Love this piece. So glad I found Cracks...you are expressing thoughts and ideas that have been torturing me -- as just a person in the pew (or, in last several years, NOT in the pew) -- and couldn't seem to put into words.
I'm coming away from this piece feeling I want to be fully alive more than I want to be right; that I can't start from scratch, with no tradition-dogma (though I want my faith to be much more "organic" -- right here, and not always looking "out there"). To not distinguish so much between "Church/church" and "not-Church/church" (which this piece does marvelously), and to cultivate eyes to see and ears to hear the Spirit, wherever and however and in whomever we encounter it. (I love Richard Rohr's references to the "Christ-soaked world.") To be willing to live more lightly with tragedy and comedy (my own personal, and writ large). To recognize and sit with the tension between naive liberal Protestant progressivism and the Catholic knowledge that we can't do it on our own (I don't like the term "fallen..." It begs the question "fallen from what," which opens up a whole new cans of worms).
In general, I feel starved for a real companionship of faith and have never managed to find it (or make it) in a parish or in Catholic adult faith formation (which seem to me to be lacking...I don't want to be endlessly pointed back to the Catechism. Isn't the Catechism our Alpha and not our Omega, if you will...a crude map, and not the destination...a kind of frame on which a real House can be built?)
Thank you so much for getting these thoughts percolating in this particular reader!
Love this piece. So glad I found Cracks...you are expressing thoughts and ideas that have been torturing me -- as just a person in the pew (or, in last several years, NOT in the pew) -- and couldn't seem to put into words.
I'm coming away from this piece feeling I want to be fully alive more than I want to be right; that I can't start from scratch, with no tradition-dogma (though I want my faith to be much more "organic" -- right here, and not always looking "out there"). To not distinguish so much between "Church/church" and "not-Church/church" (which this piece does marvelously), and to cultivate eyes to see and ears to hear the Spirit, wherever and however and in whomever we encounter it. (I love Richard Rohr's references to the "Christ-soaked world.") To be willing to live more lightly with tragedy and comedy (my own personal, and writ large). To recognize and sit with the tension between naive liberal Protestant progressivism and the Catholic knowledge that we can't do it on our own (I don't like the term "fallen..." It begs the question "fallen from what," which opens up a whole new cans of worms).
In general, I feel starved for a real companionship of faith and have never managed to find it (or make it) in a parish or in Catholic adult faith formation (which seem to me to be lacking...I don't want to be endlessly pointed back to the Catechism. Isn't the Catechism our Alpha and not our Omega, if you will...a crude map, and not the destination...a kind of frame on which a real House can be built?)
Thank you so much for getting these thoughts percolating in this particular reader!