on accompaniment, attentiveness, and contribution
We use the word “church” to mean a lot of things. The people of God. The structure where we meet to pray. The hierarchy that leads. The tradition handed down.
What if, when we said church, our default definition was “a network of spiritual directors”… a tribe bound together by the tender cultivation of another’s (as well as their own) journey to know themselves as loved sacramentally?
If this was the default definition, how would this shift our priorities? How would this shift our inner lives?
Say that each day is a beautifully baked loaf of bread. Twenty-four hours, fresh every day.
What gets the first bite?
Prayer? The cultivation of solitude? The creation of something generous? Attention to our dearest relationships? Nature? Physical health?
The demands of work? Internet platforms that sell your attention to advertisers? Obsessive worry?
We rarely have the ability to control our days. We often have the ability to choose what gets the first bite of our time.
Flannery O’Connor once said, riffing on John 8:32, “You shall know the truth, and the truth will make you strange.”
I love this quote.
If what we say in the creed is true, we are going to have a wild journey… an adventure to know God as love and to act out of that knowledge. It will certainly, and thank goodness, be unpredictable, leading us little by little to a profound interior freedom.
If we are not comfortable being strange, neither should we expect to be free.
Paul's Blog