He asked this, "Is the Church a place where difficult questions are asked and allowed to linger?"
In my experience talking with people in all different walks of life, I have not gotten the impression that most people expect "the Church" to be a place where we ask questions or much less where it is safe to ask them. I wonder if over time the communities of faith that developed fell into patterns of community that gave stability but turned into a rigid adherence to rules, rather than a commitment to continued discovery. Isn't that how most of us work? We start something and as we get settled into the routine we do less of the things that created the routine and made it exciting in the beginning. Then it becomes the norm and changing it means that we have to be uncomfortable again and experiment with new things. During time of high creativity we expect lots of changes and energy around what is new. When we begin to get comfortable and edge into maintaining things it is easy to forget to keep trying new things and looking for new opportunities for growth. We can also do so many new things that we never get settled into living giving routines and customs that invite us to go further in our faith and the development of community.
Part of developing new communities and routines is in order to create a better system to maintain but if we do not consistently evaluate the things that we are maintaining we will miss opportunities for further growth and discovery. It isn't easy to be a place where we ask difficult questions. All people aren't ready to deal with the same difficult questions at the same time. How can we endeavor to honor these questions, accept the discomfort and support one another as we navigate the questions with integrity, hope and love? I want to be a part of a community where the questions that lay upon our minds can be asked safely and with the support of those around us. What would that look like for you? Would you participate? And how would we know that we were that kind of place for the new people we meet?
The second part of the question refers to letting things linger. If you are at all like me, you prefer to have an answer--yes or no. I tend to run quickly to an answer, even if it is painful simply so I don't have to live with uncertainty. As much as I value uncertainty and its invitation to grow...I don't like it and it is a discipline for me to practice letting things linger. In community it can be even harder to let things linger because we each are trying to manage our own anxiety and to gauge the anxiety of others. We can reach out for any certainty, even a wrong one simply so we don't have to live with the unknown anymore. How can we practice the discipline of letting things hang around for a while, unanswered and see what possibilities develop? What does it look like for a group of individuals to figure out ways to linger together around particular questions and care for one another while we wait? How can we as a small community cultivate a culture of question asking and a comfort with allowing our questions to linger--unanswered but not forgotten?
There are lots of questions...let's become a place and a community to ask them!
Part of developing new communities and routines is in order to create a better system to maintain but if we do not consistently evaluate the things that we are maintaining we will miss opportunities for further growth and discovery. It isn't easy to be a place where we ask difficult questions. All people aren't ready to deal with the same difficult questions at the same time. How can we endeavor to honor these questions, accept the discomfort and support one another as we navigate the questions with integrity, hope and love? I want to be a part of a community where the questions that lay upon our minds can be asked safely and with the support of those around us. What would that look like for you? Would you participate? And how would we know that we were that kind of place for the new people we meet?
The second part of the question refers to letting things linger. If you are at all like me, you prefer to have an answer--yes or no. I tend to run quickly to an answer, even if it is painful simply so I don't have to live with uncertainty. As much as I value uncertainty and its invitation to grow...I don't like it and it is a discipline for me to practice letting things linger. In community it can be even harder to let things linger because we each are trying to manage our own anxiety and to gauge the anxiety of others. We can reach out for any certainty, even a wrong one simply so we don't have to live with the unknown anymore. How can we practice the discipline of letting things hang around for a while, unanswered and see what possibilities develop? What does it look like for a group of individuals to figure out ways to linger together around particular questions and care for one another while we wait? How can we as a small community cultivate a culture of question asking and a comfort with allowing our questions to linger--unanswered but not forgotten?
There are lots of questions...let's become a place and a community to ask them!
