Regular readers of this blog (both of you) may already suspect what I'm about to confess: I don't really plan out a blog post very thoroughly. My blogging is the unedited me. For better or for worse, this is all fairly raw writing.
So that last entry about having a hackberry faith . . . I had really some vague intention of tying it into the season of Advent, which (for those of you not observant of the liturgical calendar) began this past Sunday.
Advent is a season of hope and vigilance. We read the "keep watch" kind of passages during this season, reflect on the "you know neither the day nor the hour" kind of things. Yes, it's about watching for Christ, both in preparation for the celebration of the Bethlehem event, but also watching for Christ coming again---and all the ways we can mean that.
And finding myself in this familiar place of having lost faith in the church as institution, I think it's a watchful place to be. I need to pay attention, keep vigilant for when and where the Body of Christ might renew my faith, where it might reveal itself in all it's incarnational wonder and glory.
Tonight was one such event to watch. My congregation gathers on Wednesdays evenings during Advent and sing the Holden Evening Prayer service. It's a lovely, singable (and danceable, I daresay) setting of some of the oldest lyrics known to Christian hymnody. And I was reminded, yes, I do believe in this. This being gathering together and singing. Maybe I don't believe every phrase, but I believe in the singing and praying together.
It's a small and significant thing and I won't belabor it.
Just sit back and smile at the places a new shoot comes up from roots still green.
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I'll have to look that up. And there are *11* of us--although 4 have no picture. Hmmm....
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