Of Whales and Such
Fr. Freeman has once again posted a
great article. This has become expected (at
least on my part), but this one I thought worth linking more than usual. I
could make my entire blog about just providing links to Fr. Freeman's writings,
but then that would be sort of silly.I
don't really have much to add (other than a photo). There was one quote worth
dwelling on for a few moments:"Neither
should we seek to make Church “easier” or more conformed to the age.
We’re in the belly of a whale. What we need is to be spewed up onto the
land, and not a program for the improvement of whale
bellies."I have spent much of my adult
life, as have most Christians, I imagine, hearing about the need to make Church
"relevant" to the times. Reading Fr. Freeman's words, I was thinking that yes,
the Church should be made relevant - and it has. The difficulty lies in the
fact that the only prayers that the Church has that are relevant to the whale's
belly are prayers aimed at getting us out of it. The highest form of those
prayers, the Divine Liturgy, is entirely focused on leaving that belly, and
residing back on dry land (heaven). Any efforts aimed at making the Liturgy
more relevant are inevitably focused on allowing us to remain in the belly - at
declaring the belly a nice place.I
wish I had a readily available photo of our oldest sitting in a muddy pool of
water in our back yard many years ago. He was enjoying it, but I suspect that
today he wouldn't think that to still be sitting in that pool would be so grand
at all. In our desire to conform the Church to our current state - make it say
that what we are doing is okay, make it do the things that make us feel
comfortable (like we're at home), all we do is tell it that we want to spend all
eternity in that mudhole. Not very appealing,
really.- The picture is of a
California Grey Whale "footprint", a calm spot of water formed when the whale
dives. Unfortunately, in our lives, the footprint of the whale is anything but
calm.
Posted: Thursday - February 08, 2007 at 10:34 PM
