Tonight we had the second meeting of Fr. Bill's spiritual formation series. The format was similar to last time: food, discussion/testimony, video, discussion.
Last week they got some Indian food; this time it was from Clay's Smokehouse. Everyone really seemed to enjoy it, and I didn't have the heart to tell them that I wasn't eating because I'm vegetarian. I hate to impose my dietary restrictions on others.
For the discussion part, we reviewed some of the stuff from last week and focused on our testimonies. We broke up into pairs and each person had a couple of minutes to give their testimony they started working on last Thursday. Rose and I shared ours with each other, although what I ended up saying was substantially different from what I had written down.
I realize that testimony isn't my thing. It's essentially presenting your conversion story to others in an effort to open the door to talk more about your faith. I'm shy, don't like to talk much (especially in groups of more than 2 or 3 people), and have a more private spirituality. Plus, my story is rather long and boring and full of loaded terms like bodhisattva and bodhicitta. The whole thing makes me rather uncomfortable, frankly. My testimony is my example: the person I am and the way I try to live my life.
The videos are pretty cheezy, but I kind of like them anyway. They're funny, and some of the questions they ask are thought-provoking. I agree with Colleen, though, that they could be a little more diverse (it's primarily done by two clean-cut, white guys). One of the things I really liked from today's video was the quote, "Christ is the visible image of the invisible God." I don't know why, but I found it rather brilliant at the time.
All in all, I enjoy spending time with everyone there even if I feel uncomfortable at times. I like hearing other people's stories and being among fellow seekers.
Institutional Christianity tends to get gridlocked by and confined within its particular religious template, or set of expectations. In the Catholic Church of forty years ago, almost no one would have understood what is meant by 'giving your testimony'. This is a borrowing from the Baptist and 'born again' Christian sects, where to join the congregation and be recognized as a Christian, you have to stand up in front of everyone and 'give your testimony' of how you met Jesus, what He has done for you, etc., etc. In the sects it’s all very stereotyped by now, and one is even expected to learn how to do it by the age of eight or nine, by hearing it countless times from others. Giving your testimony with them is a sort of litmus test, so you’d better be careful to make it sound believable, even throwing in a few miracles as well. This is how the sects interpret Christ’s words, ‘If you confess me before men, I will confess you before my Father and the angels.’ The Catholic Church, many historic Protestant churches (Episcopal, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Methodist), and some Orthodox Christians (though not the Orthodox Church itself) tend to copy this kind of personal testimony thing as a way of demonstrating that they’re just as ‘saved’ and ‘evangelical’ as those others who are always attacking them for infant baptism, a holy priesthood, the other sacraments, and the rituals and ceremonials that we make use of. We (I speak now including myself, as I have been guilty of this as well) speak this way, ‘give our testimony’ also in the hopes that the non-historic, ‘pop’ Christians will see the light and come to us. That is nonsense, of course, because it was their very choice to be contrarians that made them choose to stay on the noisy and judgmental fringes of Christianity. Talking like them to bring them back doesn’t really work. Meanwhile, here we are in the Catholic Church of today expressing our faith as Baptists.
ReplyDeleteAll that aside, my experience at St Philip Neri is that it is a modern and progressive community that focuses on real ministry to people, which is what the Church is supposed to be doing, and so the external forms and rituals and the rest of it, well, it’s like me in the Greek Church—the overwhelming truth and goodness of the Orthodox faith makes room inside me to wait for what is counter-productive to be gradually overcome. Anyone who thinks that a church that they are thinking of joining is ‘perfect’ had better just covert now to Islam. The Church (capitalizing it makes it universal) will always be ‘imperfect’ because it is on a journey not yet ended. The Orthodox say that the Church is a hospital for sick humanity, that Christ is the Head physician, and the priests and other holy people are His special assistants—not that any of them is completely healed yet, but they should be healthy enough to assist—and the cure for human life is our mortality, the final blow against the disease of sin, which when we embrace it with perfect trust (for there are some things that even we can do perfectly with Christ’s help) heals us finally and forever. And when we are cured, we understand much better, and by experience, why we say that ‘it’s not us who are alive and the blessed saints dead, but the reverse—they are (finally) alive, while we are dead.’
If you read this tonight, brother, see you tomorrow morning for mass.