Today's Journal
FINDING THE FIRE
David Steindl-Rast, Benedictine monk wrote:“The religions start from mysticism. There is no other way to start a religion. But I compare this to a volcano that gushes forth… and then … the magma flows down the slides of the mountain and cools off. And when it reaches the bottom, it’s just rocks. You would never guess that there was fire in it. So after a couple of hundred years, or two thousand years or more, what was once alive is dead rock. Doctrine becomes doctrinaire. Morals become moralistic. Ritual becomes ritualistic. What do we do with it? We have to push through the crust and go to the fire that’s within it.”
As an interested reader in church history at an early part of my journey, (some of my most depressing reading) I noticed much of what the quote above mentions: after a while most movements solidify and turn to protection instead of projection. The essential message is having the ‘right doctrine,’ and the ‘right sacraments,’ or the ‘right reverend’ in the ‘right pulpit,’ after the ‘right pulpit committee’ has chosen the ‘right candidate’ for the ‘right senior pastor,’ with the right kind of Calvinism, or Methodism or Pentecostalism… whatever.
The movements often turn to stone…dead rock. I hope we can have the courage to drill through the rock, break through the crust and find the fire again… in whatever place we are in.
“A man planted a fig tree in his garden and came again and again to see if there was any fruit on it, but he was always disappointed. Finally, he said to his gardener, ‘I’ve waited three years, and there hasn’t been a single fig! Cut it down. It’s just taking up space in the garden.’ The gardener answered, ‘Sir, give it one more chance. Leave it another year, and I’ll give it special attention and plenty of fertilizer. If we get figs next year, fine. If not, then you can cut it down.” Jesus