Ducks Part 2

I hope you have had as wonderful a break for the holidays as I have had (and am still enjoying).  It’s been a great time to just be with family, get outdoors, catch up on musical interests, and to read and reflect a little.

In my previous post, I outlined some of the motivators for a significant change of path in my spiritual walk. I am going to spend some time dissecting them – again, largely because I am still sorting things out for myself (the ducks in my head are an unruly bunch and don’t line up easily at times), but also in case anyone else cares to listen in.

Two of them are fairly simple and I think I can dispense with them here. One has to do with attending church in one’s own community, or as close as you can get. My church for the past seven years has been right in my own backyard.  After spending the previous ten-or-so years at a church 40 minutes away, attending locally was a very refreshing change.  The Gospel is all about relationships, and you stand the best chance of building and enjoying those relationships when you see other church folk at the post office, the local high school ball games and other places. It’s easier to get together and be a part of one another’s lives.  If I was going to make a change, I wanted to make it while staying in the neighborhood.

The second reason I want to address here is the pull that liturgical worship has been having on me. This is very subjective, of course. It has to do with the way God wired me and has nudged me along the way. Where I once rejected liturgy out-of-hand as vain, meaningless repetition, it has come to mean a great deal to me.  

For one thing, it is beautiful and full of Scriptural truth. But there is something else. I think it has to do with my growing need to be a part of something that is much bigger than me and bigger than any local church – something that reaches over the centuries and connects way back, to the very earliest Christian church.  Something that has been a part of the lives of countless millions of believers over the past 2000 years or so. I have wanted to step into that stream of rich spiritual history and tradition, to belong to it and to identify with it.  In my private devotional life, I have been engaging in worship that puts me in touch with this - but not on Sunday mornings. That was the one missing piece of the puzzle that needed to be addressed.

Psalm 139 tells us that we are fearfully and wonderfully made, or “wonderfully complex” (NLT). We are each wired differently, and one of the lessons in this for me is to be willing to explore how God wired me and to not be afraid to follow that.  I would never try to persuade anyone that my path is the way to go. I only know that it is the way to go for me.

In future posts I will get into the weightier areas of church history and the contemplative tradition. But not tonight.  I’m still on holiday break, after all. I hope you are too.  Merry Christmas and a Happy and Blessed New Year!

Line Up Them Ducks - Part One

 As the saying goes: “There is more than one way to skin a cat. But no matter how you do it, the cat is still ticked off. “

“Getting my ducks is a row” is another expression. It’s more positive. And, no ducks are hurt in the process. The ducks in particular like this, or so I hear.

Tonight, I am not sure what to write or even where to begin. This will probably - hopefully - be the first of a series of blogs. I say “hopefully” because over the past year so much has flowed through my heart and my brain that, even though it has resulted in a positive outcome, I feel the need to put all the loudly-quacking ducks in my head into a row and lay things out in a somewhat orderly way - for others perhaps, but primarily for myself.   Writing, for me, seems to be the surest way to do that, whether journaling, songwriting or blogging (I actually have written a song about this that I will be performing in my acoustic duo in 2013).

So I will start in the moment, and move backwards from there. After nearly 38 years as a committed, seminary-trained Protestant, I am about to begin attending the church of my youth (which I formerly and vehemently rejected), the Catholic Church.

(Note: I avoided casting myself as leaving “Protestant Evangelicalism”, because I am still firmly evangelical.)

Why do this?  That’s what I hope to address in the coming weeks/months.  For sure, I have a lot of company here – folks much like me who have made this very same move. I am also aware that some people who I know and love are a bit confused by my decision. It’s exciting to me, so naturally I want to be able to share it and articulate it well, but not to proselytize, ever.  I have no interest in changing anyone’s mind on the matter – only to aid in understanding.

My decision has to do with several elements that I intend to lay out in greater detail. In no logical order whatsoever, they are:

ü  A deep tug on my heart toward liturgical worship

ü  The flow of church history

ü  The importance of doing church in one’s own community

ü  A love for the contemplative tradition that was born and grew in Catholicism, and the path it offers toward spiritual growth

ü  The knowledge that this is the church from which all others have sprung, (checkered as its history was at times – the church is both divine and human) and the sense of connection to believers on whose shoulders I stand.

It’s been the spiritual, emotional and intellectual equivalent of Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, but I like where it has brought me and am at peace with it, though leaving my current church is not something I do lightly. I have made friendships there that are important to me and that I want to see continue. It is a warm, wonderful church filled with great people and I have become close to many of them.

Yet, I still don’t know where I’ll begin with the next installment. Whichever duck is quacking the loudest, I guess.