September 28, 2007
Reminder
On Jim Lehrer’s News Hour the other night was the new (I think) poet laureate of the US&A, name of Simic. He’s from New Hampshire by way of somewhere like Poland with his brother and mother to avoid the “protectors” from the Dark Side.
He teaches writing at a university. He asked a class, What is poetry? A woman student answered, Poetry is to remind people of their own humanity.
Fancy that, I thought, for if I were to be asked, What is church? I would give the same answer. Certainly among many other things, but very importantly, if not primarily, church is to remind people of their own humanity. For that, after all these years, is what I’ve come to believe is church. God has taken from her abundantly fecund mind us spiritual beings and imagined us and called us human and set us forth and free to live up to what she plans for us, constantly to remind us that we are human, to commission/baptize us to show others how to do and be the same and always together, synagogued and, of course, unsynagogued. That, speaking theologically, like the tango, takes two — at least — and of whatever persuasion.
And sometimes, maybe lots of times, we get it all mixed up, thinking it’s really all about becoming spiritual and religious and centering prayer which is all right in its way, but when actually it’s mostly about becoming and human and eccentering prayer.
The tragedy is that in those times when we really start fulfilling that vocation and it starts to bloom in our life, church-of-the-other becomes puzzled with us, so we turn away from church right at the moment when church needs us most. There should be a verb form for church. I church, you church, we church. And churching, we remind, do we, that we do this in reminder of that One Whom God chose as beloved human. And so forth… because he said to.
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