I'm beginning to realize that before I can move on with my life I need to make peace with my failures, lapses, gaps, and those of other people in my life. I don't have to wring contrition out of any of us, or, in most cases, get or make an official apology, but I do have to let it rest. I'm finding the biggest challenge may be the church as an institution. A friendly person once suggested that instead of seeking personal help I ought to "call the church." That's a reasonable suggestion if the church wasn't the very institution that had screwed me over. At that moment what I really needed was personal help from faithful people not institutional help.
I suppose that friendly voice meant that I could get the personal help I needed by working through the bureaucracy of church referrals, but I'd been through that system. Frankly, you always end up screwed. People check off check lists and "make connections" and then you sit in a room with someone you don't know who doesn't know you and you try to express the deepest intimacies of your life. It never works.
It's particularly difficult if you've grown up with the backstage view. You know that all these people are playing political games of one sort or another and with varying degrees of success. You've lost all innocence that someone actually cares. The only authority the church seems capable of generating at the moment is the authority of the abusive father. So I've gone off looking for something else.
I think I've found my personal something else, but I don't like how absurdly grumpy I am with the past. I don't like shuddering at every tiny misstep the church we are currently visiting makes. It's not like they are trying to be evil. They are trying to do something very good. They just don't seem to be succeeding, in my view. I'm not ready to give up on working out some kind of truce with them just yet, so I'll keep going and I'll probably keep shuddering. I wish there was a program I could call that would walk me through the steps so I could walk free.
I bet there is. I bet it doesn't work.
Random bits pulled from a homeschooling writer's life.
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About Me
- Christine Ansorge
- I have six children the greater majority of which are grown up. I’m trying to adjust to a life that has time for me. Blogging offers me an opportunity to write for an audience. Thanks for reading.
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2 comments:
I'm not sure why God built the Church out of people, but I suppose he had a good reason.
It is interesting to wonder what the Church would have looked like if it had been built out of angels. I'm not sure what other options there were or how they would differ.
So it seems that it's either New Jerusalem Now or people. It seems good to have to work for the New Jerusalem, so that leaves people.
From a Catholic perspective, considering the doctrine of the Communion of Saints, working out our differences is an absolute necessity, indeed a purgatorial precondition of the Beatific Vision. According to the "zap theology" of Calvinism--and really, all Protesters who don't have a doctrine of Purgatory--when you die you'll just be zapped into perfection. Since the afterlife in a sense starts now we are after a manner in purgatory now.
Now the specific purgation required for the Communion of the Saints aspect of Heaven is getting along with one another. Right now we set there in the sanctuary grumbling about such-and-such nonsense of so-and-so (I think of Screwtape's description). Now *surely* it won't be like that in the Beatific Vision.
In the Beatific Vision our happiness will grow *exponentially* in the following way: I'll be experiencing bliss. You'll be experiencing bliss. I'll be so united to you that when I see that you're experiencing bliss, my bliss will bulge. They same will happen for you. Then I'll get a bliss boost from the fact that my bliss gave you a bliss boost. And so on. Now add in, say, our friend KB. The same process that happened between you and I will happen between you and him and also he and myself. But *in addition to that* I'll be so united to KB that I'll be elated that his joy juiced your joy. And so on, and so on, world without end, Amen.
So how we gonna get there from here? Well, it seems it's either ZAP! or Purgatory. Surely not ZAP!. Ergo...
So I think, as is no longer surprising to me, that dogma is devotional. The doctrine of the Communion of Saints tells us that as we endure this purgatorial period we can perhaps somewhat alleviate our frustration by thinking of the Joy toward which we are hurled.
I completely agree, which is why I'm working hard at making peace. The Beatific Vision is the only reason to do anything and working to be in harmony with it is the only thing worth doing.
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