While I routinely read the New York Times online, I don’t always expect to be inspired spiritually. I know the Times does quite a few stories about religion, but too often religion is treated as a political issue or terrorist issue or the like. Sometimes religion gets tied up with sociology as in demographics. All these are interesting, but not necessarily inspiring. For this reflection piece which I call inspirational, I need something that gives me a chance to be inspired and to be inspiring.
I got lucky. Or maybe God just stepped in to help me. The help came in an editorial for the Times. The editorial is by Margaret Renkl, whom I did not know. But her title was compelling. The title read, “Easter Is Calling Me Back to the Church.” I was a little surprised to see an editorial like that in the famous global paper, but I jumped into it. It was good and I want to share some of it, as it has inspired me.
In many ways Renkl’s story is the story of many people I know. She grew up Roman Catholic. She is married and has kids, yet she and her family continue to go to Mass and make church a part of their lives. For people my age, that sounds pretty normal. While we were not all Catholics, going to church was just part of life. It was as if you could not really be an American and not go to church and somehow claim to be religious. You did not actually have to be religious, but you had to claim to be! But we all know the world and contemporary culture have changed.
Going to church is no longer a “social must.” In many ways this is a good thing. No longer do we have to fake it to be acceptable as a citizen. Listening to Renkl’s story made me reflective of my own journey and how to help students’ reflect on their own journey---whether that includes growing up in the church or not.
In spite of consistent going to church, Renkl laments how this has become troublesome. She narrates how politics have divided church. She talks about not being able to square her sense of what Jesus wants from followers and what she sees in the lives of people doing things that she never thinks Jesus would counsel. I realize this makes her sound like she has it all together theologically and those who don’t agree don’t count as real Christians. But this does her a disservice. Rather what it points to is a distinction between the theology and politics of churches and the meaning of belief in the Holy One Itself.
In seminary we would say that theology is not the same as God. Theology is about God, but God is always more than and different than theology. Renkl becomes clear she can perhaps do without church; but she realizes she cannot be without God. I found her poignancy palpable. Listen to her begin to articulate this. She tried to go without believing. But finally, she realized she simply couldn’t. In her words she acknowledges, “The reasons to believe came down to only one: I couldn’t not believe.”
Her reasoning goes into more detail, which I want to follow. My favorite sentence of the whole article comes next. “I seem to have been born with a constant ache for the sacred, a deep-rooted need to offer thanks, to ask for help, to sing out in fathomless praise to something.” I am deeply touched to hear her admit to have an ache for the sacred. In fact, it is a constant ache. I have had aches---aches and pains. But I don’t know that I ever have ached for God. Renkl has that ache.
Interestingly, she does not even say ache for God. Her ache is for the sacred. Of course, the theologian in me knows that by definition God is sacred and so on. But the idea of sacred is non-personal. The sacred may be God as person. But it may be Light, Energy, etc. I like this way of doing theology. What Renkl knows is a need to offer thanks and to ask for help.
This speaks deeply to me. I am confident many in our world feel this need---experience this ache, even though they may not believe in God. We all need a chance to say thanks and help.
I laughed when she tells us I need to praise something---and that is in italics! And then she elaborates. “In time I found my way back to God, the most familiar and fundamental something I knew, even if by then my conception of the divine had enlarged beyond any church’s ability to define or contain it.” This could the subject of a doctoral dissertation, but simply Renkl has shown us how to put together an ache for the sacred with the God found in a church. But it is not the same God of her youth.
As I reflect finally on her experience and explanation, it occurs to me she has had this ache for the sacred implanted in her from birth. Early in life the church helps her with its own theology---its view of God. Given life’s experience with inevitable rocks and roils our youthful images of the world and God, we often have to give up or get by to new ways of thinking about old things. Renkl still had an ache for the sacred. She found a new God to fit the ache.
But she still needs to be with others.
I got lucky. Or maybe God just stepped in to help me. The help came in an editorial for the Times. The editorial is by Margaret Renkl, whom I did not know. But her title was compelling. The title read, “Easter Is Calling Me Back to the Church.” I was a little surprised to see an editorial like that in the famous global paper, but I jumped into it. It was good and I want to share some of it, as it has inspired me.
In many ways Renkl’s story is the story of many people I know. She grew up Roman Catholic. She is married and has kids, yet she and her family continue to go to Mass and make church a part of their lives. For people my age, that sounds pretty normal. While we were not all Catholics, going to church was just part of life. It was as if you could not really be an American and not go to church and somehow claim to be religious. You did not actually have to be religious, but you had to claim to be! But we all know the world and contemporary culture have changed.
Going to church is no longer a “social must.” In many ways this is a good thing. No longer do we have to fake it to be acceptable as a citizen. Listening to Renkl’s story made me reflective of my own journey and how to help students’ reflect on their own journey---whether that includes growing up in the church or not.
In spite of consistent going to church, Renkl laments how this has become troublesome. She narrates how politics have divided church. She talks about not being able to square her sense of what Jesus wants from followers and what she sees in the lives of people doing things that she never thinks Jesus would counsel. I realize this makes her sound like she has it all together theologically and those who don’t agree don’t count as real Christians. But this does her a disservice. Rather what it points to is a distinction between the theology and politics of churches and the meaning of belief in the Holy One Itself.
In seminary we would say that theology is not the same as God. Theology is about God, but God is always more than and different than theology. Renkl becomes clear she can perhaps do without church; but she realizes she cannot be without God. I found her poignancy palpable. Listen to her begin to articulate this. She tried to go without believing. But finally, she realized she simply couldn’t. In her words she acknowledges, “The reasons to believe came down to only one: I couldn’t not believe.”
Her reasoning goes into more detail, which I want to follow. My favorite sentence of the whole article comes next. “I seem to have been born with a constant ache for the sacred, a deep-rooted need to offer thanks, to ask for help, to sing out in fathomless praise to something.” I am deeply touched to hear her admit to have an ache for the sacred. In fact, it is a constant ache. I have had aches---aches and pains. But I don’t know that I ever have ached for God. Renkl has that ache.
Interestingly, she does not even say ache for God. Her ache is for the sacred. Of course, the theologian in me knows that by definition God is sacred and so on. But the idea of sacred is non-personal. The sacred may be God as person. But it may be Light, Energy, etc. I like this way of doing theology. What Renkl knows is a need to offer thanks and to ask for help.
This speaks deeply to me. I am confident many in our world feel this need---experience this ache, even though they may not believe in God. We all need a chance to say thanks and help.
I laughed when she tells us I need to praise something---and that is in italics! And then she elaborates. “In time I found my way back to God, the most familiar and fundamental something I knew, even if by then my conception of the divine had enlarged beyond any church’s ability to define or contain it.” This could the subject of a doctoral dissertation, but simply Renkl has shown us how to put together an ache for the sacred with the God found in a church. But it is not the same God of her youth.
As I reflect finally on her experience and explanation, it occurs to me she has had this ache for the sacred implanted in her from birth. Early in life the church helps her with its own theology---its view of God. Given life’s experience with inevitable rocks and roils our youthful images of the world and God, we often have to give up or get by to new ways of thinking about old things. Renkl still had an ache for the sacred. She found a new God to fit the ache.
But she still needs to be with others.
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