Miscellanies

How we shape and make meaning of the world is what could be defined as the study of aesthetics [See Mark Johnson]. So while reading this article by Time magazine it becomes apparent that while the consumption of beef is a desire that many Americans have, it’s becoming more apparent that very few are willing to do so at the expense of what they do not know, or better, cannot stomach. The process involved with making pink slime and its counterparts has invoked public outcry on what the food industry has done to us along with how negligent the USDA and US government can be on food “production.” Hopefully you can read the article and see that while many “want” beef it may not be at the expense of ingesting chemically covered meat scraps that look like something out of Ghostbusters.

Jamie Smith in his recent release Imaging the Kingdom: How Worship Works cites a very interesting experiment concerning alternative learning and neural maps:

Like frogs, owls have developed an extremely accurate method of catching prey. The owl hears a mouse rustling on the ground and locates the mouse primarily in the owl’s retinotectal map, and the diving owl then looks to find the exact location of its prey as it strikes. Eric Knudsen put prismatic glasses on adult and juvenile owls that distorted the owls’ vision by twenty-three degrees. After wearing the glasses for eight weeks, the adult owls never learned to compensate, although juveniles were able to learn to hunt accurately. However, when the glasses were reintroduced to adult owls who had worn them as juveniles, they were able to readjust to the glasses in short order. (ITK, 114)

There seems to be a haunting reality within the Christian church of folks, especially youth and young adults, walking out of the church doors due to boredom, being ‘burned’ by the church, or perhaps just the fresh sense of autonomy as they enter the college ranks. Whatever the reason, statistics show hands down a decline in participation from 18-29 year olds in ecclesiastical contexts and institutions. David Kinnaman, who leads the Barna Group, says that 59% of the age demographic given above walks out on the “church.” My point is not to waylay on the reasons why people leave the church, primarily, because so much has already been said concerning that. What I want to at least mention is that there may be a silver-lining in those folks who grow up in deeply liturgical contexts, leave, and may re-enter church life some point after their walkabout.  

[I should note here that at least the research or presentations I have been apart of and have heard note that a fundamental reason folks ‘re-enter’ the church ranks after years of despondency is because they have kids and these same parents want their kids to be around or exposed to Christian teaching.] 

The silver lining is that in gatherings, worship services or meetings these liturgical rituals are always present. Sit down, stand up, doxology, Apostles Creed, New Testament readings, Old Testament readings, preaching, the Eucharist, baptisms, offering, alms-giving, so forth and so on. Communal, Spirited practices that form the body of Christ into witness. Now, most kids would look at these and think boring, and rightfully so, they can be at times, and they can especially lack the spirited  part the is so prevalent in evangelical worship services today. However to have an ecstatic, emotional high in a worship service or at least the appearance of one does not constitute as the Spirit actually being present [see Religious Affections by Jonathan Edwards]. But, that seems to be the draw these days. No 18-29 year old is beating down the door of a mainline church demanding a better presentation of the Eucharistic or more diversity in creeds. But to my point, those distinctly and historic Christian practices can be absolutely formative to the mind and heart of a child as he or she is growing up. And the practice of those things may bore them but we should be okay with that. What may have proven to be another ritual could have sunken deep into the bones of the child walking through the liturgy with their present faith community. In God’s goodness and grace those practices may have situated themselves deep within each child so that if they do leave, or, as in the case of the juvenile owls the prismatic lenses are removed, that there is something about the prodigals return to the church that the “prismatic lenses” are placed back on and they are accustomed to the Spirited-practices of the church. That these practices are refreshed and recalled in the minds and hearts of those who return to the church, and that those practices can cast an alternative to the world in which they lived during those squandered years (Lk. 15:13) and especially to the world in which we exist in today. 

Somehow I can never quite believe that God will really employ me-to the utmost: make complete use of me as He does of the others. Everyday I become more aware of my own ignorance in the most elementary details of everyday life,which everybody seems to know without having learnt them, by a sort of instinct. Yet I don’t suppose I’m really more of a fool than most people, and if I stick to easily remembered rules of thumb, I can look as though I really understood what was going on. But all those words which seem to have such precise meaning for some folk, are pretty nigh indistinguishable to me, so that I often use them haphazard, like a bad card-player to whom one lead seems as good as another. Whilst they were discussing the savings-banks I felt like a child strayed into a room full of gabbling grown-ups.

-George Bernanos, The Diary of a Country Priest