Scary Roads

I've realized that my soul sorta looks like this right now:

The straight white line I grew up depending on has long since been painted over by journeys taken & trip that seemed to cross-cross churchianity.  What seemed like a clear path in my 20s, like asphalt laid, became some type of canvass painted by a highway worker who wishes she could be Pollock or mutant fractals.

Two external forces blew at me during my journeys - the advent of megachurches and the use of churchinaity to sell things (eventually to sell a Presidency).  I was reminded of the power of these two forces when Isaw Tim Oren's post Burke's Law of Metadynamics, when he quotes  James "Connections" Burke :

Systems dump excess energy in the form of structure.

Oren unpacks this:

It essentially says that a system operating in surplus won't stay so, but instead will act to build up its own structure at the expense of the surplus.

In most faith settings, this excess energy - the power derived from transformation - too often gets distilled in doctrine, roles & organizational forms.  As fallible people, this is pretty understandable - as creatures made in God's very image, this seems like a denial of our very being.

I am listening right now, rather than swerving from left to right, rather than gunning engine.  So  much of what I am listening to can be scary - the glory God has made me for, the limits I set on God and the community I live in, the shift in life that takes place when practices are faithed.

Comments

[plumbing supplies]

Well, I guess God has made that a scary purpose. I guess we should respect whatever entity has gotten to that.