The Spirit blows where she pleases (John 3:8). She appears as a dove (Mt 3:16), as power (Micah 3:8), as a sound like the blowing of a violent wind (Acts 2:2) - always moving. How - and why - then, do we insist on our church being static? Perhaps as there are more and more "nones" in our nation, it would do us well to consider how we might grow our churches into the 'mores'. As Tom Dickau wrote, "I've always said that if you combined Anabaptist stance over against the world, with a Reformed desire to transform society, and Catholic spiritual practice, you'd have a church."* Maybe it's time for the Spirit to swoop again into our Upper Rooms.

                In my work, I have the opportunity to visit many churches. Some are static and fossilized. Others are vibrant and alive! And free! "Always, the Spirit is interested in moving us to freedom, as freedom is where the Spirit abides."(2 Cor 3:17) The difference, as I perceive it, is the pastor's concern about the spiritual life of the members, plus the freedom to let go of calcified thinking that doesn't work anymore and move into the possibilities of what could be.

                Tillich speaks of the "ontological shock" of recognizing that self-absorption blocks the way to self-realization. And there is another kind of shock, which Ray Hart calls the "imaginative shock" of great art, that reveals the gap between what one is and what one could and should be.** As we consider the transitory seething of things, let us consider the advice of Neale Donald Walsch: "Honor the tradition but expand the understanding. That's what religions must do right now of they hope to be helpful to humans in the years ahead."***
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*Quoted in Jason Byassee, "Vancouver's Stony Soil." Christian Century, Jan 6, 2016, p. 24.
**Michael Ivens, Understanding the Spiritual Exercises, p. 224
***Quoted in Megan McKenna, Like a Hammer Shattering Rock, p. 98.

                                              - Jan