All blogging activity today has been consumed in the thurible.
Anyone who’s missed all the fun should go read.
Tomorrow’s game is connect the dots:
In light of the conversation going on about how we read scripture, this quote from Irenaeus at Episcopal Cafe might interest some of you.
I’ve had a few conversations this week that have left me wondering what sort of ‘teaching’ usually goes on in church.
So, this is by way of a survey for anyone willing to answer:
1. Where did you (/do you) learn about prayer? If it was not through the ‘normal’ life of your church, have you ever received teaching on prayer in your congregation?
2. What shapes your understanding of scripture? Does your experience of church lead you to believe that there is one way to read scripture or many ways?
3. Have you ever had a chance to talk with others in your church about your understanding of (and your potential difficulties with) central aspects of faith (e.g. — love, forgiveness, resurrection, redemption, judgment…)? If so, how did the conversation come about?
If you know of people who might be willing to answer but who don’t usually read this blog, please invite them into the conversation. I’d really like to know what people from different backgrounds have experienced.
Today was the feast day of Gregory of Nazianzus and Basil the Great. A wonderful excuse for incense at the evening eucharist and a celebration of all that is splendid in orthodox theology.
The biography in Exciting Holiness — a book of collects and readings for Saints days — begins like this:
Gregory and Basil were two friends bound together by their desire to promote and defend the divinity of Christ as proclaimed in the Nicene Creed. This was against the seemingly overwhelming pressure from both Church and State for the establishment of Arianism, which denied Christ’s divinity and thus the whole Christian doctrine of the Trinity.
It made me think about how often impressive people come in pairs. Somehow, it is both the friction and support of friendship that stirs creativity and gives people the strength and energy to face opposition.
But maybe it is also friendship that teaches us we can survive the stress of opposition — that life goes on, that relationships can endure even when faced with anger and pain and misunderstanding.
Basil’s collect begins:
God, who in making us
wounded our hearts with the hidden spark of divine love…
Given the place of the divine spark in orthodox theology — given an anthropology that says that at our root we are made in the image of God, that there is an unquellable spark of the divine life within us — this suggests that the very thing that nurtures love, that flames the spark, is the wound love sometimes causes. I am not being clear. But there is something in this that is compelling.
And as I’ve said before, understanding is overrated.
wonderful exchange 