The Bus Not the Boat

(Guest Post by Journey Community Member Laura Baker)



If you're like me, hearing all this stuff about change and growth is really annoying. All the seafaring goofiness aside, I'm not a huge fan of uninvited chaos (troubled waters?), and contemplating all the ways in which change is organic to being a Christian is just not what I'm looking for right now.

Probably like many of you, I am one of those people Danielle was talking about when she said a lot of us Journeyers are in transition. For me, the transition was mostly forced upon me, and therefore highly unwelcome. And I'm guessing, then, that this series about rocking the boat (that one was for you, Danielle) will probably be both very appropriate and also quite difficult.

Don't get me wrong--I like to think of myself as quite flexible. As an adult, I've lived in five different states and eight different homes. I've had many jobs, completed graduate school, and been in every type of financial situation you can imagine.

That kind of stuff doesn't bother me. The change I'm talking about is the near-tragedy kind. The bus that comes out of nowhere and hits you. The uncontrollable stuff that knocks you right on your ass. That's what I'm not interested in. And that's what I'm currently facing. How about you?

Danielle talked about God being a force of change, although I don't think she meant that He causes horrible things to happen. She said God is a centralizing force, and I couldn't help but think of "The Second Coming," the poem by William Butler Yeats (I'm a total English nerd, so you might as well get used to it). Yeats writes:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart, the center cannot hold.

I have this picture in my head of a vacuum-like vertical spinning center that's turning and turning, and Yeats says things fly apart from this center. Danielle says that God holds it together even while it's spinning. I'm hoping God's center does, in fact, hold, but some days I'm not so sure.

One of my favorite sculptures at the Nasher also comes to mind: It's called Quantum Cloud XX (tornado), by Antony Gormley:

(www.nashersculpturecenter.org)

There's no real water or boat tie-in here, but I think the visual is pretty much right-on... there is some kind of centralizing force amid the swirling parts of our lives. I wish that force would make the chaos stop, but apparently that's not its job.

A friend of mine recently said that peace can be as strong a force in our lives as chaos. In fact, he said he was hoping that the next bus that hits me is one of tranquility and reconciliation. I don't know if that Peace Bus is really out there, but I'd certainly step out into the street to find it.

Simplicity, Origin & Ubiquity

(Guest Post by Journey Community Member Lily Gross)



Overwhelmed by Oprahific ideology, statements of seeming depth and sometimes controversy printed on the sides of Starbucks cups, an optional Religion identifier on Facebook profiles, and an increasingly blurred line in yoga class between God and the Self, there's no place like our current society and culture to consider where we stand as believers. In the hypothetical situation in which a stranger asks us, What do you believe?, how do we answer? How can you summarize your whole being, the very essence of why you see everything the way you do? Like an essay that prompts "In 200 words or less...," so does the world hold us accountable for our raison d'etre.

I grapple with this. Even my most tried philosophies that have evolved over the years are subject to sudden change, because what I feel passionately today may very well counter what I feel down the road after new experiences: If innate evil exists. The role of developed countries in those of the developing. Whether to drink soymilk or conventional cow's. How can I possibly adopt as my confession of faith a succinct pledge composed by a bunch of ancient orthodox dudes, from whom I am so far removed, if I can't conclusively decipher the ethics of dairy consumption?

What initially turns me off from the Apostles' Creed, though, is exactly what draws me to it: its simplicity, its origin and its ubiquity. Of course, there's a book that could be written about each of the aforementioned traits. By 'simplicity' here, I mean neither "easy to get" nor mere recitation; I am referring to the beauty of brevity. Just like the exchange of wedding vows are short but moving and very significant, so are the phrases in the Creed. As for origins, the age of and history behind the Creed, as I am still learning on Sunday evenings at Journey, fascinate and intrigue me. That we as a community can trace back our collective faith (that is, its formal inception) to such remarkable antiquity fosters an empowering sense of identity. When we deliver the Creed, we are in the spiritual company of the billions of believers who have gone before and will come after us, from Paul to St. Francis of Assisi to Martin Luther King, Jr, to our own children and beyond. And as for its omnipresence, how powerful to attend a service at any number of congregations across the globe and with our brothers and sisters breathe forth in unison the tenets of what we hold to be true. The thought gives me chills!

There may be parts of the Creed you hesitate to give yourself to; I have gentle and humble reservations myself. What we can take solace and find peace in is that, while the speech in its entirety might not perfectly identify us individually, we can take each others' hands and figure it out together, one word at a time.