in which I lament
Blame it on the flu and infection keeping me in bed for seven days. For the extra time to mull. Blame it on the season of transition in which Brian and I find ourselves, surrounded by goodness upon goodness, yet feeling like we were made for something else.
I suspect this blog meme is intended for lighthearted banter at the end of a long week. You'll forgive me that I just can't go there tonight. My heart and mind are too full of sorrow for all that is lost to me and my children in the Westernized, generalized religious and civic worlds we've inherited -- and, seemingly, will be passing on to those who follow us. I'll forgive you for re-naming me Doom 'n Gloom Palm.
— 1 —
The loss of our imagination as Christians. That we do not know how to wonder, doubt, groan, imagine, fantasize. Or sing songs in a minor key.
— 2 —
Our music is almost lost to us. Our books. Our great masterpieces of art. We are so willing to settle for counterfeit light, trite rhymes. We are impoverished in our minds and souls.
— 3 —
We do not know how to navigate nuance, inflection, rhetoric. We only have ears for the black and white-ness of a thing. The right or wrong. The truth or lie. We do not know the language of poetry, abstraction.
— 4 —
— 5 —
We pledged our hearts so often to one nation under God that we began to believe the phrase literally.
— 6 —
We stopped marking time through the life, death, resurrection and ascension of The Word who dwelt among us, preferring to mark time by the words in our dayplanners and the greeting card aisles. We do not even mark well the celebrations of the sacraments.
— 7 —
We forgot what it means to be neighbors, living in neighborhoods, coming in and going out in each others' rhythms, joining our wealth and poverty, joys and sorrows, births and deaths, eggs and sugar.
Six reasons to celebrate.