The Preamble (or Pre-Ramble, as the case may be)
I've posted before about my love affair with the Vancouver - Toronto (or Toronto - Vancouver) flight. It goes back to 2000, and to my previous life when, prior to moving from Toronto to Vancouver the first time (which was actually my second time, but I digress), I spent 3 months flying back and forth, living one week in Vancouver, one week in Toronto. I loved it.
With that many flights I fell into a pattern. Four and a half or five hours (depending on which direction I was heading) of uninterrupted work. I saved work for the flight. I printed articles. I read books. I wrote blog posts. The flight became the most productive part of my week.
Today, my previous life is, well... previous. But, some hold-overs remain. I still bring piles of stuff on the flight to read, and that was the case on Wednesday as Sue and I returned home from a family Christmas in Ontario. The next few posts will introduce you to some of the articles I read, and maybe to a couple of thoughts on each.
OK, Now Let's Get to the Point
The first article out of my knapsack was What's Wrong With Our Message, by our friend Brian McLaren. This one is short, but packed with content.
Brian includes one of my favorite quotes from Fr. Vincent Donovan:
Never accept and be content with unanalyzed assumptions, assumptions about the work, about the people, about the church or Christianity. Never be afraid to ask questions about the work we have inherited or the work we are doing. There is no question that should not be asked or that is outlawed. The day we are completely satisfied with what we have been doing; the day we have found the perfect, unchangeable system of work, the perfect answer, never in need of being corrected again, on that day we will know that we are wrong, that we have made the greatest mistake of all.
That quote led me to think about David Dark's book The Sacredness of Questioning Everything, but that's a post for another day. The real gem in this article though is a word that jumps out of a quote from no less than the Pope himself.
We must ask ourselves what was wrong in our message, in our entire way of configuring the Christian being...
Configuring. To configure.
The question I have for you, and the theme of my reading at 40,000 feet--and it was everywhere I looked--is this:
As Followers of Jesus how are we to configure our lives in this new world where questions are outlawed, where we fear uncertainty more than we fear error? As Brian points out, our current configuration is not working.
A further thought: Dare I say it, but I think reconfiguration is going to be my theme for 2011.
re·con·fig·ure
[ree-kuhn-fig-yer]
to change the shape or formation of; remodel; restructure.
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