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Tuesday, December 31, 2002 |
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I opened my recently acquired paperback copy of Call to Commitment, by Elizabeth O'Connor, which tells the first published story of the first decade and a half of The Church of the Saviour in Washington, D.C. It opens with the following affirmation about the nature of the Church:
The brownstone house in Washington, D. C. that has looked on so much of our life together has a small brass plaque to the left of its door. It reads:
HEADQUARTERS OF THE CHURCH OF THE SAVIOUR
Strangers read it and ask if we have other churches in other cities or if we plan to start a new denomination. To those of us who worship here on a Sunday morning, the sign is a reminder that we are also the church during all the hours of the week-in the neighborhoods where we live, in our homes, in offices and factories-for "the place whereon you stand is holy ground." We did not know on the day that sign went up what forms the church would take, but we did know that it would exist not only in a building.
I immediately realized how timely these words, which I first read in the summer of 1976, are for me today, 26 and a half years later. To say: we are also the church during all the hours of the week-in the neighborhoods where we live, in our homes, in offices and factories-for "the place whereon you stand is holy ground" is also to pronounce a blessing upon the possibilities for the "electronically connected Church". Not that I am pronouncing it as a spiritual panacea, or a "specially" holy place, but as an EXTENSION of holy ground.....where pieces of our being can gather.....and where the whole is much greater than the sum of the parts. The "Smart Mobs" idea in a theological community allows for the envisioning and embodying of "being the Church in our homes, offcies, and factories/workplaces" in additional , heretofore unseen and unanticpated places.
5:01:00 PM 
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Jobs and that search took a big 'ol back seat during those days (see previous post, Life is Good), and then Christmas and visits to my parents and hers immediately followed. The trip to Cincinnati was good. I saw Larry (the Old St. George guy I have mentioned before) and he bought me lunch and made me a cup of some top notch coffee, and we spent about 4 hours talking job hunting and such. NPR had a feature on unemployment that we heard on the way up to Cincinnati on Christmas day, and we talked about some of that, and how things are so different now--- that all the companies once thought to be so dependable and spelled "security" are dropping like dominoes, one after another.
10:07:20 AM
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Life is indeed good. I don't have a job yet, but prospects are beginning to emerge, most of which suggest that I may be a free agent, "contract" kind of worker on several Web projects for a handful of companies. But I am so relieved to be out from under some scary days this past week, when my wife had to have a breast biopsy. I found this out on the 18th, had a consult with a surgeon on the 19th, the biopsy on the 20th, which is when we began to get encouraging and extremely relieving signs: that the indicators were negative, and that was a good sign that the pathologist report would follow suit. That report showed up a few days later, on the 23rd. Thank God. Thank YOU, God. This REALLY put this in perspective. It removed quite a bit of the panic (but not the urgency to keep on bangin' at the whatever doors I can find).
10:03:41 AM
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