The Struggle With God

Yowie Zowie!! This looks fascinating. Props to Karl for sharing his find with us.

After making a quick scan of the table of contents and jumping around a little (my non-scholarly, caffeine-induced mode of study), my eyes landed on many things worthy of quoting. . .but I chose this:

The biological rhythm of rural civilizations regulated by the sun gives way to the technical rhythm of invading and massive urbanization. Life in a world of factories and laboratories is no longer organic; it is organized. Its reinforced concrete very rapidly kills the sense of living nature. Even the simplest materials used in the administration of the sacraments--water, bread, wax, fire--are disappearing from natural use in homes, or are so falsified as to be no longer the familiar and known representation of the cosmos. Thus liturgical symbolism is not appreciated; the ritual no longer says anything spontaneously. It requires a very laborious initiation. The coming generations are more and more strangers to sacred symbols.

Modern symbolism takes refuge in insignia and groups of capital letters. Words are dehydrated and the most familiar objects seem to have lost their first meaning. We see in modem churches candles surmounted by an electric bulb, a hybrid which we do not know how to name.

Nevertheless, it is this world that is the object of God's care. (my emphasis) He calls on Christian thought to make a creative effort and he asks it to translate into modern terms the immense heritage of the past, the precious experience of the great spiritual men of former times, all put in perfect harmony with the most venturesome life, thought and art.

For some reason, reading this reminded me of an interview of my friend Mike Roe that I read yesterday. In it he is quoted as saying,

"I had a therapist tell me that I was one of the only true neurotics he’d ever met," Roe says. "He defined it as someone trying to live in two worlds simultaneously. But that’s the classic Christian condition."

When I first read it I chuckled, thinking he was talking about the strain caused by trying to serve two (very different) masters simultaneously. But this begs the question. . .why would anyone attempt such a silly thing? I mean, be one thing or the other for crying out loud! Be a chanter in Church or a singer/songwriter. . .but don't try to pull those two disparate worlds together in your soul. You will end up with a staring role in a neurotic Frankensteinian nightmare! Hmmmm. How did this get so damn personal all of a sudden?