"'T Is Not Too Late To Seek a Newer World"
Come, my friends,
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Ulysses, Alfred, Lord Tennyson
I have always loved this poem, and in particular this last part, ever since the legendary Frank Smyth taught it to us in Junior Year Honors English. There have been times in my life when I have been looking for the courage to step out and do something that was risky, something in which I was unsure about what was at the end of a particular road. In those times, I found myself coming back to this poem. I remember reading Tennyson a ton in the last month or so of my time with the Dominicans, and we see what happened after that.
I've been thinking in the last couple of days about the piece by Gavin Ashenden. It really bothered me, in a way that is disproportionate to its relevance or importance, and I have been trying to figure out why. I think the answer has to do with the fundamental pessimism that permeates the whole thing. I mean, I get that he doesn't like Bishop Curry, or the Episcopal Church, but it's more than that--a vision of the world that is so negative, so unwilling to embrace any measure of joy or hopefulness.
This project that I have been on, chronicled in these electronic pages, of trying to find a new way to live and manifest the message of the Gospel, is a tough one. It is an attempt to take what is good from the tradition, separate it out from those things in past that are deeply harmful, and then find a way to make that into something function that addresses our present circumstances. That's a tall order. And the thing is, it may not work. It may be that the conservatives are right, and that there can be no true Christian project that doesn't hold to a restrictive view of women, or LGBT people, or what have you, and so everything that I am working toward and with is futile. Or, maybe it's not futile, but perhaps it just won't work because of random chance, or bad decisions on the part of those in charge, or any one of a host of factors. Or maybe Christianity really is dying out all across the board, and so all versions of the faith (or maybe any faith) are on a long twilight march. All of those things are possible.
But at the end of the day, I'm OK with that. Sure, there are and will be moments of doubt, moments when the courage wanes. But, on a fundamental level, I accept the possibility that none of what I am doing will amount to anything. Because I have decided that I would rather try and fail than not try at all. If I spend the rest of my life being a part of something that offers people another way of encountering Jesus of Nazareth, and no one takes that offer, I still think that's better than just maintaining something that is just the same-old, same-old.
One of the true blessings in my life, and I truly mean this, is that I have had some pretty serious and spectacular failures. My time at Northwestern was in at least one sense a failure, in the sense that I didn't graduate. My time with the Dominicans was a failure, at least in the formal sense that I left. I've had jobs in which I failed. I have had some pretty serious failures and disappointments in my personal life. None of them, not one, was anything but painful in the moment, and there are scars from them that linger. But the truth of the matter is that failure teaches you that you can get back up again at the end, in a way that an endless parade of successes do not and cannot. It makes failure less scary, less apocalyptic, less mysterious. And it makes you less afraid, while putting into stark relief the slow wasting away caused by a "Never Try" mentality. (The wonderful Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg has a wonder twitter thread along these lines).
I believe all of that. I am truly OK with falling flat on my face, of wasting my time, of failing spectacularly. But, if I am being completely and totally honest, I don't believe that this project is doomed to failure. In fact, I have never been more confident of this projects ultimate logic and eventually success as I am now. If one is willing to put aside the self-justifying need for doom-and-gloom, you can see signs of new growth sprouting up in the aftermath of the forest fire. There was a long period of time when I thought that I had some weird, idiosyncratic perspective shared by no one, but I have found a host of people (many of them younger than I am) who are looking to build something that takes all that is good in what we have inherited but looks confidently and unapologetically to the future.
Something is happening, I believe. There is a new wind that is blowing, a new spirit. You see it in the people looking around at the evangelical faith that they grew up with and saying "this faith doesn't reflect the poor man from Nazareth I read about in the Gospels." You see it in Roman Catholics who six or seven years ago had resigned themselves to the JPII/Benedict revisionist vision of the church, but who are now taking the torch and not simply cheering Pope Francis's return to, if I may, the spirit of the Second Vatican Council, but demanding that he go beyond his and the hierarchy's comfort zone and toward real change. You see it in members of mainline congregations, calling their people out of the provincialism and self-satisfaction and obsession with deconstruction toward an uncompromising insistence on both the spiritual and political dimensions of the Gospel. You see it in Michael Curry, and William Barber, and Rachel Held Evans, and a host of other people.
So, yeah, there are many more people than there once were who don't associate with Christianity or any Christian community. Some of them have no interest under any set of circumstances in listening to anything anyone who bears the mantle of "Christian" might say. That's OK. and indeed understandable in many cases. But there are others who are looking for something that is not just the same old, same old, a way to engage with a core of truth that they sense without drowning in a sea of prejudices and judgments. And there is another group of folks who are currently sitting uncomfortably in their more conservative churches, hoping that there is some other way to live out their faith but fearful of stepping out into the darkness. Both of those groups need to see this vision go from the theoretical to the real, embodied in loving, thriving, diverse communities. As long as it stays in the heads of those who seek it, it will always be dismissed as a pipe-dream, a fantasy. Those who believe in this vision need to go out and build the reality of church they want to see. It's time to get on it.
Much has been taken in the Christian world, but much abides. We may not have the strength that was once possessed by grand institutions, but there are clear, strong signs of heroic hearts if we are willing to look for them. There are those ready to strive and seek, in order to find some Western Shore on the other side. I don't think it is too late, because it is never too late.
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Ulysses, Alfred, Lord Tennyson
I have always loved this poem, and in particular this last part, ever since the legendary Frank Smyth taught it to us in Junior Year Honors English. There have been times in my life when I have been looking for the courage to step out and do something that was risky, something in which I was unsure about what was at the end of a particular road. In those times, I found myself coming back to this poem. I remember reading Tennyson a ton in the last month or so of my time with the Dominicans, and we see what happened after that.
I've been thinking in the last couple of days about the piece by Gavin Ashenden. It really bothered me, in a way that is disproportionate to its relevance or importance, and I have been trying to figure out why. I think the answer has to do with the fundamental pessimism that permeates the whole thing. I mean, I get that he doesn't like Bishop Curry, or the Episcopal Church, but it's more than that--a vision of the world that is so negative, so unwilling to embrace any measure of joy or hopefulness.
This project that I have been on, chronicled in these electronic pages, of trying to find a new way to live and manifest the message of the Gospel, is a tough one. It is an attempt to take what is good from the tradition, separate it out from those things in past that are deeply harmful, and then find a way to make that into something function that addresses our present circumstances. That's a tall order. And the thing is, it may not work. It may be that the conservatives are right, and that there can be no true Christian project that doesn't hold to a restrictive view of women, or LGBT people, or what have you, and so everything that I am working toward and with is futile. Or, maybe it's not futile, but perhaps it just won't work because of random chance, or bad decisions on the part of those in charge, or any one of a host of factors. Or maybe Christianity really is dying out all across the board, and so all versions of the faith (or maybe any faith) are on a long twilight march. All of those things are possible.
But at the end of the day, I'm OK with that. Sure, there are and will be moments of doubt, moments when the courage wanes. But, on a fundamental level, I accept the possibility that none of what I am doing will amount to anything. Because I have decided that I would rather try and fail than not try at all. If I spend the rest of my life being a part of something that offers people another way of encountering Jesus of Nazareth, and no one takes that offer, I still think that's better than just maintaining something that is just the same-old, same-old.
One of the true blessings in my life, and I truly mean this, is that I have had some pretty serious and spectacular failures. My time at Northwestern was in at least one sense a failure, in the sense that I didn't graduate. My time with the Dominicans was a failure, at least in the formal sense that I left. I've had jobs in which I failed. I have had some pretty serious failures and disappointments in my personal life. None of them, not one, was anything but painful in the moment, and there are scars from them that linger. But the truth of the matter is that failure teaches you that you can get back up again at the end, in a way that an endless parade of successes do not and cannot. It makes failure less scary, less apocalyptic, less mysterious. And it makes you less afraid, while putting into stark relief the slow wasting away caused by a "Never Try" mentality. (The wonderful Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg has a wonder twitter thread along these lines).
I believe all of that. I am truly OK with falling flat on my face, of wasting my time, of failing spectacularly. But, if I am being completely and totally honest, I don't believe that this project is doomed to failure. In fact, I have never been more confident of this projects ultimate logic and eventually success as I am now. If one is willing to put aside the self-justifying need for doom-and-gloom, you can see signs of new growth sprouting up in the aftermath of the forest fire. There was a long period of time when I thought that I had some weird, idiosyncratic perspective shared by no one, but I have found a host of people (many of them younger than I am) who are looking to build something that takes all that is good in what we have inherited but looks confidently and unapologetically to the future.
Something is happening, I believe. There is a new wind that is blowing, a new spirit. You see it in the people looking around at the evangelical faith that they grew up with and saying "this faith doesn't reflect the poor man from Nazareth I read about in the Gospels." You see it in Roman Catholics who six or seven years ago had resigned themselves to the JPII/Benedict revisionist vision of the church, but who are now taking the torch and not simply cheering Pope Francis's return to, if I may, the spirit of the Second Vatican Council, but demanding that he go beyond his and the hierarchy's comfort zone and toward real change. You see it in members of mainline congregations, calling their people out of the provincialism and self-satisfaction and obsession with deconstruction toward an uncompromising insistence on both the spiritual and political dimensions of the Gospel. You see it in Michael Curry, and William Barber, and Rachel Held Evans, and a host of other people.
So, yeah, there are many more people than there once were who don't associate with Christianity or any Christian community. Some of them have no interest under any set of circumstances in listening to anything anyone who bears the mantle of "Christian" might say. That's OK. and indeed understandable in many cases. But there are others who are looking for something that is not just the same old, same old, a way to engage with a core of truth that they sense without drowning in a sea of prejudices and judgments. And there is another group of folks who are currently sitting uncomfortably in their more conservative churches, hoping that there is some other way to live out their faith but fearful of stepping out into the darkness. Both of those groups need to see this vision go from the theoretical to the real, embodied in loving, thriving, diverse communities. As long as it stays in the heads of those who seek it, it will always be dismissed as a pipe-dream, a fantasy. Those who believe in this vision need to go out and build the reality of church they want to see. It's time to get on it.
Much has been taken in the Christian world, but much abides. We may not have the strength that was once possessed by grand institutions, but there are clear, strong signs of heroic hearts if we are willing to look for them. There are those ready to strive and seek, in order to find some Western Shore on the other side. I don't think it is too late, because it is never too late.
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