Sunday School teacher holds up a picture and asks the class, “What is this?”
Little Johnny answers, tentatively, “Well, it looks like a squirrel, but I know the answer is ‘Jesus’.”
Is dogma and belief reducing the child’s imagination?
Is it creating them into conditioned machines?
Is belief medicating our children?
Is it numbing them?
Is it harming them?
Jesus called the children to him and said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.”
Children are naturally agnostic. They are receptive, inquisitive and essentially mystics. They are learners, they don’t assume to know and ask many questions. How many parents have been frustrated by children who ask a question, when you give an answer they say, “why?”, you give another answer and they say, “why?” again and again.
Children inhabit a natural openness and a questioning presence (why, what, how, when, where) and practice this with their body. They practice innocence, naivety, tenderness, wonder, awe, mystery and are accepting in nature. They are in touch with their bodies and full range of senses. They are fully integrated and at one with themselves.
We also know that many children in out society are not allowed the freedom to be a child, they are not able to freely be who they are. They have been hindered, squashed, unheard, enslaved, medicated, abused, closed down, pacified and conditioned. They have not been able to enjoy a ‘care-free’ childhood and have been made to grow up far too quickly by adults who are threatened of welcoming this beauty, wonder and freedom into their lives.
My 8 year old son is struggling to hang onto a belief in Father Christmas, even though I constantly try to reinforce the myth or lie (for the sake of his younger brother) to keep the ‘magic’ going!! However when I asked him the other night if he believed in Father Christmas he replied with, “I might do”. Getting closer to the event, he is hedging his bets and has suddenly gone all agnostic on me.
While belief is often a rational thing, our memories reside in our bodies and our physical earthy experiences and is often a felt thing.
Isn’t it wonderful – a winter wonderland ! – The earth has been wrapped in a blanket of snow, a free universal gift. The snow changes and disrupts our normal activity, plans and ways of seeing things. It creates uncertainty and reminds people of their powerlessness. This gift breeds community, fosters togetherness and slows busy people down.
The snow has created chaos , roads are blocked, people need each other, they talk to strangers, help each other and commonality is fostered. Classically snow creates space for play, snowball fights, building snowmen/women/objects, sledging in which the whole family and community can particpate.
The gift , the simple snowflake enables people to break out of their boxes,(cars/ culture/ selves) and are given a glimpse of togetherness, wonder and awe. Feels like an Agnostic advent moment!
And the other side of the story is….
In true agnostic fashion – there is always another side to the story and is impacted by listening to the other. My perception and my present circumstances dictate how I see the world – but agnosticism creates social empathy and an ability to listen to the truth of the other. The poor struggle to keep warm, old people die, small businesses go bust, people get hurt, animals go hungry, hardship is caused for many.
And another side of the story…
I am self-employed and work in schools – I only get paid if I can work. I have not been into work this week because of a virus so I have been unable to earn money. However the schools were closed so I couldn’t have worked anyway. I haven’t felt like doing any work at home, but I have enjoyed playing around with the Agnostic Advent. You may have wished that I had been well!!
There are many ways to perceive the same event.
For many in our society conception is not guaranteed, leaving many women, men and couples bereft, sad and disappointed. Likewise with pregnancy, the mother embraces a fragile process and begins a journey into an unknown, unsure and often difficult wait including enduring morning sickness. So many questions, Will the baby reach full term? Will the baby be alright? Will the mother be alright? Will there be complications? , Will I eat the right things? Will the father be supportive? Will it be a boy or girl?
Is life just one big agnostic advent? Most of us wouldn’t claim to know what the future will bring and so in life we embrace a not-knowing way of being. There is so much we don’t know? So many things we can’t be sure of – there are no guarantees!! We don’t know what the future holds, we can’t be sure of outcomes? We can’t guarantee that we will make the right choices or that we will be happy? We can’t prevent struggles and difficulties entering into our life.
And so back to Mary, How was she to prepare herself for this new life? She carried this life within her, fusing feeling full with being uncomfortable. Her life was no longer just hers; she was protecting the fragile new life within. The tension between it’s vulnerability with her anxiety. It is meant to be a boy – what if it is a girl? Her life would never be the same again – would the child be alright? Would he and she survive the birth? (it wouldn’t be uncommon) What would the child look like? How would he change her? How would she cope with looking after a baby, would she be good enough?
How did Mary and Joseph understand and feel about what was happening to them during the huge surprise and news of Mary’s pregnancy?
How did Mary Feel? Mary is visited by an Angel and is impregnated – she remains a virgin/ never sleeping with a man. The semen is divine – was it divine IVF? This is impossible – never happened before – how would she tell Joseph? What would he think? What would her friends think? What were her feelings –perhaps deep fear of being seen as crazy, many questions, awe, amazement and anxiety all fused together.
How did Joseph feel? – Mary has slept with an angel / God – this brings a whole new meaning to the earth moved! How can he compete with that? Is he just a bit-part in the whole scenario? Can he believe her, can he trust her – this is impossible and it’s not fair, it messes with all my plans! Never has anything like this happened before or anyone claimed this… Who is Mary?
Following on from a recent comment I made on one of Richard’s posts about embracing the religious tradition of Agnosticism, I began to think about what this would mean in terms of advent. And so I hope throughout this advent season to explore this by putting up a few posts.
Being an agnostic essentially means unknowing and Advent means ‘waiting’ – so perhaps as we enter this advent season we enter a time of waiting for the unknown.
Perhaps this was how Mary and Joseph felt…
And how the mystics lived…
The tradition of agnosticism belongs to the mystics outside the church walls, where they are free to embrace uncertainty, weakness, uselessness, not- knowing and powerlessness. They have no need of dualism, answers, or right and wrong thinking. They have no need of a parent to have authority over them. They embrace empathy, uncondtional love, the question and the unending journey.
When we started with church on the edge there were a number of questions we had around mission and church that were important. They included things like, what does Donovans new place look like for young people, By name is G-d known in this context, what is church?
For me they broke down into two main categories, – There were Star Trek questions, that perhaps will never be answered but keep fueling the missionary imagination, questions about the new place. These questions keep you on the journey and keep you on a missional trajectory – to boldly go. Then there were the Star Wars questions which were more practical and about the steps towards breaking out the old way of doing things and moving beyond the empire of the instution towards a practical outworking of the force. Although hard to answer, these were more attainable, eg what is equivalent of Engai to the young people
When it comes to mission a lot of what we do is instinctive or stems from the feeling that something needs to change. However unless you identify your questions it is hard to begin to re imagine any answers.
What are your missional questions?
I will joining the resource weekend in Reading at St Laurence’s, on Saturday, to talk about church on the edge. Jonny says they may be able to squeeze a few more people in if you book soon. It is shaping up for an interesting time and I hope to get along early enough to hear some the input from Chris.
I have been thinking a lot about holding the tension between culture, bible and tradition which has moved into thinking about what it is to be swept up with missio dei, and what this may look like for our structures and approaches/ theology.
I still think and still feel we are a long way off the mark in emerging church circles as we are worried about slipping into syncretism, and the gravitational pull of orthodoxy. Perhaps our orthodoxy is as much a myth as the myth that we can know the unknowable G-d.
I think the separation of sacred and secular is rooted in our need to box God in, to define what is God and what is not.
So there is something buzzing away in the back of head about the need to collapse much of our approach as it feels dualist. We have made great progress in missional thinking and understanding recognizing the missio dei etc – if God is working, sovereign, we ask what is God already doing, so we can get in on this (rather than the older approach which was thinking it is our mission or we are the carriers of God or God is not present/at work) but this question, what is god doing is still rooted in identifying a particular thing God is doing (which in itself supposes there are things that God is not in control of or doing) and thus enables us to focus on this known/discerned aspect of God rather than simply being cast adrift with the missio dei with G-d in G-d’s world.
This raises the question of ‘other’ what is it, does it exist, or is there other but that is a whole other kettle of fish which i cant get my head around.
If syncretism is about the attempt to reconcile contrary beliefs, often while melding practices of various schools of thought wasn’t this what happened with introduction of christ and the emerging christology. So since Christ split the curtain shouldn’t we be a bit more about what Robert Schreiter sees as inculturation “the dynamic relation between the Christian message and culture or cultures; an insertion of the Christian life into a culture; an ongoing process of reciprocal and critical insertion and assimilation between them” which seems to differ little for me from syncretism. Perhaps i am being naive about the semantics.