| www.flickr.com |
the community blog of vine & branches christian community - a journal of who we are and what we're going through as a small group of people on a journey together.
Pray with us
> Ordinary Time
> psalter week 4
> morning prayer
> evening prayer
> night prayer
> lectionary reading
Recent Posts
> evolutionary step?
> a letter > reminder and encouragement
> bullet points for lent
> turn your hearts
> podcast
> vbcc rule of life - part one - revised
> Important Qualities for Community
> from the abbot
> On Being a Diaspora Christian
> mystical union in God
Archives
> April 2002
> May 2002
> June 2002
> July 2002
> August 2002
> September 2002
> October 2002
> November 2002
> December 2002
> January 2003
> February 2003
> March 2003
> April 2003
> May 2003
> June 2003
> July 2003
> August 2003
> September 2003
> October 2003
> November 2003
> March 2004
> May 2004
> June 2004
> July 2004
> August 2004
> September 2004
> October 2004
> November 2004
> December 2004
> January 2005
> February 2005
> March 2005
> April 2005
> May 2005
> July 2005
> August 2005
> September 2005
> October 2005
> November 2005
> December 2005
> January 2006
> February 2006
> March 2006
> April 2006
> June 2006
> August 2006
> June 2007
I wanted to share some parts of a letter I recently wrote to our community. The last post here was about evolutionary steps - that was a while ago - but this should follow nicely I suppose. This blog, as you may have noticed, isn't like a "normal" blog, but acts as a place of posting updates and thoughts about the community of Vine & Branches. This is an update of that sort so I thought I'd post the relevant parts here on the common blog. And so, we move along. God's Grace be with us.I think it may be time for a reboot. I’m a Mac person. I should really call that a restart I suppose. OK, time to hit restart. Essentially, we may already have done that and perhaps now it’s time to recognize that this is what has happened, what should have happened, and what is.
Vine & Branches has been around for a while now, approximately 6 years if you didn’t know. The concept of what this church is has evolved through those years. To some it may look as if we’re not even the same animal. As the person who started it, in whom it was conceived, I like to look at it as growing up. The evolutionary steps we have gone through haven’t been illogical at all. They have followed one another nicely and, I believe, we have grown into a more mature form of what we were created to be. This is a good thing.
As you go through one stage, you learn and grow and God makes you able, if you allow Him, to see more and move on to another stage of life. That’s what I believe has happened with Vine & Branches. These stages look and feel different, especially if viewed from the outside. If one has been a part of a growing organism, a real growing part, then the transitions are smoother. They are not unnoticeable, but they do make more sense.
Being involved - being a real part of a community like this takes a certain level of agreement and even a higher level of commitment if one is sure this is where they belong. Tight quarters are hard to navigate sometimes - OK, all the time. We are small, on purpose, and small brings with it a very noticeable level of vulnerability. Just looking up that word, seeing the root - from the Latin word vulnerare ‘to wound’ - I think you can see what I mean. Of course there is a sort of relational requirement for each of us to make ourselves vulnerable to one another, but that’s not what I mean here. I mean that simply because we are in a community like this one, which is small and close, there is an inherent and general vulnerability present at all times. When you step into something like this, you step into a proverbial clearing where you simply are more vulnerable than if you had stayed in the trees over there. We must be aware of this.
Why I say it’s time to hit restart is because we have recently gone through, or have been going through what might seem like fairly major changes. This has been happening over the last year and a half or so. It has been most noticeable by the latest well developed Rule of Life that I have written for the community. It states things in a way that are a bit different than what we have been used to. It is definitely more pointed toward Vine & Branches being a monastic faith community - living as one people inside this Rule with these common practices, helping one another grow into who we were all created to be, living the ancient catholic faith. More has been made recently of that as being important in who we are, this ancient catholic faith handed down from the apostles, the core deposit of faith, the sacraments, how we live out our faith together. This is intentional. It will continue and likely become even more pronounced. It will mostly become less apologized for, even implicitly. It is what I see we have always been growing into and now is the time to own it.
There have certainly been stages in the life of this community when things were quite less stated than they are becoming now. It has evolved from something which was fairly amorphous into something now, which has a definite form. A form, I will add, which has purpose and which is not accidental. I fully understand how that could be confusing and how someone might be, as I said before, more comfortable with one stage than with another. That being said, this is where we are and I want to be clear about that, and about where we are headed. Things have changed, yes. My own teaching about what it means to be a community like this has changed (as I said too, probably more evolved than changed 180 degrees). I fully admit that. I also want to say that I fully believe that this evolution in thought and teaching is a good thing, a healthy thing, a maturation process.
technorati tags > monastic, church, emerging church, new monasticism, vine & branches
posted by + Alan @ 12:43 PM :: 0 comments