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technorati tags > monastic, community,new monasticism, vine & branches
posted by + Alan @ 11:11 PM ::
5 comments 
8.15.2006 restart
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
6.01.2006 evolutionary step? I wrote this a while back as I was thinking and praying about Vine & Branches, preparing to meet with a couple of the Advisory Council guys to talk about things. It's just a few thoughts I thought might be helpful to put out in the open.
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That old thing... "if you're a 'leader' and you look around behind you and no one is following, you're not a leader, you're just taking a walk."
I think this of myself sometimes. I wonder what I think I'm doing. Am I delusional? Have I thrown away much in exchange for little? I hope not.
Another begged question: What else can I do? If I deeply and firmly believe that what I'm doing and want to do is right and good, and God, then how can I do anything else?
- My implied answer: nothing. I must continue with the work that I have started. I must also continue to be open to possible needed changes in how the work is to be done.
It seems that, along the continuum, this work comes to key evolutionary points. Sometimes we're going along with no apparent changes taking place. They may well be happening but are not noticeable. This is generally true.
There are also, in the evolutionary process of such an "animal." points at which certain of the collective and formerly unfelt changes that have been taking place, come together and make themselves seen. A bud, if you will, pops out of a formerly bare tree branch. It grows, breaks open, and leaves come out. I think this might be one of those times in the life evolution of Vine & Branches. Analogously, it is perhaps like being time to crawl out of the water for the last time, when for a while, we've been going back and forth between water and land. Or again, it is time to jump down out of the trees and walk upright permanently.
These are definitely periods of felt change. Almost always, this is painful. Even though the hidden, imperceptible changes that make these periods of apparent change possible have been happening for a while, ...
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That's as far as I got, but I think the thought is clear enough - times are a' changin'. Things are happening. Pray for us.
technorati tags > monastic, church, emerging church, new monasticism, vine & branches
posted by + Alan @ 3:49 PM ::
2 comments