Dragged to the World

Dear Eugene,

I haven't been writing to you for about a week now.  Whatz up with me?  Reading theology.  Serious hardcore reading.

After all these years I am still in two minds about theology, whether it is the most fascinating science or biggest mind-numbing bore, especially when it has the tendency to be both simultaneously.  This morning at eight I swore I couldn't possibly squeeze another word of theology into my numbed-out brain, but lo and behold, a sentence into it there I was again carried away to la la land...

Why do I read theology?  I have enough stuffs in my head.  There really is no reason to open cans of worms.  If not because God calls me to care for others, my family, my small group members, non-believers I meet in my volunteering, etc., there really is absolutely no reason.

Theology is fascinating not because it works my brain up but because it calls me to work my heart out.

Everyday I go by what you taught me:

 "PASTORAL WORK takes Dame Religion by the hand and drags her into the everyday world, introducing her to friends, neighbors, and associates. Religion left to herself is shy, retiring, and private; or else she is decorative and proud—a prima donna. But she is not personal and she is not ordinary. The pastor insists on taking her where she must mix with the crowd.

 When pastoral work is slighted, religion tends, among some, to become gaudy with ceremonial, among others to get cubbyholed as a private emotion. In either case she still does many things well: her theology can be profound, her meditations mystic, her moral counsels wise, her liturgies splendid. But until she is dragged into the common round she is not alive with Good News nor does she have a chance to put her ideas and beliefs to use, testing them out in actual life-situations.

 Pastoral work is that aspect of Christian ministry which specializes in the ordinary. It is the pragmatic application of religion in the present. It has a horror of detachment, neutrality, studious isolation, or theoretic otherworldliness. It is the ministry in mufti."

Do you ever get fascinated by your own writing?

Thanks, Alex

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