A Thousand Kisses Deep
Dear Eugene,
Of all the words you have spoken to me, I think the passage that I've played over the most in my head over the years is the opening paragraphs from your book "Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work":
"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."
I am still learning to speak and live this way in my disciple-making.
A riddle in the book of love
Obscure and obsolete
Until witnessed here in time and blood
A thousand kisses deep
How true that so much of what we say, not just theology, is obscure and obsolete, loaded with backhanded suggestions that we thought we shared, laden with prejudices of this age, unquestioned, depersonalized, barren of intimacy.
A picture of a hot meal put together by our loved one in a cold winter night, we posted on social media for all to see. We want it to mean to the world the meaning we ascribed to it, determined for it, unmistakable, conspicuous, for our benefit. The sacredness of a moment bleeds away in pixels.
Until we give witness to what is true and beautiful, in the here and now, in flesh and blood, we shall not know the depth of a thousand kisses.
Yours, Alex
Of all the words you have spoken to me, I think the passage that I've played over the most in my head over the years is the opening paragraphs from your book "Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work":
"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."
I am still learning to speak and live this way in my disciple-making.
A riddle in the book of love
Obscure and obsolete
Until witnessed here in time and blood
A thousand kisses deep
How true that so much of what we say, not just theology, is obscure and obsolete, loaded with backhanded suggestions that we thought we shared, laden with prejudices of this age, unquestioned, depersonalized, barren of intimacy.
A picture of a hot meal put together by our loved one in a cold winter night, we posted on social media for all to see. We want it to mean to the world the meaning we ascribed to it, determined for it, unmistakable, conspicuous, for our benefit. The sacredness of a moment bleeds away in pixels.
Until we give witness to what is true and beautiful, in the here and now, in flesh and blood, we shall not know the depth of a thousand kisses.
Yours, Alex
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