lost, now found

so i found this a while ago, but hadn't updated my blog. so for those who didn't know, my good friend brian has a great blog that was stolen from him. he has found a way back.

http://therealbigrockcandymountain.blogspot.com/

it's over there on the right for future reference. glad to have him back.

saturday night after the play, the cast went out to the york street cafe for some post-show revelry. while there, discussions turned to religion, specifically the craziness of the creation museum and the small-mindedness of those who believe the Bible to be true. i listened to their conversation, hearing their arguments and realizing the church has done a horrible job of presenting itself to many people. they brought up the great spaghetti monster, declaring it a brilliant argument against religion in general. now i have to admit, i find the great spaghetti monster amusing and it does point to some of the ridiculousness preached in the name of God. but it also points to a deeper question, one i ran across again last night in my nightly buechner reading: "what's so good about religion anyway?" buechner talks about the question this way:

...I found myself speechless. I felt surely there must be something good about it. Why else was I there? But for the moment I couldn't for the life of me think what it was. Maybe the truth of it is that religion the way he means it - a system of belief, a technique of worship, an institution - doesn't really have all that much about it that is good when you come right down to it, and perhaps my speechlessness in a way acknowledged as much.

Unless you become like a child, Jesus said, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven, and maybe part of what that means is that in the long run what is good about religion is playing the way a child plays at being grown up until h finds that being grown up is just another way of playing and thereby starts to grow up himself. Maybe what is good about religion is playing that the Kingdom will come, until - in the joy of your playing, the hope and rhythm and comradeship and poignance and mystery of it - you start to see that the playing is itself the first-fruits of the Kingdom's coming and of God's presence within us and among us.

i think sometimes it's hard to talk about faith with my friends who don't believe because they have valid points. religion does sometimes seem to cause more harm than good. wars, division, intolerance, self-righteousness, small-mindedness. hard to argue against those things that are often done in the name of religion. but they miss out on the joy that can be there when you find yourself "playing," pretending you are something that you wish you were and then eventually, hopefully, discovering you've become just that.

Father, help those of us playing to be better at presenting the joy and hope you offer. help us to experience that joy and hope ourselves.
Æ

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Now playing: Bruce Cockburn - The Whole Night Sky
via FoxyTunes