Mike's musings

Faith

Also took Jo for a walk this afternoon before taking her to bed, and we saw ducks ("ducks, quack, quack!"), a rat in the same stream ("rabbit", "no, rat", "rap! NO! NO!"), and, as we came back, a grass snake ("'nake, ssssssss!") on the road. He was alive, just basking, so I moved him off, just in case he was in danger from a car. It was beautiful - I loved snakes, and felt so privileged to have seen him (or her!) and shown him to Jo. As I mentioned yesterday, I don't think she sees the wondrous as special yet: for her, everything is wondrous.

Read Richard's paper. Didn't do much for me, either. Not helped, bizarrely, by the fact that it was in Arial (rather than a serif-ed font) and left (rather than fully) justified. But it didn't really hold together, at least till the later parts. Maybe there's a danger when you try to do systematic theology that you can't say antyhing until you've said something of everything.

Started reading Models of Contextual Theology by Bevans and Schreiter. This is, so far, very good indeed, and on the basis of what it talks about, I talked to Moo a little more about her and faith. She wouldn't call herself a Christian at the moment, partly because she's unhappy about the God that she finds in the Bible, partly because she doesn't feel she needs the kind of certainty she had when she did have a faith, partly because that certainty's not available to her any more, and partly because the Church she sees around her - the Anglican church, at least - is too full of contradictions for her to be able to relate to it, certainly in the local context in which we find ourselves at the moment.

Oh, and Sally, we need to talk. I think it's worth understanding that ordination isn't just about your relationship to other people, but also about their relationship to you, and the role you'd be undertaking. People have needs as to how they relate to their pastors and ministers. Let's talk.

# posted by MikeCamel @ 9:28 pm