Lama's log

I know I've been neglecting posting for too long. I blame facebook. Well, that and my lack of will power. To get back to it then. A while ago now I attended a YBMF AGM. Yep, I know, far too many letters. Due to everyone else’s disparaging remarks regarding my sat nav the machine was left at home and we traveled to this event in Mary's car.

I point out now that I took no pleasure in the fact that we got hopelessly lost in Leeds and I magnanimously conceded that it must really be the will of God that we couldn't seem to find a church that Mary herself had been to several times previously. Sadly, however, we were journeying with a student minister who has not yet done the 'will of God' module at college and the persistent little bugger kept going with the map until we found the venue. The only consolation I have for that fact, is that he regretted his persistence around 2 minutes into the event.

I digress. As it turned out the speaker wasn’t half bad when he got going. I enjoyed looking at pieces of art and exploring the theme of experiencing God. The kick off though left me cold. The events are always the same in make up. Loads of middle aged, middle class men. We always sit in rows, we always pray, we have to sing and we are, unmistakably, of an ilk.

When then the speaker, through use of a piece of art, described us as ‘nonconformists’ I listened a little more attentively. In fact, it would be safe to say, I listened with a little annoyance. You see, it is clear to me and actually to anyone who cared to observe us, that the one thing we couldn’t be called was/is ‘nonconformist’. We are born out of a history of it I’ll grant you but there is little identification with it. We don’t know our history or revisit it, we don’t take pride in it or put into practice the radicality of it.

To drive home the point the speaker had us stand in rows to sing a Bonhoeffer hymn together. There were too many ironies all at the same time for me to make sense of them in my head. There is an offense to the Gospel when we kid ourselves that we identify with those who struck out for word and works while laying fallow. We sing Bonhoeffer and live Pharaoh. It’s not that I’m not doing it, I am but hell I’m not going to tell myself I’m on the cutting edge when I belong to and affirm a sexist, middle class, traditional, wealthy Christian group. I’m in the church, the Baptist wing of it and lets call a spade a spade. I don’t want to beat myself or others for what we are ‘cause for one thing there’s loads of good bits. It’s just that I don’t like us lying about who and what we are. It just builds another layer of separation between us, the outside world and the Gospel.

Well this is what happens when I post I end up getting all crabby. I blame ……. Oh me I guess…