...the emergent crowd are elitist 'name-droppers', spouting jargon for the initiated, while the rest are left out...

surprises can be good...they can be disconcerting...even painful or hurtful sometimes. conversations can leave us with all kinds of feelings... one moment we can be full of excitement, anticipation... the next, we can be in the doldrums, depressed...

listening to stories...stories about people, can be that way too... we can be full of awe, admiration for all the goodness or kindnesses we hear about... the next, utterly lost for words when we hear about the ugly, the depraved...

tonite, i had such a feeling... because of a conversation i had with a friend... a conversation about our lives...and then about the people in our lives...names...those we esteem, and also those who disappoint... i was uncomfortable... he asked hard questions... i was implicated by his claims... 'am i really a part of the problem he was railing about?' i wanted to defend the group i was aligned with... but seriously... perhaps he's got a point... self-critique is a rare commodity in our day... it sure stung like hell!!! (for a moment, i felt like an American patriot told by an Al-Qaeda member that i was the real terrorist, after all... utterly unthinkable... and yet the anger that was aroused in me proves his very point...)

inevitably, god and spirituality came up, in the dirt of our perplexing, disappointed lives..."i am but a little breath..." i couldnt have felt our fragility more pointedly, in the silences that punctuate our speech...

where is god in all this? the future seems indifferent to both of us... perhaps it's the very open-endedness of our lives, the sense that all CANNOT be resolved... no easy resolutions before apparent disputes...

i was thinking today...perhaps if i had one more SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE... the kind that Aquinas had...that which terminated all the SUMMAS he gave to the church... then, perhaps...maybe... i would be happier...

oh unassuming conversation... never would i expect you to tear down those lofty dreams of mine...bring me down to earth... i can never be another 'meister eckhart'... another 'miroslav volf'... or a 'john milbank'...

names...they are all just names... concepts...'emergent'...'postmodernity'... 'theology'... 'politics'... they are all just concepts...

but God... that which we cannot conceive, we must LEARN to pass over in silence...

it is surely the hardest part of all...