Author: Jana

This morning as I entered the church I was going to be worshiping at I overheard some say that the Eucharistic Hymn was to joyful. This individual like many of us are used to church being a solemn and serious affair. In many ways this solemnity seems to indicate the authenticity of the actions and rituals that we are taking part in. However, if we take a moment to step back we realize that as we live we have moments of profound sorrow and profound joy. Sometimes authenticity is achieved with solemnity, but sometimes (especially in modern times) authenticity is more off-the-cuff, more cheerful.

Worship as a result partly should mimic this realism, but I am also reminded of the liturgical seasons of the church. While some seasons are purely about preparations for things to come, and then later celebrating, others are about purely living. As we are now in the season after Pentecost, what some even term ordinary time, it only seems that we should be celebrating our voices, our cultures, and the ways in which we find God apparent in our world.

Finding your calling is an interesting thing. For some it seems natural to fall into a particular place or vocation. For some it is a struggle, a continuing journey to find the place where you belong. For me it has always been the latter… Most days I feel I am in limbo, some days I am happy where I am with that, other days I am endlessly searching for my place to fit and flourish. Looking back it is easy to see the circumstances and decisions that shaped who I have become and where I am in my life today. In any case I will continue listening and maybe some day soon I will hear my calling come clear. Thanks be to God!

This Sunday has been dedicated to the doctrine of the trinity. A doctrine that in many ways is at the center of the Christian Church: God the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit. This core doctrine however is a creation of the church, and is not biblically based. It’s creation was a means of better explaining the different facets of God. In other words: God the ultimate eternal being from whom comes the son Jesus, and the Holy Spirit that binds all together. Jesus, who by Christians is believed to be the Christ, and is the human form of God in our world. Finally, the Holy Spirit, who comes from God and connects all beings including Jesus to God.

While the traditional form of the trinity was Father, Son and Holy Ghost, there have been more modern versions: Mother, the Daughter, and Holy Spirit; Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer (noting the attribute of each character). These updated versions of the trinity I think have been a great improvement on the original version of the trinity.

One issue that I think is of significant problem for the Church is that we rarely seem to hold these three attributes in tension, expect on Trinity Sunday. Often we focus on either Jesus or the Holy Spirit and lose God completely, or at the very best we do hold all three in tension and lose the supremacy of God. While all three aspects are important, and the trinity is a great way of examining those aspects. The whole is still one incomprehensible being, and as Christians I think we tend to follow Christ, or we follow the Holy Spirit (we certainly have denominations who fall in varying degrees of this) and neglect that we are following one and the same God.

In times of dwindling church attendance and finances, I wonder if there are ways that we can begin to focus on our similarities of God, and less of the distinction of following the Holy Spirit OR Jesus Christ. Ultimately in the Trinity there has to be room for all.

Today, for the first time in many years, I chose to not attend a Pentecost service. This choice to not be in attendance on a special Sunday seemed unusual for me, however after some contemplation it came to make more sense.

Pentecost has always been about different cultures, different languages, and communication. This morning, I realized that in the course of the last week my family and I had been so busy we were speaking different “languages” and not discerning what each other was saying. This of course brought much tension into our lives, lives that I would add, we passionately lead. From our independent toddler, to our exploring crawler, to my involved and social justice oriented partner and myself, we care deeply about many things for specific reasons.  We have different means and languages of conveying our passion about those things that are held dear to us. After a week of jumble where it seemed all we were doing were talking in our own languages, it was time to listen and interpret, to work together, and to just be. Pentecost this year for me was about listening and working together, to hearing and finding the holy spirit within us all and not just the one in my head.

As a younger member of the Christian church I have denomination hopped for awhile. I have been seeking a community to be a part of, a tradition that offers meaning to my life and existence and to which I can offer today’s interpretations of that tradition. After many years I have landed in the Anglican/Episcopalian tradition and while it is a long way from where I started, it also makes a great deal of sense. Growing up I was on the surface of religion, and although I walked a way for awhile, as I started to really question the role of religion in my life and the direction of my life in general, it only made sense to come back to it. As I was unhappy with the tradition I was brought up (gender roles, scriptural interpretation, intolerance, etc), it only makes sense after reading “The Depths of Existence” that I would continue to dig for further depth, which would bring me away from one tradition through several others and into the one that I am now until I started to find what I was looking for: the community, the traditions, and the ability to not be defined along previous lines.

This struggle for depth is not something unique to me or to the church. It is prevalent in many areas of society, especially grassroots and social justice areas where people are struggling to understand why things are the way that they are. I would also venture to say that it is also prevalent in my generation, a generation that is endlessly seeking a place in the world. We are often sent away from our earliest communities and are seeking a new community. Although we have training and degrees we struggle to find work, and although we live in cities of people we have few means of meaningful encountering our neighbours. As a result of this, it is of little surprise to me that we continue to seek communities and traditions, or ‘depth for existence’, when we no longer fit into our inherited ones.