Dear Friends in Christ,
Most of us were raised in one version or another of a dogmatic Christianity that considered most of the great questions of life to have been settled by Church, Scriptures, or Creed. But I wonder. This month Eastertide will lead us ineluctably to Pentecost and the giving of Holy Spirit to guide us to truth. I suspect that we 21st century Christians are, in fact, experimental Christians, much like the first Christians, trying to figure out what it means to be followers of Jesus; what it means to utter the Name of God in our world; what our lives mean. All we have are clues. I think of Whitman’s poem about the noiseless patient spider as a symbol of the soul:
A noiseless patient spider,
I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the
spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile
anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O
my soul.
For me, that gossamer thread has caught on Jesus and his story, but I’m constantly trying to figure out what that means. Life is a “vacant vast surrounding” and I’m trying to build a bridge to God, to hope, to meaning, but the thread, the filament, is so fragile, so “gossamer.” I need Holy Spirit to lead me forward to “ventures of which I cannot see the ending.”
One of the great joys for me as a Christian is that I am not alone in this quest, though I get the loneliness in Whitman’s language But I have you as my partners on the pilgrimage to God. When we study John together, or view a film or read a book on ethics and consumption, or just talk in the back hallway, we are companions on the journey. When I tire or run out of gas, I have your faith and love to hold me up. And since the Church is a Communion of all the Saints, I have other spiritual friends too: Walt Whitman and Johann Sebastian Bach, Thomas Aquinas and Martin Luther, Albrecht Durer and Paul Tillich. I have the whole ELCA—bishops, pastors, laity. I have Pat, Florence and Sarah. Whitman’s soul was isolated on a promontory—it was “surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space”—but I have you; I have learned that “no man is an island.” My soul is part of God, filled with God’s love, guided by God’s Spirit in me.
Some see the “experimental” nature of Christian life today as scary and uncertain. I see it as a great adventure into what God means for our time, in our world. Easter assures me that new life is what God wants for me; Pentecost promises me that I am not alone–that God goes with me and that great things lie ahead. He will stay with me “till the bridge you need be formed, till the ductile anchor hold.”
Yours in Christ,
–Pastor Bastien
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