Public theologian Jennifer Bailey uses an agricultural metaphor to describe the waning landscape of religious institutions in the United States:
At first glance, the land appears barren…. Indeed, millennials and Generation Z successors to the throne of youth are turning away from institutional religion faster than any other age group, raising a palpable sense of panic in religious communities concerned about their future.
But I come from [Illinois,] the Prairie State….
When I fix my eyes on the horizon, I see rows of fruit and veggies in the form of new spiritually grounded communities and ritual practices waiting to sprout. They may not be recognizable to a casual observer searching for a congregation that meets on a weekly basis. For those seeking new forms of community to share in their questions and make meaning of their lives, these new varieties and hybrids may be the source of nourishment they have been longing for.
Bailey names the challenges of our time and how she finds inspiration for hopeful action:
Today we, as a global community, find ourselves warring over the vision of what we will become. At stake are the very souls of our communities, with battles being fought over kitchen tables, anonymous Internet comment sections, and at political rallies….
You are not alone in your quest for understanding your place in the world as it is evolving. At times it may feel like the earth is literally moving under your feet as you attempt to step in one direction or the other. That’s because it is. All around us things are shifting, systems are collapsing, and institutions are failing. This should not surprise us. Around the world, elders across cultures and peoples were predicting this time would come. It is a time of great uncovering in which Mother Earth and Father Sky are pushing us into a divine reckoning about what it means to be in right relationship with one another and all sentient beings in the twenty-first century and beyond. It is clear to me that the actions we take now will have deep and irreversible consequences for the generations to come….
The enormity of the plight we face can be solved only by harnessing the ingenuity and creativity of the communities to which we belong and are accountable. This season will require us to recover ancestral wisdom and practices that we lost or undervalued, repair the deep breaches in our interpersonal and communal relationships that replicate patterns of harm and destruction, and reimagine the possible by stretching ourselves to see beyond the realities of our current circumstances and daring to dream something different into being.
These three words—recover, repair, and reimagine—remain at the center of my discernment process as I try to understand the evolution of my calling. My path is not linear. There are times I feel like I am chasing the shadow of something I cannot fully see. When I’m feeling particularly churchy, I wonder if that shadow is the Spirit of Divine Revelation.
Reference:
Jennifer Bailey, To My Beloveds: Letters on Faith, Race, Loss, and Radical Hope (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2021), 62–63, 64, 67–68, 69.
Image credit and inspiration: Jenna Keiper, cracked stained glass (detail), 2020, photo, Albuquerque. Click here to enlarge image. Like this cracked stained glass, sometimes we have to let the old structures deconstruct in order to make room for the new.
Story from Our Community:
As I learn about the effects and aftercare of childhood trauma, I am beginning to understand there are many stages between reading the wise words of the mystics and fully living in a state of peace. I know that trauma has fragmented my mind. This fragmentation helped me survive back then—but now my work is to gently gather and reunite each of those fragments. My journey has very much been an example of Order, Disorder and Reorder.
—Jean S.
