Is Faith a Place?
A friend from the Leap suggested that we find a way to keep this blog going. At first I wasn't sure how this would work without the shared content of our sessions in the Village, but I was recently in a discussion with some people from my church and a subject came up that I thought might be worth discussing, especially with folks from Holden and/or the Leap program.
We were talking about faith and how usually we think of faith as an individual possession or experience, something we hold in our hearts or our heads, something between us and God. But as we were talking I realized that one of the most profound gifts of living at Holden is the sense that faith is something that you can feel, almost tangibly, in the community. Something about the place and about the community seemed to make my own faith more concrete, more joyful, more peace-granting, more of a real possibility. Maybe, I thought out loud, it was because so many Holden people have taken a kind of risk or staked something or given something up to be there, and that recklessness gave me the license or inspiration to allow my own faith to come out of the box I usually keep it in. As I was struggling to articulate this, there were some looks of recognition on other faces in our group, and as the conversation continued it turned out that many of these young Christians had similar experiences in places they had been--at a youth camp or a monastary or in a particular faith community. Since then, I've thought a little more about my grandparent's experience as missionaries in prison camp and how that may have related to how they thought about Holden while they were directors there. All of this makes me wonder whether there are others who have felt that faith is more connected to places and communities than we often think. If we start to define faith as something other than mere rational assent to a creed--if we, like many of the thinkers we studied in the Leap, start to connect faith more closely to action and the moral courage to live out a truth--can we start to see faith as something that moves, and grows, and maybe only really exists in and through groups and communities? If that's true, does it become our responsibility as sharers of the good news to transform our home communities, rather than merely preach to them? Part of me gets very nervous about this kind of question, because I still believe each of us has to face the God of law and grace on our own, as individuals. And maybe all our church group was really talking about and yearning for was a more fulfilling experience of the "Church" or "the Spirit" or something else. Still, I am left wondering whether it's a coincidence that so many of us seem to have found our faith powerfully manifested in places like Holden Village, places that seem so different from where we are destined to live out most of our lives. I'd be really interested to hear what others think and feel about these questions--does your faith have a home base?
We were talking about faith and how usually we think of faith as an individual possession or experience, something we hold in our hearts or our heads, something between us and God. But as we were talking I realized that one of the most profound gifts of living at Holden is the sense that faith is something that you can feel, almost tangibly, in the community. Something about the place and about the community seemed to make my own faith more concrete, more joyful, more peace-granting, more of a real possibility. Maybe, I thought out loud, it was because so many Holden people have taken a kind of risk or staked something or given something up to be there, and that recklessness gave me the license or inspiration to allow my own faith to come out of the box I usually keep it in. As I was struggling to articulate this, there were some looks of recognition on other faces in our group, and as the conversation continued it turned out that many of these young Christians had similar experiences in places they had been--at a youth camp or a monastary or in a particular faith community. Since then, I've thought a little more about my grandparent's experience as missionaries in prison camp and how that may have related to how they thought about Holden while they were directors there. All of this makes me wonder whether there are others who have felt that faith is more connected to places and communities than we often think. If we start to define faith as something other than mere rational assent to a creed--if we, like many of the thinkers we studied in the Leap, start to connect faith more closely to action and the moral courage to live out a truth--can we start to see faith as something that moves, and grows, and maybe only really exists in and through groups and communities? If that's true, does it become our responsibility as sharers of the good news to transform our home communities, rather than merely preach to them? Part of me gets very nervous about this kind of question, because I still believe each of us has to face the God of law and grace on our own, as individuals. And maybe all our church group was really talking about and yearning for was a more fulfilling experience of the "Church" or "the Spirit" or something else. Still, I am left wondering whether it's a coincidence that so many of us seem to have found our faith powerfully manifested in places like Holden Village, places that seem so different from where we are destined to live out most of our lives. I'd be really interested to hear what others think and feel about these questions--does your faith have a home base?
posted by Living the Leap at 9:22 PM
3 Comments:
For me, the base has been Holden. I learned so much about faith the three times I've been at Holden; perhaps what I've learned most is what faith isn't, or doesn't have to be.
But, it's not the place, it's the people. I attended a Living Liturgy workshop (with Dan Erlander, Susan Briehl, Tom Witt, and Marty Haugen) and found the same faith-building feeling that I felt at Holden. In fact, it was just like Holden except for the lack of mountains!And, it's not the "famous" people, it's the regular people - in the pews at the workshop, or next to you in the fireside room at Holden.
Tom Bracken Onamia MN srtrout@yahoo.com
Since Tom pointed this discussion in the direction of the people who make a place, I thought I'd post this comment emailed from a blog reader:
"I liked what you had to say about faith as something that "does". This makes more sense when I think about how a community inspires me to action. I can live on my own for a short time. But I need life to interrupt me, people to collaborate with, people to help, people to talk up ideas with, people to inspire me to act. Why would faith be any different? We shouldn't live solitary
lives, even amidst others."
I think sometimes I wind up living out my faith in solitude even in the midst of others, which seems all right until I run into a place like Holden that shows me that even if faith starts with the individual, it doesn't have to stop there.
On the other hand, I saw the documentary "Jesus Camp" this week. That deserves a blog of its own, but suffice to say it raised some challenges to this discussion of faith as a place. Anyone out there seen it?
This is a very different way to look at faith. As a place. What a great post and idea.
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