you know something's happening, but you don't know what it is, do you, mr. jones?

so i went to seattle, to the church of the apostles for a "learning party" on the emerging church. it was a day well spent, meeting lots of cool folks and hearing parts of their stories and particularly hearing the experiences of cool folks who are trying to be church in a way that is understanded by the people who have grown up on mtv and mp3.

it was the dark times of 1966 when i first conciously noticed something was happening which we have very modernly called "post-modernism." i was a junior in college in chicago, and i put together what i hoped would be a conversation to try to understand what this thing was that we were entering, but none of us could really do anything more than notice that we were noticing something, but what it was we couldn't tell.

after saturday i'm still not too sure we have begun to grasp the magnitude of the shift. we were told proudly, adamantly, by a very gifted "abbess" that they of course did not use books in their worship. but of course lap-tops were there, and since they're just the modern--oops, post-modern--cool thing that has replaced books which were the cool thing of the 15th century, i'm not sure we were not just fish not noticing the water.

this morning i started reading the philokalia, and somehow the words of the introduction, by g.e.h. palmer, philip sherrard, and kallistos ware, about "the contemporary reader" seem particularly appropriate: ". . . he may be led . . . to question his own outlook and assumptions and then to modify or even abandon them in the light of the understanding with which he is now confronted. . . . it should be remembered that, however much the external appearances and conditions of the world may change, such changes can never unroot the fundamental potentialities of the human state and of man's relationship with god . . .."

of course we need to speak to our culture. but we need not be overwhelmed by it.