Theoblogical

The occupation movement has, at its heart, the unmasking and unveiling of true identity. Through the shared communal practices and liturgies of general assemblies, common language, shared music, disciplined endurance, and a willingness to suffer, Occupy Denver seeks to reclaim not only physical public space, but also, a deeper sense of communal identity. It seeks to make visible a different kind of world, and a different kind of life together.

Which made me wonder: isn’t this what the church is supposed to be in the buisness of doing? What if the church also sought to reclaim and re-occupy the sacred spaces and identities that are too often dominated by Caesar and his ideology of consumerism? What if, like the occupiers, its not through pre-made programs and paradigms of church growth, but through a shared commitment to communal practices, the church could re-occupy time? By creating opportunities for silence, Sabbath, and other deep spaces of contemplation and grace, spaces too often claimed by the oppressive nature of a competitive society bent on occupying every waking and dreaming moment of our days?

http://www.fteleaders.org/blog/entry/occupy-vocation/

Noticed in the comments:

May we stop and first be inhabited by the God who will then enable us to faithfully inhabit the world.

Which tends to bother me.  It seems to push the envelope back into “getting right with God BEFORE we act”,  which more often than not leads to not ever reaching that point of action, since we never feel “ready”.  Whatever happened to reconciliation as what happens in the midst  of action?

I acgtually   did not even get a sense that the author was introducing any “SEQUENCE” issue here.  But as soon as the “spiritual” is mentioned,  then people immediately grasp that as license to demand we do that part “FIRST”.  I think this misses the point  the author was making.  I sensed that he was praising the results of the communal activity of Occupy that built up around the “Occupation”, and so calling the church to tap that insight and emphasis upon the occupation of communal space.

I believe that the most loving thing we can do for the richest and most powerful is to tell them the truth: call them to the truth and challenge them to live truthfully. After all, one of the spiritual works of mercy is to admonish sinners. If this is so, we must love the 1% enough to speak the truth to them, inviting them to justice, righteousness, and transformation, and inviting them to the 100%.

http://www.rockandtheology.com/?p=4710#more-4710

I’ve heard this,  and in terms of love for persons with whom we engage in dialogue,  this is true.  But what of those who diss such dialogue,  which is  exactly what so many do?  Are the claims “confrontive”?  Yes.  Are they libelous or unfair  or unrealistic? No.  At some point ,  the gulf remains because  those  in power wish to maintain it.

What so many don’t understand is the point made in this article:

This is a structural sin: despite best intentions, we have made it impossible to do good.  This sin must be repented of and atoned for. In drawing attention to it, the Occupy Movement is a prophetic voice.

http://www.rockandtheology.com/?p=4694

Structural sin is so imbedded,  that the dictates of the system actually preclude an equitable, just applicaiton or “guidance” of that system.  Maximizing profits for shareholders actually works against any questioning from a moral/theological perspective.  And related, is the endless cycle of “if you don;t get re-elected,  then you can’t do anything good — begging the question of when the “re-election” pressure EVER ceases,  and the same cycle is repeated,  with ever stronger “ends justifies the means” strategies that justify themselves by appealing to self-preservation.   I hear much of the frustration with this hopeless set of affairs.  The system is sick.  Who,  if not the church, is theologically equipped to call the “principalities” of such imbedded nature  into question.  it is ,  indeed,  the “way of the  world” right now,  and so many people appeal to that “reality” as the basis for eschewing “idealism”  for what amounts to a grand acquiescence with the powers that be.

from the article:

Occupy is appealing to Trinity, a very wealthy church, to share its resources (prime Manhattan real estate, currently empty but presently leased on a short-term basis to a tenant) with the Occupy movement whose social goals are ostensibly the same as Trinity’s – a more just world for more people – and many of whose participants explicitly dedicate themselves to the cause for reasons of religion or spirituality. Some in Occupy use religious language of “sanctuary” for Occupy in their appeal to Trinity, because we were forcibly evicted from Zuccotti and have been hounded out of other public places since then. A religious organization like Trinity, many argue, ought to appreciate a basic point from the theological tradition: ongoing material space that is artistically curated, ritually inhabited, and safely overseen is essential for an ongoing witness to a more deeply flourishing reality.

http://www.rockandtheology.com/?p=4759