church quote

I am reading a fascinating book by Paul Elie, The Life You Save May Be Your Own, that explores the seperate and connected stories of four Catholic writers-Dorothy Day, Flannery O'Connor, Thomas Merton and Walter Percy--in the first half of the 20th century. As I understand it, his thesis is that although they are mostly interpreted and understood and read as individuals -- they are better understood in connection and community with one another, as four individuals who both separately and as friends were engaged almost violent pilgrimage towards making their experience of religion enfleshed in the work they did as writers. (I could be way off on this thesis, since I am a chronically lazy reader and I've only read about a tenth of the book.)

Right now I want to remember this quote-- Elie is discussing Day's first return to the church as a socialist writer and dissaffected young wild woman in New York-- "...what she will seek in the Church, and find in the Church, is what each of them [the other three writers] will seek and find there: a place of pilgrimage, a home and a destination, where city and world meet, where the self encounters the other, where personal experience and the testimony of the ages can be reconciled."

This seems so meaty and wonderful and profound-- this is getting close to a deep enough picture of the church that it almost sounds right. This is a rigorous and beautiful enough description to sound like the truth to me.

I so often get extraordinarily critical of church--mostly because I tend to be contemptous of that which I'm closest too, and it's easier to criticize than engaging in thoughtful and compassionate and honest assessment of what really is going on from a sociological standpoint in this kind of an organization.... But as critical and contemptuous as I am, I am also completely enmeshed in the church. So that's kind of messy. Either I'm enmeshed because I am deluded and using it to fulfill unhealthy tendencies and dependencies in my psyche (and certainly, some of that--more than I know-- is true), or my critical eye is completely arrogant, self-deceived and unfounded contempt (and there's huge truth to this)...

But if I really believe the church is the agent of Life and Grace -- the meeting point between God and all of society--then I believe it is the best, most sensible place for all of my secular friends.

And I can't maintain this mixture of arrogant, stand-offish contempt and unhealthy, infantile dependency and expect my friends to be attracted to that. ...

But this view of the church as summarized by Elie seems close enough to the truth to be of service. I need to continually re-orient my vision so that I no longer entertain the thought of the church as some limp, weak, fantasy-ridden and non-intellectual hide-out for goofy people.

And here is this beautiful, fully-orbed, entirely healthy and robust viewpoint --
"a place of pilgrimage, a home and destination.... where the self encounters the other, where personal testimony and the testimony of the ages can be reconciled...."

As I said, this just sounds wonderfully right, true and good to me. This to me sounds like perhaps this is a part of what God intended and intends-- (I could be wrong, I'd like to understand more).

How grateful I am that these words came to me at this point in my life, when I had at least a tiny bit of an opening to hear them.

I am praying for my friends to come to know the church in this way. I pray I can come to know it in this way.