We are all about the “listening church” these days: asserting its importance, its necessity, arguing about what it means and what to do with what is said and heard.
Of course, the first one to whom we should all be listening is God, but then the question arises of discerning and competing voices, so then we are back again to listening to others, to the world: If we’re not hearing God, if we’re blocking him out, if we can’t recognize his voice, perhaps we need to listen to what’s going on in the world to figure out why.
And if people – masses of people – are not recognizing God’s voice in the Church – and not even bothering to try – yes, listening to those people (which is not an other, but all of us), is important.
The “listening” that’s discussed in Catholic circles right now is focused on first, folks who feel excluded by various aspects of Church teaching, and then folks who feel excluded by current aspects of ecclesiastical regulation and by the exclusion of their concerns from the very obsession with “listening.”
All well and good. I just wish that within the halls of the powers that be, I had a sense that someone was paying attention to other sorts of cultural and social whispers and signs. Or at least doing so without an “apostolate building” agenda that fills up my inbox every morning with appeals, offers and invitations.
Three links that might not be objectively or obviously related, but in my brain, somehow got connected:
From Carl Trueman at First Things: The death of church and pub:
It would be easy to present this as a gloomy scenario. The death of church and pub can only further fuel the modern scourges of loneliness and isolation. And these evils cannot be solved directly by public policy or government initiatives because such things trade in abstractions. Nobody is ever lonely or isolated in the abstract. Loneliness only ever affects people—real, individual people in real, particular circumstances. And it can only be solved by real community.
This is where the church actually has a tremendous opportunity. The West is currently engaged in an experiment doomed to fail. Human beings crave real relationships, and there will come a backlash to the isolated wasteland of modern life, marked by the frictionless “friendships” of the online “community.” After all, nobody on his deathbed wants his loved ones appearing before him by Zoom. He wants them in the room, holding his hand, speaking to him, interacting with him in real, embodied space and time. And when that backlash comes, the real communities that exist will appear vital and attractive.
This is why hospitality is something that the church needs to emphasize again. St. Paul writes that elders must be hospitable. But in sixteen years of teaching at seminary, I do not recall ever hearing of a class on hospitality. Indeed, the saddest thing I perhaps ever heard in that time was a student at an exit interview wistfully saying that he had come to seminary to learn to share the love of Jesus more effectively with his friends and had learned merely how to fall out more sharply with other Christians who didn’t quite measure up. That is a damning indictment of theological education.
The nature of community is changing. The old village has gone. One can lament the passing of parish churches and village pubs, but the type of community that birthed them has gone forever. But the human need for community—rich, real, personal community—will exist as long as our individual identities are tied up with looking into the faces of those who are “bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh.” In other words, that need will exist as long as we are human beings made in God’s image. And the answer is hospitality. Churches and Christians need to think about what this looks like in our modern world as much as they think about other aspects of the faith. And the good news is that the very things Christian decry in our current culture, from its superficiality to its instability to its hopelessness—make this a time of unparalleled opportunity.
Also at First Things, Dan Hitchens looks at the work of playwright Matthew Gasda:
To be modern is to have banished the sacred; but in these plays it keeps creeping back, impossible either to expunge or to embrace. One character is thinking about becoming a nun; another is guilty about skipping Mass; one remarks that “participating in a catastrophic civilization” is “almost like going to church,” to which another replies: “Almost being the operative word.” To have seen through modernity is not to have found faith. But it is better than nothing…
…“Are you serious?” is the question that haunts these plays. Or, in the case of boyfriends and girlfriends: “Are we serious?” To express a serious view is to risk being wrong; to form a serious attachment is to risk being humiliated. Safer to be ironically detached, self-deprecating, and cautious about what you reveal of yourself. “I want you,” Monika tells Adam in Berlin Story. “That’s so embarrassing,” he replies. Social life becomes a strange, watchful dance with constantly changing steps…
…
Nevertheless, it is an artist, the painter Andre in Ardor, who hints that there really is an escape from irony and self-consciousness. (Ardor is not included in this collection, a pity since it is Gasda’s closest approach to the sublime.) Andre owns a farmhouse where he lets a group of young actors, artists, and writers, including his niece Chloe, hang out every summer. He is self-sufficient, aloof, unflappable, whereas they are insecure and goofy. And he challenges his young friends to imagine a world in which the screens on which they project themselves are taken away: “Like, what if the Internet crashed, what if a meteor knocked it out . . .” Only then, he suggests, could they really aspire to an “infinite passion.” The young artists are horrified by this thought experiment. Andre doesn’t pursue the point, but heads to bed, mentioning before he goes that tonight is a good night to see shooting stars—the Perseids meteor shower. “What if a meteor knocked it out . . .” A little hint has been dropped: There is something outside the world that is big enough, serious enough, beautiful enough to smash the whole hall of mirrors to pieces. But nobody cares or bothers to go outside.
A year passes, and in the play’s closing moments the group has returned to the house. Andre has died in the intervening time, but he has left an unexpected last testament: a letter to his niece in which he tells her, “You’ve always driven me crazy with all your questions,” and that now he will give her a direct answer. “God’s faith in you is the life He gives you, that’s why you feel so bad wasting it. There is no way to manipulate external circumstances to make His love go away, to separate the life from the faith, and make that love into something less than a miracle.” As this somewhat garbled but unmistakably serious testament is read out, it appears to have made no impression. “I just farted, sorry,” is the only response from the other characters.
And yet, a few moments later, when they remember the Perseids are on show tonight, the whole group rushes offstage to see the stars fall from the sky.
Finally – something that might seem superficial to you, but is the most telling of all, I think:
And what is this most-watched British comedy in the world about?
Grief. Loss. Questions about the meaning of it all, about death and what comes after.
Now, I don’t think After Life is great. I wrote about it:
I found it repetitive (over the course of the seasons) and while it got certain aspects of grief just right – it also missed a lot.
But in the end After Life falls way short because, ironically, the atheist worldview that critiques Christianity for being all simplistic-pie-in-the-sky-easy-answers offers…easy answers. Why? Because mystery and meaning essentially have no place. Tony learns to live better and move on because he finally listens to the people who are constantly telling him he’s good and funny and “lovely.” And his dog needs him. That’s really….it.
For season 3, substitute, “people who are constantly telling him that he should, indeed cash the life insurance check because angels do exist, and they are people who help others.”
BUT – here’s the point:
Gervais, fervent atheist, created a piece of art that invites the viewer to confront the meaning of life on earth in the shadow of death. It’s been massively popular. People talk about it, talk to each other about it, and listen to each other. And what are they talking about? What’s grabbing them and getting them talking? The comedy? No. Death, lost, meaning – and after life.
So.
Are you listening?
Loneliness.
Authenticity.
Death.
Are you listening?
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