One of the problems, kat, is that those of us who are engaged in doing exactly what you exhort us to do find our time, energy, and passion attritted seriously by attacks on the whole Christian picture by those who see only the broken parts that were used to hurt them in the past.

I handle such comments like this, when they come to me personally, like this-- "OK, gotta go enslave some more stupid people at church tonight, can't talk right now."

What I want is for more people, if they claim to be intelligent and tolerant, to do their share to see the whole picture more clearly. When they don;t do this, and take a position that influences others, they make our work that much harder and slower. It polarizes, and thus any movement in any direction becomes rather frozen.

And I would ask that people see the individuals in it as clearly as you see the mass movements that impinge upon you. And to extrapolate from that example of people you know, to see their place in the whole picture, and add that perception to your perception of the whole. When we fall silent, out of fear of persecution or ridicule, or just out of exhaustion at the effort to work against this tide, we become invisible.

We have a responsibility to remain visible anyway, but we are only human and sometimes we fall, too. (I'd like to have evolved beyond this, and use my prayer time more constructively, but this is still an area of struggle for me and for many others. So... somebody who wants to reply on this, how about you just pray for me instead!!)

Seeing this situation more clearly is to see the living Body of Christ in action. It is THAT living Body, made up of the individual members exercising their gifts and talents as best we can, who are The Church.

The rest of what you see is the mere church, lower case, the organization, the structure often used in oppression-- and that church has no right to the judgmental claims it makes on the world. My belief is that it is simply a mistake being perpetrated upon the planet by good people in the grip of old baggage and/or counterfeit spiritual powers, aided by the too-human desire to belong to something, anything, that opens the way to the spiritual life.

And if people really want the "Bad Guys" to change, there is still no subsititute for actually getting to know another human being. Without the relationship for dialog, nothing changes too much. Without respect and real interest, such a relationship does not flourish. Without a shared passion for what is real, and what people actually experience, there is only opinion.

I cry sometimes-- deeply, wild wanton weeping-- over the fact that discussions like this very one take the place of real discussion about what you, I, anyone, actually EXPERIENCES. This CAN be done. I have spent the last 6 months building a relationship with someone of a very different orientation, to get to the beginning of that conversation. It's about time.

Without his having done his share of the work to get to the starting point, I don't think it would have been possible. It took a real act of will to stay in comunication even when we disagreed on the deepest things you can think of.

It is now the best friendship I have ever had, and shows signs of being something eternal and valuable to the world around each of us. And there is nothing now that we cannot effectively discuss, baggage and all, because we built in the tools to handle the bumped feelings that often precede understanding and concord.

I just urge people to stop the button pushing, and THINK, and pass up the chance to take cheap shots that seem funny. It just is not the best way to get at the issues involved.

I would love to hear from anyone who has also built the kind of friendship I am talking about, across any apparent barrier. And I would love to build more of them, as well.

~S~