Can You Speak Secular

When I was in teacher training for early childhood oh so many years ago, the lab school where we took our classes had a distinct disdain for the anthropomorphism of animals. We were forbidden to read stories to children where any animal talked. It was said to mislead them.

In the same way, sometimes, the traditional church can be a gatekeeper for what is sacred and meaningful and what is not. 

I heard someone talking about the meaning of her coffee mug a while or so back. It made me think again of a huge theological discovery I've made that is ancient truth rediscovered. Other,non, marginal, dis, doubting and prior believers are eager for us to hear what is sacred to them. They will, if we are willing to do so, let us listen to what has had meaning for them that is beyond the here and now. Maybe it's a place, maybe it's a relationship, maybe it's a book, and maybe it's an afghan or a chair or a cabin in the woods near a lake.

We who believe have a peculiar call to share what we know here. We know that the onus on followers of Jesus is to listen first and share second. We know it is important to go to the other, non, marginal, dis, doubting, and prior believers rather than making them come to us. And if we don't suggest they come to us, it has to be in a venue familiar to them. We worry less about wandering from the path and more about not walking with people on their own streets. That is the new road to Emmaus.

You see, it is true that teaching children that animals can talk is misleading =except for those youtube animals that can sing and dance and of course my own dog and cats who have the ability to say 'OUT' quite clearly. But what children learn when they are young and ducks and trumpeter swans and pokey little puppies are losing their way is that there is an affinity between us and animals. It's a starting point. 

When somebody tells me how holy Kahlil Gibran's 'The Prophet' is to them, it's an opportunity to begin a discussion of the sacred and how it moves us past the concrete. I suppose I could go into a discussion of Trinitarian theology and kill their joy in about a nano second but what's the point; my correct theology or their budding one? The only test question we have to answer on the Jesus exam is 'Yes or No?'  And getting to Jesus was already modeled for us as he put his hands in dirt and water and people's hearts and said, '"what do you see of eternal value and meaning here?"

Let me put it even more simply. I have a colleague who was raised as an atheist Jew and she asked me one time, "How do you see the sacred in the secular?"

How can a coffee mug lead to eternal meaning? That's the new millennium calling for Christians in an age more people than ever are spiritually curious even as the church is either dying or becoming an arena spectator sport. We don't spread the Gospel as much anymore as we translate. 

Can you speak secular? Can we say where we once were and how we're not there anymore and how that happened even as we held our meaningful gift mugs?  Jesus would now sit at the Espresso stand instead of the well, and say "The Holy Spirit is a little like your shot of flavour that sweetens the deal and makes it more pleasant.” And so we drink from a new cup, if we can bear to allow ourselves a new chalice.