With a fellow parish, my wife, Sr. Warden, and I took a mission trip to Guadalajara. There, we did a seminar entitled ‘The Life in the Spirit’ which is a course designed to teach some basics and to bring folks to a deeper walk with Christ. Lots of experiential stuff that Constantine likes. I’ll have many thoughts on this in this and future posts.
We did the seminar for the clergy and laity of the Anglican Diocese of Western Mexico. I found myself going back to my past in the bilingual Pentecostal church I grew up in (yes, I am Hispanic and no, I didn’t learn Spanish)in which the passion of worship was full of life–and sometimes chaos.
What struck me about the culture down there was their emphasis on the ‘table,’ that is, the meal times and the wonderful interaction with families and friends. Life stops for meals and when the dishes are cleared, all gather for the sake of simply being together.
The buzz words in churches in the US is ‘community’ and ‘family time.’ But it is painfully obvious that we have no clue what that is. We exist for our careers and jobs and have little time to laugh with those we love. We are hurried, going from one trivial pursuit to another.
There is nothing romantic about Mexico, in fact the spiritual darkness there is palpable. However, they have something we don’t–each other.
