Anne Rice and Christianity

First, please let me apologize for withdrawing and for my frustration. It has been building for years and the other day it finally completely paralyzed me. I just couldn't go on speaking from the same place any longer. I was worn out and frazzled and it was not helping. Since I pulled back and looked at myself, I've come to realize that I am looking at this from a much higher Level. I know it sounds awful to say that, but the reason for that will hopefully become clear as I continue. 

I am looking at multiple Systems right now and how they are all choking to death from the pollution created by the separate self sense and the monolithic self sense. All Systems, including Religion/Spirituality are nearly killed off from this pollution. In some sense, they are going to die. It's really too late to save them. 

But Something Else is trying to be Born. Something New. And even tho the Bible can and usually is interpreted in such a way as to give the impression that Christianity or the Christian Life or The Church or Salvation are Objects that can be apprehended, guarded, owned, withheld, given, taken, shared, etc., they can also be interpreted very differently. Jesus can be understood as meaning something very different than what most people think He meant. I think we all agree on this here. 

But what we don't seem to be able to agree on is ...  agreement itself. 

If we look at the History of the Church as a case study on the History of how humans agree and disagree, we would see a pattern. At every turn, so far, we have been laboring under the double yoke of the separate self sense (I am not you) and the monolithic self (I am one). We've seen it try and form one single Monolithic locus of Authority and that didn't bring agreement. We've seen it react by splitting into nearly infinite shards and that didn't bring agreement. We've seen many attempts at unification but they have all failed. And Jesus' prayer that we may be One rings like a measuring stick in plain view of all of us, stamping all our efforts with the "FAIL Whale" without exception. 

But something weird happened within the last 10-15 years. Individuals within the Church, all over the globe and without any prompting other than their own internal impulses, woke up to the same impossible desire. We finally had enough of being right and we were finally willing to do what it took to be One. The stuff that keeps us apart somehow had to be dropped. It was terrifyingly sudden. We could no longer stomach any kind of talk that reinforced the boundaries. It all became nauseating. Some of us could hold our noses and stay seated in the pews on Sunday morning. Some of us could no longer stand the smell and had to run out of the building, both hands over our mouths, choking back the vomit. Some of us left for a while until we managed to get used to it and then went back. Some of us could never go back. It was over. 

This is a real event that really happened in real time and space. Christians in America and Europe and Africa and the Middle East all began to feel this way around the same time independently of one another. And when they all found each other on the Internet, the "Emergent" phenomenon was born. This was at least as revolutionary as when Luther published and distributed The Bible to common people. It is attracting at least as much criticism and hatred. Brian McLaren is at least as much a target for being martyred as Luther and hopefully will also escape with his life after traveling and writing and spreading this new permission to know what we know. 

This is not Progressive Christianity. 

Emergent is not a collection of new doctrine. It is a pattern of meta-doctrine that says it's time to figure out how to be One. Come hell or high water, it's time. In this new awareness is a new sense of what it means to be a Christian. What Church is. What the Christian Life is. And what we've found is that in order to be One we've had to drop most of the Objects of Faith that have been the obsession of Christians for nearly 2 millennia and instead find a fresh experience of being the Subject. It's an Interior thing. And that is why there is very little language to locate it. Interiors are known for a dearth of language and abstraction while Exteriors are a easily traded and argued about. The process of discussing Exteriors is the same process we use to reinforce the sense of separation. Talking about monolithic truths, we mistakenly believe they will unite us. The Emergent Christian is looking right at this phenomenon. Those who cannot see it, are not amongst us. 

Anne Rice just woke up and saw it.

The reason that I shamelessly say this is a higher level of seeing is because I am now merely Subject to Jesus and all Objects have become transparent. They are all good. All of them. And they are all Objects and will all disappear. And I belong to a Group of other Subjects, and together we make ONE SUBJECT. We don't have to be Objects to one another. That reinforces the separate self sense and our sense of having to be right or correct or somehow consistent. We are all in process together. All of us, merging and flowing and changing and swirling. We can all change course as we go because we are constantly in the process of dropping what separates and retaining what is best: Jesus. 

As I told Anne the other day, she has chosen what is Best over what is merely Good, just like Mary chose over what Martha chose. She is staying on Target. The Target is Jesus. Her process is beautiful and perfect just as it is, just as all our processes have been over our own lifetimes. 

She is an amazing woman who cares deeply about suffering and wants to right wrongs. God put this Erotic impulse in her. And many of us have benefitted from the incredible fruits of this Erotic drive. She has intimately known Eros diverted. And now she knows Eros un-dammed. I find her reality even more compelling and agonizingly beautiful than her fiction. And that's saying alot. 

Anne Rice is Queen of the Un-Damned. 

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