Walking Each Other Home

From Forms To Substance & From Shadows To Light

I spent a lifetime trying to find the perfect church. It doesn’t exist. I was watching a documentary on the history of Iran this week. The oldest Christian Church in Iran was founded in 81 AD. That blew me away.

I’ve been through church splits, denominational splits, house church splits, theater church splits, and they all have one thing in common: church splits are over legalism, never grace, over belief, never faith. Underneath, they are always over control, money, and power, never about love.

There’s a better way to look at what’s going on as we move from order into disorder and finally into reorder. There’s a better way than bowing up the wheel just to recreate a new wheel. It is a waste of time. What you believe will change as you do. I don’t believe, I know through experience that God is Faithful.

I live in an area that holds the Guinness World Record for the most different kinds of denominations and non-denominational churches per capita of any place in the world. Your church of the week is probably here.

With over 30,000 denominations and non-denominations, there’s only one body of Christ, right? So what’s going on? Is there a better way to approach the mess we’re in?

WALKING EACH OTHER HOME

From Form to Substance & From Shadows to Light

I see Forms all around me...Forms of the Benedictines and forms of the Baptists, forms of the Charismatics and forms of the Catholics, and Pentacostals from the Theatre Churches to the Mega Churches, along with the forms of my beloved Anglican and Methodists. The forms are seemingly endless.

Probably my favorite is Worship On The Water, a beach church that meets in The FloraBama Bar on the Stateline, literally by the Gulf waters, on the beach.. I was given three names there. Bobaratzi, The Dude, and Friar Bob when I took my Franciscan Vows.

As in everything, I use the Jesus test: “Test everything and hold fast to what’s good.”

Regardless of who thinks they’re right, they are all calling us into Substance, into being, into wholeness, into the Shalom of Christ. All calling us together and calling us home in Jesus. Our forms are like old friends slowly walking each other home. Use them as they work, and when they don’t, let them fall off you like old, tattered garments.

I love meditation and just soaking in the Presence, the peace of Christ, taking time with eternity. I also love the sense of belonging that these temporal forms give us, gathering us together and bringing us to the place of Remembrance, where, as Jesus says, ‘Before Abraham was born, I Am.” Remembrance is a doorway to transcendence where we encounter the quantum beyond time and space, where we create out of the quantum in Christ.

But more than the forms, I love crossing the threshold and entering into belonging, acceptance, and home. I love the stillness that expands us and connects us into the timeless, eternal whole, the substance behind all our forms.

Love, light, and life are the divine energies that bind us, and joy is the spark of life that ignites us in a blaze of glory. There is none like our God who infuses us with the light and life of glory. Glory manifests wholeness in our lives...A whole-hearted love, joy, and peace, sparkling and dancing within us with delight in the Shalom of Christ, as love drives out all fear.

This is surely the Kingdom of Heaven we bring into our world. Not our forms, but our Substance, like one candle lighting another, we bear Christ, spirit to spirit, heart to heart, touching hand in hand across all traditions. Yes, we are the embodied substance of God’s radical love, slowly walking each other home. As with it all, I use the Jesus test: “Test everything and hold fast to what’s good.”

~Bob Holmes #walkingwithwisdom

Photo: A wonder-filled day on Perdido Key