on "being fed"

There is a phrase tossed around by church people these days, and it sort of just slays me.  I hear it often when people decide to leave my church, or, alternatively, when they are discussing what they like so much about our church.  "I left City Road because I just wasn't being fed."  "I love my church because I'm really fed by what happens there."

I think the concept of spiritual nourishment is vital to a church, and we experience it in a number of ways (most dramatically in the sacraments, but also in preaching, praising, fellowship, liturgy, and more).  Anytime we receive a fresh infusion of God's grace in our lives, our parched souls perk up.  So, this idea of "being fed" makes sense to me.  But I also object to the way the phrase is thrown around, for a couple of reasons.  I use my experience with my children as a way of explaining my objections:

1)  Only infants need to be fed.  At one time, we were all spiritual infants.  Paul has a lot to say about this (check out I Corinthians 3).  However, at a certain point, human development demands that we begin feeding ourselves.  In fact, each of my children was EAGER to begin feeding themselves.  They wanted to control what they ate, how much, when, and all the other factors related to eating.  Self-feeding is a developmental milestone - something the doctor asks you about at your baby's checkups.  Likewise, after we have "been fed" briefly, as spiritual infants, we take on the task of feeding ourselves.  This means that we practice the means of grace.  We immerse ourselves in scripture.  We fellowship with believers.  We become missional, having been sent out into the world.  We understand that God is the source of all spiritual nourishment, but it is up to us, as maturing followers, to feed ourselves from that bounty.

2)  If my children got to pick what was on the menu, they would eat craisins and chunks of butter for every meal.  Maybe with the odd bowl of plain powdered Parmesan cheese thrown in.  My job, as their parent, is to create well-balanced meals that offer a variety of nutrients.  However, I cannot force them to eat anything.  Point being, sometimes God puts things on the menu that are not particularly appealing to us.  This does not mean that they aren't nourishing and necessary.  My mom was a big fan of liver and onions, which is one of the most nourishing meals there is.  When it was on the menu, I regularly went hungry.  (Mom wasn't into making multiple meals for picky eaters.)  So, perhaps it's not that you aren't "being fed."  Maybe it's that you can't stomach what you need to eat.

That last phrase has become my retort when I hear that people "aren't being fed."  Consider this:  maybe it's not that you aren't being fed.  Maybe you just don't like what's on the menu.

Kill your darlings

I'm in the midst of writing a very important, emotional letter.  I actually don't know if this letter will ever be read by anyone but me, but that's sort of beside the point right now.  It's one of those painful, liberating pieces of writing that really lays out my emotional landscape.  I'm lucky that the person to whom this letter is addressed is someone who knows me well, and feels safe.

But what keeps coming back to me, as I write a little and then draft (creative writing workshop habits die hard!), is that pithy phrase tossed around in my workshop days:  "kill your darlings," said William Faulkner (of all people!!  He had some pretty intense darlings.  Remind me to tell you sometime how I feel like I married into a family from a Faulkner novel).

"Kill your darlings," meaning:  if you are too attached to a phrase, too infatuated with your choice of words, too sweet on your syntax - it's become too precious, and it must be killed.  "Kill your darlings":  get right to the heart of what you love, and see what that love says about you, rather than about your object of love.

We are in a week-long class about God's redemption of the fallen nature of the world, with Walter Wink as a basis.  I feel like we could study Wink for a year, just on his own.  What a man.  But one thing I love is that Wink insists that we must resist the lure of mimetic rivalry.  This is just a super-fancy way of saying:  I shoudnl't react with violence just because the world may be violent to me.  Rather, he says that evil in the world may actually have value for us, because it shows us what parts of ourselves are still in need of redemption and resurrection.

"Kill your darlings":  if you feel especially hurt by someone's actions or words, think about what this says about you, rather than about them.  If some part of you has become too precious, if you're holding on to it too tightly, it probably means that it must be surrendered to the redemptive power of God.

So, who even knows about my letter?  At this point, the whole thing is basically a darling and it may just have to be burned in its entirety.  But perhaps the process of writing it was the really valuable exercise for me.