On Southern charms and churches.

Lindell gave a sermon tonight on Hope. His comments set off a wisp of something Tillich-ian, so I've spent the last 20 minutes searching through my shelves for a book of Tillich essays I have, that I finally realize I must have left back in Chicago. Sad.

Anyhow, I don't often think of Hope in the theological sense. I use the term, "hope," and I act the verb all the time, in a colloquial sense. I hope that this or that thing happens--that the traffic is good on my way to work, that I get my favorite seat at church, that I get time to stop at Starbuck's before class.

As Lindell talked of our Hope for heaven, and for Christ's love in our lives, I realized. I have so fiercely guarded my intellectual faith from the vagaries of sentimentality, that I haven't been living in the Hope that is promised me. Much the same as my scorn has robbed me of a place in the Body, my insistence on maintaining a faith devoid of emotion has taken from me the experience of Hope in Christ.

I've been unbalanced. Did I know it? Did I feel it? I don't know. It'd be too easy to say yes.

I feel as though my corners are being sanded, my rough edges made smooth, by the charms of Southern religion. There's something very relational down here, that extends into the church in ways that don't have Northern corrolaries. The South is rife with passion (used both for good and evil), that when laid upon worship can either be ridiculed or greatly admired--an honest soul does a little of both.

More on that later. My eyes close as I type.