The Conversation Matters

It has been one week since I rose from fallowness...we have had quite a discussion going on that day's particular blog entry, and I am very glad about people expressing themselves. I sense it is time to take down that particular entry, but not to shut down the conversation. I think we have gone about as far as we can go over the particular conversation last week in terms of that entry, but not as far as we can go in terms of sharing differing ecclesiological perspectives, continuing to "re-think" church, and pondering together on other important things, like remembering, as Saliers and Knight reminded us several years ago in their book The Conversation Matters: Why United Methodists Should Talk With Each Other. It does and we should. My prayer is that we continue to discover face-to-face ways to talk with other, to share our hearts and minds, and that we dare to be honest with one another in our differences. I wish I could always stay open to others who differ from me, because I know I don't have all the answers. I don't always do that very well. God's preference for his children, as we witness in scripture, experience and tradition, is that we be vulnerable enough to others' ideas that we risk our minds and hearts being changed and that we risk not only respecting one another through that vulnerability, but to admit our imperfection, laugh together and to love each other not despite ourselves, but because of our courage in sharing ourselves, so that we know, for sure, that love is the only thing.