In we shuffle, hooded amplitudes,
scapulared brooms, a stray earring, skin-heads
and flowing locks, blind in one eye,
hooked-nosed, handsome as a prince
(and knows it), a five-thumbed organist,
an acolyte who sings in quarter tones,
one slightly swollen keeper of the bees,
the carpenter minus a finger here and there,
our pre-senile writing deathless verse,
a stranded sailor, a Cassian scholar,
the artist suffering the visually
illiterate and indignities unnamed,
two determined liturgists. In a word,
eager purity and weary virtue.
Last of all, the Lord Abbot, early old
(shepherding the saints is like herding cats).
These chariots and steeds of Israel
make a black progress into church.
A rumble of monks bows low and offers praise
to the High God of Gods who is faithful forever.

By Kilian McDonnell, from Swift, Lord, You Are Not. © St. John’s University Press. From The Writer’s Almanac, July 31, 2004.

Let me recommend Dune, Frank Herbert’s sci fi classic, as a text for the emerging church. It’s a good story, but I want to highlight the novel’s thread of adapting to a foreign culture, because it holds several conversations for the church.

Paul Muad’Dib is the messianic figure of the story, and his “incarnation” into a local Freemen tribe is quite interesting and relevent. For example, there is a ritual that Paul must complete in order to be fully accepted as a member of the tribe. We who would seek to belong today must look for similar rites of acceptance in the tribes we wish to join.

Another interesting idea is this: The Freemen were astonished, because Paul - an outsider from another planet - seemed to know their culture as if it were his own from birth; yet he was also willing to transform Freemen culture where necessary. Compare this to the planetary governors of House Harkonnen who chose neither to understand nor even tolerate the native culture, instead working ruthlessly to subjugate or eradicate it. Application to modern incarnational ministry shouldn’t be hard to see.

So, pick it up from the library for a late-summer read. If you want or need to buy it, click thru my link and send a few pennies my way