Creativity, Joy, and Excitement (11/1/14)

The other day I was remembering the mid and late 1960’s. Creativity, joy, and excitement were pervasive in pop culture and in the Catholic Church. That was a time when almost anything seemed possible. We were surrounded by celebration and meditation, protest and poetry. Artists like Sr. Corita Kent and Mickey Myers found spiritual insights in daily realities and commercial advertisements. Church liturgies experimented with poetry and meaningful popular songs. The African Missa Luba and the Electric Prunes’ Mass in F Minor expressed Eucharistic chants in contemporary musical form. It seemed like a new Pentecost.

A lingering Viet-Nam War and the death of our prophetic heroes helped wither that era of optimism. In the next decades in the Catholic Church of the United States and Europe, the opening windows of the Second Vatican Council were slowly replaced by the closing doors of authority, orthodoxy, and sexual abuse cover-up. Perhaps those who did not live in the late Sixties will have no idea of the creativity, joy, and excitement that was then the Church. Except that something similar seems to be happening now. With Pope Francis these qualities seem to be returning. Many of the bishops at the Synod on the Family seem to have caught the Spirit.   Could it be Pentecost time again?

Next week Jesus’ mouse goes sailing and I share my Jesuit past. Chapter two of Meditation and Prayer continues with the Jesus Prayer.