Because there was a time in early Christianity when the Abbey was the center of the community and worship was so passionate that it spilled over into life-affirming expressions of art and scholarship. The abbeys of that day represented the hopeful possibilities of heaven's life touching earth--places to which wanderers and seekers could flee for refuge and places where God's spirit was allowed to actually generate culture.
Western church today is often a place where God is contained. Rather than life flowing out of the church and into the community, society seems to be holding God prisoner in the steepled (or even storefront) buildings, saying, "Come this far, but no farther."
I have stood on sites of ancient abbeys in England and wondered where we went wrong. Where is church that manifests God in a relevant way to every part of culture? Where are people who make sense to their culture, except for the fact that they are infused with divine life? Where are the expressions of God that will engage the world of today? Where are the artists, the scientists, and the adventurers?
I
cannot build an abbey, but I can prepare corridors of thought and rooms
of Presence
that can both educate and inspire toward a Christianity
that bursts any wall that dares to try and contain it! Burning bush encounters
that will transform fugitives into deliverers await men and women throughout
their wilderness obscurity. But, just as Moses discovered, the impact
of the call is only felt when one "turns aside" to deeply consider
it. Mind-Abbey is a collection of resources endeavoring to provide both
the bush and the space to turn aside.