Our Cul-de-sac of Dreams
I guess I'm a little fed up right now. Maybe you are too. Right now when I hear some of our Methodist leaders I find the phrase "cul-de-sac of dreams” comes to mind. As far as I know it originates in a Mary Chapin Carpenter song "The Long Way Home" on her 2001 album "Time, Sex, Love." A cul-de-sac is a particularly safe kind of neighborhood. No through traffic. Easy to just keep going around in circles. Strangers enter only if they are lost. So what makes a cul-de-sac of dreams? The moment when public image becomes more important than lived reality. We build houses of cards on cul-de-sacs of dreams when public relations become more important than the truth. And that happens most easily when we adopt the same language and ethos of promotion typical of American corporate culture. Don't get me wrong. I'm all in for inculturation. I wrote book about inculturation of the gospel: The Gospel among the Nations, Orbis Press 2013. And I’m all about evange