the enduring unpopularity of decay [rehashing a discussion from my friends]

ever think about how wonderful it is for certain things to die? or even how important rottenness is to life? it's in the decay of some things that we find our most delectable pleasures - cheese, for example, which comes from old milk, and chocolate from rotting cocoa.

what is bread? rotten wheat
what is wine? rotten grapes

len sweet likes to talk about the best things coming through the path of rot.

yogurt, sauerkraut, fertilizer.

and maybe, for us, church.

it's like whatever is coming next [in terms of ecclesia] will be born on the decay of what has come before. that's not necessarily to say that church-as-an-institution will go away or be completely relegated to irrelevance, but i do mean to suggest that whatever new forms church will take will be funded by the organic decomposition of the church we're all going to now.

so we ought to hold loosely to some of the things we love
and we ought to be a little more generous about some of the things we're reacting to

because we are all mushrooms and penicillin