Weekly News | 5.29.26
Earlier this year a clip from a 2007 Werner Herzog nature documentary resurfaced via social media. Dubbed “The Nihilist Penguin,” the clip shows a penguin that refuses to go either to the feeding grounds or back to the colony. Instead, he begins a solo journey to the mountains. In the documentary, it is understood he is headed toward certain death.
Mr. Herzog asks a penguin expert on site, “Is there such thing as insanity among penguins?” Can a penguin be “deranged”? The expert demurs on derangement, but does say penguins can become “disoriented” and “end up in places they should not be.”
The internet, however, has a different take on the penguin. People reposting the clip generally project a sense of burnout or existential dread onto the flippered fowl. The penguin is relatable. Some even go so far as to say admirable: “Be the penguin!”
The nihilist penguin may be relatable at our dark moments, when we are at our lowest levels of disorientation. But to head it alone - especially in the life of faith - is folly.
Which, as I’m sure you’ve guessed by now, brings me to J-Terms.
J-Terms aim us toward maturity. We are in Ordinary Time, season aimed at maturation (the “feeding grounds”). We desire to be a people that, as we age, are in fact deepened in our faith, deepened in our wisdom and love (Col. 1:28-29). That kind of maturation is hardly inevitable, evidenced daily in the world around us.
J-Terms help us keep time together. The “colony” is a place of noise, but also a place of needed connection and orientation. J-Terms come in seasons when our Neighborhood Groups are on hiatus, offering an alternative way to inhabit rhythms of connection. These connections breathe hope into places of dread and give tethering in seasons of burnout. Closing each Thursday together with Compline (night prayers) is a highlight in my own experience of J-Terms.
Whether or not it is through a J-Term, may God continue to make Church of the Cross a people of profound orientation to Jesus and life together in the Spirit, “grow[ing us] to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.” (Eph. 4:15)
Peace,
Sarah+