Well, this is it - our final To The Point newsletter of 2021. I want to first thank you - whether this is your first, your thirtieth, your fifty-first, or somewhere in between, I want to thank you for reading these words as often as you have to take a peek into the goings-on of Checkpoint Church.
As I consider what To The Point (and CPC in general) look like in 2022, I keep coming back to the troublesome image of the ouroboros - the serpent eating it's own tail. If you're unfamiliar, it's a circle symbol of a snake with it's mouth open wrapping around to eat it's own tail. It's been traced back to the ancient Greek culture and I imagine was an image often discussed during Jesus' time. For some reason, despite some loose connections with the Leviathan of Hebrew lore and some Gnostic thought here and there - the ouroboros isn't one often associated with Christian thought, not even as a heresy.
Much like the nerd culture that has been brought into the Christian sphere by Checkpoint, I think we do have a thing or two we can learn from the serpent eating it's own tail. At it's purest, it's a symbol that speaks to rebirth. Not wholly unlike our Christian understanding of true rebirth, I see it as a symbol of spiritual rebirth very similar to what we experience in our baptism. The old becomes new. What do you think the snake looks like after it's consumed itself? Is it the same as it used to be? Is it better? Is it wholly different? The image forces us to live in that state of uncertainty - a Schrödinger's serpent, if you will. The serpent is reborn and yet consuming as we look upon it.
What does Checkpoint look like in 2022? Will we just consume ourselves and look the same as we did this past year? Will we grow into something better? Will we change who we are entirely? Most communities are forced into this cycle of continuous newness. It's not a blessing nor is it a curse - it just is. The choice we have in the matter is what happens the moment after the tail is consumed. Will we grow? That's up to you. I can't wait to see what happens as the wheel turns.