Boxing Lament, Creating Playlists, and Backwards Parties: Spiritual Practices for a Busy Generation

I was talking with a clergy colleague/friend recently about an intergenerational study she is putting together for her congregation about spiritual disciplines.  We talks a bit about the different resources she is (and could) pull from.  There are a number of books about spiritual disciplines published.  I had never heard the term “spiritual discipline” until I was in college.  I was introduced to the term and the concept through Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline.  My family and church community had certainly practiced spiritual disciplines (some better than others), but I had never seen them all laid out and talked about as a whole. 
In the years since, I have read a number of such books at different points in my life.  Each has a slightly different tone and focus.  Most recently I read Who’s Got Time: Spirituality for a Busy Generation by Teri Peterson and Amy Fetterman.  It is one of the newest titles in the Young Clergy Woman Project imprint with Chalice Press.  Peterson and Fetterman are both youngish pastors and they wrote this primarily for people in their generation.  People who grew up with computers.  People who grew up moving frequently and far from extended family.  People who are marrying later and later or not marrying at all.  People who struggle to find work and if they do expect to change jobs regularly for the rest of their life.
Peterson and Fetterman do a great job of suggesting ways to practice spiritual disciplines (both classic and new) in the busy, hyper-connected life most of us live.  I really appreciated their practicality and creativity.  As much as a I respect Foster’s work, Celebration of Discipline doesn’t include a chapter on social media. 
Here’s a sampling of some of the ideas that I found interesting (they cover more traditional disciplines, like fasting, too).  Chapter two is called “In the Body,” and it explores “ways we can exercise our spirits as we live in flesh and bone.”  One of their suggestions is to incorporate a piece of scripture into a boxing (or kickboxing?) routine.  They say “Amy’s personal favorite combo includes Psalm 61:1 and goes like this: Hear *jab* my *jab* cry *right hook* O *left hook* God *backfist*.”  I may or may not actually try this one myself, but a physical lament sounds awesome!
Chapter four is all about using music in the life of faith.  One of my favorite ideas from the chapter I already shared on the blog—making playlists.  They suggest peace and righteous anger playlists.  I made a wait. hope. expect. playlist that helps me to wait with hope during this period of my life.
They also have a chapter on rituals that I found inspiring.  They wonder “How do we organize our hopes, dreams, fears, realities, loves, losses, and find a sense of the Holy in the midst of them? How do we mark these life events that don’t have rituals already attached to them the way marriage or kids do?…We believe there is a way to create ritual that makes meaning out of the lives we live now, as twenty-first–century young adults” (ch. 5).  One of the examples they give is a “backwards party” when one of their friends was moving away.  They started by saying goodbye, ate dessert, then dinner, and ended with saying hello.  It was a ritual that helped this group of friends to transition to a new phase of their friendship.  I haven’t started any new rituals yet, but I’m thinking of opportunities.
There are lots more ideas in the book, and I would encourage you to check it out for yourself if you are looking to grow in your spiritual walk.  I would add a note that I am a bit more conservative in theology than the authors, and a few ideas I’m not sure I’d be comfortable trying.  But that doesn’t mean they don’t have lots of good ideas and true thoughts.  

Imaginative Reading and Building A File

One of my favorite seminary classes was called Imaginative Reading for Creative Preaching, taught by then President Neal Plantinga and Professor Scott Hoezee.  I loved it because we read all kinds of wonderful books and talked about them with an eye to preaching.  We also had to collect quotes and observations from our reading as a start to a file.  I dreamed that as a pastor, I would be a voracious reader and my file would grow quickly.
But once I was a pastor, I didn’t read as much as I thought I would.  I was busy with meetings, answering e-mail, writing sermons, visiting people, and many more tasks.  One of my regrets about my first years of ministry is that I didn’t better protect time to read widely.  When I did read, I didn’t take the time to note those passages and themes I should save for later, so my file stayed about the same size.  On my list of things-I-want-to-do-better the next time I’m a pastor is read widely and be disciplined enough to add to the file. 

Perhaps you are wondering why it is important for me to read as a pastor.  Neal Plantinga has taken his thinking about this topic and discussions from classes and seminars he has led and crafted them into a new book called Reading for Preaching: The Preacher in Conversation with Storytellers, Biographers, Poets, and Journalists.  The premise of the book is that preachers should read widely because it helps us gain wisdom, improve our use of language, interact with new ideas and people, and find the best material for sermons. 

I studied English for my undergraduate education, and once I was in seminary I realized that all that reading and discussing and writing I did had taught me to do most of those things.  I had entered Tennyson’s grief at the death of a friend in his poem In Memoriam A.H.H.  I had grappled with stereotypes in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice.  I experienced Hester Prynne’s guilt and shame in The Scarlet Letter.  All of those experiences make me a better pastor, preacher, and person.
Reading brings me great joy—I love getting to know new people through a novel or seeing things in a new way from a poem.  Thankfully, Plantinga says to enjoy it.  “Good reading generates delight, and the preacher should enjoy it without guilt.  Delight is a part of God’s shalom and the preacher who enters the world of delight goes with God” (pg. x).  Plantinga’s blessing and exhortation in this book really encouraged me to be more intentional about reading and the less delightful (but important) process of recording some of my discoveries.   

At the same time, I have figured out some practical tips of what works for me which makes me much more motivated to do it.  First, the question of what to read.  My problem is usually having too many books to read at any particular time, but I often try to rotate through novels, non-fiction, and poetry.  Plantinga suggests “Just one novel a year?  And one biography?  And one-fifth of a book of poetry by one poet?  And a weekly visit to the website of Arts & Letters Daily to find out what the best journalists have been saying?  Not a bad plan, I think” (pg. 42).  Sounds doable, doesn’t it!  Plantinga offers a “Selected Reading List” at the back of his book to get started from.  Another way I like to select great books is from the Recommended Reading List for the upcoming Festival of Faith and Writing.   

When I am reading, if it is a paper book I have small sticky tabs that I place at the place on a page where I find something interesting.  Then, when I finish the book I go back through and if it still seems like something I want to save, I put it into the file.  (I picked up that tip from an interview Plantinga did for the release of his book.  Don’t ask how I had forgotten to ask him what his method is when I had the class with him.)  If I am reading on the Kindle app on my tablet, I highlight parts I want to save.  Then, when I am finished I go to my online Kindle account where you can see all of what you have highlighted.  Anything I want to save gets copied and pasted into my files.  Both of these methods have been working really well for me!

I keep my file in Evernote, which is a free software.  You can create multiple notebooks with various notes in each.  The best part is that I can tag each note with topics (love, grief, forgiveness, etc.).  Then when I am looking for something on a theme, I check out what I’ve tagged with it.  There is also a really convenient web clipper, which makes it really easy to save blog posts and online news clippings very easily.  Keeping my file in Evernote has been a key to actually using this system; I started out doing it differently and it was too much work.  (For the record, Evernote has no idea who I am, I just really like their software.)

I’m really looking forward to the day when I’ll be preaching regularly again and be able to use my file my often.  It is a great feeling to know that I am investing time now that should pay off in the future.  And now I’m off to Burma in a young adult novel I just started called Bamboo People. 

On My New Found Love of Poetry

When I was in seminary, I heard Eugene Peterson speak at the Festival of Faith and Writing.  He was asked what advice he would give to young pastors.  I think he had three pieces of advice, but I only remember two.  Those two have stuck with me, though: learn Biblical languages really well and pick a few poets to read deeply.  I inwardly groaned at the first and was intrigued by the second.  Peterson said that as people who use language extensively, pastors should read poetry to increase your grasp of how English works.  Poets are the people who play with language—vocabulary choices, rhythm, stress, imagery, metaphor, punctuation.  He suggested picking 3-4 poets who you read regularly and get to know well.  I haven’t been as intentional as he about sticking with certain poets, but I have found myself reading poetry more in the last two years of my life than any time before.
    
Before this point in my life I have not been a huge poetry fan.  I didn’t actively dislike it, but with few exceptions I didn’t love it, either.  I am not the best poetry reader and I’m a worse poetry writer.  I did read enough poetry when I was an English major to get a sense of styles I am drawn to and those I’m not (lets just say that T.S. Eliot will never be one of the 3-4 poets I dwell one).

So why did I start reading more poetry once I became a pastor?  I don’t think it was just because Eugene Peterson said I should or the inner English major who always wished I was better with poetry.  In the “Author Q & A” of Lauren Winner’s Still: Notes on a Mid-life Faith Crisis she talks about why she reads and writes about poetry.  Winner bases her answer on an observation by Richard Rohr that our spiritual lives have two halves—the season where you build a spiritual identity and the season where you face crisis and come to know God in a deeper way.  “Rohr says that in the second half of your spiritual life you may find yourself reading a lot of poetry.  Maybe, before, you read dogmatics or self-help how-tos or narrative history.  Before, poetry may have seemed elusive and loopy.  In the second of Rohr’s two halves, you like the space that poetry offers” (pg. 205-206). 

In the messiness of being a pastor, I like that space poetry offers.  Every day I face questions and ambiguities about faith and life.  There are the questions that inevitably come with reading scripture.  There are difficult situations in people’s lives that pastors are called to walk through with them.  There are specific applications of how we love our neighborhood, like do we help this person with their rent?  And who am I in all of this; what does it mean to be a pastor? 

In the messiness, poetry gives space.  Space to be.  Space to live with the ambiguity.  Space to question and wonder and enjoy something beautiful.  In her book about being good stewards of language, Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies, Marilyn Chandler McEntyre says, “poetry can teach us specific skills that we need now more than ever to cultivate if we are to retain a capacity for subtlety” (pg. 159). 
Good poetry doesn’t try to give all the answers and tie everything up into neat bows.  It isn’t full of platitudes.  I appreciate that because it is honest and authentic.  That's the kind of person I want to be, too—someone who can hold up to the pressure of the ambiguities in my own life and others lives.  I don’t think that it is a coincidence that one of my favorite books of the Bible is Psalms, a book full of poems.  In the psalms I find that same sort of honesty and authenticity as in other poetry.  The psalmist doesn’t usually sugarcoat things.  If he (or possibly she) is angry at God or feels wronged by God, he says so directly.  The psalms don’t always wrap everything up neatly, although they almost always end with a statement of trust in God.  The psalms, and other poems, give space to live with the ambiguity that comes from living in a broken world.  Poems can also point us towards  the hope that we have in Christ, that things are ultimately secure, even if they appear to be falling apart. 

I’m going to keep reading poetry, to keep finding that space and keep honing my skill with language.  I’ll keep sharing some of my favorite poems here, as I’ve done in the past.  The poets I have read the most in the past couple of years (in addition to the Psalms) are Scott Cairns, Mary Oliver, Robert Frost, and Luci Shaw.  The Poetry of Robert Frost is on my bed stand right now, so perhaps he’ll show up here next. 

Photo by Liesbeth den Toom, used under a Creative Commons License.

Sunday Afternoon Prayers: For a Bittersweet Day

Today is bittersweet.  It was my last Sunday morning with my congregation.  I am so thankful for these two years, and it is so hard to say goodbye.  And so today I offer two prayers.  Both of these prayers originate in Africa and came to me in An African Prayer Book.

My prayer of thanksgiving, for the people I have had the opportunity to know from around the world and for the ways that they have shown that church can be like a big family.

Our Churches Are Like Big Families

Lord, we thank you that our churches are like big families.
Lord, let your spirit of reconciliation blow over all the earth.
Let Christians live in your love.
Lord, we praise you in Europe's cathedrals, in America's offerings, 
And in our African songs of praise.
Lord, we thank you that we have brothers and sisters in all the world.
Be with them that make peace.
Amen. (West Africa, pg. 65-66).

And my prayer for the people that I am leaving, that God will continue to be at work in and through them and will continue to hold them in the palm of his hand.

The Privilege Is Ours To Share In the Loving

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, the privilege is ours to share in the loving, healing, reconciling mission of your Son Jesus Christ, our Lord, in this age and wherever we are.  Since without you we can do no good thing.
     May your Spirit make us wise;
     May your Spirit guide us;
     May your Spirit renew us;
     May your Spirit strengthen us;
So that we will be:
     Strong in faith,
     Discerning in proclamation,
     Courageous in witness,
     Persistent in good deeds.
This we ask through the name of the Father.
(Church of the Province of the West Indies, pg. 96-97)


Prayers from An African Prayerbook, selected and with an introduction by Desmond Tutu, Image/Doubleday books, 1995.
Photo by John Flanigan, http://www.flickr.com/photos/82369865@N00/5414528258/in/photolist-9fsSBu, used under a Creative Commons License

Trouble and Grace

"The world is Trouble...and Grace.  That is all there is."

So concludes Henry Smith in Gary Schmidt's young adult novel, Trouble (pg. 296).   Trouble tells the story of Henry's family's failed attempts to avoid Trouble, and how they find Grace instead.  The Smith family is old money in Massachusetts.  They live in a home that has stood strong for 300 years.  Henry's father always said, "if you build your house far enough away from Trouble, then Trouble will never find you" (pg. 1). 

You know when that is the first line of a novel, their existence will soon change, because Trouble is lurking just around the corner in this world.  Trouble does come and it changes the family forever.  I don't want to spoil the novel for you, but Trouble comes in the form of cars, history, prejudice, arson, love, and death.  The family discovers you can't actually avoid Trouble.  It is everywhere, whether you like it or not.

But as they live with the Trouble, the Smith family also finds Grace.  It turns out to be harder to see and more nuanced than their initial reaction to Trouble: just saying everything is "fine." Grace means making hard decisions about who to love.  Grace means doing things the hard, but right, way.  Grace means taking a hard look at each other and seeing the truth.  It comes in with a whisper, and it changes the Smith family.  In the end, Henry finds Trouble and Grace are all that's left.

Trouble and Grace.  These are also the two words that frame the method I learned to preach.  In

seminary, our basic preaching textbook was called The Four Pages of the Sermon.  The four pages are not literal, but four figurative moves of a sermon (an outline of sorts).  In this method you start by discussing the Trouble in the text and then a parallel Trouble in the world.  Then you move on to the Grace in the text and Grace in the world.  Some of my classmates hated this method (and some of the non-preaching profs weren't that fond of it either), but I found that it worked well for me, especially as I got started.  I'll freely admit it works much better with some types of texts than others--as I preached through the Sermon in the Mount this year I preached very few strict four page sermons.  But even when I use an alternate structure, these rhythms of Trouble and Grace remain.  

The Bible is full of Trouble and Grace. Zechariah and Elizabeth were childless, and God gave them a son.  The writer of Psalm 46 felt like his world was falling apart, and trusted that God would keep him safe.  The foolish man built his house on the sand, and the wise man's house stood strong.  Like the Bible, our lives are full of Trouble and Grace. God brings hope in the midst of dashed expectations. God keeps us safe despite the chaos of our world.  God helps us to build our lives on God.  Even if our lives seem full of one or the other at a particular time, when we think about a congregation, it is inevitably full of both.  Someone who just lost their job sits next to someone who just got promoted.  Trouble and Grace.  And God working in the midst of both.  Sometimes God's Grace is presence with us as we walk through times of Trouble, and sometimes Grace means God removes the Trouble.

For the Smith family, God is present with them through Trouble (although they don't articulate that in the novel).  And God brings them Grace.  That's one of the reasons I have found the rhythms of the Four-Page Method helpful: "The world is Trouble...and Grace.  That is all there is."

Personal Photo at Lake Michigan Recreation Area, June 2013

On Sacred Rhythms

Life has rhythms.  The rhythm of leaves budding, growing, coloring, and dropping.  The rhythm of people growing up, leaving home, marrying, having children, raising children, retiring, and dying.  The rhythm of the sun coming up and sun going down. 

And the spiritual life has rhythms, too.  The rhythm of advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, Pentecost, and ordinary time.  The rhythm of baptism, profession of faith, serving the church.  The rhythm of prayer and Bible reflection. 

Ruth Haley Barton wrote a book called Sacred Rhythms: Arranging Our Lives for Spiritual Transformation.  It is a book about what are classically called spiritual disciplines.  We might also call them spiritual practices or spiritual rhythms.  They are the practices that give a rhythm to our spiritual life.  Sometimes that rhythm is imperceptible, or we wish that we had a faster rhythm.  But even when we’d choose a different rhythm, God works through them.

Another one of my favorite books about spiritual practices is called Flunking Sainthood.  The author, Jana Riess spent a year focusing on a variety of spiritual practices.  She starts the year as a “lighthearted effort to read spiritual classics while attempting a year of faith-related disciplines like fasting, Sabbath keeping, chanting, and the Jesus Prayer” (pg. ix).  Each month she picks a discipline, reads some spiritual classics related to that discipline and attempts to practice it.  And she struggles, even fails, with all twelve. 

After a few months and a significant life experience, she found that “Although I didn’t see it while I was doing the practices themselves or even while I was writing the chapters in this book, the power of spiritual practice is that it forges you stealthily, as you entertain angels unawares” (Flunking Sainthood, pg. 168).  God used both her attempts at these different practices, and even the process of failing, to shape her to become more Christ-like and more able to reflect Christ to the world.  She, like thousands of Christians before her, discovered the power of spiritual practices, sacred rhythms, to shape Christian life.

Growing up, I don’t remember hearing about spiritual disciplines or spiritual practices as a group or term.  And yet, we had plenty of them.  We read Bible story books or other devotional material after dinner.  My dad sang to us before we went to sleep.  We went to church twice on Sunday.  My parents taught me to tithe.  We took an extended family spring break trip to do hurricane relief in South Carolina.  There were Christian rhythms in our life.  They shaped my Christian life and how I practice my faith. 

As I grew up, some of my rhythms have developed and changed. They have shaped the rhythms of my life as a single woman.  Like Riess, I have certainly failed some.  Over the summer, I’m going to be reflecting on some spiritual practices that have been important in my life, or that I would like to experiment with.  I have plans to explore writing prayers, meeting with a spiritual director, keeping the Sabbath, and doing justice, among others.  I hope that I, and my readers, will learn new rhythms and that those rhythms would shape us to become more Christ-like.  

Drum picture by Martha Riley, used under a Creative Commons License.

Praying hands picture by C Jill Reed, used under a Creative Commons License.

People of the Book and My Neighborhood Mosque

I recently read the novel People of the Book by Pulitzer Prize winning author Geraldine Brooks.  It tells to story of the Sarajevo Haggadah, an illustrated Haggadah (liturgy book for the Jewish Passover) that was created in Spain in the 14^th century.  It escaped Spain during the Spanish Inquisition, survived Catholic censors in Vienna in the 17^th century, and was rescued from underneath the Nazis in Sarajevo. 

Brooks took the historical outline of this special object and imagined how it made the journey.  Working back through history she created characters that interacted with the book—a Muslim librarian in Sarajevo, an alcoholic priest and his gambling rabbi friend, a young Muslim woman who became a slave for a Jewish doctor.  I actually don’t usually like books as complicated as this one.  Some chapters are a modern day story moving chronologically about the conservation of this special book.  In between those chapters are the chapters that describe each stop, and then move in reverse chronological order.  Each of those chapters is in a new time and place with a new set of characters to get to know.  And for this book, it works.  I was drawn into the story—the story moving forward and the individual stories moving backwards.

One of the questions or themes of this book are how people of different religions get along, or don’t get along, as often happens.  The novel is populated by “people of the book”—Jews, Christians, and Muslims.  Through the centuries, people of all three religions create, move, and preserve the haggadah.  But it usually comes in times of persecution, when people of one religion are in power and oppressing the others.  Christians censor books of other faiths in seventeenth century Venice.  A Muslim ruler captures a Christian woman and forces her to become his wife in fifteenth century Seville.  There are moments of beauty and depravity by people of all three religions. 

It is a long standing question: how do we relate to people of other faiths?  People of faith generally hold their beliefs strongly and that causes conflict.  We see it played out through the history books and browsing the news today.  And when faith gets combined with power—particularly political or economic power—things get messy.  I can only speak as a Christian, and we have made some terrible mistakes.  Those mistakes have brought dishonor to the name of Jesus, who came to bring shalom (peace, wholeness) to the world. 

I want to be part of bringing that shalom to the world, and that means both not perpetrating violence or harm to others, but also speaking the name of Jesus who brings peace.  Easier said than done.  I hear stories of people who have had to flee their homeland because of religious differences.  I walk by the mosques in my neighborhood and am curious about the people that worship in them, but I don’t know many of them.  And so I pray, may I be an instrument of peace.  May people of all backgrounds find shalom in Jesus Christ, where true peace is found.  And may all followers of Jesus bring peace and not violence of any sort.  

People of the Book image from Amazon, http://www.amazon.com/People-Book-Novel-Geraldine-Brooks/dp/0143115006/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1367202355&sr=8-1

Image of the mosque from Muslim in Michigan, http://muslimsinmichigan.org/2010/04/12/islamic-mosque-and-religious-institute-kentwood-mi/

The Waiting of Holy Saturday

Entrance to Church of the Sepulchre,
where tradition says Jesus died and was buried

Today is Holy Saturday, the day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.  I keep seeing things on Facebook starting to celebrate Easter, and it seems too soon for me.  I wonder what that it was like for the women and disciples on the day after Jesus died.

I imagine them huddled together, maybe in the same upper room where just a few days before they had celebrated Passover together or maybe they went back to Mary, Martha, and Lazarus’ home in Bethany.  It was the Sabbath, so maybe they went to the local synagogue to pray.  I wonder if they could get the words off their tongue, or if they just got stuck in their throat.  Or maybe they stayed at home so the religious authorities wouldn’t decide to come for them next.

They were grieving.  There was no other choice.  They couldn’t know that when the women went to the tomb the next morning, they would find it empty.  They couldn’t even dream that it would be a possibility.  And so they waited, full of grief and questions.  Unsure of what was happening.  Unable to see beyond the darkness.

There are times in life that feel like that day.  When darkness and questions surround us and we can’t see what the future might hold.  Times of waiting and wondering, when we can’t see beyond the darkness that surrounds us.  

For the women and the disciples, God was working in an amazing way.  Preparing to change the world with the resurrection.  But they couldn’t see that yet. 

This week, I found this quote: "We thought waiting was a parenthesis. It was not. God was working, only we couldn't see it" (The Emotionally Healthy Church by Peter Scazzero, pg. 173).  God was working on Holy Saturday.  I trust that God works in the dark times of our lives, the times that feel like parenthesis, the times we can’t see beyond the darkness. 

I don’t want to skip to celebrating the resurrection yet, because the times of waiting and wondering are important.  They are times that the Holy Spirit can work in us, preparing for new things to come.       

Photo by Michael Plutchok, used under a Creative Commons License.  http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_Talit,_Keffiyeh_and_Palestinian_scraf.jpg

UK #11: Two Different Churches in York

After Edinburgh, I headed south, back to England.  My destination was the ancient city of York.  York is strategically placed where two rivers meet.  The Romans built a fort here in 71AD.  Constantine was in York when his father died, and he was crowned emperor in York.  

Ruins of a tower of the Roman city

In the 600s, the Pope sent a bishop to York, Britain's second bishop.  During the next several hundred years, Christianity grew and many churches were built in York.  Then the Vikings invaded and settled in York.  Eventually the surrounding Anglo-Saxon kings defeated the Vikings, but then 1066 came, and Britain was defeated by William the Conqueror.  By 1070, William appointed a Norman Archbishop of York, who began to build a large church.  In the middle ages, they used the Norman foundations of the church to build the York Minster over the course of 250 years.  They also started St. Mary's Abbey with French monks.  This was dissolved by Henry VIII when he split with the Roman Catholic Church. 

Me (at a strange angle) with the ruins of the abbey church behind me

 York has a long and interesting history with many interesting historic sites, with the most magnificent being the York Minster.

York Minster

The York Minster is BEAUTIFUL.  Words can't describe it. My point-and-shoot camera was pretty inadequate, too.  The building was built in phases over hundreds of years--generations of craftsmen spent parts of their life working on this building.  Their goal was to bring heaven to earth in this building.  While we don't know exactly what heaven will be like, I think that we last least get a glimpse in a building like this.

Interior of York Minster

The York Minster is still a working church. The tour guide said that their Sunday Services are still fairly well attended and they have programs for children.  They also have daily services.  I wasn't in York on a Sunday, so I went to a weekday Evensong service, which comes at the end of the work day.  Much of it is sung by the Minster choir. It is a liturgical service of prayers and sung and spoken scripture.  York Minster is an Anglo-Catholic Church of England church, which basically means they are as close to Roman Catholic practice as you get on the Protestant continuum. 

At the service I attended, there were plenty of tourists, who were very obvious because they weren't following the order of service by closely (one of the people in front of me gave me a strange look when started to say the creed).  But there were also people who belonged.  Mothers with kids in school uniforms carrying instrument cases like they were on their way to or from lessons.  The worship and the prayers were very heartfelt.  It was a very formal setting, which gave a sense that this is true and important, but it was also living.  God is here.  And God has been caring for his church for centuries.

York is a city full of churches.  These days, there are plenty of empty ones that aren't used as churches any more.  But right next to the Minster is a smaller church that is in active, thriving use.  It is called St. Michael Le Belfrey.  It is also a Church of England, but from the evangelical/revival stream, more like St. Mary's in Poole.  In fact, it was an early leader in this movement of church revitalization in the 1960s and 70s.  The story of those days is told by the pastor at that time, David Watson, in the book You Are My God (out of print, but I read it from the Calvin library).

St. Michael Le Belfrey Sign

Today they are still a vibrant church with a number of different services.  I went to their Wednesday noontime service.  Because it is winter, it was held in their church hall, not the church building itself.  It was about 50 people, mostly retired folks, it seemed.  It was a simple service--a song, a prayer, scripture reading, and teaching sermon.  There was a lunch after the service.  It was obvious people knew and cared for each other.

One thing that struck me was that the leaders made sure to explain things as we went.  They didn't assume that everyone had been Christians their whole life.  And the gentlemen that sat next to me, that I was able to chat with for a few minutes said he had only been a Christian a year and a half.  He said he is still learning new things all the time.  Thinking about this, it is probably more welcoming for someone who is a bit older when they consider Christianity to come into a place where people don't assume you know things because you have been a Christian all your life.  I think this is a challenge for us in the CRC and West Michigan in particular, because the vast majority of people in our churches 60+ have been Christians all their lives and probably went through Christian schools.  They are fairly well-educated in Christianity.  How do we make space for their colleagues and neighbors who didn't grow up in the church or left it long ago?  

In most of the evangelistic/renewal churches I have visited, there is careful attention to making sure things are explained so people with less church background can join in.  Even simple things, like after announcing that the reading is from the book of James, saying "that's near the end of the New Testament" to help people locate it in their Bibles.  When I attended Monroe Community Church, a CRC church plant at that time, the pastors were pretty conscious of this.  They always introduced themselves when they got up and introduced the way we did things.  Sure, those of us who were regulars didn't need to be told that we could get up and get a Bible from the table by the pole, but it made space for the visitors among us.  In a way, it says that our borders are open, we,re prepared to welcome new people in.  It seems that many established churches are less conscious of this--we just do what we do.  I think that we have things to learn from the British church about how to present Christianity and the church to people without any background in it, and that number is rapidly increasing in our society.

Galloping Away

I’ve been reading through Thoughts to Make Your Heart Sing by Sally Lloyd-Jones and Jago (author and illustrator of The Jesus Storybook Bible).  This is a new book of devotions, geared for kids, but applicable for anyone.  It is really a lovely book of very short devotions/thoughts on Biblical stories, verses, and themes with wonderful illustrations.

One of the devotions picks up on an image in Jeremiah 8:6 to help us think about the nature of sin. 

“The Bible says [sin is] not like simply wandering off the path and getting lost by mistake.  It’s like a horse charging at full speed away from him.  We want to get away from God that badly!  We are like horses galloping headlong after the things we want” (pg. 32).

This vivid image reminded me of one of the starkest Q&A’s in the Heidelberg Catechism, which says “I have a natural tendency to hate God and my neighbor” (Q&A 5).  Most of us don’t really like this much.  We want to believe that we are naturally good people, full of love and not hate.

But we are like galloping horses.  Without the Holy Spirit, we naturally are galloping away from God towards what we want.  It is easy for me to see a horse galloping across a field, away from its owner or another horse.  The picture captures, for me at least, the heart of this question and Biblical truth in a way that the words themselves don’t.

Photo by bozo_z_clown, http://www.flickr.com/photos/bozo_z_clown/18475388/, November 10, 2012.

Used by Creative Commons License. 

A Profound Mystery

I recently read Lauren Winner’s new book, Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis (HarperOne 2012).  Winner told the story of finding faith in an earlier memoir, Girl Meets God.  Since then, she got married, got divorced, and her mother died.  In the turmoil, she found herself struggling with faith and doubt, and she shares those struggles in this book.  One of the things I most appreciated about this book is that in the midst of her doubt, she continued practicing her faith—she didn’t give up on the church, on spiritual disciplines, or the sacraments.  She kept at it, trusting that someday she would find God/God would find her again.

In one of her notes, Winner tells the story of being the chalice bearer during the Eucharist at a small Episcopal church.  Towards the end of the line, an elderly couple came and knelt at the rail.  Each one of them took a wafer from the priest.  When she came to them with the cup, the wife dipped her wafer in and ate it.  Then the husband dipped his wafer in.  But he didn’t eat the wafer.  He handed “the Body and Blood to his wife” and she ate it for him.

After the service, the priest told Winner that this man had been suffering from a wasting disease for 12 years, leaving him unable to digest most food.  But that wasn’t what Winner saw.  She only knew “the couple’s hands and mouths, and that I am seeing one flesh.  I have read about this, heard sermons about a man and a woman becoming one flesh; and here at the altar, I see that perhaps this is the way I come to know such intimacy myself: as part of the body of Christ, this body that numbers among its cells and sinews an octogenarian husband and wife who are Communion” (38-39).

Winner’s story reminds me of Ephesians 5: “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’  This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church” (Ephesians 5:31-32, NIV 2011).  These verses come in the context of a longer passage about husbands and wives, and the clarification that Paul is actually talking about Christ and the church actually seems rather abrupt. 

And yet its abruptness is welcoming.  It points us away from this just being a household code of rules and regulations about who can do what around the house.  It points us to the truth that anyone can be a part of this relationship between Christ and the church; married or single we are united with Christ in baptism.  We are not all in a good marriage where we get to experience being one flesh.  But, as Winner points out, we all find intimacy in the body of Christ—with Christ and with each other.  When we are united with Christ in baptism, we are also united to the Church, to the body of believers.  This couple is united to each other and to the others in that congregation and to Winner and to us.  Together we are mysteriously “united in love, so that [we] may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that [we] may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ” (Colossians 2:2-3, NIV 2011).

Advent 2: Quotidian Mysteries

I struggled to know what to write this week.  Nothing interesting seems to have happened.  I’m just trying to survive life.  I’m just trying to make it to the end of exam week (in two weeks).  But I am trying to write something weekly as an Advent discipline.  

And then I remembered the book I read yesterday, The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy, and “Women’s Work” by Kathleen Norris.  Quotidian means “occurring every day; belonging to every day; commonplace, ordinary” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary, quoted in The Quotidian Mysteries).  The premise of this book is that all of our ordinary activities—washing dishes, doing the laundry, cooking, and cleaning—give a necessary rhythm to our lives.  Like liturgy, we sometimes do them by just going through the motions.  Norris says that “both laundry and worship are repetitive activities with a potential for tedium, and I hate to admit it, but laundry often seems like the more useful of the tasks.  But both are the work that God has given us to do” (pg. 29). 

I am prone to forgetting that the laundry, the dishes, cooking healthy foods, and other quotidian things are part of God’s calling on my life.  It isn’t only writing sermons and papers, working on group projects and trying to catch up on reading.  Norris also says that “workaholism is the opposite of humility” (pg. 25).  Workaholism and perfectionism tell me that I must do everything I possibly can.  And I must do it to the very best of my ability.  My ability, because it is all about me.  But this is all the opposite of humility, of quietly depending on God.    Of being humble enough to trust that God will provide; it isn’t all up to me.

And so this week, my prayer is that I will be humble, not a workaholic.  That I will worship even if I don’t feel like it.  And I will attend to the every day necessities, because they too are part of God’s work for me.  In all of this, and in all parts of my life, I pray for wholeness and integration in all parts of my life.

Word and Deed

-->

Every time I go anywhere with Pastor John, we meet people he knows. Walking on the street, people stop their cars in the middle of the road to talk to him. Stopping outside of church, the pre-school students want to show him their toys. Going to City Hall, the mayor’s staff (and mayor) knows him. Attending other public events, multitudes of other clergy members come over to say hello.

One of the things I love about Madison is that it is a church deeply invested in the neighborhood. Having Pastor John, who after being here for 31 years is a bit of a local celebrity, helps a lot. But many of the church members live within walking distance of the church. They’ve grown up here and are now raising families here. And the church itself offers services and support for the community. There’s a food pantry, ESL classes, preschool, after-school care and summer day camp, and discipleship houses (half-way houses for men coming out of drug and alcohol rehab programs). The summer outreach program for kids has multiple goals. Some are more overtly religious, like sharing the gospel and learning Bible verses; some are more practical, like giving the kids a safe place off the streets to play, have fun, and begin positive relationships with church members.

We talked about the relationship between word and deed in my missions class last quarter. The seminary generally tends to emphasis word (not surprisingly given the vocation and generation of most of the professors). I feel like Madison is a good example of holding these two in tension and doing them together. When someone comes in to get food at the food pantry, the food pantry volunteers also pray with those receiving food (as long as they want it). We have prayer in the worship service on Sunday, but also a group who prayerwalks around the neighborhood on Tuesday evening. The discipleship houses offer a safe, stable place to live along with emotional and spiritual support. Many of the guys that live in the houses are also a part of the men’s Bible study.

There is a Biblical foundation for this sort of ministry, as well. The FYF students were supposed to read To Live in Peace: Biblical Faith and the Changing Inner City before they got here, and then we had a discussion with the author, who lives in Harlem. (I’m not sure if any of the students actually made it the whole way through the book; its pretty dense for high school students.) I found it helpful to think about how Christians are called to care for those who are robbed, beaten, and bruised, as the Samaritan did in the parable. How we are called to bring about the peace of the city (Jer. 29:7) and seek its shalom (not only peace, but completeness, and well-being). As Christians, we must love God and love our neighbor as ourselves. We need both word and deed together. We are not truly loving others if we care for only their spiritual needs or only their physical needs.

I’m leaving Paterson soon (slightly over a week). But I’m thinking about how I, and the communities I’m a part of, share both word and deed with others. How can I become a part of my neighborhood? How is my church a part of its neighborhood and how can I join that? When I’m graduated from seminary and in full-time ministry, what choices will I have to make to ensure I’m a part of a broader community?