Playing catch-up…

Posted on January 17, 2012 by

I would be the first to admit that I feel like I spend most of my days playing catch-up to those around me:  especially in terms of my reading and thinking about my faith and my calling.  I have, for most of life, done things in reverse order…I was an adult before I was a child, I had my old age before my youth (although I’m guessing I’ll get a second run at the old age thing), I worked as a librarian before I studied library science, I sang professionally before I studied singing, etc. etc. and so forth and so on.  And now, I am coming to see that I have lived a life with a fairly low-key, lay-minister orientation, long before I ever confronted and accepted my need to study and deepen my faith and my ability to share that faith in a more formal setting (yes, that means a seminary).

Yes, I have spent much of my life playing catch-up; looking over my shoulder at what I don’t know to support what I am already doing; worrying that the bright and penetrating light I see at any given moment was seen long ago by those around me and that they are simply being polite as they listen when the words of my discovery come tumbling out of my mouth in torrent of revelation.

So, now you know why I am always reading something (or several somethings)…looking for language, looking for the tools and the education that I think that I don’t have but desperately need so that I don’t make some naive mistake, as I did once at a dinner party in from of some very smart people.

It is important to know what you don’t know.

One of my favorite choices of reading material to help me in this quest is the spiritual biography of others…these works are generally very helpful for me, giving me language and process and and well, leaving me feeling not quite so alone in some of the things that are happening to me and around me and within me.    I seem to be drawn right now, in particular, to the works and lives of a group of female Episcopal lay-ministers who over the years have written and taught and served their communities of faith and the wider community of the world of faith without the benefit of ordination.

First and foremost in this group for me right now is the teacher, writer, and church historian Diana Butler Bass.  It was with one of her books that my friend and I began our morning reading program; it was one of her books that I was reading when I decided to join the Calvary Baptist Church; it was one of her books that I was reading as I started to really feel this strong pull of faith on my life.  And so it only seems fitting that it would be one of her books that right now provides the fodder that fuels my thinking, at a moment that I suspect is equally pivotal for me.

The book of this particular moment is her Strength for the Journey:  A Pilgrimage of Faith in Community.  I expected the book to move me; I did not realize it would fill in so many blanks for me (if you don’t understand what I mean you need to read Pastor Amy’s sermon from our current series, The Rules of Improv, by clicking here).  So far, it has been almost an academic year’s education in itself, in terms of the language of faith it has taught me and the opportunity it has given me to see my own faith experience played out in someone else’s life.

In this book, Dr. Bass tells the story of her own faith journey from childhood Methodism through evangelical fundamentalism to a life of faith within the  Episcopal denomination, and…well, the end of the story hasn’t been written yet.  And she tells the story within the framework of the life of the various congregations in which she has worshipped and served as a lay leader along the way.  It is an amazing portrait of a faith journey that is contemporary with my own…and it speaks to me in ways that I understand.

There are some very important things I discovered in this book, most of which I will write about later (such as what it means to be an evangelical vs. what it means to follow what she refers to as the via media, the middle way), but today I am pondering the similarities in her experience recovering from the pain and doubt that came from being involved in the kind of power struggle and chaos that comes from a church struggling to find a new voice (particularly when there are those who don’t want that new voice or any new voice), with my own after a similar situation.  She, like I, took some time off from “church” (although I think I took far longer as a respite), and she, like I, in the most unexpected place, found a healing and a spiritual home.   She explains the experience much better than I ever could:

At the beginning I felt drained and confused.  Not quite knowing what path to take, I simply put one foot in front of the other, attending to my spiritual life through the practices of faith.  Slowly, by reading the Bible, worshiping every Sunday, and working at homey parish tasks, I began to understand the Christian life in new ways.  I think that was true for all of us.  By practicing faith together, the good folks of the Church of the Holy Family (substitute Calvary Baptist Church here if we are telling my story) became brother- and sister-pilgrims, an intentional family of faith on the verge of birthing a new congregation.  We were only vaguely aware that this was happening or that we stood so close the Spirit’s tremors of re-creation.  But we were profoundly aware that we needed one another in the order to get to wherever God was taking us. (pg. 124)

Bass has mirrored my own experience and taught me about a trend in church life all at the same time…the change from congregations made up of establishment churchgoers — those who are Presbyterian because their family has always been Presbyterian and who attend the same church in the same neighborhood where they have always lived and that believe in denominational loyalty — and congregations made up of intentional churchgoers, those for whom every thing about their lives from their personal identity to their worship choices to their family structure has been researched tested and chosen.  For the intentional churchgoer, denominational loyalty and physical location mean little — they seek a gathered community of disciples, not an extension of their neighborhood or country club.

See, I’m always doing things backwards…I was living a trend and I didn’t know it.  But now I have language.  Thank you Dr. Bass, you’ve helped me catch up just a bit more.

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Journeying with the Magi

Posted on January 4, 2012 by

Advent is now long behind us (well, it seems long to me), we areat the end of Christmas, and Epiphany lies ahead of us.  I am lucky; unlike most people who must return to a daily schedule as soon as the New Year is in place, I generally have an extra week to clean out the old and make space for the new, and recover from the extra services and extra music that have filled the season just past.  These are the moments when I file the old music and ready the new; finish the readings devoted to the liturgical season and select those for the coming weeks and the coming season of Lent, and in general compose my “to-do” lists for the first quarter of the calendar year.

So I’m thinking about calendars, and so I’m also thinking about my favorite topic, the ancient practice of following the liturgical calendar.  This morning, as I sat reading T.S. Elliot’s poem “The Journey of the Magi“, thinking about the journey from Advent through Christmas towards Epiphany and what a different journey it has been for me this year, it did occur to me that I do understand why we as human beings have to be very mindful with our marking of the liturgical year.  We are finite, time-based creatures; we count time to give ourselves some sense of control over the fleeting passage of our lives on this planet — it would be possible to use the liturgical calendar in a negative way, as an attempt to capture and encapsulate the Divine in a form that we can understand, and therefore think that we can control.

I am not so used to the passage of liturgical time, yet anyway, that I am in danger of losing the mystery.  And this season has indeed been for me a mystery.  Never before have the words of the Annunciation (Luke 1:26-38) held such real meaning for me, as I myself faced the realization  that I was refusing to look at the call on my life because of fear of the consequences of that call; and as I myself felt a wave of peace that came with the acceptance of that which could no longer be denied.

But I find myself during this week between Christmas and Epiphany identifying heavily with the Magi, just as I have felt the fear of the shepherds and the fear mixed with acceptance and peace of Mary, and the joy and light mixed with anguish of Christmas, the birth of the child.  Right now I feel weary, and as if I have journeyed far following something I do not understand and something that I cannot possibly see realized in my lifetime.

This too, shall pass.  It will pass as I work my way through the to-do list on my desk, as I remove the human-world obstacles from my path.  It will pass because this year, unlike any other, I understand the three-fold experience of this season:  our private fear and confusion (the Annunciation),  calmed by our private realization and rebirth (the Magnificat and Birth), and finally our true understanding as we release as these gifts to the world (Ephiphany).

How long will it take?  Many have tried to pin the events of these stories to the passage of human time (one particularly interesting attempt may be read here), but does it really matter?  And it could take even longer, if I get wrapped up in secular problems like the current frankincense shortage (thinking like a Magi and all).  It has taken me this many years of life to understand this much;  somehow how long it takes no longer matters.  I’m guessing that the journey with the Magi will take just as long as I have life and breath, and maybe longer.

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A Hopeful New Year’s Eve Confession

Posted on December 31, 2011 by

Well here we are, once again standing at the end of our human-created calendar, looking forward to the beginning of our next year, as defined by that calendar.  Personally, I am looking forward to the opportunity to worship in community tomorrow morning, so my celebrations tonight will be quiet and I’ll leave the party animal in me to be satisfied by an event on January 2 with friends old and new, a most fitting way to start 2012.

A New Year’s Day worship service can be a most important experience…it was many years ago in just such a service, my very first New Year in Washington DC as a newly divorced, newly transplanted resident of the area I now have now called home these many years, in a New Year’s day service that I first truly heard the call of God on my life, a voice and a call that led me to years of training and performing and searching as a musician.  And I find myself, on this New Year’s eve, on the brink of another year of change and adventure in my poor human attempts to let that call unfold in my life and my living.  I am both excited and apprehensive to find what the next steps in my life bring, which, I believe, confirms that fact that I am still very much a human being on the mortal plane.

I find myself thinking a lot about our secular rituals and our sacred ones, as the secular ritual of drawing the year to a close continues.  Everything about this celebration of the passing of an old year has ancient origins…before we had a man-made calendar, we responded as living beings to the changes in the light and the seasons…it is no surprise that once we did create a calendar, that those of us of European ancestry would give its beginning and end to the time when we move through the shortest day of light and return to lengthening of days.

If you had any doubt that calendars and our marking of time were human creations, listen to this story about the island of Samoa — they decided they wanted to be on the other side of the International Date line, and so they cancelled December 30 and went straight to December 31. But calendars, be they secular or liturgical, are about remembrance, one of the most ancient human practices of all.

As usual, much of this day has been devoted to making way — making way for the blessings and lessons and people and insights that will come to me with my living in 2012.  I’m busy writing my letter to God, which follows.  If you want to read last year’s letter or if you don’t know why I write a letter to God, you can click here.

And so, as you make your way through whatever rituals you hold dear to mark this date on our human calendar, I wish you well…I wish you blessings and love and peace and all the things your heart desires and all the things that
God desires for you in your life.  And I’ll see you soon in the next year.

Dear God,

Well, God, here we are again, standing on the edge of human time, ready to leap.  For this last year, each day has felt like a bit of a leap, a leap into darkness and unknowing, in search of the light.  I frankly thought that it would never come, but it is beginning to dawn, even if ever so slowly.

I suppose that I should apologize for, well, digging my heels in a bit.  I now realize that what I thought was releasing control may have been the worst possible attempt at avoidance, avoidance of your call and your need.   At times, in 2011, I have felt like the world became very small — but now I know that it wasn’t small, I just refused to see.  We are funny creatures, we humans.  We can shroud ourselves in darkness and then blame the darkness for not allowing us to see.  But there is always the light…always.

Despite my own failings in 2011, there have been so many blessings:  so many new friends, such good relationships, such amazing grace and blessing that I cannot begin to list the magnificence.  And it is in this bounty that I find strength, the strength to welcome 2012 and all that it has to bring to my life and the lives of those around me. And with my confession and my gratitude firmly in place, I am ready to embrace that which lies ahead:  I am ready to walk through my fears, because I know that I am not alone.  I am ready to weave together all the threads of my life, even though to the world around me they don’t look like they will make a whole cloth.  I know and You know that they will.  I am ready to do whatever you need me to do to be the disciple that you need me to be.

When I am immobilized by fear, I will turn to you…I will turn to you in prayer, I will turn to you in the faces and hearts of my community of faith and the loved ones in my life; I will turn to you in faith.

And, you and me, while we will talk often, let’s make a date to compare notes again, this time, in 2012?  Deal?  Deal.

Happy New Year.

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And a Very Merry Feast of the Nativity to You…

Posted on December 25, 2011 by

I have a new policy about this holiday season…very new; in fact, it only began yesterday.  I have decided to do my best to be my most mindful about the difference between celebrating the event that beget the holiday — the coming of the Christ to our world of human flesh as the baby Jesus — and the times I am celebrating the secular holiday that has over taken the remembrance of the sacred event.

In honor of the first, may I wish you a blessed feast of the Nativity.  I hope that you are, as I am, preparing now to go and worship with your chosen community of faith, if they haven’t cancelled their Sunday services.  And even if you are not heading out to worship this morning, I invite you to remember that today is first and foremost a holy day and not a holiday and I share with you an interesting perspective from commentator Frederick Schmidt on the Patheos blog.

In honor of the second, I wish for all of you a very Merry Christmas, full of everything that you wish for, whatever that may be.  I personally will celebrate with too many cookies and some amazing coffeecake.

Whatever you celebrate today, even if it is just another day when the sun rises and the world spins, I hope for you that you do it with your full heart and with the knowledge that hope still abides in the world, even if we cannot see it or feel it at this very moment.   Whether or not you believe that last night, we remembered the moment when God became flesh, or when Santa arrived to spread joy and prosperity, or you remember the last campaign of Antiochus by lighting the fifth candle in your menorah, I invite you to believe…believe in hope, believe in love, believe in the possibility that is yours as long as you have life and breath.

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A Holiday Book Review

Posted on December 23, 2011 by

I am always struggling to make sure that each day includes some time devoted to something that most people would call a “spiritual practice”.  In the course of my life, I have tried yoga, transcendental meditation, walking meditation, journalling, praying the hours– if there is an activity recommended by my old compatriots in the New Age movement, I have tried it to a greater or lesser degree of success and discipline.

The one thing that works for me, however, no matter what the current state of my theology, is reading a daily devotion of some type.  The older I get, the more I see how the practices of my childhood carry forward in my life, almost as if imprinted on my DNA, and reading a daily devotion is one of those activities.  My memory is flooded with the picture of my childhood morning ritual:  read that day’s entry from the Daily Word, take my vitamins, pick up my book bag and out the door.

And so, as an adult, whose theology has roamed and grown and changed many times, I do still continue this practice.  I must admit that I miss the devotional books written by our congregation, but there are plenty of others out there to read. This year, in particular I have sampled a variety of devotional books for the season, and, while this little review won’t do anyone any good in 2011, perhaps it will give you some ideas for 2012…here are some of the devotionals I’ve been reading this Advent season.

Since we spent the fall reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together in our small group, I was interested to read so more of his work and therefore picked up a devotional created from his writings:  God is in the Manger.  The volume is a compilation of references from Bonhoeffer’s sermons and letters and writings in prison, sharing his thoughts and theology of Advent and Christmas, and includes additional comments from contemporary theologians about his work.   It is thought-provoking and moving, and often heartbreaking when you understand the context of some of the writing.  This is definitely not a volume that will make you “feel good” about the season, but it will provoke you to thought and it will lift you out of our contemporary cultural sweet interpretation of the season.

If you prefer something a little more mystical for the season, but also from the heart of a well known light of the faith, I would highly recommend Christopher Webber’s Advent with Evelyn Underhill.  I’ve already written about this book,  and it has been my primary study guide, but I wanted to mention it again.  I am personnaly drawn right now to the works of Evelyn Underhill:  herself, not an ordained anything, but known as one of the great teachers and seminar leaders and spiritual directors of her day; someone who has left us a wealth of writings to guide us in these later days as well.   One of the problems, however, with a book such as this is that the book is someone else’s vision of what Ms. Underhill might want to say about the season.  Sometimes the editor is on the bull’s eye; sometimes there just isn’t good material to be found for a devotional topic; sometimes the intent of the editor is not clear.  But the entries that are on the mark make the book a worthwhile exercise.  One such entry that is still working its way through my soul is:

When we lift our eyes from the crowded by-pass to the eternal hills; then, how much the personal and practical things we have to deal with are enriched.  What meaning and coherence come into our scattered lives.  We mostly spend those lives conjugating three verbs:  to Want, to Have, and to Do.   Craving, clutching, and fussing, on the material, political, social, emotional, intellectual–even on the religious–plane, we are kept in perpetual unrest:  forgetting that none of these verbs have any ultimate significance, except so far as they are transcended by and included in, the fundamental verb, to Be:  and that Being, not wanting, having and doing, is the essence of a spiritual life. (pg. 43)

Perhaps next year I’ll be a bit more disciplined and actually read the commentaries on the Scripture for the season as they are so beautifully presented in the series Feasting on the Word, but just in case I have another in my pocket for next year, one I didn’t get a chance to read this year just because I didn’t find it until a couple of days ago.  That is Advent and Christmas with Thomas Merton.  I’ll let you know how it moves me next Advent.

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Two years and still on the road…

Posted on December 14, 2011 by

Yesterday was an important anniversary for me — two years ago, I was baptized at the Calvary Baptist Church.  This was an important and life-changing choice for me, and if you want to, you can read about it here and here and here…

So for a moment, I want to pause and follow the ancient practice of remembering sacred days and feasts, because, for me, this anniversary is both.

I can safely say that I cannot think of only one other decision that I have made in my life that was made so clearly and without consternation.   And I can think of no other decision about which I can say, two years later, I have never doubted in retrospect.  It is a decision, that in fact, I rise each day and embrace again and again…it was and is each day, the beginning of new life and being for me.  It is an ongoing choice that colors every moment of my life and every choice and action and thought that I have had since that moment when, in the presence of my community of faith, with my Pastor and friend, I walked even further into the presence of my God.

But alas, on this date two years later, I am struggling…I am struggling with something equally momentous, equally life-changing, yet another step in my answer to the call of that God, and this answer is not so easy.  This time, I am fighting it.  I cannot so easily embrace the acceptance and faith of Mary as she sings the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55).  I am not able to say with her as in Luke 1:38… “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”  Not about this particular next step.

While I want desperately to respond with Mary’s acceptance and faith (which I’m pretty sure was not really what she was feeling in her humanity), I am currently standing with the shepherds in Luke 2: 8-12, trembling and afraid.

And yet, thanks to the gift of two years ago, I know that it will be alright.  I will eventually put down the baggage of my past that binds me to the shepherds, and embrace the faith of my heart that will let me stand with Mary.  And at that moment, my journey begun two years ago down the road of life will continue, the hunt will go on, for as long as I have breath and for as long as I can remember that day two years ago…no matter where that hunt might lead me.

Thanks be to God.

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On the hunt…

Posted on December 11, 2011 by

In case you don’t know, I live with a beagle.  And if you have ever spent any time in the presence of a beagle, you have probably heard the famous Dave Barry quote about the breed, namely that a beagle is a nose with four legs attached.   My Gracie is indeed just such a creature…if you watch her, you see her use her discerning nose to search out the object of her desire (usually a food item, since she is an eating machine).  When she catches that first whiff of something interesting or something that needs attention, the nose goes up in the air and the sniffing begins.

What most people do not know about a beagle is that much of their scent ability has nothing to do with their noses (although the nose of a beagle has more than 220 million olfactory sensors, whereas we mere humans have only 5 million or so). Much of what a beagle, or any hound for that matter, smells has to do with their ears.  The structure of a hound’s ears was specifically created to capture scent all around them, trap it, and make it available to those very special noses.

Now, I really do have a point to this, other than extolling the virtues of my beloved hound.  You see, you can always tell when Gracie is on the trail of something.  And, when she is on the trail, she is almost never wrong — even if we humans in her company might take days to figure out what she is trying to find. But there is always something — a chew stick pushed too far behind a piece of furniture for us to see, a last piece of duck jerky hidden and forgotten in a pocket, something….there is always something.

I am thinking that it is God’s little joke that I would live with a beagle, because my own life quest is a lot like Gracie’s nose.  My ears collect and hold things that I don’t understand, my spiritual nose knows that it is on the trail of something.  But I often cannot put language to the search, I often just “feel” the trail (I equate my “feelings” to Gracie’s scent capabilities), and I know it is there and I just can’t let it go.

And, I am rarely wrong.   There is almost always something hidden where my not-language senses pull me.  And I often need a book, or someone else, to put my sensations and yearnings into language for me, so that I can move on to the next mysterious spiritual sniffing exercise.

In this case, I have to thank Brian McLaren and his book Finding Our Way Again:  The Return of the Ancient Practices.

My frustration with much of what I encounter in my questing and searching is that…so much of what constitutes spiritual practice seems to me to imply that I, the seeker, must separate myself from life in order to have communion with the Holy Spirit or God or whatever you want to call that which Emerson refers to as the Great Oversoul. I have written about this before, and probably will write about it again.

But now, thanks to Mr. McLaren, I understand:  I am seeking the tools for a faith that is a way of life, not a destination:

One of our most common temptations is to turn the way into a place, to turn the adventure into a status, to trade the runway for the hangar, to turn the holy path into a sitting room–even if we call it a sanctuary.  When the movement becomes an institution, those whose hearts call them to pilgrimage get restless.
(Finding Our Way Again, pg. 51)

I am, at heart, a pilgrim…not the kind with a big belt buckle and a fear of Native Americans, more the kind in sandals and linen.  Someone I respect greatly once said to me that one of the ways they saw God in me was that I embraced whole-heartedly the act of living in the questions.  And she was right, life and faith and everything good and interesting is all about the questions.  I need my faith to be a way of life, a way of life in the world that is God’s and Man’s creation;  for me, there is safety and comfort in the questions.

So,  like my beloved furry-child Gracie, I am always on the hunt.  She sniffs, I feel…but we are both always on the trail of something. And the hunt is way more important than the destination (unless, of course, for Gracie, it is something to eat.)

 

 

 

 

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A pilgrimage…of sorts

Posted on December 10, 2011 by

Lately, I have been very interested in a way of thinking that is often referred to as the “ancient-future” view of Christianity, one that seeks to recover what we know and can know of the ways of those first Christians, struggling in faith, struggling to live together before the creation of the institution that we know as “church”, and to take that knowledge and use it to forge a way of Christian living in the 21st century.  It is this view of faith that has led to such movements as the New Monasticism, among others.

I however, have been approaching this interest, not by moving into a big house with several others, but by research (is anyone surprised?), and I have begun to read a series called The Ancient Practices Series, that includes books by well-known expositors of our time on the Abrahamic ancient practices:  fixed-hour prayer, fasting, Sabbath, the sacred meal, giving, the observance of sacred seasons, and…pilgrimage.

It is only because of all this thinking and reading that I was able to recognize that I was practicing the act of pilgrimage this weekend.  And I only realized it after the pilgrimage had begun, of course.

You see, for the past couple of days I have been in the city of Chicago.  My original reasons for planning this trip were secular and silly, really:  to visit the Christkindlmarkt in Daley Plaza (because there was just no way to go to Germany this  year),  to eat at the Frontera Grill (after a couple of years of watching Rick Bayless re-runs on Public Television), and to finally stay at a Kimpton Hotel.  Oh yes, and to add to my frequent flyer miles total in my annual quest to maintain my Premier status.

But as the plane took off Thursday morning from Reagan National, my mind was flooded with memories…memories of all the times I had been to Chicago…all the times I had thought about living in Chicago…and all the times that life took a completely different turn.

As I find myself at another decision point in my life, a critical one, I was receptive to understanding my real reason for going to Chicago this December:  I was going on a pilgrimage.

Now, don’t misunderstand, I have done everything on that list I gave you above, and I have more than enjoyed my stay at the fabulous Hotel Monaco in Chicago (in fact, I will, after this experience, always choose a Kimpton Hotel if it is available when I travel, as it is the first U.S.–based hotel group I have ever found to satisfy completely my pseudo-European tastes)…but as I have walked these streets (in the freezing cold) I have also remembered.

I remember the anticipation of my very first trip to Chicago, when I was moving to next door South Bend, Indiana, to attent the University of Notre Dame.  We drove, and we stopped here to visit the Tutankhamen Exhibition at the Field Museum, on its first-ever tour of the the United States.  I was so frightened of the big city that I wouldn’t park my car in a garage where I had to hand over my keys (no one had ever asked for my keys in Kansas City, after all).  And there was that first big-city dinner at a french restaurant, where I had my first white wine ever (a nice Vouvray, as I recall, but what did I know about wine at age 19?).  And then, there were the weekend drives from South Bend to Chicago, weekends spent in museums and roaming the ethnic stores and restaurants of Devon Street.

And after failure in Indiana and a return to Kansas City, I remember the anticipation of the train ride from Kansas City to Chicago on my return to the big city, when I came to present my first academic paper as a student member of the Schools of Oriental Research; I remember the desperate desire to study archaeology at the University of Chicago.  The study that just wouldn’t happen.

A lot of life transpired between that moment and now, a lot of changes in how I live, what I am called to do and, well, who I understand myself to be.  And it was really only possible to see this and feel it through the practice of pilgrimage.  Brian McLaren describes pilgrimage as the act of leaving your daily life and seeking a new, unknown place where God will show us something that we need to learn.  Well, Chicago may not be a new and unknown place, but it has definited provided me with a pilgramage experience.

And some nifty new ornaments for the tree.

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Advent: Reminder of the Perpetual Coming

Posted on December 1, 2011 by

I must admit to having a fair amount of writer’s block lately.  I have started any number of texts for various purposes and discarded them.  In one case, I even pulled back something that was about to be published.  I can’t even find enough inspiration wordsmithing to finish the personnel handbook revision that is more than overdue.

Perhaps it is just the hustle and bustle of seasonal preparations and concert preparations; I am not sure.   Maybe my eyes have been closed for other reasons (for it is with the eyes and and ears and the heart that we write, I believe); maybe my ears have been resting.   Maybe my thoughts have been just too internal to commit to words. Maybe I haven’t read enough to feed my creativity. Maybe I just haven’t had anything to say.

But Advent is a very special time to me, and writing is an important part of my journey, and so over this past week since the lighting of that first candle, the candle of hope, I have been trying again.  This, if you see it, is my fourth attempt to set pen to paper, in a blog-o-sphere kind of way.

In light of the season and the new liturgical year (Year B, for those keeping track),  it may not be surprising, but I’m thinking a lot about ritual.  Maybe it is all the talk of the changes to the Catholic Mass  that began last Sunday, maybe it is just that it is the season of accepted ritual, both personal and corporate – gatherings, trees, shopping, and, well, Advent and Christmas and New Years.  With everything that is going on around us, it is easy to forget to be in the moment that you are living right now.

And so, in order to prevent that from happening, I always have a private seasonal ritual for myself…something that I can do day-by-day in a quiet moment, to center and sustain me through the busy-ness.  This Advent, as in the Lenten season past, I have chosen a compilation of the writings of Evelyn Underhill to guide me (Advent with Evelyn Underhill, ed. by Christopher L. Webber).

For the past few weeks,  I was spending a substantial time working with the Lectionary texts for the first Sunday Advent  (because of something else I was trying to write), and well, I just couldn’t really get them clear in my mind. I must admit, hope was the last thing I was feeling as I read them, and as I moved through the days of my weeks.

Until the words of Ms. Underhill, that is.

Last week, our texts were: Isaiah 64:1-9,  Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19,  1 Corinthians 1:3-9., and Mark 13:24-37 (Yes, for those of you at Calvary who were paying attention, we did use an alternate Psalm text, Psalm 42).

The sum of these texts is, for me, so much more complex than the concept of hope, and in their complexity, so very human.  When taken as whole,  they emphasize not just the hope and anticipation of the season, but the state of despair that makes it possible for us to see that hope.  If you have ever participated in a “Blue Service”, you will understand what I mean.  Frankly, if you are human and have suffered the disappointments and losses that are the human condition, you understand what I mean.  Hope never looks more precious than when you feel that you have none.

There is nothing that points up the presence of pain and loss like finding yourself in the midst of manic and unbridled celebration such as that which is the cultural norm for the Christmas season in secular American culture.  Just trying to keep up with the round of obligations, trying to keep that smile on your face through exhaustion or loss or financial problems…I think we all understand.  Hope almost never feels so far from our grasp.

These texts echo our own complex relationship with hope in our lives; they point out that it is easier to embrace the all-too-human hopelessness that pervades everything around us than it is to hold on to the hope and the promise born of our relationship with God.

And so, enter Ms. Underhill, to remind us that whether or not we know it, hope is always there for us:

We should think of the whole power and splendour of God as always pressing in upon our small souls. ’In Him we live and move and have our being.’ But that power and splendour mostly reach us in homely and inconspicuous ways; in the sacraments, and in our prayers, joys and sorrows and in all our opportunities of loving service. This means that one of the most important things in our prayers is the eagerness and confidence with which we throw ourselves open to His perpetual coming. …If our lives are ruled by this spirit of Advent, this loving expectation of God, they will have a quality quite different from that of conventional piety.  For they will be centered on an entire andconscious dependence upon the supernatural love which supports us; hence all self-confidence will be destroyed in them and replaced by perfect confidence in God. (pg. 3-4)

It was there in the Lectionary and I just didn’t see it:  the despair of the Hebrew text and the Psalm, tinged with the remembrance that once upon a time in Israel there was a special relationship with God that offerred protection and safety; Paul’s reminders of the spiritual gifts that the Corinthians always had among them and in them; and the Gospel of Mark’s statement of the glory of the coming grace that, as Ms. Underhill so beautifully states, comes when all self-confidence will be destroyed in them and replaced by perfect confidence in God.

God is not Emmanual (God with us) only during Advent.  We no longer wait for the birth of an actual child.  We, my friends, are called to live in a state of perpetual coming.

Ah, hope…I see your candle now.

 

 

 

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Going to church…

Posted on November 20, 2011 by

It is, once again, Sunday morning.  And I am once again up at some totally-too-early-hour, getting ready to go to church and join my community in worship and in fellowship. But that, my friends, is my favorite way to spend my Sunday morning.  No lazy lay-a-bed with the New York Times for me — 5:30 wakeup, meditation, preparation, and out the door at 9 a.m. only to return, if I am lucky, by 2 p.m.

But what is really on my mind this morning as I get ready for the day ahead, is, well, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the things we read together as a study group in his work Life Together.  And, more than that, what I read about him in his biography Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxas.

If you know anything about Bonhoeffer’s life, or even the legend attached to Bonhoeffer’s life, you have probably heard that his thinking about faith and community was transformed by his time at Union Theological Seminary in New York.  But it wasn’t the work at Union that transformed him, in fact he writes rather negatively about the students and the prevailing secularlism at Union in that time.  He was transformed by his time spent with the congregation of the famous Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem.

There were a lot of transforming things for him about that experience, according to Metaxas, but the one I am thinking about this morning is that, before Dietrich Bonhoeffer came to New York and before he worshipped regularly at the Abyssinian Baptist Church he was  a theologian, yes, a man of faith, most likely — but he did not attend any kind of service of worship on a regular basis.  After his experiences in New York, he went to church each Sunday.

Now I am the first to admit that going to church is not an end in itself, but I find myself wondering how can a person be a theologian, someone seemingly devoted to the language of faith,  and not seek to worship with a community of believers each week…particularly someone who, ultimately, would find the idea of community in Christ so compelling that he wrote a book about it?  How can someone who spent most of his life thinking about and writing about and teaching about what it means to be a church…how can that person not seek or create a worship community that he could call home?

Yes, I understand the problems of his time, the affiliation of the German church with the state, the perversion of that church through that relationship once the National Socialists came to power.  And I understand that not all churches would fit my own definition of a Gospel community, and I’m guessing that the church of his day did not satisfy Bonhoeffer’s definition either.  But I know that Holy Spirit will always win, and if we listen we will find a community within which to worship.

Bonhoeffer aside, thinking about his transformation from non-church-goer to regular-church-goer, I found myself thinking about quite a few people in my own community who attend on nothing more than a casual basis…meaning, we may not be blessed by their presence even once a month (and statistically, the experts consider regular church attendance to be at least twice a month).  I know, Washington is a busy place…people travel for work, people sometimes only have the weekends to pursue other hobbies and goals…I get it.

But as for me, I’m glad that I am able to rise early on a Sunday morning and worship with my fellows in Christ.  And I realize that that worship is strengthened and amplified by sharing it with others.  And I know, that in my life, in my relationship with the God of All, that this act of worship is primary.

Some say I know this because I’m older, and therefore, having lived a bit more of life, my priorities are different than a younger person’s might be…maybe that is true.  But what I know is that once Bonhoeffer experienced a community that worshipped in faith and not in politics, a community that struggled to live out the Gospel in this world, that he too began to seek out a community with whom he could worship.

A friend of mine points out to me regularly that, we make time for what is important to us, that the excuse “I don’t have time for that” is just that…an excuse or even worse, a failure to acknowledge that the activity in question just isn’t a priority.

Even before I read Life Together, I knew that my priority is worshipping and learning with my community any chance that I get.  After reading Life Together, I am even more convinced that community means life together, warts and all, failures and successes, sorrow and joy.  But it is really hard to live a life together if you don’t show up.

Consider showing up for your community, whatever that might be.

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