lauren winner: mudhouse sabbath

mudhouse sabbath by Lauren Winner on Amazon

Small in size and light to hold, making it easy to slip into purse or backpack, mudhouse sabbath could become a handbook and resource for almost anyone's spiritual journey. Lauren Winner writes from the perspective of two of the great Abrahamic traditions, Judaism and Christianity; from her Jewish upbringing she brings perspectives on prayer, liturgy and community and she filters her Christian experiences as a present-day member of the Episcopal Church. Each of the eleven chapters has a dual title in (transliterated) Hebrew and English; topics include sabbath, food, morning, hospitality, weddings and doorposts. Notes at the back reference scripture and other books, too. Her words and sentences flow almost exactly like real-life speech and the sentences are short enough not to need to go back and read it again to be sure you got it. Such a pleasure to read!

"Mudhouse" is the name of the coffeehouse in Virginia the author enjoys and at the time of writing (book is © 2003) sometimes visited on Sunday after church. (The site looks very pretentious to me.) I didn't try to find the origins of the name, but I like to think of similarities with mudrooms that form a liminal space that's neither still out in the world (or even in the yard) nor quite yet completely inside the house, a conscious bridge between outside, more public space and inside, more private space. They're especially common in climates that feature winter snow, and provide a handy, safe place to shed boots, shovels, mittens and parkas so you're not out in the elements and you're not wrecking the best rug or the great room, for that matter, with mud, dirt and leaves. In each chapter Lauren talks at least a little about her own perspectives and sometimes struggles between being private and being public, about how much to bend in order to let other people into her own bent spaces, something that only can be done in spaces where you're not afraid of spoiling pristine surroundings, where you know it's okay to drop some crumbs and let sentences hang mid-air.

Lauren talks a lot about obedience. As a Jew, you don't do something because it feels good or because you desire or like the outcome; you do it because God has commanded it. And not surprisingly, in the long run you usually do feel good and discover the outcome is exactly what you desire. Life grounded in Torah and directed toward God is intentional and almost seamlessly integrated between sacred and secular, between public and personal. I particularly love how shopping for food, preparing it, feasting on it and fasting from it, preparing for Shabbat, grieving death and anticipating new life in marriage all take time and thought because they need to be done properly, in a way that almost forces you to consciously be aware of God, gracious Creator and bountiful Giver to Whom it all belongs, anyway. As I mentioned in my intro, this is literally a hand book and Lauren could have included other subjects or expanded on the chapters she chose. But one of the beauties of mudhouse sabbath is the way every chapter can apply to every reader and easily be adapted to your own circumstances. I hope you'll buy the book, enjoy it and make some of these insights, disciplines and practices part of your own daily walk.

my amazon review: bridging and integrating Judaism and Christianity

Harvesting the Fruits

Harvesting the Fruits: Aspects of Christian Faith in Ecumenical Dialogue by Walter Cardinal Kasper

Product information includes: Publisher, Continuum (December 14, 2009); ISBN-10 - 1441162720 and an updated ISBN-13 - 978-1441162724

"Harvesting the Fruits" references Galatians 6:9, "So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest-time, if we do not give up." As the title of the book and the featured scripture imply, this is not a season of frustration or discouragement in ecumenical relations, we are not in an ecumenical winter, but "rich fruits" already have been harvested from these and other dialogues.

Writing about "ecumenical consensus, convergences and differences" over the biblical number of the past 40 years, Walter Cardinal Kasper brings us an easily readable, very useful overview of formal, bilateral conversations between worldwide organizational expressions of Christianity: Lutherans and Catholics / Methodists and Catholics from 1967 through the publication date of 2009; Reformed and Catholics / Anglicans and Catholics from 1970 through 2009. These dialogues were grounded in "Catholic understanding of ecumenical dialogue" and ecumenical principles stated in Vatican 2 documents Unitatis redintegratio and Lumen gentium and as Cardinal Kasper notes, they reflect multilateral interrelationships amongst the various expressions of Christianity that participated. The book is comfortable to hold, has an easily readable type face (style and point size) and includes a near-comprehensive list of abbreviations from each phase or period of each formal dialogue, one of several features that make it a wonderful reference book. The author attempts to outline where we are at this present time as well as where we in the churches can move ahead and should move ahead in the quest for common unity. Cardinal Kasper uses the traditional, 2-millennia-long theological "Father, Son, Spirit" theological vocabulary without equivocation or apology.

Harvesting the Fruits is logically organized into an introduction, four chapters and preliminary conclusions (at the end). Chapter subjects are:

1. Jesus Christ and the Trinity; 2. Salvation, justification, sanctification; 3. The Church - Nature and mission; Sources of authority; Ministry - "whole people of God" and "ordained"; Episcope / oversight - of both local church and Universal Church; 4. [dominical] Sacraments - baptism and Eucharist

Particularly beginning with the Vatican 2 Decree on Ecumenism, Unitatis redintegration in 1964, the See of Rome has considered restoration of unity in the Church a primary concern; Jesus Christ founded one Church, and only one. This particular book does not include Easter or Orthodox expressions of the Church (Cardinal Kasper refers to those as "Churches" but calls other non-Roman Catholics ecclesial communities). Except for those of Wesleyan heritage the Pentecostal churches do not participate in ecumenical activities and except when one includes the highly ecumenical Disciples of Christ (in the USA) in that category, church bodies that evolved from the various restoration movements in the 19^th Century are not inclined toward ecumenism, either.

For these discussions a "common confession of the Trinity and of Jesus Christ" was the starting point. The ultimate goal of ecumenical dialogue and other shared activities includes "full visible communion in faith, sacramental life, apostolic ministry and mission" alongside the invariable and necessary differences in culture, styles of liturgy, hymnody and worship, as well as differing emphases in all the above... All of the ecumenical partners hold a fundamental common understanding of the Gospel including: creedal faith; Trinitarian conviction; and salvific action of the persons of the Trinity. Despite the basic need for more conversation and consensus, "What we share in faith is therefore much more than what divides us."


my amazon review: a healthy yield with more to come

Vision of the Anointed, ch. 1

Originally I typed my notes from the online discussion of chapter 1 of The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy by Thomas Sowell on Saturday, August 29, 2003 and now I'm finally blogging mainly what interested and intrigued me as I read the sample pages online. If I remember correctly we didn't get beyond chapter 1, though the book arrived from Amazon so I might read more later. At UMassBoston we read the author's Race and Economics and I remember it was close to spellbinding, so the possibility of reading and talking about this book interested me.

Chapter 1, "Flattering Unction"

"The vision prevailing among the intellectual and political elite of our time." "It is a prevailing vision… [offering] a special state of grace for those who believe in it." "…those who disagree are seen as being not only in error, but in sin." "People are never more sincere than when they assume their own moral superiority."

Vision, anointed, state of grace and sin all are biblical and theological buzzwords!

Early on our discussion moderator asked what the terms "vision" and "anointed" meant to us and why; she also asked if the author tells us why he chose those words, but since I don't have my book yet I can't answer that question, though possibly someone else can.

To do a brief word-study, in Israel, prophets, priests and kings were anointed into the legitimacy of their call; as the moderator pointed out, "Christos / Messiach" means the "anointed." As I posted on one of our earlier book threads, Jesus was anointed into his death in a most unconventional and unorthodox manner and in an unofficial, non-hierarchical setting outside of the legitimate religious, economic and political establishments. As Christians baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, as we take the name "Christian" we're baptized prophet, priest and king.

Therefore, the "anointing" of those to whom Dr. Sowell refers are anointed into legitimacy. In our Christian tradition we use olive oil, from the olive tree – which arguably is the "Tree of Life" – as the anointing oil in our liturgies. So these anointed in Sowell's book can be imaged as anointed into fullness of life? Bizarre argument maybe, but I'm thinking! But then again, we Christians consider the cross the ultimate tree of life and although our moderator so aptly pointed out that economics is the most theological of disciplines, I've already cautioned against really getting off on a more explicitly theological track, so I'll quit on that particular subject, though not without saying "tree" is a persistent biblical image and concept.

Our moderator already wrote succinctly about "vision," and so many biblical "vision" settings are familiar to all of us, at the moment I'll pass on writing any more about visions. I'm interested in seeing what more he says about grace and sin in subsequent chapters.

Thomas Sowell speaks of the =insulation= of a vision, and he is very correct, because ideas and egos do become "inextricably intertwined," as he expresses it. Our own individual ideas (as if any idea anyone ever had were not at least somewhat derivative) assume the force of dogma and sometimes lives of their own mini-lives within our larger lives and worlds, so "I" need to protect and defend and, yes insulate "my" idea to the exclusion and sometimes the extinction of everyone else's ideas.

"Crusading movements among the intelligentsia usually include": (paraphrased)

1. Assertions of great danger to the whole society…to which the masses of people are oblivious;
2. An urgent need for action to avert impending catastrophe;
3. A need for government to curtail the behavior of the masses in order to assert the ideas of those prescient few;
4. A disdainful dismissal of arguments to the contrary.

His saying "Many are unaware there's any other way of looking at things" comes close to bringing me up short, since very suddenly I'm realizing that despite trying to broaden my "vision" by reading and discussing, all too frequently I become very, very unhappy when my ideas aren't accepted as the best, and of course when people aren't interested in listening to me and hearing me I can be truly devastated.

"Thinking People" vs. "Articulate People!" is an intriguing way of separating and distinguishing people! Seems as if the more articulate folks are the ones who get believed and get their articulations acted upon.

One of our discussion participants asked about Dr. Sowell, "what compels him to swim against the prevailing academic stream of thought."

"academic stream of thought" – because so-called liberal thought indeed does prevail in academic and intellectual groups and troops and is relatively rare outside of the educational and cultural whatever-you-want-to-call-it-complex.

I believe I was the one saying though I'd love to get into a discussion of otherness, Holy Other, Creator/creature and identity, I thought that'd get us off this book's track and into a more specifically theological excursion. But many thanks anyway for mentioning the necessity of something other than that supreme "me" and "I" when it comes not only to visions and dreams but when it just plain simply comes to life itself. None of us is self-generated, so thanks for saying the visionary force begins not inside of us but rather outside of us: the biblical distinction between Creator and created. Was not the very idea of creation a vision of our Creator-God's?

The whole superiority and self-righteous trip – me too, all more often than I care to admit. That's it on this chapter for tonight. Amazon said my book was supposed to ship yesterday (Monday), but I haven't gotten an email saying it has shipped, so I'll look forward to reading more of what everyone else has to say about this chapter.

Reign of Christ

Reign of Christ: culture, Jesus, identity and…

As we anticipate the season of Advent with its call to repentance and promise of hope along with the start of a new liturgical year, a couple of blogs inspired me. First, RevGalBookPals' selection for October was Jesus for President: Politics for Ordinary Radicals by Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw. Jan Edmiston wrote an outstanding intro to the book and the comments added a lot, plus because I haven't read the book yet I can't say anything remotely authoritative, so to learn more you need to go to the RevGals' website. In referring to Jesus as our President I'm making a habit of the more corporate and covenantal "we, us, our, ours" and moving far away from a proprietary "I, me, my, mine."

This topic hardly could be more timely since slightly over a month ago I finished for now a 10-session Monday evening series, "Reading The Bible Economically," developed and hosted by Lee Van Ham. I attended 7 of the 10, did the reading for all of them and the journaling homework for all but two; our wrap-up for the course particularly reminded me 1) the way I initially learned to interpret scripture was highly countercultural, very economic and extremely political, as it constantly considered each person's embeddedness in and responsibility to the vitality of our church community's worship, witness and service, our relatedness to every aspect of the neighborhood surrounding us as well as our lives as political people at every level; 2) I do not regret in the least not continuing professional service in the church; 3) my current level of agitation and discontent regarding lack of opportunities to contribute to a degree consonant with my background, experience, and ongoing sense of call indicates something in my life needs to change.

A quote from Jesus for President:

"The construction of the set-apart people into a living temple of blessing is going so-so. The solution: God puts skin on to show the world what love looks like. But here is the catch: The Prince of Peace is born as a refugee in the middle of genocide and is rescued from the trash bin of imperial executions to stand at the pinnacle of this peculiar people. A strange way to start a revolution…"

In the book thread comments I wrote:

• Although I don't have the book, I wanted to make a couple of flag comments. From whence I came, neither national flag nor Christian flag ever had been an option in the sanctuary, but intense political activism was. I've heard that immigrant German Lutherans during WW I were the first to place a US flag in their sanctuaries because they wanted themselves and everyone else to be clear they were Americans now.

• Quite a few years ago during a conversation about worship someone pointed out that with adequate scriptural and historical citations it likely would be very possible to prevent a flag being installed in the sanctuary, but removing the flag forever probably would not and could not happen.

• Four or five years back on the old (2nd iteration, maybe?) online UCC forums someone started a thread about flags in sanctuaries. My immediate gut reaction was "what kind of theological idiot would even think to ask that?" but one of the replies opened my mind very wide. It essentially said, "Yes, we have an American flag in our church sanctuary. In our chancel the means of grace - font, table, ambo and cross - are on a raised platform; the flag is on the same level as the gathered assembly so the flag symbolically listens to and hears the prophetic word along with everyone else."

"Divided allegiances" segues into a closely related blog post for World Communion Sunday from my Facebook friend Presbyterian Hunger in Fasting, malls and the eucharist.

PH starts out by explaining, "I started out walking…in search of a church where I could break my fast with communion." His narrative then recounts how in turn he viewed a steeple (church, maybe?), a roof that hopefully signaled a Greek Orthodox church, a strangely shaped cross that proved to be a supermarket, then an Asian restaurant, and finally a car dealership. Finally, PH spotted a white steeple that actually was a church structure full of church people, so he entered the building and found a eucharistic liturgy well in progress in a packed, clearly multi-cultural congregation.

Post-worship and liturgy, PH feasted at a richly and abundantly stocked Panera and then attended another innings of the event he'd journeyed to that city for—a conference on community food security. He concluded his blog post with, "As I passed the cathedrals of capitalism, as whizzing cars passed me, I wondered how long this lifestyle could possibly last…"

Among the plethora of domesticated gods that include Egyptian imperial religion, Roman imperial religion, the Jerusalem Temple and contemporary urban consumerism, each of them and all of them subtly and not-subtly bring to their adherents a reign of death, not as gracious gift but at huge cost to the individual and to society. But the God of the Bible, God of the prophets, the God of Jesus Christ cannot be contained or domesticated in any way and by grace and without cost to us, this God raises the dead.

In "our" culture of consumerism we're close to being governed and owned by our desires for excessive consumption, so does the culture rule our wants or do our wants rule our lives? The biblical ideal demonstrated YHWH as sovereign, but we know the people longed for a king like those other nations had. As the authors of Jesus for President, Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw observe, "The Prince of Peace is born as a refugee in the middle of genocide and is rescued from the trash bin of imperial executions to stand at the pinnacle of this peculiar people" Yes, and during his earth-life Bethlehem-born and Nazareth-bred Jesus socializes and celebrates with outcasts and marginalized, rejects conventional ecclesiastical and political authority, gets himself convicted and killed on charges of sedition and blasphemy and dies outside the city, far from the arena of civilization, from the crossroads of commercial and consumerist activity, from The Place where religion and spirituality usually (invariably, inevitably) become static, codified, rationalized and institutionalized, losing all power to save and transform. What a friend we have in Jesus? Jesus calls us friends, as possibly the ultimate accolade, yet his Lordship is one of servanthood, as is our presence in the world.

As the people of God we have been formed in the sparse economy(!) of many deserts where obvious signs of life are ultra-meager yet where life teams hidden beneath the surface. We have been uniquely re-birthed by Jesus' death and resurrection. We know the heart of a stranger, because we have been strangers to the dominant cultures and popular mores in all of our Egypts. Do we currently experience the heart and the lifestyle of strangers here in this 21^st century consumerist culture? A Fourth World people is a nation without a state. How about us, wherever we pitch our tents? Are we a nation, a distinctly constituted people? Is Jesus our President? Are we stateless or citizens?

Handbook of Spiritual Ecumenism 2

Tomorrow we'll have the second of our local Faith, Order & Witness conversations about A Handbook of Spiritual Ecumenism, by Walter Cardinal Kasper; here's my first blog about the book and here's my second.

Of late I've been blogging so sparsely I wanted to write some notes this evening, though I well may write more after tomorrow's meeting. I like this Prayer and Worship section a lot; I feel it can serve as a short how-to handbook. Some points that impressed me included on page 45, in the Personal Prayer section, Cardinal Kasper quotes the encyclical Ut Unum Sint: "Prayer should always concern itself with the longing for unity...In this journey which we are undertaking with other Christians ... prayer must occupy the first place." Cardinal Kasper adds, "...prayer for unity remains at the heart of any Christian prayer." On page 47 in the section Prayer in Common I love his saying, "Such prayer might focus on the mystery of the Church and its unity, on Baptism as a sacramental bond of unity, on the renewal of personal and communal life, or on the healing of the brokenness of humanity." On the following page he nicely puts forth the idea of retaining local (and confessional, denominational) particularity in liturgical practice rather than going for a blending mode when Christians from different traditions worship together—non-eucharistically, though I'm beginning to get some sense of the Roman Catholic ideal of shared eucharist as a visible sign of accomplished unity rather than a means or a stage of unity as it is in the Protestant churches. But appropriately, on page 57 he claims the eucharist as the "privileged" place to pray for unity. Cardinal Kasper considers joint public worship events a live possibility on occasions such as he lists on page 49 (you know what they are so I don't need to relist them here). In my first blog on the book I said, "I'm curious about the implications and resonations of the word spiritual with a lower-case "s," though in this chapter I didn't notice the expression "spiritual ecumenism" until I found it on page 53 in conjunction with our common baptism into Christ. I rejoice in and celebrate Cardinal Kasper's idea (page 54) that "An ecumenical affirmation or commemoration of baptism can [among other options] be a welcome occasion for a common catechesis on the mystery and the effects of baptism." But I'll caution that'd work well alongside church bodies of Reformation, Anglican, and Wesleyan heritage, but most likely the discussion would get lost with churches who affirm a sign of grace rather than a means of grace or effective means of grace interpretation of baptism.

Cardinal Kasper provides words of hope and grace regarding Mixed Marriage Families, and the Roman Catholic Church's two Sacraments of Healing, Penance/Reconciliation and Anointing of the Sick, in which "In certain circumstances and under certain conditions" (page 64) non-Roman Catholic Christians may participate, but if I read the symbolically fine print correctly, I believe he's referring solely to Christians in the Orthodox and Anglican communions, so once again I've officially been excluded. In the short Liturgical Year section Kasper again cites more than two dozen possible occasions for shared ecumenical worship, prayer and related celebrations.

So far I've read only thus far, mostly so I won't bring next month's discussion material into this month's topic, but I'm looking forward to chaper three, Diakonia and Witness. In our local FOW committee we've mainly been discussing documents specifically related to Faith and Order, but several times our committee chairperson has said, "Why not Witness one of these times, since that's part of our name?!"

Handbook of Spiritual Ecumenism 1a

Last Wednesday was the first of three Faith, Order & Witness meetings we'll read and talk about A Handbook of Spiritual Ecumenism, by Walter Cardinal Kasper; here's my first blog about the book. Although we won't meet to discuss chapter 2 until late February, I decided to add to my earlier thoughts, both to comment post-our group discussion and tamely and politely (I trust) write a little about how some of Cardinal Kasper's assumptions about protestants and Mariology surprised me. For lack of time but primarily because in print and on the computer screen the reader has neither the face nor the inflection of the writer, last week I hesitated to write anything, so I didn't. For example, on page 14 he uses the phrase, "Mary, the Virgin Mother of God," which no protestant I've ever known could agree with, but like many others I'm cool with Theotokos—God-bearer; pages later, starting with a heading, Mary, the Mother of God and onto page 34 he suggests, "Together, Christians can

• acknowledge the place of Mary in sacred Scripture and ponder with her the great things that God has done in salvation history [yes, of course, to both of those ideas, at least from where I sit]
• study the witness of early Christianity regarding Mary…[I'll agree to this, as well]...
• promote mutual knowledge and appreciation of various traditions in devotion and spirituality related to the Mother of God in both the East and West…" [my Roman Catholic and Antiochian Orthodox committee colleagues distinguished "veneration" and "adoration", so I can go there as long as Mary is God's-bearer and not God's-mother…]"

But in a far more radiant light, everyone in our group appreciated the ecumenicity of Cardinal Kasper's section headed Martyrs and Witnesses unto Death starting on page 35, and I love his quoting John Paul II's Tertio Millennio Adveniente, "Perhaps the most convincing form of ecumenism is the ecumenism of the saints and of the martyrs. The communio sanctorum speaks louder than the things that divide us." [page 36] He follows the JP II citation with examples including, "Together, Christians can

• offer ecumenical prayers for Christians of all traditions who still are victims of persecution and violence...
• publish locally or regionally updated registers and biographical notes regarding recent witnesses to the faith unto death; this can be done ecumenically, reminding everyone that the shedding of blood is a common inheritance of all Christian traditions."

Then, on page 38, without specifying names other than "the four Evangelists and the Apostles" Kasper seems to consider holy persons and redemptive actors from all Christian traditions Saints, apparently not limiting sainthood to those in the Roman Catholic or Orthodox canon. It's not clear to me if this is like "saints" in a Pauline salutation or something other-than.

In my first blog on the book I said, "I'm curious about the implications and resonations of the word spiritual with a lower-case "s". Even non-church people often talk generically about spiritual aspects of existence (and hey, everyone's heard "I'm not religious but I'm spiritual" far too many times)." One of our members sort of equated "spiritual" with "prayer," so I'll leave that alone for now.

We also had a short-go-around about ecclesial communities and valid sacraments/eucharist, as well as my own near-craziness about Catholics under Rome's aegis not qualifying their name with Roman; to that Fr. Vince, a retired *Roman* Catholic priest, told us he had been ordained a priest (in other words, lots of church experience) when someone in England or elsewhere in the UK asked him if he was "Roman Catholic," and he'd replied, "No! I'm Irish Catholic!" He told us that was the very first time he'd ever heard Roman Catholic!

During August 2004 in Culture Bound (Culture, identity, home, belonging, etc.) I wrote:

As those cultural anthropologists insist, each of us inhabits a range of cultures; more than a single culture encumbers each of us. We see, hear and feel; we remember, dream and hope through the senses our cultures have given to us and we've inadvertently received; and to some extent, our cultural identities constrain and limit us.

From July 2007, here's my blog about my experiences at the Orientale Lumen conference. Although I'm considering seriously attempting to ferret out the claim of the Antiochian Orthodox Church as the only, most true church, though they credit Roman Catholic and other Orthodox church bodies with valid sacraments because of apostolic succession, last July I found the Orthodox Eucharistic liturgy very eastern, highly un-western in style and expression. Clearly I have a habit of bringing Pastor Martin Luther into a lot of my blogs and live-talk, and Luther famously lists as one of his marks of the true church prayer and hymn-singing in the vernacular—in spoken, visual, symbolic, and cultural speech people in the pews can comprehend! But of course there's valid argument for liturgies that are more formal and elaborate in terms of music, visuals, and gestures sometimes helping people more easily imagine the Reign of Heaven here on earth, assisting their belief and trust in something "other than" the mundaneness of routine everyday existence.

Regarding various varieties of theology and expression, again I'm considering my own experience as someone who didn't grow up in the Church or on its peripheries; I first met Jesus, the Church, and the Spirit within a context powerfully related and completely relevant to my own cultural background, passions, and hopes: a small, very urban, passionately worshipful, liturgically variable, socially and politically activist community that demanded, expected, and guided my full participation and commitment in all those areas. How many times have I told myself (probably) none of the congregations I've formally served on staff nor any I've attempted to get involved with since then wouldn't have attracted me at all, because I'd have been unable to discern the reality amidst the unfiltered and uninterpreted apparent clutter. And although these days I'm a good-enough cultural anthropologist, I know sufficient theology and understand the Western (and the Eastern) Churches' historical liturgy so I'm able to get a clue to the texts, actions, and meanings I experienced during the Orthodox Liturgy, I cannot imagine any person who's a product (literally) of Western culture and sensibilities comprehending Orthodox Liturgy as much more than an Adventure in Anthropology or in Comparative Christianity.

Listening for God blog 1

The first RevGals book for almost new year 2008 is by scripture scholar and pastor Renita Weems—Listening for God. Not that Amazon was exactly slow shipping my super-saver order, but I took a long time choosing books from my wish list I could justify buying at this time of scarce $$$ resources, so I was the stuck one in the transaction, and as a result my shipment didn't arrive until last Wednesday. As usual, I'd planned to read this entire RevGals monthly book selection before tuning in on anyone else's blogs, but given that it's already the last Monday of the month and book discussion day and the sun has gone down, before reading further in the book I'll reflect on the preface and chapter 1, "The Mystery of Silence and Prayer" I've read so far, all of which encompasses almost half the pages of the book, not so much in detail but as to how the author's ideas reflect and relate to my own experiences, especially of the past dozen years.

A few years ago we discussed another of Renita Weems' books in a group I belonged to, but neither by searching my bookshelves nor by checking out Amazon could I remember the title, but I do remember appreciating our discussions and I'm also very proud that group was one of the few things in my entire life I've actually quit...though it took too long for me to do it! Nonetheless, I'm well aware my habit of sticking with whatever it is coupled with often making too many excuses for people has served me well, since it's the same person who has tolerated lots of %&*#%^* in order to keep on keepin' on toward what she's wanted and felt called to achieve. And to do.

In the preface, bottom of page 18 to top of page 19 Renita explains "...much of what has been written in recent years appears to be directed to the novitiate, the recent traveler, the newcomer to the inward journey...What about those of us who are beyond the first blush of the spiritual journey..." Then on page 20, "If God was going to speak to me, God would just have to do it amidst the clutter of family, the noise of pots and pans..." Needless to say, but every one of us requires reminders from someone else that God is walking and will continue to walk alongside and go before us, wherever we are and to whatever place God calls us. Last summer I insisted, "Yahweh's specialty was constant, unmediated presence with creation; so was Jesus' and so must ours become..." So many times I've said we people of faith, who sometimes trust in the humanly incredulous and who often journey without being able to rely on our physical senses like hearing and sight, also need to live with ambiguity and paradox. With mystery, too? Oh, yes—that one, also! Picking up on a few ideas, at least once I've blogged about my observing ages ago in the Monday evening Bible study that met at my house "people have seasons," and how everyone immediately picked up on that not-at-all-novel idea, so I especially like the way Renita discusses human heart, mind, body, spirit and soul seasons in this first chapter. Related to seasons (assorted ambient situations and environmental conditions, textures to use Renita's word I found on page 31, typically not related to our own plans or agency) in which we find ourselves, in ages past we used to talk a lot about living "as if," in Wendell Berry's words, to "Be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction. Practice resurrection." I also find myself in the habit of doing a lot out of plain obligation, oughtness to God, to humanity and all creation.

On last week's winter friday 5 I wrote, "I've learned to appreciate the subterranean, near-silent growth that happens during the colder seasons, closely parallel to the vast amount of life underneath the immediately apparent top layer of the desert..." and every one of my commenters picked up on that phrase! From pages 63 through 67, in a section headed "Ordinary Time," she equates the less sensational, less festive, more routinely mundane "green" seasons of the liturgical year with similar periods in each of our lives, immediately followed by the wonderful "Saint Fallow" section lining out parallels and similarities between plant life and our life. In my blog Earth Day 2007, which really is about my (award-winning! yay!) Earth Day postage stamp series, I said, "The images – all slices from my digitized analog graphics – aren't from my specifically bible-based or liturgical art but about our living green everywhere in faithful stewardship of creation. Interesting that we call Sundays in Ordinary Time "GREEN" Sundays!" In so many places Renita affirms exactly what of necessity I've been doing for what feels like a far too long forever; for example, on page 28, "...it is enough simply to cling to the memory of a memory with God." And of course, as I've been bloggin', talkin' and teachin, maybe especially in my own ecclesiastical context of emphasis on God's persistent (and paradoxical!) presence in Word and Sacrament, by grace the Spirit of Life helps me remember and assists the community in recalling, re-appropriating the narrative and the reality of our deliverance from death to life, in re-membering our identity as a people of God in this place and time.

Beginning on page 39, the ambiguity, sometimes paradox that can exist between theological scholarship and living within Christian community is something else I easily relate to. Unlike Renita, I don't hold a doctorate in theology, I didn't do an academic theology degree, but people have suggested I didn't get into my "safe" seminary because the interviewers thought I'd be getting a PhD or ThD and teaching at seminary level. Recently I've been told and tried to hear, "Leah, you could be teaching in seminary now, but you don't have the academic credentials—do you want to go back to school?" No, I don't. And from another: "Your Greek is so much better than mine!" Maybe it is, and maybe not, but I've claimed and made excellent use of the time I've had to work through a lot of the texts. Had God called me to become an academic theologian? My best guess is no, because I cannot believe I'd've been that obtuse and unresponsive, and I trust the possibility would have crossed my mind and heart more than once, but whatever God's past calls to me, all I can do is go on from here, and Renita's clear articulation of the messiness and chaos of existence and of life helps affirm that reality.

Amidst all the pain, seemingly endless disappointments and rejections, and everything else I won't enumerate, like Renita, I need to live out my baptism not only in the world, but within a worshiping, confessing and witnessing community of faith; I need my more formal theology to become my biography! For quite a while now, I've been telling myself and even other people I cannot go on this way, using my gifts, skills and education to such a small degree; despite realizing my experience post-deciding not to finish seminary and not to continue serving FT in the church would have been very different had I returned to Cambridge (for example), I also recognize my wisdom in choosing a parish church, one that's geographically near (in my current case, so geographically proximate to Where I Live that I walk out of my condo parking lot into my church parking lot), but I also need to grasp and risk acting on the wisdom to reach out for more possibilities within other communities claimed by Jesus' death and resurrection and called to faith by the Spirit.

Lies and living in hope; journaling as a form of prayer. In "The Longest Prayer," on pages 60-61 Renita observes: "By dusting off and rereading my journals, I get to relive the past and to retrace the hand of blessing in it. I get to relive the past and to redeem it. I get to relive it and to reinterpret the parts that once felt unsurvivable. More important, through my journals I get to play back God's voice." Further down page 61: "I've changed so little and yet changed so much." Me, too! I began this post talking about ambiguity, and in sometimes obsessively reliving and trying to make sense of past pasts, etc. I've noted both a typical female (human, probably) tendency to discern kernels of truth and partial truths in my attitudes and behaviors, and despite untruths (lies, whatever word you prefer) at times being facts of life, I'm realizing my incessant rationalizations and explanations aren't so much about stereotypical shades of gray as about near-absolute truth existing within my reasons and excuses for overstaying situations that no way are yielding fruit for me or for anyone else. That was oblique (gray?!) but I need to post this, so I'll conclude with words about journaling on paper. I haven't regularly kept a journal for quite a while, though a few years ago at one point I filled 4 or 5 70-page spiral notebooks within 4 or 5 months. When I knew I needed to get into a journaling phase and asked a friend who has taught English and writing with exceptional creatively, she insisted the ideas need to go "from head and heart to hand to paper; afterwards you can do whatever you want with what you've wrote." She also emphasized – as long ago I'd learned – to not use a lovely, beautiful, fancy journal book, because you won't want to ruin it with your writing. My experience with digital design has been exactly the same: despite sort of being in the process of developing what I refer to as an independent digital style and despite having produced maybe a dozen really cool pieces, maybe because I didn't grow up digital like younger denizens of this society, but most likely because of the way people are wired - wired was intentional, trust me - the only way I can design well digitally is to begin in analog format, scan what I've done (however detailed and/or complete or not) and then go on from there. Similarly, when I'm learning a complex piece of music on piano or organ (think Beethoven Sonatas, J.S. Bach's Prelude, Toccatas and Fugues), I'll learn the basic notes first, often commit them to memory and become technically adept at the piece, then it's always time to put is aside "for a season," maybe a few weeks or even several months.

I've no idea when I'll read and blog more about this book, but even if it's not for a long while, this chapter has been so very helpful and assuring.

Handbook of Spiritual Ecumenism 1

In an attempt to keep myself on the local map or possibly re-map myself, I sort of volunteered but mostly got drafted to facilitate this coming Wednesday's Faith, Order & Witness Committee discussion. For the most part we've gone roundabout in typical traffic circle style a series of documents we hope will bring our local group (Roman Catholics, one Antiochian Orthodox, mainline Protestants from several theological traditions) to a convergence of faith; our discussions have included several World Council of Churches Faith & Order papers along with sundry and assorted "others." For the next three meetings we'll read and talk about A Handbook of Spiritual Ecumenism, by Walter Cardinal Kasper, published by New City Press, site-described as "the North American publishing house of the Focolare, an ecclesial movement approved by the Roman Catholic Church…"

The book description on Amazon includes:

This Handbook offers practical suggestions for implementing and strengthening spiritual ecumenism… It is grounded in the documents that have shaped the Catholic Church's engagement in seeking Christian unity, those of the Second Vatican Council, as well as others such as the encyclical Ut Unum Sint and the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Amazon also gives biographical info about the author:

Walter Cardinal Kasper, born in Germany in 1933, was ordained a priest in 1957. An accomplished theologian and author of many books and articles, he studied at the University of Tübingen and taught at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. Wide respect for Kasper's ecumenical work led John Paul II to appoint him president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, a position he has held since 2001.

I'll get to comment and facilitate discussion about the 3-section Preface that touches on three subjects (A Handbook; Spiritual Ecumenism; Growing in Communion) as well as the 2-part Chapter 1, Deepening Christian Faith (The Word of God in Sacred Scripture; Witnesses to the Word of God). Although I trust our group discussion will enlighten me, from my perspective something is un-okay, especially given the copyright dates of 2006 and 2007.

First, I'm curious about the implications and resonations of the word spiritual with a lower-case "s". Even non-church people often talk generically about spiritual aspects of existence (and hey, everyone's heard "I'm not religious but I'm spiritual" far too many times), which includes the Holy Spirit's call to us and claim upon our lives, whether or not we actively admit to it, along with the Spirit of Life's sanctifying actions in human persons and communities, in the Church and the churches, throughout creation and pervading the world, *even* institutional, organizational, and bureaucratic structures—Jesus made hash of the power and principalities… Churches of Reformation heritage long ago cited Word and Sacrament as essential for the local (and global) presence of the Church, with other things being not-so of the essence, or adiaphora. Days of forming new church bodies out of the old on a basis of structural, organic union followed by re-denominating most likely are over, but the protestant mainline (is the concept of culturally, socially, and theologically mainline still viable, still a reality?) remains committed to conversation and exploration of ways to attain and to thrive with full-communion agreements and related enduring partnerships under the sovereignty of Jesus Christ. In all of this, it's not simply about spiritual aspects of the gospel, but about the fullness of redemption Jesus Christ brought to the world and calls the church to continue doing.

So I'm asking what lower-case "s" spiritual ecumenism is all about! The gospel does have a spiritual aspect, but also physical, social, and cultural dimensions; while almost easily acknowledging essential unity, although there are many reasons The Protestants no longer are going for organic union between church bodies, reconciling differing polities along with more structural organizational arrangements has been one of the major concerns and difficulties in the past. Every one of us lives in a world bounded by language, geography, and an array of other factors, and we gotta live together with and despite those differences. In addition, the redemption and sanctity of all creation – not simply human creatures – is a huge part of the Bible's and Jesus' reality, and I'm wondering how the Roman Catholic Church, maybe especially with its emphasis on sacraments and a sacramental worldview, complacently can focus even primarily on the small-"s" spiritual?

At this time I've read no further than my assigned portion, but throughout chapter 1 Cardinal Kasper constantly references ecclesial communities, a phrase I first became aware of from the current Bishop of Rome when he was Cardinal Ratzinger. After Ratzinger's election to the See of Peter I exclaimed, "But that's the guy who called us 'ecclesial communities!'" My conversation partner responded, "Ecclesial community is a big step up from 'heretical ministries!'" Agreed…and as I prepare for continued participation in several geographically, culturally, and theologically nearby (near-to-where I live in every sense) heretical ministries, I know I'm participating as a part of the church in apostolic and prophetic continuity, and I know those church bodies belong to the church catholic, so would you Christians under the authority of the Petrine See please begin calling yourselves not simply "Catholic" but "Roman Catholic?"

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle blog

By Barbara Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life on Amazon

This was RevGalBookPals discussion, hosted by Cathy Knits and Mary Beth.

Despite my earlier excellent intentions to buy or borrow this book, I didn't, so no way will I presume to assume anything about this book itself, but I'll respond to Cathy.

3. One of the ways that the book has influenced me was to encourage me to search for alternative options for obtaining our vegetables. Our family subscribed to a gardening subscription service (community sustained agriculture) in which we receive our vegetables from a organic gardener. It’s one step that we have taken that we found works for us. How has this book changed how you are eating or purchasing food? What alternatives are available in your area?

Now for fun... what is a local food that is unique to your area? For example, grits is a main staple where I live (YOU SHOULD SEE THOSE GRITS FIELDS). For some of you, you may have never eaten it. So.... suppose I came to your place and visited. What would you want me to have that would be a part of your world?

Alternatives in my area include a Saturday Farmer's Market a few streets over; a couple of sort of chain (meaning more than once of each) food stores that both have great produce, but their "natural" brands of packaged and scoop-out-of-the-bin cereals and other grains, etc., are about on a par with the no-name stuff at the 99¢ Only store, which, by the way, is a fabulous source for fresh, inexpensive produce, often in extensive variety. During the berry season I shop there 2x or 3x a week.

Some of my own culinary history includes growing up eating lots of Southern and Midwestern food, and I still love those Americana basics, though nowadays I cook and eat very little of either aside from what someone may bring to a church potluck. As a young undergrad shopping on my own for the first time, I used to be ecstatic whenever I found my favorite fruits and berries in the market out-of-season, but it took me forever to discover they'd been engineered to be long-keepers that could be hauled long distances without spoiling, and I still haven't quite learned flavors and textures from faraway lands usually aren't as irresistible as those locally grown. Pretty much forever I've eaten low on the food chain and can be very happy with lunches of rice and beans; virtually every day I enjoy a basic (rice, beans, pico de gallo and sometimes potato) burrito for lunch or supper. At an informal sit-down restaurant I'll often order a burger, and make a point of announcing it's "my annual burger," though that's just for effect, since I eat more like 2 or 3 per year than just 1, because you can't eat just one.

When you visit this part of the world, I want you to enjoy the avocados that abound in these here parts—I'll make guacamole and a bowl of last Friday 5's 7-layer dip; how about some cheese from Happy Cows and several glasses of inexpensive varietal California wines (white is my preference, though you're welcome to red)?! Mexican culinary influences run high in the Southwest, especially styles and flavors from the northwestern states of Baja California and Sonora, and I'd love for you to feast on a well-stuffed fajita burrito, either on this side or that side of the international border. I really like carne asada, but will be happy to fix vegetarian or pollo instead.

Regarding food and ministry, the church I served on the East Coast had a backyard field, and a couple of apartment-dweller members planted their own gardens. I'd like to see that happening elsewhere, though both that neighborhood and one in High Desert City had community gardens where you could rent a plot for a nominal charge. In terms of current ministry, of course there are potlucks, and one of my current churches hosts a monthly First Saturday Lunch that often includes offerings from member's own gardens. In spite of a relatively short season, Nick, my East Coast friend, grows flowers, veggies and berries, and he's the only person I know of who consistently maintains a compost, something my grandmother always did. My Tucson friend, Carla, who lives in a fairly dense residential area, has at least a dozen, very productive citrus trees and on another note, has a National Wildlife Certified Wildlife Habitat^TM. Thanks, Cathy and MB—now to read the book (and GO, GRITS!).

Good Fences

…The Boundaries of Hospitality, by Caroline A. Westerhoff: this month's RevGalBookPals selection; here's the Amazon link.

This book is a real WOW! for me—one I need to be reading right now for the insights she offers and maybe especially for the affirmations of what I'm trying hard to do in my own life right now. In early September I blogged a little about the gates and boundaries of our local international border, adding some baptismal implications. Related to fences, barriers, boundaries, exclusion and inclusion, over the 5-year life of my theology blog I've written tons of stuff about liminality and the liminal, and won't link to them now. One last thing for this paragraph: several years ago I read another WOW! book, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation, the first volume of Miroslav Volf's free church ecclesiology. Not a quick read, but check it out!

For August's book, Grace (Eventually), I asked:

what on earth is it about book covers with iconic (without a doubt) white (or thereabouts) clapboard church buildings plunked down and settled in amidst verdant Midwestern or New English (doubtless) shade trees? Is there any other possibility?

To get it out of the way, this is another book cover featuring another wood frame building, this time with a white picket fence, but this one's painted gray and trimmed with white, for a look distinguishing it some from the others.

The discussion questions in the back of the book are outstanding, and I trust our discussion facilitator Songbird will offer some good ones. Like our last RevGals book, I could write so much about Good Fences, and it would help me lots to work through the questions, but due to time constraints, I'll try a free blog for today.

In mathematics (at least as far as the level I achieved) you always talk about a line segment rather than a line, because even one that seems to extend into infinity stops somewhere!

I love this hymn:

God Marked a Line and Told the Sea

God marked a line and told the sea
its surging tides and waves were free
to travel up the sloping strand
but not to overtake the land.

God set one limit in the glade
where tempting, fruited branches swayed
and that first limit stands
behind the limits that the law defined.

The line, the limit and the law
are patterns meant to help us draw
a bound between what life requires
and all the things our heart desires.

But discontent with finite powers
we reach to take what is not ours
and then defend our claim by force
and swerve from life's intended course.

We are not free when we're confined
to every wish that sweeps the mind
but free when freely we accept
the sacred bounds that must be kept.

–Thomas Troeger

Chapter 5, Connections, discusses defining our identity and personhood in terms of how we will and won't permit people to act toward us, regarding how we pronounce our names (and inform or not inform the speaker of the right pronunciation)...not only speaking up about the name that connects us with our own life-story and at times with a biological family of origin's history and genealogy, and a slew of related concerns about our place in the church, also speaking up when we're violated by not being heard, being disregarded, belittled or demeaned. Personal limits and communal limits. Caroline (I'll call her and hope I'm pronouncing it right) also insists we need people in our lives who know our social and cultural locations, who care enough about who we are to listen to our stories—in other words, our name, both spoken and spelled.

So many ideas...neighborhood or community? White academic-type liberals still seem fond of referring to "The Black Community," though forever I've responded there is no such thing in any kind of cohesive, definable, recognizable cultural, social or ethnic sense. Anything but! I resonated with her vignette of happening upon an Atlanta neighborhood she didn't know existed because I had a similar experience when I was going somewhere in New Africa, must have gotten lost, and found myself in a desolate-appearing space I'd never seen before, where most of the windows were broken or boarded-up, grass didn't exist, litter, trash and glass was strewn all over, sidewalks and streets were even worse-off than elsewhere in the city, but it seemed totally residential, with scattered random people sitting out on the stoops of the ancient rowhouses and tenement housing.

Living and acting in the Gray Zone, not in the sense of persistent indecision and inaction, but within the frequent ambiguity and usual unfinishedness (here and now—not quite yet) of earthly manifestations of Heaven's Reign. Stories of death, dying and funerals...she's right about their importance, but why do I keep needing to be assured of things almost anyone has learned from experience?? After my mother's passing I drove around for several weeks with her cremains in the car trunk—she'd requested to have them sent out to sea. In fact, she'd also specified no funeral or memorial service, but I trumped that and planned one for Residential Road Beach. Heather drew some flowers for a bulletin cover, Betsy Whatever Her Lastname typed the inside contents I provided, including a pair of scriptures (I have a copy somewhere, but couldn't find it in time to post this) I hastily chose and after the handful of relatives arrived from Hio, they and some neighbors and a few acquaintances gathered on the beach where I greeted them, offered an opening prayer and then each person "shared" (wonderful church, 12-step and group therapy word) a memory of Pat. But later, despite phoning three people I knew would be there with me and for me, I could recruit no one to go to the beach with me and send her cremains out with the tide. This is not something done with a solitary prayer! It needs to be done with prayers, hugs, maybe tears, followed by good food, conversation, and assurances "we're here for you," but no one was there for me or has been there for me since that summer.

Thinking about my experiences of exclusion, those from the church have been most painful, but maybe because they haven't surprised me too much in some sense I've come close to saying it's been okay, which it hasn't been at all. I won't re-count the countless examples here. But inclusion? One of the most stellar but maybe not surprising in the least was the Tongan UMC congregation I was pianist for. Although they were continuing their practice of unaccompanied choral music, they wanted to venture into the American-style of accompanied choral music, and also sing some standard anthems (though translated into Tongan by the choir director...) Almost every week I accompanied their rehearsal, but played for worship only about once a month. After worship we'd have dinner in the fellowship hall or whatever they called it, and then it was back into the sanctuary for testimonies. Why am I writing this? Because they always included me in many of their non-Sunday social events and parties, so different from those people who hadn't experienced living as strangers in a foreign land and different culture. One of the choir members said to me, "We have the gift of music and the gift of food." They also totally possessed the "gift of hospitality," very fully in the Image of the Divinely welcoming and embracing One.

Again for me at this time, Caroline's advice on what voices to hear and heed aligns with what I'd decided to do. Dennis, the spouse of someone I sort of know from one of my churches is a wise and retired house painter. I have the impression he's officially Roman Catholic, but also involved in some alternative Catholic communities. He attends a weekly bible study I've facilitated on both a regular and sporadic basis in the past at Old Condo Shadows. I am so afraid to say anything remotely negative about anyone, but my opinion of that group's usual attendees was anything but high. Dennis expressed some choice, not complimentary opinions of them too, especially their requesting prayers for things like MRIs, safe trips to the grocery store (though with all the folks driving into buildings around here, that seems realistic), etc. After all, the whole world is in pain and they can't see! Dennis and his spouse (a way cool painter who still talks a lot about her Dad the Dead Pastor) and another Dear Woman were in my group of four at the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit. He and I got to talking again, and he informed me what I've told myself 234092830948 times—most of the people in the churches I've tried getting involved with and have done some teaching, preaching and playing at simply do not know where I live, who I am and where I've been and definitely do not care.

To read in a bound book that expecting and needing to find connections when I go to a new situation is not unreal! Truly it's not!

Thanks, Caroline, and thanks, whichever RevGals chose this book.

my Amazon review: edges and inclusions: ours and others

Grace (Eventually) blog

Another feature from RevGalBookPals! For a bunch of reasons, I didn't do the last two, but I've read this month's and plan to blog on September's book, too; in fact, I started reading it before I received this one from Amazon.

Anne Lamott, Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith on Amazon

My first impression was Anne Lamott's easygoing, easily understandable yet wonderfully and thankfully unannoying writing style. A couple times I stopped and tried to deconstruct it some, but decided I'd rather keep reading. Late this afternoon I finished the book, but what on earth is it about book covers with iconic (without a doubt) white (or thereabouts) clapboard church buildings plunked down and settled in amidst verdant Midwestern or New English (doubtless) shade trees? Is there any other possibility?

At first I thought this is kind of coolly about real life, but next I thought, "I think I'm just as clever, brave, honest, mellow (no, not that one yet), wise and perceptive as Ann(i)e Lamott, and I'd love to be published between covers rather than just on a blog screen, too." A week ago, when I read half the book (picking and choosing the next chapter according to how intriguing the title seemed), I kept thinking, "we all are not all that f***ed up, are we? She so seems to be into total depravity! It will take the world 1,000 years to recover from GWB? I thought this book was about grace!" But the further I got, the more I knew she was writing about me, and with such credibility: not only is it an actual printed hard-copy (because after all, so is the National Enquirer), but it's a bound book by a non-sensational author. That rocks!

I may have 2^nd and 3^rd thoughts after posting this blog, but I've been trying to explain my grief, my sense of death, of loss of self, of identity, and my perplexity (better perplexed than depraved?!) to at least a dozen people who apparently believe they have answers for my experiences of these too many years, people who do not know me, my aspirations or my history and who have not been with me at all, beyond an incidental pickup (I'm using "pickup" in the sense of a pickup ball game, or maybe truck, or pickup sticks—but not a Saturday night bar-type pickup) conversation. To introduce the In Circulation section, on page 83 AL quotes Separation (previously unknown to me), by W.S. Merwin (a poet not known to me until now); here's an "about" from the page I linked to:

W. S. Merwin's new and selected poems, Migration, won the 2005 National Book Award for Poetry. His most recent book of translations is Jean Follain's Transference of the World (2003). Both are from Copper Canyon Press.

Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.

That perfectly describes my own experience of emptiness, of being abandoned by life, of wondering why I ever imagined my life soon would have meaning and purpose again and that I'd have an adequate income. I never could have imagined this much loneliness and devastation for this long a time. "They" say make a new normal, and I haven't been able to do so. I am weary of folks in casual interchanges telling me to pay no attention to anything anyone says. Hey, if there's one reason more than another that I'm in this situation, it's that I've constantly disregarded almost everything negative almost everyone ever has said to me or about me. After all, it's a backhanded compliment, they obviously envy me, they very much want me to participate but don't want to exploit me, I need to be patient and wait until they're comfortable with me...

In the Dance Class chapter in the Dance Class section, on page 38, AL insists, "...humans want and need exactly the same thing: to belong, to feel safe and respected...And...dancing almost always turns out to be a good idea." Same chapter, pages 40-41:

I'm not comparing the hardship of being developmentally disabled to that of being an alcoholic or a drug addict, but in dance class, I noticed all sorts of parallels: the off-rhythm gait, the language you can't quite catch, the lack of coordination, the odd affects...the screwed-up relationships or no relationships at all, the not-fitting-in-ness. ...All of us lurch, and fall, sit in the dirt, are helped to our feet, keep moving...help others get back on their feet, and keep going.

But I used to fit in! As Oprah said to a teenaged girl one of the rare times I watched her show, "You know you can't do it [life] on your own, by yourself." Jesus asked the guy by the Bethsaida pool, "Do you want to be healed?" and the guy responded, "Sir! There is no one to pick me up and put me in the pool after the angel stirs the waters." Exactly! Even when I've asked, requested, begged and pleaded...I knew my life and the world around me would regenerate and rebuild, because, after all, is the power of resurrection, of life – of grace – not so incessant, persistent and overwhelming that nothing can block it?! I would hope at the very least God would allow me to become minimally a wounded healer of sorts. From one of those casual conversational exchanges that took place a few weeks ago:

Acquaintance: You keep beating yourself up over the past.
Me: Not in the least—anything but! I'm trying to salvage a life that will make some use of my gifts, education and background.
Acquaintance: But you're disabled!
Me: I am?!?!?
Acquaintance: Yes; it's very obvious.

For maybe the second or third time in my entire life, I was thunderstruck and stuck for words, though long ago I got used to the "What medication are you on?" question in job interviews, with my "none" response usually followed by, "you'd better get some medication if you expect to get a job."

After solemnly deciding to not continue serving professionally in the church, knowing for sure it was the best stewardship of my gifts, education and life, despite telling myself churches of a different (non-local neighborhood, non-working-class, non-struggling mightily to stay above the ground) type would have given me different results, these days I simply do not know. A person cannot be fully human without the interwoven fabric of connectiveness, belongingness, participation, recognition and acknowledgment. Because it's real and alive, it can be torn, tattered, ripped apart, rewoven, mended and appended to other pieces (remnants) of cloth. Call it "being networked!" The friends I'd expected to grow old(er) with have abandoned and deserted me, and I feel I've lost my embeddedness in history. (Oh, I know, church, liturgy and sacraments...but you know!) In the first paragraph of the Wailing Wall chapter, AL writes, (page 25) "You say that we don't have to live alone with out worries and losses, that all the people in their tide pool will be there for them. You say that it totally sucks, and that grace abounds." Turning over to page 26: "...in some inadequate and surprising ways, things will be semi-okay, the way wild flowers spring up at the rock dirt-line where the open-space meadow meets the road, where the ground is not so mean. Just as it's fine to know but not say that anger is good, a bad attitude is excellent, and the medicinal powers of shouting and complaining cannot be overestimated." That sounds a whole lot like a whole lot of my own writing, teaching and preaching, but where is the community with that promise for me? This is a big-time military town, and when I watch the homecomings on TV, I wonder if ever again there will be anything like a homecoming for me, a birthday party, an invitation to a social event? Being welcomed back, enjoying a party other than a church affair, invitations to lunches, dinners and whatevers used to happen to me literally all the time, and I had no reason whatsoever to imagine they wouldn't again, in reasonably due time.

Since I have unfinished blogs about two great concerts I need to work on and that likely will be less painful to write than this one, I'll end with words from Near the Lagoon, 2004, (in the Forgiveness section of the book); Near the Lagoon is about AL's return to the scene of her earlier life after a long time away. Quick quote, page 141: "I almost immediately got a Twilight Zone feeling. First, I was going back to the place from which I had fled, and that is usually a signal to me that something mythical is in the works. And second, instantly a hobgoblin of a man appeared in our path...He asked...'Do you know where you are going?'" And in Ski Patrol, on pages 18-19, toward the book's beginning, AL asserts "...God always hears our cries, and helps, and it's always a surprise to see what form God will take on earth..." Amen, amen!


my Amazon review: you may need to wait a while, but grace will be

Church in the World; church and the world 3

Last week again I facilitated a session of the Theology of the Cross course I originally developed for Lent 2007. We discussed our living as a paradoxically hidden sacramental presence to the world, and I mentioned in passing the concept of neighborology from Water Buffalo Theology. Yes, this class also got handouts with some of my notes from WBT. Does the cross remain an outrageous offense to contemporary sensibilities, sensitivities and logic? I believe it does!

On Lent 5, toward the end of the actual Lenten series, I blogged on this site about geographically, socially, culturally, chronologically, theologically and/or spiritually liminal modes of Christian presence and asked if our presence in the world and in our neighborhoods can be a liminal, in the process of becoming, though not-quite-yet one? Partly in our own world and way, partly in theirs, and wholly in the sovereignty of heaven?

I've been trying to listen carefully and comment selectively to what people say about worship style and content; the friends with whom I attended Saturday evening worship at Rancho Bernardo Pres said something about people getting confused by "ritual." That's understandable, so how about an occasional instructed liturgy? It doesn't need to be highly detailed or elaborate, but if people learn to appreciate the origins and intent of what we do during worship, it would help worship become more meaningful to them.

Here are a few more sort of paraphrases from my old blog(s):

The synagogue's and later the church's liturgy developed and became shaped in ways that address, interact with and speak to our human condition and demonstrate God's response to creation's need. In Hebrew history, the past acts of God gave Israel confidence about the future and willingness to continue in covenantal partnership with God; because they knew about God's past faithfulness, they could face the future with a living hope. Israel persistently kept recalling and re-membering her history with the God of the Covenants with rituals, celebrations and liturgies; within a context that was play more than it was anything else, Israel told and retold the story of creation's experience with God. Like God's primal people Israel, in our worship we, the contemporary people of God, remember who God is, who we are, God's redemptive actions, and we announce our dreams and hopes for the future. Not only is much of our liturgy in the present, just as play is—like children's playtime and the various play endeavors of adults, worship also creates a new and different self-contained world existing alongside of and within our everyday world.

Similar to play, and parallel to our dreams, worship ends the dichotomy we often make between material and spiritual. When we play, when we dream, when we worship, we live fully in the present—creative, responsive, and responsible. Being Christian means to live precariously in the interplay between two worlds, just as Jesus lived. As God's children we will be completely free and alive without constraints some day, and our playful attitudes and our liturgies are the first fruit, the guarantee that finally we will end up in God's image, since it is God's indwelling Spirit that makes possible our play, our dreams, our celebrations.

In worship, and especially when we celebrate a baptism or the Eucharist, we carry with us beyond the worshiping assembly and beyond the church building a microcosm of a redeemed world; we become a living and a life-giving memory of God's actions in history, especially in Christ Jesus, as the Holy Spirit calls and enables us, Jesus again becomes alive in the world and we become sacraments mediating between God in Christ and the world. We offer the world a living connection to the heaven of God's Reign on earth, living as visible, tangible signs of God-with-us, God-for-us, God-among-us—maybe especially as we practice neighborology, the word about the neighbor?!

Velvet Elvis blog 2

Another from another RevGalBookPals book discussion

My own Velvet Elvis Blog 1

Michael Krahn linked me to his Velvet Elvis series... I'm planning to visit soon, and all the RevGals' comments have been thoughtful. I esp appreciate Songbird's observation that Sabbath-keeping is a week-long endeavor. During Lent 2004 I participated in a REAL discussion of Lauren Winner's Mudhouse Sabbath (finally out in paperback! Yay!) Velvet Elvis and the RevGals' thread makes me want to go back and reread it.

ReverendMother blogged,

It’s also a little unfortunate as a title because, as a professor told me in seminary, “Don’t ever give someone a reason not to listen to you.” The hip typeface and panoply of cover designs probably make it more marketable and appealing to people who wouldn’t give two hoots about Calvin’s Institutes...

I’m willing to forgive the kitsch and the hipness, though, because fundamentally, this book wasn’t really written for me. It seems to be written for people outside the church—people who may be intrigued by Jesus a great deal, it’s just “his family” that they have a problem with.

This second blog about the book most properly belongs on my "other" long blog, this far by faith, but 1) I need blog fodder and 2) I'm attempting to risk a little more public self-revelation and openness, so here it is.

In most ways this is a book for outsiders, but my insiderness has become too, too strained and painful; though in the past I've spent a lot of time reading theology (full meal type books, not exactly "snacks"), I'm truly exhausted on every level, and despite acknowledging many people have considered me a threat and have been just plain rude to me, even the ones who have been polite and welcoming have no clue where I live socially, culturally or theologically (hey, even people who've been in bible studies I've facilitated). So for me, it's high time for a sea change, and that means getting beyond concerns of polity, connectedness and ecumenical relatedness to the fundamental fact I'm useless to everyone as long as I'm not getting my own needs (gasp!) met, and my needs include using my gifts, education and skills to a reasonable extent if I'm to be reasonably whole, not to mention finding social opps with people who are aware of who I am and where I've been and who appreciate my uniqueness, whether or not they "get it."

Pastor Rob Bell cites the usual wisdom that one needs to hit the bottom before being able to change, rebuild, whatever...but my current situation isn't about having hit bottom at all. While the Cedar Fires I referenced in my other blog blazed away, as with my neighbors I considered what I'd take with me if we needed to evacuate (besides the obvious cats and some clothes), my choices were my very well-marked RSV (the first bible I ever owned), my academic transcripts and my letters of call.

I'd been so goal oriented, so disciplined, so sure I couldn't lose. For me, it wasn't facing my brokenness nearly as much as it was encountering my fallibility. Like everyone, I'd failed zillions of times, but finally, no matter how many new beginnings I made none of them bore fruit. I've sensed such an overwhelming loss of self; when someone loses a family member or close friend due to physical death or absence, people gather around them and support them. Is there no one for me? In the conventional mainline churches, maybe not.

I'm wondering if I dare blog this publicly, but for some reason I no longer trust myself. Walter Brueggemann says "bright, skilled educated people are valued and sought-after"; he also says there are people sitting in the pews feeling nullified (by life? by the church? by family, spouses, by whomever, I'd imagine). As I insisted some time ago, "These things don't happen in First- and Second-World countries." They happen to everyone occasionally, but what on earth and in the Name of Heaven has this been all about? Does it continue to be about?

Hospitality is God's first call to the people of God and fundamentally defines them. From the beginning, the uniqueness of the nascent church as it moved outward from Jerusalem was 1) its radical inclusivity and 2) "see how they love one another." No one lacked anything; everyone had everything in common, a true common-wealth, as the New England Puritans initially believed they'd be able to live. But it was not only about embrace and provision for the already-insiders; the first Christians embraced and provided for everyone, making no distinctions whatsoever. Just as "God is not partial," they "were not partial." The outsider became incarnate, enfleshed as one of them, becoming an insider. These past years, I went into one church after another, no longer someone called or employed by the church, but as a stranger, an alien, like Abram an Ivri, a Hebrew—one from the other side. One in the image of the Divine, of God from the very other side. In every case, I came bearing gifts, and it stills blows me way out of the water to think one person after another would dare not accept my otherness as a gift. The human insecurity doesn't amaze me in the least, but the blatant chutzah still does.

Back to Velvet Elvis and the mainline church. Sunday was the PCUSA's annual Pentecost Offering for at-risk children and youth. I love the Pentecost Offering and I love the justice and advocacy ministries all the mainline (Prot and RC) are doing. I grew up in a blighted, decaying very inner-city neighborhood, attending a crummy urban high school, and originally intended to become a social worker.

But on my first Velvet Elvis blog, Diane commented, "does the word "mainline" just mean 'boring, non-pentecostal, 9-5, hierarchical, set-in-their-ways', can't discern the wind of the spirit even if it is a hurricane? Maybe we need a new name..."

Finding a new name or not, as we've often observed, the old mainline now longer is the central or most prominent expression of Christianity in this country, and most fortunately, being a mainline protestant no longer is a given part of being American. Unlike the whistle-stop, sideline or spurline, but similar to the railroad passenger mainline of old and paralleling today's AmTrak (sometimes I watch the slick, California AmTrak in its glossiness slide through this town of San Diego, often called "Paradise" by the weather forecasters, and I think, yep, that's mainline). I'd say yes, indeed, maybe in too many ways mainline retains its original connotation of cultural Christianity, both from the old Philadelphia mainline that was exclusively and solely Episcopal and Presbyterian but later embraced other churches that were staid and pretty stoic in style, like Lutheran and UCC...a few months ago I got a possibly true email forward about a seminary professor beginning a lecture on Pneumatology when a student charged into the classroom in ghost-buster regalia, causing the professor to remark, "Typical Presbyterian response: extinguish the Spirit!" Of course—could've been any other polite denomination. During the years I actually served as a [Lutheran] church musician, the Assistant Pastor's wife nursed their baby in one of the front pews most Sundays during the early service. One outspoken woman informed us she was going to begin attending the Episcopal Church, because it was "a dignified church." I wanted to scream, "But was Jesus dignified?!"

Then there's that other use of mainline, to shoot a drug into your veins. Mainline a hit of Jesus straight into your veins, so the blood of Jesus courses through your entire being? Think about it!

End of blog 2.

repainting into a new reformation?—my amazon review

Velvet Elvis blog

Sunday the Day of Pentecost 2007

This was part of a RevGalBookPals discussion.

Monday (technically, but they've announced they'll post the discussion this afternoon) will be the third book discussion—this time it's Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith by Rob Bell. I said Christianity for the Rest of Us gave me hope; this book gives me a kick in the butt while affirming what I've been trying to tell other people and trying to convince myself for the past few years. I finished reading Velvet Elvis late Thursday afternoon, and for this (maybe first?) blog I'm writing out of my head (literally, most likely) and heart. After reading what the other RevGals have to say, maybe I'll blog again in response.

Rob Bell is founding pastor and current pastor of Mars Hill Church in Grandville, Michigan. A few year later as I edit this post, I've unlinked to the church's Narrative Theology Statement because I don't know what's going on there and finding out does not interest me.

Just as a Velvetized Version of Elvis is an interpretive repainting, repainting the Church into a new look and new vision forms the basic idea behind this book. In Christianity for the Rest of Us I found hope about the Protestant Mainline; Velvet Elvis tells me my hope may be outside mainline confines. On page 11 he mentions the picture the church of Martin Luther's day had been painting and presenting. Regarding these 21st century days, oh, I know a lot about the picture the church has painted of itself and maybe even moreso, the way outsiders to the church have viewed and interpreted that picture. Page 14: "What I do know is that this pursuit of Jesus is leading us backward as much as forward," that evokes the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, the way the Roman branch of the church says along with us "reformed and always reforming" plus the numerous 19th century Restoration Movements with the plethora of churches and church bodies they spawned.

A few thoughts from pastor/author Rob Bell:

• Page 10, about artists who don't sign their entire names, "Because when you're this good, you don't even have to write your whole name." Exactly God's situation and position!

• Page 13: it's not about making (photo?)copies of the same picture over and over again.

• I love his citing some of my favorite (not!) experiences: the person who is so into scripture yet insists on her own personal Jesus that lives in her heart; the individual who decides to find out "what the Bible really says" after reading a slew of commentaries and interpretations.

• And I love the way Rob Bell talks about experiences of life coming together when the moment is full and complete—if even for a split second; he calls those times "Holy ground"; I love the way that phrase implies heaven come down to earth raised up to heaven.

• Rob Bell tells us he doesn't do 9-5 office jobs well, that he is creative. That's my story, too—I can do routine jobs like cleaning, etc., but whatever the content of the office work, it pretty much kills me, although there have been a scant handful of exceptions.

• I love his discussion of Christian needing always to be a noun rather than an adjective—I read the same in at least one of Robert Farrar Capon's books, and the idea probably isn't original with either of them, but it long has driven me nuts hearing people talk about a Christian this, Christian that or a not-Christian whatever.

• Maybe more than anything about this book, I love reading the same theological vision and scriptural interpretations as I hold (humility from humble moi) from Rob Bell, someone I'd consider a relative theological conservative.

The book's author cites the usual wisdom that one needs to hit the bottom before being able to change, rebuild, whatever. Yes, but—in my experience, you can't do it alone. As Oprah told a teenage girl on one of her shows I watched two or three years ago, "You know you can't do this [life] by yourself." Jesus asked the guy by the Bethsaida pool, "Do you want to be healed?" The guy answered, "Sir! There is no one to pick me up and put me in the pool after the angel stirs the waters." Exactly!

Recently I've been remembering the devastating, generally extremely destructive Cedar fires we experienced in this general area during fall 2003. "We experienced" because the sky, filled with soot and smoke from relatively far away, turned into a range of unusual colors and the sun became dark. But not all that long after the Cedar Fires finally stopped being a constant topic of local and national news and face-to-face discussion, one of the weather reporters showed us the plants and flowers that were sprouting and growing in the fire's wake; he reminded us some plants can't germinate and won't grow at all unless they're touched, seared and transformed by fire! And doesn't that describe every one of us?

Rob Bell mentions how a garden naturally becomes a city when life goes the way and grows the way God created it to. I hadn't thought of that inevitability! I think of what a weed I've been, too, but that's one reason I've survived and definitely thrived in many cases!

Today is Pentecost Sunday 2007; I know in my head and especially in my heart that I can retain some involvement with the mainline church(es) that had been a gift to me and that had called me a gift, but I also need radical trust that the Reforming, Renewing Pentecostal Spirit of Resurrection will start repainting my life and world really soon. I am so excited about going wherever the Spirit calls me and carries me!

repainting into a new reformation?—my amazon review

Christianity for the Rest of Us 3

Christianity for the Rest of Us: How the Neighborhood Church Is Transforming the Faith, by Diana Butler Bass.


Christianity for the Rest of Us Blog 1

Christianity for the Rest of Us Blog 2

As I previously blogged, this subject is close to my heart and central to the needs of most of us in the protestant mainline; this book gives me so much hope! The RevGals' basic consensus was like mine—this book gives all of us hope! I love the RevGals' passion for unity in diversity, too. Just like mine!

A sudden memory inspired this third blog on this book...

Probably within the past ten years, but likely at the far end of that number, one of the national news magazines – Time, Newsweek or U.S. News – had an extensive cover feature on the American Protestant Mainline. It's been a while since I subscribed to any of those (mainline) mags, but I seem to recall purchasing a copy on the newsstand, so maybe I still have it somewhere. They featured the same denominations as Christianity for the Rest of Us, with the addition of Baptists – of which they said "there are many," but I believe most of the Baptist churches in the study were from the liberal American Baptist Convention-USA, headquartered in Valley Forge Pennsylvania. (You can find direct links to the other study denomination links in my Blog 1.) The news mag article(s) described local churches very similar to those DBB describes, and I remember the striking phrase, "Any of these churches is a wonderful place to be!"

Clearly I'm still in lots of pain over the too many times I'd been excluded from participation in churches over the past too many years, but I'm always saying things like, "I'm not claiming any of this remotely is my fault, because no matter how I parse it, people have been just plain rude and just plain considered me a threat." However, my segue to that and similar statements usually is something like, "A huge part of the answer is these have been the wrong kinds of churches." By that I'm not saying any of these mainline or whatever or whichever has been theologically erroneous or otherwise not appropriate, but the social and cultural settings haven't been where reasonably I could expect my abilities and background to be appreciated and exploited. It offends my still sometimes working-class sensibilities, but despite the fact there always would be exceptions, a church in the Harvard Square or UC Berkeley environs would have been very different with a radically differing outcome in terms of their welcoming (and yes, exploiting) my gifts and regular participation.

In my second blog I'd intended to mention how much I loved the concept of people and groups being politically neither Blue nor Red but Purple, and how I love the implications of early Christians adopting the royal color purple for radical, subversive usage and intent in seeking to follow The Way. In that era in that part of the world, only royals were allowed to wear purple; remember Lydia from Thyatira we read about in Acts 16? Lydia's story happens right after Timothy joins up with Paul and Silas and just before Paul and Silas end up in prison; the entire passage is magnificently evocative:

Acts 16

¹³ On the Sabbath we went outside the city gate to the river, where we expected to find a place of prayer. We sat down and began to speak to the women who had gathered there. ¹⁴ One of those listening was a woman named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth from the city of Thyatira, who was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul's message. ¹⁵ When she and the members of her household were baptized, she invited us to her home. "If you consider me a believer in the Lord," she said, "come and stay at my house." And she persuaded us. NIV

On the Sabbath, expecting to "find a place of prayer" at the river, they also found a place for baptism, where people formally could separate from former allegiances and lords, and officially be baptized into the reign of heaven on earth under the Lordship of the crucified and risen Jesus Christ—a Lord at once both royal and subversive! Lydia, the first European Christian was a woman, and one who "dealt in" clothing for kings but dared publicly sign onto the subversive lifestyle of the followers of Jesus Christ. In that era of the nascent church, Christianity provided a radically alternative perspective: politically to the point of sedition and socially to the extent of welcoming and actually including all comers. Lydia, newly-baptized and a merchant who routinely interacted with high and mighty royalty, knew God called her to hospitality and community.

Here's the 1st Peter scripture from Blog 1:

1 Peter 2:9-10

But you are a chosen, elect people (birthed, descended), a royal priesthood, a holy nation (ethnic), a people (folk) belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people (folk), but now you are the people (folk) of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

The end of another incomplete blog (what else is new), but here it is, nonetheless.

By Leah, baptized into Jesus Christ and hoping to find a church that's a wonderful place to be.

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