poetry party 30

poetry party 30 – wings/taking flight
About twice a month, Christine Valters Paintners from Abbey of the Arts has a poetry party. This time I'm posting here and on this far by faith, my testimony blog where I usually participate in the poetry parties (and where I typically play Friday 5). As always, Christine hints at a possible focus and direction:

"In the US, today is of course Martin Luther King, Jr. day ...And tomorrow is Inauguration Day... So I invite you to enter into the image below. ...Write a poem about the process or the moment, or perhaps in honor of the significance of this day or tomorrow. (Photo taken at St. Bart’s church in NYC last spring)"

the angel
an ev-angelical
a messenger
"good newser"
announces fear not
to us has arrived a God-spell
a whispered do not be afraid
lift every voice and sing
our new day begins!

Losing Moses on the Freeway

Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord and all the ordinances; and all the people answered with one voice, and said, "All the words that the Lord has spoken we will do." —Exodus 24:3

Now behold, one came and said to Jesus, "Good Teacher, what good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life?" So Jesus said to him, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but One, that is, God. But if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments." —Matthew 19:16-17

The way we know we've been transferred from death to life is that we love our brothers and sisters. Anyone who doesn't love is as good as dead. —1 John 3:14

Blessed are those who do his commandments, that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter through the gates into the city. Revelation 22:14

from the baptismal liturgy:

"In Christian love you have presented these children for Holy Baptism. You should, therefore, faithfully bring them to the services of God's house, and teach them the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, and the Ten Commandments. As they grow in years, you should place in their hand the Holy Scriptures..."

A few days ago I serendipitously happened to buy a book by former New York Times foreign correspondent Chris Hedges; it's Losing Moses on the Freeway: The 10 Commandments in America, and in the author's story I recognize major parts of my own journey. In the prologue, author Chris Hedges explains God gave us the Sinai Covenant, the commandments, in order to enable and sustain community—"They [the commandments] were for the ancients, and are for us, the rules that, when honored, hold us together and when dishonored lead to alienation, discord and violence."

Chris Hedges opens the first chapter, Mystery, with his experience as a young seminarian serving a people and a church in the inner-city Boston neighborhood of Roxbury; its normative violence and human degradation, crumpling, decaying physical infrastructure, pervasive aura of wastedness and death amounted to a setting previously unknown (and probably unimagined) by him. On page 10 he calls it ghetto, and I'll define "ghetto" as any place - whether financially affluent or impoverished, ethnically and socially self-described or characteristically anything else - where nothing much goes in or out of that wasn't there the day before. By not interfacing with or even seeing people and ideas "other than" my own and my own kind, I fail to appreciate my uniqueness or even my identity.

On page 18 Hedges, son of a pastor, admits in words essentially identical to what I've said and written dozens of times over the past few years, "The church was part of my daily rhythm. I look at the world through the eyes it gave me." And also parallel to my experience he says, "But I also knew the church's dark side, its self-righteous smugness, its crushing piety, the way it used religion to exalt itself and how it often masked human cruelty behind the quest for virtue and piety." [page 19] To that I'll add the petty viciousness, self-centeredness, and destructiveness of both local and judicatorial church politics.

I relate closely to the author's anger as he chronicles [page 11] smashing a glass bottle against the front door of the church building as "...an ending, a final conclusion to a life spent in the powerful and claustrophobic embrace of the church. It is meant to be a break from God. But you trade one god for another. This is how life works. We all have gods."

For myself, the unanticipated separation from full participation in the church to which I'd devoted years of my life and that had played a central role in shaping my goals, lifestyle, and my entire worldview is like experiencing my own death.

On page 11 Hedges says we circle back to the origins our our lives, "if not to embrace it then to understand how it shaped us, to examine with less heat and anger our marks and scars." I'm still examining the mosaic in order to find my place, just as I try to discern ways I've helped create it as it has created and recreated me.

On page 175 the author wisely reminds us "They [the commandments] do not call us to practice total self-abnegnation, empowering others, as I did at first in Roxbury, to abuse us. They call us rather toward mutual respect and mutual self-sacrifice." In words from a pastor with whom I worked alongside, "God calls us to serve, but not to be walked all over." To illustrate his advice of setting (physical, in this case) boundaries so you won't be broken and violated, Hedges gives the example of Martin Luther King, Jr. walking from Montgomery to Memphis with a detachment from the National Guard. [pages 29-30]

From the Holy Communion liturgy in the Book of Common Prayer:

God spake these words, and said:

I am the Lord thy God who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have none other gods but me.

Lord have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law.

Examine your lives and conduct by the rule of God's commandments, that you may perceive wherein you have offended in what you have done or left undone, whether in thought, word, or deed. ...

Ye who do truly and earnestly repent you of your sins, and are in love and charity with your neighbors, and intend to lead a new life, following the commandments of God, and walking from henceforth in his holy ways: Draw near with faith, and make your humble confession to Almighty God, devoutly kneeling.

Like the Israelites formed in the searing heat and God's minimal yet faithful supply of the exodus desert, we are above all a people, a nation. In Lord's Day, Sunday, Sabbath worship we retell, re-enact in baptism and the Eucharist and reclaim the meta-narrative of our deliverance from death into life, of Jesus' death and resurrection. Although sometimes I think I loved the Church more than I loved Jesus, after beginning really to hear my story, someone asked me why on earth I'd remained in the church at all and I replied, "This is where I find the sacraments!"

As I wrote in the class handout for class 4 of the Theology of the Cross series I developed and facilitated during Lent 2007 and the following summer, Theologian Jürgen Moltmann describes baptism as "sign, witness, representation and illumination of the Christ Event" and we can claim the same about the Eucharist. We also know Martin Luther did not understand sola scriptura – "Word Alone" outside of grace alone and Christ alone. The sacraments are actions of the entire Church in every place and time. Do they belong to Jesus? Yes, of course, but Jesus uniquely charges and authorizes his followers with continuing his life-giving action in baptism and the Lord's Supper.

In the Love chapter: "But by giving up parts of ourselves for others, by accepting that we must be willing to lose life to create and preserve life, we honor the core of the commandments. The commandments hold out to us the possibility of love." [page 173] Chris Hedges [page 174]: "The covenant offered by the commandments, the covenant of life, is the covenant of love. It is a covenant that recognizes that all life is sacred and love is the force that makes life together possible. ... But it is never too late to turn back. Atonement permits a new way of being. It calls us to life." [pages 173-175] We are people of Maundy Thursday, who have been given and who have received Jesus' New Commandment, the mandate of love faithful unto death; by faith and in the Spirit we have infinite access to Jesus Christ's atonement for the buying back, the redemption, for the life of all creation.

To quote Moltmann again, "Nomadic religion is a religion of promise!" John the gospel-writer tells us God makes tabernacle, a portable temporary shelter, "pitches a tent" with us, traveling essentially unencumbered so as to be able to pick up easily to continue the journey alongside creation. Like Jesus of Nazareth, we are created in the very image of God, both fully human and completely divine and claim our Divine Nature until the human and divine hardly can be distinguished from each other.

Then Moses took the book of the covenant, and read it in the hearing of the people; and they said, "All that the Lord has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient." —Exodus 24:7

The Hebrew bible witnesses to God among us in tabernacle and temple, in the prophets and in the people. Doing The Word, "Performing the Scriptures": The Word made Flesh—doing the Word? Try simply being the Word, God's gracious, unmediated presence? Jesus and us! Losing Moses on the Freeway... people in vehicles move fast on freeways and on toll roads, too, and they tend to travel by themselves and distracted by media. In any case, it's not an optimal situation for observing a neighbor's needs or for slowing down enough to respond to anyone else's situation or recognizing one's own needs, either. Every day the implied give-and-take of "conversations" in Gmail strikes me as a possibility of moving away from anonymity and alienation to being known and connected.

In the Idols chapter about the band Phish Chris Hedges observed, "The experience of belonging to the crowd appeared to give to followers a new, vibrant community, even as it destroyed community." [page 45] But baptized into the reconciling Christ event, we no longer live under the reign of death, its idols and its artifacts, but in the alternative community countering individualisms of covetousness, greed, commoditization, consumption, superfluity and (ultimately) despair.

Here we will take the wine and the water;
here we will take the bread of new birth,
here you shall call your sons and your daughters,
call us anew to be salt for the earth.

Give us to drink the wine of compassion;
give us to eat the bread that is you;
nourish us well, and teach us to fashion
lives that are holy and hearts that are true.

Marty Haugen, Here in This Place/Gather Us In, © 1982 GIA Publications, Inc.
my Amazon review: law that binds; commands that free

tagged by Brent...

An embarrassingly long time ago Brent Bill tagged me and introduced this meme challenge by explaining:

My friend and fellow blogger Shawna "meme'd" me and so I'm trying the same thing back at her -- and including you. I looked up "meme" in Wikipedia, and got completely and totally lost. So I reread Shawna's post and thought, well, maybe I can do this and so, here goes....

Meme "rules:"

1. Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.
4. Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
5. Present an image of martial discord (as in "war," not as in "marriage") from whatever period or situation you’d like.

Brent's tag reminds me well that I picked up on a pair of ideas from Shawna's main blog way back last summer and have yet to finish blogging them, but meanwhile, here's Brent's post: Is a meme as annoying as a mime? Finally, here's my 7, though I'm not convinced any of them are weird except I decided to include numbers in all of them and given that everyone in the blogosphere probably has played or declined an invitation to play, consider yourself tagged and invited and let me know if you do.

1. I love the number 5 and multiples of 5

2. I've lived in 3 parsonages

3. I hope for countless, innumerable – try 999,999,999 - tomorrows for everyone, for Jubilee Justice for all creation and for peace in our time

4. I've attended 5 professional schools: music; social work; divinity; biz (mini-MBA in entrepreneurship) and design

5. My 2 favorite jobs were about food: writing restaurant reviews for the local radical rag and working as a line chef at a semi-high end restaurant

6. I've moved house at least 20 times

7. I have 2 particular theological interests: ecological theology and liturgical theology

For an image of martial discord I'll cite too many local church and judicatory meetings I've experienced.

grace in (fluff)land

(fluff) Friends have become a huge Facebook favorite for quite a few. These virtual critters (mostly animals, a few foods like radish and tofu) are friendly, social, generous, energetic gourmet types. I've adopted a leppit and named him WildSpirit; leppits look like rabbits but have trouble pronouncing rabbit. However, "leppit" is close enough to Lepus the hare the meaning shouldn't be confounding.

(fluff) Friends developers keep busy offering new events (keep busy endlessly writing code) that recently have included a pirate ship treasure hunt, Halloween trick or treat and most recently, Christmas stockings and gifts. Around presidential election time in the USA, there was an exciting couple of weeks of (fluff) elections, so people ran around casting votes for each others critters. According to the way participants interpreted (fluff) press releases, the top vote-getter would become (fluff) president and receive perks like seal, podium, white house, (fluff) force jet and related. Runners-up would become ambassadors, secretary of (fluff) fence, vice-fluff and similarly influential political positions. Given the common perception that whoever got the most votes would win, everyone cast their hourly votes and waited for the outcome.

However, after the (fluff) polls closed and (fluff) owners went to check on election results, it turned out everyone had won the position of president! In other words, there was nothing anyone could have done to make the results any different, either any better or any worse: election results turned out to be an undeserved, unmediated gift of grace. I've no clue as to the history and background of any of the (fluff) developers, but this was yet another example of the world outside of the Church "getting it" more correctly than the world inside the Church. Just sayin'...

Nativity 2008

With its retrospect and prospect of judgment, repentance, renewal, redemption and hope, Advent 2008 is past; the Feast of the Nativity and the season of Christmas have arrived! In the Bethlehem manger we meet God surprisingly come to earth amidst darkness and cold, pleased to share our common lot...of huge casino payoffs, sunny endless summers, mega-mansions and financially prosperous career tracks? Surely job layoffs, bankruptcies, brokenness, alienation, urban decay, ecological degradation, disillusionment, mining disasters, organizational disarticulation, loneliness and betrayal are far more customary than what the world typically covets and deems success, so God enters history in the thick of human need and in human need, too...

Yahweh's people Israel called the desert manna "Bread of Heaven," and for forty years of peregrinations it nourished and sustained them. In chapter 6, John the evangelist calls Jesus born in Bethlehem, Little Town of House of Bread, Bread of Heaven and Bread from Heaven, and because of Jesus' touching everyday lives with God's love in the commonest essentials of creation, today we have living manna blessed and broken, given and shared to sustain, to nourish, to mend and to heal.

But for you who revere my name the Sun of Righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall. Malachi 4:2, NRSV

As we ponder the witness of scripture and discern God's call daily to live as his Presence, we discover a constant interplay of theological realities and current cultural inclinations; you can't contextualize the gospel into a culture you're not familiar with! Right along that vein, recognizing Jesus Christ as Sun of Righteousness reflects the Mithric feast of the Unvanquished Sun that in turn came into imperial Rome through evolution and syncretism.

The first two songs on this list made it into a special Christmas edition of RevGalBlogPals Musical Musings and you might like to check out some of the other wonderful suggestions. I'm also bringing a mostly musical Christmas greeting for this year!

First, lyrical beauty from Amy Grant, "I Need a Silent Night" by Chris Eaton and Amy Grant

I've made the same mistake before
Too many malls, too many stores...

And the angels said fear not for behold
I bring you good news of a great joy that shall be for all people
For unto you is born this day a Savior, who is Christ the Lord
And his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Prince of Peace

I need a silent night, a holy night
To hear an angel voice through the chaos and the noise
I need a midnight clear, a little peace right here

To end this crazy day with a silent night

With our frequent multitasking and sensory overload, still we realize we need the kind of peace only the Son of Peace can bring us, yet at times we imagine we can buy it rather than awaiting it as gracious gift; nonetheless, the Savior's birth arrives again and brings along with it an end of fear and the song of the angels, messengers of gospeled good news, and we receive a silent night conclusion to this particular chaotically noisy crazy day (and to tomorrow's craziness, too).

I really discovered "Valley Winter Song" by Fountains of Wayne on a December LLBean commercial and even found a very appropriate, sepia-toned Winter in New England video:


This song evokes the New England winters I've experienced and endured, with their gray, salted, slushy snow, wind chill temps below zero, trying to write papers, anticipating final exams, Lessons and Carols at Harvard's Memorial Church, house parties with eggnog and hot spiced glögg along with the assurance "summer's coming soon" because the winter solstice is finally here, coming "to those who wait"...what else to do but to bring to you a creative gift, a valley winter song?

You know the summer's coming soon

Though the interstate is choking under salt and dirty sand
And it seems the sun is hiding from the moon

And the snow is coming down
On our New England town
And it's been falling all day long
What else is new
What could I do
I wrote a valley winter song
To play for you

Faith Hill, "Where Are you, Christmas?"

Where are you Christmas
Why can't I find you
Why have you gone away...
My world is changing
I'm rearranging
Does that mean Christmas changes, too...

Christmas still is here, after all, as God constantly comes into the world, into each of our worlds, often in hidden not always immediately apparent sacramental ways, reminding us God is there if only we will look and often surprises us before we even think to seek God, because the God of Jesus Christ graces with unmediated Presence...and unanticipated presents.

Next, full tilt boogie with Sheryl Crow and Eric Clapton, "Merry Christmas, Baby"

Feeling mighty fine, living in Paradise, lit up with gifts of creation (diamonds!) and light of the unvanquished Son of Righteousness...around 3:30 a.m., amidst deepest darkness the gifts of Christmas surreptitiously and surprisingly arrived in my very own dwelling, so "Merry, merry, merry, merry Merry Christmas, baby..."

Also via John chapter 6, Jesus calls himself the real manna from heaven, and promised anyone who ate that Heavenly Bread of Life never would be hungry, would live forever and never die! In revelation about the Logos, the chapter 1 "Prologue" to John's gospel identifies Jesus as the Word, the verb, God's action! The infant Jesus in the Bethlehem manger is the Word of Life, Jesus is the Bread of Life, Jesus is our manna and the entire world's manna. So finally for this Christmas, Amy Grant sings a rockin' "Little Town" with an unconventional melody that's neither St. Louis nor Forest Green along with tangy instrumentation:

"Little Town"

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year 2009, World!

PS Due to YT vids coming and going, I've been deleted all YT links in this blog but keeping the song titles so you can find your own.

advent 1, advent 2

Advent 1

This has been an Advent full of hope! We're again in Revised Common Lectionary year B, and this time my own journey started out with a jazz-tinged eucharistic liturgy at one of the Big First Churches here in Paradise, First United Methodist, though this one's in the Valley rather than Downtown. As Pastor Molly Vetter responded on Facebook to my asking if we'd be hearing the Isaiah passage that's the 1st lection for Advent 1B and one of my very favorites, of course--and Mark's little apocalypse, too: jazz, prophecy, and apocalyptic go together so very well! From Isaiah 64:1-9:

64:¹O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence— ²as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil— to make your name known to your adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at your presence! ³When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence. ⁴From ages past no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who works for those who wait for him.

Abram was an Ivri, a Hebrew, one from the other side. In Jesus we meet God from the exceedingly other side as God tears open the gates of heaven and comes to earth, permanently obliterating boundaries and distinctions between holy and mundane and confirming the covenant between heaven and earth. It's interesting we identify Abraham as our progenitor in faith, because both Old Covenant and New Covenant people of God form a gathered assembly and the solitary individual before God is the anomaly, the a-nomen, the "other than" the law rather than the general rule, yet scripture and history in general are replete instances of God claiming, calling and enabling a particular individual to a distinctive, transformative endeavor.

Regarding God incarnate in our midst, last week at The Rising we watched part of a DVD that reminded us 1) Joseph and Mary trekked to Bethlehem because Joseph was from Bethlehem and likely still had relatives there; 2) no, Jesus was not born in "straw poverty" (though I love that expression I heard a couple of Nativity seasons ago), Jesus was born as what a recent bank commercial would call a "regular guy," someone who "shared our common lot," in the words of the UCC Statement of Faith.

Regarding the otherness aspect of Abraham as the prototypical person of God in being from the other side (of the hills, of this city, of mainstream culture, supremely from the other side of death), what does God's incarnation in the baby in the manger, the Nazarene carpenter and the cross of Calvary show us about us? Paraphrasing Jeremiah 22:15-16, Jesus ate and drank (no ascetic!) and did justice and righteousness, and it was well with him (and better with the world)...this not only is what it means to know God, but to be like God!


Advent 2

Sunday afternoon of Advent 2, featured another unforgettable liturgical event; this time it was the festival of Lessons and Carols in Founder's Chapel at nearby University of San Diego, and an exceptionally worthy piece of preparation for God's birth in our very midst, "fulfillment beyond all human reckoning," as one of the worship leaders described it.

To call this experience perfect is a huge understatement! For the prelude music choir and orchestra exulted with Pergolesi's Magnificat, then more than a dozen (I didn't distract myself by counting) people jubilantly processed into the worship space with "On this Day, Earth Shall Ring," in an arrangement by the illustrious Alice Parker (I attended her hymn sing workshop at 1st UMC a couple months ago). Standard scripture selections, etc., and the gospel procession…

Back in City of History, after an Easter Vigil several of us attended, when I asked the senior pastor I'd served with his opinion of that congregation's liturgical style (I had my own opinions, of course), he replied he did not care for the gospel procession because it elevated The Book too much. But the gospel procession at the Lessons and Carols was something else altogether as it demonstrated and celebrated how God comes into human history to live as one of us so we can touch, see, smell, taste, and hear evidence of God among us; this gospel procession on Advent 2 appealed to and teased all our senses.

We had incense during the opening processional, the closing recessional and to accentuate the proclamation of the Word of Life. A couple of advents ago I asked "Is God among us not a Hallelujah moment?" Yes, a time for singing multiple responses of "Yahweh be praised" as we heard the gospel text. Finally, the recessional song was a West Indian Spiritual proclaiming...

The Virgin Mary Had a Baby Boy

The Virgin Mary had a baby boy,
The Virgin Mary had a baby boy,
The Virgin Mary had a baby boy,
And they say that his name is Jesus.

Refrain:

He came from the glory,
He came from the glorious kingdom.

The angels sang when the baby born,
And proclaimed him the Savior Jesus.

Mary's boy named Jesus brought the Glorious Reign, the Sovereignty of Heaven down to earth—Dietrich Bonhoeffer speaks of God's "unfathomable condescension" and the Christmas carol sings "Pleased in flesh with us to dwell: Jesus, our Emmanuel, God with us!" During this season of Advent 2008 we once again await the arrival in our midst of The Wild Guy from Nazareth whose presence among us levels mountains, makes valleys higher, shatters barriers, blurs distinctions that separate us and raises the dead.

Thanks Giving 2008

It is Good to Give Thanks!

Thanks Giving 2008





I love this Praise Worship CD! Christyl, my former neighbor who now teaches HS music and has served as a music worship leader gave me 2 copies—a real one and a copy. I tried hard to find an MP3 or video to
link to, but couldn't, but I'm posting the lyrics from Glorify Thy Name, a Hosanna! Music CD.

Psalm 92:1-4

♫ ♪ ♫ ♪ It is good to give thanks to the Lord
Singing praises to our God on high
Sing of mercies throughout the day
And Thy faithfulness by night
And Thy faithfulness by night ♫ ♫ ♫ ♪ ♪

Vs. 1
♫ ♪ ♫ ♪ I will rejoice in the work of Thy hands
For Thou has made me glad
Thine enemies scatter; they fall away
But the Righteous One shall stand ♫ ♫ ♫ ♪ ♪

(Chorus)

Vs. 2
♫ ♪ ♫ ♪ from the strings of an instrument
My offering will poor
The God of Righteousness is my rock
Exalted evermore ♫ ♫ ♫ ♪ ♪
(Chorus)

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?

The Rising

Recent Thursday evenings I've finally been getting to The Rising!!! Bruce Springsteen's song, "The Rising" is the eponymous source of the community's name:

Can't see nothin' in front of me
Can't see nothin' coming up behind
I make my way through this darkness
I can't feel nothing but this chain that binds me

Come on up for the rising
Come on up, lay your hands in mine
Come on up for the rising
Come on up for the rising tonight

Sky of blackness and sorrow (a dream of life)
Sky of love, sky of tears (a dream of life)...
Sky of longing and emptiness (a dream of life)
Sky of fullness, sky of blessed life (a dream of life)

Come on up for the rising
Come on up, lay your hands in mine
Come on up for the rising
Come on up for the rising tonight

© Bruce Springsteen (ASCAP)

...a dream of life, dream of life, my dream of my life...God's dream about my life?

The Rising is the alternative, or possibly simply an alternative assembly of what several times I heard referenced as The Big Church, "The Big Church" being a sizable, relatively affluent congregation of an historic mainline denomination that has become increasingly ethnically, socially and theologically diverse over the past couple decades. Almost every Thursday evening a smallish group first gathers in the wrought iron-gated courtyard for potluck and then moves into the adjacent chapel for scripture study, reflecting, singing songs and listening to songs, worship, holy communion and Open Space.

During the years I've been back in Paradise I've gathered some of my own history with the sponsoring congregation, but won't detail any of my prior history there expect to mention I'd previously attended several worship and other events in that chapel, now reconfigured without front-facing wooden pews so we could sit on couches in a circle, enabling participants to experience more than a single expression of "open space." Literally forever it's been clear to me a more conventional, predictable style of church never would have attracted me at the beginning or during those in between times, but The Rising has a more organic feel and presents with a better integrated reality than the typical Sunday morning worship experience. But you know how much I love the Church's historic liturgy and I'm something of a lectionary geek and I'm still seeking to find a regular place of Sunday worship... however, my experience with The Rising has been really nice! "Really nice" may sound tame and unfocused, but I haven't felt threatened, I've felt welcomed, listened to and heard, and I feel The Rising is an excellent fit. I've long been searching for people willing to learn my name and willing to trust me with theirs!

Toward the start of worship the first time I was there we heard a song by one of my favorite, most thoughtful Christian groups, Faith Enough by Jars of Clay; another lyrics sample:

The storm is wild enough for sailing
The bridge is weak enough to cross
This body frail enough for fighting
I'm home enough to know I'm lost
Home enough to know I'm lost
It's just enough to be strong
Should the world rely on faith tonight
Should the world rely on faith tonight

The group has been writing its own statement of faith, and together we confessed our trust in the 2nd and 3rd Persons of the Triunity (1st Person still is in progress). We've been having some discussion of the just past and passed local and national political elections and for now have finished the book of Acts, which will wrap up next week before taking a Thursday off for Thanksgiving. I love the Acts 27 passage describing Paul, ³⁵After he had said this, he took bread; and giving thanks to God in the presence of all, he broke it and began to eat. ³⁶Then all of them were encouraged and took food for themselves." As I mentioned to the group, from Paul we received the earliest account of Jesus' New Covenant declaration in 1 Corinthians 11:23-26. Together also, we prayed prayers and spoke words of the eucharistic liturgy, and at the end of the evening each of us individually got to hug each other and speak that evening's blessing.

Bruce Springsteen's The Rising possibly describes better than I'm able the lonely distances I've traveled, the overwhelming weight of raw grief and staggering loss, the tears, lack of tears, darkness and sadness I've been carrying along alone, the fear that's accompanied me near-countless years, the love and mercy and embrace I've dreamt of, the life I've hoped to recover. But then again, possibly I could describe my own experiences better in my own words, but I'm not ready to go all that public! I've told a few people "I crave an audience the way an addict craves cocaine," yet I don't quite dare unmask, publicly or more privately. I was convinced, I'm still convinced trying to free-lance everything was far better stewardship of my life than getting tied up in constraints and restraints of a pastoral position, current design trends, the ignorance and opinionatedness of music committees. I've been overrun with excuses, rationales and defenses, each containing at least a morsel of truth, but in the end, the painful truth remains that my phone never started ringing again, and most of my offers have been rebuffed, often met with horror.

Sky of blackness and sorrow (a dream of life)—yes, but also a Tucson dark sky southwestern sunset...

Sky of memory and shadow (a dream of life)—indeed, but remembrances that help heal and shadows that protect.

I've been going down to the beach, or close to it, for The Rising Thursday nights and found friends. According to my view from here, most Thursdays I'll be going on up (down near the beach) to The Rising, dreaming of life while relying on faith all ways, always.

Sin Boldly

A few weeks ago a friend and I were painfully wondering about the future of a local church community we both hold dear; echoing Genesis 18:16-33 that records Abraham's pleading with YHWH not to destroy the city for 50, then 40, 30, 20, and 10 righteous, my friend wondered if God found 9 faithful, only 9, would the community survive, would God keep covenant—but the question is wrong!

From Chicago Sun-Times religion columnist Cathleen Falsani, check out Sin Boldly her latest delight. Writing to Philip Melanchthon from Wartburg Castle, Martin Luther, described by Cathleen as "that great theological hoodlum and father of Protestantism" advised his friend and colleague, Pecca fortiter, sed fortius et gaude in Christo—"Sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ more boldly." On Facebook I've included that in my list of favorite quotes!

Cathleen Falsani has written Sin Boldly: A Field Guide for Grace in an easily flowing style without annoying asides or trite clichés; if along with most people you've ever wondered what God possibly could do to transform your pitiful attitudes and pathetic lack of alignment with the demands of the commands, this collection of stories from the author's recent peregrinations will give you hope and keep you keepin' on, since God lovingly reigns with showers of mercy-filled grace, no matter who, no matter what, no matter when.

Wrapping up a nicely compact just-right size for backpack or purse, the dust jacket of Sin Boldly presents in tawny earth tones and features a transparent-wingèd dragonfly. I couldn't find any information about the friendly rounded serif with easily readable tall ("big x-height," as we'd say in the trade) lower-case letters set in sepia. A small dragonfly demarcates some chapters into separate divisions and like a sage printer's mark announcing "I was here; I typeset this book," a dragonfly hovers around the concluding epigraph of each chapter. There's a bright turquoise foil-embossed dragonfly on the spine, too.

Wiki confirmed some lore and symbolism I'd heard about dragonflies, including the way they reflect and refract light as they symbolize enlightenment, truth, change and transformation. Dragonflies originate in the water and immigrate into the air as they grow and mature, but are at ease in both elements throughout their lives. Dragonfly mythology suggests summer's warmth and sunlight finds dragonflies at their most mellow and influential as they effect prosperity, harmony and a sense of self. Not only do these ancient insects adapt well to the natural elements, but in the midst of flight dragonflies can change direction and fly backwards. Like the dragonfly we are birthed and re-birthed in water and we need to keep returning to the water as an unceasing source of sustenance and renewal.

On page 57 Cathleen cites a couple of "grace" examples that especially resonate with me: "Sometimes it's having the guts to rebuild, to take a chance, to follow your nose and your heart rather than your head." "Sometimes grace is finding out that your preconceived notions are dead wrong." "And sometimes it's a bowl of watermelon gazpacho when you were expecting Taco Bell." Yep, but Taco Bell is very right around the corner from where I live as well as tasty and inexpensive.

Relating some of her experiences and feelings in Kenya, on page 63 Cathleen realizes "how mzunga I really am," finding herself challenged "to understand with a heart not colored by my nationality, class or skin tone." Is that not part of everyone's journey? Having lived in many different socioeconomic, geographic, cultural (and ecclesiastical) milieus, I often wonder how my view of the world would look to someone else, at the same time realizing how I'm completely unable to track the subtle ways my worldview keeps changing. Sprinkled here and there throughout Sin Boldly I found a word my grandmother used frequently: lagniappe, a Creole word meaning an unexpected extra, a real surprise someone gives you at no cost. "In other words, a lagniappe [like grace] is getting what you don't deserve." [page 56] Here's Lagniappe Presbyterian Church's site—doesn't the name make you want to visit and find out what they're doing?

Discussing the possibility of following precise recipes for spiritual and religious experience and renewal [page 85]—well, there aren't any, also reminiscent of my grandmother, Cathleen describes herself as rhubarb pie with pistachio ice cream. I love both of those and I'm remembering bounties of rhubarb in my grandmother's garden, her fabulous rhubarb cobblers and how we all screamed for hard-to-come by pistachio ice cream. For too long now I've again been in a discernment phase but at the moment I can't figure out how to describe myself in food.

Cathleen's book chronicles God's "audacious" grace, as she sometimes styles it; I've named one of my blogs that's not currently public (due to its being even less active than the others) "Wild Grace," and in its free, elusive, characteristically unanticipated and unexpectedness, Grace is Wild as well as bold and audacious. But just as much, grace often is physically tastable, audible, visible, aromatic (...sometimes "odiferous," too) and touchable: incarnate and enfleshed; in that case, where can grace lead us?

God created each of us in an imago dei, in the Divine Image. To complete his genealogy, Luke the gospel-writer names "Adam, son of God!" In Christ Jesus and in baptism God endows us with another measure of divine identity; the Spirit of Pentecost irresistibly confirms our divine birthright enlivening the privilege of servanthood and the surprise of resurrection from the dead. Imago Dei?! Us, acting and just plain being like God, like Jesus, God's most definitive self-revelation? Yes, us. Taking risks, not expecting payment or even thanks in return, astonishing people in spite of themselves in the same way God has amazed us; keeping the redemption flowing and the goodness growing. Gifting people with the matchless grace of hospitality, just being with them without invading or overtaking their space while letting them be.

Cathleen refers to her own [179] "moody faith" that could be grace for someone else, just as others are grace for her, and if we do this only a little of the time, it's right in line with Cathleen's suggesting [page 108] we can "hold space" for one another, rather than imaging fixing or controlling them into behaving the way we want them to. Doesn't God spend reams of time holding space for each of us, waiting until we finally sort of begin to get it?

I cannot count the times I've realized only a few months, or weeks or days or possibly hours ago I'd been so clueless about whatever it was while at the same time extremely grateful God hadn't bonked me over the head (even with a copy of the Book of Confessions or Book of Concord) so I'd turn around and do or acknowledge whatever it was, because it's about growing into high summer's purposeful sense of self in our own time. Jesus exhorts us to be perfect, meaning not unattainably precise inhuman perfectionism but to reach our goal of becoming who we were born to be: teleological purposefulness! Like the multi-elemental, near-infinitely adaptable dragonfly, responding to wherever and whomever we find ourselves.

If only 9 remain righteous, simply 9, will God keep covenant? If God found only 9, or possibly only 2 or 3...? The question is wrong! If God found not one, not a single person faithfully righteous...God would keep covenant, God would shower grace on creation, God could do no other than to have mercy. God, the gracious, covenant-maker is endlessly covenant-keeper, lover of all creation in Jesus Christ. If we find only a few faithful or maybe perceive none as faithful, will we dare risk claiming the Divine gift of Divine image and audaciously dare to be agents of grace and means of grace? I hope so!


Here's my Amazon review of Sin Boldly.

September Prayer

Here's the prayer I wrote and offered to open today's meeting of the Faith, Order and Witness Committee.

Holy God, merciful Lord, reconciling Spirit...

You again have called us together as Your people in Christ Jesus; we again gather to learn more, to further enlarge our hearts and our minds, to discern paths of agreement, but above all to follow Jesus more fully and faithfully.

Amidst endless uncertainties and certain unpredictables, You call us and in the Spirit of Pentecost You enable us to be holy and righteous, merciful and loving, reconciling peacemakers, to be Your word, Your presence, Your very image everywhere You send us.

We ask You graciously to bless this time in the Name of Jesus Christ, crucified and risen for the life of the world,

Amen!

season of creation

This month again I got to do Musical Musings for the RevGals blog; because it's happening right now, I decided to celebrate the new Season of Creation liturgical emphasis—here it is!

musical musings: season of creation edition

New Heart, New Spirit: Ez 18:31

Orientale Lumen XII West

University of San Diego Founder's Chapel Entrance Door
Intro

Again this year, Father George Morelli of the Antiochian Orthodox Church and a member of the Ecumenical Council's Faith, Order and Witness Committee arranged for committee members to attend the all-day session of Orientale Lumen West a few Wednesdays ago, on June 25. The website explains history and purpose of the annual event where "Eastern Orthodox, Eastern Catholics and Roman Catholics...meet and pray together, learn from each others' traditions, and become friends together searching for a common goal: 'that they all may be one' in the One Church of Christ."

My blog from last year's conference explains some basics: Orientale Lumen XI West. Last year's event started opening my life to the worldview of Eastern Christianity; the three talks we heard this year were exceptionally helpful in affirming some aspects of my own theology I've been thinking about a lot lately as well as attempting to explain to others.

Morning Liturgy

The Eastern Catholic Church, which is under the aegis of Rome, led the opening Eucharist. As I mentioned to my FOW colleagues, I could have gotten to Founder's Chapel at the beginning rather than close to the end in time to receive the antidoron, but intentionally didn't, since it is too painful to be excluded from the Lord's Table and my attending as a known protestant approaching the Table and being refused would have been not cool at all. Orthodox Christians couldn't commune, either...a pastor colleague from the committee told me he always gets "serious hat envy" whenever he attends an orthodox liturgy! For the past few months I've been trying hard to lighten up a lot, so his remark helped as did someone else mentioning my "lightening" attempts were most apt, given the conference is Light of the East.

Feasting and Fasting...

...according to the Byzantine Typicon, by Sister Vassa Larin and a panel discussion formed and filled our morning experience. Typicon is an ordinal liturgical book of examples rather than an obligatory code of laws. Sr. Vassa, the daughter of a priest in the Russian branch of the Byzantine tradition, is completing her PhD under Byzantine expert and Jesuit Father Robert Taft from the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome, and Fr. Robert was a member of the discussion panel! In this section I'm combining observations from Sr. Vassa's talk and the following discussion.

You can search to find more details on the topic, but we learned there are 6 classes of feasts, from greatest to the 6^th class of simple days. I like the way the Typicon denotes which is what with a graphic symbol, and uses "rubric," a word familiar to us in the West to convey instructions in ruby or red type embedded in a liturgical text (in the Lutheran Book of Worship we also had the "pink wash" phenomenon...). I love the way Sr. Vassa explained (my paraphrase) sacraments and liturgy need to be grasped with our senses and integrated into our entire existence so we are drawn wholly into the salvific meaning of the Christ event.

Liturgy is meant to be for and by the whole church, for everyone in the church, rather than dis-integrating into rote lifelessness. But that's exactly what I've been trying hard to teach and explain: our worship describes (literally draws and writes, "en-scribes") what we believe about ourselves, about God, and about our relationship to God; in worship we demonstrate who and what we are supposed to be! How we live becomes based upon how we worship as our worship orders our lives. So if we worship money, contemporary culture, the beach, our career or anything else, that's what we become. Once again as I wrote recently (for sure not remotely original to me) "in worhsip we need to re-enact and re-appropriate the meta-narrative of our deliverance from death into life..."

Sr. Vassa described fasts as times of keeping watch, of anticipation and waiting, while feasts are fulfillment; there's penitential kneeling contrasted with eschatological standing. The purpose of the feast is to communicate, to "bring us together around the chalice," poignantly reminding me of the way we in the mostly mainline Protestant West have been working hard at achieving full communion agreements rather than continuing to go for organic unions—examples of organic union include the 4 church bodies that united to form the United Church of Christ, the 2 that came together into the Presbyterian Church (USA), and the 4 that joined and became the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America—one of those, the Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches, originally was constituted as a uniting church...interesting (at least to me)!

"Liturgy confronts our lives with the image of a Savior who gave himself for all..." and we need to approach liturgy with a spirit of mimesis, of imitation that'll lead to a fusion of liturgy and life that creates a lifestyle (but again that's what I've been trying to say!). To quote myself from a while ago, "Worship that reflects and embodies God's Self-revelation and Self-giving in Jesus Christ." Iconography calls us to a wholly-lived life in which we become the icon, the image. Feasting is the iconological opposite of fasting and I'll say a little more about that in the Holy Time section of this blog.

Its name deriving from the same source as the English-language "type" and "typical," the Typicon points to an integrated lifestyle rather than a collection of rubrics. Fr. Robert described change in the Eastern Churches "like watching the grass grow..." but that's exactly like change in the Western Churches! Anthropological theology: the church emerging from anthropology, so in my estimation anthropology, "the word about the human" becomes ecclesiology, "the word about the called-out assembly (of humans)."

The East is legalistic?! But so is the West! A panel member observed in the olden days culture prescribed what we were supposed to wear to church (etc.). In my current spirit of lightening up, I'll tell about arriving at church on a summer Sunday morning a few years ago (I wasn't a worship leader). A friend observed, "this must be Southern California—you're wearing flip-flops to church." And yes, here in Southern California, I've preached in flip-flops as well as attending parties in them. But hasn't almost everyone?

Lunch

This year we got to have lunch in a faculty dining room and sat in comfortable chairs at a wide table overlooking an expansive canyon. The University of San Diego campus is exceptionally open and gracious, with a feel that reminds me of broadly letterspaced type that tries to convey leisure and a touch of opulence. The posted bill-of-fare didn't allow us a wide choice, but it was very tasty, though they served us their choice of (an okay) pre-planned dessert rather than giving us a choice from the printed menu. Maybe I need to write a few more restaurant reviews? But not at this time about that lunch.

Ravenna Statement

A new agreed statement from the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue Between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church has been published (15 November). The commission met from 8-15 October 2007 in Ravenna, Italy, and finalised the text, which is entitled: Ecclesiological and Canonical Consequences of the Sacramental Nature of the Church: Ecclesial Communion, Conciliarity and Authority. Ravenna, the same location as the Ravenna Mosaics. We experienced a pre-recorded DVD of Metropolitan Kallistos of Diokleia discussing some intricacies of this "Agreed Statement" between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches.

I love his "Church in Eucharistic Terms" and a reference to the book (I still intend to buy and read) The Church Makes the Eucharist-the Eucharist Makes the Church by Father Paul McPartlan, the Carl J. Professor at the Catholic University of America. (I'm sorry I haven't yet found a link.) Metropolitan Kallistos was born Anglican and currently serves as co-chair of the Anglican-Orthodox dialogue. Eucharistic ecclesiology with koinonia, covenental community as the leitmotif. Patriarchal structure is an "institution of the whole church..." all this makes A Formula of Agreement and Called to Common Mission sound like simplicity itself!

I don't know its origins, but a few years ago on the old United Church of Christ forums someone posted why are ecumenical relations like sex between Elephants? Here's why: it's done at a high level; it needs to be done very carefully; it's accompanied by a lot of trumpeting and braying; no one can tell if the elephants are coming or going; no one cares except the elephants! Metropolitan Kallistos also used the buzz-phrase "no bishop - no church; no church - no bishop." Describing the church as an icon of the Trinity reflecting the perichoresis of the Trinity reminded me of Miroslav Volf's (2nd, I believe) volume of free church ecclesiology, After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity. Metropolitan Kallistos mentioned conversations and agreements because of multiple jurisdictions and autocephalus (a word I use neither casually nor lightly, since it's not exactly part of my everyday protestant vocabulary) churches.

Holy Time

I watched just a little of the after-lunch liturgy videos and then Dr. Richard Schneider, a specialist on iconography and a professor at Canada’s York University and at St. Vladimir’s Seminary, provided the day's final plenary that essentially was about time intersecting with eternity—liturgy does not belong to the structure of time, but rather is the breaking-in of eternity into time — I'd express it as integrated chronos and kairos. Again you can search and research, but Eastern Christianity claims 5 cycles of time: Daily Prayer at essentially the same (I think) hours as the Western Church gathers to pray; baptism, marriage, ordination (a whole series from acolyte and reader through the great habit); 8 tones; movable feasts and fixed feasts. Interesting to contrast with Western protestantism's 2 sacraments, though similarly we consider the Eucharist a foretaste of the feast to come and a proleptic realization of the reign of heaven. Ordination in the West is different, too—some church bodies formally ordain deacons and elders, other simply elect or appoint and install them, though ordination to Ministry of Word and Sacrament connects the ordinand to the entire church in every place and time and authorizes them to preside at Table

Reflecting

This year I again found the ornate liturgical style in both real-life real-time and on DVD with its shiny ultra-bling and fantastically vested all-male clergy extremely off-putting, yet I appreciate the appeal to the senses. One of the presenters mentioned Orthodoxy evangelizes by means of attraction, drawing people in with the bells, smells, splendors and visible mystery. I often remind myself it took the passionate, optimistic, activist and wholistic ministry style of the first congregation I was involved with for me even to imagine the Way of Jesus as anything I'd ever consider being involved with, and I suspect that's what it would take for me even now, despite "having a rather accurate knowledge of The Way."

However, ultimately it needs to be about a style and expression that enables and supports a person's knowledge of Jesus and journey with the Lord of Life, along with a community of faith. Though I'll still insist on the necessity of vertical and horizontal connectedness, not every style of worship and preaching (or polity!) draws everyone and it's often different at different times of a person's life, as well as different days of the week.

For example, for Lord's Day/ Sunday worship I come close to insisting on liturgy and proclamation that clearly reminds me Who God is, Who Jesus is, what the Spirit is doing, that reminds me I am baptized, called and accountable, yet live under a reign of mercy and grace. But on a day or evening during the week, a far less formal, songs and bible-study teaching or discussion format is fun and fine, often healing and nurturing. A couple months ago in my first blog about Brent Bill's Sacred Compass blog, I explained about myself:

Despite a few sojourns elsewhere, I've remained mostly in this Reformation tradition because of its consistent ecumenicity and catholicity, an emphasis on the sacraments and a sacramental worldview, a justice and advocacy oriented public identity and confessional theology (something meaty to sink my brains into—I do not believe I've ever mentioned in a blog that I've actually taught Book of Confessions...); besides, these are the means of grace churches!

These are the means of grace churches but I can learn from all of them, including others in the West and those in the East.