frog blog hymns discussion

Over on her frog blog, 1-4 grace started an interesting discussion about hymns. Her blog's not live any more, so I removed the link.

Tell me your own ideas of hymns which are meaningful, those which are painful or stir other negative feelings. What hymns do you really like? Which ones could you do without?

By the way, I am not doing any actual research. I am just interested in what folks have to say.

Good one! I'll begin with the negative stuff, which includes Amazing Grace. A while back I said to someone "it has no Christology and no theology (not to mention the near-obligatory funereal-sounding bagpipe versions at actual funerals)..." he responded "agreed, but a little soteriology..." to that one I needed to reply, "disembodied soteriology? I do not think so!" Then there's Borning Cry, part of the pain of which I know is John Ylvisaker's typically tawdry tune. The hyper-militant Lift High the Cross almost grossed me out the first time I heard it, but it's still better than Onward Christian Soldiers.

"Among the" (as our cultural anthro teacher tried teaching us not to say) more recent hymns I like a lot, I'll list Marty Haugen's Here in this Place / Gather Us In—I especially love how the harmony undulates between major and modal; Now the Silence with words by Jerry Vajda, music from Carl Schalk; Earth and All Stars, preferably in the original more rhythmically dynamic version. Rise, Shine, You People Ron Klug's text with the tune Wojtkiewiecz, after composer Dale Wood's original Polish name... "He comes to us by sin and death surrounded, with grace unbounded" moves me to tears. I love #524 in the ELCA's new Evangelical Lutheran Worship, What Is This Place and blogged about it all of three years ago. Praise songs? Definitely Shout to the Lord!

For older hymns, I love Gently Raise the Sacred Strain, #146 in the current LDS hymnal. Praise to the Lord, the Almighty – Lobe den Herren a fabulous one to lead from the organ and I have especially wonderful memories of singing it during my first interview weekend in Utah with the Utah PCUSA Presbytery and the Utah UCC Association convening together; singing with a room full of pastors almost always is a great experience. One more for now: Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing, because What's not to love about it?

Despite my own reasonable sensitivity to inclusive (or not) language, in many cases I don't like the texts of old familiars distorted simply to make a point of being inclusive. I'll probably come back and add a few essentials when I suddenly remember I've left them out, but that's all for now.

Roll of Thunder

This one's for Black History Month 2010.

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, by Mildred D. Taylor has won several major publishing industry commendations and awards including the Newbery Award for 1977; I'd like to bestow my own reader award for the dozen fast-reading chapters in a book originally intended for middle- or high-school ages but that hardly talks down to a more "mature" audience and, I imagine, most of the vocabulary is basic enough for a bright 4^th or 5^th grader.

The story happens in post-emancipation Mississippi USA during the Great Depression of the early 1930s. The author doesn't specify an exact locale but refers to a fictional town of Strawberry as well as the real city of Jackson where, by the way, author Mildred Taylor was born and my own grandfather grew up. Spokane County in Washington State was the only one I found with a Google search, so that's one for the book, as well. And this was three decades prior to the Civil Rights movement that with legal decrees only started initiating the dawn of desegregation followed by sometimes grudging, occasionally truly triumphant integration of Black Americans and White Americans. Interestingly, until mid-20^th century only Blacks and Whites qualified to become American citizens; most of the country remained racially and ethnically suspiciously divided (and still is), with what feels like endless disputes over the international border between California, Arizona, Texas and Mexico.

First-person narrator Cassie Logan is the young teen daughter of Mary, a school teacher and of David, who spends a lot of time away from home laying railroad track in neighboring Louisiana; grandmother Big Ma, Uncle Hammer and a few other elders provide some backstory and lots of historical perspective. Biblical themes of land, justice and peoplehood run throughout the book, punctuated remembering and recounting tales of Southern Slavery punctuated along the way with reflections about injustice and inequalities and hints of daring hope for a truly free future. Each successive generation is willing to settle for less and more able to trust dreams of a different reality down the road--if not now, when? Mildred Taylor has written so skillfully from Cassie's perspective you'd think she'd actually lived the events, though she tells us her own father was very much like David in the book and as a youth he basically was Cassie's brother Stacey. Christopher-John and Clayton Chester, a.k.a. "Little Man" complete the trio of Cassie's brothers. David spends a lot of time away from home laying railroad track in neighboring Louisiana

The Logan family is privileged to own 400 acres of land; in 1887 Grandpa bought 200 acres that by the year 1933 had no mortgage note to pay yet still had taxes; in 1918 he acquired 200 additional acres that during the time of the book had mortgage plus taxes. The Logans and some of their Africa-American neighbors recognize land as gift that further will provide crops that will enable them to pay taxes and the mortgage on the land that will keep them living there and will continue to yield food for their dinner table.

In some ways scripture views land, the earth, as inalienable gift, Leviticus 25:23 famously says, "The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine. For you are strangers [aliens] and sojourners with me." God is the creator and the original owner but wait, it all belongs to Him, anyway! In Native American culture, too, land cannot be sold. However, access to rich, healthy, well-stewarded ground is essential for our mutual survival, yet during the Jubilee Year, the 50^th year, the one of 7 times 7, the land reverts to its original (human) owner/steward. "They" say land is inalienable gift, yet "they" also observe all wars are about territory and we have the concept of real estate, real property.

The Logan family related to the dominant White-controlled economy sometimes with fear-tinged submission, at times with almost play-acting "yes sir, no sir, of course, ma'am" behaviors amidst finding true refuge and safety in a solid, respectful and respecting family of parents, their offspring and the dad's mother, Big Ma. The church that has given its name and a lot of funding to Great Faith elementary school play major roles, too.

Although earlier on in the novel we find examples of death-dealing and destructive fire, closer to the conclusion of the book, fire becomes redemptive as Cassie's father David torches a portion of his own cotton crop in a prescribed burning that directs the Whites in power from possibly pursuing a handing or lynching because they need to prevents the fire from spreading to their own land; for a while the fire brings along with it the visible reality of White and Black "children of slaveholders and children of slaves" working compatibly side-by-side.

And oh, of course there's a prominent White character who is on the side of the Blacks, the lawyer Mr. Wade. And we have the Wallaces, which sounds like a code name.

My experiences growing up around grandparents heavily influenced by Southern social and cultural practices made me think a lot about what I read in Roll of Thunder. I recognized a bit of the attitudes, though tempered by recognition of mutual humanity and mutual needs. The food was familiar, too; what got called Soul Food for a while was exactly the same vittles as poor(er) White Folk typically ate. By the time my grandparents reached New England they'd owned farms and worked the land in Nebraska and North Carolina, and though they'd become urban cliff-dwellers they retained heavy respect for the land. Need I mention we often enjoyed black-eyed peas, grits, cornbread and biscuits? I attended high school in an inner-city school that imagined it at least could desegregate and maybe even integrate some day and did my second undergrad stint at a university originally formed for non-traditional students that included a lot of African-Americans and other distinctive groups. Later on as an adult I lived and served in a predominantly African-American community, where I discovered my familiarity and relative easiness with African-American cuisine and customs coupled with my relative lack of stereotyping and assumptions was a powerful asset to bring to the situation. If I had doubts about my abilities - and who doesn't at times? - my horror at the words and behaviors of some outsiders who came in for volunteer or paid work constantly assured me.

What have you been doing for Black History Month? Just wonderin...

"reads like a real-life experience" — my amazon review

proclaiming the scandal of the cross

Proclaiming the Scandal of the Cross: Contemporary Images of the Atonement

Proclaiming the Scandal of the Cross brings the reader word and prose "images" of the atonement of Jesus Christ. The book features eighteen authors all told with a tailpiece, a headpiece and one in the center by editor Mark D. Baker. Contributors include big names like C.S. Lewis and Rowan Williams though sadly, only a scant four women. Brief bios in the front of the book show they're mostly Western Protestants, mostly pastors from English-speaking countries. Sadly surprising is the apparent total omission of anyone from a Lutheran or a Roman Catholic perspective, although I especially appreciate the inclusion of Frederica Mathewes Green, who writes from the Antiochian Orthodox tradition.

I found this book to be a helpful resource that I read very quickly. Despite my background, I've been known to get seriously bogged down in densely-written theological tomes - not to say those weren't written well - but this wasn't one of those. I especially like the real-life stories that contextualize each concept and the way each author nuances their atonement concepts a little differently. Each discrete chapter opens with introductory explanations and concludes with a descriptive wrapup of the material just presented.

Proclaiming the Scandal of the Cross goes beyond the generally popularly acknowledged models of the atonement of Jesus Christ that typically include conflict/victory, legal penal satisfaction, and moral influence/example. In his intro, Mark Baker observes [page 31] "...for centuries, Christians preached and taught the message of Christianity without the gospel leading them to the inescapable conclusion of penal satisfaction." And, "It is noteworthy that Orthodox Christians still read their Bibles without finding this theory."

[page 35, still in Baker's intro] "Through the lens of a Western legal system, anyone is just who meets the standard of the law. But a Hebraic understanding of justice is more relational: anyone is just who keeps one's covenants and commitments to others. Here, we could say that God is considered just ... because God is faithful to his covenantal promise to provide salvation to Israel and through Israel to the world."

I found material from several chapters especially helpful and revealing...

Chapter 9 from Richard B. Hays, "Made New by One Man's Obedience" based on Romans 5:12-19

page 97 "If the apostle Paul had turned this passage in to me as a short theological reflection paper, I would have told him, 'Get thee to the writing tutor.'" ... "so that he can pass my course on Greek Exegesis of Romans."

page 99 "But the Adam-Christ analogy should [page 100] never mislead us into thinking that Jesus Christ merely undoes the effects of Adam's transgression and puts us back at square one with a blank slate. Instead, Jesus has swept us into a new creation in which our identity is now positively redefined by his faithfulness rather than by our own disloyalty to God."

[page 100 continued] "Paul almost never talks about 'forgiveness of sins,' because ... he has a more radical diagnosis of the human predicament and a more radical vision of the new creation. We need far more than forgiveness or judicial acquittal. We need to be changed. [page 101] We are saved because we participate in the new humanity that Jesus, the faithful, obedient one inaugurated. ... this faithfulness not only models a different pattern of life but also actually creates a new kind of family."

chapter 3, "Rising Victorious" by Frederica Mathewes Green clearly and concisely defines the Christus Victor atonement model that remains most prominent in the Eastern Churches.

Doug Frank, in chapter 12, "Naked but Unashamed" lines out an account both psychological and told in the first person as he describes how the cross obliterates the shame, the fears about self-revelation and the self-alienation most of us feel far too often. [page 133] "...since God is so wildly and scandalously for us, who, including ourselves, can possibly be against us?" Historically, obliteration of shame in the cross of Jesus Christ has been a focus of liberation theology, and I appreciated Doug Frank's very real-life contemporary middle-class western world examples.

In another chapter (14) about shame, this one by Mike McNichols, "Jesus, the Ultimate Outsider" on page 147 quotes Dr. Ray Anderson's definition of shame as "...the perceived loss of our place with others. Those who have the power to create our history have the power to make us feel worthy or unworthy at the core of our being. ... We feel shame as loss of being."

[page 149] McNichols describes when "Jesus himself became the ultimate outsider. ...He was banished from the world of homes, family and friends, work and play."

Chapter 11, "The Cross as Prophetic Action" by Brian D. McLaren brings us Hosea 2; and on page 115 he calls the desert "a place of aloneness, trials, and reconstruction" and says "The Valley of Achor, the Valley of Trouble, ... will become a passageway to hope."

[page 116] "[Israel] was already his [God's], but he bought her back anyway." McLaren contrast the money-changers "for prophet status, in contrast to Jesus' for-prophet status."

I love Brian McLaren's asking, [page 117] "Could it be that just as Hosea in a sense exposed God's betrayed heart ... could God be saying, not just with Hosea, 'You're breaking my heart!' but also through Jesus, 'You're torturing me, killing me.'"?

McLaren continues by asking, "How different this gripping understanding of the passion of Jesus is from the formulaic transactional understanding promoted by evangelical pop-atonement theology. ... How must God feel about ... our continuing betrayal of God's heart, our ongoing missing of the point that might be funny if it weren't so sick?"

I highly recommend this book as a teaching and discussion resource; it could be helpful as part of the preaching enterprise, as well. But not including a single currently practicing Roman Catholic troubles me and I particularly consider the omission of a contributor writing from a Lutheran perspective both glaring and puzzling, especially given how central the theology of Martin Luther has been for the Church in the West and given that most of his theology was very specifically "Theology of the Cross." In fact, for Luther, the cross of Calvary formed a Weltanschauung, an all-encompassing worldview.

I'll semi-conclude by first quoting from one of the class handouts I prepared for the theology of the cross course I developed and facilitated during 2007:

The cross of Calvary forms the ultimate type and reality of God’s characteristically hidden and paradoxical, sacramental presence in the commonest things, situations and people. Especially in the cross we learn God totally subverts evil for good, as the death of Jesus Christ becomes a redemptive reality for all creation.

I also paraphrased Luther and wrote:

Theologians of the cross build their theology in the light of God’s own revelation of himself, particularly God’s self-revelation in Christ crucified. The cross of Calvary forms a paradigm and model for God’s characteristically hidden and paradoxical, sacramental presence in the commonest things, situations and people.

Four articles from the Heidelberg Disputation [1518] form my final conclusion for this blog:

19. That person does not deserve to be called a theologian who looks upon the invisible things of God as though they were clearly perceptible in those things that have actually happened [Romans 1:20].

20. He deserves to be called a theologian, however, who comprehends the visible and manifest things of God seen through suffering and the cross.

21. A theologian of glory calls evil good and good evil. A theologian of the cross calls the thing what it actually is.

22. That wisdom which sees the invisible things of God in works as perceived by man is completely puffed up, blinded, and hardened.


my amazon review: "a helpful resource despite serious omissions"

biblical perspectives on evangelism

by Walter Brueggemann, Biblical Perspectives on Evangelism: Living in a Three-Storied Universe on Amazon.
After my recent 4^th reading of this tightly focused book, I knew it was time for a blog. Did you know the colonial Americans - some of the antecedents of today's United Church of Christ insisted God acts in history only by covenanting? In scripture we can trace a series of significant covenants from Adam through Jesus, but was not the Divine passion for relationship that engendered creation in itself a covenantal act? Throughout the author emphasizes obedience along with explaining why we need to remember... after all, when we forget the possibility of a free future is all over. (Therefore, I'm making a conscious attempt to remember more clearly, even to revisit the past I've often almost choked on in order to start claiming a freer future for myself and those around me, too.)

Rooted firmly in the Hebrew Bible, in God's loving grace and the possibility of human response, reminding us about ways to be and ways to live as the people of God (=as the Church), just as in many of his other books, Walter Brueggemann emphasizes the importance of the commandments. On page 31 he describes the ten commandments as "the working documents for covenanted community..." on page 68 "covenant is ... a relation which frees each in vulnerability to receive life from the other, to be postured in mutual dependence." The commandments are "...boundaries and limits which define the horizon of covenantal humanity." On page 115: just as earthly parents teach their offspring that which concerns them most, our heavenly parents do exactly the same. "I do suggest, however, that the ten commands turn out to be God's most 'cared for matters.'" And he includes references to his other two non-negotiables: the tithe and the sabbath.

The world is about a multi-faceted "3-stories" of architectural floors or tiers and narrative tales about the lives of people: long-time insiders to the gospel, typical outsiders, and the next generation coming up. In addition, there are three central narrative stories in the salvation story (Heilsgeschichte) that in turn opens us to 3 scenes to the evangelism drama:

1. God's victory over chaos and death
2. the announcement of that victory—"gospel"
3. its appropriation by those who hear the announcement

3 stories are focal and normative and definitive:

1. the promise made to the [Israel's] ancestors
2. deliverance from slavery
3. the gift of the land

WB offers a pair of concrete definitions of evangelism, an activity impacting every aspect of life—personal, public, economic, political... first on page 10 "Evangelism ... is the invitation to re-imagine our lives in these narrative modes." And last, in the conclusion on page 129 "Evangelism ... is an activity of transformed consciousness that results in an altered perception of world, neighbor and self, and an authorization to live differently in that world."

WB brings us a trilogy to illustrate the 3 stories:

1. Joshua 24 "a meeting at Shechem whereby outsiders become insiders"

2. in Nehemiah 8 forgetful at least one-time insider members are "re-tented into the passionate vision of risk and vulnerability that is decisive for the community."

3. ongoing conversation with the offspring of believers/insiders = "children becoming adults." In this [hopefully] dialogue, [page 55]"It is always 'them' and it is always 'us,' always then and now, always there and here, concerning all of this community of telling and listening through time."

That continuing, continuous conversation is because "...in Jesus Christ, God has overcome the power, threat, and attraction of the power of death" and [pages 37-38]"...the continued re-enaction of this dangerous [page 38] news ... is the definitional account of [the church's] life in the world." But what news, news for what? [page 43] "...news for alternative obedience in the world" as we [page 46] "...recover the focal drama of baptism, which is a subversive act of renunciation and embrace" and are summoned [page 47] "From our several enslavements ... to a common, liberated obedience."

Regarding our ongoing need to live faithfully in the twenty-first century, yet possibly concerned that the texts we rely on were transmitted and recorded thousands of years ago, WB reminds us "...all through the Bible the gospel has been exactly and precisely concerned with social relations related to power, goods, and access. Indeed, there is almost no aspect of the biblical presentation of the gospel that is otherwise." [pages 40-41] "The victory of God in our time over this deathly idolatry is hidden from us. ... It is hidden in the cross where it is always hidden, and in all subsequent manifestations of the power of the cross." In his marvelous book The Land, WB explains how the Church has concentrated on covenant to the near-exclusion of the centrality of land in the biblical witness and, without a doubt, in current twenty-first century politics and economics.

Some reasons for us to remember, remember, remember...include

page 78 "If Israel, birthed in liberation [Exodus] and situated in covenant [Sinai], forgets these memories, it will very soon start playing the old power games of Egypt, and start practicing brick quotas again in order to get ahead by the standards of the empire."

page 78 "Everything depends on a live memory. Everything is jeopardized by careless forgetting. Everything ride on remembering and forgetting."

page 79 Jeremiah 2:1-13 Israel did not say, did not proclaim, announce or confess their history with the God who liberated them because they had forgotten the story, the history...

page 82 parallels Deuteronomy 8 || Jeremiah 2

page 82 "And when they forget, they forget the past, they forget Yahweh, they forget themselves, their history, their identity, their faith, their vocation, their raison d'etre."

page 83 "... the Bible is constant in asserting that this terrible ending ... is rooted in the loss of [torah] memory."

page 84 "Remembering is the hard choosing of an alternative present, authorized by a subversive past. When that subversive past is given up, an alternative present is rendered completely unavailable."

page 72: by the time of Nehemiah 8, Israel is a "people of the book." But in the re-texting of Israel in the Festival of Booths "Israel must bodily re-experience and re-enact the memory, recovering its vulnerability in bodily exposure."

parallel to his words on page 75, "This old [torah] text of Israel's memory never exists as authoritative for the community without imaginative interpretation." "people of the interpreted book", on page 97 WB tells us conversation with youth "in a context of unconditional advocacy ... that mediates free grace." [page 98] "The conversation with our young must be persistently interpretive."

Closely related to the near-plethora of existential and situation insecurities in which almost everyone currently finds themselves, I love WB explaining [page 87] how in Nehemiah 8:13-18 "olive, wild olive, myrtle, palm and other leafy trees" make the temporary shelters for Succoth, the Festival of Booths or Tabernacles, granting participants both "exposed homelessness" and "true homefulness". Interesting too, was the experience of the newly-borning people of God with a God who traveled alongside them in a tabernacle, a portable shelter and gospel-writer John (1:14) tells us how incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth, God pitches a tent, a tabernacle.

Amidst all this talk about following and keeping the commandments in gracious response to the God Who in Jesus Christ calls us, saves us and sanctifies us by grace, [page 114] Martin Luther begins his Small Catechism, traditional preparation for First Communion with the Ten Commandments, "...for the one with whom the church communes is Lord of the commands. Finally it comes down to that, but it does not come down to that quickly or simply."

The church charges parents and sponsors of a child or children to be baptized to teach them the Lord's Prayer, the Creed and the Commandments; to bring them to the Services of God's House and Place the Scriptures in their hands. Why? These are some of the ways they can learn, hear and live the story and the stories, make them their stories and remember the stories of the covenanted people of God as they learn the place of their own individual story in the journey of the community. At the services of God's House they celebrate and participate in the Eucharist, God's feast of justice, reconciliation, forgiveness and inclusion for all creation. This is God's manner of making new beginnings that's also a living sign of God's promised end, the eschatological feast of justice and equality, the table of "go and do likewise." They learn to be prepared to forgive and to be forgiven... learning to live every moment "wet behind the ears" again with baptismal water, committed again to Good Friday and to Easter, constantly recovering "...the focal drama of baptism, which is a subversive act of renunciation and embrace" summoning us [page 47] "From our several enslavements ... to a common, liberated obedience."

In his conclusion, WB insists evangelism isn't an ecclesial, a church thing, nor a church agenda—"It is rather an offer that we might be on the receiving end of 'all things new.'"


my amazon review: grace, memory, faithfulness and life

welcoming the stranger

Welcoming the Stranger: a public theology of worship and evangelism, by Patrick R. Keifert.

Welcoming the Stranger is © 1992 Patrick Keifert is professor of systematics at Luther Seminary; this book demonstrates some of his knowledge, insight, experience, and organizational abilities.

The title of the book references "public," and throughout author talks about hospitality. Hospitality is a central biblical theme! Reminders of Israel's and the Church's essential call to welcome the stranger, to make a place for the sojourner at table and at worship weave throughout the book's chapters. Especially for any contemporary congregation wondering how to grow in depth and in numbers, hospitality, welcoming people into our midst, particularly strangers, those apparently not like us or simply people we don't know who outwardly do look a lot like us is a very contemporary topic. Despite our baptismal identity as brothers and sisters in Christ and as siblings of Jesus Christ, church as "family" in terms of everyday interaction, comprehensive knowledge of the other person, and routine, casual, supportive interactions doesn't really apply.

But the book title also pairs up worship and evangelism, and though the copyright date is 1992, one of the typical church stereotypes remains that structured, liturgical worship is un-evangelical, not good news to strangers and newcomers who might wander into worship or think about attending a nearby church. Chapter 3 opens by asserting,"Good liturgical worship and effective evangelism belong together, despite the commonsense idea that they are incompatible." [page 37]

Title of Intro: Public Worship and the Stranger

Talk about intimacy, safety and freedom is prominent throughout Patrick Keifert's argument that includes a fair amount of "how to be" and "how to do" suggestions for any local church in almost any geographic setting. The so-called intimate society in which people may attempt to interact with strangers as they do with biological family and other long-time associates whilst expecting an institution like the church to function as the type of family started disappearing a century ago and has receded even further into the background. Back in sociology, in history, and anthropology classes we often discussed the chaos, anomie, confusion, and disorientation that resulted from the industrial revolution and the onset of modernization.

Patrick articulates clearly the danger and threat of strangers and strangeness in our midst, whether it's our locally familiar First Fifth Church on the nearby corner, or halfway across the world. On page 88 he reminds us strangers can be threatening, dangerous, and challenging on physical, emotional, and spiritual levels. He is sensitive to and knowledgeable about the strangeness of worship settings and liturgical practices to people not conversant with Church.

A theme of intimacy versus sociability weaves through the book. Page 70: "The biblical vision stands in sharp contrast to the ideology of intimacy at this social and psychological level. Rather than projecting the private onto the public, it opens the door for the stranger. The biblical vision affirms impersonal public interactions through the command of hospitality to the stranger."

Israel remembered itself as the stranger hosted by God just as the church knows itself—read page 59 with the heading "Israel's Worship and the Stranger." Page 60: "Though God was free to be present everywhere, God promised to be present in Israel's worship." —just as the Church knows God's promised presence in the means of grace... page 61: "If God's gift of self-presence is understood as substance, it is easy to imagine God presenting grace wrapped in a box—the liturgy—with our job to pry the box open in order to get the gift." Not only a new humanity, but also a new creation arose from Jesus the Christ's birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension. Early on Patrick reminds us that creating, not redeeming, is God's primal work and, in fact, we are redeemed in order to continue as co-creators and co-stewards with God in the Spirit.

Page 113, "I call for recognition that the presence of God is embodied in the stranger and in Christian hospitality to the stranger." Page 129: "...God's presence ... on behalf of and through the stranger." The worship space is God's house, the house, the home where God is host and offers hospitality of Word and Sacrament.

Analogous to style, training and expectations of sports teams for games played at home versus games played away from home, Patrick describes possibilities for Home Worship and Away from Home Worship, both of which are opps for evangelism, for sharing and further incarnating, embodying the gospeled good news. Page 120: "Probably because the situation in general is characterized by a distrust of ritual and a broken ritual tradition within and without the church, both ritual competence and ritual resourcefulness are so urgent." Like any social scientist, Pat recognizes that rituals of every kind have logical structure and relations that actually make public life possible. Ritual actions and structures possess power to bind people together, to create community among unlikes and unequals.

Despite the copyright date of 1992, I recommend studying this book as a resources for living out our baptism "on behalf of the world, with the world as horizon." on behalf of the world, with the world as horizon... but how else do we, that corporate "we," live out our baptism?

One more thing: I don't recall when or how I acquired this book, but by the time I began reading the book's perfect (not!) binding had started to become unglued and as I turned each page it disconnected itself from the others. I am amazed at Fortress Press, historically one of THE publishers of high-end theology and, in fact, Augsburg-Fortress has retained the Fortress imprint for its more majorly theological publications.

my amazon review: hospitable, vulnerable and redemptive

friday 5: if

Rev Gal Blog Pals Friday 5 for today is about "IF" Friday 5

I'm lovin' this one from Jan...

1. If I were a color, most days I'd be medium golden yellow (Crayola dandelion, which is much more mellow than dandelions in nature), though some days I'd be Crayola indigo.

2. As a flower (or plant), most days I'd be something bright and noticeable yet adaptable around others—maybe a zinnia. On the other hand, I frequently claim to be a weed; in the words of Charlie Brown (I think) courtesy of Charles Schultz, "Weeds have a wide tolerance for environmental conditions and the rare ability to exploit recently disturbed terrain..." What does that mean? I can "roll with the punches!" (and have done so with far too many...)

3. For today's animal I'm a filly who's sometimes tamed with a slight nudge of the reins and at other times prefers to run wild and will run wild no matter what anyone says or does.

4. If I were a shoe I'd be flip-flops: most days naturally tan flats, other days, low platform black.

5.In my current identity as a typeface, my font would be Boopee... it's funky and full of expression and I've been using it lots lately.

give me a word!

"give me a word" and abbey of the arts giveaway

I've already won one of Christine's prizes, but it's never only about awards and rewards but about the opportunities for becoming more fully alive Abbey of the Arts offers. As Christine explains:

In ancient times, wise men and women fled out into the desert to find a place where they could be fully present to God and to their own inner struggles at work within them. ... Many people followed these ammas and abbas, seeking their wisdom and guidance for a meaningful life. One tradition was to ask for a word – this word or phrase would be something on which to ponder for many days, weeks, months, sometimes a whole lifetime. ... what is your word for the year ahead? A word which contains within it a seed of invitation to cross a new threshold? ...

My word for this new year 2010 and probably one of my words for the emerging new decade is open..."open the verb" and "open the adjective" and both in more than one direction. Openness to the people, events, circumstances, ideas and opportunities around me and openness to new things Spirit is enacting within me. Maybe even more challenging than those aspects of being open, by grace I hope to start claiming and making the huge risk of being open to others about my needs, experiences, expectations and pain so I'm writing this in green as a symbol of growth. I've observed how I love that green is the liturgical color for Ordinary Time and that during seemingly repetitive, apparently circular times and endeavors are exactly when our lives and our perceptions of our environment change and transform the most.

Christine cites The Desert; I named this blog "desert spirit's fire!" because of the gift the desert has been to me—the hot desert, the cold high desert and the coastal desert where I currently live. Regarding openness although God leads us with a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, along the way gifting us with water from the rock and manna from the sky, we still need carefully to look carefully in order to find them and we need openness to surprise. You cannot survive in a sparse, deserted habitat without ongoing cooperation with one another so you not only need to "talk to each other" you need to interact with each other...

velvet elvis review

Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith by Rob Bell on Amazon

repainting into a new reformation?

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 so I'm writing this review out of my head (literally, most likely) and heart.

In most ways Velvet Elvis is a book for outsiders. 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. On page 11 Rob Bell mentions the picture the church of Martin Luther's day had been painting and presenting. Regarding these 21st century days, I know a lot about the picture the church has painted of itself and maybe even more so, 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," evokes the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century.

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.

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 its radical inclusiveness and "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. The outsider became incarnate, enfleshed as one of them, becoming an insider.

As we've often observed, the old mainline now longer is the central or most prominent expression of Christianity in this country, and being a mainline protestant no longer is a given part of being American. 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!

repainting into a new reformation?—my amazon review

missionary congregation review

"...we are faithfully to indwell the gospel in a culture that has disembedded itself from that tradition."

In The Missionary Congregation: leadership and liminality, a handbook for doing mission that you can read through in very little time and that'll take several readings and considerable pondering to understand and appropriate, Pastor Alan Roxburgh explores Victor Turner's book-length essay on liminality, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure, (Cornell University Press, 1969) as a framework to help us understand the historical, contemporary and maybe even future call of the church. The experience of liminality, of being on the threshold between old and new, neither back where we were nor yet where we think we're heading typically applies to ritualized liturgical rites of passage that dissolve and dis-embed aspects of an individual's or a group's old identity and are at least the beginning of incorporation into a new group or community along with a new status. For Christians, baptism is our primal liminal experience. As we enter the waters, should we be prepared to drown? Yes! And we should be equally prepared to be surprisingly raised from that death by drowning! And then there's also the desert...

Although Pastor Roxburgh insists "The church's lived experience is marginalization," then he says center-margin language is obsolete and also cites the contemporary Spirituality Smorgasbord. And then he says a possible center-periphery relationship may exist between urban and non-urban, though he claims the urban center itself has no margins. This is fascinating and highly thought-provoking and brings us back to the tendency to equate modernization with urbanization as it evokes Max Weber and rationalization, too. Pastor Roxburgh strikingly observes (page 38): "...it is not marginalization that shapes our context but a liminality without center points from which to gain perspective or meaning." Continuing both/and, neither/nor language, marginalization presupposes a center and a periphery. Amidst all the talk about community, Pastor Roxburgh cites Christianity's shift to a "private, individualistic center." We still keep hearing far too much about a proprietary Jesus...

Pastor Alan reminds us historically the church building – the physical church structure – was a place of refuge, a place of sanctuary. As people of the Good Book we affirm wherever God meets the people is holy, sacred ground, "sanctuary." In biblical – in covenantal – terms, God indwelling the people, God's encounters with the creation to which Godself so passionately has "attached" Godself sanctifies life.

Pastor Roxburgh definitely is not talking about business models and parallels as he considers the leadership of the church in a time of liminality, which requires leaders whose identity is formed by the tradition rather than the culture and leaders who listen to the voices from the edges where the apostle, the prophet, and the poet are found.

"...leaders whose identity is formed by the tradition rather than the culture." But he doesn't explain how the tradition has formed the identity of those leaders. I also need to quote, "...they are cries that long to be connected to a Word that calls them beyond themselves into a place of belonging that God gives within a people." "The alternative community...is formed as the prophetic word addresses the pained recognition of our liminality." For Christians, baptism into the alternative, counter-cultural community that daily walks the way of the cross and lives the reality of resurrection is our primal liminal experience. And then there's also the desert...

Finally, we can consider the re-symbolization and professionalization of church leadership, as it has become and continues becoming yet another clubby priesthood with all of the occultisms, rituals, secrets, insignia, gnoses – and bureaucracies – associated with all of those other royal priesthoods...remember the Jerusalem Temple? I hope this short selection of ideas from The Missionary Congregation Leadership and Liminality will encourage you to read the book, which would be an excellent choice for study by a parish mission or outreach committee, council, session or vestry. There's enough material in its less than 100 pages (71, actually) for at least 5 or 6 serious discussions.

edges, centers, culture and counter-culture...my amazon review

Christianity for the Rest of Us review

I originally blogged this in growing green of Ordinary Time...

transformation and tradition

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

This subject is close to my heart and central to the needs of most of us in the protestant mainline. The study included ten core study congregations plus forty correlated validation churches spread across the continental United States, all of them what used to be generically referred to as mainline protestant, though these days that old once predictably socially, theologically and politically mainline has become sideline or spurline. The project combined participant observation, personal reflections from the book's author, from pastoral and lay church leaders and from rank and file members along with relatively hard data collection and crunching. Study churches "...were solid, healthy churches that exhibited Christian authenticity, expressed a coherent faith, and offered members ways of living with passion and purpose. They exuded a renewed sense of mission and identity, often having emerged from dire circumstances...they were their own best selves—creative and traditional, risktaking and grounded, confidence and humble, open and orthodox..." explains the introduction to the book. The Rest of Us means protestant - but definitely could include many Roman Catholics, too - Christians who don't affiliate or consider themselves fundamentalist or evangelical in the recently popular sense of "evangelical." The book jacket features a black and white sketch of a high-steepled, white wood frame church that's probably not the big downtown First or Central Church, but the drawing is similar to enough small town, suburban and small city meetinghouses that a lot of readers probably can identify.

Apparently there truly are such places as hospitable, creative and faithful churches where a person truly can belong, can grow, change and be transformed in every aspect of being in Jesus Christ!

The Galatian Church was the first of what we'd call an distinctively ethnic congregation, one gathered on the basis of genetic and cultural inheritance. As the author points out, in the U.S.A. the kind of village where everyone knew everyone and local church or denomination constituted on a basis of ethnic or cultural identity (think Scandinavian or German Lutherans, Scots Presbyterians, Italian, Irish or Polish Catholics who routinely intermixed and frequently confused symbols of culture and Christianity) went away just as nation and church have become ethnically, linguistically, racially and culturally diverse beyond anyone's anticipation, with many of us claiming more than one of each category.

I love the idea of people and groups being politically neither Blue nor Red but Purple, along with implications of early Christians adopting the royal color purple for radical, subversive usage and intent in seeking to follow The Way. In Acts 16:13-15 we hear about 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 original emerging 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. Let us consider what God is calling us to, wherever our social and cultural locations—assumptions, preferences and traditions?!

my amazon review: transformation and tradition

water buffalo theology review

Christianity in this country won't always be (well, it isn't now!) First Church on the corner of Main and Elm, housed in an iconic white colonial or colonial reproduction building, pews lined up facing the chancel that features a communion table topped with brass candlesticks donated by Annie and Henry's grandparents, Tiffany-type stained glass, Strawberry Shortcake Socials and picnics on a grassy lawn…

Water Buffalo Theology is liberation theology, ecological theology, theology of the cross and an offering in the Christian-Buddhist dialogue. By definition Christianity is incarnational, so cautioning every one of us in our attempts to reach others author Kosuke Koyama asks, "How can anyone be a teacher of religion unless he is at home with the language of the people?" and in the course of the book contrasts and compares many aspects of Buddhism and Christianity. Koyama challenges us to tough anthropological cross-cultural work of living with and living as the other in order to become more aware of ourselves, during the journey (hopefully) discerning essential aspects of the way of Jesus we're offering to others alongside possibilities of adapting the host culture's own practices. As an aside, to me it's interesting how the practice of many contemporary Christians is marked by passionate attachment along with attempts to live with greater perspective and more detachment.

Kosuke Koyama, who died during 2009, was born in Tokyo of Christian parents; the years he taught at a seminary in Thailand heavily influenced this book, thus "water buffalo" and careful considerations of Buddhism and Buddhists. Koyama says God's "first and fundamental gift" to us is "the constant awareness that we are under the judgment of the Word of God."

Detailing limitations of a "theology of the neglect of history" he mentions "an unmysterious God" and quotes Martin Luther's "God without strange work is God without proper work!" In fact, Koyama reveals himself as a huge fan of Dr. Luther... not surprisingly, my internet research revealed on Wikipedia that Koyama wrote his PhD dissertation for Princeton seminary on interpretation of the Psalms of Martin Luther. Introducing the chapter on page 68, he asks, "What is the matter with this God?" In other words, this God who becomes perturbed to the point of wrath is not like our idea of a perfect human; this God is no human invention!

Koyama says Thai Christian awareness of God must be "...deepened and substantiated by [their] sensing the presence of God incarnate in Christ," to the God Whose wrath has "historical and covenantal reasons," reasons of "I-Thou!" Further, in describing Buddhism's influence on the non-historical mindset of many Thai Christians, he describes it as moving away from karmic chains and away from causality: away from attachment! Clearly the God of the Bible confronts us with choices - sometimes choices between life and death, meaning we act in the midst of both existential and emotional attachment to persons and situations. Finally, and strikingly, the not-historical God is a God continuous with humanity: there's no disruption between finite and infinite.

In the half-dozen years since I first read Water Buffalo theology it has been an extremely useful resource for teaching and interpretation that bears rereading and easily carries the weight and freight of a 5-star recommendation.

my amazon review: local yet global

Nim's Island

risk and redemption

Nim's Island—with a tagline for everyone, "Be the hero of your own story!"

You can read about principals and producers on the website and check out the narrative on Wikipedia and other locations, so I'll highlight Selkie the sea lion, whose name suggests mythic Celtic and Scandinavian shape-shifting seals, the pelican named Galileo for free-flying conveniently natural GPS wherever you are (even on a remote island in the South Pacific whose inhabitants aspire to not being found by anyone ever), and Freddie the bearded dragon.

Wendy Orr wrote the book and she's on blogspot with at least six blogs! Here's her Nim's Island blog.

Especially as an artist and dweller in a coastal desert I love the tertiary color palette of the film – but what else would you find in an island setting? – along with relatively sparse though essential special effects. Patrick Doyle's wistfully fresh music fits perfectly. Concerning becoming the hero of our own stories, in Nim's Island literally Berkeley-bound by agoraphobia Alexandra Rover (think about the implications of possessing a name like "Rover"), Jack Rusoe the dad, and Nim his daughter all deal rather predictably with their own stuff as circumstances, the needs of others and more than a hint of irresistible grace push them into new dimensions. All three principal characters are tightly caught in their own self-defined world (since the dad in the story was wearing a wedding ring, I assume he'd been widowed) and for sure every one of us is most of the time, but how do those liminal, transitional moments marked by vestiges of what was and hints of not-yets and months full of fear, promise and future happen if by grace someone or something other than ourselves doesn't push us out of where we are?

Playing along with the closing credits is U2's

Beautiful Day

The heart is a bloom
Shoots up through the stony ground
There's no room
No space to rent in this town

You're out of luck
And the reason that you had to care
The traffic is stuck
And you're not moving anywhere

You thought you'd found a friend
To take you out of this place
Someone you could lend a hand
In return for grace

It's a beautiful day
Sky falls, you feel like
It's a beautiful day
Don't let it get away...

You love this town
Even if that doesn't ring true
You've been all over
And it's been all over you...

Touch me
Take me to that other place
Teach me
I know I'm not a hopeless case...

my amazon review: risk and redemption

advent

The Spirit and the Church cry out, "Come, Lord Jesus!"

All those who await his appearance pray, "Come, Lord Jesus!"

The whole creation pleads, "Come, Lord Jesus!"

"thank you"...

here's the note I wrote to fans, friends and guest artists of suntreeriver design on Facebook...

Thank you, thank you, thank you to fans, friends and guest artists of suntreeriver design!

Again we celebrate a season of cultural, religious and family festivities; in the northern hemisphere shorter, darker days and longer, colder nights bring a particularly marked opportunity to recognize the gift of light without which life cannot prevail. At this time of year the world looks to the hope of a new star on the horizon bringing a vision of justice for all creation.

Beginning with light as the first act of creation, a river of life and tree of life in a fresh, untamed garden and ending with the river of life and tree of life in a city where the sun never sets, sun and tree and river are persistent images throughout the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. The witness of scripture shows us how to live in community and to live in harmony with and as part of the natural creation. Today many of us live in places neither quite urban or exactly rural, where garden and city intermix and converge, but wherever we are, as artists, designers, photographers, illustrators and people who simply enjoy being surrounded by beauty, we can help make the world kinder, more lovely and less threatening.

As we move the calendar year 2010, let's do everything possible to live as stewards of the planet and of the light as our lives help restore, nourish, heal and sustain. May we fill our surroundings with beauty and grace and make this world safe for innocence, vulnerability and wildness so all creation will find a safe home on this planet that is the dwelling-place of the divine, the habitation of the Spirit of Life.