Vacation That Isn't

I don't think that a single day lies ahead in the next two weeks in which some form of scheduled interaction with someone is not required. A little much for this perceived-as-extrovert-but-not-one kind of person.

This morning I am headed out to meet with the friends with whom I used to spend every Saturday morning. That tradition broke down for me last fall when the rest of them decided to spend that time at a farmer's market and I decided that I needed to conserve my energy instead.

Tomorrow~ field ed church all morning and then the entire afternoon spent at my home church where a friend and I will be getting people started on our prayer retreat. We begin with a meeting of the spiritual directors, and then the retreatants will join us for orientation. Each of them has agreed to spend half an hour in contemplative prayer and half an hour meeting with a spiritual director over the next five days -- quite a venture for Presbyterians! My co-leader and I had hoped to be solely engaged in the organization of this one, but the numbers and schedules haven't worked out that way. It looks like I will be meeting with two people each evening, so in this case I am conserving mental energy ahead of time. It doesn't sound demanding, but listening attentively to someone and trying to follow her prayer life for several consecutive days is exhausting!

Monday ~ I am meeting with someone who is planning a year-long Ignatian retreat in everyday life. I am extremely excited about that, but it entails a huge commitment on both our parts. Four years ago I was in the middle of my own retreat, and I am still in awe that someone else who had multiple other responsibilities was willing to meet me at 8:00 in the morning once a week to accompany me through the Ignatian Exercises. That memory and the recognition of all that changed in my own life as a result help to propel me forward when my own phone rings.

And there is a sermon to plan for Thursday, and a huge paper to write. (I didn't realize just how huge until I started it last night.)

Well. I wanted to be a pastor and a spiritual director. Be careful what you wish for, right?

My camera and its various accoutrements is sitting here next to me on the bed as I type. I am going to start figuring it out later today, and I've started a new blog under my real name for the upcoming adventure. I have no idea what will happen to Search the Sea, but I think it's time for a different approach. If you are interested in joining me over there ~ so far a title is all that exists ~ email me at gannetgirlatsbcglobaldotnet.

In Church For All Saints' Day

Someone said to me afterward, "Oh, you really need to hear it out on the Highlands."

We didn't have the Highlands or the images, but we did have the bagpipes and the organ.

Monday, Monday

~ Started writing a blog post and did nothing else that I had planned to do early this morning.

~ Had a three-hour lunch with the associate pastor at my field ed church; very informative and not at all optimistic about call possibilities in my Presbytery.

~ Went for a walk in the cemetery; discovered that the holes are dug for our memorial bench; had a long phone conversation with a friend about a possible memorial scholarship at the kids' Montessori school; took some photos.

~ Went to a church where I sometimes sit to pray; on the way in, ran into a Jesuit I know who told me about his sister's having lost a 19-year-old son to a car accident many years ago; went inside and sat there and cried.

~ Stopped at the grocery on the way home to pick up a couple of necessities, including a pumpkin.

~ The Lovely Daughter made us stir-fry for dinner; it was very, very good.

~ Packed up for tomorrow's drive; going to try to upload some pictures. Maybe one or two will show up here.

Church and Girls and Their Moms

I was visiting another church, and at the end of the service a young-ish couple got up to make a stewardship presentation. They talked about how much the church means to them, and about how involved they are in the church and in its associated school which their three elementary-grade aged children attend. They were attractive and energetic and articulate, and bubbling over with the general goodness of life and their joy in their family and church.

It was pretty painful to watch, if you happened to be me.

I used to be that mother and my family used to be that family. It was hard to watch them as the person I am now. It was hard to think about myself having made similarly enthusiastic presentations in oblivion to their possible effects. It is hard to think about ministry and how to conduct church services in which the pews are filled with people experiencing all kinds of hardships as well as all kinds of joys.

After they stepped down, we sang the last hymn, and then it was time to leave. I was pretty near the front of the very large sanctuary and I wasn't in a hurry, so as I reached the back, few people were left. But among those who were still there was a small group in one pew: a young girl sobbing into the lap of the woman next to her, another girl about her age curled up in a man's embrace, and a couple of other adults looking fairly dazed and disconnected.

I felt as if I should understand the little scene playing out before me, but there was no reason that I would. And then I thought: I wonder if that's the family of the woman who died in a car accident a few weeks ago, leaving twin daughters behind.

If it was ~ how excruciating it must have been for those girls, to see another mother from their school laughing and talking about all the things that she does with her children. All the things their mother will never again do with them. To see their classmates smiling and waving at the congregation. It was hard for me and I am all grown up and I have had some time.

I wanted to stop and say, I know. I know what it's like to lose your mother in an automobile accident. I know what it's like to grow up without a mother. But of course, I didn't, because I didn't know anything at all about the family sitting there and, even if they were who I think they were, I am a complete stranger to them. But I do think about the family I know of, and pray for them often.

And then I drove home, and thought about a conversation my daughter and I had had earlier in the day, in which she had poured out some frustrations to me and had then begun to talk with delight about something else. And I thought about what it is like not to have those conversations with your mother. Not even to know such conversations exist until you have a daughter of your own.

I hope those girls have daughters someday.

I hope they get to wave good-bye as I did today, to a 22-year-old woman sporting a bright pink wig, off to meet a friend at her Montessori school's Halloween party, eight years after she last attended that party as a student. I hope they get to live as mothers the lives they are missing out on as daughters.

I hope they can someday find a way to be in church, filled with peace rather than with sorrow.

I hope I can, too.




Cross posted at Desert Year.

Down Where?

As you know if you've been reading this, I'm doing my "field ed" (internship) in a downtown church this year. Every day, whether I am there or at seminary or at home, I wonder what I am doing and what God is inviting me into. Every day, I think: a year from now I will most likely be doing something in ministry, and my vision of what that might be probably could serve as a definition for the word "murky."

This morning I am doing the readings in the main service, and tonight I am preaching in a smaller service. My sermon is sort of on the topic of gratitude, which you can imagine is a difficult one for me. I try to remember the words of one of my seminary friends, now out in the world and looking for her first call, when I questioned my capacity for taking Homiletics last spring. "You will be studying and proclaiming the Word; what could be more healing?"

I have this to say: Healing comes in odd forms.

As I am getting ready this morning, I've read two things that apply. The first, a wonderful and brilliant sermon from Songbird, which I suggest you read in its entirety, closes with the following:

" . . . Jesus is turning the whole idea [of greatness] upside down for us, reminding us how far we have to go to go with him. He made it plain how far you have to go: all the way to the bottom, out of love for all. . . . "

The second, quoted on The Website of Unknowing, is from Parker Palmer's The Promise of Paradox.

"The way of the cross is often misunderstood as masochistic, especially in an age so desperately in search of pleasure. But the suffering of which Jesus spoke is not the suffering that unwell people create for themselves. Instead, it is the suffering already present in the world, which we can either identify with or ignore. If pain were not real, if it were not the lot of so many, the way of the cross would be pathological. But in our world — with its millions of hungry, homeless, and hopeless people — it pathological to live as if pain did not exist. The way of the cross means allowing that pain to carve one’s life into a channel through which the healing stream of the spirit can flow to a world in need."

Rundown of Day 2

Hebrew Exegesis is going to be fine.

Middle of the day: Very bad. Run-in over certain administrative rules I have unwittingly broken, the breaking of which produced some of my best educational experiences here. Result: Foul taste in my mouth over issue of rules versus meaningful learning.

Chapel: 0 for 2. One of the very few Gospel verses that has given me any solace during the past year was given a decidedly different twist by today's preacher. It felt as if a knife had been plunged into my gut and twisted, and I departed before communion, something I don't do. Well, actually, I've done it twice in the past several months. I'm thinking that it would be better sometimes to skip the preaching of the Word and proceed directly to the Sacrament. Those of you who are Reformed will recognize that as a fairly dire statement of desolation. Those of you who are not ~ well, we do Word all the time without Sacrament, but never vice versa. However, having now sat through several sermons which have caused me considerable pain, I'm ready to scratch them from my daily life for awhile.

And that from someone who is in seminary in part because she loves both preaching and listening to preaching. Or used to, anyway.

Day considerably redeeemed by spending the afternoon engaged in a wide-ranging conversation with my advisor.

Long walk; beautiful evening.

Two hours spent translating three Hebrew verses. Sort of. Could not have done it without English version also on desk, and still several of the words have refused to reveal themselves in the dictionary. I know what they are, but I'm damned if I can figure out what their roots are so that I can find them.

Going to read Bonhoeffer. Now there's someone I'm willing to listen to.

Approaching Church

This morning I will worship for the first time in a church new to me, the church at which I will spend ten or so hours a week in the coming year to meet my field education requirement. It's a very old and historic church in the heart of the city, with a magnificent sanctuary, many outreach ministries, a dwindling congregation, and a new pastor.

A couple of years ago in my home church, we talked about what it might be like for a newcomer to experience one of our worship services. We are a vibrant suburban congregation with a long history of social justice work in the local and broader community, a senior pastor who has been there for 20 years and an associate for five, a sophisticated and diverse music program, a multi-generational and enthusiastic congregation. I have friends from other cities who tell me that if they could find a church like ours they would go, and friends at seminary who express surprise at the breadth of our educational offerings and the openness and eagerness of our members to learning and discussion. And yet we do not grow.

When we had that conversation some time back, we talked about how many roadblocks a new visitor with little or no experience of church, or even just of a Presby church, might find in a first visit. Even the bulletin, intended to be helpful, contained words like processional, confession, pardon, assurance, commission ~ I counted once and found 22 words that someone unfamiliar with our service might not understand in our context. (I just looked at last week's bulletin and see that in this past year in which I have been mostly absent, many of those words have been excised in favor of more familiar ones and/or short explanations. Very interesting.) There is a visually appealing brochure in the pews which tells about the history and internal activities and outreach of the congregation, but there is not, to my knowledge, anything which explains the design and purpose of the sanctuary. If you were to visit, I think that you would feel most welcome, but I'm not sure that you would have much of an idea of that to which you were being introduced.

As many readers know, I have often attended Catholic mass this past year, in an effort to worship quietly and anonymously. Even though I was somewhat familiar with the mass, it took a number of visits for me to feel comfortable. I have gone to mass in four different places and, with the exception of the Jesuit retreat house earlier this month, there has never been anything in place to clue a visitor in to what goes on. No welcoming announcement except, in two of them, an announcement of who the presider is and, in the case of the retreat house, the homilist, as that is usually someone else. No bulletin. No one in the pews or seats who talks to you. These services have suited my purposes, but they are clearly designed for those who already know what happens and what its significance is.

So, in a couple of hours: a new place, which no doubt will strike me as glorious in some ways and nudge me with doubts in others. It's a dark and dreary day outside. I have not slept well in nearly a year and last night was no different. In other words, there is nothing outside or inside to foster the openness of spirit I need for this morning, nothing except the Spirit herself who has led me to a new place in spite of myself, and the longing for a God who has remained mostly hidden for a very long time. A new kind of new beginning.

Color Where There Is No Place to Put It

A couple of nights ago I stayed over at church as one of the hosts for an IHN week. If your community has an Interfaith Hospitality Network, then you know it's a program designed to offer a tiny bit of a homelike atmosphere to homeless families. Shelters are usually segregated by gender, which tends to split up spouses and divide parents from children. Through IHN, families stay overnight, in their own rooms as much as possible, in participating churches and synagogues for a week at a time. They spend their days at the IHN center, from which children are delivered to school and where parents find phone banks and other resources for housing and job searches.

Most religious communities host IHN families about four separate weeks each year. It's a high people-intensive committment: volunteers are needed to set up and take down, welcome and say good-bye, provide breakfasts and dinners, act as hosts during the early evening hours - mostly to supervise the younger children so the parents can have some privacy, and stay overnight. I figured I could about manage an overnight, with the minimal interaction it would require with either the families or my co-overnighter.

I didn't miss the irony that I was spending the evening with four families who have no homes at present at the same time that I was writing about extravagant home decorating ideas. An odd thing has happened recently in that several possibilities for serving the homeless have suddenly materialized in my life. A friend and former colleague is taking me with her next week to a huge men's shelter where she does poetry workshops. A man is my spiritual direction program is planning his internship around offering spiritual companionship to the homeless. This Saturday I'll be spending some time at the church where I'll be doing my internship this year, on a day when lunch is provided to the homeless. And if I get my act in gear and send an email today, there may be an opportunity for me involving spiritual direction and the homeless in the city in which I attend seminary.

In the very dark days of last winter, my own former spiritual director, working in another city these days, sent me without commentary a short article about Jean Vanier and L'Arche, the communities Vanier founded in which those who are developmentally disabled and those who are not share homes together. Why did you send me this? I asked. I don't know, he answered. I thought about writing something, but I decided to let it take its own course. I can't say that I felt suddenly inspired to anything beyond my own survival, but it did occur to me then in a vague kind of way that perhaps he was trying to tell me that my own life having crashed and burned did not mean that I was forever lost and precluded from helping others.

It's probably premature even to speculate about this turn of events, since all that has happened is that a few seeds have been scattered into my life. But it does make me wonder whether I am moving in a completely unexpected direction. I have a roof over my head and a loving family living in it with me, and yet in some ways as a consequence of the past year I feel completely adrift and homeless. New qualifications, perhaps.

Unformed Thoughts on Worship

None of my thoughts are well formed these days, so why should those on worship be any different?

At least that's the excuse I'm using this morning when no, I am not in church. I have some hope, though, that there will be some contributions in the comments that will lead, eventually, to some degree or another of sorting out.

My disorganized thinking on the subject has been generated by Quotidian Grace's post challenging an earlier post written by Bruce Reyes-Chow, the Moderator of the PCUSA, in which he offers the beginnings of a rationale in favor of twittering during worship services. QG objects primarily on the grounds that we struggle enough as it is to focus during worship. Bruce, as I understand it, finds twittering to offer valuable potential for community response to God and to one another.

It's no secret that I've struggled mightily with worship over the past several months. (Perhaps not a politic admission for a seminarian, but I have concluded that there is some value to be found in addressing the real-life fallout of bereavement.) When I go to my own church (in which, as far as I know, no one twitters ~ but some of us do take notes on the bulletin, and pass occasional commentary back and forth), I am usually overwhelmed by the energy and sense of community ~ aspects of our worship that I treasured a year ago, and for many years before that. (And apparently I also have a bit of PTSD going on. It had never occurred to me before that there might be a good reason to avoid having your child's funeral in your own church sanctuary.)

And yet, I keep returning ~ to other churches when I cannot manage my own. Worship is not, after all, much about me. I try to find places where other people are praying, and singing, and engaging with God in some way, even when it seems beyond me personally. And I am very aware, and grateful to acknowledge in some some way, that what is beyond me personally is being taken up on behalf of myself and my family in synagogues and Catholic and Protestant churches all over the country.

The other day, a friend talked about having gone to church a couple of weeks earlier for the first time in over a year. Her family is in the thick of it these days, contending with her husband's devastating and tenancious cancer. "I was SO BORED," she said. "All that ritual ~ it's boring and meaningless. I'm too experientially oriented for church. A day in the wilderness ~ that's my church."

The wilderness is a church for me, too. God in all things. But the ritual, the liturgy, the sacramental community, the attentiveness to text ~ I love all those things, too. It occurs to me, however, that they all ~ like the wilderness ~ require an education before they can be fully appreciated. I can't comment on where my friend has directed her energies. But I know that I can find God in the wilderness in part because I have invested years in the study of birds, in art because I read and look and listen to what others have to teach me about painting and architecture, in church because I practice (in the literal sense of the word) my religion intently in a variety of ways.

"Twittering" asked my 24-year-old son, when I told him about the discussion. "That incredibly irritating practice?" "How would you know whether it would be a problem in church, since you don't go to church?" I asked him. "No, but I think I understand the point," he said. "And what about the people who have prepared for and work so hard on the service?" he asked. "I don't think I've ever attended a church that lacked a coffee hour ~ why can't people socialize there?"

I will admit that one of the first things I had thought about, in response to the initial posts, was the effort that goes into leading a service, and how dismayed I would be as the minister, the preacher, the music director, the liturguist, the choir member, to know that people were twittering among themselves rather than offering themselves and their attention and participation to the drama of the service. I don't doubt that God is in the twittering, as one of its proponents argues. (Although I have to say, that last one felt like a really bizarre sentence for me to write.) But worship is an opportunity to focus on God's self-disclosure, rather than upon our own, and to respond directly to God, rather than to one another.

In the end, I realize that perhaps my own orientation is just contemplative enough to make twittering during worship an outrageous proposition. I can imagine that if one is directed more completely toward the evangelical (in the sense of sharing), the prophetic, the social, or the kinesthetic in one's engagement with God, then twittering could have its place. Given my own extraordinary challenges these days, I am willing to make room for others to experiment with approaches to theirs in creative ways that might seem frustrating or damaging to me.

I will share, though, as representative of my own viewpoint (with apologies for the unabashed male gender of the language) the following quotes which appeared here, on the blog The Website of Unknowing yesterday. I found it pretty humorous that they popped up in my blog reader as I was pondering this topic.

The tragedy of modern man is that his creativity, his spirituality, and his contemplative independence are inexorably throttled by a superego that has sold itself without question or compromise to the devil of technology.
…

The contemplative seeks to liberate his soul from all external control, to purify and detach it from material, sensual, and even spiritual compulsions, and to surrender it to the truth and creative freedom of the Holy Spirit.

— Thomas Merton, The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation

I personally question the liberating power of Twitter. But I'm willing to listen to the arguments.

Inquiring Gannets Want to Know

Gannet, who is always attuned to historical and liturgical context, is curious as to why her little Ash Wednesday survey reveals a predominantly Anglican/Episcopalian presence here. Gannet herself being apparently Celtic by name, Puritan by ancestry, Methodist by childhood, Catholic by friendship, and Presbyterian by confession, wonders if all of that equals the Middle Way?

Or is it just that the survey happened to be about ashes?

Maybe if she asked about election, all the Presbies would show up.

Friday Five: Some Forks

Wonderful Friday Five today! Here it is, from Singing Owl:

I am at a life-changing juncture. I do not know which way I will go, but I have been thinking about the times, people and events that changed my life (for good or ill) in significant ways. For today's Friday Five, share with us five "fork-in-the-road" events, or persons, or choices. And how did life change after these forks in the road?

Obviously, the biggest fork in my road, ever, has been the sudden death of my son six months ago. But that horror of a life-changing event happened within a broad context of life, and it's that context that I want to focus on today. Herewith, five forks:

1. That first Brownie camera, received for my 9th birthday. I have experimented with photography off and on throughout my life, and it has played a big part in helping this cerebral, left-brained, language-oriented person become more attuned to how vast is the universe beyond words. I have noticed, in the six months since we lost our son, that despite the cascade of words that have come my way, most of the things which really speak to me are visual, either images themselves or words which create images.

2. The marriage. I have been married my entire adult life, since just before I turned 21. All of the things I have done as an adult have been within the confines and expansiveness of that relationship, meaning that, while sometimes my options have been limited, I have always been supported in decisions that are sometimes a little bizarre and more often than not seem to lead nowhere. I became a lawyer, a teacher, and now a seminary student, welcomed three children and said good-bye to one, all in the context of one marriage.

3. The venture into church, a Methodist church, in my late 20s. I simply woke up one morning and announced to the Quiet Husband that we needed to find a church. Who knew? In addition to serving as the foundation for a whole host of life choices, that church was the place in which we became part of a group of friends who have been family to one another for more than twenty years.

4. Great-horned owls. I first became interested in birding as a law student, when I read an article about a local guy studying and photographing nesting great-horned owls. Who could not fall in love with baby GHOs? That led to a decade-long volunteer relationship with the Museum of Natural History, my first experiences as a teacher, time up-close-and-personal with bald eagles and, most of all, a lifelong dedication to birds of all kinds.

5. The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. After a couple of graduate courses on spirituality as expressed in literature, I signed up for a course on the Exercises and within a couple of weeks asked my professor whether he would guide me through them. With that low-key modesty characteristic of individuals of profound achievement, he simply said "Sure," never letting on, as he had not through three semesters of classes, that he is one of the giants of Ignatian interpretation. A year later, I was en route to seminary and to becoming a spiritual director myself, immersed in an experience and a tradition of prayer that have, quite simply, changed my entire being and course of life.

So that's it, five forks. All of them unexpected people, unexpected gifts.

(Image: Here.)

Key West in No Particular Order (5)

In honor of Gene Robinson's having been asked to offer the invocation for the opening event of the Inaugural Festivities (hat tip to Mary Beth), I offer images of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Key West. It's a good day for the Episcopalians, and any winter day is a good one when 80-degree temperatures permit the church windows to be flung wide open. ( I suppose there's a metaphorical as well as a literal meaning in there.)

The Spaces We Inhabit, Part I

Mrs. M over at The Kitchen Door has posted an interesting piece on the spaces in which we live. Prompted by considerations involved in moving to a new apartment, she moves on to what she has seen and experienced in various churches and what the different frameworks for worship mean. I am always fascinated by physcial space, and so I thought that in response to her questions I'd give it some thought for a few posts. Today I'm focusing on a few churches, Protestant and Catholic.

The Presbyterian church to which I belong, which I have served as an elder, in which I have participated and been supported in so many ways:

Think austere and elegant New England. The walls are a pale shade of white with a hint of blush, the trim a bit more on the creamy side. Two sets of pews with aisles down the center and down each side. The communion table on a raised platform, a lectern for the readings to the right side as the congregation faces the front, a pulpit for preaching to the left. The cross, a contemporary rendition which I have contemplated a great deal and hope to use as the subject of a sermon someday, hangs from the ceiling over the steps leading up to the communion table. No artwork whatever in the sanctuary. The windows are clear glass panes. The choir stalls are in the front, behind the communion table, and the organ is built into the wall behind them, so the choir is always visible and the music pours directly into the sanctuary.

The Methodist church in which our entire family participated energetically for many years:

The main sanctuary is modeled on a 13th century French Gothic cathedral, huge and cavernous, with breathtaking stained glass windows and elegant piers, columns, and arches. The layout is almost identical to that of my current church, with the exception of the music-related features: the choir stalls are in the left transept, so that the choir is all but invisible to the congregation, and difficult to hear, and the organ is built into the back wall above the balcony. When the church is full and everyone is singing and the organ is playing, the effect is impressive. The pulpit, lectern, and baptismal font are all made of wood, intricately carved exponents of the theme of vine and branches running through the entire space. A Renaissance reproduction painting of Mary and Jesus hangs over the baptismal font.

The sanctuary of my Presbyterian seminary:

Again, New England and austere, but without the intimacy of my home church. High, high ceilings, and high, high, clear glass windows. Now that I think of it, the interior shape must be something of a half-hexagon; the pews do not follow the lines of the walls and the effect is somewhat confusing. (From the outside, the building appears to be a square.) One of my readers may correct me here. Both organ and choir stalls are in the balcony. And here's something Mrs. M mentions in another context: the single pulpit (no lectern) is smack in the middle of the front. I had never heard of such a layout until just before I went off to seminary and wondered what it would look like -- and there it is! To me it seems rather an astonishing illustration of the Protestant emphasis on Word at, perhaps, the expense of Sacrament. It was awhile before I was able to shake off the sense that the human preacher rather than God was at the center of the worship service. When we have communion, it is served from a small table below the towering pulpit.

The Carmelite chapel, where I have spent some time this fall:

Another austere space, this one shaped somewhat like a barn, with white plaster walls. There is a statute of Mary with the baby Jesus in a side alcove, and that's it for artwork. The windows are clear glass and the furnishings are made of wood, with simple and spare lines, and entirely mobile. When I have been there we have always sat in rows forming a semi-circle the long way across the rectangular space, with the altar front and center and the lectern/pulpit off to the right. No choir; a small organ in the back, but I think it can be moved around.

The suburban Catholic church I sometimes attend which is, not surprisingly for me, also a Jesuit church:

You might call this one a contemporary version of the Methodist church described above. It's huge, wide with high ceilings, but no arches, no columns, and boxy rather than rectangular. Most of the stained glass windows have geometric art deco designs, except for those in the front which tell some of the Ignatian and Jesuit story. The organ is in the balcony, which is usually where the choir is, too, although often the music is provided by soloist or small group vocalists and musicians from the front to the right. There are a couple of very small side chapels, and large statues of Mary and Joseph, one on each side in the front, and a large lectern/pulpit to the left. The priests sometimes preach from the pulpit, and sometimes walk down and stand in or wander the aisle There is no doubt that in this church the emphasis is on the celebration of the Eucharist: the elevated altar is huge and set back at some remove from the congregation and the majestic crucifix takes up the entire wall above it.

My current favorite, even though I have only been there once ~ a downtown Catholic church restored over the last decade or so:

Inside, a wonderful semi-Gothic space with soaring arches and white walls and huge stained glass windows that somehow still enable bright light to filter through. A little bit in the way of sculpture and statues, not at all intrusive. There is an altar but, as with the Carmelites, everything is moveable. The day I was there, we sat in two vast semicircles; the reading was from the (beautifully carved) lectern placed toward one end and the homily was preached from the center of the congregation. The communion elements were consecrated on the altar, but the entire congregation of several hundred surged forward and encirled it, as we had gathered and encircled the bapismal font in back half-an-hour earlier for the full dunking baptism of a baby girl. I can't describe this church as well as I'd like since, as I've said, I've only been there once, but its combination of elegant and historical stone, glass, and archways with contemporary and spare furnishings and artwork, its infusion of bright light, and its generous balancing of space for both Word and Sacrament, is completely appealing to me.

Ghost Ranch Sunday

Early in May, a group of twenty members and friends of our church made a pilgrimmage to Ghost Ranch, a Presbyterian retreat and conference center in New Mexco. Last Sunday, they led our worship service, incorporating slides, chants, music, and reflections from and about their journey, which had them climbing through rocks to mesas; visiting Native American, Muslim, and Benedictine communities; sharing personal journies; and learning new music.

I was particularly taken with this version of the Lord's Prayer which they brought home to us, from New Zealand in the Anglican Maori tradition:

Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver, Source of all that is and shall be,
Father and Mother of us all, Loving God, in whom is heaven:
Let the hallowing of your name echo through the universe,
The way of your justice be followed by the people of the world,
Your heavenly will be done by all created beings,
Your commonwealth of peace and freedom sustain our hope and come on earth.
With the bread we need for today, feed us.
In the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us.
In times of temptation and test, strengthen us.
From the grip of all that is evil, free us.
For you reign in the glory of the power that is love, now and forever.
Amen.

(The image is from Christ in the Desert Monastery.)

Summer!

It has been SO nice to focus on people and matters outside my fairly self-absorbed space of the past year.

My spiritual director made his final vows as a Jesuit on Saturday, so the Lovely Daughter and I went to the mass. It takes at least twelve years to get from first day to final vows in the Society of Jesus, no matter what you've done before you get started -- in his case, an M. Div, and then many years as a parish priest. It's pretty cool to observe the solemnity (and humor) with which the Jesuit community marks a man's final and most complete commitment to membership in its ranks.

A friend of mine, a religious studies professor, had asked a small group of people to serve as first readers on a book manuscript he's working on, and so Sunday three of us got together to discuss its current manifestation. Another process of coolness -- to be a tiny part of a book in the making.

Tonight I've just returned from a lengthly planning meeting for my own church's adult ed program for next year. My days of chairing that enterprise are behind me but I still get to participate. I am extremely grateful for the opportunity, because as a group we are way up there on the imagination-ometer, if I say so myself.

And . . . I started CPE today. The hospital has 35,000 employees and covers I don't know how many city blocks. Enough that I am beyond description in terms of being geographically challenged. The chances of my actually answering a page within a day of receiving it would appear to be limited at the very best. I am more likely to find the North Pole than I am any destination on that campus.

I am WIPED OUT.

And yeah, the gutter guys are still here. I suppose I should look at it this way: the gutter-and-soffit catastrophe is absorbing pretty much all the stress I might otherwise direct toward CPE. As a lining, though, that one looks more like rust than silver.

Miscellaneous Thoughts on a Monday Morning

Over at a new blogring of which I am a member, it was suggested that we write about the election. I find that I have little to say. I am intrigued by the fact that my brother, a businessman and lifeling Republican, tells me that McCain is a "no-way," that he could get behind Hilary without much of a problem, and that he is utterly frustrated by the apparent reality that the Dems are choosing Obama, whom he views as "maybe ready in another eight years."

Over at Faithstones, there are a couple of posts on a book called UnChristian, which apparently reflects the reality that many young people view the church as hypercritical and judgmental and anti-gay. That's how my own three young people view it, which also intrigues me, since neither my church nor my church friends nor I could be described in that way. (Well, okay ~ I'm their mother ~ I suppose they might see me as critical at times.) The power of the media? Again? Which I hold responsible for the Obama/Clinton phenomenon? Why have my children, who have heard a lifetime series of sermons, talks, and discussions about the radical inclusivity of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and who have spent their lives in and out of the orbit of Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish friends, including a community of nuns and various members of the clergy, who have welcomed them at every turn, come to see the church as the polar opposite of the values they cherish?

This past week-end, I received a handwritten letter from a lifelong friend of my dad, who just wanted to tell me how delighted he was that I am studying for the ministry. I think he has every reason to guess that we are on opposite sides of The Issue referenced above, but he could not have been more gracious. I am always going to treasure that communication.

Our church was about to burst with the Spirit yesterday. You might have thought we were Pentecostals instead of the Frozen Chosen. Several young people from the local high school's award-winning choral program, which includes a phenomenal gospel choir, have begin to grace our sanctuary on Sunday mornings. I don't know which was better: the music, the communion, the preaching, that atmosphere of ~ ahem ~ radical inclusivity . . . I suppose it was the whole conglomeration, which actually caused a crowd of decently-and-in-order Presbies to break into applause several times.

OK, denial at work. Can you tell that I am making my major Greek presentation in a few minutes? The outline alone is 13 pages. (Things got a little out of hand this past week-end.) And would you be surprised that my take on John 21's breakfast on the beach has something to do with hospitality and inclusivity?

Milestone

I am just completing my three year term as an elder on our church's Session (governing council), serving on (and this past year, chairing) our Ministry for Education and Formation.

In practical terms, that means my schedule of, at an absolute minimum, two (and more usually three to five) church meetings per month is behind me. I no longer have to spend summer afternoons with committees dreaming up year long plans and programs, I no longer have to make cold calls (or, thankfully these days, emails) to potential speakers, and I no longer have to manage the endless stream of paperwork that accompanies any administrative task. It also means I'll no longer have a mailbox at the church, I'll no longer be on the receiving end of those emails when Something Happens, and I won't get an invite to the annual Robert Burns party, featuring haggis and terrible poetry recitations.

I think we've had a great run. From the adult end -- my particular area of concern -- we've put together a Sunday morning program that has taken us through Biblical text, church traditions, and spiritual practices -- and this year, by popular demand, we're back on the Bible again. As folks learned more about the traditions and practices that mark Christian life, they started asking for a return to the Biblical foundation -- an unexpected and very cool development.

We've read and discussed books as a church -- C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity, Charles Kimball's When Religion Becomes Evil, Jim Wallis's God's Politics. Charles Kimball came and spent a fall week-end with us, providing a community lecture, a Sunday morning adult education session, and a Sunday sermon. We've had small group Bible and spiritual practice groups, and men's and women's spirituality groups, and a small center for quiet spiritual reflection is up and running from Advent through Lent. Most of all that is the product of a large group of hardworking people and has little to do with me, but it's been a real pleasure to see our program grow and fill vacuums that we weren't even aware existed.

From a personal standpoint I've gotten to do one of the things I love most -- I had to make a resume last week and discovered as I surveyed my computer files that I have taught adult classes on Benedictine and Ignatian spirituality; the history of the church in America; hospitality as a response to pluralism; the practice of prayer and the practice of Sabbath-keeping, the text pertaining to Abraham, Hagar, Sarah and Sons as part of our look at the story from Jewish, Christian, and Muslim perspectives; and the Tamar story as part of our Advent series on the women in Matthew's genealogy. I've learned so much and had so much fun!

I've just finished writing the minutes from my last meeting and revising my section of the annual report that will go to our congregation later this month. I hate writing minutes, so I don't mind scratching that job from my list, but I am really going to miss this level of engagement with my congregation. And I am going to be sad when the next Session heads off in the snow for a retreat at the end of this month. I, alas, will be studying Greek.

Winter Energy

I had scheduled an interview today with a pastor whom I'd not met before to discuss internship possibilities for next year.

We talked for nearly three hours.

And then, totally wound up, I went down to the Big Lakefront to see what might be going on there.

And then I came home and played with my photos. I do miss this part of my life!

Winter, Late Afternoon

I sat in the stylist's chair and made small talk as she chopped through my hair, bringing shape to thick weight.

And I went to the coffee shop for a meeting and sat with my pastor and drank a hot chocolate with whipped cream or, rather, a whipped cream with hot chocolate, and discussed half a millenium of theological conundrums ~ or mysteries, as we prefer to call them ~ which was probably a different discussion from any of the others taking place there, although you never know.

And then I went to the Little Lakes to see what last night's storm had wrought, and a chickadee called through the cold.

Church Questions ~ Dialogue Sought

We met twenty years ago in, of all places, a church. I know it was twenty years ago because The Lovely Daughter was a newborn, and I say "of all places" because, for many of us, church was an unlikely destination. The reasons were various but there we were, a group of couples with young children, trying to figure out how to live as families and a group of mothers, in particular, starving for adult companionship.

Snapshot, maybe fifteen years ago: our group has expanded a bit, but most of us are connected in significant ways to the same Methodist church. We serve on boards and committees and take classes and run events. Many of the children attend the church's cooperative nursery school, and their mothers duly take turns on the school's board. Our social lives center around events at church and events of our own in which we all participate with energy and enthusiasm.

Snapshot, oh, say, last week: the families are a good deal more tattered these days. Divorces, a couple of remarriages, some of the young adult children struggling to accomodate to the "adult" part of their identities, parents who are veterans of layoffs and any number of unexpected battles with finances, illnesses, and others of life's myriad curveballs. A couple of the families are still active in the Methodist church, where a major new addition has engaged the services of those who are architects for the past few years. I'm down the street with the Presbies. None of the children have any church involvement, and many of the adults have let it go as well.

Saturday mornings usually find me at a local bakery/coffee shop with a group of the moms. This morning I went with a mission in mind and was disappointed that only two others showed up ~ we all see so much of each other during the holiday season that I suppose most felt that today could slide ~ but I went ahead with the two questions I had for them:

Do you feel that you have a religious, or some kind of spiritual life, whether on your own or with your family?

and

Is there any way in which you could foresee church as having any appeal for you in the future?

I didn't ask those questions with publication in mind and I don't want to violate the privacy of my dearest friends, even in my pretty-much-anonymous blog. But I do think that some of what they said generally bears consideration for those of us who care about the church, however we encounter or define it. These are women, after all, who were at one time deeply engaged in the life of their church and full of hope that they and their husbands and children would continue in that pattern.

Both of them deem their lives spiritual, although their definitions were, to my way of seeing things, vague and had little to do with the 2,000 year old tradition of Christian spirituality -- or any other tradition of spiriutality, for that matter. Their disinterest in Christianity isn't connected to an exploration of Zen or an attraction to another faith, for instance. It's more in the way of a sense that traditional religion of whatever persuasion has little to offer in terms of an expression of that part of our lives that we would identify in some way as spiritual; a sense that that part of our lives is best engaged individually, in private, in the realm of every-dayness.

I hasten to add that my interpretation of what I heard is not necessarily complete and therefore, not necessarily accurate. I'm just doing the best I can with what I have at the moment.

With respect to the second question, I heard nothing that would indicate any attraction to the church as an institution, as a community, as a place of worship, or as a locus for encounter with God. Among the (many) reasons I have become interested in the issue of adults and the church is the recognition, as described in the blog Mark Time several days ago, that people are often hurt by the church: by its cliqueiness, by its narrow-mindedness, by its mistakes in judgment and process that are perceived as personal slights, by its inability to frame and sustain genuine welcome and hospitality. And I heard about all those things in some detail this morning. Most of the stories I knew well, and many concerned events that I had at one time or another sloughed off fairly easily. But I tried to listen really, really carefully this morning, and what strikes me now is the incredible height of the standard to which we want to hold the church. As beaten and bruised as it is, we still want it to be the insitution in which people behave differently than they do elsewhere, and we are truly and deeply devastated when they do not.

Another interest of mine: I have been wandering around thinking that as we age, my generation of Boomers is going to become more interested in end-of-life and, therefore, spiritual issues, and may turn to the church for answers and support. It seems that I might be completely wrong on that one. Neither of my friends see the church as a place in which she wants to invest energy or committment, even in exchange for support and practical services as parents die and we ourselves grow older. They expressed no interest in having long-term connections with a pastor or congregation; no sense that it might be desirable to have anything more than a drop-in relationship with respect to a worship service or a funeral. (Or, I suppose, a wedding ~ the type of event we moms are most likely to be planning in the next decade.)

My husband is not in any way religious and so, when I talked this all over with him awhile ago, he asked the question I had been trying to unearth. "What is church for, anyway?"

I suppose I could write for hours on my own relationship with the church: on my understanding of the interrelationship among tradition, community, and spirituality and how essential each is to the others; and on how those portions of my spiritual life which are indeed private and individual, some of them shared at most with just one or two other people, exist only in the context of the scripture and traditions of a history of (so I believe) revelation and relationship.

I have no argument with the discovery of relationship with God in both the beauties and the challenges of the natural world, of human relationship, of daily endeavor. I know that we can find God in all things. But it seems to me that without the community, the texts, the traditions of the church, we lose access to much of the story.

But ~ enough of me. I would love to see some dialogue around this topic.

What do you think, dear readers?