Bringing the Outside In

Yesterday was a frustrating one for me, for various reasons. Within about an hour of chapel beginning, I was probably at my most cranky point. But I headed over to chapel (later than I've done all semester), in order to prepare the space for our worship service.

After setting out the hymnals and preparing the communion table with the green cloth I use each week (never the same way twice, though), I felt overwhelmingly that I wanted to bring something in from the outside.

I walked out the door of the chapel and looked about me. I thought of maybe some branches off a tree, or some flowers I might find... then I saw a charlie-brown ginkgo tree just off to the side of the chapel. It had shed a number of its bright, gold leaves and they had blanketed the ground around it. I collected a good handful and put them by the bulletins (which I always set on a table at the entryway). I also put some more on the communion table on top of the green cloth and under the candle, already burning. But then I turned around and saw this long stretch of bright red carpet along the the aisle...

I went back out with a student. I took off my jacket and we started to fill my jacket with gold leaves. As we reentered the chapel, the president of the seminary looked at me curiously: "I saw you out there loading leaves in your jacket..."

I laughed. "Wait til you see what we do with them!"

Then we proceeded to strew them all along the aisle - from back to front. The bright gold against that deep red was something!

It was fun, then, to watch people come in and blink! The prayer of invocation we prayed together ended up asking God to help us see God in unexpected ways: in the strange and familiar. Then the sermon was on the feeling of "in-betweeness."

I thought about how the leaves made our space an in-between space: not outside, not inside. And Autumn being an in-between season: not Summer, not Winter but carrying us between the two. For me, the leaves began to generate meaning.

My favorite part was directly after the service, first the two of us who had brought in the leaves (and made the mess in the first place!) started collecting them into baskets. Then, little by little, more and more people--from the students to the dean--were down on our hands and knees collecting leaves! There was so much laughter and marveling going on down there on the floor of the chapel that it was certainly a continuation of the worship service from my perspective.

Part of my role as the director of chapel is to use the chapel experience to teach students. I've been trying to do this subtly, by showing the kinds of things that are possible in worship. At our community dinner afterwards, one of our students asked me about the leaves. She is Korean and still struggles to express herself in English, which made our conversation all the more beautiful to me. She asked me about the meaning of the leaves. I talked about the meaning I had found in them, but suggested that others might have made different meanings. She smiled, and said: "I liked it. They were beautiful!"

Another student admitted that she hadn't noticed the leaves at all until partway through the service. And she said she couldn't figure out then if they'd been there when she had walked in, or if someone had walked through as part of the service and scattered them, or if they'd been there every week and she simply had never noticed before! She was one of the ones who got down on the floor to pick up the leaves, laughing delightedly. It occurred to me that the leaves had called her into presence in worship in a way she had not expected. They were familiar things in an unfamiliar place--and they had caused her to notice. There is gift in that.

By the time the service was over, the frustrations of my day had melted away. My spirit had been able to come to a resting point. And I'd been reminded of the joy that can be found in community, especially a community that dares to worship together.

Finding Perspective

On Saturday I went to watch Monk's hockey practice. Each week at practice they do a horrendous drill where they skate the length of the rink (back and forth) while the coach shouts, "Down!" then "Up!" With each command they drop to the ice then clamber back up again as quickly as possible. I guess it's supposed to help them learn how to get on their feet again if they take a spill during a game.

Granted, all exercise strikes me as dreadful, but this one in particular looks like utter punishment. I couldn't help but smile as I sat on the bleachers this Saturday. It occurred to me, no matter how bad a day I may have on occasion, I never have to do that. It was such beautiful little moment of perspective. I feel like now I always have something to be thankful for. :)

Yesterday wasn't a bad day, but it was a long one. Mondays always are: I get in to work by 9:30 a.m. and stay 'til 10 p.m. (Though last night it was closer to 10:30 before I headed out.) I spend the day preparing both for the Seminary chapel service at 6:00 as well as preparing to teach immediately after chapel from 7:00 to 9:30. The amount of energy that goes into each experience is tremendous--both draw on wells of spiritual intuition and empathy, not to mention intellectual challenge.

For the most part, I find that worship and teaching gift back energy more than they take, but on occasion they really zap me out of it. And last night was one of those. Even so, it is such a privilege to get to do this. The tired that hits me is a well-earned tired. And the thing is, I never have to do that drill.

Ordinary Time

Sunday was the last worship service I had responsibility for planning as the Minister of Worship and Spiritual Growth at our congregation. As of the end of May, my position is coming to a close. Between this ending and the end of the semester, the month of June opens up for me to be able to pay attention as I move into my new position as Assistant Professor of Worship at the beginning of July.

I stand in awe at this transition time--and desire to engage it with great intention. Noticing the endings, anticipating the beginning, living in to this time of change.

The paintings I did this past weekend, what I ended up calling my Pentecost Trees, must have something to do with this. Some release of creative energies. Some openness to Spirit moving. On Wednesday of last week, my spiritual director asked me what I most felt I needed to do in the weeks ahead. I settled into God's leading after she asked the question, turned the question over for the Spirit to do her work on it. My sense was this: "Be open to receiving. Do not try to shape too much." I don't know what all that means quite yet. But I hope to live into it.

There is something truly lovely about beginning this new season of my life with the long, verdant season of Ordinary Time in the liturgical year. Festivals like Pentecost command our attention--with all their reds, and flames, and stormy winds. But Ordinary Time asks for a quieter reception--none of that bluster of birthing Spirit, just the gentle invitation of everyday moments of being.

My season of Ordinary Time begins with making lunch and breakfast for Monk this morning. Some time of reading and prayer. A trip to the bank to deposit checks. And then some work--reading, and writing comments on final projects. Nothing more ordinary than these things. And yet, all of it shimmering with God.

Worship Celebrating the Witness of Martin Luther King, Jr

I'm working on planning worship this morning and am considering setting the day's service aside to remember the witness of Martin Luther King, Jr. In my travels on the web, I've come across an excellent online source for King's speeches--which I thought I'd share in case anyone out there is also looking for texts for this week. You can find it at MLKOnline.Net.

Even if you're not planning Sunday's worship, why not stop by the site and read the inspirational and challenging words of one of our most recent prophets.

Coaxing the Light

We celebrated Epiphany at church yesterday--a day late, I suppose. But Baptists have great leeway when celebrating any festival of the liturgical year. You're lucky we celebrated it at all, quite frankly.

For the first time, as I prepared the service, I was impressed with how expansive epiphany really is. The readings for the day all celebrate the expansive grace of God which pours out beyond any barriers we might have set up over time. God's grace is for all people. And God's love will not rest until all are brought into God's embrace. (Indeed, nothing is beyond God's embrace!)

The magi who came to meet the Child of Grace were among the first to recognize this expansive salvation. (The Hebrew word for salvation also means spacious, by the way!) Anna and Simeon, in Luke 2, also recognize it when they encounter the Little One on his eighth day.

I was aware of these things as I prepared the service earlier in the week. But by the time I'd gotten to Sunday morning, my own heart was heavy from a week's worth of accumulated burdens. I was cranky yesterday morning. My son was sick. I didn't have everything done that I needed to be done. I was running late. My computer was giving me troubles. I left the house already worn out and not the least enthused about going to--much less leading--worship.

Thing is, I needed worship. But what I need is rarely what I want. Besides which, I'm still getting used to the idea of needing worship as a worship leader. Precisely because I don't feel centered yet. I feel like I'm in the shallow end. Or up in the high gales. I'm not deep in the calm waters, or far below the bending branches in the quiet beneath. I guess somewhere I'd gotten it into my head that to lead worship with integrity, one needed to start from a place of wholeness. I'm starting now to think the opposite may be true.

My worship started in an unexpected way, though. It began when I was readying the sanctuary before the service started. I decided to take down the Advent Wreath. Though we could have justified using it through the season of Epiphany, in fact the blue candles were becoming mere stubs--and folks would be so distracted wondering if the wreath would go up in flames at any moment that the symbol wouldn't be able to function effectively anymore!

So I moved the wreath into the closet and picked up our nearly brand new Christ candle (lit only twice) to find a new, prominent position for it. As I did so, I noticed that the last time I'd snuffed the candle out, the wax had managed to completely seal over the wick--so that it could hardly be perceived at all!

Well, our Epiphany service was sopped through with Light imagery. And if there was ever a day we needed the Christ candle lit, this was it!

So for the next ten or more minutes, I gently, carefully, and diligently eased the wick from the candle. First using match after match, I would slowly melt the wax around the wick, then gently try and press it away. I was always aware of how delicate a wick can be. The slightest tug can rip off it's tip--resulting in a pathetic, tentative flame. After a while I abandoned the individual matches for the larger candle-lighter--those huge brass things you only ever see in churches. I could hold the flame to the wax a bit longer that way. Then I could set my finger into the hot wax and gently shape it away from the wick.

It was only after I'd been at it for quite some time that I started to become aware of the gift and privilege in this task. Coaxing the light on Epiphany.

The buried wick wasn't so different from my experience that morning. (Or last month, in my state of exhaustion for that matter!) Nothing could be forced in that time. But the gentle coaxing with the warmth of a flame reminded me of what I most want, to burn bright. There was something truly beautiful, in those moments of preparing the space for worship, as I slowed my pace to the attention of one detail. It was in that moment that my worship began--when I attended to my own need for the light of Christ.

Receiving the Day

I've come across these two quotes in my studying for my exam today. I share them with you because they just seemed too overwhelmingly beautiful for me to keep all to myself.

"We do not know that breathing can be communion with God. We do not realize that to eat can be to receive life from God in more than its physical sense. We forget that the world, its air or its food cannot by themselves bring life, but only as they are received and accepted for God's sake, in God and as bearers of the divine gift of life. By themselves they can produce only the appearance of life." -Alexander Schmemann

"This applies to the [gift of the] present time as to manna: one must gather it each day, without ever being able to store it up or to amass it as far as to dispense with receiving as a gift. The manna of time thus becomes daily for us. . . .The Christian names her bread 'daily bread' first because she receives the daily itself as bread, a food whose daily reception -- as a gift -- no reserve will spare." -Jean-Luc Marion

And so, may we experience this day as gift--for God's sake. Amen.

How Can You Worship at a Time Like This?!

Last Thursday, as news was breaking about the latest foiled terrorist plot, I was sitting at home planning Sunday's worship service. It was difficult to do because I had no idea what the world would be like come Sunday. The news accounts made it sound as if a terrorist attack was still imminent. Anxieties were increasing again around the world and in this country particularly.

I also didn't know how people in our congregation would be feeling. In some ways, the foiled plot was something to celebrate. Untold thousands of lives were saved as a result of the investigative work by British intelligence. On the other hand, it was sobering to know how close we were to another catastrophe that would rival and surpass the events of September 11. As we are approaching the five-year anniversary of that horrific day, it sounds like there were some malicious people who were planning on marking the event by causing more carnage. This is so utterly heartbreaking, when we really let it sink in, that I can hardly bear it.

It turned out that we were hosting a guest preacher on Sunday who is somewhat of an expert on the Middle East, particularly between Israel and the Palestinians. So the subject of worship that day was already heavy. In some ways, it suited the events of the week.

So for this week, I planned a service that embraced lament as one faithful response to the pain and suffering in our world. I found a lament on the World Council of Churches website (from a worship service designed to launch their Decade to Overcome Violence) and I modified it slightly. The lament alternated between a musical piece and spoken word. A young woman from our congregation played a Scottish aria on a violin for the musical lament. It was heartwrenchingly beautiful. For the spoken word parts, I had three different people read their pieces while seated in the congregation. I told them when we rehearsed it that I wanted the voices to come from the congregation--not spoken by leaders toward the gathered people, but spoken to God from amidst the people. The lament concluded with the congregation also speaking words of lament.

I truly believe that gathering in worship together is one of the most faithful responses we can have to events such as we faced last week. Opening ourselves to the healing presence of God at the times of our greatest vulnerability can truly transform this world. God longs for our reconciliation, for a whole cosmos, for the end of strife and terror and abuse.

It was an eye-opener for me a year or two ago when I read this simple sentence in the Book of Common Worship: "We pray for the world because God loves it." It goes on to say:

God created the world and cares for it. God sent Jesus, who died for it. God is working to lead the world toward the future God has for it. To abide in God's love is to share God's concern for the world. Our prayers should therefore be as wide as God's love and as specific as God's tender compassion for the least ones among us.

This is a beautiful theology. We pray for the world because God loves it. We don't pray for the world because it is hopeless, a lost cause, beyond redemption. We pray because God so deeply loves the world, because our concerns become God's concerns.

It is at such a time as this, when we face the bleakest realities of life, that worship truly becomes three dimensional. It stands out in relief as a truly faithful, hopeful, prophetic response to desperate, hateful, and threatening times.

Sculpture "Broken Earth" by Roberta Shefrin.

Why Bother with the History of Worship?

I am feeling happy tonight, because I got through another huge to-do list over the past 24 hours. I am tired, worn out. But it is a good tired. Akin to the tired from working in a garden, I think. A tired that feels like my energies went to the appropriate places.

This morning I was responsible for a couple pieces in our Intro to Worship class. I had about five minutes to talk about the Revival/Frontier 3-part worship structure. Then later I had about a half-hour to talk about the lectionary--what is it? where did it come from? what theology went into shaping it and how does that theology end up shaping how we hear the texts? and what are the benefits and challenges to receiving (or rejecting) the Revised Common Lectionary?

I got to everything but the last question. We'll have to pick up there next week. It strikes me as funny to think about how impossible it is to say all of those things about the lectionary in thirty minutes--when just two weeks ago we were going through the history of Christian worship in the same exact allotment of time! Ha! [That's a perverse sense of humor.]

Sometimes I learn more from what I end up saying spontaneously in a lecture as I do in the hours of preparation beforehand. Today two things came up that I hadn't exactly thought about before saying them, but felt as if the words were called out of me.

The first was a brief explanation about why we slog these poor MDiv students (who are mostly UCC and UMC, but also Baptist, Mennonite, Brethren, Pentecostal, Disciples, and UU) through this history of these various elements that we talk about. Why does it matter to know how lectionaries developed over time?

One big reason, I told folks today, is because history is often used in an authoritative way. If there is a sense that something was done in a certain way a long time ago, then this can be perceived to have some normative claim on our practice today. It's as simple as the Liturgical Movement of the 20th century seeking to reclaim early church worship practices as ideal ecumenical models for our worship practices today.

It is a macro-version of "we've always done it this way." But sometimes, it's not the way we've always done it; it's just the way we believe it was.

We teach folks the histories of these various rites and pieces of worship at least in part to give them the ability to critically engage with it themselves. If you know what the history is, then you can ask: how is that valuable to me? what does it teach me about current practice? are there things that I can learn from how previous Christians engaged with this?

A lot of folks who are in free church settings also tend to be a-historical. There is not a recognition that we are part of a history of Christian worship practices. It comes down to the autonomy of the local congregation--and that congregation is in no way indebted to the practices of the church universal.

Interestingly enough, the person who had the most significant influence on the 3-part worship model from the frontier tradition, Charles Finney, also challenged the church to be a-historical. The frontier worshipping tradition was based on a model of extreme pragmatism--it was intended to reach the unchurched who had been dispersed across the giant land of the United States. The frontier model was based on seeing results. How American is that? The results they were looking for were lots of converts at the end of the service.

The three part service was created to enable the most results--it begins with songs or a praise service (often called 'preliminaries'), then the sermon, and concludes with the altar call. Finney said the church needs to be willing to employ whatever means necessary in order to bring the most results. The church should feel no obligation to history, if history does not serve to produce more converts. It was with all intention an a-historical approach to Christian worship.

So, fine. But that was two hundred years ago now. And the irony is that there is now a frontier tradition with its own history that these churches have to take into account. Because the truth is, this model of worship is deeply in the bones of the people who worship in it. In this model, the sermon is truly the apex of the worship experience. And the altar call has become truncated for the most part, because nearly everyone in church is already a baptized believer.

Church leaders who attempt to change this pattern, by introducing the prayers of the people after the sermon, or the offering, or other "response to the Word" elements, will likely be met with vehement resistance.

In the pbs documentary The Congregation, we see just how divisive such changes can be. Although this documentary mostly tracks the story of The Rev. Beth Stroud as she comes out to her congregation and consequently faces a trial in her United Methodist denomination, it also includes the story of her co-pastor, Fred Day, who had the audacity to try and change the order of worship at their otherwise "open" congregation. The idea that the service would no longer climax with the sermon (and end immediately) afterwards, was too much for this congregation to handle. It was as if it went against nature to try and do it any differently.

Fred Day was simply trying to integrate the changes suggested by the new worship book of the United Methodist Church, which suggests a model of worship that has four movements: Gathering, Word, Response, Sending Forth. [Based on what the early church model of worshipis currently perceived to be.] But it couldn't be done. The Frontier tradition was too embedded in the expectations of that congregation who had always known its rhythm.

Well, sheesh. I've gone on forever here. Tomorrow I'll try to take some time to write about my afternoon workshop on Disability and the Practice of Worship. But this is enough for now. Surely you have other things to do than read this all night! :)

Getting Out of the Way

"What we teachers can finally give to our students is to show them that we are not what they are seeking, nor what they need. As we resist their desires, we can best enable them to reach for something different from what we have, or something else that might even be something more."
Stephen H. Webb, "The Voice of Theology: Rethinking the Personal and the Objective in Christian Pedagogy" in Journal of the American Academy of Religion 65.4 (Fall 1997): 779.

I read this just a little while ago as I prepare for my class this afternoon on pedagogy. I am fascinated by the quote, by its almost shimmering quality, and by its implied critique of many pedagogical practices.

I read Webb's article in the midst of several in the same issue of that journal, all reflecting in various ways on pedagogy in religious studies, especially interacting with various commitments of feminist pedagogy (or pedagogies, why should we ever refer to multiple things in the singular?). It's evident to me that the authors were struggling with redefining concepts of personal versus public space: Is the classroom, and perhaps the religious studies (or humanities) classroom a personal or a public space?

The conclusion, for the most part, seemed to be that it is a unique merger of the two. And the pedagogical task, from feminist perspectives, seems to be to draw on that merger rather than seek to suppress it in favor of some "objective" ideal. Students will and must bring the fullness of their personal experiences to the subject in order for them to engage with it. At the same time, teachers must cultivate the space to allow for these personal experiences to be given voice. More, the teacher must be willing to share her own personal experience as one way of cultivating space.

She must be fully present, in other words. And yet, somehow, not there at all. This is how Webb's quote shimmers for me.

Now I suddenly see teaching and liturgical leadership related in ways I never noticed before. Two things come to mind immediately.

The summer prior to entering seminary, I attended a conference as a ministry fellow of The Fund for Theological Education. The acclaimed preacher Barbara Brown Taylor spoke at the opening convocation, developing the idea of the preacher as icon--the window through which others are opened into the Divine. The icon is never the thing itself. And yet it matters, inasmuch as it reveals the thing itself. In order to live into becoming an icon, the preacher must be fully present. Fully there. And yet, somehow, not there at all.

While in seminary, I had the utmost privilege of being trained as a liturgical leader by Gordon Lathrop. I have no single quote that sums up what I learned from him in connection to this idea, but I know it has something to do with wearing the alb as a liturgical leader. Gordon describes the alb as being the baptismal garb that one wears on behalf of the baptized assembly. It is not a distinguishing mark, not one announcing status (as the academic robe worn by ministers in my own free-church tradition tends now to be). Rather, it is the ultimate equalizer. It is the clothing of "neither slave nor free, male nor female." It is the alb that assists the liturgical leader in being fully present. And yet, somehow, not there at all.

Because there is someone wearing the alb, after all.

Gordon had us read Robert W. Hovda's book Strong, Loving and Wise: Presiding in Liturgy. Here, Hovda reflects on the notion of presence and how it requires the spiritual art of being oneself. He writes: "At one time--a time this author remembers well--it was popularly considered desirable for the one presiding to be as anonymous as possible. The less oneself that showed through, the better. The ideal was pretty much an obliteration of self in liturgical celebration, if that isn't putting it too crudely."

Hovda acknowledges the impossibility (and futility and even costliness) of anonymity. "We can't escape ourselves at any time, especially when we are exercising a function of leadership. Only the one who recognizes the futility of the effort to be anonymous and is without illusions will be effective in minimizing individual idiosyncracies and peculiarities for the sake of the social event."

Finally, I'll quote generously from Hovda's conclusion regarding liturgical leadership and presence:

Part of one's service to the assembly as presider is to be willing to present oneself to the whole group, consenting to be a focal point in the action being in constant communication with the other ministers and the entire assembly through eye contact, gesture, body posture and movement, as well as word. The self-centered person, the ecclesiastical prince, the person who is out for privileges and status is opaque in this role. If, however, the presider is close to and part of the lives of all in the faith comunity, one of the people, clearly the servant of all, there there is the possibility of being transparent to the presence and action of [the Divine]. But it is a transparency that is accomplished, not with an anonymous persona, but with oneself.

So, when one functions as a presider or other minister, it is the whole person, the real person, the true person, the full and complete person who functions. It is you God calls through the church. God wants no sacred alias, no pulpit tone, nor does the church.

It is rather a pardox, isn't it? Being fully present in order to be tansparent to the presence and action of the Divine.

I am delighted with this connection that I see now between teaching and liturgical leadership. And even as I write this, I begin to suspect that the connections might be made all over the place. My spiritual director often told me it was his purpose to "get out of the way" when we met, in order for me to see my relationship with the Divine more clearly. And what of parenting? And being in love?

Which is to say, I suppose, Happy Valentine's Day.