According to Coyote

My kids & I attended According to Coyote at the Children's Theatre.
Wow! We all loved it.
These were old spiritual stories. They were engaging.

My kids and I attend church regularly and hear the lectionary readings.
Wow! We're all bored.
These are old spiritual stories. They're a struggle to engaged with.

Why?
Is it the stories? I don't think so.
Is it the professional actress and professional support? I think there's more to it than that.

• Telling stories is different than reading stories aloud.
• A story teller or reader who engages deeply and fully (beyond mind and voice) engages listeners more deeply and fully.
• In church we take ourselves and our beliefs so seriously. We resist having fun and playing. We're not good at combining serious topics and serious fun, godliness and play.
• Stories benefit from the support of noticeable context, be it visual, auditory, historic, cultural, personal, etc.

How could we do more with this in church & in our families? Brainstorm some ideas. Let's do it .

.

The Cross and the Gospel - Notes from Church Services

In the Episcopal church I visited today the Gospel Procession to the middle of the church included the reader and the crucifer.

I appreciated this pairing of the cross and the Gospel. The cross lent a persepctive to the gospel; the gospel gave a context to the cross.

How is the Gospel read in your church? How else have you seen it done?
What approaches do you like? Why?
What approaches do you dislike? Why?
How else can you imagine it being done? Brainstorm.


.

Bold Simple Questions

Thoughts based in my reflections this morning during church:

I wonder if -

• we're too much "in our heads"
• we're really sold on what we say we're focused on

What if every Sunday each of us

• made a point of making personal connections with people at church
• tried one new thing - big or small - to deepen our worship and our community

I can imagine a diversity of responses.

Have at it.

Just don't kill any messengers, questioners or experimenters in the process - even if you disagree with them - remember we're Episcopalian :) okay?

Rollins' Hope to Believe in God

Well into the game, I've finally come upon Peter Rollins' blog. His post, One Day I hope to believe in God... hits a lot of things on the head for me.

If you have time for more reading, interesting pairings with it are Peter Morrow's comment to Rollins' post and Kester Brewin's parable, Footprints, also on Rollins' site.

Among my responses:

Many in and outside the church operate with the assumption "that we all have a shared understanding of what belief is and what we mean by the word 'God.'" (Rollins) The assumption isn't always true. Recognizing that it's operative and figuring out what to do about it is difficult, yet important.

The assumption is part of why meaningful religious conversation (with religous or non-religious people) and constructive changes in religious settings can be so challenging. We have our definitions of God in boxes. More often than not, those boxes resist being opened.

How do we have a conversation about God when we think about God quite differently than our conversation partner (and we may or may not realize this difference exists)? How do we talk about God when we know our understandings of God differ but we don't understand the other person's perspective, our partner doesn't understand ours, or we disagree with each other's perspectives?

I can see why our boxes resist being opened. Assumptions are strong and ingrained. It's difficult to conceive of what might be outside those assumptions. If we can conceive of it, we may or may not like it. Working with it takes energy in forms that can be hard to come by. It takes a lot of risk. It's scary and threatening. It can lead to reorientation of long held perspectives and beliefs and all they imply.

But not being able to find a bridge between differing understandings of "God" in relationships that matter has its own risks, frustrations, pain and sadness. This applies to personal relationships and to societal level relationships.

How can we communicate about God in ways that might be likely to start overcoming these challenges? How can we do so without throwing the baby out with the bathwater? Or in other words, how can we maintain that which we may find meaninful in religion and at the same time open boxes? How do we make it safe and appealing for ourselves and for others to open boxes? How do we let God and each other out of the boxes and more deeply, fully into our lives?

Proximity - Come on Down

How does being near or far the altar or front of church impact your involement?

What perspective do various positions give you?

Why do you pick the place to sit that you do?

Have you ever experimented with other places?

Have you participated in churches where physical seating had a different layout?



Read more at my post by the same title on Children in Church.