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 .

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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.


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My Christmas Shopping is Not Done

Just saw the movie What Would Jesus Buy? with Rev. Billy and The Church of Life After Shopping. I recommend it.

I bought into most of the beliefs of the Stop Shopping Church/The Church of Life After Shopping years ago. But like most of us I suppose, I struggle to live out those beliefs to the extent to which I'd like. The desire to teach my kids human and spiritual values over the values of consumerism provides my greatest struggles over it. This responsibility toward my kids, in the face of the difficulties of fulfilling it, make me sad and overwhelmed sometimes.

But in spite of that, the movie helped me. It gave me insight, reminders, ideas and motivation! I'm prompted to re-think some of the decisions I still have to make about Christmas gifts and celebrations this year. I have a combination of good ideas and challenging questions. But not much time to figure out how I'll act on them! I think it might be fun though! How many days until Christmas?

If nothing else, whatever I do now is a step in a good direction. How may days do I have to re-think and revise until Christmas 2010? We're coming both to a New Year and to Epiphany, right?
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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?

The Parable of the Great Pearl

I told the The Parable of the Great Pearl as a Godly Play story at church today. Now I'm reflecting on the experience.

There's much to be wondered about in the story. There's also much to be noticed and learned as a story teller.

I noticed my tendency toward a different kind of response to people's comments, depending on how well I felt they got at the meaning of the parable. I need to work with that!

Aside from the ridiculous arrogance of the idea that I know how the parable should be interpreted or what part should receive the focus, I'm sure letting my own judgements into my recognition of responses will short circuit the work of the parable, the Spirit and the people. If I lead people to feel that there are "right" responses at the expense of supporting exploration of possibilities or at the expense of honesty in our responses, we'll have a hard time to "hear what the Spirit is saying to God's people." The great openness of Godly Play, being able to play and discover what the Spirit is saying rather than pushing a prepackaged, predetermined answer, is part of what I love about Godly Play. But I notice it's easier for me to be comfortable with that as a participant than as the story teller. I wonder why...

I noticed there were wide ranging perspectives. For example, some thought the seller might have a use for all the things he got from the merchant. Others thought the seller had too much stuff.

I noticed that a lot of our reflection had to do with exploring considerations related to all the things the merchant exchanged for the great pearl. (What would he do without these things? What would the other person do with these things? Should some of the things redistributed to other places? Which things? What places?)

I noticed how little of our reflection was in keeping with what I've assumed the parable is supposed to illustrate. I've thought we're expected to see the exchange of everything for the great pearl as a wise, enlightened, fulfilling move. Maybe we are, maybe we're not. But I notice that this largely isn't how we feel about this great exchange. We question the wisdom of it. We're not comfortable with it. I think that might be something to pay attention to and wonder some more about.

I noticed & wonder about other things too....the interplay of literal vs. metaphoric reflections....interest in the biblical reference for the parable...my pacing, how I handled multiple voices at once in the circle...and more.

If you were there is morning, I'd be interested in any reflections you'd care to share. And if anyone wishes to offer feedback to help in my development as a Godly Play story teller, that's invited also.

Thank you.

Seven Word Summary - All Saints

All Saints: Ultimate issues most personally noted.

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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.

Link to Food Reflections

As my church has taken a focus on a food/food shelf ministry, I want to share this post that I came upon.

The Gastromical Jesus from the Painted Prayer Book.

Where Have I Gone?

Update as of Nov 22, 2009. The details in this post are no longer all accurate. However, you can still find me at each of the places below.

My more active blog is currently the 30 Seconds one.

You can also look for me at the The Garden's Ning.

Do you Twitter? If I know you, and you're so inclined, let me know if you're there. Many of my friends seem biased against it, but I'm intending to try it out & make up my own mind. (So far you won't find me in a Twitter search, so for now, comment here or something to let me know.)

A Little Experiment to Prompt Awareness and Reflection

Proposal:

Try calling God She.
Call God She as prominently, often and casually
as God is usually called He.

How does that feel?
Is is hard to do?
What does it make you think about?
Why?

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Women

I've been coming across current expressions of old religious debates about the role women.

They amaze me. Women having authority over men in the context of some secular employment is seen as a problem....what it means for a husband to have "final decision making authority" is discussed at length....

I could enter the arguments & debates: theological, semantic, social, logical etc. (I hate not to, because as a woman saying this I tend to feel I have to prove myself.) But what I think is more relevant and important for me to say just now, is from my experience.

The positions I read about the role and nature of women don't amaze me because I've never heard them before. They amaze me because of how familiar some of them have been, how much I've experienced them and how far from them I've come.

I hope it's not patronizing (or matronizing) to feel this way, but I feel bad for the many women who continue to live within these systems of belief. And of course I want to protect my daughter from as much of the sexism that pervades our culture as I can. At the same time I realize that in many ways I still live within it too. Years of personal experience in patriarchy and centuries of cultural experience in patriarchy don't go away just because one awakens to it a bit and starts to see things differently.

When I primarily identified with conservative Christian groups with predictably conservative views regarding women, I could never really come to terms with those views. It's not that it was always a burning issue. From time to time the issue would emerge, then dutifully get explained and swept back under the rug of rationalization and unawareness to be ignored awhile longer. At the time there wasn't much else I could do. But sometimes it would get noticed enough to be painful. As much as it might be presented otherwise, when I got in touch with it, I couldn't get around the deeply painful sense that in spite of explanation that said otherwise, in reality this position portrayed that women were inherently inferior to men and because of this women were by definition denied certain roles. In other words, as a woman, I was inherently and deeply inferior to that part of humanity that was male, and had to live in an accordingly limited way. I don't think all the explanations in the world, even ones that might be rationally and logically plausible; or the best experience possible in living out relationships with men who might live out this model in the most godly and gracious ways possible, could get me to truly accept this or feel alright about it, then or now.

I want to say to women: you do not have to rationalize this so you can keep yourself within a sexist definition of absolute truth, faithfulness to God and the way "He" made you. You can be honest with yourself and honest with God. You are not a 2nd class citizen because of your gender. You should fight those things from our religion and our culture, and those things within and around you; that say, imply, or make you feel that you are. You are not offending God by doing so.

I don't mean to say men and women, boys and girls are all the same. If nothing else, I've been a wife and mother too long to think that. But don't let your gender put you down or limit you. Trust yourself and trust God enough to be honest about the dynamics of your life, including those related to gender. Then do your best, with God's help, to live true to yourself, the relationships you have and the callings God has given you.

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Greeting Anyone

I've noted some juxtapositions in my life lately.

Engaging in social & religious conversation in the morning
with a member of a Baptist church that I used to call home.
Engaging in social & religious conversation that same evening
with a pagan high priest.

Reading quotations from the well known pastor of that same Baptist church,
indicating that women should not hold authority over men, even in some secular positions.
Reading "Dance of the Dissident Daughter,"
"A Woman's Journey from Christian Tradition to the Sacred Feminine."

Between, within and beyond such juxtapositions
are my life, my experience and the people I love.

Sunday at church someone explained to my children that in the time of the service called "The Peace",
you can greet anyone you want.

Another person followed up: "That is, if they're in church."

How true!
So many of the people with whom I want to exchange a sign of peace,
In fact with whom in various forms I do exchange signs of peace,
are not in church.

Some are in other churches (of many different kinds)
Some are scattered across the country or around the world
Some do not express their faith in the context of a religious community and
Some belong to religions with other names.


God is with you.
And also with you.

Let us rejoice in the power of the Spirit.
(found in many, expected and unexpected, wonderful places.)

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Back to Posting Here

I hope to continue the 30 Seconds / 5 Minutes blog that displaced my posting here for awhile.

However, I'm getting tired of everything being constrained to 5 minutes.
Sometimes I'm cheating on the 5 minutes.

So, here I am again.

(I think that was less than 5 minutes.)

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Soon to be on Hiatus

I'll be removing this blog from my visible profile in the near future.

I'm putting it on hiatus in favor of a new project in which you are invited to join me.

It's in the form of a blog:
30 Seconds: An Exercise in Meaningful and Efficient Communication.

The explanation is here.

Creation Stories

I just made one of those posts that I find relevant to the way I think of my Children in Church & Grown Up in Church blogs.

I pulled together some children's books of creation stories because of my work with kids. But as with so many things like this, why should we leave the adults out? Some of us adults are fortunate to be involved with kids in a way that provides the impetus for doing this kind of thing. The rest of you might have to make more of a point of it. But if you do, you might get hooked.

You can read more on Children at Church.

Symbols, Stories & Tears

Some of the strongest symbols are ones that tell more than one story at a time.

One symbol might carry stories of

• something that happened a long time ago
• ways that first story has been passed on and on to us
• our own lives and relationships
  

As I fought tears while attended the Memorial Day service at my home town's cemetery I realized that this characteristic of symbols probably has a lot to do with why I find myself moved by this kind of event. It probably has a lot to do with other interests and emotions I have too.

I often tend to see things from multiple perspectives. This inclines me to sense multiple stories and levels of meaning in symbols and rituals. The sense of richness, depth or profundity this brings can become overwhelming. The overflow sometimes comes out in tears.

I'm sure this has a lot do with why I love ritual (both religious and secular) and liturgy so much. Their ability to communicate is uniquely powerful. It's hard to find words to effectively, efficiently sum up what a symbol or symbolic action can communicate or evoke in an instant.

Sanctuary

Sanctuary
Inspired by an hour plus at Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden and Bird Sanctuary

A place peaceful and beautiful
scenes so idyllic and right
you feel it in your stomach
it starts to satisfy, soothe and excite your soul

A place where quiet and slow come naturally, fit with ease
it's difficult to hurry even if you want to
A look at your watch is a pleasant surprise at how little time has passed
but finally, it's hard to go

Banishment from Eden must have been an awful thing

God beyond all names, be sanctuary for my soul
so my departure will not mean
I am banished from Eden again

-Monica, 5/8/08


Link to Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden and Bird Sanctuary

Bicycle Church

Gethsemane's Green Group is planning to get a bike rack.


I assume this photo from http://www.mandie.net/images/maastricht/im000588.jpg is not what they're planning. The site on which its posted says its an old church in downtown Maastricht serving as a bicycle parking garage.






I'm sure Gethsemane's future won't come to this. But wouldn't it be great if we had so many people biking in our city that a place like this was needed?

I wonder what it feels like to park & pick up your bike from this kind of space? I wonder what responses it sparks.




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Green Churches - Green Theology

Did you see the article in Saturday's Star Tribune about the role of churches & other faith groups in environmental issues? It had a variety of interesting points. (Sorry I don't have the link handy.)

Several were along the lines of churches bringing a somewhat unique sense of moral responsiblity to the issue. There was also the idea that the belief that God created the Earth serves as motivation for us to care for the earth...respect the Creator by respecting the creation...

Its not that I outrightly disagree with these points. But they don't resonate very much with me.


Moral responsibility for the environment can come from many sources, religious faith oriented or otherwise.


My own faith oriented perspective on environmental issues includes an important moral aspect. But framing it as primarily a moral issue seems to miss the crux of how I understand it and what I find compelling. It see it as primarily a spiritual issue out of which naturally grows a moral issue.

Moral issues are too often perceived as externally imposed obligations. Prodding with a religious should is a poor way to motivate true transformation.

Caring for the environment is a matter of living in sync with God, with the earth, the rest of humanity and our own selves. Christianity supports that best not primarily by focusing on moral responsiblity, but by going deeper to focus on nurturing and developing our ability to be in tune and in sync with these relationships in both our awareness and actions.


As far as caring for the creation out of respect for the creator, it makes me think about how I care for a quilt my grandmother made or objects I've inherited from my mother-in-law. I care for them out of respect for these people and the place they have in my life. My care for creation has a lot to do with my relationship with God. But I dont' have the same sense about caring for the earth as I do about caring for my grandmother's quilt. On second thought maybe I do. But its not the part of the sense that this individual made this therefore I take care of it. It's the sense that these things are a tangible representation of who these people are, who I am, how we fit together and how we all fit into the larger pictures of life and its meanings.

Maybe that's what the Christian idea of caring for the creation as an act of respect for the creator is all about. But I tend to hear the typical Christian representations of the issue with a lot more of an external and overly personified orientation than works well for me. My perception of God has become less personified over time and I see the creation story as more metaphoric than literal. I still hear a lot of the stories and statements of Christianity in the highly personified & highly literal ways I first learned them. Sometimes that gets in the way for me. I don't think I'm alone.

In the context of environmental issues & Christianity, how can we avoid letting the limitations of particular stories & metaphors, or the ways we've heard them in the past, become the limits of our definitions of our spiritual relationships? How can we engage our traditions in ways that maximize their abilitiy to work as intended, as tools to engage spiritual relationships?