Mother Banjo

Listen to someone familiar here. (The address was in the newspaper.)

Is there a way to have her do music for some Sunday morning services?!

Oboe, Piano, Taize, Hymns

I really liked Beth's oboe music in church today. I'd like to hear more of it. Maybe she could be asked to solo sometimes.

I liked the piano music during communion. It was contemplative which seems good to me in that time.

During the sermon when Aron sang (I think a Taize song, that I knew & that was one simple repeated line.) I sort of wished he'd keep singing it and we could all sing along.

I liked singing a couple of the hymns that were old familiar ones I've known for years & made positive associations with long ago. Some of the words I liked, some I wasn't so sure about & some I want to go back & think about some more. But regardless they rang a bell that I liked.

Community with Aquaintances

One thought led to another & it occurred to me just now that in the 5-6 years I've been at Gethsemane, I've never been in the home of anyone from the congregation and no one from the congregation has been in my home (nor have I invited them to be). In fact, in terms of anything that "counts," I can't recall that I've ever done anything with anybody from church outside the walls of the church.

I have some good conversations at church. I have some personal conversations at church. I have some good connections with certain people at church. And yes, a community does include acquaintances. But I think it should also include people with whom one has closer or more developed relationships than I have at Gethsemane at this point. I wonder if its just me, or if lots of us are in the same boat.

I've had experiences, in a couple other churches, where there were very specific efforts to establish community that, though entirely well intended, and in some cases with very good results, I've had some tensions with. There have been times in my life when community was not what I was seeking through church, and not what I wanted to be pushed into at church. I think for where I was at in my life at those points that was fine. I assume others are at that point at some times too and I'm fine with that. Even at times when I was quite open to building relationships and community, some of the programmed efforts to establish it rubbed me the wrong way. Though programs may be needed to facilitate community, I think true community is organic more than programmed. When I don't feel this is adequately recognized and accounted for I bristle.

That said, nearly 6 years at Gethsemane without more development of relationships seems to be out of balance. What's up with this? In part I know. My social life has been in sorry state pretty much the whole time since I've had kids, if not longer. My sense of openness or flexibility to schedule any number of things that I might have in the past has gone by the wayside. My work schedules have been outside the mainstream norm for a large part of the last 9 years. In addition to these & other factors on my side, I don't think we've made a point to create as many opportunities at Gethsemane as some churches do.

What would happen if I could manage to make a point to create some opportunities, either formal & programmed or informal & personal? Would people have the inclination to respond? Would people have space in their lives to respond? I hope so. I know there is a lot to be gained in many ways on many levels. And selfishly (to be honest, of course this better reflects my felt motivation) sometimes I get very busy & very full of all kinds of stuff (ideas, excitement, questions, issues....) that grows out of working on children's & family ministry and out of parenting and I feel too alone with it.

Diverse Events with Overlapping Themes

A lot of things I've been exposed to lately seem to fit together.

Planning for All Saints Day at church got me thinking about things passed on generation to generation - all kinds of things in all kinds of time frames.

I found wonderful books on the theme at the library (more on them another time hopefully). Some highlight how as things are passed on they both stay the same and change.

That reminds me of the Speaking of Faith podcast Aron's post prompted me to listen to, and the ways scripture and tradition are both the same and different as we continue to interact with them.

I went to a presentation by Marie Olofsdotter and students at my kids' school. Olofsdotter has recently been an artist in residence there. She read Sofia and the Heart Mender. There were several exciting connections I experienced during the event - some highlighted the theme above, one in a personal way. Another came from her book which I want to read again thinking about themes related to the immanence of God that have been on my mind because of the discussion of "The God We Never Knew" in the Gethsemane Book Group.

I also caught a snatch of a Radio Lab broadcast about memory. They claimed that when we remember something, we're not remembering the original event, but remembering the last time we remembered it, recreating the memory and reinterpreting for the present time. Fascinating implications for this whole idea of things being passed on generation to generation.

Music I Love

Two rather different examples of music that inclines me to external stillness and internal reflection of a meditative nature.

• The Irish Brigade's tunes. (Play the reels on this site.) The tunes are wonderful in themselves and juxtaposed with war ballads and other songs with lyrics, those songs just become all the more powerful. Check the schedule at The Half Time Rec for a chance to hear the live version.
• Busy organ music. If the postlude at church isn't enough, try listening to Pipe Dreams.

My tastes run much wider than this, but these have recently been in my ear and on my mind.

Movie: For The Bible Tells Me So

Do you know about this one? For The Bible Tells Me So is at the Lagoon through Oct 18.

It's a documentary having to do with Christianity, scripture and sexual identity. Stories told by members of 5 families, including Bishop Gene Robinson and others in his family, make up the bulk of the film.

I saw if Friday. I recommend seeing it. There's more worth being said about it. Hopefully I can get to that. For now I at least wanted to say this much since the opportunity to see it appears limited.

Book Discussion: The God We Never Knew

If you've found your way here, but not to the Gethsemane Book Group, check it out. We're discussing topics from "The God We Never Knew: Beyond Dogmatic Religion to a More Authentic Contemporary Faith" by Marcus Borg.

I've read the book & had trouble getting through some of it efficiently because I was so busy underlining and making notes and then getting lost in thought stemming from what I was reading. You know that feeling of finding something in writing that resonates with your views in a particularly rewarding or refreshing way? You know that other feeling of reading something that puts pieces together in a way you never thought of before and the little ah-ha light bulb goes on? Those are the kinds of experiences that made me so interested in this book.

If you only know Borg by reputation, I'd recommend checking his writing out for yourself. (And if you pick this book to do it with, don't misread the word panentheism and promptly end your exploration because you thought he said pantheism.)

Little Ah-Has

On the Trinity questions.

I've been reading The God We Never Knew by Marcus Borg. (Watch for an upcoming online book discussion on this.) He indicates the term persons in ancient texts doesn't mean separate individuals as we think of. Instead it refers to different roles. (pp. 97-98) This concept makes a lot more sense to me.

Second, in thinking about the traditional terminology of Father, Son & Holy Spirit and other terminology that is or might be use, I came upon this idea. I was trying out the gender neutral terms Parent, Child....but I didn't like that because child conveys the sense of a person who is not an adult whereas son is inclusive of all ages. This brought me to the term offspring. It may not be the most poetic term, but it triggered something in me.

At first the idea of offspring seemed a bit objectionable. God is God and God having offspring, or that offspring being Offspring with a capital O (that is God), seemed to be a lowering or compromise of the concept of God. Though the same issue exists with the concept of father and son, I hadn't had the same clarity about it until I thought in terms of parent and offspring.

Then I realized that maybe the concept of Offspring is the point. Its not that it lowers the concept of God, rather it elevates the concept of Offspring, broadens the concept of God and fits together with a few things that make sense to me that I hadn't been able to put together before. Offspring God emanates from Parent God, but its still all the same - its all God. I sense possible connections to the relational, communal aspect of the trinity, to panentheism (no, that's not a typo of pantheism, that's a different thing), to what's reflected in the Holy Trinity icon I wrote about before, to the immanence of God, to creation - both past and continuing...

This is exciting.

I'll have to live and work with this a lot more to become more clear on which of these connections hold up and how those that do work out, not to mention to get to a point to be able to talk or write about it more clearly. For now I hope someone reading this has a sense of what I mean.

It's A Blurry Line...

between posts that belong on my other blog and those that fit here. So I'll let you know I recently posted Visiting Another Church on Children in Church.

It has to do with encouragement or discouragement of the perception that one can make choices in the context of religion.

Music...

...is so personal.



I think all of the music in church is well selected and of good quality....but some of it I find dry, unengaging and unmoving. On the other hand I love some of it and am moved by some of it to the point of tears.



Problem is, I imagine some of what I would be more than happy to do without others value and some of what I love others deplore.



Take today for example. It was jazz mass. (Wonderful in my book). We sang "I Love to Tell the Story." I wondered how many people knew this song. I wondered what others thought of it. I tried to figure out a bit of what I though of it.



I sang most of it (including the 2nd verse) with only peeks at the hymn book. I know this song. This is a song from my childhood. These old songs bridge the gap between the more conservative place from which I have come (which will always be part of me in some ways) and the more liberal place in which I am now. Singing them at Gethsemane is an interesting and rewarding connective experience. (Not that the hymns we usually sing are liberal at all, just not so deeply familiar and evocative for me, and Gethsemane is in general more liberal than the churches from my childhood and past.)



I'm not at all sure that I would be much interested in "I Love to Tell the Story" if I didn't know it from my past. But I do. It took me back to specific places. It reminded me of my grandparents. It made connections between various parts of my faith and life for me. And it had new meaning as well as old because my grandmother and grandfather, who are strongly associated with my faith and religious experience as a child, and for whom I think their faith meant practically everything, both died within the last couple years. The 2nd verse includes the words..."and when in scenes of glory I sing the new, new song; 't will be the old, old story that I have loved so long."....you see where I'm going with this I guess.



I cried this morning in church and I'm crying even more now.

Hints About the Trinity Puzzle

Came upon a blog by a priest in England. She seems to offer well informed & interesting perspectives. Her writing on the Trinity has some things I find worth further reflection.


So far, off the cuff, I'm thinking I like the way she backs us up to look at the concept of Trinity in terms of the concept of God this gives us before letting us jump too quickly to applications for worship and mission. She's getting the horse & the cart in the right order. This lends to exploration and development of the concept with a sense of credibility and integrity.


I think she has good points about the effects of "unitarian" worship as a face off between us and God...but I have the sense that there are also other better ways seeing God as a unity can work out too. I'm not ready to put that concept aside quite so much.


I have issues about how predominantly we anthropomorphize our concept of God. Even though her language about the Trinity includes some of that, somehow her explanations help show me a window for thinking of God as Trinity without necessarily carrying the personified, anthropomorphic concepts as far as usual. I think that comes largely from her talking about the movement, exchange and non-coercive openness that can be implied in the concept of Trinity. That can be understood in non-anthropomorphic ways.


Finally, I notice that she's talking about responding to the invitation to join with the Trinity in a way where we may end up hardly noticing the seams....this is some of what I was wondering about in my previous thoughts stemming from the Rublev icon...she has the courage and clarity to say what I didn't.


Her work and my response deserve more careful treatment than I've given them here. My reading and writing have been hasty and I hope I haven't misrepresented her perspectives, or my own for that matter. But...I think I'll give myself this disclaimer and thereby try to give myself permission to let go of some perfectionism and post....Here goes.

Increased Interest in Trinity

Two things have struck me and increased my interest in the Trinity since the BCMS paper got my attention on the topic.

One is the The Holy Trinity Icon and explanation that Aron brought to my attention. The Trinity is pictured around a table, with an open place (with food)...an open place for us. In this concept I sense a new perspective with new potential.

How might that image speak to the nature of God and to the nature of God as Trinity?

Might that open place for us be understood as inherent to the nature of God?

What does it mean to have that open space there for us? Is it an invitation or something else?

If an invitation, what are we invited to do or be? If something else, what?

The other thing that struck me and piqued my interest was the image (called a triquetra) that I found in the lower picture on this page while searching for labyrinths to walk. Apparently this familiar image and the concept of Trinity extends beyond its specifically Christian associations. Finding "Christian" concepts in other contexts tends to increase my sense that the relevance of those concepts isn't limited to a certain sectarian way of framing things, but that they speak to something basic and broad.

How accurate is that sense in this case? If accurate, what is that relevance?

Why has trinity been important in other belief systems as well as in Christianity?

What about reality, what about the Divine does it reflect that I haven't been keying in on?

How might my response to these questions impact my perspective on orienting our understanding of mission to our understanding of the Trinity...?

The BCMS Paper & The Trinity as an Understanding of God

So, I'm finally going to add some more in response to the BCMS paper. The end of my last post pointed to some next questions including: Should I/we relate more stongly to the concept of the Trinity? Why or why not? Thoughts in that vein follow.

I see the Trinity as a way to think of God, but not the only way to think of God. I'm suspicious of treatments of the Trinity as more or less the be-all end-all, exclusively right & necessary way to conceptualize God. Christians in general, and the BCMS paper, tend too much toward this approach in my opinion. At the same time, a couple things that have come up since I've started thinking about this lead me to believe that the concept of Trinity deserves more credit and attention than I have previously given it. Let me fill in a little on those thoughts as I continue.

All our language for God is metaphor. Each metaphor keys in on some aspect of the truth. But none of the metaphors adequately capture, completely describe or explain God. We come closer to understanding God, and our spiritual lives expand through use of varied and multiple images for God.

Though the authors of the BCMS paper may (or I suppose may not) understand things this way, the language of the BCMS paper doesn't leave me feeling that way. For example, in the section "Mission Begins with the Trinity" the paper states, "The Christian understanding of God is highly relational: God's identity consists in the loving communion...of three distinct yet inseparably united divine persons..." (bold emphases mine). This makes things sound pretty definitive and limited. It sounds like beyond this particular understanding we are no longer in Christian territory. It sounds to me like beyond this we are no longer talking about God as God should be understood. Does it sound that way to you too, or not?

I don't argue against Trinity being a good and important way to understand God. But to make it too exclusive a way to understand God limits our ability to comprehend God in and around us as fully as possible. It also unduly limits our ability to communicate and relate to people in our society. This makes the adequacy and wisdom of orienting our whole sense of mission around such exclusive sounding concepts of God questionable.

That said, what HAS interested me more in the concept of the Trinity lately? See my next post - hopefully coming soon, where I finally get to be more positive, and hopefully add credibility to the idea that I do want to do more than be part of a "culture of 'complaint, critique and criticism.' ”

Stars

The natural and the spiritual have a big overlap in my perspective.

Over the last few months I've been observing the stars more.

Part of what fascinates me is that they are simultaneously something so ancient and so much a part of our everyday world.

We take them for granted, and for most of us their details & patterns of visibility go on without our awareness. (We speak about the stars moving. But this just points all the more to our self-centeredness and limited of awareness of the context of our existence. The movement is really that of the earth on which we are riding.)

How much goes on around us of which we are unaware.

What an interesting contrast between us and people of times past. They may not have know that the earth was round or the shapes the continents take. Yet I'm sure many were much more knowledgeable about the patterns of the stars, and familiar with them, than most of us are.

What an interesting connection we have to people through countless ages as we look at stars that they also observed - specific individuals, and people in general.

Such thoughts increase my sense of connection to aspects of spirituality that extend beyond my own life, beyond our own times, beyond history that we know...to reaches that we have a limited and vague knowledge of, then beyond that to reaches I can not comprehend, about which I do not know.

And yet in the midst of that I remain grounded by the physical reality of the stars that I see and the tangible, definable information that I have and continue to learn about them.

What a wonderful combination!

The BCMS Paper - The Trinity

In my post BCMS Paper - First Impression I basically said I didn't find the section of the paper titled "Mission Begins with the Trinity" as compelling as I would hope. Now I'll start to say some things about why I think that is.

Referring to God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit seems familiar to me. Calling God Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer seems good to me.

Still, I find the concept of the Trinity rather obtuse. Not the concept of each of the persons of the Trinity, but the concept of the Trinity itself, as well as the concept of the relationship between the persons of the Trinity. I don't think the concept of the Trinity has ever struck home to me in a way that makes it as elevated and central as this document and the church in general makes it. I have the suspicion there are a lot of people in and around the church in the same boat. As I recall, Patrick Keifert wrote about this state of affairs among many in the church in WE ARE HERE NOW: A New Missional Era.

For one who doesn't relate strongly to the concept of the Trinity, pegging and orienting mission to the Trinity isn't as compelling as might be hoped.

So among the next questions: why don't I/we relate more to the concept of the Trinity? Should we? Why or why not?

The BCMS Paper- Joining the Conversation

The Bishop's Commission on Mission Strategy, Episcopal Diocese of Minnesota has written a paper called "What Are We Here For? A Theological Position Paper on Mission."

The paper makes clear that it's intended to generate conversation. I hope to join the conversation here.

In trying to respond to the paper, I feel like a line from the paper, "Mission Impossible!? Where Do We Begin?" There's a lot there, a lot to think about, a lot that might be said and asked. In keeping with yesterday's post, I'll try to just bite off bits at a time.

BCMS Paper - First Impression

There is so much that I like in this paper, that I hate to begin on a problematic note. However, an issue that raises concern for me comes up early in the paper, so I will talk about it early in my responses. I hope you can bear with me.

I also hope those who have obviously labored with experience, education and knowledge beyond my own; and no doubt labored with conviction and love to create a careful, meaningful and useful expression of these points, will not find me impudent or otherwise offensive. I guess honest responses are important, to me and to the results of the paper, so with intimidation & worry I'll forge ahead, submitting my perspectives for what they may be worth.

The section titled "Mission Begins with the Trinity" gave me the feeling of being head theology that isn't making a good connection to heart theology. Ideally they are one and the same, but that's not what I've perceived in reading this section.

For me, too much of the section reads like a dry, heady recitation of inherited Christian dogma. To put it another way, the preface of the paper mentions that theology involves faith seeking understanding. This section kind of seems like an understanding trying to generate faith.

I want to be clear at this point that I don't mean what I'm saying in today's post to be a comment about the specific meanings of the content. I'm not trying to say I think it's true or not or anything like that. I'm talking in general about how I feel it comes off. I'll get to my theories about why (including, but not limited to, some thoughts about the content) in future posts.

All theology is of course constructed. What I think we hope to end up with in constructing theological statements are statements that do a compelling job of reflecting what we think in our heads and believe in our hearts to be true. If we achieve that goal there is a resonance, a passion, a click. I don't find enough of that resonance or passion when I read this section. The writers may have had it. I can't comment on that. But it doesn't do it for me.

Mission seems to imply and require passion. So, if too many people respond to this section as I did, I'm afraid it won't be as effective or useful as it's desired to be.

I keep thinking that to be sure I'm being fair maybe I should read it again. (I think I've read it twice so far, and wrote most of this not long after the 2nd reading, since which some time has passed.) I probably will read it again at some point and see if I still feel this way. But I don't think its a good sign for me to have to read it again in the hope that I'll find it less dry and more compelling. It may be just me. But if it's not, I'm not sure enough people will give it that many chances. Even if they do, first impressions can be powerful and we would hope for them to be positive and compelling in this case.

Well, so much for a short post. But at least I'm posting. (Remember I said yesterday I write long things that I don't post? There's more where this came from. But I will try to keep them short if I can. Sometimes I guess it takes a bit of writing to work oneself out onto a limb...eek...I hope it doesn't crash with me on it.)

Short, Sweet? & Frequent

I write lengthy things I never post. I'm afraid no one will read them & I'm afraid of what they might think if they do.

I'm overwhelmed by the volume of issues & questions that I want to process, get feedback about, contribute to the general dialog....

So, I'm going to try to post more frequent, shorter things. I'm going to try to resist my compulsions for detail and perfectionism.

That said, enough said.

More tomorrow.

The Bells

You know the bells that ring at the consecration of the bread and the wine during Eucharist?

Today at the consecration of the bread I heard a bell ring. Not the little hand held set that go ding-a-ling-a-ling. A big steeple bell. I thought maybe it was a neighbor church that coincidentally rang their bell at that time.

Then it happened again at the consecration of the wine.

Wonderful! I think this was our bell. I think it was rung on purpose!

How appropriate that the sound marking the consecration of the bread & the wine as the body & blood of Christ is not contained in the walls of our building, but rings out to the world around.

Now as the sound of the bell went forth, let us go forth into the world, rejoicing in the power of the Spirit.... bringing along within us to all those we meet the spiritual food of the body and blood of Christ.

Easter at May Day

I love the annual Heart of the Beast May Day Parade.

It certainly isn't explicity or specifically Christian. It draws on mythologies of various belief systems and cultures. But if you wish to frame it that way, you can find a lot of Easter in it.

It's richer than I'll try to describe in this blog, but here's the key example as I see it. The story and themes portrayed by the parade usually flow along the lines of that which is good and full of life suffering or dying because of being overcome by evil. One of the portrayls of this is often the Tree of Life being carried through the parade in a horizontal position, draped with black cloth. It looks to me like a cross or a coffin. In the later part of the parade and especially later in the ceremony at Powderhorn Park, we experience resurrection as life triumphs and the Tree of Life is raised up again, alive, with the coming of the sun.

You might say the event succeeds at doing what we're trying to do at church. It connects universal themes to our day to day life in the context of a diverse community that celebrates the triumph of life over death and is re-energized to go forward embracing life and resisting evil, with the support of the community and the Power(s) that be.

Perhaps next year we can join in the workshops that create wonderful imaginative costumes to wear while marching in the parade and/or we can represent Gethsemane in the join in section at the end of the parade.