Not Doing Me Any Favors

I work in youth ministry.

You can tell, because the other day I realized that I say "Awesome." Not ironically. Sincerely.At least once a day.

Yes, I sincerely believe that there are things in my everyday life that are so wonderful, so literally full of wonder, that they deserve to be called Awesome, and I call them that. To other adult humans. Out loud. And occasionally in emails. More than 7 times a week.

(I also use it in text messages. But for some reason, it's usually sarcastic when I use it in a text. Hmmm.)

Anyway, part of my (awesome) job is writing lessons for our kids on Sundays.

This month, we'll be trying working on empathy, trying to grind into their tiny little heads what Jesus said in Matthew 7:12 - "In everything, do to others what you would want them to do to you," (as it says in the flat-footed but exceptionally clear New International Reader's Version.)

So: The Golden Rule.

How do you get pre-schoolers to begin to recall scripture? Well, the same way you get adults and teens and centegenarians to - by singing a song.

Google Golden Rule Song.

I dare you.

Oksy, I don't dare you. I can't be responsible for the effect on my tender-hearted friends. or my under-18 friends, and I have plenty of both. You know, because youth minister.

The top result - the top PAGE of results - involve a parody rap song from Lonely Island, vocals by Andy Samberg, joined in this number by Justin Timberlake and Lady Gaga, some humiliating fake beards, and a bunch of clothes from Chess King.

The specific golden rule in the song is not the sum of the law and the prophets. It's an etiquette rule about is specific to a form of adult recreation, about which a woman might text a gent*, after which he would hop a transit bus to her house, with a 6 of Bartles and James.

It's not subtle, but it's pretty funny. Now I want to listen to some of their other songs, but I can't. Because I am now at home with my child. Not in my office at church. Right.

SO not what I was looking for. 

[*Spoiler alert: OR TWO.]


:Bonus:  if you'd like to see a Golden Rule song that is possibly even more inappropriate for a pre-school Sunday School class, Google: Jack Black Golden Rule Song.

what I will bring to the bonfire:

These which I saw on the always-delightful SnackReligious.
EDITED TO ADD: These were a huge hit at the Guy Fawlkes festivities, and also with the babysitter. I'm thinking the second pan will get a similar reception at the potluck Sunday. Recommended.

And, no, we haven't made pretzels yet, and it doesn't look like it's going to rain tomorrow, which means that there will probably be a limited amount of kitchen time.

I have a video to put together, but my laptop does not have a big enough brain to handle it. (This would be a REALLY bad week for the servers at work to crash, incidentally. They've been kind of dodgy lately, randomly refusing to print docs and other occasional hiccups that we've been working around. Anyway, not this week, please, is all I'm saying.)

Knitting news: I am almost done with the famous entrelac stroller blanket. I had plans to work on it at various times this weekend - car trip, kid's nap, now...but I've made a lot of progress and feel like the end is in sight. If I can just remember how to do the bind-off triangles...

playdate news: If the week shapes up the way the national weather service seems to think it will, we may have one more backyard party on Friday, before daylight savings time ends.

Busy Kitchen yesterday:

a couple batches of these, for neighborhood distribution and church on Sunday

8 loaves of bread - a couple of loaves burned! which has never happened to me before! Weird!

plus a double batch of this, which I would make again with sharper cheese

and a pound of this, which needed more hot peppers. I didn't have the tiny red peppers I used last time, which come from a houseplant...guess I should have stopped by the auto shop and checked to see if the plant was still producing. My store-bought peppers reflect my timidity in these matters - I am terrible at getting the peppery-ness right.

The salad and the cassarole were for a party, where all the food was amazing. I also totally lucked out at the competitive gift exchange (Is this a southern thing? I never heard of this activity until I moved to the dc area. You know, where you draw numbers, and then, when your turn comes, you can either take a wrapped gift or poach someone else's desirable gift? It can be totally cut-throat - last night was hilarious, but moderately civilized- and it definately is entertaining and revealing of character.)

Anyway, I ended up with a cookbook and placemats! So we can eat our seasonal produce on handloomed indigeousnous textiles. That totally rules.

It also totally rules because the gifts we contributed were very popular, totally in keeping with the theme (good for the recipient, good for the world) and as close to free as humanly possible. I made a reusable string grocery bag (it actually wasn't finished yet - I put it in the box with the needles and a note) and a couple organic free-trade dark chocloate bars. (Expensive for candy bars, but very cheap for a Christmas gift.)

Both these gifts were extremely hotly contested, poached as many times as the rules would allow. Because, in the competitive gift exchange, I'm totally not competitive about getting gifts - I'm competitive about contributing desirable gifts, as confirmation of how damn clever I am. Not that anyone necessarily has to know it was me. I just have to know. It's satisfying.

Should you be competitive in this way too, here's a hint for next year:
It is impossible to go wrong with chocolate.

6 ideas

1. Sundays aren’t important
That is to say: Coming to church on Sunday does not make you a Christian or constitute a spiritual life. A Sunday isn’t our one chance to save souls or glorify God. It’s not the one place to learn about God, commune with the Holy Spirit, or be challenged. In many ways, as we spend time, sitting still, thinking about or listening to people talk about God, Sundays run the risk of being the least spiritually forming day of the week.

2.Sundays are important
They’re our front door, our chance to host strangers and long-lost friends. They can give us a chance to reflect, which most of us rarely get (or take) during the week. They tell us how to make direct contact with God. They provide a chance to consider new ideas about God and the world; the combination of time with God and new perspective may open the door for transformation.

3. A journey together, not a presentation to an audience
We are not in the business of trying to sell anything, convince anyone of anything, or impress anyone, with our logic or with our artistry. Including God. A worship gathering has a bunch of living humans making contact with a living God, and even though we do our very best to plan things well and have a destination in mind, we cannot anticipate or control everything that happens. I don’t think we should want to.

4. It matters that we are all together in one place
There has got to be a difference between coming to church and hearing a sermon on a podcast, listening to Passion CDs in the car, praying in the shower. It has to matter that we can look one another in the eye, touch one another, and actually converse rather than monologue. Our bodies have to matter, and our proximity has to matter.

5. some things are beyond words
Not only is God beyond our logical comprehension – we are. The mundane world is. We need to make peace, deep in our souls, with the idea that God is worth a lifetime of study, service, prayer, digging, listening – and that we are not going to get to ‘answers’. Ever. Much is lost when we try to make God ‘make sense’. It’s not even a good marketing ploy, because smart people can see right through it.

6. The only decent ‘selling point’ in favor of a life with God is that you get to have a life with God.

Question: #544 What if Christ does not accept me as I am?


Answer: You are seriously jacked.



You can admire Mark Driscoll or hate him (I'm not a fan) (duh) but this is fascinating.

What I think is interesting:
1. The whole idea - not unique, but thought-provoking nonetheless

2. The content of the questions that won a place in the series.

3. Driscoll's blog responses to the process (click on 'what mark is thinking' to see)

What I wonder about:
1. The idea of leaving the question open to the whole internet, rather than asking the congregation who will be in the room for the series. I understand it, I think, but I don't know that it's the decision I would have made.

2. Is there a place to see all the questions, and how they ranked?

I also want to give props to the web designer - yeah, the video ('How this works' page) loads slow and plays jerky, but major background love! And the empty chair. Also love.

(Don't hate me! I am not commending Driscoll's theology or personal charm! I just like the peeling paint. The peeling paint is worthy of commendation.)

what we've done to Christmas

The most accurate portrayal of the nativity that I've seen is in the film Children of Men. The movie tells of a not-so-distant future where people are no longer fertile, and humanity is gradually dying out. There are no babies, no children, and no hope.

As inevitable anarchy descends, communities and their cities are destroyed; allegiance and faithfulness fall away. Friendship, forgiveness and trust are quaint relics from the past. Then one day there's a whisper, an impossible rumour of a woman who is pregnant. As the rumour spreads, the world fights for ownership rights to the baby.

Towards the end of the story, the protector, mother and the crying newborn make their way to a place where the baby's survival can be guaranteed. The people fighting in the street hear the cry of a baby.

They can't work out what could be making that noise. They haven't heard that cry within living memory. But when they recognise it for what it is, they drop their weapons, they drop their guard, they even drop their determination to survive. Just for that moment, the world stands still.

Don't let a Christmas carol tell you otherwise: the cry of a baby when the world has been holding its breath is the most beautiful sound imaginable. It's perhaps the only sound that can ever change the world. Whatever chance we get, in whatever place we can, whether we choose Christianity as our faith or whether we visit it twice a year, all of us are called to seek out that cry and find where it might be born in the world.

Cheryl Lawrie works for the Alternative Worship Project in the Uniting Church in Australia

go read the rest - The Age is a daily newspaper in Melbourne, Australia; Cheryl Lawrie's blog is [hold :: this space] where she posts amazing liturgy and poetry from her work creating worship in prisons and hospitals.

Reading her blog reminds me that this work is real...that facilitating worship and bringing people the sacraments is really precious, not just to me, but in reality. That communion isn't, you know, the garnish on the spiritual meal (where the meat is service and study...)

http://postsecret.blogspot.com/

I preached today; Patsy, who was scheduled to preach and with whom I had been planning an unusual service, was sick and hoarse, and after a series of brief conversations yesterday, I agreed to write and present a sermon, along with the communion/contemplative/liturgical elements we had been working on.

Edited to add: It's up on the Cedar Ridge site. Click here and it's at the top of the page.

I've been joking about how stressful it is, but here's my super-secret confession in the relative anonymity of cyberwhatsis - it was fun. I liked doing it. Of course I was nervous, and of course I worked hard at it and worried about it. But I also really enjoyed it - both writing it, and speaking it.

Here's what made it easier -
1. My husband, who not only contributed ideas and advice but agreed to be interviewed as part of the message (the theme was fresh starts, and of course he's been immersed in a fresh start for the last 11 months, so it seemed sensible; plus he's funny; plus how great is it to be able to have someone standing beside you while you do this? Pretty great. Is the answer.)
2. Jack B, who took over all the booth stuff I am usually doing;
3. Harp 46, consummate professionals who basically did exactly what I asked them too perfectly
4. Tony, who, when I called, said (as he always does) 'just tell me what you need'.
plus Christie and Gail and all the other people who help all the time. Plus Jim, who did not kill me for double-booking him and another sound operator, but instead went out and bought me coffee. Plus, of course, Matthew and Patsy, who each thought of 12 different ways to say 'you'll do a good job."

My husband also added a special visual to the new years liturgy that I had concocted - people wrote down the stuff they were leaving behind, and I had planned a 'ceremony' where we would take those pieces of paper and remove them as we prayed. Eric, of course, had a more striking idea, and stood behind me. And as I prayed to have God transform our old lives into some something new and beautiful, Eric magically transformed the paper into sparking fluttering 'snow'.

AND THEN HE WENT AND GOT THE VACUUM AND VACUUMED IT UP BETWEEN SERVICES.

Excuse me, I have to go kiss his feet.

Again.

He hates it, but I just can't be stopped.

ohmyGod

I'd better hurry because my husband is OBSESSED with going to bed on time, and on time is when 'House' is over, and it's 20 minutes, so I'd better write fast.

Dinner was quite decent, Ian knows all the words to Jesus Loves Me (yeah, Ian and Karl Barth), my husband has a new computer (we thought about getting a mac; after long analysis we decided to stick with a pc, but he got one that looks like a mac, so maybe that counts for something.) I am eating ice cream.

I finally started working on my freakin' sermon, which I was able to work on for a whole freakin' fifteen minutes before a friend called and wanted to talk about the whole Episocpal mess (the big international Episcopal mess that's been in all the papers for a year, not any sort of local intrigue.) And then my husband came home with the new toy (did you know they give away color printers these days? Like key chains! Or logo-stamped liscence-plate frames! They gave him two printers! We already have one on each floor! This is ridiculous!) and then suddenly it was time for 'House'.

Anyway, despite the lack of progress, I am feeling encouraged about the sermon.

There was an escaped convict running around our town this morning. Yes, that's my town, on the national news. You know, where George Wallace was shot. (At the Mall!) Where Mohammed Atta, famous Sept.11 hijacker, lived. (In the Valencia Motel. Where my husband lived briefly as a pre-schooler, while his dad served at Fort Meade and the family waited for their house to get built.)

Inconcievable!

And, unbeliveably,again! This one's just audio - I was moving around a lot, the video might have gotten messed up. The file's actually a Mitchell-Henning portmanteau - the first half is Zach Sandberg interviewing Moses via sattellite (played by Eric, on video), and then the second half is my 'sermon', which involved tying people together with pink yarn (Manos de Uruguay, for any of you who are yarn fanciers. Second service I used rainbow-colored Sugar and Cream crafters cotton. It went faster, and I collected the ridiculous tangle at the end and draped it over the base of the cross.)

Updated to add: Video! same link.

Link to my sermon

they let me preach again. Click to listen or watch.

At least this will lead you to a fuller appreciation of the high-quality preaching in your church.

All kidding aside, I just watched the video for the first time, and through the haze of crippling self-conciousness (Maybe I'll look less fat if I squint. Um, okay, NO. Hmmm.) I can say I feel decent about this outing. I meant all that stuff.

Here is how I have come to preach, twice, at Cedar Ridge:

every summer we have The All Ages Show, aka family services, or Sunday School Teachers Get August Off. As staff liturgist and tech director (I bet I'm the only one of those in the country!) I'm heavily involved in the collaborative planning of these services. (I'm heavily involved in the planning of practically every service, but most of those discussions are small - me and the speaker - and efficient, not free-wheeling brainstorming that August entails.)

At some point during the brain storming, I am unable to control myself and go off on some long, ill-considered rant about 'what we should really say' about this topic. (Because I'm, you know, the tech director. So I am perfectly positioned to shoot my mouth off about matters of spiritual formation.)

I go until I run out of steam, and the other people (you know, the pastors) look at each other in silence for a moment. Someone starts some sentence fragment, like:
"well, that's, uh..."
and someone else says "yeah, that's really, um, it."
and I say "I guess I could, you know, just..."
and someone else says "Yeah, why don't you?
and I say "Really? Would that really be okay?"
and someone says "I think so." and someone else says "Yeah, totally."

And then I'm preaching.

I'm preaching again this fall, and it did not come about in that way. For my next sermon, I was actually asked, and put on the schedule back in spring. I will be preaching to the grownups in November.

Good Lord.

Ecumenism critqued

over here. I'm a fan of Kyle Potter; he's a divinity student, a terrific clear writer about some complex subjects, and incidentally, a devout Anglican. (All those guys who starts out as Southern Baptists make the best Anglicans.)

It's more than incidental for me, actually. I'm a cradle Episcopalian, who, after a very devout childhood and short periods as a Buddhist and a Quaker, grew up to be sort of a general-purpose evangelical who worshiped, and now serves, in independent churches. Trans-denominational...no, wait, Post-denominational churches. That's it.

My identity - my denominational identity - surges from foreground to background, from not-even-worth-mentioning to the primary fact of my identity, the first bullet point in my introduction. The last few years, it's come to the front again.

For one thing, it's a distinctive - it connects me to some people (Bob comes to mind) and sets me apart from others.

It sensitizes me to, and aligns me with, the victims of evangelicalism's tenacious anti-Catholic bullying.

I also suspect it's my primary qualification for my job.

Seriously, the Old Boss aside, hardly anyone in the congregation I serve has a sacramental background. The things I grew up believing and celebrating and doing are a part of what our church wants to give people - deep ritual, meaningful actions, a place to meet God beyond logic and sermonizing. The rhythm of the year; connections between this Lenten season and the one 5 years ago. Disciplines. Ancient poetry.

I haven't been to seminary; I never studied any of these things. I got them through immersion, through them being the only way I knew to be church.

And my background has plenty of holes. Growing up in my church, there was no moment of decision, of 'giving your life to Christ' - you were His already, obviously, baptised and raised under God's hand. Any decision - if one decided not to be confirmed, for example - would have been a refusal of the assumed order rather than a positive step. It was a little like the Columbia Record and Tape Club; it ran on negative consent.

The church I grew up in left lots of room for interpretation, so much so that famous Episcopal priests have published books debunking the virgin birth and the literal resurrection. Moral decisions were largely between you and God, but the directions for seeking God's guidance were pretty hazy. Also, if I had grown up 'born again' ("I've been born again my whole life!" as the character in "Saved!" says,)
I'd have a much better handle on the Bible, both as narrative and as compass.

Not to mention the class and gender baggage woven into the gigantic structure...the whole massive hierarchy (and its basis, apostolic succession) just seemed more of an impediment to God's work than a help. I couldn't sign on for that. And God was kind, and appears to have led me to a way to honor my 'calling' (I feel pretentious calling it that, but honestly, there's no other word) outside that structure.

And so I have made a commitment to an ecumenical, born-again community.

Nothing in my life has ever made me feel more Anglican. And more high church Anglican, at that.

I don't want to post a comment on Kyle's blog, cuz dude, they're all a bunch doctoral candidates and parish priests hanging out over there, and they'd eat me alive! Not in a mean way. They just know a lot of words that I didn't learn while getting my BA in theatre. I would be exposed.

But I will say this here (where I am constantly exposed) -

Kyle says that the differences between denominations are real, and to suggest that one is as good as another is disrespectful. Because we pick our denominational affiliations, at least in part, because we believe it to be

...the most faithful way, in this time and place, to respond to and embody the fact of God's reign in Christ?

And if you really think your church- say, the Baptist church - is the one that's 'the most faithful way', then to say

"I'm a Baptist, because that's what I think is right for me. I'm glad that you're a Methodist, because that's what God has called you to be. It doesn't really matter because we all love Jesus."

may be well-meaning and even kind, but it isn't truthful.

Here's where Kyle and I differ:

I think that I believe denominations were made for people, not for God.

People are limited. They're limited in their intellect and spiritual connectedness; they're limited by habit and taste and history.

God is enormous, majestic, passing understanding.

This may be the postmodernist in me -

I believe (and scripture and history support) that God reveals God's nature in many ways - scripture, creation, sacraments, supernatural happenings. Jesus was/is the most perfect revelation of God's character and nature.

Even people who knew Jesus in person, who walked with him 365 days a year for 3 years, did not get the fullness of God's revelation. They didn't even get the fullness of Christ. And he was right there. He ate with them, joked with them. They saw him rise from the dead.

Why, then, is it hard to imagine that Methodism might exist not because it's the best vehicle for revelation (and so everyone should get on board) but that it's the best vehicle for revelation to a certain type of people. Other people will be left cold by Methodism but love Roman Catholicism. Neither is 'the most faithful way' in God's eyes. Both are God-inspired but human-made, and so have truth and errors and beauty and hatefulness somewhere in there.

Does this make sense? It seems to me that God has done many things (Christ's incarnation, parables, Pentacost, to name three) to speak to people in a language they'll understand. Are denominations part of that?

A decade in the vocation by Peacebang.

Of course I'm not (and at this late date, and considering my level of misgivings about, well, practically everything, am unlikely to ever be) a parish priest. So my experience isn't really like hers. But my feelings surged right along with her as I read this.

It has to be asked whether 2000 years of religious photoshopping have remodelled Jesus almost out of recognition. We've added some tints (sure, he didn't speak about homosexuality, but if he had, we know what he would have said), a blurred edge (he didn't really mean we have to sell all we have for the poor), and made him as transparent as possible (put him there in the background, but not so obvious that we actually have to look at him). The trouble is, someone forgot to hit "save" right at the beginning, and we've got little hope of undoing the layers to get back to the original.

Cheryl Lawrie in the Austrailian newspaper The Age.

I just discovered Hold::This Space, a blog of an alternative worship project; via jonny baker.