Opening to Grace -- an ad

I don't think I've ever used this space for an ad before, but I'm going to make an exception.  There is an amazing woman by the name of Tilda Norberg who lives on Staten Island, where she practices and teaches Gestalt Pastoral Care.   Throughout the year she does weekend retreats called "Opening to Grace" near Dingman's Ferry, PA, at her funky little retreat space.   This fall the dates for her weekends are:  Sept. 25-27, Oct. 16-18, and Dec. 4-6.  Each retreat is limited to 6 participants, plus some helpers, and costs $300, which includes room and board.  Gestalt pastoral care is a combination of Gestalt growth work, healing prayer and spiritual companioning.  It's hard to describe.  You kind of have to experience it.  

I studied with Tilda for two years at her home/school on Staten Island.  It was one of the most important experiences of my life.  Given that my life has been a bit of a mess ever since, I realize I'm not the best walking advertisement.   (But then again, I'm not sure this mess isn't partly a result of shaking up my comfortable little world.   Sometimes healing isn't pretty.)

If this sounds even vaguely interesting to you, go to the website and read up on it.  Or give Tilda a call and have a chat.  I highly recommend her and this work.   But maybe you shouldn't go if you like your life exactly the way it is.   I'm just saying ...  

In Defense of Church-Shopping

I recently read an article by a former colleague of mine in which she bemoaned the American habit of church-shopping.  I completely understand how she feels.   I used to preach that same sermon.   She criticized the concept that churches are "spiritual service providers."  Yup, I've made that argument, too, back in my preaching days.   

But let's consider the other side of the story.   Let's say I'm a mom of a young child and worship on Sunday morning is the one hour a week I can hope to get some spiritual nourishment in community.  I may sneak in my own prayer and devotion time through the week -- but not with other people.  This is my only chance and I know I can get more out of it if my beautiful, squirmy, noisy, curious child is safely taken care of somewhere else.  In a nursery.  And the church I attend doesn't have one.   Will I stay?   Probably not.  Could I be accused of only thinking of my own spiritual needs?   I could.  But what would be the point?  That I shouldn't be taking care of my own spiritual needs?   Don't women -- and mothers in particular -- get that message often enough?   Take care of everybody else's needs first!   Yours can wait.   

Or take the accusation that one shouldn't leave because you disagree with the pastor.   The truth is, anybody making this statement is probably a pastor.  What is the point of worshipping week after week, listening to a person who preaches the Word and shapes the liturgy, if you have some fundamental disagreements with that person about that same Word and liturgy?   Is this a tolerance test?   Of course I'll disagree with any other human being from time to time -- we're human, after all -- but to state that agreement with the pastor should not be a criteria for whether one stays active in a church is an unrealistic and, frankly, disingenuous statement.  You can bet the person making it, on his/her Sunday off, seeks out a worship service with a pastor they enjoy.  (If they go to church at all).   

Neither of the above are my current situation.  But here is my reality:   I'm a single mom working full-time as director of an agency, with two precious animals in my care, a home, yard and car that are my responsibility, and aging parents for whom I uprooted my adult life so that I could live near them.   I am not complaining about these things.  I love these realities.  They are, in fact, my calling in life at this stage.   Each one of them has a particular pull on my soul and energy and I do my best to honor all of those pulls.   They are where my time, energy and love go, day after day.   Taking care of a church community is not one of my callings right now. It has been for most of my life, but it isn't now.  And that's true of many people sitting in our pews.  They aren't called to take care of your congregation, preacher, so give them a break.   

I love God.  I love worshipping God in community.   I need that community.   And I am church-shopping to find it.    Shopping has this negative, materialistic, self-centered image in the church and for good reason.   I think a better metaphor is dating.   I'm dating several churches (and other spiritual communities) this year.   I thought I needed to hop from my last church-marriage into a new one and the trouble with that model is you don't give yourself time to learn and grow and figure out how you changed since the last time you made a commitment. So I hopped quickly into what I believed to be a long-term relationship with a congregation.  I didn't sign on the membership line, but I did get very involved.   Then, when I began sensing that the relationship wasn't really working, I felt guilty and confused about how to extricate myself.   

Also, like my real-life dating these days, there is a child involved.  And that makes a tremendous difference.  (Unlike real-life dating, the child goes on most of my church-dates).   It is not just my needs, but his that I consider.   Is he surrounded by other adults in this congregation who demonstrate to him, implicitly and explicitly, the kind of Christian values I hope to help him develop?    If that isn't happening in the congregation, I'm not staying.   Just as in dating, I don't care how much I like the guy, if he's not somebody I feel good about my kid being around, it ain't happening.    

And, as is true in my dating life (or my desire to have one, is more like it), I'm not really out for a long-term commitment just yet.   I need a break from the hard work of that kind of commitment.   I do want to just be able to enjoy the date without thinking too much about the future.  Which means, next Sunday I may or may not want to spend time with you.   I may want to go out with another church next week.   Or I may be serially monogomous for a while -- a few months in this church, a few in that.    

The bottom line is, church-shopping -- or church-dating, as I prefer to call it-- is going to happen.   Churches and pastors need to deal with this reality without judgement.  Just as not every date is going to lead to marriage, not every church-date is going to lead to a long-term commitment.   Nor should it.    And there's nothing wrong with that. 

Hafiz -- a poem

Don't surrender your loneliness

So quickly. 

Let it cut more deep.

Let it ferment and season you

As few human

Or even divine ingredients can.

Something missing in my heart tonight

Has made my eyes so soft, 

My voice

So tender,

My need of God

Absolutely

Clear. 

My New Favorite Song

So I'm a little late to the party, as usual. This one is for a special friend. You know who you are.

Holy Week

Being asked to do the Presbymeme (below) gave me the impetus to blog about my Holy Week. Nothing Presbyterian about it.

Let's start on Palm Sunday. I got a 9 a.m. call from a new friend, raised secular Muslim, who has very bad feelings about Christianity in general, but is trying hard to respect mine. "Happy Palm Sunday!" he announced. "Oh. Is it?" I replied. I really didn't know. And that shocked me. Has there ever been a Palm Sunday in my entire life that I didn't wake up looking forward to the dramatic story that moves from triumph to tragedy? I loved waving the palms as a child. I love the Palm Sunday hymns. As a pastor, I always loved creating a parade from the outside to the inside of the church and moving the congregation from the exaltation of "All Glory, Laud and Honor" to the reality of death and betrayal still to come.

I went to Funny Little Church (FLC) -- the one I've blogged about from time to time this year -- at the usual afternoon time. They had palm branches there, but we really didn't do anything with them. The service was fine ... but it didn't feel like Palm Sunday. None of the triumph or the tragedy, really. Just another informal, lefty Baptist kind of thing.

In keeping with the lack of realization that it was Holy Week, I had made plans to celebrate the Vernal Equinox on Maundy Thursday. That day I had second thoughts, but having no church home that was doing Maundy Thursday, I kept my original plans. I went to a friend's retreat center (we do similar work and try to collaborate rather than compete) to do meditative dances. It was fine. But it was not Maundy Thursday, which may well be my favorite Holy Day of the year. Especially when foot washing is included. My churches have typically conflated MT and Good Friday, with communion first and then Tenebrae, on the theory that getting Presbyterians out to one mid-week service is asking enough and two would be impossible. I love that movement as well, from tight circle of friends huddled in an upper room, to public trial and betrayal. From gentle hope to dark hopelessness in such a short time.

On Good Friday, I attended my local Episcopal church (LEC), which is where FLC now meets, so they had invited us to join them. It was a beautiful service. We heard the whole gospel story of the betrayal, trial, crucifixion and tomb. The priest gave a beautiful homily using an illustration from modern-day Middle East about non-violence and compassion that was so moving and pertinent. He is a man clearly in love with God. We had a ritual with stones that we offered as something we needed to let go of in order to follow Christ. There was the Eucharist and healing prayer. We sang Taize music, mostly. Finally, I felt like I had joined Holy Week.

But that left Easter. FLC just doesn't do the Big Holy Days (BHD) well at all and I had decided some time before not to attend there, so as to preempt my disappointment. But the last BHD I had gone with my mom to her traditional Presbyterian church and left screaming in boredom and ended up offending her, because she really loves her church, so I didn't want to do that either. First I thought I'd just do LEC again or the Cathedral, always a good choice if one is in search of Pomp. But I wasn't in search of Pomp. I was in search of resurrection.

Then I got an invitation I couldn't refuse. To worship at the Men's State Correctional Facility. So that's what I did. Drove with some friends from FLC to the maximum security prison about an hour away and worshipped there. We didn't sing any of the hymns I love -- no Jesus Christ is Risen Today or Hallelujah Chorus or the wonderful Brian Wren Easter hymn to Beethoven's 9th. They sang gospel. And Amazing Grace. A retired Baptist minister preached. Good sermon.

It is a strange and discomforting place for me to feel so out of sync not with Christianity in the spiritual sense, but Christianity in the denominational sense. In spite of lovely, compassionate Christian people in all the churches I have attended over the past year, I can't escape the sense of deadliness I encounter there. Is it in me or in the churches? I suspect it is me dying to my old ways of being church. A long, slow death as it is turning out.

At the prison, there is so little pretence. You either get resurrection or you don't. If you don't, you're not there on Sunday. If you do, you can't not be there. What else is there when you are behind bars and have thrown yourself on the mercy of a living, loving Lord? This is a stance I understand. When my church let me go, God did not. God, in fact, picked me up even before they threw me down.

[Now, there will be some Presbyterians who will read this, who know my story and will jump in to say, "Oh, no. The church didn't leave you." To you, I need to say, please spare me. I know what happened and how. And until you have walked in my shoes, you really, really don't know.]

So I am dying a long, slow death to the ways of worshipping and understanding God and church and community and compassion that I lived so fully for so many years. It is not easy. And yet, it is also not hard. Because I know resurrection. I know it in my bones, in my gut, in the ligaments that hold me together. I know it, quite literally, better than I know myself. Because my self is also in this long, slow dying time. I don't know what I'll look like or sound like on the other side of the process I'm in, but I trust, that with Peter I will move from eager follower to quick denier to empowered leader. But also like Peter, I don't know if my former communities will recognize me when I get to that stage or will want to disown the more inclusive, more powerful, more merciful and impartial God that I am continuing to grow to know. There is no going back to the old ways. I have no desire or need to do so. But what is to come is yet to be clear. Resurrection changes things.

Happy season of resurrection, friends. May you know it in your life and may the church know it as well.

PresbyMeme

OK, my blog bud Ruth tagged me for this one. To put it mildly, I'm pretty disconnected from being Presbyterian these days, but given how deeply I've been steeped in the past, I'll play along. The start for this one came from Bruce Reyes-Chow.

What is your earliest memory of being distinctly Presbyterian?
All my early memories include being distinctly Presbyterian!! I wasn't Catholic -- didn't wear a uniform and go to a special school or have a priest who wore a collar or have to go to confession. I wasn't Southern Baptist -- didn't sing praise songs, go to revivals, or believe that everybody might be on the way to hell. I was invited to think about and question scripture as soon as I started learning it. In a small Midwestern town what else could I be? Gee, I must be Presbyterian! (And then there was church camp, Logos, singing in the children's choir, Synod School, serving on the Presbytery Youth Council, being a YAD at Synod, the first ever Youth Triennium -- yes, I did just turn 45 -- Montreat youth conferences, Montreat mission conferences, being a YAD at GA, being a seminary intern at GA, working for the Presbyterian headquarters when it still was in NYC -- yes, I did just turn 45 -- and all those SERMONS!!!)

On what issue/question should the PC(USA) spend LESS energy and time?
g/l/b/t ordination. Newsflash: gays are people in whom the holy spirit moves. get over it already.

On what issue/question should the PC(USA) spend MORE energy and time?
whether they embody the healing power of Jesus in everything they say and do. If not, why bother?

If you could have the PC(USA) focus on one passage of scripture for a entire year, what would it be?
"Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me." (Psalm 51:10)

If the PC(USA) were an animal what would it be and why?
Ruth, I love you, sweetie, but I can't answer this one in polite company. Nothing good will come of it. (But your answer on this one was lovely.)

Extra Credit: Jesus shows up at General Assembly this year, what does he say to the Presbyterian Church (USA)?
"Umm ... excuse me. Is there some reason you're trying to save this denomination? Did you forget that whole thing in Matthew 16:25, Mark 8:35 and Luke 9:24? Ya think if it was crucial enough to make it into all 3 synoptics you might wanna pay attention?" (Oh, I love to send Presbyterians scrambling for their Bibles).

OK, hope I don't sound too bitter. I don't know many Presby bloggers so if you are one, play along and if you aren't one but want to answer for your own brand of religion, play along that way.

St. Patrick's Prayer

I bind unto myself today
the strong name of the Trinity,
by invocation of the same,
the Three in One, and One in Three.

I bind this day to me forever,
by power of faith, Christ's incarnation;
his baptism in the Jordan river;
his death on the cross for my salvation.
His bursting from the spiced tomb;
his riding up the heavenly way;
his coming at the day of doom
I bind unto myself today.

I bind unto myself today
the virtues of the star-lit heaven,
the glorious sun's life-giving ray,
the whiteness of the moon at even,
the flashing of the lightning free,
the whirling wind's tempestuous shocks,
the stable earth, the deep salt sea
around the old eternal rocks.

I bind unto myself today
the power of God to hold and lead,
God's eye to watch, God's might to stay,
God's ear to hearken to my need,
the wisdom of my God to teach,
God's hand to guide, God's shield to ward,
the word of God to give me speech,
God's heavenly host to be my guard.

Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me,
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

I bind unto myself the name,
the strong name of the Trinity,
by invocation of the same,
the Three in One, the One in Three,
of whom all nature has creation,
eternal Father, Spirit, Word.
Praise to the Lord of my salvation,
salvation is of Christ the Lord. Amen.

(With thanks to my friend, Roy).