Church Shopping at the Holidays

This is, I fully admit, a brief linguistic rant. Words have meaning - the name of the next post - and they affect how we act in unconcious ways.

It's coming up Easter, one of the two great feasts of the church and one of the two days that "cultural Christians" come wander in the door. It is one of two days we especially worry about church shoppers and how they will evaluate our services. (I'd put those in quote marks, but the fact is, I don't even think I am being ironic.) We worry about how welcoming they will think us, how inclusive, how relevant and authentic, how accessible - physically and spiritually. And we tend to act like awkward idiots. And we spend a lot of time apologizing, even if we don't actually say "I'm sorry."

What I wonder is why we put ourselves out in this particular way for cultural Christians. I have met a lot of people, people I will also call cultural Christians, who were in fact looking for a spiritual home, or an encounter with Christ, but I never met them on Easter or Christmas. I met them on Tuesday afternoons, or some random Sunday in July.

And they were all broken, they were all at a sticking point in their lives, and some of them partook of the Eucharist and ran out the door (I've done this), and some of them found a gentle face at coffee hour, sometimes even the priest, and they hid out in the corner of the church and cried and cried and cried. Some of them stayed forever, some stayed for a time, some left never to return.

The thing I worry about, when we devote most of our attention to cultural Christians who attend on Easter and Christmas is that we don't pay enough attention on Tuesdays or in Ordinary Time (yes, this is a church season, just like Easter.) I'm not saying we should close the doors to people who are not "real" in some way on the major feast days, but I am saying that we talk a lot more about how to be appealing on these two days, to people who are enacting rituals more cultural than Christ-like, and while we should put our best foot forward, we should consider than they may not, at that particular time, be our primary audience.

I would like to see us spend a little less time creating excellent service for shoppers on our major feast days and a little more time making sure that the celebration is a deeply meaningful connection to the high points of our faith, not our ecumenicalism, not our welcoming demeanor, not our "not like you think from major media outlets" fears. Be boldly Christian. Let them see the mystery, even if they don't understand it - it is a mystery after all. And we don't understand it fully either.

All-In Community

I have 5, yes 5 random thought processes sitting in draft form. So, I'm going to try to clear my plate of this stuff this week. So, plenty of posts but nothing really on Holy Week, at least not that I know of. 

Here is the thing about small churches - you don't "check them out" and you don't "ease into" them.

Walking into a small church isn't a process of anonymously assessing the pros or cons or welcome or whatever other criteria you have. It won't work, because they don't operate on anonymous. They aren't arranged for the casual shopping experience. At least, no more than your own family. True, like your own family, they can be highly disfunctional. They can be supporting the disfunctions of members in all sorts of passive aggressive ways. Churches struggle with how to balance the needs of everyone just like family.  If you have or have experienced families with say a Down Syndrome member or an alcoholic member - you know that your family is not passing the "normal welcoming bland anonymous" test. Because, let's be really real about this. When we don't throw away the "problem child" what becomes functional for us is highly individual and very intimate.

Here is the thing about small churches. As long as you aren't interviewing them for their ability to be politically correct, as long as you lay claim to them as family and have the expectation that they will adapt to you like family - aka, sometimes graciously, sometimes imperfectly, sometimes with all the charm of a hippopotamous, then they will be a family.

There is a complaint, often, about churches, that they are not accomodating enough for families with autism or ADHD or whatever the particular family is dealing with. And they lambast churches for not having a plan in place, not anticipating what is not there. I have no idea what the individual experience is that leads to these articles, I only have my experience. And my experience is that it is like family. We didn't have a plan in place for our baby to be born with a genetic deletion or our step mother to be an alcoholic. Situational ethics needs a situation first, and a solution second. And finding the equalibrium isn't going to be pretty. All those articles or their comments end with, why don't people just do something practical, like offer to babysit. These things do happen in little churches. (A secret - little churches are terrible at assessing their insurance risk. They just aren't worried about it, because they are actually worried about you.)

When you are right in front of them, well, think about how your grandmother reacted to her newest grandchild with a genetic deletion. It was a bit of love and awkward combined, and then some accomodating adjustment and then a fierce protection (this is common, but not everyone has this grandmother). And because it's your mother we are talking about, you are often fully aware you are stuck with her, so you have some patience to let her work this process out. A small church is going to work through the same process as your family. They will take a little time to accomodate you, to work it out, and as long as you are in it for the long haul and not obviously shopping for the level of service you expect, it will work out. And it will have someone to watch your child while you worship and it will have someone to take you to the doctor at 2am when your car won't start.

My own experience tells me that when the conversation becomes, "You should just leave because we can't deal with you," it's because that small church is busy worrying about the "church shopper" and their "service" and not what is right in front of them. Some of the most uncomfortable experiences in church I have ever had are in the growing smaller churches and church plants. If there is a very explicit structure for grace and in-grouping, it can be wonderful, but if it is relying on assumptive in-group ethics to grow, it can be very painful if you don't walk in the door already in the socio-economic assumptive reality of those already there. And if you have an akward family, or you don't own your own home, or you don't vacation in the right places, or you don't vote the same way, it's going to be ugly once you start opening up.

How do you know you have the former and not the latter? Grace has a lot of room for mistakes and apologizing on the part of the church, not the new member. Grace may ask if you can help pay for something, but it won't assume that you bear the full burden of accomodation. Grace laughs, sometimes joyfully and sometimes painfully and sometimes grace is completely mortified but admits to mistakes. If you find yourself in a place that makes you feel like you have to apologize for being inconvenient, you should leave. If you find one clueless, possible tourettes sufferer or mildy racist old lady who is not the pastor or head of the church committee, you are probably looking at a place that is accomodating. However, if that person is very powerful in the church, you want to leave.

A sidebar to churches on capital improvements: Look at your facilities. I know that an accessible ramp, and an elevator if you really must use the basement/attic are worth the investment - not only are they useful and welcoming for people in wheelchairs, they are useful and welcoming to parents of small children and the elderly and anyone who has ever broken their ankle and tried to navigate stairs with crutches. Spend the money - it's really a selfish investment but other people will appreciate it, too.

Rilke and the Haiku

I have finally started reading poetry, which will please Susan C. to no end. How many years ago did she tell me I needed to be reading more poetry????

When I moved my friend to Denver, over a year ago, I picked up two books of poetry, Rilke's Book of Hours and Aitken's The River of Heaven. Rilke is German and Aiken translated the great Haiku writers. Both books appealed to me because they had the original and translated text. I can't read either language, but I like the contant reminder that these are deeper than I know, because of all the nuance being lost in translation.

Mostly, they sat next to my bed for a year. But over the last month, I've been reading in both of them, one after the other, until I reach a poem that hits me, and then I put in the bookmark and stop. Rilke probably makes more sense to me - sometimes I only finish one poem a day. The haiku I read second, and I read them until I feel myself sunk into the moment and this feeling washes over me that I really don't even have words for. How to describe that moment when you really feel yourself in the moment, sort of the one step removed suprise - or like being awake in a dream. I like haiku for that, and maybe someday I'll even try writing my own.

I think it will be like finally praying my own prayer. And I wonder if it really is ok to only pray the prayers of other people, the books of prayer and poetry and fiction and non-fiction and hagiography that pile up next to my bed and overflow my bookshelf. Is my prayer real enough if it is a constant stream of someone elses' ah ha moments?

Meditation isn't even a fad anymore. Sitting in attentive silence is now medicine - dispensed by my therapist and my MD. If Kaiser used paper prescriptions, my medical file would be littered with little papers saying meditate more and check out this website.  I think of my MD, whom I admire for his no-nonsense, just-fix-it-already attitude and wonder if he really knows he is prescribing prayer. I wonder how many people even know they are praying; these people I meet in CBT and DBT and XYZ classes for depression and anxiety. I wonder if it would stop working because of their God baggage, or if it would let them work through the baggage and move on?

I know I am very guilty of loving my totally secular "breathe" and "imagine the beach" meditation tapes over chanted psalmody or taize or God forbid, whatever is rattling around in my own head. What is in there feels so banal, so mundane, petty, boring, tedious, silly, ordinary (and not in that the ordinary is sacred sort of way, but the 'did I switch the laundry yesterday or the day before or whatever day I last ran a load of laundry and gosh, it sure was easier to do laundry in a sacred intentional way when I had to haul it to the laundry mat but its also nicely cheaper at home...') You see how this doesn't seem like prayer. It certainly doesn't read like a Rilke poem.

This is the poem I stopped on today. It stuck, I think, because it resonated with the wonderment I have in my ability to make people cry. I've made a lot of people cry this week - with the blog and at the office. I think it's all probably the good kind, since the meanest thing I said was telling a good friend he looked like shit and asked was he taking care of himself, and he didn't start crying.

This is Rilke this morning:

You too will find your strength.
We who must live in this time
cannot imagine how strong you will become-
how strange, how surprising,
yet familiar as yesterday.

We will sense you
like a fragrance from a nearby garden
and watch you move through our days
like a shaft of sunlight in a sickroom.

We will not be herded into churches,
for you are not made by the crowd,
you who meet us in our solitude.

We are cradled close in your hands-
and lavishly flung forth.


This poem makes me think of all the people who have sat in discernment with me over the years. All the people who love me and want to put me in the only box they have, while knowing perfectly well that the box isn't going to fit. It's sort of amazing to wake up from this long nightmare of existential crisis and mid-life crisis and just having-a-crisis crisis, and realize how multitudinous are the people who hurt with me along this path. But is such a huge number of people who suffer with me even a blessing? Can it be a blessing to make people cry, to make them suffer because you are suffering and not at all polite enough to keep it to yourself.

But I am grateful. I'm grateful because if I was in the priesthood box, I would not even for one moment be allowed to speak this rambling truth that is in me. I would not for one moment be allowed to be honest about my own struggles towards God and towards the light and life and being. And finally, I come to the place where my heart aches, not because others have what I was denied, but because I don't think they are any more suited to that box either, but they ended up there anyway, and that I can make them cry.






(Rilke Translation by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy. II,26)

"St. David's, San Francisco"

That is what my husband said about half way through the service yesterday.

In other words, the most typical of Episcopal Churches; standard Rite II, somewhat confusing hodge-podge of paperwork associated with the service, and less than 50 people. A church that is a family, and welcomes new people in the awkard way that families do. Amazingly, the priest remembers us from our one visit a year and a half ago. Whether that is because they recieve few visitors or it was pretty obvious that I was having a full blown PTSD attack that led to 6 months of crisis therapy is something I don't actually want to know the answer to.

In any case, I have a bit of the "my country, right or wrong" feeling about the Episcopal Church and am deeply, classically Anglican. Which means, I believe deep, deep in my heart that Anglicanism is about local roots and a reformed monasticism. I think it also means that my people broke away from the Episcopal Church an eon ago, if they didn't all just die by the Nineteenth Century. Still, here I am and here I stay, and in the way that small family churches accomodate their crazy relatives, I expect that Church of the Incarnation is about to get one more.

I've spent the last several months not blogging about my innards. Although very few people read this, and I expect all the ones that do are actually interested, sometimes this phase of my life, and thus my blogging life, feels like a tedious navel gazing. I have discovered boredom, and spent some time hanging out there, because I wasn't ready to see myself as hanging out in the desert. And now, I am both pretty sure that my future holds comtemplative prayer and pretty sure that the reason this is lonely territory is that so few people are allowed to get here. Does it require what we are currently labeling PTSD to get here? Is it fear that holds people back, because the edge is pretty damn scary. Is it that there aren't enough guides? How do you become someone who holds the hands of the falling? How do they find you?

You don't find those people, at least regularly, in church. And they are not managing the big and prosperous churches. Because it is a completely different way of being in the world, to be walking along the cliff looking for people about to fall over AND HELPING THEM DO IT. A sucessful butts in pews church doesn't seem to have room for that kind of individuality. Doesn't seem to have room for that sort of spirituality. Because it is really individual, and personal, and timing is everything. People no where near the cliff have no idea what it is like and people walking the edge often have no patience for people grazing in the meadow.

Perhaps the largest issue I have had to resolve in going back to church has been that of being recognized for what I am. And how hurtful that is, because what I am isn't the same as the box they try to put me in. Right now, what saddens me the most about church, and the Episcopal church in particular, is that we have this huge monastic base in our tradition that we are edging out in favor of "all Eucharist, all the time." I was a pariah in seminary for all the times that I pointed out the essential dichotomy of the 1979 prayer book. We said - laity rules, but we wrote, priest or bust. And taking classes from some of the people who wrote the prayer book, well, let's just say they really, really didn't like what I said. And because that is the only option we created, all the people I come across try to stick me in that box, but that isn't my box. At least not the way it's currently being constructed.

The most powerful thing ever said to me was, "you are like Jesus walking." I am still trying to decide if this is better or worse than being called Jeremiah. But the fact remains that I am both what outsiders wish they could find in church and a huge thorn in the side of what is actually there. Let's be real, the Pharisees find I stick in the craw, like Jesus and Jeremiah. And it is a very uncomfortable place to be as a plain old human being. I have incredibly ordinary desires, to love and be loved. To be able to speak without being judged harshly. To eat good food and not have to do the dishes afterwards. To discover no iron clothing that doesn't look like a dish rag or the seventies. To see beauty and to leave some behind. To stop having acne and to be able to eat all the candy with none of the cavities.

I don't want to be anyone's Messiah and I don't want to be anyone's prophet. I want people to do the best they can, with what they have, and to always strive to do what is right, and when choosing between two rights (the usual case) I want them to strive for life rather than death. (This shit is totally why I get compared to Jesus.) I want companions on the way, because life is hard and the decisions are hard and because we are surrounded by just enough death that it hides the fact that we are made of life. And I want people to see that life comes from death and how beautiful resurrection is.

And that isn't what church is for. At least, that isn't what we are doing there these days. I've had to come to terms with this, and to decide what it was that I wanted from church, given what it does have to offer. And thus, as I always knew, I find myself back at my local church, and back in a small place, a family place, a place that makes room for crazy cousins and drunk uncles, because family seems to be the place that cliff walking is both hardest and most likely to contain a companion for the journey.

Integration

Another journal post - still nothing but my own self exploration to offer the world.

For Lent this year, I am exploring what it means to do things from my own sense of desire rather than obligation. I still do things from obligation, but being able to notice and own the differences between things that I do that come out of my own desire or the movement of my soul towards some activity or goal and the things I do because I feel someone is going to judge me for not having done it.

This, so far, seems to revolve around a lot of laundry. And the fact that I am married to, perhaps, the most perfect person for me, makes this whole exercise somewhat absurd. His answer, "Well, just have the dry cleaner do it, whatever." It brings home to me just how much of what I do every day I am no longer doing because I derive satisfaction from it but because I was doing it before and so people expect me to keep doing it.

This flies in the face of so much of how I live my life when I am being intentional. I'm amazed at how much of my life feels as grounded as a butterfly or plastic bag these days - and even more surprised to discover that the break happened when I started seminary, not after. When we engage in recollection, when I engage in recollection, I am continually finding that there is this breaking point between 2008 and whenever now is - and it has been that way for a couple of years, which is how I have realized that I have never integrated a whole section of my life into "my life."

The other thing I have been doing lately is reading all those Benedictine Spirituality books I've bought over the years, some I am re-reading and some, I never got around to. And I am coming to the realization that it meant more to me than I thought that I had a one-sheet reminder of the Rule of Benedict in my office. I started reading the Rule by some chance, found that it resonated with how I was living my life or wanted to live my life, and I think I am only just barely beginning to see how profoundly that Rule has shaped me and how it has colored my understanding of my call.

I think, for the very first time, I am starting to see the glimmer of what people meant when they said my call wasn't clear - that the priesthood didn't seem to fit. And I am starting to see why church is so chafing to me. I thought that it was rejection and a whole associated mess of childish push back on my part, but I think I actually didn't go through my spiritual formation in what churches actually are, and so the fact that this tiny, presumed dying (because as a church it was in fact dying) community that formed me, and that I miss and I long for and I go back and forth about how to stay in connection with people I feel rejected me is because I have in fact confused the very monastic community we did have with what a church is.

Some days, I think I am living the whole history of Christianity in my own person.

But mostly, I think that I am going to have to find that old one-page shorthand of the Rule of Benedict and post it back up. Because I think I am very word-centric, and I think I need to see the words to remember why they are so important and how the living of those ideas is what give me peace and what makes me feel whole.

So, This is Where I Am

I've been miserable sick for most of the last month. I had a few days to start a huge pile of projects at the Red Cross and then drop them, because I was too sick to roll over. And while I was gone, my team there did all sorts of things without me, and it is the very best feeling. (It's weird, because I am just noticing this, but it's the very thing that happened at St. David's and the very thing that Sara couldn't understand.) Maybe I am weird, but the best feeling is the knowing that I am replaceable - knowing that life was happening before I stumbled along, and will go along after I'm gone, but if in my passing, that life became brighter, smoother, more compassionate and maybe even a little more understood. Well, then I have done what I was sent to do.

While I was sick, I went off my meds. It was unintentional, although I had always planned to do so this January. One year was enough, especially since I have been feeling dissatisfied and looking around for myself lately. It has been interesting - the light headed dizziness aside - to find my tears again. I just feel more even though I hadn't really noticed. I suppose if I fall into depression again, I will be ok if I have to take the medication my whole life, but it is good to know the difference if that is the case.

I supposed the best way to describe it is being present. I'm really good, and have put a lot of work into being good, at being present to whomever and whatever is in front of me. Not trying to change it, just paying attention to what is really there, and being really honest about what I think and feel in the moment. It is what makes it possible for me to have such tiny profound experiences. And those experiences are what make me feel alive - how I know I'm doing that thing I am supposed to be doing in this life.

So, I have a few things to finish up, things I started while I was having my breakdown, and that I owe at least a little bit of cleaning up my own mess. But things that were good to keep me busy even if they are not things that make me alive. Yes, the PTSA and the Red Cross have been good to me, but they have not fed me. They have not kept me whole, they have only kept me from spinning out of control. And I know, with absolute certainty that those things are not my calling. Still, I will give them a couple of months to clean up.

I went through all my books from seminary. I picked out all the books that pulled at my heart, and filled two bags (about a third of the total) of books that didn't move me. This is the second purge, the first was the congregational development stuff, which was perhaps a knee jerk reaction, but this time, it was a lot of old dead white theologians. I kept the things that teach, theology that is a bit quirky, my strange collection of books by and about other denominations, my Benedictine Rules, and collections of prayers. And from there, I am thinking about what I am going to do next.

That strange collection of things tells me that I am going to be a chaplain. So, I am going to do my CPE (clinical pastoral education); that thing that I couldn't/wouldn't make time for during seminary. I'm going to see about doing the year long residency, but I might have to do the summer internship first. I'll just have to see.

What I am looking for in my corporate spiritual life

I've been thinking about what I actually want out of a corporate spiritual life. Besides not beeing taken for the priest or at least a priest everywhere I go. (Don't think the Catholics don't have this in their favor.)

I've a deep call to preaching. And pastoring. And I have a horrible sneaking suspicion that this makes me a writer - although I've killed all my writing skills with the preaching, because talking and writing actually should look different. My writing is a mess and it will take a very long time to get it back after the last several years, but that may be what I need to do.

Here is the thing about the Eucharist - I am deeply called to liturgical worship, and I love the coming together on Sunday morning, but my ministry was never to be a Eucharistic Minister. I care that it is done right, well, meaningfully, but the forgiveness of sins part has always been more important to me than the offering of sacrifice. We love the ritual, I think because it satisfys that very part of us that Jesus said we didn't really need to be satisfying. I don't know. Actual meals are more important to me. Actually eating together, whether you give the meal the ritual flare or not, actually talking about what Scripture says and how to turn that into livable action, today, in my affluent life, is what matters more.

I suppose I never did actually fit into what a typical Episcopalian is trying to become. I just don't have the patience to be a "social justice fill-in-the-blank." I care about the metanoia, the changed heart. You can, in your affluent life, do all sorts of good things without ever changing. Yesterday, I had the opportunity to sponsor a child in Vietnam for 28 dollars a month. I can sponsor a dozen children on just the cost of my own childrens music and swimming lessons. If I had a coffee habit, I could sponsor three. It's easy to give up nothing tangible and feel good.

But I am interested in how my heart turns towards people. How do we turn our hearts towards people, not just throw our spare change at them. When our hearts turn, then we start to have compassion for the system that we all struggle in, the affluent and the poor, and we can start to find ways to change that system.

Anyway, I am wondering where I am going to find my next group of study partners for my spiritual life. Jonathan suggests I start my own cult, but where to find the people?

I don't miss the Eucharist, but I miss the rhythm, and I miss the Wednesdays nights something fierce. I don't know if I need to search for that again, and figure out how to recreate it, or if I need to treat it like much of the rest of my life in Portland, as something to grieve if necessary, but to recognize as a particular time in my life and then move forward.

I've been seeing a lot of internet billboards to the effect that as long as I am looking backwards, I won't be able to see where I am going, or better yet, aim for a desired direction.