Weekend in Iowa

I’m so grateful that we enjoy spending time with our families, no matter which side of the family we’re talking about.  Yesterday, we returned from a weekend in Iowa, spent with my wife’s extended family.  Some highlights:

• We stayed at Ordinary Spouse’s aunt and uncle’s place.  The girls got some quality time with their cousins.
• The house is in the country.  You can see the stars, unlike in the ‘burbs.  OS and Middle Daughter saw a meteor.
• Lots of farm cats.  It seemed like the daughters used every free moment to play with kittens.
• Saturday was gorgeous – over 70 deg F and sunny.
• They have a small piece of wooded land a short distance from their house.  We decided  to spend the morning there, travelling via hay ride.  How many times do you get to do that in November?
• The highlights of the morning included hunting for heffalumps, swinging on a tire swing that looked like a horse, and diving in leaf piles.
• For lunch, we had a picnic with food cooked over a camp fire.  OS’s uncle is a machinist for a university physics department.  He started the picnic cooking fire with magnesium shavings from the shop.  How cool is that!
• Speaking of picnics, it seems like everyone in that family knows how to make good food.  Kudos to OS’s aunt for an extravagant picnic.

OS’s uncle mentioned how he hoped the kids got to make some memories.  I really appreciated that – it’s such a great gift to give to your children.

Five for Friday… Instruments

Piano – When I was young, my parents had me take piano lessons.  Actually, there was probably a time when I wanted to take piano lessons.  But I didn’t do a very good job of practicing.  I’m surprised that the collective ‘we’ stayed with the lessons for as long as we did – and actually I don’t recall any more how long that actually was, but I think it may have been about five years.  These days, I can plunk out a melody line or some chords, but I’m mostly thankful for the piano lessons because I taught myself to play…

Guitar – Now granted, I’m not real good at guitar – basically, all I play are chords – but it’s the instrument that I play regularly.  It’s good for leading worship, entertaining daughters, and quieting myself when I get into a mood.  I’d love to be more skilled in a folk singer/songwriter kind of way, but time is a  limiting factor here.

Hammered dulcimer – Rich Mullins, one of my favorite musical artists, inspired me to take dulcimer lessons when I was in grad school.  I really enjoyed them, although I had trouble practicing, just as I did with the piano.  I even own my own dulcimer.  Alas – when the daughters arrived, the dulcimer was too susceptible to damage, and it was too annoying to set up and take down all the time.  So now I’ve got a dulcimer under my bed, waiting patiently for a few more years until it isn’t threatened anymore.

Violin – If I were going to learn a new instrument, this would be it.  I love its versatility to carry a melody line or add accompaniment, its suitability to a variety of musical styles, and its portability.  (That last one is the primary reason that the violin gets the nod over the cello.)  However, I can’t justify learning violin until the dulcimer comes out from under the bed.

Piano accordion – This is the instrument that I seriously considered  buying this week.  The newspaper at work had a used one for sale in the classified section, and I thought that I could probably pick up some passable skills on my own (sort of like I did with the guitar).  In the end, the cost was just a tad high, and storage was an issue.  And I didn’t want my daughters to have to go through therapy when they reach adulthood.

Holy silliness

Each Wednesday, I meet with a group from my congregation for a weekly supper and prayer time.  Afterwards, I facilitate a group Bible study, although one could almost call it a second time of prayer.  We approach the scripture using lectio divina.

Last night, we were reflecting on Psalm 146.  I was drawn to this verse:

I will praise the Lord as long as I live;
   I will sing praises to my God all my life long.

(Psalm 146.2, NRSV)

and especially to the word ’sing’.  As I reflected on that word, I recalled an image of singing in my living room with my daughters.  I had my guitar hooked up to my amplifier, had some sound effects turned on (there’s one that the girls think sounds like an elephant), and we were having a grand time singing and dancing to some song that lends itself to enjoyment in that way.  The phrase ‘holy silliness’ seemed appropriate for the image that formed in my mind, and it stuck with me.  It wasn’t a phrase that I’d used before.

As I reflected more on ’sing’, I recalled other images of holy silliness.  The blessing that we say before mealtime often contains some, as does the music time that I do with pre-school children on Sundays.

As a result of these reflections, I am living with another verse for today:

Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.”

(Matthew 19.14, NRSV)

Grow your vocabulary!

Oldest Daughter has turned into a bookworm.  Tonight, she made this declaration to Ordinary Spouse:

It’s good for me to read the toy catalogs, because it helps your vocab.  It can go up by 10% a year.

 Indeed.

Cute words

At the breakfast table one day…

ordinary (mostly): I’m trying to remember cute words that Youngest Daughter says.

Ordinary Spouse: YD, do you say cute words?

YD: Yeah.

Middle Daughter: Say ‘ball’.

YD: I can’t.  It too hard say that word.  I little bit shy.  I walkin’ way.

(she walks out of the kitchen, but seconds later runs in with arms raised)

YD: Here she backs!

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And here is a current, quick list of cute words.  Some have been mentioned before.

• Tomlin – this is a class at the YMCA
• Bleckees – breakfast
• Mookees – music
• Feddah – sweater
• Fingin – on the fing set
• Plincess – I have three of them in my house
• Tickey – what fingers are, after eating
• Tinkey – when a diaper needs changing
• Kunchees – the chunks of granola in her favorite cereal
• Baffwomb – I’ll let you figure that out

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 Additional words (4 Nov 2009):

• Fimmin – what we like to do at the YMCA
• Bashin – what we like to do in the fimmin pool

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 Additional words (5 Nov 2009):

• Boon – used to eat, with a fork and knife

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 Additional words (6 Nov 2009):

• Soplise! – what we shout when Daddy gets home and we jump out from our hiding place
• Flingoes – pink birds at the zoo
• Can – what we color with (the vowel is pronounced over an extended duration – ca’an)

Emerging?

For about a year now, I’ve been hearing stories about this thing called “the emerging church”.  I think I first came across the term in an article when I was flipping through an issue of the Mennonite Weekly Review.  I remember reading the article, but I don’t think I really paid much attention to it – at least not until a friend, who was on her way to an emerging church conference, sent the article my way for a second time.  So I read it again.

To be honest, I didn’t understand what the big deal was.

My impression was that there was some group of Mennonites somewhere who were trying to live an authentically Christian life, trying to keep Christianity relevant to the 21st century, and forming ties with other Christians from outside the Mennonite tradition in order that they could learn from one another.  And I thought, “Good for them.  Whenever people are finding relevant  and vibrant ways to be Christ-like, I’m all for that.”

But I didn’t really understand why they thought that they (either these mennos or the others with whom they were forming ties) needed some new catchy label like “emerging” (and believe me – “emerging” is not the only catchy word being thrown around).

So my friend lent me a DVD of Richard Rohr, a Catholic priest and founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation, speaking about the emerging church.  I must say that I was very favorably impressed, and it was my intent to blog about it.  Alas – it has now been too many months, and I can’t remember enough to say anything substantial.  However, it was my overall impression that Fr. Rohr did a good job of emphasizing how the Church tends to bicker over relatively minor things, while tending to neglect the important commonalities that we share.  He indicated that the emerging church isn’t trying to create new structures, but rather to reform the existing ones.  In addition, he developed some creative ways to go about doing Church that would redirect the emphasis toward our shared values.

This kind of speech is edifying, and I always appreciate those who can articulate a clear vision for grace-filled Christian community and mission.  And yet there was still a disconnect for me – what was special about what he was saying that it deserved to be a movement?

On a whim, I decided to purchase A Generous Orthodoxy by Brian McLaren* from the Laurelville gift shop one weekend when my family was there.  Brian begins the book by describing the many reasons why you shouldn’t read it.  This seemed to confirm my less charitable perceptions – that these “emergents” just liked to hear themselves talk.  Then Ordinary Spouse pointed out that I write the same way…

* I hope to provide a more in-depth look at this book sometime in the future.  However, given the speed at which I move, I was concerned that it might take me a year or two to get around to it.  So I decided to mention it in this post first.

So I slogged through that introductory chapter and made my way through the rest of the book.  Brian lays out a vision for what this emerging church might look like, and I began to understand the significance of the emerging movement…

(We interrupt this discourse to bring you a disclaimer.  The author of this post has read one book by Brian McLaren and started to read a second.  He has managed to read snippets of other authors who are considered to be “emerging”.  In addition, he has no first-hand experience with communities that identify themselves as “emerging”.  Furthermore, any halfway motivated person can see from a quick Google search that the range of ideas about what constitutes “emerging” is fairly broad.  Therefore, to claim to speak with any authority on the “significance of the emerging movement” is completely uncalled for.  It’s unwise.  It’s misguided.  It’s just plain stupid.  Here goes anyway.)

It seems to me that the emerging church is motivated by a desire to get back to the person of Christ, to understand who he is and how his message is relevant today, and then to live into that message.  And that’s important – to really apply the way of Christ to one’s approach to life now.  In some ways, this is a very Anabaptist thing to do.  Anabaptists have always been about the centrality of Christ.  And so, this explains some my initial ambivalence about the whole movement.  Parts of this thinking is not new to me.  In fact, it comes naturally, as I believe it would to people who value historical Anabaptism and who are wondering about its relevance for the future.  And as I’ve been reading, I’ve learned that this kind of thinking has brought about many connections between Anabaptists and the broader Church – the kind of connections that were mentioned in that Mennonite Weekly Review article.  Furthermore, this focus on living out the way of Christ is (as I understand it) a shift of sorts for some other Christian groups.

But if I’ve come to understand my initial, blase reaction to the emerging church, I’ve also begun to understand how it informs (or reforms) my own Christian journey.  I talked above about a way of “thinking”.  In his book, Everything Must Change, Brian McLaren talks about “framing stories”.  These are the narratives that shape how we see the world, how we interact with it, and how we make decisions.  And one area where my framing story was incomplete and providing a mixed message was in my approach to scripture.  I was (and still am) influenced by a number of traditions: Anabaptist, of course, but probably also traditional protestant (whatever that is), evangelical, charismatic/pentecostal, and maybe even fundamentalist.  And it had become clear to me that these traditions weren’t always in agreement, weren’t always right, and were leaving me with an inconsistent approach to understanding the Bible.  It didn’t help that this wasn’t a topic that I thought much about during my time at Goshen (which is where I might have received some good guidance on the matter – but that’s another story).

Recently, I had come to a more comfortable place in my biblical understanding – one that averted a faith crisis of sorts – but it was still an uneven understanding.  However, when I read A Generous Orthodoxy, I encountered a subtle shift in interpretation, but one that (I think) will be life-giving and more holistic than my previous approaches.

Since I want to blog about that separately, I’m going to leave you wondering what I’m talking about.  Let me only say that a slight change in framing story or a small shift in the way that I read the Bible seems to have enormous possibilities for living out my life.  In some ways, I feel like I’ve been working on a puzzle.  I have all of the needed pieces in front of me, but all of a sudden I think I might have some sense of how to fit the pieces together to solve it.  Cool!

Another personal benefit is a new sense of the unity of the Church.  I’ve already mentioned that others were  building these bridges, but my reaction was rather “ho-hum”.  Now, however, I’m also getting excited by these ties.  Similarly, I gaining a greater appreciation for the strengths of various traditions.  (This was a major emphasis of A Generous Orthodoxy.)

One final benefit that I’ll mention is the encouragement that I receive when I witness how the emerging church lives out the way of Christ.  It is a generous way, filled with grace, humility, and hospitality.  There is so much for me to learn from it.

As an example, I’d like to point you to a story of someone who was denied communion when she went to visit her parents’ congregation.  The details aren’t given.  But look how her own congregation (a Lutheran group) responds when she returns home.  Now – my understanding of Lutheran eucharistic theology is that they consider the elements to contain the Real Presence of Christ.  This isn’t my understanding, but frankly, my understanding isn’t the point.  The point is that this person’s community saw a need and responded with grace.  And that is beautiful no matter what your theology is.  That’s the kind of Church that I want to be a part of.

Random trick-or-treating observations

Trick-or-treating is happening now (4:00 – 7:00 pm) in our town.  Here are my random observations…

• According to Ordinary Spouse, we had 40+ children the first year.  Numbers are down since then.
• Love the parents with one-year-old children.  Guess who’s getting candy tonight?
• If I’m the one answering our door, you better not simply hold out a bag.  I’m likely to take something out of it.
• It’s great fun when you get kids you know.  You can offer them green beans or tuna or other random canned foods that you know they don’t like.  You get sad looks, but they’re too shy to say anything.  That’s my idea of a trick.  (Don’t worry – I make up for it.)
• Love the kid who just came to the door.  Probably three years old.  He took one thing and said he wanted “two!”  Sure, I said.  So he took another, and said “two!”  At this point, I just let him go at it and waited to see when his mom would stop him.  Two became five.
• Ordinary Spouse has a theory for dealing with the candy that comes home to our house.  Let them eat it all right away, crash and burn from the sugar high, and then we’re done with it.
• According to Ordinary Spouse, Youngest Daughter wasn’t sure that she wanted to go trick-or-treating.  But after the second house, she figured out what was happening.  Then she charged along.
• Ordinary Spouse just asked, so I checked:  It’s 44 deg F out there.  That’s why they came home with ice cubes for hands.

Left: candy consumed.  Right: candy rejected.

This week in the “garden”… 31 October 2009

It’s October 31st and I’ve just finished picking up the leaves* in our back yard – really early this year.  I’ve put “garden” in quotes, because I only have one garden picture – and it’s all brown.

* I’ve finished, but it was Ordinary Spouse who made most of the piles.  Thanks!

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The Mother’s Day garden has mostly gone into dormancy for the winter.

There are a few leaves left on our tree, but not many…

…since most of them are here.

Sun sets over the back yard.

Looking to the future, part 2

(Mister Guest Complacent left some nice questions for me after reading a recent post.  Rather than pondering them in the comments area, I thought I’d process them here…)

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Ah, the little questions of life. OS is quite right that one never knows where one will end up. Who would have figured 2 years ago that I’d be responding to you from the beach in Bali (insert comment about my lame beach activities here).

Ah – pastoral guidance from my own family.  Nice.  Since you already mentioned the beach activities, I don’t need to raise the issue of trusting the wisdom of someone who mixes your skin color with the sun. 

As one who did leave grad school for ministerial ambitions (a decision never regretted)…

I’m trying to recall how you processed the decision ahead of time, though.  (I remember some of the details regarding ‘where’ you processed – let’s leave those out.)  As for me, I know that I can question my motivations (good) or over-analyze (paralyzing).  However, at some very basic level, I know that I’ll (we’ll) know the choice when it arrives.  That allows me to be content, even in my impatience.  I value the Jesuit tradition of consolation/desolation.

There would be several comments I would make:  1) I never left that self-interest behind.

Yes, I realize that, which is why your current position seems obvious to me, although I don’t know Mrs.GC’s strengths well enough to know how they fit in exactly.  Processing the whole family thing might be a good topic of future conversation.

This has been an area of struggle, since there has always been a disconnect for me between faith and synchrotron science.  In hindsight, I might have chosen a more biological or environmental course of study after my time at Laurelville.  That’s wisdom to pass on to the next generation, at this point.

2) It was much easier to do as a single, even though the change was still tough.

In some ways, I’ve never been single when considering these decisions.  OS and I have been dating or married for over eighteen years.

3) There were more intermediary steps I could have taken that would have been less drastic.

I’ll pick up on this below.

4) Good lay ministry is just as important, or more so, than professional ministry.

Yes, I know.  And yet…  There is always the ‘and yet’.  I’m left with a sense of desolation.  (That sounds worse than it actually is.  Rather, there is an intuitive sense that I shouldn’t be surprised when the choice for professional ministry comes along – that I should expect it to come along.  I don’t know if that makes sense.)

Actually, come to think of it – I’d be very interested in exploring full-time lay ministry.  I’m just not sure who is doing that.

As I look back at #3…

I hear your wisdom on this point.  I have the opportunity now to explore questions about various options or choices.  I also have the chance to look at my own personality, weaknesses, strengths, and so forth.  As you noted – the issues I raised in the “Congregational update” post touch on all of the above.  And I can do all of this pondering without the pressure of an impending decision to be made.

All the best as you envision you bigger life picture and enjoy the ministry opportunities that arise and fill in that vision.

Thanks.  I imagine we’ll talk some more about this…

Congregational update

I’ve been meaning to give an update on the state of things in my congregation for a while now.  I know that some of my earlier posts may have been confusing to those looking in from the outside, so I’ll try start with a very brief summary of things.

Those who have read my blog before know that the congregation was going through a process to discern whether to extend membership to same-gender couples in committed relationships.  We had a very painful meeting on Pentecost Sunday of this year (May 31st) that ended badly.  However, despite what might have been assumed from reading my reactions to that meeting, our process did not conclude with that meeting.  Rather, the process continues, although it has been put on hold for a time.

(On the other hand, some people have left our congregation.  My friends, who were most directly impacted by our congregational process, needed to leave for their own health.  Others left based on conviction one way or another.  Some people decided to take a vacation from the congregation, but returned later.  And so on.)

Since our congregation is pretty mobile, especially in the summer, we put off further action until the fall.  In the interim, we decided that in order to move forward we needed some new tools – new ways of communicating, of telling our stories and listening to others tell theirs.  We have brought in two mediators from KIPCOR to work with us. 

Their first visit was earlier this month on Sunday, October 4th.  I had a somewhat unsettling experience that day.  Our meetings were during the Sunday school hour and then again after potluck.  As I came to our meeting space, I struggled to join the group that had already started meeting.   Mentally, I just had a very hard time.  Finally, I found a chair in the corner and listened from there.  The meeting after the potluck was even harder – I never did join that one, although I was able to listen because the sound system was on.

I’m not exactly sure why I reacted the way I did, and I wasn’t pleased with myself.  In theory, I was glad that the mediators were there, but I felt tired – like I had dealt with things all summer, even though the congregation as a whole was waiting for fall – and didn’t want to go through things again.  It is also possible (though I discounted it then) that returning from Australia only twelve hours earlier had something to do with my emotional state.

The folks from KIPCOR will be back in the middle of November, and they’ve asked us to consider this question:

What is the one story you would like to share with others that will help them be able to understand your experience related to the events of the past 12 months?

Again, I don’t particularly look forward to this time, and I’m not at all happy with that feeling.  Partly, I don’t know where to begin with my story.  Partly, I don’t want to tell it again.  And I’m still tired.  So I’ve got some preparation to do.  Here are the other questions that I (we) have been asked to consider between now and then:

What is God saying to me in the midst of struggle?

What is the one thing I am doing to help the congregation resilient?

Am I cultivating a sense of respect and humility?

Can I maintain a sense of wonder?

Where am I seeing God at work?

Am I taking care of myself?

Did I laugh with others today?

Am I spending time in prayer with the freedom to be honest with God?