The Amazing Feasts of Comites Christi —Praying the Days after Christmas Christmas comes and in our imaginations we surround the Incarnate Word, the Babe of Bethlehem with star struck shepherds and gift-laden star gazers. The church in its zig-zag evolutionary wisdom of praying with Christ discovered other “companions of Christ” ( comites Christi ) who confront our mix of culture and gospel with contrasting visions of Christmas: Stephen, the first Christian martyr, John the evangelist, and the innocent children whom Herod maniacally slew as the Holy Family escaped to Egypt. These characters are like alcohol or hydrogen peroxide swabbed on a wound: they sting our easy and facile revelry with the surface of the Christmas story and invite us into the paradox and mystery of Emmanuel—God with us. They help us to confront our questions about all the things that don’t fit “Joy to the World” and “Silent Night, Holy Night.” In no way am I proposing that we should not celebrate Christmas with all...
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The Nativity Story—Digital Poetry 2006? I skipped Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” for many reasons, so why would I buy a ticket and sit through Catherine Hardwicke’s “The Nativity Story”? In part because the promotional hype was less pushy and MO, my spouse, told me she had seen some good interviews with actors and others involved in the production. Rather than say that I liked or disliked it, I’ll describe the film from my perspective and invite you to do what you will with it: compare notes if you go, or use this blog as a reason not to go. “The Nativity” is a montage with an overlay of Advent/Christmas sacred music subtly used in a way that reminded me as a viewer that this is a story told through the memory and imagination of the church over two millennia. True to this tradition of conflating the synoptic gospel narratives, the film “tells” the story with restrained imagination. Luke’s canticles (Zachary’s Song and the Song of Mary) are incorporated as speaking parts, but ...
Art, Church and Life—“Breaking the Narrow Boundaries of the Infinite” In my online class for pastors on presiding at the Eucharist a student referred the class to a church tapestry (his engagement with Rev. 12) and an related article [1] which contained this quote of Pope Pius XII: "The purpose of all art is to break the narrow boundaries of the finite, and open windows onto the infinite for the benefit of the human spirit, yearning in that direction." (Pope Pius XII in "Address to the First International Congress on Catholic Artist" Liturgical Arts 19 (1950), 3f.) I replied to the student: Even though the good Pope recanted this (or the more accurately the impersonal “Vatican” did so for him), I think in this statement he addresses your concern about right and left brain issues. If I am hearing you correctly you are saying, ‘Art, vesture, gesture, music, etc. used in the liturgy and in ‘charging’ Christian faith for the dialogue of the looking out and looking in ...
Bread on the Table—The Hermeneutics and Politics of Daily Life On the wall of our dining area is hand watercolor painting of a table grace enshrined in my memory and the memory of my birth and marriage family that reads: Back of the bread is the Snowy Flour— And back of the Flour is the Mill— Back of the Mill is the Wheat and the Shower And the Sun and the Father’s Will. I grew up praying it at special and ordinary meals and recall it being described as “our family grace.” I treasure the painting all the more because my grandmother painted it. In later years I have discovered a similar version by Maltbie D. Babcock, upon which “the family prayer” is no doubt based. I do not know where the family variants “snowy” and “Sun” came from. What has struck me for years now is the kind of naturalist and “thick” perspective on grace and blessing that this prayer expresses. Instead of the direct causality of the Bible (God giving us bread—manna dropping down in the wilderness of Exodus and John ...
Water works I woke this morning from dreaming about being somewhere where the meeting was going to shift from a meeting as in "business meeting" to the meeting ( synaxis ) of the baptized to worship God in a service of Word and Table. My struggle in the dream was getting the room set up. It was my responsibility to improvise the movement of chairs and furniture into an arrangement for the assembly. (My dreams are often struggles like trying to find my sermon notes or vestments and get to worship on time.) Well, why set up the space like a “court room” where the judge is at the front, with table for counsel and a jury box (choir)? Why not create a space that invites the assembly to be around the strong central things? But where and how would they be placed? In the dream, the people’s seats would be around the central things: on one side, lectern with the Bible and presider’s chair just behind it, and the Table on the other side. The seating of the people would be “choir” sty...
Teaching Online--One Big Classroom! I have been infrequent in posting lately, in part because I have been preparing for and beginning an online course. This is a brief look at the course. How is this for amazing: my current class room is 5500 miles long and 2500 miles wide stretching over 7 time zones! I am in Hawaii and students are in Oregon, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and New York. Last fall I was invited to teach an online course on presiding at the Eucharist. The course took shape around a notion of the presider as icon of the risen Christ as host— in persona Christi —and of the congregation as icon of the beloved community, the holy Trinity. Recalling Hovda’s book and the scriptural text from which he drew the title (2 Timothy 1:6-7) I titled the course “No Cowardly Spirit.” The subtitle, “Grace Driven Holy Communion” was chosen by the host organization for the course, Lumicon, as a not so subtle link to the popular “Purpose Driven” books by Rick Warren. [i] I taught the course in ...
Reflections on Goodness and Greatness (The following essay was written by a former colleague, Dan Dick, Research Director in the new Solutions Team at the General Board of Discipleship of The United Methodist Church. Dated September 5, 2006, it is part of a regular column he writes for staff of the agency. With Dan’s permission I include it in my blog. I post it without comment, except to say that I am deeply appreciative of Dan’s thoughtfulness and discernment. I will make comment in my next blog entry.) One of the most popular business books of the past five years is Jim Collins’, Good to Great . The main premise of the book is simple and solid – good enough isn’t good enough. If you want to dominate a field, you must strive for excellence and make the necessary sacrifices to be great. Implicit in the argument is a cultural perspective that says great is better than good. In the modern world, few argue that great is great and good isn’t as good. But has this always been the case?...
dream fragment—mysticism and trust i was a graduate student in search of a topic for my dissertation: the connection between east and west —lotus land and the doctrine of justification by faith. where do these night fabrications come from? what prompts the dreamer’s concoctions? here a pinch of a week long class in chi gong and yoga; there a central tenant of christian grace—blend well. “i am enough, i have enough, i do enough” we repeat while resting on the floor. “christ died for us while we were yet sinners” the presider assures the faithful. the soul’s mysticism, the perfect form, a place to be, being in space and time, being before god, god being for us, all things connected, all accepted… Note: I make no case here. I only share the edge of a dream upon waking. Somehow it reflects the ongoing quest for the strong center and the open door.
Daily Prayer: Cloister or Coffee Shop? In “Frog Liturgy”—my previous blog—I noted two patterns that habituate seekers in prayer: (1) daily prayer (the communal “daily office”) and (2) weekly Lord’s Day liturgy gathered around water, word and meal. Here I will focus on daily prayer as a personal and communal discipline. One of the primary dimensions of the liturgical renewal agenda of the last thirty years has been recovery of the “daily office”—the church praying at the cardinal points of the day: sunrise, zenith, sunset, and night. Roman Catholic, Anglican/Episcopal, Lutheran, Presbyterian, United Methodist, and perhaps other churches have official liturgical patterns and texts for prayer for these times of the day. Having these services of prayer in our worship books and acquiring the regular use of them in patterning our daily prayer are two different things. The first is more or less accomplished, but the latter as a widespread practice is far from being widespread. There is a plan...
Frog Liturgy: Future and Present in Liturgical Prayer? Just back from some time in southeastern Alaska and observation of the Tlingit totems, I am musing on the frog as one of their prominent figures. Among other things, the frog lives its life on two levels, submerged in the water with its eyes scanning the horizon and its nose penetrating the life-giving air. Evelyn Underhill plays with the same connection somewhere in her writings on spirituality and prayer. Richard Valantasis, in Centuries of Holiness: Ancient Spirituality Refracted for a Postmodern Age (Continuum, 2005), proposes that the Christian seeker “lives in two worlds simultaneously: the current real world of daily existence, and the even more real, emergent, eschatological, and divinized world toward which the [seeker] works.” (p. 109) In other words, the church lives in God's future as its dialogue with the present. What an amazing vocation! God calls us into a dialogue of living fully in the world as it presently e...
Confession of an Ancient-Future Worshiper “How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land,” asks the Psalmist. It was a question the exiles asked. It is my question too as I visit churches in my journeying around the United States. No, I am not a Mystery Worshiper for the Ship of Fools ( http://ship-of-fools.com/Mystery/index.html .) You may think that is odd for a Christian to feel like worship in any church is a foreign land. So, I will be specific and charitable, as I mean no harm. Consider this a confessional rather than negatively critical. Last Sunday I worshiped in a nearly 15,000 member megachurch at the invitation of a friend. The high-tech music, lights and sound was professional and effective. The preaching was strong, compassionate and visionary. On the scale of excellence I would give this congregation high marks for what they do according to their aims and purposes. Here, however, is the confession: I was not at home here. It was more than the theology that I couldn’...
“Wild Spaces” in Western Culture and Churches (In “Ethical Metaphors” I hinted that the metaphors of the liturgy are ethical in direction, but in order to have converting torque in the assembly’s life they need deepening attention to the “wild spaces.”) I’ll admit I am a contender for the liturgy—the patterned enactment of praise and prayer to the triune God around central public symbols. I will also admit that I and many who find deep meaning and formation in praying the liturgy do not consistently pay attention to God’s heart of love for life in all its forms. Wherever I worship I am continually struck but the meagerness of the assembly’s prayers—whether or not they are “liturgical” communities. (I will say that those who are liturgical generally engage in a form of encompassing and expansive intercessions. However,...) Liturgical worship or not, the circle usually seems small: family, relatives, friends we know, and maybe our troops or hurricane victims. Seldom are there voices rai...
Ethical Metaphors In a previous post, “On Doing ‘Our’ Liturgical Thing,” a commentator responded “Your comments are most appropriate for those who were born within the confines of the circle. But what of those who were excluded by birth, by skin, by national edict?” She ("Desert Mother") raises the issue of oppression relative to liturgical texts and practices born of the hegemony of the privileged. Her comments brought a needed word to this conversation about liturgy around the central things (bath, story, and meal) and justly recalled attention to God’s open doors—the wide horizon of God’s gaze upon the thriving of all life. I will leave to liturgical historians questions of whether or not what has become in our time the historic, ecumenical liturgy (sometimes referred to as the “ecumenical consensus”) was born of privilege and power, or in what sense it comes to us as a gift of the Spirit working among the least ones in the Greco-Roman world (inclusive of Egypt and North A...
Desert Mother's Comment and My Reply I am grateful for a comment made to "On Doing 'Our' Liturgical Thing" by Desert Mother. I responded to her comment. In part I wrote to her: Well said and you do my "strait corner" expand. Yours is powerful poetry. I am grateful for your bringing a "wild space" (see Sallie McFague, Abundant Life --Fortress Press) to this matter. I use "wild space" in the sense of where one does not fit the white, male, Western, heterosexual, youthful, educated, able-bodied, middle-class and successful definition of “human being”. Such wild-spaces (you represent one or more in your comment) open windows from which to see the matter from another perspective. I urge you to read her comment and my reply as context for the next blogs.
Eviction from Our Snug Homes In “Lecture II” ( New and Collected Poems 1931-2001 , pp. 493-494) Czeslaw Milosz writes of the banality of 20th century, pre-WWII culture and how it failed to challenge the rise of Nazism and the holocaust. In the poem he lists what Jesus “has” (note the tense) to face (a seemingly harmless list of human artifacts and activities inclusive of coffee, philosophizing, clocks and landscape paintings) and muses that nobody would have taken him seriously. The Jesus Milozs juxtaposes with the culture looks too much like a Jewish drifter—the kind the State catches and disposes of. If the list of what Jesus has to face were in terms of 21st century churches, what would “Jesus have to face”? Hymns? Praise choruses? American flags next to Christian flags? Sermons without skeptics? Parking lots full of SUVs driven by we who over consume and live careless for the planet? Bible studies without discipleship and accountability? Baptisms without conversion and intent towar...
On Doing Our Liturgical “Thing” Many of us have been tempted to alter or paraphrase a prayer, litany, or liturgical text to “be more accessible” to the congregation. Perhaps we thought the ritual text was opaque to contemporary seekers. And, many of us have suffered (or been delighted by) such at the hands of others. What are we not aware of in these undertakings? John Donne’s poem, “Upon the Translation of the Psalmes,” (a response to the translation of the Psalter by Philip Sydney and his sister, the Countesse of Pembroke) begins: Eternall God, (for whom who ever dare Seek new expression doe the Circle square, And thrust into strait corners of poore wit Thee who art cornerlesse and infinite) Donne, in this little knot of convolution, as I call it, seems to be wrestling with the limits of creativity and human innovation. Might this at least be a caution to us “who dare” to make “new expressions” in the church’s prayer? Is everything our hearts, minds, and words conspire to articulate ...
The blog name—StrongCenterOpenDoor—seems to contradict the postmodern context that I want to address and explore in relationship to liturgy. In the opening blog I carelessly wrote: Postmodernity is increasingly decentered and deuniversalized. It would have been better to say that our world is increasingly decentered and deuniversalized. The two “d” words are synonyms for the postmodern world and experience. Oddly, my intent for this blog is to affirm central things in Christian worship while also acknowledging the wide horizon and diverse dimensions of psychic, social and cosmic life. While I accept that Christian worship is diverse and quite messy in each local expression, I am convinced that it is critical that worship find focus in its historic and ecumenical center: liturgy enacted around font, lectern and table. All the candles, crosses, songs, and worship centers in the world will be so much froth on our beer if seekers and seeking communities don’t engage with the God who meets ...
In our postmodern context, worship ways are wide open and increasingly diverse. At the same time there a desire for a "generous orthodoxy" that listens, questions, and explores ancient-future understandings and practices in the emerging churches around the world. Postmodernity is increasingly decentered and deuniversalized. Yet there is a yearning for center and attention to global realities. On this blog I will be attempting to reflect on emerging worship from a perspective that holds in tension paying attention to a "strong center"--the central things that give substance and a centeredness to the worship of God (praise and prayer in bath, word, and meal) and paying attention to God's radically open door to the world. I am indebted to Gordon Lathrop for this tension between center and periphery (See his bookS--HOLY THINGS, HOLY PEOPLE, and HOLY GROUND.) Liturgically, we are living in amazing times. Churches are experimenting, risking, trying new things, frustra...