strong center open door

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