Memorieeees, All Alone in the Mooooonliiiight

I really enjoyed hearing from Doug Pagitt last week about Preaching in the Inventive Age. It was certainly a book worth every penny of that 5,000 dollar Amazon price tag! Well. I borrowed it from a friend, but it would totally be worth it! Ahem. That is not germane to this discussion. 

I was really intrigued by his discussion of memory and how that plays in to the experience of worship. If I remember (ha!) correctly, it is about 2 seconds that make up the present experience before said experience goes in to the part of the brain that is memory. As someone who does not really have a scientific way of explaining the world, I like to think of my memory either as a dusty file cabinet where some of the files have been soaked with coffee so they are less readable than others but are there nonetheless, or as my more recent mental image is, like a library whose librarian sleeps at her desk, but who does, upon waking up, know where to find everything. One particularly long Megabus ride through the entirety of Virginia, I spent pondering how my brain is organized and came to the conclusion that it is closer to the concept of a library than to a file cabinet, because it is like I have a way of accessing what is in my memories, but I can not always remember how to get to them, I can find them. One day, I do want to try to build a mind palace rather than a paltry old mind library. But a mental library with sections on recipes, maps of places I have been, books I have read, calendars, incriminating things said by others, trivia for use when watching Jeopardy, and family memories works just fine for now!

How is this relevant beyond just bragging about how much useless knowledge I have accumulated?

People’s memories of what church is like can sometimes overwhelm their current experiences. If the current two seconds or so of experience are too jarring and filled with flashing lights or are too dull and filled with incense and dust, then that can call back memories of the good old days when all the women were strong, all the men were good looking, and all the children were above average.

But sometimes, the power of memory can be used for good. Scents and music and other experiential elements can evoke memories that enhance the experience of worship and elevate the service from mundane repetition of songs and strings of syllables that sound nice to a more all-encompassing set of memories to draw upon.

Sermonizing about Sermonizing

I have a confession to make. I don’t like sermons. 

Well. I do not like certain types of sermons and am not entirely certain what purpose they serve beyond giving a person the opportunity to listen to the mellifluous sound of their own voice until they run out of ways to repeat themselves. I know that I am not the only person to think this way and that there are people who will leave churches if the preaching becomes too much about the pastor or how much Greek and Hebrew the pastor knows. 

So then why do we have sermons? I know that they serve the purposes of educating and exegeting passages of scripture and using that to encourage the congregation for the coming week. But what about the sermons that are preached solely for the purpose of self-aggrandizing? Or for the purpose of nap-inducing? Other parts of the church service, such as the music, can definitely be vehicles for self-aggrandizement or pyrotechnics (both literally and figuratively) but it is the preaching segment that can most frequently end up as an ego-building exercise.

Sometimes I do wonder about my personal pet peeves in preaching and why they turn me off so emphatically. One pastor my church had in high school told the same four stories about growing up in small town north Louisiana to illustrate a good third of his sermons. I do not recall him using examples from other traditions or experiences other than his own fairly limited one. Now that I am looking back, it makes sense why he did not do well in a church of doctors and lawyers and other generally respectable people. He expected the congregation to come to him, rather than him going to the congregation with stories and examples that we might appreciate. 

Along similar lines, the next pastor our church had enjoyed using his newly-earned title of “Reverend Doctor.” He also never let us forget just how educated and smart he was, because he preached sermons filled with esoteric terminology and fairly spotty organization. Again, he expected the congregation to follow him when he would not use his sermons to enlighten or encourage, but rather to inform us of how many truly spectacular words he knew. 

Of course, these are outliers, but I routinely struggle with what purpose these crummy sermons serve. I also fully realize that coming up with new things to say on subjects that have been studied for millennia is a Herculean task and it can be overwhelming to try to do this every week. Most importantly, I need to have grace for those attempting to share their view of the Good News with congregations how they see fit (even if what I would really like to do is sit in the balcony with posters with sassy opinions on them).

Binaries Schminaries

When I was in high school, one of my favorite past times was repeating leftist viewpoints that I heard on NPR in my dad’s car when he drove us to school to right-leaning acquaintances. I am fairly certain that I was convinced that Bush, Cheney, and Karl Rove and all of their lackeys were everything that was wrong with the country! It is so easy to complain that those you are against are the problem and that your team would fix everything, if only they were in power. It is a sad lesson to learn that when your team is in power, they make their own mistakes as well. It is silly to think that one political party has the monopoly on truth, justice, and generally being decent people.

It is even sillier to think that there is only one way to correctly do church and that one needs to choose either the activist view of doing good works and helping the poor and oppressed OR being in right relationship with God and achieving salvation. Shouldn’t we at least take a stab at doing both? Do we have to be either a social justice society OR a monastery devoted to prayer and contemplation? Can’t we be more interesting than that?

In my limited scope of experience, people who zealously subscribe to only one of these binaries end up being somewhat unpleasant. Either you are interrogated on how you can possibly wear leather shoes or drink Coke or buy cheapo clothes from Target because of oppression, or you are interrogated on whether or not you have accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior. I do not think that we have been called to interrogate our fellow humans. If I took a guess, I would say that we have been called to love them.

Yes, it is so much easier to think that the beliefs you subscribe to are the right ones and those who are in any other camps are dead wrong. But that is lazy and does not accomplish anything. Of course, it is necessary to regularly examine your beliefs to know what they are, but it is far more important to act in such a way that you love people rather than judge them. 

In-Between Places

Today in class, before we got off on multiple bunny trails, we talked about being in in-between places and how to do that. Sometimes, especially right now, I definitely feel like I will be in an in-between place for a long time. Which, I realize, is not the worst thing! I really don’t want to think all the time that “I have arrived!” because then, where do you go? 

Most of the time, I really don’t like to think of cheesy inspirational stuff like “Personal Journeys” and “Feelings” and such. I’d much rather examine our philosophy and how our theology fits together and the occasional discussion of the family dynamics of Once Upon a Time. But there is a certain amount of introspection that is required for discerning what it is that we really want. So in these in-between places (like seminary!) it is important to think sometimes about what comes next and what we want that to look like. Of course, it won’t look like what we think it will, which is great! Mostly because my imagination is generally filled with worst-case scenarios in which I live in a shed in the woods with thirty cats. 

I suppose that this is another way of saying that I am frightened of what comes next. Which, I know is normal and healthy. I just really want to know that I am not in this in-between place forever.

Many Hats

Last week’s discussion about leadership and how it can be shared among the community seems like quite a long time ago. But I wanted to write on it because it is how emergence can spread, even within top-down systems. In the interest of full disclosure, I am not seeking ordination so I will not be a pastor of a church. However, I have worked in a non-profit with a fairly flat structure for about two years, so I have seen how more emergent structures can work (on both good days and bad days). I especially love that moment when we talk about an image of leadership in a flat structure that I have observed and the discussion and the reading actually do connect to the real world and all of the beautiful herders of cats doing their work. 

I remember reading a book on community organizing a couple of years ago and thinking to myself that all of these skills related to rounding up leaders and volunteers and people who actually show up to meetings are a lot of what is involved in church work. And that many of the best churches do function as community organizations, continually recruiting new members and incorporating them into the existing structure and working towards a common goal of making something better. And, of course, holding meetings to decide what, exactly, they want to improve and how to go about that. But I digress. What I wanted to emphasize is that there is a lot of positive energy that emerges when people can generate their own ideas and bring them up, even if said ideas never come to fruition, they are still worth being heard. What is a skill that I know I need to develop is being open to the ideas of others, even if I do become blinded by my own brilliance sometimes. But it is a skill that can be cultivated by observing other people who are able to affirm people’s ideas and make them feel heard and validated, even if they disagree.

Another topic that I enjoyed thinking about was the different images or roles that leadership can take. I do hope that some day I can be more effective than a herder of cats, but other days, I become resigned to my fate in whatever profession I find myself in. I can vividly picture the image of the leader as air traffic controller, sending the planes in their various directions and hoping they all arrive eventually. But there is always the possibility of planes not going where they need to, or needing to circle the airport until it is safe to land, so it is necessary to have someone “In Charge” to make those decisions so that everything can keep running. But it is not necessary for that person to peer over everyone’s shoulders because there is a basic level of trust that operations can keep running without constant supervision which, really, saves the sanity of everyone involved. And energy that had previously been diverted to supervision and micromanagement can be more productively channeled to cooking champion potluck dishes!

Well Yes, but What’s the Point?

While I was reading part two of The Great Emergence, I kept thinking either “Well yes, but what’s the point?” or “Ok…I’m picking up what you’re putting down, but get on with it!”. I am not sure if it was because I was particularly scatter brained or because she covered a lot of subjects in not a lot of real-estate, but for whatever reason, I was baffled by the breadth of topics covered and began to wonder where she was going.

But maybe, the vastness of the territory she covers and the lack of a strong single thread throughout is indicative of the shift in postmodernist thinking from single, unifying principles such as sola scriptura or the papacy to the emerging of flatter, more loosely connected networks. And there is certainly foolishness in searching for one single, unifying point in the vastness of the seas of information available. So could it be that she is encouraging us to search for trends and patterns more than the single, originating point or date? 

If only we humans were simple enough to operate in such a way that we could be pinpointed and predicted so easily! But where would the fun be in studying human nature and history then? How dull!

So I suppose it is good that this emergence of new growth in the church comes out of so many different factors. It certainly makes for years worth of scrutiny and debate. I hope, though, that books and discussion are not all that come of all this new growth (much as it pains me, as a lover of both books and discussions). But if it peters out as a mere blip in scholasticism and does not transform the global church in ways that benefit the whole body of Christ and not just publishing houses and blog hosting servers, then it will be such a waste. I don’t think that will happen, though. I think the repercussions of this regeneration will bear fruit. And if it does not, there is always the next one!

 

I Finally Get to Rhapsodize about History!

I had heard some of what Phyllis Tickle said in this portion of The Great Emergence before, about how the global church goes through a re-formation or great upheaval of sorts every five hundred years or so. So in general, I was not greatly surprised, but it was fascinating to see how far back it all went in the sweep of human history. It does make sense, though, that the status quo only lasts for so long and that at certain points, a break or change or new growth must happen to survive.

My favorite sentence that she wrote in this section was that “Only history can expose the patterns and confluences of the past in such a way as to help us identify the patterns and flow of our own times and occupy them more faithfully”. And as a history major, I want to tell people this at least once a week that once you study how wars and technological advances and revolts happen, it gives the world today much more clarity.

As an example, my dad (who loves American history) and I (who always skewed towards studying European history) began talking about what all is going on in the Ukraine and the Crimean peninsula. He compared it to the Cold War with Russia and the US on opposing sides and gradually declining relations, whereas I told him that it reminded me of the beginnings of World War I with the rumblings in Eastern European countries that no one is ever quite sure where they are that lead to larger countries asserting their dominance and escalating along the way. Not to mention, it is exactly one hundred years since the beginning of World War I. Perhaps it is about every fifty years on a geopolitical scale where there is a major upheaval such as the Civil War or World War I or the Cold War that change paradigms on a global scale. So it is possible to observe knotty problems of today and observe them with the knowledge of the ebb and flow of history and how it illuminates what goes on in our world.

But I digress.

I think it is important to remember that though upheaval on this scale can be terrifying, especially to discover that you are on the decaying side of history, it is because of such upheaval that great and wonderful things can come about and creaky institutions can awake and remember their purpose. World War I was a pointless, massive tragedy that did not need to happen and led to even greater tragedy in the aftermath of the Treaty of Versailles and the beginning of World War II. But without it, we would never have Ernest Hemingway novels or the breaking up of the oppressive colonial system. And I must say that as a student of history, I am looking forward to seeing what new thing breaks out of our creaky institutions and if it can reach into even creaky old Washington, DC!

In Which I Muse About Dishes

What is it about dirty dishes that becomes such an issue? It seems like the topic of washing the pots and pans or loading or unloading the dishwasher becomes some sort of battleground almost everywhere where people share some sort of cooking facility. I can almost picture ancient cave people grunting at each other over why someone left their bone knife sticking in the wooly mammoth rather than licking it and putting it neatly in the corner of the cave where it belongs.

Full confession, when I lived by myself, I was the worst about washing my dishes. I tried to justify it by saying that I did not have a dishwasher or that I was the only person seeing the pile of dirty dishes and so it was totally ok. But really, I was a Class A slob. Occasionally, I would tell myself that when I lived with other people, I would be totally neat and respectful of common areas and always clean up my messes.

It is mostly true. I generally rinse out my dishes and put them in the dishwasher. But sometimes I forget and come back to find that someone cleaned up after me and feel like a pile of dirt for not cleaning up my stuff. So then I clean up after someone else to atone for my absentmindedness. And maybe that is what we can learn from piles of dirty dishes. We probably will never remember to always clean up our own messes. But we can clean up most of them and when we forget, we can be grateful to those who help us and so can help others with their messes…whether dish-related or not.

Further Adventures

In this segment of A New Kind of Christian, Dan really grew on me. He fully wrestled with topics that got under his skin, he reacted honestly, and he was mortified at the thought of gaining a label like “liberal”, all actions that I strongly identify with (if you change “liberal” to “conservative”. So it was good to revise my original opinion of him (and a bit by extension, McLaren).

With that in mind, I could ponder the variety of conversations that Neo and Dan had about Biblical inerrancy, death, what happens after we die, how Christianity as an institutional religion relates to other religions and the culture of the world, and what it means to evangelize. Writing that, I am struck with admiration that he was able to cover so much territory that is fraught with tension in so few chapters.

Most of it, I do not yet have a firm opinion about, but his quote from The Last Battle about the young soldier who worshipped Tash being greeted by Aslan made me remember first reading it in about fifth or sixth grade. I had forgotten how formative this passage was, but I am glad that I got over my initial dislike of the book because it did not feature Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy as much as I thought it should (my goodness, I do have a habit of disliking things at first and then re evaluating my opinions!). This scene with the soldier and Aslan talking about his life and who he worshiped and how he did it somehow insinuated itself in my brain and so ever since, I have always had that in the back of my mind that we do choose who we do or do not worship and how we live our lives, but in the end, it is Aslan/Jesus who welcomes us home. And so really, it is not our decision who does and does not go to heaven (thank God! I certainly don’t want that job!), but it is our job to live in such a way that we are a catalyst for the kingdom of God here on earth.

In Which My Thoughts Run Away From Me

While reading the first part of Pete Rollins’ How (Not) to Speak of God, about every other paragraph would be so thought-provoking that I would go off on some mental bunny trail about something borderline relevant and would not get back on track for another couple of minutes. I am certain that part of my mental unruliness was also due to reading it after copious cups of coffee. But in any case, I kept having to reread paragraphs to chew over them and let them all sink in (mixing metaphors, I know).

What struck me that I am still thinking about four hours after reading it is his point that ideology can morph into idolatry if you focus too much on trying to make a singular statement about the nature of God from the variety of images present in both the Bible and in the human experience. As humans who will never fully understand God, though we are in relationship with God, it is far to easy to get side tracked trying to understand what exactly is going on in this relationship and who or what exactly we are in a relationship with, rather than actually basking in and absorbing the love that we are experiencing and sharing that love with others.

His illustration that the revelations of God that we share are like museum-goers all looking at the same painting and seeing something different also resonated with me. It made me think of Monet and that every time I go to a museum, I see his many paintings of the same scene (be it water lilies or the London skyline veiled in fog) at different times and in different lights and from different angles and though these dozens of paintings are of the same collection of objects, they are most definitely not the same image. And so I think that the idolatry of ideology could be something like naming one stroke of paint as the focus of the entirety of all the images that one person could never absorb all at once.

Of course, this illustration of God falls short of God’s nature and shows more about me (Yep. I like Impressionism.) than it does about God because God is not a painting to be studied and admired and placed in a museum, but a subject who loves us more than we can comprehend whom we can only know through experience.

And so how do we interact with God as ultimate subject? And how do we point others to God? What is the role of spiritual disciplines as ways of experiencing that which we understand as God? I have no idea now, nor do I ever think I will have a complete idea. But the moment that I think I know, either I will make millions on my (completely wrong) Never Fail System To All Go To Heaven Right This Second. Or I am definitely dead. Either way, I’d much rather live with the questions.