Practicing self-care...

From time to time I find myself needing to pause in the midst of my ministry to do a reality check.  During the past nearly 30 years of ordained ministry in the local church setting, this has not always been the case; as a consequence sometimes I've found myself burned-out, resentful, confused, ungrounded, blind-sided, frustrated and a whole lot more.  Once, while participating in a month-long study retreat re: spiritual direction in San Francisco, I had one of my last major "temper tantrums" - a full blown pity party - that forced me to find a new way of dealing with all the shadow realities of being a pastor in the 21st century. 

It didn't come easily - and there were some profound lows on the road to doing ministry in a new way - but for the past 10 years... Let's just say there has been greater balance and introspection of the healthiest type.  So, for the past week I've been thinking about how I interact with the people in my congregation.  Do I share my energy and gifts in ways that are satisfy, authentic and life-giving?  Do I practice self-care as well as compassion?  Do I love the congregation as Christ loves his church - and what does that means for me personally and professionally?

In another of those fascinating moments of synchronicity, this morning's Alban Institute update contained the following posting re: pastoral integrity and care.  They note that there are four imperatives for the cultivation of enduring pastoral fruitfulness.

+ Systemic commitment to lifelong learning: Pastors must take the initiative to ensure that they are always refining their understanding of their fundamental purpose. This might mean writing or rewriting a personal mission statement or journaling about their unfolding discernment of God’s call for their lives.

They must also examine their own authenticity to make sure they are living out of their true self in ministry and sharing that self with the community of faith. This process could include seeking therapy to identify and integrate the various and sometimes conflicting voices within. Pastors must develop skills through seminars, coaching and mentoring relationships that can help them respond creatively to the challenges they are facing in ministry. Primary responsibility for a commitment to constant learning rests with the pastor. It is part of the cost of call.

The responsibility for lifelong learning does not, however, rest on the pastor’s shoulders alone. This must always be a shared burden with the larger church, and the church in all its manifestations must continue to provide abundant resources for the continuing formation of pastors. Sharing responsibility for cultivating a community of lifelong learning is just one way that the church and its leaders must cooperate to ensure the proclamation and day-to-day enactment of the gospel. This is how ministry is practiced best—with mutual effort and expectant openness to God’s continuing creation.

+ Intentional connection to communities of shared practice: Families are one kind of “community of shared practice.” Children grow up in families learning core values and beliefs and rituals, and they internalize an understanding that “this is how the Smiths or McCraes or Jaramillos do things.” The influence of those traditions and evolving ideas and practices lasts for life. The church is a similar kind of community, one in which people are called to bear one another’s burdens, to recognize how the varieties of gifts God has bestowed belong to the same body, and to encourage one another in witness and service.

At its best, the church might be described as a diverse and growing community of shared practice, whether conceived internationally, denominationally, ecumenically, or congregationally. Fruitful pastoral leaders understand the importance of being part of such communities and they make sure they have regular continuing access to such groups. The most basic community of shared practice for Christians is, of course, the congregation. When the central relationship between pastor and congregation is working well, there will be reciprocal teaching and learning and encouraging and confronting as all seek to live out God’s call in their lives.

But the demands of ministry and the peculiar relationship of pastors with parishes (employee/employer; leader/follower; servant/master?) require that pastors belong to other kinds of communities within which they might openly share ideas, hopes, and fears about the practice of ministry. This emphasis on mutual support for ministry is not an entirely new idea, of course. Religious leaders have sought to encourage and learn from one another ever since the eleven disciples huddled together in those agonizingly uncertain hours after the death of Jesus on the cross. What is new, however, is the increasing data from research attesting to the value of such groups for pastoral leaders and suggesting what works best.

+ Strong roots and active exercise in a growing faith: The word ecology was coined by zoologist Ernest Haeckel in the nineteenth century, bringing together the Greek word for the “study of” something with oikos, which means “house” or “dwelling place.” The ecology of Christian ministry is always surrounded by Christ. This is both a theological affirmation and a mandate for practice. Life in ministry must constantly be grounded in the lively practice of faith and confident hope in God’s providence, even through the dark days of discouragement and loneliness that inevitably come for most pastors. Staying connected to the vine of Christ is the most essential task of pastoral leadership and sometimes the most challenging.

+ Careful stewardship of the leader’s own self: Pastors rarely misunderstand the mandate to love God and love neighbor, but they too often fail to grasp the full meaning of the command to “love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus did not say “instead of yourself.” I suspect this misunderstanding is most often rooted in some misguided attempt to live sacrificially, although I fear it is frequently a works-driven quest for worth or reward that bears witness to a lack of trust in God’s grace.

In my counseling practice I’ve seen hundreds of pastors over the years whose depression, physical maladies, spiritual burnout, and troubled family lives reflect their failure to love themselves as they love others. While Jesus’s warning in the Gospel of Matthew about bad trees’ bearing bad fruit was aimed at the dangers of false prophets (Matt. 7:15–20), the logic of his metaphor could surely be extended to the importance of pastors’ caring for themselves so that they might bear good fruit.
These four insights are essentials for my well-being - and I have been reviewing them carefully.  My exploration of jazz music and peace-making, for example, as well as the opportunity to travel and interact on the international scene is so integral to my soul that without this experience I would feel hollow.  It has energized my body and mind and given me a joyful way to share making music in the company of others that is simultaneously prayerful and challenging.  I have also discovered working with the Berkshire Association of the Massachusetts Conference of the United Church of Christ has given me a community of practice greater than both my family and congregation - something I need for perspective and accountability. My monthly conversations with a "spiritual friend" takes this deeper, too.

I have discovered, much to my surprise, that over these past 30 years I have cultivated a deep sense of professional boundaries - and especially over the past 10 years:  I simply do not have much time for the crazy-makers or users that seem to feed off the naivete or co-dependence of some pastors.  As my wife told me last night, "You are an excellent preacher and teacher and musician; you are committed to using your time and gifts wisely to strengthen compassion personally and socially. So just face it:  you aren't called to waste your time doing anything else."   

Sometimes people in the church don't get that, right?  They want you to be available for all their real and imagined wounds and needs.  Or they want to suck you dry before moving on to their next victim. Or they are so narcissistic that they don't even know they are soul vampires.  Or they want you to be their "friend" without understanding that ministry is a "public" rather than a private relationship. There is love to be shared - and a real spiritual and physical presence, too - but without discernment and intentionality burn-out is always lurking around the corner. Heart break, too.

What I have discovered - mostly by lots of mistakes - is that I have very clear gifts for ministry and limitted time and energy.  When I move into the blessings of the Spirit, things are good and make me think of Warren Zevon's GREAT ode to the perpetual soul vampire...

Grandma's hands...

I love Richard Rohr - today's reflection on mysticism IS worth sharing - and speak to my deepest experience of the sacred.

Bernard McGinn authored a four-volume study on the history of Christian mysticism. He says mysticism is “a consciousness of the presence of God that by definition exceeds description and … deeply transforms the subject who has experienced it.” If it does not radically change the lifestyle of the person—their worldview, their economics, their politics, their ability to form community, you have no reason to believe it is genuine mystical experience. It is usually just people with an addiction to religion, which is not that uncommon, by the way.

Mysticism is not just a change in some religious ideas or affirmations. Mystics have no need to exclude or eliminate others, or define themselves as enlightened, whereas a mere transfer of religious assertions often makes people even more elitist and more exclusionary. True mystics are glad to be common, ordinary, egalitarian, servants of all, and “just like everybody else,” because any need for specialness has been met once and for all.

Today after worship, in our small group Bible study conversation, the subject of living into our gifts came up - again.  One person said something so profound I've been blessed by it all day. "Sometimes a person doesn't really know their gift, but they keep showing up to be a part of the community... and that's ok, don't you think?"  OMG - YES, YES, YES - sometimes our gift is our presence.  Sometimes our gift is our common sense.  Or our willingness to help out with an ordinary but invisible task.

It made me think of one of my favorite Bill Wither's songs, "Grandma's Hands."  In fact, I've decided that this song fits with next week's message about discerning our gifts.  (NOTE: as I told the Bible study, if I had been writing the Bible I probably wouldn't have called God "abba" but rather "grandma.")  Dig it...

Synchronicity...

As many of us revel and rejoice with the street revolution in Egypt - and Tunis - and hold our sisters and prayers in prayer and respect, we cannot help but look towards our own context, too.  Today Bob Herbert's column in the NY Times wrote:  As the throngs celebrated in Cairo, I couldn’t help wondering about what is happening to democracy here in the United States. I think it’s on the ropes. We’re in serious danger of becoming a democracy in name only. (Please read the full article - it is worth your time - and passionately honest: @ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/12/opinion/12herbert.html?_r=1&ref=bobherbert)

Two other articles came my way this morning, too.  Both evoke a sense of God's gracious and loving laughter (thank you, Peter) and hope in a hard time as well as something of the Spirit's presence in the 1983 album by The Police.

+ Fr. Richard Rohr in part of his on-going commentary about the presence of the Cosmic Christ in history writes these words to help us not give in to despair, but rather live into the joyful presence of the one who sets us all free.

The reason I believe the Christ Mystery is so hard for us to see in our little tiny moments of history, our little tiny moments of life, is that this groaning and this process of giving birth is preceded by a series of losses and gains, and the losses are very real. There is no doubt that history goes three steps forward and two steps backward; but thank God, there seems to be always a final net gain. And God seems to be very, very patient.

We all see the two steps backward: the violence, the war, the genocide, the repetitive stupidity, the injustice of it all. We see, for example, the Roman Church, circling its largely self-constructed mental wagons around itself, as if it alone and apart was the world Jesus loved and died for (John 12:47). Refusing to die to itself, it remains “just a single grain of wheat” (John 12:24), and becomes much more Roman than Catholic. And yet it was doing this same thing in the first part of the last century—in spades—and the courage of the Second Vatican Council came out of nowhere. Where did this high level and enlightened thinking come from? Now it stands forever as a Council of the Church, and no elderly Pope or young priest can put this toothpaste back into any tube. If we reject this Council, then we can reject the other twenty also. It stands, like the Gospel, and will finally win out.


And we, in our doubt, still continue to hope and chant, “Come, Lord Jesus!” Perhaps this hoping and chanting are his very coming.

+ And my friend Peter (who writes under the blog Black Pete for "Red Wine and Garlic" @ http://redwineandgarlic.blogspot.com/) sent me a copy of his most recent article from his "Heart of the Matter" published in Ontario, Canada.

Shortly after the end of the Second World War, Winston Churchill was asked how it felt to have defeated Fascism. His response was unexpected—and chilling: "Yes, we have defeated Hitler and his ilk," Churchill is quoted as saying, "but Fascists like Mr. Albert Speer are not so easily defeated." He further implied that the Fascists may have won in spite of our best efforts.


Albert Speer was the Minister of Supply in the Nazi regime. Among many of his responsibilities was reorganizing Germany's manufacturing capacity toward an efficient, powerful force capable of supplying a worldwide effort at conquest. He was also responsible for the "branding" of Germany with the unmistakable iconography of Nazism. The idea was not merely to be efficient but to appear to be unbeatably efficient. Speer was one of many tried of war crimes and convicted at Nuremburg after the War.

But what did Winston Churchill mean? Our popular image of Nazism is that of a tightly-controlled right-wing society focused on world dictatorship. While this image is accurate as far as it goes, Albert Speer's role was of a different nature from the warriors: he was an "efficiency expert". Speer began his work by instituting a systemic statistical analysis made possible, ironically, by data-processing machines purchased from IBM in the United States. The statistical approach spread into almost all areas of pre-war German life and eventually bore fruit in Nazi armament production and troop movements—it even made possible the horrendous scale of mass murder in Nazi concentration camps.


Perhaps Winston Churchill understood that the core philosophy of Speer's brand of Fascism is that all life can be reduced to numbers. Numbers for Nazi Germany indicated progress, the return on investment in money, personnel, energy and machinery toward the regime's ultimate goal. Numbers are useful, and have been for thousands of years, but Winston Churchill saw that Speer and his fellow Fascists had expanded the use of numbers invasively into new areas of human life, well beyond sensible and compassionate use. What's more, the entire world would go along with them.


In our society, we have bought right into the numbers game. We developed a language that went with it, "hard data" over "soft thinking"—translation: "what is quantifiable is of value; what is not, is not". In our health care system, lengthy stays in crowded waiting rooms are considered unimportant because statistically, fewer doctors are seeing more patients, a sure sign of increased efficiency. It is no news that the business world in general measures only the bottom line—the numbers count—at the expense of such difficult-to-quantify realities as environmental health, quality of life, sustainability and long-term effect of its actions. And this mentality is killing us. A numbers-obsessed society has no room for unquantifiable spirituality, for that matter.

Ironically, Nazi Germany was anything but efficient. There was waste and duplication everywhere and not surprisingly, fabrication of statistics to make the numbers look good. Still, our present-day political and economic leadership seems to have the same numbers mania as Speer's Fascism. In that sense, Winston Churchill was right: the Fascists indeed won the war.

Sr. Joan Chittister once said something like, "The challenge for people of faith is to learn to see the eagle within the egg."  As one who finds God's light in some of the darkest places, I draw strength and solace from the words of Rohr and Fergus-Moore as they point out the harsh realities of our day.  That so many of us in the West are coming to grips with this darkness is, for me, another sign of God's gracious light within the darkness.

Thinking about the importance of beauty in an ugly culture...

It should come as no surprise to those who read this blog periodically that I am one of the advocates for finding ways to create, share and express artistic beauty into an ugly culture. In this I am an ally of Mako Fujiumura, Gregory Wolfe, Hilary Brand, Eugene Peterson, Louis Huey-Heck and Jim Kalnin (to name a few.)  This observation about the Roman Catholic theologian, Hans Urs von Balthasar get is so right:

"Balthasar’s theological aesthetics begins with ‘beauty’…. That which appears in the beauty of natural and created forms is the glory of being, der Glanz des Seins. It speaks of the mystery of that which transcends and yet inheres in all existents. Consequently, aesthetics is not just one department of knowledge, which in relative independence of others constitutes a relatively autonomous discipline. When one sees the beauty of a person, a work of art, or a sunset, one is confronted at the same time with the mystery of its otherness. This sense of the wonder of beauty, Balthasar believes, is at the root of all serious metaphysical endeavor.” Louis Roberts, The Theological Aesthetics of Hans Urs von Balthasar

My heart, soul and mind are, therefore, keenly aware of what this means for both the continued dumbing-down of American popular culture and the public policy consequences that continue to gain traction during our financial crisis.  A recent posting on The Huffington Post put it like this:

It happened first in schools and is now proposed on a national scale - the continued cutting down of arts and culture funding. A group of conservative Republicans, called the Republican Study Committee, revealed a new plan on Thursday to cut federal funding for arts down to zero. This means the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities would be left in the cold. Not to mention the potential hit at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Run by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the over 150-person group's plan, the Spending Reduction Act of 2011, would "save" $167.5 million pulled from the NEA and the Humanities endowment and $445 from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. They are forecasting that this erasure of cultural funding would reduce federal spending by $2.5 trillion over the next decade.


Considering that arts and culture spending has already been reduced down to such a minuscule portion, it should come as no surprise that the Republican Study Committee has cornered the arts as a less valued endowment. And this is not the first time that arts endowments have had to fight to keep afloat. The NEA was targeted similarly in the 1990s by Republicans looking to cut "wasteful" spending.


When one thinks about all the organizations funded by these endowments, it's difficult to see the NEA as so easy to brush off. The American Ballet Theatre, the Joffrey Ballet, a touring Shakespeare troupe, music and poetry initiatives, and arts education programs across the country are all amongst those that would be affected by the funding cuts.

+ First, let's be honest:  federal dollars only comprise 1% of the funding base for these projects. At the same time, arts-related project generate not only insight and beauty but also significant jobs and taxes.  Clearly the "creative economy" as it is called in Pittsfield, is a multi-layered part of economic recovery. "On average, the arts industry generates $166.2 billion in income each year. "The government's existing arts-funding model follows conservative budgetary principles," Americans for the Arts president Robert Lynch told the LA Times. "A small federal investment that's important to the health of the nonprofit arts sector helps sustain its 5.7 million jobs and the $30 billion in annual returns to federal, state and local coffers that those workers pay in taxes."

+ Second, perhaps the time has finally arrived when the United States can muster the integrity of the old slogan:  It Will Be a Great Day When Our Schools Get all the Money They Need and the Air Force Has to Hold a Bake Sale to Buy a Bomber.  The Mayor of Cleveland, Michael R. White, used to say something like, "Progressives have to learn to make poverty their friend."  That is, use tough time to make hard decisions that don't have political legs when money is flowing fast and free.  Nicholas Kristoff on the New York Times points out what conservatives and liberals both understand:

It was reflexive for liberals to rail at former President George W. Bush for jingoism. But it is Obama who is now requesting 6.1 percent more in military spending than the peak of military spending under Bush. And it is Obama who has tripled the number of American troops in Afghanistan since he took office. (A bill providing $37 billion to continue financing America's two wars was approved by the House last week and is awaiting his signature.)


Under Obama, we are now spending more money on the military, after adjusting for inflation, than in the peak of the cold war, Vietnam War or Korean War. Our battle fleet is larger than the next 13 navies combined, according to Defense Secretary Robert Gates. The intelligence apparatus is so bloated that, according to The Washington Post, the number of people with "top secret" clearance is 1.5 times the population of the District of Columbia. Meanwhile, a sobering report from the College Board says that the United States, which used to lead the world in the proportion of young people with college degrees, has dropped to 12th.


What's more, an unbalanced focus on weapons alone is often counterproductive, creating a nationalist backlash against foreign "invaders." Overall, education has a rather better record than military power in neutralizing foreign extremism. And the trade-offs are staggering: For the cost of just one soldier in Afghanistan for one year, we could start about 20 schools there. Hawks retort that it's impossible to run schools in Afghanistan unless there are American troops to protect them. But that's incorrect. CARE, a humanitarian organization, operates 300 schools in Afghanistan, and not one has been burned by the Taliban. Greg Mortenson, of "Three Cups of Tea" fame, has overseen the building of 145 schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan and operates dozens more in tents or rented buildings — and he says that not one has been destroyed by the Taliban.

+ And third, beauty - public or private - encourages both the inner journey of the soul's deepening but also the outward journey of compassion.  Part of my commitment to the arts comes from the fact that art feeds me spiritually - I am in my deepest prayer while playing music and experiencing the sacred energy flowing through a band of different people becoming one in a song - but that is not all that happens.  In a tender and insightful essay entitled, "How Is Art a Gift, a Calling and an Obedience?" Andy Crouch captures the ethical and even broadly political importance of art:


We who are privileged enough to live in North America live in a world that is forgetting both pain and play. Our popular culture offers us endless diverting amusements that fall flat and well short of real celebration. Our so-called serious culture offers us endlessly difficult dead ends. Who will be the people who can play gracefully - unusefully - in the world? Who will be the people who turn unafraid toward the pain all around us?  Who will be the people who believe in beauty without being afraid of brokenness?  Who will be the people who champion that which is not useful?


Crouch then summarizes our utilitarian obsessions calling this the age "of the economist and the evolutionary biologist, each of whom have gotten very busy explaining why everything we thought was particularly human is actually just useful."  Then he cuts to the heart:

Once you have lost the idea that the world is a gits - that culture is something that can be taken, blessed, broken and given as something useful - then eventually... you can do the same thing with human beings - consider them useful, too.  (Or not...)  So what is at stake in our attitude toward art, toward the beautiful, broken, unuseful parts of culture, is ultimately our attitude about those creatures that the Lord God formed out of the dust.  And without a reason to believe in the beauty of what is unuseful, who will be left to champion those people who are not useful? People who cannot be substituted for one another, who are stubbornly and particularly themselves...?


The unemployed?  The abused? the dying? The deformed? The mentally ill?  It is no wonder Dostoevsky wrote that "Beauty shall save the world."  But we must support it and honor it and advocate for it.  Sometimes, you know, the light is forced out:  think of art and ethics during the time of Stalin?  Or Mubarak?  Or the Taliban in Afghanistan?  Or McCarthy?


There is more at stake here than scoring political points or even reducing federal spending by a few pennies in the overall budget.  To me it comes down to what Pastor Neimoller said after his experiences in a Nazi prison camp:


Als die Nazis die Kommunisten holten,

habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Kommunist.


Als sie die Sozialdemokraten einsperrten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Sozialdemokrat.


Als sie die Gewerkschafter holten,
habe ich nicht protestiert;
ich war ja kein Gewerkschafter.


Als sie die Juden holten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Jude.


Als sie mich holten,
gab es keinen mehr, der protestierte.


When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.


When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.


When they came for the trade unionists,

I did not speak out;

I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,

I remained silent;

I wasn't a Jew.

When they came for me,

there was no one left to speak out.

Sooooo into Pentangle...

For some wildass reason, I am sooooo into Pentangle right now I can hardly see straight!  I fell in love with this band when I was in high school:

+ Danny Thompson was the hottest double bass player EVER!

+ Bert Jansch and John Renbourn ALWAYS blew me away as guitarists - still do
.
+ And dear Jacqui McShee melted my heart with her sweet but oh so damn cool vocals.

+ And let's not forget brother Terry Cox and all his subtly on drums.

Maybe it has something to do with playing all this jazz - clearly Pentangle (and Cannonball Aderly) were my jazz influences from a tender age - or maybe it has something to do with the season:  these cats always evoked my longing for Spring.  Who knows - it is just abundantly clear that I can't get enough of these guys and want to find my old albums - and get new CDs - to revel in the mystery and madness all over again! 

Now it is YOUR turn:  dig it!

WOOT - just went the basement and found some old VINYL in my ancient collection!!!! 

Church council at First Church...

Tonight we had a deep and serious conversation about suffering at Church Council.  Earlier I had written a reflective essay about the work I sense us being called towards this year.  It included the following: "I came across an article written by monastic friend (from Boston) who was in worship and heard the old hymn, “Crown Him with Many Crowns,” in a new way.  “I couldn’t help but think of my young friend (and many others) as we sang:  "Crown him the Song of God before the worlds began, and ye who tread where he hath trod, crown him the Son of man; who every grief hath known that wrings the human breast, and takes and bears them as his own, that all in him may rest.”

What would happen, I wondered, if we lived as though we really believed that was true?  Why is the notion that Jesus was (is) somehow immune to the ordinary pain and petty sadness of normal human life so persistent?  Why is it that so many faithful women and men seem to believe that their circumstance, their suffering, their life is so different from what Jesus experienced on earth? I’ve heard many variations of this complaint over the years – and to be honest, I’ve made it my own on more than a few occasions – but why?  (Kevin Hackett, Society of St. John the Evangelist)

All of which set off a fascinating conversation about human suffering, how we react to it as a congregation and what we are called to do about it.  Two points took most of our time:

+ First, none of us senses that suffering in and of itself is redemptive.  In this, we clearly separate ourselves from those traditions that celebrate and fetishize the pain of Christ.  We are about easing the suffering of the wounded and exploring Christ's joy in the midst of the suffering.  In fact, we have chosen to spend more time reclaiming the "feast" as a core commitment than the fast.

+Second, we simultaneously understand that if we are attentive to God's presence within our pain, we can both grow closer to God through our suffering and grow in compassion and patience.  In this, something horrible can be used for a greater good.  As Paul says, we know that suffering can lead to endurance and character and God pouring hope into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.

I found myself blessed over and over by this honest, careful, challenging and very thoughtful dialogue.  And then when I got home, I came across these words from Eugene Peterson in my evening prayers that pushed me over the edge:

St. Paul talked about the foolishness of preaching; I would like to carry on about the foolishness of congregations.  Of all the ways in which to engage in the enterprise of church, this has to be the most absurd - the haphazard collection of people who somehow get assembled into pews on Sundays, half-heartedly singing a few songs most of them don't like, tuning in and out of a sermon according to the state of their digestion and the preacher's decibels, awkward in their commitments and jerky in their prayers.

But the people in these pews are also people who suffer deeply and (sometimes) find God in their suffering. These are men and women who make love commitments, are faithful to them through trial and temptation and bear fruits of compassion, spirit-fruits that bless the people around them.  Babies, surrounded by hopeful and rejoicing parents and friends, are baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. Adults, converted by the gospel, surprised and surprising all who have known them are likewise baptized. The dead are offered up to God in funerals that give solemn and joyful witness to the resurrection in the midst of tears and grief.  Sinners honestly repent and believingly take the body and blood of Jesus and receive new life.

But these souls are mixed in with the others and are, more often than not, indistinguishable from them.  I can find no other form of the church in the Bible.

What a strange and often overlooked - usually invisible - blessing, yes?  This thing we call the church is so wounded and fragile, yet so strong and loving and real at the same time!  I wept tears of joy and gratitude as I drove home in the freezing cold.

Practicing resurrection as the church...

NOTE:  Here are my worship notes for Sunday, February 13, 2011 as a part of my on-going exploration of Ephesians.  I continue to find great insight from Eugene Peterson's text, Practice Resurrection: A Conversation on Growing Up in Christ.  If you are in town, please stop by at 10:30 am.

Let me share a quote with you from that grand old curmudgeon of the contemporary church, Eugene Peterson, because the way he puts it really cuts to the chase for us today. In his discussion of what is really at stake in being the church of Jesus Christ in our day, he pulls no punches in his commentary on Ephesians:

When the wild bull of American ambition and individualism is bred with a tame Christianity with no cross, the result is a hybrid spirituality – or more honestly a mongrel spirituality – in which both the image of God and the crucified Savior have been lost in the cross-breeding.

Ouch! That really stings if we’re taking it all in, yes?

• Wild ambition and selfishness – mixed with a watered-down Jesus – gives birth to a mutant spirituality that experiences nothing of God’s grace and reveals nothing of Christ’s soul.

• Sadly, the result is NOT the Body of Christ in the real world, but a pseudo-religious club spewing spiritual sounding words that sound an awful lot like the Lord’s warning in today’s gospel.

You only make things worse when you lay down a smoke screen of pious talk, saying, 'I'll pray for you,' and never doing it, or saying, 'God be with you,' and not meaning it. You don't make your words true by embellishing them with religious lace. In making your speech sound more religious, it becomes less true. Just say 'yes' and 'no' for when you manipulate words to get your own way, you go wrong.

So today – in part four of my series into St. Paul’s insights from the book of Ephesians – we’re going to consider what he tells us about the church. The real church: not the mongrel that passes for the church in its hyper individualized expression or the idealized and romantic notion of the church that is bound to distract and disappoint – but the real church – something that Paul calls the Body of Christ.

You see, St. Paul wants us to know that growing up and maturing as people of faith is NEVER an abstraction. “Nothing in the practice of resurrection,” Peterson writes, “is experienced or participated in apart from a body.” (p. 103) This is critical so I hope you were paying attention: nothing about maturing into our faith is experienced apart from a body. Paul tell us in Ephesians 2:

In Christ Jesus you who were once far off – strangers and disconnected from God’s grace – have now been brought near by the blood of Christ. He is our peace – our shalom - in his flesh he has made both insiders and outsiders into one body – breaking down the dividing walls and hostility between us – and making us into the body of Christ. (Ephesians 2: 13-14)

This is Paul’s first insight for us about doing and being the real church in our generation: whatever we do in the Spirit – however we experience Jesus in our lives – it all has to become flesh within and among us for that is how God works. Do you remember how the Bible begins?

• In both Genesis 1 and 2 what story are we being told: creation and first things, right? In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth…

• So let’s say out loud what it was that God created according to these stories: “light and sky – earth and sea – trees and vegetation – time and seasons – fish and birds – cattle and kangaroos – man and woman… all of the things created in the Genesis stories speak of God pouring out grace into forms that are accessible to our five senses.” (Peterson, p. 102)

God’s creation, you see, all becomes flesh – something real and tangible – so that we can “see, hear, touch, taste and even smell grace” in our lives. This is how God works – this is what the Genesis stories tell us –and we have to be highly suspicious of any spirituality that would disconnect us from this truth about creation. So let’s not try to be more spiritual than God; we are not ethereal and disembodied spirits nor are we angels.

We are God’s creation set in a world where everything we experience is of the Lord… God’s sky upon God’s earth and sea, within God’s time marked by sun, moon and stars in the company of God’s menagerie of dolphins and eagles, lions and lambs… women and men made in the image-of-God who come to us as parents and grandparents, children and grandchildren, brothers and sisters, neighbors and relatives, playmates and workmates, students and helpers – and Jesus. (Peterson, p. 103)

That’s why Paul insists that nothing in the practice of resurrection – or growing up into adult people of faith rather – ever takes place outside of a body. Whether it is Genesis or Jesus, the very heart of God’s grace is always incarnational: it is the Word made flesh within and among us. Like Christ tells us:

You only make things worse when you lay down a smoke screen of pious talk, saying, 'I'll pray for you,' and never doing it, or saying, 'God be with you,' and not meaning it. You don't make your words true by embellishing them with religious lace. In making your speech sound more religious, it becomes less true. Just say 'yes' and 'no' for when you manipulate words to get your own way, you go wrong.

• Are you still with me? Am I communicating and getting through to you?


• Let’s pause for a moment and see if there are any questions or thoughts or reactions about what I’ve said so far, ok?

Alright then: if the first insight about being the church and experiencing God’s grace is that it is always incarnational – grounded and expressed in one type of body or another – the second insight is that we have to pay very close attention to what bodies we are embracing for our lessons in a mature faith. One of the reasons we continue to read and study the Old Testament as Christians – what some call the Hebrew Bible – is because it grounds us in a time-tested body of knowledge, experience and human spirituality that knows how to challenge the evils of individualism.

The words we have been asked to read from Deuteronomy for today are illustrative. In no uncertain terms they tell us that God has set before us a way of living that will bring life or death – hope and integrity or fear and moral compromise – blessings or curses. There are two contexts for these warnings:

The first comes from the ancient story of Moses the great Hebrew liberator who led his people out of the oppression of Egyptian slavery towards the Promised Land. In our text the people of God are encamped just outside of what will become Israel – the land of milk and honey – and Moses is summarizing everything he has learned and taught the people. In just a few chapters he is going to go up Mt. Nebo one last time and gaze on the land of God’s promise, but like Dr. King he won’t be able to cross over and realize all of God’s blessings. So, after a generation of wandering in the wilderness with his people, just before his death Moses preaches one more time: “Obedience or death. Love God and live; serve other gods and perish!” (www.WorkingPreacher.org, Carolyn J. Sharp)

There are choices to be made with your bodies, you see, and they will lead to “blessings and extravagant abundance… for those who heed the voice of God; or unspeakable calamity, terror, and affliction (for) those who abandon the covenant.” God’s challenge is crystalline: either embrace liberation and responsibility in my new community or else slip back into the degradation and despair of Egypt. Today I set before you the ways of life and death – so make up your mind.

That is the first context – the historic commitment of Israel to live as God’s unique and counter-cultural people of freedom and responsibility in covenant with one another – but there is another setting for this text, too. And the second context is that this story from Deuteronomy was actually being told to God’s people NOT at the beginning of Israel’s history, but rather from the middle of the sixth century BCE when Israel’s best and brightest had been taken into exile and oppression again – this time to Babylon. And just like countless other wounded and confused people, the Israelites were telling themselves the stories of their origins to better understand just how their troubles had come to pass.

• Can’t you just hear them: it seems that somewhere along the way we chose death instead of life – fear instead of trust - yes? And when we hear those old, old words of Moses again – that great sermon about the consequences of choosing life or death – it starts to become clear that we tried to finesse things too much and make peace with the security of Egypt’s empty promises rather than trust in the challenge of God’s love.

• That’s part of what the Old Testament teaches us time and again – and why we still read it: when Israel tried to become a hybrid with other cultures – and remember they were surrounded by nations just as bright and creative as the United States is today – places like Assyria, Babylon and Egypt – when they did this, they gave away their unique commitment to God.

Peterson is most helpful again when he notes:

Our Hebrew people-of-God ancestors lived as neighbors with a number of high-achieving ancients. But however they may have accepted and benefited from their libraries and technologies, they were at their best when they lived as fiercely jealous about the integrity of their souls and vigilantly guarded their image-of-God identities. They did not admire the leaders of those other kingdoms and cultures, nor did they adopt the successful ways of life that produced the power and wealth of those civilizations. Rather… they were uncompromising in their rejection of the divine pretensions and sexual profligacy’s of their leaders in government and the arts and the superficial idolatries of the so-called best families.

Do you see where I’m going with this? When we try to live into God’s love all on our own terms – forgetting our counter-cultural covenant and the fact that God’s grace only becomes revealed in reality not abstract ideas – we become spiritual mongrels: our faith is compromised and sick, our testimony in the world is anemic and we find ourselves enslaved to the addictions and goals of Egypt rather than the faith, hope and love that God reveals in the Promised Land.

Let me give you a tiny example from within our own faith community: last week after Eucharist I was greeting one of our Sunday School adolescents. I shook his hand, patted him heartily on the back and said, “Man, I am so glad you are here.” And he looked at me – and like young teenage boys are want to do – started to kidding around saying, “Oh, oh, he touched me – he slapped me on the back – I’m suing, I’m suing.”

• Now, I am all for jokes and having a good time – and I really don’t believe that children are better seen than heard in church – but I have to tell you I was stunned.

• I was shocked and saddened, too because from out of the mouths of one of our babes was coming all the sickness and cynicism of our selfish and hyper individualized culture. I guess the contrast with Holy Communion was just too much for me because it really hurt me – and I physically ached for this boy – and the culture he is inheriting.

The second insight St. Paul urges us to embrace is that growing up in the Christian faith and practicing Christ’s resurrection within our bodies is a very counter-cultural matter and we can’t figure it out on our own. We need the stories of God’s people to guide us. We need the community of other adults to help keep us on track. And we need a way to remember both God’s promises and what it means to live into them or else we’ll sink back down to the lowest common denominator of our culture.

That’s what Paul’s third insight into being and doing church in the 21st century is all about: Without a regular reminder of what life is like when we are trapped or addicted or confused by American individualism, we’ll stay there – not because we want to – but because we don’t know any better. That’s why St. Paul reminds the Ephesians of who they were before they entered the community of faith we call church.

It wasn't so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn't know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It's a wonder God didn't lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah… But don't take any of this for granted. It was only yesterday that you outsiders to God's ways had no idea of any of this, didn't know the first thing about the way God works, hadn't the faintest idea of Christ. You knew nothing of that rich history of God's covenants and promises in Israel, hadn't a clue about what God was doing in the world at large. Now because of Christ—dying that death, shedding that blood—you who were once out of it altogether are in on everything.

Did you grasp that? Church is the place where we are reminded NEVER to take God’s grace for granted. One of the things we’re supposed to do is jog our memory so that we keep on track with grace – but always with joy - NEVER with guilt. Paul reminds the Ephesians of seven truths they would like to forget: they were outsiders – Gentiles – strangers who were addicted to individualism rather than committed to God’s grace. They didn’t know about prayer or community or sharing; it was all “me first” and to hell with everybody else.

But now, by God’s grace they are different: they are united with the body of Christ – they are in community – and share values that go beyond greed and selfishness and the lowest common denominator. Are you with me? To be and to do church in the 21st century isn’t any different than when St. Paul got the ball rolling.

+ First we have to keep it real for God always expresses grace within a body.

+ Second we have to experience and practice the counter-cultural values of Christ in community knowing it takes a life time to get right.

+ And third we have to help one another remember why our commitment matters because it is all too easy to drift back towards Egypt.

And this is the last word: we are to do it with grace and joy never guilt and obligation. It is a lot of work, but so much better than the fear and isolation and addictions of the alternative – and that is the good news.

What a find...

So I am getting my old faithful turntable up and running this weekend - and sorting through some old vinyl - in anticipation of listening to Herbie Mann's sultry take on the Beatles' tune:  Come Together.  It comes from one of my favorite 1970 albums:  Muscle Shoals Nitty Gritty - a follow-up to his stunning Memphis Underground. (check it out: http://www.cduniverse.com/productinfo.asp?pid=7432624)  And what a GREAT album it is:  funky soul saturated with cool jazz and just enough hip attitude to make you smile and maybe even shake your booty.

Well sports fans, in addition to brother Mann's record in MINT condition (after all these years) I discover a few collections I don't remember ever owning:

+ An original copy of Miles Davis' Bitches Brew

+ Vince Guaraldi playing a live Bossa Nova set w/Bola Sete from El Matador in San Francisco's North Beach.  (The place still exists - I've walked by it a number of times - but now it is a strip club.)

+ Duke Ellington's Sacred Music Concert albums.

+ A Blue Note reissue of Thad Jones and Mel Lewis

+ My favorite New Age Oregon album:  Distant Hills

+ And a six album - 12 side - unopened box set called:  The Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz (which the NPR guide to jazz says is THE boxed set to own - as it starts with Scott Joplin and ends with John Coltrane!)

What a blast!  What a find!  Who knew?!!?  I've been groovin' all weekend to some incredible sounds - and there is NOTHING like vinyl to bring out the warmth of a music collection - in my humble opinion.

Random thoughts on jazz and prayer on a Saturday morning...

Just finished the "new" Robin D.G. Kelley biography - Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of An American Original - which is as informative concerning the origins of bop as it is insightful into the soul of this oft misunderstood artist. Kelley observes that too often Monk has been treated as a weird and mythic genius - an isolated artist - when in reality he was deeply connected to the New York jazz world and participated fully in its social and artistic renewal.

Further, Kelley makes something else clear: Monk was not all about experimentation and extemporaneous sounds, he was a studied and practiced pianist with roots in Chopin, Liszt and Rachmaninoff (with some Beethoven and Bach thrown in for good measure, too) who knew the importance of practice before musical improvisation. To be sure, he was playful and unique, but not without roots.

Back in high school, when rock guitar "gods" like Clapton, Hendrix, Harrison, Beck and Kaukonen ruled, I used to think that some people were just born with the ability to play wild-ass solos while the rest of us mere mortals had to learn to be satisfied with rhythm guitar. Over time I learned how mistaken that notion was - I even had a few musical breakthroughs after playing blues scales over and over while working on my doctorate - and now grasp what should have been obvious: soaring the musical stratosphere requires LOTS of time doing grunt work on the ground. It is like the old joke about the young violinist who is lost in NYC and stops an older soul on the street and asks: "How do I get to Carnegie Hall?" To which the old salt replies: "Practice, man, practice!"

St. Paul makes a similar observation about prayer - and living or practicing resurrection - if we treat prayer passively, intimacy with God will always be an external idea rather than a lived experience. Further, if prayer is always done in someone else's language, it will never become truly ours. I can't play guitar solos like Clapton, but I can play like Lumsden - which is never fast and showy but sometimes very soulful - and THAT is the point. I still can't play the bass like McCartney (well, ok sometimes I can) or Ron Carter, but with lots of practice and intentionality I can groove on it as "the Rev" - and that is a sweet, sweet thing, too.

I remember reading once about the pastor in Pittsburgh who said, "Everyone in my congregation ADMIRES Mother Theresa, but then don't know how to BECOME like her!" Henri Nouwen once noted something similar - to which the old saint said: Take one hour every day to be in prayer - mostly listening for God - and you'll get it. Then the Pittsburgh pastor went on to say: So it became my job to teach them - to show them and help them - embody the time-tested practices that over time can move ordinary people into the simultaneously ordinary AND extraordinary experience of living intimately with God. Making your life a prayer rather than just parroting the words.

Now after all these years I've noticed two things: most people don't really want to practice - and - we learn better by doing than merely hearing. Richard Rohr suggests that often pain is the catalyst that moves us beyond our resistance; he calls it the natural process of practicing dying so that we might live just as everything in the created order dies to live. That is part of the wisdom of the cross if we pay attention... but then most of the time it is too easy to be distracted, yes?

So,"scuse me while I kiss the sky" as Jimi used to say: I have some bass riffs to practice because I can't sit back and expect the progress I've made to last if I don't keep reviewing the scales and the grooves.

Last night at Patrick's...

Last night at Patrick's was a GREAT gig all around: lots of classic jazz (which I'm beginning to finally grasp), some fun rock and roll (which is like the ground of my being) and some special fun, too (like a guest singer who was a knock-out in her Vegas-style evening gown singing "Sway" or the reigning Pittsfield Polka King who inspired Andy to lead us in a little impromptu "Beer Barrel Polka!")

Afterwards Charlie Tokarz - who is an awesome musician and plays sax, flute and clarinet - said to me, "Sounds like you, my man, have spent some time in the shed." "Hmmm... I hope that was a complement," I wondered. And, after a little google-search this morning, found out that it is jazz slang for practicing hard and hitting the groove. What a blessing to hear that from Charlie!

Andy was encouraging, too. It really helped that I've been practicing a LOT and finding special times to work-out some charts and tunes with Andy before each gig, too. He is another killer musician who along with our drummer, Johnny, and pianist, Bennie, are just took kewel for school.

I think Dianne hit her stride as a jazz vocalist last night as she was in splendid form: not only was she loose and at home with the material, but also playful and always right on the notes. As she told me at lunch, "It's a good thing all the church/choir folk who came last night (by our count about 25) didn't make our first few gigs as I'm much more confident now." It shows... (BTW I am really blessed and grateful that so many of our First Church friends have been coming out to support our music. What a sweet community of faith!)

Now as we really get into preparing material for Istanbul, we've got a truly eclectic repertoire and this tune will be our next exploration...