2016.07.24 What Do You Do With An Idea?

My son John is a librarian at an elementary school. He reads lots of kids' books and recommends them to me, telling me that his spirituality is always enhanced by the children’s books he reads.

The late great storyteller Madeleine L’Engle would agree. She has written many books, some of them on the shelves as children’s books. Madeleine said many times that there is no such thing as children’s literature. There is simply good literature.

Good literature includes picture books in which word and visual image come together to move the hearts of children and adults.

One such book is What Do You Do With An Idea? by Kobi Yamada, illustrated by Mae Besom. It’s a charming tale about a small boy who gets an idea. He loves his idea even though it feels strange as if it isn’t really his. He doesn’t want to share his idea for fear others will make fun of  it—and him. But his idea simply won’t die. It follows him around, hounds him you might say. In time he grows to love it, nourish it, embrace it as one might a great love, play with it, and follow it. Then you see what becomes of his idea—and you are transformed.

I’m someone who loves ideas, especially new ones, ones that almost force me to think differently, do things differently—change. My best ideas burrow under my skin—affix themselves. They challenge my assumptions and refresh me. I love ideas that fill me with laughing delight and won’t go away. I share them with people who want to try new things, to consider new ways of thinking and understanding. "Let’s" is my favorite word.

My very best beloved ideas I share with God—not to get an elevated opinion but to submit them to my inner spiritual barometer test. It measures my deepest feelings, ranging from enlivening to stifling. That’s how the Holy Spirit helps me discern whether an idea is godly, a little godly, devilish, or just plain me showing off.  There’s nothing fail-safe about this process but for me it’s how I pray.

For instance, I’ve assumed that a good sermon was generally, though not always, delivered by one person, an ordained person, skilled, trained and practiced at preaching from Holy Scriptures. Clergy, rightly, do try to live up to such expectations. It’s a vow! But is there more? Is this all that God expects for the holy Word in a sermon?

An idea churned inside me— not a totally new idea, but one I hadn’t revisited for a long time and one possibly new to my context. It used to be called dialogue sermon. Boring  title.

Let’s try group-preach. Barometer measured a little godly.

So with God’s help I tried it out and wrote about it on my blog post of 7/17/2016. The response was bright and exciting. I believe we gave the Holy Spirit a grand workout. Let’s try this again, God—when the time seems right and the text lends itself to it.

What do you do with an idea? Love it, test it, run with it, let it change you.

2016.07.17 Wake Up!

A funny thing happened in church today. I was the preacher but I didn’t preach. I identified a stand-out theme in the biblical readings, which I called WAKE UP!  Briefly I outlined it: 
         Old Abraham woke up fast when three strangers with angelic credentials showed up to let          him know he and Sarah would have a new son at age 100++ And Sarah split her sides. They woke up.
    The author of Collisions, (that’s Colossians!) burst onto the scene with an amazing proclamation, “Jesus is the image of the invisible God.” This was hardly a new idea to this author. He’d heard it all before, yet this idea woke this writer up for the first time.
    And what about the old familiar, tried and true story of Mary and Martha in Bethany with Jesus? Sigh. Nothing gets old or dull save we make it so, yet this one was drying up. Was there a wake-up call in this story? What was new here? I wondered.

You know when you read to a small child you can see God. They love this story and beg you to read it again—and again—and again—until you want to throw up. But you read it over and over, because you love this child, and because you get to share in the wake-up face: eyes lit up, delight spread all over the face—every single time. It's contagious.The child eventually knows the story enough to turn pages at the right places and says all the words even though they can’t read. The story becomes the child’s own story. It’s gospel—incarnate, a scriptural process.

I imagine this is how the Holy Spirit works the biblical texts into our flesh in a way that wakes us up. So what about the Martha/Mary/Jesus story in Luke? Could we wake it up together?

I invited the congregation (about 25 people spread out all over the big sanctuary, Anglican-like,)  re-read the brief clip of story I affectionately call the M& M story, then paused. So? What do you think? Silence. Was anyone awake? I waited and asked again: What wakes you up in this story? There’s no right or wrong here. What do you notice? I gestured. Then slowly, slowly the sermon began to happen.

The women busted out from their containment and found the "preacher" inside them. I didn’t dare imagine how they had held back for so long. Most of them were Marthas who had always held resentment about this story. One of them even received applause for her bold declamation of Jesus’ bad attitude. Men chimed in with their own feelings. One said he “got the spiritual idea.” The place was vibrating with energy. Faces lit up; eyes brightened. Nothing got out of hand. I was not tempted to explain, take back control or defend Jesus—or Luke.

Together we created the most magnificent thing—gave the Holy Spirit a workout and Her own wake-up call.

A man who is nearly deaf and rarely speaks, suddenly offered a prayer of thanksgiving aloud in just the right place, even though he couldn’t hear. “I knew something was going on here. I didn’t hear it but the women were talking. I don’t agree with any sermons but last night a man in my writing group for homeless people at the cathedral rummaged through his collection of street pick-ups, found a window fan and gave it to me. I slept so well last night. Thank you.”

The buzz kept on through coffee hour and outside as people left for their homes. The best news?  No one said, “Good sermon, Lyn.”

2016.07.10 Pray, Pray, Pray, and So?

All over the internet, on social media, and in all our email boxes there are calls for prayer. Our Episcopal Presiding Bishop has issued a particularly elegant call and prayer for our common humanity from the Book of Common Prayer. It is beautiful. Every person and all prayers are earnest and honest in their spiritual desiring. How they get winnowed is not my business.

So why do I feel uninspired? I feel frankly impotent, though I do pray for peace and an end to the escalation of violence. I even feel a little ashamed because I’m not on board somehow or I’m privileged not to be afraid. I’m not beseeching, not weeping, not agonizing. Am I cold-hearted? Is God dead? What does God do? Anything?  

I learned prayer as a child when I talked endlessly to God, instructing God that many things should change for the betterment of my little world, and specifically that God should end the dominance of the martini glass in our house. God did nothing, didn't change a damn thing outside me. I prayed anyway. It made me feel better inside, more able to seize life as it was and  never stop praying anyway—just to know my heart’s desires and to feel God’s listening. That formed my image of God: omnipresent but certainly not omnipotent.

I wonder if God is who we think God is—eternal almighty-ness?  Or is this a stereotype to whom we too often bow?

I am inspired by this prayer, written in the diaries of Etty Hillesum. She died at Auschwitz at 29.

Tonight for the first time I lay in the dark with burning eyes as scene after scene of human suffering passed before me. I shall promise You one thing, God, just one very small thing: I shall never burden my today with cares about tomorrow, although that takes some practice. Each day is sufficient unto itself. But one thing is becoming increasingly clear to me: that You cannot help us, that we help You to help ourselves. And that is all we can manage these days and also all that really matters: that we safeguard that little You, God in ourselves. And perhaps in others as well. Alas, there doesn’t seem to be much You Yourself can do about our circumstances, about our lives. Neither do I hold you responsible. You cannot help us, but we must help You and defend your dwelling place inside us to the last.   (Etty Hillesum, Essential Writings Maryknoll: Orbis Books 2009 p. 59)

To this kind of prayer I say Amen, and to this God I pray without ceasing.

2016.07.03 All Things New

It seems fitting that on this weekend when we celebrate the anniversary of the birth of our nation, we should celebrate all things new–and the possibility thereof. Our country calls for e pluribus unum. We keep losing sight of either the unum or the pluribus. Does our religion?

In our present world we are challenged to integrate the pluribus as we adjust to pluralism, now the  norm of oneness—for both cultures and religions. How to keep the old and integrate the new to make a new whole? 

Change is upon us, nation and church. So is fear. Still, what sets us free will also make us whole—especially if it hurts everyone along the way.

There’s nothing wrong with Christianity’s essential vision of goodness in the whole. Do you need to go to church to live good and loving lives, to see divinity in everything? Do you need to believe in God to live these values? Apparently not. Apparently.
   
Some things I know from experience about change and making things new:
      It hurts. You can’t change without contention, conflict.
      You can’t change by staying within a rigid status, or by silent striving in prayer.
      Change doesn’t happen by staring at our own reflection, like Narcissus. Outside perspectives are necessary, even if it means  systemic stress.That’s how the Boston Globe’s Spotlight team found new energy to expose the deeply-rooted scandal of sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church. The team was embedded in that culture and couldn’t see far enough beyond it to question it enough. A new editor could see the whole. They followed his lead. Jesus wasn’t new to his culture and religion; nor were the prophets of Israel. They just sounded new because they issued a recall which led them back to the basics: what you hate do not do to your neighbor—any neighbor.    
      Change requires new thinking, deep reflection by a core group who work together to make plans, get honest, and listen to outside voices.
      Change requires patience, hope, humor, prayer, true grit, and the grace of God.
      Change requires recognition that what we believe reflects what we pray as much as what we pray reflects what we believe.
      Change awakens minds, hearts and actions. Why change? To live.
      Change requires a mantra of encouragement, such as that spoken about the biblical Esther by Massachusetts Bishop Barbara C. Harris:
                           She used what she had to do what she had to do.

I was recently inspired by an approach to change and making things new from the secular world. Matthew Teitelbaum, the new director of Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, offers a vision for the future and a practice of quiet innovation—gradual change without operatic drama. Teitelbaum is a Canadian art historian, born in 1956 in Toronto. His vision for the MFA is one of diversification in funding and audience. (See “The Art of Innovating Quietly” by Malcolm Gay, Boston Globe, June 26, 2016.)
Many Christian churches are facing change and innovation for the sake of a lively future. Survival is not enough. Here are a few things to consider from Teitelbaum’s approach.

    Experiment. Just try something new. For example Teitelbaum, instructed his curator to “Put the Monet here.” Usually the most famous of impressionist painters would get his own gallery, be showcased as the prize. The newly installed Monet gallery is a “preposterously gorgeous space that radiates with the collective glow of some 20 freshly hung works.” It covers the artist’s whole career in its historical context. Works are installed in a gallery with other artifacts of the era, furniture, other impressionist paintings and sculptures on pedestals that make them all at eye level. All of it together tells the story of one artist’s evolution and an era. We knew something was different; some things had been put together that would not traditionally be juxtaposed. The expansive effect was praiseworthy.
This is what diversity accomplishes. It’s also what divinity accomplishes as we evolve.
    Look, no, examine, everything the museum does: admissions, hours, café menu prices, food served, exhibits, permanent collection and passing exhibits and their interface.  EVERYTHING.  Why? To discern what makes all kinds of people feel welcome. The church must do the same. What can be done differently? What will we vary in our liturgy? Our theology? Do we tell the whole story? Jesus didn’t just die for us.There’s more to the story.
    Diversify.  The demographic of the MFA is diverse, but its audience is mostly educated white people. In our recent visit we observed this truth. But this is a museum for ALL Boston people and beyond. There is the art of the world here! Whom do we serve? It’s a crucial question. Can world and local demographic be served at once?        
   Afford.  “We have to diversify our revenue and our audience—the two are connected,” Teitelbaum said. Financial health and audience growth are primary.
    Ask. Do we retire debt quickly or fund it over a longer time? Debt must not be crippling or a balanced budget an idol.
    Risk. Discern what and why and how. The two most besetting problems for small churches now are stewardship and welcoming/attracting new people. Is a church too homogeneous? Who feels welcome here, as if they belong?—more than a smile and some food.  Is there something that speaks to the experience of diverse groups? Many churches are about as diverse as the museum, which is not diverse at all.
    Go beyond. Who lives beyond our doors? What do they value? What do they need? What do we have to give? In the church, deacons are ordained to help make these connections.
    Ask. Think. What MUST change? What must NOT change? And why?
    Refrain from rank-ordering gifts.  “  . . .the European work is not higher than the African work.”  Is that not a gospel value? Teitelbaum takes advantage of the museum’s whole collection, sparing none. His motto is: Bring it all on. Is it too much? Is it junky? Go see for yourself.
   
I return to the Monet collection. I love impressionist art, because the farther away you stand from the paintings the clearer the images become. It gives perspective. The same is true of an era, or a religion. Monet is the prize, showcasing depth in the midst of what is temporary. Is that not what we want to do with the unconditional grace Jesus embodied?—permanence, eternality in the midst of what is passing—and all of it lives together in the one gallery, just as all living things thrive in one cosmos. Is that not what makes scripture holy: that the divine Word is embedded in the many human words and voices, so the whole reflects the divine image? Does God not love it all deeply and equally? It’s humanity that labels things good and bad, of God and not of God.

Teitelbaum is helping the MFA create a brilliant and engaging mix. Can the church of Jesus Christ do the same? Put Christ here and here and here. How many stories are in Christ’s? Everywhere you turn there is the face of Christ when we make all things new within the old.

2016.06.26 Give Me Your Poor

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

"The New Colossus" poem by Emma Lazarus; lyrics for Irving Berlin musical, "Miss Liberty"

A friend recently told me that Emma Lazarus’s poem had been set to music by Irving Berlin. She said the women’s chorus of which she is a member sang it, and that I should check it out. It would make me weep, she said. It did.

In the context of the current skirmish over immigration and our highest court's split about whether President Obama’s proposal to allow 4 million immigrants to stay here and work here, Lazarus’s message rings sacred. Yes, I know it’s a vision, a dream—two words never to be prefaced by “only” or “just.”

My mother loved broadway musicals. Cole Porter and Irving Berlin were her two favorite idols. The information that Irving Berlin, composer and lyricist for “God Bless America,” first sung by Kate Smith in 1938, the year I was born, had written music for the Lazarus poem only added to my tears.

Mom died 18 years ago. I bet she never knew that music was the only source of income for Berlin, born Israel Isidore Baline (later Berlin, thanks to a typo) in 1888 in Belarus. Music was also the source of income for Mom’s own Jewish father. Berlin’s father had been a cantor in a synagogue. Through his father’s singing vocation Berlin learned to love music—for its spiritual power and its sheer beauty. I don’t know where my grandfather learned to love music, but he made a career of importing classical musical talent—most of it Jewish— from Europe to America.

                                                      Mr. Irving Berlin

With their music, my grandfather and Irving Berlin made this country rich. Neither would have come to America without the invitational hospitality of a Jewish poet named Emma and this country’s foundational principles. 

And neither man would  have come here without being ushered in by the inspired grandeur of the enormous Statue of Liberty, a gift of friendship from the people of France to the people of America. She stands as a symbol of freedom and democracy. She holds a torch of welcome, stands 305’ 1” tall, and weighs in at 27,000 tons. Up close she represents one image of the soul of America.

As a child growing up in Manhattan, I looked up to her as if to a Goddess. I was also a little afraid of her, just because she was so huge and a bit stern looking.

For some of us today the message she carries is frightening. Whom shall we let in? Will we lose our rights, our identities, our properties if we share? Have we become so afraid of “pollutants” from without that we are going to create a toxic closed system within our borders—such that we will stifle—not grow, not evolve?

Lady Liberty, the one Berlin praised in song, in all her glory and her gospel, reflects the God I love and worship, the One who amorizes the whole cosmos, kindling love throughout.  

2016.06.09 Grace Is A Verb

Many alphabets of grace have been created. That’s because grace is both a divine mystery and something everyone experiences, sometimes daily. Usually grace is used as a noun, but it can be a verb, as in “The Queen graced us with her presence.” Or the Pope, or Jesus, or the President, or the one you’d always dreamed would fall head over heels in love with you. 

In seminary my favorite New Testament professor defined grace in an experiential way. I’ve never forgotten his definition and hold it true today. Grace is the experience of being known and loved— at the same time. That sounds passive, and it is because this kind of grace is a gift. When you feel known, through and through to your core—AND AT THE SAME TIME— loved, through and through to the core, you explode. No longer can you say, “They know me but they don’t like me.” Or, “They love me all right, but if they really knew me, they wouldn’t.”  You see what I mean. Grace is a package, and it is divine when it happens to you. Only the verb form can express this explosion of truth in your soul. Like this:

Here is my alphabet:

A  aerate
B   burst
C   clap
D   drop-kick, delve, dazzle
E   eulogize, effervesce
F   fly
G   God/Godde
H   hallow
I    irrigate
J   jolt
K  know
L   lift, love
M  mourn, marry
N   notarize
O   own
P   potentiate
Q   query
R   reconstitute
S   sanitize
T   thank
U   undergird
V   vivify
W   wonder
X   xylophonize
Y   Yes!
Z   zest

My father when he was alive gave me grace when he completely knew and loved me at once, which wasn’t consistent, by the way, but when he did I glowed through and through. Like the time I, hesitantly, told him I wanted to be a priest and launched into a messy and awkward explanation. I didn’t think he would disapprove; I just thought he might think it silly and laugh. Instead, he said, “I understand, Lynda.” (He called me by my full name when he got seriously angry—or graced me with his full presence. )

Here’s Dad the day he married Mom 82 years ago June. Handsome dude! I got his nose and his hair.

2016.06.12 The Quality Of Mercy

A MERCY BLESSING

May God give you:
For every challenge, Wisdom;
For every stony path, Strong Shoes;
For every storm, a Rainbow;
For every hardship, Support;
For every journey, Faithful Companions;
For every concern, Hope;
For every blessing, Gratitude;
For  every prayer, an Answer;

And may all life's seasons bring God's
        gift of MERCY to
You and those you love.
          AMEN
 (Based in part from an Irish Blessing. Michele Aronica, RSM)

Last week I was on retreat at Mercy Center in Madison, CT.  This blessing was framed and in each room. I awoke to it very morning and its truth sank into me. This is all I want and hope for: not that stony paths, challenges, hardship and all the rest will bypass me, but that I will have gifts to help me keep going, especially faithful companions and Hope. Hope, to me is the greatest of the Big Three spiritual gifts: faith, hope, and love. (St. Paul thought love, but he might've been wrong, ya know!)

  When I told someone that I'd been on a silent retreat for a week, she said, "A whole week?"—followed by, "You and Dick?" Some things are quite astonishing. I told her we weren't rigid about it, and that we convened each evening to sit outside and chat, or just sit and gaze at the natural beauty of the sound stretching before us and all the glorious trees that adorn the Mercy property. I added: "You know the silence, after a while, becomes a friend, one whose comfort you begin to appreciate like an over-soul." (Over-soul is a Jewish descriptor of the affects of a true Sabbath rest.)

Mercy is different from compassion or sympathy, or even empathy. Mercy has the power to soothe, season, or soften all life's aches and pains, all our passions, strivings, even the great and righteous judgments we make, and the social justice causes for which we labor.  James, the most practical book in the New Testament, makes a big deal about the unity of faith and deeds—one no good without the other. Yet even James reminds us, almost casually, "For judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy; . . ."    And btw: ". . . mercy triumphs over judgment." (James 2:13b)  [Italics mine]

Biblically, mercy is translated as divine lovingkindness toward all living things. In Hebrew it's chesed, and in Greek eleo, both rooted in the word which means guts or womb (racham and splagchnizoai)".  I do so love words.

And from Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice:

The quality of mercy is not strained;

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
‘T is mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown:
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew, 
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much
To mitigate the justice of thy plea;
Which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice
Must needs give sentence ‘gainst the merchant there.

By all means, do not forget to be merciful with yourself, please. Godde will assist.