March 28th, 2007 - Wednesday Soup & Bread, Service and Choir

More folk attend soup and bread than I anticipated during Spring Break week. I eat with Greg and Peter and we discuss work and family.

Pastor Mark preaches at this evening’s service on a reading from 2 Timothy:

To Timothy, my dearly beloved son: Grace, mercy, and peace, from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.

Mark’s words are filled with wisdom as he talks about looking at the Greek word for PEACE in Mt 10:34 (eirene), and that this word refers to peace and harmony. He talks about harmony in connection with the choir. The peace Paul refers to is not about everyone singing in unison but that we listen to one another and blend our voices to create harmony.

We sing Kelly’s song Quiet Our Souls as one piece of music during our prayers around the cross. His music and lyrics bless that moment of the service.

After the service we form a prayer circle. Pastor Dayle tells us Bethany’s bone marrow biopsy shows she is not currently in remission. Bethany will be home for the weekend and will then go in for another round of chemotherapy. This hits all of us hard. Our prayers go out to the family.

Choir practices on our Holy Week pieces, Pastor Mark’s words fresh in our hearts. Once again Kelly tunes our voices and spirits to the material. The music moves from simple, stark beauty to dramatic and triumphant glory.

The choir will sing next at the end of the Sunday services of Palm Sunday.

March 21st, 2007 - Wednesday Soup & Bread, Service and Choir

I was unable to make the soup and bread meal or the Lent service tonight. I attended choir practice.

There were not as many people at the practice tonight due, no doubt, to the upcoming Spring break.

The combination of collective discipline and humor between Kelly as leader and the choir impresses me tonight, as it often does. Kelly knows the sound the choir needs to achieve and communicates the emphasis, pronunciation and clarity of diction in regards to what we are to sing. Kelly can quickly move the choir into an understanding of each piece and an apprehension of the beauty and vision that likely moved the composer when writing the music.

We spent time on each of the pieces we will be performing. Each piece has unique challenges and strengths that become clear with each successive practice.

Certainly my vantage point is skewed towards the bass section since that is where I am singing. I appreciate the strength of Greg’s music reading abilities to reinforce what I read in the music while we are singing. And in each section there are singers whose voices are astounding. I am in awe of how many singers we have in the choir and their collective strength considering the size of the congregation.

The other central pillar for the success of the choir I am now seeing is our performance schedule. Last Sunday’s performance brought clarity and finality, for now, to God is Our Refuge and Strength. The choir showcases statements of faith that are a combination of composition and performance and the listeners. When these musical performance pieces reveal the faith of composer, performer and listener simultaneously there is a worship experience that tugs at the core of the relationship of man and God and reveals another piece of it.

March 18th, 2007

Christ be with me / Christ within me

Christ behind me / Christ before me

Christ beside me / Christ to win me
Christ to comfort me and restore me
Christ beneath me / Christ above me

Christ in quiet / Christ in danger

Christ in hearts of all that love me
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger

--St. Patrick's Breastplate

St. Patrick's day was celebrated yesterday. The Gospel for today's services was the story of the Prodigal Son. Pastor Dayle asked who we identified with most in the story, the elder brother who stayed home, the father or the prodigal son?

Pastor Dayle preached to the point that the father's actions was a win / win situation that the older brother did not see. I was surprised when she went on to suggest that the elder brother did not see that justice would come in time because the younger brother would have to work harder and longer because of the prodigal lifestyle he indulged in.

What Pastor Dayle suggested to me could be extended to a win / win /win situation. Obviously the relationship between the prodigal son and the father changed but, even though it is only implied in the story, I can’t help but feel the relationship will change for the better between the father and the elder brother as well without the younger son paying penance for bad choices.

To listen to the elder brother’s words, he has worked like a slave (or a servant depending on the translation) to his father in the fields. He has not seen the side of his father that is clear in the story. Perhaps he now understands that all his father has is his in a way he did not before. He can work not from obligation but from gratitude and joy.

There possibilities the elder brother has open now he did not see before. The celebrations with the elder brother’s friends can happen. We all can be niggardly as we work and build our lives and not celebrate when we should. The elder brother puts this on the father but now there is another life for him as well of joy instead of servitude. It is the elder brother’s life to do with as he wants because of his father's understanding and generosity.

The choir sang God Is Our Refuge and Strength at both services for the Psalmody. The congregation sang A Mighty Fortress is Our God with the choir during the performance. There was a drama about it; a beginning, middle and particularly end that caught the ear. There is, for me, a joy in singing the words to A Mighty Fortress is Our God that I grew up with in four part harmony. This is another example of the constant struggle between tradition and reformation that need to be balanced.

In the Adult Education hour we are currently engaged in prayer exercises from Brent Dahlsing’s Grounded in Prayer. It was surprising how many differences each person has in my group regarding the prayer they find effective.

The book addresses old questions about prayer. Many are doing the daily exercises as they are set out in the book. This focuses on intercessory prayer and intercessory prayers do not come easily to me. The book addresses some of those difficulties. I believe expectations and answers I have held regarding prayer are part of what is so troublesome for me. I want to focus more on the process rather than outcome of prayer. There is something about praying and then looking for God's answer with a certainty that the answer will be recognized that I need to understand.

There will be more sessions and more chances to compare our understanding of prayer.

March 14th, 2007 - Wednesday Soup & Bread, Service and Choir

Daylight Savings Time changes the atmosphere of Creator Wednesday Lent services completely. In An Actor Prepares author Stanislavski talks about the importance of lighting and how inclusive everything and everyone can feel within a circle of light. The evening services where darkness has fallen around the congregation makes me think of Stanislavski’s words. It concentrates one’s focus and you feel a part of it all in a very special way. Today I see the opposite.

The evening starts with another Lent dinner of soup and bread. This dinner is another foretaste of the feast to come. There is a relaxed table fellowship where the silliness or the routine stories of everyday life are shared perhaps more than the sacred. Accepting that is a part of learning to be a part of these meals.

The silences in worship are powerful in different ways than in past weeks. Today I feel my individuality rather than feeling a part of the congregation. Mary comes to worship and I feel her presence throughout reminding me of talks we have been having about prayer, worship and the church recently. I am constantly grateful that Mary and I have never disagreed on the spiritual importance of what we have experienced in our lives.

David Lee’s Kyrie is the musical highlight of the service for me.

Lastly, we have choir practice. Kelly announces the choir is performing God Is Our Refuge and Strength on Sunday. It immediately focuses the group. We practice the piece and cover the material until we feel comfortable with what we will perform. David plays piano and that frees Kelly to direct the vocals. We have practiced this before and there is a “choral memory” that helps us out immensely. Undoubtedly Handel’s Hallelujah will work for us in the same way.

The other piece we practice tonight is Now, O Death, Where Is Thy Sting? There is strength to this music that was present tonight.

I am looking forward to all our future performances.

There is truth I continue to grow to know at Creator. My life is centered around God and Jesus far more profoundly and far differently than I previously recognized.

In the last entry I was exploring the memories the green LBW hymnal had for me. The hymnal began to be used at a time when I began to search for God outside community worship.

Creator reconnected me to community worship. My journey was tied to others in a powerful, mysterious way.

For many years I desired a mystical experience of God and, I suppose, in my mind there were expectations of what that experience would be like. Worship at Creator has given me new eyes over time to recognize transitory God-filled moments and give them the importance they deserve.

Each is different. I remember a story my dad told me when there was difficulty with my birth. He was afraid I would die and began to pray for my life to God. Dad made a promise in that prayer that if I lived he would insure my life was devoted to God. Afterwards he would muse "I don't know why it didn't occur to me that I should have promised to devote my life to God." I have always felt there was something binding about that prayer. I thought about going to seminary for a time but I felt unsure of what I believed at that time and let that dictate my decision.

At Creator I learned that different God-filled moments point to different aspects of God and my relationship to the Trinity.

For example, there was a moment struck with ecstasy during the worship centered around my son's baptism. I knew affirmation and connection I had never experienced before.

There was a moment struck with drama when then Vicar Amanda carried a bowl of fire around the congregation during a Pentecost worship. It tied to something ancient and true.

A moment filled with the recognition of missing God's purpose occurred when Pastor Dayle laid prostrate during the Lent worship service when the Iraq War started. I understood the cultural complicity I shared in the events that were unfolding.

Most recently I felt this during the RIC service at Central. This was a moment struck with mission. Read the blog entry for what this moment was like last January.

All of these moments are extremely personal and subjective. Simultaneously I know them to be a community experience at the same time.

This understanding of God's presence seems to come and go in our lives. From reality to dream and back again. I was reading Marcus Borg's new book Jesus and he described America as being simultaneously Christ haunted and Christ forgetting.

It seems true personally as well as culturally.

March 4th, 2007

The gospel today (Luke13:31-35) used a metaphor for God of the mother hen. Pr. Dayle preached about the text wearing a feather boa to remind us of the wings of a mother hen. She pointed out two images the metaphor conjures up; the mothering hen and the brooding hen.

The brooding hen goes after the fox trying to attack her young and the brooding hen senses danger and will react to a threat to protect the chicks.

The mothering hen scampers after the little chicks with wings outspread and brings them to herself to keep them warm and to protect them. Interesting images of God.

This Sunday we said farewell to the old green hymnals. The new ELW will replace them next week. The farewell called to my mind my own "smells and bells", what Al talked Wednesday (that I recorded in the last blog entry). These are sensory links to powerful memories.

The scent of past hymnals bring back many childhood memories of past churches. The "bell" equivalent of a sensory link is the Kyrie from the red hymnal and the Create in Me a Clean Heart that was then a part of the liturgy. The Kyrie, to my child ears, had an ancient sound. I could imagine this being sung for a thousand years. Create in Me a Clean Heart had music that matched the words completely. As we sang it the song seemed to cleanse the congregation.

The LBW (Lutheran Book of Worship) green hymnal associates in my mind with personal time in the wilderness. Almost immediately after my confirmation my spiritual journey and questions were met with disapproval by my pastor at that time, as well as the members of the church I then attended. The questions I grappled with took me away from what I was supposed to believe in their eyes. I tried to work through my understanding of what resurrection meant to me with some questions to my pastor and he told me "You can't ask the questions you are asking and be a Christian."

So I stopped sharing the spiritual path I was on with anyone I worshipped with but continued to participate in worship. The the church changed hymnals to the green LBW just as I left college. Everything in my life at that time pointed me away from the church I knew in my childhood. The change in hymnals cut me away from the liturgy of childhood and the importance of worship diminished.

I began my spiritual search in a larger context. After comparative religion courses in college and reading authors like Kerouac and Salinger I was ready to pursue what other religions offered.

February 28th, 2007

Wednesday night. Soup and bread, worship and choir.

Soup and conversation with Al, Mark, Paul and Ruth was great. Al and Mark talked about Lutheran and Episcopalian differences and similarities in worship. Al confessed he sometimes misses the "bells and smells" of Episcopal worship.

As we gathered for worship my mind was filled with thoughts of faithful people engaged in God's ongoing endeavor. This service is filled with silence, the world around us is dark. There is a solemn focus of attention.

The reading this evening is from Matthew 15:

21 Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. 22 A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, "Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is suffering terribly from demon-possession." 23 Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, "Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us." 24 He answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel." 25 The woman came and knelt before him. "Lord, help me!" she said. 26 He replied, "It is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to their dogs." 27 "Yes, Lord," she said, "but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table." 28 Then Jesus answered, "Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted." And her daughter was healed from that very hour.

A hard, powerful text that speaks to how we are to help each other. Lighting candles around the cross those words are still in our ears as we sing Kelly's Quiet Our Souls and In the Lord.

Kelly is the choir leader again. We practice God is Our Refuge and Strength; Now, O Death, Where is thy Sting and Stay with Us. Quickly we make progress on our performance of the pieces and Kelly lays out the plans for choir performances during Lent and Holy Week. It is nice to see so many returning to choir practice. There is teasing, the fun and friendship that I have come to associate with choir over the years.