September 7th, 2007 - LCNA meeting

It is fascinating to see how relationships, how groups and communities are formed. The Lutherans Concerned North America, at least the Portland Chapter, does this extremely well. Before the meeting everyone was talking with someone else, wrapped up in finding out more about one another and catching up on what everybody had been up to.

Many people were lamenting how quickly the end of summer was coming. In a conversation I was having with Gene and Joan, Joan said she had heard that if you plan and do eight memorable activities over a summer it will stay in your memory as a summer that did not just slip by.

This was not a summer that will just slip by for many in the LCNA. A majority of this meeting was worship with memories of the Churchwide Assembly in Chicago recounted as part of the service. We began by singing All Are Welcome. The Haugen piece connected this with last January’s powerful RIC Sunday worship service that moved and inspired so many I am coming to know.

Jim Morrell’s stories of this summer’s struggles and reconciliations in Chicago quickly connected with the group. He was one of three voting members attending the meeting tonight. He began by having the voting members stand, then the volunteers and those who supported through prayer and by being part of the Goodsoil prayer vigil. Everyone was standing in the end.

Many who were in Chicago at the meeting went to the Goodsoil Worship on August 8th and revealed the wonder of that shared experience. It was not an official Churchwide Assembly event and still over 650 people attended and Bradley Schmeling preached.

For many Chicago showed an early sign of a shift from the past in the church. Many, like Jules, have been involved in this struggle for over three decades and tonight he recalled a story about someone telling him how God looks for holy impatience at times.

After the memories, the service ended in prayer.

There was more fellowship, a little business and additional conversations after that. The mission and ministry was in the air, together with the care and respect the members appear to have for one another. I don’t know if it is the nature of who these participants are at their core but there is no exclusion or feeling of being an outsider. I have attended only one other meeting but there was only invitation at each meeting before, during and after.

During worship we drew "heartstones" with words to reflect on as we lit candles. The word on mine was recovery. I could have looked the meaning for recovery in the book but, for me, it was about needing to find again something that was precious.

There is a Walt Whitman quote from Leaves of Grass I thought of during and after this meeting. I also thought about this quote after the last Creator worship I attended and during a meeting for planning Adult Education last Wednesday. Since this is from the poem Song of the Open Road I used to think of the travel as being much more literal than I do now:

Camerado, I give you my hand!
I give you my love more precious than money
I give you myself before preaching or law;
Will you give me yourself? Will you travel with me?
Shall we stick to each other as long as we live?