I don't think I have much to say at the moment. So just going to see what comes as I type. I am thinking and mulling over many things. There is the vision of Reconciler and my role as both pastor of Reconciler and prior of the Community of the Holy Trinity. Some of what I am puzzling through is that for me my being both pastor and prior effects my experience and interaction with both groups, yet does not seem to be that much in the consciousness of the members of Reconciler or Holy Trinity. So to some extent it seems at the moment that there is the vision and ministry of these two groups that in someways overlap, but for the groups are distinct and are in my being pastor and prior are united. There is then a sense that my ministry and call isn't defined by Reconciler or Holy Trinity, but that there is something else that encompass (at least) both. One thing I think I am having difficulty getting my mind around is how to honor the distinct vision and mission of the two groups and at the same time keep in mind my distinct ministry that is also bounded and defined by the vision and mission of these two institutions. And this isn't figuring it out how to make it happen but to give articulation of what simply is the case.
Also, I have enlightenment on the brain. There has been a conversation about enlightenment and the art and films of Jordorowsky. One party of this conversation was very much extolling enlightenment as nondual. Which seems to me to name enlightenment in primarily Buddhist or Hindu terms, in which ultimate reality or the source of all things is a non-personal absolute oneness. Which is not Jewish or Christian cosmology. Also, it does not seem to me that the enlightenment experience that surrealism seeks or seeks to produce or induce is nondual. In fact I would argue that it is very much a dualistic enlightenment experience. Which then makes me wonder to what degree surrealism is or is not still very dependent on Christian mysticism. Certainly it played a large(ish) role for Dali, though he is not the surrealist movement in its entirety.
Well that is it for now.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Thoughts After ECRA Meeting Today.
Today was the monthly meeting of the Edgewater Community Religious Association (ECRA), an association of religious leaders of various faiths though mostly clergy of Christian denominations. We had a very large gathering today. Possibly the largest I have attended.
At this meeting one of the things that was discussed was the possible closing down of the Summerset Nursing Home in the neighborhood. Which actually brought up many concerns that we all had about the nursing care facilities in our neighborhood. the question I have is why I and the rest of us are only talking about this now that one of the larger facilities is in the news for violations and the threat of shutting down the facility? It does kind of seem that without the media attention our own observations and concerns weren't entirely observable and noticeable to ourselves. this seems a tad strange and there is something wrong about that.
I ask this because I had concerns due to people I have met and had coffee with who are in one or more of some of the nursing care facilities, and had discussed it with people but nothing more. I personally wasn't sure how to move forward. But something did seem to change in my sense of the issue as we discussed the news reports and talked about steps we could take to bring attention to the larger issues than just what has been in the news over Summerset.
At this meeting one of the things that was discussed was the possible closing down of the Summerset Nursing Home in the neighborhood. Which actually brought up many concerns that we all had about the nursing care facilities in our neighborhood. the question I have is why I and the rest of us are only talking about this now that one of the larger facilities is in the news for violations and the threat of shutting down the facility? It does kind of seem that without the media attention our own observations and concerns weren't entirely observable and noticeable to ourselves. this seems a tad strange and there is something wrong about that.
I ask this because I had concerns due to people I have met and had coffee with who are in one or more of some of the nursing care facilities, and had discussed it with people but nothing more. I personally wasn't sure how to move forward. But something did seem to change in my sense of the issue as we discussed the news reports and talked about steps we could take to bring attention to the larger issues than just what has been in the news over Summerset.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Lent and Fasting
I don't remember much about the sermon this past Sunday. Reflected some about the meanings of wilderness and desert. Then took the three temptations of Jesus and attempted to show how they are at root common human temptations. Through those two things I hoped to present Lent as a boundary time, in which we can encounter ourselves and God, and not a time of self-denial for the sake of the feat of restraint and fasting. A colleague of mine and fellow Covenant pastor blogged about this to some degree. And a number of people have wondered about this taking on. Lent is so connected in peoples consciousness with giving something up for Lent, that we seem to not think of why it is that Lent is associated with giving up something.
Lent as I have said recently in more than one place and occasion is associated with giving small things up, because Lent is a fast. The giving up coffee or chocolate or meat for lent is a form of fast. Fasting and Lent are associated because fasting is also a sign of repentance, as well as a means to turn ones focus on prayer, away from satisfying bodily needs. What I take from all this is that Lent is to be a time when we stop and look at what has been dominating our lives and turn aside from those things that perhaps in only small ways have been distracting us or leading us away from God. Lent is a time of repentance, that a time set aside to recognize and in recognizing turn from ways of being that have gotten in the way of our call before God. Fasting tells us that even good and necessary things can so distract us, and that at times we need to turn aside from those things to focus and pray and repent.
r
We aren't to give things up for the sake of giving things up as if taking things out of our diet or life automatically make us more spiritual or prepare us for being formed into the image of Christ. Though, God can certainly use even things poorly motivated. In the end Lent is a time to turn and return, to let go of ourselves into the embrace of God.
Lent as I have said recently in more than one place and occasion is associated with giving small things up, because Lent is a fast. The giving up coffee or chocolate or meat for lent is a form of fast. Fasting and Lent are associated because fasting is also a sign of repentance, as well as a means to turn ones focus on prayer, away from satisfying bodily needs. What I take from all this is that Lent is to be a time when we stop and look at what has been dominating our lives and turn aside from those things that perhaps in only small ways have been distracting us or leading us away from God. Lent is a time of repentance, that a time set aside to recognize and in recognizing turn from ways of being that have gotten in the way of our call before God. Fasting tells us that even good and necessary things can so distract us, and that at times we need to turn aside from those things to focus and pray and repent.
r
We aren't to give things up for the sake of giving things up as if taking things out of our diet or life automatically make us more spiritual or prepare us for being formed into the image of Christ. Though, God can certainly use even things poorly motivated. In the end Lent is a time to turn and return, to let go of ourselves into the embrace of God.
Monday, February 22, 2010
The weekend
Over the weekend the community had a room shuffle. We are preparing to have 7 people in the community house. The most we have ever had and we had hoped that we would already be in the second living space by now, but we are still awaiting some construction that has yet to be done before we move in. so 4 of the current six members were moving rooms so we will have room for the seventh person who has been away for the past 4 months. Until we can move into the second space, which hopefully will be soon. That took up Saturday and we are still working on finishing that up.
Before that it had been a full week, with Ash Wednesday and a number of appointments, so I was not able to work as much as I would have like on my sermon for Sunday. On Saturday morning I had no real idea what I was going to preaching on the first Sunday of Lent. But one thing about moving is that one can also rehearse lines of thought for a sermon, or so I discovered on Saturday. By Saturday afternoon I had realized that the core of what I was going to preach I had already written in Reconciler's bi-weekly e-newsletter.
If you think I had some time Saturday evening to work on the sermon you are mistaken as it was closing night for the Busch Fest and cast party and birthday celebration of the stage manager and props guy. We left there somewhat early but I was very tired, so we went right to bed when we came home.
Sunday then was spent getting the sermon together. And it did come together though not as well thought out as I'd have liked, but it did prompt some good discussion and a couple of conversations after the service. Sometimes I think that the less polished sermons invite more engagement, if I leave some holes in the presentation then people are able to fill in the blanks left. I perhaps need to think about that more and see if there are ways to achieve this even in a more polished sermon.
So given that weekend I did not post anything, as is obvious, and I think the demonstrates why. I really didn't have any energy to post anything here over the weekend.
Before that it had been a full week, with Ash Wednesday and a number of appointments, so I was not able to work as much as I would have like on my sermon for Sunday. On Saturday morning I had no real idea what I was going to preaching on the first Sunday of Lent. But one thing about moving is that one can also rehearse lines of thought for a sermon, or so I discovered on Saturday. By Saturday afternoon I had realized that the core of what I was going to preach I had already written in Reconciler's bi-weekly e-newsletter.
If you think I had some time Saturday evening to work on the sermon you are mistaken as it was closing night for the Busch Fest and cast party and birthday celebration of the stage manager and props guy. We left there somewhat early but I was very tired, so we went right to bed when we came home.
Sunday then was spent getting the sermon together. And it did come together though not as well thought out as I'd have liked, but it did prompt some good discussion and a couple of conversations after the service. Sometimes I think that the less polished sermons invite more engagement, if I leave some holes in the presentation then people are able to fill in the blanks left. I perhaps need to think about that more and see if there are ways to achieve this even in a more polished sermon.
So given that weekend I did not post anything, as is obvious, and I think the demonstrates why. I really didn't have any energy to post anything here over the weekend.
Friday, February 19, 2010
Bi-vocational?
Vocation... what is my vocation and do I have two of them because my pastoral ministry doesn't pay the bills? In seminary we talked about our sense of call, we all knew what we were talking about, the call to pastoral ministry. Yet we use "vocation" also as synonym for profession or career. This usage of the term is apparently thanks to Martin Luther (so I am told I haven't actually studied this) who took the word to apply to any work because God calls us not only to be religious or clergy but into every part of life and the world. Secular or religious professions can be equally a calling from God. Somehow this sense that God's call is in all walks of life seems to have come to mean that what one is called to will be that by which one earns a living. Or so it seems when I am said to be "bi-vocational" because the pastoral ministry doesn't earn me a living.
I feel that we use this term sloppily, to mean a pastor who either earns all or most of her or his income by means other than ordained ministry. Some pastors who make a living may have a second vocation or profession that earns them a living, but not all. I do not have a second vocation. I do other things, some more or less related to my pastoral vocation some largely unrelated in order to along with my wife bring together an income we can live on (she makes most of the money we have).
So it seems that somewhere along the line as vocation, as God's call in all of life, came to be associated with the occupation one has in order to make a living. On some level this "secular" connotation of vocation is in tension with the "theological" connotation. My call, my vocation, is pastoral and it is the only one I have, through following that call of God, it currently does not earn me a living. That is not being bi-vocational.
My aunt pointed out recently that this was something like Paul. Which caused me to imagine Paul's reaction if someone would have tried to tell him that he wasn't only called to be an Apostle but equally and seperately a tent maker. Somehow it seems that Paul's occupation served his apostleship, it was a skill something he did in order not to burden those God had entrusted to him. His vocation was singular and all served that vocation as Apostle to the Gentiles. Or so it seems to me, and in the very least even if one could argue that it was not so for Paul it is for me.
This is actually part of my struggle: I sense that all I do, everything I am is being ordered around this call to pastoral ministry and its working itself out in leading the Community of the Holy Trinity and Church of Jesus Christ, Reconciler. Part of my would feel comfortable with the situation in which I could say I have a second calling, to be able to say that I am actually bi-vocational. The singularity of my vocation is a little unnerving, in part because it effects and orients even that which is beyond "church".
I feel that we use this term sloppily, to mean a pastor who either earns all or most of her or his income by means other than ordained ministry. Some pastors who make a living may have a second vocation or profession that earns them a living, but not all. I do not have a second vocation. I do other things, some more or less related to my pastoral vocation some largely unrelated in order to along with my wife bring together an income we can live on (she makes most of the money we have).
So it seems that somewhere along the line as vocation, as God's call in all of life, came to be associated with the occupation one has in order to make a living. On some level this "secular" connotation of vocation is in tension with the "theological" connotation. My call, my vocation, is pastoral and it is the only one I have, through following that call of God, it currently does not earn me a living. That is not being bi-vocational.
My aunt pointed out recently that this was something like Paul. Which caused me to imagine Paul's reaction if someone would have tried to tell him that he wasn't only called to be an Apostle but equally and seperately a tent maker. Somehow it seems that Paul's occupation served his apostleship, it was a skill something he did in order not to burden those God had entrusted to him. His vocation was singular and all served that vocation as Apostle to the Gentiles. Or so it seems to me, and in the very least even if one could argue that it was not so for Paul it is for me.
This is actually part of my struggle: I sense that all I do, everything I am is being ordered around this call to pastoral ministry and its working itself out in leading the Community of the Holy Trinity and Church of Jesus Christ, Reconciler. Part of my would feel comfortable with the situation in which I could say I have a second calling, to be able to say that I am actually bi-vocational. The singularity of my vocation is a little unnerving, in part because it effects and orients even that which is beyond "church".
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Exposure: I'd much rather be waiting and watching in the shadows.
I already feel a bit exposed by this daily discipline. This already feels like I have walked into a place with no shade, where the sun beats down on the ground with unrelenting intensity. I should perhaps explain, since I don't have that many readers of this blog, to whom am I exposed, my wife asked? Though it is more the choosing to be out in the open. I have approached this blog much like I approach spending a night at a goth club. At a goth club if you arrive early say 11 pm you will find maybe one or two people on the dance floor most wandering and lurking at the edges of the dance floor, in the darkness away from the various lights of the dance floor. you'll greet anyone you know but you'll stand or sit on the edge, waiting, watching. The ideal goth club is one that has either a slight labyrinthine character whith seating away from the dance floor or plenty of seating near and around the dance floor but still in the shadows of the club, places where one can simply wait and watch. I am often among the few who will venture out on the dance floor, but only if I love to dance to this song, but then when the song is done, I'll go back to the edge of the dance floor and wait. Eventually on a good night soon the club will fill, and then suddenly it seems all these lurking Goths are on the dance floor together all having discovered that they just have to dance to this song if the DJ is good there will be several songs in a row that one dances to before returning to the edges to watch and wait in the shadows of the club.
This is something like how I have approached this blog (and I suppose my approach to the various social media of the interwebs as well): I may post something if some thought of event simply has captured my attention and wont let me go. But then It will be several days or even weeks before there is something else I must write about. But then there are periods where I will write a couple to several posts to this blog in a row, before going back into the shadows and wait and watch.
Perhaps now it is clear why this posting daily feels a bit like finding oneself in the desert sun exposed squinting wondering why I chose to leave the shelter of the dark and overgrown forest.
This is something like how I have approached this blog (and I suppose my approach to the various social media of the interwebs as well): I may post something if some thought of event simply has captured my attention and wont let me go. But then It will be several days or even weeks before there is something else I must write about. But then there are periods where I will write a couple to several posts to this blog in a row, before going back into the shadows and wait and watch.
Perhaps now it is clear why this posting daily feels a bit like finding oneself in the desert sun exposed squinting wondering why I chose to leave the shelter of the dark and overgrown forest.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Lenten Spiritual Discipline and Vocation
Lent has begun and I am taking up blogging as a spiritual discipline, and am looking at blogging each day during Lent. Part of what I hope to do in taking up blogging is to unpack and explore why I have taken this up as a Lenten discipline. Part of this is that, as the subtitle of this blog indicates, at least a purpose of this blog is to explore my sense of vocation. As the Title of this blog indicates this vocation engages church and world in ways that are somewhat peculiar, or in the least not what is generally expected, the coincidence of pastor and goth, continue to surprise people and cause at least at first some discomfort. That I engage both the church and the goth scene and subculture simultaneously (along with other urban subcultures and scenes), creates a number of tensions, as well as fairly consistent puzzlement, admittedly even from myself on occasion.
I think I have found myself of late resisting aspects of the peculiarity of my vocation. I am perhaps seeking to avoid a certain public nature of my calling. As the Community of the Holy Trinity and Church of Jesus Christ, Reconciler have taken more form, the pressure of my pastoral ministry in both places has caused for a greater and greater desire for withdrawal. As I enter Lent oddly enough, I am suspecting that this desire for withdrawal is avoidance of the complex nature of my vocation and its public nature. Thus it seems that an appropriate Lenten discipline is not to withdraw (though I have planned a spiritual retreat in Lent) but to engage my vocation and to do so in this public space. this is at least in part seeking not only to explore my vocation but also to confront the temptations of this peculiar call.
I hope that this may be of some interest and perhaps even help to others, who perhaps find themselves in a matrix of communities and tensions between worlds in their call to serve Christ and the Church. And I ask for your prayers for me a sinner as I undertake this discipline of engagement. I also invite dialogue and conversation.
I think I have found myself of late resisting aspects of the peculiarity of my vocation. I am perhaps seeking to avoid a certain public nature of my calling. As the Community of the Holy Trinity and Church of Jesus Christ, Reconciler have taken more form, the pressure of my pastoral ministry in both places has caused for a greater and greater desire for withdrawal. As I enter Lent oddly enough, I am suspecting that this desire for withdrawal is avoidance of the complex nature of my vocation and its public nature. Thus it seems that an appropriate Lenten discipline is not to withdraw (though I have planned a spiritual retreat in Lent) but to engage my vocation and to do so in this public space. this is at least in part seeking not only to explore my vocation but also to confront the temptations of this peculiar call.
I hope that this may be of some interest and perhaps even help to others, who perhaps find themselves in a matrix of communities and tensions between worlds in their call to serve Christ and the Church. And I ask for your prayers for me a sinner as I undertake this discipline of engagement. I also invite dialogue and conversation.
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
Priestly Goth Preaching Chronicles, XVI
It has been a long time since I posted on this thread. This past Sunday felt like a sort of crescendo in my preaching that has been building since Christ the King Sunday. You can find the outline of the sermon here. I have outlines or manuscripts from most of the sermons between Christ the King and this Sunday, and I plan to post them on Reconciler's blog eventually.
I didn't want to preach that sermon Sunday evening. I did not want to preach it because for the first time I was preaching on something that I know I live into at best only in some small fraction of what I was calling us all to in the sermon. For the first time, as I prepared I felt something of the hypocrite. How do you preach something that you are unsure your own life exemplifies. And yet with such an overwhelming call and reality, how could anyone live fully into it, without also having attained perfection. So perhaps there is in the end something hypocritical about preaching the Gospel, for in the end if one is really preaching the Gospel, it will at least some of the times be a word one needs to hear from God, as much as anyone perhaps more than any one else in the congregation. Perhaps, knowing that what one is preaching is a word to oneself as much as to anyone else means that the preaching is not hypocritical. For a hypocrite is one who believes they have everything or attained a place of judgment over others and thus have achieved a perfection, but whose lives don't match their judgment. A hypocrite is blind to their own flaws.
All the same it wasn't comfortable to encourage people to open themselves up to Jesus Christ and Love, and allow themselves to be dispossessed of all they own even their own identities. In the aftermath this week I am struggling with sorting out how I am holding on: How do I seek to own myself, and things around me? How is it that love may release me from all ownership so that I may belong whole and only to God? I'm not there yet. What I preached on Sunday I have not mastered, in fact I am only at most a beginner, and perhaps I have not even begun.
I wonder if this is why some preachers stick to a certain type of repetition: stay with what they know, what they have achieved, because to do otherwise is to stand in the pulpit before God in fear and trembling. Yet, oddly enough in the preaching of this sermon I experienced such joy, and ecstasy that I have rarely experienced. As I preached none of this anxiety and reflection existed, only the word of the liberating power of a love that dispossesses of all we possesses, so we may live free in God and in the world. Now to trust that power and this love in each moment.
I didn't want to preach that sermon Sunday evening. I did not want to preach it because for the first time I was preaching on something that I know I live into at best only in some small fraction of what I was calling us all to in the sermon. For the first time, as I prepared I felt something of the hypocrite. How do you preach something that you are unsure your own life exemplifies. And yet with such an overwhelming call and reality, how could anyone live fully into it, without also having attained perfection. So perhaps there is in the end something hypocritical about preaching the Gospel, for in the end if one is really preaching the Gospel, it will at least some of the times be a word one needs to hear from God, as much as anyone perhaps more than any one else in the congregation. Perhaps, knowing that what one is preaching is a word to oneself as much as to anyone else means that the preaching is not hypocritical. For a hypocrite is one who believes they have everything or attained a place of judgment over others and thus have achieved a perfection, but whose lives don't match their judgment. A hypocrite is blind to their own flaws.
All the same it wasn't comfortable to encourage people to open themselves up to Jesus Christ and Love, and allow themselves to be dispossessed of all they own even their own identities. In the aftermath this week I am struggling with sorting out how I am holding on: How do I seek to own myself, and things around me? How is it that love may release me from all ownership so that I may belong whole and only to God? I'm not there yet. What I preached on Sunday I have not mastered, in fact I am only at most a beginner, and perhaps I have not even begun.
I wonder if this is why some preachers stick to a certain type of repetition: stay with what they know, what they have achieved, because to do otherwise is to stand in the pulpit before God in fear and trembling. Yet, oddly enough in the preaching of this sermon I experienced such joy, and ecstasy that I have rarely experienced. As I preached none of this anxiety and reflection existed, only the word of the liberating power of a love that dispossesses of all we possesses, so we may live free in God and in the world. Now to trust that power and this love in each moment.
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