Art Festival, Conferences and Hermits

The Milwaukee Avenue Arts Festival is 4 days away (well 4 1/2 as the festival begins at 4 pm Friday). I am somehow not freaked out about that this morning. I have a great deal to do still on my installation art piece not the least of which is to write the largest Icon I have written on site. I think, I hope the mural space has been constructed will find that out in a little bit. Writing the two icons last week went well and Kate says it went fast, it did not feel fast but I will need to probably work both quickly and long to finish the mural.

Given the time this takes and all I have wondered about whether I should have taken this on. Are there other things I should have been focusing on, or doing. There certainly are other things. I missed the Ekklesia Project Gathering, which I and one or two people from Reconciler were thinking of attending this year. I always think of going, and never have. I don't go to conferences generally. About every other year I attend North Park's Symposium on the Theological Interpretation of Scripture and once made it to *CINO's Practicing Resurrection (the first one actually). I am actually a little puzzled and overwhelmed by the number of conferences there are in the various circles I am in. I don't know how people make it to conferences nor why it is such a priority. This isn't a criticism, though somewhere there may be a critique of conference mentality. Of course if I were in the Academy I would be attending the conference(s) of my respective discipline. AAR and SBL for Religious Studies and Biblical and Theological studies, yet as a Religious Studies major and the seminary student never attended.

What I do instead is something like the Milwaukee Avenue Arts Festival, or try my hand and making a movie one summer (as Kate and I did the summer of 2005, and having spent the previous year writing the thing with some friends). I am prior of an intentional Christian community and pastor a small church, maintain some semblance of relationship with pastors in the Edgewater neighborhood, and currently trying to establish a relationship with service providers for the mentally ill and homeless. In all of this the place of art in faith and my life as a pastor and prior, the role of the local church coming along side service providers etc. is enough to keep me occupied and with enough to theologically cogitate and mediate on without going to a conference to hear about other peoples thoughts on other possibly related subjects and experiences. Don't get me wrong a very large part of me wants to do just that. I want to engage others talk about what is going on hear what others, and yet I just can't be bothered, it all seems like so much noise and distraction.

A friend of mine pointed out when I expressed some of this that conferences are the way a privileged affluent culture communicated with itself. Conferences are ways we communicate and network, we let each other know what is going on. It has it pluses and its downsides. This lead me to think more seriously about a thought that came into my head as the Ekklesia Gathering was going on and that same friend was tweeting the conference and I was wishing just a little that I was there: I am a hermit, a new hermit perhaps (something along the new monasticism). I say this partially tongue in cheek, but there is something here. This thought was elicited by reading on the blog Mystagogy that a certain hermit on some Island in the Mediteranian one the Greek Isles I think, is spending his time restoring a building (that either was a monastery or the hermit is restoring for the purpose of it becoming a monastery), the hermit works on the building and apparently also hangs with the local villagers, who love the hermit. Something about this seemed analogous to my experience as the Priestly Goth, who is pastor and prior, does crazy things like agrees to be part of the Big Sculpture Garden at the Milwaukee Avenue arts fest and wanders about Chicago. I am building something, preparing a space for others. Often it feels like that, others who are yet to realize they need or want the space perhaps. The difference though is actually some are already there, and then there are the villagers, the fellow goths and artists who I run off and do things with from time to time. I need to focus on these local tasks, this singular and lonely tasks, like being in the Milwaukee Avenue Arts Festival. Reconciler isn't there, I alone. I have invited members to connect with this but this is a solitary task, I don't understand it entirely, not sure what or why, except that when I was asked, there was no question that I was supposed to do this.

So maybe I am a very odd hermit, a hermit in a city who is also prior and pastor. but there is something solitary about this, something that I also invite others into, something I am called to build for others. But saying that seems a little nuts, but are hermits ever sane? I don't know.

A time of Surprises at St. Gregory's Abbey

My retreat at St Gregory's Abbey I think yielded what I had hoped but not what I expected. I went with the intention to being open to God's leading in my role of pastor of Reconciler and prior of Holy Trinity. And I had a very gentle lesson in being open to what God might be doing in the moment when things did not go as I planned or necessarily wanted for my time at the Abbey.

Things did not go as I would have had them on my way and first couple of hours at the monastery. First I left about 15 minutes later than I intended, but I had planned to leave so as to arrive at Union station early. I did not leave early but with still ten minutes to spare, so more or less just on time since I needed to collect my tickets. It was a little nerve wracking but it turned out I had enough time. Then the train arrived on time and the monk who was picking me up was late and had been hoping he could count on that this line of the Amtrak tends to be late. But we had a quite tasty meal at an Indian restaurant in Kalamazoo. I think just about some of the best Indian food I have had, and that is saying something. This was my first surprise. I had not expected to find Indian food in Kalamozoo that rivaled what I have had in Chicago and L.A.

Once at the Abbey I ended up being locked out of my room because house keeping didn't unlock the room until I had been at the Abbey for an hour and a half. This disrupted what has become my pattern: unpack, make bed setup the desk for study, then go to the church to pray and ask the prayers of St Benedict, St Gregory and Virgin Mary for my time at the abbey and then to the library and check some books out. Too my surprise, once I established that I was not going to get right into my room, I was able to settle in anyway, went to the church and prayed and came back and read a book I had brought along until the bell rang for None. After None I was able to get into my room and settle in the rest of the way.

The most surprising thing was that I was more social than I usually am on such retreats and it enriched my times of silence meditation and reading/study. The first night after supper I ended up talking for about a half an hour with one of the other guests, who seemed like he needed someone to talk to. Then the evening Kate arrived one of he monks, Br. Cuthbert took us into town to meet up with mutual friends of ours who live in Three Rivers, Rob and Kirsten VGR. Friday was the Feast of St Gregory, so there was not only a celebratory feel of the day but there is conversation at meals (usually we eat in silence as one of the monks reads from a book that has been selected) and at supper guest and monks sat at the same table and at both dinner and supper there was beer and wine to drink. All very festive and I played darts with another guest and some of the monks in the refectory. In the midst of this celebration I also did a good bit of studying and of course there is still the Divine office though some of the Hours are combined but the day is still punctuated withe the Hours of prayer. So even in the midst of finding myself interacting more with other guests and the Monks it did not detract from the other reasons I came for there was the time and opportunity for them as well.

On the whole the Feast of St Gregory that was the most surprising. It was a day that felt so full of a pure joy I have rarely if ever experienced. At diner at midday on Friday as we the guests sat at our table and I watched and heard the Monks at theirs, I caught a glimpse of a larger feast going on around and in the midst of us, one that ours was a sort of shadow. Or I could just make out the saints there celebrating with us, St Gregory and St Benedict and the Virgin laughing with the monks, Jesus Christ carrying a glass walking about in our midst. Even felt this in the evening meal though for some reason not as deeply. However, I partied with the monks (yes monks do party especially on the feast of their patron Saint.) and it was among the most purely joyful times I have ever had in my life. Makes most parties I have been to seem dreary places to tell the truth.

I had no great insights to my situation from this time but I feel more open to what God has in what lies ahead for the congregation and the community. Also, feel a little more attuned to the roles and various involvements and connections I have here in Chicago.

Oh, a side note to conclude. In playing darts, I won the game we were playing and for a time it was Prior Aelred and I neck and neck so to speak, but I got the final bull's eye that won the game. So I beat out the Prior of the abbey in a game of darts. I mostly think that is all kind of funny and silly and that was part of the joy and surprise of this retreat.

Retreat at Abbey redux

Well it turns out that I had written a little piece about my time at St Gregory's Abbey before I left. I carry with me a notebook in which I from time to time will jot down some ideas for a blog post or write a sizable portion of a blog post when I am not near my computer. When I began to write some notes for my post on Take this Bread, I found what I had intend to post when I returned. So here it is a reflecting on my time at the Abbey written about an hour before I left the Abbey after Sexte on the 24th of June.

At the Abbey June 24th-
I will have spent exactly 24 hours at the Abbey. I traveled to Kalamazoo by train and was picked up and dropped off by the monks Brother Abraham and then Brother Martin. I felt less impacted by the environment of St Gregories because the ride from the train station to the Abbey with Brother Abraham was like entering a pocket of the monastery before arriving there.

I had several conversation that were all about the stat of Christianity in the U.S., with some of the monks and with a priest who was also on retreat there. From these conversations I am concluding that there is a neare universal response to the continued transformation of the American religious context: get congregations and parishes to grow numerically. In essence to attempt to create some semblance of the peak of church attendance and membership in the period after WWII. This means that our focus remains as all of our denominations face decline (recently it has been reported that even the Souther Baptist Convention is not immune to declining numbers just not yet as serious as with "mainline" denominations) is to attempt to get our congregations to attract people to come to worship and take part in programs.

I wonder about this attitude because it seems to be partially based on the assumption or belief that church is merely a human institution that we have to convince people to join. We do not seem to believe that the gathered faithful are places of encounter with Jesus Christ and the Trinity Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We do not seem to really believe that our faith and health as church has to do with being filled with the Spirit. It seems to me that if that was our belief than "attracting" people would not be our concern but truly worshiping god and being formed into the holy temple the body of Christ and royal priesthood, that then goes out and proclaims the Gospel in word and dead. Now I can't guarantee that that focus will in all places and all times bring in the numbers. It seems to be true that at times people don't want or don't think they want the Gospel, and an encounter with the God who became incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth. Acts Certainly indicates that one can have both amazing numerical growth and complete rejection of the Gospel and everything in between.

In our current context I think we should be asking oursleves if our worship is true worship- meaning not only a question of form but about whether we are living our lives out of that worship. We should also ask if our people are living out and thus proclaiming the Gospel. This should lead us to ask if our seminaries, priest/pastors, Bishops/Superintendents and other denominations leaders are in fact teaching the Gospel and the faith once delivered to the saints. However we will not find the answer to this question if we allow ourselves to be stuck in the categories of "conservative" or "liberal", or other narrowly conceived notions of Christian truth.

Well that seems to be what I was thinking about at least over my 24 hours, as well as writing on the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Reading Rowan Williams book Resurrection. I am not sure I know exactly where I was going with the above thought. And not even sure I would defend all that I wrote above but it was interesting to find this and also to discover that I had this thought and had moved on in a sense. Though I think it might link up in interesting ways to my thoughts on Take this Bread: A Radical Conversion. Thoughts anyone?

On a personal Retreat

I am off to St Gregory's Abbey for what will be about a 24 hour retreat. Much needed. I went on retreat there last summer and felt drawn to return and it has taken almost a year for me to do so. It has been too long.

Continueing thoughts on Sex Celibacy and marriage

My struggle is this: I accept that certain interpretations of celibacy and marriage labeled as Christian have been and are still sources of domination and the denial of difference. Yet, I am coming to be ever more convinced that those who talk about a liberated sexuality and of justice in areas of sexuality and sexual expression, know little of true liberation and are ignorant of the justice that has it's source in the righteousness of God. Even to say this though sounds to me oppressive. My reflections here are a seeking a true liberation and a true justice, as one who is himself bound by the disorder of our world and our sexual selves.
I write this out of a longing, a longing that I think is often sought fulfillment in "making love." This insight came to me last night, as I was out with Kate at a local Cafe, Katarina's, with Friends to hear "Greek Gypsy" music. It was astonishingly beautiful music and the musicians and the singer, Katarina herself, played and sang rapturously. The music was deep with longing and sensuality. Since the lyrics were in Greek I do not know what was sung except when Katarina would give a little commentary. In the very least she saw them as songs of love and love making. I wondered if in part this was so because in the world view of this music and I think especially so of our time, we seek the fulfilment of our longing in sexual intimacy and pleasure. The truth, the justice, the love we long for is to be found in bed with the other by whom you have been smitten.
Yet, what in fact these songs and their proclamation of longing say is that sexual intimacy, making love, even between those who are committed to each other for life, will never satisfy the longing. In fact it creates longing for a deeper unity for the truly other. If the longing that is part of the very risk and thrill of making love, if the union we seek is fulfilled in romantic love then we would be bound to go arround untill we find that perfect union through sex. And yet the very act of making love prevents that union. Even in the end of the uniting in love making I still only know my own experience, and when I talk with my wife about our expreinces I am confronted with the reality that we experience sex differently. This is also complicated by the reality that the pleasure of sexuality can also stand in the way, the pleasure of sex tempts me, at least, to objectification to seek the intensification of my pleasure, and at best the intensification of the pleasure for both of us. Yet, even in pleasure, even if the pleasure we seek is fulfilled for the moment, it leaves us with longing.
In the world of the music last night, in the world of the music of our culture, we express a longing and seek its fulfilment in "love making", in romantic love. In seeing this as an eternal cycle of longing and temprary releif in pleasure and intimacy, we fail to see that this longing and the momentary relief has its source elsewhere.
In part this is why I think celibacy and the monastary are seen as such a scandle: it points to the fact that sexual intimacy and pleasure, even in marriage, will never relieve us of this longing. Rather the Monk and Nun tell us that this longing typifies, signals, for us the deep longing of God, of God for us and of us for God.

some questioning thoughts on sexuality, celibacy, and marriage.

A friend of mine has gone to a monastery to be a monk. Just before he left Kate and I were talking with him about what this meant for his spiritual journey. It was deeply moving and as he shared of his fears and anxiety of making such a radical commitment I found what he described to be familiar. I was reminded of when Kate and I moved from dating to engagement towards marriage.
This has lead me to wonder if we Protestants haven't missed something. Are the vows of marriage and the vows of celibacy analogous? Are we so confused about sexuality and marriage and gender because we have ceased to take seriously the theological importance of a celibate life as a permanent state?
Might I be a better husband if I could conceive of marriage as something related to and in partnership with the celibate life?
How is both celibacy and marriage informed by Christian eschatology? Is my marriage oriented towards the Kingdom, or is it oriented towards some form of disciplined pleasure? Are these at odds? If not how do they coincide?
As we conversed it was evident to me that part of what we were discussing was the degree to which we all are bound by our society's and culture's obsession with sex. "Having Sex" for pleasure and intimacy simply is ones right. When one chooses to abstain from this most (including fellow Christians) cannot understand or accept it as true. The only true sexuality is one that is articulated through "having sex."
How is one married in such a sexualized culture? My friend has caused me to realize that there is more to being married according the the Christian faith then simply choosing to live with and have sex only with my wife. The theological reality of my marriage should be clarified or else my marriage probably is Christian in name only; easily dominated by other conceptions of sexuality and human fulfilment. It is clear to me now that it is easy to be seduced by a culture that sees sex as the ultimate truth of self. If one is not "having sex" one is diminished as a person. If that is true than celibacy is a violation of our humanity. However, it is the conviction of my friend that he will be most himself when he is celibate. I accept his testimony and it makes sense. Jesus taught in responce to questions about the resurection that our sexuality and marriage as we know it will cease in the coming age. Given that teaching given my friends witness and the witness of centuries of devoted monks and nuns, how is my marriage oriented towards the Kingdom of God?
I am convinced in part it is through rejecting the cult of sexual intimacy and pleasure that is one of the religions of our time. Beyond that I am uncertain at the moment.
I invite your thoughts, or your answers.

Asceticism: Examining some dangling threads

Monastic disciplines are not readily associated with Lutheran thought. Yet, when Philip Jacob Spener(For further information see also http://www.ccel.org/s/schaff/encyc/encyc09/htm/ii.lxxxiii.htm ,
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/cgi-local/DHI/dhi.cgi?id=dv3-61 ,
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12080c.htm ) wrote Pia Desideria it was in part a reaction to the lack of discipline within the Lutheran Church.
The reality Spener confronted was to some degree a result of the focus in Lutheranism on justification by faith alone. For a variety of reasons this ended up meaning that for large numbers of Lutherans, both clergy and lay, the Christian life consisted in being baptized, memorizing the catechism and going to church but only very incidently effecting their everyday life. There was in this emphasis on justification by faith an over reaction to the perceived teaching by the Roman Church that one was saved solely by works.
Spener made what at the time was a fairly audacious claim that justification by faith not works did not contradict a call to live a disciplined and holy life. Spener opened up the possibility to speak cogently in Lutheran circles about sanctification, which one could argue is what the Orthodox and the desert Fathers and Mothers call theosis.
Sanctification is what monastic discipline is in part about. being raised by Lutheran Pietists Sanctification was a main focus of my spiritual teachers growing up. Yet, the emphasis on the disciplines of private and group Bible study are fairly limited, and individualistic, even though Spener concieved of these disciplines as corporate and not private activities, in fact activities fo the church. I wish to point out that what Spener and the Pietists were seeking to do was to reinject asceticsim into the life of Lutheranism. However, it is my experience that latter Pietists (including those in my tradition) were sudduced by a highly individualized understanding of piety and ascetisism. The other is that if we are concerned for the lively spiritual life of Christians (that is sactification) than we are in someway interested in the monastic tradition and are in fact talking about theosis.
Spener was seeking to bring balance to the emphasis Luther had due to the abuses of the practices of Roman Catholicism and monasticsim of his time. In a sense I think Geroges Florovsky's comments on Luther here are iluminating and helpful:
"It must be strongly emphasized that Luther does indeed protect one aspect of salvation, the very cause and source of redemption and grace. But he neglects the other side, the aspect of man’s participation in this free gift of Divine initiative and grace. Luther fears any resurgence of the Roman Catholic system of merit and indulgences, he fears any tendency which will constitute a truly Pelagian attitude, any tendency that will allow man to believe that man is the cause, the source, or the main spring of salvation. And here Luther is correct. Nygren’s Agape-Eros distinction is correct in this context, for any spirituality that omits Agape and concentrates only on Eros, on man’s striving to win God’s influence, is fundamentally non-Christian. But the issue is not that simple. Both extremes are false. God has freely willed a synergistic path-of-redemption in which man must spiritually participate. God is the actor, the cause, the initiator, the one who completes all redemptive activity. But man is the one who must spiritually respond to the free gift of grace. And in this response there is an authentic place for the spiritually of monasticism and asceticism, one which has absolutely nothing to do his the "works of the law," or with the system of merit and indulgences." (Georges Florovsky Collected works)