We Like Sheep - Wandering Astray

Overall May was a good month for me. My solitary practice has continued, in May I was able to loose 7.9 pounds in the month (using a trend analysis from start to finish), which is right where I was hoping to end up.

Our CRC was more off then on, but we had a good evaluation and are going to try some really interesting experiments for this quarter. One of which is moving the common meal near to the start of our liturgy and use that space as a space to include children, before separating to our study and reflection.

One of the more interesting things I read last month came out of england:

http://hauntedgeographies.typepad.com/basho/2009/05/99.html

It was the reflections on joining a local "transition" community and struggling to understand its place inside the broader network of the "Transition Lmtd" group. Transitions is network / stream that comes out of the bio-regionalism movement in England and is about find ways for communities to respond to the twin issues of peak oil and global warming in local, networked, grass-roots ways.

The author was one of the anchors of Vaux, an experimental church form in England in the 90s and early 2000s that did some amazing stuff. What struck me about it was the hesitancy of people on the outside to risk being parts of networks that had a sense of heirarchy where they were not present in the formative stages.

For example here:

"The first piece of information that begun to dampen some of my enthusiasm was the existence of a ‘Transition Network Ltd’ and the associated ring fencing of the terms ‘Transition Network’ and ‘Transition Initiatives’. The movement seemed to be posturing as a ‘brand’. Which to me, is falling at the first hurdle, quite literally buying into the very system that has perpetrated so much havoc. It feels particularly depressing as transition practice could potentially challenge capitalist subjectivity.

All this tends to breed immediate suspicion, undermining all the talk of ‘decentralisation’, ‘temporality’, ‘sharing’ and ‘openness’— its just business as usual. I find the copyright issue particularly confusing as it’s being invoked ‘to ensure their work isn’t hijacked’. This seems crazy, the whole project has emerged virally, its meant to be replicated, adjusted, twisted and hacked. It’s designed to be adapted to local conditions. The Transition network should be more confident of its biological models. As with open-source programming, the code should be freely available— to be tinkered, adjusted and improved by anyone. Yes, misuse of ‘the commons’ is possible, yet this is the nature of the beast. The benefits and advantages of a locked-open system far out way the possibilities of any ‘deviant’ application. (Ab)use and error are necessary evils, a creative system requires them. To make pearls and snow, one needs ‘dirt’."

It reminded me how deeply ingrained the expectations of freedom and forking are embeded into the generation that grew up on the internet. When open systems (online) are the norm its a struggle to accept other modes of being.

So this month I am going to look for ways to embed that freedom into the way we introduce the CRC to the new member joining us for the first time.

Nate

So tried to write a blog in response to this question, it kept failing. The question was: Do you believe in the power of prayer? (Yes / No). So I answered no, even though if you asked if me if I prayed, I would say recently yes, I have started to pray again. I think to answer this question clearly you need to have some idea about what real experience people are pointing to when they say: "the power of prayer." I think the common use of the phrase is to point to a time when you were in a situation, felt powerless to change it, had a desired outcome, and hoped some kind of magical incantation, or act of piety would change things. I think the core real experience of people who "believe in the power of prayer" is that desire to influence the future, when you feel totally powerless. I have been there, I have dreamed of control when I really had no say. I have dreamed of power when I felt powerless. But as someone committed to living in what is, not just what I dream, I have to conclude that I really am powerless about many things around me. So I guess in this sense I really think that the "belief in the power of prayer" as commonly used is a delusion not a helpful comfort. A friend of helped me understand this better, he had been married to his wife for 50+ years. She was the love of his life. She had terminal cancer and died from it. Shortly afterwords he confessed to me, that near the end, when the doctors had given her to hospice care professionals. He felt an urge to pray. As we talked about that space, what he said he learned was that prayer can also be an ontological act. It was a way to meditate and confront the twin realities: 1) He did really care what happened here. He was not a disinterested observer. He was willing to do anything he could to change what appeared to be the inevitable outcome. 2) There was absolutely nothing he could do that would have any significant influence on weather his wife would die of cancer or not. If prayer is about opening a space of inner dialog, where you confront the truths that scare you the most. The dissonance that confounds all attempts to resolve. Then prayer can help you live an honest and authentic life. Not powerful, but helpful. That kind of prayer I could use some more of in my own life.

This was a comment I made to someone else on their profile. I think my mind went some interesting places. [ed: extended for the blog a bit]

That your description of being embodied: "I like to feel my body move with purpose. Walking somewhere, dancing, building/creating something, running, shooting, even driving seems an extension of my body's will (which is an embodiment of my mental will). I love the fact that I have a body to direct; I see the body almost as a machine . I am working on improving/strengthening my personal machine, as apparently my genes aren't going to cut it forever. "

Was striking and deserved some comment. A friend of mine describes the feeling of using tools as an extension of the para-personal space. The idea that when you are eating with a fork, you don't consider how to angle the fork or move your fingers to grip it, you think about picking up the food, as if the fork were part of your hand. When I drive its a similar feeling, my car becomes an extension of my person.

My friend the dancer suggested that anything our bodies come in contact with can take on this mental conceit. In her mind dancing with a partner at its best, is about discovering a space where both of you experience the body of the other as part of your para-personal space.

Yet that also makes one have to ask if I understand your body as part of my para-personal space, have I lost any sense of you being other at all? It leads me to this essay: http://www.igreens.org.uk/bodys_grace.htm

Which has a very different take.

Harold,

I think you are asking a few good questions. Let me offer some general thoughts and then move into more concrete examples of what I have done with kids in the past and where our crc is up against this right now.

General:

First, don't lie - I tried to never speak of God or theology in ways that conflicted with what I understand now. So no discussions about god who is up there, etc. My goal was that would not have to unlearn harmful theology later.

Second, kids are not adults, trying to simply have them repeat and use the theological code words their parents use is just going to produce dogmatic eiers or crcers. We need a model of what spirit maturity looks like at every age. Fowler's stages of faith might be a way to start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stages_of_faith_development

Third, on the whole on of the things I think is wrong with the current sociological structures of is the stratification of each person and need into groups with independent programs targeting each of them. As if a spiritually mature child can be nurtured by dogmatic fundamentalists. To think that lasting change can happen without the education of younger generations is a wish-dream. For most of humanities existence, we have nurtured children in multigenerational extended family groups. I posit that this holistic group (which is larger then a nuclear family) is central to well socialized, spiritually mature, young adults.

Fourth, this means that on the whole the engagement with children needs to be an every-person activity and not simply something for parents. As we envision the CRC as a alternative loci of faith, we need to distinguish between the form of a CRC liturgy and the body of people that meet. I can't imagine that I know someone who is a parent without knowing their children. If we conclude that the CRC liturgy is not the correct place for children, then we need to also consider how as a group of people who meet in a CRC we can support and nurture the children in our group.

Fifth, I think that with tweens and teens one of the most determinant factors in thriving is connections with other caring adults outside of the nuclear family. Otherwise as the strugles within the nuclear family to redefine roles they are left without connections they can trust to the world outside their peers. One of the best books I read when doing Youth Ministry was: Hurt, by Chap Clark http://www.amazon.com/Hurt-Inside-Todays-Teenagers-Culture/dp/0801027322 it lays out the isolation that I think is endemic within the adolescent period. Some of the most helpful things I did as a youth minister was taking concreate steps to form these relationships in 5th and 6th grade.

Sixth, I think we need to separate formation into christiandom from the nurturing of spiritual maturity. I think we need to lay out some basic values that are at the core of a healthy engagement with religious practice. I am speaking here of openness to new things and experiences; embracing their own creative spirit and expecting to have a voice; finding points of mystery and not having all of the answers; an aweness of others who are different; and practice uniting for co-operative action. These can be developed in a lot of different ways and this is not some little list of moral niceties.

Seventh, from 3-11 is really when the mind learns most of its language, so part of what we want to do is introduce children to the poetics of the christian symbol system. Not because they will totally understand it, but because it gives them words to describe what happens later on. One of the things I am most thankful for from my upbringing was a firm grounding in the phrases and rhythms of the bible. I was able to draw on these narratives later on, when I found myself in the middle of despair. Alan suggested a book about Brother Grimm fairy tails, which says that the goal of those fairy tales was to give children language when they met monsters in real life. The poetics of the scripture have this wonderful characteristic, they unwind themselves the more you study them. So for me starting to feed these disorienting parables and stories to children is about planting seeds. So take some time to sing and play and repeat the great poetic sections from scripture. A great orator helps do this and the retelling of these stories can be a communal activity.

Eighth, adults need interaction with children and to hear from children. The bible contains examples and promises of children as role models in many places. Our own lives reflect the times when a childs willingness to extend embrace, to ask the naive questions we dared not, to dream universal dreams when we are in the particular, to dance wildly, and to remind us of long term thinking - the world we leave for them - are all critical and irreplaceable. When we do not involve children at some level in our community we loose something deeply nurturing and we fail to live lives in awe of the sum total of reality.

So what does this look like in practice? Here are some of the specific things I have done that I think worked:

1) Involve kids in service projects. Our church was going to do a canned food drive for the local food pantry. I got a bunch of grocery bags donated from a local liquor store. I passed out a series of coloring sheets w/either bible story themes or pictures of nature / symbols. As the kids worked on coloring them I lead a discussion about the stories; mixing story telling with frequent breaks to have the kids ground specific parts. Then we assembled all the decorated bags w/shopping lists of needs for the pantry and the kids gave them out at the door each week. From start to finish we took time to explain why were doing this, who benefited from it, what it might be like not to eat for a day (the older kids actually fasted from sunup - sundown one day to tell us about it) and when the food came in we took pictures to show them of the food in the church and of the shelter when we delivered it. This starts to establish a link between organized action on the part of the kids and results for other people in the world. Other projects like this included collection a dollar a kid each week to start paying off specific named apportionment's in the church budget (with public announcements during the worship service to encourage other groups to do the same), making get well and birthday cards for use by the church office, ornament making during advent, and a school supply drive before the new school year. These crafts that echoed the church year helped to involve and explain the rhythm of the liturgical year.

2) Scavenger hunt improv days: When I had really restless kids, I would take them outside and ask them to search around for 10 minutes to find something to bring back. Then I would ask each of them to take a moment to share what they had brought back and quickly riff on the christian symbolism that can be drawn from what they bring. So if a kid brings back a dried leaf, we talked about Jesus' parable of being connected to a vine and being disconnected. Then I asked them what things give them life, what relationships nurture them, etc. When someone brought back a pine cone we talked about seeds and the metaphors that were used there. The goal here was to encourage exploration and curiosity, noticing things around them in nature, and to start to let some of these rich metaphors and images come to life in real things they can see and touch.

3) Sing, Dance, Move, Play: After my time with Interplay I wish I had done a lot more of this, but some of my lesson time was intentionally spent outdoors, playing games that involved working with partners, running around, jumping and moving. My goal was to break down some of the distance between adults and children by both being fellow players together, to give them time to get the physical energy out so sitting down to talk could come, and to find joy and fun together. Because its often during the games that bonding starts to happen.

4) Wander around the sanctuary and talk about the things you see. I would do a variant of the I spy game, where each kid got to look around the sanctuary, find something they thought was cool and then we would all walk over and I would talk about the symbolic meaning and the uses of the object in the church's life. Again I wanted to help them understand what was going on, but also to foster a spirit of noticing and curiosity, and to authenticate each child's noticings by having the entire group walk over to what they saw.

So as I move from general to particular let me finish with a quick narrative story, that for me is a touchstone I go back to when I consider what this might be like.

A few years ago I accepted a ride to a confrence with a family of missionaries back on furlough. My best friend who was going with me had bailed at the last minute and I had only started driving three months earlier so I was scared of driving from Houston to Santa Fe New Mexico alone. I had met the Jones family two days earlier as we worked together to setup the Doxology Art exhibit:

http://futuristguy.wordpress.com/category/culturology-case-studies/doxol...

They were going to the conference as well and Andrew (the dad) invited me to ride there with them (being his wife, their five children aged 15-4 and a friend of theirs) in their 15 passanger van. It was a tipping point in my life. It was also pretty scary. Even though I knew funds had been tight when they planned this trip, Andrew refused to accept any money to help with gas or anything else. He said it was important that this be a gift. I felt more isolated by this, unable to provide a meaningful rationale for my being there, in a really intimate space. I rode shotgun, at the front of the bus, for the first chunk of the trip. At the second rest stop one of Andrew's children (who was about 7 at the time) grabbed my hand and asked me if I would take her to the restroom (I think it was loo actually). So I walked her there and then waited for her to come back and we walked back to the van. As we got ready to load back up she looked up, smiled, and said: would you sit back here and play with us. So I did, we played some card games and spent some time. Then she promptly fell asleep in my lap. Looking back I am struck by how much that simple act of invitation, welcome, need, and embrace meant to me. My fears about being a leach, about imposing on a private space, the insecurity seemed gone. I was able to enjoy the rest of the trip together with the whole family. That long week, really was a turning point for me in how I approached my life.

In my mind that is the image of a spiritually mature seven year old. It is something I hope I helped to foster in some of the kids I worked with, and it forms the basis for some of my observations here.

http://tallskinnykiwi.typepad.com/tallskinnykiwi/2006/10/family_update.html

That is picture of the family from 2006 a year after I spent a few days with them. You can guess which one is the child I described.

A friend and co-worker Houston Markley (i.e. he of the awesome first name) in the Symposium shared with us this quote from a Paul Tillich sermon for his advent reflection:

Both the Old and the New Testaments describe our existence in relation to God as one of waiting. The condition of our relation to God is first of all one of not having, not seeing, not knowing, and not grasping. A religion in which that is forgotten, no matter how ecstatic or active or reasonable, replaces God by its own creation of an image of God. I am convinced that much of the rebellion against Christianity is due to the overt or veiled claim of the Christians to possess God; they waited for Him. For how can God be possessed? Is God a thing that can be grasped and known among other things? Is God less than a human person? Since God is infinitely hidden, free, and incalculable, we must wait for Him in the most absolute and radical way. He is God for us just in so far as we do not possess Him. We are stronger when we wait than when we possess. When we possess God, we reduce God to that small thing we knew and grasped of God; and we make it an idol.

Paul Tillich, “Waiting”

I feel like I'm falling
Like I'm spinning on a wheel
It always stops beside a name
a presence I can feel
I...I believe in love

So here is the second draft of my CRC catecism for God:

Within our CRC circles, the subject of our discussion is our lives, our experiences. As such we do not spend time discussing the potential existence of some being or process. Nor are we really concerned with organizing ideas into a comprehensible worldview. Our experiences tend to be partial, complex, confusing, awefilled, and ultimately mysterious. The experiences we prize - those times when our expecations, explanations, and systems are challenged, shattered, and left reeling - are often the best examples of this. We speak of such expeirances as "Hearing the Word of God." or "Reality breaking in."

When we speak of Reality, we are not just pointing to matter or energy, we are describing at some level the absolute unknowable Mystery that is at the core of our being and at the edge of our reason, science, and culture. This same Reality includes the passions, desires, and dreams we have. We dream of shaping, changing, subdueing, and pacifying everything around us and within us. Reality confounds and subverts every attempt our every attempt to domesticate existance.

As committed realists, we affirm both the ultimate limits of our ability to change things and our desire which has no limits. Everyone lives in this tension; we choose to call it good. By chosing to name this tension as God we indicate a devotion to it. We decide (and sometimes decide not) to live into the future in a trust that does not come from any evidence inside us, but is a leap of faith. In this we find kinship with poets and prophets, mystics and contemplatives, questioners and skeptics, refuges from certianty of all sorts who accept their own total subjectivity, but nevertheless ...

So ever since I got my tattoo, everyone has asked me what it is exactly. I have promised to write a blog and say a bit more. The wedgeblade symbol traces its roots back to the Ecumenical Institute / Order Ecuminical - a amazing group of radical christians living in intentional community and deeply involved in what might be understood as community development in their local place. All informed by a deep study of 20th century existential theology. You can read some of their stories about when they first encountered the symbol. The OE had a turn towards the world and did a lot of work in secular community development work as the Institute for Culture Afairs. They chose the wedgeblade as their logo and various ICA groups explain it differently.

I am not directly associated with either group. The class that introduced me to the wedgeblade traces its roots back to the RS 1 course that the EI used to teach.

The wedgeblade symbol is built on a wedge, the wedge represents the spectrum of peoples responce for towards change. Imagine the line starts out like | and then gets pulled into a new shape an > by Reality that demands a responce. Some people are scared by the new things happening and attempt to preserve the current dynamic. Others embrace the new demand and go out to the edge of the wedge. The line down the center represents the leap you have to make if you decide to work towards the tip of the wedgeblade. Think about the demands for a sustainable energy policy. It demands a change from all sorts of different people, Oil executives like T. Boone Pickens, and environmentalists like Al Gore. All of them are tugged towards a new direction. At some point though, there is a choice that is hard to walk back from. A point where you go from interested and concerned to leaping out there. Perhaps it is committing to be carbon neutral in all of your actions or to go off the grid. Perhaps its spending 20k to redesign your house or install solar panels. Perhaps its buying a bike and biking 15 miles each way to work. At some point you have to leap, to move from being concerned to responding.

The tip is red, its bleeding a little, because any time you go out on a branch, there is a sacrifice, you get bloody.

The wedgeblade is wrapped in a circle to remind you that this dynamic is present in every group, that wherever you are, in whatever place you are, around you are people living out on the edge in all sorts of cool ways. Its a circle of humility - you are not that special - and also of promise - you have alies all around.

I chose it for me and placed it on my wrist, where I can see it, so that it is a constant reminder of the wedgeblade dynamic. A constant question to my actions: How are you responding to the work of God in this space? And as a way to mark my own vocation, to be a person who embraces change and lives into the future with trust, love, and freedom. The name for the symbol came from a D.H. Lawrence poem. For me its a prayer and a call, my hope for how I will live:

Song of a Man Who Has Come Through - by D.H. Lawrence
Not I, not I, but the wind that blows through me!
A fine wind is blowing the new direction of Time.
If only I let it bear me, carry me, if only it carry me!
If only I am sensitive, subtle, oh, delicate, a winged gift!
If only, most lovely of all, I yield myself and am borrowed
By the fine, fine, wind that takes its course through the chaos of the world
Like a fine, an exquisite chisel, a wedge-blade inserted;
If only I am keen and hard like the sheer tip of a wedge
Driven by invisible blows,
The rock will split, we shall come at the wonder, we shall find the Hesperides.

Oh, for the wonder that bubbles into my soul,
I would be a good fountain, a good well-head,
Would blur no whisper, spoil no expression.

What is the knocking?
What is the knocking at the door in the night?
It is somebody wants to do us harm.

No, no, it is the three strange angels.
Let them come in

This really has been a wonderful month and with many of the others to already report in, hearing President Elect Obama has been part of that. I don't know why, but on the day of the election I was filled with an sense of dread. Having seen proof that the last two elections had been stolen, I had very little confidence that this time would be different. It was different and that sense of ease has seeped into other parts of my life as well.

I taught a seminar on using the Internet for Youth Ministry that was really well received. As the class was filling up, I was asked to move to a new room, as I was on the second floor and one of the people that had signed up was wheelchair bound. This was not detected until she asked someone how to get upstairs and they realized she could not. So some of the intentional space setting up was lost. However, some of the other pedagogical methods were very popular. The flow of the class was related to the Theological Edge time at the Symposium. I introduced the concept and did a quick (7 minute) talk around the questions we should be asking in how to do Youth Ministry that was an attempt to broaden and define the space we were going to delve into. Then we took time to write down each of the questions that the people there brought to the room and as a group worked on addressing them. Cynthia's insight on exformation was really eye opening for many of the participants. If you are working with students who are bombarded with information every day in school (and in the quickly expanding social spheres of their life) the internet's ability to allow for exformation on a massive scale (blogging, taking tons of photographs, fan fiction, video work, etc) make it a serious draw. I watches as a few parents who could not understand why their kids were so into these forms saw the light come on.

In my work life the one-year review, which had been hanging over my head for 3 months finally happened last friday. The results were quite positive, I was promoted to a full supervisor (as opposed to shift lead) and with that comes moving to salary and an extra full week of paid time off. Part of the delay in the review process was so they could finish a survey of the employees on the effectiveness of their supervisors. So I saw not only how they scored me, but how those scores compared to the entire company. It was nice to have some firm data and highlighted some places I can improve and grow, I think its going to be a good thing.

At my review I was able to get my schedule adjusted slightly. So I will be able to continue the practice I have started this month of attending at least one Nia class a week ( http://niamoves.com/ ). Nia as they describe is: "Nia is a dynamic cardiovascular workout that stimulates and integrates your mind/body/spirit and leaves you feeling recharged, rejuvenated, and fully alive. Nia blends dance, martial arts, and healing arts (including yoga) to allow your dancer, athlete, warrior, and child within to expressively emerge." Our time with the interplay methods brought me to a place where I was able to get into this and I have left both sessions so far feeling sore and thrilled at the same time. So I think its going to a positive addition to my spiritual practices. My goal is to attend a class on monday nights (in the middle of my weekend/sabbath time) and thursday mornings which is right in the middle of my work week. My hope is that some Nia classes in the mornings will tire me out, so I can go home and get right to sleep. Bringing more of a defined shape to my daily rhythm.

My life rhythm has also been stretched in the last week with the presence of a roommate in my apartment. Shannon, one of the guys from our Hawthorne dinners has been staying with me on my sofa-bed for the last week. There have been some touch and go moments. It is surprising how angry I felt about waking up, looking for some orange juice and finding he had drunk the entire bottle in one day. It also has put me up against the questions of how far to go in extending trust, faith, and love in every moment. If I am planning to go get dinner with a friend, should I invite shannon? Is it cool if he uses my laptop when I am asleep? What about my car? If I walk in and he is wearing a tshirt of mine is that a big deal or no? Can I expect him to spend lots of time looking for a job and trying to get somewhere or if he spends all day watching movies is that the rest time he needs? Should I tell him to call me if he needs a ride when I am sleeping or should I let him walk the two miles home? Can I remember to shut the door to my bedroom or should I start sleeping more modestly? I am sure that questions that challenge me to lean into the future are prevalent in the rest of my life, but I have found that in this past week, I am far more aware of them. I cannot report that I have been completely consistent with my avowed goals, but it has been a good stretching experience. The scariest / most surprising thing has been the moments of joy I get when I come home from a day of work and there is someone there to talk to and my own general sense of ease with the experience as a whole. I removes most of the space I had to wonder if I could do this, if I was up to. Shannon is planning on moving into something more long term, but I am confident now that I need to engage in hospitality like this on a deeper level in the near future.

In all of this I have seen the deep wisdom and trust that was involved in Nancy's simple declaration that the way forward here was as a family. Framing the conversations that way gives you a good hint at what a faithful action here might be. In the next month I am going to fly home to see my family for christmas, its been a few years since I have gone to see them and I am aware of both the excitement and dread that comes with these trips back to Maryland.

Our CRC life has suffered this month, we had an end of the books celebration. But many of our members have been busy with trips, projects, and family commitments. We have not met formally for a few weeks and I don't expect we will get back into it again until after the holidays are finished. On the plus side I have been talking to some folks who are interested in trying it out, so we might be able to reform with a few new members. We are also discussing moving it from Sunday nights to Monday or Tuesday nights.

My solitary practices have not been great, but they have been better then before. After the symposium I got serious about blogging again, and while it has not been as frequent as I would like, I am blogging more ( http://welikesheep.org ) and I expect to post at least one more post today. One of the posts this month was the first of my rewrites on the CRC Chatecism that we committed to in Bonham. I am including it below with the promise that I expect to have drafts on the fall and the church in the next month.

Our first core understanding is: God as a Devotional Name for Reality.

I have tried to keep all of the major points Gene addressed in his paragraph, and even cribbed the final sentance pretty much word for word from his paragraph. Credit were credit is due ...

Its advent, the holidays, for some of my friends this is a great season of deep joy. It leaves me uneasy and uncomfortable. For those of you who are not sure they can stand the sentamentality of this season I offer this prayer from Cheryl Lawrie:

we come to worship.
there are no easy answers here,
no sentimental comfort
and no guarantee of hope.
just each other, held together by the need to begin again
and a story that tells us how it can happen.
welcome to worship

When I was in high school I lived two blocks from this wonderful water tower. I could see it from my bedroom window. The nice part was, it made explaining phallic symbols really clear.

Well, I really am still alive. Just have been busy as of late and ignoring my blog. I did my second Nia class today. Once again it kicked my ass. My review has been scheduled again for thursday. One of the kids from Hawthorne has been staying with for the past 3-4 days. At first it was a little odd and I can still bitch about little things, but all in all I have actually liked having him around.

Will write some longer posts later, a lot going on in my mind.