Praytell

Friday, July 31, 2009

Minneapolis, Minnesota

This series draws to a close.

The room, the place, the people, the keys, the music, the hopes all have their places.  It remains for them to find their call.  The essential church is Catholic, Baptist, Congregational, Mennonite, Lutheran, Methodist, Seventh Day Adventist . . . the list goes on and on.

Each find ways to shape answers to essential questions:  what do we do with Jesus?  What does Jesus have to do with God?  What does God have to do with Jesus?  How specific do we need to be?  Can we be specific without being xenophobic?  How wide a circle of friends are we to be?  How disciplined should we be?  What will we do when the fierce battles between budget scarcity and trust in a God of abundance tug us in two directions?

Eventually, perhaps like a dog chasing its tail until it decides the quest is futile and settles down, we settle down and find a theme.  The theme may change over the years, but it is always there.

The Quakers who were once known for quaking at services are now known for their perception that because all of life is a sacrament the offerings of communion or baptism are not necessary and that keeping silence removes the distractions that so easily sow fear in our soul.  To take this seriously, to harbor it carefully, is a beautiful thing.  My mother and father are Quakers.  My mother worshiped for well over a decade before she ever spoke in a meeting.  Her waiting was a sifting that tried to ensure what she would say came from God rather than her reactions to the news of the day or opinions she had formed over the years.  And so . . . peace. . . . not as the world gives . . . but as God gives . . . just as Jesus said so long ago.

Our children were all born in a Seventh Day Adventist hospital.  My wife’s life was saved by its physicians after the ever so difficult delivery of our twins.  With collapsed veins, her doctor realized things were not going well.  The next needle had to “hit.”  Alice came by, took the syringe in hand, drew in her breath, and said, “Okay, Lord, here we go.”  She pushed.  The needle sank.  She hit it.  Hope returned.  Two weeks later Connie came home to hold Ben and Andy.  These Seventh Day Adventists, I do not know what they believe, but healing is their theme and for that I am forever grateful.

And so it goes.

There is a centering.

There is this responding to call.

There is this finding of a theme.

And, of course, what is true of churches is true for you.  There are keys to your life, too.  There are tables in your life as well.  There is music in your life.  There is a thread that runs through your life.  It may not seem like much, but guess what . . . it’s enough.

Follow it.

Many blessings,

Larry

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Minneapolis, Minnesota

As we assemble sacred space we are both constrained and freed at the same time.  The table is a table . . . not a chair . . . but any table will do.  The bowl of water is a font, but any bowl, any creek, river, or sea will suffice.

In the end, there is order.

When the clerk takes his or her seat in a Quaker meeting, everyone knows it is time for the silence to begin.  When the pastor says, “may the meditations of my heart and the words of my lips will be acceptable in thy sight, everyone knows the sermon is about to begin.  This order is a beautiful thing.  Like love, it has its own way but is nether rude nor arrogant in expressing that way.

So there we are.  The hubbub of getting the kids ready, leaving a messy kitchen, stepping on a potential argument or two, finding a place to park, wondering if the church will ever sort itself out . . . whew . . . it all somehow finds a place to settle.  “God is in this holy temple . . . let all the world keep silence before him . . . keep silence . . . keep silence . . . keep silence before him,” our choir sang when I was a child. The tune, the words and the meaning keeps flowing through me even though there will be more talking or singing than silence in the way we worship.

Be that as it may, here we are.  Which leads to a question:  Why are we here?

I have a basket full of ready answers.  It’s part of my life, it’s what people do, it pays attention to things that are often ignored.  And I’d like the church to work.  I want it to be healthy.  I want it to be caring, brave, alive, useful, meaningful, and not something I worry about.  I am, perhaps, a bit like Obama who just wants church to be church in ways that are meaningfully filled with justice, mercy and humility.

I’m well aware that may involve a committee.  Oh dear!  And so I’m on one.  How’d that happen?  Our committee  had been invited to reflect on what would make the church better, more useful, more meaningful, more inviting.  There is a place for discussions about “more,” but more often than not they tend to run out of gas or get a bit prickly.

It occurs to me that perhaps we should direct the discussion another way.

“Why do we go to church?”  I asked.  A moment of silence ensued.  A well of emotion and recognition gave itself to me.

“I go to church for the restoration of hope,” I said.  “After my strokes God left, and I had to leave the church I loved.  I lost hope.  And so for me, worship is a place, a time, and a way to restore hope.”  I can feel the emotion in the words.  What happens in worship is precious, essential, and pivotal.  I wonder for a moment if I have said too much. The strokes aren’t a secret but neither have I shared.

Maybe I should have remained silent.

But no.

I was and am not talking about the way I’d like the church to be.  I was and am talking about what worship that blesses an essential and elemental return of  hope.

And you?

Why do you go to church?  And what lies beneath your answers?  It could be a worthy discussion . . . one the table, the water, the food, the windows, the symbols, the pianos, the harps, the hymns, the keys, and the congregation are both waiting and eager to hear.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Slowly, we have assembled the space in which we will talk with God in the hopes that God will talk with us.  I appreciate your patience in this transformative work–turing tables into altars, bowls of water into fonts, congregations into choirs, and crosses into symbols.

Today the subject may seem surprising.  And it is one that is likely to get me into trouble.  For this I apologize.  And I need to say at the outset, “You’re absolutely right.”  But stay with me.

We must get into this space.  For that we often need a key.  To me, there is something troubling about a locked church.  You have have noticed in this series about the “essential church” how many times I have entered a church I did not know.  Each time, its doors were open and there was nobody there.  I was not locked out of sacred space.

There was a time, in Big Timber, Montana, that I thought every new member of the church should have a key.  No questions asked.  Here’s your church; here’s your key.  When I think back on it, Tom had a key; Joyce had a key; Barb had a key; Art had a key; Jeanie had a key; Helen had a key, or two; Joanne had a key; Bob had a key; Bonnie had a key; Judy had a key; Cassandra had a key; Mary had a key; Shirle had a key; I had a key I kept losing; Chris had a key; Dave had a key; Doug had a key; Gayle had a key; Sharon had a key; so many keys.

Two days after 9/11 I went over to the school, just across the street, and gave them a key saying, “Just in case anything happens . . . you can always come to the church . . . here’s the key.”

It will not surprise you to know that probably nobody knew how many people had keys.  Had the trustees known they would have surely done the responsible thing and asked everyone to return their keys.  But it would not have worked.  It was “our” space.  It was shared space.  That is an essential part of the essential church:  shared access to shared space.

Now I must share with you that I got into lots of trouble lots of time for leaving the door open, for not locking the church, for risking the property.  In one town the sheriff would call at night, “Larry . . . the church is open and the lights are on.  Better come over.”  Oh dear.  But I’ve noticed something.  In “healthy” churches all kinds of people have keys.  When authorities ask for all of them to be turned in, they know, and we know, that’s not going to happen . . . because . . . Helen needs a key, Barb needs a key, Tom needs a key, Chris needs a key, Doug needs a key, Shirley needs a key, so does Art; so does Joanne; Dave needs a key, Mary needs a key, Joyce has got to have a key, if Sharon doesn’t have one how will the 4-H kids get in?

We need keys.

We need access.

We need access to the attention and care of our pastor.  We need access to the blessings of each others’ spirit.  When the doors to our soul, our compassion, our essence, are locked . . . we need keys.

Do you have a key?

Can we be spiritually responsible without one?

And so . . . think about keys, pray about keys . . . notice how many bibles have “keys” to scripture . . . and, responsibly, thoughtfully, and prayerfully . . . consider the keys that give us access to the essential church and the essential life.

And if you have one . . . don’t worry . . . I won’t tell.  I trust you with it.

Larry

Monday, July 27, 2009

Minneapolis, Minnesota

We turn now to symbol as we transform a room into a church, a room into a sanctuary.  We do so with both gratitude and reticence.  Gratitude the presence symbols is so pleasing, and so centering we can’t help but discover ourselves in a new way.  Reticence because there is something about “claiming” ground that is fraught with violence.

We “plant” a flag when we claim territory.  Columbus came with a flag.  So did Cortez who thought nothing of destroying the sacred spaces of the peoples he conquered.  The Nazis into Austria or France with flags.  “This is mine,” we say.  Kids play “capture the flag.”

And so we are a bit caught.

When caught, stories come to mind.  My church in Montana had a branding iron.  Branding irons are registered with the state.  There is, of course, a certain lore to the brands.  There is the single brand, that would have one symbol, and the double brand that would have two–perhaps two “R’s” joined together in one way or another.  Our brand, which the church has had for well over 50 years, was a single brand.  It was a cross.  A simple cross.

When we built a new entrance to the church I wondered how the brand might be used.  And so, as the concrete dried on the sidewalk leading into the church that was so beautifully designed, I took the branding iron and pressed it into the still-wet concrete.  There it was.  The brand.  I’m sure that most people are not even aware it is there.  But it is.  Our history; our church; our faith; in concrete.

Over the door is a stained glass window.  In the window there is a dove.  In the dove’s beak is an olive branch.  Around the dove there is light.  When we walk into church, we are so often “flooded” by events that seem to overwhelm us.  An illness; an argument; a misunderstanding; a betrayal; grief; an event over which we had no control . . . we know what it means to be “flooded.”  But look . . . here comes the dove with an offering of peace.  Let all who enter here know they are blessed.  Let them know there is hope in the middle of a flood.

We found a way to proclaim space, to bless it, to carry hope for it.

When I was in junior high school, my church did the exact same thing.  Grace Presbyterian Church didn’t have a church.  There were drawings, and fund raisers, but no church.  And so we went to the lunch room at Euclid Junior School.  (My school, I hasten to add!)  We set up the chairs.  Rolled in the piano.  Brought in an altar table.  Put a cross on it.  Put up a few banners.  Lit two candles.  Quieted down.  And began worship in a lunch room that was suddenly sacred space.  There was nothing accidental about it.  We knew what we had to do.

Perhaps without even knowing it we were speaking the language of “here” and “there” that ritual and symbol so eloquently.  Whatever one’s faith, life and death, so utterly separated most of the time, are reconciled in the world of symbol.

That cross- -  its arms reaching out to embrace the world, its trunk connecting heaven and earth, speaks a world of meaning in a form that “works” on turquoise pendants, lapel pins, the design of cathedrals or tattoos.  Each time it gives a message.

So do those windows, those paintings, those banners, those stations of the cross, those carvings.

So many symbols.

Each one an entry.  Each one a book in and of itself.  And each one a way of saying . . . this space is sacred space. . . thanks be to God.

Sunday, July 26, 2009

Minneapolis, Minnesota

We continue to gently fill the room, transforming it from concrete numbers of square feet, windows and doors into sacred space.  We began with a table that became an altar; with food that nourishes both body and soul; and with water.

Today we must sing.

I was in rural Paraguay.  The adjective doesn’t make much sense, because most of Paraguay is rural.  It is the only country in South America in which the indigenous language is one of two official languages.  All Paraguayans are taught both Spanish and Guarani with its utterly different sounds, constructions and worlds of meaning.

Across the red street . . . again, an adjective that doesn’t make much sense because the red earth of Paraguay makes virtually all streets red.  But, across the red street, and just across the square, there was a church.  I decided to see if its door was open.  It was.  I walked in.  The sanctuary was empty.  Soft light fluttered through the windows and across the wooden benches that made for pews.

Up front there was an altar table.  Over to the right, on the side of the “stage”  there was a Paraguayan harp.  Smaller than harps found, but not often heard, in symphony orchestras, and much larger than an Irish harp, it is Paraguay’s national symbol.   By now you’re predicting that my next word will be “beautiful,” and you’re right.  Go to Nicholascarter.com if you would like to hear one.

So there it was.

In the luminous silence of that empty church . . . a harp waiting for worship.  There was a perfect balance between the harp and the altar table.  One could almost hear the music between them, as though altar and harp were two ends of a single instrument.  I stood still, and sank the image, that light, that moment, that harp, into my heart.

Music.

In your church there is a piano.  In the Sunday School rooms there are “old pianos” that used to be new but were moved (not thrown away)  when the church bought a new one for the sanctuary.  In the fellowship room, there is more than likely a piano.  In your church there may be an organ.  In these days, I regret to say, in your church there may be a sound system that plays digitalized music.  In your church there are hymnals.  In your church there may be overheads that lead many to wonder what a hymnal is.

In the essential church there is harmony.  In the essential church people who never sing, and people who love to say they were once kicked out of choir in the sixth grade, and people who cannot read music, and people who don’t know if they are an alto, a tenor, a baritone, a soprano, and who decline to go to choir because they are not singers . . . these people sing.

Amazing!

We sing.

Why?  I can only answer by sharing the verse of a hymn whose author is not known and whose tune is simply attributed in the Quaker’s hymnal to “American gospel hymn.”

My life flows on in endless song; above earths lamentation,

I hear the sweet, though far-off hymn that hails a new creation.

Through all the tumult and the strife, I hear the music ringing; it sounds an echo in my soul,

How can I keep from singing?

We use words to turn tables into altars, bowls of water into fonts, and rooms into sacred spaces.  But life is more than words.  And sometimes our eyes let us discern what life is saying.  Every horizon can’t help but be a table.  Waters always reflect the light.  Rivers, lakes and seas have edges that keep changing, keep moving, keep reminding us of the boundaries between sacred and secular whose edges also keep changing, moving and inviting us to keep changing, keep moving, and keep noticing.

When we build the essential church, nature has a way of showing us the way.  Or so it seemed to me one day while walking along the south shore of Lake Superior and then trying to remember its essence with watercolor.

Saturday, July 25, 2009

Minneapolis, Minnesota

We continue to transform a bare room into a sacred space; a collection of people into a congregation; a table into an altar; food into both physical and spiritual nourishment.  We can’t help but find ourselves in the midst of double meanings.  Yes, the “bread of life” is just a piece of bread, but it is more than that.  Religious thought is replete with double meanings.  How do we “see?”  We see with the heart.  I read, years ago, that the ancient Egyptians believed that puns and double entendres were sacred because they revealed a second dimension to life.  They were on to something.

Be that as it may . . . let’s return to the room.

If we hunger . . . and we do . . . we also thirst.  We thirst for meaning, for healing, for new beginnings, for spring rains, for the river of Life.  And so it is that “water” makes its way into our room.

Some years ago I just happened to be in Louisville during the first days of Lent and so, as usual, I started to walk around.  A large cathedral appeared.  I walked in.  My children would tell you that my curiosity about churches is a nearly irresistible impulse.  I opened the large door, stepped inside, and couldn’t help but be drawn by the stained glass windows and a large pool of water at the back of the pews.  Surrounding it was a beautiful array of dead plants–reeds, rushes, tall grasses, all dried, all brown.  It was Lent . . . the season of renewal.  I knew that, come Easter, the dead plants would give way to lilies.  Life . . . death . . . water has the capacity to move us between them.

In Spain, I’m told, mosques frequently have water running through them, a sign of life.  In most churches, there is, somewhere, a baptismal font.  Sometimes it is front and center.  Sometimes, and a bit sadly, it is hidden, and stashed to the side as memorial gifts often are.

In 1917, John Pray, age eight, died of Scarlet Fever in Ashland, Wisconsin.  When my grandfather walked down the stairs to break the news to my grandmother, he said, “Helen . . . we’ve had him.”  A service was held in the Episcopalian church.  Later, my grandparents gave a beautiful baptismal font to the church in memory of the child they briefly had. The font recognized both the life that had been taken and the blessings that its waters would give to both adults and infants in the future life of that church.  Two years later, my father was born.  When we stopped by the church five or six years ago, the font was still there, and I remember my father brushing back tears for the brother he never met and the poignancy of that gift.

Water.

A bowl of water . . . a font.

Water.  The cup of blessing.

Water . . . the essential baptism, the new beginning, the remembrance, the tears, water.

We who thirst are surrounded by water that asks us to jump in, to drink, to remember when we’ve done both . . . and to wonder what would happen if we did so again.

Blessings to you.

Winter is nearly over; the fields are nearly ready.  And the hills of western Wisconsin are always eager for whatever happens.

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Like all rooms, it starts empty.

And then, bit by bit, piece by piece, its spaces soon become a home, a kitchen, a garage, a store, a school, a library or, in our case, a church.  We wonder just what is it that defines sacred space?

If you have in your hand a ceramic cup with a handle, you immediately know it is not a milk glass.  Instead, it is a coffee cup.  We even have a special word for it:  mug.

If you have in your hand a clear small glass without handles, you know without thinking that it is a juice glass.  Or, of its shape and size is altered just a bit, it is a shot glass.  Either way, you know.

If you have a glass with a stem and a gentle bowl above it that wine enthusiasts could name in an instant, but I do not know . . . you will know it is a wine glass.  Change its shape just a bit and you’ll know it is for white wine, or red wine, or champagne.  Whatever the case it is for alcohol, not milk, coffee or straight orange juice.

These are things we just know.  This knowing is powerful enough to establish a presence.  And so I return to the question . . . what is it that establishes the presence of sacred space?

In yesterday’s entry, I mentioned “food.”  But then I realized this word food is somewhat ambiguous.  Did I mean “real” food?  Yes, I did.  I meant church potlucks, I meant inviting all the teachers over for a dinner in the church basement that thanked them and honored them for bestowing the gift of civilization upon our children in Montevideo, Minnesota; I meant funeral meals lovingly prepared in the kitchen after someone we love and know has passed away–never a catered meal, never a Costco luncheon, never a delivery–always made by hands, egg salad sandwiches, coffee and tea . . . food enough to feed 5,000 on the hills of Galilee . . . food as real as a piece of bread and a chalice of wine . . . food, real food, “glorious food.”

But then I realized this doesn’t go deep enough.  The church kitchen must provide food for the soul.  Spiritual nourishment.  It must help us end cravings but not longings; it must give us strength for the next leg of the journey; it must provide some measure of encouragement, and some measure of presence not just in the incredibly beautiful greetings in a church lobby the precede worship.  I do not know if there is such a thing as transubstantiation or not.  But I do know that the salad served at church is different from that exact same salad served at home.

Food.

A kitchen to prepare it.

A table to hold it and around which it is served.

An altar table with food.

And then light.

An altar table with candles . . . perhaps two . . . most usually two . . . one for the unseen God who is unsearchable and unknowable . . . and one for the Christ who is knowable, whose resurrection is seen whenever we open our eyes to life, and who travels with us.

Food.

Table.

Light.

And an offering.  In church Sunday, a bouquet arrived a bit late but the woman who brought them had a smile as she placed them on the altar table.  “Here,” she seemed to say.  “These are from God and now they’re returned to God.”  An offering that brought a smile.

The great giveaway. The great return.

In an empty room . . . place the table first.  Bring the food.  Light the candles.  Stay silent a bit.  Wait for the flowers.

My guess is you’ll know the transformation from space to sacred space has already begun the work of invitation that has no end.

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Sunday, July 19, 2009

The church is empty.

It is, at this point, just a building.  In the building there are rooms.  Our task is to turn this into the sacred space known as church, or mosque, or temple, or synagogue.  We know we can pray anywhere.  We may be apt to say God is within us, and that is enough of a temple in and of itself.  That’s right.

But still . . . if space is to become sacred space . . . what do we need?  Where do we begin.

Some years ago, an elderly woman was sitting all alone in her pew.  I’d been wondering what it would take for the church to “grow.”  And so I asked her.

“What do you think Arlene?  How are we going to grow this place?”  She looked at me perhaps not knowing if I was teasing or if I really meant it.  And then she spoke a single word:

“Food,” she said.

I burst out laughing in delight.  Of course, a church provides nourishment for the soul, we call part of communion the “bread of life.”  In that particular church, there was a long tradition of serving a feast at least one Sunday a month.  The members knew about it, the town knew about it, everyone knew about it, loved it, prepared for it, shared it, and joined together doing it.

It was all about food.

I realize that sounds crass.  And I know full well there is a difference between a restaurant and  church.  But this concept of nourishment is so very, very important.  I am in Memphis, interviewing a pastor.  The mailman stops by.

“How are you doing?” asked the pastor.

“Fine,” said the mailman.

“We’ve got some tea for you,” said the pastor.

“Thanks,” said the mailman.  The pastor returned his glance my way.

‘”His son was shot three weeks ago,” said the pastor.  “So he’s in our prayers.  Every day we try to give him something, some lemonade, some tea, some ice, just to let him know we’re aware of him.

Food.

There is scarcely a church, a synagogue, a temple or a mosque that does not have a kitchen in its midst.  Many have two.  Some have three.  Some have five or six, each one for a different function and administered (perhaps guarded is a better word?) by one guild or another.

At my last church, in Big Timber, Montana, the coffee hour was more than just a cup of coffee.  There was elk sausage, cheese, fruit, fresh bread, muffins, tomatoes . . . we filled our plates, cozied over to a table, and spent time with each other laughing, talking, caring, teasing . . . food.

In each of our homes there is a dinning table.  Even if the table is just a tray (I say that because we have not had a dining table for some years now), it still gathers us, holds that which nourishes us, and receives our attention.

In the front of the church there is a table.

Sometimes it has words.  “This do, in remembrance of me.”  Sometimes it has a cloth on it.  Sometimes it is just a table.

Somehow it is both God’s table and our table.

Somehow its presence turns a room into a sanctuary.  Somehow it orders our presence.

“How are we going to grow this church?”

“Food,” said Arlene.

She’s right.

Soft walking,

Larry