This Week on the Pilgrimage - 1

If your just joining, this post is third in a continuing series about our new Sunday evening worship practice, "The Pilgrimage." I invite you to catch up on the "script"/order of worship and the story behind the Pilgrimage (posted just today, don't miss!).

We've probably all heard what Lao-tzu said about journeys. Last night our Pilgrimage began with an even stronger first step than I "boldly" :-) hoped for. And there were homemade runzas!!!111 (or, "bierock." I'm a Nebraskan though.)

What happened? Well, we practiced together for the first time! "Practice" in the sense of a Christian discipline, or that of a doctor, more than in the sports sense. The people who needed to come, who felt called to check this out, gathered at the house in relative peace and a spirit of reflection. Jody and I offered some initial guidance and explanation, but not so much as would snuff out all risk or excitement about the worship. We seemed to intuitively understand the un-programmed aspects of the practice; there was enough sharing, and enough silence and space in between.

As hopes were named, my sense of who we were together and who individuals were deepened. Hearing what others found to be the main point of the story of Bartimaeus enriched my own understanding. I could begin to get a sense of the story though the eyes of this person, or that person; as a young, white man, I found myself seeing differently as others spoke.

For the discernment circles, we moved into two groups. In dim light, with a candle to focus on, some of my group were moved to share and some were not. The practice of communication in discernment circles is highly structured in a sort of ritual sense, but completely un-structured in terms of content (except that it relate to stewardship). Our circle navigated this unfamiliar territory quite naturally, which surprised me for a first trip through. Words were concise, but spoke of real longing and rang of inner truth.

Our first week affirmed for me that I am not alone (and not crazy! Ha!) in my desire for what Elton Trueblood called "redemptive fellowship"; a small community in which to wrestle with my role as a caretaker of God's world and God's people. I think that many of us have longed to dive more deeply into our Christianity, but have not known how to translate that desire into a practice. If I sound full, let me remind myself and you that we have not arrived; we look forward to changes, adjustments, and (I boldly hope, with confidence!) growth as the Pilgrimage continues. But today I feel stellar about where we are.

As I've said to house-building high school missionaries in Tijuana, and gospel-energized campers at Kaleo, last night was a miracle of the kind we should expect; cooperation between people and God. Nothing supernatural, but holy runza! if it wasn't Divine.

The Pilgrimage - PRIMER

To explain where our Pilgrimage is beginning, I need to tell you a story. It has two beginnings; they intertwined with time, but I'll have to pick one to start with.

After Jody and I first heard about CrossWalk America, she started a six-week sermon series that covered two of the Phoenix Affirmations per week. To help us remember, we gave each Affirmation a word. The first four were Witness, Listening, Stewardship, and Worship, respectively. Our first "Aha!" moment of clarity came after the second sermon, when we realized that the first three Affirmations named the sections of our worship much better
than our old headings.

What had been known at St. Peter's (and in many other churches, in a very traditional Protestant style) as "Gathering," (Opening Hymn/Words/Prayer, Call to Worship, Announcements) "Sharing the Word," (Scripture, Children's Moment, Anthem, Sermon) "Responding to the Word," (Prayer, Hymn of Preparation, Offering, Communion) and "Sending Forth" (Closing Hymn, Benediction) became:

Witness - We gather to confess who and whose we are
Listening - We share God's still speaking voice in scripture, community, and prayer
Stewardship - We accept the invitation to be care givers for God's world and God's people.

The other beginning is the older one; last Christmas I was invited to glean from the personal library of Paul Bock, who belonged to my home congregation before his passing. Knowing and loving the work of Quaker authors such as Thomas R. Kelly, I picked up Elton D. Trueblood's "Alternative to Futility." Trueblood's insight on the purpose of Christian gatherings - to be small, purposeful, redemptive communities - gave shape to my own longing to belong to such a society. I passed the book on to Jody, and she re-copied fully half of the book in her notes (it's a real gem) she discovered a similar desire. We were clearly moved to attempt something along the lines of Trueblood's "redemptive fellowship."

A synthesis of these flashes of clarity came when we saw that our Sunday morning worship service was centered on the Listening section. Our new hope was for a way of moving deeper into stewardship; discerning what it means, where we are being called, as we accept the role of caretaker for God's world and people on an individual, personal level. Our hope-beyond-hope was that practicing discernment in this way would lead organically to new, meaningful, effective action.

The Pilgrimage is organized in the same way as our Sunday morning worship, with Witness, Listening, and Stewardship sections (you can see the whole "script"/order of worship here), but the content has been un-programmed. Instead of a litany, worshippers have an opportunity to name their hopes, which the community responds to. Rather than a sermon, together the ommunity discerns the main point(s) of scripture and its implications. And the center of worship are the discernment circles; carefully structured opportunities for each person to speak truly about their hopes, struggles, and sense of call in relation to their role as a steward of God's world and God's people.

The Pilgrimage is informed by our own tradition (in Christian, Protestant, and St. Peter's senses), by the model proposed in "Alternative to Futility," and by our own creativity. And the best part is that it is followed by a potluck - not as an afterthought or gimmick - but as a natural, essential, purposeful part of striving together as Christians.

Really (though the word is loaded), we are a church.

The Pilgrimage - Order of Worship

Or "bulletin," or "the plan," or whatever you want to call it. Jody and I wanted you to be able to see and read exactly what we'll be doing, starting this Sunday night (Oct. 29). Call St. Peter's (816) 942-1155 or email
musicstpetersucc (at) sbcglobal.net
for time & location details.

The call and response litany stuff ("A voice asks...", etc.) is meant so anyone can say any of the parts. It will be spontaneous. What is written below is only the framework; the whole worship will be created by what participants say, from "naming our hope" to the "questions" (no sermon, or any kind of message-monologue) to the circles of discernment.

We are most interested in what you think of all this. -h

The Pilgrimage

Witness
Claiming who and whose we are, and naming our hope

A voice asks: Why have we come?
An answer is heard: We come to acknowledge your claim on us, God.
Another answer: We come to listen together for your still-speaking voice.
And another: We come to discern and take on our parts to play in Christ's reign of love.
All: Open us now to your Spirit's presence as we come to pattern together the new life you have promised all creation.

We Name Our Hope
Any may speak: Tonight I boldly hope for... (name a hope).
All: God, hear our longings and strengthen our hopes!

Hymn of Witness
Sing my song backwards from end to beginning, Friday to Monday, dying to birth,
Nothing is altered but hope changes everything: sing "Ressurection!" and "Peace Upon Earth!"

Listening
For God's still-speaking voice in scripture, community, art, and prayer.

Scripture and Context

Questions for the Community
What stands out as the main point?
What are the implications of this passage for a life of stewardship?

Hymn of Listening
Let it breathe on me, let it breathe on me, let the breath of the Spirit breathe on me,
Let it breathe on me, let it breathe on me, let the breath of God now breathe on me.

Silent Prayer and Lord's Prayer (anyone can start when ready)

Stewardship
Embracing God's invitation to care for each other and God's world

Safe markers (Like Mary, hold what you hear in your heart and ponder it, Luke 2:19).
1. Speaking is invitational. This is not share or die.
2. Appropriate responses are mirroring ("I heard you say...") or pattern recognition ("I percieve a pattern in what you are saying..."). This is not a dialogue. No judging, fixing, advising, suggesting, or setting straight.
3. When recognizing a common call or readiness to move toward shared action, the appropriate invitation is "Could we continue this conversation beyond the circle?"

Discernment Circles (A time to reflect on what God is asking of each of us)

Hymn of Stewardship (move into the Circle of Blessing)
I'm gon' to (live, work, pray...) so God can use me, anytime and anywhere! (repeat)

Circle of Blessing
All: May God take your hands and work through them, open your lips and speak through them, wake your minds and teach through them, set your hearts on fire and love through them, and may Christ who sat at table with us continue with us wherever we go and sit at table with us always, by the Holy Spirit we pray. Amen.

Potluck

Dentists, FaithWorks, and The Pilgrimage

I visited my dentist today, who had seen my first KC Star FaithWalk column and recognized me, which was rad. We talked about how organic bananas keep chemicals out of the environment and sometimes lead to better prices for farmers. Thanks, doc!

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Jody, her spouse, a congregant, and I are just back from the Missouri Mid-South Conference UCC's biennial FaithWorks event in Osage Beach. It was way above average as these things go. Racism and white privilege came up in presentations and discussion four or five separate times; it's a live issue, and I feel good that we can raise it in our conference. I had some good conversations on the margins. Valerie, our storyteller, was incredible; I'll post specifically about her, and her impact on our storytelling here at St. Peter's, as it develops. I usually come home from these events completely wiped and full of existential angst, but just 80% wiped and an average (mid-low) level of angst this time.

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You may or may not have heard about the Pilgrimage, a new Sunday night worship experience we are beginning this Sunday (Oct. 29). Check the St. Peter's web calendar for details. The service will be in a home, followed by a potluck (every week!), and will give those of us seeking to deepen our role as stewards of Creation an opportunity to do so in a close community.

The focal point of worship will be "circles of trust," small not-quite-discussion groups in which we can wrestle with our lives as stewards in Christ's service. The circles are based on the thinking of Elton Trueblood in "Alternative to Futility" and Parker Palmer in "A Hidden Wholeness," adapted to our purpose and context. Below is our draft of "safe markers" - guidelines - for the circles. I'd like to know what you think.

Safe Markers (Like Mary, hold what you hear in your heart and ponder it - Luke 2:19)

1. Speaking is invitational. This is not share or die.
2. Appropriate responses are mirroring ("I heard you say...") or pattern recognition ("I percieve a pattern in what you are saying..."). This is not a dialogue. No judging, fixing, advising, or setting straight.
3. When recognizing a common call or readiness to move toward shared action, the appropriate invitation is "Could we continue this conversation beyond the circle?"

Do you have questions? What's clear/unclear? Anything left out?

The goal is for participants to share, as they are moved by the Spirit, how they are working out their role as a steward in Christ's body (the Church universal) and what they might be feeling called towards. It's discernment. It's a safe space for the true, inner self to speak. Those who are not sharing we intend to listen first, and respond only in order to reflect back to the person sharing what they've said so that they might see their own wisdom more clearly. The circles are not a brainstorming or planning session; hence # 3.

Once again, your open and honest feedback and criticism would be much appreciated. Our Pilgrimage begins this Sunday, and will certainly evolve as we go along, but we want to start in the best way possible.

See you,
-h

Ten Words or Phrases Not Found in the Bible

From T. J. McTavish's "A Theological Miscellany; Odd, Merry, Essentially Inessential Facts, Figures, & Tidbits About Christianity"

This may surprise some folks, but these words and phrases just can't be found in the Bible.

Accepting Christ - Glossolalia (a term for speaking in tongues) - Personal Savior - Going to heaven - Inerrancy - Infallibility - Second Coming - Eternal security - Theology - Trinity

What do you think?

"Eternal security" surprised me - not because I thought it was in there, but I haven't heard that phrase used before, anywhere. It must be a big concern for somebody, though. I'll bet "Second Coming" is a shocker to some; even those who realize Jesus didn't ask people to "accept" him in order to "go to heaven," the LaHaye vision of Revelation is so widely known and taken for granted that if someone told me it was in there, I'd probably have bought it.

Next time someone asks if you've "accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior so you can go to heaven," you might ask them what they're talking about, and where those ideas came from. If the answer is "The Bible," your reply cound justifyably be "Bulls***." It's probably not pastoral, or helpfully-relational. But true :-) Is there such a thing as holy impishness?!

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Extra Credit; Is God a Taoist? from The Tao Is Silent by Raymond M. Smullyan.

This is an imagined conversation between an anonymous mortal and God that raises some great questions. I can't add anything to it; I've encountered some similar thought before in the work of Daniel C. Dennett, The Tao of Pooh, The Dancing Wu Li Masters, and others, and this was a fun, refreshing, and insightful review.

Sim City & Creation

"Instead of making fixed definitive things that we put out into the world, I think we’ve both decided that it’s much more interesting to make things that even we can’t predict."

- Brian Eno, on game designer Will Wright (Sim City, the Sims), from "The Long Zoom," New York Times, October 8 2006

Reading about Will Wright's progress on his new game Spore, I never expected to find a "thin" place. But the above quote certainly was.

Wright works in a genre called "god games," open-ended experiences in which players supervise "a bustling and multifaceted system, managing resources, juggling different objectives." The nomenclature is no accident; "god games" allow the player to assume the role of an intervening God, manipulating the game-universe, creating and destroying, rewarding and smiting. Spore's gamer is quite like the God of "intelligent design."

I don't find our Holy One to be that invasive, or capricious, or contemptous of our freedom. But it still seems remarkable to me that Wright and Eno, at the bleeding edges of creativity and art, are interested in giving up control; endowing their work with unpredictability and freedom, seeking out surprise and novelty from their creations. In a very real way, they are creating an Other - and with the Other, a relationship - that they no longer control, but are a partner in. Now that sounds like the One I know.

"As Wright’s appearance with Eno suggests, the game perhaps deserves to be seen as a work of art first and foremost, a way of seeing and making sense of the world. If it succeeds, it may be in part because of the way its long-zoom perspective resonates with this particular moment in time."

"Everybody has a different take on it: for some people, it has a religious theme; for others, it’s awe at nature and science. But everybody seems to understand that it’s a valuable perspective, and it’s a perspective that they like to have. In a way, what I’m trying to do is connect the almost inconceivable universal scale to the deeply personal, because what you do in the game is deeply personal." - Will Wright

“'One of the things that’s obviously been happening for the past 100 or 200 years,' Eno told me, 'is that the range of our experience has greatly expanded: we can see much smaller things and much bigger things than we ever could before.' But we can also start thinking about much longer futures and much deeper pasts as well. That really makes a big difference to us as humans, because on the one hand it makes us realize that we’re very powerful in that we’re able to comprehend and see all of this universe. But it also makes us seem so much less significant. We’re a tiny blip on a tiny radar screen. I think this is a feeling that people are trying to come to terms with, the feeling of where do we fit in all of this." - Will Wright

I feel consonant with Wright, that coming to grips with humanity's place in the universe is currently (and always?) a magnificent challenge. Notwithstanding those who cling to a capricious and intervening God/gods, we face a 20-billion-year-old universe, with perhaps 80 or 100 billion to go, with Earth as the only island of life and intelligence we know. Why? - does intelligence destroy itself? Is it that rare? Are we just the first? I certainly feel powerful and insignificant, usually at once.

We learn more every day that Creation is not what we once thought. That God's ways in the universe are not what we imagined them to be. So now what?

Or, more pointedly, will we choose to love as God loves anyway?

-h

A Persistent Irrationality

Internet Monk hosts an article, "A Persistent Irrationality," by Eric Rigney. I'm very interested in Rigney's main point; that Christianity embraces and encourages the application of reason to faith and the rejection of superstition.

Instead of his "soverign God who controls everything" I would talk about a God who creates a universe of physical law and respects freedom within it; where Rigney says the Bible has "a specific plan," I find a specific purpose. These are significant differences, but don't diminish my consonance with Rigney's main idea. It seems to me that Jesus wanted to free people from arbitrary, irrational, superstitious religiosity*; that's part of the good news! -h

*Let me affirm that Jewish law is often a wonderful, genuine expression of faith. Like all practices, including Christianity, the mode of expression is in constant danger of being mistaken for its inspiration.

ND SS ND SS

"Spiritually radical technovangelist and blogmiester..."

nd-ss-nd-ss-nd-ss-nd-ss-nd-ss-nd-ss-nd-ss-nd-ss-nd-ss-nd-ss-nd-ss-nd-ss-nd-ss-nd-ss-nd-ss-nd-ss-nd-ss-nd-ss-nd-ss-nd-ss-nd-ss-nd-ss-nd-ss-nd-ss-nd-ss-nd-ss-nd-ss-nd-ss-nd-ss-nd-ss-nd-ss-nd-ss-nd-ss-nd-ss-God-is-Love-nd-ss-nd-ss-nd-ss-nd-ss-nd-ss-nd-ss-nd-ss-nd-ss-Do-Not-Be-Afraid-nd-ss-nd-ss-nd-ss-nd-ss... (TECHNO. vangelist. ND-SS-ND-SS-ND-SS-ND-SS...) -h