burning like matchsticks in the face of the darkness

Things I learned/was reminded tonight:
1) While I grew up really low church and still identify strongly as such, I get defensive of any liturgy/ritual I have any understanding of.
1a) I prefer my religious "services" to be structured, and this perhaps lends itself to an inclination toward ritual.
2) I really like the idea of doing the Emmaus story as the Communion prep.

Edit: Oh, and Eda said she wishes we would call "Doubting Thomas" e.g. "different epistemology Thomas" -- he just has a different learning style :) /edit

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"Joy Sadhana is a daily practice in the observation of joy."
-mylittleredgirl [more info]
Weeping may come; weeping may come in the night,
When dark shadows cloud our sight.
Joy comes with the dawn; joy comes with the morning sun;
Joy springs from the tomb and scatters the night with her song,
Joy comes with the dawn.
-from "Joy Comes With the Dawn"

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"Joy Sadhana is a daily practice in the observation of joy."
-mylittleredgirl [more info]
Glimpse Despise not your mother when she is old.

Yes, my dad misread a sign in Hagerstown today [Proverbs 23:22b].

Speaking of church things, apparently the half-time pastor at my grandparents' UU church only preaches on alternate Sundays. I've had people, upon hearing that my evening church has a quarter-time pastor, ask/assume she only preaches one Sunday in four -- and I've always been boggled by that idea, but here I am encountering it in the wild. And there is a certain "effective use of resources" element to it...

I also learned that if it seems like there's a bit of thread sticking out of tights, it's a bad idea to just cut it off, because if they're knit then you end up with a hole in your tights. Oops :/

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During Coffee Hour on Sunday after CHPC, Barbara (who's been coming to CHPC for maybe a year?) told me that she'd been at her sister-in-law's church (in California, I think) and read an article in a newsletter about "progressive Christianity" and thought, "Oh!  Yes!  That!  Now I have a name for what I am."  I laughed and said, "I joke about all the leftie churches I hang out in, but yeah, 'progressive Christianity' is also an accurate term."  She said that "leftie church" doesn't work as a term for her because it has connotations/implications that aren't true for her.  I wanted to say, "What part of 'leftie' doesn't work for you?" but instead I just said lightly, "Eh, I just like being flippant."

I was telling Ari about this tonight, and I said that I don't remember when I first encountered the term "progressive Christianity" but that it makes intuitive sense to me -- "two great tastes, taste great together," I quipped ... I mean, in the Venn Diagram of identities, there are progressives and there are Christians and what do you call that overlapping segment?

I said that I'd been ruined by going to college in Northampton where (almost) all the churches have rainbow flags -- because the population is so predominantly queer(-friendly), of course subgroups of the population are going to be similar; ditto Smith College where there was Radical Catholic Feminists of Smith (RCFOS) and lots of lesbians in Hillel and so on.  And I said that I guess if one came from a place where there was very little queer presence, it would be easy for the religious voices to be either anti- or silent, which would make rainbow flag church seem an unusual thing.  And I know that I should cut people some slack for being all, "Oh, this church is unique and special and amazing and different," because if the only church they have known is church that has hurt them, then encountering an alternative would really rock their worldview.  It still makes me cranky, though, because there are SO MANY churches in this geographical area that have progressive politics and social policies, that practice inclusivity and non-hierarchical participation, and different churches do different things better than others, and your church is not the ONLY option (and is not necessarily even the best option).

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At CHPC we have had two book group sessions on John Shelby Spong's Sins of Scriptures, and the second session turned into largely talking about what do we have after all of this "traditional" stuff we've inherited has been discarded, and how can church be relevant and meaningful and etc. (Karl's sermon that day had been on how at the conference he'd been to the previous day he'd been reminded once again of how much he loves the Church and how many churches are dying but many churches are out there on the edges trying to do a new thing and he wants CHPC to be one of those active creative churches).

Later that week (which was last week), Karl came across The First Christmas: what the gospels really teach us about Jesus' birth by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan and emailed us saying, "I've just been going through it and think that it would be a really good read for us during advent.  It's about seeing scripture as metaphor and parable, and the political critique the gospels were making of their time, and more.  I would love for us to suspend Spong for a little while and spend 2 or 3 weeks with Borg and Crossan."

Today, someone Replied All saying that right now they are "more interested in discussing how we as a church can live some of the things we discussed after reading Sprong's book" and maybe Session and Worship Committee could read the book and "discuss how some of the relevant issues can be implemented in our worship and in the life of our church."

I have really mixed feelings about this, because, on the one hand, I am thrilled that people really want to continue this conversation about how we do church, but on the other hand, I really want to do Advent.  In part because I'm not good at doing Advent, so I want all the resources I can get.  And also... we can't wait a month to return to that other discussion?  How present (physically/mentally) are people really gonna be during the holiday season anyway for discussions of How We Do Church?

And as I was realizing while talking to Ari tonight, that what we believe we're waiting for in Advent is really central to our faith.

I was rereading some stuff from Easter 2007 earlier today, and thinking about how "Christ is Risen" is a true statement every day of our lives, about how the light in the darkness and God dwelling amongst us and so many things are ALREADY (and always) true -- and I don't WANT Advent ... I don't WANT the waiting.  But then I was thinking about the reasons I'd been feeling down and how a lot of that is stuff that I just need to bear through, that the waiting is a good practice to cultivate.

CWM's Advent Planning meeting was a conference call tonight instead of a meatspace meeting due to scheduling constraints.  I called in at 8:01pm (for an 8pm call).  Tiffany was the only person on the call -- and that remained true for the next forty-five minutes until we hung up.  Tiffany had expected that I would (A) call in, (B) have read the lectionary texts.  I did the homework but didn't really have thoughts, but I called in anyway.

Tiffany remembered from my sermon a few weeks ago that I love Advent.  I laughed and said I'd been having a mopey day and had been thinking about Easter and how the things we celebrate on Easter are always/already true and about how I didn't want to do the dark waiting period of Advent.

We talked about the lectionary and what spoke to us, surprised us, etc.  I said that one thing that had surprised me was that "Rejoice in the LORD always" is in the Advent lectionary.  She said that had surprised her, too -- that it shouldn't, because it is one of the candles after all, but when she thinks of Advent she immediately thinks of a contemplative time.  She talked about the joy of Advent as being an authentic joy in opposition to the false joy of consumerist culture.

We talked about the reminders that God's Reign isn't going to be what we expect, that we can have very strong ideas about what kind of thing it's going to look like, but ultimately we are all going to be surprised, it is beyond our comprehension, there is, as Tiffany said, an element of Mystery.  We also talked about the pregnancy metaphor, about how that's joy mixed with anxiety, about how you don't know what's going to come out.

***

After about a half an hour, we'd run through lectionary and themes and images and hymns and decorating the altar, and Tiffany thanked me for taking the time to participate in this call and also reiterated, with the same high level of energy as she had when she said the same to me on Sunday, that she really enjoys reading my sermons and that she thinks they should be shared with more than just my facebook friends and that the pulpit is open.  She said preaching sermons is very different from writing sermons (I know) and she hoped that the experience of preaching would help with my discernment  -- she said preaching is what really drew her into the ministry, that kind of dynamic energy.  I did not say that I do not get that kind of charge out of public performance/engagement.  She said if I haven't picked a Sunday by the first week after January she'll assign me one.  I laughed long.  "You can always say 'no,'" she pointed out.

When I told Scott (a few weeks ago) about her open-pulpit offer, I said I'm not familiar enough with the lectionary to know what Sunday I would want, and I'm not sure how helpful reading ahead in the lectionary would be (especially since it often takes me a few days of sitting with the lectionary texts to find a way in), and he said that some of his best sermons (or whatever the appropriate equivalent is) have come from just being assigned a parsha, so he suggested I just pick a Sunday at random; so I may take her up on her offer to simply assign me a Sunday.  However, I also welcome input from people more familiar with the lectionary than I.

She also suggested that I could write a book -- collecting all the sermons after a year and also including a reflection on the process.  "I would buy that book."  It's definitely an intriguing idea (though of course part of me wants to wait until I've gone through the whole three-year lectionary).  I would self-publish, obvs. -- lulu.com or something.

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My facebook status is, "Elizabeth is in a much better mood after the Advent Planning (and other lectionary-related conversations) call with Tiffany," which says a lot about my life and who I am.

In a (locked) post on a community today, someone talked about considering joining her faith community in a more formal capacity and spoke of her resistance to joining things, to putting her name on membership lists, and solicited thoughts on formal and informal membership.

Having put together my reply, I thought it might be of interest to regular readers of this journal as well.

my autobiography is probably not a helpful comment (but here it is)

I grew up with Honesty and Intentionality and Consistency being hugely valued, so I often have a really difficult time labeling myself as a member of a group.  (See also the fact that I tend to feel sympathy/connection to a variety of, if not mutually exclusive then at least not wholly overlapping groups, so I feel not only more at home on the borderlands but also feel that is a truer statement of my identity.)

I grew up in a nondenominational Protestant church, and at some point during my teen years the pastor asked me if I wanted to get confirmed.  I said no, because I didn't know what I believed, nor did I know what I was supposed to believe in order to become a member of this church.  (My mother brought me and my brother to church every Sunday of our childhood, and I continued to attend until I left town for college -- but the pastor's sermons put me to sleep, so I usually helped with childcare rather than staying through the service; I never felt like I wasn't a part of that church family, though.)

The church I attended almost every Sunday my sophomore through senior years of college (two hours away from the town I grew up in) I was never invited to officially join as a member, and I would have said no if asked.

The year after college I lived with my parents and church-hopped some (though I spent most of my Sundays at the Congregational church), knowing I would be leaving town soon, so I saw it as more denomination-shopping than congregation-shopping.

Some months after I moved out of my parents' house (and moved a half hour closer in to Boston) I started church-hopping again and began accumulating church communities.  Two and a half years later, it's almost a stubborn point of pride that I attend regularly (read: weekly) at a number of different churches (two Sunday worship services, one Wednesday night worship service, one Sunday discussion group) but am not officially a member of any church.

I've been referring to Cambridge Welcoming Ministries as my "primary" or home" church for probably close to a year now and Tiffany (the pastor) sometimes invites me to officially join the church (this year I'm on Finance Committee, so I'm not uninvolved), but that means claiming not only CWM but also the United Methodist Church.  In looking at lay speaker certification recently I actually felt a willingness to officially join the church/Church -- though I'm still not ready to do it (yet).

In writing this up, it also occurs to me that because I'm involved in so many church communities, to claim one "official" membership feels problematically exclusive -- even though in some ways it shouldn't since I'm very clear that CWM is the church I feel most at home in, the church that most teaches me how to be church, the church that best embodies how I think church should be, the church that most nurtures my gifts and graces and challenges me (in a growing way rather than a frustrating way -- it does the latter, too, but less so than some of my other church communities), the church I prioritize and privilege over all others.

In a true community we will not choose our companions, for our choices are so often limited by self-serving motives. Instead, our companions will be given to us by grace. Often they will be persons who will upset our settled view of self and world. In fact, we might define true community as the place where the person you least want to live with always lives! -- Parker J Palmer, 1977, Quaker Faith & Practice, 10.19

The Parker Palmer quote [from the OP] definitely resonates with me as often my resistance to claiming a group identity label is very much connected to my resistance to being officially linked with certain other members of that group (political affiliation, church denomination, etc.).

When I say, "I want a radical, queer, church, which is rooted in the Bible (and tradition), and which is engaged -- with the text, with the tradition, with the world -- and which doesn't make assumptions," Cambridge Welcoming Ministries (CWM) basically _is_ that church. I don't always love it, but it's still Doing Church Right in a lot of ways.

My frustration was coming out of my recent experiences at CHPC -- and also probably exacerbated by the fact that even when CWM isn't doing it for me I don't have anywhere else I can go.

Don't get me wrong -- First Church Somerville, UCC, is a vibrant church with an integrated GLBT presence (okay, maybe not so much T -- though there's a boy who sometimes dresses in drag who's very much a part of the community) and the preaching is energetic and intelligent and challenging and uplifting, and the pastors are good at pastoral care ... it is my secondary church home, and in part I'm just stubborn that I do "Rest and Bread" (Wednesday evening) there and so don't want to do Sunday morning there, but in part it's also not "mine" (I did Sunday mornings there last Advent, and I hated that so often I was pulled out of the worship experience, having to refer back to my bulletin, because it wasn't announced what we were doing next [e.g., hymn number], and when I raised that concern to Molly -- the senior pastor -- she said she thought they already did too much talking but she would be attentive to ways they could be more inclusive of/welcoming to people who were new; in fairness, Laura Ruth is very receptive/responsive to my criticisms re: Rest and Bread).

So anyway. ( in which Elizabeth gets her rant on )

I want a church that has a (radical, prophetic) vision of the Kindom of God and is working to bring it forth on Earth.

Walking home tonight, there was this man and woman in front of me.  The woman asked the man if he went to church.  He said he did when his mom said they had to because they were with grandma, which is once a year.  She said she loves going to church.  He asked her what she gets out of it.  She says a feeling of community, and tradition.  She said she went to church last week, with her Jewish friend, to Trinity Episcopal -- the big deal church by Copley.  They talked about Communion and she said taking Communion makes her feel so comfortable.  This is of course in great contrast to how I feel around taking Communion.  The talk about community and tradition reminded me of sk8eeyore and others.  They turned onto Endicott Ave. so I did not get to hear the rest of their conversation.

I have lots to say about The Last Days of Judas Iscariot*, of course, but sleep is good and I just wanted to write down that story before I forgot.

*N.B. They lie; the program says 2:45 plus a 10-minute intermission, which is more accurate.  We started fairly soon after 7:30 and ended at 10:35.  Just an FYI for your planning, if you go.