Yr. B, Wk. 12: Augustine, Benedict, and Women in the Background

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Worship and Check-in
Scott opened with the introductory prayer to Nine Advent Lessons and Carols. The gathering question, "Whom have you made happy this week?" elicited stories of a happy dog, the gift of Emily Dickinson's cookbook, a mother in good spirits, a co-worker surprised after surgery to receive a home-cooked Thanksgiving meal that she could eat, Thanksgiving cooking synchronized to the minute by a nerdy spreadsheet, and a patriarch who looks forward to seeing his great-granddaughter for the first time.

Living Faithfully in a Multicultural World, Unit 2: Theological Reflection as a Life Skill:
1st yr: Jessica; 2nd yr: Susan; 3rd yr, Pete, Nuno, Marilyn, Kathy ; 4th yr, Scott. Mentors: Susan and Scott. Absent: Marilyn.

Discussion of the Readings
St. Augustine's not-so-saintly life story and his contributions to our church started us off. Kathy expressed mixed feelings about him, which led to more discussion. St. Benedict's rule related to the conclusion of the Y4 book on theology: "commitment" in the way you live your life is "intrinsic" to reputable Christian theology.

Susan read about Paul as revealed to us in Acts and letters. Acts parallels Luke like a sequel, its arc following Paul to Rome the way Luke follows Jesus to Jerusalem. The puzzling question is, why does Acts fail to mention Paul's letters, and where in Acts is the theology of Paul's epistles? One theory concerns scribes who took dictation from Paul. Scribes were important to the 1st Year reading from Yee: Jessica's own experience of stories that change from generation to generation helped her to understand how the scribes of the Hebrew Scriptures filter the stories of women from their own perspectives.

Theological Reflection
With Nuno, we saw both sides of a Benedict medallion. The numerous letters are initials of prayers on a table Nuno showed to us.

We came to focus on what might distinguish an object of veneration from a magic talisman. Susan suggested that veneration is intended to align our wills with God's will, while a talisman is supposed to manipulate or bend others to our will. Some of us shared about such objects of veneration in our own lives. We remembered what we read about saints' relics.

Pete opened up a new idea with his suggestion that the ruby slippers in Oz might be a cultural example, because they are a sign "you had the power in you all along." Scott was reminded of a novel by Graham Greene in which a delirious priest goes through the motions of communion with neither bread nor wine in his hands -- and yet this imaginary eucharist changes those who receive it. Nuno reminded us that we received communion vicariously during the worst days of the pandemic, praying for "spiritual communion."

In breakout rooms, the Boys and the Girls responded to the TR in different ways with these collects:

Two Collects in the Presence of an Object of Veneration

Dear God, through whom we experience all good things: We give you thanks for the lives of the saints who have come before us. We acknowledge that you are the Alpha and Omega, beginning and end, and all in between. We pray our focus is on you eternally and not of mundane things of this world. We humbly pray these things in your name. Amen.

Dear Heavenly Father, the Source of all Holy inspiration: You lift our thoughts from this world to Heavenly things. We pray that you would help us discern your Spirit in all things, so that we might not rely on magic or ourselves but to rely entirely upon you. Amen.

Emailing the collect, Nuno made an observation that his letting us discover things about the medallion worked out well: "Holding back added a lot." That's good advice for future TRs.

For Next Week
We do the readings for week 13. We expect to miss Nuno, maybe Pete. Susan will lead worship; Scott will have a source for a TR. If it's two mentors with just three participants, we may postpone the TR a week.

Yr. B, Wk. 11: Text and Traffic

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Worship and Check-in
From a Jesuit website, Pete selected prayers for giving thanks that fit our different interests and personalities. For a gathering question, Pete asked which we liked better, fixing the Thanksgiving meal or cleaning up after? Only Scott and Marilyn chose the second option. We learned about tater-tot hot dish, sweet-potato casserole with half-and-half pecans and marshmallows, and how to time all your cooking projects with a spread sheet.

Living Faithfully in a Multicultural World:
1st yr: Jessica; 2nd yr: Susan; 3rd yr, Pete, Nuno, Marilyn, Kathy ; 4th yr, Scott. Mentors: Susan and Scott. Absent: None.

Discussion of the Readings
Jessica started the conversation with a quote from the Y1 text, that “the modern reader of Deuteronomy has to become an interpreter" in the same way that the writer(s) of Deuteronomy reinterpreted Exodus for the situation in Israel centuries later. Scott picked up on translation, which is just one of many angles on any text that a theologian has to be aware of, along with context, history, and a critical awareness of the baggage we ourselves bring to the text.

Translation and text continued in discussion of Islam's first century. Y3 learned that Mohammed's poetry, so beautiful in Arabic, doesn't translate well to English. With just one author, the Koran has a poetic cohesiveness in Koran that our Bible lacks. Pete interested in the poetry of Islam, as the Koran's “divine beauty” is said to need no images. The Koran plays the role in Islam that the Incarnation plays in Christianity. We liked the quote about Islam in the East – “apocalypse was postponed and everyday life took over.” Repeating the author's comment about how Islam spread by the sword, Nuno noted that the Imperial Church had done the same. We saw how both religions got tangled in political power. Islam filled a vacuum left by the Church, which was preoccupied with its own political conflicts.

Susan was delighted by texts, too: Powell provides Matthew's historical context and authorship, audience. Susan enjoyed seeing Matthew’s distinctive approach: loves numbers! Matthew "layers" text from Mark with different purposes and angles.

Pete was delighted by the maverick church in Ethiopia. Ethiopian church celebrates BOTH Jewish sabbath and Christian. There, Pontius Pilate is celebrated because he evidently realized the extent of his guilt and suffered for it. Remembering Jesus Christ Superstar, we went down an Andrew Lloyd Webber rabbit hole.

Houston evacuates for hurricane Rita, 2005

Theological Reflection
The story how Jesus rebukes John and James for wanting to rain fire down on the Samaritans eventually morphed into the image of a driver going "wrong way" through traffic. Our exploration of that image brought us to a more specific situation: EMTs driving towards danger through lines of cars headed for safety.

We connected to the image.

• Action Source: evacuation of New Orleans; snowpocalypse
• Movies: Day after Tomorrow, zombie movies
• Position: “tomorrow is another day” and Mister Rogers, "Look for the helpers."
• Tradition: Looking back Lot’s wife turns into salt. (James and John are lucky they didn’t!)

Our connections graded into insights: War has its own momentum, undertow – we have to work against it or it pulls us in... Go with the flow (or not: Nuno’s story of grabbing onto a sea turtle that dragged him far from shore)... From experience on the Vestry, there are situations where you’ll be challenged to buck a trend / a tide. Don’t be afraid to pause and turn to God. Our personal insights worked into this collect:

Collect for Going Against the FlowProtector and ever-loving father, You guide us even through the valley of the shadow of death. We pray that we may not be led into temptation, but that in times of trial we will run towards you. As you have bound us together in a common life, give us courage to go against the tide and to rescue our neighbors. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

For Next Week
We're taking off the week of Thanksgiving. When we return on Tuesday the 29th, Scott will lead worship and bring a gathering question; Nuno will bring a source for theological reflection.

EfM at Diocesan Council

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FridayOur own Jessica served as verger for the Diocesan worship service Friday evening, where Scott was concluding a day of reports and elections.

The event took place in the main gym of Holy Innocents Episcopal School, established in 1959 by the Episcopal church of the same name. Scott's mother taught there from the early 1970s to the early 2000s. Here's a photo of the same location, then and now.

At a presentation by The Office of Congregational Vitality (vitality@episcopal.org), Scott joined Sue and Sharon, co-mentors of the morning EfM group at St. James. The presenters advertised services offered to congregations regarding stewardship, leadership, and congregational discernment.

There we participated in an exercise based on John Westerhoff's list of Anglican characteristics. Stations were set up along the walls of the room for the "temperaments" centered on aesthetics, nature, history, moderation, intuition, comfort with ambiguity, open-mindedness, catholicity, and politics (but not "partisanship" -- one participant told us that a round-table discussion earlier in the day had turned ugly when partisanship got involved in a discussion of the phrase, "Behold, I am doing a new thing"). The other stations identified Anglican "spiritualities" described as mystical, pastoral, sacramental, communial, and liturgical.

We EfM mentors saw the four sources of a TR behind all those many categories. The presenters were using a procedure in the RRG called "TR in Motion."

The Bishop's sermon was a TR that drew on a poem about the "minutes" of our lives, and a bit of Isaiah. Before the prophet talks about "a new thing," there's a passage of remembrance of God's great deeds. Then Isaiah tells us to forget about all that -- Bishop Wright called that a "what the--?" move. The Bishop guessed that some of us might be anxious wondering what "new thing" we might have to do and reminded us that it's God who's doing something.

[See a fuller report at Scott's personal blog The Word Sanctuary.]

Yr. B, Wk. 10: Semantics Matter

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Worship and Check-in
Marilyn selected prayers that fit both the year's theme and our own individual personalities.

Before class, we learned that Nuno's family is now mourning the loss of two beloved pets in three weeks. We also heard from Kathy, suffering a setback in her recovery from surgery. They were in our thoughts at the beginning and end of the session.

Living Faithfully in a Multicultural World:
1st yr: Jessica; 2nd yr: Susan; 3rd yr, Pete, Nuno, Marilyn, Kathy ; 4th yr, Scott. Mentors: Susan and Scott. Absent: Nuno, Kathy.

Bob Marley relates to the church in ancient Ethiopia.

Discussion of the Readings
Jessica started us off with her reaction to reading so many instructions in Leviticus for slaughtering lambs, bulls, and other animals: "It makes me want to be a vegetarian." Scott picked up on the sacrificial lamb, mentioned in the Y4 book as one of many metaphors by which we understand how Jesus saves (e.g., ransom, conquering warrior, advocate, husband, Second Adam), metaphors that can "intensify" feeling and devotion.

Pete compared reading about the minutiae of temple sacrifice to reading about the hair-splitting that resulted in so much bad blood in the early church. Marilyn agreed. Scott asked for any modern-day example of emotional conflict over semantics. Susan cautioned everyone, "Semantics do matter." Jessica told us thta the difference between "marriage" and "blessing a union" caused the break-up of a church just this week. All agreed that, reading between the details, they did sense believers struggling to create community with God and each other.

Susan enjoyed Powells' charts that show at a glance differences among the gospels and different theories to explain how some portions of different gospels seem to quote each other or some unknown common source. Pete and Marilyn enjoyed learning about peoples that don't come to mind when Euro-Centric Episcopalians think about church history: Ethiopians' strong identification with Jews, and Syrians' affinity for the story of Jonah (as in, any enemy of Nineveh is a friend of ours). When Susan mentioned that the Ethiopian connection continues in Jamaica, we went down a reggae rabit-hole.

Theological Reflection
With two of five absent, we put off tonight's TR for next week.

Instead, we thought about ways that visitors to our class could get a good idea of what we do. Our ideas went into our blog's new Visitor Center. The link is located at the top of each new blog post and also in the upper-right-hand corner of our blog, over the EfM logo. And here it is again:

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For Next Week
Pete will lead worship; Scott will bring a source for the TR.

Yr. B, Wk. 9: Certified Saints

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Worship and Check-in
Nuno presented worship adapted from Mission St. Clare, including a vision of all the saints from 2 Esdras and a spoken hymn: "For All the Saints." (His closing was a recording of "I Sing a Song of the Saints of God," which left us all smiling.)

For a gathering question, Nuno asked what saints come to mind for us?

• Thomas Aquinas (for philosophy, but let's also remember his song Humbly I Adore Thee, topping the charts for 1000 years)
• St. Peter, St. Paul, and the church fathers (and mothers) whose writings and actions shaped the church
• St. Anthony, patron saint of lost things
• St. Francis, whose ministry included animals
• St. Teresa of Avila for teaching that we are Christ's hands and feet, now
• personal saints among family and friends (very appropriate for this Day of the Dead)

Living Faithfully in a Multicultural World:
1st yr: Jessica; 2nd yr: Susan; 3rd yr, Pete, Nuno, Marilyn, Kathy ; 4th yr, Scott. Mentors: Susan and Scott. Absent: None.

Discussion of the Readings
One thread of the discussion was protracted and recurring conflicts over doctrines that, to us, "didn't make an iota of difference" -- a joke that Nuno appreciated. We were amazed that the church survived at all. Through these disagreements we saw under Constantine's imperial church a competitiveness for power along with sincere concerns about truth. We noted that these conflicts will continue under other names at other times and places.

Another theme, one that would connect to our TR, was the proliferation of certified relics as different shrines offered destinations for pilgrims.

Theological Reflection
Pete shared on screen four slides: front-and-back of Pete's birth certificate in the Thai language, another in English from the US State Department, and a certificate of Baptism. We had a long list of observations and questions before we decided to focus on the concept of "identity through certification."

We explored that concept with perspective questions, this time looking for building, breaking, and bridging: building a new life or new community, creating an historical record; breaking common humanity, separating Us v. Them; bridging generations and countries.

We connected "identity through certification" to other sources.

• Tradition: Circumcision a seal, “You are sealed as Christ’s own forever,” blood on the door to identify Hebrews in Egypt, mark of the beast vs. Christ’s seal on the foreheads, Ashes on Ash Wednesday. When we looked for connections specifically to Jesus, we hit a new vein of ideas: “Render unto Caesar” the coins that bear the Roman imprint, Jesus consorting with outsiders, the marks he made on others (pressing spittle and mud in the blind eyes, telling the lepers to present themselves to the priests to certify healing), and his question about identity: “Who do you say that I am?” That last one made us think of God's answer I am what I am, refusing Moses the certification he sought to let people know he'd been with the real God.
• Culture: pedigree for animal breeders; travel papers such as passports but also forms under apartheid that asserted minority control over ethnic groups; tattoos--as souvenirs, at demarcation at Auschwitz, along with the Star of David, and as Gang Identification; and brands that mark status, with the egregious example of the SUPREME label.
• Action: Nuno shared a couple of personal experiences when certification was important.
• Position: None of this documentation is necessary to who you really are or your relationship with God.

Gathering insights and applications, we thought how certification of "provenance" for art and "pedigree" for animals (and debutantes) increase their value, and also questioned the system that makes that so. We connected this discussion to the readings for today, how the early church fought bitter fights certifying true beliefs.

Working together in a breakout room, Pete, Nuno, and Kathy composed this collect:

For Certification of Identity

Dear all knowing and all seeing God: You know our true identity better than we do. We pray that when we encounter strangers that we see you in them and recognize them as members of your earthly family so that we may be more true to your identity and desires. Amen.

Jessica and Marilyn wove different threads of the discussion into their collect:

Dear I am who I am and who knows who we are even before we are born: You seal us as members of your holy church through Baptism with love. We pray that those who do not know you come to the knowledge and love of you so that they might know the beauty of belonging, feeling connected by faith. Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen.

For Next Week
Marilyn brings worship and a gathering question; Scott will bring something from the tradition source for a TR.