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During Holy Week and Easter Week, we are "meeting" asynchronously; that is, we're reading and reflecting on our own and emailing brief responses to Scott for posting below. Good journaling suggestions on page 18.
For Next Week (the 18th): Read the short essay for week 30 in the RRG. We'll meet again on Zoom. Scott will email the link. Kathy will lead worship. Instead of a TR, we'll be developing an "elevator pitch" for EfM.
(Interested in joining us? Link to our Visitor's Center.)
During Holy Week and Easter Week, we are "meeting" asynchronously; that is, we're reading and reflecting on our own and emailing brief responses to Scott for posting below. We'll meet again on Zoom April 18th. Good journaling suggestions on page 18.
(Interested in joining us? Link to our Visitor's Center.)
Living Faithfully in a Multicultural World, Unit 4, Integrating Belief, Behavior, and Doctrine 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.
[PHOTO: Moravian Worship Space, Moravian Museum, Bethlehem, PA.]
Jessica attested to the validity of the observation that the Psalms break into four categories. Then she found two more in Collins. When we all asked ourselves why a book that doesn't mention God is included in the Bible, we had a range of answers: Ancient Rabbi called it the Holy of Holies, an allegory. The passion of it strikes a chord with lots of saints in the mystical traditions. Our word for a shady commodity, erotica, is different from the root word eros that crops up in theology books (year 4 and elsewhere) celebration of human desire (including desire for, say, the future, or home) and love.
We had already found personal connections to the image, expressing thoughts and feelings. We explored the "world" of the image further with perspective questions:
When we looked back over the entire discussion, including the source, we had these insights:
We had one collect from Kathy, Jessica, and Marilyn, and another from Pete and Nuno, in that order:
Dear Giver of Light, Your love shines to bring us out of darkness. We pray that your perpetual light envelopes us in your likeness so that we can share divine love with you and one another. Amen
Dear Eternal Heavenly Father You promised that you will be with us until the end of the age. Help us not to hold to the things that are passing away Through our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen
(Interested in joining us? Link to our Visitor's Center.)
Living Faithfully in a Multicultural World, Unit 4, Integrating Belief, Behavior, and Doctrine in a Multicultural World:
1st yr: Jessica; 2nd yr: Susan; 3rd yr, Pete, Nuno, Marilyn, Kathy ; 4th yr, Scott. Mentors: Susan and Scott. Absent: Pete, Kathy.
Before the discussion proper, we took time to write out our response to a question from the RRG about any gap (or closeness) between beliefs presented in our readings and our personal beliefs. Answers were given during discussion.
A great deal of interest centered on early expressions of positions that are still in dispute today. Jessica understood reasons for the cruel bans on intermarriage in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, but was uncomfortable because it's so much like the approach of the Taliban and others we deplore. Marilyn cited letters from 1512 and 1542 that asserted (1) indigenous people are no less worthy human beings than Europeans, and (2) other faiths can reflect God. Susan saw the same tension among early Jewish Christian leaders regarding Gentiles -- Paul's special contribution to the growth of our faith. Nuno offered some personal experience with the kind of syncretism that the early Christian missionaries tried to suppress; Susan observed that holding on to the old gods was a political act as well as a religious one.
After Nuno remarked that even open-minded Missionaries "infantilized" natives by refusing them full participation in worship, Jessica and Scott opened up another angle from Jessica's reading in Yee last week (when Jessica was absent) -- treating of women the same way, as children or outsiders.
We explored the properties of spices, and imagined the lands where they grew. We remembered the exploitation of inhabitants and wars between European states over territory that was never rightfully Europe's. We had fun thinking of redemption in this context: tomatoes, cookbooks, making great dishes from leftovers. We shared some personal experiences of spice markets and cooking, dwelling particularly on Aleppo Pepper and homemade Ranch Dressing. Connections to our tradition included Jesus telling us to be salty salt and to let our faith grow like the mustard seed.
Looking back over the spice image and connecting it to prayer, participants volunteered insights that quickly shifted into applications:
← | latest | → Use the back arrow to see earlier posts, including our collage collect last week.
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An NPR story of a sickle-cell sufferer helped by the gene-editing technology called CRISPR was the source for our TR. We heard her speak tearfully to a gathering of scientists with thanks to them and to God. Hear the story.
Thinking of faith meeting science, we imagined waves at the shore: not the water, not the sand, but the excitement and change at the uneven place where they meet. That seemed to be one theme of the evening even in the hour before we chose the image.
As our lips are loosed, our hearts are warmed. We feel thy presence near. Although thy throne is in Heaven, thy footstool is here and bending here ask mercy, peace, and by Spirit’s power. May angels keep us on thy way, and never let us fall from thee. Our times are in thy hand. A little span is meted to us, what better can we do than pray and praise? Shouldest thou, O Lord, in thy goodness spare us yet another day, give us grace, we humbly beseech thee, to serve thee better than in times past.
In contrast to those solemn sentences, Marilyn asked for our favorite Crayola color from those big boxes of 64 that looked like bleachers at a baseball game. Sea green... yellow-orange and orange-yellow... cerulean... not flesh. Sharp differences over periwinkle were revealed.
The energy released, when solemnity met silliness, was an example of the excitement where the wave meets the sand.
Living Faithfully in a Multicultural World, Unit 4, Integrating Belief, Behavior, and Doctrine in a Multicultural World:
1st yr: Jessica; 2nd yr: Susan; 3rd yr, Pete, Nuno, Marilyn, Kathy ; 4th yr, Scott. Mentors: Susan and Scott. Absent: Jessica.
Here, too, much of our discussion concerned the energy and interchange, among factions of the Reformation. Anticipating the wave image, Kathy noted the "ebb and flow" as Catholics reformed in response to Protestant attack, and then reacted to the reforms. Those of us with Roman Catholic backgrounds had strong reactions to the origin story of the Jesuits in contrast to what our friends experienced in encounters with Jesuits. Pete remembered Jesuits as "scholarly and serious and MEAN – but during the counter-reformation, they were more enthusiastic ... to get people into God’s tent." Dressed in ordinary clothes, the Jesuits seem to be on the line where the "wave" of the ordained clergy meets the "sand" of the laity -- implying not a huge contrast, but a continuum between the two sides.
Nuno shared some insights. Peter wondered about the reference to Protestant preachers having beards. Nuno understood that to be their dig at the supposed effeminacy of the Catholic church's priests, who were celibate. Nuno was taken aback by some imagery from John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila: “God calls her and places her in the garden to consummate Marriage with God." He guessed that seems scandalous to us, because we don’t think in terms of union and wanting. Scott saw some of that same language in Sedgwick, where the theologican uses "hospitality" to describe sexual relations -- evidently not meaning Ramada Inn -- a mutuality apart from the "idolatry" of family (sexual purity and fecundity ensuring property and patriarchy) or the other idolatry of self-fulfillment by marriage.
Kathy was challenged by the Catholic Church’s thinking – cleaning up their act post Reformation – but then they trot out the Inquisition – "They were smart enough to understand what they were doing!" Marilyn enjoyed (and was creeped out by) the image of the “Papal Machine” and a series of men (and kids!) who were made popes and bishops for all the wrong reasons.
Instead of a collect of words only, we're contemplating a collect of images (with words welcome, too). Here's a link to our page of notes: TR Wk 25 notes
Here's my offering:
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| Artist George Seurat's full image (rt) glows from the energy where contrasting colors meet (lft). | |
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| from Marilyn |
It was a magical, mysterious, hidden, perfect place. I got to go in ‘03 and ‘05. I have it in sketchbooks and watercolor.
It was to my great startle and delight when years later Hollywood got ahold of it. It’s the place where the children return to Narnia in the second C.S. Lewis book. It’s worth watching. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eUlVUvffXwk I think they probably got new stairs out of the deal. There never were any ruins.
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Living Faithfully in a Multicultural World, Unit 4, Integrating Belief, Behavior, and Doctrine 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.
Y1 read a lot of books for this week. Still, Joel stood out. Following the order of the books that Collins suggested revealed to Jessica something surprising: there was an early separation of church and state, most evident in Haggai, where Priest and King cooperated.
Y2 found that Paul in Philippians is much more upbeat than usual. His insistence that Christ pre-existed the birth of Jesus, written in his letter decades before the Gospels were written, shaped our doctrines.
Y3 reported how Martin Luther provoked public outrage eating sausage during Lent. Erasmus asked Luther to calm down; it didn’t work. Ironically, Luther’s success speaking out against the authority freed followers to form splinter groups in opposition to him.
Y4 reported on the appealing vision of a close-knit Anglican parish joined by piety. The back-and-forth in England between the Catholic church and Protestantism led Elizabeth Tudor to lead the Church of England down a “middle way,” emphasizing practical piety over doctrinal purity. This approach to solving a dilemma came up again in the TR.
More than usual, we recommended outside sources. There’s a graphic novel version of the Old Testament at a site called The Bible Project. Scott recommended The Brick Bible (see samples on this blog) and Dorothy L. Sayers’ novel about murder in a small parish, The Nine Tailors. Jessica, Susan, Scott, and Nuno recommended Barbara Brown Taylor’s books about our faith and spirituality. Jessica has found Holy Envy to be especially relevant to the multicultural theme of this year in EfM.
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| Marilyn's California sky |
We followed the RRG's suggestion to ask about who has power, who gives up power? When we looked for examples in Scripture and Culture, we found bad endings both ways, duty-over-loyalty, loyalty-over-duty. David distributes bread of the presence, Judas betrays Jesus to authorities; soldiers suffer PTSD after they sacrifice platoon-mates to a larger duty; we thought of law/ethics subjugated to loyalty for criminal gangs and corporate interests.
Like the writers of Star Trek, we looked for a third way. Jesus seems to do that when he's posed dilemmas: Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's... Let he who has no sin cast the first stone. [I'm reminded of Paul's solution to the dilemma of eating meat sacrificed to false gods: It's okay to do it; don't do it.]
Other insights were No wonder students are so confused by Kant (Mr. Duty)... Dilemma of friend v. institution is not the real issue: It’s how to be faithful to God... When Satan tests Jesus, Jesus responds, “It is written” all three times. In this kind of dilemma, come back to what is written, come back to God.
In two breakout rooms, teams composed the two halves of this collect:
Collect for a Dilemma Dear Holy and All Knowing God, to whom our devotion is given, and in whom our commitment is invested: We pray that we may take only your yoke upon us so that even when faced with heavy decisions, our spirit may rest knowing we are held up by you. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
Heads up: We won't meet during weeks 28 and 29, which straddle Holy Week and Easter week. During that time, we will be reading on our own the interlude book by Kim and Hill.
(Interested in joining us? Link to our Visitor's Center.)
Living Faithfully in a Multicultural World, Unit 4, Integrating Belief, Behavior, and Doctrine 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.
Parallels between that plague time and ours were striking. Pete noted the excuses people make to persecute other people, and conspiracy theories; Nuno said we're still not past finger-pointing.
Jessica was disturbed by the dry bones vision in Ezekiel, but then saw the hope in it. Jessica told us of a patient who questioned bone marrow donation, citing this vision. Susan remembered visiting that very valley of dry bones in Israel, where this story has become an image for the re-birth (and defense) of Israel. In other disturbing osteo-centric news, Kathy cited how the Church exhumed Wyclif's bones to burn them, probably to keep them from being relics.
Pete highlighted the revered but also wily Renaissance man Erasmus: A devout intellectual, famous writer, traveler throughout Europe, he "worked his way into cushy circumstances."
When we explored the image, the world of the roller coaster had a lot to recommend it: seatbelts and safety built in, keeping on track, anticipation, and community for all the strangers in the railcar. Fear seemed to be the main drawback. Nuno made us laugh with a moment of redemption: the terrified child at the end of the trip gasped, "Let's do it again!" An insight we had was that being scared in that way reminds us what "safe" feels like, and safety feels better because of it.
In our tradition, we thought of Adam and Eve at the pinnacle of creation before they took the fatal bite; Jesus at the pinnacle of the temple being offered a safe landing if he were to jump; the toppling of the magnificent tower of Babel.
We thought of Apollo 13, Oz, Jurassic Park, E.T.. We also recognized that much of what we call recreation involves that same kind of juxtaposition of awesome height and terrifying risk -- climbing, Zip lines, repelling.
We shared some of our positions on the world of the roller coaster: Overcome your fears... it's okay to be uncomfortable... trust in your equipment, your training, the other participants... defying gravity: be light, don't let peoples' doubts bring you down. These brought out more thoughts from Scripture, including "Trust in the Lord with all your heart," and Nuno's new translation of the Annunciation which, all agreed, Scott should work into the new collect:
Collect at a Turning Point Almighty and eternal God, you surrendered power and immortality to commune with us, choosing to be born of a young mother: when we in our comfort hesitate to take the track you lay out for us, send your angel with the message he gave to Mary, Fear not, and strap in for the ride of your life. Through the Holy Spirit we pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.
