Yr. D, Wk. 30: Moral Truths from Nature; a Poem by Yeats

All present.  Scott brought dinner; Susan, worship; Bill, the TR.

We sat at one table and dealt cards in four suits, just three cards each:

• SPADE: What in the reading do you want to dig deeper into scripture to find more about? (In EfM - speak, the "Tradition" source)
• DIAMOND: What in the reading reflected facets of history, current events, fiction, or other arts? (The "Culture" source)
• HEART: What in the reading connected to you in some personal or emotional way? ("Action" or "experience")
• CLUB:  What in the reading made you want to fight to defend a belief, or to fight for a new cause? ("Position" or "belief")

[W.B.Yeats]

For a few minutes, Bill, Lynne, Erica and Scharme searched through the marks they made in the reading to find three for their cards.  Then, sitting at one table, they played their cards, one per turn, explaining what the reading said and how it affected them.  Each card had to connect by suit or subject to one on the table.  If Scott hadn't moved in to give the mentor's view, it had already been written out on cards by two others!

The TR homed in on a line from an early Yeats poem, "Ephemera," concerning the soul's loving and continuous good-bye.  Our discussion found cultural references in the 1970 film Harold and Maude (she teaches him how to love, then dies, to let him love on his own) and, in our tradition, to Jesus' ascension (a good-bye), and Abraham/Sarah's good-bye to their home in their nineties
.
In the end, we collected our thoughts, images, and references, in this way:

Collect for Loss
Jesus, Lover of our souls, by suffering with us, you taught how to love, before you departed: By your Holy Spirit, help us to recognize that we can grown through loss to create something new and holy.  In Your Name we pray, Amen.  

Next Week: Bring $5 for dinner that Susan will order; Susan brings the TR; and Lynne brings the worship.  

Mountaintop Experience: Mentor Formation Retreat

Susan and I returned yesterday from three days at EfM's HQ at the University of the South, Sewanee, near Chattanooga, TN. We joined Bob from Florida, Steve from Asheville (moving soon to KY), and Ethel Ware from All Saints in Atlanta.  Our mentor Sissie Wile modeled ways to formulate an understanding of spirituality through experiences that engaged our imaginations with all four of EfM's sources: action, position, culture, and tradition.

[PHOTOS:  Top - Sissie's home, where we visited with her dog and cat on Saturday, before dinner.

Middle - A branch finding a way through a manufactured space was, for me, an image of Incarnation - the Creator's sharing in our struggles and pain.

 Below - A "mandala" collage of images that help me to define holy]

Our sessions together began and ended with worship from the New Zealand Book of Common Prayer.  Hearing familiar texts phrased differently, we're aware of new angles to old sayings.  For instance, "The Lord be with you / And also with you" is re-stated as an affirmation for all:" The divine Spirit dwells in us. / Thanks be to God."

Before we'd even decided what we meant by spirituality or by related terms mystery, holiness, and the divine, Sissie had each of us choose a photograph from an array published by the Kaleidoscope Institute. I chose a view of an apartment building, ten rows and twelve columns of balconies defined by concrete slabs, iron rails, and glass doors. For me, there's a mystery in that each resident is an individual universe of experiences, pursuits, and hopes; yet even near neighbors may be unaware of each other. So much life is visible at a glance; how can anyone conceive of the fact that all the individuals on our planet are equally self-contained universes?

We also each selected one psalm among those identified by author Walter Brueggemann as psalms for seasons of orientation (8, 14,33, 37, 145, 131, 133), of disorientation (13, 25, 50, 74, 79, 81, 86, 137), or new orientation (30,34, 50, 74, 79, 81 86, 137), all connecting to EfM's  theme this year of new orientations in our "journeys in faith." 

I chose Psalm 124 ("If it had not been the Lord who was on our side...), feeling that my life has reoriented towards care for Mom, following my fifty-seven years of responsibility mostly to myself, my job, my own projects.  The Psalmist seems to be clutching to the knowledge that, "We held on through tough times before; God will be with us at the end of this time, too." 

Again, after sharing, we reflected on aspects of spirituality revealed by this effort.  What we saw was deep connections across time and culture between us and the psalmist; the experience of relating concrete reality to metaphors; the awareness that interior conclusions may not easily be identified as true or false. We agreed that psalms have different meanings for us at different times in our lives.

The most intense thirty minutes of the weekend, for me, were spent searching through magazines for images that spoke to my sense of what's holy, then fitting them into a circle -- to form a personal "mandala," an image of the universe, or the universal.  During that time, we all milled around the room, and I, for one, was nearly oblivious to others while I cut, rearranged, and pasted.  My own images include preparation of food - a holy activity when done lovingly to bring people together; a lovely tree at the edge of a lake, reminding me of days spent in such places reading, or, even more, riding my bike, occupied solely with the cycling and breathing, enjoying God's gifts; a bed, which I've come to see as a raft for a nightly journey through dreams, in which we find rest and meaning-making; the dog - for many of us, a veritable angel in life, example to us of unconditional love and life in the moment (see my article Dogs are Poetry); and the crossword puzzle, signifying for me horizontal existence in time intersecting with the vertical existence of mind, memory, and imagination (see my article Theology of Crosswords).

We also had assignments to design experiences in spirituality for each other.  Bob and Steve presented a combination of lectio divina with the movements of EfM's process of "theological reflection."  Ethel Ware sent us away to sketch or describe something that illustrates what we mean by "the divine." (I brought back a sketch of an open hand, palm up: able to reach out, able to hold, to let go, and vulnerable to rejection).  Susan and I sent everyone out at dusk to bring back images (perhaps on phone cameras) of intersections between what we call "nature" and the human-manufactured world.  In these, we looked for the Trinity:  images of the Creator's joy in creation; of the Incarnate Lord's sharing the pain of creation; and, of the Spirit that flows through all life like the wind.  We were inspired by the analogy in our RRG of a night hike by flashlight:  what we see by "light" of our manufactured world is limited, and we'll appreciate much more of the night life in a forest, once our senses become fully engaged for a walk in the dark.

For a short time before dinner, we accepted Sissie's invitation to her lovely home overlooking a bluff, with a view west across the valley.  Such a short time was still a powerful highlight, reminding us all of another holy quality of hospitality, by which patriarchs welcomed angels. 

Yr. D, Wk. 29: Incarnation, and Walking in God's Footsteps on a Bridge

Present: Bill, Erica, Susan, Scott.

We brought our own dinners.  Bill opened and closed with prayers for evening from his father's 1928 prayer book, and asked us about artifacts of our parents' lives.

Discussion continued of Delio, et. al.  We felt that the environmental teachings in the book were, for us, "preaching to the choir."  Our discussion focused on Duns Scotus's idea, contrary to what we'd been taught as teens, that Christ's Incarnation was not "remedial" but the crowning act of creation.

Erica's TR was an anecdote that brought to mind events in all our lives that we captured in the metaphor of crossing a rope bridge. Our exploration of that metaphor brought us to Peter's steps on the water.

Collect in time of Hesitancy
Lord, You hesitated to go forward at Gethsemane, and caught Peter when he faltered on the waves; when we freeze with doubt, may Your Spirit remind us that You have been this way before, so that we can trust in You, and know that we are not alone. Amen. 

Next week: We read the essay in the RRG for Wk. 30. Scott does food, Susan does worship, and Bill will bring a TR.

Yr. D, Wk. 28: Care for Creation

All present; Scott came mid-way, following chorus concert.  Susan ordered pizza and brought cookies. For worship, Scharme opened with Psalm 8, and ended with Francis's Canticle to Creation.

Of discussion, Susan reported a consensus that the common reading book Care for Creation: a Franciscan Spirituality of the Earth by Delio, et. al., was "peaching to the choir" but then generated some interesting discussion about "how to make ecological questions transcend politics."

For the TR (with interruptions from a dramatic wind and hail that rattled  our windows), Scott focused attention on John 5:1-18, the story of the man crippled 38 years whom Jesus finds beside a pool where the waters are supposedly stirred now and then by a healing angel.  "Do you want to be healed?" Jesus asks. Our first thought, from the cripple's point of view, was, "Duh."  When we asked ourselves why Jesus might be intuiting something holding the cripple back from really wanting to be healed, we generated some references to other experiences, Scripture, and insights, wrapped up in this:

Collect for Healing:
Lord and Father, as Jesus demanded to know if the cripple really wanted to be healed, You know when we, too, have settled comfortably in places where we lie paralyzed: help us to recognize our need for healing that we may rise up, take our pallets, and confront life. Amen. 

Next week: Finish Delio. Brown bag for food, Bill for worship, Erica for TR.

Yr. D, Wk. 27: Hymns and Trophies

All present.  The Lovelaces provided dinner.  Erica brought prayers from St. Patrick, including words for our hymn tune St. Patrick's Breast Plate. For an ice-breaker, Erica asked about luck in our lives this past week.

All of the readings related to hymns.  Erika told of the wide range of emotions in Psalms, and spoke of the joy in reading Song of Solomon.  Scharme pointed to ancient hymns incorporated into James, and related James's warnings about "the tongue" to a hymn we listed as a favorite, "O for a thousand tongues to sing."  She also went into the theme of faith v. works.  Our third year students Bill and Lynne also found a lot to relate to the hymn card.  We were all interested in the Moravians' "cheerful" Christianity and the Methodists' "methodic" way of stoking "enthusiasm."  Discussing Wesley's 9000 hymns and his "fuguing tunes," we got a quick lesson in musical counterpoint.

Scharme brought out a plastic gold trophy for the TR.  Though she'd thought of it as a "vessel," we all had a range of emotions and positions when we thought of trophies given, received, denied, envied,

treasured, despised.  In the end, "trophy's" origin in the Greek word for "nourishment" was what we explored.

We attempted to capture elements of all our exploration in a collect.

Collect for the Trophy:
Father, the prize of Your upward call inspired the Apostle Paul to press on: may we, too, take nourishment from Your word as we run the courses of our lives, that we may be vessels of Your spirit to raise up others we encounter along our ways, through Jesus, the pioneer of our faith. Amen.

Next Week: Susan brings the food, Scharme the worship, and Scott the TR.  We read what's assigned for week 28, 100 pages in the book by Delio.  We may decide next week to double up.  Noted: Bill and Lynne will miss on May 16.

Yr. D, Wk. 26: Chronicles, Thessalonians, and New Spain

Scott was away;  Scharme brought food; Susan led worship.

Here's a report second-hand from Susan's notes:  Chronicles is another perspective on the same material found in Kings.  Thessalonians gives us Paul's response to those who expected a glorious end of the world in their lifetimes -- Scharme was reminded of Jack's mom: "You gave up everything for magic beans?!"  Year 3 told found disturbing the story of the Spanish church's conquest of native Americans, and the introduction of trans-Atlantic African slave trade to replace native labor depleted by European diseases.

The word "atone" provoked a discussion that came to stress reconciliation, us to each other, as well as us to God.  An image of "Pilgrimage" emerged, with Jonah, Paul, and Abraham as examples.

Collect for Pilgrims:
Almight God, who sent Abraham and Paul on unexpected journeys that brought them closer to You: send us as you will and open our minds so that we may embark on the journeys you intend for us. Amen.  




Next week: Scharme brings the TR, Erica brings the worship, and the Lovelaces bring food.

Yr. D, Wk. 25: The Desire to Codify Beliefs and Worship

All present.  Dinner was the Youth's Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper or BYO.  Erica led worship with readings from leaders of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation.  This week's "on board" question came from the current Pope Francis's list of regrettable traits to give up during Lent.

To discuss the readings this time, we gave every fellow three hypothetical "cards" on which to write the three outstanding items from their study that they wanted to discuss.  After we invited Erica to play her first card, everyone tried to lose all their cards by finding a connection to those already "on the table."  At the end of the discussion, we articulated themes that emerged from the exercise.

For the TR, we focused on the first theme that jumped out at us from the earlier discussion:  "The Desire to Codify Beliefs and Worship."  We asked what represents wholeness, brokenness, recognition, and restoration when we look at this desire in our world.  We found even more examples in Scripture and our tradition, both for codifying and for eschewing codification. We looked at how our culture honors the outliers who rebel against codification.  We accumulated an impressive list of insights and personal experiences this way.

The pieces of our collect emerged from the written notes on the board, and are assembled here:

Collect before Worship:
God of Law and Love, Your servant Moses carved Your law in stone; your servant Hezekiah elevated Your written word; yet Your Living Word refused to be enshrined by Peter on the mountain:  let us enter into worship with open and attentive minds, that the words we repeat may be written in our hearts, a part of our being. Amen.


Next Week:  Scott will be with his young actors at least until 8:00.  Scharme brings food; Susan, the worship; and Bill, the TR.