Yr. A, Wk. 28: "The Dream of God" by Verna J. Dozier, Part One

Members:  Thomas, Gene, Mariel, first year;  Erika, second year; Scharme, third year; Bill and Lynne Lovelace, fourth year; Scott and Susan, mentors. Absent: None

This was a "brown bag" dinner night. Scharme led us in a reading of Compline and posed the question, "What is your spirit animal?"  We turned out to be a menagerie: Bengal tiger, turtle, orb spider, 17-year-cicada, fox, and dog.   

We responded to Verna Dozier's Dream of God. Many of us were taken by the ideas of God's vulnerability in loving us and leaving us free not to love Him.  The author does us all a favor by making a sort of Cliff's Notes for the Bible, and we found her matter-of-fact interpolations to famous stories to be enlightening, such as the detail that Moses must have heard stories of His people from his Mother.  Gene wished he had read this book before launching study of the Old Testament, although he wondered if he'd have understood this book so well before he'd already done the Old Testament?

Mariel observed that the "three falls" correspond to ages of human development: toddlers' rebelling against parents' "no," adolescents clamoring to be like everyone else, and finally, the adult surrendering freedom to a world of institutions.

Tom defended the institution of the church from attacks on "institutionalism" by the author.  Lynne suggested that rise of institution was also a loss of community.  Others saw that, at each step towards institutionalism, we Christians abdicated some freedom.  Scott asked about the author's saying that the opposite of faith is fear; that love is justice in action.

Susan related all this to "St. Patrick's Breastplate," and conversation fell apart in joking about how she hates the difficulty in singing that hymn.

For the TR, Lynn brought the image "Woman Who Broke the Alabaster Box" by artist Kim Young Gil.

Our initial responses fixed on the form as often as on the content of the picture.  In the end, we identified the flow of energy from bent head of lily to bent head of Jesus to bent body of the woman, and back -- three figures each focused on another -- a circuit of caring.

We drafted a collect for the thoughts and feelings conjured by the image.

Collect for our Church Family

Creator, Redeember, and Sustainer, Your love flows eternally through the persons of the Tinity: may we members of the church bend with humility and attentiveness to each other, valuing differences, that we may generate love in the flow through worship, mutual care, and service.  Amen.  

Next meeting will follow Holy Week, Tue. April 3

• Reading:  Finish Dozier; read "Vocation" (RRG pp. 153, ff.) .  
  


• Food:  Susan.


• TR:  Mariel


• Worship:  Scott.

Yr. A, Wk. 27: Psalms, Hebrews, Protestant "Awakenings," and The Call of God

Members:  Thomas, Gene, Mariel, first year;  Erica, second year; Scharme, third year; Bill and Lynne Lovelace, fourth year; Scott and Susan, mentors. Absent: Scott arrived mid-way through the TR.

Opening worship and "check in" question:  Mariel brought a service from the New Zealand  prayer book. 

Susan took notes on the discussion of readings.  Our discussion of the TR made many references back to that discussion.  She underlined a quotation from Psalm 118 about our calling God, and His placing us in a "broad space."

Gene brought an anecdote from his life for the TR.  After a lot of buy-in from others, we arrived at a universal metaphor for what we think and feel at such a time:  The Call in the Middle of the Night.  Creation was sleep: peaceful, restorative.  Sin was the call, and the many reasons for not answering.  Judgement is the perseverance of the caller on the other end, making us recognize that it isn't an accident or a robo-call.  Redemption is being called out to act within the community -- family, friends, neighborhood.  We found many traditional connections, especially Samuel hearing the call in the night from God, but also the Good Samaritan.

Collect for the Call

God Who roused Samuel from sleep to service: when we get the call in the night or see the stranger in need, let it take us out of selfishness and into the broad space of community.. Amen.

Next Week:  

• Reading: Week 28 -- in the book by Dozier, pp. 1-64   .  
  
• Food:  .Brown Bag.
• TR:  Lynne.
• Worship:  .Scharme

Yr. A, Wk. 26: A Dilemma

Members:  Thomas, Gene, Mariel, first year;  Erica, second year; Scharme, third year; Bill and Lynne Lovelace, fourth year; Scott and Susan, mentors. Absent: None. Scott came at the break.

Opening worship and "check in" question:   Erica brought a prayer / poem relating to a topic in her reading, slavery.  

Discussion of the reading (from notes by Susan): Erica struggled with I Timothy  - slavery, silent women, etc.  Lots of social convention, disharmony about authorship of letters.  Contrast with the number of women in Luke and Acts.  Difficiculty when people take literally, hard to see Scripture used to oppress others.

Mariel, commenting on Chronicles, quoted Gabriel Garcia-Marques, "the heart's memory highlights good, forgets the bad." So we have a very selective history, in which Levites are great.  Was it written by a Levite?  Why do the "high places," supposedly "destroyed," pop up again and again?  Mariel's theory is that they never went away; they just put on a show for each new king.  

Tom thought Collins' book helped make sense of Chronicles.  Gene agreed, that it's more about the Jerusalem cult, rather than the people, as writer inflates numbers (60 to 600).  

Bill talked the role of the rabbi.  

General discussion of difficulty of reading scripture.  

Year Four: Poverty, contingency of existence then, is proper context for Jesus's preaching of care fore the poor.  Not like a contract as in old testament; act because you love your neighbor.  Micah 6.8

"What is good;  what is to be done; who decides?"  

Year Three: Scharme said that the Spanish did not love their neighbors, did a lot of taking.  African slavery answered the problem of sickly Native Americans.  Chronicler's geneology has same function as Spanish geneology to throw out Jews, show purity.

TR: Bill brought us the story of a dilemma he experienced in high school.  Mariel wrote the collect:

Collect

O God, Eternal Source of justice and mercy,strengthen our resolve to see beyond our present circumstances, desires and fears, that we might choose action over abstraction, and become holy instruments of Your righteousness and peace, fulfilling Your will and establishing Your kingdom on earth. Amen.

Next Week:  

• Reading:   Week 27 - Psalms and Song of Songs; Hebrews; Protestant Awakenings; Sedgwick 5 & 6.  
  
• Food:  Tom.
• TR:  Gene.
• Worship: Mariel .

Yr. A, Wk. 25: "We shall not cease from exploration..." and some Geese

Members:  Thomas, Gene, Mariel, first year;  Erika, second year; Scharme, third year; Bill and Lynne Lovelace, fourth year; Scott and Susan, mentors. Absent: Gene.

Opening worship and "check in" question: Taking the RRG's suggestion that we regard the catechism (BCP 845), Scott led a recitation of the first two sections, questions and answers about the nature of God and of Humanity.  The question for "check in" was, "What question did this past week answer for you?"  

Bill and Lynne brought a satisfying meal of fixings for chicken Caesar salad.

The theme of the evening turned out to be T. S. Eliot's famous lines, "We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." This was quoted in a sermon that some of us heard at Evensong down at the Cathedral a couple days before; its truth was reflected in our discussion of the readings, and even more in our experience of theological reflection on a poem by Wendell Berry.

Tom started discussion with his observation (after Collins) that the harsh cruelty practiced by Nehemiah continues today under the Taliban.  Erika saw harshness in Thessalonians, the dictum "He that will not work shall not eat."  Mariel called Nehemiah the "stick" to Ezra's "carrot," and she was struck both by the political opposition to the rebuilding of Jerusalem, and by the preservation of that opposition in Scripture. Scharme had lots to say on such political opposition as she described the counter-reformation, but she brought out the generous spirituality and discipline of mystics John of the Cross, Theresa of Avila, and Ignatius Loyola.  Their experience of God, bordering on erotic, brought us to the chapter on "Incarnate Love" that Bill and Lynne read.

Susan brought a short poem of Wendell Berry's, referenced in that sermon at

the Cathedral alongside Eliot's.  After we read "What We Need is Here" three times, we offered observations, questions, and some uneasiness. We questioned Berry on many points, and found we had different ways of reading the title, repeated twice in the poem.   We did all agree that we could buy into the experience he describes when geese fly overhead, what Eliot called in another poem a "timeless moment."  We did not cease from exploring that image itself for nearly an hour, arriving where we started, only to recognize for the first time just what Berry had in mind.

Tom asked, "Have we just ended up where we started?"  That's when Scharme had her epiphany, that our experience of this TR was in fact the purpose for doing TRs: to explore a truth we may already know in such a way that we come to own it. Scott said,"We've earned the understanding of the poem."  All agreed, we took it apart in order to put it back together.

Collect for Theological Reflections
Creator God:  incarnate, You often retreated to quiet places to experience timeless moments: Help us to find the self-discipline to abandon the busy-ness of life at times, to be quiet in heart and clear in eye; so that, reflecting with patience and creative insight on our lives in You, we may discern Your lovingkindness both in the wonders of creation and in the path through sin and judgement to redemption.  In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.


Next Week:  

• Reading:   Those listed for Week 26..  
  
• Food:  .Gene.
• TR:  Bill.
• Worship:  Erika

T. S. Eliot's "Little Gidding": Visit my reflection on this poem.

Visit Scott's blog page devoted to the novels and stories of Wendell Berry. 

Yr. A, Wks. 23+24: Prophets, Paul, and Practical Piety

Members:  Thomas, Gene, Mariel, first year;  Erica, second year; Scharme, third year; Bill and Lynne Lovelace, fourth year; Scott and Susan, mentors. Absent: Tom.

Scott brought Chinese dishes.  Phoenix and Dragon was best. Erica wondered if anyone else had given up dragon for Lent.

Lynne brought us worship from a Lenten devotion book, with the reading of Jesus separating the goats from the sheep, to whom he said, "I was poor .. naked... in prison... and you helped me...."  The reflection had to do with becoming "holy," not so intimidating as it sounds when we think of it as meaning "becoming more like Him."  We shared how we have felt ourselves becoming more "holy" this year.

Our discussion of two weeks' readings criss-crossed some common ground.  Mariel observed that Ezekiel's prophecy built in a coherent, literary way to a detailed vision of a utopia centered on temple worship.  Erica said that's echoed in the "realized theology" suggested by assurances in Ephesians and Colossians that the kingdom of God is now, not in the far future.  Scharme reported on the communities formed around "confessions" as the Lutheran Reformation, mixed with politics, spread among more radical community leaders.  Lynne and Bill reported on Timothy Sedgwick's deriving a vision of Christian ethics in the Anglican church, grounded from early times in the "practical piety" associated with the parish church. 

When Bill and Lynne spoke of "practical piety" in contrast to piety based on strict adherence to laws or dogma, they harked back to the discussion of "holiness" in our opening worship.  Students of other years picked up on the same theme.  Mariel observed that the prophets, preaching the holiness code, were nonetheless aiming for a change of heart -- Susan remembered the prophet's line "Rend your hearts, not your clothing."

Gene started a discussion of history with a  question about individual salvation compared to the more communal focus we were seeing in tonight's reading.  When Scharme had spoken to us of "humanism" in this week's reading about Erasmus and Luther, she was referring to the time in European history when the concept of the individual first developed -- through critical readings ancient authors that took individual perspectives into account. Susan traced that development through the Enlightenment.  Scott referred to Petrarca, who addressed a "letter" to ancient orator Cicero "from the banks of a river you knew, 14 centuries after the birth of a savior you never knew."

That image of looking across water to someone on a distant shore turned up again in our TR.  Scharme laid out artifacts from her family's life on  a purple Lenten cloth beside a cross.  As a group, we were most struck by a photo from 1912 of two choir boys at St. Phillips, labeled "Bill" and "Dad."  Aware of the distance between us and them, aware that World Wars, Depressions, families, old age and death lay ahead of the boys, Erika suggested the metaphor of travelers on the deck of a ship watching people on the shore as the distance between ship and shore increases.


Collect for the Journey:
Heavenly Father, as we see both past and more distant past when we look at the stars, we know that You see us both as we were in the womb, and as we will be:  let us never forget, as we sail onward, the great cloud of witnesses on the shore behind us, and our responsibilities to those whose lives lie on a distant shore ahead of us. Amen.

Next Week:  

• Reading: See RRG week 25.  
  
• Food:  Bill and Lynne.  (The week after: Gene)
• TR:  Susan.
• Worship:  Scott.

Yr. A, Wk. 22: Theology and the Art of Elizabeth "Grandma" Layton

Members:  Thomas, Gene, Mariel, first year;  Erica, second year; Scharme, third year; Bill and Lynne Lovelace, fourth year; Scott and Susan, mentors. Absent: None.

It was a brown-bag week. 

Susan led us in a "lectio divina" considering the folk-styled tale of Elisha's following Elijah to his appointment with chariots of fire.

We discussed the common reading.  At the end of the discussion, we performed the exercise recommended at the reading's end, filling three squares of a piece of folded paper with (1) what belief or tradition we think of when we think of God's presence, (2) what cultural /  artistic examples bring us close to God's presence, (3) a deed or behavior that does the same; we went back to add into each square the feelings connected to each of those; and, in square (4), we concluded how we know God, how God reaches us.  These we saved for sharing at another time.

After the break, we considered Erica's story of an acclaimed artist in her family, Elizabeth "Grandma" Layton, who discovered late in life both love and the power of art to overcome her depression.  From samples of Layton's art, we each chose one that struck us.  After a wide-angle exploration that brought to mind images of phoenix and butterfly, and Bible stories of Abraham, Sarah, and Ezekiel , we put together a kind of word salad of hopes and insights that our reflection had raised:  Transformation ... made whole by God's call... completing... Ezekiel, desire driving us... persistence (following through)... that we may hear and heed Your call, awakened passion / desire... develop new skills, relationships, discipline, transform healing service... outward manifestation late in life, unintended.

Collect for a Change in Life
Almighty Father and Creator, You called Abraham and Sarah in their old age to start a new family, and called the priest Ezekiel to a second career as prophet: open our minds to the possibility of transformation even late in life, and grant us persistence, courage and discipline that we might develop new skills and relationships necessary to fulfill Your vision for us.  In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

Next week: We'll discuss the readings for Weeks 23 and 24.  Dinner Scott; Worship Lynne; TR Scharme.

Yr. A, Wk. 21: It's so hard to say "I'm Sorry!"

Members:  Thomas, Gene, Mariel, first year;  Erika, second year; Scharme, third year; Bill and Lynne Lovelace, fourth year; Scott and Susan, mentors. Absent: Gene, Scharme.

Opening worship and "check in" question:  I was at musical rehearsal until late and missed this part.

Readings:  I arrived mid-way in the discussion of Jeremiah, Lamentation, Galatians, and "Drama of the Cosmos."

Esau embraces Jacob:  Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (d. 1872)

Collect for Atonement
Judge eternal, just and merciful: As you led Jacob back to make amends with Esau, show us our secret faults, that we, too, may repent and seek forgiveness from those we've harmed, and that we may embrace those who have trespassed against us. Amen.

Next Week:  

• Reading:  Combine readings for week 22 and 23. The common reading is listed as "week 22" in our RRG book.  
  
• Food: brown bag: Some may wish to partake of pancakes.
• TR: Erika
• Worship: Susan.