Yr. B, Wk. 8-9: Luke! The Musical, and Pharaoh's Daughter

Class: Christine, first year; Mariel, Tom, Gene, second year; Erica, third year; Scott and Susan, mentors.  Absent: Christine, Tom.

Erica opened with her personally printed Compline worship service.  While we ate our brown bag dinners, we considered Erica's question, "What in the past week brought peace to you?"  We had positive answers.

Our discussion of the readings grew from Mariel's observation that the gospel of Luke is "like a musical," replete with humanity, movement, and actual song.  The musical "sound" of the language in Luke connected to the 4th year reading in Ford, who lays out in his survey of theologians' views of Jesus, some ways that translations of the gospels all add new layers of imagery and meaning to it.

Mariel also compared Luke to an "historical novel," opening up another avenue for other years to offer connections. From 4th year, Susan reviewed what we know of Jesus between gospels and other historical records.  Erica told how councils struggled to define how human and how divine Jesus  was -- and is. Scott was struck by Ford's exploration of the question, "How can a particular 1st century Jewish male speak to, be relevant to, relate to, the rest of the world today?"

Looking back over the whole conversation, we remarked on how much room there is for speculation in the materials that we've inherited.  Mariel observed that we want to "freeze the image" we have of Jesus.

TR.  Susan had us read several translations of Exodus 2.1-10, about a conspiracy of women to keep alive the baby who will become Moses, whose name means "drawn from," as in, "drawn from the river."  Our exploration of the scripture focused on Pharaoh's daughter, how she subverts her father's arbitrary law.  We saw that she herself is regulated.  We saw pity.  We saw a "nudge-nudge-wink-wink" cooperation of the Princess, who ends up paying the nurse to care for the nurse's own son.  In Scripture, we saw how Jesus often bumped up against the literal enforcement of laws when he looked at the intention behind the laws.

Collect for Judges
Heavenly Father, you moved Pharaoh's daughter to defy her father's decree and draw baby Moses from the river:  help us to discern the law you've written on our hearts and give us courage to follow that law regardless of personal risk.  Amen.

Next week: Readings are for week 10.  We won't have Christine.  Tom brings food; Mariel leads worship; Erica will bring an object for a TR.

Yr. B, Wk. 7: Exodus, Mark, Manicheans, and a Marriage Proposal Gone Wrong

Class: Christine, first year; Mariel, Tom, Gene, second year; Erica, third year; Scott and Susan, mentors.  Absent:  Mariel has been away for three weeks, but has shared her reading responses through email.

Erica provided us two kinds of yummy soup from Panera, salad, and bread.  Gene led worship.  We caught each other up on our respective weeks.

Mariel's email about the readings for year 2 started our discussion  She calls Mark a "gospel for middle schoolers" focused on mysterious and supernatural events a la Harry Potter, told in the "historical present tense."  The original ending "they were afraid" seems right to her, but has long disturbed Gene.   Tom and Gene responded to Mark and Powell's text, commenting on the disjointedness of the narrative, and the "story sandwich" that Mark often presents.

Christine segued from Tom's observation that the apostles repeat the same mistakes to the Hebrews' repeating the same errors so much. In her reading of Exodus and Collins, she was struck by the words translated from Hebrew that she has always seen differently.  We discussed the importance of "God's name."  Scott made a comment about how our American history has already been oversimplified or even fictionalized.  Gene gave the example of Washington and the cherry tree, a fable made up by a clergyman named Parson Weems to teach children about Washington's integrity. Scott gave the example of a WABE host who made a generalization of the 60s -- "It wasn't true -- I was there," said Scott.

Erica connected the discussion of Exodus to her own experience teaching little children who were disturbed by the violence of plagues in the Exodus. In her reading, she was struck by the origin of the word "pagani" meaning "non - combatant," practically "draft dodger," a term of scorn to Christians who take seriously the metaphor that believers should be "soldiers" for Christ.  Erica does not buy in to that metaphor, volunteering that she despises Sir Arthur Sullivan's hymn "Onward, Christian Soldiers," .

We were all interested when Erica spoke of Zoroastrianism, and the heretical Manichean idea that Good and Evil battle each other as equals.   Scott and Susan, speaking of Ford's chapter on "Evil," said that one traditional Christian view is that evil is the absence of good, a rejection of God.


TR  Scott shared an experience concerning a musical theatre piece that he spent years composing; he called off the production to save a friendship.  As we got into the story, we came up with a more universal version of it, the marriage proposal at a baseball game - rejected on nation wide TV.  Our exploration of the metaphor brought out several Scriptural and Cultural analogs.  We collected our thoughts and feelings in this prayer:

Collect for Strained Relationships
Lord Jesus, bridegroom of the Church: as the wife of Hosea rejected his offers of love and forgiveness, we have so often rejected You. Open our eyes to see You in others, that we may nurture loving relationships with all our fellow creatures.

Next week:  We skim the reading for Wk. 8 and move on to the readings for Wk. 9.  Brown bag dinner; Erica leads worship; Susan will bring a TR.

Yr. B, Wk. 6: Wading through Turbulent Waters

Class: Christine, Yr. 1; Tom, Gene, Mariel, Yr. 2; Erica, Yr. 3; Susan and Scott, mentors. Absent: Mariel.

Susan started us with worship from the daily devotions for early evening in the Book of Common Prayer.  While we ate our brown bag dinners, Susan's question, "How was the last week?" evoked responses that struck Gene as unusually similar.  The theological reflection (TR) would derive from this observation!

Christine found comfort in Powell's delineation of legends etymological and ethnological. The categories helped her to read the different stories of patriarchs in Genesis.  Tom remembered how he was struck by the alien morality of those early tales; Erica is comforted by the way God works through flawed people in those ancient stories.

Gene loved Powell's exposition of Matthew, and he recommended the website and its videos.  Reading the Gospel in one sitting was a great experience.  He was struck by the structure of five sermons and by the theme of "binding and loosening."  Mariel checked in by email, calling Matthew "A Converted Rabbi's Gospel" with its theme the Hebrew scripture, "the stone which the builders rejected...."    Using the ABCD method, she was amazed at the tight structural cohesion of the gospel, bothered by Matthew's use of scripture out of context; confused by the vagueness of Powell's 7th theme; and delighted at all the phrases common in our culture that come from Matthew.

Tom admitted being intimidated by the command to "be perfect" as God is perfect.  We discussed how "perfect" means "thoroughly made" or "solid" or "complete" or "integrated" or "whole" -- not free of errors and mistakes.  Gene related this to the idea that, once Jesus ascended to heaven, the institutional church was left behind to be His eyes, hands, and feet.: we are Jesus.

Erica covered 50 - 300 A.D. from the chapter "Boundaries Defined."  She noted how women clearly had leadership positions in the church until, realizing that Jesus might not be coming so soon as expected, the Church chose not to disrupt the common social structure.  She quickly surveyed the ancient heresies that echo through controversies in today's church.

Erica noted the complexity of gender issues in the church then and now, noting on a personal level the importance to her of her children having their father.

TR. Scott invited members of the group to tell what struck them in others' stories of the past week that we shared during the meal.  From all the answers, we derived an image of someone wading into flood waters so far, the waters so much deeper than expected, that the wader isn't sure to reach the other side, nor sure that going back is an option.  Our culture tells us often to fight through to the other side; Scripture sometimes tells us to accept the situation, to "let go and let God."  We wrapped up the discussion with this collect:

Collect for Crossing a Flooded Stream
O God, Who separated the waters of chaos from dry land: when the Hebrews were hopeless, You parted the Red Sea; when disciples expected to rule in a kingdom, You took them overseas to serve and die: When our own path seems to lead us into turbulent waters, remind us that we need not fear.  Whether we fight the waters, or surrender to the current to be washed downstream to take up a different path, we are in Your sight and care. We may trust in your goodness. Amen.

Next week: Erica brings dinner; Gene leads worship; Scott brings a personal story for the TR.

Yr. B, Wk. 5: Many Ways to Approach the Experience of God

Class: Erica, 3rd year; Gene, Mariel, and Tom, 2nd year; Christine, 1st year; Susan Rouse and Scott Smoot, mentors.  Absent: Mariel, Gene.

Erica has prepared beautiful decorated booklets containing the Compline service, color optional.  She asked us to tell of someone who had been to us, in the last week, a blessing.  Scott prepared chicken Caesar salad on - site.

Susan started discussion with outstanding ideas from Ford's 4th year theology primer. How do we think about God?  How is God known to us?  Scripture is not the only answer; our experiences of nature, of music and art, of life all are part of our experiences of God.  Scott added how Ford emphasizes the Trinity, a doctrine that has been reinvigorated in the past century, which also seems to be a bridge to people of other faiths.

Erica voiced enthusiasm for McCullough's writing. She listens to it read by an actor, and pays attention to the vast sweep of Christianity's spread through space and time.  Some points that struck her included the translation of "virgin" (as in Mary's virgin birth) comes after a Hebrew phrase that meant "young woman";  Paul's amazing influence in his half-century of ministry; and the chills Erica felt in a description of Jesus by the effect that he leaves in the record as, hardly meek and gentle, an irreverent inverter of expectations, loving and always expecting to die for his cause.


Tom responded to the second year readings with appreciation for some visuals provided in Powell. There's a speculative portrait of Jesus based on what we now know about the demographics of his place and time -- a brown skinned man with short-cropped hair. Tom appreciated the survey of different ways to approach Jesus, each with something different to offer -- such as the "just the facts" approach.  Mariel, sending her thoughts from afar, agreed that the survey of approaches is meant to appreciate the distinctive contribution each perspective makes to our rounded picture of Jesus.  She's amazed by the richness of the picture; bothered by the lack of definitive answers, confused by the absence of parables in John's Gospel, and delighted by a table of parables printed in the textbook.

Christine responded positively to Genesis 1 - 11 and the textbook.  A message we got loud and clear is that we need not fear, knowing God, Lord of Creator, is over all, immanent as well as transcendant.

Tom related his spiritual autobiography through the lens of what he learned from a time with Buddhists.

Erica closed the evening with a beautiful prayer by St. Augustine that includes the plea, "Cleanse me from my secret faults."


Next week:  Brown bag dinner. Susan brings worship.  Scott prepares a TR.  We all do the readings for Week Six, but we've asked Christine to go ahead with the Common Reading for Week Eight, for an introduction to TRs.

Yr. B, Wk. 4: Early Israel and Colors

Class:  Yr. 3, Erica Anderson; Yr. 2, Tom Erb, Mariel Fox, Gene Taylor; Yr. 1, Christine Bondor. Mentors: Scott Smoot, Susan Rouse.  Absent: Tom.

Gene brought worship from the evening service of the English prayer book.  We told about the last week while we had our brown bag dinners.

Christine has begun to read the book that will accompany Collins's survey of the Hebrew scriptures, The Hebrew Bible: Feminist and International Perspectives edited by Gale A.Yee. Christine discovered many layers over the basic "feminism" that she knew from the 1960s.  She had heard of all these developments in isolation, and was excited to see how they developed and overlapped.

Gene found helpful the distinction between "exegesis" and "hermeneutics."  He confessed some trouble keeping straight the various critical approaches surveyed in Powell's chapter on "The New Testament Writings."  Mariel related this chapter to those "layers" Christine found in the survey of feminist thought.  She welcomed a proliferation of "different voices."

Erica first relayed parts that struck her in McDonough's chapter on ancient Israel:  "prophets" were never considered to be fortune-tellers, but truth - tellers who applied law and Scripture to contemporary conditions; "Israel" means "struggles with God," something she knew from the story of Jacob's wrestling one night, but had not connected with the nation; the book of Judges, for all its odd stories, contains the most corroborated datable events of any book in the Hebrew scriptures; that it was the educated leaders of Israel who were deported during the Babylonian exile, so their return naturally led to the priestly reforms and crackdown on "foreign influences."

Erica asked why the EfM program chose the book by an agnostic historian, albeit one "friendly to Christianity," when others are available from openly Christian authors?  We had a general discussion about the value of different voices.  Mariel made the analogy to children growing up into awareness of colors far beyond what they had in their first box of crayons.

Christine shared her spiritual autobiography.
Mariel prefaced hers with a metaphor of a prism that occurred to her as she was reading Powell's book.

Next week: Erica leads worship; Scott brings food; Tom will present his spiritual autobiography.

Yr. B, Wk. 3: Closing Gates and Re-opening Memories

Class: Year 1: Christine; Year 2: Tom, Mariel, Gene; Year 3: Erica; Year 4: Mentors Susan and Scott.  Absent: Tom

Mariel brought Sloppy Joes for dinner.   Before we enjoyed Mariel's Sloppy Joes and sweet potato chips, Scott led worship drawn from Jewish web sites for the evening of Yom Kippur (see picture), capping days of atonement with a "closing of the gate" on the temple.  We recited the Shema (Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One) with right hand over the eyes -- to exclude distractions and other gods.  The question during dinner was, "What gates have closed, or have you closed, these past few weeks?"

Our discussion of the readings found a lot in common in the content, which dealt with the world and culture of the ancient Greeks and Romans.  Feelings were positive about the texts in all three years.

Mariel recommended the web site mentioned in our Reading Reflection Guide,  http://kwokpuilan.blogspot.com/2011/02/how-to-read-theological-book.html.  We also discussed a book read with EfM a few years ago by Martin Luther King Jr.'s college professor Howard Thurman, a short theological work that struck Susan and Scott as something special. Scott's blogpost is here.

After a break, we repaired to the Pilgrimage room to hear spiritual autobiographies by Gene and Erica.  After hushed expressions of appreciation for both of these brief slices of life that we will all remember, we joined in the EfM liturgy of appreciation:  For what has been, Thanks be to God; For what is, Thanks be to God; For what will be, thanks be to God.

Next week:  We bring brown bag dinners.  Gene provides worship.  Mariel and Christine will share their spiritual autobiographies.  We will prepare by doing the readings assigned for week 4 in the RRG.
We heard

Yr. B, Wk. 2: Listening to Multiculturalism

Class: Year 1: Christine; Year 2: Tom, Mariel, Gene; Year 3: Erica; Year 4: Mentors Susan and Scott.  Absent: Tom

[Photos:  A famous movie was filmed in Tunisia, site of an incident in Susan's spiritual autobiography; canned food and asparagus both had significance in Scott's spiritual autobiography.]


Mariel brought worship inspired by the upcoming St. Francis Day, focused on God's creation, with scripture about the natural world selected from Psalm 104, Genesis 1, Revelation 22, and the Book of Common Prayer's Song of Creation.  Mariel posed a question for us to discuss during our meal, how nature had impacted our lives in the last week.  Answers included enjoyment of acres of woods, the red cardinal that delights the parent with dementia, the dog's smell walk, local produce, seeing a whale shark wait patiently to be fed at the aquarium, and the diversity of greenery around the church.

Erica shared some exciting personal news.

Our discussion of the reading coalesced around three topics, the first being "culture." We looked at the term broadly, to include pervasive sub-elements in American life, such as "sports culture" and the culture of the deaf, as well as our own Episcopal culture compared to, say, Baptist culture.  We were struck by the statistics that show how Muslims outnumber Episcopalians and Presbyterians in America.  After Gene, we shared some stories about how our best experiences of "multi - culturalism" have been those that made us feel uncomfortable. Susan was concerned that this topic of "multi-culturalism" might be something superficial and prescriptive, lacking the depth of metaphorical themes of other years in our course.

We were also struck by the essay's ideas about "listening." Mariel gave good advice, to breathe deeply!  Christine liked the five pillars of listening.  Scott repeated what Tom had said, about disciplining ourselves to put off thinking about our responses until we've heard the other person out. Scott, as a drama teacher, especially liked the idea of listening with our whole bodies.  Gene reminded us that "open mindedness" is not the same thing as neutrality: "You keep your commitments."

Of course, our spiritual autobiographies are a training ground for listening without judgement.

After a break, we repaired to the Pilgrimage Room to hear spiritual autobiographies by Susan and Scott.

Next week:  Worship is handled by Smoot; dinner will be Mariel's; Gene and Erica will prepare their short spiritual autobiographies from the perspective of cultural encounter.  We do the readings assigned for our respective years in the Reading Reflecting Guide, Week Three.

Here is a link to the text of Scott's spiritual autobiography, "A Spiritual Encounter with French Asparagus."