Reflections

Speaking of the "Deepest Things"

“We need rituals of care that provide safe spaces in which to feel the full range of emotions inherent in conflict, to speak the truth in love, and to come to a healing place.” I recently wrote this sentence in a chapter of a new book called Conflict and Communion (www.discipleshipresources.org). Each chapter contributes to the idea that Communion is one of the most appropriate places to bring our brokenness. Indeed, the first thing that happens at the Last Supper is that Jesus names the conflict in the room - the betrayal that is about to happen. But what does he do? Refuse to eat until all is right? No. He breaks and shares bread… gives bread to them all and tells them that whenever they “do this,” they should remember him. Our tables are still places where Jesus shows up - not in spite of our differences but because of them - and we remember the way he invited all to the table.

My friend Bob Hill, a pastor at a wonderful church in Kansas City (http://www.community-christian.org), is a masterful wordsmith in many forms. Recently he wrote of a trip to Israel with an interfaith group from Kansas City. He wrote this: “’Communion’ is what takes place when bread is more than bread and souls touch each other across inestimable distances.” Indeed, whenever we come to any table with the intention of opening to the deeper realities at work in our sharing, this is “communion.” No doubt you have experienced this around common tables - your kitchen table perhaps. My question is, do we expect these kinds of experiences at the Communion table of our worship? I leave you with these further questions from my chapter and hope you’ll check out the whole book to deepen your understanding and practice of Holy Communion.

“Do we understand our liturgy as a place where transformation can happen? As a passage from perhaps a state of conflict or regret to a more restorative and healing place? Further, do we expect this from our liturgies? Do our words and songs and symbols vividly portray this possibility and carefully set a tone and safe space where that can occur? My friend Nina Reeves says to me when I see her only occasionally, “Let us speak about the deepest things we know.” Indeed. Do we invite our communities of worship to speak about the “deepest things?” Do we invite dialogue at all? Do we truly believe that God invites us to speak honestly, in the context of our rituals of worship, of pain and uncertainty?”

(order Conflict and Communion at http://www.upperroom.org/bookstore/description.asp?item_id=310214)

A Prayer from Venice

Venice has ninety churches.
I saw a few of them recently.

They speak of the scope of time… how things endure and how things crumble, fade, decay, rot and die.

I’ve been in many Italian cities and towns as I traveled with dance companies in my earlier “lifetime.” I even lived here for a time - starting a dance company in Naples and working at an orphanage in Portici sponsored in part by the General Board of Global Ministries. That was years ago… but only a blip in time compared to the evidence of centuries you see around you as you walk along the labyrinthine streets of this Italian city where I sit writing this today.

But to speak metaphorically of the way you wind around these car-less streets and canals is another story…

There are ninty churches in Venice.

Yesterday I went to a Roman Catholic Mass (well, that’s almost all there is, save on English Anglican church) at the church of St. George - San Giorgio Maggiore - that sits floating along acroos the water from the rest of Venice. I went there because they were having a Gregorian Mass and I wanted to hear the lofty, ringing Gregorian tones of this chants, hopefully sung from the spectacular choir stalls behind its grand altar. The “cantor’s” voice was lovely, with a gentle appropriately slow vibrato that was practiced for this reverberant stone space. But the choir stalls were empty, the monks having died out and crumbled along with the adjoining monastery.

But again, I’ll resist the temptation to ponder another metaphor to return to what I really want to tell you.

My prayer yesterday morning that turned fervent - the kind of repetitive petitions I am wont to do when something passionate stirs within me - was a prayer to the patron saint, George, whose claim to fame was that he supposedly slayed dragons. His statue sat looking down over us as we timidly sang refrains and mumbled Amens.

“Slay the dragons of this church, George!”

Slay the dragons of fear that make us believe we cannot cross ecumenical lines -
Theological
Ideological

Ones we have created and think erroneously that we cannot change.

Slay the dragons of this church, George…

The dragons of hatred that have driven conquests and
inquisitions and
torture and
war and
exclusion.

Slay the dragon of greed that creates ambivalence,
denies poverty’s existence,
holds us immobile and reigns ignorance and impotence to do anything about hunger and greed.

Slay the dragons of the church that keep
Roman Catholic
Protestant,
Evangelical,
Free,
Fundamental,
Reformed,
Orthodox,

Apart.

And help us endure…. In
Love
Love
Love,
And unity in and through
Jesus who knew unity in his very body.

Ritual and Conflict

I just returned home from a JustPeace gathering in Nashville (www.JustPeace.org). I am so grateful for this group of persons who help facilitate processes of restorative justice within and outside of the church. I was honored to share and reflect with this group on the role of ritual in engaging conflict. (Download presentation notes below) We experienced and talked about the power of symbol to help facilitate difficult conversations and the ways in which ritual can help us experience bonds even when we do not share common convictions and find ourselves in the midst of conflict. Ritual is not magic - outcomes are not predictable in the sense that what we hope for is accomplished. But it can provide a safe space to name pain and commend our journey to the Holy One.

My friend Tom Porter, a hot-shot lawyer turned minister (as I like to call him), was transformed by his experiences and witness of restorative justice practices in South Africa and now helps the church train facilitators of circle processes that embody a very different way of dealing with conflict and restoring right relationship in “right” ways. A Native American saying describes this well: “You can’t get to a good place in a bad way.” Sometimes processes of retributive justice (the court system and even the judicial workings of Christian denominations!) do not always offer a place for all voices to be heard, for all those who have been affected to be part of the solution, and for true mutuality and accountability to undergird the process of healing and moving forward.

While my good friends at JustPeace often deal with clergy misconduct, sexual abuse and other very serious issues, I have also seen the circle process help churches who are experiencing conflict over worship. When people come to a circle, everyone is invited to tell their stories and engage in deep and respectful listening guided by a “steward.”. Amazing things can happen in this form of dialogue. For instance, a tearful account of worship that changed a life and meant so much to one person is really heard by someone for whom that particular worship seemed “irreverent” or “boring.” People come to realize through experiencing the stories of others that God indeed works in and through all kinds of expressions. Time spent in the circle process can help us get to “what lies beneath” our conflicts. Struggles over candlesticks and preachers who come out of the pulpit sometimes reveal deeper issues if we take the time to unpack them. Resistance to change simply “because we’ve always done it this way” can be eased when the roots and origins of our practices come out in communal memory. This kind of dialogue can move a community forward, rather than the paralysis that comes with anonymous complaints or backroom grumbling.

Watch for more on how to facilitate this kind of circle process around worship issues in my next book on worship leadership. In the meantime, check out and support my friends at JustPeace (www.justpeaceumc.org).

Download plenary_sessions_on_ritual_for_justpeace_06.pdf

Waves and Worship

Water.

I’m sitting here in the early morning hours watching the surf on the Gulf Coast of Florida. Later today and the rest of this weekend I will be with a church as a consultant, speaking with them about their own surf… their own changing tides as they contemplate starting a new worship service.

I went to sleep listening to the waves and here they still are this morning… relentless in their undulation. I remember being at my Dad’s house in Hawaii years ago. At the time he was living on the North beach of Oahu where the waves can be really big and the surfers flock to get some tunnel action. There the sound was a relentless crashing sound, not the more gentle and almost constant noise I’m hearing this morning. At my Dad’s place, the crashing waves entered my dreams one night and I spent the night trying to survive that water as it filled the house of my subconscious mind. It was terrifying. I also remember a real-life moment standing on a rocky cliff much too close to the crashing surf when I was a very young woman and a little too daring, turning my back on the surf and all of a sudden being rolled and tossed like a toy by a wave that slammed over the rock I was standing on.

And so it has been with an almost visceral awareness and reaction that I have watched the Gulf Coast on the television in this last month or so. The usual gentle waves that I am seeing this morning become huge swells pushed by the winds of hurricanes. I have been with the folks of the Florida Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church the last two years at their annual meeting and I have seen how battered in spirit you can become when you begin to deal with relentless human need following disasters which require not months, but years, of dealing with the aftermath. And next year I will be with the folks in Mississippi at their annual meeting in June. Hurricane Katrina has completely changed the way that meeting and its worship will be experienced.

Songs like “Wade in the Water” take on a depth of meaning they never had before. You have to think long and hard about planning to sing a song like “water, river, spirit, grace, sweep over me, sweep over me…” A song line like, “I will soar with you above the storm” no longer only speaks to some metaphorical life storm but calls to mind the hundreds of lives lost to storms, hurricanes, tsunamis of this very short new millenium. Worship design takes on a hyper-consciousness that may not have been present previously. Prayer is always a spiritual discipline integral to any planning I do, but there are times like this when I’ll spend months in prayer for a conference before I ever get to the computer keyboard.

But I also think that we have to remember that at every worship service there are people dealing with life disasters. And most of the ways that people experience any part of a liturgy we can never know or predict or completely plan for. That is the way that images and metaphors and symbols (the language of our worship) work. We are faced with metaphors and they evoke other images from our lives, calling up memories and the emotions that accompany them. All we can do as worship designers is to trust that the Holy Spirit is working in our midst. And that the Good News proclaimed will also attach itself to whatever comes up. Worship with deep soul will evoke the deepest things of our lives so that God can meet us there and touch us with healing power.

Designing and leading worship with deep soul is also about pastoral care. One of the most important members of a worship leadership team could be those persons who have the gift of prayer and care. These persons could lead prayer for worship team planning sessions. They could also be available at the end of services to pray with members of the congregation who have perhaps been touched in a way that requires spiritual care. Some churches have persons available in a corner of the sanctuary or in a side chapel ready to receive and pray with anyone at the immediate end of the service. One church I worked with had a prayer room outside the sanctuary where rotating volunteers kept a prayer vigil during the three services on Sunday morning. If you are utilizing elements of emerging worship such as an extended time of prayer and meditation at various stations around the room, having people available to pray with folks could be an essential element of that time.

Waves. I thank God this morning for life-giving water and I also ask God to work in healing ways with those whose lives have been washed-over by recent storms.

Worship. And I pray that our worship will continue to call us all to pray for victims of disaster … both with our liturgies and with our lives. I know many of you are giving money and planning work camps. Thanks be to God.

Reflections "In Flight"

I have flown A LOT in my life.  As a daughter of a commercial airline pilot, I have always loved flying because it made me feel close to my dad… it still does in a way.  I walk around airports and airplanes feeling like I have a special “in” to the whole thing.  So perhaps it isn’t so strange that when I’m flying is my best reflection and writing time.  I feel like I am on “heightened alert” - not because of security measures - but because to fly is a radical act.  We are being jettisoned through the air at 500+ mph at 35,000 feet or so and unless we feel turbulence, we remain relatively comfortable–unaware of how radical this thing is that we are doing.    Whenever I arrive at an airport, whatever person is picking me up to take me to my hotel usually, without fail, will ask, “How was your flight?”  My favorite answer is, “Uneventful and that’s how I like it!” 

Worship is a powerful, radical act with the potential to take us to heights, depths and velocities beyond the way we experience the everydayness of our lives.  It is a place where the ordinary becomes extraordinary.  Where we meet and encounter the presence of the Holy.  Worship is a radical endeavor.  We dare to name incredible suffering and then proclaim hope and praise ANYWAY.  Worship is a place where we dare to believe that what we do matters in some way… that prayer works and that lives can be changed.  Where we invoke the name of Jesus and dare to commit our own lives to that kind of radical hospitality.

But like that comfortable plane ride, we have so anesthetized, pressurized (or de-pressurized), the worship act that we forget its power, we forget how radical is this journey we have embarked on… and we answer the question, “How was the trip?” with the answer, “Uneventful and that’s the way I like it.”

I mean, when we get on an airplane, at least we expect to land in a different place than where we started!  Too often we do not even expect that we will be moved by our worship (let alone transformed).  Perhaps we just go up on the sight-seeing tour as Annie Dillard describes it, “brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute”–taking a nice look around from lofty heights but coming right back down to where we started.

Perhaps we’ve become so afraid of the turbulence that might happen if we really soar, that we don’t even bother to get on the plane.  We take no risks, preferring to trudge along the same ruts weighed down with the baggage we can’t seem to release.

So, worship leaders, are we content to “preside over” the forgettable?  Or shall we see every worship experience as an opportunity to “reside” fully in an unforgettable ride-of-our lives?