Call them "Chuggles"?

This past week I finally fulfilled a long overdue date with Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I got the book for Christmas two years ago, but I knew once I started reading it, I would not be able to put it down, and I just haven't had that kind of time, to disappear into Hogwarts for 48 hours, until just a few days ago.

I already knew who was going to die, as a confirmation student accidentally blabbed that info to me before they realized I hadn't yet read the book. But I have to say, I'm still kind of in shock over who killed the deceased - I don't want to say more, lest I accidentally ruin the details for anyone, but suffice it to say, I am still disturbed and brewing over how that all shook down.

And I also find myself, as I do after watching the Star Wars saga, somewhat jealous of the characters' abilities and gadgets, because in many respects I think we have similar callings. Ok, granted, I do not personally face immanent mortal peril nearly so often as Harry or Obi-Wan, but I do still deal with matters of life and death on a regular basis. And we are all three of us stewards and ministers of a powerful and mysterious force that holds the universe together; we are all three of us constantly on the frontlines of the battle between good and evil (and most often employ sacrifice and love as our weapons of choice in that battle). And like the Jedi, pastors are called to a certain Zen-like detachment from particular places and people in order that we might better love all of God's children and be free to serve the universal church.

So we're all basically fighting the good fight, but they get such way cooler perks - a lightsaber, a wand, a flying broomstick, the ability to move objects or even themselves with their trained mind. . .I get health insurance and a pension plan.

(which, especially in this day and age, I'm certainly grateful for, but they don't hum when you wave them around in the air, and on most days, don't seem nearly as useful as the ability to apparate)

But I digress.

The "chuggles" in the title above is inspired by reading Harry Potter just a few days after Christmas - just a few days after the "C&Es" (short for "Christmas and Easter Christians") have made their annual or semi-annual pilgrimmage to church.

Now, perhaps I am lacking in my sympathetic imagination here, but I suspect the people who only show up once or twice a year come more for the sake of grandma, or nostalgia, or tradition, than they do out of any expectation of encountering the divine. Which is just weird to me, because my understanding of worship is that it's an intentional encounter with God in a place where God has promised to be found. And I'm not just blithering around up front, going off on my own opinions, or giving a nice speech, or trying to uplift or edify the people - I'm charged with both the burden and the gift of bringing the good news, I'm (hopefully) handing over a word of life from God that you can cling to in a world full of death. And I fully believe that the Word of God, though it may travel a wide and circuitous route, always, ultimately, bears fruit, it never returns to God empty. So, I'm just kind of confused by people who don't share this understanding, who don't come to worship with these same expectations to encounter God and the living Word - and I find myself wondering what they do expect, and why they bother coming at all?

(I should clarify at this point, that I'm not trying to pick on C&Es - I have met plenty of people who are regularly in the pews, and sadly, even a few colleagues, who also seem to lack any expectations of an actual encounter with the divine through the Word and the Sacraments - and I often wonder the same things about them)

And I also wonder, then, what these folks day-to-day lives are like. Because if you don't expect to meet God in a place where God has promised to be found and where you have actually bothered showing up - do you honestly expect to meet God anywhere at all? Again, I could simply be lacking a charitable imagination here, but I suspect the answer, for most, is no. Which is, again, just weird to me, whose world is infused with the divine, who sees God on the loose as much in the New York City subway as in the purple mountain's majesty, as much in a Puccini aria as in Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.

So, I'm thinking perhaps a new sociological category is in order, dubbed "Chuggles" - people who claim affiliation with the Christian faith but who are as void of any expectation of meeting, as oblivious to the actual presence of, the divine, as the muggles of Harry Potter are to the magical.

The good news is, I don't think it's a doomed "once a chuggle, always a chuggle" situation. I think people can learn to expect to meet God in the places God has promised to be found, I even think they can have their hearts and minds and ears and eyes broken open to see God running loose in all sorts of unexpected places in the world.

The question, the great challenge before us who steward such immense mysteries, is HOW? How do we de-chuggle or un-chuggle a person? And how much more fun would it be if lightsabers or flying broomsticks were involved? :)

Peace,
Catrina

On the Fourth Day of Christmas

. . .I'm putting up pictures of the new paper cutting at our church - the Star of Bethlehem. It's 16' tall, so it makes a big impression, and I think it's really enhanced our worship space this season (we put it up Advent 2 - that's probably rushing the star thing a bit, but c'mon, it's huge and blue, and the liturgy we were using really emphasized God as creator, and the cutting does too). Below is an intense close-up so you can see all the cool detail. Young Owen is convinced there's a dragon in there, though I'm not so sure. Let me know if you find one!




PS - If anyone knows how to get these buggers to rotate, please let me know that too!

The Zen of the Midwest

A post to the host over at the Prairie Home Companion site asked Garrison Keillor for his famous Christmas quote, and he responded in kind:

"Craving only causes frustration, intense desire makes the object recede. If the game is really important, you're going to lose. If you're wildly in love, you're going to lose and you know it. The trick is to keep it from being that important. Be cool. Don't want it that much. Want it less. When you get to where you don't want it at all, then you're more likely to get it. And if you don't get it, you don't care so much."

As GK added afterwards - that one's so true sometimes that it hurts.

Mind the Gap

Sorry for the long delay in writing. I went to Minnesota for Thanksgiving, and between the getting ready for vacation, the being on vacation, and the catching up from vacation, well, there hasn't been much time for blogging.

But now I'm back with some half-baked thoughts that have been kicking around my head for the past month or so. It all started the week before vacation, when I went out to lunch with a parishioner who I am mentoring through our synod's Authorized Lay Worship Leader program. When our food came, she volunteered to pray (so nice to go to lunch with someone who doesn't assume that I am the "token pray-er"!), so we bowed our heads and she said the following:

"For Food in a world where many walk in hunger,
For Faith in a world where many walk in fear,
and for Friends in a world where many walk alone,
We give you thanks"

And I looked up and said "That's Keith's prayer from Six Feet Under!"

We were both, frankly, kind of surprised to find a fellow fan in one another, but we quickly moved beyond that and into an engaging conversation about what a well-written and thought-provoking television show that it is, and how many incredible discussions of life and death and faith it could launch, EXCEPT. . .

. . .except there is always too much graphic language and sex for me to be able to use it as a resource at church. I mean, I have some parishioners whose piety is such that they would be offended at the mere thought of their pastor watching a show like Six Feet Under - there's no way they would tolerate showing it or using it as the basis for a small group study at church. And yet I've obviously got other parishioners who are watching it and would love to have a group with which to discuss some of those deep meaning of life and death questions that it raises.

So this is a constant frustration for me - because I could write entire small group studies on the theology of Six Feet Under, or the Dave Matthews Band, or the Star Wars saga, or other such pop culture phenomena where I see God on the loose. And I have this nagging feeling that to do so would be to meet a lot of the unchurched and de-churched of my generation where they are at. But those kinds of studies aren't going to appeal to the vast majority of my current parishioners.

So do I serve the majority of the congregation to which I am called? Or do I reach out to serve and engage the whole people of God (isn't that also part of my calling)? And if I do go for broke one day and offer up a "God running loose in pop culture" kind of study, how in the world do I find and convince the people who would most dig it to take part?

So then when I was on vacation, I went to worship at the Mercy Seat, a new church plant in NE Minneapolis that seems to be very intentionally reaching out to the de-churched/unchurched/disenfranchised by the church/disillusioned by the church, and engaging them through "critical orthodoxy." The service was very solid liturgical worship, essentially the same texts and ordo as the LBW, but in an improvisational jazz medium. The sermon was excellent, a thoughtful well-crafted proclamation, thoroughly grounded in the theology of the cross, that skillfully wove deep theological insights with illustrations from The Simpsons and references to a Jesus who "goes all the way to 11" (and the congregation actually got and laughed at that line!). Their announcements included a plug for their stewardship pledge drive, a hilarious and ingenious campaign to "stop the hostile takeover" - they claimed that a multinational corporation was threatening to buy the congregation and outsource the sacraments unless they could "prove their viability" through 50 pledging households.

My impresion of this congregation is that it is very intentionally rooting itself in the best and most essential core of the Lutheran tradition while also very intentionally engaging not-so-traditionally-churchy people at the intersection of art and faith and culture. In other words, it is a church that could get away with, and would have an audience for, a Six Feet Under small group study.

Which makes it very hard not to be jealous of those pastors and the kind of work they get to do and the kind of sermons they get to preach, EXCEPT. . .

. . .except I refuse to believe that the only solution to my frustrations is to head to Chicago for mission start training and start up a completely new congregation. I mean, it's certainly easier in some respects to be creating a congregational culture as you go, instead of trying to retradition and reform longstanding cultures that you inherit. And it's probably easier to convince the disenfranchised and disillusioned to come and see in a group that's rather new and somewhat different, than a group that looks and sounds and acts an awful lot like the church that disenfranchised or disillusioned them to begin with.

But we are called to be one body in Christ. And it is one of the greatest strengths - and gifts - of the church to hold people of widely divergent backgrounds and opinions and interests together AS the one body of Christ. So I keep thinking, there's got to be a way to bridge the traditionally churched and all those who are de-churched, unchurched, disillusioned and/or disenfranchised by the church. I refuse to settle for an either/or answer - I keep thinking there's got to be a both/and, there's got to be a way to draw them all into community together.

So, I keep looking for ways to mind the gap, tending to both the now and the not yet, caring for the church as it currently is, and caring for the church that the Holy Spirit is even now birthing us to be.

Peace,
Catrina