Why It's Good I Have a Strong Inner Monologue

Our class led chapel today. Dr. Keifert was the preacher and I was the presider.

The thing about liturgy is: it takes a lot of focus and mental energy to lead well, you are always thinking two or three steps ahead of the assembly while simultaneously being present in the moment and making it all look smooth and effortless.

The other thing about liturgy is: it is a lot easier to sustain the kind of focus required when one is in a regular rhythm of leading.

And the thing about liturgy in this particular context: leading it at Luther is a bit nerve-wracking. In theory it shouldn't be - as a place full of pastors-in-training it should be a place where people are free to flounder and fail on their way to refining these skills. But in reality it is a place full of pressure to perform at the peak of one's game.

Part of that pressure comes from my own inner perfectionist wanting to "get the A" from my peers and professors, especially since I'm no longer a pastor-in-training but have been a real live pastor for a number of years now. But part of the pressure is definitely embedded in the system - if there were 50 people in the congregation here today, I can guarantee there were probably 55 opinions on how to properly preside over communion. ;)

Anyway, I was presiding today. And though I got back into a regular rhythm of presiding this summer when I was covering for Jen, I hadn't led worship since the end of July. I was a bit rusty going in this morning, which only served to amplify the anxiety of leading in this context.

I was also tired, having spent most of yesterday traveling back from the East Coast, and had a sinus headache due to the change in weather.

And the service was running long. As I walked back up to the chancel at the end of the peace, Dr. Keifert whispered to me "We need to move it along."

So as I approached the altar to begin the communion liturgy, I was trying to pick up the pace while remaining articulate in an echoey room and also not appear to be racing through the liturgy. I was also trying to remember to say "new testament" instead of "new covenant" in the words of institution, as that would tie directly to what Dr. K said in his sermon.

I made it through all that just fine.

But at the end of it, I completely forgot to lead us into the Lord's Prayer.

The congregation knew it, they didn't sit down the first time I gestured for them to sit down.

I still hadn't realized my mistake so gestured again, that time they sat.

I realized my mistake after communion was over, when I finally flipped the page in the leader book and saw, not the post-communion blessing that I expected, but the Lord's Prayer staring back at me.

This is why it's good I have a strong inner monologue because inside my head I went "Oh SH*T!" Thankfully that didn't also come out my mouth and into the rockstar microphone wrapped around my ear.

I was completely embarrassed, I'm sure my ears flushed as red as my hair through the close of the service.

Despite the glaringly obvious flub, several friends and professors were kind enough to compliment my presence up front and gracious enough to chuckle about the mistake as a good reminder of our imperfect humanity.

I used to joke about this in the parish, but the kindness of these others affirmed it once again today: it seems a decent voice and a pretty pectoral cross will cover a plethora of liturgical sins. :)

"Humanity and death and the cross and all that is sort of messy business. . ."

Well, I made it through another high holy day in which I did not have any of the usual responsibilities. Kind of weird to wake up this morning and not have to burn last year's palms to make ashes for tonight's service.

Though, not being in charge, I did find myself paying attention differently today, noticing things I have overlooked in recent years.

For one, I realized I don't like the ELW service as much as the LBW service for Ash Wednesday. Even though we had the new hymnals, which actually prints the Ash Wednesday liturgy in the hymnal, we never used the ELW service, we printed the liturgy in the bulletin and kept on with the LBW service. I don't think I even realized until today that it had changed, but it's condensed. And of all days on the church calendar, this is not the one to condense. . .

I also stumbled into a moment of profundity during chapel. I was singing with Schola this morning, we were directed to the far side of the chapel for the imposition of ashes, which happened to be the line that Mary was imposing. There was something kind of profound and soberly perspective-granting just in that, to have my doctoral advisor remind me that I am dust. But then later in the service, Schola was directed to a different side of the chapel to receive communion, and this once again happened to be the line that Mary was serving. And it occurred to me, the same hands that had marked me in ash and reminded me of my mortality also handed me the bread of life.

And that was true in PA too - I was the one marking everybody's foreheads and the one handing out the bread. Cami was usually my assisting minister for Ash Wednesday, which meant she would have both marked my forehead and served me communion over the last five years. But I was always so busy worrying about the service as a whole, I never noticed that before. And I don't know that I would have noticed it today except for some fortuitous traffic direction.

So I basically had ashes on my forehead all day, which I am not used to. I kept forgetting they were there, and inadvertently smeared them all afternoon. By the time I got to church tonight, I needed another cross, because I had essentially - though not consciously - wiped the first one away. I wrote something about how I kept smearing my ashes on facebook, and Kristin's response was "Well, humanity and death and the cross and all that is sort of messy business. . ."

And that it is. Messiness and dustiness we'd really rather not be reminded of, if truth be told. Maybe not such a big surprise, then, that as I went about my day my hand kept unconsciously grazing my forehead, slowly brushing that reminder away. Except that didn't really get rid of the cross, it just moved the mess out where I could see it, on my hands, where I could spread it around unless I dealt with it.

That's the thing about Ash Wednesday - it won't let you escape the mess.

And that is actually its gift.

Blessed Lent,
C

Greetings from the Land of Abstraction

I am working at the edge of my competency here, so be warned that these thoughts are long and a little half-baked, but here is what’s stewing around my brain these days.

First, a list of ingredients:

1. I am doing a PhD level independent study with Chris Scharen in which we are exploring practical theology – what exactly that means, how the field is defined, how it’s methodically done, etc.
2. I also work with Chris and Eileen Campbell-Reed on the Learning Pastoral Imagination project, and as such, spend increasing amounts of time thinking and learning about phronesis, which is embodied wisdom, knowing how to do the right, wise, prudent thing at the right, wise, prudent time (a skill that can only be learned over time, through apprenticeship and learning from failure and success). As a result of this work I also spend increasing amounts of time thinking about how theological education could/should be different to better equip the development of pastoral imagination.
3. I am also currently taking a PhD level systematics seminar on The Congregation with Pat Keifert. This week I was the presenter on David Kelsey’s book To Understand God Truly: What’s Theological About Theological Schools, which is making a case for how theological education could/should be different that all may understand God more truly.
4. The other night I was talking to my friend Sarah, who works for an ELCA synod. In the course of conversation she shared that a colleague of hers used to be a seminary professor and now works for her synod doing basically the same stuff in terms of teaching community faith formation, but this person enjoys it so much more because they are working with actual pastors and faith communities, whereas their experience of seminarians was that ministry is still entirely an abstraction for them.
5. I am also auditing an MDiv level course on Worship and the Lutheran Confessions where all these just-mentioned streams of thought seem to be coming to a head.

I would say the composition of this MDiv class is half to two-thirds first and second year students, which means they have not been on internship yet. There are also a handful of PhD and MA students, most of whom have had multiple years of parish experience. And then the rest are seniors – they’ve had a taste of ministry on a year-long student internship and are now back for one more year of class before they receive a call, get ordained, and become real live pastors.

So anyway, the class is a mixture of lecture, small and large group discussion, a good way to mix things up in a block schedule. The large group discussion is always at the end, and is always led by a group of students (the leader group rotates from week to week). Thus far the leader groups have come up with what they obviously consider to be “edgy” questions. Like, when discussing baptism, the two big questions were “Should we be reaching out to and baptizing Jews and Muslims?” and “What do you do when a family shows up to get their baby baptized, and the last time you saw them was 4 years ago when they came to get their now-4-year-old baptized?”

At the end of that class, all of us who have actually served as parish pastors were talking to each other as we were packing up and concluded, “Yeah, these are not the questions you ask or are really even interested in once you become a pastor.”

But then last night the topic was Communion, and the questions were: “What is the relation of faith and communion?” “At what age should we begin communing children?” “Should we be practicing an open table where all, even the unbaptized, are welcome?” “How should we dispose of the elements?” “Who should be allowed to preside over communion?” etc

These questions and the discussion have been bothering me ever since, and I’ve been trying to unpack why.

Partially I’m annoyed because again many of these are not the questions you are really worried about once you actually become a pastor.

Partially I’m bothered because, while on the surface these questions were about pastoral practice, in reality they were all meant to go after the theology underlying the practice. Which is not an inherently bad thing – I mean, part of what I’m exploring with Chris is how we understand and talk about practice as embodied theology. But the way the questions were asked and discussed, the real concern and debate was over right doctrine (which everyone seemed pretty rigidly convinced they had) and making sure we had right practices to reflect that right doctrine.

Partially, I’m disturbed because the whole conversation was such on such an abstract level.

Which, ok, you could argue they don’t know any better, they haven’t had any or enough experience to have this conversation on anything more than an abstract level, and there are a number of ways in which both the candidacy and curricular processes of Lutheran seminaries make almost everyone into little Lutheran Nazis (rigidly obsessed with correct doctrine) by the second year, so perhaps this is all understandable.

But at a point in the discussion about whether the table should be open to the unbaptized, I piped up and shared a story from my experience in the parish, about a relative of the congregation who lived far away but was a fairly regular visitor, who never took communion in the five years I knew them. That whole time I just assumed it was because they were a skeptic or had some other reason for not wanting to participate, but I never actually asked them why they never came forward, because I didn’t want to be nosy or make them feel uncomfortable or pressured to take part. Around the same time that I announced I was leaving, this person and I finally had a conversation about it – turned out all this time they had wanted to come forward but didn’t because they weren’t sure if they had been baptized, and they didn’t want to offend the church or me or God by participating in something they weren’t sure they had a right to.

Long story short: my own theology (and what I would argue is good Lutheran theology) is that it’s Jesus’ party and he invites everybody to come, who am I to stand in anybody’s way? It’s an open table and this person was more than welcome to participate. I think the welcome to the table that I speak embodies that theology, but there was a contradiction in the bulletin, a little line in fine print that said this is a meal for the baptized. I hated that line and at various times pulled it out (I wasn’t the one who put it in), but it would pop back up when the secretary would use an old bulletin as a template, I wouldn’t always notice that it reappeared, and I would hope no one actually read the fine print. But this person did, and it kept them from coming forward.

I’m pretty sure now they probably do participate in communion, not only because of our conversation but because the conversation prompted some family research and they discovered they were indeed baptized. And that’s awesome and is hopefully a meaningful change and practice in this person’s life now, but we both lamented that we hadn’t had that conversation five years ago, so that they could have been participating all this time.

So I shared this whole story as a piece of wisdom from my own experience, that this stuff is not just an abstraction or word game about keeping doctrine pure, but it really matters in the messy, in-the-flesh, everyday reality of actual people’s lives. A spoken or unspoken implication of a closed table cuts hungry people off from the grace Christ offers them in his supper.

And the response I got, from a second-career student twenty years my senior (who I suspect was a little pissed that I had played their normal conversational trump card of experience, and had actually trumped their trump by discussing pastoral experience as opposed to general life experience) was, “Well, in five years of wanting to come forward for communion, why didn’t they find a church near where they lived and go talk to that pastor about it?”

In other words, when faced with a concrete, embodied, pastoral reality, when looking at the question of what the wise pastoral move is in the situation, they wanted to throw the responsibility back onto the parishioner and throw the discussion back into the abstract and hypothetical, and speculate on history that at this point can’t be undone. Instead of having the imagination to see what, pastorally and theologically, is really at stake in the sacraments – that they are a means of grace, events in which God promises to meet us, acts that create both a space and a place for the Holy Spirit to work, so why in heaven’s name would you want to box them up or rope them off? – they just wanted to be right in the safe, sterile environment of the seminary classroom.

I think that’s what’s really bothering me, is that they’re not asking the phronetic question, how then shall we live? On the surface it sounds like they are, “Should we practice open table” sounds like a “how then shall we live” kind of question. But they weren’t going after that aspect of the question, they were essentially using the question to practice articulating Lutheran doctrine, and the clear focus was on making sure we get the rules right.

And maybe that’s just where they are at, developmentally. I mean, you’ve got to learn your scales before you can do anything with them. Learning how to articulate doctrine and theology is not a bad thing, it’s rather important, actually. Maybe I just need more patience, especially when I hear them sound a “wrong” note.

At the same time, if theological education is in need of reform (and it seems almost everyone thinks it does), isn’t this a place to start? Isn’t part of the problem that seminary education just teaches the scales and expects students to figure out what to do with them, and what’s at stake in them, on their own? So how do we change that? How do we pull them out of the land of abstraction?

I’m not saying I have any good answers – I warned you at the top that these thoughts are only half-baked. I’m just feeling like the events of the past couple weeks have been clarifying the problem. . .

Mine is the Church Where Everybody's Welcome

Mine is the church where everybody’s welcome.
I know it’s true ‘cause I got through the door.
We are a dazzling bouquet of every kind of flower.
Jump in the vase, ‘cause we’ve got space for more.
-"A Dazzling Bouquet" by Bret Hesla

Officially all the transfer paperwork was taken care of by late November, and I became a member of Salem the Sunday of the blizzard. But the blizzard kept a number of us (myself included) from making it to church that day, so we were publicly welcomed into the community this morning.

On the one hand, it was a sad day, entailing the loss of an official connection to people I still care about back in Pennsylvania, and another little death to be endured in this transition from pastor to PhDland.

On the other hand, it was a joyful day to become a member of this amazing part of the body of Christ here in Minneapolis.

I love this congregation for many reasons. I love that they are indeed a dazzling bouquet where everyone is welcome, and worship reflects that as people of diverse ages, ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, socioeconomic statuses, talents, interests, etc, gather every week to praise God and support one another in this life of discipleship.

I love that they are radically committed to ministry in their neighborhood, so much so that they are continually willing to die to their old selves and blossom into the new life that God is working in them and through them and with them.

I love that they are in the wilderness. Increasingly I am convinced this is the best place for a church to be, because the wilderness is where the people of God are truly shaped into the people of God; it's where our utter dependence on God is unavoidably and sometimes painfully obvious; it's where we are most focused on essentials (and least distracted by the crap) and most open and receptive to the Spirit; it's by living on the margins that we become more attuned to and empathic with all who are marginalized. This wilderness wandering is all the more impressive and intriguing considering the congregation physically exists in what is functionally the center of American Lutherandom.

I love that Jen is a great preacher and a great leader who makes it easy to be back in the pew instead of up front and in charge. I also love that she's a great colleague who welcomes my gifts and invites opportunities for me to keep playing in the sandbox of congregational life.

I love how friendly and welcoming pretty much everyone has been since the first day I walked in the door.

. . .so jump in the vase, 'cause we've got space for more!

And Catrina Saw That It Was Good

Spent most of the day today helping Breen and Patrick get the garden beds ready, and we also actually planted onions and garlic. The weather could not have been more perfect - not too cold, not too hot, just right humidity, bright and sunny with a nice gentle breeze. An absolutely gorgeous day to be out and about in a big beautiful world in the company of wonderful people. Adding to my bliss was a delicious breakfast to start us off right, and an even more delicious lunch (because Patrick grills the best hamburgers in the world), and during breaktime inside, I had fun playing with the cats, who are endlessly adorable and entertaining.

It's at the end of a day like this that I totally get what God is talking about, sitting down after a busy, full day of creating and sighing, "This is good."

It's also a day that puts me in mind of a famous G. K. Chesterton quote:

Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore. (From Orthodoxy)

If he's right, then I'd like to hold with God's eternal appetite of infancy, especially after a day like today, I say: Do it again!

Tradition!

In her Halloween post, Maria the Great commented on how Tim sorts candy with the boys after they've gone trick-or-treating, because he remembers doing that as a kid. That got me thinking about traditions and how they get started. . .

Tim's a few years older than me, so he may have a better sense of how this all began, but from what I remember, the great candy sort began as a way for our fathers to inspect our candy. We were young trick-or-treaters during the candy scares of the early 80s, when some people were doing all sorts of weird junk to the candy they gave out on Halloween. Anything that looked suspect was pulled out of the pile without question, along with anything else they didn't want us to have (I think hard candy and suckers were routinely removed until we were old enough for them to trust we wouldn't accidentally choke on them). As we got older and our fathers' inspection was less needful, we'd still dump our candy out all over Uncle Ron's living room, sort it, then swap each other to either gain more of our favorites or get rid of stuff we really didn't like. So, a tradition that began out of practical necessity and gradually morphed into family habit is still going strong 25 years later, as a new generation of Ciccones are learning to sort their candy when they get home from trick-or-treating, because that's what my cousins and I always did when we were kids.

Naturally, I see many parallels here to the life of the church. A noticable parallel around here has to do with communion practices - despite a synod-wide push several years ago to have every congregation in the synod move to weekly communion, there are still many congregations who only celebrate communion four times a year plus high holy days. This, too, began as a practical necessity - in the days of the circuit-riders, a congregation was probably only visited by an authorized presiding pastor 4-6 times a year. But it gradually became "family habit" so even after a congregation had a regularly established and called pastor present every week, they continued their very irregular or infrequent celebration of communion because "that's what we have always done."

Now don't get me wrong here - I think traditions are good. They help us remember and tell and live our stories, and they often give us solid ground to stand on in a topsy-turvy world. And trust me, I can get as grumpy as the best of them when my traditions are messed with.

But, traditions can also be, or become, stifling. When we forget how the tradition started, or why we perpetuate it, when we allow tradition to become an end or a god in itself and refuse to entertain the possibility of any new things we're being called to do. . .then I think maybe tradition is not so good. Or healthy. Or helpful.

At least, that's what my friend Tevye found out (the hard way). . .

The Weight of History

This luggage tag was a birthday gift from the Mays, and true to my nerdy Lutheran self I think it's hilarious (though i don't know why blogger won't rotate the picture - sorry). Funny as I normally find it, however, I put it up to illustrate more somber thoughts tonight. So let's see just what baggage I'm lugging around these days. . .

The first night of the GME, we heard Katrina Browne speak, then watched her documentary Traces of the Trade. It's about her and a group of her cousins coming to terms with the fact that their ancestors were the biggest slave trading family in New England. It's a good film but heavy - I don't recommend watching it if you're already having a rough day. And watch it with someone you can discuss it with afterwards, not by yourself, if possible.

I've been thinking a lot about the weight of our history ever since that night. Browne said the reaction from many folks, especially those whose ancestors happened to have immigrated after the slave trade and even the Civil War was over, is that "These weren't my ancestors. This isn't my or my family's fault. I have no guilt, no responsibility here." Being the descendent of more recent immigrants myself, and being from a Northern state, I'd have to say this is my normal response.

Browne's response to that (which she credited to conversations with a history teacher) is that later immigrants came because America was the land of opportunity, and it was such a land of opportunity precisely because of an economy largely built on and undergirded by slave labor. In thinking more about it I would also add, even just stepping off the boat and not speaking the language, those later immigrants still had a degree of white privilege that provided opportunities which native-born black Americans were denied, even if their families had been here for generations. So though myself and my ancestors may not have been the perpetrators, we are certainly still among the benefactors of an evil and unjust system. Long before my family ever dreamed of America, the body of Christ was broken here, for us.

But that's not the only weight I'm carrying. Yesterday was the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. Part of the argument in dropping the bomb was that it would end the war sooner and ultimately save more lives. My grandfather's life is certainly among those that this decision intended to spare - he was sworn into the Navy the day before the Japanese surrendered. Instead of getting sent to the Pacific front he was sent to Oregon to decommission returning battleships. While my mother was yet a twinkle in my grandparents' eyes, the body of Christ was broken half way around the world, for me.

But it's not just the weight of such history that I'm lugging around. It's also the weight of today. For the body of Christ is still being broken, in this country, around the world, every day, for me. Traces of the Trade brought that up as well - the modern day slaveries and unjust systems that our lives depend upon. I am afforded many privileges and opportunities because of my skin color, citizenship, economic class, and education level, things others are denied because they lack one or more of the same qualities. I am afforded a lifestyle that, while rather simple by American standards, is yet outrageously luxurious compared to most of the world, a lifestyle that is underwritten by the people who work for a non-livable wage (in this country and others), by the people who live next to the factory farms and the garbage heaps and the mined mountain tops, by the soldiers risking their lives to enforce the Pax Americana, by the creation itself, which suffers every indignity and abuse in the name of efficiency, all of whom pay a price so that my costs as a consumer stay relatively cheap (even in a world of rising expenses). This is all the body of Christ, broken daily, for me.


Jesus, that's a hell of a lot of baggage.



Lord, have mercy.

Making Stock and Taking Stock

Yesterday after church I roasted the whole chicken that I bought on Friday. After carving off what I would use for sandwiches and other meals this week, I boiled what was left to make stock.

I bought the chicken directly from the farmer who raised it locally in a sustainable and humane fashion. The local butcher who processes the birds is in the habit of leaving the neck and (inexplicably) the kidneys attached. My point in sharing this being: whenever I purchase and prepare one of these birds, I am always overwhelmed by how close I feel to the source of my food. And I don't just mean that it's local. I mean, somehow (maybe it's the attached neck, which, admittedly, kinda creeps me out), these birds just _look_ closer to the real, living creature than the chicken you buy in the store (they taste a lot better, too).

And in the process of rinsing, roasting, carving, boiling, and picking, I am also overwhelmed by how close I feel to my grandmothers, who have prepared countless chickens in this way as a course of habit and necessity.

Feeling so close to your food, and to those who regularly have (or had) to put this much effort into preparing food, sure makes one excessively grateful. As I was picking the boiled meat off the neck last night (a task which makes me particularly sqeamish), I started thinking about Grandma Louise's stories of Tante Janz, who could kill a chicken by stepping on its neck, grabbing its legs and pulling up, all without ever losing a beat or batting an eye. I shuddered and said a prayer of thanks that I do not live in a time or place where I routinely have to kill and butcher my own food, nor do I have a job that requires me to do so on behalf of others. I also said a prayer of thanks for those who _do_ do the hard, sometimes disgusting, often thankless work that puts so many foods so conveniently on my table.

I think it's good, it's important, to get this kind of reality check on a regular basis - it keeps me mindful of how much I waste, of how much I take for granted. And though I hate handling raw meat and mostly avoid it whenever possible, the sense of connection I feel - to other people, to my community, to the whole of God's good creation - whenever I have a chicken cooking day like this, far outweighs the gross factor. Plus, like I said, the end result tastes a lot better than anything you'll buy in the store!

Peace,
Catrina