There is an ebb and flow to small congregations that is almost magical. This morning, we watched the song leaders and musicians change out without missing a beat. The pianist got up in the middle of a song to become a singer, the organist took over, when he went into a coughing fit, the drummer, who came into the service 45 minutes after it started and began drumming mid song took over, and then, suddenly, the drummer became the organist. (The original organist held on as long as he could — and was brought at least four glasses of water (increasingly hot, I think — maybe tea at the end), and some mints or cough drops, but I think he has the nasty clingy upper respiratory ook that’s just hanging on and on, and it was too much in the service this morning.
There were little dudes with tambourines who ended up on the mics at different points, singing with the congregation during the about hour and fifteen minutes of worship and praise, that was a medley of songs. Michal suspects the organist usually leads, but this morning, his voice largely gone, the deacon was leading, and the musicians kind of following along. The organists and pianist were interesting, and the music was rolling and . . . and fun. I think there’s much to be said for jazz organ, and all three musicians seemed to be playing on the fly.
The congregation’s obvious enthusiasm and love of the music was apparent, and the whole package made Farmergirl say, on the way out the door, “Do you think maybe we could go to ECOR every other Sunday, and attend this church, too?” We think she really likes small congregations. This one started with a dozen people besides us, and ended with about a half dozen more who came in at different points.
The building has a white marble cornerstone that reads from 1964, but the cornerstone doesn’t match the style of the building (which has exquisite woodwork, the style of which was long gone by the the 60s), so I looked up the records on the county assessor’s site, and found that the church was built in 1904, which was much closer to my original guess. It is a gorgeous building, with beautiful woodwork, and rounded pews that mirror the half-circle balcony. If you get a chance to go there, it’s worth it just for that. (1912 E 1st Ave, just off the Altmont exit, on the northside of the highway, at the intersection of 1st and Magnolia).
It was not a surprise to walk into Manito Methodist Thursday morning and walk past a half dozen people of different nationalities and religions on the way into the Interfaith Thanksgiving Service. It was a little bit of a surprise when the guy in the yarmulke reached out, grabbed my braids, and tugged them alternately. “It’s a Wisconsin handshake,” he grinned, “It had to be done.” I wasn’t really familiar with this, but the air was crisp, the guy was smiling, and it seemed in good humor, so I grinned back, took a bulletin from the Hindu guys, and we made our way into the seating between the Unity choir (30 people–on Thanksgiving day!), the Buddhist monk, and the really really tiny Muslim lady.
A Wisconsin Handshake involves one person interlocking her fingers, thumbs down 
, while the other person reaches out and “milks” the thumbs.
I don’t remember what I was looking for exactly when I stumbled upon an article about the Interfaith Council’s Thanksgiving Service, but I thought they’d probably have one this year, and it was just a matter of finding it, so I stuck it in my calendar, and found it. Hooray for the internet! A veritable font of information! 42!
The Interfaith Service itself was a series of prayers, blessings, chants, meditations, and reflections on thanksgiving and hope, from the different faiths gathered: Baha’i, Buddhist, Disciples of Christ, Hindu, Jewish, Methodist, Muslim, Native American, Sufi, Unity — and the congregation gathered, which seemed to range as widely (we saw some other Episcopalians we know–I don’t know the denominations of the other folks in attendance, though we were behind a wild driver from Idaho from the highway all the way up the hill).
We almost didn’t go . . . I had a tragic turkey incident the night before (that lasted until after midnight, but ended less tragically), were up too late, and I really didn’t think we’d get done and home in time from the south hill in Spokane to avoid a second turkey tragedy . . . but Michael made some coffee while I was in the shower, and we headed out on our slippery mountain road and it all worked out just fine. (And, when the car decided to not be on the road anymore, it decided to go in the ditch side, not the death side, so even the excitement of the first snowy road was not enough to drive us to give up, turn around, or drink heavily when we got home to counteract the effects of the adrenaline). I’m really glad we did, though.
Week 47, in which Michael, unable to contain himself, gets in a pointless and fruitless discussion with a well-meaning but strident evangelical on the topic of biblical infallibility, which will no doubt result in his soul getting a really super good dose of prayer this week.
Once upon a time ago, when we were part of a church plant that met in an elementary school, we were making the move to a middle school, and trying to figure out the new configuration of the pulpit (a music stand), and the altar (a wooden bar-height table). The priest wanted the pulpit closer to the altar, and I proffered that it ought to be a bit further away. (The discussion was crucial because I was in charge of documentation, and the microphone cable to the pulpit was supposed to be taped down for each service).
I wasn’t itching for a fight, but I decided to make my case. I stood behind the pulpit and said that the priest was like me, a gesticulater. I noted that he usually put one hand in his pocket and used only the other, because, I suspected, like me, he might get going to fast and hit something. I noted that he didn’t like to stand behind the pulpit, and that he often wandered out from behind it, until what time he needed his notes again, and, doubling back, I noted that he’d return to check them and move on. He was taller than me, and I said the relative proximity of the pulpit to the stage right candle on the altar brought his gesticulating dangerously close to the candle, and that we ought to move it just a smidgen more away. I think it was my noticing all of these details that caused his face to fall. I’d been trained in acting and had spent a good deal of time “on stage” as a professor for nearly a decade. I taught my students about stage presence, and I noticed things about speakers – including the priest.
Maybe they don’t critique stage performance in seminary, but my observations were met with a somewhat icy reception from a normally warm priest.
Michael and I seem to have this effect on nice church people. Mine generally comes from a combination of irreverence and not being very good at keeping my big mouth shut. His usually has more to do with a deep desire to be understood, even in the face of an obvious hopeless conversation.
This was the case last night.
After the church service, we were talking to a woman who’d given us a warm welcome—about which I was complimenting her, and making a suggestion that she contact a sister church (one we’d visited, Vintage Faith) to answer the call Pastor Steve there had put out, when he observed that Vintage Faith was a congregation that wasn’t very good at welcoming new people. I said that I thought she had done a good job of it, and that, as someone with a lot of recent experience on the subject, I thought she had a lot to offer, because we did very much feel welcomed by her in particular.
I’m not sure exactly how the conversation got to this point, but it went something like this.
She asked what Episcopalians believe, and we said that it’s a creedal, not a doctrinal church, so most Episcopalians believe the Nicene Creed, and there’s a lot of room for discussion and differences beyond that. She wasn’t familiar with the Nicene Creed, and sounded suspicious that there might be so much latitude for belief, so we decided to try a different route. And then there was a bunch of stuff that I don’t remember exactly, and then Michael said that, for example, the Olive Branch Community‘s statement of beliefs includes a line about biblical infallibility, something that he has a hard time with. “You don’t believe the Bible?” she asked him.
No, that wasn’t it.
“The Bible has been proven to be true,” she said with great earnestness, “It’s been proven over and over to be historically and factually true.”
He tried to explain further what he meant – that we bring a lot of cultural and historical baggage to the text of the Bible. That, for instance, the “green pastures” the shepherd of the 23rd Psalm takes his sheep to is not the verdant English pastoral scene of the British Romantics or Thomas Kincaid. The countryside of Israel makes Spokane look lush and brimming with greenery. The occasional wadi oasis in the country are few and far between. When we think about a rolling green lawn, we’re imposing a western, modern worldview on the text. Or, for example, the text about Jesus making his return “like a thief in the night” – this one is one of his favorites, though I was concerned he was going to approach it with his usual crescendo-ing verve and intensity as he explained that the Biblical thief in the night was not the modern cat burglar who wants in and out with the stuff, silently robbing the home. No, he usually says, with growing volume, the thief comes to the home with his band of not-so merry men, bangs down the door, and kills everyone in the home before taking off with the loot. By the time he gets to this last bit, he’s usually kind of loud to make his point that the thief in this point in history is neither subtle nor silent.
She wasn’t buying it, and was increasingly concerned that we a) didn’t believe the bible was true b) were probably some kind of Catholics c) might be part of a cult d) might think we were Christian when we really weren’t. I think this last one was particularly troubling to her because it was part of her own story, that she alluded to.
She’d said that she had been part of a church for a long time, and thought she was a Christian, but it wasn’t until she had come to the mother church of the Olive Branch Community that she realized she wasn’t actually a Christian, and became one.
This opens a whole new can of worms that I’m really glad we dropped pretty quickly, but that we discussed at length with Farmergirl on the way home: What makes a Christian?
The problem with the conversation at hand, was that the woman we were speaking with was coming at it from the point of view that the Bible is unchanging, and that, if we interpret it differently at different times, then it is an error on the part of the reader, because it’s God’s unchanging word. So the fact that modern evangelical Christian focus is on a personal relationship with Jesus, which is in stark contrast with the 12th century view of salvation as part of defending God’s “honor.” Both things are there, but different people at different times have glommed onto different parts of it.
Because she had been part of (or knew someone who had been part of) a pentecostal church that insisted that speaking in tongues was something that a person who was “really” saved would do right after being “saved” through their baptism, and her friend, an otherwise devout believer spent years tormenting herself over not evincing this gift of the spirit. She thought this was a terrible thing, so I pointed that out . . . many people in many churches that do not emphasize the “gifts of the spirit” nonetheless allow for their exercise among other believers to varying degrees of comfort. I pointed out that the bible does point to the exercise of speaking in tongues as a good thing . . . but that this particular congregation she’d brought up emphasized it more than the one we were standing in, or our home Episcopal congregation. It wasn’t that either church was “right” or “wrong” in doing or not doing it, but that the emphasis was different.
No, if the speaking in tongues wasn’t orderly and accompanied by a translation, then it wasn’t right. I decided I’d struck out, and gave up. But she was really concerned that we might leave with the wrong understanding of the bible and its infallibility. I silently willed Michael to let her have the last word, because it was apparent she was going to stick with it until she did. The psychic connection was online, and he took the next opportunity.
It’s hard to explain to someone who doesn’t maybe understand that the culture and milieu and era they come from is cultural and worldview baggage they bring to the text. I find myself so often short sighted because I think of childhoods as involving two family cars, and larger homes with multiple bathrooms, and television and radio and recorded music. We keep having these rural moments when things like our lost sheep (er, goat) bring home an agrarian parable of Jesus. Even knowing I drag this baggage doesn’t prevent me from continuing to look at the text through its lens. I know my view of hell is formed as much by Dante as it is the Bible, that my view of Satan is informed by Milton and Hollywood and Jack Chick, that my view of Jesus is unfortunately tied to THAT 40s painting of Jesus. You know the one. Warner E. Sallman’s “Head of Christ.” You’ve seen him. Even if he wasn’t hung in your house when you were a child, you’ve seen that picture of him. It’s only slightly less famous than Da Vinci’s Last Supper picture of him. People know it’s Jesus as sure as they know Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe or Mickey Mouse. That one.
Michael ultimately tried to take it home with an explanation that he didn’t find the infallibility issue all that useful . . . that he felt the grace and mystery of God were more important and more useful to the Christian life than statements on the infallibility of scripture. He’s probably getting prayed for, nonetheless . . . but really, who can’t use a little more of that?
Well, I’ve managed to write over 1600 words and not tell you anything at all about the service. One of the striking things was that neither of us knew most of the music it they played. I would call it “neo-gospel” as far as the music itself. Michael rather liked the words. I was annoyed, because most of the time I couldn’t see the words (beamed onto a screen that was set too low for having the congregation stand) and therefore couldn’t sing along. Like many of the emergent-ish congregations we’ve visited, they had a break mid-service, before the sermon. One person we talked to said it probably wasn’t like any other kind of service we’d attended, which I thought was odd, and before I could reel it in, I opened my big mouth and said that most non-denominational services included times of praise and worship, an offertory, and a sermon that was somewhere between 20 and 50 minutes. The person I said this to looked a little taken aback. I forget, sometimes, in this project, that most people have been to as many other kinds of churches as Farmergirl had been to when we started, and that they don’t really know how very similar more protestant church services, denominational or not, are. The person I was talking to said the pastor promised the 5:30 service would be done at 7pm (it being Sunday night in a rented building, and many people in the congregation having children who would probably be headed to school the next day), but the 22 minutes remaining weren’t enough for his three point sermon, which took the better part of 45 minutes. I suspect that the time of sharing what folks were grateful for, and the lighting of the advent candle at the beginning of the service took more time than originally anticipated, and instead of reducing the length of the music, or condensing the sermon, the pastor just ran with it.
The Olive Branch Community is one of the few churches we’ve been to that provides bibles (well, technically a copy of the New Testament), and encourages guests to take the bibles with them as a gift. We did actually take one along, and it’s been interesting reading, because I think it was edited with the following question in mind: “If someone who didn’t know the first thing about Christianity or the church were to pick up this bible, how would you explain how to live the evangelical Christian life?”
Back east, twenty years ago, the Congregationalists, the Unitarians, and the Base Chapel used to get together once a year for a singing service. Each congregation would vote for hymns they wanted to sing. I don’t remember what the Chapel or the Congregationalists picked, but the Unitarians always chose John Lennon’s Imagine, which just charmed and tickled me, since it was not considered a hymn in the churches we’d attended.
The guest musicians this week were a Bluegrass group called Molly and Tenbrooks. As most bluegrass gospel music has a lot of specifically Christian doctrine (things like covered by the crimson flow,” or the original lyrics to Amazing Grace.
What I didn’t know before, and learned yesterday at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Spokane, is that the Universalist stream of the UU tradition was, in part, a reaction to the increasingly dominate Calvinist* view of a stern God whose hell one should try to avoid by being one of the elect. “Give them not Hell,” John Murray wrote, “but hope and courage.”
“You may possess only a small light, but uncover it, let it shine, use it in order to bring more light and understanding to the hearts and minds of men and women. Give them not Hell, but hope and courage. Do not push them deeper into their theological despair, but preach the kindness and everlasting love of God.”
The sermon revolved around the history of the Universalist stream of the UU church, and the minister asked the congregation an interesting question: “What would happen if we lived our lives as if God were a loving God?”
* This is my version of the modern UU version of Calvinist doctrine, and does not quite reflect the intricacies Calvinist theology.
I’m trying to figure out why my original response to this memorial service was so negative.
“remembrance @ht: the burial of the dead: sorrow & hope” is the title of the bulletin printed for the memorial service for the husband of our friend. The service seemed to be largely from the A New Zealand Prayer Book, but a lot of the language was clunky and forced, which was distracting.
The music was dull and plodding.
Episcopal services often seem mechanical to outsiders (see the critiques of “empty ritualism” from earlier this year, from a number of the evangelical churches we’ve attended), but this one was just . . . lifeless. Then homily veered off on a weird tangent about facades and the swept-dirt front yards of Nicaragua. I’m still not sure what to make of that.
My mom visited a church once where the pastor preached on unicorns (as in: they exist and one of the horns the temple priests had was from a unicorn). I don’t know what to make of that, either.
I do know I’d like my funeral to include both music and language that rolls, and reminds the people in attendance that they’re still alive.
I come from a long line of folks in the funeral industry. My generation is the first in four to not have someone in the business, but we’ve all grown up going to cemeteries as a family past time, and I think we’re all very comfortable with death, and with the tumultuous emotions that accompany it. I think this one of the reasons why the baptismal covenant is included in the service from the BCP — it breathes life back into those gathered.
Perhaps what missed the mark was that the service had very little movement back toward life.
Michael works with the father of Zachary McPeck who passed away recently at the tender age of 22. The family wanted the service to be one of celebration of his life, and it very much was. They shared memories and photos and music, and it was tender and lovely, followed by a reception with desserts and craft tables, which we were unable to stay for, as we had a second memorial service to attend, across town, right after.
I think that we (culturally) eat at/after wakes/funerals/memorials because eating is life sustaining and life affirming. It was nice, too, that they’d thought about all the ages, and included creation (the crafts) as part of the celebration of Zachary’s life.
The most pernicious thing about being robbed is that you know that the thieves immediately toss the things that are of significance to you. For example, Michael’s notebook with a year’s worth of work notes, the pictures of the magic show that were on the camera, and Farmergirl’s bracelet. As I’m writing this, Michael is on the phone with the insurance company, explaining that the things she lost weren’t of monetary value: the backpack and her clothes were used (though it was her current favourite pair of jeans), and the bracelet has a monetary value of about 14 cents.
It wasn’t even a real bracelet. It’s a scrap of cloth.
But it was her scrap of cloth, and it’s not the cloth itself, but its spiritual significance that made it valuable to her.
Two years ago, at camp, one of the projects the campers did was to make prayer flags. Farmergirl informs me that she feels she misunderstood the instructions, and that she ended up writing considerably more on her prayer flag than the others in her group. The experience of creating the prayer flag and, in particular, her counselor, helped her puzzle through some deep spiritual questions she had. This year, again at camp, she found the tattered remains of that prayer flag . . . the writing was gone, and the blue had faded. She reclaimed it, and has been wearing it, wrapped around her slender wrist, as a bracelet.
She seldom takes it off, but had removed it for the magic show she’d assisted in, because it didn’t really fit the “look” of the Vegas-magician’s-assistant in a sparkly green ball gown. It was tied to her backpack when it was stolen.
We have a family tradition of weaving stories – sometimes factual, often not – we were in a crowded mall in Beijing once, right before Christmas, and a vendor gave Farmergirl a red balloon. We were going to be back on a bus, and didn’t really have a place for the balloon, when we noticed an even smaller girl (Farmergirl was 7) looking longingly at the balloon. Farmergirl gave her the balloon, and we watched it bob through the mall. The mall was organized around a large atrium with dozens of escalators connecting the floors. Our story is this: Farmergirl gave the balloon to the first little girl, who passed it on to another, who passed it to a third, and a fourth, and so on.
When we think of that day, we see the balloon being passed from kid to kid, multiplying the happiness through the mall. When we think of that day, we see the red balloon, bobbing from floor to floor, through the throngs, spreading more happiness than its initial gift had brought.
This is our story about the prayer flag bracelet.
The thieves quickly realized Farmergirl’s back pack contained “nothing of value,” and pitched it into the Spokane river. It bobbed along, in the dark, until it reached the slow waters alongside Riverfront Park, above the Falls. On the south bank of the river, a young woman stood, sniveling in the rain, ready to jump into the icy waters of the Spokane. She knelt down to feel the water, and her hand caught the Garfield backpack. She fished it out, and untied the bracelet that Farmergirl had used to hold it shut. She held that wet scrap of cloth in her hand like a lifeline. Like Farmergirl, Garfield was her favorite cartoon character, and here he was, just as she was ready to pitch herself into the river. She tied the prayer flag around her wrist, and walked home in the rain to take a hot shower, and clean up the backpack. I told Farmergirl we probably shouldn’t tackle that girl if we run into her downtown. She had a rougher week than we did.
Although I have the feeling that Bethel AME is always alive, attending on the first Sunday after the election of Barack Obama was electric and joyous and buoyant. There was great rejoicing throughout the congregation, and quite a bit of clapping, and several standing ovations, beginning with the minister saying, “I would like the be the first to congratulate president-elect Obama,” but he was careful not to gloat. He specifically said that if this was the election outcome the congregation assembled had wished for, they must not gloat–but rather, he said, pray for those who were feeling low. “I know,” he said, eyes twinkling, “If the election had gone the other way, I would need them to be praying for me.”
I confess I was still in my own little world during most of this service, trying to find equilibrium still just hours after the theft, digesting the Quaker service.
Bethel AME rolls. The band was playing keyboard, drums and jazz organ when we came in. They like to sing, and the choir comes and goes throughout the service. There was a special performance by three of the youth, one a singer, and two liturgical mime/dancers, accompanied by the choir. This is probably latently racist of me, but I found myself surprised that two young black men were performing mime/dance. It was refreshing to see youth engaged in the service.
The congregation, as one would expect, is largely African American. Our Gra asked if there were enough African Americans in Spokane to have a congregation (coming from Baltimore, our 1.7% makes it seem Spokane is just white). For the record, there are several traditionally African American congregations in Spokane.
Near the end of the service, they do a three-tiered altar call. I think this (the altar call) happens weekly (based on the bulletins available online). The minister asked everyone to hold hands, and to say, in repeated clauses (like repeating one’s wedding vows), a version of the sinner’s prayer. Then the minister bade anyone who’d said it for the first time to come to the altar. “We just want to love on you,” he said, “Nothing scary.” The congregation clapped as folks went to the altar. Then, (the third tier), if anyone wanted to join Bethel AME, for them to come down to the altar, “Because you might find another good church, but you won’t find a better church!” (the congregation roared), “Because Bethel means the house of the Lord! And it’s good to be in God’s house, isn’t it, Church? Because here, everyone is someone, and Jesus is the Main Attraction!”
At the altar, those who came forward were met by choir members and elders and ushers. Many returned to their seats with another person (I think these were the folks who were joining the church — they were filling out forms). Although there were probably a half dozen people still at the altar, the service continued with announcements and music. There’s a weird orchestrated chaos that dominated the service. It wasn’t a production, but there was order to it. There’s something refreshing about that.
I was really sorry Michael missed it, so we’ll probably be doubling back on that one (actually both the AME and the Quakers–he wanted to go to both).
*On a note that I don’t know where this kind of note fits: I’m pretty sure Jacob’s Well has (some of) Bethel AME’s former pews. I say that because I think I recognize them from this picture.
There isn’t a lot to say about an the “Unprogrammed” or “Simple Worship” in a Friends meeting. This is because the service may not have anything that was “said.” The Spokane Friends have a short note that they hand out to newcomers and visitors (in the meeting this morning, there were five regulars and five visitors. Michael is under the weather, so Farmergirl and I, plus three young men from Gonzaga were the five). Part of it reads:
Friends share the conviction that each person can have a direct experience of the Spirit of God. Our way of worship is based in the silence of expectancy in which we seek to come nearer to God and each other as we share the stillness of the gathering. Participants are not expected to say or do anything other than join in this seeking. Do not be concerned if silent waiting seems strange at first. We rarely experience silence in everyday life, so it is not unusual to be distracted by outside noise or roving thoughts.
Often a Meeting will pass with no words spoken.
This was our experience this morning . . . that is, the Meeting was a silent one.
It was a good time, too, to have that time of silent reflection.
And it was hard not to be distracted this morning.
Last night, when Michael and Farmergirl came to pick me up, our car was broken into, and several items were stolen, including my camera (and its lenses) , and Michael’s computers (and his work bag, and a year’s worth of notes, and our house designs), and Farmergirl’s backpack with her favourite jeans and a scrap of cloth that was of great heart-value to her. We spent a restless night of could’ves and should’ves, mourning each thing that we remembered was contained in those bags (the pictures of Farmergirl in a stunning green Vegas ballgown, assisting her friend Ray at his Magic contest, for example). The thief didn’t take any of the books (ours or the library’s).
My head was still spinning this morning. Farmergirl and I dragged ourselves out into the cloud that’s been sitting on the prairie for three days because we thought anything must be better than staying home moping.
The worst thing about all of this is how mad I felt at Michael. He feels I’m too obsessive about locking the car; I think he’s too lackadaisical. He felt terrible. I could feel how terrible he felt.
Just a big fucking pit in the stomach.
So this morning, sitting with the Quakers, and trying to calm my mind, I realized: I can’t really do anything about this. Farmergirl and I went and walked the area, hoping the thief threw away her backpack, or Michael’s, and that we could recover his book or her fabric bracelet. We got our toes wet, and I got a blister . . . be we came up empty handed. So I realized I can’t do anything about this. I’ve searched the bushes, made a report to the police, will watch craigslist and ebay and the pawn shops . . . but the only thing I have control over is this: how I react to my family.
And that was it.
It just kind of melted away.
I could even feel it, in my shoulders and between my temples.
The fucking crook might have my stuff, but he can’t steal my heart away from those I love most dearly.
