rethinking church

This past Sunday, for my solstice service, I had the largest audience at both boys' and girls' facilities that I've had at either before--seven at each--but I'm troubled. Two of the boys were--well, staff called them disrespectful, but I think it was more like I wasn't giving them what they expected or wanted. I'm not sure they could have articulated what either was, although both made references to "real church" and said things that smacked of traditional black worship: "Can the congregation give me an amen?" "I feel the spirit coming into me. I gotta preach." I don't think either wanted a more traditional worship service, although one asked me point-blank, "Why aren't you standing up and yelling?" becuase neither was a churchgoer in their lives outside, but that they were reacting to uncertainty by reaching for elements they had experienced.

The girls were more respectful, by which I mean more polite, but they were coloring or scribbling and occasionally chatting quietly to one another throughout the service, which wasn't distracting but did get me wondering what they were getting from those activities they were not getting from the service. (Possible answer for both: participation?) What this experience has led me to is a realization that my services need a major restructuring.

I've already reduced my order to one that is as listener-friendly and participatory as I thought necessary, but one that remains recognizable as a contemporary Christian or UU service: welcome, candle lighting, hymn, reading, message, silence for prayer or meditation, benediction (with the replacement of conversation for other prayers or hymns). On its own without dialogue the service lasts about twenty minutes, which is probably as long as I can expect any of them to sit as possible. But my point is it remains recognizable, which may be both a strength and a failure.

I've often advocated for a radical restructuring of service elements, and even with all my study and contemplation I still have a hard time imagining what that would look like without those basic elements. I've thought about replacing the message or the hymn or both with a mashup like I've done in the past, but I'm not entirely convinced it's worth the effort (although I already spend a couple hours writing my message and searching for an appropriate song and reading, so I don't think I'd be losing anything). But I'm also loathe to make another element that's just like watching TV. True, I can still have dialogue, and there would be more time for it if I reduced both the reading and message to a single three to four minute song. And true, my reading of Steven Johnson would suggest that my reaction against it being "just like watching TV" is heavily influenced by the culture and the generation I grew up in, and may not take their experiences with learning into account. After all, when I teach I use visuals to make a point or an idea better understood. Why should I assume that spiritual ideas can only be understood through words?

what if I gave a sermon and nobody came?

A self-important minister got up one Sunday morning to discover that about six feet of snow had been dumped overnight on the town. He didn't have much trouble getting to church, of course, living in the attached parsonage, so he hurried over to prepare for the morning service. It was about fifteen minutes before service began and he looked out at the pews. There was only one person sitting there: Fred, one of those bachelor farmers of the area, and still bundled up from milking his herd.

The minister dawdled around in the back rooms until it was five minutes to service and then looked out again. Fred was still the only one sitting in the pews. No one else being there to do it, at ten o'clock the minister himself pressed the button that rang the bells in the steeple. They rang a little muffled but enough to be heard. A minute after ten he looked out. Still just Fred. At quarter past ten he looked out again. Just Fred.

Finally, at ten-thirty the minister stepped out from the back rooms and walked to the pulpit and said, "Listen, Fred, as you're the only one here, I suppose we ought to just cancel today's service."

Fred pulled down his muffler. He said, "Parson, when I call in my cows and only one shows up, I still milk her."

I'm sure I'm not the only one who's dreaded the empty church on a Sunday. A couple Sundays ago just such a thing happened which, if I was doing a sermon on it, I'd title "What if I gave a service and nobody came?"

For the past month I've been working at a pair of facilities for at-risk and troubled teenagers, one for boys and the other for girls. The boys' facility, with four units, is on the far end of the rim to the northwest of us; it takes me an hour and a half to drive there. The girls' facility, with two units, is a half hour drive to the southeast. I do the boys' service at four and the girls' at six.

As it turned out, the reason no one showed at the boys' facility was a miscommunication in the daily calendar for the units. But the lack of attendants got me thinking. I give a pared-down service, one heavy on participation and conversation, since each service is likely to trigger some response on their part. This below, for example, is the order of service for that day's chapel.

Sunday June 8, 2014

Welcome

Joys and Concerns

Reading: A Fable by Rumi

Song: “What’s Going On”, Marvin Gaye

Mother, mother
There's too many of you crying
Brother, brother, brother
There's far too many of you dying
You know we've got to find a way
To bring some lovin' here today - Ya

Father, father
We don't need to escalate
You see, war is not the answer
For only love can conquer hate
You know we've got to find a way
To bring some lovin' here today

Picket lines and picket signs
Don't punish me with brutality
Talk to me, so you can see
Oh, what's going on
What's going on
Ya, what's going on
Ah, what's going on

In the mean time
Right on, baby
Right on
Right on

Father, father, everybody thinks we're wrong
Oh, but who are they to judge us
Simply because our hair is long
Oh, you know we've got to find a way
To bring some understanding here today
Oh

Picket lines and picket signs
Don't punish me with brutality
Talk to me
So you can see
Oh, what's going on
Ya, what's going on
Tell me what's going on
I'll tell you what's going on - Uh
Right on baby
Right on baby

Message

Minute of Reflection or Prayer (Music by Henry Saimo)

Congregation Dialogue

Benediction: Take courage, friends. The way is often hard, the path is never clear, and the stakes are very high. Take courage. Deep down, there is another truth: you are not alone.

Our altar is a simple affair. I cut some flowers growing around my house or on the nearby trail and put them in a glass vase, then set a small, flickering LED candle behind it. This is the message I wrote that was undelivered. It's about five minutes to deliver.

For people my age—for many of you I’m talking about your grandparents and for some of you I’m talking about your parents—1971, the year this album came out, is an important period in American history. All sorts of things were happening that no one had experienced before, much of it pretty bad. You hear some of it reported in the song. “Too many of you dying.” “Picket lines and picket signs.” In 1971, the US was years-deep into an unpopular war in Vietnam that would last another four years before the US declared itself spent and got out. The year before members of the Ohio National Guard at a college called Kent State opened fire on students protesting that war, killing four students. This wasn’t the first time American authorities had killed otherwise peacefully protesting civilians—the previous decade had seen many, many violent responses to demonstrations against the war or in favor of civil rights for blacks or better conditions for people in poverty. And the year after a burglary at a hotel called the Watergate in Washington, DC, would lead to the embarrassing resignation of President Richard Nixon and a cynical, distrusting view of government and politicians that, if anything, has only gotten worse in the following decades.

Everywhere kids like me turned, it seemed there was little point to growing up because society was shredding. Families were breaking apart, drug use was skyrocketing, cancer rates were spreading, as were crime rates and unemployment rates. Outside, the way we’d learned the country was a place of eternal beauty and resources was having the lie put to it. Our rivers and oceans were being polluted by industries that found it easier to dump poisons into the water than to pay for proper disposal, killing off fish by the millions. The fish not killed made it onto peoples’ plates, poisoning us. The pesticides intended to help farmers win the battle against harmful insects and agricultural diseases were also killing the birds that ate infected worms and pets that ate the birds or rolled on their carcasses, and the herbicides we relied on to keep corn and wheat and apples healthy were killing our lawns and fields and burning trees from the inside out.

Something we hope for as humans is that things that are bad will eventually get better. Have things improved in forty-one years? It’s hard to tell, sometimes. Late last month a young troubled man not much older than you posted a very angry document on the Internet blaming women for his problems and then went out to shoot several people, eventually killing nearly 10, including himself. America is still fighting two wars, one of which has lasted longer than all other wars we’ve ever fought. Last week was the 25^th anniversary of events in China’s Tiananmen Square where the military suppressed a student-led demonstration so forcefully that at least hundreds, and maybe thousands, of people died. We argue whether the world’s climate is changing for the worse and whether people are responsible for it. Our reserves of coal and oil are rapidly depleting and some scientists say will disappear in the next 20 or 30 years and the companies that make money from coal and oil discourage development of other resources. Little is being done to change these circumstances, and the next generation, which is you, is being left to either come up with a solution or learn to live with the consequences.

This is an important weekend celebrated by two faiths, called Shavuot by Jews and Pentecost by Christians. Both celebrate the same thing: a time when god gave them the means by which they could live in the world they found themselves in. Jews celebrate the day Moses came down from Mt Sinai with the Ten Commandments, the holy laws that explain in short form how by not killing or stealing you can live a righteous life, and Christians celebrate the emergence of the Holy Spirit among them, helping them see through the minor differences between them like language or the way they look to see each person’s inner Christ.

How do we live rightfully in a world where people are killed indiscriminately by wars or new diseases or angry people with guns, where because of greed the world changes before our eyes while the people responsible for the changes deny it, where jobs and careers are disappearing and the ones that remain pay so much less than the ones they replace that it’s hard to live at all on what they pay? Jews say the answer is to do justice, to be merciful, and walk humbly with God. Christians say it is to love God with your heart and soul and love other people as much as you love yourself. Those are both very good answers. It’s hard, though, to understand how to do that on a daily basis.

But make no mistake, there are very good things happening in the world too.  People are being born and falling in love and taking care of one another all the time, and just to make it personal and specific, between Bar None and Avanti there were four successful discharges just this last week. People in treatment are getting better and you know some of them. Good things happen all the time all around us, often in very small, very personal ways. In the midst of the painful stuff happening in the world, how do we keep from forgetting the good stuff?

It is, I hope, a teen-friendly and especially fidgety teen-friendly type of service. While they're very curious about traditional religion and ask questions about it all the time, they're also distrustful of traditional answers, traditional ceremonies, church, or anything sounding like piety.

But here is what I got to thinking about. After about twenty minutes, when I realized no one was coming, I started cleaning up around the old chapel where I hold services. I looked out at the late spring afternoon and saw boys canoeing, fishing, playing frisbee, and just walking around. If I were them I wouldn't want to spend a beautiful day in Minnesota indoors, either. I started toying with the idea of holding chapel on a weekday evening, at least during the summer and fall months, when there's more to do on the weekend. Another idea playing around my brain is taking chapel to them. One of the arguments for holding services in the chapel, besides the rather nice rustic charm of the old spare building, is that it gets the boys off the unit for an hour. But when I go to the units to hold groups I have much better attendance that I suspect is both from nearness and from interest in what those who don't start out with us hear from their rooms. It may be, too, that my service format, already scaled-down to take from twenty to forty-five minutes, depending on their interest in talking, needs even further paring. I'm open to doing that if it means greater participation.

And it may be, too, that the idea of chapel is so foreign and even repellent to these kids, who may have been forced to attend their parents' churches in the past, that there is no amount of change in how it's done or on what it focuses that can get them past that resistance. From a purely mercenary perspective that's not an issue for me: I'm paid for having been there whether anyone attends or not. But I'd rather think I am accomplishing something.

 

 

who do I resemble?

I'd gotten this idea from a blog post elsewhere and was intrigued by its implications. Except that, instead of using fictional characters, which are, after all, static personalities, I'm using real people with all their attendent complications.

So, what clergyperson do I most resemble?

Religious person I most physically resemble:

Religious person whose impact I'm most like to resemble:

 

 

I'll have more, I'm sure, to say about this in the near future, but for now I'm just getting back into the habit of blogging prior to starting my workday.

my truth

I've begun a new position as the spiritual coordinator (read: chaplain) at a pair of boys' and girls' residential treatment facilities and next Sunday I hope to initiate my first chapel service for them. I don't know if I'll be able to read the following message, but after several weeks of trainings, meetings, observations, and time spent with the kids, I've been moved to write this as the overriding message I want my ministry to reflect.

            Ten years ago I was teaching college English at prisons in Minnesota. I really like doing that. It was important work. During break one night an inmate came up and told me he wanted me to know what he’d done to be sentenced.

            Now, I don’t know if it’s as important a thing here as it is in prison, but you don’t ask someone what he or she has done in prison. It’s a private, personal secret in a very public place, People jealously guard it and sometimes it’s literally dangerous for other people to know how you broke the law.

            So when this guy said he wanted to tell me what he’d done I said, “I’d rather you didn’t.” He asked, “why not?” and I said, “right now I’m your teacher and you’re my student and I like you. But if I find out what you did I might not like you so much anymore.”

            But he took the chance and told me. And although it was something nasty, I still like him for who he was. It doesn’t always work out like that but sometimes, when you’re lucky, it does.

            I know why you’ve come to chapel, what it is you want. In addition to a break in your day, you want the answers. You want someone to tell you what they are, about god and the afterlife and heaven and hell. Most of all, you want someone to tell you it’s all worth it.

            I’m here to tell you the not-so-good news but it’s the truth. I don’t know if it’s worth it. I don’t think anyone knows. Some people come to what they think are the answers for everyone but at best they’re just the answers for them.

            That’s not to say you won’t find answers. For some of you, you might find answers in the Bible or the Koran or the Buddhist Sutras. And those are legitimate answers but they’ll be your answers and nobody else’s and you’ll only find them after you’ve looked a long time and really hard at them.

            You want to know what the secret is and that all the crap you’ve gone through, all the worst stuff you’ve done and had done to you, is worth it. That at the end of the day the good outweighs the bad and you are happy and satisfied and the world is smiles and rainbows. That might be the case. It’s not the case for me or most of the people I know. The world is sometimes a beautiful place and sometimes it’s hellish. Most of the time it’s a balance between the two. I hate to be the one to tell you it never really does get better or easier. Not in the way you want it to: you find the pill or the therapy or make the breakthrough that makes that possible. I used to look for those and it might work for a little while. But eventually you see through that and realize it wasn’t the real answer you wanted.

Life is hard. Maybe it’s meant to be. Maybe it’s better that it’s harder for some of us than for others. I can’t promise you it won’t get harder. You’ll make breakthroughs and you’ll backslide, sometimes worse than before. That’s how life is. Someone once said the only constant is change. A Greek philosopher named Heraclitus famously said you can’t step in the same river twice. The truth is that that’s the truth. You might feel crappy as all hell today and tonight feel like yours is the best life in the world. And tomorrow you might feel exactly the opposite. I can’t promise that won’t happen all your life.

            But I can promise you one thing. This is unchanging, no matter how much you search, no matter how bad it gets, no matter how many dead ends you end up following, no matter how many times you scream and fight and curse god and those around you. There will always be someone who will help you. Call it god, call it reality, call it staff, call it the divine in other people, but there will always be people who are willing to be with you. To explain things, to tell you what you might find ahead, to comfort you and remind you that, while the bad things you’ve gone through may or may not be worth it, you are worth it. This is my truth, my good news. No matter how you feel, no matter what anyone says or how the world treats you, you are worth it.

my superhero identity

Barring introduction by aliens or an industrial accident, the superhero whose special powers I could replicate is Mystery Men's The Shoveler. With the exception of one very big plot done with a Bobcat, all the gardens at the two homes we've owned have been created by me with my trusty yellow-handled spade bought in the mid-90s for $20. In our gardening ventures, my wife is the brains, I am the strong back.

Most recently, we've decided to make an above-ground garden, previously devoted to flowers, a vegetable garden. This required my not only weeding it but digging up the black plastic we had laid under the soil years ago (possibly a decade ago). It took a little over a week and a half; after I started and got half-way done, it rained for nearly a solid week, which made weeding easier but tugging the plastic loose harder.

It began as a load of soil mistakenly dumped in the backyard instead of on the garden we'd already dug, and to quote the sainted Arlo Guthrie, "instead of bringing that pile up we threw ours down." We had a number of railroad ties that propped it up and dozens of bricks to hold them in place until they were solid. It's served us well in the ensuing years, and St. Francis has watched over it peacefully. But with only a few exceptions, you can't eat flowers, and we're ready to make it more utilitarian.

what color was your robe?

I don't think I've told this story before. This was back in my Woodstock days when I was working at Sunflower, a health food store (yes, the one where I met Ed Sanders, Arlo Guthrie, and Pete Seeger). I was working a closing shift and took my lunch break in the office, where I settled into the manager's chair, put my feet up on the desk, and drifted off to sleep.

The dream was incredibly vibrant for what must have been only minutes but seemed as if it lasted for hours. I was back at the Buddhist monastery where I'd attended sesshin the year before, and kneeling before the abbott for my weekly interview. He asked me, "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" And I, thinking I was very clever, held up my right hand and slapped its fingers against the palm.

The abbott remained quite composed, sitting calmly and regarding me. Then he brought out from its hiding place behind him the kyosaku that the head monk used to prod us if we slouched in meditation or smack us loudly if we fell asleep. He screamed "Wrong!" and brought it sharply and loudly on my head.

He composed himself again and repeated, "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" Probably thinking of the story of Huangbo, I leaned forward and slapped the abbott across the face.  He reamained as calm as before until, again as before, he screamed "Wrong!" and slammed the kyosaku against my melon.

This went on over and over. The abbott would ask the same question and I would answer in some way and he would shriek "Wrong!" and smack me on the head. Finally, I answered "I don't know," and at that moment (as I experienced it) my feet slid off the desk and I woke up.

I shook my head several times before going back out on the floor. At the register I told the dream to Nancy, who often worked closing shifts with me. She said, "But what color robe were you wearing?" But I hadn't looked down at myself once during the dream.

I'd like to say that my feet sliding to the floor and waking me was when I became enlightened but the truth is that I'd become enlightened the year before at sesshin. I dutifully reported it to the abbott during one of our interviews and he answered, "Oh, I'm so sorry."

the art of squatting

Although I read this last year, this section has stayed with me since then and I catch myself consciously thinking of its wisdom while I'm squatting somewhere, waiting. I've come no longer to use waiting time to check my FaceBook or email or even, as I used to do, to use the opportunity to catch up on some reading (although I do continue to carry a thick book in my car for such opportunities). Instead, I squat, watching, waiting, thinking a little. Being.

My workers come from many places in Mexico and live in small towns scattered throughout the valley. Del Rey, where many of them stay, is the nearest town to my farm. The estimated population is about 1,500, but during the summer harvest the town swells to twice that size. The workers live in rented rooms, small cramped boardinghouses, or hidden bungalows in converted garages and toolsheds.

I visit one of these apartments. The workers live in a small outbuildings behind my foreman's house. Some of the men are standing, others are crouching in a familiar squat.

My grandmother squatted that way, peasants I saw in South America squatted that way, old folks in rural Japanese villages did the same. It is a common-folk way of resting and a fine observation point from which to watch the world. It's the squat I use when I'm waiting, not for anything in particular but the waiting and resting that's part of farming.

Squatting evens out physical differences. Tall people and short ones become closer in height when squatting. You share with others a common point of view. Once you squat you have to think twice about getting up; you become conscious of choices and decisions. Squatting is a mark of country folk who have worked the land and whose legs are in excellent condition. You can't squat well if you are overweight, if your legs are used to sitting in chairs, or if you are lazy. I wonder if we've lost the art of squatting. In our fast-paced world today, we're too busy or think we're too good to squat.

--From Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm by David Mas Masumoto