Not your normal Sunday School

At Capitol Hill UMC there is a quiet revolution going on. Successful, intelligent, affluent Washingtonians are meeting with those who wander the city’s streets without a home and for whom a used T-shirt and a meatloaf lunch is a gift. But this meeting is not about charity, or even mission. The group is studying the Bible together and learning about Christ from one another.

One morning in August, Tom, who spends many nights in his wheelchair on the church’s stoop, was lying on the cement, trying to get his socks on before attending Sunday School. One of the church members stooped to help him, while another went to fetch some water to wash away the excrement that another homeless overnight visitor had left on the church’s sidewalk behind some bushes.

Struggling to dress a confused man whose pain made him cry out and washing waste off the pavement, is hardly how most United Methodists begin Sunday School. At Capitol Hill, they meet needs first.

And, in these needs, they sometimes discover the presence of God.

During the Sunday School class, in a small chapel, a man named Lester sat down very close to me in a pew. As he leaned forward to rest his head, I noticed specks of blood and tiny red bugs on the back of his shirt. When Lester raised his head to share his thoughts on living a resurrection life, I didn’t understand some of the words he mumbled. But I did find myself caring intensely about what he thought about God.

In moments, through their relationships, that’s what the people at Capitol Hill teach you. It feels radical, a bit like a daring adventure, a leap of faith into an almost heretically bold way of being. But then, as coffee and conversation is shared, you realize it’s really just the Gospel being lived out. Amid mess and chaos, there is deep listening, and faith, and authentic love unfolding.

The writer G.K. Chesterton said, “There are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematician that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one.”

It’s this kind of miracle math that allows Jesus to feed the multitudes with a few loaves of bread and some fish. It’s also what allows people – all the people — at Capitol Hill to live resurrection lives.

Bless your heart

 May the road rise up to meet you. May the wind always be at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face, and rains fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again, May God hold you in the palm of His hand.
– An old Irish blessing

I love the idea of blessing – how the light of God shines on and from within people. But recently, I had the chance to experience a living beatitude when I spoke with the Rev. Stan Cardwell and his wife Michelle.

They had just returned from Uganda, where they visited with some of the boy soldiers who had experienced incalculable atrocities after being abducted and forced to serve in Joseph Koney’s Lord’s Resistance Army.

The Cardwell’s have soul-stirring stories, which will appear in the July 29 UMConnection. But one thing that particularly touched me was when Stan spoke about how he intentionally provided these young men, most of whom were orphaned, with a parent’s blessing.

He and Michelle laid their hands upon the boys and emphatically told them they were children of God, beloved and extraordinary, and that God has a special destiny in store for them.

Like Abraham with Isaac, the Cardwells drew God’s eyes upon these boys and declared their sacred worth.

Many fathers today don’t bless their children, Cardwell said. I had never thought about it, but my mind started reeling with the way some people’s lives might change if they were blessed and led to believe that God did indeed know them and have a destiny in mind for them.

Often, in today’s world, we think of blessing as praise. But blessing also means to make sacred, to infuse something with holiness. To use a wonderful, old-fashioned word, to bless to is “to hallow.”

In Numbers 6:24-26, the priests bless the people: “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace.”

Such words call us to become living “benedictions” – blessed and able.  God bless.

Intentional action

I got in trouble recently – big, large, messy trouble. It’s not important to share the details. My heart is still a bit broken because trust was shattered all around.

I still find myself wanting to defend myself. I want to keep believing that grace enables truth. But amid the bruises, I’ve also been doing some soul searching.

I am a person of intention. What my heart feels and my soul desires are reality to me. But in the midst of my troubles, I’m learning I need to also become a person who more deeply appreciates and embraces the concrete value of action.

This tension between intention and result is an ancient one and I’ve had many teachers in my reflections. These are some thoughts I’ve encountered:

• You cannot change anything in life with intention alone, which can become a watered-down, occasional hope that you’ll get to tomorrow. Intention without action is useless.”  ~ Carolyn Myss
• “We are all inclined to judge ourselves by our ideals, others, by their acts.” ~ Harold Nicholson.
• “Knowing is not enough; we must apply.” ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
• “Well done is better than well said.” ~ Benjamin Franklin
• “Greatness is not in where we stand, but in what direction we are moving. We must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it – but sail we must and not drift, nor lie at anchor.” ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes
• “Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts. And never hope more than you work.” ~ Rita Mae Brown

 And then there’ are the words of Jesus, who spoke in clear, powerful calls to action: Ask. Seek. Knock. Love. Claim. Turn. Feed. Do.

I don’t know where this soul-searching will lead. I know reflection, contemplation, deep learning and contented introversion are essential parts of my life, which I choose to live somewhere near a quiet hearth. That doesn’t have to change. But first steps are called for. And, one foot after another, I’m beginning to take them, curious about where they’ll lead.

People of words

 Earlier this month, the English language crossed the one-millionth word threshold with the word “Web 2.0.”

Leading up to the millionth word, the Global Language Monitor analytic company reported, was “Jai ho,” a Hindi phrase signifying the joy of victory, which gained English-language popularity through the film “Slumdog Millionaire.

A few words used in major media outlets, were recently denied access to the dictionary – like “staycation,” which means spending a vacation at home, and “bracketology,” the science of NCAA March Madness betting

The one-millionth-and-first word has also already been added – “financial tsunami.”

For the world’s 1.53 billion English speakers around the world, crossing the one-million mark seems like a milestone worth celebrating – a Jai ho moment….

Reading news articles about the event, I learned that the average American uses about 7,500 words a day, and knows about 20,000 words total.

United Methodists, I am convinced, are a people of the word. This was especially apparent during our recent three-day annual session of the Baltimore-Washington Conference in June.

There were 4,213 words in the bishop’s state of the church address. In the pre-conference booklet, we used 47,196 words to lay out the session’s business; and during the 225^th session members spoke more than 154,800 words.

Most of these were words of hope. It is often a defining trait of United Methodists to merge their hope with action. Bishop Schol’s benediction reflected that.

“Maybe each of us have to figure out what it means to take these words of the past three days and put flesh to them in our churches, our neighborhoods and our world,” the bishop said. “May God be our guide, and may God be the judge of our speaking and our acting.”

His words mean a great deal to me. They evoked a similar sentiment from the Holocaust Museum in D.C.: “Thou shalt not be a victim. Thou shalt not be a perpetrator. Above all, thou shalt not be a bystander.

Sometimes, I have to confess, I fear The United Methodist Church may too often be witnessing, rather that responding to the people and the world that swirls around us. I’m not always as hopeful as I might be.

But then I watch the 1,400 people of the conference gathered together, working, praying and hoping to become the living Word of God. There is power in that intention.

I don’t know what the exact word would be for that phenomena of United Methodist word merged with action but there should probably be one. 1,000,002.

When God flows out of a pen

I believe that God can flow out of a pen.

I believe that God calls us to live interesting and meaningful lives, not balanced ones. I believe in the potential that arises from conversation. I believe in hyacinths. I also believe in the transcending power of grace and, that if we really want to understand God, we need to talk to poets.

 

The definition of what poetry is varies. “A poem begins with a lump in the throat,” said Robert Frost. According to Carl Sandburg, “Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance,” and Marianne Moore defines poetry as “Imaginary gardens with real toads in them.”

Poets thrive in Sabbath, where time, space and matter unfold in a holy fashion. Poets don’t carry umbrellas and never speak in “therefores.”

Those who are thinking about church and planning its future could probably use a bit more poetry.

Robert Browning was convinced that “God is the perfect poet.” I don’t know if that’s true. I do know this poet-God should be evoked in more sanctuaries. Poetry thrives on mystery. So does any good liturgy and all great devotion.

I subscribe to The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor. Each morning, I’m greeted by a poem in my inbox, an act which in and of itself feels like a small moment of daily grace. I usually find myself wanting the poems to deliver great meaning to my day. But they tend to just make me pause, and sometimes smile.

Joesph Joubert said, “You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some of it with you,” and I think that is probably true.

I’m not sure what the church would look like if it was crammed with poetic intention. Part of me is convinced that beauty, creativity, spookily authentic emotion, and dramatic license would flourish in astonishing ways. But that’s my rhyme and reason. Each person, I’m sure would bring their own meter and schemes to set the cross upon.

I’m not sure why poetry is missing from religion today. I do know we’re a little less for it’s absence. Salman Rushdie said, “A poet’s work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.

Amen. Let the ink flow.

Thirst for the holy

She took a breath before she stepped into the aisle that led to the altar, robed and prayerful, walking for before her husband’s coffin.  

 

It was an ancient act, ritualizing all we hold sacred. How my friend found the courage and strength to stand in the pulpit and eulogize, pray, and sing for the man who was her heart, I have no idea. But that she did so was important. It was holy. It was church at its very finest.

 

In the midst of meetings, church planning, strategies for discipleship and busy-ness of keeping all those hearts, minds and church doors open, it’s easy to forget the soul of church – that feeling and that knowledge that compels us to abandon ourselves in God.

 

In her act of sorrow tinged with joy, my friend stood in the pulpit and reclaimed church.

 

Watching her, I thought of the quote from writer Annie Dillard: “There is always the temptation in life to diddle around making itsy-bitsy friends and meals and journeys for years on end. It is all so self conscience, so apparently moral…But I won’t have it. The world is wilder than that in all directions, more dangerous…more extravagant and bright. We are…raising tomatoes when we should be raising Cain, or Lazarus.”

 

Bishop Peggy Johnson of the Philadelphia Area was at the funeral. Being new to the episcopacy, Johnson confessed that the one, and only, thing that made her ministry possible was prayer.

 

“Cease praying for a moment,” she said, “and chaos will descend.” Prayer enables possibility.

 

I think it was prayers – those of her husband, and all who love her, that held my friend as she walked before the coffin. I’m certain it’s what enables the best of the church to survive and thrive.

 

Despite the tragedy and heart-break, I found myself wishing there were more moments of authenticity and vulnerability in our congregations. How we spend our days is,” as Dillard says, “of course how we spend our lives.”

 

As a church, we need to spend our time more intentionally wrapped among sacred moments. Or maybe it’s just me – caught with a thirst for the holy.

 

Call to the River

Twenty nine people gathered recently at the river at Manidokan, a United Methodist retreat center near Harper’s Ferry, to explore God’s call and discover new ways of being church.

“I want the church to talk to me in curious ways,” one participant confessed. Curiosity, openness, wonder and mystery became by-words of the weekend.

The Call to the River retreat was the soul-child of the Rev. Rod Miller, director of connectional and emerging  ministries for the Baltimore-Washington Conference.

The “emerging” part of his title is new and Miller is gathering strategic partners, like Faith at Work (www.lumunos.org) and the Church of the Savior in this instance, to help him discover more about how United Methodists might relate to the emerging church community, which is unfolding on the mainstream religious landscape.

During the retreat, Miller and the Rev. Matt Poole, a Guide in the conference’s Western Region, asked participants to reflect upon the Bible’s first story and how much space God created.

“Now consider how much sacred space you claim,” Poole said. “We sometimes tend to live small lives. But there’s an immensity to God.”

Poole encouraged those present to look for the spaces God is creating in their lives and step into them.

The church, Miller explained, also needs to invite people into that sacred space. One way to do this, he said, is to move beyond transactional models of ministry, which focus on the trading of goods, services and ideas, and into an emerging model, in which people are valued for who God created them to be, leadership is shared, and possibility is not bound by structure or expectation.

One of the first steps in such a journey, Miller said, is to connect one’s own story with God’s larger story.

To assist those gathered in this task, Marjory Zoet Bankson, author of “Call to the Soul,” was invited to help people explore “the call cycle,” which she designed to help people realize the larger purposes of their lives as they unfold and to move them into the realm of the Spirit.

“Now what?” is one of the central questions of call, explained Bankson. Throughout their lives, people will discover new answers to the questions who am I, what is my work, what is my gift, what is my legacy?

Each call, Bankson explained, takes a person through a cycle with various stages including resistance, reclaiming, revelation, relating and release. As they consider taking their calls public, people find themselves on the banks of a metaphorical river, which they cross at their own peril or delight.

While each call is different, they do share common traits. “A calling from God is simple,” Bankson said. “It is impossible without God and it is persistent.”

In examining call, for individuals and the church, Bankson read from Ezekiel 47, where an angel reveals a vision in which a river flows out from below the Temple, creating a mighty force that brings life wherever it goes. Fruit trees grow on its banks, “and their fruit will be for food, and their leaves for the healing of the nations.”

“The river flows from the sanctuary, and where the river flows, life abounds,” Bankson said. The Temple was a closed system. But God’s river flows from under the Temple and into the world. It doesn’t ignore the temple, but it is more. It’s a bigger story.”

This Scripture resonated with many present at the retreat. Some said the church couldn’t effectively address the things that “made them feel dead inside.” Others worried that the church had become trivial and irrelevant, “a bad parody of what it was intended to be.”

But Miller reminded them that they hold the key to address this. Each person is beloved by God. “The river,” he said, flows through us.”

Throughout the weekend, participants were invited to listen to their bodies as they participated in a wide variety of sacred experiences, ranging from stretching and dance, the intoning of Shalom, holy conversation, walking group meditations and communion.

During one of these exercises, Tiffany Montavon, from Faith at Work, asked those gathered to close their eyes and imagine placing their dreams in their left hand and God’s dream in their right. “Now place your left hand in your right and let it rest there,” she instructed.

In that merging of individual, God’s and the church’s dreams, a new spirit stirred. No one present was ready, or even able, to define it. But that’s okay, Miller says. God’s river brought forth life and new callings were awakened.

In praise of ugly angels

Honestly, I like the ugly angels. Those cute, chubby cherubs leave me cold. I prefer the ugly, powerful kind who can show up in the midst of chaos and make you believe them when they declare, “Fear not.”

 

I also tend to relate to Jonah, the reluctant, not-so-very good prophet, to the more show-off-y Isaiah. I like Jacob when he wrestled with the angel, and Hannah, when she prayed so impolitely that the priests assumed she must be drunk.

 

I seek balance, but I like the slightly off-kilter. That’s why the Christian holidays – from Christmas through Pentecost – sometimes annoy me. The Mary of the crèche, bears little resemblance in my mind to the Mary who bled, ached and screamed, with no running water or medicine, amid the straw and animal dung to give birth in the night.

 

If I made a nativity set, I think I’d tarnish and tilt her halo just a bit.

 

That’s why I loved the altar display at Mt. Olive UMC in Randallstown the one morning I visited. Its pastor, the Rev. Laura Lee Morgan, is creative and believes that the altar can serve as a living canvas to illuminate the stories of God.

 

This season, she displayed evergreen trees that were decorated with the themes of each Sunday’s Advent lesson. I arrived the first week and went into the sanctuary to see her work.

 

While she was not pleased, I was delighted to find that the “e” in “hope” had fallen off the tree.

 

“HOP” it told us, in large white letters. I did. I’ve been hopping through Advent, and it’s given me new hope that Christ is born in unexpected, places. With that Advent display, I was reminded that the church is not supposed to be coloring inside the lines.

 

Christmas, in all its glittery, silent night wonder, can also be audacious and messy and still be holy. So, I’m waiting on my angel, certain that his annunciation will defy my sense of order and open up God’s unexpected wonder.

 

Paul’s Footsteps: Pompeii

On Aug. 24, in the year 79 AD, Mount Vesuvius erupted. Ash began to fall on the 8,000-year-old city of Pompeii, which was home to more than 20,000 people. Before two days had passed, more than 2,000 people were killed by the heat and deadly fumes and the city was buried in volcanic ash.

In 1764, by accident, remnants of the ancient city were unearthed. Archeologists considered it a miracle as they dug into the preserved homes, theaters, libraries, temples and artifacts of daily life at the beginning of the first millenium.

Walking along the streets of Pompei, one can see a mosaic of a bird stealing a string of beads at the House of the Faun, with a statue of a man dancing still the house’s foyer. Bodies are preseerved in their postures of death, some reeling with agony, one kneeling and blockng his face from the fumes, in what seems like an attitude of prayer — frozen forever. Ancient stepping stones help people cross the muddy streets.

These stepping stones, Bishop John Schol pointed out, are spaced to allow for the wheels of chariots to pass between them. The wheel-span of the chariots is based on the width of the hindquarters of two horses standing side-by-side. More than 1,500 years later in the United States, the width of railroad tracks is consistent with this measurement. Iron horses mimic their ancient counterparts — and the more things change . . .

Our guide, Antonio, unlocked the secrets of the city, revealing ancient shops, temples, brothels, bars and civic spaces.

He pointed out the white stones that lined the streets. These, he explained, were set out strategically by city leaders to reflect the moonlight and provide light to those who might stumble in the dark.

This seemed an apt metaphore for Christians today, who are called to be out in the world, reflecting the light of Christ to illuminate the darkness for others.

On the way back to the boat, the bishop led the people on the bus in prayer, that ”we might be the Gospel.” As we begin our journey homeward, this feels like an apt way to honor Paul’s legacy – to be present, and to shine, bearing witness to the glory of God.

Paul’s Footsteps: Malta and Sicily

There’s something about arrivals. Malta is a city of honey-colored ancient stone that lines the harbor in walls, homes and churches. Light and geometry create images that speak to the imagination. Carravagio painted here. And as the ship sails into this ancient landscape, it’s possible to imagine history’s story unfolding.

Malta is a place of mosaics. A gateway between Africa and Europe, its geography and history of conquest has transformed it into a country where cultures have collided over time and shaped themselves into something new.

Paul is everywhere here. St. Paul’s Cathedral gave birth to 365 Roman Catholic churches throughout the small country, one for every day of the year.

We visited the underground, cave-like cell, where Paul was held as a prisoner for three months. We also prayed and sang together in a Baroque cathedral in Mdina that bears his  name. The legacy of one man’s faith astounds.

Paul swam to Malta. The wood Roman galleon, which carried him and 276 others, was shipwrecked off the coast, after being battered at sea for 14 days. The shipwreck was part of his adventure as he took risks to spread the Gospel. Too often in our lives, we settle for an easy, more comfortable faith. In Paul’s journey we’re reminded, “Ships in port are safe, but that’s not what ships are built for.”

In a square in Mdina, we walked over a Maltese cross, created by the Knights of St. John during the Crusades. Its eight points represent the beatitudes and its four arms remind us of the four Christian virtues of justice, prudence, temperance and Christian fortitude, which the poeple at my dinner table promptly translated as “guts or Christian chutzpah.”

It’s Sicily, bella

As we traveled through the ruins of a Greek ampitheater and the surrounding quarry, where slaves worked and died to create the Roman Empire, God seemed present in small and unusual ways. A cave, hollowed out by centuries of water and decades of slave labor, created an echo chamber. Inside we sang hymns and the hall was made hallowed by the sound.

Our tour guide, Atilio, pointed out a simple Acanthus leaf, growing by the walkway. These leaves, he explained, were the inspiration for Corinthian columns. Their shape gave form to the decorative tops of the columns, which now hold up temples to art, democracy and God throughout the world.

In Syracuse, Archimedes was born in the third century before Christ. On the bus each day we have devotions. Bill Buckman of Kentucky explained how this one man, and his “Eureka” inventiveness altered the course of history. “Give me a lever long enough, and a prop strong enough,,” Archimedes said. “ I can single-handed move the world.”

I imagine something similar might be said of Paul — give him a moment to proclaim and lives might be transformed.

Bill is a radiation physicist. His sense of the sacred seems to come through reason and science. During devotions, Joyce Buckman read all of us on the bus a children’s story about Jesus coming to her house. It’s been a very long time since I’ve been read to. I was amazed at how comforting and special it felt — almost like a lullaby. In this small moment on the road on Sicily, reason and story merged and blended into prayer.