I was raised in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. It’s a liturgical church, and to this day I can recite the LCMS order of worship. When I visit my mother in New Orleans, I’ll attend church with her, and while a few changes have been made (like the pastor chanting part of the service), it is still the same liturgy I knew as a child.
The church building was an A-Frame, with four or five classrooms along the side. The first Sunday School class I can remember was in one of those classrooms, and it was taught by Miss Gail, who was pretty and young and now must be in her 70s. About 20 years ago, a new church building was constructed, and the old A-frame is now mostly a storage area. When I see it today, I can’t believe how small it actually is – it seemed huge me to as a child.
I also learned certain hymns by heart, because our Lutheran pastor liked them and used them a lot in the worship service. I’ve always thought of them as “Lutheran hymns” because that’s where I learned them. Some were written by Martin Luther, like “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” so that’s a fair claim to make. Others, however, like “Fairest Lord Jesus,” can be rightfully be claimed by all Christians (but I still “go Lutheran” when I hear it and sing it).
Today I’m a member of an Evangelical Presbyterian church, Central Presbyterian in Clayton, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis and the county seat of St. Louis County. It’s an old church, by American standards, founded in 1846 with the present sanctuary building constructed in the 1870s (back when all the riff-raff lived in the county and the well-to-do elites in the city) (times have changed). Clayton is one of the wealthiest suburbs in St. Louis, in Missouri and in the United States. The church is more diverse than that, attracting people from all over the metropolitan area, but by any standards, it is a wealthy church. And it’s a generous church, doing what a church is supposed to do, funding ministries and missions all over the community and the world. It also occasionally has “Lutheran hymns” in the worship service.
But by themselves, my childhood church home in New Orleans and my current church home in St. Louis are not “the church.” They are local manifestations of the church, and the church realities I’m most familiar with. But, by themselves, they are not the church. No individual congregation is. No denomination is. And certainly no political party is, even though plenty of us think that way.
So what – who – is the church?
The church is the pastor of the underground house church in China who’s been arrested four times and tortured twice because he is a Christian who has to keep serving his Lord.
The church is the man in Rwanda who stepped in front of a machete to protect a neighbor who belonged to the wrong tribe.
The church is the pastors and churches who took to the streets all over Eastern Europe in 1989 and 1990 and helped take down an evil empire simply by standing for truth (even if the news media likes to forget that fact).
The church is the couple with four children in Brazil who belong to a charismatic church and speak in tongues.
The church is the young man in Norway who seems to be fighting a one-person battle against an onslaught of secularism determined to destroy him.
The church is the faithful blogger who lives in Michigan and wears her faith on her sleeve, with no embarrassment and no apologies.
The church is the mother in New Jersey who is homeschooling her kids because she wants them educated in academics and faith.
The church is the couple in Colorado sending their children to public school to be in this world but (they pray) not of it.
The church is the dirty, smelly, unkempt, alcoholic bum who just became a believer in the basement of a Salvation Army mission in Seattle.
The church is the murderer and rapist who became a believer because a businessman with Prison Fellowship cared enough to visit and pray for him.
The church is the narrow-minded hypocrite who sees and often comments on everyone else’s faults but also knows that God loves her and is working on her mean spirit.
The church is the artist who is determined to paint the gospel, the writer with a heart for telling stories to the world and the poet who is broken enough to speak truth.
The church drives a Cadillac Escalade and a Honda Civic hybrid; rides a bicycle with patched tires and the bus; and walks six miles each way to and from church on Sunday because that’s what you have to do to worship as a body in rural Kenya.
The church prefers traditional worship, contemporary worship, orchestras, praise bands, choirs singing classical music, suits and ties, jeans and cutoffs, video, big auditoriums, meeting in someone’s family room, and meeting behind closed doors because they have to for safety.
The church is that sweet lady who prepares the coffee every Sunday for the fellowship time between worship services and never asks for recognition, and the quiet man who shows up for every work project at the church building because that's what he knows to do.
The church is the man and the woman who struggle with and doubt their faith and doubt God and keep coming for worship anyway.
The church is the young 20-something who wants to bring Twitter and Facebook and YouTube and multi-media into the church because he’s convinced it will grow the ministry.
The church is that 13-year-old Catholic girl and her almost 50-year-old Catholic mom who’ll together be traveling to Washington in January to stand in silent protest in front of the Supreme Court.
The church is the 30-something man who turned his back on a promising and successful corporate career to take his family to serve in the mission field in Central America.
The church is sinners and saints because they’re the same thing.
The church is not bound by denomination or color or creed or nationality or geography or time zone because it is all of these things and more, because it belongs to God and God is not bound or defined by man or woman.
And the church, I suspect, sings Lutheran hymns.
(This post is part of the One Word Blog Carnival hosted by Peter Pollock and Bridget Chumbley. To see more posts on “church,” visit Bridget’s web site.)
Monday, December 14, 2009
A Line I Can't Cross
I reached the line in Gerald May’s The Wisdom of Wilderness that I can’t cross. We’ve been reading May’s book as part of a discussion group over at The High Calling Blogs. This past week, we read chapter 10, “Natural Being,” in which May recounts a dream he had about encountering a mountain lion. From the dream, May moves to a short discussion about animal being and healing. When he talks about healing, he says this:
“Some of us still see the earth as an enemy, something to conquer, subjugate, and squander. More of us, thank God, now see it as something to cherish and to care for. But even in our cherishing, the earth remains an ‘it,’ a ‘something,’ an object that is not us. The popular language is ‘stewardship of the environment.’ Stewards are managers, overseers, caretakers, and no matter how benevolent they are, they must forever remain apart from that which they care for…Before we can effectively heal the wounds we have inflicted upon the rest of Nature, we must allow ourselves to be healed. And we must allow the rest of Nature to help us…
“I have never been able to do this for myself. It has to come through grace, in the Presence of the One I called the Power of the Slowing, the Wisdom of the Wild.”
May is not talking about God, but he is talking about a kind of god, a god that is creation. He’s infused it with a supra-human spirit and given it voice and personality, but it is still, ultimately, creation, the natural world, but the natural world that has a very human-like presence projected on to it.
There's one chapter left, and I will finish the book. But this is a line I can’t cross. Perhaps I’m too modernist, too corporate, too “religious” – but May has now formally established the point he’s been aiming at all along – oneness with, and the worship of, the creation. It’s an old, old problem, and it’s called idolatry. And it’s ultimately destructive of that very self May is so desperate to find in his book.
The Seventh Day of Christmas: New Friends
For the seventh day of Christmas, I want to highlight some new friends I’ve found via blogs, comments on blogs, Twitter, and various web sites.
Doug Spurling. Doug lives in Minnesota. He has a blog called Spurling Silver (I like that name), where he writes about family, grandchildren, life, faith and God. He had two posts last week, one entitled “Frozen” and the other “The First Christmas Tree,” which will give you a good indication how he can surprise a reader, and take you where you didn’t expect to go. You can follow him on Twitter, too.
Susan Etole. Susan lives in Minnesota, and posts about the “three Ps” on her blog, Just…A Moment – poems, prose and photos. She’ll take the simplest of ideas and combine a few words with a photo to blow you away, like she did with “No Storm Here” and “The Riven Heart.” Susan and I have at least three things in common – faith, a love for poetry and a love for good mysteries.
Randall David Tipton. Tipton is an artist in Oregon, and he posts his oils and watercolors on his blog, Painter’s Process. He does some beautiful work, painting in a luminous way. His subjects are often nature – woods, trees and other natural settings – but he also did this recent work of “Steam and a Mill” on the Willamette River. And thanks to my friend Maureen Doallas for introducing me to Tipton’s work.
Phoenix-Karenee. Phoenix-Karenee is an artist, a poet and an author. I don’t know her or his real name or (obviously) gender; the blog site is something of a mystery and that’s part of the enjoyment. I suspect it’s a she, but I could be wrong. But I really enjoy the poems and the art that’s posted occasionally.
Claire Burge. Claire, who lives in Ireland, writes a blog called My Memoir of You, and she posts her poetry and photography. She also has a tutoring business, a blog devoted to her photography, and a blog about family, where she posts occasionally. I tweet her poems whenever she posts one – they’re good.
Doug Spurling. Doug lives in Minnesota. He has a blog called Spurling Silver (I like that name), where he writes about family, grandchildren, life, faith and God. He had two posts last week, one entitled “Frozen” and the other “The First Christmas Tree,” which will give you a good indication how he can surprise a reader, and take you where you didn’t expect to go. You can follow him on Twitter, too.
Susan Etole. Susan lives in Minnesota, and posts about the “three Ps” on her blog, Just…A Moment – poems, prose and photos. She’ll take the simplest of ideas and combine a few words with a photo to blow you away, like she did with “No Storm Here” and “The Riven Heart.” Susan and I have at least three things in common – faith, a love for poetry and a love for good mysteries.
Randall David Tipton. Tipton is an artist in Oregon, and he posts his oils and watercolors on his blog, Painter’s Process. He does some beautiful work, painting in a luminous way. His subjects are often nature – woods, trees and other natural settings – but he also did this recent work of “Steam and a Mill” on the Willamette River. And thanks to my friend Maureen Doallas for introducing me to Tipton’s work.
Phoenix-Karenee. Phoenix-Karenee is an artist, a poet and an author. I don’t know her or his real name or (obviously) gender; the blog site is something of a mystery and that’s part of the enjoyment. I suspect it’s a she, but I could be wrong. But I really enjoy the poems and the art that’s posted occasionally.
Claire Burge. Claire, who lives in Ireland, writes a blog called My Memoir of You, and she posts her poetry and photography. She also has a tutoring business, a blog devoted to her photography, and a blog about family, where she posts occasionally. I tweet her poems whenever she posts one – they’re good.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Arrows, Near the Rocks
I send the arrow-fetcher back,
To town, holding the
Arrows I arced
Beyond him.
Beyond was the
Sign, the
Signal, the
Talisman of
A king’s rage, a father’s fury
A prince’s anger, a son’s grief.
I stand alone, in
Anticipation of Beloved’s
Emergence from the
Outcroppings of rock.
He peers round;
Our eyes meet our hearts,
Hearts of joy and
Desolation, the
Joy of friendship present, the
Desolation of absence to come.
He bows, three times
He bows; he bows to
Pay obeisance to what the
Lord has ordained, what
We both know
The Lord will take away.
We say but few words,
Words mostly unneeded now.
We weep the tears of together,
Repeating vows. He
Heeds my words, my warning, and
Leaves in our shared peace.
We know we will not
Speak again,
Shattering our souls.
To town, holding the
Arrows I arced
Beyond him.
Beyond was the
Sign, the
Signal, the
Talisman of
A king’s rage, a father’s fury
A prince’s anger, a son’s grief.
I stand alone, in
Anticipation of Beloved’s
Emergence from the
Outcroppings of rock.
He peers round;
Our eyes meet our hearts,
Hearts of joy and
Desolation, the
Joy of friendship present, the
Desolation of absence to come.
He bows, three times
He bows; he bows to
Pay obeisance to what the
Lord has ordained, what
We both know
The Lord will take away.
We say but few words,
Words mostly unneeded now.
We weep the tears of together,
Repeating vows. He
Heeds my words, my warning, and
Leaves in our shared peace.
We know we will not
Speak again,
Shattering our souls.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
The Mysteries of Sally Wright
Some years back, I had discovered Sally Wright’s mysteries, with her university archivist Ben Reese finding himself in the middle all sorts of murder of mayhem. What I liked (and still like) about the Ben Reese stories was that they’re intelligently written stories that respect their readers. I had read two of her mysteries when they published in the 1990s, and then the bookstore I found them at closed, and I couldn’t find them at other stores. I lost touch.I was in Big Sleep Books in St. Louis recently. A small shop in what we St. Louisans call the Central West End, Big Sleep is devoted to one genre of books – mysteries, broadly defined to include suspense and a few related areas. I wandered alphabetically about the store, and then found myself looking at the Ws. And there was Sally Wright. The store had the two mysteries I had previously read -- Pride and Predator and Publish and Perish -- and one additional one – Pursuit and Persuasion (yes, the titles sound like Jane Austen; they also sound like Dorothy Sayers). I bought all three.
Set in the early 1960s, Pursuit and Persuasion finds Ben Reese in Scotland and briefly in England, helping a former student and assistant find out what happened to the woman who left the student a large estate in Scotland – and a letter indicating that she was likely murdered. Reese has two mysteries to solve – what caused the deceased woman to make the young woman her heir to the estate, and who, if anyone, killed the deceased.
The first thing a reader notices about Pursuit and Persuasion and all of Wright’s mysteries is how well written they are. The next thing is how many characters are involved in the story, and the list of characters at the beginning of the story is immensely helpful, as is the map of the estate. (I love mysteries with maps like this – like the old S.S. Van Dine mysteries from the 1920s and 1930s).
This time, Reese finds himself running up against a mania – a mania known only to collectors whose desire to possess sometimes lead to murder. And Wright introduces a love interest, or actually, two potential love interests, for Reese.
Pursuit and Persuasion is a great read and great fun to rediscover. Best of all – there are three more in the series I haven’t read.
Friday, December 11, 2009
The Sixth Day of Christmas: Marcus Goodyear
An editor, a poet and a philosopher/thinker about the workplace. That’s a lot, but even collectively it doesn’t quite do Marcus Goodyear justice.
Marcus is senior editor for The High Calling, the High Calling Blogs and Faith in the Workplace. I connected to him in blogs and blog comments via L.L. Barkat, a managing editor at the High Calling Blogs (and author of Stone Crossings and the recently published book of poems InsideOut).
He takes editing seriously. Here’s what he says on his web site: “When I agree to edit a work, I take such a commitment very seriously. I am a tough editor. I will not hesitate to change verbs, cut sentences and paragraphs, and work on issues of style like pacing. I do not attempt to usurp a writer’s style, but too often writers are simply avoiding the work of revision and editing under the guise of defending their stylistic integrity.”
Marcus was my editor for an article I wrote for High Calling. Marcus takes editing seriously. Trust me.
He writes poetry, including one we republished at TweetSpeak Poetry called “Sometimes I Cannot Always Be There,” which he called a poem for All Saints Day. He’s written poems about Eve’s garden, the risen Christ, zombies, mowing dead grass after church on Sunday, and the Large Hadon Collider (he may be the only person in the history of the planet who’s written a poem about the Large Hadon Collider, not to mention the fact that it was about motherhood and the Large Hadon Collider).
And his writing about work, well, you have to read it for yourself: an interview with Michael Card on freedom and slavery; the work and faith movement; and “why I don’t go to church.” He actually does go to church but the title certainly pulls you into the article.
Marcus is a husband and a father, too.
Explore his blog, goodwordediting.com. Follow him on Twitter. Enjoy his writing and his poetry – and in the process you’ll learn that he edits himself harder than he edits anyone else.
(Over at the High Calling Blogs, we’re celebrating the 12 days of Christmas by highlighting a blog or web site of someone besides ourselves during this season of Advent and Christmas.) (Which is what we should also be doing the other 353 days of the year.)
Marcus is senior editor for The High Calling, the High Calling Blogs and Faith in the Workplace. I connected to him in blogs and blog comments via L.L. Barkat, a managing editor at the High Calling Blogs (and author of Stone Crossings and the recently published book of poems InsideOut).
He takes editing seriously. Here’s what he says on his web site: “When I agree to edit a work, I take such a commitment very seriously. I am a tough editor. I will not hesitate to change verbs, cut sentences and paragraphs, and work on issues of style like pacing. I do not attempt to usurp a writer’s style, but too often writers are simply avoiding the work of revision and editing under the guise of defending their stylistic integrity.”
Marcus was my editor for an article I wrote for High Calling. Marcus takes editing seriously. Trust me.
He writes poetry, including one we republished at TweetSpeak Poetry called “Sometimes I Cannot Always Be There,” which he called a poem for All Saints Day. He’s written poems about Eve’s garden, the risen Christ, zombies, mowing dead grass after church on Sunday, and the Large Hadon Collider (he may be the only person in the history of the planet who’s written a poem about the Large Hadon Collider, not to mention the fact that it was about motherhood and the Large Hadon Collider).
And his writing about work, well, you have to read it for yourself: an interview with Michael Card on freedom and slavery; the work and faith movement; and “why I don’t go to church.” He actually does go to church but the title certainly pulls you into the article.
Marcus is a husband and a father, too.
Explore his blog, goodwordediting.com. Follow him on Twitter. Enjoy his writing and his poetry – and in the process you’ll learn that he edits himself harder than he edits anyone else.
(Over at the High Calling Blogs, we’re celebrating the 12 days of Christmas by highlighting a blog or web site of someone besides ourselves during this season of Advent and Christmas.) (Which is what we should also be doing the other 353 days of the year.)
Thursday, December 10, 2009
The Fifth Day of Christmas: nAncY Rosback
A short conversation on Twitter started with wishing a happy birthday to a son, when it was actually a daughter. And then this:
@poemsandprayers: thanks glynn...cj ....um...is a girl :-) jane is her middle name...on my grandmothers' side was a baby taken in that was left…on church doorstep in kentucky, they named her america jane, so we used jane as a middle name for her. america jane was one of my ancestors that was from ky. and ended up in so. illinois.
So meet nAncY Rosback.
Descended from America Jane
a baby, a foundling
left in the hands of God on
the doorstep of a church.
they named her not Jane but
America Jane, because this was
frontier-like and that’s what you did
frontier-like and everyone understood.
and she grew, and grew up, and had
babies of her own whom she loved and
treasured and didn’t leave on a doorstep of
a church because she knew God had left them
in her arms instead.
And a baby had a baby had a baby,
and a baby found herself growing up in the
prairies not too far from where Lincoln lived.
and she grew up playing in corn field and a ditch
and she learned to ride a bike that moved her all over
town, because it was okay to do that unafraid in the 1960s.
she grew up and got married and lived in Oregon where
she grew a family and some grapes for wine named Sineann.
now she takes these beautiful photos and she writes poems,
about a voyage, and youth, and relationships, and community
and all the other things in life that matter, like God. to find her
you have to just say the word, or tweet.
(Over at the High Calling Blogs, we’re celebrating the 12 days of Christmas by highlighting a blog or web site of someone besides ourselves during this season of Advent and Christmas.) (Which is what we should also be doing the other 353 days of the year.)
@poemsandprayers: thanks glynn...cj ....um...is a girl :-) jane is her middle name...on my grandmothers' side was a baby taken in that was left…on church doorstep in kentucky, they named her america jane, so we used jane as a middle name for her. america jane was one of my ancestors that was from ky. and ended up in so. illinois.
So meet nAncY Rosback.
Descended from America Jane
a baby, a foundling
left in the hands of God on
the doorstep of a church.
they named her not Jane but
America Jane, because this was
frontier-like and that’s what you did
frontier-like and everyone understood.
and she grew, and grew up, and had
babies of her own whom she loved and
treasured and didn’t leave on a doorstep of
a church because she knew God had left them
in her arms instead.
And a baby had a baby had a baby,
and a baby found herself growing up in the
prairies not too far from where Lincoln lived.
and she grew up playing in corn field and a ditch
and she learned to ride a bike that moved her all over
town, because it was okay to do that unafraid in the 1960s.
she grew up and got married and lived in Oregon where
she grew a family and some grapes for wine named Sineann.
now she takes these beautiful photos and she writes poems,
about a voyage, and youth, and relationships, and community
and all the other things in life that matter, like God. to find her
you have to just say the word, or tweet.
(Over at the High Calling Blogs, we’re celebrating the 12 days of Christmas by highlighting a blog or web site of someone besides ourselves during this season of Advent and Christmas.) (Which is what we should also be doing the other 353 days of the year.)
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