Monthly Archives: March 2011

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Lent: You’re Probably Doing It Wrong

I’ve been reading some discussion regarding this article by G. Jeffrey McDonald. McDonald laments the way that Lent is frequently observed within American Christianity and says:

We’re remaking [Lent] as a type of spiritual self-help whose effectiveness is measured by how well it entertains us and affirms what we already believe. Since Americans love parties and hate to do without, Christianity is evolving to deliver. The diminution of Lenten practices illustrates the trend and highlights what’s lost when religion becomes a consumer commodity.

I don’t deny elements of truth in what McDonald is saying. In fact the article strikes me as a very satisfying read for us church leaders, what with its hand-wringing, self-righteous tut-tuts and in-crowd high-fives.

It bugs me to tears, actually.

Please don’t misunderstand me. Consumerist Christianity is a big issue. And certainly the church has a prophetic duty to call people to deeper authenticity and radical discipleship. But this article smacks of caricature. McDonald characterizes Lent as a “joke” based on one comment from a friend. And “sumptuous” fish dinners on Fridays? This is the normative American Christian experience?

This kind of “you’re doing it wrong” carping is not productive. All of this reminds me of the discussion we had on this blog back in December about singing Christmas carols in the church during (gasp!) the season of Advent. I argued back then that maybe, just maybe, some people feel drawn to the music of Christmas during December not because they are worshiping the gods of Best Buy and Wal*Mart, but because they desperately need to immerse themselves in a message of Joy Right Now, to soak it up, because the world is a pretty dark place. Can we treat people like grownups and say that perhaps they have a good sense of what their hearts and spirits need without us telling them?

Why don’t we spend our time helping people connect their Lenten practices, whatever they might be, to the presence of the living God, rather than diagnosing those practices as inadequate? I know a woman who committed to run each day during Lent. I guess I can chide her for disrespecting Lent as a season for “spiritual self-help”… or I can help her make the connection between that practice and stewardship of the body, which Paul calls the temple of God. Heck, daily physical exercise sounds like a struggle to beat the sin of sloth, which last I checked was one of the seven deadlies! What could be more Lenten than that?

(BTW, this is part of the tension within the Sabbath stuff. Lots of people take time off for R&R and don’t call it Sabbath. Good for them. So my job isn’t to say “Well unless it’s got the Sabbath imprimatur, it’s only second best.” Instead, maybe I help them see ways that their practice of rest and play doesn’t just recharge the batteries, but connects them to a deep wellspring of joy and grace that [I believe] is a gift of the Holy.)

I appreciate these two posts on the Christian Century blog, both of which bring some much-needed nuance to the topic. I found the latter especially on point:

Is “true deprivation” really the point of fasting, or is true fasting measured by the extent to which it turns us toward God? Deprivation for deprivation’s sake could easily become competitive or self-aggrandizing. Biblical writers frequently make the point that God isn’t interested in displays of piety but in justice and love.

Amen.

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National Poetry Month

I love that April is National Poetry Month. Heck, I love that National Poetry Month exists at all, but there’s something appropriate about it being in April. April is just-Spring, when the world is mud-luscious. April is also the cruelest month. Poetry conveys both sentiments, and everything in between.

When I was in second and third grade, I got pulled out of class every week or so with about five other kids for Poetry Enrichment. Well, that’s what I call it now. I didn’t have a name for it then. I think I just called it Poetry. Back then all I knew was that a few other smart misfits and I would head to an empty classroom at an appointed time, and a long-haired, flowy-skirted, bespectacled woman would be waiting for us with a stack of mimeographed pages, damp and heavy with purple ink. Somehow I picked up on the other teachers’ feeling that this woman was a little daft. But I loved the experience.

We read poems, we did the grade-school version of “analysis” of them, we memorized them, and, if I jimmy the lock on that steamer trunk of awkward repressed memory, I think we actually recited them at a school assembly. We learned a lot of Lewis Carroll. I still know “Jabberwocky” backwards and forwards, and have a traumatic spelling bee experience related to the word “chortle.” “The Walrus and the Carpenter” still makes me giggle. I didn’t know back then what a vacant and pensive mood was all about, but I longed for a field of daffodils anyway.

I have no idea who tapped me for this group. Did a note go home for my parents to sign? Did a teacher take it upon herself to nudge me into this activity? Or did the school issue a blanket invitation that I accepted? I probably won’t ever know exactly how it happened, but I owe the universe a debt of gratitude. It set some pretty major things in motion for me. In college, I realized a new acquaintance was going to be a good friend when I said, “Let us go then…” and she added, “…you and I.” And this seminary class changed my life and helped make me the preacher/poet I am, some 25 years after the purple mimeographed sheets. (Teachers, mentors, school volunteers—you make a huge difference.)

Every year during National Poetry Month I resolve to write a poem a day, and I never make it very far. But hope springs eternal…

As for poetry resources to share, I love the Writers’ Almanac daily e-mail, of course. Knopf also sends out a poem each day in April. And I have enjoyed the Poetry Off the Shelf podcast for many years.

Do you have a favorite poem? Do you like poetry? Find it boring? Intimidating? I tend to agree with W.C. Williams, who wrote,

It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.

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Giving Up Should for Lent

I have an unofficial goal (call it an intention) of posting to the blog each weekday, with Friday being a short roundup of links I found interesting throughout the week. But that’s not always possible, or even feasible. Sometimes there isn’t anything to say, and anything I do would be forced. Sometimes my kids are sick. Like, today.

So instead I want to share this article about reading a book a week… or more to the point, not reading a book a week. And how that practice of “Not” takes on a special significance during the season of Lent:

The tradition of Lent lies in direct contrast to our culture’s belief in resolutions, our quick proclamations of will and self that are meant more for our personal gain than a real change of heart. And I need, as St. Augustine put it, a “new pure heart”; I believe that my reading habits reflect my own heart’s current needs, ones that resolutions bent on my own success cannot touch.

This article really spoke to me. As I shared in this post/sermon, during Lent I am letting go of my pursuits at excellence and intentionality, noble though they may be, or not. Instead, I am practicing contentment, even radical self-acceptance. Which sounds self-centered and very me-me-me but is, I’m finding, the exact opposite.

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Baggage about the Sabbath

As I continue to work on The Sabbath Year, I’ve been collecting a list of objections people have to the idea or practice of Sabbath. These are things I’ve heard personally, statements I’ve read in other books on Sabbath, or things I’ve even told myself as our family engages and resists this strange weekly rhythm we have chosen to adopt. I hope to address some or all of these in the book in some form or another.

Do any of these statements resonate with you?

What would you add to this list?

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Sabbath is so legalistic.

It’s not relevant for our time. Sabbath is a relic of a bygone era.

I don’t have time.

I’m fine. I’m happy. I don’t need to do that.

We observed the Sabbath when I was a kid. It was SO boring. I swore I’d never do that again.

I’d rather not spend a day doing faith-based activities, quietly reading the Bible, etc.

My kids would never agree to it.

My teenagers would never agree to it.

We’re not Jewish and we shouldn’t co-opt their practice.

I already make time to rest from my work and don’t need a fancy title for it.

People who have time to take Sabbath rest obviously don’t have enough to do.

The problems in the world go on—there is too much to be done already, how can you sit around and “be spiritual” while there is suffering happening that you could be a part of the solution for?

You can rest when you’re dead. Life is too short.

The seven-day week is a false construct. Rest when you need to, not when the calendar tells you to.

Technology means you can work when you want and rest when you want—taking a whole day is a false construct. Be more fluid and intuitive about when you need to work and rest.

It shows a lack of sensitivity to the needs of others—face it, sometimes people need you on that day. The vast majority of the world doesn’t observe Sabbath—they’re just going to see you as selfish if you’re not available.

Sabbath is a practice of privilege—other people have to work at those times—how can you enjoy that time of rest when other people don’t have that luxury?

Sabbath just creates more work. I spend the day before getting ready for it and the day after cleaning up from it.

Of course you can do this, your kids are young. They aren’t in that many activities yet.

Your kids will miss out on opportunities to play sports, do drama/speech team, marching band, etc. They won’t get into college because you’ve had to say no to these extracurricular activities.

That’s what vacation is for.

That’s what retirement is for.

Kids are constant work, so you might as well embrace it. Life with kids is work no matter what you do.

My kids are very active and energetic. They’d be in all kinds of mischief if we all just sat around all day.

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Friday Link Love

Some stuff I found intriguing this week:

Worth Living For

Dying for something is heroic; in the rare case that it happens, you go down in a blaze of glory, clutching to your morals or cause. Nice work if you can get it. Years later, Brad or Angelina will play you in the movie.

But living for something can be mundane…

Quiz: Informal, experiential worship styles growing in U.S. churches

Interesting quiz highlighting attitudes and practices from the 2008 Congregational Life Survey.

The Nike Ad That Changed My Life

I don’t remember this ad but I love it…

You wanted to be a Veterinarian.
You wanted to be President.
You wanted to be the President’s Veterinarian.

More at the link.

24 Rooms in 344 Square Feet

A truly astounding use of small space in Hong Kong. (short video)

Liminality and Leadership

When and where are our formative “thresholds”? And how do we carve out and preserve these times and spaces where we are often at our most creative?

Two questions I spend my life considering.

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The Problem is the Problem

I was charmed and captivated by this post, called “You Are Solving the Wrong Problem.”

In the late 1950s, a British industrialist proposed a contest, inviting folks to build an airplane powered entirely by human effort. Many groups vied for the prize, spending months on complicated designs, only to have them fail spectacularly during actual testing.

Finally, after almost 20 years of failed solutions, a man named Paul MacCready pulled it off, building what would come to be known as the Gossamer Condor and the Gossamer Albatross. How did he do it? He realized that the problem was the problem:

Paul realized that what needed to be solved was not, in fact, human powered flight. That was a red herring. The problem was the process itself, and along with it the blind pursuit of a goal without a deeper understanding how to tackle deeply difficult challenges. He came up with a new problem that he set out to solve: how can you build a plane that could be rebuilt in hours not months. And he did. He built a plane with Mylar, aluminum tubing, and wire.

The first airplane didn’t work. It was too flimsy. But, because the problem he set out to solve was creating a plane he could fix in hours, he was able to quickly iterate. Sometimes he would fly three or four different planes in a single day. The rebuild, retest, relearn cycle went from months and years to hours and days.

Robert and I were talking about this last night, and he was telling me about agile software development. Read the link for more, but here’s a pertinent bit:

Agile methods break tasks into small increments with minimal planning, and do not directly involve long-term planning. Iterations are short time frames that typically last from one to four weeks. Each iteration involves a team working through a full software development cycle… This minimizes overall risk and allows the project to adapt to changes quickly.

(I’ve noticed this with software programs such as Things and Evernote. These programs update constantly… and are constantly getting better.)

What’s striking is that this story of Paul MacCready and the Gossamer aircraft came to me after a session meeting in which our elders figured this out intuitively: the problem was the problem as we’d (or I’d) defined it.

I inherited a committee structure at Tiny Church that is organized into 11 committees, headed by elders. As you can imagine, some of these function well as committees, some are committees of one person, and some are basically dormant. Some of these areas have huge, constant responsibilities; others are seasonal or sporadic. Add to that the complication of only 6 elders and 11 committees—that’s a lot of different hats. Not to mention the fact that people want opportunities to do ministry, but they don’t join a church to serve on a committee. (Especially when there’s a perception that once you’re on it, you’re on it forever.)

So I’ve felt for some time that a reorganization was necessary, but I was stumped how to slice and dice it. I polled friends, posted queries on Facebook, you name it. Do we organize by elements of our mission statement? Form sub-groups on session? Consolidate several committees?

I brought all of this to session last night and expected we’d do some general discussion and, at least, get the different roles and options on the table, but that it would take several months to come up with a new structure. But we ended up with a specific way forward. We’ve got our structure, and it’s an agile one. We began our Gossamer Condor.

In essence, the session will no longer staff committees. (Yippee!) In fact, at this point at least, we do not even have specific elder areas of responsibility. Instead, each month we will look at the calendar of upcoming ministry events at the church, as well as emerging opportunities that come up, and determine how those items can be best implemented: invite a specific person to make it happen? Oversee the formation of a short-term task group, with the elder serving as liaison?

Thus, in addition to being the visionary/spiritual leadership of the congregation, the session will be “dispatchers” of a sort—matching ministry opportunities with particular people with the gifts and availability to implement them at a particular moment in time.

We solved the right problem. Our problem isn’t finding the most appropriate structure for our session. Our problem is how to get the church’s ministry done.

What excited me is how can-do the session seemed to be at this approach. And this excitement was present in spite of the fact that we know problems will arise. If we’d spent months developing The Perfect Structure, those problems could be seen as a threat to all our hard work and easily ignored. But with an agile process, problems are essential information—necessary parts of making our processes better. With an agile process, we will be constantly evaluating and tweaking.

I’ll be sure to let you know how she flies.

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Endless Improvement and Other Myths and Idolatries

I recently began the Couch to 5K program. It’s been a great experience, even though I wasn’t exactly starting from Couch—I’ve been walking 3-5 times a week for over a year. I also don’t have much interest in a 5K—I’m climbing Mt. Washington this summer with family, and would like to do so without a) injury, b) wheezing embarrassment, or c) death. But I wasn’t able to find a Couch to Mt. Washington program, so this will have to do.

The c25k app I use makes everything a no-brainer—load your own music onto the app’s playlist, stick in your earbuds, and follow the verbal instructions, delivered in that Kindle text-t0-speech voice: “Warm-up,” “Run,” “Walk,” and my current favorite phrase in the English language, “Cool down.”

The app also includes a journal for jotting down notes, and there are several line graphs where you can view your progress in several areas, including distance traveled, average run pace, and average walk pace.

I wrote last week about Youngstown, Ohio and how they’ve decided to give up on the fundamental assumption of our economy: that a city (or a company, or a church?) should always be growing. I thought about that post again this morning, as I saw my line graph for “distance traveled” dip lower than it’s been since I started c25k four weeks ago. Apparently I’m normally slow as molasses, but today I was slower than peanut butter.

I felt pretty discouraged that I was losing ground on distance, and therefore on run and walk pace. After four weeks of seeing the line go up and up, or at least stay the same, today was a decent-sized dip, and I was bummed. I am not a born runner, and I began to consider the possibility (nay, likelihood) that I would hit a ceiling and no longer be on an upward trajectory of performance.

I guess I’ve bought into the idea of endless growth and improvement more than I’d thought.

On the other hand, this week’s program represents a major jump in ratio of running to walking. The 32-minute workout includes 16 minutes of running, in 2.5 and 5 minute increments. By contrast, last week’s workout involved only 9 minutes of running, with increments no longer than 3 minutes. It makes sense—in my quest for endurance, I slowed down considerably. It will probably take me a while to get back to where I was… and heck, maybe I never will! And I’ve decided to be OK with that.

This is harder than you might think.

Can I get an Amen?

I remembered receiving Caroline’s last report card. Caroline is a bright child, about whom I worry very little. The report card had nothing to worry about, really. Intellectually, I knew this. But I felt that expectation of endless growth and improvement heavy in the pit of my stomach when I saw that she had stayed the same or improved in every category except for one. She had slipped… in writing.

Way to hit me where it hurts, universe…

After sending a message to her teacher later that week to make sure there wasn’t something obvious we could do to encourage her (there was, but her teacher wasn’t worried about her progress), I remembered back to the baby and toddler years with our kids. It was common for them to regress in one area while they were making a developmental leap in another. Their sleep schedule would go to hell; meanwhile they’d bust out with complete sentences. Or they’d get very clumsy and trippy, but suddenly grow by leaps and bounds in terms of emotional intelligence and empathy.

So perhaps Caroline’s writing took a back seat to other developmental changes.

And maybe I run as slow as peanut butter, but I keep going for 16 minutes.

And maybe that’s OK.

Great, even.

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Image: How can you not love that pink stripe? Makes 6 a.m. a lot less dreadful.

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A Church That Reinvents Itself

I guess it’s partly because I’m a hopeless foodie, but I seem to find bizarre connections between restaurants and the church. I’ve explored before the trend of tiny restaurants as they relate to the gifts of the small, intimate congregation. Today it’s Grant Achatz’s new place, called Next, previewed in the NYT. (NEXT Church people: how can you not be intrigued? It’s right there in the name.)

From the NYT:

When a chef has nothing to prove and nothing to fear, what does he cook?

Now that is a compelling question!

Now 36, Achatz is at the top of his profession, having achieved his lifelong ambition last fall when Alinea was awarded three Michelin stars. He has the sober perspective and what-the-hell attitude brought on by a near-death experience.

That’s right. Achatz had advanced throat cancer and was told that his tongue would need to be amputated. His life would probably be saved but he’d be a chef with no ability to taste.

He sought a second opinion and is cancer-free today.

(Does it belabor the metaphor by pointing out the diagnosis some have given the church? Yes, some have called us “deathly ill.”)

His food at Alinea is already highly inventive; now, Mr. Achatz has set out to reinvent the restaurant itself.

Achatz felt he would be bored and complacent simply changing the menu every so often. So they will be changing the actual restaurant each season:

So, rather than the earthbound categories of Japanese, Italian or Peruvian, the food will evoke cloudier concepts: Kyoto in springtime; Palermo in 1949; Hong Kong in far-off 2036. A menu might be designed around a single day — say, the Napa Valley on Oct. 28, 1996, the day Mr. Achatz started work at the French Laundry, where he remained until 2001.

…All involved insist that Next will not be a kind of Disneyfied time-travel restaurant, but a serious exploration of culinary history and creativity, executed with the perfectionism that is entwined with Mr. Achatz’s intense personality.

Now on one level, there’s something crazy about this kind of restaurant—the prices are truly mind-boggling, and there are people who can’t afford to eat, after all. But there is something powerfully spiritual about a beautiful meal, be it in your best friend’s kitchen or a lovely restaurant. I remember hearing about a restauranteur that planned an autumn menu and somehow filled the restaurant with the faint aroma of burning leaves. People were in tears, remembering childhood days gone by and dearly departed parents and grandparents. (See Big Night and Babette’s Feast for more about the spiritual resonances found in food and drink. See also the stories of Jesus.)

So. When a church has nothing to prove and nothing to fear, what does it do? Maybe it does something radically new each season.
…Not as a gimmick, but as a challenge to innovate for the sake of the gospel.
…Not out of desperation, but out of an awareness that we, as a community are always changing.
…Not to be clever, but because people are starved for a real, authentic experience of God and community,
and maybe sturdy, reliable liturgies that change only imperceptibly over time aren’t going to cut it anymore.

We already have an incredible scaffolding at our disposal: the liturgical seasons. I’ve appreciated for years the fact that the Presbyterian order for worship is, basically, set. It’s the skeleton on which we put the skin and sinews each week. Which sure makes life easier in the throes of worship planning. Then again, should the season of Lent and the season of Eastertide really have the exact same skeleton, just with different hymns and prayers?

Random additional thoughts:

Maybe it’s a crazy bad idea. My nonagenarians would rise up and ride me out of town on a rail… joined by several Boomers and probably a Gen Xer or two.

Or maybe we already do this seasonal reinvention, sort of: sermon series, small group studies for Lent. I don’t know though, it feels like we could be even more daring.

This would take an incredible amount of effort. But it’s effort that could energize folks in very powerful ways.

Small churches seem ideally suited for this—it’s easier, perhaps, to be responsive to the real shifts going on in the community rather than changing for change’s sake. On the other hand, I’m talking about the layout of the worship space, liturgical art, music, maybe even lighting. You need people for this, not to mention some Benjamins to pull this off.

Would it create rotating congregations? People who check out until the new “menu” appears because they don’t like the current one? On the other hand, how is that worse than sticking with a single menu that appeals mainly to folks who’ve grown up eating that kind of food?

People who need church to be a rock, a place of consistency, would probably hate it… Unless the core values and practices could somehow remain constant and consistent. And they still might hate it.

Unless they absolutely love it.

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Image: Testing oeufs Bénédictine for Next.

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Friday Link Love

A few items of interest from this week:

Quick Q&A with David Wilcox

How excited am I now that I’ve finally decided to go to the Wild Goose Festival (i.e. Woodstock for Jesus Freaks), and how excited am I that David will be there? This is a nice little interview.

Real job of a musician is to live a life that’s inspiring and worth singing about.

That’ll preach.

Grace over Karma: Interview with Bono

Another musician Q&A. This is not a new link, but new to me. A good elaboration of the Gospel According to Bono.

When Stereotypes Sink In

Jonah Lehrer cites numerous studies on how gender stereotyping may lower the number of women in math and science fields. In one study, students watched gender-neutral ads (cell phones, insurance) and ads featuring beautiful women extolling diet sodas:

Women exposed to the gender stereotyping ads were far less interested in anything quantitative. Instead, they were more than twice as likely to choose careers in the verbal and service industry, such as retail, sales and communication. The pattern was reversed, however, in the women who saw neutral ads. They were actually more interested in pursuing quantitative careers. All it took was the absence of a blatant stereotype to increase their interest in math.

Sigh.

10 Things You Need to Do If You Were Fired Yesterday

I have not had to deal with this particular heartbreak personally, but this seemed like a decent list. I post it in case any Blue Room readers are dealing with joblessness.

And one more for fun:

How to Fold a Letter So It Becomes Its Own Envelope

One of my intentions this year is to write more actual paper letters—I was doing about three a month and then Lent hit and I’m letting all my hard work and intentions lie fallow for this season. But this origami will be fun to try when I pick up the letter-writing practice again.

May you be folded and spindled in creative ways this weekend.

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I’m Irish… But Aren’t We All Today?

Early in the week I asked the twitterverse whether it was polemical to wear orange instead of green on St. Patrick’s Day. I am Protestant, after all. And yes, I am part Irish, but isn’t everyone today? I’m also Scottish and English and countless other northern European things. Even my married name means “The Dane.”

But still. Irish.

My father’s family is big and Irish and Catholic. My dad was supposed to be the priest in the family. He even went to seminary for a time; it didn’t stick. Exhibits A, B, C, and D: my siblings and I.

He died a Presbyterian seeker, heavily influenced by the spirituality of Alcoholics Anonymous.

The summer before Robert and I got married, we were at a McKibben family event and someone asked us whether our wedding was going to be in the church. I said yes, seeing as how it was a verbal question… I didn’t pick up on the capital letters. Yes, we’re getting married in the church as opposed to Hermann Park or VFW Hall. They were asking about The Church.

My grandparents are as staunch as you can get in their Catholicism. I’m sure it grieves them that few to none of their dozen-plus grandchildren are Catholic.

But I got a letter from them recently, and it was addressed to the Rev. MaryAnn Dana.

In it they shared a hope that they could someday come and hear “their number 1 granddaughter preach the Word of God.”

I’m wearing green.