PUTTING THE BLOCKS AWAY

I used the word confused
With my grandson
While we put the blocks away
Sorting the yellow triangles,
The blue circles and the red squares
Through the corresponding outlines
In the container lid
Like a crime scene on Sesame Street.
He repeated the word
Not knowing what it meant.
In love with the sound I suppose
Rolling the syllables joyfully
With the soft dexterity of the tongue,
Ka-foooosdid
Again and again
Until it grew large enough
To contain his delight.
This is how we learned
Before we stepped back from our lives
and stood before consciousness’s long mirror
Adjusting our collars and smoothing down our hair
Before what we loved
Became complicated with meaning
And eclipsed by our own reflection.
Back in those sweet days
When one thing followed another
As easily as these blocks
Slip through the empty space
Made especially
With them in mind

COPYRIGHT: Charles Oberkehr 2009

Nuts and Bolts

We have swung the publicity campaign into full gear. Posters are going up around the neighborhoods, and an email campaign has started. It’s time for some of the nuts and bolts decisions to be made.

The biggest so far is where to have the liturgy. We have a large, gothic sanctuary, which is beautiful but not very flexible. Pews are fixed and the altar is against the wall. There is really no room for instruments. They never envisioned anything more than the organ when they designed the space. Those are just some of the minuses.

The pluses are that the sound system and the piano is there already. The drums and the guitars are portable. There has been some grumbling about drums and such in the sanctuary, but that’s been isolated. We can always set up a free-standing altar for the liturgy.

I guess my biggest concern is expectations the sanctuary imposes on the liturgy. The idea for this liturgy is to help all of us relate to our worship experience in a new way. That includes how the Good News is communicated in a new way and how we might be an inclusive community through this liturgy. Some sacred cows are sure to bite the dust here. Trying to do all that in the sanctuary may be the equivalent of new wine into old skins.

My inclination now is to set up the auditorium downstairs into a worship space. That poses a different set of logistical challenges, but at least it puts everyone on equal footing. Everyone already has an experience and an idea of worship in the sanctuary. Whatever happens will be judged against that experience. No one knows quite what to expect from a liturgy in the auditorium though.

As March 1st draws nearer, I am feeling more than ever how important this initiative is for our congregation and our community. There is so much division, fear and isolation in our communities, and it can be so strong, even within our own congregation, the resistance to something new and unknown. Still, the Spirit blows where it will. I pray our sails are set in the right direction on March 1.

Charting a new course in bilingual ministry

We've set a date to begin our new bilingual ministry "Somos El Cuerpo de Cristo" "We are the Body of Christ" Sunday, March 1st. 7:00PM. Keep your fingers crossed and please keep praying for this fledgling ministry.

The idea is to use music to bridge the language barriers, and make the liturgy active, culminating in the action of gathering at the table for the meal. The key for this liturgy will be interaction and participation. I imagine us trying to develop a sort of liturgical sign language, focusing on music, dance and the visual arts as the universal platform for the spoken word.

There have been so many false starts in attempting bilingual ministry here. The prevailing two church model, or tenant/landlord, has been a bust, twice. Trying to fold a new model of a unified diverse congregation into an old envelope has been disappointing. But there have been glimmers of hope from that attempt. Sparks to cup with your hands so that they may grow to a new flame. So, I think it is time for a new approach. New skins to hold the new wine of a bilingual inclusive congregation.

I'll keep you posted on how things are developing. Especially on the "demons" in the form of unexamined expectations this brings up in the "established" group. There has been a lot of that, and its not really surprising. It's sort of like the kick when you fire a shot gun. Enthusiasm in whatever form it takes, digs squarely into the shoulder of the one who pulls the trigger. The bigger the blast of enthusiasm, the bigger the kick.

All I can say so far is for a leader to expect that and know how to exercise self care so that you can keep the vision moving forward. Keep your shoulder loose, so to speak, so the kick back doesn't set you down on the seat of your pants. The biggest thing you can do is to keep standing. Whatever that takes.

Krugman in the Times today

I agree with Paul Krugman on this. I hope Obama is listening.


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/09/opinion/09krugman.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

A Journal entry

I am lost. It makes no sense to pretend otherwise. I have been walking in circles for weeks. My mouth is full of bitterness. My eyes burn. The ground gives way under my feet.

I don’t know how to get my bearings. All the old tricks have been exposed. I try to read, but the book in my hands is a mirage, the words shimmer and dance with neither meaning nor nourishment.

I have nothing to say for myself. It all sounds like the muttering of derelicts wandering the fluorescent-lit grocery aisles among the bright boxes of oatmeal and detergent at midnight.

I have no baptism to account for this. The heavens have not opened. There has been no heavenly voice. There has been no wild man with reservations. No devil to grant permission; no stones and no bread.

There is no justification for any of it. No ransom note, no telltale sign.

There is only the clock unwinding on the mantle, one thundering tick at a time, and this long scarf of smoke outside my window, unraveling in the crimson January sky.

A New Beginning

The American savior machine is rolled out and cranked up. Bush and Cheney they seemed so small...bugs out from under the magnifying glass. We give and we take away. They scurry off into the future, and when they return, it will be in the rosy glow of our collective short memory.

Important perspective

Given the one sided nature of coverage around this issue, I think this is an important perspective for us.

http://tinyurl.com/7gl33u

Thoughts for the day of Epiphany

Here's the thing I just don't get. You'd think a star that could literally point out a baby in a haystack would be pretty hard to miss. And yet, everyone is oblivious to it except our three travelers from the East.

Is everyone so caught up in the daily grind of life in Bethlehem that even a star moving through town goes unnoticed? How could the majesty of God be so obvious to foreigners while the citizens of Bethlehem could be so oblivious?

I can't help but wonder, what stars are shining in my life right now, that I am too dense, preoccupied, oblivious (fill in your own adjective) to notice? Prayer may be nothing more than opening our eyes to the shining wonder of God's presence in the present moment.

A little doodling

Jesus doodles in the dirt as the Pharisees bring a woman accused of adultery, a capital offense, to get Jesus opinion. Lives hang in the balance here. The woman's life of course, but Jesus life too in a manner of speaking. This is a test, and if Jesus assents to the Pharisee's verdict, things will go much easier for him. If not, they have evidence against him.

No wonder Jesus starts to doodle in the dirt. Was he giving himself time to think? The Pharisees time to reconsider?

Whatever Jesus was doing, it worked. Jesus arrived at the perfect answer. And, he gave the Pharisees time. To their great credit, they dropped their stones and walked away. Other mobs have not.

Be conscious about how you reach decisions today. Is there space built into the process for the Holy Spirit? Truth seldom arrives on a time table. If you're not sure, maybe a little doodling is in order?

help Obama stop torture

Take action now, through the National Religious Campaign Against Torture

click here

The season's first snow

It’s starting to snow here. The first predicted snow of any appreciable amount this season. I am sitting in the kitchen by the window with my coffee, watching the tiny flakes dropping from the sky between the winter-stripped forsythia. Falling with a certain urgency in light of the forecast of up to six inches of accumulation.

It’s strange how quiet everything suddenly becomes now that I am aware of the snow. As though some small wheel of the cosmos is back on its rail. The snow will continue to fall, regardless of how I conduct my day, just as it arrived of its own accord. The snow falling never lets me get too far away from now and the accumulations of the present moment. We are on two parallel tracks, companions and adversaries at the same time. We share this day, whatever this day brings. It’s challenges and its blessings are happening at this very moment. I am content to see how it will all unfold.

GM exec makes more than the top 37 Toyota execs combined

We've been hearing about the UAW auto workers needing to take a pay cut to help out GM. The Republicans have laid a large share of the responsibility for GM's trouble at the feet of the UAW. And yet the difference between the hourly wage of the average GM auto worker's wage and the average Toyota (and Honda and Nissan for that matter) is negligible.

However, the combined wages of Toyota's top 37 executives is 121 million... or, to put it another way, the equivalent of the yearly salary of GM's CEO. One GM exec gets paid as much as 37 Toyota execs.

Clearly, the UAW and the GM autoworker is NOT the problem here...

http://tinyurl.com/64qcfx

HMO apologizes for phone sex mix up

Do I still need to be pre-certified?


http://tinyurl.com/6xn9mj

Smiling banned in Indiana

Whatever you do, don't say CHEEEZ!


http://tinyurl.com/5l6vgw

A FAMILY PORTRAIT

My father is singing
in the photo on the refrigerator.
It’s an impromptu portrait,
the last time the family was together
and, as is almost always the case,
no one knew it at the time,
but you know it now
so you feel like God
when you look at it
on your way to a midnight snack.

There are dishes waiting to be cleared
from the table in front of them
empty glasses, glittering forks.
My father’s hand rests on the shoulder
of the sister who took him in at 14.
She is not singing,
she is almost smiling
gazing off to the left.

My father’s younger brother
and an older sister
are singing with him.
Their arms are linked
at the elbows,
mouths in perfect O’s.

My mother and my aunt are smiling
standing by their husbands
as though they’d just decided
at that very moment
their lives had been good.

Rudy is dead now,
Lois (the one smiling) is dead,
Uncle Chickie is dead,
two of the sisters
dissolving into laughter; dead
and the one still singing; dead.

My father is dead too.

There is this terrible line between
is and was
and it moves so swiftly
you can barely see it
and maybe that’s why
we love photos like this
why we plaster them on our refrigerators
and invent ingenious things with magnets
to hold them there.
They are emblems of what could not be spoken
and what should not be forgotten
they are talismans of the sacred
wadded in the pocket of an old coat.

A family
standing shoulder to shoulder
side by side
hands tentatively resting on each other
like small blessings,
singing a German song
from the immigrant childhood
that marked each of them
in different ways
and there is a sense of reconciliation
you come to see in time
that thing which comes after hope
the moment someone sings the first bar
of something
and the rest join in.
In photos
as in the heart that cherishes them
they do not stop singing
until the song is finally done.

Thanksgiving Eve Thoughts

I just got back from our community Thanksgiving service. It was held this year at the African Methodist Episcopal Church. I always enjoy being together with the community, being able to worship without having any real responsibility for what happens. And I always feel vaguely like an imposter among my “amen-ing” “thank you Jesus-ing” black colleagues. Coming from a catholic, liturgical tradition, we speak a different language. Or at the very least, a different dialect.

Everyone there tonight was black, except for me, and I was glad that I was there, my whiteness exaggerated by my white alb and stole. It was a reminder of how deeply segregated our religious life is, and I felt my being there was a sign of hope. And, I think the worshippers appreciated my being there too, for the same reason.

The worship was right out of the AME order, I suppose. I don’t want to criticize. I was more grateful to be able to worship tonight than ever. And there was a sense of warmth there tonight that I appreciated. It helped me ease some of the heaviness of spirit I came there with tonight.

But I felt like the proverbial Martian, seeing practices for the first time and trying to make sense of them. For instance, the point in the service where everyone was invited to come to the altar and leave their worries with God.

“The altar is now open,” the presiding minister declared, and two ushers promptly closed the rail around it. Then people came up and knelt at the altar rail, where pumpkins and squash, and apples, and bananas from last Sunday’s harvest Sunday, (for us Christ the King) were still lined up and people came and knelt at the rail with the pumpkins and the fruit and scrunched up their faces because they were at the altar and thus where praying harder.

I wonder, what was here at the altar that was not there in their seat? Is God MORE present here than there? The practice seemed to mimic the Eucharist, yet it was all up to me. Meaning that I had to come forward and FEEL something. Something only I could feel, and in that it was very private. No wonder there was all that scrunching of faces.

In the Eucharist, you come and gather around the table of the Lord for the sacramental meal. You receive the bread and the wine. The experience is outside of me. Sure it means something different at different times. Sometimes it is deeply moving and sometimes your mind is thinking of other things. But the point is, the experience of taking and eating, taking and drinking, is not a private emotional concoction. It comes from outside of me, and in that sense I can only receive it. I can't control it. Which to me, says something very important about God.

God is intimate, as near as my own heart beat, my own breathing, and still God is other than me. I come into the presence of God, and am fed by God in the process. God is not my thoughts, my emotions, my feelings. God is a piece of bread placed in my hand, a cup lifted to my lips received in the context of faith.

Right now

Right now, the rain is clattering down the wall outside my study window, where the downspout is missing. It gathers in a puddle in the yard, and it sounds like a deluge, but I don' think it is really raining that hard. As I contemplate the start of my work day, trying to decide where to begin, I wonder if there isn't a downspout missing in my psyche, as the tasks seem so difficult to plow through. Is it really raining that hard, or am I just standing in a puddle?

My prayer right now, thanks to an old John Prine song that just came to mind:

That's the way that the world goes 'round
You're up one day, the next you're down
It's a half an inch of water and you think you're gonna drown
That's the way that the world goes 'round

This photo was taken by Joe Hodges at our 110th anniversary celebration, October 26, 2008. More to come on the e Star.


-- Post From My iPhone

Sunday night

Sunday nights are usually quiet for me. I wonder, how many other clergy feel a kind of let down on Sunday nights? As I reflect on the day, there was so much to feel good about. New people in worship again this week. The Spanish and the English combination is finding its own level in the liturgy. It was good playing the guitar after worship and developing ideas for a new bi-lingual liturgy. I am grateful for having music and the guitar back in my life again. I wish I could just play on a Sunday morning. Maybe I’ll join another church incognito, and play in their praise band or something on a Saturday night. There’s an idea.

Here at the end of the day, I feel the clashing needs of people, like a great wash of tides, or water in a bucket sloshing up against the sides. It feels unending and ungainly. We come before God to worship, lifting up our hearts to the Lord, dragging the weight of who we are like a ball and a chain along behind us.

What happy people don't do

Interesting article about the habits of happy people. Or more precisely, what happy people generally steer clear of. I wonder though, does their happiness lead them to these choices, or do the choices produce happiness? My sense is that happiness leads one to make choices, but an unhappy person making those same choices will not necessarily make a happy person.

If so then, what is happiness and where does it come from?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/20/health/research/20happy.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink