Methodism and Membership

the Methoblogworld is buzzing about the upcoming constitutional amendments proposed by General Conference 08, which must pass this year's annual conference by a 2/3 vote.  The usual suspects are coming out against an amendment to strengthen language about membership in the church being open to all (as if we need another psychological barrier to encouraging the whole idea of membership in this individualistic age).  A friend of mine made a rebuttal.  I thought it was well articulated, so here you go.  

My Church's Farmer's Market

Last summer two women in the church came to me with the idea of hosting a farmer's market at our church.  One is a chili pepper and herb grower.  She makes all kinds of chili rubs.  I bought some pear honey for her last year too.  The other woman is an elementary school teacher who had previously expressed interest in promoting good eating habits among children.

Morris had no previously existing farmer's market.  The two women thought it would be a great example of "Radical Hospitality," which is a principle of The Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations, by Bishop Robert Schnase.  We had been studying the book together as a congregation through a sermon series and a book study.  I thought it was a great idea, and told them so.   They went with it.  By the end of the summer, our parking lot was ringed with farmers with their tailgates open and tables of vegetables.  We opened the church so that bathrooms would be accessible for farmers and shoppers, and welcomed the kids to play with the church air-hockey table.  The market was to be on Saturdays, which meant that our church might not be perfectly clean on Sunday mornings for worship.  The church considering the ramifications of this fact during church council was a good opportunity to for us to reflect on the true purpose of a church.  

We submitted the idea to Bishop Robert Schnase's website that corresponds with the book and study material, fivepractices.org

This past week, I was also contacted by someone at The Interpreter magazine who wants to include a photo in that magazine of the market.  

Hooray church.  We plan to continue the program this year.  

Kid's first music

I really resonated with this report on NPR the other day about people making the choice of the first music to expose their children to after they are born.  I'm a music lover, so this is something on which I too spent quite a bit of attention.  The guy in the interview said he chose John Coltrane's A Love Supreme.  I must commend this choice, for the same reasons that the Church of St. John Coltrane use his music as a prophetic gift to the world.  

For Wesley's birth at the UCLA Medical Center, I chose another prophet, and brought the whole Songs of Freedom box set to the hospital to listen to while waiting for Wesley to be born.   I remember a tall pretty nurse with

 braids smiling and commending our choice.  The doc asked to turn it down at a particularly intense moment (Wesley had to have a vacuum assisted delivery), and after Wesley finally came into the world and I got around to turning it back up, Bob was singing "Everything's Gonna be alright, Everything's gonna be alright."  That was serendipitous.  Both of my kids had a healthy dose of reggae in utero and afterwards.  I found the old headphones my dad had for our record player, and I'd put them on

 Lara's belly for a bit of music time.  After Wesley was born, we had 10 songs we'd sing him at night, including Beach Boy's Barbara Ann (which we changed to "Wea, Wea, Wea, Wea, Wesley G.  He's all right by me e e.") and Summertime from Porgy and Bess.   He also heard Bob Marley's Thank You Lord.  That's kind of his evening prayer song.  He ended up singing that one and Deep and Wide, and Into my Heart (like I did as a kid) as prayer songs.  Almost every night, he also listens to a CD of lullabies that Katherine gave us when he was born .

  

For a while, we were going to name Julianna Susanna, and I enjoyed playing for her Dandy Livingstone's Susanne Beware of the Devil in utero.  But we went with Julianna instead, and I have yet to think of a song called Julianna.  Sometimes I sing to her Fleetwood Mac's Rhiannon 

substituting Julianna for Rhiannon.  I knew what I wanted to play for her as soon as we first knew we were having a girl though: Stevie Wonder's Isn't She Lovely?  That one's made to sing to a baby girl after all.  

We didn't bring music into the hospital for her, so she only heard silence for her first day or so, then listened to that in the car on the way home from Tulsa.  Since then, she also really seems to like the 40's on 4 on Sirius radio.  That's what we listen to most of the time as we prepare dinner and eat.  It seems to make things taste better.  

Perhaps the appreciation of music will be something my kids can pick up from me.  I used to love sitting by the record player and listening to my mom and dad's Stevie Wonder and John Denver and Jackson Browne and Crosby, Stills, and Nash and Aretha Franklin.  Every time we go to Eureka Springs, I hear Ann Murray.  My first records were Thrller, John Denver and the Muppets, and the soundtrack to the Fox and the Hound.  I also had the Hands Across America benefit album.  Hahaha.  I went to "Hands across America" by the way.  Was I in line with any of my readers?  

  I look forward to finding out what sounds have imprinted themselves on the minds of my children.  Perhaps this kind of environment building is important to me because I hope those imprints are something beautiful.  

Do you have first songs for your kids?  Any first songs you recall?  Comment away!

Ring Lake Ranch

I mentioned Ring Lake Ranch in my last post in association with Earth Day because it was at Ring Lake Ranch that I met Belden Lane, who is one of the best writers and storytellers I know. His topic of research and writing for the past decade or so has been the geographic context of spirituality. This same topic has caught my imagination ever since I was a teenager, when I first remember thinking, "I wonder if our scriptures would be the same if they had originated in a temperate/forest kind of climate (like mine in Arkansas) rather than a desert/Mediteranean kind of climate?" How much of Judeo-Christian religion is due to the landscape that birthed it? Belden Lane helped delve into these kinds of questions and much more at a seminar hosted by Ring Lake Ranch, and the setting (picutred above) and the experience were emblazoned on the "desktop" of my soul from then on.
While I was there, I did quite a bit of hiking and horseback riding and thinking and writing. The context really spurs on the creative spirit. One day when I was hiking around some hills that had been pushed up by a glacier moving down the valley millions of years ago, I felt a kind of "tap" on my shoulder, and when I turned around, the barren tree had sprung to life with the foliage of a bright white cloud. The story of St. Francis standing in front of a tree in the wintertime and inviting it to "Tell me of God!" came to mind. In the story, the tree springs to life with foliage and fruit. In my own experience, the harmonization of the tree and the sky combined to bring about another miracle of revelation, and I had the camera around my neck, so I captured the moment on film. To me, the revelation is that the world works in concert in ways that we infrequently recognize or pay attention to, but sometimes the moment just slaps us in the face like a Zen master. That's why I chose that photo to use as the header for my blog. I am most interested in the moments in which I/we sometimes catch a glimpse of the harmony that I believe is Divine. This happens for me when I am attentive to the outdoors, but it also happens when I am attentive to the relationships that fill my life and the creativity of the human spirit.
Perhaps God does mold our minds and cultures with context and environment to receive particular glimpses of the Truth. Or, perhaps our location in life bleeds into our creation of characteristics that we ascribe to God. Either way, as Elizabeth Barrett Browning said

Earth's crammed with heaven,

And every common bush afire with God;

But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,

The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries,

And daub their natural faces unaware.

Oh, by the way, I noticed Belden Lane is coming back to Ring Lake Ranch this Aug. 2-8. That's right over my birthday. Well, how about that! You should really consider going. Oh yeah, and if you ever read the journal Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture, and Ecology , keep an eye out for the book review I wrote for the paperback edition of Belden Lane's book The Solace of Fierce Landscapes. I just got a request to send in a consent to publish, so I suppose it's coming out soon.

Faith and Earth Day

Over the years, the intersection of environmentalism and religious faith has been a major source of inspiration to me.  When I received an Fund for Theological Education grant before starting seminary, I designed an immersion in eco-stewardship.  That took place in 2002, and so in many ways I feel like I was able to witness the rise of the evangelical voice in that area.  I remember meeting Richard Cizik, now deposed VP of the National Association of Evangelicals, and thinking--"wow--he's cool, I hope he has an impact!"  He did, and his success caused him to become a divisive focal point in evangelicalism's renegotiation of the essential concerns for that group in the 2000's.  When I first started observing and participating in "eco-stewardship," I recall hoping that the evangelicals would begin articulating environmental justice rooted in the scriptural witness.  It seemed like such a powerful potential movement.  At several of events and conferences I attended, I met Lyndsay Moseley,  who was an evangelical with a keen interest and commitment to creation stewardship.  I noticed recently that she edited a book published by Sierra Club.  So, if you need some good sources for voices of faith on environmentalism, give it a look.  

Earth Day always reminds me of my time at Ring Lake Ranch in Wyoming as well (where I took the photo of the cloud-tree right up there).  I'll post on that next time--I have a girl crying.  

Thank you God, for stealing my precious gold ring from the pirates and giving it to me.

That was my prayer, five minutes ago, at the behest of Wesley.  

We were washing his hands, and I explained that you always had to wash your hands after going to the bathroom.  It is one of the rules.  

"And Dod made the rules?"

"Yes, God made the rules about cleanliness so that we wouldn't get sick."  

That seemed to be an acceptable reason to wash hands.

Then,

"Why can your ring get wet?"  

"Becasue it's made of gold, and gold doesn't rust." 

"Oh, that's why pirates like gold."  

"They sure do, don't they? It's a precious metel that everyone wants."

"Dod must have stoled your ring from the pirates and given it to you.  That's nice.  You should pray to Dod and tell Dod thank you."  

all hell

sitting here, blogging 1-handed

listening to the 40s on 4 (sirius radio) through the baby monitor while Julianna gnaws on my thumb.   

Somehow, the all hell I thought was about to break loose is staying in the can.  Perhaps God is tapping my soul like I tap the top of a Coke can after it has been shook up.   

Garrison Keillor had some good insights on Writer's Almanac.

I love the "Lies My Mother Told Me" poem by Elizabeth Thomas, especially the part about God "ratting you out" and "exaggerating."  That's good.  I sometimes wonder if life after death is completely and utterly open.  Whatever we hide or bear is common knowledge not only to God, but among the new fellowship.  We are open books.   Maybe that's how we find ourselves in heaven or hell.  If so, no doubt there's grace to see things in perspective.  

I also liked the quotes from the late birthday boy Herb Caen.  

 "Isn't it nice that people who prefer Los Angeles to San Francisco live there?"

As an Angeleno who loved San Francisco too, I can see the humor there--NoCal people just love looking down their noses at SoCal.  I think it's equivalent to Arkansans hating Texans--it is something that gives us Arkies a bit of passion, but the Texans don't really care.  It isn't reciprocated.   They love themselves too much to be distracted by any cultural vehemence.  My good friend and girlfriend from my first year in college was a Dallasite who was genuinely surprised that I hadn't taken "Texas history" in high school (in SW Arkansas).  It is that kind of oblivious state pride that makes Texans humorous and charming.  

All hell breaking loose had to do with dealing with this wreck and the purchase of a new car,lots of travel, helping a family experiencing grief and strife over the loss of a loved one and funeral planning, getting the Vundo computer virus, annoying changes to a book title I've contributed a chapter to, preparing for Holy Week and other commitments...It just seems like things kept piling up.  

Last night Wesley knelt by his bed and prayed.  He thanked God for "mommie and daddy and sister and grandmama and grandaddy and gammy and papi and all my toys."  He told Lara she needed to pray to, then he told me I should pray as well.  I prayed that God would help us be good to each other because some of us were stressed out.  

Later that night, the vundo virus was just gone from the computer.  Perhaps it's a virtual miracle.  

Disgusting

Wesley was at the sink washing his hands so he could sprinkle the brown sugar on his oatmeal lunch.  He was commenting on the "different little square bar of soap" I had put in my bag after a recent hotel stay and brought home to use.  (Waste not, want not!)   I reach around his little four year old frame perched on a "stepp-n stool" and grab some Burt's Bees Banana hand salve sitting in the windowsill.  I put it on my knuckles and wonder if Wesley knows the smell of bananas well enough to pick up the aroma.  He doesn't really go for them, so I doubt it.  I hold the little jar under his nose,

 "What does that smell like?"  

"It smells like disgusting," he says matter-of-factly.  He  pronounces the g so hard it is almost a c.  

I look at him with a smirk, then just to clarify: "You mean you don't like it?"  

"That's right." 

Then we look out the window.  Our calico, Lao-Tzu, is crouching in the big 12x18 hole that was dug yesterday for a new back porch.  Like a soldier in a trench, she's peering her head over the edge of the hole at two robins.  She springs up into action and darts at the birds, but gets there too late.  Part of the ground had previously been covered by a smaller slab of concrete.  

"You know why those birds want to root around in that dirt?" I ask. 

He nods and looks at me with bright brown eyes.  

"Because there are lots of worms and bugs that used to live under that concrete that used to be there, and now the birds can get to them!" I say.  

Then I realize Lao-Tzu is prowling the area like a lion waiting at a watering hole.  We open the door and call her back in.  The birds come back to the Shangrila pretty quickly and we sit there watching them hop around and  pull worms out of ground.  

Beware the Ides of March

Over Wesley's past three birthdays, we've found ourselves covered in puke (2nd), getting Wesley stitches in his chin (3rd), and this year with Lara in the ER the night before his party. Beware the ides of March, indeed. Lara was hit in Tulsa by a little old lady: Not physically punched,(that would be interesting) but rammed into by the other lady's car. I told the church that was one more reason they could think of Lara as Wonderwoman, since she evidently has an invisible car like Wonderwoman has an invisible jet. Thankfully, she's okay with some burns from the airbag and soreness. But now we're dealing with purchasing another car just a few months after already buying a car. Hooray.

The best tomato soup ever

My church is full of great cooks.  I was fortunate to score the leftovers of Lori Kellner's tomato soup from our "Souper Bowl Luncheon for Missions" and Lara and I relished it all week afterwards.  I ate it for dessert one night.  It's that good.  Impress your friends with this recipe.  

Sherried Tomato Soup

 

6 Tbsp melted butter

1 med. Onion

1-46 oz. tomato juice

2-14 oz. cans diced tomatoes ( I use petite diced)\

3 Tbsp. chicken base ( 4 boullion cubes if need to substitute)

salt

pepper

1 cup cooking sherry

1 cup whipping crème

chopped fresh parsley and basil

 

Saute diced onions in butter until transluscent.

Add tomatoes with juice.

Add juice, base salt, pepper and stir.

Bring to a near boil, turn off heat.

Add in sherry and cream and stir.

Add parsley and basil to taste.

 

• This is the original recipe.
• To this I add 1-2 cloves garlic, minced
• And 1 tsp Italian seasoning and ¼ tsp crushed red pepper

The Face of Grace

I've always been impressed by iconography.  One of the most important icons in my own life is also the oldest known icon of Jesus Christ Pantocrator at St. Catherine's monastery at Sinai.  I think it was my mentor from college, Jay McDaniel, who first exposed me to this icon.  The seperate halves of this face of Christ each convey such different expressions.  When I look at the right half of the face, I see anger, almost a sneer.  McDaniel said that eye feels like a laser boring right into his soul.  The left half of the face expresses compassion and tenderness.   Do you see the difference?  The left half has a softer eye--it is a gaze of love.  

A truth that I have learned from this icon is that grace is both halves of this icon.  Jesus expresses both tenderness and anger.   I think it is conventional wisdom that grace is only that tender acceptance.  The power of a Wesleyan concept of grace, with the dynamic movement through prevenient, justifying and sanctifying grace is that notion that grace is also perfecting.  "Going on to perfection" sometimes involves deep discomfort and difficulty.  That's one reason I think Lent is such an important season of faith.  We are confronted with Jesus as a rebuker, as a wild man, as an angry man.  Often, we are lulled into the false idea that being a person of faith means we are nice to everybody.  Augustine said "Hope has two beautiful daughters, Anger and Courage.  Anger at the way things are, and the courage to try to change them."  

Sum

Here's the book I'm reading. I heard the author speak on a Tulsa NPR station and thought it sounded good. It is 40 vignettes on the afterlife that are off the wall, but also probing. The book fits in one hand pretty well--Lara and I both read it while we feed Julianna. It earns a thumbs up from me so far-the dust jacket says the afterlife scenarios are "never previously thought of," but I know I've daydreamed about a couple of them. Perhaps they're something in the collective unconscious. Am I dwelling on the afterlife? It first came to mind when I tried to think of a good question for the Transforming Theology Conference (a few days ago). I also wrote this little bit in my journal.

Almost Four.

When she returned at fifteen minutes till midnight, we sat on the couch with her legs resting on mine—me finding it hard to take my eyes off my little girl—she told me that my father had told her that he remembered his mother. His mother had died when he was three and a half years old. His older sister was five, and their two older brothers were already in their 20s and married.
I had never given my grandmother’s death much thought as an actual event. It was more of a circumstance. My grandmother had died when my dad was almost four and my dad’s dad had died when I was almost four.
The circumstance became more of a event in time for me when my wife mentioned that my dad told her that he remembered his mother’s death. He and his five year old sister were at home alone with her when she had the stroke that killed her. He said that they had just finished eating cherry pie, and for the longest time my dad and his sister thought that if you ate cherry pie you would die.
Hearing this was odd to me. I had never heard this before. Furthermore, just that weekend, while Lara and Julianna were away and Wesley and I were home alone together, I had the terrible daydream that I died while Wesley and I were home alone with each other with Lara away. What would my child do? Would he try to wake me? Would he panic? Would he try to find my cellphone and start punching buttons? My son is almost four. He is now as old as my father was when his mother died. He is now as old as I was when my father’s father died.

Perhaps Lent has really soaked into my bones this year.

My Dad and the Grapette bottle

This appeared this morning in the "Paper Trails" section of the Arkansas Democrat Gazette.

Pastor gives a message in a bottle


LINDA CAILLOUET

THROUGH TIME AND SPACE:

Until last week, the empty vintage Grapette bottle rested on a shelf in Rev. Michael Mattox ’s office.
The pastor of First United Methodist Church in Little Rock , known for his quirky collectibles, was given the bottle in the early 1990s by a member of his congregation, then in Arkadelphia. When he became district superintendent and moved to Little Rock , he packed up and brought the bottle. Later, when he became pastor of First United Methodist, he again packed and moved it.
Then he learned that Billy Parker, the man whose funeral he was to preside over last Saturday in Rison, had on many days in his youth bought nickel bottles of Grapette and bags of peanuts for his high school crush Estelle, who eventually became his wife of 51 years. That’s when Mattox knew why he had the bottle and what he needed to do with it.
“It kept staring at me,” the pastor tells Paper Trails. “I thought, ‘It was a gift to me, and I need to make it a gift to Estelle.’”
He took the bottle from the shelf and filled it with water and daffodils he’d plucked from his backyard. During his sermon, the pastor shared the couple’s Grapette story and placed the flower-filled bottle amid the grand arrangements flanking the casket.
Call it a revelation. Or a reassuring message from the departed to loved ones left behind. Or a God moment.
Just not a coincidence. The date on the bottle? 1946 — the first of the four years during which Billy and Estelle shared the drink at a local store during recess breaks.

Night Rainbows

I submitted another application to the Collegeville Institute writing workshop with author Eugene Peterson. Last year I submitted a midrash on the Transfiguration, and that got me a spot as an alternate (12 are accepted). I had to fight the urge to unimaginatively submit the same thing again, since it got me so close before. But, I decided to expand on a journal entry I made a few years ago.  

Night Rainbows

 I had just gotten my son dressed for bed, and a wave of dissatisfaction crashed over me.   Questions raised at a church meeting about my salary had provoked defensive thoughts about my worth to the community.  What was it that I did for them exactly?  I didn’t render any service but the occasional visit to the hospital or home.  And what exactly did I speak about with people when making these visits?  How the football team was doing, how the grass was growing.  Not exactly the kinds of conversations I was having in seminary. I didn’t produce any product except for some words on Sunday, hopefully helping people deepen their relationship with God—but that isn’t exactly a measurable quantity.  I needed some inspiration, so I prayed for it.

I took these questions with me outside to smoke my pipe in what had turned out to be a cold night.  I lit my pipe and stood there focused on the shed in my back yard.  As I was standing there, it suddenly grew brighter.  The trees cast shadows on the grass.  I looked up in the sky and saw a full moon.  The low hanging clouds were moving rather quickly across the sky, and as they passed, the moon would peek out from behind them and illuminate my whole yard.  The radiance of the moon lit up the contours of each cloud moving across the dark sky.  I felt like I was on the bottom of the ocean looking up at silver gilded hulls of great ships, moving in from the north.  From time to time, Venus or Jupiter would also peek through a small break in the clouds, framing the planet momentarily.  It looked surreal, like a photo negative.  As the moon drew my yard out of darkness and cast shadows of the fence and trees, the moment also drew my mind out of the darkness of self-doubt and worry.  I went inside to get Lara, and she had just finished putting Wesley down for the night.  I asked her to get a coat and come out with me.  She was thrilled by the sight as well, and pointed out that the moon was so bright that as the clouds grew thinner at the edges, you could see the water vapors in little wispy rainbows.  Rainbows at night: Symbols of God’s promise that aren’t restrained to the light of day.  Even on a cold dark night, the moon reflects the piercing light of the sun to the extent that it can be broken into colors by the prism of water vapor.  What a miracle!  I was overcome with joy, and took it as an answer to my prayer. 

The Psalmist who wrote Psalm 65 was overcome with awe and reverence for the work of God in the natural world.  The poet lifts up the mountains and the oceans and all the things that generate a sense of wonder in the human heart.  That night, Lara looked up in the sky and said, “there is proof of God’s existence!”  She was thankful that I had shared the moment with her, and I was thankful that she had shared her experience with me. 

That moment in my first year of parish ministry has reminded me to look for the rainbows even at night.  I have learned that I can either accept the readily apparent darkness, or I can search for those uncanny and unexpected signs of God’s presence in the abyss.  God is like the wind.  Or perhaps a stronger statement that is no less true is simply that God is the wind.  The wind is more noticeable when it is blowing hard and rustling the trees.  We can see its activity by the things it moves: The leaves it blows across the yard, the tree limbs waving back and forth.  Yet we sometimes forget that we take this wind into our body and it moves us too.  It brings oxygen to our blood and powers the spark of life and consciousness.  Our relationship with our Creator is as basic as breath. 

So, any moment is “crammed with Heaven,” as Elizabeth Barrett Browning observed.  There have been many night rainbows that I have been too bogged down in myself to notice along the way.  I have been a blackberry picker.  God’s presence takes that acute awareness that Zen monks cultivate toward their own breath.  As Solomon prayed for wisdom, I pray for the attentiveness to “take off my shoes” and acknowledge the presence of God.  I pray for the patience to look at the world around me in wonder.  I pray for strength and insight to jettison all the burdensome mental cargo that makes me unwieldy and slow to shift course.  I pray for the humility to know that even when I see something spectacular, a more profound vision can be attained with the help and companionship of another.  

My question to the TRansforming Theology conference:

I heard about Transforming Theology on the Emergent Village. Looks like a bold plan, and I look forward to seeing what comes of it. At the invitation of Tony Jones and Tripp I submitted the following question to be posed to the people.

New project designed by Phillip Clayton

Lenten Discipline

I thought the MethodX description of the Ignatian examen was good. I'm linking it on the church website to give the people another option for Lenten practices. I remember learning about the examen from Andy Drietcer at Claremont. We used this book called "Sleeping with bread." That book's hard to forget and beautiful.

this video made me happy

I hear echos of Sgt. Peppers--do you?


I heard her on my Jem channel on Pandora. It's truly outrageous.

I was listening to a Brahms cd with Julianna yesterday and Prelude and Fugue in F minor. That reminded me of Jem, who I remember Nick Harcourt playing frequently on "Mornings become Eclectic" (why can't more NPR sataions be like KCRW?)

Anyway, I decided to see if "They" had a video that I could share with you, and there are two. One looks like it was made in the indie days, and one looks like it was not.

Jem - They (2005)(TMF){MTV} @ Yahoo! Video

Space Striptease! (Not that I'm complaining--it's a good song!)

Checking in on KCRW clued me in on this: Gotta love Femi Kuti

Katherine Hepburn's laugh

I enjoy little things about movies. For example, I really like the way Toby's character in American Splendor says "nyurd."

Last night, I was also enamored by Katherine Hepburn's little sarcastic laugh in Philadelphia Story. At the beginning of this clip


Long live youtube! And for the record, I consider myself a nyurd!

It's been a while

Sunny and 34 degrees

When it’s dry and cold,

You don’t even get that satisfying

puff of steam from your breath.

Trumpeting from your mouth

like visible soul.

You just walk around clear

Eyed and shocked

At the wonder

Of the cold air crammed

In your chest.