Is it Church?

So I had every intention of attending church today at St. Mark's Episcopal church. Really. I was up in time. I showered and shaved. I got my morning coffee. But then I just couldn't bring myself to go. I hate going to worship where I don't know anyone. But then I also really don't want to get to know anyone there. That is what they call ambivolence. I am ambivolent toward church .

So instead, I got in my new RAV4 and drove to the mountains. I was listening to a Sara Groves CD while praying and meditating on God's creation all around me. One of the lines of one of her songs struck me, "Maybe I was made this way...to think and to reason, to question and to pray." That really struck me that I simply can't turn off my mind. Any faith that I embrace has to be one that can handle my thinking, reasoning and questioning. A faith that can't withstand that is a faith I could never embrace, at least not fully. It was a powerful morning, listening to the music while i prayed and drove. Afterwards, i grabbed myself a bagel and coffee, and spend time praying the lectionary for the day.

So here's my question . Is that really church? I'm tempted to think not. There's no community. There's no sacrament. There's no giving of myself to others. So was it wrong for me to skip church yet again to be alone, to read, to observe, to reason, and to pray?

I'm not sure I have answered these questions yet.

so today...

my 17 year old, soon to be 18 year old son, announced to me that he wants to join the Navy after he graduates from high school. Really I'm not that surprised. He was involved in Civil Air Patrol in junior high and talked about enlisting then. He eventually lost interest in CAP, but I always wondered. Plus he wants a one way ticket away from his mom and myself, especially since we're both dating other people now. I'm concerned. I wonder about having a son enlist during a time of war. I wonder about how the ethics and values he was raised with will play into what he can and can't do. But he is becoming a young man. More to follow...

it's been a year

It's been a year since I posted. Someone asked me if i had a blog and i said, "no." But then i remembered this! So i thought I'd post something. Since Christmas I've bought two books. The first is by Phyllis Tickle, and it's a pocket edition of the Divine Hours. Basically it leads through fixed times of prayer throughout the day. This is a new practice to me, but very intriguing. I guess it's an outgrowth of my draw to the Book of Common Prayer. The idea of praying prayers that have been prayed for centuries helps me feel rooted historically. It also helps me to pray the words of scripture, giving me words when my own words fail. The other book I've started is by the ever controversial Brian McLaren. The first book I ready by Brian was A New Kind of Christian, which was a breath of fresh air for me at the time. Since then I've read him on and off, and he's drifted progressively away from where I'm comfortable. However, I have appreciated his thoughts. In Finding Our Way Again, McLaren introduces a new series on the ancient practices. I spent a lot of time at a recent retreat i was cooking for reading it. It rekindled some of my desires to engage in these practices. That's all for now.

Merry Christmas

On this day after Christmas, i want to wish you all a Merry Christmas. The winter chill is in the air. My advent readings are reminding me that Advent is a time of waiting . A time of anticipation.

I'm still adjusting to sharing the kids at Christmas. This is my third year doing it. I'm still not entirely used to it. But i guess i'm getting better at it. We had a good time together. They were with their mom and her side of the family Christmas Eve. I picked them up around 11 on Christmas day. The biggest gift was the game Rock Band. At least it's something they can do together. Then we went to my mom's for dinner (which i brought). That was nice. Then to the movies to see Valkyrie (We wanted to see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button but it was sold out). Over all a good Christmas in this new "normal" i'm living.

Advent

Today marks the first sunday of Advent. For the first ten years or so of my Christian life I didn't even know what Advent was. It was only after i finished a church history class that i realized that the church has historically used the calendar to remember Christ's arrival, life, death, resurrection, ascension, and future second coming. Thus while the rest of the world marked time by agricultural seasons, national holidays, presidential terms, and professional sports seasons, followers of Jesus have marked time by reflecting on the life of their Lord. How we mark our time shapes what kind of people we become and what how we view our world.

Advent is a time of waiting. A time of recognizing that sometimes God's promises come after what feels like a long delay. It's also a time to recognize that sometimes God's coming into our world doesn't fit our expectations. We expect God to come a certain manner, usually in a manner imprinted with our own agendas and ideals. But as C. S. Lewis observed, God is the "Great Iconoclast," continually breaking out of the conventional boxes we place God into. Perhaps this is also why the desert fathers preferred to speak about what God was not like, the via negativa, since that way resists the temptation to shape God into what we prefer that God be.

The last few years of my life, I've taken comfort in the liturgical calendar. That's an odd shift for a recovering "contemporary church, innovative, entreprenural" sort that tends to sweep traditions away like yesterdays news, in favor of the newest and the next. Maybe it's because i can hide behind the liturgy. When i don't have the faith to believe (which is usually about half the time), the liturgy speaks words of faith that i myself long to have but lack in the moment. Maybe because it's because in the liturgy roots me to a tradition that goes back beyond my lifetime and concerns. It roots me to a history, a story, that goes back thousands of years. Maybe it's just because i'm reacting against the kind of evangelicalism that I lived in for so long.
I'm reading through this Advent devotional guide. It's not your typical gude with pithy sayings and inspirational thoughts that are the equivalent of spiritual junk food. Instead it's filled with authors who have stood the test of time, people like Bernard of Clairvaux, C. S. Lewis, Kathleen Norris, Henri Nouwen, and so forth. So far so good as i prepare my own heart for the celebration of Christmas.

Apparently I'm Part of a Cult

At least that's the rumor going about some of the people at the church i used to pastor. That's a strange thing to me. It once again points out the power of words, especially labels that can be used to confine, define, and then dismiss. Here's one definition of cult:

"A group's cult status begins as rumors spread of its novel belief system, its great devotions, its idiosyncratic practices, its perceived harmful or beneficial effects on members or its perceived opposition to the interests of mainstream cultures and governments. Persistent rumors may follow relatively small and recently founded religious or non-religious groups when they are perceived to engage in excessive member control or exploitation."

The group i'm part of is more like a support group of recovering fundamentalists trying to keep their faith in Jesus and his kingdom. Yet because it's not part of the institutional status quo (that i spent 17 years defending) it's cultic to some. I think these kinds of words say more about the people who use them than it says anything else. People are afraid of things they don't understand. Labeling them helps them dismiss them, feigning understanding.

I think about the other labels i've used or that have been used of me:
Depression
Abuse
Victim
Narcissist
Anorexic
Heretic
I suppose these things can help insofar as finding patterns to cope with them that in the past have worked with others. But when a PERSON is reduced to a LABEL a terrible violence is done to them and the image of God in them.

God protect me from using labels to mask people. Help me see people in their full humanity, good and bad, sinful and saintly, evil and good, broken and whole. Lord help me resist the urge to dismiss people with the words I use to describe them.

Beauty

Saturday night I went to Newport Beach with a friend and watched the sunset over Catalina Island. It was gorgeous. It got me thinking about how I'm noticing beauty again in my life. It seems like three years ago my life went gray. Everything was another shade of gray. The brilliance of color vanished. The spectre of depression robbed the colors from my life. It reminds me of the lyrics of Grey Street by Dave Matthews:

And she thinks...hey

How did I come to this

I dreamed myself thousand times around the world

But I can't get out of this place

There's an emptiness inside her

And she'd do anything to fill it in

But all the colors mix together To grey,

and it breaks her heart

After the sickness we call depression visited my household, i read many books on the subject. One book called depression being caught in the present moment like there was no future. Just the present moment. Just the misery of how one feels at that moment. Feeling like it is forever. I could see this in my depressed wife. I could see it in myself as the sickness of depression began to affect me as well.
It's good to see colors again. It's good to enjoy a sunset with a friend. It's good to notice the briskness in the weather, the smell of freshness in the air, and the beauty of the world around me. I think this is a good thing.