Monthly Archives: January 2010

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The laying of a cornerstone.

When I was in graduate school I was asked to spend some time with perspective students and to give them a tour of the school. There was a standardized tour that they had written up directions and instructions for, but anyone who knows me knows that if you are asking me to do something it will be my version. My tour was a little different and if you ask me more comprehensive than the standard tour. The highlight if you happened to be assigned to me was a trip outside through some bushes down a dirt path to the corner of the seminary’s first building. As you came through the overgrowth you reached a forgotten, though once hallowed place where the “cornerstone” was laid and inscribed with the words, “Christ Jesus Himself being our chief cornerstone.” For me this was an important introduction to the school. It wasn’t because I am a Christian and wanted them to see that Christ is the cornerstone, it was more about showing people the thing on which the institution was built upon. The cornerstone is a symbol of what is or at least was important to the builders and framers of the school and there is something significant in that. It is a Christian school though it promotes the study of all religions and is both ecumenical and interfaith in its scope and practice. The point for me was to introduce the importance of having a cornerstone; of having something substantial holding you up, because without it you just become whatever they teach you and you loose whatever “self” you started with. You can learn many things, but without something substantial in you and of you to apply those learnings to, you never really gain knowledge, you just have stuff that you know.

On Sunday January 31st, 2010 I attended the laying of the cornerstone of First United Methodist Church in Seattle. First Church was literally the first church of any kind in Seattle and they have just moved into their fourth building after a long process of deciding where to move and what would work. The other part of the process for the church was to decide what they are about, what their “cornerstone” really is. It is not easy to be a downtown city church in today’s suburban world where less people live in the city and churches are swallowed up by the skyscrapers and highrises that supposedly mark progress. First church decided to stay downtown (though in a different part of downtown than before) and to be a downtown church. They decided that that was who they had to be. It is a unique place where multimillionaires and homeless people can and do worship together. They built themselves on an ideal of being able to reach the population of the city around where they are. The building includes a social services center and is very intentionally an open place while at the same time being a safe place. Their “cornerstone” is laid as a foundation of being a welcoming and serving presence in the heart of the city. The motto is, “serving the soul of the city” and the whole thing works because everyone that is a part of it understands that that is their foundation and they refuse to let even themselves get in the way of this collective ideal.

As I walked into their new building on a day that was proclaimed as First Church Day in the City of Seattle by the mayor and First Church week in King County by the county executive, I felt compelled to think of my own cornerstone. In one of the classes I teach regularly the question we ask ourselves on the first day is, “what do you believe in so strongly that you would stake your life on it?” in other words, “what is your cornerstone?” A cornerstone has elements of faith, family, national/cultural identity and any number of other factors. Whether you feel strongly about any of those, they have an influence both good and bad on how we form the foundation of ourselves and of our core beliefs, which become our cornerstone. It may even be that we rebel against one of these things, but that rebellion defines us just as much as a strong affinity does. For both an individual and for an organization like First Church or my school, our cornerstone is constantly being built upon, but those things, which are most important remain the same even if they sometimes seem to get covered up by the things we place around them. These aren’t opinions or ideas, because the reality is that we all should be open enough to change any one of those, but there are some things that simply are who we are and we couldn’t change them even if we wanted to. The important thing for all of us is to take the tour from time to time; through the bushes and down the overgrown path to remind ourselves of the things that matter most, the things, which hold us up and make us who we are. As long as we can hold onto these the whole world can crumble around us, but we can always rebuild because our cornerstone is intact.

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Memory

When your memory starts to fade, what will you hold onto?

My grandfather is a man of history, a man with memories. He is a storyteller possessed of endless stories that I have spent hours upon hours listening to; now his memory is slipping away and I wonder what stories i will never hear. Over the years with every visit new tales unfolded of life in Black Diamond and the toughness of my great-grandfather or of the way he lead his crew during World War II. Then there were stories of my mother, my aunts and uncle and in those his deep fondness and love for his family was always so clear. He and my dad taught us how to throw and to hit a ball and we could talk sports for hours and I listened and learned as he would confidently and accurately predict who would win every game. The doctor says there is a chance his memory will come back, but even if it doesn’t I have my own now to hold on to and I will.
I used to visit a man whose short term memory was almost completely gone, but his long term memory never left him. I was a newer person in his life, but I think he lumped all of his pastors into one persona and still managed to associate me with the role whether it was me he was relating to or not. In his mind he was back in his twenties newly married and loving life. It makes me wonder if I get to that point what memories I might live in. We form new memories everyday. We meet people who may just be passing through our life, but who also may change us forever by their presence in it. The question is: what are the moments that are so meaningful they will never be erased? Is there a time in our life we would be happy reliving? in every life there are moments that define us and I would like to think that it’s these that we hold on to. A time, a place, a person, your anam cara, something so special that it becomes a part of you, not so much a memory, but really a part of you that can’t be take away; an anchor that holds you even when all else is slipping away, that’s what we all need. Our memories are the best kind of gift, the kind we make ourselves. They become a story we can both hold onto and pass on and in the end I believe it is the parts that are most true to ourselves which will live on. I remember…
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When to the Sessions of Sweet Silent Thought 

Sonnet #30"When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past, I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste; Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow, For precious friends hid in death's dateless night, And weep afresh love's long-since-cancelled woe, And moan th' expense of many a vanished sight; Then can I grieve at grievances foregone, And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er The sad account of fore-bemoanèd moan, Which I new pay as if not paid before.  But if the while I think on thee, dear friend, All losses are restored and sorrows end"
While listening to Public Radio International (PRI) the other day I was reminded of my time with the Seattle Young Shakespeare Workshop.  The program was on the use of words and the ability of the few rare and gifted persons like William Shakespeare to craft them in ways that can make the simplest word seem eloquent and which force you to think about every word for fear that you might miss the meaning of the whole. The program quoted one line from Sonnet 129  (a sonnet that was actually assigned to me to perform as a soliloquy) "had, having and in a quest to have extreme," and it was like that one line triggered something in my mind and I found myself reciting the rest of that sonnet that I had not read or thought of in ten years.  "I summon(ed) up remembrances of things past."  There was a point in my life when I had a Shakespeare quote for nearly every situation.  The sonnets offered the romance of lines like, "shall I compare thee to a summers day, thou art more lov'ly and more temperate" (#18), or the ability of love to see past all things and perhaps in truth see more clearly, "I grant I never saw a goddess go; My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground: And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare" (130)
When I feel blocked as a writer I still find inspiration in those lines of iambic pentameter floating through my head, but more than that they remind me of the ability of every word to do so much and the opportunities for inspiration that exist in every moment.


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Hit by a car

If you read my church newsletter you will see a version of this applied to the Church, but as I wrote it, it seemed just as relevant when applied to the individual.


When I was in High School I ran cross-country, and I can remember one time when I was with a group of four guys running through a neighborhood about two-thirds of the way through a long and familiar run. We were cruising along at a decent pace and as we approached a side street that we needed to cross we saw a car coming down the hill. They had a stop sign and we figured we would get there about the same time so we just kept on running. Then as we crossed the street the car not only missed the stop sign, they failed to see the four runners crossing the street and I was hit on my left side rolling up onto the hood of the car. They weren’t going very fast and they stopped right away without hitting any of my teammates, but I can’t say that I appreciated the experience much at the time. One of my teammates slammed his fists on the hood of the car denting the hood further (after the indent my left hip had made) and we (including me only slightly bruised) ran on leaving the driver with a dented hood and hopefully some thought for watching where they were going. I tell this story because the other day I was out running and came within inches of a repeat (minus the teammates) of the incident in high school. Perhaps it was getting hit once that made me just a bit quicker in recognizing a driver that is not paying attention to my coming, but whatever it was, I managed to dodge at the last minute. I am not sure the driver ever even saw me. My point is not to criticize the two drivers, but instead to make the observation that sometimes we get so comfortable as we are moving along, we miss things and we fail to react. The drivers in both cases had probably driven those roads a hundred times; they were in their comfort zone. They were probably going home or to some place they often go and they were not expecting someone to come running along. They went through their motions of looking left for cars, slowing, but not stopping since there were rarely cars or anyone else around, and then they went on their way. In one case they ran into something that hopefully made them think and at least for a while certainly broke them out of their comfort zone, and in the other they came close, but instead missed things entirely. Both of these are what can happen when we get too comfortable.

The dilemma for us is that we want to be comfortable, we want to have familiar things with familiar people around us, even if we know that we might miss things. Even talking about changes and the possibility that something we are used to might disappear is scary to us. In our lives we can become complacent; accepting things as they are and never really thinking about what else could be. We are moving right along relatively happy, so why should we change things? Maybe we shouldn’t, maybe we should do more of what we are doing, but maybe we have just never really thought about what else we can do because we got so comfortable with what we were doing. The point is to ask the question: “are we too comfortable?” And, are we missing things all together because we are passing by on our old familiar route? There are points at which we run into things and they shake us up a bit and maybe even change the way we do things a little for a while and it’s in those times that things can happen. It’s in the midst of those times that we can get unstuck, we can break free from our paradigms and out of chaos be reborn, or we can return to how we were because we realize it really was good. Often we realize that the best answer is probably somewhere in between those things, but either way we come out better because we were forced to think about things all over again and re-prioritize.

We need to be open to the uncomfortable so that we can truly see what is around us. Sometimes we even have to dive in and choose the uncomfortable, trusting that good can come of it if we leave ourselves open to it. I believe that to be a true visionary leader we must find a way to be comfortable with the uncomfortable and to confidently lead others out of their comfort and into the unknown. Without the unknown life would be boring.
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Happiness

I have recently encountered a lot of people who seem to be perpetually unhappy (not depressed which is something more clinical and severe, just generally unhappy) and it makes me wish there was something I could do, but it also makes me wonder about happiness. Some of the most joyful(happy) people I have every known were people whose lives were much harder than mine has ever been, so I often think of them when I am feeling down and it helps me gain perspective. When I was in Nepal a few years ago I met some young people who had to sneak out of their houses in order to practice their religion and when caught were beaten severely. The thing is it only made them practice their faith all the more fervently and they managed to take their joy wherever they could find it. In Guatemala I met people who by my cultural standards had almost nothing, but who were some of the most generous and friendly people I have ever met. In each case they are happy because they understand how simple happiness can be. It can be as simple as being thankful for what you do have or for the little things that matter and not worrying about what you can’t control.

Perhaps what we all really need is to have our own list of favorite things like Maria in “The Sound of Music” (and it probably helps if you can sing them too). I started writing my own and if I get it to make sense I will record myself singing it and post it with this (sometimes being willing to make a fool of one’s self can make not only you happy, but can be the thing which helps an unhappy friend find a way out of their own unhappiness). In the musical “You’re A Good Man Charlie Brown” the cast sings a song called “Happiness” and they each make a point about our ability to choose what makes us happy and to let the little things count. Charlie Brown has the best list of course: “Finding a pencil (dropped by the little red haired girl who he is so in love with that even her pencil is important to him and which means he gets to find her and give it back), two kinds of ice cream, walking hand in hand, five different crayons, being alone every now and then, morning and evening, day time and night time and anything at all that is loved by you.” It seems there is wisdom to be found in song and maybe Bobby McFerrin gives us the best advice with his immortal tune:
“Don’t Worry…Be Happy…
In your life expect some trouble

But when you worry
You make it double
Don’t worry, be happy……
Don’t worry don’t do it, be happy
Put a smile on your face
Don’t bring everybody down like this
Don’t worry, it will soon past
Whatever it is
Don’t worry, be happy”


My Favorite Things
Walking in cities and hiking through forest
the song of the birds a magnificent chorus
snow covered mountains and cool flowing springs
these are a few of my favorite things

banana popsicles, creamy gelato
feeding my new infant daughter her bottle
to burst into song cause you just have to sing
these are a few of my favorite things

preaching and teaching and churches with steeples
traveling the world and meeting new people
the sound of the rain and the life that it brings
these are a few of my favorite things

when the flu hits
when my friends hurt
when I’m feeling sad
I simply remember my favorite things
and then I don’t feel so bad
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Lack of hope/Finality

I feel like I have been around too much negativity lately (especially about budgets and things) and it’s rubbing off on me to the point I actually said something pessimistic yesterday(which is completely out of character). I guess my answer is to write about hope and to reach out to the people who seem ready to give up. I started this blog a while a go when someone used the phrase, “this is the last…” when we both knew they didn’t really meant it:

The “Final Frontier,” which is only movie five of the now 10 or 11 movies, or the “Last Crusade” which wasn’t last (yes I understand that the writers were clever in their word choice and that neither meant it had to be the last movie); we use the words final and last so often without knowing and without even really wanting them to be true. This is the last time I am doing this, this is the last time I will see you, this is the last time… how many times does Brett Favre have to retire only to come back and play as good or better than before until we understand that there is always a chance and rarely is something actually final. I realize that sometimes we really do have to let go of things and move on and the release can even be worth celebrating, but rarely if ever should we cut ourselves off from the possibilities of “what if” when we really don’t want last to be last or final to be final.
Perhaps we just need more hope. Hope that the impossible can happen. Hope that there will be a next time, or hope that an end can mean new beginnings in a different way. Hope that what you want, that what was good, wasn’t just some fantasy, but was real and can be again. Hope that the joy you seek really is available if you are willing to keep seeking it. Hope that in every challenge we face we can be made stronger and the rewards that much more sweet for the trial we had to endure to get them.
We live in a time when governments and media seem to follow Machiavelli’s advice using fear to influence the populace. Stephen Colbert of “The Colbert Report” uses the term, “fright facts” in his parody of all the unsubstantiated scare tactics that seem to be influencing so many people and he’s right to poke fun at it, but it’s only funny because it’s true and people are buying it. It is sad to me that people are more influenced by fear than they are by hope. When Obama ran on a platform of “hope” it seemed people all over the world really wanted to hope, but it doesn’t take long for people to loose it and to fall back on skepticism and fear. We have a choice; we can live in fear, or we can live in hope. In fear we can do nothing, just hide. In hope we must be intentional and willing to do what is necessary even it’s hard. We need more hopeful people.
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Story time and spontaneous dancing

As I sat with my 2 year old at the library’s story time today listening intently then jumping up when it was time to sing and dance, it occurred to me what a joy it can be to listen to a good story told by a good storyteller (or even a bad story told by a good storyteller, but not so much for a good story told by a bad storyteller). When we were children that was the best entertainment. We could listen to our parents or our teachers read story after story as we entered those imaginary worlds and as we absorbed new words and new thoughts planting the seeds that would form our imaginations. Just looking around at the faces of those 2-3-4 year olds rapt with attention and filled with a sense of wonder I couldn’t help but wish they might all hold on to that forever. We need a sense of wonder. We deserve a chance to have new seeds planted in our imaginations. As adults we read for ourselves (though recorded books are becoming more and more popular) and that is such a gift, which allows us to travel to places we may never go and live adventures we may never have. I enjoy movies, but the best movie ever made doesn’t even compare to a good book.

Perhaps the greatest gift my daughter has been given is the freedom to imagine and to dance to the music in her head whenever the feeling hits. At story time the librarian directs the dancing and singing, but at home a spontaneous dance moment from dad or daughter(with or without music playing) can occur at any time (same goes for spontaneous singing). It’s just this energy, this joy that needs to be expressed. We had a family dance session (with music) after dinner and it was the most fun we have had at home in a while. The lesson for me is about removing our inhibitions and freeing our minds from all bonds. It’s almost like you can hear the rhythm of the world around you and you let it move you. You allow yourself the freedom to do what you feel, to be enthusiastic about living each moment and you let your mind wander and wonder. People talk about the rhythm of life, but how many let themselves hear it and respond by dancing? It may seem a bit silly (whether you are reading things or you have actually witnessed it), but maybe that’s what makes it worth writing about; we could all use more silly in our lives.
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The blending of voices/collaboration

In my cluster of churches we have Tongan, Samoan, Hispanic, Filipino, Multi-racial and european congregations. For one day a year we all get together for a choir festival as we celebrate the diversity within our unity. It should be a simple thing to pt together and in most ways it is, but it somehow manages to seem like a lot of work too. When we sat down to discuss the service, we were presented with a lengthy, but well written liturgy put together in a simple way to kind of slot between the choirs. The thing missing was the Eucharist and for the Tongan and Samoan pastors that was critical. Our discussion turned into an interesting one about the differences between a European service with long unison prayers and lots of readings, but no communion and the services of other cultures which are more focused on a spiritual experience with less form and a whole lot less reading, but always with communion especially if it is with another group. I am not sure that everyone really heard each other at the table, but the group has a lot of respect for each other and didn’t get bogged down in the little things. We ended up taking out some of the formulaic stuff (with a nod the fact that it really was well written) and putting in the Eucharist. The previous year we had just left things up to two of the pastors and went with whatever they came up with. This year it started that way and turned into a collaboration that I personally appreciated for the insight I received into my own worship tendencies and a cultural sensitivity that reminded my a lot of the kinds of dialog that take place when putting together interfaith and ecumenical gatherings and worship. There is always a balance and I was proud of the pastors who were willing to stand up for what was important to them so that they could feel their people would be represented and their voice was being heard. It wasn’t like there was any intentional saying it has to be a certain way, but it still meant something to hear a pastor stand up and talk about why the Eucharist is important to them. Those who love liturgy didn’t loose out either and the service did its best to blend the voices of our faith communities into the voice of one church.

That same week I was part of an ecumenical service involving a Russian Orthodox Abbot, Episcopal, Lutheran, Presbyterian, and United Methodist pastors and with a choir of people from the Latter Day Saints. The service was put together using an Episcopal pattern with some Presbyterian prayers and a sermon by the Russian Orthodox Abbot. We could not do communion together because of some fundamental differences around the act, but we did have a blessing of the bread at the end. The part that stuck out to me though was that we used the Nicene Creed which clearly was inappropriate for the ecumenical group gathered, but I appreciated our Orthodox brother simply being willing to omit saying the Filioque (this is the part where is says the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father (agreed on) and “from the Son” (not agreeable). As much as I appreciated his willingness to ignore it, he shouldn’t have been put in that position and I was disappointed that he was. Another part of the service that stood out to me was the bowing before the altar and crossing ones self. These are not a common part of my tradition and in some ways I felt awkward as the pastor who doesn’t really do those things and who has a theological issue with bowing to the altar or to the cross. In some ways the services was so liturgical (traditional formulaic) that I felt like I (or at least my style of worship) was the most left out of the service (though I had plenty of parts to read). This service was not a collaboration, it went well and had some good moments, but we were each just doing what we were told to do.
On a separate non-religious note about collaboration I recently finished listening to an interesting collaboration called, “The Copper Bracelet.” This is the second book using the same set of characters and with each chapter being written by a different writer. The first was, “The Chopin Manuscript” and I read it because there were chapters by several of my favorite authors including David Hewson (which was my uncle’s name, and who is a very nice guy on top of being a great author (I met him once and talked to him about travel and choice of graduate schools for something like 45 minutes)). This is obviously a very different kind of collaboration from that of a putting together a worship service, but there were some lessons in it that I find similar. What stands out to me is the effortless way one author can simply kill off or resurrect a character in a way that no single author would our could. When it’s your character there are always some who you simply know will survive, but when another author takes over all bets are off. I was actually annoyed at one point when a character that seemed interesting was abruptly killed and it made all his development in previous chapters seem pointless.
What is all comes down to is that in collaboration you sometimes have to be willing to let go. You do what you do and the next person does what they do and so on and you can’t always worry about what they will do with the things you created. On the other hand, in a good collaboration there is a mutual respect so that the important things are understood and in the end all the participants can feel they were are part of getting things to where they got. It can not be just about everyone doing their part, it needs to be about everyone actually being a part of things. Collaboration can be beautiful and it can be disastrous and either way we can learn a lot from it.
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dependency

It is an incredible thing to realize that there is someone in this world who is completely dependent on you and whom you know that you could not bare to let down. I have a lot of respect for nursing mothers whose life is not their own for months, but who willingly give of themselves so that that new life can thrive. The thing is, I never thought I would become a nursing mother, but I have of late been channeling my inner Michael Keaton (from perhaps his second most memorable role after Batman as “Mr. Mom”). My every moment is dictated by the needs of my infant daughter who will only take her bottles from me and has shown an unwillingness to accept any substitutes for her dad with no regard for the funerals and holiday services I am also responsible for. No sleep, no time for much of anything and certainly nothing which lasts longer than the prescribed three hours between bottles, but there is nothing I would rather be doing and there really was never any question that I would do what needs to be done(while still trying to make sure my 2 year old knows she is loved as well). It’s not like I am alone as a single parent without plenty of help, but this has given me a new understanding that my previous role of support staff could never have done.


There are many forms of dependency, but none is so complete as that of an infant to its parents. At various times in our lives we choose who we will place our trust in, who we will depend on, and that bond can be pretty special, but it is still our choice and the infant doesn’t have one. It is a question of not only who, but how much we are willing to depend on anyone. We have to decide how much of ourselves we are willing to give by allowing ourselves to be vulnerable in our dependence. When I counsel couples thinking about getting married, one of the things we always talk about is the balance of dependence that is so important in a relationship. You have to have things which are yours, and other people you can turn to, otherwise the weight of dependency will eventually become too great. To fall in love and allow yourself to depend in part on someone else is a beautiful thing and it’s truly a gift to find that so I do wish that for everyone, but there does have to be a balance.
The thing about it is that it’s not just the possibility that you might be let down, it’s the pressure we place on the other person by our dependence. For a lot of people (myself included) it is much easier to be the one that others depend on than to allow ourselves to be dependent. I suppose what I am learning with my daughter though is how deep and incredible that bond can be when we do let ourselves (as the classic song says) “lean on” someone else. It’s actually inspiring to feel that kind of trust whether it is earned or there was any choice involved or not. Perhaps my daughter will teach me how to lean on those who love me more. I guess that’s just one more gift our children can give us if we let them.