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One of these mornings, you’re going to rise up singing

Posted on November 1, 2011 by megancastellan
 I’ve been following with interest the various church-based reactions to the #OWS movement around the world.
      St. Paul’s Cathedral, London has been a weird, ongoing train wreck of a reaction.  From the outside, it looks like they thought the protest would go away soon, so they didn’t try to engage systematically.  They just sort of tolerated the protesters’  presence, until they didn’t anymore.
        It’s difficult to tell what caused the problem–tourists were getting upset?  (and see, that just makes everyone look bad–the cathedral charges tourists, and that’s a source of income.  So let’s hope it’s not that, shall we?)
     So then St. Paul’s decried the protest as a ‘health and safety hazard.’ And closed.  And asked them to leave.
     At which point, one of the canons of St. Paul’s said he would quit if the protesters were made to leave.  At which point, in jump the media.  And then the dean of St. Paul’s said he would resign, and the church would reopen, and no one had to leave, and didn’t everyone just feel dumb now, what with the quitting and stuff?  And also, the Bishop of London was getting involved, and now they were announcing a special task force!  For ethics and financial systems!  Because we should talk about these things, yes, but in y’know, organized ways, in rooms with proper tea, and biscuits and whatnot.  This task force was to be spearheaded by the Church of England and wouldn’t that please make the protesters happy, and couldn’t they please, maybe, go home now?
Unsurprisingly, they were less than impressed.
Today, news broke that after the dean resigned, the Chapter (vestry of a cathedral) met, and decided to immediately drop legal action against the protesters, and essentially slink quietly away, looking foolish.
This whole thing has been playing out in the media on both sides of the ocean for the past week or so,  and Episcopal Cafe has done a bang-up job of covering it here.
I’d also direct you to what has been going on in NYC and our homegrown Episcopal communities.  Trinity, Wall Street (aka: The Church that Owns Wall Street, in a Fairly Literal Manner) released a statement at the beginning of the Occupy movement.  It is here.  Since then….no drama.  No standoffs.  Members of their staff have participated in the protests, have held Eucharists for the marchers. Other NYC area Episcopal churches have done likewise.  Similar scenes have played out in Boston, Philadelphia,  other cities.
It strikes me that this difference of reaction mirrors, in large part, the divide in the church.
     On the one hand, we have the old traditions, and the institutional memory of being In Charge.  We represented the bastions of our civilization, that Is Not to Be Questioned.  We were content in the knowledge that we were in charge, we had the power, and we got to call the shots.  We got to decide who shared power with us, how decisions were made, and how discussions were held (in comfortable rooms, with tea, sherry and cookies, thank you very much.)  We got to decide who was in those rooms, and even what was allowed to be on the table for discussion.  The buck stopped with us.  And who was anyone else coming in from the outside to question our benevolence and our wisdom?  Seriously, how dare they?  (These people shall get no sherry.)
     On the other hand, we have been slowly coming to the realization that the power we had has left us, in many ways. We aren’t the numerical majority any more, we don’t  attempt to select the leaders of countries (unless you’re Pat Robertson, in which case, I have a LOT more to say to you).
So what we preach rings hollow unless it is backed up with action.  No one will listen to us unless we live out what we preach, individually and corporately.  And we can’t get away with preaching a Christ who ‘came to set the captives free, to preach good news to the poor’ while we try to hold on to our own power and wealth, and protect it at the expense of others.  People, generally, don’t buy that.
The good news is, however, that this frees us up to do amazing things.  Trinity gets to open their doors in an authentic way to be a meeting space for conversations about what an ethical economy.  They get to be a prophetic voice without worrying so much about what part of their entrenched support they will be losing.  If you let someone else uphold the status quo for a while, you get to do a lot more heavy lifting in ministry.
The status quo upholding gets really boring after a while.

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Kids these days

Posted on September 20, 2011 by megancastellan

This week was Week Two of “What if Canterbury Got to Have Its Service in a Real, Live Church?” Experiment.  Each week, this has gotten to be a smoother process by an order of magnitude.  (Last week, in a process too long to go into, I discovered that three of my four on-hand Canterburians did not have driver’s licenses.  Kids!  All wild and crazy and lacking the ability to drive legally.)

But it never fails to amaze me how large the gap is between what the Average Congregational Episcopalian seem to expect a “college service” to look like, and what the Canterburians then deliver.  From the initial conversations I had with these A.C.Es prior to the start of the 5:30pm services, I gather that many expected experimental liturgy!  Wild rock music!  Possibly some extemporaneous praying!  But definitely drums of some kind.

Instead, the students would like a greater reliance on the Hymnal 1982, and the authorized hymnals.  (Point of reference: this group doesn’t like singing Spanish hymns in translation.)  They have a strict list of Rules For Music, from which I am forbidden from straying from (i.e. No folk Christian music  published between the years of 1960-1998, except as approved on a case-by-case basis. Nothing that would suggest that Jesus might be anyone’s boyfriend; nothing that mandates hand gestures, but if spontaneous movement arises, that is acceptable, (aka the Macarena Paradox) etc.)  They would greatly like a thurible (cheap ones can be ordered online from Mexico!) And I’m fairly certain that at some point, I’m going to end up with a handmade t-shirt that says “Rubrics are binding!” on it.  And I shall wear it with pride and glee.

And all of the above is the hardest pitch I ever make in larger church gatherings.  No one believes me.  The conventional wisdom of “Young people don’t like traditional music/liturgy.” just won’t budge.

…and there is some truth in that.  Or, more properly, some young people don’t like some liturgy done in some ways.  You can no more generalize about an entire couple of generations than you can about, say, all women.  Or all men.  At all time, everywhere.  Unless you’re a late 1990’s comedian.  (In which case, my guess is your calling is not to be a leader in the church.)

Really, they like church to be church.  And not church pretending to be anything else.  That is what they’ve signed up for.  (believe it or not.)  Because there are a ton of places to go and hear folky music, or rock music.  Or sit in an amphitheater and feel better about yourself.

There aren’t a whole lot of places to go and have a transcendent experience of the divine come near, connect with a tradition generations-upon-generations older than you, and be challenged to live a better life in community with those around you–some you like a lot, and some you would really ignore til the day you died.

Starbucks doesn’t quite cut it.

And remarkably, that’s what these students have signed up for, of their own free will, and cheerfully, too.  They’re not there because of a societal expectation that going to church is what makes you a good person, or keeps you in tight with the ‘right’ crowd.  Nope.  They’re there because they want to be.  Because they find something there that they are passionate about.

It’s the rest of us, maybe, who get freaked out by that.

 

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Angli-leaks

Posted on June 2, 2011 by megancastellan

Thus far, I’ve refrained from commenting much on what’s happened in the Church of England over the past few weeks.  And by ‘refrained’, I’m excluding a Facebook status, and a ranting session to my friend in Montana.

If you’d like, Episcopal Cafe has done a very good job covering everything as it unfolded here.

Basically, if you’ll recall, in the summer of 2003, as The Episcopal Church here was getting excited over the election of V.Gene Robinson, the Church of England leaked the news that someone had nominated Jeffery John, a celibate gay man in a long-standing partnership, to be bishop of Southwark.  Chaos ensued, and finally, the +Archbishop of Canterbury stepped in and asked that he withdraw his name from consideration, “for the unity of the church,” which is what happened.  Anger was expressed at the time over the leak, because unlike in the American church, English bishops are appointed in absolute secrecy, or, at least, they are supposed to be.

Now, the late dean of Southwark cathedral’s family has released a memo detailing his take on what happened that summer.  And it reads like a 21st century version of Anthony Trollope.  You can read the memo for yourself at the link above, and I won’t repeat it here, but suffice it to say, no one comes out looking particularly pleasant, ++Rowan least of all.  Suddenly, his motivation shifts from church unity to looking like something much more upsetting.

In today’s Episcopal Cafe, Jim Naughton has an excellent piece meditating on the differences between what appears to have happened in Southwark and what’s currently happening in the walkabouts in Washington DC’s bishop election.  It raises several things that I’ve been pondering, now that I’ve gotten over my initial impulse to stage a cleansing re-enactment of the Battle of Yorktown.

So messiness will ensue whenever broken humanity is involved.  The question is, do you want to acknowledge this openly?  Or do you want to try to deny this and wait until it festers and breaks out in some horrific, even worse form?

Our Episcopal method of electing bishops might be political, but it is overtly political.  Everyone has a voice, and everyone gets to raise their voice to the rafters and make their case, even if (and I cop to this willingly) I heartily disagree with many of these voices and many of these arguments.  At no point, do we, as a church, expect the Holy Spirit to squeeze herself into a tiny back room filled with cigar smoke.  That’s a pretty tall order, and I, for one, don’t like to order around any portion of the Trinity.

So we argue and wrestle with stuff.  It’s unseemly, you might say.  But it’s also a sign of trust.  Trust in each other, trust in the Spirit, and trust that we will be led into the truth eventually, because God is still with us.  We don’t have to have all the answers right now.  (Herein the difference between a living faith and a stoic one, perhaps?)

If Jesus wrote fortune cookies, one of the better one-liners would have been “There is nothing hidden that won’t be revealed.  There is nothing secret that won’t be shouted from the rooftops.”  And man, he wasn’t kidding.  Generally, I’ve heard this interpreted to be something about how, at the Day of Judgement, everything we’ve ever done will be revealed to God.  Which, ok, that works.  But let’s give the 1st century rabbi some credit–this is also pretty pragmatic advice.

If you’re living an inauthentic life, it’s going to come up, at some point.  It’s going to wreak some havoc.  It just will. ::Insert pointed look at politician of your choice here::  Hypocrisy doesn’t work in the long run for humanity.  It hurts our brains.  We get bent into weird shapes and we get confused.  And humans are nothing if not easily confused.  We dearly love consistency.  Saying one thing and doing another is just hard to keep up for decades on end.  It has to come to an end at some point.  Someone is going to call you on it.  Whether it’s a single person being hypocritical, or an entire institution.  Or an entire planet.

Eventually, someone points it out.

And blessed are those people.  For, though they frequently get shouted down, cursed at, and run out of town on rails, they are doing the work of the Spirit.

 

 

 

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Adventures in Post-Modern Ministry: That Word Does Not Mean What You Think it Means

Posted on May 25, 2011 by megancastellan

On Saturday, I went to a lecture on Jacques Lacan and the use of metaphor and narrative in counselling situations.  Because I thought it would be fun!

And, also, given the number of times I preface conversations with, “But then again, I’m postmodern, so….”, I thought brushing up on actual postmodernists would be wise.

The day started out auspiciously–there was coffee!  Good coffee, readily available!  The day could commence!  (Sometimes, these things are dicey.)  In the process of acquiring said coffee (Sacrament #8), a woman came up to me, and without preamble, announced, “Your nametag is upside down.  That could be interpreted.”  She walked away, and I decided this lecture had just become the best lecture ever.  (For the record, it got caught on my hair.  I wasn’t trying to make a statement.)
In a nutshell, Jacques Lacan was a French psychologist who reexamined the teachings and writings of Freud in light of new philosophical theories of semiotics and deconstructionism.  ::crickets:::
And the fact that this previous sentence probably made little to no sense to many, many people would have made Lacan extremely excited, and proved his point.  Which was that language itself is isolating, and to be truly understood by another person was impossible.  This is also known in my small head as The Inigo Montoya Theory of Language (Or: The  “I Do Not Think That Word Means What You Think That It Means” Problem.)
Basically, it goes like this:  I say something to you, using English, our common language.   You understand me well enough, being that English is our shared language, but you understand me imperfectly, because you cannot possibly understand all of the connotations, all the memories and associations and connections that are triggered for me by the words I chose, since they came from my entire lived experience, my family’s history, and everything I know of the world that is unique to me.  And, if I attempt to explain it to you, we are facing the problem of imperfect language again.  It’s a vicious cycle!  We’re all soooooo aloooone!  Sad mimes in berets!
So, then, Lacan and other French post-modernists would argue, we are continually talking past each other to some degree or another.  (Lacan, being a psychologist, would also argue that this also makes us sad, and can ultimately motivate us to have better lives, but that’s another story.)  To try to mitigate this talking-past-problem, we humans have developed the capacity for conscious metaphorical language, since our basic language isn’t conveying literal truth so well anyway.  (In fact, you could argue, and I would, that all language is metaphor; some just more conscious than other.)  Like me saying I was brushing up on post-modernism–I wasn’t literally brushing up on Lacan.  He’s dead, and that’s both disgusting and hard to do.  But it conveys something more concrete (see, another one!) to you than me saying I was re-learning Lacan.
And here’s where I think this applies to ministry.  As we’ve become more self-consciously post-modern (or, rather, many of us have, especially those among us who are youngish), I’ve noticed our metaphors becoming more self-conscious as well, and more elaborate, almost like we’re trying to construct an entire other language with more circumscribed meanings, to lessen the innate misunderstanding.  We actually want to communicate better, have that implicit understanding, and we have a growing awareness that people are different from us, and this understanding is actually not guaranteed.  So we try to manufacture ways around that.
My brother and I went for months on end, in high school and college, where we would mainly speak to each other in quotations from ‘The West Wing.’  Aside from the fact that we clearly have extremely good taste, I think it was an attempt to find a shared language, somewhere, given that at the time, we had almost nothing else in common, no common experiences to solidify our common language.  But the world of the West Wing was static enough that if we quoted that to each other, we knew what it meant.  But outside that static world?  Nope, we were ships passing in the night.
For preaching, this is huge.  For anyone in the church at all, this is huge.   If language is freighted with extra baggage, and we can’t assume any common meanings any more, then preachers have to be extra-special, super-duper careful.  And I mean it.  Anything said is liable to misinterpretation and confusion, and not just by the one guy in the fourth row who didn’t like you in the first place.
Tape the Prayer of Humble Access to your foreheads, people, and memorize it.
 In fact, maybe we need a new one for the 21st century:
“WE DO NOT PRESUME… that those words that meant one thing when we were kids still mean that same thing.
WE DO NOT PRESUME…. that the Bible verse that has been comforting to me is comforting to everyone.
WE DO NOT PRESUME…. that because I repeat a phrase over and over again, everyone knows what it means.
WE DO NOT PRESUME…that we can continue to use the same words and phrases with abandon and everyone will understand what we mean.”
The work of preaching is now as much about constructing a common language as it is about sharing the gospel.  We have to redefine ‘salvation’, ‘grace’, ‘love’ , even ‘God’ and ‘Jesus’, because we cannot assume a common, static understanding.
We have to reconstruct one for ourselves.

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