The dance of Trinity

This Sunday is Trinity Sunday, which means it's a
Sunday set aside to celebrate the doctrine of God

being three persons but still one God.  What, celebrating a doctrine sounds strange?  Well, probably because it is.  What makes it even trickier is that, as a preacher, almost anything I say on the subject will likely contravene the doctrine.  Because... well because it's an extremely convoluted doctrine and its underlying reality is so confounding to our experience and logic.  How can three separate things really be one thing? 

The idea of the Trinity developed over centuries of debate revolving around the scriptural witness, the experience of believers and the traditional interpretations handed down by Jesus' disciples.  There's also probably more than a touch of Greek philosophy thrown in as well, those old church dudes (and they were mostly male) loved their Greek philosophy.  In some ways, the development of the doctrine of the Trinity resembles a group of grumpy blind men trying to create a Renoir painting - lots of arguing over things that can't really be understood.  All analogies fall short eventually because they're, well, analogies - not descriptive reality. And there's no way to really describe alot of what God is or is about short of analogy, thus our understanding is always incomplete. People, mostly, hate ambiguity though.  Thus, lots of heat is generated by religious types claiming their analogy is the Truth. 

At the same time, their is something about the human experience of God which leads to seeing God in distinct forms.  The eternal God whose will underlies all of the Cosmos, existing outside of time and space, somehow remote and distant, Jesus of Nazareth who walked and talked and had to do all the things human do (yes, even those things) and yet in whose life and resurrection from the dead the earliest disciples experienced the divine, and all of the ways in which the divine purpose intersects our lives and makes its presence known to us; all three of these point to "God" and yet we cannot get over the feeling of separateness in them while somehow recognizing their unity of purpose and direction. 

There is to mind, very little to say about the Trinity other than saying "in this mystery I believe and trust."  But there is still much to be said about our experience of God, both in transcendence and in our relationships with others.  I became a Christian not because of the beauty of it's arguments on behalf of God's existence or because of the internal logic of its theology (which it isn't).  I became a Christian because of experiences I had whose explanation defied rational examination and the story of God as contained in the Christian tradition made the most sense, even if not perfectly. 

To me, Christianity is an ongoing examination of the world around us and a testing of tradition and scripture in light of that experience.  Faith is not about learning some arcane set of facts and holding fast to them in the face of contrary evidence.  It is a journey of discovery and reconciliation of our experience of God with others' experiences so that all together we might discern and live into the one underlying truth of God; that our universe is founded upon the twin principles of love and relationship.

Redeemed

Recently I received a Facebook friend request from my childhood best friend, someone I not had seen or spoken to in something like 35 years.  Of course, I accepted right away.  We had been inseparable before his family moved away.

And then he sent a message:
"I have one question for you...Just why couldn't I have my crystal radio set back? (I say that with a smile but I know you've grown up a lot since then I'm sure - but I do remember we had a fight over that.)"

So I replied: 

Honestly I don't recall. Now that you mention it, I remember using it in the basement where it probably still is. I'd be happy to return it now. I suspect I was reluctant to let too many things go.

But he messaged me again:

LOL - u don't remember much. I came and got it. We had a fight. You punched my chest and burst my blood blister that was on my chest. I think that was the last time I talked to you. I played with it for awhile. I think it was a $5 toy. I was just wondering why you were being so mean about something so trivial.

At this point, I have to be honest, I felt really bad.  Not only had I treated my friend terribly so long ago, and though it had obviously stuck with him, I had forgotten.  I was uncomfortable coming face to face with my 12 year old self and felt ashamed.

So I wrote back:

Probably because I was angry that you were leaving and didn't have anywhere to direct that anger except on you 

And it probably is true.  I was a pretty angry young person and looking back I think I had reason to look at the world as unfair and to be angry.  But at the same time, I can also recognize that anger wasn't an effective means to build a life.  And as I grew up, I was often my own worst enemy, my anger and stubbornness driving me to self-destructive behaviors and choices.

But somewhere along the way, I discovered the power of being loved which led me to begin to believe that there might be something like a loving God.  And slowly, my anger ebbed away.  Its not that I don't ever get angry, but its not the perspective from which I see everything around me anymore.

I've found redemption, I've cased in my anger for hope, my frustration for faith.  And in something as simple as Facebook friend request, God has again given me an opportunity to experience redemption, the redemption of a friendship derailed by anger.

missing the mark

St Paul talks about the multiplicity of gifts/abilities expressed individually by members of the assembly which, together, express the reality of Christ present within the Church.  His vision for the christian community, the Church, seems to be just this joining together of the many into one "body."  But, at the same time, Paul is very clearly the one in charge, and he seems to be appointing people (eg; Timothy) to exercise his authority vicariously and to guide and develop the nascent christian assemblies he has formed.  So, the community exist, seemingly, as both egalitarian/inclusive and hierarchical/exclusive.  It's authority and power, what's right and who decides.  I have a thesis that this intersection of authority and power is at the heart of the struggles of the people of God, but without getting into that too much I am interested in a particular expression of that conflict

In my tradition (Anglican) we have ordained persons who provide spiritual leadership.  These people are "called" or identified within particular congregations, but then confirmed and tested by the hierarchical leadership beyond the specific congregation where their specific gifts were first recognized.  Ideally, it is a nice balance between the inclusive and exclusive push/pull of the Church.  In reality, it can be a difficult and wearying experience almost wholly at the whim and mercy of the hierarchy.  There seems little willingness to trust in the discernment of gifts by the congregation.  I suspect this is a hard-learned lesson involving situations where people weren't willing to be truly honest with one another.  I generally assume good intentions of others, but let's be honest; anyone who spends some time in church knows that its full of difficult people (including clergy) or perhaps worse, people who don't know that church isn't reserved to the good and gracious.

I've met enough bad clergy persons that I can appreciate the hierarchical concerns regarding quality of candidates presented by congregations.  At the same time, I've known good people who've become good clergy not because of hierarchical support but in spite of it.  I don't have any solutions really, except this.  Gifts and call and the action of the Holy Spirit is a crazy, a-rational thing that probably cannot be neatly fit into a "process."  Identifying, discerning and preparing people for vocational ministry isn't like making widgets with a known raw material, a measurable process and an expected outcome.  God can't be pinned in like that.  I think it is far more like art, sculpting perhaps - which is more a process of stripping away the unneeded to find the true figure previously hidden within the stone.

the tie that binds

For the amusement of serious Episcopal Church geeks only!

At General Convention last year, a resolution was passed that directed, more or less, the sale of our Church HQ building in New York City, fondly known as 815 (because that's its address).  Somewhat surprisingly (or not) the people who work there submitted a report to the Executive Council that said, "thanks, but no" and then gave some self-serving reasons why they thought General Convention didn't really mean what it said and everything should stay just like it is.

I have to be honest here and say, I'm not really sure what benefits, if any, come to my parish because of the work of the 815 staff.  I don't doubt they exist, but I don't know what they are.  I know what Episcopal Relief and Development does.  I know what the Church Pension Fund does (and thank you!!!!).  I even know what the Episcopal Church Foundation does and the National Association of Episcopal Schools do as well.  I can clearly articulate their mission and how it affects me, but 815.... nothing.  And so my question is this - what do they do and how does it help me spread the Gospel in southern West Virginia?

And since I love to make grand suggestions for change, allow me to indulge my fancy for a moment.  Let's get rid of it, just to see what happens.  Let's try to just hang together based on the Prayer book, General Convention, and support of those groups and networks (and those like them) mentioned above.  To draw on the analogy of my family, we remain so based on a shared history, some physical resemblance, and mutuality of relationship and frankly not spending too much time in each other's business.  I'm all for hanging together as a church on the thinnest of threads because if Jesus is in it, it will all work out and if he isn't... its just as well it goes away.

where from here - part 2

After my last post, I've been thinking more about the future shape of the church.  I've heard lots of people tell me what the future of church looks like; everyone seems to have a preferred model (house churches for everyone!).  But it strikes me that there isn't one ideal model out there, and whatever the future looks like, I think we'll be seeing a much greater mixed economy of "church" than we've seen in a long while.  There are places where the traditional parish model still works (and well) and is very effective.

Looking specifically at my situation here in West Virginia, one of the most obvious things about this diocese is its lack of urban areas (see last post) and given the open marketplace on religious affiliation, many locales are not able to support the traditional parish model

[As an aside, it strikes me that there are plenty of places where rather than 14 branch offices of Christianity, they would be much better served by just one community church.  The ever present desire to go our own ways and dismiss Christians who see things different from ourselves as somehow lesser is a cancer on the body of Christ.]

But isolated, self-supporting worshiping communities have not always been the norm.  It may be true that such a model has been the preferred way, but are there any examples of a relatively thriving Christian Church in the absence of cities?  Well yes, there is - ancient Ireland.  The Christian Church managed to establish itself and spin-off some pretty amazing folks (Ss Brigid and Columba for example) who remain as example and who were instrumental in the spread of Christianity elsewhere in Europe.  And what I recall is that the locus of activity for the Irish church was not the parish or the diocese, but monastic communities.

Now I don't necessarily think that the future of the Episcopal Church in rural America is monasteries, but what about intentional communities of some sort?  I'm imagining a core of individuals and families committed to worshiping together, committed to a revenue generating activity, and committed to a focused ministry.  Perhaps, if such communities could be fostered and grown,  they could operate as Christian centers whose influence could spread across a much wider region, supporting smaller worship communities and perhaps even developing new focused intentional communities on the same model as themselves.

I'm not suggesting this as THE answer, but something like this has worked in the past and it thrived for hundreds of years.  I don't see it as an impossibility, so if anyone has some usable property (or maybe a little cash) to offer in Southern West Virginia, let me know.  Maybe we could start our own Christian micro-distillery!

And where from here?

The Episcopal diocese of West Virginia was established 140 years ago, about ten years after the state established its separate identity during the Civil War.  And the diocese has 68 congregations, 3/4 of which were founded before 1900.  Like most places, West Virginia has changed significantly since 1900.  The 20th century saw a boom in coal and railroads as energy resources buried almost everywhere under the state was dug up and shipped off.  Coal mining and railroads were once huge, sprawling industries and extremely labor intensive and so people flooded into West Virginia and towns sprouted up and fortunes were made.

And though a great deal of coal is still mined here, it is not anything like as labor intensive as it once was and neither is rail-roading.  So it turns out that all those little coal camp hamlets and the bigger towns that arose to serve their needs from doctors to movie theaters aren't quite the thriving places they once were.  Exhibit A is the city of Welch in McDowell county at the south end of the state.  In 1950, 100,000 people called McDowell county home and Welch was a bustling place.  Today 22,000 people live there and Welch is a much quieter place.

All of which is a prelude to asking, if we were to start from scratch establishing the Episcopal Church in West Virginia, would we build something that looks the church we have now?  My guess is, probably not.

The image below is taken from an amazing project called the Census Dotmap which aims to show the location of every single person in America.  As you can see, West Virginia has only a few clusters of people.

To locate our churches we would need to know about how many people are needed to support an old-fashioned Episcopal parish (probably about 100 households)and how much of the population can we attract to an Episcopal Church (historically, 1-2%). This would suggest to me that you need at least 10,000 people and probably more like 20,000.  West Virginia has 13 "metro-areas" with more than 20,000 people.  If we built a church for every 20,000 people in those areas we would build 40 or so parishes.  If we were smart though, we'd shoot for a couple of really big congregations in the largest metro areas, which would leave us probably more like 25-30 parishes.  Remember, we have 68 now.

I think the other thing we would do is to develop those parishes with a much greater sense of responsibility to the whole diocese, so that some large portion of their revenue would be directed towards support of ministry centers in the many small towns where we didn't build a parish.  What if we could attract 5% of the population though?  Well, now we're talking about needing roughly 5000 people to make a viable parish.  These are the places where would focus our efforts as a diocese to evangelize and do mission.

I think that to some extent, our desire to recreate the English vision of a parish and a gentleman in every village of the land has meant that we only ever have one goal - a full, self-supporting parish - for our ministry expansion efforts.  I think we can be more creative than that and be ok with letting go of that vision where the population just won't support it but where the progressive Christian tradition at peace with human knowledge championed by the Episcopal church would be an important beacon of hope is needed.  I also think we won't ever reinvigorate this diocese without being willing to let go of the old vision and be ready to go where the people are now and not try to cling to where they were a century ago.

Why aren't there any Centering Prayer studios?

Ok, quick quiz - raise your hands if you know someone who claims to be Buddhist.  Ok, now raise your hands if there's a Buddhist temple with 50 miles of you.  My guess is that most everyone could answer positively to the first and much fewer to the second.  So how exactly does Buddhism spread?  And more importantly, your friend who says they're Buddhist - what does that mean exactly?

image from mydeepmeditation.com

Now as far as I can tell, the number of people in America claiming to be Buddhist is increasing.  Wikipedia
 (I know, but this isn't for credit, so deal, ok) says there are between one and a half and six million self-identified Buddhists in America whereas I'm guessing 50 years ago they could probably be numbered in the thousands, with almost all being ethnically Asian.  So how does a religion with little or no infrastructure grow by millions, while Christianity, with a branch office on every corner has declined by many millions in the same time frame?

It seems to me from my own brief immersion in Eastern religion long, long ago (Taoism for me, I like to be different) that part of the appeal was an attraction to a spirituality divorced from a largely unattractive cultural Christianity, part of it was its lack of organizational structure, and part of it was a young person's desire to differentiate myself.  I never pursued it in depth, but I still own my copies of the Tao-Te-Ching and Chuang Tsu, where they sit in my priestly office and there's a reading concerning death, that I still find very comforting.

But I also wonder to what extent, eastern practices are attractive.  I found Taosim through karate, and most serious Buddhists I know meditate faithfully.  The entry way to Eastern spirituality, at least here in America, seems to be through taking up a physical manifestation, a discipline.  I'll throw in Yoga as the most successful of these eastern spiritual practices.  Now, not everyone who takes up karate gets into Taoism, but there's no denying that these activities operate on more than one level (double ditto for Yoga).

So, why does most Christian evangelism start with convincing people of our doctrine?  And further, why do we primarily offer only our devotional life as our entry way?  Are there other Christian practices than worship that might be an easier gateway?  Could we reorient our churches to being homes to different spiritually-based activities (that people pay for, btw) that would be a boon to the spiritual life of the believers as well as offering something meaningful and beneficial for the agnostic or spiritual seeker?  Maybe entering into faith wouldn't seem so intimidating.  Jesus tells the parable of the sower, but who says the seeds have to be asking people to swallow the wholly grown plant?