I Stand by the Door

I've been working on completing my Godly Play Core Training, as part of my new role as St. Paul's Lay Pastor for Children's Formation. I am continually grateful for this truly special and unique curriculum. There is something very special and important about using a structure in Sunday school that is serious, intense, and not over simplified. I get as much out of it as the kids do, and they get a LOT out of it.

Anyways, today our training session opened with our trainers reading this poem. It's relevant to Godly Play because one of the two adult roles for the room is that of Doorkeeper. But that's not why it gave me goosebumps. I felt a thrill of recognition because it captures so much about who I am/want to be as a Christian person in the world. It's a pretty long poem, with a lot more words than I usually like in poetry. And maybe it will lack something that it gained from being read out loud. But, I won't blather on any further. I just want to share it with you.

I Stand by the Door
I stand by the door.
I neither go too far in, nor stay too far out.
The door is the most important door in the world -
it is the door through which folk walk when they find God.
There's no use my going way inside and staying there
when so many are still outside, and they, as much as I,
crave to know where the door is.

And all that many ever find
is only the wall where a door ought to be.
They creep along the wall like blind men,
with outstretched, groping hands,
feeling for a door, knowing there must be a door.

Yet they never find it...
so I stand by the door.

The most tremendous thing in the world
is for people to find that door - the door to God.
The mos important thing anyone can do
is to take hold of one of those blind, groping hands,
and put it on the latch - the latch that only clicks
and opens to that person's touch.
People die outside that door, as starving beggards die
on cold nights in cruel cities in the dead of winter -
die for want of what is within their grasp.
Others live, on the other side of it - live
because they have found it,
and open it, and walk in, and find Him...
So I stand by the door.

Go in, great saints, go all the way in -
go way down into the cavernous cellars,
away up into the spacious attics -
it is a vast, roomy house, this house where God is.
Go into the deepest of hidden casements
of withdrawal, silence, of sainthood.
Some must inhabit those inner rooms,
and know the depth and heights of God,
and call outside to the rest of us how wonderful it is.
Sometimes I take a deeper look in,
sometimes venture in a little farther;
but my place seems close to the opening...
So I stand by the Door.

There is another reason why I stand there.
Some people get part way in and become afraid
lest God and the zeal of His house devour them;
for God is so very great, and asks all of us;
and these people way inside only terrify them more.
Somebody must be by the door to tell them that they are spoiled
for the old life, they have seen too much:
once taste God, and nothing but God will do any more.
Somebody must be watching for the frightened
who seek to sneak out just where they came in,
to tell them how much better it is inside.

The people too far in do not see how near these are
to leaving - preoccupied with the wonder of it all.
Somebody much watch for those who have entered the door,
but would like to run away.
So for them, too, I stand by the door.

I admire the people who go way in.
But I wish they would not forget how it was
before they got in. They they would be able to help
the people who have not yet even found the door,
or the people who want to run away again from God.
You can go in too deeply, and stay in too long,
and forget the people outside the door.

As for me, I shall take my old accustomed place.
near enough o God to hear Him and know He is there,
but not so far from others as not to hear them,
and remember they are there, too.

Where? Outside the door -
thousands of them, millions of them.
But - more important for me -
one of them, two of them, ten of them,
whose hands I am intended to put on the latch.
So I shall stand by the door and wait
for those who seek it.
'I had rather be a door-keeper...'
So I stand by the door.

by Samuel Moor Shoemaker

The Light of Christ

When the alarm goes off at 3:30am Sunday morning I turn it off without even waking up. I have this habit, honed through the many middle-of-the-night phone calls from the road when Andrew was touring early in our marriage. I developed the ability to answer the phone, even talk to my husband, and then continue sleeping uninterrupted. I would have no memory of the event. Since I know this about myself, the second alarm goes off at 3:35, followed by Andrew's alarm at 3:45. That's the one that does it, because it's on his side of the bed and I am not able to reach it without sitting up and climbing over him. At that point, I'm up.

And glad to be - I was due at church at 4:15. I am there by 4:30.

As a child and young person growing up in our evangelical church there was always an Easter sunrise service. And, seeing as my mom was the choir director, we were always there for it. I have dim memories of being loaded into our green van half asleep in the morning darkness, and trudging up the hill behind our church building wrapped in blankets to sit in the rows of folding chairs that had been placed outside next to the giant tree overlooking the plot of land our congregation hoped to build on someday, facing towards the sunrise. It was never a long service, being as it was outside and people were cold, but it was timed so that the sun would come up as Pastor Rick was preaching, or maybe as we were singing. Wrapped in my blanket, perched on the edge of my cold metal chair, it was always the sunrise that thrilled me. Though the music and the preaching was fine, the goosebumps and that tight, holy feeling that spread though my body as we said "He is risen" to each other wouldn't have been there without the magic of that rising sun. That is what I remember about Easter mornings as a child.

Now that I'm an Anglo-Catholic Episcopalian in Seattle, I don't have Easter morning outside. For one thing, the sun makes fewer appearances here in the Pacific Northwest than it does in Sacramento, CA where I grew up. Most Episcopal churches participate in a liturgy called the Triduum , which is one service that takes place on three days: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and a service that is either late in the evening on Holy Saturday, or early on Easter Sunday, the Easter Vigil. I've done the Vigil both ways - when I was confirmed at St. Mark's it was a Saturday evening. Now at St. Paul's we are fairly hardcore about liturgy. So, of course, our Vigil is on Easter Sunday, and it starts at 5am.

I am there at 4:30, putting on my alb and enduring a gentle ribbing from my friend Kate, who managed to be there on time. The only thing better, in my opinion, than attending the Vigil is serving in it. While our 5am, heavily choreographed, ancient, three hour long liturgy is a far cry from the 45 minutes huddled under a blanket outdoor experience of my childhood, I feel a similar anticipation and excitement in this service to what I felt watching all those sunrises, years ago.

The church is dark as people file in. We wait in our white vestments, holding our sturdy candles. Outside is Seattle, drizzling rain and for the most part fast asleep. But there is a steady stream of pilgrims coming in, getting their tapers at the door, finding places in the dark sanctuary, settling children on the wooden pews. The little Nelson kids are wide eyed, electrified with the rush of being awake when they are usually asleep, the novelty of total darkness in a place where there is always at least one candle burning.

The Vigil is like a sunrise, but longer. From the darkness a tiny light comes - a fire, lit at the back of our space, blessed, and then spread to the hundred or so handheld candles that fill the pews. Songs are sung, and we listen to many stories of the People of God, their readings punctuated by psalms and sung prayer. About 45 minutes in ushers quietly move down the aisles, offering replacement candles because most of them are dangerously close to burning out.

Then, still in darkness, a baptism. Kate and I are left back at the altar while the rest of the servers process with the baptismal candidate back towards the font, where our new fire began some hour ago. We wait until backs are turned and then tiptoe towards the altar rail that separates the congregation from the servers up front, so we can see. Baptisms always make me cry, like seeing someone married or born or dying does. It's something I cannot quite explain.

The sun is almost up now, not outside but in here, where we are. After the baptism Melissa, our priest, takes a bouquet of rosemary and dips it in the waters. She walks around the entire place, flicking water on everyone, letting each of us share in the sacrament of joining that has just taken place. The choir sings a long, chaotic recitation of all our saints, and we remember. Or maybe we just listen in awe. When she returns to the altar we servers face the congregation and all wait for the moment.

This is where Lent makes sense to me. This moment wouldn't be what it is, if we had not been avoiding the word "Alleluia" for the past six weeks. It wouldn't be what it is if our space had not been bare of flowers for the past six weeks, if our priests had not been in simple, spare vestments, if our altar had not gone unadorned by silver, if our Bread was not coarse wheat instead of the usual honeyed white. If we had not just spent ninety minutes in heavy candlelit darkness, if we had not listened again to the Old Testament stories of Creation, Flood, Dry Bones and promises this moment wouldn't hit with the weight that it does. And, this is key to me, if we were not together, a community of faith, all sorts of people who have been doing all of this in union these past six weeks.

"Alleluia Christ is Risen," she sings it. And the lights fly on (not all together, but choreographed, like a sunrise).

"He is risen indeed, Alleluia!" we sing it back, and the pilgrims reach into pockets and purses for bells of all shapes and sizes and begin to ring them vigorously. The organ is playing something familiar and triumphant, and we can see for the first time the explosion of white flowers on both sides of the Table, the gold vestments adorning our sacred ministers and the matching cloth adorning our table.

The sun is up. And we proceed to celebrate an entire mass, basking in the glory of our new year, our new hope, the silver cups and plates, the white bread, the Alleluia, the Mystery of Easter that we can come close to in a sunrise, in a dark liturgy that ends in explosions of gold and light, in all these symbols and sacraments saying with their shapes, lines, and colors what our words cannot express.

"Whew!" My friend who works at the coffee shop down the block from St. Paul's says to me when I stop in after the Vigil for my americano. "That's commitment!"

It isn't though. It's Easter, it is the sun coming up, the trees turning white and pink, the earth warming, it is a new fire inside me and hope burning so strong that my eyes water. It is a Mystery, and I would set one hundred alarm clocks if I had to, to make sure that I got to be there and hold my small piece of the Light.

Shameless Self Promotion

I have the honor of being the editor for our parish blog at St. Paul's, and I'm especially proud of the series we have going on right now. Seven brave people - postulants, aspirants, parishioners, and one clergyperson - have agreed to make blogging part of their Lenten discipline and submit one piece a week for the blog. It's really lovely, a fine mix of voices reflecting on Lent across a wide range of experience both positive and negative.

Click here to check it out.

The work of listening.

I had the privilege of facilitating a leadership retreat for a local parish a few weeks ago, an overnight affair at a campground complete with above average cafeteria food and late-into-the-night, guitar accompanied singing of camp songs. I had a great time, and at the end I was sad to leave them.

I came away from the weekend with a lot of ideas percolating inside me about leadership, goal setting, and the relationship between our ideas of church and the actual practical doing and living of church in the real world. This sort of internal mishmash is a pretty common state for me. Usually something bubbles up to the top of my brain after a while. This time the bubble is about listening.

At one point during the weekend one of the parish leaders was talking about leading, and how parishioners needed to understand that while leadership will listen to them, ultimately the leaders make the decisions. Something felt unfinished about that to me. And then I realized what it was - there needed to be some fleshing out of what it means to listen.

"Yes," I interjected, "it's fine to want them to understand that you make the decisions. But we as leaders also have something to understand. Listening isn't just hearing. Really listening means we are open to being changed by what we hear."

It's a concept I've heard vocalized many times. For some reason this time, saying it out loud myself, something finally clicked. Here is the difference between debate and real listening. This is the part of so many political discussions that seems dishonest to me. We all want to be heard, but the work of really listening isn't easily accomplished.

Imagine - if when you sat down to talk to that relative whose political views are anathema to you, imagine if you entered into the discussion truly open to being changed by their point of view. Scary, isn't it?

Imagine - listening to a homily, or experiencing a mass with the readiness to be changed by that experience?

Lately I have been experimenting with really listening to children. Not just hearing them, and not just giving the child I am speaking with room to air his or her thoughts, ideas, and views on life, but listening to what they have to say with a stance of real openness. That is, openness to being changed by them. Suddenly, the children in my life have much more to say. And I do not want them to ever stop talking.

If I take this idea a little farther, than listening isn't something that happens only in conversation. Listening to my husband might be anything from a certain way of paying attention to him to actually changing my course of action because of something he has to say. Or, as is more likely with my partner, something particular he doesn't have much to say about. Listening to God becomes not just prayer, and not only silence, but an openness to encountering Her anywhere, in unexpected places, in situations both wanted and unwanted, and through people both loved and despised. And not just open to the encounter, but open to being changed by it. That's a difficult thing to accomplish. It means that listening is very hard work.

But all holy work is challenging, right? It can feel like capitulation to change your mind. No one wants to be perceived as wishy washy, wrong, or a push-over. Lucky for us, there are several examples throughout the stories of the people of God where God, even GOD, changes direction. The best known example is probably God's conversation with Abraham about Sodom, but if you look for them there are several examples of God listening to God's people in the way described above, in a way in which God is open to changing as a result of that listening. Does that make God weak, wishy-washy, a push-over? No. I really don't think so. It means that God is capable of true relationship with us, willing to enter and encounter our experience so deeply that there is both give and take there, instead of being just a ruling Deity, God also is a listener. Such an intense listener that creating us and being in relationship with us wasn't enough. God had to become us, as well. Jesus is the best example of God listening to and being changed by human experience that we could possibly have.

So, it's Lent already. And I'm not sure how to quantify this, but I want to become a better listener. I want to figure out some way to do the work inside that will enable me to listen to what is outside of me. Not to just hear, but to listen, to be open to being transformed by what, by Who, is there.

mid-week homily

I am lucky to get to preach now and again at St. Paul's, and last night I gave a teensie little homily at the thursday evening mass. The text and my thoughts on it follow:

mark 8: 27-33 Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, 'Who do people say that I am?' And they answered him, 'John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.' He asked them, 'But who do you say that I am?' Peter answered him, 'You are the Messiah.' And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him. Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, 'Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.'

Our house has been a whirl of expectation and activity for the past week. Andrew and I, as you may or may not know, are in the process of adopting a baby and this past week we reached an important milestone. We finally finished our last piece of paperwork, completed our last interview, and polished up the profile book full of photos and descriptions of our life for potential birth mothers to look at. So, as of right now, we could get matched with a baby at any moment. This has moved me from cautiously excited to full fledged nesting – the house has been rearranged more than once, I have worked up five different possible schemes for daycare arrangements, and when I am not thinking about baby things or going through my growing stash of scavenged baby clothes I am likely to be found daydreaming about what it will be like when I meet my child. I have lots of ideas, and many imaginary scenarios to choose from. We don’t know what the race of our baby will be, or whether our child will be a boy or girl. We don’t even know what state he or she will be born in. There’s plenty of room then, to fantasize about that moment. It feels like I have been waiting forever.

This isn’t the first such moment I have waited longingly for. I’m sure many of you, too, can recall waiting for something that seemed so important and consuming that it was hard to even live while you waited. Or perhaps you are living such a moment right now. The moment you meet the person who will become your spouse or partner. The moment you finally don’t have any more credit card debt. The moment you find out you are pregnant, that you got the job, that the hotel in Maui is booked and tickets have been purchased. That the tests came back negative. That you can finally afford to retire.

Yet, funny thing, these moments are often not quite what we were expecting, are they? Once they have arrived and past, these amazing once-in-a-lifetime forever anticipated moments have a way of turning on us. The baby arrives and – I’m told – parenthood can be something other than unmediated joy. We get married and the fighting starts. The miraculous clean bill of health arrives and… we’ve forgotten how to be healthy. Or, worse, the moment comes and brings us the exact opposite of what we were waiting for – a miscarriage, a divorce, a death sentence, a stock market crash.

In our gospel today we see Peter representing a nation that has been doing the hard work of this sort of waiting. When Jesus asks his disciples “who do you think that I am?” The answer is one that they can hardly dare to say out loud. Only the boldest among them – Peter – can even believe that it is possible. “you are the messiah” he says, and in his words are the long frustrated hopes and dreams of an entire people. This moment – the moment in which a child of Israel can look at the flesh and blood person that is their promised Messiah – is the moment that Peter, the disciples, and all of Israel has been waiting forever to reach.

Now, when you reach such a moment in your life, the tendancy is to celebrate it – shout it to the rooftops! Our baby is here! I’m getting married! There is no more cancer! You are the messiah! And so forth.

But Jesus won’t let Peter celebrate. In fact, the reality of their dream come true isn’t going to be anything like what they thought – this messiah of theirs isn’t here to do anything they were hoping he would. He is here to suffer, to be rejected by those who are important in society, and to die.

Peter finds this extremely disturbing. So much so that he actually attempts to get Jesus – the man he just proclaimed as messiah – to shut up. This, if you remember, does not end well for Peter. The man who just previously was in the midst of one of those moments – the one you wait your whole life for – is now being compared to Satan by the teacher he has been hoping would save the world.

“You are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things” Jesus says to Peter.

Jesus is trying to let Peter and the other disciples in on the truth about him. Their hopes for him had clouded the reality of who he was. Peter’s own focus on the moment when his messiah would stand before him, his own desires and wishes for what that moment would be like, and what would happen afterward, nearly caused him to miss its meaning.

The messiah Peter wanted and the messiah Peter got were not in fact the same person. Peter wanted a great prophet who would invoke tangible political change in the systems that oppressed the people of Israel. Jesus came instead to participate in that oppression, to receive great suffering not to end it. Peter wanted a Messiah who returned Israel to its rightful place in the world, a messiah who would rule over all of what he knew. What he got was a Messiah who submitted to humiliation and death, and who promised more of the same to those who dared to follow him. Yet this messiah, the one Peter got, was compelling enough for Peter to follow him to death and beyond anyway. This messiah was powerful enough to reach beyond the death of everything Peter had wanted from his Lord to something bigger, even more, a resurrection worth living AND dying for.

For, you see, the messiah Peter wanted might have been able to change one political system, or to alter one nation’s reality. Jesus, instead, altered reality for each of us. His choice as God to suffer, to be rejected, disappointed, and ultimately to die a human death gives meaning not just to Peter’s living and dying – but to yours and to mine as well. And the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ offers us a different way to make meaning out of the many small deaths we each suffer as we navigate through life’s huge moments – and the time we spend waiting for them.

But what do we do with this knowledge? How do we prepare ourselves to look at divine and not human things – can we avoid being like Peter, rebuked in the very moment that he should have been triumphant?

Peter’s mistake came, I think, in his refusal to listen to the reality that Jesus had to offer him. He didn’t want to hear what his messiah had to say.

My hope for myself, and for you, and for us as a church community, is that we do want to hear the voice of our messiah, even if that voice is saying something that isn’t what we were hoping to hear. That we would be willing to listen even as we wait for the next defining moment to arrive, that we would be willing to listen even as it washes over us, that we would be able to trust that our messiah’s reality is in that moment – however things play out - and will take us through its death to hope and life beyond.

bowing quietly

Last week Andrew and I took our niece, Sophia, to the Epiphany mass at St. Paul's. Sophia will be three in April, and some might question our decision to take someone at such a tender age to a long anglo-catholic mass at 7pm in the evening. (her usual bedtime is around 8, I think.) But Sophia's parents were at a childbirth class for baby #2 and we were feeling adventurous, so we went for it. Sophia has been a fan of St. Paul's since visiting on Thanksgiving with her parents, and whenever she talks about her experiences there she brings up "people in robes" and "how we bowed quietly!"

Sitting in the hushed and sacred space of the sanctuary I realized yet again something I've known deeply for years, but often forgotten superficially: worship is many things, but it is not boring.

I should qualify, perhaps. If one is paying attention - and few adults pay attention the way that a toddler does - mass is not boring. There is too much going on! I watched my niece take it all in with wide blue eyes: the lofty vaulted ceiling, the lit candles, the robed liturgical ministers, and the smoke rising from the thurible as it swung, incense burning inside. I watched her take it in with her other senses as well - the smell of the incense, the feel of the smooth wooden pew beneath her hands, and the softer cushion under her small knees when we went to the communion rail. The feeling of Mother Melissa's hand on her forehead as Sophia received a blessing with a shy smile and pleased eyes. The warmth of the candles at the Mary shrine, where she insisted on stopping to kneel after we left the rail.

This is not to say she spent the entire hour and a half riveted to the service. Few of our children, do! But Sophia noticed the things that are easy for me to forget about. She was captivated by the elements of our worship that are our truest attempts to capture the mystery of our relationship with God, to express the inexpressible about the Divine one incarnate in the world, with-us. We use incense and candlelight to augment our response to that mystery. We dress our priests and other liturgical ministers in brightly colored vestments in an attempt to celebrate the sacrament we experience together in bread and wine, because while there is much that we don't understand or cannot adequately express about that feast, the one thing we do know is that it is a celebration.

Sophia got it. She was thrilled by the smells, the colors, the candles, and the movements. She stood and sat down and bowed quietly. She also drifted a bit during the homily (though it was lovely) and the prayers. Those were just people talking, and what's so thrilling about that? Grown-ups are always talking. The magic is with the mystery, the unexplainable parts of the mass.

I think the same is true about faith (and prayer) itself - there is something unexplainable about it. Many people try to put it into words, and their attempts can be illuminating, even transformative. But the essence is a lot more like incense or candlelight - sweet and wonderful to behold, undeniable when experienced, and somehow cheapened by description.

I think one of my goals for the coming year is to pay attention to the world the way a toddler would. There's a lot of mystery and wonder to be found - both outside and inside of me, my family, my church, and my religion. I want to keep an eye out for the unexplainable, and my heart open to see and wonder at mystery when it can be found. I also need the reminder that there is much pleasure to be found in the simple routines of life - in this case standing, sitting, experiencing the smells and sights and, when appropriate, bowing quietly.

because one blog is never enough...

Andrew and I have a new project, and we (mostly me, but he might contribute now and again as well) are blogging about it here.

Here's an excerpt from the second post there:
Andrew and I looked at the class schedule for the day with a decided lack of enthusiasm. It was our second day of the mandatory training weekend that is part of our agency's homestudy requirements. The list was grim: Grief and Loss in Adoption, Attachment in Adoption, Transracial Issues for the Adopted Child -and that just took us through to the lunch break. (more)

I'll still be writing here with my personal reflections on theology, vocation, and life in general. So stay tuned!