WHEN GOD SITS ON HARDWOOD PEWS WITHOUT CUSHIONS

In the beginning, the elohim created the skies and the earth.

Welcome back. Let's think about how we are raised in church.

The church I attend follows what is called the Charleston Baptist model. Numinous churches like it are found on the Southeastern Coast.

Charleston Baptists possess an educated clergy and congregations. They are liturgical in their worship, and they follow the Christian calendar.

Church members comment how different our church is from the "one that brung them."  For instance, one of our members preached this past week about celebrating Epiphany. He said the church he was raised in only celebrated Christmas and Easter.

Amen to that. My home church on Signal Mountain, Tennessee celebrated simplicity in a sanctuary that at first had been carved out of wood.  There were no purples, blues, yellows, or other colorful hues in my home church.  Apparently, God's shekina glory glowed best in brown and white. Wooden pews without cushions, a wooden pulpit without a microphone, wooden walls with painted windows kept worship simple so church members could turn themselves more faithfully to God's presence among them.

After the church burned down from a lightning strike, and it burned rather quickly because of all the wood, a new sanctuary of river rock arose. Purple, blue, and yellow painted windows lined the walls. I recall a pretty dove scene installed inside the baptistery.   

Even with such nice touches, the church still celebrated only Christmas and Easter. Those services were not unlike other services throughout the year except that members glittered in newly gotten clothes.

We never celebrated Epiphany in that church. In fact, I have never celebrated Epiphany in any church, ever. Indeed, I never heard the word until I read The Sacred and Profane by Mercea Eliade in a religion class during my sophomore year.

I still do not know what to think about the Charleston Baptist model. The services at First Baptist contain numerous liturgical responses, prayer recitations, and statements of faith that I botch every Sunday. I begin reading late or I read the wrong thing, but I never quit or get frustrated. I am learning a new way to worship. 

This past year, I observed (watched, literally) Advent. Soon Ash Wednesday will be here. My pastor mentioned that it would be early this year. That means a lot of reflection I never knew before will precede Easter.

What a fascinating way of being a person of faith in the world!  Last night I wrote about how pumpkins signal the cycle of autumn in a year. Now, I can actually experience a special frame of heart so that my calendar is filled with cycles that are new, mystical, and unforeseen. I look forward to assimilating those new cycles into my own spiritual journey.

Blessings...

All the Pretty Pumpkins Gone Away

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back. Let's think about pumpkins.














As I perambulated in the early morning yesterday, I walked past a church that annually fills up its yard with hundreds of pumpkins in October. You can see a photographic view I took this year during one of my walks.  

The air felt breezy and cool. A full moon glowed through a thin layer of fast moving cloud cover, illuminating dark stretches of sidewalk beyond the reach of the street lights.  

When I passed the church, the hard dirt lawn covered with straw looked desolate. Maybe I had noted before that the pumpkins were gone as I drove past, or even walked by, but I had the sensation yesterday as if for the first time that they had all vanished.

Their disappearance did not strike me as gradual, but as occurring overnight. I did see buyers coming and going in the yard. Surely, the number of pumpkins decreased, but that was forgotten yesterday morning.

Those pumpkins make my life interesting. Every year they represent the changing of the season from torrid summer to delicious autumn. Now, that they are gone, it feels as if they never existed.  

There's an awareness of normalcy that can be very comforting when the seasons change. A sudden surge of joy can catch us off guard when something familiar that has been long gone appears again.  

I will smile when I see pumpkins set out again onto that church yard. It reminds me how difficult it is to describe a spiritual moment. 

Most of us think speaking in tongues is spiritual or praying is divine. I have no experience with the former and the latter often has all the sensation of an exercise. 

Indeed, I imagine a genuine spiritual experience would be rare, not weekly, and it would contain an element of surprise.

Like when the mere sight of pumpkins annually shrouded in night can suddenly become numinous and suggest a reality that has always been, but is not always revealed.

Blessings... 

    

'Twas the Before School...

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back. Let's think about tomorrow.

They're coming. They're coming. Nothing can stop them. No ministry of magic can halt them. They will be here soon enough. In fact, they are just a few hours away. No amount of medication can ease the anxiety of their arrival. It will happen. I must let it happen.I have no choice. To resist is futile.

I'm writing about students of course.  Our second semester begins tomorrow. I will be teaching a subject I've never taught, British Literature, and one subject I've taught twice now, American Literature. Luckily for me, they are my favorites besides the Bible and theology.

In truth, I can talk to anyone for hours and hours about great literature, the Bible, and theology. I am never intimidated by content.

However, earlier today, as I looked over the names of the students, none of whom I know, I wondered how many among them would be teachable. Heck, I wondered how many would be approachable. With that wondering came visions of sullen, irate, crabby kids. Surely, a few will dawdle day in and day out. Others will militantly defy any learning I might try to whip up in my classroom. I could just about bet the house on that. 

I know something now that I merely intimated before. Those emotions are old feelings emerging from ghosts of hellish classes long past. Such emotions fuel anxiety dreams that I have from time to time where an administrator suddenly pops into my classroom to evaluate me on the day I forgot to wear my trousers.

Oh those irrational fears torment us so. Indeed, when I consider the facts of late, I know that I am unable to make one reliable prediction about the students who are coming.  

Last semester, only seven students failed my three classes. That's seven out of ninety! Only three failed the Georgia writing test. Many of my students were polite, fun, and interesting. They refuted my phantoms from yesterday.

This kind of experience makes it impossible for me to accept the finality of my judgment about anything. I am reminded once again of my own fallibility and ignorance. I can never say with certainty what God is, what life is, who people really are, and who my students will be tomorrow.

I can only say that the worst moments of the past do not dictate what is happening to me now. So I hope, believe, and love with a view that the places where those ways lead me are overwhelmingly the best settings for my life story.

Blessings...  

HEARD AT CHURCH:  

How to Make a Christ

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back.  

Today, the preacher said that the church reveals Christ to the world.  That is our mission.  

I could not help but think (to borrow from an atheistic criticism of faith in God) if Christ did not exist in the world, it would be necessary that we invent him.

Over the centuries, Christ has been absent from the deeds, thoughts, and doctrines of church people.  

Where truth is maligned, including scientific truth, Christ is absent.

Where kindness is seen as weakness, Christ is not there.

Where forgiveness is exclusive and not universal, Christ is far away.

Where violence is, Christ is not.

There does not have to be a particular belief about a god for love to exist.  The atheists are right about that. 

I've known a lot of infidels who were more decent and more humane than most of the Christians with whom I was raised.  

I've read the writings and watched the lives of many atheists who were more decent and more humane than the god and the life-in-Christ proclaimed by my Christian brothers and sisters.

Where there is love, there is Christ.  Where there is church, there should always be love.  

If the church is present, but love is not, then the church is fallen.  It trips up everyone else trying to go upward and onward.

The church which is not a building, but people who would reveal Christ in the world, can always be born again.  The church always has the potential to make a more convincing case for the presence of our God of love when we love as Christ loved. 

That is really all we must do and must believe.  If we cannot do at least that much, we knock a lot of other folks down.

So that was what I thought today after hearing a message about what God revealed when Jesus was born.

Blessings...