Some gifts from the archives of the Unitarian Universalist Christian Fellowship:
1. December Prayers by Carl Scovel: Christ my morning, Christ my evening, Christ my noon, and Christ my rest...Transcendent truth, transform me...O God, teach me my insufficiency, then my power...Holy God, Holy River, Holy Reservoir to which my waters flow, Holy Spring from which they come, Holy Moving, Holy Mystery, Holy More than my mere words, Holy Void into which I pour my pitcher, Holy Flowing in which I love and move and am--and all this does not say yet. (after reading Psalm 46:3-4).
2. Christmas is about the coming of the Messiah. It is about the breaking through into time--our time, not just a time two thousand years ago--Christmas is about the breaking through into time of God's grace...The Christmas faith is not a faith in something which happened two thousand years ago, and it was done and over with then. We do not wend our way to the manger at Christmas to worship past history but to worship him who was called Emmanuel--God with us--here...now.--Judith Hoehler.
3. And as we sing our lessons and carols, this from James Luther Adams: The Christian, in singing, does more than express emotion. Like the singers of other traditions, there are songs of praise, confession, recollection, dedication, and fellowship. Hymns become forms of communion between people and God, providing a bridge that leads to the victory of the creative and recreative powers of the divine, thereby enabling us to find a new flute and a new melody such as the song the stars sang together on the morning of creation. Why do we sing? Carlyle has told us: "All Deep things are song. It seems somehow the very central essence of us is Song; as if all the rest were but wrappings and hulls. The primal element of us and of all things, the heart of creation, is music."
We are surrounded by a mighty cloud of witnesses, those who have left us the legacy of their lives and those who are with us today, supporting us and reminding us to look up where the Star of Bethlehem shines for all to see. For all, no matter what.
Friday, December 26, 2008
Creating Community One Meal at a Time
Is the title of a wonderful recent piece in Friends Journal; a call for religious communities to create relationships, move toward more sustainability, and reclaim communal eating as one of the marks of the Christian life. Raising awareness about that 1200 to 1500 mile trip on average the normal bite that goes into a U.S. resident's mouth takes and what it costs us personally and socially now and on into the future.
Envision a small group of people, some members of a church who know each other and some residents of the wider community who know each other, and some joining the group for the first time or off and on when they can, gathering on a Sunday morning in the missional center that is their expression of faith all the rest of the time, but at this time coming together around the cross and table to light candles and share the joys and concerns of their lives and the life of their wider community, praying the Lord's Prayer, singing together, celebrating the bread and the cup of Jesus, then bringing not a potluck meal to share, but bringing the ingredients of meals to share, and wherever and however possible and growing over time the ingredients will be a part of the community's "foodshed", and then all preparing together not only a meal to eat together on that Sunday, but promote preparing together a diversity of meals that could be taken home to be eaten throughout the week, creating more intentional meals of health rather than impulse eating, and/or meals that could be stored at the missional center to be shared as necessary during the week with others; coming together this one Sunday morning to help, in real, meal-centered ways, people to have less stressful and healthier days when all are physically apart from one another.
That sounds like worship to me. Children could be a part of all of it; and/or have their own version or time together during the meal preparation community. They learn that church is a community of values, resting on relationships, restoring souls for service and networking them as mustard seeds and leaven into the world. It sounds like something you don't have to have any particular set-aside experience or knowledge to do and coordinate. It can be multiplied and taken to new places and new times as needed.
This is nothing new, but stay tuned for the continuing Reformation of the Church....one meal at a time.
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Envision a small group of people, some members of a church who know each other and some residents of the wider community who know each other, and some joining the group for the first time or off and on when they can, gathering on a Sunday morning in the missional center that is their expression of faith all the rest of the time, but at this time coming together around the cross and table to light candles and share the joys and concerns of their lives and the life of their wider community, praying the Lord's Prayer, singing together, celebrating the bread and the cup of Jesus, then bringing not a potluck meal to share, but bringing the ingredients of meals to share, and wherever and however possible and growing over time the ingredients will be a part of the community's "foodshed", and then all preparing together not only a meal to eat together on that Sunday, but promote preparing together a diversity of meals that could be taken home to be eaten throughout the week, creating more intentional meals of health rather than impulse eating, and/or meals that could be stored at the missional center to be shared as necessary during the week with others; coming together this one Sunday morning to help, in real, meal-centered ways, people to have less stressful and healthier days when all are physically apart from one another.
That sounds like worship to me. Children could be a part of all of it; and/or have their own version or time together during the meal preparation community. They learn that church is a community of values, resting on relationships, restoring souls for service and networking them as mustard seeds and leaven into the world. It sounds like something you don't have to have any particular set-aside experience or knowledge to do and coordinate. It can be multiplied and taken to new places and new times as needed.
This is nothing new, but stay tuned for the continuing Reformation of the Church....one meal at a time.
Type your summary here
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Beginning Jan. 1: The Rule of Benedict
Subtitled "Insights for the Ages" by Sister Joan Chittister, these selections and commentary arranged daily in a cycle that allows you to come back to them twice more during the year, will be my daily reflection book. A good way to continue some movement prompted by the other recent works, The New Friars and Flirting with Monasticsm. Occasional reports to follow in the new year as I seek to explore ways to ground our missional being in a more monastic understanding and practice.
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Christmas Eve
Tomorrow at 11 pm we will hold our Christmas Eve "midnight" service of lessons and carols and communion in A Third Place Community Center, 6514 N. Peoria Ave. A time of peace and hope, a celebration of what is being born of the divine within us, among us, and beyond us. A time to remember the night 2000 years ago when a small group gathered together under a star that shined where no stars had shined before; in a cave with stray animals coming in and out to eat, a bit of shelter where there were no inns, where a few shepherds were drawn by the gossip and by the message that here was something wonderful happening, something hard to describe, something that hadn't happened before, a hint, a glimpse that the world was about to shift just a little, a ripple of kindness spreading, a thought beginning to grow, that the Almighty could be seen and felt in an out of the way place, off anyone's map, in the lives of an outcast couple that didn't resemble respectable couples, in the wondering eyes and the grasp of a baby's hand that could hold the universe, a small fragile palm that touch was to touch Ultimate Love.
Tomorrow at 11 pm we will begin moving toward the turning at midnight of Christmas, with open doors for whomever may need a place to come and sit and light a candle on this Silent Night. Almost everything around us will be closed, except a convenience store and gas station, signs of the Empire, and perhaps a few miles away a bar on Lewis Ave. Both the station and the bar will undoubtedly have more people at midnight than we will have inside our community center in Turley. Our spirit will be with those gathered in the bar, who come to the station on their late hour drives to their other places to be, and with all those who are gathering with families, tucking in children one more time again, getting ready for the late nights wherever they are, and with those finding a place in the abandoned cars, the shelters, the jailed, the hospitals, and with those who care for them on this night as with other nights, our thoughts will be with them and with you. And for those few who are able to come to be with us in Turley at 11 pm counting down the minutes to Christmas with silence, and song, and the old old story, and the passing of bread and juice, Presence Enough, we will seek to make visible in our world now that night so long ago, when something happened that no one else but a few saw....a light in the darkness, a few souls together, an open hole in the cave to strangers, a new life.
Wherever you are tomorrow and on the day after that, know that you have a candle lit for you here, that you may take the story into your heart this season, that you are a blessing to one another and to the world, so be full of life in all its abundance and diversity of spirit that has already been given to you, for unto you this day was born a child to remind us that all are children of God, and go in peace into the places of your life and think of A Third Place, go into the places of your life and be in peace, in prayer, in passion.
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Tomorrow at 11 pm we will begin moving toward the turning at midnight of Christmas, with open doors for whomever may need a place to come and sit and light a candle on this Silent Night. Almost everything around us will be closed, except a convenience store and gas station, signs of the Empire, and perhaps a few miles away a bar on Lewis Ave. Both the station and the bar will undoubtedly have more people at midnight than we will have inside our community center in Turley. Our spirit will be with those gathered in the bar, who come to the station on their late hour drives to their other places to be, and with all those who are gathering with families, tucking in children one more time again, getting ready for the late nights wherever they are, and with those finding a place in the abandoned cars, the shelters, the jailed, the hospitals, and with those who care for them on this night as with other nights, our thoughts will be with them and with you. And for those few who are able to come to be with us in Turley at 11 pm counting down the minutes to Christmas with silence, and song, and the old old story, and the passing of bread and juice, Presence Enough, we will seek to make visible in our world now that night so long ago, when something happened that no one else but a few saw....a light in the darkness, a few souls together, an open hole in the cave to strangers, a new life.
Wherever you are tomorrow and on the day after that, know that you have a candle lit for you here, that you may take the story into your heart this season, that you are a blessing to one another and to the world, so be full of life in all its abundance and diversity of spirit that has already been given to you, for unto you this day was born a child to remind us that all are children of God, and go in peace into the places of your life and think of A Third Place, go into the places of your life and be in peace, in prayer, in passion.
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Saturday, November 29, 2008
The Thanksgiving and Advent Church
Hi all. Happy Thanksgiving and Happy Advent.
First, a few announcements then a few stories:
This past Friday was Buy Nothing Day, when we join with others around the globe in creating a counter culture to the consumerist "Black Friday" that seeks to promote affluence, appearances, and the nation's perceived GNP at the expense of the real health of individuals and families and communities. Starting at 9 a.m. we held our Giveaway Day from the donation room of A Third Place and offer our space for people to bring items of their own to giveaway to others. Our donation room works to promote this culture shift every day but we are pleased to yoke it with the annual Buy Nothing Day movement. I get more than a little "prophetic" when I keep hearing how important corporate "profits" are to our future if those are dependent, as so many are pushing regardless of political affiliation, on increased consumer spending and easier debt and disposable marketentertainmentplace values and products.
Sunday join us at Church of the Restoration, just south of Pine on Greenwood, at 11 a.m. for worship where I will be preaching on Advent and a theology of presence in north Tulsa through the mission of our churches.
And keep Sunday, Dec. 14 at 11 a.m. in mind when I will be with the Metropolitan Community Church United of Tulsa near the Airport. See http://www.mcctulsa.org/Welcome.html.
WOW: Weekly on Wednesdays beginning this Advent, on Dec. 3:
7 a.m. Morning Prayer and Midweek Meditation and Breakfast, a short period of centering the soul.
11 a.m. Bible Chat with Ron
Noon Prayer and Meal
6 pm to 8 pm Vespers Meal, Conversation, Advent Communion
Dec. 3, 10, 17 our Advent study will focus on Shane Claiborne's book "Becoming the Answers to Our Prayers."
This Thanksgiving Day was a great demonstration of our incarnational way of being the church. It was a kind of parable of us. Many churches do wonderful things on and for Thanksgiving; the line at John 3;16 mission for free turkeys stretched down the block when I went by there the other day, and I heard many stories of churches giving out food so families could make their own meals; and I know some families who passed the word that those who needed a place to eat with others could come to where they were gathered. These are part of the "come to us" type of churches, and we need more like them. But we also need more like ours, a "be amongst others" church, a go to them and learn from them, dedicated above all to creating relationships, connections, community and not just providing a handout or a service. We ate our meal with about 30 others at A Third Place, and some brought something to share too, and helped others while they were here; our new stove donated by a member of the wider community and connected by a volunteer; one of our new volunteers prepared all the place settings so people wouldn't fill like they were going through a line, and also cleaned the children's room; and people who couldn't eat with us brought food and will be around to serve and share leftover meals during the Giveaway Day tomorrow; plates of food were made and taken to those homebound during visits. We learned stories from those we ate with, and got ideas for ways we could partner with them, like the women who showed up from the local horse rescue group. We had people who had never been to the community center before too, but who will be back. A new Turley Tradition was started with this meal.
The day before Thanksgiving a man who had hitchhiked from Washington found his way to the Center to seek help in using our computers to try to find a relative in the area; a thanksgiving reunion happened at the Center.
We began our season of Reverse Offering this past Wednesday during Vespers when we distributed money to be used as people can come up with ideas on how that money can seed change in people or communities. We will share our stories in January on the Wednesday near Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
This coming Sunday is the First Sunday of Advent. Advent is our preparation period to focus ourselves on the coming of Christmas, the Incarnation, the spirit becoming flesh, becoming meaty, becoming vulnerable, when the Spirit of God became visible in the world through the birth, life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus. It is a time when we enter into the story of how the divine spirit came not to the showy, the wealthy, the powerful, the resourceful, the institutional, not to any place and people where it would be expected by the world. Instead it came to a single poor young woman living in an unknown and unregarded part of the world under occupation by the world's mightiest power, when God switched sides, when it took on a human face, an earthy experience, one susceptible to all that we are susceptible to, even penultimately ending up on a cross. That is something worth following a star toward...It is something to use as a model for our lives and for our faith communities. This Advent let's contemplate how our churches and our lives are Advent-ures of an incarnational kind.
First, a few announcements then a few stories:
This past Friday was Buy Nothing Day, when we join with others around the globe in creating a counter culture to the consumerist "Black Friday" that seeks to promote affluence, appearances, and the nation's perceived GNP at the expense of the real health of individuals and families and communities. Starting at 9 a.m. we held our Giveaway Day from the donation room of A Third Place and offer our space for people to bring items of their own to giveaway to others. Our donation room works to promote this culture shift every day but we are pleased to yoke it with the annual Buy Nothing Day movement. I get more than a little "prophetic" when I keep hearing how important corporate "profits" are to our future if those are dependent, as so many are pushing regardless of political affiliation, on increased consumer spending and easier debt and disposable marketentertainmentplace values and products.
Sunday join us at Church of the Restoration, just south of Pine on Greenwood, at 11 a.m. for worship where I will be preaching on Advent and a theology of presence in north Tulsa through the mission of our churches.
And keep Sunday, Dec. 14 at 11 a.m. in mind when I will be with the Metropolitan Community Church United of Tulsa near the Airport. See http://www.mcctulsa.org/Welcome.html.
WOW: Weekly on Wednesdays beginning this Advent, on Dec. 3:
7 a.m. Morning Prayer and Midweek Meditation and Breakfast, a short period of centering the soul.
11 a.m. Bible Chat with Ron
Noon Prayer and Meal
6 pm to 8 pm Vespers Meal, Conversation, Advent Communion
Dec. 3, 10, 17 our Advent study will focus on Shane Claiborne's book "Becoming the Answers to Our Prayers."
This Thanksgiving Day was a great demonstration of our incarnational way of being the church. It was a kind of parable of us. Many churches do wonderful things on and for Thanksgiving; the line at John 3;16 mission for free turkeys stretched down the block when I went by there the other day, and I heard many stories of churches giving out food so families could make their own meals; and I know some families who passed the word that those who needed a place to eat with others could come to where they were gathered. These are part of the "come to us" type of churches, and we need more like them. But we also need more like ours, a "be amongst others" church, a go to them and learn from them, dedicated above all to creating relationships, connections, community and not just providing a handout or a service. We ate our meal with about 30 others at A Third Place, and some brought something to share too, and helped others while they were here; our new stove donated by a member of the wider community and connected by a volunteer; one of our new volunteers prepared all the place settings so people wouldn't fill like they were going through a line, and also cleaned the children's room; and people who couldn't eat with us brought food and will be around to serve and share leftover meals during the Giveaway Day tomorrow; plates of food were made and taken to those homebound during visits. We learned stories from those we ate with, and got ideas for ways we could partner with them, like the women who showed up from the local horse rescue group. We had people who had never been to the community center before too, but who will be back. A new Turley Tradition was started with this meal.
The day before Thanksgiving a man who had hitchhiked from Washington found his way to the Center to seek help in using our computers to try to find a relative in the area; a thanksgiving reunion happened at the Center.
We began our season of Reverse Offering this past Wednesday during Vespers when we distributed money to be used as people can come up with ideas on how that money can seed change in people or communities. We will share our stories in January on the Wednesday near Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
This coming Sunday is the First Sunday of Advent. Advent is our preparation period to focus ourselves on the coming of Christmas, the Incarnation, the spirit becoming flesh, becoming meaty, becoming vulnerable, when the Spirit of God became visible in the world through the birth, life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus. It is a time when we enter into the story of how the divine spirit came not to the showy, the wealthy, the powerful, the resourceful, the institutional, not to any place and people where it would be expected by the world. Instead it came to a single poor young woman living in an unknown and unregarded part of the world under occupation by the world's mightiest power, when God switched sides, when it took on a human face, an earthy experience, one susceptible to all that we are susceptible to, even penultimately ending up on a cross. That is something worth following a star toward...It is something to use as a model for our lives and for our faith communities. This Advent let's contemplate how our churches and our lives are Advent-ures of an incarnational kind.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Monastic?
Below and off and on I have mentioned New Monastic movement, and gradually I have been drawn to the balance of missional-monastic for the vision of where we might go with our community here. A lot of this might depend on some discerning and dreaming we are doing around a possible new and much larger space, an old church building near us, but more with the desire to be an urban monastery or house of hospitality in this abandoned place of Empire we live in, as a way of creating a culture counter to the one about us, bringing back daily communal open to all public prayer, sharing of possessions and giving of them away, and our working together in service beyond ourselves. However, I am not sure we will become monastic in the sense of sharing living space on a daily basis with other members of the community, as is the monastic custom both old and new. Who knows what the future holds, but one way to move in this direction is to seek to live monastically, even if not as monastics. A recent read here in this regard is Karen Sloan's Flirting With Monasticism: Finding God on Ancient Paths. The main take-away that moves beyond the specifics of her own story is that we individually and communally can benefit from learning with and from and taking into our disciplines what the various traditions of monasticism have given us; there may be much that is not transferrable, but it is a conversation to become engaged with. I hope to revisit it here more soon. Oh, and The New Friars by Scott Bessenecker is one I might have mentioned too that has a helpful and different take on missional-monastic, and how friars, as opposed to monks, have been more popularly seen as out on their own or in pairs working in the world instead of, or in addition to, time withdrawn from the world. It is all transformational though.
This Advent will be eventful though as a few seeds and steps begin.
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This Advent will be eventful though as a few seeds and steps begin.
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From Next Gen leaders in Sojourners
This begins a series of quick quotes and excerpts and marginalia from not too long ago reading.
From Sojourners back in June:
Eliacin Rosario-Cruz (http://www.msainfo.org/ & see below for comments on Tom Sine's book): Christians need to create contexts in which we live out the way of Jesus---physical places and relationships in which the story given to us by a market-driven, individualistic, racist, sexist system is challenged and subverted." What gives him hope? Easter. My daughter's love for gardening. Our little community of the Mustard Seed House. Friendship with other young conspirators. Libraries. Autonomous social movements in the Global South. Street artists. Workers co-ops in Argentina. Potlucks. Horizontalismo. New Monastics. DIY culture.
Lyndsay Moseley, Sierra Club---As John Muir said, "Everyone needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal body and soul alike."
Beauty, play, prayer, nature, healing---good guides for the road ahead here, things to look for as we grow organically and in that wonderful phrase, and statement of mission, create contexts in which we live out the way of Jesus.
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From Sojourners back in June:
Eliacin Rosario-Cruz (http://www.msainfo.org/ & see below for comments on Tom Sine's book): Christians need to create contexts in which we live out the way of Jesus---physical places and relationships in which the story given to us by a market-driven, individualistic, racist, sexist system is challenged and subverted." What gives him hope? Easter. My daughter's love for gardening. Our little community of the Mustard Seed House. Friendship with other young conspirators. Libraries. Autonomous social movements in the Global South. Street artists. Workers co-ops in Argentina. Potlucks. Horizontalismo. New Monastics. DIY culture.
Lyndsay Moseley, Sierra Club---As John Muir said, "Everyone needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal body and soul alike."
Beauty, play, prayer, nature, healing---good guides for the road ahead here, things to look for as we grow organically and in that wonderful phrase, and statement of mission, create contexts in which we live out the way of Jesus.
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About us in "Small Talk"; Missional-Monastic?
The final part of the three part essay on us that I wrote for Small Talk publication is now available on its website. Thanks so much for their work and for highlighting ours. Go to www.spiritoflifepublishing.com and click on newsletters and go to volume 6 or http://www.spiritoflifepublishing.com/newsletters.html. Support their mission.
Things develop and evolve so fast when you move from organizational to organic. I can already see how this essay written just a few months ago was right at the turning point of how we had transformed from what most folks think of as church into being more of a missional group with weekly worship more like part of our mission to ourselves, resting in God's presence, so we can continue embodying that presence to others. Now I wonder what we might be able to write about us a year or two from now, as we begin to add, bit by bit (see the post below), monastical to missional.
In his latest good book, The New Conspirators, Tom Sine has a good overview of the different streams of dawning church that he calls 1. emerging. 2. missional, 3. mosaic, and 4. monastic. I will try to comment on these more in the coming days, but I can see us in our existing group anyway straddling the missional-monastic, having moved away from the emergent attempt back in 2003. It is also fun to see a developing mosaic type church with the changes that have begun at All Souls in Tulsa with the weaving together of that church with the members of the previous New Dimensions Church led by Carlton Pearson. More to come.
Things develop and evolve so fast when you move from organizational to organic. I can already see how this essay written just a few months ago was right at the turning point of how we had transformed from what most folks think of as church into being more of a missional group with weekly worship more like part of our mission to ourselves, resting in God's presence, so we can continue embodying that presence to others. Now I wonder what we might be able to write about us a year or two from now, as we begin to add, bit by bit (see the post below), monastical to missional.
In his latest good book, The New Conspirators, Tom Sine has a good overview of the different streams of dawning church that he calls 1. emerging. 2. missional, 3. mosaic, and 4. monastic. I will try to comment on these more in the coming days, but I can see us in our existing group anyway straddling the missional-monastic, having moved away from the emergent attempt back in 2003. It is also fun to see a developing mosaic type church with the changes that have begun at All Souls in Tulsa with the weaving together of that church with the members of the previous New Dimensions Church led by Carlton Pearson. More to come.
Icons and Images, Retreat and Turley
It has been quiet for a while here on the blog as work and local action get busy, but I have been accumulating a lot of bits and pieces that I will be posting in the days to come to make up. Here to start is some more about some recent travels and upcoming events in the neighborhood through the Living Room Church and A Third Place Center. It begins with a reflection on a spiritual retreat again at Glastonbury Abbey in Hingham MA.
It was wonderfully refreshing to be on spiritual retreat at Glastonbury Abbey, a Benedictine home of hospitality near Massachusett's Cape Code. A spiritual retreat is somewhat of a misnomer since so much of it has to do with bodily rest, bodily rhythms and re-orientation, and rediscovering the joy of simple physical things. And I am thankful to be home. The particular focus of the conversation during the retreat was on "Seeing Jesus" and on the physical presentations of what no one can re-present physically, which is what Jesus looked like. I looked at hundreds of diverse images and icons made of faces and bodies in a myriad of poses, all called Jesus, and from nearly all centuries since Jesus, some by famous artists, some by artists I want to get to know better, and some by the early faithful followers of Jesus in the catacombs and elsewhere who are and always will be unknown, and whom I think I would like to know best of all.
And so now here in Turley again I find the vibrant and comforting and challenging spirit behind those images and icons of Jesus, this time shining through the people around here and in this place. Spending a lot of time looking at faces in art helps, believe me, to see more clearly and more deeply the faces we encounter all around us--especially if those faces in art have themselves tried to convey a glimpse of the divine.
I thought during the retreat of how,during the births of our two daughters, Bonnie followed that contemporary ritual of birthing, having a special photograph, a face, to center her thoughts during labor, a makeshift altar in a hospital room; and how important it is, for the same reason, to have little altars around us all the time, at home in corners, on the refrigerator, in our cars, out in our yards, on our desks or workplaces wherever possible, little bits and pieces of sacredness to re-orient us, like prayer, throughout our day. I know I need to fill my canvass of life with these iconic reflections more often.
And I know that all our A Third Place/Living Room Church gatherings of service and study and communion and community times are themselves images of Jesus which help us to find the Spirit and, refreshed, let it go to be born into the world.
And so as we draw into the special marking of the Thanksgiving Season, we are thankful for all that is being born within and among and beyond us, through us--and we have an eye, an expectant and eager eye, on the Advent and Christmas season and all that may, yet, be born which we have no inkling of now.
Who could have, for example, forseen the following, these times ahead on our schedule below where we enter into our mission of "becoming a body of people, who make Jesus visible in the world?." Everyday, it seems, something new is being born....
Wednesday, Nov. 19--6 p.m. meal, conversation, communion. We may be spending our time after the meal exploring a possible new and much larger building for our missions; we may be revisiting what it means to be ethical eaters and our developing food ministries, and how all of it grows out of and feeds into our sense of what communion is in our radical hospitality tradition, drawing from a recent and wonderful book called "Take This Bread" by writer, lesbian, political radical leftist, cook, Episcopalian Sara Miles (check out http://www.saramiles.net/). Come and see what all happens.
Friday, Nov. 21, I will be meeting here in Turley with an ACORN representative for some learning and connections, then meeting again with the TU law clinic to continue our project developments, and then meeting with representatives from the Kendall-Whittier community association to talk about their history of renewal.
The health clinic meets every Monday, Tuesday and Friday full day here, except for during the Thanksgiving week. Call A Third Place or OU 660-3613 for information on access during that week.
Saturday, Nov. 22, 12-step The Lighthouse meets at 7:30 p.m. here.
Sunday, Nov. 23, worshipping with Church of the Restoration at 11 a.m., Pine and Greenwood.
Tuesday, Nov. 25 we will be meeting with a member of OU Social Work Department again, this time about developing projects and particularly partnerships for our community gardening. Just today I had new leads and people wanting to help us with this work. Then at 7 p.m. meet with the Turley Community Association at O'Brien Park.
Wednesday, Nov. 26, 6 pm meal, conversation, communion: a look at how prayer can change the world, based on the new book by Shane Claiborne, "Becoming the Answer to our Prayers: prayer for ordinary radicals." [If you'd like to share in this conversation with us, let me know for a free copy of the book].
Thanksgiving, Nov. 27, 1 pm we will bring our families, our food, and meet with others in our wider community who will bring their families, and if possible, their food, and share in this holiday meal and time together at our Center. All for free. We will also launch our Buy Nothing Day events encouraging people to take from our wonderful bargain donation room instead of shopping for new things for Christmas.
Oppose "Black Friday", Buy Nothing Day, Friday, Nov. 28. On the day the consumerist society seeks to encourage debt and bankruptcy of many in order that a few may reap increasing profits and on that day supposedly "go into the black or plus side of the business ledger" we will offer our alternative society counterweight of giving away nearly everything we can out of our donation room and plus from our homes, helping people fight the system of "gotta have it" labels and gadgets, recovering the joys of sharing. Come by and help us give to all freely. We have great books, clothes, large items, weird items, and more. The five and dime store is back, for free. This will help us create room for expanding our "lending library of tools and medical equipment and other items of necessity that not all need to own separately."
Sunday, Nov. 30, First Day of Advent, 11 a.m. Church of the Restoration. I will be leading worship and preaching on our mission in north Tulsa and Turley, our theology of presence, our inside-out church. Get a preview by going to look at the three part series of essays I wrote for Small Talk magazine, volume six in the newsletter section at http://www.spiritoflifepublishing.com/newsletters.html.
Beginning in the Advent Season, the season of new spiritual birth, Wednesdays beginning Dec. 3 will become a Mid-Week Day of Monastery and Meditation here, in addition to our missional daily work, we will have 15-30 minute morning prayer and breakfast at 7 a.m. (if you are interested but an earlier or later time in the morning would work for you, just let me know and we will see how it goes as we develop this); noon prayer and bible chat and lunch, and then our weekly Wednesday vespers beginning with meal at 6 p.m. All free, for all. If you'd like to be a prayer or meal leader during one of these times, just let me know. Come share with me also ways we can transform some of our inside space, and the new backalley space, into places for solitude and silence, even if it is semi-solitude and semi-silence of course. It's time for me also to resurrect my "Souls and Soles" meditative walking, so if you would like a walking partner, or want to join me, drop me a line and we can connect, same goes for those who would like an hour of spiritual reflection scheduled monthly.
A look ahead: Friday, Dec. 5, 5:30 p.m. at Tulsa Community College, meeting with other community organizers in north Tulsa House District 72; Tuesday, Dec. 9, noon, special program on personal and neighborhood safety by Sherry Clark, see http://www.facestulsa.org/; Saturday, Dec. 13, a special day of community gardening and transforming one of our neglected intersections in Turley; Sunday, Dec. 14 I will be in church and leading conversation on missional church with the Tulsa Metropolitan Community Church (http://www.mcctulsa.org/) and looking for ways to partner; also look forward to our tour and meeting at the Turley Correctional/Residential Center next month, developing co-mission with the YWCA of north Tulsa on issues such as anti-racism and living multi-culturally with the YWCA, holding a program on disabilities awareness and learning how to be more hospitable, and a relaxing time for celebrating Christmas with one another, and for all those relationships and community and missions bubbling up and taking shape, and those I know I have forgotten to mention here that I should have. Looking even further ahead: plan to be a part of our local welcoming group working with the Unitarian Universalist Christian Fellowship Revival as it comes to Tulsa and also to Turley, go to http://www.uuchristian.org/ and especially click on the Revival link, and let me know you would like to be a part of it in March, and plan now to go to the regional UU summer camp this year at Western Hills Resort near Wagoner, a short drive from us, Aug. 2-7, part or all of the week.
Also I go to Phillips Theological Seminary in Tulsa at Admiral and Mingo on Tuesdays at 11:30 a.m. for chapel and then, as Director of Ministerial Formation for UU students, meet with students and others at noon meal for wonderful conversation, and would love to have you join with me sometime as my guest, especially if you are interested in seminary or possibly just taking some courses there. Let me know as there are some weeks that the seminary does not have these activities, such as next week during Thanksgiving Week.
It was wonderfully refreshing to be on spiritual retreat at Glastonbury Abbey, a Benedictine home of hospitality near Massachusett's Cape Code. A spiritual retreat is somewhat of a misnomer since so much of it has to do with bodily rest, bodily rhythms and re-orientation, and rediscovering the joy of simple physical things. And I am thankful to be home. The particular focus of the conversation during the retreat was on "Seeing Jesus" and on the physical presentations of what no one can re-present physically, which is what Jesus looked like. I looked at hundreds of diverse images and icons made of faces and bodies in a myriad of poses, all called Jesus, and from nearly all centuries since Jesus, some by famous artists, some by artists I want to get to know better, and some by the early faithful followers of Jesus in the catacombs and elsewhere who are and always will be unknown, and whom I think I would like to know best of all.
And so now here in Turley again I find the vibrant and comforting and challenging spirit behind those images and icons of Jesus, this time shining through the people around here and in this place. Spending a lot of time looking at faces in art helps, believe me, to see more clearly and more deeply the faces we encounter all around us--especially if those faces in art have themselves tried to convey a glimpse of the divine.
I thought during the retreat of how,during the births of our two daughters, Bonnie followed that contemporary ritual of birthing, having a special photograph, a face, to center her thoughts during labor, a makeshift altar in a hospital room; and how important it is, for the same reason, to have little altars around us all the time, at home in corners, on the refrigerator, in our cars, out in our yards, on our desks or workplaces wherever possible, little bits and pieces of sacredness to re-orient us, like prayer, throughout our day. I know I need to fill my canvass of life with these iconic reflections more often.
And I know that all our A Third Place/Living Room Church gatherings of service and study and communion and community times are themselves images of Jesus which help us to find the Spirit and, refreshed, let it go to be born into the world.
And so as we draw into the special marking of the Thanksgiving Season, we are thankful for all that is being born within and among and beyond us, through us--and we have an eye, an expectant and eager eye, on the Advent and Christmas season and all that may, yet, be born which we have no inkling of now.
Who could have, for example, forseen the following, these times ahead on our schedule below where we enter into our mission of "becoming a body of people, who make Jesus visible in the world?." Everyday, it seems, something new is being born....
Wednesday, Nov. 19--6 p.m. meal, conversation, communion. We may be spending our time after the meal exploring a possible new and much larger building for our missions; we may be revisiting what it means to be ethical eaters and our developing food ministries, and how all of it grows out of and feeds into our sense of what communion is in our radical hospitality tradition, drawing from a recent and wonderful book called "Take This Bread" by writer, lesbian, political radical leftist, cook, Episcopalian Sara Miles (check out http://www.saramiles.net/). Come and see what all happens.
Friday, Nov. 21, I will be meeting here in Turley with an ACORN representative for some learning and connections, then meeting again with the TU law clinic to continue our project developments, and then meeting with representatives from the Kendall-Whittier community association to talk about their history of renewal.
The health clinic meets every Monday, Tuesday and Friday full day here, except for during the Thanksgiving week. Call A Third Place or OU 660-3613 for information on access during that week.
Saturday, Nov. 22, 12-step The Lighthouse meets at 7:30 p.m. here.
Sunday, Nov. 23, worshipping with Church of the Restoration at 11 a.m., Pine and Greenwood.
Tuesday, Nov. 25 we will be meeting with a member of OU Social Work Department again, this time about developing projects and particularly partnerships for our community gardening. Just today I had new leads and people wanting to help us with this work. Then at 7 p.m. meet with the Turley Community Association at O'Brien Park.
Wednesday, Nov. 26, 6 pm meal, conversation, communion: a look at how prayer can change the world, based on the new book by Shane Claiborne, "Becoming the Answer to our Prayers: prayer for ordinary radicals." [If you'd like to share in this conversation with us, let me know for a free copy of the book].
Thanksgiving, Nov. 27, 1 pm we will bring our families, our food, and meet with others in our wider community who will bring their families, and if possible, their food, and share in this holiday meal and time together at our Center. All for free. We will also launch our Buy Nothing Day events encouraging people to take from our wonderful bargain donation room instead of shopping for new things for Christmas.
Oppose "Black Friday", Buy Nothing Day, Friday, Nov. 28. On the day the consumerist society seeks to encourage debt and bankruptcy of many in order that a few may reap increasing profits and on that day supposedly "go into the black or plus side of the business ledger" we will offer our alternative society counterweight of giving away nearly everything we can out of our donation room and plus from our homes, helping people fight the system of "gotta have it" labels and gadgets, recovering the joys of sharing. Come by and help us give to all freely. We have great books, clothes, large items, weird items, and more. The five and dime store is back, for free. This will help us create room for expanding our "lending library of tools and medical equipment and other items of necessity that not all need to own separately."
Sunday, Nov. 30, First Day of Advent, 11 a.m. Church of the Restoration. I will be leading worship and preaching on our mission in north Tulsa and Turley, our theology of presence, our inside-out church. Get a preview by going to look at the three part series of essays I wrote for Small Talk magazine, volume six in the newsletter section at http://www.spiritoflifepublishing.com/newsletters.html.
Beginning in the Advent Season, the season of new spiritual birth, Wednesdays beginning Dec. 3 will become a Mid-Week Day of Monastery and Meditation here, in addition to our missional daily work, we will have 15-30 minute morning prayer and breakfast at 7 a.m. (if you are interested but an earlier or later time in the morning would work for you, just let me know and we will see how it goes as we develop this); noon prayer and bible chat and lunch, and then our weekly Wednesday vespers beginning with meal at 6 p.m. All free, for all. If you'd like to be a prayer or meal leader during one of these times, just let me know. Come share with me also ways we can transform some of our inside space, and the new backalley space, into places for solitude and silence, even if it is semi-solitude and semi-silence of course. It's time for me also to resurrect my "Souls and Soles" meditative walking, so if you would like a walking partner, or want to join me, drop me a line and we can connect, same goes for those who would like an hour of spiritual reflection scheduled monthly.
A look ahead: Friday, Dec. 5, 5:30 p.m. at Tulsa Community College, meeting with other community organizers in north Tulsa House District 72; Tuesday, Dec. 9, noon, special program on personal and neighborhood safety by Sherry Clark, see http://www.facestulsa.org/; Saturday, Dec. 13, a special day of community gardening and transforming one of our neglected intersections in Turley; Sunday, Dec. 14 I will be in church and leading conversation on missional church with the Tulsa Metropolitan Community Church (http://www.mcctulsa.org/) and looking for ways to partner; also look forward to our tour and meeting at the Turley Correctional/Residential Center next month, developing co-mission with the YWCA of north Tulsa on issues such as anti-racism and living multi-culturally with the YWCA, holding a program on disabilities awareness and learning how to be more hospitable, and a relaxing time for celebrating Christmas with one another, and for all those relationships and community and missions bubbling up and taking shape, and those I know I have forgotten to mention here that I should have. Looking even further ahead: plan to be a part of our local welcoming group working with the Unitarian Universalist Christian Fellowship Revival as it comes to Tulsa and also to Turley, go to http://www.uuchristian.org/ and especially click on the Revival link, and let me know you would like to be a part of it in March, and plan now to go to the regional UU summer camp this year at Western Hills Resort near Wagoner, a short drive from us, Aug. 2-7, part or all of the week.
Also I go to Phillips Theological Seminary in Tulsa at Admiral and Mingo on Tuesdays at 11:30 a.m. for chapel and then, as Director of Ministerial Formation for UU students, meet with students and others at noon meal for wonderful conversation, and would love to have you join with me sometime as my guest, especially if you are interested in seminary or possibly just taking some courses there. Let me know as there are some weeks that the seminary does not have these activities, such as next week during Thanksgiving Week.
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
faith fragments from turley--hybrid church experience
Hi all. Some still lifes of faith on the move here in Turley....
I just love Turley sometimes, well all the time but sometimes I am reminded of it. The other day I am driving down 66th St. past O'Brien Park and alongside the new golf course they put in there (taking out community shelters for gatherings, but that's an old other story), and I didn't see anyone putting toward the hole but there was a family who had parked by the road and walked past the ditch and set up lawn chairs near the pond by one of the holes and were fishing there. I think Tiger Woods would have been proud too. The Spirit lives on...
Tonight we will eat together at 6 p.m. and then talk together about using the Bible as a spiritual resource to sustain our justice work, then we will pray and have communion together. Next Wed. while I am in Chicago preaching and leading communion, we will watch the second part of the movie about peace activist John Dear's mission, and his times in prison and what sustains him. Then on Wed. Oct. 22 we will have special guests and a conversation on restorative justice led by Rev. Thea Neitfeld of Tahlequah, OK. Part of our focus this year addressing issues in the legal system, and our visiting with prisoners.
Also if you can I invite you to the Phillips Theological Seminary worship tomorrow, Thursday Oct. 9 at 11:30 a.m. for a service led by Rev. Tamara Lebak of All Souls Church, as part of the seminary marking Domestic Violence Week. I am now at the seminary once or twice a week as part of being the Director of Ministerial Formation for Unitarian Universalist students there. And also for a few Mondays more there is the Faith Matters lectures for the public at Phillips. Go to http://www.ptstulsa.edu/.
Starting Sunday Oct. 19 following Bible Study at All Souls, I will also be moderating a monthly film discussion series where we will go see a movie together after church and then return to All Souls for discussion.
We have become here in Turley a Matthew 25 community it seems, at last (well some never get there !). We feed the hungry here (free meals and free peanut butter and jelly anytime someone needs it), we have the health clinic that heals the sick, we give free bottles of water for the thirsty, and free coffee as well, we welcome the stranger and help strangers to learn to welcome strangers, and now with our growing relationship with the Turley Correctional/Residential Center and University of Tulsa Law Clinic and others to come in the legal field we are visiting the prisoner and having them visit us. Such, Jesus says, is how you live in God's spirit. Click to read more...
This Saturday, weather allowing, we will sponsor our Turley Clean-Up Day beginning at 8 a.m.. Feel free to start with breakfast at the Odd Fellows Lodge, 6227 N. Quincy, and give a free will donation for community projects and then come pick up trash with us or pick up trash first. Take a break at noon as we will have outdoor live music to entertain the volunteers and others. We provide free bags and places to pick up what others have dumped on us. It is the kind of street ministry and preaching that really inspires and makes a difference.
This Sunday I will be back at All Souls Church at 11:30 a.m. for bible study in room 207, with an episode from the video curriculum Saving Jesus: from the Christian right and the Secular Left. We will be exploring the death of Jesus.
Last night we sponsored a gathering to keep momentum moving toward beginning the first of what we hope to be several community food gardens in our area, as well as sustaining our current Let Turley Bloom projects, and beginning new ones...We will get these started this Saturday too and keep working on them as people can and weather allows throughout the fall and winter and spring months. We will start with a community garden at the corner of 61st and N. Rockford Street which is near Cherokee School and on the way for folks in the Park Meadows Mobile Home Park where many of the children live, as well as others in the area. Come check in with us Saturday and you can help on that in addition or in place of the trash pick up work. We are also going to claim an abandoned but highly visible intersection that has been neglected by the county officials, at 66th St. and N. Lewis and begin getting it ready to turn from a trash site to a Turley treasure site with cardboard, rocks, and plenty of mulch to begin with after preparing and combatting the toxic stuff that has been sprayed over and over there. And we are going to plan a "Trash Garden" Seminar for February, 2009 to help people learn how they can easily make vegetable gardens for all of their sites. We also have become members of the Oklahoma Food Coop and will be promoting that here, along with signing people up for the community garden.
All of this reminds me that what the church does at heart is to provide opportunities for people's generosity. In all we do we seek to foster a spirit and openness for people to be generous, to give back and to give away. In this way we fulfill the spirit of Jesus and align ourselves with the nature of a Generous God, creator of a diverse Creation.
We are looking for medical books to help people study for nursing aide positions; we are looking for GED materials to help residents study for the GED; we are looking for people to offer to teach basic ways to use the computer; and to help parents who come here with their children after school to help with homework online and in person; we have been receiving medical equipment to have as part of a loan system and can always use more; today we had cases of baby food donated; we also had to turn away someone looking for utility assistance by referring them to others; we need help teaching parenting, and job skills; we are getting a sewing machine though; and this, again, is just part of a day's activities, part of the ebb and flow of the Spirit moving. Fortunately, as it should be, sometimes I am the last person to hear stories of the generosity and companionship that come through here and that spin out from here. Jesus said you will always have the poor with you, meaning you will always have opportunities to be generous, if you live his Way.
There is a revival going on, and pardon the transition, but please go to www.uuchristian.org/revival and begin your plans to join us here in March for Revival, as part of the event will take place in Turley one afternoon.
So you see why these emails are often periodic in nature. Keep us in your thoughts and prayers and allow us to keep you in our thoughts and prayers. We have many among us sick and many among us mourning and many among us celebrating recovery and many among us struggling financially and many among us despairing. And so we simply open our doors, we smile and wave at strangers, and we live hour by hour, failing but living hour by hour, guided not by the day's news but the good news of everlasting hope.
Oh yes, remember and spread the word that Friday Oct. 10 is the final day to register to vote. We still have forms at the church/center (or as a new book I am reading calls places like ours, a "hybrid church.") and let them know, as our sign out front continues to, that many felons in our state can vote and they don't know it. It can be a first step sometimes in their sense of re-entry into community, ownership of the world, and hope for new life.
blessings, Ron
I just love Turley sometimes, well all the time but sometimes I am reminded of it. The other day I am driving down 66th St. past O'Brien Park and alongside the new golf course they put in there (taking out community shelters for gatherings, but that's an old other story), and I didn't see anyone putting toward the hole but there was a family who had parked by the road and walked past the ditch and set up lawn chairs near the pond by one of the holes and were fishing there. I think Tiger Woods would have been proud too. The Spirit lives on...
Tonight we will eat together at 6 p.m. and then talk together about using the Bible as a spiritual resource to sustain our justice work, then we will pray and have communion together. Next Wed. while I am in Chicago preaching and leading communion, we will watch the second part of the movie about peace activist John Dear's mission, and his times in prison and what sustains him. Then on Wed. Oct. 22 we will have special guests and a conversation on restorative justice led by Rev. Thea Neitfeld of Tahlequah, OK. Part of our focus this year addressing issues in the legal system, and our visiting with prisoners.
Also if you can I invite you to the Phillips Theological Seminary worship tomorrow, Thursday Oct. 9 at 11:30 a.m. for a service led by Rev. Tamara Lebak of All Souls Church, as part of the seminary marking Domestic Violence Week. I am now at the seminary once or twice a week as part of being the Director of Ministerial Formation for Unitarian Universalist students there. And also for a few Mondays more there is the Faith Matters lectures for the public at Phillips. Go to http://www.ptstulsa.edu/.
Starting Sunday Oct. 19 following Bible Study at All Souls, I will also be moderating a monthly film discussion series where we will go see a movie together after church and then return to All Souls for discussion.
We have become here in Turley a Matthew 25 community it seems, at last (well some never get there !). We feed the hungry here (free meals and free peanut butter and jelly anytime someone needs it), we have the health clinic that heals the sick, we give free bottles of water for the thirsty, and free coffee as well, we welcome the stranger and help strangers to learn to welcome strangers, and now with our growing relationship with the Turley Correctional/Residential Center and University of Tulsa Law Clinic and others to come in the legal field we are visiting the prisoner and having them visit us. Such, Jesus says, is how you live in God's spirit. Click to read more...
This Saturday, weather allowing, we will sponsor our Turley Clean-Up Day beginning at 8 a.m.. Feel free to start with breakfast at the Odd Fellows Lodge, 6227 N. Quincy, and give a free will donation for community projects and then come pick up trash with us or pick up trash first. Take a break at noon as we will have outdoor live music to entertain the volunteers and others. We provide free bags and places to pick up what others have dumped on us. It is the kind of street ministry and preaching that really inspires and makes a difference.
This Sunday I will be back at All Souls Church at 11:30 a.m. for bible study in room 207, with an episode from the video curriculum Saving Jesus: from the Christian right and the Secular Left. We will be exploring the death of Jesus.
Last night we sponsored a gathering to keep momentum moving toward beginning the first of what we hope to be several community food gardens in our area, as well as sustaining our current Let Turley Bloom projects, and beginning new ones...We will get these started this Saturday too and keep working on them as people can and weather allows throughout the fall and winter and spring months. We will start with a community garden at the corner of 61st and N. Rockford Street which is near Cherokee School and on the way for folks in the Park Meadows Mobile Home Park where many of the children live, as well as others in the area. Come check in with us Saturday and you can help on that in addition or in place of the trash pick up work. We are also going to claim an abandoned but highly visible intersection that has been neglected by the county officials, at 66th St. and N. Lewis and begin getting it ready to turn from a trash site to a Turley treasure site with cardboard, rocks, and plenty of mulch to begin with after preparing and combatting the toxic stuff that has been sprayed over and over there. And we are going to plan a "Trash Garden" Seminar for February, 2009 to help people learn how they can easily make vegetable gardens for all of their sites. We also have become members of the Oklahoma Food Coop and will be promoting that here, along with signing people up for the community garden.
All of this reminds me that what the church does at heart is to provide opportunities for people's generosity. In all we do we seek to foster a spirit and openness for people to be generous, to give back and to give away. In this way we fulfill the spirit of Jesus and align ourselves with the nature of a Generous God, creator of a diverse Creation.
We are looking for medical books to help people study for nursing aide positions; we are looking for GED materials to help residents study for the GED; we are looking for people to offer to teach basic ways to use the computer; and to help parents who come here with their children after school to help with homework online and in person; we have been receiving medical equipment to have as part of a loan system and can always use more; today we had cases of baby food donated; we also had to turn away someone looking for utility assistance by referring them to others; we need help teaching parenting, and job skills; we are getting a sewing machine though; and this, again, is just part of a day's activities, part of the ebb and flow of the Spirit moving. Fortunately, as it should be, sometimes I am the last person to hear stories of the generosity and companionship that come through here and that spin out from here. Jesus said you will always have the poor with you, meaning you will always have opportunities to be generous, if you live his Way.
There is a revival going on, and pardon the transition, but please go to www.uuchristian.org/revival and begin your plans to join us here in March for Revival, as part of the event will take place in Turley one afternoon.
So you see why these emails are often periodic in nature. Keep us in your thoughts and prayers and allow us to keep you in our thoughts and prayers. We have many among us sick and many among us mourning and many among us celebrating recovery and many among us struggling financially and many among us despairing. And so we simply open our doors, we smile and wave at strangers, and we live hour by hour, failing but living hour by hour, guided not by the day's news but the good news of everlasting hope.
Oh yes, remember and spread the word that Friday Oct. 10 is the final day to register to vote. We still have forms at the church/center (or as a new book I am reading calls places like ours, a "hybrid church.") and let them know, as our sign out front continues to, that many felons in our state can vote and they don't know it. It can be a first step sometimes in their sense of re-entry into community, ownership of the world, and hope for new life.
blessings, Ron
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