Getting it Right - Sermon for January 31, 2021

 Hi folks,

Below is the text of the sermon I gave today at Church on the Square. I'm working off the lectionary text 1 Corinthians 8:1-13, which you may want to read first to understand some of the references.

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Good morning, friends. Thank you for being here, for bringing your attention, your heart, your reflections to this moment. Will you pray with me?

 

God of wisdom, guide us in the paths we should walk. Help us to know how we can build each other up with love. Help us to care deeply and move past surface-level knowledge into the kind regard that moves us toward peace. Bless us, bless us, bless us in the struggle. We pray, trusting in your grace, Amen.

 

In the theater art of improv, one of the exercises players use is a game called “subtext.” It’s intended to help the players understand how to tap into emotions, and do more than one thing at a time in a scene. So the players will get two inputs. The first one is, what’s the argument about? Maybe it’s about not putting on a new toilet paper roll. And then the second input is: okay and what’s the argument really about, and maybe it’s about how one of them makes way more money than the other. So then the scene might go something like this:

 

A: "You didn’t put a new toilet paper roll on, again. I guess your time is just too important to have to deal with mundane things like that."

 

B: "Hey, look, I’m sorry. You’re really more in charge of things like that around the house anyway, aren’t you?" 

 

Probably a scene like that would build up a little more gradually – I kind of jumped into it. But you get the point. And the thing is, you can play it for comedy, but lots of times arguments really play out like this. There’s the thing we’re arguing about on the surface, and there are the emotions underneath that are fueling the thing and keeping it moving when in a different context the same problem might not get anywhere near the same reaction.

 

So, a little context for our Scripture writing. Paul, the writer, was this energetic, passionate church planter and he’d helped assemble and launch the community in Corinth. They write to him with a problem – is it acceptable to eat meat that’s been part of another religion’s practice? And Paul writes back, well, yes and no.

 

Some background. In those days eating meat that had previously been sacrificed to a god was hard to avoid for a couple reasons. First, if a priest had received it during the ritual and hadn’t eaten it, then it might be for sale in the market and not necessarily marked in any way. This is before the USDA. Second, there weren’t lots of public venues where you could be out socially and eating with people, except for going to a temple and taking part in those celebrations. So not eating meat that had been sacrificed in another religion’s ceremony came with a social cost, not just a nutrition cost.  

 

I realize all the vegans and vegetarians online today are thinking, “I have an idea that could help.” Right?

 

Paul writes back with this way of thinking about it. "On the one hand," he says, "I grew up thinking about it this way – those statues in those temples that people think are gods don’t really have any power. They’re not the one true God. So it doesn’t really matter if meat was sacrificed to them or not, because really, nothing changes about the meat and nothing changes about you if you eat it. Either way is fine." He goes on… "But while I know that and I feel it in my bones, I know for some of you, you grew up thinking about those statues as being gods that have real power. And that’s a hard habit to break. It would be easy to go to a temple celebration just for the company and come out convinced to go back to your old way of life and your old way of seeing the world. So, my advice is this: the kindest, most loving thing to do here is for those of you know what I know is for you to choose not to eat it anyway, even though you’re right, so that your siblings in Christ will be able to maintain and grow in their faith." 

 

Here’s an analogy. Let’s imagine there’s someone who’s very new to being sober, and they’re part of a recovery group. And they have someone who sponsors and supports them in the group. But one day, they’re passing a bar and they see their sponsor inside drinking a beer. And it gets them down and they end up going and getting a drink somewhere themselves and losing their sobriety. Now, is that still their choice that they made? Yes. But, would it have helped them if their sponsor had decided not to be in a bar, or to be careful to drink something that doesn’t look like alcohol? Yes. Because as I’m imagining the story, the sponsor actually wasn’t drinking a beer, just something that looked like it.

 

Of course, I hear what Paul is saying and there is a part of me that wants to say, basically, that that’s not fair. Why should the one group have to bend and accommodate for the other group? 

 

The problem with community is that it gets us into these places where it’s important that we’re both open to and aware of the surface issues but also wise and kind about the emotions underneath. How vulnerable and uncertain these Gentile believers must be, joining up with a new faith that’s so different from what their families and friends believe? How about the believers with Jewish backgrounds, feeling more connected to the Scriptures and history of this new way Paul has taught them about, but then bumping up against problems and concerns from the Gentile Christians that just feel like they shouldn’t really be an issue. How hard is it to share their traditions and to make space for newness and change within them, too?

 

The core challenge for the Corinthians, then, is finding ways not to just believe the right thing, but, on a deeper level, to live the right way. To make decisions that take love into account first, rather than rightness. A couple thoughts on what that looks like.

 

First, I know I don’t always lead by example, but letting someone be wrong on the internet can be the kindest thing to do. Every now and then I’ll read a conversation that helps me understand the world better, but usually I'm peeking in on someone else's conversation when that happens. It is exceedingly rare that I’ll learn something from somebody who has decided to change my mind for me, especially if I don’t already trust this person and believe they have my best interests at heart. If you have the gifts and the opportunity to have open, curious conversations in person, that’s a different proposition. Although of course that can have its issues, too. But when we’re online, we’re really only coming to the conversation with part of ourselves and while our heads may be available to type out the words, our hearts are generally locked in place, which means that none of us is going anywhere.

 

Second, one way we move some of the energy from a conflict or a disagreement around is to give it to somebody else. The psychology word for this is triangulation because you move from a 1 to 1 relationship to a 1 to 1 to 1 relationship when you do this. Mad at your co-worker, but complain to your spouse? Mad at your spouse, but complain to your friend? That’s triangulation. Easy to do, relieves some of the anger/stress/what have you, and… it doesn’t address the underlying problem.  The story of the Corinthians turning to Paul to give them an answer is 100% triangulation. It happens all the time as a natural response to all of us trying to live together and cooperate. And if what you’re hoping to do is avoid having to make any changes in the relationship where there’s conflict, then triangulation is great. But if you actually want to solve a problem, unfortunately, you have to talk to the person you have the problem with. And, possibly, make changes of your own. After all, as it turns out we are ourselves the only people we can change in any relationship.

 

Finally, if you find yourself giving more and more complicated negative meanings to someone else’s choices, that might be a sign that things are getting out of hand. The first apartment Heather and I had together, we had three other roommates. And it wasn’t always comfortable, in general. It was really not enough space and enough bathroom for all of us. And I started to have new interpretations for what dishes in the sink meant. It didn’t just mean that our roommate didn’t like doing dishes right away, it meant she didn’t respect my time or want me to succeed. The story got bigger and bigger the worse things got. 

 

But then, when Heather and I moved out and it was just the two of us, two young crazy kids in love, I immediately got much more relaxed about dishes. It helped, of course, that there were only two of us sharing the kitchen, and that Heather was much better at sharing the space and doing her dishes. But also, added in there, was the fact that I loved Heather in a way I didn’t love our roommates, and so having to do her dishes sometimes, and knowing sometimes she would do mine, took the temperature way down, real real fast. 

 

I know that as a country we have a difficult task in front of us, which is dealing with both questions about right and wrong and finding a way to care for each other across big divides. Some of that will be about having people who have been hurt speaking up and being heard, and setting boundaries. And some of that work will mean actually not talking about our disagreements, and instead finding ways to work together on other projects and talk about something else. We'll need to recognize that even though we have big, important differences that there are even more important things that hold us together and more powerful things we can do together than we ever could alone. My prayer is that we will find a way to walk that path with love. May it be so. Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

 

From the Speakeasy - I Know What Heaven Looks Like by Lawrence T. Richardson

When I first met LT, I was immediately struck by his gentle and open-hearted demeanor and the kindness in his eyes. His book I Know What Heaven Looks Like is a memoir that helps me understand how hard-won those gifts are for him. Richardson shares stories from his childhood, youth and early adulthood that follow three threads: first, understanding and living out his sexuality and gender identity; second, the struggles and abusive relationships in his family; and third, his relationship with the church and spirituality.

These three threads intertwine, giving the reader a deeper understanding of the complexity of Richardson's journey. For example, from an early age Richardson feels welcome and excited to be a part of his grandmother's congregation, but later as he lives more fully into his sexuality, she warns him that the people in the congregation aren't ready to accept him as he is.  Later, a different congregation and pastor will encourage him to go to seminary and become a minister.  Richardson's openness about his sexuality also leads his grandmother to throw him out of the house, resulting in a season of homelessness nearly undermines his ability to graduate high school. Church, home, sexuality, woven together.

A few thoughts on improvements. The book looks self-published - there are really big spaces between the lines, for example, and I think a good editor could help to sharpen and refine some of the choices in terms of what Richardson shares and doesn't share with us. Sometimes we get a lot of detail about a particular moment that doesn't feel all that significant otherwise, and other times parts of the story that seem pretty important don't get much play. What happens to Rose after she and the baby go into a homeless shelter, for example? And, many conversations read a little more as the things I wish I'd said, rather than capturing the rhythm and cadence of how people actually talk. A few sections feel particularly "educational," rather than faithful to the original conversation.

 All that being said, Richardson's story is inspirational without being neatly tied up at the end. An important family member comes around, Richardson grows into himself with more coherence and finds the strength to confront family members who hurt him when he was younger. For people wondering what it might be like to grow up trans and then become a minister, this book, consistent with LT's own way of being in the world, is an open-hearted sharing of one man's difficult journey toward wholeness and learning to live out God's call on his life.

Note: I got a free copy of this book from The Speakeasy blogging book review network in exchange for writing a review of it. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I've expressed are my own. This note is a disclosure in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255. For more info, here's the website: http://thespeakeasy.info Whew!

Just Finished Reading: Loving and Leaving a Church by Barbara Melosh

Flannery O'Connor wrote about where she grew up in the south, creating fiction. And one of her favorite responses to a story she wrote was when someone told her: "Well, that's just what some folks WOULD do, isn't it?"

This book, Loving and Leaving a Church tells the story of Barbara Melosh's experiences as a second-career pastor in a working-class Lutheran church that's located in a gentrifying neighborhood in south Baltimore. As a pastor myself in Baltimore, MD (and onetime fellow member of her clergy Bible study) reading the memoir, I kept thinking, "That's just what these folks WOULD do, isn't it?" Memoir isn't fiction, of course, but it can be fuzzy and scattered or clear and convincing, and I found myself cringing with recognition over and over again, reading about Pastor Barbara and the Saints of "Saints and Sinners."

There are many experiences packed into one book - the new pastor's enthusiasm, the inward-looking congregation, 50 years of gradually sinking attendance, so much misplaced hope in the power of fundraisers, the rounds and rounds of attempts at change on the pastor's part, and patient forbearance on the part of the congregation. Over and over again, just when there seems to be some traction, some unexpected loss or setback puts the church back on the track of steady decline. The book ends, not with an amazing turnaround, but with Melosh's decision to finish her ministry there. "It's time," she tells the church matriarch. "It's not you, it's me."

When I first got out of seminary, I read a book by Richard Lischer called Open Secrets, that had a similar premise - in his case, a young man with a PhD in theology trying to convert a rural church into Illinois into something more, something different from what it was. In Lischer's story, he goes on to another, bigger church across the country. Melosh, on the other hand does not find a new permanent call, but moves into interim ministry and writing - the bigger opportunities do not come her way as they did for Lischer. And the next pastor at Saints and Sinners is a young man, newly married. She reads his newsletter updates, wondering if the enthusiasm in his writing reflects the reality on the ground any more than her messages had.

There are so many books out there about church growth - so many programs and schemes and ideas of what can turn a church around. And yet, the larger reality of mainline churches in the United States is that so, so many churches are caught in cycles like Saints and Sinners', if they're not already closed. That makes it really, really hard to be a pastor. Especially if you don't fall into the nostalgic ideal of a straight, married white man who is the "correct" age. That's not the main focus of the book, and there are many moments of deep connection and beauty, plus the kind reflection of several years of distance from the experience. But all that being said, I appreciate the honesty of this book and am grateful to have read it, even if the picture it paints is a daunting one.

https://www.amazon.com/Loving-Leaving-Church-Melosh-Barbara/dp/0664264344

From the Speakeasy - A Resurrection Shaped Life

Hello faithful readers! I managed to sign myself up for free books in exchange for book reviews through the website The Speakeasy and the writer Mike Morrell, who, if you’re interested to know more, helped write a book by Richard Rohr on the Trinity. I’m hoping to get some new and exciting reads out of it. More information here.

I was at church the other day, talking to a friend about how, in the progressive wing of the mainline church, it’s easy for us to say what we’re against: exclusion, judgement, taking the Bible literally, etc. But it’s harder to say what we’re FOR. This book, A Resurrection Shaped Life: Dyingand Rising on Planet Earth by Jake Owensby, is an exploration of what resurrection could mean in a progressive church context.

An image that I love that opens the book is of a Japanese practice of taking broken pottery and gluing it back together with a material that has gold in it. The cracks become beautiful and sparkling – the beauty of the re-formed bowl is its imperfection, the crack it has survived is highlighted. Resurrection in our everyday lives is like this – what have we survived, what are the scars that have been healed, what has marked us deeply and made us who we are in our lives made new?

I appreciated that Owensby expands the meaning of resurrection out from the standard sin and redemption trope that is so common. The ways that God is saving us through Jesus move far beyond this into freeing us from shame and moving us into acceptance, freeing us from a life where we are always looking for someone else to blame into one where we live out of compassion for ourselves and one another. Resurrection is also about how we heal from our deep losses and griefs. And finally a life of compassion can lead us into seeing the connectedness of all beings and working toward a just world for all. Owensby closes by sharing that he believes in a life beyond this one, that resurrection is not simply a metaphor.

Reading the book, I appreciated the personal stories and concrete examples to ground the theology, and I liked and resonated with the ideas. I didn’t necessarily feel like I was having an amazing new groundbreaking theological experience. But on the other hand, I’ve been working on this project of finding an alternative to substitutionary atonement for a while. The book has discussion questions at the end of each of the six chapters, and it is nice and short, clocking in at 106 pages before the acknowledgements. So I think it would be excellent for book groups made up of busy people and for folks who are new to the idea that there are more possibilities for what salvation means than simply “Jesus died on the cross for my sins.” As it turns out, God is saving us in all kinds of ways and transforming us again and again through any number of resurrections.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the author and/or publisher through the Speakeasy blogging book review network. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.

Just Finished Reading: Managing Transitions by William Bridges

This is an excellent book that has the feel of a classic, partly because most of the examples about transitions had to do with stories about manufacturing plants closing or being downsized. And I think we're past the heyday of all that...

Bridges starts with a great story about being a young professor at a university. They still have early morning classes on Saturdays, and the students hate it, and he as a young professor hates it, and students frequently skip the classes anyway, so the goals of learning and shaping young minds are not being met by these Saturday classes. Plus, they cost more money because of an additional day of keeping the buildings lit and heated, which means the dean would also like to get rid of them.

But when the faculty as a whole sits down to make a decision, all those older professors are less than convinced. This is how they've always done it, this is the world they've known, and if they changed the schedule, one professor remarks, it would mean having to rewrite all his class notes for his T-Th-Sa classes. The measure is promptly voted down. Bridges is stunned, and it kicks off a career in studying change and transition. Those professors, he realizes, weren't just avoiding logic for no reason, they were doing what we all do, which is protect our worlds as we know them. Change may mean good things, but it also means losing other good things. Like a career's worth of carefully crafted lecture notes, for example.

Here are my favorite takeaways from the book:

1. Transition is the experience people go through to adjust to change. If there's a major change, but the people don't transition to adjust to it, then the changes will only be on the surface, if they happen at all. For example, there might be a new org chart, but people will still go to their old bosses for advice and assistance.

2. Transition comes in 3 stages:
    First: Letting Go
    Second: Neutral zone/murky middle/chaos/the swamp
    Third: New Beginning
These stages come one after the other in a healthy process, but they also overlap, so one day you may have someone overwhelmed thinking of all the things they've let go of, but then the next day experimenting with something new that has been freed up by the loosening of rules and regulations in the neutral zone.

3. It's important to mark these stages of transition ceremonially and symbolically. Symbolic language matters: a company needed to close a plant in 8 months, but needed to maintain production until then. When language about the plant changed from "sinking ship" to "last voyage" people were able to stay in the game and also prepare for the ending of production. In fact, production went up in the last push! (Until management tried to sneakily stretch it out - that didn't fly)

4. Build trust by trusting and by being honest and trustworthy. Trust comes slowly.

5. The neutral zone is a time of both danger and possibility. Productivity slows, people don't know what is going to work and what isn't, and there's just a lot of uncertainty. BUT it's also a time when great creativity and innovation are possible - all bets are off. Now is especially a time to reward intelligent failures.

6. If people aren't convinced of a problem they won't be willing to go through stage 1 - letting go of the old way of doing things. Which means the true shift to a new way of doing things won't happen. It's important to:
     Sell the problems - put people in direct contact with the people who are having the problem. For example, if the problem is poor customer service, find ways to put unhappy customers in touch with the people who need to improve the service. People need to come face to face with the reality.
     Listen carefully for losses and compensate for them - when big changes happen, some people will lose out. Can you find ways to compensate them for what they're losing? With status, education, gratitude?

7. Different people need different things in the neutral zone. Try to be clear about: a purpose (blue/idea) a picture, (yellow/intuitive) a plan,(green/details) and a part for everyone to play (red/relationships).

Sabbatical Reading Project: The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker

Priya Parker is a professional facilitator, and before that she spent her childhood navigating the differences between her mother's Indian family and culture and her father's conservative rural family and culture. She thinks she may have been destined for peacemaking just because of her biography.

This book gives a lot of tools for interesting, meaningful gatherings. Example: think about how you want to end it. Give announcements, thank yous and logistics second-to-last, and then think about a summary or something that wraps everything together.

Parker also recommends as a key component of a good gathering that you have a clear purpose, that you not rely on the established cliches for what a party is supposed to be about. So for example, for her baby shower she asked her husband and male friends not to come. But afterwards she realized that a party that had been about helping both of them transition into parenthood would have been much more valuable than the more traditional purpose of bringing the mom a lot of gifts to help defray the cost of having a baby (the underlying assumption being that mom is going to do most of the parenting work).

This seems easier than it is. I'm thinking of our family's upcoming birthday party/housewarming party. Definite mission creep there.

As part of defining the purpose or helping clarify it, paying attention to the guest list is an important step. There are people who need to be there, people  who definitely shouldn't be, and then there are Bobs. This would be someone's friend Bob, who's a perfectly nice guy and who you'd like to do something nice for, but the gathering isn't for him, and getting him caught up will take away from the time and needs of the rest of the group.

The room and the setup of the space are both extremely important in getting the right dynamic. After reading Parker's book, I listened to a podcast by some stand-up comedians talking about bad shows, and usually the start of the bad show would be that the room they were in was way too big for the crowd that had gathered - 30 people in a room with a 100-foot ceiling, for example. And any laughter just floats away in to the ether, rather than echoing and multiplying. Parker recommends deciding the purpose of the gathering first, then choosing the space with that purpose in mind. And, don't be too full or empty in your space.

Parker also talks about gatherings that have odd, temporary etiquette. This allows them to be more inclusive, because we're not relying on WASP etiquette or some other "objective standard." Instead, the party rules are for that time and space only, and so everybody knows what they are and also they don't have to abide by them after the gathering. So for example, in a gathering intended to help entrepreneurs get advice from a panel of creative people, the rule was not to talk with one another about work, or to share last names until near the end of the meeting at a "Big Reveal." This allows the room to be focused on the person coming for help, not on impressing the people around you.

Last thought - in a different gathering called "15 Toasts," Parker mentions that to elicit intimacy, the facilitator has to share something early on at the depth of vulnerability that they are looking for. If you want it to go deep, you can't tell a surface story. Gatherings are a tremendous source of energy, and this practitioner is creating amazing ones!

Sabbatical Reading Project: Community: The Structure of Belonging by Peter Block

This book is dense and beautiful, and I almost want to just keep re-reading it to hold onto the insights involved. Here's an attempt to cover the ones that are still resonating several days after finishing reading:

First, if we're going to value democracy and recognize peoples' contributions to it, it helps to flip your mindset. Instead of thinking of leaders as the cause and citizens as the effect, think of the people as the cause and the leaders as the effect. I've noticed this insight bearing out in conversations about improv and standup where the audience has a tremendous effect on the performers and the entire show experience.

Block describes two opposing qualities of relationship between people and leaders. In the retributive community, we stay focused on safety, solving problems, and figuring out who is to blame. Citizens become clients who purchase or demand services from their elected leaders. Holding people accountable is very popular in this line of thinking. In the restorative community, people are accountable for their contributions to a community, but they are accountable because they choose to be, not because someone is holding them accountable. Restorative community is focused on possibility, gifts and generosity (and Block has a very specific idea about the meaning of the word "possibility")

The power leaders hold is that of convening the group, and the task of a leader is to confront people with their freedom. I like that language, but it also feels slightly mysterious. In any case, getting groups together to build something new involves 5 conversations. The first one is:

Invitation - leaders spend time considering who should be in the room. If we want to create the future we are looking for, who will be in the room with us? Invitations should be as personal as possible. E-mail doesn't count. They should describe the possibility the group will explore, and describe the costs involved in pursuing the possibility. For example: "Men wanted. Antarctic expedition. Harsh conditions, limited pay, return not guaranteed."

Possibility - what future are we hoping to bring into being? What are we willing to publicly declare as a possibility.

Ownership - shifting the conversation from blame to owning our own freedom. Questions for ownership are things like, how valuable do you plan for this meeting to be? and How are you contributing to the thing you are complaining about?

Dissent - Peoples' doubts, concerns and disagreements need to be spoken before they can truly take ownership of the new thing that is forming. The leader's role here is to get curious and to bring the dissent out, not to defend against it.

Gifts - What gifts are people willing to bring to the effort? What gifts are hidden or in exile? Don't: promise to do something you won't do. It's better to say you won't do anything. Staying in the community circle means being trustworthy, not just agreeing to something in the moment for the sake of keeping the peace. And, many gifts are needed to bring the new thing into reality.

There is a lot more to this great book. What's exciting is that the author has written a summary himself in the back, plus summaries at the start of each chapter. Which makes it so much easier to learn the material. Thank you, Peter Block!


Block believes that the future arrives through small groups. Get the people together who need to be there, get them to have these 5 conversations, and you are on your way. Stay out of the rut of solving problems, which will only get you a slightly improved version of what already exists.

The space in which a group meets is very important. Work for beauty, make sure everyone can get to a microphone, don't put leaders up on pedestals, and have chairs that can move and circulate.

The great thing about this book is that he summarizes the chapters and summarizes the whole book at the end. A very considerate thing to do.

Sabbatical Reading Project: Community in the Inventive Age by Doug Pagitt

So... I'm taking some time away from pastor work to do some reading. The overarching topic is community, working mostly from a list of books recommended by the organization Art of Hosting. Here's their reading list, and you can scout around for more info about what they're doing from there, if you're curious.

For this blog post, though, I'm going to do a review of Community in the Inventive Age by Doug Pagitt, which is a book I have read before. Pagitt, formerly a youth pastor, founded Solomon's Porch in 2003 with a group of 7 other people. The book is from 2011. Here are some pieces I'd like to highlight:

1. The Inventive Age: American society has gone through several cultural movements over the last century or so. Agrarian Age people lived on farms, used horses, etc., and so the best form for church was one based on being within walking distance of it. Community was reinforced by not going more than 100 miles from your home during your entire life. The industrial age meant standardization and churches started to look like factories. The information age is the age of Sunday school wings and the work of downloading information from the expert to the waiting minds of children and parishioners. Finally, the inventive age (Pagitt's term, I think) is a culmination of these other ages' accomplishments. Rather than seeking out information, or standardization, or focusing on survival, the inventive age is about creating new things and making individual contributions. Authority comes from relationships, rather than top-down.

2. Relational Set: So, I have been thinking a while about this concept of a center-set for a church. As in, we have some core beliefs and values that hold us together, but that some people are further out or closer to the center, depending on what it is. For Solomon's Church, whoever is there makes up the community. Another example of a relational set organization is a family. People get married or die, or are born or adopted in. Each person adds to the community in their own way. And, the community's capacity to do whatever is asked of it, and its call arise from the people who are there. This is helpful to me, although I still have a sense that there are core guiding values and beliefs operating in the community. They do have a covenant partner designation of some kind, if I remember right.

3. Children: They have kids at their regular gatherings and think about them as, similar to adults, having things to contribute to the community.

4. They meet in the round

5. They start Sunday night gatherings with conversation, and the sermons are dialogue-based. People learn from one another, not the authority figure. The pastor's role is to facilitate conversation, and not everything that gets said is something he would necessarily want or agree with. There's a Tuesday night group that plans the sermon for the congregation, reading the particular scripture and reflecting on it ahead of time.

6. They have a lot of candles.

7. Creativity is a participation in the creative life of God.

8. They eat together a lot. There's a weekly community meal that rotates between houses, plus eating together after the Sunday night gatherings and etc.

9. Sunday night gatherings are one part of the community, not the whole thing. Announcements, therefore, are pretty long.

(Update) 10. Our beliefs change not by receiving new information, but because they come with partners - dreams, desires and possibilities. This explains why no amount of information seems to change the views of my relatives who have a different political opinion from me about the current state of affairs. I'm interested to see how it will change the conversation to say something like, "what are your hopes for this country?" instead of "why don't you even read the article I sent you?"

Reading this book again after 6 years of church-start work, it is amazing to me how much more it makes sense and answers questions that I have been asking. I don't remember this "coming home" feeling the last time I read it. It's also really interesting how the book matches up with a community I've been working with over the last year. Given that the population of that other church is somewhat different from the Solomon's Porch crowd, I think Pagitt may be on to something here. Nice to have it summarized, with some of the practical and spiritual implications laid out. 

Just Finished Reading: Leadership and the New Science by Margaret J. Wheatley (chapters 1-5)

I am reading this for a continuing education course, and was only assigned the first 5 chapters, but here’s what I got from them (and a little bit of chapter 6):

First, we have interpreted the world for the past couple hundred years using a Newtonian physics framework. Which looks like this – there are objects floating in space and they influence each other with varying amounts of force, like billiard balls on a table. The cue ball hits number 9 and it goes in the pocket. And, like billiard balls on a table, getting something moving takes an understanding of the different parts of the encounter and how they move, and the things that are acted upon are pretty passive in event that is described.

 Similarly, we’ve tried to understand systems by examining the parts of the system. Like dissecting a jazz band (or a bluegrass jam) to find out what each instrument sounds like, how each person plays and then the various forces the parts exert on each other.

But here’s the thing: when you start examining the world of quantum physics, things don’t work that way at all! For example, there’s the quantum leap, made famous by Scott Bakula. An electron will be spinning its way around some neutrons and protons and whatnot, and then suddenly it will be in another place, with no intermediary movements, much like Dr. Sam Beckett, leaping from life to life.

Or, here’s another cool one. Scientists will set two electrons next to each other and set them spinning together. One goes right, the other goes left, or one goes up and the other goes down. (Whatever the scientist is measuring for. More on that in a minute.) The two electrons respond to each other instantly. And then, if you separate them by, say, a couple feet or a couple thousand miles, when one starts spinning, the other one spins the other way instantly. As if there were no space between them. No speed-of-light lags, none of that. That part made my head explode.

So, if we’ve been trying to organize people as though they were billiard balls, when in fact we are more like the mysteriously connected electrons, part of a larger whole, then we’re putting a lot of effort into aiming and smacking balls that don’t go into the pocket, when we could be enjoying an elegant dance instead. We’re missing the whole, the thing that makes live music better than even the most carefully layered recording.

Here’s another cool idea: space is not empty, it’s full of fields. You’ve heard of gravity, right? Gravity works kind of like this – there’s this fabric of space and time, and very large objects bend it, which causes smaller objects to fall toward it. So gravity is one kind of field. But there are lots of other ones. And all the little protons and neutrons and God particles appear where fields meet. The interactions of the fields lead to the creation of matter. And yet, fields are themselves invisible, immaterial.

 So what if consider fields in organizations as a way of organizing them? Instead of trying to hit the cue ball so it hits number 9 just right, what if we pay attention to agreeing together on what song, what key, what tempo, and then letting the musicians do their thing? Military example: now, instead of having commanders hold all the information, some branches of the US military are having the commanders share an intent, a goal, and principles for achieving it, and then getting as much information as possible about what’s going on to all the soldiers on the battlefield. With enough information, the soldiers actually do a better job of organizing themselves. (Sorry, skipping ahead a little to Chapter 6)

There is an inherent order to the universe, and organizations can organize themselves too. People self-organize in response to the energy they’re given. And connections create power. The power of an organization is the power of its relationships. Negative energy, bad relationships, create negative power and resistance, but love may be the most powerful force in the world, motivating people to do what’s needed, together in a mysterious alignment.

Schroedinger’s cat. A famous thought experiment. If there’s a cat in a box, and you’ve set up a machine to either give it poison or food at some set moment, randomly chosen, then until you open the box and look, the cat is both alive and dead at the same time. Or at least, that’s how it works in quantum physics. Remember how I said that the electrons in the spinning experience go whatever direction the scientists are looking? Well, here’s the thing – in quantum science, one of the variables, one of the things that affects what happens, is the observer – the act of observing. WTF. Experiments turn out differently if the camera is on, for example, than if it’s off. If the experimenter looks for where a thing is, they won’t be able to find out where it’s going. But if they find out where it’s going, they won’t be able to find out where it is. You get one or the other, but not both. Again, my head is exploding.

But on the other hand, don’t we observations affecting reality all the time? I was just reading last night about unconscious bias. How one guy I feel a connection with can have a good interview or seem like a star, thanks partly to my seeing him as someone who will have a good interview or someone with the potential to be a star. Or someone who my unconscious bias tells me is a criminal will start behaving in what look like suspicious, threatening ways, leading to our confrontation and their violent response to my (pre-emptively) defensive attack. See: Black Lives Matter movement.

The universe is actually very well organized. Finding ways to organize ourselves in the same way, in open systems instead of closed ones, in information-sharing networks instead of information-controlling bureaucracies, with leaders who encourage disequilibrium instead of aiming for motionlessness, will be the path forward into a totally different mode of organization. One that seems chaotic on the surface sometimes, one that will NEED to be chaotic sometimes, but that will have its own order, its own identity and ongoing process, in the same way that a stream, while constantly changing, maintains an identity, a shape and an order that has lasted for millions upon millions of years.

just finished reading: the life-changing magic of tidying up by marie kondo.

Just adorable

What an adorable book. The shape and feel of the book itself is cute, and the person telling her story about being a lifelong (and I mean LIFE LONG) tidying enthusiast, and all her little hints for how to approach your things, they’re just adorable. Or maybe the word I’m looking for is refreshing – her voice and the ways Japanese culture show through in what she writes were totally charming to me. Anyway, here is my plan for putting my house in order, as prescribed by tidying expert Marie Kondo:

Discard things that don’t spark joy. Pick up each thing, hold it in your hand and ask “Does this spark joy?” and if not, get rid of it. Discard first before storing.

Order of discarding

Go by category of thing, in this order, and do all the things in each category at once:

               Clothes – Books – Papers – Komono (odds & ends) – Sentimental items – Photos.

I’m relieved that there’s an order to go in for this, from least emotionally draining to most. Komono has its own order:

               CDs, DVDs – skin care products – makeup – accessories – Valuables (passports, credit cards, etc. – electrical equipment – household equipment (sewing kit, stationery, etc.) – household supplies (medicine, detergent, other expendables) – Kitchen goods and food supplies – Other (spare change, figurines, etc.)

               Items related to a hobby are their own subcategory

Papers

Keep only the things that spark joy! Because of this rule, Kondo recommends throwing away just about all papers, and then having only a few files that are very broad in scope. I don’t know – can I go there?

Timeline

Kondo says the best approach is putting your house in order in one go, which is to say, over the course of about 6 months, tops. It sounds like she often goes into peoples’ houses to help them with tidying and helps them throw away 30-40 bags of trash in a single day.

Relating to things, storing things

When Kondo goes into a house to help someone put their house in order, she first kneels down on the floor for a couple of minutes to thank the house for the way it supports and shelters the people and to ask for its help in deciding where to store things. She recommends keeping all objects of the same type in the same place and not spread out in any way, and each person gets one space for their storage. Types of things should be pretty broad, like, “electric” or “paper-like” and not sorted by when they would be used. When she’s not sure about where something should go, she will ask the house where it believes the thing should go, and then she puts it there.

Storing clothes

Kondo believes strongly in vertical storage, not flat stacks, and recommends a particular method of folding that causes the things that are folded to stand up vertically in a drawer. That way, when you open the drawer, you can see all your options. (She also sorts these folded clothes by color - dark in back to light up front.) She recommends hanging things in a closet in such a way that the largest, heaviest items are on the left and the lightest items are on the right.

Discarding

As she discards things, Kondo touches and holds each thing one at a time to see if it sparks joy for her. Then, if not, she treats the moment as an opportunity to thank the things for what they’ve done for her and meant to her. If she is discarding a gift, she thanks it for conveying the sentiments of the giver. If it’s an outfit she thought she’d like but didn’t, she thanks it for helping her learn more about herself. The act of discarding is like a celebration or a graduation, so Kondo dresses up for the occasion, usually wearing a dress and a suit jacket.

The bottom line

The bottom line is this: if you want to have a tidy house and be surrounded by things you love, get rid of all the stuff that you don’t love, that’s just sitting there being only partially useful and taking up valuable space and mental energy. Give thanks for and celebrate each thing, then let go of all but the ones that you love. And then you’ll be surrounded only by things you love. Kondo believes there will be a moment when something clicks and you know you have the right amount of things. 

Developing a skill

Another way of describing her approach is that by touching each of our things, holding it in our hands and making a decision about whether we really love it, we develop the skill of knowing ourselves and what we love better and better. The discarding gets progressively harder, but then so does our skill at discarding.

I am excited about this

I am super excited to put this into practice. Thanks to an unfortunate circumstance in our basement, I already have a head start on discarding books – there is a trunk full of books in my car that are on their way to the Book Thing very, very soon. 

Book Thing - hilarious pictures

(Check out the Book Thing’s website – they have a hilarious set of pictures of real books they’ve gotten. http://www.bookthing.org/ Things like Don Knotts explaining how to lay bricks, or how to be a gun runner for fun and profit.)

Dreams

I’m hoping this will be a start to a new way of life in the near future. An intermediate goal is to have fewer of those dreams where I suddenly realize there is a vast storage space in my house that I hadn’t realized was there before.

Just Finished Reading: Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha and Mohammed Cross the Road? Christian Identity in a Multi-Faith World

McClaren's basic point is that a lot of religion, and Christianity in particular, has fallen into either a strong and hostile identity, where it's us versus them in the game of life, or into a weak and benevolent identity, where we hold some beliefs that are important to us, but the most important thing about them, really, is not imposing them on others.

An interesting point McClaren makes about weak-benevolent identity is that it makes room for empire and its violent, death/revenge ideology just as surely as the co-opted hostility of the strong-hostile identity. It doesn't offer a truly viable alternative, just  an unobtrusive side dressing. I'm thinking of a review of a biography of the Inklings I read recently, where in the Screwtape Letters CS Lewis talks about the hazards of war - how being a soldier can cause someone to sin - and his main concern was that a young man would swear more than usual or spend extra time with the ladies, missing the whole part of the endeavor that involves killing other people.

So the solution to the problems our world faces, and the answering of God's call for a new way of life in a multi-faith world can't be lowest-common-denominator Christianity, but fire & brimstone from a tightly drawn circle is out too. Strong-benevolent is McClaren's alternative goal, what I would call (in family systems language) self-differentiation on the scale of the entire religion.

Let's get clear, he says, about our beliefs and practices - commitment to radical hospitality, for example, and God's generous goodness, Jesus' vision for a new world built within and through this one, and the suffering of the cross as a result of our sin more so than a remedy for it. Let's move into liturgy and sacraments that reflect Jesus' teaching and ministry, and let's move into a way of doing "missionary work" that makes the world a better place without trying to convert and colonize "the other" to be like "us" but instead is a hospitable and respectful exchange of gifts that enables each side to deepen and grow in their own religious identity. Sometimes people won't be able to stay in the tradition where they are, and will move somewhere new, and there needs to be freedom for this. But that's probably going to be the exception, rather than the rule. And our goal is to get those dusty religions to shape up and come alive, come back to the deep roots that can feed them.

McClaren closes with Ghandi's suggestions for Christians and Christian missionaries in India interested in bringing a non-colonizing and naturalized version of Christianity to the country.

1. Live more like Jesus Christ (this could be the only advice....)
2. Practice your religion without toning it down - don't weaken it to make it palatable.
3. Emphasize love, which is the soul and center of Christianity. (Love as a working force, not just a nice feeling)
4. Study non-Christian religions sympathetically so you can approach the people who practice them sympathetically.

Onward and upward! What I most appreciated about this book is the way McClaren makes me feel like I can let go of some things - having to convince people that my way is the right way, for example. At the same time, it is a challenge to live the kind of Christian life he envisions. In my neighborhood, we've been having new people move in who are demographically different from the current residents, and there is a lot of tension around that. I keep thinking, "Someone should start reaching out to those new people and meeting them, and bridging the difference between the old and the new." Well, guess what - maybe that someone needs to be me, and beyond me the Christian neighbors. Because, you know, that's what Jesus would do.

What to Say to Your Doctor - Just Finished Reading: Being Mortal by Atul Gawande

"090814-N-7090S-216" by MilitaryHealth

This is an excellent, beautiful book that made me cry a lot because it's written with such sensitivity and attention to the human experience. The people who should read it are: anyone with a serious or terminal illness, caregivers of people dealing with serious illnesses, and anyone not planning to die young. There is great stuff about how our perspectives change when time is short, how doctors can help patients by taking on the role of interpreter and partnering to make decisions, and an in-depth explanation of why nursing homes can feel so bad to be in - because of the loss of autonomy that goes with institutional living.

Two things I want to remember:

1. Real assisted living is a wonderful thing. The underlying idea behind assisted living, in its original form, was that people would live independently and only get help for the things they needed help with. There was a lock on the door to the apartment. The first priority is on autonomy and quality of life, not on safety or the efficiency of the institution.

2. Several times, Gawande describes a valuable conversation that happened between patients coming to the end of their lives and either doctors or adult children. These four questions helped flesh out the patients' priorities in living well in the limited amount of time left to them.

     1. What is your understanding of your condition?
     2. What are your biggest fears and concerns?
     3. What goals are most important to you?
     4. What trade-offs are you willing to make, and what are you not?

In each of the instances he describes, these four questions help tremendously in clarifying the treatment choices that will maximize the patient's quality of life, something that is different for everyone. More than once, an adult child faced with a difficult decision that has to be made quickly about a surgery has clarity about good choices, thanks to having this conversation with their parent beforehand.

There's a lot more to the book. You should go read it.