Finding a Rhythm

So I am not as good of a blogger as some of my friends are.  But I am finally writing again.  The reality is that I have been extremely busy over the last few weeks.  I will be starting a new job in just a few weeks, but I will also still be living at Richmond Hill, at least for awhile.

Which has gotten me thinking about a lot of things.  If I do eventually move out of Richmond Hill, how will I continue to live according to a healthy rhythm?  You see, while I am here at Richmond Hill, I stop what I am doing 3 times a day so that I can pray.  All of my meals follow these prayer times, and many of these meals are eaten alongside my community.  This rhythm is life.  It sort of reminds me of Ecclesiastes 3; you know, there is a time for everything under the sun.  In creating a rhythm, I have found healthy ways to maintain my relationship with God, as well as relationships with everyone who I am living with, and those who I am in ministry with.  It gives me a safe way to say no to certain things, and it forces me to keep everything in perspective.  After all, there really are very few things that you can’t stop for 15 minutes to join your colleagues in prayer, and I have yet to experience any of those things since I moved into Richmond Hill, a year and a half ago.  (If you want to know intense pressure to finish something you have started, stop in the middle of something that is important to the community you live with, especially when it involves the only kitchen in the whole building.)

So I spent my holidays in Colorado Springs, and there I spent 9 days living without the rhythm that I had established here on the hill.  And I decided to check out my friend Doug’s website, findingrhythms.com.  What I realized is that I am really impressed with what it is all about.  I am not positive where he got all of the material he uses from (yeah, one of the prayers is from Richmond Hill, and that lends itself to familiarity, as well as a little sense of pride), but this is good stuff.  If you are reading this, and you like to surf the web, and you have been looking for a way to be better about developing a rhythm, or doing daily devotions, or whatever it is you call intentionally spending time with God, you should visit this website.  There is even a link at the top of the page that you can sign up for daily e-mail reminders.  I signed up for them, and all they are is a link to the website.  If you are like me, you spend part of your day mindlessly surfing the web anyway, going to various websites which have no real significance on your daily lives (my favorites are msnbc, espn, and facebook).  It was easy for me to find time while in Colorado to read these prayers, passages of scriptures, and questions which have been put together in an easy to follow format.

So I realize some of you are thinking, I am not able to focus 100% on those devotions every day.  In fact, you may even say to yourself that you have a hard time focusing on devotions once a year.  Let me give you a word of encouragement.  I pray three times a day, or rather I attend prayers 3 times a day.  My pastoral director put it best when he said that our hope is that we are fully present at least one moment during each prayer time.  Perhaps it sounds crazy, or even a little hypocritical, but what I have found is that over the past 18 months that it is simply my presence at these prayer times, my intentionality, that is so formational.  I have been changed (in a good way) by living according to this rhythm.  There is a mystery to it, especially to us Americans who are raised to believe we have to earn everything we have and are.  I mean, I want to tell everyone how I was able to change.  Heck, if I could make it a book and give it a certain number of steps, like 10 steps to becomming a better you by living a daily rhythm, I think I could make millions, maybe even more.  Unfortunately I don’t know the steps, I can’t get a copyright.  I just know it works.  Again, I don’t know how, and it doesn’t matter what your ability is.  I try to explain it like this:  We live in a culture of consumerism.  Simply by watching commercials, seeing billboards, ads in magazines, we are formed into wanting more stuff.  What if this rhythm thing works the same way.  What if just by spending time reading about God, and hearing prayers about God and who He wants us to be, we wanted to be with God more, and started acting more like the people God wants us to be.

On an entirely different note, I am planning a retreat with a friend of mine, Jeanine Guidry.  We are working on a retreat focusing on worship, giving people opportunities to be creative in their worship, and creating a space where it is comfortable to do so.  If you are free the last weekend of January (the 30th through the 1st of February), please consider being a part of this retreat.  Visit richmondhillva.org for more info.  If you haven’t got enough money for the registration, fill it out anyway, because we offer scholarships.  I really feel like this is going to be an awesome retreat!  Plus you get to experience our rhythm!

Community and Individuality.

Another wednesday, another profound (I think) thought.  I appreciate so much the ability that I have as a community to discuss God’s word.

I have been for some time contemplating the idea of Christian communal identity.  A book I was reading on Celtic spirituality planted the thought in my head, and I have been pondering it hardcore ever since.  The conclusion  I have been arriving at is that as a whole, the Christian community does not have a singular identity.  That is to say, there is nothing that one can point to and say, all Christians… (fill in the blank).  I have been toying with this idea knowing that everyone thinks Muslims pray 5 times daily and make a pilgrimage to Mecca.  We equate Judaism with people who eat kosher foods and passover and Hanukkah.  so what do Christians have?  Certainly not Christmas, not even Easter (bunnies and eggs?).  In fact, some churches follow the Christian calendar (advent, epiphany, lent, easter, etc…) and some do not.  The sacraments?  Baptism is practiced in many different forms, and there is debate over whether it is a necessity to salvation or not.  Marriage is certainly not limited to Christians, and even among Christians isn’t as Holy as it should be.  Communion may be the closest thing Christianity has to a communal identity.  Even then there are many different ways communion is done, and some churches have relegated it to a once a quarter or random event.  So why in the world am I thinking about this so much, is it even important?

I think this morning, in our formation, I had an epiphany.  This morning we read Isaiah 64:1-9.  In our conversation, someone talked about the impact that committing sin has on us.  She was saying that when we murder someone, it is wrong, and others suffer the consequence of what we have done, but that the greatest impact of our sin is on ourselves.  She talked about how it would kill our souls, and how it would affect our relationship to God.  But as she was saying it I thought, doesn’t God care about the one who was murdered as much as he cares about us?  And the family of the murdered?  And isn’t the hatred and deadness of our souls already present if we are capable of committing murder, sort of like a preexisting condition?

So I think that the reality of community and individuality is both and.  Now I know I am going all over the place with this, but stay with me and hopefully it will make sense.  In order for us to be healthy individuals we need healthy community, but in order to have a healthy community, we have to be healthy individuals.  I think anyone in a marriage can testify to this.  I know that my counselor tells me that before I enter into a healthy relationship with someone of the opposite sex which is headed towards marriage that I should understand this.  And it is possible, and perhaps I am being too Jungian, is that one is symptomatic of the other.   For instance, an unhealthy relationship can be a symptom of an unhealthy individual, and an unhealthy individual can be a symptom of an unhealthy relationship.  I would say that this is true to the point that individual health and communal health cannot be mutually exclusive.  At the same time, they are more than simply dependent on one another, and almost share the same identity, which for the sake of the rest of this writing we will call righteousness.

As an individual, I can be righteous or unrighteous (healthy or unhealthy).  As a community, we can be righteous or unrighteous.  I think that one of the great misunderstandings we suffer from today is that the two are seperate, even though many still stress how related they are.  I now see individual righteousness and communal righteousness as the same.  In this way we can diagnose the church, similar to how we might symptomatically diagnose a marriage.  In my mind this is not a matter of condemnation either.  It is only useful for attempting to improve health, not to judge, which is like cutting off an arm if you sprain your wrist.  Would it not be better to tend to the healing of the wrist, as opposed to severing it as a result of its lack of health.  So when churches focus on judging (an intentional use of the word) the “gays” and the abortionists, and spend very little effort in trying to love the poor or those in prison, what does that say about the health of the church?  What does it say about the health of the individuals in that church?

Certainly, there is no such thing as a perfect church, just as there is no such thing as a perfect person (Wow, that statement fits in my argument.  If there were a perfect church and I joined it, it would immediately become imperfect, for I am imperfect).  But what does it mean that the Chuch (the total body of Christians) does not have a communal identity?  What does that mean for us as individuals and our Christian identity?  I think it’s why I kling to this monastic lifestyle so much, to the liturgy, the lectionary, and the Eucharist (which I think aptly, is a different name for communion).

I don’t have the answers, but often the questions are more powerful and truthful than any answer.  I wonder if we spent as much time working on our communal health as a church if it would impact the individual health, and if those who spent so much time concentrating on the communal health would spend some time on their individual health, etc.  But then again, I believe righteousness is both.  And one last thing about righteousness:  My pastoral director once said that a key quality of righteousness is that those who are righteous understand that there is no ownership of that righteousness.  In other words, they aren’t righteous because of anything that they have done.  I think this is true.

I’d like to continue having this conversation.  Feel free to comment, or if you’d like, let’s go out and sit at a cafe and enjoy the conversation face to face.

Advent

Happy New Year!

Okay, so maybe it isn’t January 1st, or even the chinese new year, but today is the first sunday of Advent, the beginning of the Christian calendar.  Advent, “the coming”, is the time of year Christians spend in preparation of the birth of our savior, Jesus Christ.  Although this time is full of hope, it is also a season of the church when we reflect on the brokenness of the world.  Liturgically, advent can be compared with the season of lent, although with today’s extended early celebration of Christmas, you wouldn’t know it.

One thing is for certain, for some, this season is a reminder of the brokenness of the world.  There are many throughout the world who will be spending this season trying not to be reminded of a lost loved one.  There also will be many who are hurt by the idea of a season where so many get so much, while they look on and are reminded of how little they have.  With the season also comes colder weather, which is especially difficult for the poor and homeless.

For many, the pain that Christmas brings will be entirely unseen.  With Christmas comes the intense pressure of commercialism and materialism.  Perhaps those of us who can afford the diamonds, lexus, video game consoles, beautifully decorated large homes, and large feasts will actually be able to buy happiness.  Perhaps though, it will only conceal our loneliness, how truly detached we are from the communities that surround us.  Perhaps we will go into tremendous debt in order to obtain the things we want to give for Christmas, enslaving ourselves to what is obviously a broken financial system.

Advent is not meant to be dark and gloomy, though it is intended to create an awareness of the brokenness of the world.  The awareness of the brokenness is intended to heighten a desire for something, or someone, to fix all of this brokenness.  We are supposed to become anxious for a savior, which only intensifies the joy of Christmas, which is the celebration of the arrival of our savior.

Perhaps sometime this advent we will get an opportunity to reflect on the nature of that salvation.

If I sound like I have it all together, I don’t.  What I know is that I have created a lifestyle for myself which doesn’t allow me to give, even if I really wanted to.  Because of decisions I have already made, I have just enough income to pay my bills, and little more.  So as the end of this post, I am asking for prayer, because I am thinking about working as an engineer for NASA.  It would help me financially, but I’m not sure how it would affect my desire to impact my community.

Justice and Consciousness

Every Wednesday morning the Community of Richmond Hill comes together for formation.  This involves an open discussion of the Old Testament passage from the week’s lectionary.  The discussions are sometimes heated, and often eye opening.  This morning was an eye opening conversation, as we discussed Ezekiel 34:11-24.   I would like to reflect on what was said, and admit openly that much of what I am about to write are not my own ideas, but rather my paraphrase of what many contributed to.  Such is the blessing of living in community.

As some of the members of the Community batted around the idea of justice, and how righteousness had an individualistic and communal meaning, we came to the realization that one could not be openly and honestly discussed without the other.  I grew up in a suburban church where the very definition of salvation was preached to me as believing in Jesus Christ as savior.  Not that this is not an accurate statement but it is lacking.  We never discussed the poverty and injustice that occurred even within our own community (and therefor never discussed the healing or salvation of that poverty and injustice).  Similarly, when people were struggling with individual sins, it was never discussed.  Those who had struggles merely hid them in an effort to look as though they maintained the status quo.

As I look back at those times, I realize that every problem seemed to be the result of some personal sin.  Since these personal sins also seemed to be those things which obstructed our relationship with God, we did our very best to conceal them from those around us, hoping that others would not deem us in bad relationship with God.  And yet we ignored the consumerism and individualism, materialism and militarism that have helped to create some of these problems.  After all, if I had lived in an area with good public transportation, then I wouldn’t have needed a car, and therefor my need to make a car payment or find the money to fix a car, or worry about how others are going to get where they need to go and how it affects my schedule then becomes an entirely different issue.  In reality, however, most of the people who live in the suburbs that I grew up in, see public transportation as a problem to be avoided, and not a solution to social injustice.  After all, keeping THOSE people out of our area is important, not insuring that families with car problems have a way to get groceries.  This is, I realize, an issue of consciousness.

A quick example of this same consciousness put a different way.  When you walk into one of the public housing projects in Church Hill, you immediately sense a different spirit.  It is a spirit of despair, hopelessness, desolateness, and oppression.  Many of us, intentionally or subconsciously, were taught that the cause of this particular spirit was the immorality of the people who lived in these projects.  After all, the projects were a place where there is drug dealing, rape, murder, and all sorts of terrible behaviors.  Upon reflection on the history of these housing projects, one can easily see a different consciousness, one in which the spirit of the projects is imposed on them from those who are on the outside, trying to keep people on the inside.  Those on the inside are taught that they deserve to be there, and those on the outside are afraid of what might happen if we give them a chance to get out.

“Because you pushed with flank and shoulder, and butted at all the weak animals with your horns until you scattered them far and wide, I will save my flock, and they shall no longer be ravaged; and I will judge between sheep and sheep” Ezekiel 34:21,22.  Perhaps they aren’t scattered far and wide, but they are just as seperated from the rest of us.