There’s a lovely story here (with interesting comment). It reminds me of Chatham, for those to whom that means anything.
ontological expression
I have just been writing my bits for the January newsletter (we have a compassionate editor, who let me delay after Christmas). The newsletter is a new-ish thing in the life of the congregation, and we are just at the point of shifting from ‘new and bright’ to ‘established pattern’. So it is that I begin to recognize how even a newsletter reflects the biases of the priest and editor.
The editor and I had conversations early on about what a rector’s letter was for, and she offered me the good advice that it needed to be shorter and simpler than I might wish to make it. The trade off was that we put in place a monthly column called ‘Growing Together’. This is a catch all space for news that needs to be shared (decisions made at the liturgy day, for example) and things that we might fruitfully think about together. But as I wrote for it again today, I realise I’ve turned it into yet another ‘teaching’ slot.
It is inevitable I suppose. ‘Once a teacher always a teacher’ is a phrase that lacks humour only because it is about as surprising as ‘water is wet’.
But I do prove the adage rather more often than most.
So, this month’s rector’s letter has small suggestions for preparing for the winter session on deepening in prayer. And the Growing Together column has a full blown invitation to written work on core theological concepts, as well as a quick explanation of the free writing method.
It’s crazy, I know. But the thing is, it seems to work. I can’t tell you how often someone comes back to me weeks or months after some throw away suggestion I’ve made to the congregation to tell me how much they got out of it (or enjoyed it, or what it led to…). I’m sure some of the congregation groan and think ‘not another piece of homework’, but they are free to ignore the suggestions and carry on with their day.
This business of offering tiny suggestions for things to do, things to try, things to think about seems to be working for a lot of people. And it is as easy as could be to offer.
So, the question for you, dear reader, is this: what are the best ‘little suggestions’ you’ve been given? Small bits of teaching, method, stimulus that have lead to something meaningful.
I have a blog domain sitting dormant right now. I wonder if it is time for a new ‘church homework’ blog and weekly posts, with a space for talking about what happened when we tried. ‘Hermione’s Heaven’, perhaps? It’s madness, isn’t it? But the thing is, madness is no bar to things happening in the Piskie church…
mind games
The anatomy of singing certain carols:
God rest ye merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay
oh good, I like this one, but never think to use it. Why don’t I use it?
Remember Christ our Saviour was born on Christmas Day
da dum de dum de da dun dun — yes, it’s lovely isn’t it? So colourful. I love those long skirts, and that green velvet bonnet. See there, the one with the white muff? and her little dog. Oh look, there’s Bob Cratchet…
To save us all from Satan’s power,
when we were gone astray.
Oh tidings of —
It was a beautiful film, so much a part of… Hold on. To save us all from what??
comfort and joy, comfort and joy.
Satan… at Christmas? No.
And so it goes. It really doesn’t bother me at all to sing ‘ye merry gentlemen’. It’s a helpful locator: it puts me immediately in a time and place far away. And for a while, I can enjoy that. In fact, the time/place locators in this are so strong (helped along by visions of Dickens) that I can even sing merrily about Satan without at first noticing what I am saying. And that’s where it gets dangerous.
Uncritical use of language. Uncritical use of imagery, all for a bit of nostalgia and a good tune.
I don’t’ really worry about this in a group of committed Christians. I assume we can all sift our experience and differentiate what we enjoy for memory’s sake from how we would choose to speak of God today. I trust that that process will happen because we will have heard other words, other stories that offer critique of the biases of one generation. We need old hymns and new, to show for us different threads of our theology.
But what happens to the person who is there for the first time? … who is just beginning to wonder what sort of God this is?
Well, we have just taught them that this world is held in Satan’s power, and that Christ comes to free us. If they then stick around long enough to sing Child in a Manger (a carol all about redemption, but without a redeeming feature), they will get to refine this by singing:
…child who inherits all our transgression,
all our demerits on him will fall
One the most holy child of salvation
gently and lowly lived below;
now as our glorious mighty Redeemer,
see him victorious over each foe.
Lovely, isn’t it? You’ve come to church at Christmas to see if you can catch a glimpse of God, and you’ve gone away having sung that the world is in Satan’s power, that God heaps all our faults and punishment on Christ, and that that’s OK, but Jesus does battle with all who oppose God and Jesus wins.
God help us.
There is not a single concept there that should be excised from Christianity. They all have their place, their biblical precedents, and a mature faith needs to grapple with why the early church chose the language it did to speak of salvation. But the Christmas Liturgy (or worse, the carol service) is not the time and place for it. People remember the things they have sung better than the things that were said. These are the images of God they will carry away, and the better the tune, the more damaging the effect.
None of this is about ‘man’ and ‘mankind’ — changing a word here, and a word there to aim at inclusion.
There are times, there are prayers and hymns in which it is easy to slip in ‘people’ or ‘humankind’ or ‘all’. And sometimes that is the right thing to do. But changing a word here and a word there can be worse than singing ‘God rest ye merry gentlemen’ if it suggests that we welcome this hymn and all its theology apart from that one little word.
out with the old?
Once again, Kate has written an important post reflecting on the experience of Liturgy — most specifically: what it feels like to be pushed to the edge by overwhelmingly male & patriarchal language for God. I can picture the scene all too easily, and it frustrates me.
But I know that if Kate came here, she would find things little better. I know, because I flinch as I lead worship — saying phrases I would quietly omit if I were sitting in the pew, phrases that I believe are unhelpful and misleading.
So, Kate’s post also makes me uncomfortable because it puts me face to face with my own hypocrisy. I hate some of what the tradition offers as normative. It was not part of my formative experience as a Christian, it was not part of my formative experience as a theology student or ordinand, but I have had to learn to deal with it as a priest.
I deal with it as a priest because it is what the tradition demands of me. I deal with it as a priest because one has to pick one’s battles, and my own needs and those of the congregations do not always match. I deal with it as a priest because I naively and somewhat stubbornly resist being too free with the words of the liturgy, because I have known too many priest who cut (or add) all sorts of things without any sense of the theological implications of what they are doing.
I pray daily for a revised liturgy that will take away these pains (and give thanks for those who are working on it).
But in the mean time, what can we do other than flinch?
Well, while I have chosen not to push the language agenda too far in these particular congregations, I do try to keep as many images of God on the go as possible. ‘Father’ has it’s place, and it’s place is scattered amidst a thousand other images for God.
I try — though only with partial success — to get the other preachers in the congregation to respect my wish that we not use ‘men’, ‘man’ or ‘mankind’ to refer to humanity. But then, neither can I force people to agree with me, nor prevent them from preaching on the importance of ‘Son of God’ rather than ‘Child of God’ while I quietly fume in my pew (there is a theological argument to be had there, but it is rather more complex than sermons allow, and the effect of stressing Sonship, to me, is to overemphasise maleness). And the thing is: there is almost no way to convince someone that inclusive language matters if they think it doesn’t. To engage in the feminist critique of language for the first time is to be confronted with your own complicity in abusive power structures, and most people just aren’t willing to do that while chatting over coffee.
But there are days when I want to throw caution to the wind, days when I want to send Kate on tour to each and every congregation that lives quietly with outdated language and image and say, ‘look: is this not precisely who we need in the church? We are lucky she seems strong enough to withstand the damage, but how many others are we losing along the way?’
I do not know how to reconcile the fact that in one church, there are people who hurt if they lose language they have loved all their lives, and others who hurt if they are constantly confronted by images of God which exclude them.
I believe that the greater burden needs to be on those who have lived longest with God, and have grown deepest in faith. But of course, age never guarantees experience.
In the mean time, I thank God for the blogs, for the community that has developed, for a place where we can speak honesty of what we find hard in church and know that there are others there working for the same revolutions, those who understand that the anger and frustration at some of what happens in God’s name comes out of our love for the wonderful terrible beast that is the Episcopal Church.
wonderful exchange 