GeoFee
Trust the Spirit; Speak and Act Plain... The Opening Way!
Posted on: 03/14/2013 22:13
Resort to group think processes may serve well to defer change in practice, being liable to abstraction, with words displacing action as the operative norm. Words are spoken, collected, collated and re-framed as saummary statements. These summary statements are then disseminated as information for the constituent community. On reception, the words of the summary statement are adopted, or not, as normative for the life and work of the constituent community's communities.
Group think process is undertaken as an approach to remedy, for that which troubles the constituent community. It has a predictable liturgical pattern. The question is broached. The issue is framed. Persons are delegated responsibility for addressing the issue and discovering recommendations. This team of persons begins drawing on the experience and insight of the particular members. These are scribed onto flip charts, which serve as the basis for collation, summarization ("word smithing") and distribution, generally as a study guide or a reference document.
What I want to ask is directly related to the pattern above. Is it possibile that the means we employ, as we seek definition of our mission in light of the gospel, are compromising our hope; being a symptom of the malaise and therefore unable to be useful in its remedy. Einstien, somewhere, says this much better than I just have.
I mention these things as someone who has stepped out of the definitional patterns by which we are governed; by which we have been rendered anxious and defensive. In my heart I carry gratitude for the persons who discerned my suitability for ministry with the UCC. They recognized me as a "maverick" and indicated that this might bring a gift to the Church. And there is the rub.
A maverick is a cow who does not walk with the herd. This leaves the maverick vulnerable to misfortune, but also provides the maverick with opportunities fo the discovery of alternative ways to achive desired outcomes. When the herd is stymied by some unexpected barrier along the way to the feeding trough, it is the maverick who will find a way around the barrier. The herd is faced with a dilemma of some consequence. Follow the way indicated by the Maverick, whom they generally shun, or stick to the habitual pattern?
The text is clear: "Without a vision, the people perish"; as we are perishing. This makes plain our obligation to devote all available resources to the discovery of our life sustaining vision. We need to know what we are to do as those who have covenanted to service in the way of the gospel. [I recoommend resort to the agreement of Luke with Isaiah. By these two witnesses we called to incorporation for concrete expression of the Spirit's mandate. Our mandate, our vision is made plain as day is it not?
Our returning, to which Lent invites us by its dramatic press to decision, will begin with personal inquiry and grow through mutual inquiry. At every level of our shared being in the world, each must either choose or shun responsibility for the generations to come. This is what a vision does. It calls us away from where we have been, leads us out into unfamiliar terrain, and towards the new reality which is the homeland we seek for our children's children.
Nice to be able to ramble in a room for of critical thinkers. Jesus begins by asking what others are saying. He turns to the decisive queston: "Who do you say that I am?" This is the question ministers of the gospel are called to raise in the mind of those gathered to the common table. Each must be invited, challenged, supported, encouraged, in a personal relationship with the text. This is a basic baptismal commitment, is it not?
I am one of multiplied thousands in the earth. Each of us, by the exercise of the distinctive and distinguishing gift that is in us, is making known that the present configuration of power is in a state of accelerating decay.
If you do not care for apocalyptic metaphors, I will point you to Carl Jung on mass nuerosis. The cumulative repressed anxiety of a continent deep in the thrall of debt bondage (Egypt as the correponding metaphor), is now breaking out in manifold forms of death dealing. The surface of civility is grown extremely thin and there are chaos flashpoints breaking out with increasing ferocity and frequency.
The Spirit of God is like the wind, which comes and goes as it pleases. Thirty two years following my baptism into that Spirit, I am peruaded that as it was in Egypt, Babylon, Persia and Rome, so it will be with us. It is a matter of listening to the past and understanding where we are in the cycle of rise and fall. Denial is the first stage of neurosis. Persistent denial is fatal. Arnold Toynbee is helpful in understanding the pattern.*
A small reminder. The things above are nothing more or less that what God has given me to think and say. This is the God who has given me daily bread in my years of destitution as in my years of sufficiency. I was first introduced to this God by my mother. I surrendered to this God alone in the Rocky Mountains, at the very end of my self confidence and the very end of my hope.
I am only here through Lent. I do appreciate the freedom to utter and the certainty of critical awareness on the other side. If you take me to be out of bounds, I hope you will come alongside to support and encourage my press to fidelity.
Blessed are those who will die to the way of this world, and rise to the way of the world to come. As it is written: "There is that which appears to be rich but it is poor. And, there is that which appears to be poor, but it is rich."
*"Of the 21 civilizations Toynbee identified, sixteen were dead by 1940 and four of the remaining five were under severe pressure from the one named Western Christendom - or simply The West. He explained breakdowns of civilizations as a failure of creative power in the creative minority, which henceforth becomes a merely 'dominant' minority; that is followed by an answering withdrawal of allegiance and mimesis on the part of the majority; finally there is a consequent loss of social unity in the society as a whole." Source Link
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MikePaterson
Posted on: 03/15/2013 10:08
Why does god keep spooking the herd of which we're part, Geo?
You'd think it'd be easier for "him" to stay in the office, and make "himself" useful by granting our every prayer ("he" can be a bit slack in that department at times!)… and let us get on with the "real" stuff.
crazyheart
Posted on: 03/15/2013 11:20
John McCain and Sarah Palen think that they are Mavericks How many more out there?
kaythecurler
Posted on: 03/15/2013 12:05
That brings up more questions CH and GeoFee. I'll ask them but with the plain statement of - no offense meant!
When does a Maverick's behavior become the behavior of a nutcase?
How can we tell the difference between these two descriptions?
MikePaterson
Posted on: 03/15/2013 13:51
Herds are basically stupid, Kay — invariably. Greener field one day, abattoir the next…
Mavericks may be crazy or they may not, but no-one in the herd's going to know the difference because they simply go along with everyone else, surrendering their discernment, denying their responsibility and abandoning their principles… and at least 10 per of the herd's members are bound to be crazy.
Jim Kenney
Posted on: 03/15/2013 14:36
Is there a difference between being crazy and being insane? I happily self-identify as crazy, but I do not see myself as insane. To me, being crazy is to be willing to consider ideas and possibilities seen as impossible or unacceptable to the majority. Being insane is to adopt a line of thinking that is self and other destructive. Mavericks are those who choose to go their own way, but their goals may not be much different from the rest of the herd.
I thought mavericks went their own way without worrying too much if the rest of herd eventually will follow them.
I don't know if George offers a particularly helpful strategy, but I share what I perceive as his core concern. One way for a religious institution to survive is to have a key role in the power structure of a society. Another way for a religious instittution to survive is to a place where people encounter God / Spirit in a meaningful way and respond to those encounters faithul to the Spirit. At times it seems the UCC is trying to survive using intellectual tools and management strategies., and I do not see much future in these kinds of strategies. The first way is gone for us, and the second way is our best hope.
SG
Posted on: 03/15/2013 14:55
http://www.shs.uwo.ca/mentalhealth/stigma.html
GeoFee
Posted on: 03/15/2013 16:40
Thanks all for the comments. It is by the entertainment and engagement of diverse perspectives that we may take our bearings, and by those bearing negotiate our progress along the way that opens.
kaythecurler and crazyheart, I wonder if there is anything in the openng post indicating "nutbar" status?
I will stay tuned a while, and add some further commentary as the conversation moves forward.
kaythecurler
Posted on: 03/15/2013 19:53
As I pointed out - I meant no offense by my questions. I know people who have had the 'title' of maverick and of 'nutcase' attached to them by other parts of society. Sometimes, it seems to me, which 'title' fits best, isn't known until some time later, as in 'when the situation has settled down again'.
GeoFee seems to self-identify as a Maverick, a talent that took him into the service of the church. At least some people within the church appear to have seen him as something a bit different - maybe a nutcase, a rabble rouser, a thorn in the flesh. Don't we just love to classify ourselves and each other! To me, he is one of the wide variety of folks that frequent the WC.
MikePaterson
Posted on: 03/15/2013 20:57
Mavericks have more fun.
GeoFee
Posted on: 03/16/2013 14:26
No offense taken. This is one of the great delights discovered while present to the spirit and absent to the world. Folks are as free to be who they are as I am to be me. Say on kind friends, curious onlookers, skeptical and concerned... I am twice as ready to hear as I am to comment
Here's a maverick having fun at a conscientization event in Fredericton.
The resistance community found me a funny fellow, but took encouragements and insight from our dialogic sessions; as did I. Among them I was a mentor friend, in the way of a mid-wife. This has been my principle strategy all along my appointed way. To come alongside persons met along that way as friend and encourager. This following my realization that Jesus did most of his life changing work at the brief intersection of his own experience with the experience of persons serendipitously met. No trace of a program by my reading.
Once requestied United Church participation, members of the church joining members of the resistance in a show of solidarity, at a meeting of Woolastook Presytery executive. Showed pictures and told stories of adventures in social action with a demographic the United Church would love to attract with the gospel.
I have learned that such folk are much open to the gospel. It is the religon in which that gospel has been kept out of sight which is refused. Those who practice it do not go in and they do not allow others to go in. This keeps the critically conscious youth resistors out rather than in.
One member to the Executive was not persuaded. Her family had always been well served by their loyalty to the Irving name. She did not want to put the benefits following this loyalty at risk. Nor could she endorse any public United Church present in the streets and in the public square. The consensus supported this perspective.
Here is an example of my process with resistance groups. I am mostly behind the camera observing. The short sample of dialog at the front indicates my method of engagement. Rarely is such engagement done on camera. This is just by way of example
I have always considered myself as a single one. I am strenthened in my position by resort to Buber and Kierkegaard, both interpreters of Socrates. My method consists in the simple determination to yield the things I have learned by my experience in the world into the service of the Spirit. There is only one thing required of me if I am to progress along this opening way. With Schierlmacher and others, I am convinced of my absolute dependance.
The designation "Maverick" was made by the Conferenc of MNWO. This after four years of discernment specific to my suitability for ordered ministry. The designation reflects my integrity throughout the process. I never pretended to be other than I was in order to negotiate the credentialling process required by the Basis of Union; but not by the gospel. I expressed myself as one observant and critical concerning the precept and practice of the United Church, as it was being expressed in the lived experience of its constituency.
Anon... Partner and Pup up for some R&R, much as I enjoy sitting in this almost place with you, each as all.
RAN
Posted on: 03/16/2013 00:21
Was the lost sheep (of the 100) really a maverick? There was a celebration when the shepherd brought the lost sheep back to the flock. Would the return of a maverick be a reason to celebrate? (Just playing with the metaphors.)
GeoFee
Posted on: 03/16/2013 11:59
Nice.
GeoFee
Posted on: 03/16/2013 22:30
Nicely played from where I sit in this circle of observance and participation, this almost place of learning and growing.
The rabbis were not occupied with mental construals and constructions. They preferred to engage the way of truth from within the world of experience. The gospel notes that Jesus taught nothing without resort to a parable.
We find this in Socrates as well. How often is he not berated for his talk of cookery and boot making. That with which we have to do is rooted in the world of experience. What we discover in the realms of intuition and insight can be expressed only by resort to metaphor.
The assertion of objective veracity is demonstably at odds with a God who, like the wind, is elusive and ambiguous by definiton. What can be fixed and located is not God but some idol standing in the place of God.
The complementary notice of a sheep wandered from the flock puts a good question to my notice of a cow who wanders from the herd. Where I had the maverick as exemplar of an alternative consciousness by which the herd might find behefit, the parable has the maverick as one wandered into peril and rescued into security. A very welcome question, which I have been puzzling through since coming upon it.
On this Saturday evening, as I prepare to relax with Partner and Pup, I am glad to have been the wanderer found. After years alone drifting through Canada's Western Provinces and Cities, I had come to the point of exhastion in heart, mind, soul and body. At the very point of surrender to death alone in a high mountain pass, the word of God came to me. Claimed me and brought me back - to the herd which I had left in search of liberty.
I was baptized into the Holy Spirit at the age of thirty and began a life of service in the way of the gospel. This way has brought me to where I now sit, here in this almost place, playing with language during the days of Lent.
Why playing?
Helps me avoid the pitfalls attending the knowledge of good and evil; that bipolar realm where conflict rules and harmony perishes. I know my words are given me to say. I have no idea of what it is that they may or may not accomplish. They are made present in the hope of dialogue. Not a rational battle of wit and will, but the sweet give and take found where poets and musicians "riff"; what Bob Marley calls "Jammin' in the Name of the Lord"
GeoFee
Posted on: 03/18/2013 14:15
A sound collage from this past Sunday morning, March 17, 2013. The service is with one of four rural congregations who are unable to obtain regular ordered supply. I send this to give some indication of what can happen when we break away from the habit of scripted liturgies. While we follow a basic script, there is lots of room for the spontaneous and the unexpected. Laughter is common.
Sound like a "nutcase"?
Dcn. Jae
Posted on: 03/18/2013 21:51
We evangelicals struggle as well. Too often in our churches we are tempted to make Christian education programs our King. What we really need are more genuine experiences with the God-Spirit. My own little Baptist church is one of great love and family-feeling. I would love to transplant that into more churches. I believe that this feeling I have is a part of my calling to be a pastor.
GeoFee
Posted on: 03/18/2013 22:09
Here are a few lines speaking to the matter of transplanting love, an idea with which I am in agreement.
There was a very succesful Baptist congregation in downtown Fredericton. The membership was growing and crowding the existing structures, sanctuary, auditorium and such. So a plan was set in motion. It began with exploration of possibility. During this stage I took time to sit in conversation with the lead pastor. With him I explored an alternative to building a a new Church.
The congregation's success suggested to me that there was something good going on. I wondered if the congregation might consider appointing and sending small teams into the many congregations in the vicinity who were not doing so well.
The small teams could get involved and begin to establish the precepts and practices which had brought success to the original congregation. This seemed in agreement with the manner in which Jesus sent disciples to spread the good news of liberation for all those suffering under the ruling powers and principalities.
My idea was considered interesting, but not accepted as workable. Why? I suspect that there were many of the city's prominent business and politcal persons numbered among the congregation. At a time of sluggish market movement, the idea of a major construction project was appealling.
I have mentioned, elsewhere, how many congregations in Fredericton were investing in GDP and dodging responsibility to the poor and broken dwelling in the very shadow of prosperity. This is not unusual. Congregations all across the country have turned to real estate development in the hope of solvency in a rapidly shifting social economy.
On another note. I continued to be friends with the pastor of this congregation, as well as most of the others. In my last year with folk in Fredericton, the local speedway held a "Faster Pastor" event. About a dozen local ministers were given street modified stock cars to race around a quarter mile paved oval. What fun!
Best of all good things as you work towards the realization of the possibility vested in you by the spirit of the living God.
Dcn. Jae
Posted on: 03/19/2013 18:47
Best of all good things as you work towards the realization of the possibility vested in you by the spirit of the living God.
Thank you for your kind words GeoFee and thank you for sharing your story about Fredericton. I would like to write more, but I must go back to doing some homework now... finishing up a report for one of my classes.