Hey Meredith - this is one that I have a bookmark in, so count me in!  I just finished one, so I'm ready for another. 

Not an easy thing to be balanced. Sometimes one side negates the other. It's hard to fly if you have to be "grounded" at the same time.  So maybe we occasionally have to let go one side of the balance while we embrace the other, even if we do intend to embrace the first side again. 

Glad to have you join us Birthstone!

That's a really interesting comment Spiritbear - any others who agree that sometimes it's necessary to become unbalanced to move forward?  Interesting that DBB stated that Mainline Protestant churces needed to be "decentered"...

Hi Meredith:

I will comment more on the book after I have read my way deeper into it, but just commenting on balance, any balance between two opposites necessitates both opposites. And, as spiritbear pointed out, in order to explore one extreme, we have to leave the other, and vice versa. Only after we have explored both extremes do we know where the balance really is!

Hi Meredith, 

Thanks for starting our new wondercafe book study. 

It is encouraging to read that thriving congregations are rediscovering the richness of the Christian tradition - embracing the biblical story, and engaging in spiritual practices.  I like DBB's definition of emerging Christianity as "transformational".

Hi Meredith:

I think DBB started her book off on the wrong foot by using her negative reaction to Centering Prayer as a wholesale condemnation of meditation. "I have little patience for spirituality that seems self-absorbed and isolating," she writes in her introduction.

It appears that DBB judges and codemns meditation from the viewpoint and the negative experience of a non-meditator. From my experience, meditation is not isolating but uniting!

In the meditative state we expereince the unity of all things. We feel at-one with everyone and everything—including God. The all-encompassing unity we experience in meditation is an excellent grounding for spirtuality, the firmest possible grounding I can imagine! To experience all-embracing unity is, in my opinion, the Christ experience, the experience of Jesus' "kingdom within," or "kingdom of God." What could be more Christian than that? What could me more grounding for a Christian congregation?

What, I wonder, are her successful congregations grounded in? Doctrine? I find doctrines to be potentially divisive, and spiritual experience to be powerfully unitive. DBB displays the same disdain for experiential or mystical spirituality as Gretta Vosper. I am disappointed!

But one shouldn't judge a book by its cover. So far, I've read only IINTRODUCTION and Chapter ONE. I hope the book gets better. 

As I read what she said regarding the meditative exercise I thought "Arminius is not going to agree with this at all!"

I wonder if part of our discomfort with or wholesale dismissal of meditative practices has to do with living in a culture that does not value these things.  We don't value quiet, stillness or inactivity so when we encounter them we're uncomfortable.  I think it's fair to say that they are not isolating and self-centered in and of themselves.  I also think it's fair to say that, depending on how they are presented, they can be a little silly and out of place.  Maybe this was the case at the conference she was describing.

Yes, Meredith, I'm sure this was the case at the conference she was describing. Meditation may indeed have been out of place there. Moreover, meditation should never be forced. When it is forced, it does not turn out right. Although Centering Prayer is a traditional Christian monastic practice, Christian culture is not traditionally meditative, and we must be careful not to push it.

Meditation is sometimes forced on others by well meaning people (like me ) I, of course, know better than to force meditation. Beginning meditators in particular may not feel comfortable meditating in groups, or in public, where there is pressure on them to produce a certain desired result. Moreover, meditation is not much of a virtue by and in itself. I know people who meditate a lot—but that's all they do! If mediatation is not followed up by creative thinking and dynamic creative action, then it is little more than a self-centered exercise. Although I think meditation is important for basic spiritual grounding, the thoughts and acts that follow meditation are what ultimately counts. And it is quite possible to engage in these thoughts and actions just out of a deep and abiding religious conviction. Contemplative thought can be just as effective as meditation.

Anyway, I have not given up on DBB yet. Most of all, I like her easy-to-read style. Her Chapter ONE, The Vanished Village, reads like a chapter out of a good nostalgic novel. Almost every one of us who are near fifty or older grew up in such a community. I think it is spiritual community that we all yearn for, and those congregations that manage to retain their traditional sense of spiritual community are the ones that thrive and survive.

Tonight I'll read Chapter TWO.

 I have heard wonderful things from wonderful UCC people about this book, and have actually participated in a workshop based on the book.  I just haven't read it. 

I brought it home today from the church.  There was a bookmark in it (early on) but when I skimmed through, I only remembered headings.

Well, this looks like a good place to jump in with both feet...I am an ex-Buddhist nun who is searching for a way into community who was told about wondercafe as a means to faciliate the transition back to church. I think I left Christianity for reasons that seem to be irrevelent now. So many people are searching and struggling with living mindful and virtuous lives in the spirit of Jesus' teaching without the bible thumping and condemnation that made me very uncomfortable sitting in a pew in the past. And the very language that was so hurtful seems to be disappearing. This book addresses some of the problems I encountered and am encountering now. Meditation and retreat practices are still a very important part of my life... I am curious to see how I can find the balance I need to feel authentic and true to myself as I reach out for contacts in the church.

Are DBB's comments about meditation really a criticism of the practice itself, or only the context in which it is practiced? To me, meditation requires a large degree of solitude and isolation from distraction.  But that's not what public worship is about. The very act of coming together as the body of Christ is about finding community and connecting with others - the God incarnate or Christ-spirit in each and every individual.  Meditation just requires too much focussing for it to be successful for many of us in public worship. That's not to say some that it might work for some in this context, but I don't think it does for most. It's like herding cats. The fewer you have the more successful you will be. Let's just find the right context for the right practice.

Finally, a book study I'm on time for :)  I've read the book already, so I'll go back over it and try and chime in on the discussion.  We actually looked at it as a study group in one of my churches, and those folks mostly did NOT like it, so if this thread gets too positive, I'll try and throw in some of their objections :)

I don't meditate.  I've tried it, and it has not been a good experience.  Mostly, I simply fall asleep.  That said, I know well that it has enormous value for many.  It just needs to be someone else who leads it :)

"Basically the participants were lead through a guided meditation/prayer in which they were asked to close their eyes and “breathe their sacred words”.  While attempting this exercise DBB found herself anxious and unable to keep her eyes closed.  She concluded that the exercise was a poor metaphor for Mainline Protestant Churches and that what the church really needs is to be decentred, more in touch with reality and the possibilities that God might have for it."

You will note she is not saying meditiative prayer is wrong but that it is not a good metaphor because it is so individualistic - where is the common metaphor for the community when it is your sacred word?  To be decentered is to move from self to self in community to community: church decentered is- to move from inner concern to wider concern,  from self as in community to a wider sense of God within process.

The other thing is she does lay out the common elements that help mainline churches discover their trajectory and each church studied reflect an aspect of the common elements - it is a back flow- set out theory and see how actual situations inform theory - so her model is one of praxis.  You can begin anywhere to discover the common insights.

The other important insight, not in the book, but later is the difference between postmodernism and modernism - and that every 500 years the church has a rumage sale - everything is on the table to see what is needed..

There will be resistance to her over view on the part of some congregations because it is demanding.  It is the rummage sale and some sacred ideas must go.  Those ideas that are considered sacred really are cultural. Is that what you discovered at your church Matt? I found this to be a reistance in mine.

That was certainly part of the problem, yes.  Cultural ties ("we have always done it this way") are a problem.  There was also a certain amount of resistance to the book itself, with some arguing that while the first chapter or so was well written, the rest of the book was really just the same thing repeated ad nauseum.  The third thread of objection was that what insight provided was really not useful for their context - small, rural.

Of course, that third objection could arguably be said to simply be the first with different dressing.

The other point is many want a how to manual and forget that the book is an illustration of how different and diverse groups acted out in their context some of the generalized themes needed.  No one size fits all but each is a creative adaptation of the basic values and particular empathizes on one theme or more than one theme.

Does being "balanced" mean you become stale, stagnant and repetitive? We can balance ourselves with two feet beside each other or we can have one foot slightly ahead of the other one. One stance keeps us standing in one spot the other moves us forward.

Would you think meditation  and spiritual rituals vs bookishness has something to do with how people are made - right and left brained? Some get it and are comfortable with it and some aren't?

Hi Waterfall,

I'm a big fan of balance - it stabilizes, grounds and keeps us from falling over.  I would submit that it is not balance that makes us stale, stagnant and repetitive but rather imbalance - in the church this may mean never trying new things, becoming closed off from the world around us or stubborn resistance to change.  The other extreme is an approach that doesn't remain connected to tradition, ritual or a routine of some sort.  Typically we see the first rather than the second imbalance in Mainline Protestantism.

I just remembered that I bought a copy of Christianity for the Rest of Us  before Christmas, so I could participate in this discussion and haven't read it yet.  Don't think I'll be able to sustain this one, so wondermail me if you'd like the book.  It's new and I"m donating it.

Anjali -- a big welcome to you!  Great to see you here.

 Anjali - welcome!! I'm positive you'll find some great discussions here.  

We used this book at the workshop I mentioned as an overview to churches recognizing their strengths and building on them, rather than trying to be everything, or particularly, something they aren't.

Referring to what  Rev Matt said, a rural congregation would have a hard time running a soup kitchen for street people, and an inner city church might find it difficult to have big family picnics.  

I'm not sure what the actual book is like, but it was used in a very memorable way to encourage real discernment of purpose & ability.

Hi Anjali: Welcome to wondercafe!

I went a path similar to yours: From literalist Christianity to atheism to Zen Buddhism back to a new understanding of Christianity. Now I find myself a Budhhist Christian, slightly out of step with my fellow Christian pilgrims.

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Hi Pan: You are right; DBB did not condemn meditative prayer. She just felt uncomfortable and anxious while participating in it, and thought it was a poor metaphor. But she made it into a metaphor?!

_______________________________________

Hi Meredith: Last night I read Chapter TWO, Remembering Christianity, and what struck me was "We are all pilgrims in a strange land now, exiles and immigrants wandering in the new world of this post everything age." (page 38)

Post everything age, I thought, that's a good one! But it also means pre everything age: an opportunity for a new beginning!

She further writes, on the same page, that "the old village churches became secularized, and lost their sense of wonder, transcendence, and passion. This loss of holy beauty hastened their decline."

But what can be better to re-capture this "holy beauty" than the experience of God, or the eternal now, that we experience in meditation? Why, then, does she come out, if not against meditation, then certainly not in favour of it, with her ill-conceived opening remarks about meditative prayer?

I have noticed that liberal/intellectual mainstream Protestantism is generally uncomfortable with meditation and mystical experience, as if mysticism were unintellectual, something that the mystical East and the evangelical Christian Right engages in, but not the liberal and intellectual Middle! And this is coming from a tradition that was founded by mystics, on the strength of their mystical experiences, and whose mystical inspirations became our sacred scriptures?!

I noticed and bemoaned a similar disregard for mystical experience in Gretta Vosper's With Or Without God. Of the books we discussed so far, only Bruce Sanguin came out strongly in favour of meditation and mysticism. Indeed, his highest level of spiritual evolution, the Turquoise level, is the level of mystical at-one-ment with everyone and everything.

But I'll read on, and talk tou you tomorrow.

In Cosmic Unity,

Arminius

Meredith, 

Could you clarify how you would like us to move through the book discussion? 

Will we carry on with chapters 1 and 2 on this thread (as Arminius is starting to do) or will we be creating new threads for each chapter?

An interesting discussion is shaping up here.

 Arminius - I know of several wonderful pockets of wonderfully meditatively spiritually focused people in various UCCs.   I have learned a lot from them, despite not being 'tuned' in the same way, and have found them to be some of the truest disciples of God.  Or maybe it was more evident, which is a benefit to discipling.  

Don't lose hope!  I think those pockets draw similar people to them, so if there is place without them, it may feel less encouraging.

Yes - please remember I don't get to read so often - darn Cafe!!  But I'm coming!!  Do you folks take notes when you read a book like this?  Or just dog-ear pages.  I tend to do both.

Hi Birthstone, 

For wondercafe book studies, I use highlighters and sticky notes.

P3

Argggghhh. Nooooooo

When I am done reading a book, it looks like it has never been opened.

IT

Russ

I am going to start a thread for each chapter but each thread is not limited to discussion on that chapter only.  I will summarize chapter 1 but will be inviting someone else to summarize chapter 2.

Birthstone I'm taking notes as I read (can't bear highlighting books) but do whatever works for you.

Arminius I'm working my way through chapter 2 - don't get too far ahead of us

This is exactly where I need to be to sort through the insertioon of myself into a Christian context. The book is helpful and your comments rich in significance since this is where this "Wesleyan Buddhist Witch" (egad!) seems to have landed. I have spent months on retreat and I guess have discovered that that needs to be balanced with life in community in order to carmelize the insights gathered during contemplation. And I love people and want to be of service... the retreat cabin is a good palce to commune with foxes and chipmonks and the occassional moose, but I want to be with people for awhile. The UCC seems to want to engage in this journey with folks lurking on the fringes. Thanks for this book study.

I am sure that some of the discomfort over contemplative or meditative paths must come from the fear of what disturbing or controversial insights might bubble up from the deep stillness. The late medieval mystics were a great witness to God's spirit but were an unsettling bunch of coconuts to many. Christianity does have a rich contemplative history and its martyrs too.

She is right at home in recapturing the mystical tradition and you are correct that many liberals are not.  However, her opening point is,  find your sacred word,  It is this new age direction of radical individualism that also helps move the church qua church out of a shared experience of God - it makes it too individualistic and that is why it is not a good metaphor - it is another focus on me and often the transcendence is lost. That is the problem of the liberal church - we have lost the transcendence in the horizontal plane.

She was commenting on a particular experience that actually goes against what is hoped for - I have been in many a situation where centering prayer was misused and that the persons in charge did not notice.

The metahor that she is calling for is for us to “pray with eyes wide open” as we cultivate God-filled spirituality,  The problem she had was the eyes shut - that is a problem with the church for it is too inward looking - in a post everything world we have to have our eyes wide open to what is going on around us.... this is the direction she is suggesting.

In some use of the 'sacred word' is it is too inward without the moving out to solidarity with the world - the spiritual direction is beginning in the inner to the outer than the process grows - the outer is reflected back into the inner reality and on and on.  Too often the inner stuff remains there - another form of self referencing.

Hi Pan: Thanks for the clarification. Now I understand her metaphor better!

I actually like the book. It is insightful and beautifully written, trying to re-capture the best of our traditions while moving forward into a better future. I myself, despite my appearant ultra progressiveness, love many of our Christian traditions, and would like to retain them. DBB's combination of tradition and progressiveness appeals to me.

And yes, some leaders do go overboard in their zeal to introduce centering prayer and other meditative practices. Such practices can't and shouldn't be forced, and some settings are inappropriate for it.

it is hard to keep my eyes open when what i see is so much suffering. i don't want to run away from it but I don't want to be overwhelmed by it either. cultivating stillness for me provides a moment of renewal and i hope inspiration as to what to do next. Jesus has been a life long mentor for me in this. I honour his fearlessness in facing the truth of our humaness and loving us enough to remind us of our divinity. The inherent Buddha nature that was pointed out to me by wise Asian mentors strikes the same chord. Something about Jesus touches me differently though. It has to be more than a nostalgic feeling for "home" or the familiarity of the the language and the tradition that was nurtured in me as a child and youth. But maybe that is all that it is. I am getting older and going to funerals and hearing the words all over again in a new context sharpened by  grief.  a tradition holds us in these tender moments.... maybe my return to the church is more about a fear of death. or at least a need for a community to embrace the inevitable with me. Traditions that are flexible enough to embrace change while holding onto the old  unites people through time and can provide rituals for transformations like this.

Hello everyone ....God bless you....

I dont believe anything of God should be out there without the Holy Spirit...This wonderful part of the Trinity does His/Her Job in our lives...the Holy Spirit .....

I am not a meditator.....I pray ...I pray formyself, all my loved ones, I Praise the Lord for what He does in my Life...I worship Him for His Wisdom and Understanding ....the Supernatural/Mystical....the Mysterious Side of God ..this is what I seek and search for ....

I believe that it would be a total blast to stand up in and just Praise the Lord with our whole heart...but who can really do this ....this is how I believe we grow....not that I am a loud person at all. ...I found the churches were very quiet...and I felt uncomfortable to worship  ...not an atmosphere I would want to frequent ....

I believe as long us we Believe in God ...this is what counts first, the Rest will fall into place.....meditation, prayer, supernatural, mystical...I believe it all works ...if we have Faith.....

Good discussion....God bless you guys......

IJL: bg

What is the horizontal plane and why is it important the liberal church transcend in it?  Google is failing to help me grasp the concept.

Yes and she said she found the exercise "ironic".

You'll have to excuse Pan, he's an academic ;)

He will correct me if I am wrong, but normally that horizontal plane language is meant to stand as a contradiction to the vertical plane.  The vertical plane suggests that the world exists in vertical order - ie, God is above us.  If you view the world on the horizontal plane, you talk about God as being in the same place as us, roughly speaking. 

What we are transcending is the boring normal experiences of life.  The profane, if you will.  The vertical plane thinking finds that much easier to do, because God is so much better than us, so God is automatically outside of the profane, better than it.  But that also creates the understanding that we mere mortals can never really aspire to much better.  Seeing the horizontal plane allows us the possibility that we, too can be better, but the down side is that it becomes very easy to lose sight of that beautiful transcendence altogether as everything melds together into the grey of normality.

Hope that helps.

Thank you RevMatt! I understand it now.

Does it really matter that D BB wasn't turned on by meditation or centering prayer?

Isn't she on a spiritual journey just like the rest of us? Maybe it will be more meaningful or satisfying to her some other time.

ah yes.    I find it helpful then, when looking at the suffering, to look just beyond it and discover the hands reaching out to help, and the hearts that are softened in discovering sorrow.  That is where God is working and where there is hope in the world.

Hi RevMatt: How about combining the two planes?

The religious sybmols of all religions embody some kind of unification between opposites. The Eastern Yin/Yang symbol is most famous for that, but even the Christian Cross or the Judaic Star of David combine opposites. The union between the vertical and horizontal plane is particularly obvious in our cross.

Noetic knowledge is said to be ultimate knoweldge. According to Husserl, Noetic knowledge is the union between the vertical and horizontal planes of knowledge, objective and subjective knowledge, or Noesis and Noema, as he calls them. I made a cross out of the union between Noesis and Noema:

    N

    O

NOEMA

    S

    I

    S       

I fail to see why transcendence should be missing in the horizontal plane, particularly when the horizontal and the vertical plane are combined. Even horizontal thinking alone, which knows no hierarchy, knows transcendence. In natural evolution, transcendenec is the theme. Past states get transcended and carried forward into the next state, and so on, and the highest state contains all states. Thus, we have transcendence and oneness on the vertical plane.

On the horizontal plane, God thrones on top, and down it goes, down the heavenly and earthly hierarchies, with transcendence more obvious, but perhaps less real.

Actually, I like the Celtic Cross the best, with the circle, the symbol for union, superimposed over the junction between the vertical and horizontal plane.

In Cosmic Unity,

Arminius       

Matt does a good job and Arminius reminds us what DBB is suggesting - when we leave spirituality on only the horizontal plane ( cf Charles Taylor) we reduce it to the mundane - when you have both then the ordinary is full of beauty that causes awe - ordinary is enchanted and extraordinary - the purely horisontal is the deenchantment of our world.

If you are resting in the presence there is neither v or h just awareness I expect of everything. My hope is that "church" makes/allows space for this to happen through music selections, silence, mindfulness of the food/eating/assimilation/"incorporation" during communion, the sense of real community at the exchange of peace.

Does it make sense to think of God's law as vertical, and God's love as horizontal?  Or is this too far away from the concept RevMatt explained?

Great discussion here, Meredith, and we haven't even started the first chapter of the book yet.

RevMatt, I have found that a meditation practice does help to keep the "gray of normality" from dampening the spirit so to speak so that its not a melding so much as a more acute awareness of everything in its own light.  I have been in the "for the rest of us" camp for so long I am wondering if Christianity might lose its own special revelation and light offered by the life teachings of Jesus if the inclusivity becomes the main point and not the revelation itself. I guess that is why I came to wondercafe...to explore that question.

egad, what if inclusivity is the main point...

Aw well, Anjali, maybe both are main points.

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Hi paradox3: In terms of Husserl's "Noetic Knowledge," which is a full complement between Noema and Noesis, or subjective and objective knowledge, God would reveal ITself in the subjective or intuitive experience, and we interpret that experience into objective or analytical knoweldge.

We need both, because one feeds the other. The more mature or wise our objective knowledge becomes, the more it will influence our experience of subjective knowledge. Thus we are going up a spiral of ever-increasing awareness.

Now I must get ready for Sunday service, and hopefully go another little notch up that sacred spiral.

Yes and I think the book's subject is an important and timely one.  We need a positve view of mainline Protestantism and I'm really liking the book so far.  I'll begin discussion of Chapter 1 on Tuesday. 

I guess because I've read the first 3 chapters before, I'm not finding much to say about it.  So far, I'm just nodding in general agreement.

A point that stands out though:  a common argument is that mainlines are failing because they aren't Christian enough.  I've heard that before in real life too.  I'm not sure what there is to discuss on that, because its a bunch of baloney.  So, then, what is it about the churches that is working....  hoping chapter 3 has something about that.  I assume it does ;) 

Re:  Spirituality - well, what does that mean?  As I've said before, I have a hard time with some things, especially in public ie - walking a labyrinth with 20 people around.    Not my thing.  I also find conversational prayer & connection very easy, but get icked out by many liturgies and dreamy things.  Again, not my thing.  But I am spiritual, and possibly more in an active context.  Not sure how it pans out.

My point is that churches need to offer room for various spiritual paths, or at least accept that they aren't offering something for everyone.  People are spiritual, but what does that mean?  in an Urban setting?  A rural farm one?  A rural cottagey one?  Suburbs?  I think that how a church honours & encourages the individual path & Celebrates the communal path is more important to the specific spirit practices considered orthodox.

Yes, Birthstone, the liberal Christian Church of the future will definitely be more inclusive and multi-religious, albeit from a Christian perspective. I have come back from atheism into Christianity via the practice of Zen Buddhism. I consider myself both, Zen Buddhist and Christian, and see no conflict in that. As long as we don't shove one particular spirtual path down other people's throats, we can include a multiplicity of spiritual paths while remaining centered in our Christian faith.

If religious expression were regarded as art, then accepting other spiritual traditions as equal would be as easy as remaining proudly and unapologetically Christian.

I am finding the book very interesting and wondering if there has been any similar studies done in Canada? Has Reginald Bibby written anything about this lately? I haven't been keeping up with the academic side of things and am wondering how much her American data applies to us too.

BTW, I really enjoyed the UCC I went to on Sunday and will probably go back. Things certainly have changed... at least in that church, in a good way.

Has the thread for chapter one started and how do I find it?