Worship Seeking Understanding

... is first of all the name of a fascinating collection of essays by John Witvliet, director of the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, and published a couple of years ago by Baker Academic.

The recent inspiring series of weblog dialogues on baptism and sacraments in general (for example, at Quaker Renewal, Public Quaker, Nancy's Apology, and implicit in some of the Christmas discussions) brought that phrase, "worship seeking understanding," back to me. I looked in my notes from my visits to Calvin College and their Worship Institute, and found some nice morsels. Most of these are from a gathering of worship leaders from emerging and experimental churches back in August 2004:

• At the very heart of worship is the enactment of a relationship between a community and its Creator.
• The movements of worship (illustrated with arrows and hand gestures): Gathering; receiving (from God); speaking (to God); sharing/exhorting (each other).
• The communication patterns of worship are like the communication patterns of any healthy relationship, in which we all say: I love you. I'm sorry. Why? Say again? Help. Thank you. What can I do? Bless you. (For more, see this page on the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship Web site, and the many other related pages.)
• Worship is not for ideas or agendas, it is for leaving our previous preoccupations and engaging in that reality of community/Creator relationship. You can do almost anything you want in worship as long as you can explain it (and in that context).

It is the word "enactment" that makes me pause. In a way, maybe it is "enactment" that George Fox and the early Friends were resisting. They felt that professing Christians were not adequately engaging in that reality; too often, they were just going through the motions.

Is "going through the motions" underrated? Maybe one way of looking at the work of John Witvliet and his Worship Institute colleagues and their counterparts throughout history is that they are "going through the motions" in the very best sense. Each motion (gathering, receiving, expressing) evokes an essential component of worship, and without a public, reliable, communicable, multisensual recounting of those motions, would our community eventually flake away down to a few ancient intuitive introverts with long memories? During the most oppressive periods of official atheism in the Soviet Union, all the church was allowed to do was to celebrate the liturgy (in other words, go through the motions); the liturgy had to carry the message ... and it did.

If we did no enactments, how would our artists participate fully in worship? One of the things I love about the Worship Institute is the way they pay attention to all the resources of culture in helping the worldwide church consider the motions of worship. At Reedwood Friends, children's first public experience of appearing in ministry usually involves participating in a recitation or musical contribution. My colleague Ginger Pyron prepares liturgical dance for her progressive Oakhurst Baptist Church—including one for this coming Sunday of Epiphany, for those of you in the Atlanta area. The Mennonite Church where we worship most Sunday afternoons has beautiful banners in the worship area. And don't even get me started on the power of icons.

One Reedwood Friend whom I respect deeply is quite happy to have a sermon, a collection, and beautiful music in our meeting for worship, but he draws the line at candles. His point: we do not need symbols to get in the way of our communion with God. We do not need artful props to simulate or represent the divine encounter, we need the divine encounter itself, and anything else is vain ornamentation. Meanwhile, others in Northwest Yearly Meeting are busy importing ecumenical and "ancient/future" elements such as labyrinths, chants, and ... you guessed it, candles.

A tangent: years ago, I heard a story at a quarterly meeting in Connecticut: as the embers of a fire were dying down in the fireplace of a meetinghouse, someone in the meeting room stood up and, pointing to the dying fire, shared, in substance, that he felt as if his life was similarly fading. A short time later, someone else stood up, went to the fire, and stirred it back into a lively flame. (If someone reading this knows a more accurate version of this story, please share it!)

When does "going through the motions" cross the line between vital and engaging communication about the community/Creator encounter, and a pale imitation that pretends to do what it can't? Here are some suggestions:

• When considering any form of "enactment" for a worship setting, ask: how does it engage the participant in the relationship between the community and its Creator? What motion in that relationship does it serve?
• Does it (pretend to) end with itself, or does it lead to an unscripted, open-ended opportunity for a direct encounter?
• Does it serve to provide a person with a way of participating in worship that takes his or her special talents into account, thereby perhaps honoring a deep yearning in that person? Conversely, how will we honor the other diverse temperaments in the community, including those who are unreceptive to "talent" in worship? Do we need to reframe our teaching about worship to equip all of us with a more loving attitude?
• Remember that worship is not an arena for ideas and agendas. If we are making plans for a meeting for worship, is our planning as drenched in prayer and abandonment to God as the worship itself will be? When, during the worship, the Holy Spirit seems to be pointing in a different direction, are we able to change or abandon those earlier plans?

I know I probably say it too often: There's no formula or pattern that excuses us from the need to exercise real-time discernment. Who provides this discernment for the Quaker community in connection with public worship?

(Part two is here.)

---

Probably none of this is very helpful in considering the struggles that go on in several yearly meetings over the propriety of the "ordinances" (baptism and communion, for example). As I said on Alice's blog, "Too often the debate degenerates into yet another version of the corrosive tug-of-war between those who argue for a more passionate expression of Christian faith and unity, and those who argue for 'Quakerism' as if the latter were a religion all its own." As a recovering Quaker bureaucrat, I'm happy to take a break from those debates, but grateful that others are participating thoughtfully. (See a relevant exchange in the Evangelism and the Quaker Testimonies forum topic, "Why did the testimonies weaken among Orthodox and Evangelical Friends?")

---

A beautiful letter from Maxine in Baghdad:

Dearest friends-

First and foremost, Happy New Year to you all! The celebrations have started here today in Baghdad with lots of fireworks and joyous noises in the street. One such noise was a band that went walking by our building. I asked the landlord about that, and he said is a custom here that families or groups of friends put together a band and go door to door, wishing people well and asking for small tokens of money.

My friends are still not home today as we wait for the new year. It's been hard not to be discouraged. But, as often happens, the words of a child brought me new insight. A friend who has been telling her young daughter about the situation e-mailed me a letter in which she made an extraordinary comment. She said, "I hope they keep them long enough to know them like friends."

Know them like friends? Could that possibly happen?

Knowing my colleagues, I think it is. I can well imagine Tom Fox having incredible discussions about faith with his guards. I can imagine Norman telling about his isit to the Radiation Hospital in Baghdad, how he taught radiation medicine in ngland, and how he feels badly that this hospital is struggling to perform such necessary medical care. I can imagine Jim recounting his previous journeys to Iraq and his love of the Iraqi people, especially his good friend Sa'ad who refused to fight in Sadaam's army because he couldn't live with killing people. I can imagine Harmeet talking about this being his first trip to Iraq, and how much he's seen about how difficult the situation even in a such short time.

Yes, I can imagine they've been there long enough now to be friends.

Although I can appreciate the kidnappers may want to keep their new-found friends close at hand, I'm hoping they will see how precious they are and return them to us who treasure them so much.

If I knew where they were I'd get a band together today, walk down the street, knock on the door and instead of asking for money I'd ask for my friends back.

May you be blessed with surprises of peace and joy in this new year-
Maxine

And this from Peggy Gish, via mennolink:

4 January 2005

IRAQ REFLECTION: Walking ahead in the New Year

by Peggy Gish

The New Year began in Baghdad with firecrackers, flares and even some colorful fireworks, but also with bombs and shooting that killed at least twenty people. Celebrations of this day usually symbolize the hope for new beginnings, new possibilities. Iraqis still have that hope, but it's a struggle to maintain it when the changes in their society and government have resulted in greater insecurity and continued violence.

As part of the Christian Peacemaker Teams in Iraq, I find challenges to my hope when I see the daily pain and hardships of the Iraqi people, as well as the unresolved disappearance of our four colleagues.

Kidnappings, killings, and bombings- whether they are done by the resistance or the state--instill fear in the people. This fear leads to feelings of helplessness and paralysis. It drains the hope that their actions can lead to change. People become afraid to speak out and take action against injustice. We see this in Iraqis, and we find it creeping into our consciousness as well. We, as peacemakers, often feel pressure from others to be more realistic in our work, to see that the world's economic, military and governmental structures are so strong and entrenched that they are truly impossible to change.

We are aware that when we work for change, we can be eliminated any time our work is seen as threatening to those wielding power. Our government's and the world's networks of violence appear overpowering, but we must not be seduced into believing that they are invincible. I continue to believe that the power of truth and love is stronger than all these forces. (I do not mean that there won't be struggle and suffering. It is when the dissent is having a powerful effect and the structures of power feel threatened, that the greatest crackdown on it occurs.)

We are encouraged when we walk alongside Iraqi people who daily take risks addressing injustice and corruption, but we must also make wise and critical decisions. We need to discern how to respond, where to focus our energies, whether this is the time to be more publicly confrontational or whether moving forward must wait. Whatever the decisions, we do not want fear to immobilize us.

This New Year is the time for more of us to become part of movements that expose the real sources of terror and the lies behind lofty reasons given for war and occupation. It is the time to live out alternatives to the dehumanization and emptiness of our society, to build communities of love that more justly share the world's resources. It is time to keep walking ahead, although we feel weak as individuals, and to allow God to work powerfully through our combined efforts. It is time to affirm what we know deep inside, that love and truth are more powerful than any evil force.

---

Marcia Ball is coming to Portland. Her latest album is a treat!! If anyone in the area wants to join me at the Aladdin Theater on January 18, let me know.

Weekend PS: Iraq, George Bush, and Calvin College

In an column entitled "The Best P.R.: Straight Talk,"New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman reflects on the White House tactic of blaming Newsweek magazine for the fatal riots that followed the Koran-trashing rumor. It's a great example of a communication policy that is both wrong and ineffective. In the "war of ideas" in the Muslim world, "We are spending way too much time debating with ourselves, or playing defense, and way too little time actually looking Arab Muslims in the eye and telling them the truth as we see it."

Friedman goes on to suggest that President Bush's response to the riots should have been, in part:

"Look, Newsweek may have violated journalistic rules, but what jihadist terrorists are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan - blowing up innocent Muslims struggling to build an alternative society to dictatorship - surely destroys the Koran. They are the real enemies of Islam because they are depriving Muslims of a better future. From what I know of Islam, it teaches that you show reverence to God by showing reverence for his creations, not just his words. Why don't your spiritual leaders say that? I am asking, because I want to know."

I wish I could believe that Bush truly wants to know, and is truly ready to engage in that kind of dialogue.

For nearly four years, I have yearned for this kind of robust, candid dialogue between the USA's president, acting as our national representative responding to the horrible attack of September 11, and the leadership of the sector of the Muslim world that attacked us. In this weblog ("Public Christianity," August 12, 2004) I cited such communication as part of the minimum we should expect in response to Jesus's direct command to love our enemies. I still want to see President Bush debate our enemies' grievances - to acknowledge where they are right, to dispute vigorously where they are wrong, and not to fudge issues by looking for disloyalty in the ranks, by insulting our enemies, or by emitting nice platitudes about the Muslims we approve of.

In advocating a direct rhetorical confrontation with Osama bin Laden or his most accessible allies and spokespeople, I am not arguing for legitimizing his tactics by entering into negotiations. Nor would I want to see the kind of limp approach taken by Christians who go into Christian-Muslim dialogues mumbling historically uninformed apologies for the Crusades. I just want the whole Muslim world to see our president, our leadership, demonstrating both integrity and Christian humility, even a bold and nearly unprecedented level of courtesy, by taking on the whole radical-Islamic case against the USA with the kind of directness and candor that Friedman advocates.

And guess what? Doing so would cost a lot less than $300 billion. It would in fact cost a tiny fraction of what it costs to run the facilities at Guantanamo.

Instead, our leaders continue to act as if they believe sending our young men and women into intolerably ambiguous hairtrigger situations, and harvesting the inevitable corpses on all sides, all the while continuing to lay down smokescreens of diversion and outright lies, will win the religious and intellectual conflicts behind the Afghanistan/Iraq war.

---

On my trip home from Moscow, I spoke with a retired couple from Lexington, Virginia, who were well-educated, friendly, intelligent, widely traveled, and in touch with the world. When I said (in a long conversation that touched on many subjects) that I was hoping to be a Friends missionary, they couldn't believe that Friends had missionaries. The only Friends they knew thought that there was no reason to spread a particular message, because all religions were basically the same.

When I talked about evangelical Friends, they were even more mystified (but to their credit remained in the conversation!) - if we were against war, how could we possibly be evangelical? It turned out that they were totally unaware that large numbers of evangelical Christians have not been "blinded by might" (to appropriate the title of the Cal Thomas/Ed Dobson book) and do not accept certain far-right politicians or ideologies as adequate reflections of the Gospel.

Now comes Calvin College, the location of today's George W. Bush commencement speech. (Calvin's own coverage of the event is here.) Having done some work with this gem of a school, I was not surprised that Calvin's brand of evangelical integrity would lead to courteous but assertive expressions of dissatisfaction with Bush's policies.

An open letter signed by nearly 800 students, faculty and alumni, published as a full-page ad The Grand Rapids Press yesterday, said: "In our view, the policies and actions of your administration, both domestically and internationally over the past four years, violate many deeply held principles of Calvin College."

In a Sojourners commentary, graduating student Elise Elzinga explains her own participation in the dissent surrounding Bush's commencement visit at Calvin:

"For me to sit silently on the sidelines as Bush addresses Calvin and not stand up for what I believe about these issues would be to ignore my personal faith convictions about working for justice. The goal of Calvin student dissent at graduation is not to be disruptive, disrespectful, or unpatriotic, but rather to apply the lessons we've learned about engaging the world as responsible and informed citizens. That's why I - along with other students and some administration and faculty members - will be wearing an armband or button as a non-disruptive display of disapproval."

I hope that this news made its way to certain retirees in Lexington, Virginia.