[Dialogue] 10/27/2022, Progressing Spirit: Rev. Gretta Vosper: Creating Community from the Stuff of Ecclesial Practices?; Spong revisited

Thu Oct 27 05:41:52 PDT 2022

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Creating Community from the Stuff of Ecclesial Practices?
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|  Essay by Rev. Gretta Vosper
October 27, 2022As I write this, 2022 is in its final quarter providing an opportunity to reflect on the tenth anniversary of the worst year of my life. And one of the best. Reviewing our lives is always complicated, isn’t it? Let me share with you.

Late in 2011, my chest was beginning to feel snarly. The next morning, Saturday, I went to a walk-in. The doctor, who didn’t know my history, wouldn’t prescribe the medications I suggested. End result: five months off work, massive antibiotics, huge doses of prednisone, and the final insult: thrush. Yep. When I do sick, I do it big.

On one of my many visits to my own doctor’s offices, I pointed out a walnut-sized lump in my abdomen. They ordered a scan. End result: five months of terror, major abdominal surgery to remove a cancerous tumour that had grown to the size of a 2-litre pop bottle, and more time off work. I was wretched.

To top that off – and this is the point – the surgery took place the same week my second book, Amen: What Prayer Can Mean in a World Beyond Belief, was published. You can imagine how well that went. But the craziest part was that being so out of it for so many months, I’d been unable to convince my publisher to properly title the book. I mean, it isn’t even about prayer. It simply uses the various forms of prayer churches employ as a tool to explore the basic needs of the human heart and so, too, its community. I had wanted it to be titled With or Without Prayer, We’re All the Answer We’ve Got but they thought that too derivative of my first book. Perhaps I should have asked them to call it Without Church (Or Reasonable Facsimile), We’re All F*&ked, because that’s what the book is really about. (To say nothing of the fact that I would have been way ahead of the curve on all those provocatively titled “F-word” books! Gah!)

The declining trend of the intervening decade brings home to us just how fragile church communities have become. Pews filled by previous generations are barely warmed by younger ones. Denominations’ acceptance of accelerated decline undermines singular attempts at the revitalization of congregational life and invites the question addressed last year by the International City/County Management Association (ICMA): “Is an empty church … a problem or an opportunity for a municipality?”[1]

The ICMA’s question is an important one made more urgent when we step back and consider the breakdown of the cohesive nature of community in our neighbourhoods, cities, states, and countries. I don’t think I need to get into just what that breakdown is because most of us are aware of it. One of my neighbours has a F(insert maple leaf)CK TRUDEAU sticker on their truck window; neighbours further south hear chants aimed at some guy named Brandon and are similarly unnerved; across the pond, civil protests are now illegal and peaceful protesters jailed, some remaining behind bars even after the government initiates the very programs the incarcerated had demanded. It isn’t all happening on the other side of the computer or television screen; on a daily basis, we are affected by or witness to the growing rifts in what was once a robust social fabric built around somewhat mutual goals of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” to quote just one nation’s ideal.

But what are those common goals in a world where personal consumption seems to be humanity’s greatest and most fiercely protected “liberty”; the “pursuit of happiness” equivalent to coming out on top when comparing ourselves with others, today’s most virulent form of entertainment; and the meaning of life reduced to whatever gets the most likes on TikTok where “influencers” publish ever more egregiously inappropriate videos to celebrate whatever millionth follower they just earned.[2]  The rise of anti-this-or-that groups waving national flags as a symbol of rebellion[3] proves the point. With established communities unable to reflect their individualistic values, they are drawn through online channels to right-wing conspiracy theories and activism, when perhaps they just needed a community, no matter what the beliefs of that community might be.[4]

The question of whether social breakdown results from the decline of congregational life or vice versa or if they unravelled entirely independently, I leave to those in academia who might be more confident drawing conclusions. But I do believe there’s a link and that it goes back to the elements about which I wrote in Amen. Those, and a couple or three generations of care-less-ness toward the common goals that held communities together.

In Amen, I used the acronym “ACTS” to identify the different kinds of prayer that emerged within Christianity to address the basic needs of the human spirit.[5] They are Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication.

   - We have a deeply rooted need to bow before the wonder of life, beauty, the fragility of relationship, the interwoven simplicity and complexity of nature and the million other wonders we encounter in and through existence: Adoration
   - Standing in relief against those wonders, we realize how often we fall short of mirroring or enhancing them with our own lives. We recognize the great opportunity to account for the crevasses we create in relationship, in our own hearts, in the world around us and, in doing so, find ourselves restored and upright, dignity intact, possibilities fresh before us: Confession and Assurance of Pardon
   - We experience gratitude for the unlimited do-overs and pardons we’ve already welcomed and those we’ll find ourselves in need of again, of the many joys in our lives, and the relationships we cherish, both challenging and wonder-filled: Thanksgiving
   - Confident of our worth, we raise our voices and put voice to needs, ours and those of others, the dreams we know will make this world a better place, and the courage that will sustain us as we work to make these dreams reality: Supplication

These are our prayers. These are the pieces of ritual that have sewn our hearts back together over and again, the hearts of our riven communities, our warring nations, and our broken world. And they worked. They really worked. Just not in the magical way we pretended they did. They worked by opening our eyes to ourselves, to our neighbours, to our world. And whenever that happened, the real-life magic began. Church helped make that happen by leading us through a liturgy that convicted us, forgave us, inspired us, and challenged us to name our needs rather than focus on our wants.

How do we do that now? As congregations shrank, tried new things, shrank more, and finally closed, what did we salvage other than the potential held in the real property? What do we hold sacred to the point of adoration, reminding ourselves weekly, if not daily, that adoration means maintaining reverence for and commitment to something bigger, much bigger, than ourselves? Where do we do the work of examining our complicity in the breakdown of family and community, in our destruction of the natural world, the loss of innumerable species, known and as yet unknown, and in our limitation of the hopes of tomorrow’s children by the consumption of the resources they will need not to thrive, but just to survive? How often do we pause, acknowledge we can expect nothing in this life, while humbly acknowledging how unbelievably privileged we are, however great or meagre are our life’s accomplishments, accoutrements, and relationships? And finally, to whom do we express our deepest desires? Not for a shortened timeline for delivery of the new fill-in-the-blank, but for release from the fear that we got all the important things wrong and that it’s too late to change that? The courage to change a life of security and enough for a life of radical joy and service? The will to invest our all in the fight for climate justice rather than head off to the luxuries of a boomer retirement? The impudence to hammer a political sign into our lawn or knock on the door of the neighbour with the F(insert maple leaf)CK TRUDEAU sticker on their truck and invite them to chat with us over coffee? It’s only when we really articulate those ideas, put them outside ourselves, and hear them twirl about in the air around us that we begin to consider the possibilities they might unleash.

Matthew Fox breaks down the word “community” in one of his ICS meditations. ‘The word comes from two Latin words – cum munio – that mean “to share a common task”’ [6]. We become community when we share a goal and work together to achieve it. Or maybe the reverse: we work together to achieve a goal, and in the process, become community. Whatever. The point is, we create – or become – community when we want to do something enough to hang out with the people who also want to do it.

Our predecessors in the Christian church wove community of thin air. Sometimes, of course, that community came together around the work of feeding the poor and ministering to the ill. But I believe that much of that community was built as we gathered to do the work of binding up our tattered lives, bleeding out our failures, mending our broken hearts, and patching our dreams back into wholeness. We all needed it whether we knew it or not. And we all experienced the wholeness made of coming together for that common task, the community that strengthened us all.

It may be too late to save the church community you gather with on Sundays. It is never too late to be about the work of creating community whether in church or outside of it, whether on Sunday mornings, or Thursday evenings, or on zoom whenever. You have the ancient code – ACTS – that may be the key to building its core. You have the right to belong to it. You have the right to create it. And you have the power. Oh yes, you absolutely have the power.

P.S. I forgot to mention why 2011 a best year as well as the worst. It was because of the amazing surgeons at Princess Margaret Hospital. They removed that four-pound tumour over the course of a long and delicate surgery, and they’ve checked up on me every year since. And that, of course, is why I am still here, ten years later, making 2012 one of my best years ever.   ~ Rev. Gretta Vosper
Read online here

About the Author
The Rev. Gretta Vosper is a United Church of Canada minister who is an atheist. Her best-selling books include With or Without God: Why The Way We Live is More Important Than What We Believe, and Amen: What Prayer Can Mean in a World Beyond Belief. She has also published three books of poetry and prayers. Visit her website  here and her Blog here. [1] Reinhard, Richard, “Redeveloping Houses of Worship.” PM Magazine, April 1, 2021. https://icma.org/articles/pm-magazine/redeveloping-houses-worship, accessed October 19, 2022.[2] If you don’t know what I’m talking about, take a deep breath and give thanks.[3] Personal opinion: Co-opting national flags has got to be the best, most effective, and most devastating, anti-government marketing scheme E.V.E.R. Just sayin’. [5] I speak of the human spirit  without belief in its pre-existence or enduring personal nature but simply as that essence of human life that emerges from within the physical stuff in which we are individually wrapped and influences a life and the lives of those around it.[6] Fox, Matthew, “On the Breakdown of Community,” https://dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.org/2020/09/26/on-the-breakdown-of-community/, accessed October 19, 2022.  |

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Question & Answer

Q: By Jane

One suspects that some institutional churches are still AFRAID if reality demands that scriptures are not to be taken literally.  Why?

A: By Rev. Lauren Van Ham
 Dear Jane,Turn upside down.  I’m kidding.  But only sort of.  Things we learned as children can be hard stories to shake as adults.  But since we learned them as children, I recommend un-learning them with some childlike curiosity.  For example, what are your thoughts about heaven and hell?  Are they actual destinations?  Have you visited them already during your life, here, on Earth?  If so, what “took” you to hell?  How did you find yourself in heaven? 

Next, I invite all of us to consider the value of polarities.  Having a sense of “hot,” or, “left” allows us to appreciate “cold,” or “right.”  When we know where north is, we can usually find south.  This is useful but it leaves out so many other locations like the liminal, the both-and, the inward, the circuitous, and so forth.  It is high time we use more curves and circles in how we talk about our experiences. 

Our tree and plant relatives offer another invitation.  They need the soil where their roots receive nourishment and transmit messages to one another.  A lot happens in the hidden, cool darkness!  And we know, of course, that they also need the rain that falls, and the sun that encourages them to bear fruit, pouring forth with life.  In my desire to imitate these wise beings, I might say that our souls ground us in the depths, inviting us to tap into a vast root system, while our spirits encourage us to reach, unfurl and expand.   

So now, what value is up, and what about down?  Fairytales have done a fantastic job of suggesting bad and good, naughty and nice, but the teachings of Jesus consistently invite us to befriend our foes and to do the gritty work of loving here and now.  Heaven, hell, and all the other experiences, too. ~ Rev. Lauren Van Ham

Read and share online here

About the Author
Rev. Lauren Van Ham, MA was born and raised beneath the big sky of the Midwest, Lauren holds degrees from Carnegie Mellon University, Naropa University and The Chaplaincy Institute. Following her ordination in 1999, Lauren served as an interfaith chaplain in both healthcare (adolescent psychiatry and palliative care), and corporate settings (organizational development and employee wellness). Lauren’s passion for spirituality, art and Earth's teachings have supported her specialization in eco-ministry, grief & loss, and sacred activism.  Her essay, "Way of the Eco-Chaplain," appears in the collection, Ways of the Spirit: Voices of Women; and her work with Green Sangha is featured in Renewal, a documentary celebrating the efforts of religious environmental activists from diverse faith traditions across America. Her ideas can be heard on Vennly, an app that shares perspectives from spiritual and community leaders across different backgrounds and traditions. Currently, Lauren tends her private spiritual direction and eco-chaplaincy consulting practice; and serves as Climate Action Coordinator for the United Religions Initiative (URI), and as guest faculty for several schools in the San Francisco Bay Area.  |

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Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited

What the Gun Debate Reveals about
the Republican Party and Political Leadership

Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong
April 18, 2013Something seems to be missing from the equation or perhaps I am just not smart enough to understand the dynamics. The fact is I don’t get it! Perhaps there is something subliminal going on that will in time be revealed. For the life of me, however, I find it difficult to understand why the intelligent people, elected to the Congress, are having such a hard time deciding whether or not to vote for universal background checks as a prerequisite for buying a gun. I do not understand why there is a debate on whether to limit a magazine clip to ten bullets on a gun sold to a civilian. Are ten bullets without reloading not sufficient for anyone’s personal use? I do not understand why any private citizen needs to own an assault weapon?While I was trying to make sense out of these questions and the behavior of our elected officials, I watched as a group of Republican senators sought to block the Senate from even being able to debate, much less pass any gun reform legislation. Led first by four of the regular right-wing grandstanders in the Senate, who were enhancing their image with the Tea Party types, they were soon joined by 11 others including the Senate Republican minority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. It then became the position of the majority of the Republican senators, when 31 of the 45 of them voted in an attempt to prevent this bill from even being considered by the legislative wing of our government. Are there that many senators who are that out of touch with the people of this country? Is this now the official position of the Republican Party? With every poll of our citizens showing majorities ranging from 91% to 56% in support of the various provisions of this gun reform law, I am driven to the conclusion that something irrational has become the point of view of one of the major political parties in this nation, which means that something dreadful is going on in my country!I try to listen to these people’s arguments, seeking to discover some semblance of rationality, but it eludes me. In this legislation I see no attempt to revoke the second amendment’s guarantee of a citizen’s right to bear arms. I see only an effort to keep dangerous weapons out of the hands of mentally sick and clearly distorted members of our society by requiring universal background checks before a gun can be purchased. People getting drivers’ licenses at least have their criminal records checked. I see no effort to take guns away from hunters or gun club members. I have never been convinced, however, that hunters or gun club members need assault weapons or unlimited magazine capacities to carry out their activities. These might be essential to an army confronting an enemy seeking to destroy this nation, but does any private citizen need a howitzer, a bazooka, a machine gun or a missile launcher.I understand why people who live in non-urban areas, separated by distances from police protection or even from their nearest neighbors, might need to arm themselves against possible intruders, but action-activated spot lights, alarm systems and well placed cameras can provide far more effective security and at a much cheaper price and if that security system were supported by a shotgun, a rifle or even a six shooter, sufficient protection to alleviate all fear would be accomplished. More than that seems to me to reflect rampant paranoia.I listen to gun lobbyists suggest that only a society armed to the teeth will ever be a safe society and I find no facts that bear out this claim. America has more guns per person in our population than any other developed nation in the world. If guns make us safer then why does this nation also have the highest murder rate of any developed nation? Among regular gun victims are our children. What kind of nation is it that does nothing when school children are regularly lost to gun-carrying killers? No place appears to be safe from violence. University students at Virginia Tech, a campus with its own security forces, who are in fact well-armed, were murdered in their classrooms by a mentally-disturbed former student, who had access to a high magazine attack weapon. A member of congress, Representative Gabby Gifford, addressing her constituents in her home state of Arizona, was shot as were others meeting with her, including children, who came to “meet the congresswoman,” were killed. Members of a Sikh Temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin were murdered by an armed psychopath while gathering for worship. Children at school in Columbine, Colorado, were slaughtered by armed disgruntled students, and children, six and seven years old, in Newtown, Connecticut, were senselessly murdered by a young man with an attack weapon, who had just killed his mother. Innocent, unnamed, urban teenagers are regularly caught in the crossfire and killed in some of our crime-ridden, drug infested cities. How many must die before our elected leaders develop an effective response?Political and transformative figures have also been victims of our violent society. One thinks of such leaders as John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, George Wallace, Robert F. Kennedy, Malcolm X and Ronald Reagan who have been hunted down and shot by a wide variety of potential killers. How is it possible that some of our political officials think that limiting access to killing weapons compromises civil liberties more than protecting the potential victims of gun violence? Are not murdered people rendered devoid of every civil liberty?Are our elected leaders so afraid that if they had to cast a vote on this bill they would either lose their seat in the Senate or close off from themselves forever the lucrative support of the gun lobby? Is that fear more compelling than protecting the innocent from gun violence? Is there no issue worth risking one’s Senate seat? Then why did these people seek election in the first place: Since all but two of those who threatened to block any vote on these issues were Republicans, we must ask whether there is anyone in the Republican Party willing to speak out against this vote-dodging behavior of their leaders in congress?Has Kentucky Republican Senator Mitch McConnell, by embracing that attempt to prohibit even a vote on these issues, not sacrificed any leadership potential that he ever possessed? This is the same national leader who stated some four years ago that his top priority was not to help lead the country through the worst economic crisis since the depression or to help bring an end to two wars that were instrumental in bringing the economy to the edge of bankruptcy, but it was rather to limit his political opponent to being a “one-term president.” Does that statement not border on irresponsibility, if not treason? What does leadership mean?That is not the only bizarre act that now plagues this party. During the last presidential election in states where the Republicans controlled the governor’s office and both houses of the state legislatures, which included states from Pennsylvania to Florida and from Ohio to South Carolina, efforts were made by a variety of barely legal means, to suppress minority voting. Is that the way democracy works? Are they willing to subvert this democracy in order to gain political power? Why were they not worried about the civil liberties of minority voters? Is this the party of Abraham Lincoln who, for his efforts to end slavery lost his life, and as a result once had the fierce loyalty of the great majority of America’s black voters? Is this the party of Theodore Roosevelt? Is it even the party of Ronald Reagan?This is, however, the same Republican Party that wants to limit the health care options available to women in the workplace, to mandate invasive ultra-sound procedures for women seeking a legal abortion, whose representatives denied that a woman could get pregnant from “legitimate” rape, all in order to force women to conform to the narrow religious agenda of these spokespersons. Was it not the presidential candidate of this party who wanted to “self deport” illegal immigrants by seeing to it that they received no support, no jobs, no education and no health care? Do they really believe that in the last presidential election they lost by huge majorities, the votes of women, young people, African-Americans and Latinos only because they did not communicate their policies well? Or do they think no one was listening? I suggest they communicated quite well and that these voters did not like their message! I wonder whether or not this party has, out of its fear of losing power, become suicidal, or does it simply suffer from a death wish? Is this party destined to go the way of the “Whigs?” Does it not recognize that a two-party system vying for the support of the majority is what makes this country work?The gun vote in congress is a matter of life and death to many people. It is a vote both about public safety and about what kind of a nation we are becoming and what kind of nation we want to be. When leaders get so far out of touch with the people they were elected to serve and when the people begin to feel that they cannot make these leaders hear their voices the seeds of revolution are at that moment being sown.If Senator McConnell, along with Senators Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, just to name the most vocal of those who tried stop even a vote on the gun bill, are in fact the face of the modern-day Republican Party in the United States, then this party has no future. I urge other Republicans in the Senate, in the House and Republican governors around the country to separate themselves from their current congressional leadership and to call their party back to their constitutional role of responsible opposition. That is the only way Republicans will have a chance to share in tomorrow’s leadership in America.
 ** A message to my readers: After the deadline for the publication of this column the terrorist bombing at the end of the Boston marathon occurred, leaving many of us enraged, saddened and despairing about the levels of violence that apparently engulf the world. It also put the content of this column into a new perspective. Our prayers go out to the victims and our thanks go to the first responders, but our hopes to build a better world remain in tact. When all the facts become clear we will look again at what this new terror episode means to our churning understanding of what it means to be human.~  John Shelby Spong  |

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