tornado!

I wondered when I would experience this Midwest weather pattern. It finally happened last night. At about 6pm my TV show was interrupted with a severe weather advisory. They said something about tornados, but I was doing dishes and didn't catch the whole thing so I looked out the window. The sky was so bizarre. There were really low clouds in layers. The lower layer moved east-west. The layer just above it moved north-south. And the whole sky was this wierd shade of bile green (but not quite that dark). My sister Trish told me to run if I heard the sound of a train. There's a train station two blocks from here. I hear trains all the time. The TV said it was a tornado warning. Warning or watch: which is the bad one?

Is it:
watch -- "Hey, do you see something?" "No, do you?" "Not yet."
warning -- "Look out below!"
-- or --
warning -- "Better move along, might be something bad about to happen."
watch -- "Sh*t! There it is !"

I've wondered what I might do with the animals in the event of an emergency like this. I grabbed Roz and wished the cats good luck. That kinda sucks. Then I went through the emergency procedures. Do I stand in a doorway? Hide in the bathroom? Boil water? Ah yes, basement.

When I got to the basement people from the other side of the building were beginning to come down. I tried to call Brian, who's supposed to be my back-up for security. No answer. I tried to reach him several times. I also tried to call everyone on the block I had a number for. Only one person answered and he was already in his basement. It was a freaky looking sky and I didn't want to go out, but I gave Roz to someone and ran to evacuate the other buildings. Fortunately the dorm people were already in their basement. I got almost all the apartment people. The other apartment building doesn't have a basement so I told them to go over to my building. Some refused to evacuate. On the way back I reached in my apartment door to get the small first aid kit. When I got back to the basement it was quite crowded. There must have been 30 people, plus 10 or so dogs. Someone commented that the tornado warning must have been a real threat because the dogs were all relatively calm. Someone brought a radio to listen to the weather alerts. I heard conflicting reports about landfall, some said it happened nearby, some said it was only funnel clouds. An 8-year-old girl, the daughter of one of the new students came up to me, hugged me around the waist and said this was her first tornado. Mine too sweetie.

In a short while, the person who was manning the radio announced that the warning had passed. At the beginning of all this the TV said the warning would be in effect until 6:52. I no longer see any reason to razz meteriologists about their accuracy. At just about that time the sky became a normal colour, and a gentle rain tapered off. By 7:10 the sky was blue and there were just a couple little whisps of high altitude clouds.

So there you have it, my first tornado experience, all this in one hour. I don't know if you could say I actually survived a tornado, but this is about as close as I'd ever like to get.

annoying thing: crazy frog

Have you ever come across something that just struck you as hilarious even though it was kind of silly? Kathryn and I were shopping for a backpack for her at a back-to-school sale. I found a novelty pack with a curious animated creature on it sporting a "push to hear" button on its belly. Naturally, I pushed it. It was so funny! Remember making engine noises as you rode your bike as a kid (or maybe you still do it now)? There was this kid in my neighborhood when I was little. He was younger than the rest of us and tried so hard to be cool or something. When we rode our bikes he'd come along and make these peculiar motor noises - complete with gear shifting, as he'd try to keep up us. We thought he was a wierd kid, but we let him hang out anyways. The sound bite on the backpack brought me right back to that time. Kathryn and I make the beginning of the sound to express when either of us is in a hurry for something. We only get the first couple sounds out before we start laughing. Last night I found the character AND the sound from the backpack. It's just too funny. Get yourself in a silly state of mind and take a listen.

"The Annoying Thing"

I'm given to understand that the character Crazy Frog is from the UK and there's some controversy about him, but I'm not clear exactly what it is. Suffice it to say I link to this site with the best of intentions and I hope it doesn't offend anyone -- though I don't know how it possibly could.

a gift

I preached at chapel yesterday. Normally I would say, "It seemed to go well," preferring not to come across as arrogant or over-inflating the effect of the delivery on either me or my patient listeners. But it was better than "well" or "okay." I'm beginning to think I have a gift here.

I talked with my spiritual director last week about all the great feedback I got from the last sermon I preached at St. Matthew's, as well as some of the other homilies for which I've had the privilege. He identified my preaching as a gift and said that Episcopal priests are not necessarily known for their preaching as much as their other strengths. It's a rare gift. He said gifts don't come without curses.

Writing sermons has always been a struggle. I imagine it like the story of Jacob wrestling with the angel at Peniel. I wrestle with the Spirit every time I try to compose ("gimme my topic!"). When I deliver the finished sermon the strangest thing happens. The room fades and the people become somewhat transparent and gray and silent. It's like time stops. I can see something that feels like the Spirit hovering just above everybody's heads. I preach to the Spirit, because there's no one else in the room. The struggle of composing the sermon becomes an interaction between me and the Spirit. There's a converation going on. When I'm done the room comes into focus again, the congregation comes back, and the thing hovering over everybody disappears.

After Eucharist one of the new students came in to the sacristy immediately after the service. She gave me a big hug and said that I had no idea how much that sermon meant to her, how much she really needed to hear that. I was told that another student and a faculty member cried during it. A faculty member came up to me and asked if Jane was going to continue to use me in the pulpit. I said yes. He said she'd better or else he would have called her personally to tell her what for. A student who hasn't has his preaching classes yet said he wanted to preach just like me. A staff member also said I had a gift. Today people are still commenting, stopping me in the halls and thanking me for my words. "My" words. I'm not so sure about that.

All week I'd been hearing people using words that were coming to me in the preparation of the sermon. It was wierd to sit there and hear bits and pieces of what I was planing to say all around me. It made me think I was on the right track.

I noticed on Monday that I was scheduled to preach third this year, after Ruth (Academinc Dean), and Gary (Dean and Pres.). I thought, "I'm supposed to follow that?!" Oh come on! Imagine that, batting third after those heavy hitters. Someone mentioned that to John, the preaching instructor, and reported back to me his reaction to my misgivings. John said I could compete alongside them.

So I wrestled with the angel as Jacob did, and I'm left wondering who won? What is this curse my spiritual director warned me of?

how exciting

I just finished David L. Holmes' A Brief History of the Episcopal Church, and I have to say it was a great read. "Great" for me means fast, thorough, to the point, and easy on the ears (too many SAT words gets tedious). He includes an appendix entitled, "Henry VIII's Quest for an Annulment." Possibly the best chapter in the book, this last section was candy. One of my history classes here at Seabury covered this brief time period with a little more background on the relationships betwixt and between the players. Holmes covers more of the legalities. Fascinating. It's up there with cardiology (and that's saying something!).

I've been spending my fast-dwindling free time before classes resume reading history. I don't feel like I really have a grasp on it the way I do with the other disciplines Seabury covers. I took a break from Sydney Ahlstrom's A Religious History of the American People and turned to Holmes this past week. Ahlstrom's book was the subject of my last sermon you may recall. I'll get back into that later today. I'm about half-way through it. This book has made me pause to say, "Ahhh..." and "Hmmm..." more times than any other history book. He makes some very interesting connections between the popular history we all already know and socio-political underpinnings of colonial America. In particular I'm thinking of the Salem witch trial era. You'll have to look it up yourself. I wouldn't want to spoil your read.

I'm hoping to get to A History of The Christian Church by Walker, Norris, Lotz, and Handy, before the week is out. I've barely opened it.

Next week is Orientation for the new kids on the block. I've got almost a full week scheduled. Ruth (Academic Dean) put me down to preach on Wednesday. According to the Customary (a book that details the Seabury-Western way of doing things) I have to limit my sermon to 3-5 minutes. I've been working hard this summer at lengthening my homilies to 15 minutes -- though I never got past the 9-minute mark. It's awkward to go backwards. I'm torn whether I'll preach from a manuscript or not. I should go without; I need the practice.

Youth Group at St. Matthew's went alright. I'm ready to get going with this. I don't like having to do the housekeeping things like setting ground rules, introductions, overviews, etc. But they're necessary things. We had a brief parent meeting after services to let them in on what we're planing for the year. They're jazzed and really want to help out. They're concerned that we're bringing together the middle school and the high school age groups. I think the term they used was recipie for disaster (*gulp*). They want a once-a-month late afternoon gathering just for the high school kids, and they're willing to make it happen. My first reaction is that it's one more thing for me to do, and I resist. Then I see how much they want to be involved and I reconsider. Maybe we can make this work. I'll confer with Jane. It's probably going to happen.

That's been about the scope of my days since I last wrote to you. The drier should be done by now, and I've got to tidy the house -- other housekeeping matters. Chat with you later.

leadership

I'm running the Youth Group at St. Matthew's this year. As I consider what I and the group will be doing, interesting questions of leadership arise.

I'll be working with 6th through 11th grade young people, and ably assisted by two adults. The list of parish youth is incomplete at best. No one really knows who is or is not around, or who is or is not interested in attending. Several active members from last year are already off to college, so I'm assuming that they will not be at St. Matt's on Sundays, even if college is local. I haven't come across any paper trails of what the group did last year, save for bits of evidence I found while preparing the room last Sunday. So I'm really flying blind here.

I began preping a few weeks ago and I've got the topics of discussion mapped out from now until the last week in May. The overall theme of the year seeks to answer the questions, Who are we as youth?; Who are we as a community of all ages?; and What is our place in the world? Every month we have a topic theme within which are 3, 4, or 5 subtopics for each week (depending on how many Sundays we have). I've left space for flexibility in the schedule in case some event of social or theological import makes the news. My goal is to give the youth a sense of their value as contributing members of the wider community. I want to give them a place where their opinions are not only heard, but matter. This age group knows what's going on in the world, but it seems like their opinions are consistently ignored or undervalued. I've got a plan, so that's something, right?

The two adults I'm working with seem very excited about what I've got in mind. We've been in touch almost every day via e-mail. They've been great helping out with logistics and details. I think I can count on their full support.

My planning and their support are what make me apprehensive. Here's why:

At our staff meeting Jane handed out CDs from the leadership conference she went to. I listened to Bill Hybels (of Willow Creek fame) talk for almost two hours about "The Lifespan of a Leader." He talked about how enthusiasm is important, but it has to be backed up with experience. He also said that strong leaderhip builds a "constellation" of sub-leaders around the principle leader. There were some other things he mentioned also, but these two points relate to my Youth Group project. My own leadership experience has taught me that getting the logistics in place is critical. If done properly, all we have to do on Sundays is follow through on the plan. I see it as using the martial arts concept of "train hard/fight easy." The more work I put into getting things set up to go, the more time the group can spend reaping the benefits, and less time looking around wondering what we're doing. When I blend my own experience with what I got from the CD I have to ask myself if I have what it takes to back up my enthusiasm in Youth Group leadership. That's the question.

I've never led a Youth Group. I have been a leader of other things with measurable success. I've also been a follower of leaders -- both good and bad. In some sense I guess I can claim as my own the leadership experience of my former and current leaders. I have witnessed some impressive screw-ups, as well as achievements. I'm happy to report that under my watch, there have been no monumental mistakes. I attribute it to the 5-Ps that I mentioned in an earlier post (Proper Planning Prevents Poor Performance). That's all well and good, but experience in one area doesn't guarantee success in another.

This leads me to the second point. By the grace of Jane I've been given two great guys to help me lead the youth. I think they will be effective sub-leaders, to use Hybels' constellation talking-point. They seem really excited about the comming year and have given some very helpful input. I just hope I can back up my plan with the substance they're imagining. I'm reminded of the dog prayer. "Lord help me to be the person my dog thinks I am." In this case I pray that my plans and leadership are as good as my assistants imagine.

It all looks good on paper; I've done as much as I can. Nothing left to do but give it up to God.

One final thought about leadership and Jane's CD. I knew about the leadership conference at Willow Creek and I really wanted to go, but I couldn't afford it. Maybe I didn't miss anything. I have to say I was disappointed by "Lifespan of a Leader." I spent two hours of my life listening to Hybels and learned very little that I didn't already know. I can parrot back the main points of his presentation in about 10 minutes. For the leader he's marketed as, the bulk of his presentation was only marginally related to leadership skills, techniques, and strategies. There was a lot of rhetoric, several anecdotes, and filler -- such as drawing on an overhead projector. It was an audio CD but he described his drawings as though they were poorly rendered stick figures. If I paid that much for a ticket, I wouldn't want to watch the leader of Willow Creek mega church wasting time chuckling about his drawing skills. There was very little substance, very little content in his overall presentation. The best thing he said was to read every leadership book printed. I'm already working on that Bill.

return engagements

Just got back from a staff meeting at St. Matthew's. Jane thanked us all for our work this summer. With services both at the church and at the beach, it can be a stretch on our resources, but we did a good job. She said a number of people called her after Sunday's services to tell her how much they liked my sermon. Jane has asked me to continue on the preaching rota. Woo-hoo! I think last Sunday's homily was a hit out of the ball park after all. I know I've done a good job when I get all tingly about it for days afterward. Ruth, the academic dean here at Seabury, sent out a calendar as part of the process of putting together the preaching schedule for the quarter. I turned mine in the next day. Maybe I'll get to preach here again, too. I'll let you know.

heresy!

I spent the better part of today creating a quick-reference guide to the major heresies throughout church history. I think I got them all. My favorite so far is the Bulgarian heresy of the 10th century. They taught that God had two sons, Satan and Michael. Satan created the material world and tried to create Adam, but was unable to create a soul. Mankind is bound to serve Satan. Michael came to the earth in the form of the Holy Spirit and entered the body of Jesus, thus breaking the agreement that bound mankind to Satan servitude. Satan then orchestrated the crucifixion (poor sport). Satan is still working to recapture mankind by way of mainstream churches. Kinda sounds like a movie trailer doesn't it?

Tomorrow: doctrines. I wanted to do the doctrines guide today, but it was going to take more effort to put together than the heresy guide, and my time was limited. Later I'm planning a quick-reference guide to the major controversies.

we have a winner

God is great,
that's for certain.
Let us thank God
for this sermon.

I guess the sermon came out alright after all. Lots of people came up to me to tell me they liked it. We had a baptism today, and one of the family members from Kansas asked me if I would mail him a copy to use with a Christian school youth group. He said he'd give the proper credit. I hope he's got a copy of Hacker's manual. ;) Anyways, here it is:

"We are called to get our hands dirty"

It’s Back-to-School season again, and many of us are getting ready to start another year. It’s a bitter-sweet time. I’ll get to see all my old friends again, BUT, I’ll also have to write papers. My office is all tidied up, and organized to a “T.” But when I go back to classes, my desk will get messy again. I like having a neat desk, but for me a neat desktop is a sign that I’m not doing the work I’ve been given to do. Today’s Gospel makes me think about this time of year, and the work that will soon need to be done. There’s all this new learning and growing, which is great, but it doesn’t come clean. There’s dirty work ahead, as we turn the page to the next chapter of our lives.

The new books for class have begun showing up in my mailbox. I love books. I love new book smell. I love the look of a full bookcase. Just having a library of smarty books, makes me feel smart. One book that I’ve been hopefully anticipating finally arrived last week. It’s a big volume entitled, “The Religious History of the American People.” It’s huge, and heavy, and chock full of stuff I want to know. I carefully removed it from its corrugated cardboard shipping armour, and beheld it with admiration and wonder.

The pages were perfectly cut. The cover hasn’t got a scratch on it. It came wrapped in plastic, perhaps never touched by human hands. I just barely opened it to look at the Table of Contents, because I didn’t want to crease the binding. Satisfied, I placed it on the shelf near my desk; not on the bookshelf, not yet. I wanted to keep it close, to gaze upon its bound wisdom. That’s when I noticed it: the edge along the bottom had several dinged pages – as though it were rested on a pointy thing. I quickly opened to the affected pages to flatten then out, iron them with my fingertips. Some of the pages had been torn by the trauma. I restored the volume as best I could, but whatever it had been rested upon also discoloured the pages. My book was dirty – defiled.

I don’t like that. On some level the knowledge in that book becomes invalid because of its dirtiness. It is a lesser volume than it’s sister that was shipped off, in pristine condition, to some other seminary student. That seminarian will be smarter than me because her book is perfect and mine isn’t.

That sounds silly doesn’t it? Of course there’s nothing wrong with what’s inside my book. The dings barely did any real harm, and certainly weren’t even deep enough to touch the printing, the heart of any book. When classes start, the cover will be bent back on itself and favorite chapters will forever open themselves up because the spine will be cracked there. It will be filled with notes and doodles, highlighting, dog-ears and post-it notes. After all that, it will be even more valuable because of the engagement between text and reader. That book is useless until it gets a little dirty.

I wonder if the Pharisees and scribes learned that in today’s gospel? When you engage in God’s work, you’re going to get a little dirty. The Pharisees got so wrapped up in imitating the ritual cleanliness disciplines of the Temple priests that they couldn’t appreciate the kind of dirtiness that was on the hands of Jesus’ disciples. They were emphasizing the human aspects of ritual washing over the truly religious and faithful aspects of the dirt. Jesus lays it all out for them pretty cleanly. He teaches us that it’s not dirty hands that separate you from God, it’s the misguided human traditions that say we should never touch things.

The disciples probably had very dirty hands. I imagine they were tired and hungry too. We meet them in today’s reading just after they finished feeding five thousand people. I’ve done my time working as a waitress to pay for college so I know what it feels like to serve five thousand people. At least it felt like five thousand. The disciples got dirty doing God’s work. Loving as Christ loved is a dirty job. We are all called to get our hands a little dirty. The disciples got the most out of their relationship with Jesus when they engaged with him, loved as Jesus loved, and they tended to get dirty in the process. God doesn’t turn them away because they had dirty hands. Rather, they were fed by Christ, dirty hands and all. They grew in their relationship with Jesus through their actions. Before their time with Jesus-on-earth was complete, they ended up looking like my new book will soon end up looking: dinged and torn, dog-eared and bent backwards, and the love of Jesus written all over them. It’s a heck of a book to read. The same thing can happen to us in our faithful relationship with Jesus.

Because of this relationship, this faith, this love, we do things that get us dirty. We sit with homeless or homebound people, we sign up for the Night Ministry, we build houses for Habitat for Humanity, and we come home a little dirtier for it. But it’s a good kind of dirt. It’s a dirt that says that we got out there and did the work God has given us to do, with gladness and singleness of heart. When we try to love as Christ loved, dirty is what happens.

Just as it’s impossible to learn anything from a book that is never opened, I don’t believe we can grow in our faith if we aren’t willing to engage with God. We must always strive to be unafraid to open the book, to touch it, to engage with it. And more than that, to have the courage to move to the next chapter. There’s still more to challenge, more to learn. The author of our lives together has so much more to teach us, if only we keep turning the pages.

Our Collect this morning says, “Graft in our hearts the love of your Name.” We’re asking, we’re praying, for God get right in to the heart of us, to where the printing is, and write on the pages of our books, make notes in the margins, highlight. It will leave a mark, sisters and brothers, this faith and response to the love of God. Our outsides may not be so pristine afterward, but imagine the richness added to the insides when we engage with Christ, to love as Christ loved, those on the margins.

The Pharisees, and those like them, can have their pristine books that are untouchable; beholding their libraries of books undefiled by faith-dirtied hands, their volumes of bound wisdom. Because if loving as Christ loved is a dirty job, and we are called to get our hands dirty, I’d much rather have a tattered old copy of God’s unbounded love instead. Turn the page.

Amen.

got it!

I think I've got a good one here. As usual (that is, thankfully, and I'm sure not taking it for granted) the sermon came together last night. It's nothing like what I started out with earlier in the week. Sadly, no time to memorize it to preach off notes. I'm not sure I like doing that anyway. I really feel more comfortable with a manuscript. I know I should practice off-book more often, but if every homily comes with this much difficulty I'll never get any done with enough time to memorize. Ah well, practice, practice, right? We'll see how it goes tomorow.

stuck preaching

I'm stuck. This happens every time. I get so far into what I'm going to say and I get stuck. I hate everything I have to say, which isn't much. This usually goes on for a day or so, then by the grace of God I'll pull something out that sounds halfway decent. At least, that's been the pattern so far.

I think I shouldn't have to preach if the lessons are clear. I mean, Jesus took all the good lines. "What He said. Amen." Nothing to decipher in the Psalms. The Old Testament has some good advice. What more can I say that my congregation of very smart people don't already know? Maybe we can do some silent meditation... Or an open forum: "Does anyone have any thoughts on the readings today?"... Or maybe this: Let's get into small groups.

I enjoy preaching but the prep is such lonely work. "Preaching A, B and C" was great because I could bounce ideas off my classmates while I was still working the material. If I ever have to preach on a regular basis after seminary there better be a preachers chat group I can get in on.

Enough dawdling, back to work.