Generous Jesus, we confess that you are the Son of God. You heal the sick, you comfort the stricken, you find the lost ones. Yet, we confess we find it easier to love you than our neighbor. We would rather love our politicians and celebrities than those who live right beside us. We continually make ourselves into groups, codifying who is us and who is them. We do this to show how we are better or how we are always right. Forgive us Jesus. Remind us to call any and all neighbor, especially those who are close enough to annoy us. Help us to give of ourselves through love and devotion like the widow. Teach us how to love we pray…
Why a Farmer’s Market?
We are blessed to open our 5th Farmer’s Market season this summer. A Farmer’s Market that we put out for our community. A Farmers Market that the church’s volunteers run from May to October.
So why a Farmer’s Market? Where is the discipleship in this? and how exactly is this a ministry?
New Covenant Presbyterian Church spent a lot of time trying to participate within the neighborhood. We wanted to be a part of what was going on. With approximately 15 community groups meeting in our building, we felt the disconnect. Many people will come to these gatherings, but nothing sponsored by the church.
We got to work to be a part of the community. Some events were short: a one day electronic recycling drive, a Mendelssohn concert and Ice Cream Social, a Dove Nominated Gospel Concert. We started some long term things too…we opened a free weekly playgroup.. We organized and oversaw an ongoing clothing exchange.
We looked at our resources, we looked at our strengths. We are place that is easy to gather at, we have a large parking lot. We are close to major highways.
How about a Farmer’s Market? Which we committed to do, as long as we remembered WHY we want to do this. To participate within the neighborhood.
To be a part of the community.
To be PRESENT. We committed to help to set up, to serve, to strive for a caring environment built on balance and needs (as opposed to being purely profit driven).
We will then sit at the church table and HELP people. Answer questions and LISTEN carefully to what is being said so we could get reacquainted with the community.
We did the work (See the upcoming post on HOW a Farmer’s Market) for details. By the Grand Opening close to 200 people came. Which was a huge number for a 50-60 person church.
By the middle of the summer we clarified our why into one phrase.
Won’t You Be Our Neighbor?
Because we want to be your neighbor, we want to be a community-building congregation, we want to be a community that supports communities.
The ministry of presence, of listening of neighboring is a part of who we are and what we do today! We look forward to our 5th rendition of this particular ministry of Farmers Market.
#Prayer of #confession #lent
Holy Jesus, we know you to be the teacher, the healer, the authority on scripture. Yet, we confess that it is struggle to follow you. You tell us to follow you, but we ask you to wait a minute because we are in the middle of other things. You send us out two by two, and we worry about which of us is the one who is really in charge. You tell us to give everything we have to others so we can follow God. But we are sad because we feel secure in our possessions. Help us to do what we need to so that we can follow you, and get to know God better. (Silent Prayer)…Amen
#Sacrifice, #Parable of a #church
A congregation came to Jesus and said, “Good teacher, what must we do to inherit eternal life?”
Jesus said, do the commandments. “Love and respect your neighbor. Have courage to do new things. Enter the world to support those in need. Gather as God’s family and honor everyone as human. Render to no one evil for evil, learn how to be more than nice. Pray and support those in need, and open yourselves to the community”
And the congregation said, “Lord we have striven to do all of this”
Jesus said, “Then there is one more thing, give away your worship space to be a place of sanctuary for the rest of the community”
And the congregation went away grieving, for their sanctuary was a very beautiful and well cared for space.
Then Jesus said “Trust the Lord with all your heart, all your soul and all your mind, and remember you security is not in possessions or ownership of space and time, but is in God.”
Mark 10
#Confession #lent the #bible is clear
Prayer of Confession:
Embodier of God’s Love, teach us your love. This week our confession is that we are not willing to make the sacrifice. We are more concerned about who is a part of the kingdom, instead of loving those who might not be. We ask, what must I do? Yet the Bible is clear. When people in the Bible said Moabites were bad (Deut. 23), then Ruth the Moabite came to love Naomi in heroic ways. When the people of the Bible proclaimed that those from Uz were evil (Jer. 25), Job from Uz was uplifted as the the most blameless man on earth. When God’s people hated Samaritans, Jesus told a Samaritan who was the only one to love an injured neighbor. When foreigners and eunuchs were banned (Deut 23), an African Eunuch is prompted by the Holy Spirit to be baptized into the church. (Acts 8). When the story begins with prejudice and fear, the Spirit of God moves them to be stories of God’s openness, welcome, inclusion and affirmation. We confess that often time our story is one of worry and doubt, about what we can do, about what others can do to us. Turn our story into God’s story, the story of love. We confess ourselves and pray that we are changed here and now. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
#ashwednesday is for….
I confess myself and seek God…because to me, they are the same thing….
Ash Wednesday is for when all four of your checks hit after the bank closes but before you can put your husband’s check in, including the really big rent check, and they therefore all BOUNCE!
Ash Wednesday is for your four year old child throwing up all over the house, and not quite getting the try to aim for the bowl or the toilet concept
Its for your special needs kid being better focused in class, even as you worry about his continual bad smell
Its for losing your voice on the night the pastor has to lead service
Its for your eldest who is struggling to concentrate getting a good email from the teacher.
Ash Wednesday is to lay out your whole self before God
To confess yourself, not to feel ashamed, but to be able to see yourself as God’s beloved
The very act of owning who you are and your reality, the act of being you as God’s, frees you to be reflective of God.
I confess myself and seek God…because to me, they are the same thing….
Ps 34:4-5 I sought the Lord, and he answered me;
he delivered me from all my fears.
5Those who look to him are radiant;
their faces are never covered with shame.
Thank you.
Look at this cheeky little thing! Photo by Evan Schneider.
I published the words I did on Wednesday to begin a conversation about ableist and “I’m sorry” subcultures, discourse and dominant beliefs that subtly exclude certain families and children. I should point out that while I only recently did that disability narrative assignment with my students, those some 750 words were nearly two years in the making, so forgive me if these ones are a bit rough.
During those two years I’ve certainly felt misunderstood and excluded at times, but the courage to speak about these feelings and these concerns rests upon a church community who has consistently offered love and acceptance rather than questions; family like those little girls in the photo and many others who love Lucia with abandon and without exclusion; and countless friends (and foster mothers!) who have modeled love and grace with their own lives and…
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Walk It Proud (a prayer for preachers)
Favorite-est things from #2015
The good stuff from this year…
Oprah Chai Teabags from Teavana, which taste like lattes only healthier
Books:
Accidental Saints Nadia Bolz-Weber: Confessional Pastoral Tales of mishaps & ministry–>seeing the holy in the messiness of humanity
Grounded by Diana Butler Bass: Mysticism, Spiritual but not Religious
Rook by Sharon Cameron: Fantasy YA version of The Scarlet Pimpernal
Six of Crows by Leigh Burdugo: Get together a crew to steal a prize, fantasy YA style
Prudence by Gail Carriger: Cyberpunk-ish tea drinking lady defies Victorian odds in werewolf and vampire politics
Court of Fives by Kate Elliot: Young woman in a Romanesque style class system competes in Olympic-like trials and uncovers the deep seated plots, classicism and intrigue (did I mention plots?)
Ash & Bramble by Sarah Prineas: Post Apocalyptic Sleeping Beauty Fiary Tale, where the world turns by story magic
Fairest by Marissa Meyer: Heart-rending portrayal of the villain of the Lunar Chronicles.
Movies
Star Wars A Force Awakens: Awakening a new (better represented diversity of) Star Wars fan with the now arch-typical stories of friendship and redemption
Martian nerdy science-ness and survival without a bad guy! No angst, just a collaborative game of survival
Inside Out what if feelings had feelings? Portraying the complex emotional development of children
Best Moments
Announcing Marriage ratification in the PCUSA
Love Wins: marriage equality Jun 29th 2015
My sister graduating from Oberlin May 2015, senior show, getting engaged…
Water on Mars!
Church Kids doing Charlie Brown Christmas Performance
Westley potty training!!!
Ashburn talking more
Franklin being creative and kind to everyone
http://www.transmography.net/brainery/ Fairy Tale Writing Class
Church: Kids day at the farmer’s market, 1st ever craft fair, 1st Breakfast with Santa, Doing Christmas all in Advent, NextChurch, 2nd Credo
Media
#blackharrypotter
#morallycomplicatedYA
#folkloreThursday
http://thiseverydayholy.com/ podcast about holiness in the daily
YAY BLOG
My Post on #Christianity I don’t think it means what you think it is
Theological Breakthru about my belief about Jesus coming
Things to work on
Gun Violence, Syrian Crises, Ebola, Floods, Climate, Poverty, Economy, other big things….
Reclaiming #mysticism, #prophets & #christianity in Grounded
You probably haven’t noticed this, but prophets are often outside the fold of the norm in scripture.
Whether its Elisha, Elijah or Jesus himself it is difficult for those who stand outside of religion and claim a relationship with God to fit.
This is, no doubt, because humans long for “normatives” we long for a checklist by which to live our lives, some way to say this is the right (and only) way to be in relationship with God and each other.
Of course if we were created to be that way we wouldn’t be the multi-faceted, every learning, gender-fluid beings we are. Our spirituality and sexuality would not exist in complex relationship to each other, and our experience of the world would be all the same.
Its amazing that Christianity has plateaued into a “normative” state for so long.
In Diana Butler Bass’s book she reclaims the ordinary-earth, water, fire and air. She claims them as ways to experience God in mystical and tactile & experiential ways.
Because these days, when people of all ages have been burned by institutions (whether they be courts or government, schools or churches, scouts or libraries) and are highly suspicious of institutional wisdom.
Experience, instead, informs.
Diana Butler Bass talks about our experiences in the following ways…”Adam and Eve are made from hums, placed in Go’ds garden, and directed to care for the soil from which they came….” Land “is the source, the material basis, of the food supply (no dirt, no food, no us); or it may be viewed through the eyes of spiritual awareness, as part of a divine ecosystem….disregarding the ground is sinful and evil” p. 43
Humans are made of dirt ”
And Diana Butler Bass puts poetic narrative to her experience, allowing life to be mystical and mysterious in its particularity and beautiful & beloved in its multiplicity and shared interactions.
She dignifies the spiritual awareness that so many has, with a well reasoned personal narrative, grounded in scripture touching on the ideas of God as home, neighborhood as a state of being and the hospitality of creating a commons to dwell in.
“Spirituality is about personal experience–the deep erealization that dirt is good, water is holy, the sky holds wonder; that we are part of a great web of life, our home is in God, and our moral life is entwined with that of our neighbor.”
None of that tells us a checklist to be healthy, wealthy and wise, “it is about tracing the threads of the interconnected universe.” 238
Diana Butler Bass explores the spiritual revolution as it is unfolding today. I highly recommend reading with an open mind, to understand God, and just how accessible Xi is.
Personally as a pastor, I love to learn about how people understand God to be in their lives, and to me church is/should be the place where we share our differences to enrich our own faith. I hope that mystics are heard especially when they are not understood and help us to change into whatever church is being born today….
katyandtheword 