Posts Tagged ‘worship’

Getting Ready For Thanksgiving

Sunday, November 21st, 2010

This morning in getting ready for Church, I am sitting in my office thinking about what does it really take to get ready for Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving, in this denomination, is the very core of worship.  Why is that?  I think the process is two fold – a first step – awareness of what we have – followed by a second step – awareness of what we have to give.  That is something to come open to.  What is that you have …. to give.

Because we all do, we all harbor this “thing” that was the point of God creating us.  Often largely unknown, ignored, or unlived in this life it still stirs.   When we take moments to worship in the spirit of thanks and gratitude for the blessing, we can feel its gentle presence.  Why?  As Emanuel Swedenborg phrased it, “Because the divine nature intimately affects everything with good and with blessedness.”  (Heaven and Hell)

Last night I was able to witness one of those moments.  I was privileged to preside at a 50th Wedding Anniversary/ Renewal of vows. To watch Mary Ellen and Paul socializing after the service, “working the crowd” with obvious joy and gratitude for the gold that was their life, was to watch a prayer of Thanksgiving literally unfold on a beautiful night at Pen Ryn.  They are living in what they have and in what they have to give – to each other, to their family, to their community.

So getting ready this morning is about clarity – clarity about a very simple, very profound message.  What we have is nice.  What we have to give is the point.


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Christian Evolution

Friday, September 24th, 2010

New Church theology posits that the growth of faith, historically, moved through several “churches” – groups who had a deep understanding of God and His Word.  Some of that was specific to a given church body.  Other elements were far more broad, more shared as it were, constituting a church of the heart, a universal church that crossed denominational boundaries.

Each phase was inaugurated within God’s plan to uniquely serve humanity at that time.  Within the Christian tradition, that means the Old Testament was to serve humanity at that time as was the New Testament and as is New Church theology for this time.   Each builds and adds on to what went before, adding its own unique layer of meaning to what preceded.  As each sows itself together, married with experience, it constitutes for a Word for now.

The author Parker Palmer wrote: “All of our propositions and practices are earthen vessels. All of them are made by human beings of common clay to hold whatever we think we’ve found in our soul-deep quest for the sacred or in its quest for us. If our containers prove too crimped and cramped to hold the treasure well, if they domesticate the sacred and keep us from having a live encounter with it—or if they prove so twisted and deformed that they defile rather than honor the treasure they were intended to hold—then our containers must be smashed and discarded so we can create a larger and more life-giving vessel in which to hold the treasure.”

At a certain point we do outgrow the older forms he references. losing touch with the treasure within.  We then need to find “a more life-giving vessel.”  That does not change the sacredness of revelation.  It does however call us to be aware of the “pots” we place it in, including worship and Christian community.

Just as revelation “moves”, so much churches.    The trouble  is “when any religion insists that the treasure cannot be carried except in their earthen vessels ….”

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I want to see God but I can’t

Thursday, September 2nd, 2010

Many people want to “see” God, experience God.  But the “seeing”, the experience, eludes them.  How then do we see God when our best efforts seem to leave us “without”, searching within what appears to b a vacuum?

To start, God simply “is.”  That means that God is something we awaken to vs. journey to.  We can often fall into the belief that certain actions will inevitably lead us to the experience of God.  I have not found that to be true.  My understanding is that we do those “actions’ – be they prayer, reading, meditation, service, worship – so that we are awake when God shows up. They do not create the experience.  They do however ensure that we are awake enough to know when the experience arrives.

Secondly, God’s presence is most often not of the “clouds parting” “trumpet blaring” variety.  The experiences tend to be far more gentle.  One author compared God’s voice to being as quiet as the beating of our own heart  (Try listening to your heart beating to get an idea of what that means).  While some individuals do experience the granduer of God in dramatic fashion – i.e. Martin Luther, Emanuel Swedenborg, Bill Wilson – most of us experience God in more muted yet not any less powerful ways.  That is why perhaps Jesus spoke of the presence of the Divine as the spirit, a word that can be translated “wind.”

One author’s point is one I have been thinking a great deal about recently.  Her perspective grew out of a endless prayers for the experience of Divine.  What she came to realize was that God’s answer to her longing was her longing.  It was that love, that compassion, that “pull” in her heart that bore great fruit in her life, a “pull” that might have moved her more in her life than any dramatic presentation of God.

If the pull to experience God is moving you forward in your life, that might just be the whole point.  That might just be the mercy and compassion of God at work in your life. Stay awake.  Keep doing the work.  God will show Himself in the ways He knows to be most important in light of goals that are eternal, not temporal.  Those are not often the most dramatic but they are the most transformative.

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