The Practice of Wearing Skin and Fellowship

One of my daily morning practices is stretching, and I pray as I stretch. My first few prayers are done just in breathing, as I stretch my legs and hip joints to one side and then the other. Breath is ruach, the Spirit, and I invite the Spirit to dwell in me fully again each morning.

After several more stretches have limbered my joints enough to consider standing up again, particularly now as mornings are chilly, I turn and do what yoga practitioners might call an extended child's pose, kneeling with my hands stretching out as far in front of me on the floor as I can. It's a great shoulder stretch, but now it invariably reminds me of the Baptist-Muslim National Dialogue conference I went to in January, and the Muslim Friday night prayers I had the opportunity to participate in.

At that conference Cheryl Townsend Gilkes from Colby College made the connection between the historical fact that many of the slaves brought over to American colonies from Africa were Muslims and many were forced to convert to Christianity by slave owners. But she pointed out that the Islamic influences lingered on in the spirituals.
And so as I stretch in this pose, so similar to the full outstretched Muslim prayer prostration, I remember and hold the stretch long enough to sing a couple of lines: "When I fall on my knees, with my face to the rising sun, O Lord have mercy on me."

As I get up and stretch my hamstrings and calves, I stretch on each side and sing another song that I learned in Sunday School, that was perhaps a reminder of the Muslim calls to prayer:

Whisper a prayer in the morning,
whisper a prayer at noon,
whisper a prayer in the evening
to keep your heart in tune.

Once I've stood up I continue stretching and praying, mentioning those people whom I am praying for by name—opening the world for God's presence in their lives. Then in my final stretches, I pray for myself.

I think it's very appropriate to pray and pay attention to the body, to the aches and tight spots. I'm continuing to read An Altar in the World by Barbara Brown Taylor and she talks about the "practice of wearing skin":

(p. 43) The daily practice of incarnation—of being in the body with full confidence that God speaks the language of flesh—is to discover a pedagogy that is as old as the gospels. Why else did Jesus spend his last night on earth teaching his disciples to wash feet and share supper? With all the conceptual truths in the universe at his disposal, he did not give them something to think about together when he was gone. Instead, he gave them concrete things to do—specific ways of being together in their bodies—that would go on teaching them what they needed to know when he was no longer around to teach them himself.

What do those concrete things remind us to do now? Where do we find incarnation these days?

Over the weekend I attended the Northeast regional gathering of the Alliance of Baptists. The Alliance is either a movement or a fledgling denomination. This gathering did not remind me of church business as usual, although a lot of the elements were familiar, but they are thinking about what gathered believers need and want in associational fellowship, while maintaining Baptist principles and a commitment to welcome, hospitality and fun, as well as to social justice and peace. In the preaching, in the singing, in the communion, in their covenant and in the fellowship before and after, these people are doing a fine job of remembering that we are the body, and acting on what Jesus taught—we need to care for the body. I knew a few people there and was warmly welcomed by both those I knew and those I didn't know. The conversations were lively, supportive, and interesting. It really was fun, and such a spiritual boost—that's what a fellowship will do: bring joy (and yes, we sang Leaning on the Everlasting Arms).

Recommended reading from the gathering's sermon: The Great Emergence: How Christianity is Changing and Why by Phyllis Tickle:

"Phyllis Tickle offers a creative and provocative overview of multiple social and cultural changes in our era, their relation to previous major paradigm shifts, and their particular impact on North American Christianity. This is an immensely important contribution to the current conversation about new and emerging forms of Christianity in a post-modern environment—and a delight to read!" —The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, Presiding Bishop and Primate, The Episcopal Church

"Tickle, author of God-Talk in America and PW's founding religion editor, observes that Christianity is holding its semimillennial rummage sale of ideas."

What is trash and what's worth keeping in the rummage sale? That would be prophecy… All of my reading and encounters convince me that we are and need to be in a time of great change about our religious institutions and spiritual practices. Does ordination (making/protecting order) in/through today's church and denominational structures make sense in this time that we are called to embrace or create change? Since institutions by their nature are resistant to change, they protect homeostasis by choosing/ordaining leaders who will keep the same old order. On the other hand would Luther have had the same impact if he had not been ordained within the institution that he was trying to change? Can you tell I'm waiting on the next step in the ordination process?

While I wait I'll just continue to practice wearing and appreciating my own skin, and hope that you will do the same. As Taylor put it:

(p. 42) One of the truer things about bodies is that it is just about impossible to increase the reverence I show mine without also increasing the reverence I show yours.

Blessings to us all!

Herding Cats and Doing the Right Things

Herding Cats: Life Lessons in Preparation for Ordination
We had between nine to fifteen cats most of the time I was growing up. I hasten to add that I grew up on a farm in Colorado, so we had a lot of space. They mostly lived in the garage with a few special cats allowed in the house. But all of them kept me company when the two dogs and I went on walks to the orchard or the garden.

Our orchard was a quarter of a mile away from the house, and I taught/encouraged the cats to come with me to the orchard and home again. Picture a ten year old walking in the midst of a swarm of cats, probably carrying one or two kittens who were too tired to make it back on their own, with the dogs ranging out and back, with a couple of the older cats pacing alongside, while the rest did their cat-style investigations: pouncing, sniffing, stopping to consider, rolling in the dust, climbing a tree, … Sometimes I had to backtrack to pick up a wailing kitten, sometimes we stopped to wait for some laggards, and often I had to encourage one or more through calling, getting down on my knees, or patting the ground. So early on in life I learned how to herd cats.

Those early life lessons, I realized this week, have really been very important in my preparation for ordination, that is, in gathering the materials and going through the hoops before ordination. I found out that I have successfully gotten all of the materials gathered and in for meeting with the Committee on Ministerial Preparation, and have been scheduled to meet with them in June. I think that I had to get no fewer than seven ministers, one layperson, and one school official to send in or arrange for materials on my behalf. Herding cats may have been easier, but it certainly prepared me for what it has taken to get this far along the process. What is true about herding cats and about getting these various ministers to send in materials is that the reason that each of them did so was out of love and affection, for me or for each other in the case of the cats, or for me or for the church and in ministry to God's people in the case of the ministers. I give thanks for the love that has accompanied me so far on this journey.

Doing the Right Things
This weekend I attended my denominational region's annual gathering. While there were a number of difficult issues, particularly around the consequences of difficult financial situations, I was impressed that people were/are doing the right things: budgets that require fiscal responsibility and living within the region's means after years of not doing that; one departing (laid off) area minister who wanted to make sure that she was reconciled to the region before she left and asked that if she had harmed any, to grant her forgiveness; and the region responding affirmatively to the member associations' request for review of their actions and authorizing bylaws that seem more top down than our congregational polity allows. In doing and accepting the doing of the right things there are moments of grace and healing.

This poem by Ellen Bass (found in Claiming the Spirit Within, edited by Marilyn Sewell) paints a picture of doing the right thing, and seems especially appropriate this Mother's Day:

There are times in life when one does the right thing
the thing one will not regret,
when the child wakes crying "mama," late
as you are about to close your book and sleep
and she will not be comforted back to her crib,
she points you out of her room, into yours,
you tell her, "I was just reading here in bed,"
she says, "read a book," you explain it's not a children's book
but you sit with her anyway, she lays her head on your breast,
one-handed, you hold your small book, silently read,
resting it on the bed to turn pages
and she, thumb in mouth, closes her eyes, drifts,
not asleep—when you look down at her, her lids open,
and once you try to carry her back
but she cries, so you return to your bed again and book,
and the way a warmer air will replace a cooler with a slight
shift of wind, or swimming, entering a mild current, you
enter this pleasure, the quiet book, your daughter in your lap,
an articulate person now, able to converse, yet still
her cry is for you, her comfort in you,
it is your breast she lays her head upon,
you are lovers, asking nothing but this bodily presence.
She hovers between sleep, you read your book,
you give yourself this hour, sweet and quiet beyond flowers
beyond lilies of the valley and lilacs even, the smell of her breath,
the warm damp between her head and your breast. Past midnight
she blinks her eyes, wiggles toward a familiar position,
utters one word, "sleeping." You carry her swiftly into her crib,
cover her, close the door halfway, and it is this sense of rightness,
that something has been healed, something
you will never know, will never have to know.

May the scent of lilacs (mine are blooming now) and a sense of rightness and the love of those who journey with us be with each of us today.