I've been reading The Listening Book by W. A. Mathieu in the morning.
He has several wonderful exercises about being aware of sound (p. 10-11): "Get a pencil and paper. Become aware of all the sounds you are hearing now, this moment, as you read. Make a list of them. Close your eyes from time to time. Swivel your head slightly to change the mix. Make a sweep from nearby sounds to distant sounds. Fall into the distance. Become transparent. Now fall into the nearness. Make a sweep from the highest sounds to the lowest ones. Disappear into the stratosphere, reappear underground. If your space is quiet enough you will hear your own internal sounds: breathing, maybe your blood in your ears. Or the subtle sounds of cloth against cloth, skin against skin. Count everything; write everything down. Use words economically. Later, if you like, you can set the scene and go into detail."
Here is mine this morning:
computer humming
car swishing by
clatter of keyboard as I type
deep breath
cracking joints as I roll my shoulders
scuffing shoe on the floor
plane flying overhead
creaking chair as I sit back
twittering of bird outside
fabric rustling against my hands
distant humming of cars on the parkway
scratching of skin
ticking of clock in the other room
the neighbor's wind chimes
the dripping of the water fountain
the call of the morning dove
Time to go for now, but I feel much more in the present, aware of my surroundings, and conscious too of how bombarded by sounds we often are. No wonder it is so hard for us to sit in silence to find God. We cannot find silence, and the associations that we have with each of these noises takes us away to some place or time, not here, unless we come back, paying attention just to the now. Perhaps this is where God is. "Be still and know that 'I am'--God."
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Home Again?
Dear Fox, old friend, thus we have come to the end of the road that we were to go together. My tale is finished--and so farewell. But before I go, I have just one more thing to tell you: Something has spoken to me in the night, burning the tapers of the waning year; something has spoken in the night, and told me I shall die, I know not where. Saying: "To lose the earth you know, for greater knowing; to lose the life you have, for greater life; to leave the friends you loved, for greater loving; to find a land more kind than home, more large than earth----Whereon the pillars of this earth are founded, towards which the conscience of the world is tending--a wind is rising, and the rivers flow."You Can't Go Home Again by Thomas Wolfe
In this increasingly mobile society, we do a lot of leaving home. And in leaving home, we attempt both to define and find home. In my own life, I left home at 17 to go to college and went home most summers. But by 22 I never spent much more than a week at a time there, because, like Thomas Wolfe, I also found: you can’t go home again. Sometimes it is because you grow, sometimes because it shrinks, sometimes both you and home change. Sometimes you may discover that if “home is not where you live but where they understand you” (~Christian Morgenstern), then you realize that they don’t or possibly never did understand you. That is most likely why I live where I do, and my blood relatives live where they do. I love them, and while love in many cases may not require being understood, being home does.
I acknowledge in myself a strong nesting instinct: I stay in jobs a long time, and in houses and apartments for 7-10 years at a stretch. Home is where you make it your own place, perhaps? Still I’ve left jobs and moved out of houses and they are no longer home either. Home for me has also been a function of community, not just of blood. “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” (~Robert Frost, The Death of the Hired Man) When I started seminary, one of the things that I could not quite envision about the call to ministry was leaving my church home. This past year in my field education internship, I missed those familiar people and ways of doing things, and I brought a lot of those familiar things to my internship church as gifts and ways of being connected home. Somehow though on the last Sunday I knew that this community where I’d been a student pastor also held a piece of my heart in its care. Is that also home?
This past Sunday after finishing my internship I came back to my “home” church. It was a joyful, hug-full and sobering experience. I spent the afternoon looking up the quotes about “you can’t go home again” and creating a play list of music (see below) that reflected my very mixed feelings. Almost home, you can’t go home again in jazz, country, R&B, rock, gonna feel like heaven when we’re home, sometimes I wonder if I’m ever going to make it home again …
from The Odeon by Neil Harding MacAlister
Somewhere between the smiles and tears
A childhood gets misplaced;
The landmarks of our younger years,
Torn down without a trace.
Nostalgic hearts seek what is gone,
Reality explains,
She gently chides, the curtain's drawn;
The show is over. Run along.
You can't go home again.
Growing in faith and following our call is a journey that takes us away from home and to home again. The tricky part is that those instances of home may not be the same. Thomas Wolfe’s eloquent description of that growth: leaving the life, friends, home you love for greater knowing, learning, and a new place “more kind than home, more large than earth” is poignant and true. I am not the same person after this year of learning and claiming my call, and while I was gone the folks and church at home changed too.
What it teaches us, this going from and coming back to home, is that home is really something we carry within us. “Peace - that was the other name for home.” (~Kathleen Norris) When we pray, for example, we welcome God into the world, and God in turn welcomes us home, into and as ourselves, both fully inward and in the world. Home then is not the destination or the building, or even the people, but the journey, the learning, the knowing, the centeredness, the peace we come to. Hopefully, the place we rest our head, the people with whom we live, work and/or worship do support that for each of us, and sometimes we call what we know there “home,” but it is really what we move toward, both inside and outside ourselves.
Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit ever answered to, in the strongest conjuration. ~Charles Dickens
You can never go home again, but the truth is you can never leave home, so it's all right. ~Maya Angelou
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Driving Habits
A woman was being tailgated by a stressed out man on a busy boulevard. Suddenly, the light turned yellow, just in front of her. She did the right thing, stopping at the crosswalk, even though she could have beaten the red light by accelerating through the intersection.
The tailgating man hit the roof and the horn, screaming and swearing out the window, yelling threats and insults at the woman in front of him because he missed his chance to get through the intersection. He was still ranting when he heard a tap on his window and looked up into the face of a very serious police officer.
The officer ordered him out of the car with his hands up. He took the man to the police station where he was searched, finger printed, photographed, and placed in a holding cell. After a couple of hours, a policeman approached the cell and opened the door. The man was escorted back to the booking desk where the arresting officer was waiting with his personal effects.
"I'm very sorry for this mistake," said the officer. "You see, I pulled up behind your car while you were blowing your horn and swearing at the woman in front of you. I had noticed the 'Choose Life' license plate holder on your car, the 'What Would Jesus Do' bumper sticker, the 'Follow Me to Sunday-School' bumper sticker, and the chrome-plated Christian fish emblem on the trunk. So, naturally, I assumed you had stolen the car."
From Ralph Milton's RUMORS, a free Internet e-zine for Christians with a sense of humor.
****
I don't know whether the moral of the story is not to have bumper stickers, or perhaps ... to watch our driving habits.
I find that in a crowded grocery store where I can still smile at someone who is trying to push a cart through me, it seems to help lighten the mood and remind people of common courtesy. (I went to the grocery store at prime time this week.) But in a car, it's as if we're in our own little bubble, and we think we can do anything. I do still look for the little thank you waves from car to car and try to give them as people let me through, but the kind of behavior described in this joke is not so unusual. Why is that?
A good friend of mine was in a car accident recently and fortunately is okay, although the other driver's car was totaled and hers needs major repairs. Could a smile and a little less rushing have made the difference? Something for all of us to think about as we drive, maybe especially as we drive home from church or to work ... :-)
I am remembering the son of a colleague at work was called by one of his friends two years ago this weekend to the scene of an accident where 5 of his friends had been drinking and then were driving at 85 mph down at 40 mph road and rammed into a tree--two killed, one in a coma, other two thrown clear. He could have been there if he hadn't been at work. And he got to identify the bodies.
Something for us all to pray about as we drive, particularly as we go out this coming long weekend.
Take it easy out there. Drive carefully and prayerfully too.
Nancy
The tailgating man hit the roof and the horn, screaming and swearing out the window, yelling threats and insults at the woman in front of him because he missed his chance to get through the intersection. He was still ranting when he heard a tap on his window and looked up into the face of a very serious police officer.
The officer ordered him out of the car with his hands up. He took the man to the police station where he was searched, finger printed, photographed, and placed in a holding cell. After a couple of hours, a policeman approached the cell and opened the door. The man was escorted back to the booking desk where the arresting officer was waiting with his personal effects.
"I'm very sorry for this mistake," said the officer. "You see, I pulled up behind your car while you were blowing your horn and swearing at the woman in front of you. I had noticed the 'Choose Life' license plate holder on your car, the 'What Would Jesus Do' bumper sticker, the 'Follow Me to Sunday-School' bumper sticker, and the chrome-plated Christian fish emblem on the trunk. So, naturally, I assumed you had stolen the car."
From Ralph Milton's RUMORS, a free Internet e-zine for Christians with a sense of humor.
****
I don't know whether the moral of the story is not to have bumper stickers, or perhaps ... to watch our driving habits.
I find that in a crowded grocery store where I can still smile at someone who is trying to push a cart through me, it seems to help lighten the mood and remind people of common courtesy. (I went to the grocery store at prime time this week.) But in a car, it's as if we're in our own little bubble, and we think we can do anything. I do still look for the little thank you waves from car to car and try to give them as people let me through, but the kind of behavior described in this joke is not so unusual. Why is that?
A good friend of mine was in a car accident recently and fortunately is okay, although the other driver's car was totaled and hers needs major repairs. Could a smile and a little less rushing have made the difference? Something for all of us to think about as we drive, maybe especially as we drive home from church or to work ... :-)
I am remembering the son of a colleague at work was called by one of his friends two years ago this weekend to the scene of an accident where 5 of his friends had been drinking and then were driving at 85 mph down at 40 mph road and rammed into a tree--two killed, one in a coma, other two thrown clear. He could have been there if he hadn't been at work. And he got to identify the bodies.
Something for us all to pray about as we drive, particularly as we go out this coming long weekend.
Take it easy out there. Drive carefully and prayerfully too.
Nancy
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Listening in ministry
I've been thinking about the dialog of preaching and of ministry.
I was reflecting, as my time at my field education site draws to a close, that ministry, at its best, might be described as a series of dialogs, and outside of field ed, we don't get much instruction or guidance in ways of opening up those dialogs—with God, with colleagues, with congregation members, with ourselves. In field ed, there has been attentive listening and conversation in reflection and supervision sessions, and with the teaching parish committee there has been feedback, listening and conversation built into the structure.
But we don't appreciate enough the gift of listening, I think, either in the giving or the receiving. I looked to my bookshelf and found two books on listening that I bought and never fully read, that I think I'll peruse over the summer: The Listening Book: Discovering Your Own Music by W. A. Mathieu (Boston: Shambala, 1991). The cover says it is "about rediscovering the power of listening as an instrument of self-discovery and personal and personal transformation." We've got two ears and one mouth, the old saying goes, so that we should listen twice as much as we talk.
The second book is The Third Ear: On Listening to the World by Joachim-Ernst Berendt (New York: Henry Holt, 1986). Berendt, according to the back cover, is the author of the international best seller The Jazz Book and has done a lot of work in organizing jazz music festivals. "He uncovers startling evidence that suggests dominance of the ear is directly linked to compassion and peacefulness, while reliance on the eye produces divisiveness and aggression. At the core of almost every spiritual tradition—from the West, East, Middle East, Africa Pacific Islands, and the Arctic—lies the knowledge that the world is made of sound and that the way to wisdom lies through the ear."
What the ear of the jazz musician knows or learns is how to hear the way through. If the listening goes awry, then jazz gets derailed, and it's obvious—sort of what happens to the rest of us in life a lot of the time, but we don't get that it's because we weren't listening enough and paying attention. It is so rare that I feel really listened to, rather than that a person is just planning their response while I'm talking. We need to give the gift of time in our listening as well, and not expect immediate response, or perhaps train ourselves to give time to listen in our dialog before we respond.
I was reflecting, as my time at my field education site draws to a close, that ministry, at its best, might be described as a series of dialogs, and outside of field ed, we don't get much instruction or guidance in ways of opening up those dialogs—with God, with colleagues, with congregation members, with ourselves. In field ed, there has been attentive listening and conversation in reflection and supervision sessions, and with the teaching parish committee there has been feedback, listening and conversation built into the structure.
But we don't appreciate enough the gift of listening, I think, either in the giving or the receiving. I looked to my bookshelf and found two books on listening that I bought and never fully read, that I think I'll peruse over the summer: The Listening Book: Discovering Your Own Music by W. A. Mathieu (Boston: Shambala, 1991). The cover says it is "about rediscovering the power of listening as an instrument of self-discovery and personal and personal transformation." We've got two ears and one mouth, the old saying goes, so that we should listen twice as much as we talk.
The second book is The Third Ear: On Listening to the World by Joachim-Ernst Berendt (New York: Henry Holt, 1986). Berendt, according to the back cover, is the author of the international best seller The Jazz Book and has done a lot of work in organizing jazz music festivals. "He uncovers startling evidence that suggests dominance of the ear is directly linked to compassion and peacefulness, while reliance on the eye produces divisiveness and aggression. At the core of almost every spiritual tradition—from the West, East, Middle East, Africa Pacific Islands, and the Arctic—lies the knowledge that the world is made of sound and that the way to wisdom lies through the ear."
What the ear of the jazz musician knows or learns is how to hear the way through. If the listening goes awry, then jazz gets derailed, and it's obvious—sort of what happens to the rest of us in life a lot of the time, but we don't get that it's because we weren't listening enough and paying attention. It is so rare that I feel really listened to, rather than that a person is just planning their response while I'm talking. We need to give the gift of time in our listening as well, and not expect immediate response, or perhaps train ourselves to give time to listen in our dialog before we respond.
Tuesday, April 3, 2007
Counting
Originally posted at
Every day as I drive my daughter to school I pass by a lawn sign about half way there. Today it said 3253. According to tonight's news, they will need to change the sign, and I'll see if it is different tomorrow, because the count of American military deaths in Iraq is now three higher. When I drive by I often think that perhaps they need more signs, because counting only the American deaths does not tell the whole story of what is happening. The counts of wounded Americans can also be found on those sites, and the number of Iraqis who have lost their lives, is a much larger number.
Of course, this is not the only place in the world with deaths and tragedies to count--Darfur is another. These are hard numbers to count.
In our adult ed class at church yesterday we were finishing our series of lessons on our Music of Faith and Songs of the Soul with a selection of songs on blessings, and I included an adaptation of the chorus of the hymn "Count Your Blessings" that I wrote as a children's counting song when my daughter was small. The visiting four-year old sitting on his daddy's lap particularly enjoyed the song. So for all of you with young friends who are learning to count, I offer this way of counting:
Easiest to Count
This week at First Baptist Church in Jamaica Plain we will have a Maundy Thursday service at 7 p.m. and we will be focusing on the new commandment that Jesus gave the disciples. Maundy is from the Latin mandatum (like mandate), meaning commandment. The new commandment is found in John 13:34-35: "I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."
Thinking of love and counting reminded me, of course, of the famous poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, that starts, "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways…" When it comes to the ways we are loved by God, and the ways Jesus showed his love for us, perhaps these are the easiest of all the things we might count.
Somehow, though, it seems to me that we cannot count the ways God loves us, or our blessings, unless we also count each death, and unless each death or wound also counts. Surely, when we come to this week, of all weeks, where we remember the wounds in Jesus' hands and side, and his death, we must count all wounds and deaths, and begin to count the ways that we love one another, and more importantly, the ways that we show that love. Love counts.
Hard to Count
Every day as I drive my daughter to school I pass by a lawn sign about half way there. Today it said 3253. According to tonight's news, they will need to change the sign, and I'll see if it is different tomorrow, because the count of American military deaths in Iraq is now three higher. When I drive by I often think that perhaps they need more signs, because counting only the American deaths does not tell the whole story of what is happening. The counts of wounded Americans can also be found on those sites, and the number of Iraqis who have lost their lives, is a much larger number.
Of course, this is not the only place in the world with deaths and tragedies to count--Darfur is another. These are hard numbers to count.
In our adult ed class at church yesterday we were finishing our series of lessons on our Music of Faith and Songs of the Soul with a selection of songs on blessings, and I included an adaptation of the chorus of the hymn "Count Your Blessings" that I wrote as a children's counting song when my daughter was small. The visiting four-year old sitting on his daddy's lap particularly enjoyed the song. So for all of you with young friends who are learning to count, I offer this way of counting:
Count your blessings, name them one by one.
Count your blessings, see what God has done.
Count your blessings, name them one by one.
Count your many blessings, see what God has done.
Count your blessings, name them two by two.
Count your blessings, hear what God can do. …
Count your blessings, name them three by three.
Count your blessings, for earth and sky and sea. …
Count your blessings, name them four by four.
Count your blessings from God that we adore. …
Count your blessings, name them five by five.
Count your blessings, be glad that you're alive. …
Count your blessings, name them six by six.
Count your blessings, you are part of God's good mix. …
Count your blessings, name them seven by seven.
Count your blessings, you are on your way to heaven. …
Count your blessings, name them eight by eight.
Count your blessings, God is never late. …
Count your blessings, name them nine by nine.
Count your blessings, God is with us all the time. …
Count your blessings, name them ten by ten.
Count your blessings, and then sing them all again.
Count your blessings, name them ten by ten.
Count your many blessings, and then sing them all again.
Easiest to Count
This week at First Baptist Church in Jamaica Plain we will have a Maundy Thursday service at 7 p.m. and we will be focusing on the new commandment that Jesus gave the disciples. Maundy is from the Latin mandatum (like mandate), meaning commandment. The new commandment is found in John 13:34-35: "I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."
Thinking of love and counting reminded me, of course, of the famous poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, that starts, "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways…" When it comes to the ways we are loved by God, and the ways Jesus showed his love for us, perhaps these are the easiest of all the things we might count.
Somehow, though, it seems to me that we cannot count the ways God loves us, or our blessings, unless we also count each death, and unless each death or wound also counts. Surely, when we come to this week, of all weeks, where we remember the wounds in Jesus' hands and side, and his death, we must count all wounds and deaths, and begin to count the ways that we love one another, and more importantly, the ways that we show that love. Love counts.
Monday, March 19, 2007
Silence and Sabbath
Silence is scarce.
As I start to write this, wanting to write on our congregational experience during Lent of sitting in increasing amounts (a minute increasing by a half minute each week) of silence, my daughter is in the room next to me watching a re-run episode of "The Lucy Show." Somehow it seems like a fitting dose of reality. How hard it is to find quiet time, time to sit in silence. This Sunday, it seemed to me as if people were sinking into the silence. There didn't seem to be the shuffling and rustling that we've had in previous weeks. Note to self: don't announce the amount of time that we'll have and then people don't wonder when it's supposed to be up. But there was a power, an enfolding or upholding of the gathered community as the silence deepened. I think we were making space for God.
Even early in the morning, in my supposed quiet time, it's hard to find silence or space for silence. The kettle whistles, the furnace clanks, refrigerator whirs, the computer hums and cars swish by. Even now, although it is quieter since my daughter went upstairs, my chair squeaks and I hear the clock ticking as my fingers are tapping. Why is it easier to find God in the silence than in the busy-ness and noise? I'm not denying that it is—I'm just wondering why we're not wired to find God in rush of everyday?
I read somewhere recently that Sabbath is the most radical contribution of Judaism to the world, or maybe it was the most radical contribution of any religion to the world in 4000 years. Not that Sabbath is always silence, but it is holy time, and it seems to me that we were achieving holy time on Sunday in our silence. Somehow in my mind I equate the spaciousness of Sabbath with the quality of silence we had.
My calendar popup reminders intrude as I try to sit in silence again. And I suspect that if I close my eyes to sit in silence now, I may be asleep—restless night from aching shoveling muscles last night.
If we lost scents and ritual in the reformation, it was a much bigger loss to have lost Sabbath keeping, whenever it was that we did. Blue laws, that remnant of Puritanism, really didn't ensure Sabbath, although the laws helped to control the options. How hard would it be to buck the tide and keep a day of Sabbath in a Christian tradition? How hard is it to find 3-4 minutes of intentional silence? Yet, what an absolute blessing it is when we do.
I tried yet again to sit in silence, and my mind has too much chatter just now. So, there it is. Yesterday I felt enfolded by others around, like being wrapped in a communal blanket of silence. My mind was not nearly so noisy.
I'll miss the silence during service when Lent is over. I'm not sure that I've made enough space for God, but it's been a special part of the season, not a giving up, but a getting.
As I start to write this, wanting to write on our congregational experience during Lent of sitting in increasing amounts (a minute increasing by a half minute each week) of silence, my daughter is in the room next to me watching a re-run episode of "The Lucy Show." Somehow it seems like a fitting dose of reality. How hard it is to find quiet time, time to sit in silence. This Sunday, it seemed to me as if people were sinking into the silence. There didn't seem to be the shuffling and rustling that we've had in previous weeks. Note to self: don't announce the amount of time that we'll have and then people don't wonder when it's supposed to be up. But there was a power, an enfolding or upholding of the gathered community as the silence deepened. I think we were making space for God.
Even early in the morning, in my supposed quiet time, it's hard to find silence or space for silence. The kettle whistles, the furnace clanks, refrigerator whirs, the computer hums and cars swish by. Even now, although it is quieter since my daughter went upstairs, my chair squeaks and I hear the clock ticking as my fingers are tapping. Why is it easier to find God in the silence than in the busy-ness and noise? I'm not denying that it is—I'm just wondering why we're not wired to find God in rush of everyday?
I read somewhere recently that Sabbath is the most radical contribution of Judaism to the world, or maybe it was the most radical contribution of any religion to the world in 4000 years. Not that Sabbath is always silence, but it is holy time, and it seems to me that we were achieving holy time on Sunday in our silence. Somehow in my mind I equate the spaciousness of Sabbath with the quality of silence we had.
My calendar popup reminders intrude as I try to sit in silence again. And I suspect that if I close my eyes to sit in silence now, I may be asleep—restless night from aching shoveling muscles last night.
If we lost scents and ritual in the reformation, it was a much bigger loss to have lost Sabbath keeping, whenever it was that we did. Blue laws, that remnant of Puritanism, really didn't ensure Sabbath, although the laws helped to control the options. How hard would it be to buck the tide and keep a day of Sabbath in a Christian tradition? How hard is it to find 3-4 minutes of intentional silence? Yet, what an absolute blessing it is when we do.
I tried yet again to sit in silence, and my mind has too much chatter just now. So, there it is. Yesterday I felt enfolded by others around, like being wrapped in a communal blanket of silence. My mind was not nearly so noisy.
I'll miss the silence during service when Lent is over. I'm not sure that I've made enough space for God, but it's been a special part of the season, not a giving up, but a getting.
Monday, March 12, 2007
The scent of God?
I've been mulling about the sermon I'll be preaching on March 25. I have been thinking that I'll be improvising the sermon—that is, not writing it down, or at least not standing at the pulpit reading it, but one of the things that has drawn me about the gospel text, which is the woman anointing Jesus, is the fragrance.
Last night I found a place on-line (after looking unsuccessfully in several places locally) that sells essential oils and I ordered some spikenard, as well as frankincense and myrrh, among others. I'll hope it's here by March 25. I went rummaging through my drawers and crafts bags for fragrances this weekend. My daughter's Christmas gifts several years ago were potpourri boxes and sachets, and we had fragrance oils for those, and I had gotten some fragrances to add to massage oils, so I have quite a few essential oils around for one reason or another. I'm thinking that this might be a fragrant service. I have a lot of smells captured in bottles. The children will enjoy that...
Smell is the sense that is most primal and I'm wondering why we don't make more use of it in worship. Other than the smell of the coffee brewing—which actually isn't very strong, we don't do smells in Protestant churches. Is this another thing, like ritual, that we lost/threw away during the reformation?
Nard or spikenard was used in preparing a body for burial. I figure that's a coded way of saying that it's a potent enough scent to cover up the scent of a decaying, no—let's be blunt—a rotting body. If so, what primal associations would nard have? Yet, it's referred to as well in Song of Solomon: "While the king was on his couch, my nard gave forth its fragrance." It's originally from India, and we know from the gospel that it was costly then. Was it a scent the poor would have known? Currently it's not as expensive as myrrh, and it's recommended for rashes, wounds, and tension, and is known as a very spiritual fragrance, apparently just from its historic association with the anointing of Jesus. Is that cause or effect now? If I didn't know it was nard, would I be affected spiritually?
So am trying to think of how to use fragrances in a sermon, especially since we have a hospitality theme going on… Bring my bread machine—baking bread is a current fragrance of hospitality. But apparently nard had an association with welcoming guests as well…
Where is God in all this? What is the scent of God? The scent of redemption? The scents of love and welcome and acceptance and hospitality? How can/do we think of those? If we make worship more sensual, with more subconscious or primal connections, what might happen? There are ways to have anointing as movement as a part of the service, because it wasn't just that the fragrance was there, but that it was lavishly used, and anointing was a limited act—by priests for kings, for example. So what radical notion is it for a woman to anoint an itinerant teacher/prophet/social reformer? But it was also love and recognition, captured in the scent and in the act. How might that be translated into worship/a sermon and for this particular congregation? And we are told in Matthew and Mark that wherever the good news is told, her story will always be a part of it in remembrance of her … should we re-enact it? There is an interesting echo "in remembrance of her" with communion …
Maybe when I actually get the nard and smell it, I'll decide that there's a different way to go for this…. In the meantime, thinking of the unusual sparks creative possibility.
What is the scent of God? I asked my girlfriend as I was writing this: My answer: the smell after a rainstorm on a freshly plowed field. Her answer: the way the house smells when you are cooking, preparing for company. What's your answer?
Last night I found a place on-line (after looking unsuccessfully in several places locally) that sells essential oils and I ordered some spikenard, as well as frankincense and myrrh, among others. I'll hope it's here by March 25. I went rummaging through my drawers and crafts bags for fragrances this weekend. My daughter's Christmas gifts several years ago were potpourri boxes and sachets, and we had fragrance oils for those, and I had gotten some fragrances to add to massage oils, so I have quite a few essential oils around for one reason or another. I'm thinking that this might be a fragrant service. I have a lot of smells captured in bottles. The children will enjoy that...
Smell is the sense that is most primal and I'm wondering why we don't make more use of it in worship. Other than the smell of the coffee brewing—which actually isn't very strong, we don't do smells in Protestant churches. Is this another thing, like ritual, that we lost/threw away during the reformation?
Nard or spikenard was used in preparing a body for burial. I figure that's a coded way of saying that it's a potent enough scent to cover up the scent of a decaying, no—let's be blunt—a rotting body. If so, what primal associations would nard have? Yet, it's referred to as well in Song of Solomon: "While the king was on his couch, my nard gave forth its fragrance." It's originally from India, and we know from the gospel that it was costly then. Was it a scent the poor would have known? Currently it's not as expensive as myrrh, and it's recommended for rashes, wounds, and tension, and is known as a very spiritual fragrance, apparently just from its historic association with the anointing of Jesus. Is that cause or effect now? If I didn't know it was nard, would I be affected spiritually?
So am trying to think of how to use fragrances in a sermon, especially since we have a hospitality theme going on… Bring my bread machine—baking bread is a current fragrance of hospitality. But apparently nard had an association with welcoming guests as well…
Where is God in all this? What is the scent of God? The scent of redemption? The scents of love and welcome and acceptance and hospitality? How can/do we think of those? If we make worship more sensual, with more subconscious or primal connections, what might happen? There are ways to have anointing as movement as a part of the service, because it wasn't just that the fragrance was there, but that it was lavishly used, and anointing was a limited act—by priests for kings, for example. So what radical notion is it for a woman to anoint an itinerant teacher/prophet/social reformer? But it was also love and recognition, captured in the scent and in the act. How might that be translated into worship/a sermon and for this particular congregation? And we are told in Matthew and Mark that wherever the good news is told, her story will always be a part of it in remembrance of her … should we re-enact it? There is an interesting echo "in remembrance of her" with communion …
Maybe when I actually get the nard and smell it, I'll decide that there's a different way to go for this…. In the meantime, thinking of the unusual sparks creative possibility.
What is the scent of God? I asked my girlfriend as I was writing this: My answer: the smell after a rainstorm on a freshly plowed field. Her answer: the way the house smells when you are cooking, preparing for company. What's your answer?
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