by Sylvia Miller-Mutia

The other day I convened the mid year meeting of the Youth & Family Ministry Team at our church, a team that includes everybody involved with or interested in ministry with children, youth, or parents in our congregation.

In light of our meeting, I found myself less interested in what the Gospel had to say about Jesus as the Messiah with a capital M, and more interested in what the Gospel had to say about Jesus as a young man who:

(1) was formed by a religious tradition and a religious community, and
(2) discovered & claimed his true identity and his true authority in the context of that religious tradition and community.
I am interested in what the Gospel says about Jesus as a young person who,through his presence & participation in his particular religious tradition and community both
(3) WAS transformed, and in turn
(4) DID transform that tradition and community
in ways that opened up new possibilities and new pathways for life and spirit for lots of folks (inside, outside, and beyond) his original community, for at least 2,000 years.

I spent the third week of January up at the Bishop’s Ranch in Healdsburg, CA, for a conference sponsored by All Saints Company on “Music that Makes Community”. As part of that conference, Donald Schell shared with us the wisdom of great jazz musician, Clark Terry, who summed up the process of improvisation and music-making this way:

“You’ve got to imitate, assimilate, and innovate!”
Imitate…Assimilate…Innovate

Or, if you prefer alliteration, you could say:
Copy…Claim… Create
Copy… like you’re playing a mirroring game, matching the movements of the person across from you…
Claim…like you’re taking what’s outside and drawing it into your own body, your own heart…
Create…like a seed planted inside you is flowering, and flowing out into the world.

And so the cycle continues.
Imitate…Assimilate…Innovate
Copy…Claim…Create

This is a process that characterizes not only jazz, but all art, all growth, all life.
I know it to be true as a mother…As my 18 month old, Lucia, is learning to speak she begins by imitating sounds. Ba Ba Ba. But now those sounds begin to take on meaning. They are not just my sounds. They are Lucia’s words. “No.” “Shoes.” “All Done.” And soon she will be using those words to create her own stories, and poems, and songs.
I know it to be true as a dancer…I began my training in ballet class, imitating my teachers, doing 800 million plies and 800 trillion tendus, until the technique worked its way into my muscle memory and became part of me…then I moved into choreography, the realm of creating something new, and eventually moved beyond the world of classical ballet entirely, into something more well-aligned with the true vocation of my heart.

I know it to be true as a priest…especially as a priest who enjoys the privilege of spending a great deal of my ministry with young people. The beautiful thing about working with young people is that you can sometimes witness this entire process (imitation, assimilation, innovation) unfolding in a relatively short period of time. I see it in Godly Play, and in summer camps, in the Christmas Pageant, and on retreats.

Because what is true in language and art is also true of the spiritual life.

It’s true for children & young people. It’s true for all of us.

Imitate…assimilate...innovate
Copy…claim…create

We can’t skip to innovation in any meaningful way, without first imitating and assimilating a tradition.

On the other hand if we never move beyond imitation, to assimilation, our growth is stunted and our faith remains immature. It is always someone else’s story, someone else’s song, someone else’s prayer.

And if we never move from assimilation to innovation, our tradition is dead.
Imitate…assimilate...innovate
Copy…Claim…Create
This is the pattern and process for art and for life.
This is our pattern and process for liturgy and spiritual practice.

And this is a pattern and process that characterizes the life & ministry of Jesus.
We can see the pattern unfolding, for example, in the 3rd & 4th chapters of Luke’s Gospel.

Imitate…
In Luke 3 Jesus is baptized, then in Chapter 4 he is led into the desert to face 40 days of testing. After this season of testing has passed, he heads home, and in Luke 4:16 we read, “When Jesus came home to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue as was his custom”, as he had since childhood. As a boy Jesus had heard the men of the community stand (day after day, week after week) and read from the scriptures, then sit to offer comments and interpretation. Even for Jesus—radical teacher, or revolutionary prophet, or incarnate Word of God—even for Jesus, the spiritual path started with imitation.

Assimilate…
As a boy Jesus went to the synagogue, watched and listened. As he grew into a man he took his place alongside the other members of the community. He stood up to read the scriptures. He sat down to offer his own comment and interpretation. Up until a point, we can presume that Jesus went to the synagogue every Sabbath because it was the custom of his family…the custom of his community. But at some point, a shift takes place, and we hear in Luke 4 that when the Sabbath comes around, Jesus goes to the synagogue as was HIS custom. Imitation gives way to assimilation.

Innovation…
Then, as the chapter continues, we witness assimilation to such a degree that it becomes innovation…as the words of Isaiah roll off Jesus’ tongue, the words of Scripture become Jesus’ own words…

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon ME
because he has anointed ME to bring good news to the poor
He has sent ME to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind
To let the oppressed go free
To proclaim the year of the Lords’ favor”
Then Jesus rolls up the scroll, sets it aside, and says…
“Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

The response of Jesus’ community in the face of this innovation varies. Most are astonished. Many are delighted. Some are enraged. A crowd even hustles him to the edge of town in the hopes of throwing him off a cliff.
Imitate…Assimilate…Innovate
Copy…Claim…Create…

As spiritual communities this is the path Jesus invites us to walk with one another.
We must be generous and steadfast and patient at the stage of imitation.
We have one member of our church who regularly worships on Sundays at our 8:30 AM service. This person has a big voice. And he has been spending the past 20 months or so, since he was born, exploring that big voice in ways that are sometimes delightful, and sometimes excruciating for other members of the worshipping community.
About a month ago, something marvelous happened. What for months had seemed like a series of random vocalizations began to take on a recognizable shape…syllables began falling into place, one by one, and suddenly we could hear this little boy singing…Al-le-LU-ia…Al-le-LU-ia…Al-le-Lu-ia…

I went home and told my 7 year old daughter about it. “Well of course,” she said matter-of-factly, “He’s learning to pray.”

We must be generous and steadfast and patient—with ourselves and with each other-- at the stage of imitation.

And we must create space and time and encourage the practice that allows for assimilation.

Last April I went on retreat with our youth group, and two of our middle schoolers took responsibility for creating and leading a Saturday night compline service. What was so amazing about the service was that, while the content was original to them, the skeleton of the service was clearly derived from the shape of the liturgical practice of our church community. Our practice as a congregation had seeped into their bones, so that they were able to use the shape to create something new…something beautiful.
We must be generous and steadfast and patient at the stage of imitation.

We must create space and time and encourage the practice that allows for assimilation.
And we must be courageous and flexible and open in the face of innovation.
The people who study rites of initiation across cultures remind us that initiation is never complete until the initiate carries the community to a place beyond. So when we find ourselves at that ledge, on the brink of the unknown, on the edge of being carried to a new place, beyond what is known, we need to resist the urge to hurl somebody off a cliff.

Imitate…Assimilate…Innovate
Copy…Claim…Create

It is a dance into which God invites all of us…toddlers & teens; first time visitors to church and old-time church members; students and teachers; individuals and communities.
This, I believe, is at the heart of our spiritual formation as Christians: When we heed God’s invitation to join Jesus in this dance, we receive and share the Word of Life until eventually we become the Word of Life and ultimately we transform the Word of Life for the life of the world.

Sylvia Miller-Mutia is a dancer, mother, and priest, serving as Youth & Family Minister at St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco.

By Linda Grenz

The trend lines for attendance, membership and finances in the Episcopal Church continue to show declines. Some of the changes are simply due to demographics – our attendance trends largely follow the rise (Baby Boomers) and fall (Busters) of the Anglo US population. One place we have failed to keep pace is in serving people of color – the fastest growing portion of the US population – which is the primary reason why our percentage share of the population is falling.

Many of the changes we are discussing in the church now are a natural result of those population shifts. In the 1950-60’s we built churches, education wings, programs and services to meet the needs of all those families with young children. That growth rippled through the system: dioceses and the church-wide organization expanded along with parishes. But when the population boom ended, we failed to adjust our systems. The end result is that the current members have to work harder and give more to maintain a church life that no longer fits their situation and fails to attract newcomers. Programs to “fix” the problem demand even more time and money – and many fail to produce the hoped for results. Eventually some people give up and leave. Others stay but are exhausted and dispirited – poignantly expressed in the comment: “Church feels like just another job.” Dedicated clergy and laity fail to find the depth of spiritual life or the engagement in God’s mission that they desire.

Organizational systems theory says that a system is designed to produce what it is producing. If you like what the system is producing but want to “improve it,” tinkering with the system enables you to produce a better result . . . faster, better, cheaper. But if you don’t like what the system is producing, you have to change the system.

A crisis generally is what motivates us to change. But the question is: Will we change the system or tinker with it? Others may have a different answer, but I’m not satisfied with producing more of what we are now producing (exhausted, dispirited members, declining numbers and spiritual vitality). . .even if we can do it faster, better, and cheaper! Restructuring will get us efficiencies, but it won’t get us a different end result.

Most organizations react to a crisis – what Otto Scharmer in Theory U calls a Level 1 response. The “voice of judgment” rises during this stage. The second level he identifies is redesigning – changing the underlying structure and process (that’s what is now being discussed on the HoD/B listserv). The “voice of cynicism” is the dominant blocking factor at this stage. And this is where most organizations stop – they re-organize or they re-structure and about 70% of them fail to transform their organization. If we stop at reorganizing and restructuring, it will simply enable us to continue producing the same thing faster, better, cheaper.

If we want to get a different result (and I, at least, do), we need to go deeper. Reframing is the third level. This level changes our thinking, not just our organizational structure or processes. It requires letting go of our habitual ways of seeing and thinking and reframing – this is where the “voice of fear” becomes loudest. Fear because, if we do that, we need to look seriously at questions like:

• Where is God at work in the world around us and, if we had no structures or ways of being the church already in mind, what would we create to align ourselves with and participate in doing God’s mission?

• Who are we, who do we say Jesus is and how does that shape how we live and “are church?”

• Is a legislative convention the way we must or should make decisions? Or might there be a whole other way of building a collaborative decision-making process?

• Are dioceses an essential organizational structure for us to be the church? Or might there be another way to organize ourselves to do mission?

• Are bishops or a Presiding Bishop or priests, or paid staff, etc. essential for us to be the church?

• Are church buildings, as we currently envision them, essential or the best way for us to create sacred space for people to worship and…?

After “letting go” of our assumptions, our notions, our understanding of how to be church, we get to the bottom of the U, where we need to re-generate – go to the place of core purpose and ask: Where does our commitment come from? What is the ground/source of our existence? In the faith community, that means we stop, retreat, reflect and reconnect with God. Scharmer calls that place “presencing” – shifting our perception from what was in the past to the Source of a future possibility that is emerging. This is what we call, “discerning God’s will for us.”

Then, and only then, can we begin to live into that emerging future: co-creating new thinking and principles, co-creating new core activities and process and finally co-creating new structures and practices. Scharmer calls this process Theory U because the first three steps take us down through a process of shedding old ways of thinking and being to a focus on our core purpose and establishing a common commitment and then back up through three parallel steps of re-creating.

This process is designed to transform secular organizations – but it is really the faith community’s process, translated into business language. Over two decades of research in the field of organizational systems theory affirms what we, in the church, have always known: that when we are willing to follow Moses out of Egypt (that which oppresses us) and go through the wilderness where we learn to discern and follow God’s leading, we will get to the Promised Land. We know that on a personal level – and spiritual directors help us go through that process. We know it on a communal level and we repeatedly tell that story of letting go, dying, relying on God, following The Way and discovering new life.

Practioners of organizational systems theory (like Scharmer in Theory U) might have fancy names for it, but I think it is simply telling our story and using our DNA to transform organizations. We would do well to follow in this way rather than just looking at restructuring or, worse yet, spending our energy on giving voice to judgment, cynicism and fear.

This is a pivotal moment in the life of the Episcopal Church. We have the power to choose life. God did not allow the Israelites to blame others for their captivity in Babylon. God’s Word to them is also God’s Word to us: “get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! Why will you die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, says the Lord GOD. Turn, then, and live.” (Exekiel 18:31b-32)

The Rev. Linda L. Grenz is publisher and CEO of LeaderResources. Her DMin project on using organizational systems theory and spiritual practices to transform church systems includes an online course to help congregations and groups implement a process that integrates systems theory and traditional spiritual practices.

By Derek Olsen

Though some may not be familiar with the term, everyone who has spent much time with a Christian congregation of any stripe is familiar with the concept of “Tiwwadi.” No, it’s not a term from an African language like “Ubuntu” or “Indaba” (though to my untrained eyes it could be…). Rather it’s an acronym for an English phrase which I have no doubt is uttered just as frequently in other languages by tongues across the world. Usually preceded by a “But…” it lives on the lips of church matriarchs and patriarchs, altar guilds, flower guilds, vestries, you name it: “This is the way we’ve always done it.”

Now—let’s be honest. Clergy and church leadership types usually invoke this line with a snicker recognizing it as a delaying tactic that someone has deployed in an attempt to not do something we want them to. But I’d like to move beyond the snicker for a moment. Indeed, I’ll even suggest that tiwwadi has some lessons embedded in it that we’d do well to acknowledge.

The first lesson is that tiwwadi isn’t just an excuse—it’s is an evolved defense mechanism, a protective mechanism, that we would do well to heed. Of the things that the Episcopal Church believes about the faith, one of them is that it was, in fact, “delivered” to us. The quotes here aren’t scare quotes but are translation quotes. In his discussion with the Corinthians about the Eucharist, St. Paul appeals to what they learned about the faith which was based on what he learned about the faith: “For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed…” (1 Cor 11:23). The Greek word for “delivered” here is paradidomi; Jerome, when he translated St Paul’s words into Latin uses tradidi which is the precise root from which we get “Tradition.” We believe that we stand in direct and organic continuity with a line of teachers and preachers of the faith that stretch back through Cranmer, Jerome, and Paul to Jesus. We didn’t make it up—the faith has been delivered to us. For this line of delivery to function effectively over two thousand years, it requires a certain healthy conservatism, a stasis, an inertia, that resists easy and idle changes. Snicker as you will, tiwwadi is one of the ways that our tradition preserves itself.

Now, not all inertia is good inertia. (And let’s not cram the comment box pretending that’s what I’m saying either.) There have been plenty of clarifications to what has been handed down that have enabled us to better proclaim the Gospel. All I have to do is look at my ordained wife to remember that. We’d do well to remember that paradidomi, the verb Paul uses to “deliver” his teaching is the same verb that Judas does to Jesus, “delivering” him to those who will judge and kill him. (Sobering reminder isn’t it: sometimes a “delivery” can be the life-blood of a movement, while in other contexts it can be its betrayal…)

That having been said, if we had a penny for every dumb idea by a bishop, priest, deacon, or lay leader that had died a silent death due to tiwwadi we’d likely be able to pay off the national debt. A lot of things that “seemed like a good idea at the time” have been smothered by this inertial force and, looking back at some of the things that I’ve suggested in congregations, that’s not a bad thing by a long stretch. Indeed, it’s by suppressing those spontaneous, hare-brained notions arising from transient inspirations or fads that tiwwadi does much of its best work. There is a logic of the ages embodied in tiwwadi that inhibits careless tampering.

So, here’s my first major point: if someone calls “Tiwwadi” on you, take a step back and think carefully. What inertia are you trying to overcome—an inertia born of stagnation, or an inertia that is preserving our Gospel proclamation? When we starting looking from this perspective, we begin to recognize that a systematic dismantling of a congregation’s tiwwadi mechanism may accomplish more harm than good in the long run.

The second lesson that tiwwadi can teach us is that it plays an important role in the endless, inevitable, and necessary negotiation between the catholic and the incarnate. Let me explain this by way of a classical case of tiwwadi. St Augustine’s Letter 54 to Januarius recounts a discussion that he had between his sainted mother, St Ambrose, and himself. Upon moving from Africa to Milan, St Monnica was quite troubled at what she perceived as a departure from proper piety—the Milanese church did not fast on Saturdays as her African Church had. They didn’t do things the way she’d always seen them done.To help his mother out, St Augustine asked St Ambrose which was correct: to fast or not fast? The response from St Ambrose wisely avoids the simple either/or and moves to the underlying principles:

“When I visit Rome, I fast on Saturday; when I am here, I do not fast. On the same principle, do you observe the custom prevailing in whatever Church you come to, if you desire neither to give offense by your conduct, nor to find cause of offense in another's.” (Ep 54.3)

As the letter unfolds, Augustine states the principle that if neither Scripture nor the Universal Church command or condemn something—thinking particularly of pious practices—then Christians should observe the customs as they find them. To do otherwise is to stir up unnecessary trouble that harms the faith through matters that are peripheral to it. (See in particular section 5/Chapter 4.)

That is, at the heart of the faith stands its catholic basis: those things that are believed and done by all. However, Christian communities are inherently local: we live, believe, work and love in particular times and places. The faith incarnates itself in different ways in different local communities—and this is just fine as long as those ways do not threaten our catholic identity. In its best forms, tiwwadi preserves this principle of incarnation, the universal made comprehensible and accessible in its particularity.

Speaking from my own experience, I’ve been worshipping in my current congregation for about a year. Some things are common and familiar to me. Others are part of the common Anglo-Catholic heritage that both the church and I claim. Still others I find just plain odd. I could rail and protest. I could keep doggedly doing my own thing, supporting it by the fact that this is how I learned it at Smokey Mary’s or Phil-on-the-Hill or one of the other many churches I’ve worshipped in my life. But I don’t. When I dig deeper, I find something of the particularity of this parish, of its foundations in South Baltimore’s working class, of its ministry to the Polish and Slavic immigrants who filled its pews in the early 20th century. I learn too of my own priest’s formation in a related parish in central Baltimore. Other echoes point to the Missal tradition which flourished among the Anglo-Catholics of this region. Still others are silent reminders of a long-tenured alcoholic priest who left the parish scarred. In this place, tiwwadi functions as a vehicle for our own history, our own incarnate experiences of not just the faith, but the journey this faith community has traveled.

Tiwwadi isn’t always a cop-out or a simple appeal to the past for the past’s sake. Sometimes it’s a rehearsal of who we are now because of where we’ve been together. And this recounting can leave its marks in the strangest places—where water is kept during the service, an acolyte’s extra trip to the altar to return the deacon’s glasses, why we lay out the green French vestments after Epiphany rather than the English ones. You may not know who left the oddly disturbing candlesticks for the Lady Chapel in Lent, but Marge may well remember and tell you the story that goes along with them. Efforts to change these relics and recollections may be efforts to move the story forward—or to erase it altogether. Some customs are healthy to release, but others carry key clues to who we are in this time, this space, this place of grace.
Again, this defense of locality shouldn’t be misread as a license for anything goes.

Anyone who knows the Anglo-Catholic movement with any depth knows that one of its chief trials is rampant idiosyncrasy. There are things that all of us do need to hold and do together. As Episcopalians, we hold the catholic faith as written and prayed in our authorized Books of Common Prayer and our customs ought to be in line with that theological system.

Beyond that, though, we do well to remember the advice that St Ambrose gave to Sts Monnica and Augustine: observe the prevailing customs. Do it the way we’ve always done it. Sure, sometimes it’s stagnation and an unwillingness to change, but sometimes it’s wisdom, identity, and corporate memory.

Derek Olsen recently finished his Ph.D. in New Testament at Emory University. He has taught seminary courses in biblical studies, preaching, and liturgics; he currently resides in Maryland. His reflections on life, liturgical spirituality, and being a Gen-X/Y dad appear at Haligweorc.

By Donald Schell

I’d visited Joe in the hospital several times before he fell into the coma. The cancer was taking him quickly. Joe had co-chaired the parish search committee that had taken the big risk of calling me, a divorced twenty-nine year old priest from across the country, to be their rector. It hadn’t worked out as he’d hoped, I guess. After Joe died, I learned that he and his co-chair had taken the big risk of insisting that their good friend, my predecessor, retire for the good of the congregation. When I came, the congregation was mostly people in their 60’s (the age I am now). The search committee was looking for someone to lead change and attract new young families.

Joe’s co-chair on the search committee was mayor of a small town a couple of miles out from our parish. Small town politics and conflict in his police department had made him courageous even when he was a target, which was a good a thing, because change came hard to our little congregation. We introduced the brand new 1976 Proposed Book of Common Prayer to the parish, instituted every Sunday communion and shared it with young children, and sang more of the liturgy than some believed was appropriate. I was grateful that Joe’s co-chair was ready to cover my back; he and I talked over everything. Sometimes he counseled patience or steered me from crazy risks, sometimes he stubbornly made me see the good in someone in the parish who was angry, upset, and speculating that I’d come to destroy the church, and even when his friends made no sense to him or he thought I was being headstrong again, he stood beside me in conflict.

Joe’s particular goodness made him more shepherd than warrior or diplomat - Joe was faithful to his old friends. His ear was ready with sympathy for anyone who was upset, angry, or condemning of changes we were making. His heart went out to old-timers, and he made their pain and grief at every change his own. When the new younger adults began asking for a voice in running things, Joe reminisced with old-timers about building the church, brick by brick with their own hands twenty years before.

For a while he became their messenger
- They don’t know where you’re getting all this stuff.
- They just don’t feel like it’s their church anymore.
- We had our ways.
- Most of us chose the Episcopal Church.
- You keep telling us the church is change and we don’t see why.
- They don’t see why.
- They just don’t trust you.
- We built this church with our own hands.

The messages shifted back and forth that way between “they” and “we.” Eventually Joe’s being their ready ear and voice made him their leader.

Joe’s shepherding fit him well. Years before he’d literally spent a summer herding sheep. Before Joe and I quit talking, he’d told me of an early Rocky Mountain snowstorm that summer that had stranded him and the sheep in a high altitude pasture.

Sudden snow had made it impossible to get the sheep down the mountain and back to his camp. As darkness descended he drew the sheep in close in a tight circle on the ground, picked his way into the center of the circle, and wiggled in to lie on the ground surrounded by warm sheep bodies, sheep breath and wet wool. Snow continued to fall through the night. Joe recited the 23rd Psalm quietly to himself and then said his “Now I lay me down to sleep,” hoping he would not actually “die before I wake.”

Next morning he woke covered with a layer of snow, but alive and well. He stood in the radiance of morning sunshine and shook off the snow as the sheep did the same.

“The one good thing about this new Prayer Book of yours,” he’d told me, “is that we’ve got ‘The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,’ in the words we all know.” He appreciated that the Rite I burial office included the King James Version of Psalm 23.

As Joe’s friends got angrier, and with me welcoming new strangers who volunteered for tasks and wanted to run for vestry, Joe found it harder and harder to talk to me. I called on Joe trying to talk it through. The last of those visits, when I knocked at his front door, Joe’s wife came to the door shaking her head. “He doesn’t see the point.” “You mean he won’t talk with me?” “I guess not.”

About a year later I got word of his cancer. It was probably that long since I’d seen Joe. I drove out to his place and knocked on the familiar door. This time he welcomed me himself. “I’m surprised you’d come,” he said smiling wryly. He invited me in to sit and talk and be quiet.

I watched him walk across the living room. He was hunched over with pain in his abdomen and his steps were slow and sitting down slower, but we talked, and from that day we fell into a routine of me visiting him a couple of times a week. I’d taken some risk knocking on his door. Joe took the bigger risk - he let me, the kid, the troublemaker, be his pastor. He began telling me stories again, rich stories of his life as a rancher and cattle broker, more sheep herding stories, memories of rocky desert and huge sky and mountain pastures that he loved, stories of ranching friends and homesteading farmer friends, memories of pulling over to watch a radiant red sunsets as he returned from a cattle buying expedition to a remote ranch. As he felt himself nearing death he told me stories of people he loved who had died well.

Eventually his pain got too great for him to be at home, and he was getting too weak to stand or sit. We didn’t have hospice care in our town. Getting adequate pain management meant he’d die in the hospital. I visited him there daily and continued visiting after he fell into a coma. I’d take Joe’s hand and pray aloud with him and then just sit for a little while longer holding his hand. When it was time to leave I’d pat his hand again and say “good-by” out loud. It was what I’d learned in CPE not so many years before - “Talk to people in coma. Hearing seems to be the last of our senses to go.”

The day I’m remembering was my second to the last visit with Joe. Something had changed. His breathing was labored. The nurse said death was close. When I sat with Joe and took his hand, something reminded me of Joe’s story of sheep in the snowstorm. With my free hand I opened my Prayer Book to Psalm 23 and slowly and deliberately read the version he loved -

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:
he leadeth me beside the still waters.

He began so quietly I’m not sure when I first noticed Joe’s voice speaking with me, his lips barely moving.

He restoreth my soul:
he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil: for thou art with me;
thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me
in the presence of mine enemies:
thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life:
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

We spent that moment together somewhere far beyond our disagreements. I felt it as a moment of our seeing and knowing one another, a final remaking or restoration of care and respect for one another. And the moment was powered by memory, and by spoken words and by memorization.

The twenty-third psalm had become a part of Joe’s body and soul. He’d rooted it in his neurology where it became a means of our making peace.

I think on my startled hearing of Joe’s voice and remember finishing that evening as I left his room, walking the hospital corridor calling to mind prayers and songs I knew by heart to find what I could speak from coma.

Something from that night lives in questions I’ve worked on ever since: How do we form people in community? And what’s our liturgy for?

The Rev. Donald Schell, founder of St. Gregory of Nyssa Church in San Francisco, is
President of All Saints Company.

By Kathleen Staudt
Since I’m currently serving as Rector’s Warden/Senior warden at my home parish, I am very aware of November/December as “budget season” and of course these are challenging times, with high anxiety around financial matters. From a spiritual point of view, this time of year raises for me deep questions about the way we do church, whether it’s sustainable, faithful to the gospel and how we measure that. So much of what we receive from congregational development experts seems aimed at figuring out what people need and giving it to them, attracting more members to sustain what we have built evangelism as marketing (which it is to some degree) – but a model very much attuned to the culture around us.

And at the same time I’m rereading Esther de Waal’s writings about monastic spirituality for our time, and remembering that monasticism began with people who felt that the values of the church and the values of the surrounding culture were getting blended together to a point of great confusion. When Benedict established his rule in the fifth century, he was building what I think turns out to be an abiding “counter cultural” tradition of Christian living, preserving what he understood to be the central values of the gospel.

These values are not really developed in response or reaction to the culture; they simply offer themselves as guides. And so as I prepared for the November vestry meeting, I spent some time reflecting on the three vows that monks take, the vows of “Obedience”, “Stability” and “Conversatio” or “conversion of heart.” Unpacking these ideas has been helpful to me – and was helpful to the vestry, meeting about the budget in November. So I thought I’d share some thoughts about them here.

First, “Obedience,” which de Waal reminds us comes from the the Latin for “to listen.” Looking at parish life and our own lives, how do we listen for God’s guidance/ What practices orient us toward discernment rather than simply the pushing and defending of competing agendas. Where in our common life are there opportunities for study and prayer together, especially for leaders? How do we pay attention to Scripture? Listening to each other – giving each person around the table an opportunity and invitation to speak, practicing “appreciative inquiry” and other ways of discernment that help us hear one another: all of these practices, I think, fulfill the spirit of the vow of obedience. We can move toward healing if we also pay attention to the ways in which we are “not listening” in our pairhs life – to the neighborhood around us – to the needs of the world at the moment (not so much for marketing purposes as for mission and ministry). We need to pray for a deepening ability to listen. A symbol for this kind of obedience might be the Rublev icon, with what one writer has called the “listening eyes” of its three figures attentive each to the other – or another image might be building blocks, shared by a community of leaders. In her book Seeking God, Esther de Waal writes:

The Christian and monastic model for discerning God’s will in a given situation is not that of finding the solution of a crossword puzzle . . . where the answer must be exactly right, fitted to some preconceived plan. A better model is that we are given building blocks and have to see what can be done with them, using in the task all our intelligence, sensitivity and love (p. 49)

The second vow, which I find fascinating despite the challenging term, is “Stability.”(Perhaps a better word for us would be “commitment” – but let’s hold the two together). – in our “cafeteria-Christianity” culture, this is the value that calls us to seek ways of staying together: not by silencing difference but by hearing and receiving the diversity of our views. . It is the vow a monk makes to stay with the same community –and let himself be formed by its challenges. The call to stability is of course a great challenge in the Anglican Communion just now but it helps me to name it in that way – not a call to “unity at any cost” where a dominant voice “wins” – it’s not a call to put up with abuse -- but it is a call to stay at the table, stay in conversation stay in relationship– not to leave—or at least not to consider leaving and going elsewhere as our first option. In parishes, “stability is a deeper value than giving everyone what they want or keeping things the same. it is an invitation to commit to being together and worshipping God in this place, to stay on rather than move on, when leadership changes. It is the value that fuels sustainable stewardship, care for one another in crisis and in conflict. It requires faith and endurance. I’d like to see leaders in congregations reflecting more on what stability looks like for them – what the challenges are, what the obstacles and rewards. The symbol we have for the value of stability is the symbol of our faith: the Cross, which tells of endurance through suffering, for the sake of the whole Body. Joan Chittister says this about the Cross and stability:

The cross is not a dark aspect of religion. It is, on the contrary, the one hope we have that our own lives can move through difficulty to triumph. It’s the one thing that enables us to hang on and not give up when hanging on seems impossible and giving up seems imperative. . . . The cross says that we can rise if we can only endure (Wisdom from the Daily, p. 148)

The call to stability might sound like a call to stuck-ness or to doormat-like acquiescence if it were not balanced by the third vow of conversatio or openness to change – the most famously challenging value for congregations. The symbols or this are the water of Baptism and the fire of the Holy Spirit. Ours is a faith that is about transformation, and as leaders we serve people best when we lead them toward this kind of openness. I like what de Esther de Waal writes about this in Seeking God:

If the vow of stability is the recognition of God’s complete faithfulness and dependability then the vow of conversatio is a recognition of God’s unpredictability, which confronts our own love of cosiness or safety. It means that we have to live provisionally, ready to respond to the new whenever and however that might appear. There is no security here, no clinging to past certainties. Rater, we must expect to see our chosen idols successively broken. It means a constant letting go. (Seeking God, p. 70)

By Donald Schell

With my first step on the Aikido dojo’s practice mat twenty-eight years ago, I knew I was declaring my willingness to become a teacher. That is, I knew that by investing patience and regular practice from that day forward, I would earn a black belt, and a black belt signifies a teacher. And “teacher” means continuing to learn, as my first teacher said, ‘When you earn your black belt, you will be ready to begin learning.’ The Aikido saying echoes Suzuki Roshi’s wisdom in Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind.

For twenty-nine of my thirty-eight years as an Episcopal priest, weekday church work has followed dawn practice in an aikido dojo, throwing and being thrown in a playful, energetic, sometimes frightening, always enlivening moving meditation. Gently and persistently Aikido has shown me something I didn’t see before in the Gospels and in the work of our church - our Christian tradition asks you and me to become rabbis in Jesus’ mold, teachers of teachers in training.

Eastern teacher traditions (like Ai-ki-do and Zen-do and others that call themselves a way, that is a ‘-Do’ or ‘Tao’) often speak of the process of passing on the practice as ‘transmission.’ In Christian practice, more typically we speak of ‘tradition.’ Both words point to ongoing creative engagement between beginners and more seasoned practitioners, and between older and younger generations.

Processes of ‘transmission’ or ‘tradition’ teach by demonstration - seeing and imitation, specifically mindful imitation, and reflective learning. What I see now in the Gospels is how Jesus’ tradition-ing brings the wisdom of our remembered and still living past into direct dynamic encounter with the passion and fresh demands of the present moment. Both past and present are changed in that encounter.

Last winter here in the Café I wrote about the false dichotomy our church falls into whenever we use ‘traditional’ and ‘contemporary’ as polar opposites. I return to that theme a year later because I feel daily how that false dichotomy impoverishes us, fractures inter-generational learning and works to separate wisdom (the humble, ‘I wonder’ version of experience) from fresh energy and insight.

In ongoing extensive research on what he first named ‘communities of practice,’ Etienne Wenger reports that traditional crafts and trades KNEW crucial innovation was likeliest to happen in the daily interchange between senior apprentices and their supervising journeymen. Where a craft or trade actually has such a person as a ‘master,’ that person isn’t the one we should look to for noticing, blessing, and developing the accidental discoveries that learners are making.

Wenger’s observation is similar to Suzuki Roshi honoring the gift of ‘beginner’s mind,’ but Wenger’s slightly different framing should challenge the church uncomfortably. A culture of experts and novices or professionals and amateurs encourages neither tradition nor innovation. In vibrant communities of practice, tradition, or the transmission of knowledge, is a creative act. Consider what the word ‘lay’ or ‘laity’ means outside church talk - “Amateur, inept, or inexpert, not professional.” How did we do that? How can church thrive unless tradition and innovation feed each other? And who needs to share authority in that interchange?

Let’s put the dilemma differently: Jesus our teacher models for us that the real master, like an advanced journeyman, continues to learn and delights to engage with other learners. The most advanced learner makes the best teacher because that learner, whether called ‘black belt,’ journeyman, master, rabbi, teacher, or presbyter/elder, while confident of experience, also knows that she or he will always have more to learn. And the most advanced learner understands most deeply that ‘misunderstandings’ and ‘mistakes’ of the stumbling apprentice may fall into something new, fresh or essential to the work.

Aikido helped me see how Jesus (in the synoptic Gospels) invites his disciples and listeners to join him in an inquiry. Jesus presents himself and teaches as a journeyman teaching advanced apprentices. The Gospels show him learning alongside learners and his listeners into inquiry with him.

Imposing a ‘know it all’ Jesus on the Gospels numbs our ear to his real questions.

When our Teacher of teachers in training asks, ‘What parent among you, if your child asked for bread, would give that child a stone?’ he asks a real question with more than one possible answer. Our Teacher asking this question knows that some parents make frightening and damaging choices. His next question pushes on toward the threat asking, ‘what parent among you, if your child asked for an egg would offer a scorpion?’

Yes, there’s something dreadfully wrong when the parent hands a child a scorpion, but it does happen. When some flinch to call God ‘father’ (or ‘mother’) from dark memories of a dangerous, abusing parent, can we help them see and hear our Teacher’s courageous reflection on mixed experience pushes us to specifics. God isn’t simply ‘father’ or simply ‘mother.’ We have to ask ‘what kind of mother/father?’

The Teacher pushes our inquiry onward. ‘Abba,’ Jesus’ name for God our father, is far more specific than a conventional distillation of cultural norms of ‘appropriate’ parental behavior in his or any other time. The forgiving father in the parable of the prodigal son models unrestrained loving mercy that breaks the bounds of culturally endorsed patriarchal dignity. These parables, the pair of sayings about hungry children asking for food, and the story of the wayward, wanton child coming home, touch something deeper than pretending ‘we’re all always good parents,’ and wiser and more loving than ‘remember to act appropriately.’ Teaching traditions, the traditions that engage beginning learners with more advanced learners (and Jesus does cast himself as a learner) create new, fresh authority for even recent beginners, the authority of actual experience, real questions, and struggling to make sense of the contradictions we know in life.

‘Because I’m the rector,’ that killing refrain of tightly-held authority has no place in a teacher tradition. Yes, sometimes canons and good sense demand that a bishop or a rector or music director or Sunday School teacher or senior warden or other designated leader make a decision to mark the end of a conversation, declare a consensus or hark back to an essential, central principle or practice. BUT whenever any of us refuses to offer a clue of why it was time for us to resolve so we can act together we turn from learning (and discernment) to magisterial rule. Teacher traditions must sometimes trust leaders to distill vision and resolve community conflict, but teacher traditions keep looking for learning moments even in those times of resolution.

At 63, I’m very, very grateful for my thirty-eight years of work as a presbyter in our church, and the signs of life in our church feel me with hope and joy. But my heart breaks for clergy and lay friends of my generation who wonder how they’ve spent their life, what difference their work in the church has made, and lament a “dying church.” Of course our church is dying. Things what had grown old are being made new. Depressed pessimism, as though the Spirit were ready to abandon the church, is the older generation’s side of the crisis of 21st century Christianity’s traditioning.

Christian faith and practice have a future, possibly even a rich future. But boomers’ habits of leadership have broken the natural flow that gives real authority and autonomy to a next generation. Interestingly the ‘contemporary’ half of the contemporary/traditional dichotomy seems as much a baby-boomer artifact as the ‘traditional’ half. Neither one is what it says.
Our church (yes our ‘dying mainline’ Episcopal church) has great young leaders, lay and ordained bringing fresh vision and passion to building Christian community, to loving Jesus, to serving and learning in his name to give simple and abundant thanks that the Spirit is certainly at work.

Our present moment (like all present moments) asks of us wisdom that continues to learn and passion that is eager to do work, seasoned, grateful elders and passionate younger leaders listening to one another, working together to synthesize what we have learned and know, what we are asking, and what the Spirit is asking of us now.

The Rev. Donald Schell, founder of St. Gregory of Nyssa Church in San Francisco, is
President of All Saints Company.

By George Clifford

In downtown San Francisco, an abandoned building has furniture, including a refrigerator, sofa, chair, and lamp, hanging out of windows and otherwise attached to the exterior. The building has stood that way for years, with colorful murals decorating the sheets of plywood placed around the ground level to keep people out. I do not know the building’s story, whether the perpetrator(s) intended it as an artistic statement or something else.

In any case, the building seems an apt metaphor for too many denominations and congregations. These churches leave some of the people who should be integral to their community hanging in limbo outside, superfluous except as a painful statement of the types of people that Christian group excludes.

Sadly, some churches even boast about the types of people whom they exclude. Intentionally excluding people contravenes Paul’s vision of the body of Christ as mutual interdependence in which no person, regardless of perceived externalities, is dispensable. Each and every person brings gifts to the body, enriching the membership, strengthening the community, and contributing to the incarnation of Christ's body in the world.

Healthy Christian communities regularly monitor themselves to identify the types of people whom they exclude, intentionally or unintentionally. In the past, most Christian communities excluded the physically challenged because buildings were not handicap accessible. People with mental challenges or behavioral control issues often exceeded (and still do in many places) a congregation’s tolerance for behavior outside conventional norms. Fear of contamination, as happened when the full magnitude of the HIV/AIDS problem first shattered public apathy two decades ago, erected new barriers to inclusion and thereby excluded some from Christian communities. Snobbishness, whether based on socio-economic status, perceived moral probity, or another factor, continues to bar some from admission in local Christian communities.

Each person is, as it were, a lump of clay in the potter’s hands, still being sculpted into the artistic and useful vessel the potter designed. Excluding people from the community not only impoverishes the community but also devalues the potter’s unfinished work as unworthy. Intolerance, from the right or from the left, has no place in Christian community. All people, no matter how personally repugnant I may find their views or behavior, are, like me, an unfinished vessel in the potter’s hands, still being sculpted into an artistic and useful creation.

Part of the historic Anglican genius has been our commitment to unity in the midst of diversity. Sometimes called “big tent Anglicanism,” this requires making room for those with a wide array of beliefs. Preventing the big tent from collapsing on top of those within it, stifling both their vibrancy and their ability to welcome others, requires humility, trust in the potter, and honoring our baptismal vow to respect the dignity and worth of all persons.

I’m thankful for the courageous stands that the Episcopal Church took at its 2009 General Convention. Having clarified who we are, and whose we are, now the harder work of lovingly living into that vision of inclusivity begins, a task in which we chart our direction and our progress with more difficulty. But even as the heat of a kiln is necessary to finish transforming clay into a useful and artistic vessel, so the heat of the hard work in the years ahead is necessary for us to incarnate fully God's loving embrace of all people.

The Rev. Dr. George Clifford, Diocese of North Carolina, served as a Navy chaplain for twenty-four years He taught philosophy at the U. S. Naval Academy and ethics at the Postgraduate School. He blogs at Ethical Musings.

By Gregory C. Syler

Sitting with Hemingway’s breakthrough classic, The Sun Also Rises, once again, I noticed what must have always been there, though I hardly saw it before: a robust catholicism; a “grand religion” no less vital to Spanish culture than to a few of the American ex-pats who tried to renew life, at least for a while, in a fictional summer. Read of protagonist Jake Barnes’ experience in the Bayonne cathedral, relishing the cool stone, awkwardly feasting in quiet prayer, soaking up time-honed sacredness of place.

Hemingway began to write it in those early years spent abroad with his wife and child. Bored and brooding as 1925’s summer turned to fall, he headed off by himself to Chartres, and found the ancient pilgrimage site an excellent place to refine the novel. Biographer Michael Reynolds notes: “Catholicism held for Hemingway a strong emotional attraction. It was the religion of the bullfighters and royalty, a religion of the streets and courts.”

Something there speaks to me. Not the watered-down cultural religiosity but the honest appraisal of what is in the Episcopal Church, as well, a catholic truth: If we take Jesus seriously, we’ll find ourselves singing, praying and eating with the rich and poor, the homeless and those with mortgage woes, the ones we’d like to vacation with and the ones we’d rather serve lunch to, behind the protected wall of a parish hall’s kitchen counter.

You see, I’m the rector of a small but increasingly vibrant Episcopal parish in St. Mary’s County. Not much happens where we live and worship in the village of Valley Lee, but an Anglican church has been here, continuously, since 1638. No modern church planter would start a congregation in this precise spot, because it doesn’t marry with the modern layout of roadways in southern Maryland, but St. George’s is a simple whitewashed building almost exactly halfway between the great manor houses nearby. Sure, this was a church for the landed gentry, but it also was a congregation for the folks who tilled the land and worked the waters, those who got up with the sun and rested when the day was done.

That’s something to be celebrated, a truly Christian community in which the wealthy and not-so-prosperous gathered around the same altar. Even today, long after the slave galleries were ripped out and the manor barons’ wealth all but dried up, St. Mary’s is a booming mix of U.S. Navy, military contractors, retirees and folks who can still trace their line to the founding of the colony. And they gather, still, around the same altar – those with doctorates and oversight of multimillion dollar defense contracts right next to those who learned from their grandparents how to stuff a ham and whose parents showed them how to catch rockfish according to native American customs.

To me, it’s both amazing and humbling because, like many, I chose the Episcopal Church as an adult Christian and (let’s be honest) many of us, myself included, relish that our church is a fairly elite group that still prides itself on how many U.S. Presidents we claim, how intellectually curious we can be, how upper-crust we still seem, and that Vanderbilt, Washington and Lee all count as members of our clan. As the relative wealth of colonial manor homes gave way to the contemporary wealth of Navy contracts down here, it’s refreshing to know that the Episcopal Church has, all along, also been founded on watermen and tobacco farmers, on honest, simple folks (myself most certainly included) as well as the elite; a “religion of the streets and courts.”

This also is refreshing, I should hope, to congregations in the Episcopal Church that don’t necessarily share the colonial heritage that quaint little St. George’s, Valley Lee does, for number-trackers continue to alarm faithful Episcopalians (and diocesan staffs) when they show the average attendance at an Episcopal church today as something like 70 folks on a Sunday morning and an increasingly aging population and, well, never mind the rest of the statistics but throw up your hands and cry “Oh, my, the ship really is sinking!”

If you look at it another way, however, you realize that a lot of church-folk in southern Maryland learned the lesson, long ago, that a church of 70 or so on a Sunday morning can still be the recipe for a pretty amazing Christian body, and they don’t have to come with deep pockets. In Valley Lee and other hamlets here, we are growing in spirit as well as in numbers, and we’re doing it through readily identifiable Christian work: education, outreach, worship and pastoral care; not just finding the next wealthy manor lord. We may not be the Upper Crust Church and, like others, our overall attendance may have slipped from previous decades, but we are still fairly successful Christian congregations who are passionately committed to reaching out in Jesus’ name.

Maybe numbers and size and average-education-level don’t matter so much as faithfulness and vibrancy. And maybe a new door is being opened for the Episcopal Church just as the old one is closing, slowly, decade after decade. Maybe congregations like “quaint little St. George’s” will become the model for the rest of us – that the rich faithfulness and robust quality of Christian faith matters, above all else, and those qualities can be found chiefly at those altars where the streets meet the courts.

The Rev. Greg Syler is rector of St. George’s Episcopal Church in Valley Lee, Md.

Over the holiday weekend, the Daily Episcopalian will be the every-other-Daily Episcopalian.

By W. Tay Moss

Between the Christmas Eve Pageant service and the Christmas Eve Candlelight Midnight service my cell phone rang with the dreadful news, “the roof is leaking.” I had only been home for an hour and had just settled down by the fire with a drink and a cat and my toddler nephew playing by my feet. Dutifully, and with haste, I trudged the five minute walk back the church to find my distressed cleaning staff.

“Oh, Reverend,” she said in a thick accent, “I'm so sorry; I didn't know what to do!” She took me upstairs to an office of our daycare, where the water was nearly gushing through the ceiling into buckets. I thanked God that, Scrooge-be-tossed, we had booked our cleaning company on Christmas Eve. Otherwise the problem might have had all night to fester.

I flashed back to a continuing education session a few years ago. The Director of Planning and Development for the Diocese at the time was giving us newbies a crash course on the basics of church property management: “If you remember nothing else from this talk, remember this. This is the most important thing for incumbents to know how to do. Whenever any problem comes up with your building, ask this question.” He paused dramatically and then continued, “'Is this the result of water migration?' That's it—the most important thing you need to do is ask is that question!” At the time he told us that I thought “Wisdom speaks...”

Watching the water drip off the ceiling I thought, “...and is vindicated by her deeds!” I dusted off my University Spanish (minus the naughty words, of course) to tell another cleaner, Eduardo, that the problem was certainly on the flat roof and we would only know if it could be patched with a trip up the hatch.

My Honorary Assistant clucked her tongue as I climbed the ladder and hoisted myself onto the roof, “You are a brave man!” This from a woman that used to live in the war-torn Middle East. I didn't feel brave, mostly I felt determined to stop the water. The problem was immediately evident: a slushy snow and rain mixture several inches deep covered the whole flat roof section. Without a way to drain, the water had obviously found a path of lesser resistance. No doubt there was a hole to patch somewhere, but a good stopgap would be to get some of the slush off the roof. Supplied with snow shovels, Eduardo and I started to shovel the freezing mixture onto the parking lot 25 feet below. After assurances that he could go on without me, I left to get ready for the Midnight Mass.

Listening to this story at a clergy Twelthnight party, one of my colleagues said, “I would never have gone up on that roof.” I, too, am not sure that I made the right decision. More experienced priests may have patiently watched the water drip while waiting for someone else to take responsibility. “Let the Wardens handle it,” they would advise. I'm always aware that when I do something like this I may be displacing lay ministry. But the truth is that the only people willing to climb up onto that roof that night were me and Eduardo, and I would not have felt right about abandoning him to a snowy fate. And when it comes down to it, I'm too much of a control freak to “let it go.”

The decision to engage or not to engage the stuff-that-comes-up is a constant of ministry. On the one hand, we want to build communities of hope and compassion and that seems to require some rolled-up cassock sleeves. Between e-mails, phone calls, buildings, budgets, and anything else you may care to name, there are weeds to pull and vines to tend in God's green pasture. The word we use, after all, is “building.”

On the other hand, our spiritual teachers are telling us that we need to abandon such cares of the world and embrace the holy now. Consider these lines from a 17th century sermon by given Mark Frank quoted in Stephen Reynold's For All the Saints:

And alas! what have we, the best, the richest of us, as highly as we think of ourselves and ours, more than Saint Andrew and his brother: a few broken nets? ... What are all our ways and devices of thriving but so many several nets to catch a little yellow sand and mud? ... there are so many knots and difficulties, so many rents and holes for the fish to slip out of, that we may justly say they are but broken nets, and old ones too, the best of them, that will scarce hold a pull, all our new projects being but old ones new rubbed over, and no new thing under the sun.

This business of casting off the “net-works” that entangle us is a strikingly modern sentiment, but I guess there really is no new thing under the sun. Most of us fishers-of-people, I suspect, abide somewhere between the fierce urgency of the holy and ascetic now (cast off your nets) and the Parish Strategic Plan with its tactical appendix (build the kingdom).

We scramble to maintain the tippy centre of our fishing boats—perched as we are between competing pulls. Or, in my case, standing on the top of a step ladder (the step they tell you not to step on) arms hooked over the edge of the roof access hatch. Life is about balance, after all!

The question that keeps me occupied is how do I go about finding that balance? It's different for everyone, I am sure, but some self-examination bears fruit. Am I being driven by need to control the outcome of this endeavor? Am I doing this other project because I want acclaim? Perhaps that initiative is being driven by a false expectation of what my church “should” be doing to grow? These are the questions that can save us from drowning when the roof leaks!

The Rev. Tay Moss is an Episcopal priest currently serving the Church of The Messiah, Toronto. Besides enjoying hot-peppers, martinis, and monks (though usually not together), Tay maintains a blog between pastoral duties.

By Marshall Scott

There is a certain flow, a certain dependable rhythm, to my bread baking. While no single step takes long, there is enough separation between steps that the whole process takes 24 hours, more or less. Even with some variation from session to session, the result is the largely the same. Sometime in the evening, not long before I retire, the baking ends and the bread comes out of the oven.

I have come especially to enjoy the warm air that comes out of the oven when I remove the loaves. This oven is mounted high, almost at my eye level, and the warm air rushing out pours over my arms and shoulders. Even in the heat of summer, when we’ve been grilling outside or eating salads to avoid heating the kitchen and the house, I find I enjoy that moment. Even late in the evening, when I’m ready to end the day after this one last task, I find that moment pleasant, and even energizing.

I’ve been reading the recent study about the relationship between a sense of social isolation and perception of temperature. You may have seen some recent news reports about it. I have the benefit of a medical library ready to hand, and so have been able to read the article.

If you haven’t heard of this, let me give you a summary. The article, titled "Cold and Lonely: Does Social Exclusion Literally Feel Cold?" was authored by researchers Chen-Bo Zhong and Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, both of the University of Toronto. It was published in the September, 2008, edition of the journal, Psychological Science (Volume 19 Issue 9, Pages 838 - 842). They performed two experiments with undergraduates. In the first, the students were divided randomly into two groups. One group was asked to remember an event in which participants felt socially excluded, while the other was asked to remember an event of feeling socially included. They were then asked, without any apparent connection to the exercise in memory, to assist lab maintenance staff by estimating the temperature of the room. Those who had remembered being socially excluded estimated a lower temperature than those who had remembered being socially included. Indeed, the difference between the mean estimate of the "excluded" group and that of the "included" group was 2.58 degrees Celsius (4.64 degrees Fahrenheit).

In the second experiment students were asked to play a computer game that they thought had them tossing a virtual ball with other students on other computers. In fact they were playing with the computer, which divided them randomly into two groups. One group experienced roughly equal participation with the other "players" (the control group). The other group had roughly equal play at first, but then experienced the other “players” excluding them, refusing to pass them the virtual ball. Afterward, participants were asked to complete a "marketing survey" by ranking on a 7-point scale their desire for one of five foods: hot coffee, hot soup, an apple, crackers, or a soda. Those who had been in the "excluded" group had about the same level of desire for an apple, crackers, or soda as participants in the control group. However, they expressed a significantly higher level of desire for the food and drink specified “hot” than those in the control group.

The authors felt that this demonstrated in both cases that the feeling of being socially excluded precipitated not simply a metaphorical but a sensory perception of being physically cold. As they put it,

In two experiments we found that people literally felt cold (Experiment 1) or preferred warm food (Experiment 2) when being socially excluded, regardless of whether such experience was induced through a recall of past experience or virtual interaction. These findings are consistent with theories of embodied cognition and suggest that our social experience is not independent of physical and somatic perception (Barsalou, 1999; Varela et al, 1991). They also highlight that metaphors are not just language that we use to communicate; they are fundamental vessels through which we understand and experience the world around us (Bargh, 2006; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). Not only does physical experience aid our understanding of more abstract, complex phenomena, but also that domains of different experiences merge and intertwine such that the activation of one is automatically accompanied by another (e.g., Zhong & Liljenquist, 2006); the subjective feeling of coldness may be an integral part of our experience of social rejection.

Now, the authors are careful to say that, while this suggests that feeling socially isolated can make one feel cold, it would take further research to demonstrate that feeling cold can make one feel socially isolated. At the same time, they have suggested that there is more than metaphor to the interaction between our social perception and our physical perception. When I think of the warmth of the oven as the bread comes out, or of the pleasure I’ve taken by a warm fireplace, or in that first cup of coffee on a cool morning, I have my own empirical sense that the connection works both ways. That sense of warmth, of comfort and safety, contributes to my own experience that "all’s right with the world," including my own place in it.

I wonder what that might mean for our congregations. After all, we have all heard the comment that "when we visited, that congregation just felt so cold." I fear we’ve all heard it even about a congregation dear to our hearts. We’ve known that the comment expressed social isolation, a sense of not being welcomed. I wonder what it might mean if we were to create a sense of physical warmth to supplement the social and emotional warmth that we all intend to convey.

How might we do that? In these "green" days, it might not seem right to turn up the thermostat; and yet for the sake of the community it might be worth considering. Or perhaps we might consider offering shawls for services when there’s a nip in the nave. Could we consider a coffee hour that offered soup as well as plates of cookies, and maybe even warm rolls? Could we greet newcomers, not only with a handshake, but with a cup of warm coffee or cider, already filled and radiating?

We know that we are called to express the warmth and compassion of the one who created the sun on our faces, the fire in our hearths. We’ve made too often that old joke about being "God’s frozen people" (a joke told wryly, let me assure you, by many Christians, and not just Episcopalians). Perhaps we can take this research to heart and do our own empirical trial to see if it works both ways, if a sense of physical warmth can convey welcome when our words sometimes fail. It might not need a whole new program. Indeed, it might be as simple as offering in hand a hot cup of coffee.

The Rev. Marshall Scott is a chaplain in the Saint Luke’s Health System, a ministry of the Diocese of West Missouri. A past president of the Assembly of Episcopal Healthcare Chaplains, and an associate of the Order of the Holy Cross, he keeps the blog Episcopal Chaplain at the Bedside.

By Luiz Coelho

Fifty years ago, in most of Brazil, it was still common to see people watch the sunset sitting on a comfortable rocking chair on the porch of their houses. Families and neighbors were usually invited over, and food and refreshments were widely available. In more urban scenarios, people would bring tables and chairs to the sidewalks, and chat before dinner. After the Second World War, these moments had an important effect: they helped build communities, often composed of people from different backgrounds and ethnicities, and offered hope for a better future.

On colder days, if the weather allowed it, hot coffee or black tea, accompanied by a few slices of carrot, orange or corn cake, was just enough to bring families around the outdoor table, and soon neighbors and friends would join them. They would eventually bring more snacks, and conversation would go on until it was time to go inside and have dinner. On hot summer days, hot coffee was replaced by cold juices and mate, a special Brazilian tea cherished by many in its cold and sweet form. Sometimes, this happy encounter would be followed by a garden dinner, which could go on for hours and hours.

As a Southerner “by adoption”, I soon learned that some traditions are ubiquitous everywhere, especially when it comes to “Pan-American late afternoon environments”. Some of the foods were probably slightly different, and mate was surely replaced by intese doses of freshly brewed sweet tea on the rocks. However, the feelings and bonds of affection were the same, and long nights of laughs and conversations helped foster the sense of community here and there, especially at a time when the future seemed to be uncertain.

In churches, similar events also happened. From “dinners on the grounds” to Shrove Tuesday pancake suppers, food, community and conversations have always been part of our Church life. The rich noise of children running around the parish hall and vivid conversations between parishioners of different sorts still can be heard in many of our Churches across the world. In many places, however, this community life centered around food and conversation is dying, often substituted by an innovative “consumer Gospel”, which produces short term growth, but in the long run has increasingly contributed to empty houses of worship.

Sadly, I do not belong to the slow sweet tea generation. Raised in a middle class apartment, I did not have the possibility of playing with neighbors on the street and hearing my mother's call to come inside for dinner. To be true, I barely knew my neighbors' names. Only in the summer, when I would spend some free time at my grandparents' cottage, did I have the opportunity to enjoy the slow life of “the good old times”: playing with their pet (a dog named Perigoso - “Dangerous” in English – who was anything but dangerous), helping my grandfather harvest fresh vegetables, playing with the neighbors' kids, jumping in trees and getting dirty. And, at the end of the afternoon, we would always drink refreshments and chat for a while in front of their house. The neighbors were always invited to join the conversation, after all, everybody was part of a “big family.”

That's how Churches are supposed to be: a big family. However, the “community” aspect of church life is emphasized in our “modern” world less and less. Many search committees now expect priests to be much more like business administrators who are able to celebrate a quick liturgy rather than spiritual leaders called by God to announce the Good News of Jesus Christ. Furthermore, with a schedule filled with committee meetings, there is little time for visiting the sick, talking on the phone with parishioners or even enjoying a cup of coffee or a glass of sweet tea at the end of the afternoon.

Parishioners also have less and less time for Church affairs. Sunday school is rarely heard of in some places. Coffee and refreshments, usually served after the main service of the day, are taken “to go” as people run to their cars, ready to drive to the nearest restaurant. There is little time for weekday activities, including longtime parish programs and traditions, which risk being extinguished within a couple of generations.

It is necessary to reclaim the “spirituality of sweet tea” in our world: the long talks, the hugs, the common meals and warm conversations. Yes, the world has changed, and the Church inevitably has to adapt to a fast-paced society. However, the essence of Christian community life cannot change. Some regard it as the strongest aspect as the early Christians' most impressible aspect and wherever it still persists, the Church is strong and active.

Maybe it is time, then, to use community life as a tool for church growth and evangelism. Younger generations, often so technologically savvy, lack the “people” aspect of daily life. If the Church will provide a warm and welcoming environment, where all are known and cherished by their brothers and sisters in Christ, it surely will be able to reach the unchurched. Our Episcopal/Anglican identity provides a solid and traditional liturgy, complemented with a comprehensive and inclusive theology. When allied with intentional Christian community, which naturally flows from our liturgy centered around the Eucharist, Christ is made truly present among us and a conduit is created that enables people to find wholeness in God in Christ.

Luiz Coelho, a seminarian from the Diocese of Rio de Janero, spends part of the year in the BFA program at the Savannah College of Art and Design. His Web site includes his art and his blog, Wandering Christian, on which he examines "Christianity in the third millennium, from a progressive, Latin American and Anglican point of view."

By Richard Helmer

This post is for clergy, and most especially Rectors. Not to put off laity, mind you. And I doubt I could if I tried. We still are in a very clerical Church, after all. But this post is really about clergy. And, more to the point, the words we use to describe what we as a Church do to them.

I think of all the words we use, and very few of them show up in the street lexicon anymore – if they ever did. Even before we’re called clergy, we are referred to using odd words: aspirants, postulants, and candidates.

Aspirants sound slightly medical to me – perhaps in need of respiratory support, or maybe too close to something having to do with under-arm odor and its prevention. Seriously. I can unpack aspirant and see the word aspire inside, but it’s the –ant on the end that has me standing somewhere in a pharmacy trying to pick out the cheapest anti- whatever.

Postulants more clearly belong in the area of mathematical proof – as in gets confused in my head with “postulate”. And does the Church expect us to “prove” something? Our worth perhaps? The Church often sends postulants to seminary, encourages us to acquire massive debt, and then through a process that often approaches hazing, reminds us that – hey - despite our best efforts, we may not go anywhere in the Church after all.

Candidates of course resonate mostly with our baptismal candidacy. But it is a bit like being a candidate with no election to run in. So there’s a “made-it” mentality there most of the time when we get to wear that title for six months to a year and think wistfully about a future in the Church. In other words, unless we really screw up, we’re destined to be ordained. Whatever that means. I was there five years ago. I’m still trying to figure that one out.

And I don’t mean to be rude by my irreverence here, either. “The process” as we like to call it from the inside, at least, was unbelievably annoying at times, but also deeply nurturing and formative for me, and I wouldn’t want to give it back. But what does our choice of words to describe it say to a post-Christian world? Is it just a bunch of episco-speak devoid of meaning for anyone other than the initiated? I wonder.

But then it gets better. Yes, the bishop comes along and ordains me. And then it’s smack into the deployment racket with all of its uncertainties, high hopes, and dead ends. It’s a tough place to be, looking for full-time work (which really means a half-time salary for 24/7 ops) in a financially strapped denomination (don’t let the big national figures and pension benefits fool you) where the cost-of-living is going nowhere but up.

And then you land one, and you get this delicious list to choose from: you might get installed (click) or, even better, instituted.

We also, I learned recently, invest some of our clergy. Our bishop, who was consecrated in another diocese, was welcomed in an investiture when he came to California. Actually, it’s a word reserved for bishops, apparently. And of all the ecclesiastical mouthfuls when it comes to describing as close to having “arrived” in this strange vocation as it gets. . . I like it the best. (But please don’t read too much into that last sentence!) I like investiture because it implies to me a delivery of trust, of being cloaked in an office, a position of responsibility.

And I like it, too, because, being a cloak, that means it can be taken off. Left behind, perhaps, or maybe just set aside for a period of time. We can divest as well as invest, after all. Perhaps a bit of a disposable position? Maybe that’s a cautionary tale for bishops-in-general.

A few weeks ago, I was instituted. Instituted as Rector of a parish that sits right in the heart of a part of the world that deplores institutions-in-general, and where, in fact, anything that is older than, say five years, is regarded by default with some suspicion (Pity the poor children.)

And instituted as Rector. In Latin, it means, most simply, “ruler.” It’s that sinister word, describing a mysterious figure with a dark tone in Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. Should make me popular, right? More accessible to those in need? A better witness for the Gospel?

I have an image in my mind of my institution as becoming somehow statuesque, sitting in an office with the door open for people to straggle in demanding Christian wisdom for a bad day. Of my getting dusty, perhaps even a bit crusty, as I age. Of finding it harder to move, breathe, or simply live and be myself.

Again, no disrespect to the parish I serve (I love the people there dearly) or this strange vocation of priesthood (I wouldn’t have stuck with it for this long if I didn’t find God’s grace in it in so many surprising and wonderful ways. . .)

But instituted? What a strange word. More like institutionalized. I can see the clergy heads nodding. With some of the things that come at us at times from people we deeply care about, it really can be crazy-making.

As we were finalizing the liturgical booklet for my institution, our parish administrator and I were scratching our heads at what image to use for the front cover. She suggested one with a stole, two hands clasping, and a crown. I had to laugh: a marriage image. (The crown seems to fit well with the origin of Rector, no?)

And that’s an image that some clergy like to use when they talk about the “call” in parish ministry. But I’m uneasy with it. Marriage implies life-long union. Does that mean that almost all clergy today have fallen into serial monogamy along with the rest of our culture?

Besides, I’m already married to a wonderful and loving human being. I wouldn’t want to be accused of bigamy. Although, I must admit that with the stresses of parish ministry, at times I really “get,” and I mean in my bones, why Roman Catholicism demands celibacy of its clergy! Sometimes keeping the eye on the family at home and the family at work can be daunting.

But, no, the marriage image doesn’t really work for me.

Institution.

Rectors in our tradition have an awful lot of power. My spiritual director reminds me that becoming Rector means I’m virtually unassailable canonically. Short of gross misconduct or negligence, it’s tough even for a bishop to get at a sitting Rector. Vestries can scream to high holy heaven, cut the salary, and the Rector can. . .well. . .just sit there and do whatever he or she pleases within fairly wide bounds. Truly. I would deplore the day I arrived at that point, of course. As most sensible people (Rectors included!) would.

But the point is well-taken. What do I do with this power, and why do I have it? Why am I called by the Church, foolish, misguided folk that they must surely be, to become an “institution?” Something that, aside from potentially providing a steady stream of meals for my family and shelter over our heads, seems otherwise absolutely counter-intuitive.

The answer began to arise for me a few Sundays ago while preaching on the floor of the nave. I asked people to raise their hands if they knew, when they were young, that they would end up living in this town – this strange, mixed up, and wonderful town with all of its old artisans, new wealth, old homes, wandering migrants, high performing professionals, struggling musicians, and strange self-proclaimed spiritualists.

No one, not a soul in a crowd of nearly a hundred, raised his or her hand. Even today, much of the world’s population is born, works, grows old, and dies in the same village, town, or city. But not here. Not in the highly mobile and mobilized West where a job, a relationship, or a whim tomorrow could have us whisked a thousand miles away on some new life adventure.

This town, like many all over the Episcopal Church, craves stability. Someone recognizable. Someone who will be present in thick times and thin. Marriage? Not quite. I can’t promise forever. But stable long-term leadership and presence? You bet.

When our newsletter editor wrote (half tongue-in-cheek) to the congregation about my being “installed” as our “permanent” Rector, I found myself pondering the emotional content behind the words. Something, it told me, no someone needs to stay still and collect a little dust.

Like the cliché goes, “Rolling stones gather no moss.”

Rector or not, elected, selected, instituted, installed, or just simply “here,” I want to put down some roots for the sake of the People of God. To be an anchor for a while for ships forever on the move. To stop and gather wisdom like fallen leaves that are never swept up. To really get to know people for a time before they move on, and to be a recognizable face when they return to visit or stay.

This is the old Benedictine way. It’s one of the deep roots of our tradition in being Church. In fact, it facilitates tradition. Stability.

That’s what “institute” means for me in the end: Be stable. Emotionally as best I can, without demanding perfection of myself or others. Grow up and down for sure, yet do it best by standing still. It’s where trust begins and skills are honed and the sharp edges that wound others get dulled with conflict, compassion, and time. Where the hearts of stone get pummeled – often with an imperceptible gentleness and occasionally with a bone-shattering rap – by our God into flesh.

Instituted. Be there for a long time for a People, crazy, loving, wonderful, and strange.

All that power for the Rector? It’s not about power. It’s about creating stability. And that notion bounds both the risks I face of abusing that power, and the vision to leverage it when people need stability to end the spiral of being rootless.

The Rev. Richard E. Helmer, a priest, pianist, and writer, serves as rector of Church of Our Saviour, Mill Valley, Calif. His sermons have been published at Sermons that Work, and he blogs regularly about spirituality, ministry, Anglicanism, and church politics at Caught by the Light.

By Susan Fawcett

When I went to seminary I had a secret dream. In any conversation, of course, I would have tempered it with a healthy measure of sarcasm and cynicism. Nevertheless, there was a spark of hope that, upon becoming a priest, I'd spend my time doing any of the following activities:

1. Offering brilliant (and sometimes salty) pastoral care to young and old.
2. Writing and delivering humorous-yet-insightful sermons.
3. Creating programs and curricula that would transform lives.
4. Reaching new heights of contemplative enlightenment.
5. Humbly and diligently serving the poor and sick (often, involving the sensitive use of other languages).
6. Being remarkably wise and kind and yet profoundly humble.
7. And, generally saving the world.

Unfortunately, what I functionally spent the most time doing in my first year after seminary looked like this:

1. Event planning
2. Volunteer coordinating
3. Struggling to effectively use six different (and ineffective) means of communication to attract said volunteers and to lure people to come to said events.

I do not need to tell you that this was, indeed, frustrating. It became clear very quickly that none of my programs would work if I didn't communicate, communicate, communicate. So I sent out a newsletter. I contributed material to the weekly bulletin and the monthly newsletter and parish website. I started my own church blog and sent out my own mailings, and filled weekly emails with sassy photos and hip fonts and links to interesting YouTube videos. This work was not wasted. But it did take up a significant chunk of my workweek. Six hours of potential priestly world-saving, down the drain.

It is now a year later and nothing has changed. I still kill precious time updating the youth blog and trying to make the email look smart. I still run out of time to write the monthly newsletter. I still find myself bug-eyed with frustration whenever a volunteer, who has received countless emails and invitations and notices about an event, asks, "Oh, when is that meeting again? Do you need me? What will we be doing, again?" Thank you, friend, for making it abundantly clear that a significant chunk of the time I spend writing things for you is a big fat waste.

Except that it's not a waste. As much as I want people to care about how we've reformatted the youth program, and started revolutionary new curricula, and built a great theological foundation for some other major change in the parish, people actually seem to care about the other stuff that I thought was just filler: personal stories. Case in point: A few months ago, at the beginning of the summer, I wrote this cute little newsletter article about the intersections between vacation and Sabbath. Short, chatty, with a theological point—A-plus, right? Except nobody noticed that part. They all commented, however, on the story about my own vacation. For three Sundays in a row, half the people in the handshake line after church said, "You're going to West Virginia on vacation? On a motorcycle?!?"

It seems that I had forgotten how important it is to be, shall we say, personal. Self-revelatory, at least a little. Open. Approachable. In short: myself (as opposed to being my job). Interestingly, over the course of this communications-ridden year, it became clear that people were generally far more tolerant of whatever news I wanted to push on them when I was asking about them, and allowing myself to be asked about. Miraculous.

Incidentally, after learning this genius little secret, the communications get easier, because you've finally set aside your own professional anxiety and remembered that the people at church are far more important than the programs at church, every time. Which means that you've shown up as yourself, not as The Priest, in conversations with your parishioners, and that you've begun to trust them, and they you, and you now know who you can just ask to help you, and who you should just remind to come to youth group on Sunday morning. And, an extra bonus, this leaves a little more energy (if not time) for all the humorous-sermon-writing and general-world-saving.

The Rev. Susan Fawcett keeps the blog This Passage. She serves a parish in the Diocese of Virginia, and supports the work of the General Convention publication The Center Aisle.