thewholepeace

“Your membership in this church is about to expire.”   OK, that’s not my line.  It comes from the title of an essay that Jim Miller sent me sometime last year, written by Jim Bishop  – a member of Community Mennonite in Harrisonburg, Virginia and regular columnist for the Mennonite Weekly Review.  Like Cincinnati Mennonite, Community Menno has an annual covenant signing.  A common thread through the essay is the thought that congregational involvement/participation/membership is more than a one time decision to join up.  It’s an important commitment that is worth reflecting on and renewing.    

This Sunday, Pentecost, each of you who consider CMF your faith home for the coming year will be invited to sign the CMF covenant.  This will be the second year that we are using this revised covenant.  It provides a center for stating who the congregation is and what our faith in the God of Jesus Christ looks like in how we relate within and beyond CMF.  Like any covenanting process, it is a two way relationship – how we receive from and give ourselves to congregational life and mission.  I encourage you to read over the covenant in preparation for Sunday. (To see covenant CLICK HERE and scroll down to bottom of page.)

If you won’t be around this Sunday (whose idea was it to have Pentecost on Mother’s Day?) there will be opportunity to sign the following two weeks.

So while the rest of the household was away in Kansas I had some time to do some extra reading.  I got about half way into a book that a friend from seminary just sent me called Internal Family Systems Therapy that came highly recommended as a potential breakthrough in how we imagine the inner life of our psyche (maybe my choice of reading a book like this in my free time tells you a little something about my strange psyche).  I guess you can decide whether it’s a breakthrough or not.  Here’s what I’m gathering so far:  Rather than seeing ourselves as having a single personality, Internal Family Systems sees the mind as being a multiplicity – many different “parts” or even “persons” that make up who we are.  Just as a family is made up of many members with different personalities, different skills and tastes and idiosyncrasies, so we as individuals are best understood as a family of internal persons.  These persons (the author usually uses the word “parts”) have conversations with each other and have certain patterns of relating that emerge differently in different settings.  In the midst of these parts there is a Self, a leader who is compassionate and creative and able to help each part be the best that they can be.  When a person is healthy, their Self is taking the lead and their parts are working together and listening to each other respectfully.

But the internal family often has conflict and different parts can get polarized, especially when there has been a trauma or one’s external environment has been unstable.  Certain parts become “managers” and other parts become “exiles.”  For example, a certain part might be named Striver, a part that is highly motivated to achieve and excel.  But another part might be named Scared Boy, a part that has fears and anxieties and insecurities.  Striver may lose confidence in the Self’s ability to lead and take charge, silencing and exiling the Scared Boy who would get in the way of Striver’s goals.  But the Scared Boy is a person too and reacts against being silenced by sometimes acting up and asserting himself loudly in an attempt to voice his fears.  This can lead to a polarization as Striver tries all the harder to silence the Scared Boy.  Meanwhile the Self – the compassionate, creative core of a person – is losing its leadership and getting swamped by this conflict.  Other parts are also involved in the conversation.  There may be a Teenager who is idealistic about life and believes the world should work a certain way and there may also be an Old Woman Cynic (men and women can have male and female parts) who has seen too many failures in people to have much hope.  Along with the managers and the exiles, there are also firefighters who come along to put out the “fires” between conflicted parts.  In certain cases this may involve numbing or self-medicating behavior such as excessive alcohol or drug use, sexual promiscuity, cutting, or eating disorders.

We get stuck when we confuse our Self – again, that compassionate, creative leader at our core – with these parts.  We think “I’m nothing but a scared little boy”  or “I’m just a cynical old woman.”  We also don’t realize that these parts are actually trying to protect the Self.  They have the Self’s interest in mind, even if they are misguided.  The firefighters and trying to protect the Self from feeling too much pain and the managers are trying to keep the Self moving forward and the exiles are trying to inform the Self about dangers.  It is possible to move toward better health by differentiating the Self from the parts and beginning a conversation between one’s parts.  This involves separating the Self from the parts that have tried to latch onto it or cover it up.  Eventually the Self can emerge as the leader and relate compassionately with each part and help each part understand how it contributes to the “family” without playing such an extreme role.

Well…that’s my summary of the first 120 pages or so.  I’ve tried to start thinking in this way and sort out some of the parts in myself and think of the Self in this way.  I think it has some pretty good potential and it’s already helped me understand more about myself and be more compassionate and a better listener to some internal struggles.  Compassion toward oneself is always the hardest.  I guess it will take time and experiment to see if a theory like this holds up to be helpful in working on internal health.

Incidentally, Abbie and the girls made it back safely to Cincinnati.  Arrived at 5:00 this morning.  Lily has hair!  And two teeth.

The following message comes from Jim Schrag, Executive Director of Mennonite Church USA:

Greetings,

I’d like to invite you to participate in the People’s Summit for Faithful Living July 8 to 10 at the Canadian Mennonite University Campus in Winnipeg. This summit will be a joint gathering between Mennonite Church Canada and Mennonite Church USA. We hope to have many people from Mennonite Church USA attend and enjoy this time of fellowship and discernment with our Canadian sisters and brothers. Under the theme “At the Crossroads: Promise and Peril,” participants will focus on the urgent task of being a faithful community of God amidst the many challenges and opportunities of the 21^st century. Deuteronomy 4:1-9 will be the theme text.

Information on registration, costs and how to get to Winnipeg are available at summit.MennoniteUSA.org. Please forward and share this invitation with others you think may be interested in attending the People’s Summit with Mennonite Church Canada this July.

You also can read a joint news release on the Summit here.

Peace,

Jim Schrag

Executive Director

Mennonite Church USA

Now that your taxes are completed and filed – um…you did remember about that, right?! – you might be thinking about that tax rebate that will be coming to millions of US households beginning in May. Whether our government can afford it or not, they’re planning on putting $300, $600, $1200 into the hands of American consumers to stimulate the economy. It’s an interesting time to pause for a bit and consider a couple things. One thing worth considering is how central ‘consuming’ has become to our identity as human beings. Maybe we should change our name to human buyings, just as a way of being honest with what we seem to value these days – buying is more important than being. Consider the difference between being a consumer and being a steward, a caretaker. Life as a consumer feels more individualistic and my-desire centered while life as a steward feels like I am entrusted with a responsibility to care for what I have been given in light of how it affects others. Consider what it takes for us to have a thriving economy – a healthy web of mutually beneficial relationships.

I enjoyed reading an essay by our Ohio Conference Minister Tom Kauffman, published in the most recent Ohio Evangel that should be in your church mail folders this Sunday. He is encouraging people to consider how the money they get from their tax rebates can be an opportunity for extra giving. While acknowledging that some may have debts and burdening expenses for which the tax rebate might already be earmarked, Kauffman encourages those for whom this is above budget income to consider giving away a higher percentage than usual. If you usually give away 10% of your income, consider giving away 15,20, or 30% of this above budget income.

Giving to organizations that we feel are doing important work for the long term health of society would be one way to stimulate the economy in the direction of justice. Maybe we can experience the tax rebates as a generosity and justice stimulus package.

This Sunday we will have the privilege of hearing from Jim Schrag, Executive Director of Mennonite Church USA, who will be bringing the message during our worship time.  Jim’s sermon will be titled “Trend setters or trend followers?” and will take many of its cues from the book Road Signs for the Journey: A Profile of Mennonite Church USA by Conrad Kanagy that was published in 2007 and has become a center of conversation in the denomination.  The Road Signs book will be the topic of a CMF Council retreat later this month and could potentially be used for an Adult Forum study next school year.  I’ve written briefly about it before in another Musing, but here’s another excerpt from it just to give a taste of what Jim will be addressing:

“Like the people of God in (the prophet) Jeremiah’s day, the church in North America today faces massive change, upheaval, and disruption.  This is true for all Christian traditions – Roman Catholic, Protestant, evangelical, mainline, and Anabaptist.  The findings of Mennonite Member Profile 2006 reinforce this reality.  When we begin to understand how much has changed in the church, the temptation for many of us is to live in denial of the changes or to try to ‘default’ back to the church we used to know.  In fact, many of our conflicts – from styles of worship to women in leadership to membership guidelines – reflect in part the tension between what some believe God did in the past and what others understand God to be doing today…I believe that the disruption currently being felt within the church, including among Mennonites, has been initiated by God’s Spirit to move us out of quiet, comfortable lifestyles, structures, and traditions and into a world in desperate need of (good news).”

Road Signs, Kanagy, pp. 46-47.

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 Art and Peggy Gish, longtime members of Christian Peacemaker Teams, working in both the Palestinian town of Hebron and the country of Iraq, will be speaking at 7pm this Friday at the Rohs Street Café, located just SW of the UC campus at 245 West McMillan St.

Abbie and I had a good time with my family this past weekend.  Among the highlights, Abbie and I got to go on a most-of-the-day date on Saturday while Mom and Dad watched the girls!  Grandparents are very cool.    

Yesterday I had a day where I was close to both poverty and generosity.  The first and third Tuesdays of the month are my usual days to go over to the Oakley Food Pantry from 10-11am and help fill grocery bags and chat with people coming for food.  The last time I had been there the shelves were almost completely empty and we were handing out mostly beans and cereal, so when I arrived it was great to find the pantry stocked full of the usual variety of vegetables and fruit and pasta and soups.  St. Cecilia’s and the Girl Scouts had taken up big collections and delivered them earlier to the pantry.  I was also glad to be able to carry in some bags from the CMF collection bin.  There was a steady stream of people the whole hour and I was thankful that various people’s and communities’ generosity was helping struggling families get needed food.     

In the afternoon I drove downtown with a homeless couple from Oakley who are having significant health problems.  I had recently learned of a mobile medical bus that serves the homeless population of Cincinnati.  Basically a medical clinic on wheels, the bus parks outside of different agencies throughout the week and gives medical services on a first come first serve basis.  On Tuesday afternoons they are located by Our Daily Bread, a place offering hospitality, meals, and education in Over-the-Rhine near the Findlay Market.  The couple was not all that excited about being in that particular neighborhood, but slowly became more comfortable and even began enjoying themselves after we were treated kindly by the receptionist at Our Daily Bread and the nurse who spoke with them and placed them on the waiting list for the day.  Eventually they were able to be seen by the nurse and the doctor in the van, undergo some tests, and get pills and a prescription (which was filled for free at a nearby pharmacy).  They were also invited to come back next week for a follow-up visit where they can go over the test results. 

The side of the medical van said something to the effect that this would not be possible without the generous financial support of donors.  Throughout my time there with the couple I was grateful for this generosity.  I was thankful for the social workers, nurses, and doctors who were helping serve and for the education they had had to help them gain those skills.  I was thankful for the kindness of the staff at Our Daily Bread.  It was clear that the healing process involves the collective skills of many and the collective generosity and kindness of a community.

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This Sunday, April 6, at 7pm we will have an hour service of Evening Song and Prayer.  Come and sit in sacred time and space while we meditate, pray, listen, and sing.

These last few weeks I’ve been taking a class during the Thursday lunch hour at Hebrew Union College, right across the street from UC.  The class is called “Faith in a Better World” and is taught by a rabbinical student.  There are five to six others in the class and it has been mainly oriented toward discussion around certain texts – the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, Torah commandments to do justice and honor the poor.  The teacher has done a good job of bringing out similarities and differences in how Jews and Christians have understood the same Scriptures.  Her ultimate goal is looking at common ways that faith motivates people in making the world a better place.  I’ve found these short times together enriching.  I love the lively way that Jews have engaged Torah, the first five books or our Bible, over the centuries, believing it to be the Tree of Life where God is made known.  As one often asked to represent the Christian perspective, I also realize how complex and varied each tradition is.  I can speak a Christian perspective, but it’s really a Mennonite understanding of the Christian perspective, and even that is my own understanding of the Mennonite understanding of the Christian perspective.  So ultimately we’re really engaging each other as fellow human beings, each bringing our own wealth and limitations to the conversation.  Anytime there’s an opportunity to engage people on this level there is an opportunity for growth – in understanding of the other and in self-understanding.  And the real miracle of a genuine face to face encounter with another human being is contained in that expression that Jacob made through his meeting with his brother Esau – “to see your face is like seeing the face of God.”          

Below is a meditation I’m giving this week at our Oakley Community Good Friday service. The service is based on eight Stations of the Cross, this being Station 6 where Jesus is stripped and nailed to the cross.

Mark 15:24-32  ²⁴ And they crucified him, and divided his clothes among them, casting lots to decide what each should take. ²⁵ It was nine o’clock in the morning when they crucified him. ²⁶ The inscription of the charge against him read, “The King of the Jews.” ²⁷ And with him they crucified two bandits, one on his right and one on his left. ^{28  29} Those who passed by derided him, shaking their heads and saying, “Aha! You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, ³⁰ save yourself, and come down from the cross!” ³¹ In the same way the chief priests, along with the scribes, were also mocking him among themselves and saying, “He saved others; he cannot save himself. ³² Let the Messiah, the King of Israel, come down from the cross now, so that we may see and believe.” Those who were crucified with him also taunted him.

“Let the Messiah come down from the cross so that we may see and believe.”  There’s no question that our ability to believe is bound together with our experience of seeing.  We are constantly taking the world in through our senses of sight and sound and taste and touch and making interpretations about what we perceive.  We see a colorful sunset and we are reassured of the beauty and wonder of creation.  We hear news of deaths and rising numbers of refugees as a result of wars and violence and we take note that the world is not a safe place.  We smell and breath in polluted air and we are reminded that we are not taking good care of this planet we’ve been given.  We touch and hold a child and, for that moment, all is well in the world.

We see, and upon seeing, certain thoughts and attitudes and beliefs come to us.  What are we to make, then, when we see a Messiah on a cross?  How are we to interpret such a sight?  Messiah, by definition, means one who is anointed by God to deliver us from evil.  One who faces the darkness and is not overcome by that darkness, but rather emerges victorious.  Jesus hanging on an instrument of capital punishment with his life ebbing away from him is not the picture we would choose for what a Messiah would look like.  We know the kind of Messiah we want.  We are drawn toward the superstar figures who are clean and beautiful and put on a good show.  We like powerful, well armed warriors who kill the enemy - not physically weak, unarmed warriors who are killed by the enemy.  We prefer the kind of Messiah who would instantly make everything right.             

If our confession of Jesus as Messiah means that we restrict Jesus to our desires of who a messianic figure must be, then we are sadly mistaken, because the Jesus story simply doesn’t fit that mold.  If our faith is based in Jesus’ power to magically come down from the cross and escape unharmed, we will be disappointed, because this is not what he does.  If our belief in God depends on God saving us from suffering and trials and death, then our belief will be constantly wavering, because there continues to be much suffering in our world, around us and within us.

It is the bizarre, perhaps even foolish, confession of the early church that through his public outpouring of crucified love, Jesus is the one who has saved humanity from its evils, by shining so brightly in the darkness, that all peoples will be drawn to this light — the Messiah who heals our blindness and helps us to see the victory of Christ crucified.          

Jesus is stripped and nailed to the cross, and everyone who sees him is mocking him and hurling insults at him.  What do you see, and what do you say, of such a Messiah? 

One of the movements that I find encouraging these days across different swaths of the Protestant church is the reclaiming of some of the ancient spiritual practices and paths. Many of us who trace our origins back to various 16^th century “Protestors” against the corruptions of the Catholic Church are starting to realize that there’s actually a pretty rich treasure within our catholic past that deserves revisiting. Prayer labyrinths, pilgrimage walks, icons (OK, so that’s more the Eastern tradition), and morning and evening praying of the daily office are some examples of practices that Christians are re-engaging and finding to have great spiritual depth. For Mennonites, even our use of the lectionary and our attention to the liturgical calendar is a fairly recent development that is getting us back in touch with this not-so-recent way of experiencing time.

As we approach Holy Week, another of these spiritual paths available to us is the Stations of the Cross. Fourteen different stations, or scenes, portray a certain moment in Jesus’ Passion – Jesus is condemned to death, Simon of Cyrene carries Jesus cross, Jesus is stripped of his garments, etc. The final station is Jesus placed in the tomb. In 1991 Pope John Paul II issued a “Scriptural Stations of the Cross” in which all 14 stations are events that are portrayed in the Gospels (in the traditional Stations there are a number of extra-biblical events). The stations are portrayed visually and are intended for prayer and meditation.

I’d like to briefly highlight two ways of experiencing the Stations this Holy Week, next week. A congregation that I’m getting to know in Norwood, called Vineyard Central, is organizing and hosting a weeklong art display called Via Crucis: Immersion. This is how they describe it: “Via Crucis: Immersion is the Stations of the Cross remixed. Our expression of this ancient Christian practice will be multi-sensory, multi-denominational, multi-layered, and multi-media. Via Crucis :: Immersion is a pilgrimage.” The stations are set up in such a way that one can come and go at one’s own pace. This would be worthwhile for those interested in the intersection of faith and art, or who are interested in a fresh approach to prayer and meditation during Holy Week. It is open 11am-11pm all of Holy Week. I hope to have more information on this to announce on Sunday. Here’s a website with a brief intro (click here).

Another Stations of the Cross event will be the Oakley neighborhood Good Friday service, hosted by the United Church of Christ in Oakley. I’ll join with local ministers in this service that goes through an abbreviated eight stations of the cross. The service begins at 11:30am. More info in Sunday’s bulletin.

It will be good to see everyone Sunday now that we have quickly shifted from winter to spring.

The Psalm of the week is Psalm 130.

“If You, O Lord, keep account of sins, Lord, who could stand?  But there is forgiveness with you, so that you may be held in awe.”  Psalm 130:3-4

I’ve been doing some keeping of accounts recently by working on our taxes through one of the programs available online.  It’s been a matter of getting our forms in order, typing in the right information, and seeing how the numbers add up.  There are a few quirks in the tax code when it comes to a pastor’s salary, so I’ve been looking through the forms and asking some advice from others to make sure I’m on target with the info I’m filling in.

The Psalmist says that this kind of account keeping is exactly the kind of metaphor that DOESN’T describe God.  Not that God isn’t into math and number crunching (probably comes in useful with the laws of physics), but it simply has nothing to do with the human-Divine relationship.  There’s no tally being kept of sins and wrongdoing.  God isn’t keeping track and adding things up against us.  That’s our mindset toward each other and therefore how we often think of God, but that’s not the way it works.  We have awe and reverence and wonder toward the Creative Spirit of the Universe because of forgiveness – something that throws our whole equation off balance.  The Psalmist goes on to say, “O Israel, hope in the Lord.  For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with God is great power to redeem.”  God’s power toward us isn’t that of a supercomputer that tracks, files, and stores all of our actions, both good and bad.  But rather God’s power toward us is steadfast, abiding, brooding, equationless love that daily redeems us.