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Reflections

Every event & activity should have a harvest. You can find them here: articles, how-tos, and learnings gleaned from our life together.

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April 6, 2016 by Jed Dearing

Path Finders in the UK

I stood outside in the vacant abandoned lot at the corner of Central Ave and West Broad, where St. John’s Franklinton hosts Street Church. As worship was about to begin a congregant doubled over in pain, and had trouble standing in the circle, even with her walker. At this time, two of our street church members walked across the lot to West Broad St and tipped over a newspaper stand. Picking it up, they carried it back towards the circle. People started to mutter, wondering if they were stealing it, when they took it over to the congregant and set it behind her on its side, giving her a place to sit in this sea of asphalt. The perfect pew for street church.

Street Church

I’m not sure if I’ve seen a more fitting picture of what’s needed in the church today. People willing to break the rules and imagine new possibilities to make room for someone that couldn’t otherwise participate in the community. While meeting with Jonny Baker of the Church Mission Society in Oxford, he labeled these folks, Path Finding Dissenters. Those willing to bend the rules, live outside the walls, hack the canons and show the church a new way forward.

We visited three Fresh Expressions of faith in the UK that were getting on with path finding, and creating new avenues for people to engage in Christian community.

Moot, located in financial district of London literally turned the pews of St. Mary Aldermary around. A lot has changed in London in the 900 years since St. Mary Aldermary was built and Moot, the intentional community now guiding the church wasn’t blind to the changes. The location in the financial district means many people are present in the neighborhood from Monday – Friday, but no longer on Sunday. Moot opened its doors to the white collar community by facing the pews at one another, creating a café style space where anyone could enter and share in community over a packed or purchased lunch or a cup of coffee from the café stand. Regular prayer, Taize chants, mediation sessions, and yoga litter the schedule from Monday to Friday as the side chapel remains quiet and a place for reflection and refreshment in the middle of a busy workday. Moot has become the church the community needs, instead of forcing the parish to attend to its schedules, traditions, and desires.

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Kahaila Café began its Fresh Expression ministry as a café with a conscious. All profits from the café are poured into supporting local charities, which holds great appeal in the young hipster neighborhood of Brick Lane that longs for value in its purchases. The walls are open for local artists to display and sell their work. As community began to form in conversations in the café and partnerships emerged with local arts groups and charities, a church began to meet on Wednesday evenings in the café itself. The commitment to social good, the arts, and the community created around coffee led to the formation of a worshipping group. This community that formed was able to name the further need for job training and employment opportunities for socially and economically disadvantaged women, and has started Luminary Bakery which offers courses, work experience, and employment as bakers, providing a new way forward in life for the women involved. The shared space of Kahaila Café has become both invitational and generative.

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Don’t Forget You Cornflakes! No really, don’t forget your cornflakes. This innovative family service is held at All Hallows in Lady Bay, Nottingham. It is the church’s second service and is designed as a Bring & Share service. Families are invited to bring and share their breakfast with one another during a playful and engaging worship service designed for the participation of the entire family. Simple prayers, interactive songs and sermons bring the Gospel to life and create accessibility for families to enter together into worship. Rev. Mark and Barbara Rodel model participatory leadership beyond the liturgical form of the service. They and a team of five seminarians share in the leadership of the church. The seminarians and their families live in the parish while in the formation process. They have created an intentional community that meets together and walks the street, inviting young families that live in the neighborhood to visit All Hallows to experience the good news of Jesus in a new way.

I wonder how we can reimagine the use of our buildings, church planting, and our liturgy here in the Diocese of Southern Ohio to create avenues for those outside of our circle to discover our God of love? May we make room for the Path Finding Dissenters in our communities whose imagination might just be our saving grace.

 

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Posted in 2016 Pilgrimage to England, Featured, Reflections · Tagged Fresh Expressions, Intentional Community, new worshipping communities; fresh expressions;, praxis communities, ukpilgrimage · Leave a Reply ·

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April 5, 2016 by Praxis

Does God play dice with the universe?

The study of physics has had an indelible effect on human affairs and philosophical thinking. The 20th century was no exception as physics experienced two revolutions: Einstein’s theory of relativity and the revolution in our understanding of atoms and other elementary particles. This latter topic is usually called quantum mechanics and the subject is the source of much discussion in philosophical and theological circles since it involves a variety of truly mysterious and paradoxical phenomena.

Chris Orban, who is an assistant professor of physics at OSU, gave us an overview the physical and philosophical thinking that came prior to the advent of quantum mechanics in the early 20th century. As Chris discussed, after Newton and Laplace, the earth and the cosmos were understood to be a kind of “world machine” or “clockwork universe” that operates in a highly predictable way according to the laws of physics. This understanding led many church-goers in the 18th and 19th centuries to an idea of God as a kind of watch maker who created the world and set it into motion, but who may or may not need to intervene as this universe takes the course it was designed to take.

Chris argues that this idea has had a profound effect. By creating a detached and distant picture of God, this would have helped lay the groundwork for the Enlightenment. The “clockwork universe” idea may also have had a strong effect on the past and present reluctance of American audiences to accept evolution as fact. The first American interlocutor of Darwin’s theory of evolution was a Harvard botanist and protestant church member named Asa Gray. In defending Darwin’s theory to religious audiences, he had the unenviable job of explaining that this clockwork universe must have been designed by God from the very beginning to use scarcity and competition as a means for producing biodiversity. “Nature, red in tooth and claw” as Tennyson would say.

Although Einstein was not an especially religious man, he too had an idea that God (or whatever God is) determined the laws of physics at the beginning of time and set the universe in motion. Einstein’s goal was to understand the symmetries of nature so well that he could understand whether God could have made the laws of physics in any other way than they currently are.

The phrase “God does not play dice!” is attributed to Einstein in a series of discussions he had with the physicist Neils Bohr over the way that quantum mechanics introduces a degree of randomness into the world. Quantum mechanics removes the absolute predictability of the “world machine”. Einstein once said that he found quantum mechanics to be so strange that he spent more time thinking about it than his own theory of relativity. Chris drew from a chapter on Niels Bohr in Richard Rhodes’ The Making of the Atomic Bomb to explain that although Bohr too was not an especially religious man, he dismissed Einstein’s assertion. He argued that the universe can operate however it operates. Decades of subsequent investigation have continued to confirm the notion that the affairs of atoms are intrinsically unpredictable on the smallest scales, which was the scientific basis of Bohr’s response.

The ramifications for this understanding of the world are as far reaching as the clockwork universe idea that came before it and Bohr spent time considering a renewed understanding of free will and other concepts in the light of quantum mechanics. Bohr once said that “[Philosophy] was, in a way, my life”, which is a reference both to his contributions to quantum mechanics and to the philosophical discussions he experienced growing up as a child of a biology professor at the University of Copehagen. A collection of Bohr’s speeches and writing can be found in his book Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge.

Posted in Campus Ministries, Featured, Ministerium of Ideas, Reflections · Tagged Albert Einstein, Neils Bohr, physics, quantum mechanics · Leave a Reply ·

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April 3, 2016 by Jane Gerdsen

What We Learned on our UK Pilgrimage

Several of us traveled to England in February, 2016.  While we are each reflecting in our own words what this experience meant to us and how it might be integrated back into our lives and ministry, we wanted to share some of the themes and most important learnings in one place.  So here are the highlights:IMG_0013

  1. We need two kinds of dissenters to create change:
    • Path finding dissenters – those who will find a new path and have the courage to follow it.  These are the people who propose alternatives and inspire creative innovation.
    • Authority dissenters – those who spot path finding dissenters and encourage and protect them from the critique of those who like the status quo. – Jonny Baker (via Gerald Arbuckle)

“Real change and newness has a much better chance of taking root if it has this interplay between the two.” (Jonny Baker)

  1. The new belongs elsewhere. Let practices happen along the edge of the church, then shine a light on it and begin to share stories and connect people together. – Jonny Baker

“If the dreamers are put in an environment with guardians of the status quo, the chances are they will put a lot of their energies into justifying themselves, and be under constant critique…which can sap a lot of energy.  That energy would be better served in mission.” (Jonny Baker)

  1. Crack the code of the church – hack the canons when necessary, find a way to make church language and rules fit what’s actually needed on the ground. – Jonny Baker
  2. Allow yourself to be taken into other people’s worlds – In a multi-faith and multi-cultural world, we must enter fully into other cultures and find God seekers.“I am looking for God seekers so that we can journey together toward Christ who is the fullest expression of God….I need to present a Jesus who does not belong exclusively to Christianity.” – Andrew Jones
  3. The Church is gift and should be freely given away to others as gift. The church is a way to draw people into community with Christ and to transform the world – it is a sign and a foretaste of God’s kingdom. – Michael Moynagh

“Just as you might share a stick of French bread with someone by breaking a piece off, so the church breaks off of piece of itself and offers it to others as a new expression of church. Similarly, just as you might share a bottle of wine by pouring it into glasses for other people to drink, so the church pours itself out in new expressions of church for others to enjoy. As the church does this, it passes itself on sacramentally. It gives part of its own body away in a way that other people are able to receive. Far from being diminished in this giving, just as Jesus is not diminished when he gives himself in the Eucharist, the church is enriched by this sharing of its body because others are drawn into its communal life.” (Michael Moynagh)

  1. God’s mission comes first. God is out ahead of us doing new things and the Holy Spirit is at work in the church at the same time. “God’s missional grace is active both in the cosmos and in the church.” – Michael Moynagh
  2. “Just get on with it” – spend less time talking about what you are going to do and more time doing it. Understanding and integration normally come after engaging in ministry. If you don’t, you will be 90 before you live out your calling. – Michael Moynagh
  3. Contextual Ministry Matters – pioneers understand the importance of context. Knowing your context, understanding it, and even being able to critique means that you have spent enough time in your context AND that you are willing to be changed by your context. You will change if you enter fully into the context to which you are called. Theologically, this is Jesus entering fully into the Jewish world in which he found himself, becoming not just fully human, but fully part of the culture – eating foods, praying, sharing life in such a way that he became one of them.“The turn to context in global Christianity is massive. To make sense of the context will involve, for example, exploring notions of identity, reading, cultures, economics, religion, locale, myths, texts, symbols, power relations, gender, ethnicity.” (Jonny Baker)
  4. God’s people gathered is more important than the rules. A deep commitment to sacramental life undergirds everything. – Mark Berry
  5. Graciousness leads to unity. There is treasure everywhere, in the inherited church and in the new. Polite disagreement and a generous sense of catholicity means that we can disagree on the details and still see ourselves as part of God’s missional work. – Jonny Baker and Michael Moynagh and all
  6. Pioneers stand outside the doors. Pioneers are most comfortable outside the walls of the church and will stand by the door and show people how to draw close to God.  – Ben Norton
  7. What is good news? If this no longer sounds like good news to this community, find out what is and learn to share the gospel with different words and actions. – Chris Hembury
  8. Be bold – overcome your fear. Share yourself, your values, and your love of God even if you are afraid. – Chris Hembury
  9. Feed your soul – Remember to play, do what you love, unleash your imagination, experience life even if it doesn’t connect to your ministry at all. Paint, ride a bike, make music, listen to your soul’s deep longing. – Sam DonaldsonIMG_0059
  10. Training works best if you develop modules or classes that meet the needs of the pioneer. Allow the pioneer to remain in their context, to fill in the gaps of their knowledge, and to learn how to seek wisdom from the inherited church. One size doesn’t fit all.

We will be digging into these ideas a bit more in future blog posts.  Stay tuned!

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Posted in 2016 Pilgrimage to England, Featured, Reflections, Uncategorized · Tagged Church, Community, Fresh Expressions, mission, pioneers, ukpilgrimage · Leave a Reply ·

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April 3, 2016 by Jane Gerdsen

Pilgrim Path: A Fresh Expressions Pilgrimage

IMG_0044In February, a group of us traveled to England to explore fresh expressions of church and learn from some of the innovative leaders and pioneers of the fresh expressions movement. We set out as pilgrims. We were not simply travelers. We were not wandering, although the path sometimes led us to unexpected places. We were pilgrims with an intention to draw closer to God, to learn about ourselves, to be changed through the journey.

This journey was in many ways sacramental – an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. And thus, we expected to return transformed or changed or converted even from the people we were when we began our journey. Pilgrims often return from their journey with a “boon”something good that will enrich their lives in the everyday world back at home. We hoped to see something of how God was moving in a new place.   And thus to learn to see the world and our communities anew upon our return. T.S. Eliot in the Four Quartets put it this way:

“We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

will be to arrive where we started

and to know the place for the first time.”

BrendanPuzzleI think in some ways that’s why St. Brendan the Navigator has been such a powerful story in our work with Praxis Communities. For when we set off into the unknown with a clear intention,[1] it is in the navigating of unknown places that we discover God guiding us through the outward journey ever deeper in our spiritual journey.

Part of our real life navigation was learning the language of roundabouts, and a GPS that seemingly pointed one way but was actually pointing to the next turn up ahead. We found ourselves missing turns and heading the wrong way down a road more than once. We had to orient ourselves and begin to see not just where we were but where we were heading. And as we learned the driving cues, I realized that it is in this process of finding our way that we discover our own voice, our own true North as our friend Jonny Baker calls it. By discovering a clear intention for our lives, our work, our call, we notice that all of life begins to orient around this guiding point.

compassAs we find ourselves back where we started, we now know more about the direction we are headed and have a deeper understanding of ourselves and our response to God’s call to mission in the place we call home. Here are some of the things, we learned while we were in England. In the coming weeks we will be sharing more reflections and musings on our pilgrimage. We invite you to follow along here.

Our Pilgrims:

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Brianna Coey, Melanie Williams, Ben Norton, Becky Norton, Aaron Wright, Jane Gerdsen, and Jed Dearing

Our pilgrim group included members of a variety of Praxis Communities.  I, (Jane), serve as Missioner for Fresh Expressions and Praxis Communities.  I have been dreaming of taking such a journey for the last 4 years.  I was honored to have with me core team members Aaron Wright who serves as program director for Brendan’s Crossing and Jed Dearing, program director for Confluence and member of the Franklinton community.  We also had with us Brianna Coey, who is the Missioner for Northside Abbey and Melanie Williams who is one of the founding members of the Near East House in Columbus.  Each of our pilgrims brought their own questions and experience to this pilgrimage.  One of the gifts of our time was the bonding of our team and deepening of our call to this work.

Our Path:angleterre74

We started in Oxford where we met with Jonny Baker and pioneer students at the Church Mission Society. While in Oxford, we also met with Michael Moynagh, Tutor for Pioneer Ministry at Wycliff Hall and the Director of Network Development for Fresh Expressions.  We also enjoyed an evensong at Magdalene College in Oxford and visited Christ Church College for a tour.

We then traveled down to London. In London, we met Andy Matheson to learn about Oasis. We had the good fortune to connect with Mark Berry of Safe Space in Telford who happened to be in London for the day. We met with the Community of St. George in the East including members of their intentional community and their vicar, Canon Dr. Angus Ritchie. We also visited two fresh expressions coffee shop communities – Host Café at Moot (St. Mary Alderbury) and Kahaila Café.

On Sunday, we made our way north to Nottingam where we met with the Rev. Mark Rodel and Lady Bay Mission Community. We joined them for their family worship gathering (called Don’t Forget the Cornflakes) and enjoyed sharing breakfast and meeting members of the community. Later, we had lunch at the vicarage with pioneer students and their families who were part of the Lady Bay team.

From there we made our way to Hull – we stopped by Holy Trinity Hull, where the Rev. Ben Norton is helping curate a new worship service and fellowship. The next morning, we made a quick visit to York to meet the Rev. Christian Silveratnam, who planted G2, a growing fresh expression of church and is part of mentoring young leaders. We also got to see Yorkminster while we were there. We returned to Hull and visited Archbishop Sentamu Academy – a secondary school started by the Church of England in an inner city area of Hull. We met the Rev. Anne Richards the chaplain and some of the staff. Our final stop, was to meet with Chris Hembury who has lived in community in Hull for 20 years. He now works with CMS and is heading up an intentional community in an old vicarage. We shared lunch and a beautiful and inspiring conversation with Ben, Chris and some of their community before heading back to London to fly home.

 

 

[1] Brendan was sent by God on a mission to discover the Land of Promise

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Posted in 2016 Pilgrimage to England, Featured, Reflections, Uncategorized · Tagged brendan, Community, Fresh Expressions, Intentional Community, pioneers, ukpilgrimage · Leave a Reply ·

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March 8, 2016 by Praxis

Reflection on Ferguson

by Katharin Blodgett

I grew up in a pretty diverse area in an Indianapolis suburb. But it wasn’t until I was 24 years old that I actually started grasping the truth, history, and scope of everything that had happened and was still happening in 2015. I worked for a summer with a racially diverse staff in racially diverse areas, including St. Louis, MO. But man I had so much to learn and listen to and experience. I remember seeing name after name of young black men who were killed by police brutality show up on the news; I was disgusted with it all. No longer could I think of that community as “other” and that the things happening were “their fault.” I was coming to understand systemic racism, white privilege, and how the definition of racism I’d been taught to understand all throughout school didn’t even touch the evil that racism really is. As long as I was nice and respectful of everyone, regardless of the color of their skin, racism didn’t exist and we were in a post­racial America, right?

I went through the feelings of white ­guilt. I wrestled with my privilege and had to start really looking at race in America and in my life. I naively thought the only difference between blacks and whites was our skin color. How simplistic of me. Thankfully I had friends this summer who were patient and open with me. So now, fast­forward to our retreat last week to Ferguson. It was amazing to be back in St. Louis, a place I’d spent 4 weeks in this past summer. The whole weekend was a great experience, but there are a few moments that really stuck out to me. We were able to attend a service at St. John’s Church (the Beloved Community), a church that is racially diverse, and seeks to care for the north side of St. Louis because they know their future depends on that community. There was a guest speaker, Rahiel Tesfamariam, who spoke a wonderful sermon about seeking validation from the right place, and continuing a fight for justice. This was an amazing sermon about racial justice and appropriation and captivity and intimacy. Towards the end of the sermon, she was talking to her black brothers and sisters. But then, she talked to her white brothers and sisters. It was actually refreshing to me, that she called me out by skin color, she recognized it and didn’t ignore it, and let me know that THIS IS MY FIGHT TOO. And it made me think of all the times I decided to ignore skin color, because it was easier, but when really I was missing an opportunity to recognize the purpose and value and passion in each of us.

Another part of her sermon that really stuck with me was when she said something along the lines that “so often we lose the capacity to see the world as God sees the world.” I mean, we’re living in Post­Racial America after all, right?! But I’ve lately been struck by how much of God’s creativity and beauty and individuality we’re missing out on when we say that. For me specifically, a blonde­ haired white 25 year old, I know that my life is so much richer having friends who are from different cultures than me. I’m not saying that we all need to have our certain “token” friends. Because that’s a whole other issue in itself. But I do believe that God created us all how we are. And that every body has value, regardless of skin color. We can learn so much from each other and, as iron sharpens iron, really mold each other. We are doing each other and our communities a disservice when we don’t recognize those differences, understand where we differ, but more importantly see how we are so much more similar than we think, and are in this fight for justice together.

So for me, I know some practical steps I took at the beginning of my journey and I’m still taking now are reading and educating myself about my privilege. About systemic racism. Listening to other people. Shutting my mouth because a lot of times, it’s the better thing to do. I think we are a people who like to ignore what makes us uncomfortable. But it’s great, because the more you read and learn and meet more people, the less uncomfortable you’ll get and the more fired up and passionate you’ll get about everyone’s value.

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Posted in Confluence, Featured, Reflections · Tagged social justice · Leave a Reply ·

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March 1, 2016 by Praxis

Sing to the Lord a New Song! A Reflection on the Province V Gathering in Chicago

by Charlie Meszaros
Recently, I attended the Prov V Young Adult Retreat in Chicago as both a former and potential future college student, and as a friend of Dr. Bob Padberg and Dr. Ellen O’Shaugnessy.  The theme was “Sing to the Lord a New Song”, something that very much interested me, as I am somewhat of an aspiring musician who is also very spiritual (I am what some call a “seeker”- one who follows no organized religion, but believes in God).  Having attended the retreat last year (when the theme was improvisational comedy), and gotten quite a bit out of it (it was a big part of my decision to move from Columbus, OH to the Chicago, IL area), I was sure that this would be quite a wonderful experience for me, and I was right.  However, what I didn’t know was that I would feel even more spiritually and personally fulfilled than I did on last year’s retreat.
To start off, I was glad to see a lot of the same people at this year’s retreat that I saw at last year’s, including a Lutheran clergyman named Ben Adams, with whom I talked a lot at both retreats and with whom I have a great deal in common.  As soon as he saw me this year he said “I remember you from last year!”, and we began talking about what had transpired since we last spoke, including my move to the Chicago area.  Now that I have moved here, I plan on attending some of Ben’s services at Grace Place Church whenever I am available.  I also bonded with many of the students at the retreat, hanging out with them after each day’s events were finished.  Such camaraderie has contributed greatly to my spiritual and personal well being, especially as I have felt a bit lost in the past couple of weeks (I’ve been having issues relating to my job and a feeling that I lack a sense of community).
And then, there was the musical aspect of the retreat.  As I said, I am somewhat of an aspiring musician, so it was incredibly rewarding to be able to bring my guitar and play along with a big group of people (I even received compliments on my musical ability).  And then, to be able to sing and develop my voice in a non-judgmental choir-like setting was lovely.  I felt fulfilled to the point where I am considering joining a church choir.  And then, I was given the opportunity to find a music event in the area to attend.  I found a venue called Reggie’s just south of where the retreat was.  I saw four very talented local underground bands there, and this show affirmed my desire to be a musician.
I am absolutely planning on attending next year’s retreat (potentially as a student- I am considering enrolling at a community college in the fall).  I trust it will be as rewarding as the last two were.
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Sunday morning Eucharist at the Provincial Gathering.  Participants sing paperless music taught by members of Music that Makes Community.

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Posted in Campus Ministries, Featured, Reflections · Tagged campus ministry, music, Retreats, Worship, Young Adults · Leave a Reply ·

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February 25, 2016 by Praxis

There has to be a Better Way

by Katie Guy

Our team from urban Columbus Ohio arrived in Dilley and made several turns down dusty roads and into the ranch that the CARA staff lives and works out of when they are not working out of the visitation trailer of the Dilley Detention Center.  It became clear very quickly that this was a grass roots initiative that was doing some important work that not enough people know about.  The CARA staff was able to cram masses of information into our heads in a 3 hour time span that would allow us to legally assist the women and children that are detained in the Dilley Detention Center.

These women are from Central American and have crossed the Mexican border seeking asylum and are now being detained in Dilley, Texas (population about 4,000) where there is no legal assistance available.  In response to the huge need the CARA Project has a team of advocates and lawyers that live full time in Dilley and handle the cases that come through the detention center.  They also take all the help they can get from volunteers like our team.  A large part of what we did is prepare the women for their Credible Fear Interview, the interview that decides whether they can stay in the US or if they are deported back to their home country.  If they are deported, they will most likely be returned to a country that is run by gangs.

All of the women that we encountered had horrible and heroic stories.  They faced abuse from their partners, or gangs in their neighborhood that have driven them to leave their families and their home country.  These are not women that are here in the United States to ‘take our jobs’.  They are here running from a life that is full of fear and by no fault of their own.  I found it most frustrating that not all the women that were living in fear had a case to receive asylum.  One women in particular fled because she was fearful that her son would get recruited into the gangs.  Her son went to a school where he was guaranteed to join the gang if he attended, but his mother kept him out for fear of the gangs.  She was proactive and fled before her son had the chance to be recruited.  Because her family was not threatened personally, her case was weak.   I find it quite appalling that a women that was solely looking out for her family is not able seek asylum because she didn’t allow anything to happen to her son.  Essentially, for any women to have a case they have to have to let a severe trauma happen to them or their child.  I keep telling myself that there has to be a better way.  Join me in asking these questions of ourselves and of our law makers.

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Posted in Confluence, Featured, Reflections · Tagged Immigration Reform, social justice, social policy · Leave a Reply ·

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February 15, 2016 by Praxis

Ashes to Go at Good Shepherd, Athens

by Deborah Woolsey

It was a great experience this year.  Katharin Foster joined us for a little while and Elizabeth Thompson stayed with me the whole time and gave out hot apple cider. We were able to engage more people than last year despite incredibly cold temperatures. My favorite part was when someone stopped, looked me in the eye and asked me what Ash Wednesday is. Describing the day and it’s meaning when I felt pressure to do so quickly because of cold (there were a few times I couldn’t feel my face) and time ( people were on their way to class etc) as well as accurately and still be theologically sound all in a way that anyone could understand was an enjoyable challenge. The majority of the people who asked (I’d say there must have been around 6 people who asked) chose to receive the ashes after I explained it. We also had a few who were grateful for the reminder that it was Ash Wednesday and even walked out of their way to receive ashes. Two people asked if it was okay to receive ashes if they were not Episcopalian. We found out there was a great deal if conversation about Ash Wednesday at Free Lunch.  A few who had questions from that conversation came back outside to ask us.

My favorite encounter was after a student gratefully received ashes.  He turned and started walking toward a group of students he knew and one person in the group yelled out to him: “What the hell is on your face!?” He grinned and said, “Ashes, it’s Ash Wednesday.” Then she asked him what that was.  He explained it, and she said, “That’s cool,” and came and asked to receive ashes herself. Definitely one of the best parts of the day for me.

Posted in Campus Ministries, Featured, Good Shepherd @ OU, Reflections · Tagged Ashes to Go · Leave a Reply ·

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January 21, 2016 by Praxis

“What we are sculpting is ourselves” – Duane McDiarmid on Art & Action

Start with two images, both from the Vietnam War, both famous. One is an Eddie Adams photo of a South Vietnamese police chief shooting a man in the head. The other is Malcolm Browne’s photo of a Buddhist monk setting himself on fire to protest the war. For Ohio University art professor Duane McDiarmid, these two photos became symbolic of two different approaches to action. Duane believes that life is defined by action, and that there are always ramifications for the actions that people take. During our February luncheon, he told the Ministerium that art is the action of the artist, and not only those discreet actions that take place in either the studio or gallery. Instead, the art is found in any action that an artist takes. For Duane, this means that no action can go unexamined, and surety is always problematic. The South Vietnamese police chief is very certain of his point of view, and acts on that certainty. The Buddhist monk understands that all action exerts a price, and he’s awesomely and terrifyingly willing to feel the effects of his activities on his own body. Duane aligns himself with the monk. He wants to acknowledge the effects of his artistic actions on his own person, even as he hopes that they will have effects that reverberate beyond his personhood.

I first met Duane when some of his pieces were featured as part of a social practice art show at the EASE Gallery. He told me about his “Mismatched Drapes Project,” which began during a long drive from Athens to Santa Fe. Feeling sleepy, he pulled into an empty lot and fell asleep in his car. When he woke in the morning, he found that he was parked outside of an abandoned church, and went in to explore. He discovered graffiti and debris left by a motorcycle gang that was using the church as a headquarters. He was curious to find himself judging the gang, people he’d never met and knew nothing about, beyond the fact that they littered drug paraphernalia about on the floor and defecated on the carpet. Noticing some old orange velvet curtains that were torn down from the wall, he acted on an impulse and took one. Then he got back in his car and resumed his drive to Sante Fe, thinking about what he’d done and why he’d done it.

A little ways down the road, he passed an old abandoned hotel, and decided to stop and check that out, as well. He found that it was being used by vagrants and by gay men who were seeking anonymous sex. Again, he found himself facing his own judgement of these men, and again he discovered a found object, in this case a pornographic magazine, that he took without really knowing why. Back in the car, he thought about judgement, and proprietorship, and the way that groups work. Who really had ownership of the abandoned church and the hotel? Weren’t the people who were actually using the spaces the true proprietors? Could he think of the groups that were inhabiting these places as true communities? And which of the communities that he belonged to had taught him to look down on and exclude these people?

It was from these experiences and thoughts that the Mismatched Drapes Project was born. Arriving in Santa Fe, Duane decided that he would make a new curtain for the biker gang, and a quilt for the men in the hotel. He wanted these objects to refer back to the original proprietors (the church that hung the drapes, the hotel when it was functioning) and to speak to the current proprietors. When he delivered these two pieces of art, he did so at a time when no one was in the spaces, and with the understanding that he was truly giving them away. He could have no further investment in where they went or what people did with them. He wanted the arrival of these objects in the church and the hotel to be seen as a mystery, even as a miracle, to the people who would receive them. And he designed private rituals that he enacted as he was giving the art objects away. His intention was to join these communities of bikers and gay men without ever meeting them. Join them through giving as an act of communion.
Duane told us over lunch that one of the ancient roles of art is “to displace trouble, so that you can look at it and heal it.” One of the troubles that he’s trying to displace is the kind of deep prejudice we experience when encountering the truly other. Later, he found an abandoned indian trading post, and found himself engaging in a project that displaced a different but similar trouble, that of the unjust trade relationships that led to the subjugation of Native American peoples. As he worked on turning a half desiccated God’s Eye that he found in the ruins into a blanket that he would return to the site, he thought about his own participation in these trade relationships, and that the very act of taking an object from a place and making an object to replace it involved him in a kind of trade. He realized that there is a very thin line between participation and manipulation.

As he talked to us, it became clear that his mind is always dwelling on the ramifications and implications of the actions that he takes. It’s a very full, and also a sometimes exhausting, way to live one’s life. It’s also, in essence, a spiritual way of living, as self awareness and examination of motivations are a deep part of any authentic spirituality. Duane tells his sculpture students that “what we are sculpting is ourselves.” In the end, that’s true of all of us, and the tools Duane uses – introspection, self-awareness, creativity – are the tools of the Buddhist monk and the saint.

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Posted in Featured, Ministerium of Ideas, Reflections · Tagged Art, social justice, Spirituality · Leave a Reply ·

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January 6, 2016 by Praxis

Communities of Discovery

What Improv taught us about the spiritual life while we were at the Young Adult Retreat

improv retreat2

“Isn’t improv hard?” My wife asked me at breakfast, after I’d been waxing poetic about the 2015 Young Adult retreat, where my friends Barbara Allen and Bill Sabo led us in exploring the spirituality of improvisation.

“Not really,” I said, and then I thought about it. “I suppose it is hard, but in the way that yoga is hard, or powerful prayer is hard. You start with really simple things and build on them, to the point that after an hour, or in the case of the improv retreat, six hours, you’re doing and feeling things that you couldn’t right at the beginning.” I sipped my coffee and thought about how skillfully Bill and Barbara had done this, how they’d patiently built from nothing to the point where, at the end, people who had been shy and felt awkward at first were doing wonderful two person scenes. And I realized that they’d gotten us there by inviting us to be vulnerable, and creating a community of safety and mutual regard. How had they done this?

Mark Twain famously said that a joke is like a frog. You can dissect it, but first you have to kill it. So it’s with some trepidation that I choose to describe Barbara and Bill’s method and speculate on its meaning for Christian community. A two person scene usually starts with the improvisers asking for a setting or a relationship, or for some other prompt that will give them a context. In good improv fashion, I should give you the context of the retreat. We were at the Procter Center, right before Christmas. The sets of relationships were varied, or one might say hybrid. The Young Adult retreat started as a kind of reunion for Procter camp counsellors, but in recent years has expanded to include intentional communities, campus ministries, and any young adult who finds the theme intriguing and chooses to join us. So when we gathered on Friday night there were a lot of hugs and old friendships resumed, and a few clumps of people who live in community together but were strangers to everyone else.

Jane Gerdsen designed our opening worship, which involved candles and singing and prayers. Bill and Barbara said that it was the best introduction to an improv retreat they’d ever seen, so hooray for Jane! After we worshipped, Barbara and Bill began the work of knitting us together as a community by introducing us to the Zulu greeting, “I see you, you are here.” It was a call to recognizing one’s own presence in the room and inviting the other person to be fully present as well. Having planted this idea in our heads, Barbara introduced us to a game that, miraculously, got all forty of us to know each other’s names within the space of about twenty minutes. Then, in a huge circle, we played “Pass the Clap,” a famous improv game that consists of nothing but looking at the person next to you and trying to clap at exactly the same moment. The clap moved around the circle, all the others watching intently as each pair in turn tried to synchronize their clapping, looking into each other’s eyes, syncing themselves to each other. This, and a few other games, emphasized the deep need for attentiveness and awareness in improv work. Through these exercises, such work becomes contemplative, and participants are invited to live within the present moment without worrying about the past or planning for the future.

It was also an opportunity for Bill to teach us about discovery. There is an assumption that improv, and creative endeavor in general, is about invention – we prove how smart we are by inventing something new to do, think, or make. But improv posits that true creativity is based in discovery – finding out, through close attention, what the world is like, who another person is, what one’s own experience is all about. For Christians, who believe in God’s creation and gifts of grace, an attitude that’s open to discovery should be assumed. It isn’t, often, because our lives outside the church don’t reward it, and often our faith communities reflect the larger society’s emphasis on dominance and individualism. But what if we could assume that everything is a gift to us – each encounter, each observation, each emotion we feel, each environment we find ourselves in? Writing this at Christmas time, I can’t help but think of the nativity story, which is a narrative of discovery. No one says no to the miraculous truths that they’re discovering. Mary doesn’t say, “I can’t give birth to the savior of the world, because I didn’t think to do so all on my own,” the shepherds don’t say “angels can’t speak to us because we’re too unimportant,” the magi don’t say “a king can’t be hanging out in a stable.” All of them discover new truths about the world and God, and agree to that discovery.

We ended the evening by playing an amazing game called “three things.” The principle is simple. One person starts out as an object, animate or otherwise, a giraffe, for example. Another person gets up and says “I’m the giraffe’s keeper.” A third person gets up and says, “I’m the keeper’s secret desire to work with apes.” The audience then shouts out which of these three things should be kept to start the next scene with. “Keep the desire to work with apes!” That person stays while the other two sit down, and a new person gets up and says, “I’m a lonely ape who needs a friend,” and a third gets up and says “I’m a banana that’s hoping not to get eaten.” And so on. As we played this, we reached the point in the retreat when people really started laughing, when you could feel a sense of rising joy in the community. There was an understanding that any idea would do, that no one would be criticized for their choices, that supportive laughter was the norm.

The next morning, after Holy Communion, we returned to circle games, playing the scatologically named “Where Have My Fingers Been?” As we went around the circle, each person held up a finger as the person next to them did likewise, and initiated a brief scene based on a location prompt. Maybe someone would tell them “you’re in a zoo!” The first person would waggle a finger like it was a character and say, “I’m a giraffe.” The second would waggle a finger in response and say “I miss my zoo keeper.” The first person would complete the scene with one more line, “The apes have it lucky.” It seems easy on paper, but when the scene came around it was easy to freeze, trying to think of something clever or funny to say. In improv this is called “getting in your head.” It’s a response based in fear, in worry over acceptance, sometimes in a competitive desire to dominate others and prove yourself to be the best. Games like “Where Have My Fingers Been” are designed to get you out of your head, away from the worries over acceptance or criticism and purely invested in the moment you’re inhabiting. This is a very difficult thing to learn how to do, and the next exercises reenforced the lesson as we did more very brief scenes, initiating dialog and responding to the initiation.

In some ways, this process of remaining open to discovery even as we initiate ideas or respond to other people’s ideas is very like the concept of nepsis in the contemplative tradition. Nepsis can best be described as “the mind watching the mind.” It corresponds to Jesus’s statement in Mark 7:15 that “there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.” When I let my mind watch my mind, I become aware of all of the criticism, the competitiveness, the fears and anxieties that shape my thoughts on an almost moment to moment basis. It is those things that make it hard for me to be authentic in community, to open myself up and be truly vulnerable to others. One of the benefits of contemplative prayer is that it makes one aware of these thoughts, and then offers an invitation to let them go, to move beyond them and rest solely in God. Oddly, to me this is also one of the benefits of a game like “Where Have My Fingers Been?” It teaches us that moment to moment thoughts aren’t really that important, that they can be caught and released, and that there is always someone there to accept them without judgement.

And after practicing this a number of times, we found ourselves truly playing together, creating two person scenes of great joy and vitality. By Saturday afternoon, we had become a community, and the context had changed. We were no longer a reunion, or a conglomerate of different ministries and houses. We were a church. This became powerfully apparent at the very end of the retreat. Aaron Wright and Jane asked us to offer each other improv blessings. We broke into groups of three, and each person was blessed by the other two, prayed over, told what the others appreciated about them. I tear up just thinking about it. And I know, now, that true community comes into being when people let go of their internal editors, and even more importantly, their internal critics, when they don’t try to control the world but open themselves up to discovering it, when they find the freedom to play, and when they choose to bless the specificity of each other’s being. Community can’t be created, it can only be discovered.

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Posted in Communities, Featured, Reflections · Tagged Community, improv, improvisation, relationships, Retreats, Spirituality, Young Adults · Leave a Reply ·
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