The Voice of Evil

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"I will separate them, one

from the other,

drive them into

isolation

(cars and cubicles and personal space),

and then

let them believe

that they need to be normalized,

to be like all of those people

that they don't really know

at all."

Prayer for Leaders and Times of Transition

Original Photo
June 11, 2013 in Madison, NJ

Dear God, things are changing.  We are scared.  We are excited.  We are confused.  We are intrigued.  We are angry.  We are passionate.  We don’t even know what we feel.  Reassure us, strengthen us, calm us, enliven us.  Make us the people You hope for us to be.  Remind us that You’ll do some of that work, but that it’s up to us to respond to You.  We simply ask that You keep the conversation going, reminding us to speak the Truth and listen for Your Word.

We pray especially for those in our community who are lost or alone or suffering and for those who have been denied Your love.  Guide us to share Your love so that all may know it well.

We pray for [our outgoing senior pastor and his family] as they continue to serve You in their new church and community.  Let them find there not only work to be done, but also a home.  Give them Your strength and courage and be with them wherever they go.

We pray for [our incoming senior pastor and his family].  Let them find here not only work to be done, but also a home.  Help us to be respectful of the family’s time and space, but relentless in our support.

We pray for President Obama and all of our leaders in government; that they make wise decisions and lead with grace.

And we pray for the nation of Turkey in the midst of the turmoil there, especially these past two weeks.  We pray for the lives who have been lost and for all those left behind to pick up the pieces.  We pray for Prime Minister Erdogan, that he might hear his people; that he might fight for them and not against them.

Just and merciful God, help us to be slow to defame and vilify our leaders - political, religious, and otherwise - but quick to hold them accountable to such values as honesty and compassion.  Let us be honest and compassionate as we recognize our human leaders’ limitations and strengths, just as we recognize our own.  Let us know both justice and mercy.

And God, we trust that You have commissioned our leaders and that they are filled with the Spirit, like Moses and Joshua.  We remember that our leaders are capable of feeling fear and reluctance just as we are - just as Moses and Joshua were - but that, with Your blessing, they are also capable of leading us into the life that You promise us.

We confess that we have not always lived into that promise; we haven’t always believed it or acted like it’s true.  We confess that sometimes we feel distant from You or angry with You or don’t understand Your purposes.  Thank you for not letting that come between us.  Thank You for letting us know Your love and forgiveness even when we have done nothing to deserve them, because that is when we need You most.

In Jesus’ name and by the power of the Spirit, we pray.  Amen.

---

Pastoral Prayer offered on June 16, 2013
Chatham United Methodist Church, Chatham, NJ

Liturgy for Change in Pastoral Leadership

This is an original liturgy that I wrote for a worship service in a United Methodist Church. The senior pastor of six years has been appointed to serve elsewhere now, and this will be the first week in his absence before the incoming pastor arrives in July.

The scriptural reading for the day will be Joshua 1:1-9 (NRSV), so the other elements of the service incorporate that text, as well as a nod or two to it being Father's Day and a significant event in the life of the congregation.

Bold font indicates that the entire congregation reads the portion aloud.

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CALL TO WORSHIP

One: We gather in this place meant for service and sacred conversation.
All: Hear God's word to Moses:
The place where you are standing is holy ground.

One: But this is just one of many places where we can encounter God.
All: Hear God's word to Joshua:
I will be with you wherever you go.

One: We travel near and far, seeking the God who is ever-present.
All: Hear God's word to Moses:
I AM. This is my name forever.

One: We bring with us our fears and our failures.
All: Hear God's word to Joshua:
Be strong and courageous.

One: We trust in God's Word; God's presence and promise.
All: Steadfast and sure, God leads us in every age and season.


MORNING PRAYER

Loving God, you who are our father and our mother, we thank you for giving us life and teaching us to live. We thank you for all of the family and friends, leaders and communities who have nurtured us and guided us. Forgive us when we lose our way. Forgive us when we forget that we belong to each other. Teach us to recognize your presence and to trust in your promise. In the name of your Son, Jesus, we pray. Amen.


PRAYER OF DEDICATION (OFFERING)

Eternal God, you do so much to prepare us for the work you would have us do. You provide resources and leadership. You enliven us with energy and inspire us with ideas. You call on us while we are still flawed and fragile people, yet you sustain us with your Spirit. Let our offerings be part of your healing, life-giving work. And in all things, help us to be ministers to one another and to the people of the world. Amen.

A Litany for Father's Day

I wrote this litany as part of a worship service with a United Methodist congregation on June 16, 2013.

It is loosely inspired by a litany for Mother's Day by Amy Young over at The Messy Middle. Her litany is called The Wide Spectrum of Mothering and included in her "open letter to pastors (a non-mom speaks about Mother's Day)" - which is a great post in and of itself. Click here to check it out.

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One: To those who have welcomed a child into your hearts and homes—
All: We celebrate with you.

One: To those who long to be fathers, but who have no children of your own—
All: We long with you.

One: To those who are expectant fathers—
All: We anticipate with you.

One: To those whose fathers are ill in body, mind, or spirit—
All: We sit with you.

One: To those who have lost your fathers or who never got to know your fathers—
All: We grieve with you.

One: And to those who have fathered us by giving us life or teaching us to live—
All: We honor you.

PostSecret and the Art of Confession

from an Anonymous Contributor

Today is Sunday, which for me means two things: church (although I sometimes attend Saturday evening vigil mass) and PostSecret.

PostSecret has been my Sunday morning companion for something like nine years now. For those who don’t know, it’s a community art project where anonymous strangers send postcards confessing their secrets; select postcards are scanned and posted online, others are used in travelling exhibits, still others are shuffled away in a box somewhere—or for all I know, destroyed—never to be seen again. The website is updated promptly every Sunday.

I get a voyeuristic pleasure from reading these secrets. It’s human nature. Some of them I identify with, others I empathize with, many I judge with a sneer. Like I said. Human nature. When other people lay their souls bare, it’s hard not to compare yourself to what you see before you. Judgment. It’s easy.

PostSecret also provides a service to the writers of the secrets. We get pleasure from reading others’ secrets, yes, but for some, this website is the only way to unburden themselves of something that has hung over their heads, suppressing their natures. How many postcards have I read thanking PostSecret for being the only one who will listen? Or talking about the weight of a secret having been lifted off of someone because they sent in their postcard?

These postcards are confessions, plain and simple. From our very youngest age of cognizance, we learn to recognize basic right from wrong. We feel badly when we’ve done wrong, and the best way to undo that wrong is to confess it, to go back and try to right it. So Frank Warren, the creator of PostSecret, has provided an outlet into which we might anonymously pour our guiltiest feelings—our deepest and darkest.

It’s a commendable service. Often the secrets sent in are those of unrequited love, clandestine shame, or are addressed to those who have passed out of the secret holders’ lives. The things that are hardest to verbalize, but weigh heaviest on the minds of those they concern. Confession.

I myself have only sent one postcard into PostSecret. I remember sending it in and thinking that maybe I would feel this sense of burden lifted from me. But as I closed the big blue mailbox, I felt nothing significant change. I smiled because I was participating in an art project that I had enjoyed for a few years, but it wasn’t anything earth-shattering.

And I have to ask myself, why?

PostSecret, for all the support it provides to those with secrets—a community of those who may not otherwise have a community—is Confession.

There’s something very human to that word. Confession is an act we commit in response to something we’ve done. Using our own words, we unburden ourselves of the guilt we’ve felt. We can confess to our friends and family, we can confess to our priests and pastors, we can even confess anonymously to Frank Warren and the PostSecret community.

It is a great regret, as a Catholic, that so many of my fellow Catholics call that certain sacrament simply, “Confession.”

Because while, yes, confession is involved in the process of this sacrament, it is simply not the sacrament of Confession.

Keep in mind, Confession terrified me as a child. I went once a year, when my mother hard-handedly forced me because of the upcoming Easter season. I would leave it to the last week I could, I would pray while waiting in line that time would run out before I had to take my turn, and I remember trembling physically before, during and after. It was awful.

And now this is one of my very favorite sacraments.

After years of struggling with this requirement of my faith; several New Year Resolutions; a couple of college-level religion classes; chats with priests, friends, and family; I’ve finally figured out why.

It offers something Frank Warren and the PostSecret community can never offer. It gives us Reconciliation—the proper name for this sacrament.

In stark contrast to Confession’s human restrictions, Reconciliation abounds with God’s unlimited abilities. Humans taint confession with human judgment. That voyeuristic quality PostSecret lends to the process. The sacrament of Reconciliation, however, is the vehicle of delivering the perfect forgiveness that Christ died on the cross to offer us. We break the old covenant with God, and God fixes it.

I undoubtedly hear heavy influences from an argument which seized my interest early in my college career and has doggedly stuck with me ever since—the debate over justification through acts versus justification through faith. I feel that no matter what theological topic I try to discuss, it always comes back to this, and I inevitably side with justification through faith.

One day, I saw one of the giant boards churches like to put up to try to entice you to come to services. Normally I find them trite or bordering on offensive, but this one struck me:

“God gives and forgives. We get and forget.”

Humans can never earn the forgiveness God gives us time and time again. While we, in the act of confession, admit our wrongdoings and acknowledge that in which we have participated to separate us from our God, it is God’s forgiveness which reconciles the covenant between deity and human. There is no anonymity.

Whether a screen is between you and your confessor, as it often is in the Catholic church, or if you’re praying alone in a room where no one can hear you but God, the act of Reconciliation is admitting your sins face to face with your creator. And unlike the human act of confession, where PostSecret-esque anonymity is favored because of judgments which might be passed or opinions swayed, the divine act of reconciliation is as candid and perfect as its creator.

So when I sent in that single postcard to PostSecret, I was confessing, but I didn’t get the sense of relief so many receive from it. My actions cannot relieve me of my secrets; it is my God and my God alone who can do that. It is Reconciliation I have come to expect from unburdening myself of my secrets, and it was confession only which PostSecret was able to provide.

I had chosen Acts over Faith, asked the divine of the mundane, and had received from it all it could offer—a feeling which rang hollow and empty, as so many human attributes do when held in comparison with their heavenly counterparts.

Little Talks

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'Cause though the truth may vary,

this ship will carry our bodies safe to shore.

-Of Monsters and Men

Evangelism is active listening. It is not colonialism. It is not sharing my faith. It is hearing the God-story unfold in another person's life. That's what I'm learning this semester in my required-for-the-ordination-that-I-may-or-may-not-pursue-someday Evangelism course.

Active listening, no matter how active, can sneak up on you when you least expect it.

Today, as I prepared to leave work (of the nannying variety), I talked to my employer and a colleague of hers.

"This is so funny," the colleague said, as our conversation came to a close. "In the car on the way over here this morning, I was just thinking, 'I don't know if I believe in God anymore.' And now here I am, telling you about all this."

I can't blame this one squarely on occupational hazard; our chat had been just about as far as can be from the topic of God.

But one bit of conversation had led to another, and before long, the colleague recounted for us some stories about her sister who died of cancer some time ago.

The two sisters were extraordinarily linked. Numbers Eight and Nine of nine children in the family, they were raised more like twins. They shared so much - everything from sleeping spaces to daily routines.

Our storyteller described a time that she went on vacation as a young adult. While there, she had an inexplicable urge to buy her sister a pair of socks with a silly design to them. As she and her husband wandered the store, she mused frequently about how the socks reminded her of her sister. Her husband teased her for this sudden obsession with socks - the sort of gift that she had never given to her sister before - but never tried to talk her out of the strange souvenir.

Then, when they reached the cash register, she set them aside. Her husband was shocked that, after all that, she wasn't buying them.

When they returned from the trip, her family had difficult news that they hadn't wanted to share across the distance. Her sister, Kathy, had survived a car accident but had lost both of her feet. Both of her legs had been amputated just below the knees.

The same night that Kathy had been through hours of surgery, her sister, still away and unaware, did not sleep at all. This was strange to her at the time - so uncharacteristic of her. She liked to think she could sleep on a picket fence if need be. But as Kathy struggled through the accident and the aftermath, her sister kept vigil for her without even knowing it.

It was years later that Kathy was diagnosed with cancer, which eventually took her life. One day, as her sister was driving home, she thought again of her twin-soul. She didn't know whether or not Kathy had believed in God, or whether or not that should matter in what awaited her spirit, or whether or not Kathy was at peace. It bothered her - the not-knowing.

It was then that she came to a traffic light and stopped. She glanced to the side and saw a shipyard that she often saw while on this drive, many times before and many times after this day. But this was the one and only day that she saw a particular boat's name scrawled in paint along its stern:

Kathy's Fine

She is.

The Carpenter's Apprentice

A Parable by Kimberley Fais

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Manuel made his way through the woodshop that he had inherited from his father. Now himself an esteemed carpenter, Manuel found the apprentice at a workbench in the back, putting the finishing touches on a model ship about the size and weight of his own two hands.

Seeing his craftsmanship, Manuel told the apprentice, "You will build a boat fit for a journey."

The apprentice looked up in surprise. "I will?"

"You will."

"When?"

"While I am away."

Without another word, Manuel set out, and the apprentice set to work.

The apprentice was overwhelmed with honor and excitement. This was his chance to do something real and useful. Oh, he loved fashioning toys that would delight and entertain children and knickknacks that would adorn shelves and mantels, but never before had he been entrusted to build a true vessel.

He made the boat from a dense wood, the most extravagant he could afford. It was the kind of wood known to make exquisite furniture, and the apprentice imagined his ship transporting a king across the sea. He embellished the mast and carved a figurehead for the bow. He sanded the hull smooth and drenched the interior with varnish until it shone. He added every imaginable accent and amenity to raise the boat’s appeal.

When Manuel returned, he found the boat at the woodshop.

"It's heavy," said Manuel.

The apprentice quickly tried to reassure the carpenter. "Wait," he said, bustling around the entirety of the boat and plucking off various pieces. "I can fix that. I’ll get rid of the extras."

The carpenter shook his head. "Build again."

Without another word, Manuel set out, and the apprentice set to work.

The apprentice was embarrassed about his mistake; that he had gotten so carried away, so complacent. Of course his first real ship should have been humble, simple, understated. This time, he built a boat that was lightweight and thin and very nearly bare, save for the most essential of essentials; nothing unnecessary or cumbersome to weigh it down.

When Manuel returned, he found the boat at the woodshop.

"It's light," said Manuel.

"It'll float," the apprentice said proudly.

"And crumble in the waves," said the carpenter, a regretful expression to his brow. "Build again."

Without another word, Manuel set out, and the apprentice set to work.

The apprentice found just the right sort of wood for a boat, but he became self-conscious about his ability to build a ship that would not be too unwieldy or unbalanced or structurally flawed. He had failed twice already, and he desperately wanted this boat to be one fit for water. He made a sturdy little boat, one that surely could endure a bit of tossing in the waves without toppling.

When Manuel returned, he found the boat in the woodshop.

"It's small," said Manuel.

"Size doesn't matter," wailed the apprentice, "as long as the boat is balanced and strong. That's what you said!"

"You made a boat for you," said the carpenter, "a safe and simple project. This time you must build for more than yourself."

The apprentice sighed with impatience. "Come on, Manuel. Even Noah got measurements for the ark. Just how big should this thing be?"

The carpenter replied, "Big enough."

"OK," said the apprentice. "So what is that in cubits?"

The carpenter simply smiled and said, "Build again."

Then, without another word, Manuel set out, and the apprentice set to work.

The apprentice built the biggest ship he could build. If a boat for one made him seem petty and self-centered and aloof, a boat built for a massive crowd would surely be inviting and triumphant. No one would be turned away from a ship this great, and what a tribute it would be to Manuel, the mentor whose apprentice single-handedly built such a remarkable ship.

When Manuel returned, he found the boat in the woodshop.

"It's big," said Manuel.

The apprentice looked hopeful. "Big enough?"

"Too big," said Manuel.

"Whoa, whoa, wait." The apprentice leapt to the side of the boat in its defense. "Are you worried about the floating thing again? Because I know this one will float. I used the strong, lightweight wood and everything."

"Too big," said Manuel, "because there are not enough sailors to manage it."

"So we'll get more sailors."

"We will have only the sailors we will have," said Manuel.

"You know what this is all about," the apprentice insisted. "You know, but you're not telling me, and it isn't helping. How many sailors will need to board this thing?"

But the carpenter only smiled and said, "Build again." As he turned to go, the apprentice caught his arm.

"Manuel," the apprentice insisted, "I've built again and again. I need to know more. I need to know who is traveling and where they are going and how best to get them there."

"Yes," said the carpenter. "Yes, you do."

So the carpenter set out, and the apprentice went into the center of town.

He watched and listened and wandered the streets, noticing things he never noticed before. He realized then that ever since he became the carpenter’s apprentice, he tended only to notice people enjoying their handiwork—the children who had received toys built in the shop; shopkeepers using shelves and furniture and tools crafted from wood.

For the first time in a long time, the apprentice walked through town and saw and heard what people needed. The apprentice had only received his assignments from the carpenter, but it seemed that the carpenter had wanted him to surface from the woodshop so that he could talk to the townspeople himself.

But no one he met had any need of a boat.

Then he met a family just beyond the market. With some weary reluctance, the woman with a wriggling toddler in her arms explained to the apprentice that they all needed to get home, across the sea, and didn't know yet how they would make the journey.

The apprentice looked at the family; the mother and a few of her grown children would be strong and able sailors, and some smaller children would need a safe space to travel with them.

The apprentice smiled and said, "Come back to the woodshop with me to tell me more, and I will build a boat fit for the journey."

Wesley's Quadrilateral (Parody)

A parody to the tune of What Makes You Beautiful by One Direction

Sunday school teachers! Seminarians! Methodist nerds!

Ever get so happy about the Wesleyan Quadrilateral that you just want to sing about it?

You are not alone. That's why this exists.

Also, because one of my junior youth brings up One Direction in nearly every conversation and this seemed like a wise business move.



You're insecure
Don't know the four
Items that make up a religious core
Why get caught up
In abstract stuff?
Simple geometry will be enough

Methodists got a good way to say it
Four little words will do

[Chorus]
Experience makes Scripture more than just a tract
Tradition's what churches launched in the Book of Acts
And Reason's what your brain makes out of all the facts
So now you know
Oh Oh
Wesley's Quadrilateral

Miracles are things for some to see
Parables can make a mess of simplicity
There are so many ways each person can believe
So now you know
Oh Oh
Wesley's Quadrilateral
Oh Oh
Wesley's Quadrilateral

Say, "C-come on.
Knew all along"?
But just in case, I put it in a song

Wesley got cred
Once he was dead
And now this box thing will be stuck in my head

Methodists got a good way to say it
Four little words will do

[Chorus]
Experience makes Scripture more than just a tract
Tradition's what churches launched in the Book of Acts
And Reason's what your brain makes out of all the facts
So now you know
Oh Oh
Wesley's Quadrilateral

Miracles are things for some to see
Parables can make a mess of simplicity
There are so many ways each person can believe
So now you know
Oh Oh
Wesley's Quadrilateral
Oh Oh
Wesley's Quadrilateral

Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na
Na-na-na-na-na-na
Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na
Na-na-na-na-na-na

[Chorus]
Experience makes Scripture more than just a tract
Tradition's what churches launched in the Book of Acts...

(Spoken Interruption) Actually, some of our traditions can be traced even further.

...And Reason's what your brain makes out of all the facts
So now you know
Oh Oh
Wesley's Quadrilateral

Miracles are things for some to see
Parables can make a mess of simplicity
There are so many ways each person can believe
So now you know
Oh Oh
Wesley's Quadrilateral
Oh Oh
Wesley's Quadrilateral
Oh Oh
Wesley's Quadrilateral