As the remaining days of my sabbatical/renewal dwindle, I now face the rather daunting "re-entry process." To be honest, this part of the sabbatical/renewal time is something neither I nor the congregation gave much thought to. We were so concerned about the details of what would happen during our time apart that we gave little formal consideration to just how it would feel to get back together again as pastor and congregation.
I naively thought that I would head off and do my own thing for four months and then pick up where I had left off as pastor. I don't know how the congregation is handling the end of this renewal time, but I am experiencing a host of feelings and emotions. Here are some of the major ones:
1. Excitement - I'm excited to find out just how our journeys as pastor and congregation complemented eachother. I am excited to hear about my church's journey and to tell everyone about mine. I am excited to see good friends again, to preach, and to lead worship.
2. Regret - I regret that this sabbatical/renewal time is ending. These four months have been magical and more than I could ever have anticipated or hoped for. I know that this has been a once-in-a-lifetime experience and will not be repeated ever in quite the same way. I understand a bit better now in the story of the Transfiguration just why Peter might have wanted to build those little shelters around Jesus, Elijah, and Moses in order to capture the moment forever and never let it go.
3. Grief - I grieve the loss of time, unscheduled time, that this sabbatical has given me. I grieve the loss of unfettered and unhurried time to read, reflect, walk, be with Joe and the kids, visit and share coffee and cookies with my parents.
4. Restored - I don't mean restored in the sense of caught up on sleep and rested but restored in the sense of feeling better balanced inside and therefore less stressed. I feel more firmly centered in Christian ministry and the promise it holds for transforming the world.
5. Apprehensive - I know that my congregation has made connections and in a sense formed a new community while I have been gone. I don't know what the impact of those new relationships will be on my role as returning pastor.
6. Changed - Everything I read about sabbaticals includes something about how you change during them. And I guess it's true because I have changed in some ways.
I worked hard at being in the moment during these past four months. I knew that if I looked back at how much time had passed or forward at how much time was left that before I knew it, the whole thing would be over and I would not know where the time had gone. Most of the time I did a pretty good job at just living one day at a time, and that is a change I would like to keep working on.
I also realized how precious - and essential - the concept of sabbath is for me. This deepening sense of the need for regular renewal time is something I want to continue to work on. I have two weeks of study leave as part of my terms of call but have seldom used them other than a day or two here and there. I would like to be more intentional about my renewal time going forward.
I also renewed my connection to God and to my spiritual self. I would like to keep that connection strong in my ministry. How do I take what I have experienced and learned and incorporate it into "ordinary" time? That is surely the question. In that regard, here's a quote a found by Alice Walker on someone else's sabbtical blog: “Anybody can observe the Sabbath, but making it holy surely takes the rest of the week.”
7. Blessed - These past four months have truly been a blessing for me - in ways that are so crystal clear but also in ways I am sure I have yet to know!
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Sacred Space and Worship: What is the Connection?
Throughout my sabbatical/renewal journey, I have been exploring the theme of the sacred space and worship. My travel to Peru, Canada, and Scotland and my building the labyrinth and my reading and reflecting over these past four months have been my way of searching for an answer to the question of what is sacred space and how does it relate to worship anyway.
During John Bell's program on Iona, he defined worship as "a gift to God, not entertainment for us." He went on to say that worship is the faith community sharing in love before God and with each other that which is most important to them. One definition of sacred space then might be the site where that sharing takes place. It could be in a 20th century church or in a 12th century abbey. It could be at the top of a mountain, in a garden, by a flowing stream. It could be in what some would call the crumbling ruins of an Incan temple. For Christians, it could be anywhere where two or three or more are gathered in Jesus' name. For most of us, I guess that leaves out the golf course.
If worship is our gift to God, then surely a foundational question is why bother giving a gift to the Holy One anyway. But before you can answer that question, you need to answer the question of how important God is in your life. What has God done for you? What do you look to God for? Who is God for you anyway?
If, in your heart of hearts, God is irrelevant to you, then you have no need to worship, no need to give this gift. Then you can head to the golf course with no regrets.
However, if, in your heart of hearts, God has meaning for you in any sort of ultimate way, then giving this gift of worship is an extremely important thing for you to do. IGiving the gift is the only thing you can do. Heading to the golf course then is really not an option - or a substitute for the gift.
Seen in that light, worship in a sacred place is outside of the realm of day to day priorities. Worship is not one of a number of activities on your "To Do" list.
We all need to answer the question not once, but every day (and particularly every Sunday!). Is this gift to God that we have an opportunity to make more important than having a late breakfast and reading the newspaper? Is this gift to God that we have an opportunity to make more important than an athletic contest or mowing the lawn? If the answer is no, giving this gift is not more important than a late breakfast and the newspaper, not more important than the athletic contest or mowing the lawn, then what does this say about us and about how we feel about our relationship with God?
Why is it that so many of us these days make choices about how we use our time as if God was irrelevant to us? How we answer that question says a lot about who we are as human beings, as children of God. Can we be all we are meant to be by going it alone - or can we be all we are meant to be only in relationship with God, our Creator?
All this, of course, brings us full circle to our first question about worship in sacred places - ultimately, what meaning does God and your relationship to God have for you - and will you have the courage to express that relationship by giving to God the gift of worship?
During John Bell's program on Iona, he defined worship as "a gift to God, not entertainment for us." He went on to say that worship is the faith community sharing in love before God and with each other that which is most important to them. One definition of sacred space then might be the site where that sharing takes place. It could be in a 20th century church or in a 12th century abbey. It could be at the top of a mountain, in a garden, by a flowing stream. It could be in what some would call the crumbling ruins of an Incan temple. For Christians, it could be anywhere where two or three or more are gathered in Jesus' name. For most of us, I guess that leaves out the golf course.
If worship is our gift to God, then surely a foundational question is why bother giving a gift to the Holy One anyway. But before you can answer that question, you need to answer the question of how important God is in your life. What has God done for you? What do you look to God for? Who is God for you anyway?
If, in your heart of hearts, God is irrelevant to you, then you have no need to worship, no need to give this gift. Then you can head to the golf course with no regrets.
However, if, in your heart of hearts, God has meaning for you in any sort of ultimate way, then giving this gift of worship is an extremely important thing for you to do. IGiving the gift is the only thing you can do. Heading to the golf course then is really not an option - or a substitute for the gift.
Seen in that light, worship in a sacred place is outside of the realm of day to day priorities. Worship is not one of a number of activities on your "To Do" list.
We all need to answer the question not once, but every day (and particularly every Sunday!). Is this gift to God that we have an opportunity to make more important than having a late breakfast and reading the newspaper? Is this gift to God that we have an opportunity to make more important than an athletic contest or mowing the lawn? If the answer is no, giving this gift is not more important than a late breakfast and the newspaper, not more important than the athletic contest or mowing the lawn, then what does this say about us and about how we feel about our relationship with God?
Why is it that so many of us these days make choices about how we use our time as if God was irrelevant to us? How we answer that question says a lot about who we are as human beings, as children of God. Can we be all we are meant to be by going it alone - or can we be all we are meant to be only in relationship with God, our Creator?
All this, of course, brings us full circle to our first question about worship in sacred places - ultimately, what meaning does God and your relationship to God have for you - and will you have the courage to express that relationship by giving to God the gift of worship?
Monday, October 10, 2011
Sacred Sites in Scotland
For those of you who have been following this blog, you know that each of my sabbatical/renewal adventures were linked to one of my five senses. My trip to Scotland was predicated on using my eyes to see sacred places.
St. Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh was my first encounter with the Church of Scotland and sacred spaces in this part of the United Kingdom. I wasn't sure what to expect from a Presbyterian Cathedral. Like most cathedrals, it was cavernous with various carvings and side chapels. The Thistle Chapel was the most ornate and beautiful with loads of detail, including a small carving of an angel with bagpipes. It is the home of the Order of the Thistle, Scotland's great order of chivalry with its roots in the Middle Ages. There are 16 stalls for the 16 named Knights of the Order with their heraldic crests on canopies above.
And, of course, when we were on Iona, we worshipped daily in the Abbey Church. To look up at the stone ceiling, arches, and buttresses and realize how ancient parts of the church were and how many people before me had worshipped there each time left me awed.
We saw other Church of Scotland churches as well on our travels, a number of them unfortunately boarded up and for sale. In fact, you can go on a website and find listings of all the churches in Scotland on the market. The Church of Scotland seems to be facing the same problems of large buildings and dwindling numbers as the moderate church here in the US. In both places, the evangelical right has usurped the name "Christian" and in many ways given us moderate folks a bad rep.
When I wrote the grant proposal for this sabbatical, I had a very romantic view of hiking in Scotland. First of all the Brits call it "walking," and perhaps that is what threw me off. In my imaginings, I saw Joe and myself walking on country lanes through small towns and hamlets, stopping by and photographing small churches on the way. The roads were always flat, and the sun was always shining. In reality, that didn't happen at all. It rained every day, and we were hiking across lonely moors and up and down Scottish mountains. There were no little villages and hamlets along the way, with the exception of the deserted ruings of a croft here and there.
And so I found myself looking for the sacred in my surroundings instead of in churches. And perhaps that is as it should have been since this part of the world developed its own unique brand of Christianity - Celtic Christianity - which was grounded in our close relationship with the natural world around us - the streams and hills, the wind and stormy weather.
If Jesus had lived in Scotland, he would not have talked about the lilies of the field but rather the heather on the hillsides. The living water of which he spoke to the Samaritan woman would not have been water drawn from a well but rather water gushing in rivulets down a mountain. When Elijah found God in the stillness, here in Scotland, he would not have been standing at the entrance to a cave but rather he would have been sitting in the lush green grass in a stone hermit's cell surrounded by hills and silence.
And so I found the sacred in the wind and the rain. I found it in the sapphire color of the sea on Iona. I found it in the purple of the heather. I found it in the rocks on Iona, some of which are some of the oldest rocks on earth - 2 1/2 billion years old! John L. Patterson wrote this about Iona: "The rocks of Iona are little older than the ocean from which they rise. The Reverend Edward Craig Trenholme in The Story of Iona (1909) has written: ‘When our planet from a glowing mass of combustion like the sun, shriveled into a globe with a solid crust and the first oceans condensed in the hollows of its hot surface - then it was that the Archaean rocks, of which Iona and the Outer Hebrides consist, were formed on the sea bottom. They contain no fossils, for, as far as is known, no living creatures as yet existed in the desolate waste of waters or on the primeval land. They are hard, rugged and twisted, and in Iona as elsewhere marble had been developed by the vast heat and pressure they have undergone.'
When we were on Iona, a 12 year old from Australia in our group shared at our final reflection time when she had felt most alive that week. She told us it was when she was on top of a hill, by herself, dancing and feeling the wind that always blows on Iona on her face and whipping back her long hair. How could you not feel alive, she said, when the glory of God was so obviously all around you?
St. Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh was my first encounter with the Church of Scotland and sacred spaces in this part of the United Kingdom. I wasn't sure what to expect from a Presbyterian Cathedral. Like most cathedrals, it was cavernous with various carvings and side chapels. The Thistle Chapel was the most ornate and beautiful with loads of detail, including a small carving of an angel with bagpipes. It is the home of the Order of the Thistle, Scotland's great order of chivalry with its roots in the Middle Ages. There are 16 stalls for the 16 named Knights of the Order with their heraldic crests on canopies above.
And, of course, when we were on Iona, we worshipped daily in the Abbey Church. To look up at the stone ceiling, arches, and buttresses and realize how ancient parts of the church were and how many people before me had worshipped there each time left me awed.
We saw other Church of Scotland churches as well on our travels, a number of them unfortunately boarded up and for sale. In fact, you can go on a website and find listings of all the churches in Scotland on the market. The Church of Scotland seems to be facing the same problems of large buildings and dwindling numbers as the moderate church here in the US. In both places, the evangelical right has usurped the name "Christian" and in many ways given us moderate folks a bad rep.
When I wrote the grant proposal for this sabbatical, I had a very romantic view of hiking in Scotland. First of all the Brits call it "walking," and perhaps that is what threw me off. In my imaginings, I saw Joe and myself walking on country lanes through small towns and hamlets, stopping by and photographing small churches on the way. The roads were always flat, and the sun was always shining. In reality, that didn't happen at all. It rained every day, and we were hiking across lonely moors and up and down Scottish mountains. There were no little villages and hamlets along the way, with the exception of the deserted ruings of a croft here and there.
And so I found myself looking for the sacred in my surroundings instead of in churches. And perhaps that is as it should have been since this part of the world developed its own unique brand of Christianity - Celtic Christianity - which was grounded in our close relationship with the natural world around us - the streams and hills, the wind and stormy weather.
If Jesus had lived in Scotland, he would not have talked about the lilies of the field but rather the heather on the hillsides. The living water of which he spoke to the Samaritan woman would not have been water drawn from a well but rather water gushing in rivulets down a mountain. When Elijah found God in the stillness, here in Scotland, he would not have been standing at the entrance to a cave but rather he would have been sitting in the lush green grass in a stone hermit's cell surrounded by hills and silence.
And so I found the sacred in the wind and the rain. I found it in the sapphire color of the sea on Iona. I found it in the purple of the heather. I found it in the rocks on Iona, some of which are some of the oldest rocks on earth - 2 1/2 billion years old! John L. Patterson wrote this about Iona: "The rocks of Iona are little older than the ocean from which they rise. The Reverend Edward Craig Trenholme in The Story of Iona (1909) has written: ‘When our planet from a glowing mass of combustion like the sun, shriveled into a globe with a solid crust and the first oceans condensed in the hollows of its hot surface - then it was that the Archaean rocks, of which Iona and the Outer Hebrides consist, were formed on the sea bottom. They contain no fossils, for, as far as is known, no living creatures as yet existed in the desolate waste of waters or on the primeval land. They are hard, rugged and twisted, and in Iona as elsewhere marble had been developed by the vast heat and pressure they have undergone.'
When we were on Iona, a 12 year old from Australia in our group shared at our final reflection time when she had felt most alive that week. She told us it was when she was on top of a hill, by herself, dancing and feeling the wind that always blows on Iona on her face and whipping back her long hair. How could you not feel alive, she said, when the glory of God was so obviously all around you?
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Photos from Oban, Iona, and Staffa
The Island of Iona
You begin in Oban and take a 45 minute ferry ride to Craignure on Mull. Then you take a bus on a single track road across Mull to Fionnphort where you catch a second ferry for a brief 5 - 10 minute ride to Iona. The first thing you see is the impressive Abbey church.
The present one was built in 1203 and restored in the 20th century. The Abbey marks the foundation of a monastic community established by St. Columba in 563 when he was sent from Ireland to do penance on Iona. The monastery he founded was influential in spreading Christianity to the British Isles. The famous illustrated manuscript known as the Book of Kells was created on Iona.
Anyway, the Abbey Church was where we worshipped twice a day for the week we were on Iona. We were part of an intentional community of about 50 people for the week. We lived together, did chores together (I washed windows and Joe cleamed toilets), ate meals together, drank endless cups of tea and coffee together, and participated in a program facilitated by John Bell and Jo Love of the Wild Goose Resource Group, the small staff of which creates wonderful music and creative worship materials.
Our group had people from the US, Canada, Australia, Scotland, England, the Czech Republic, Cameroon, and Sweden. We were clergy, music directors, lay church workers, and people interested in exploring their own spirituality on Iona, truly a "thin place."
A couple of highlights of the week for me was the ceilidh, a marvelous and energetic evening of Scottish dancing. It's kind of like contra dancing or square dancing, but with its own unique flavor. We had a brief instruction time before each dance, which for Joe and me was pretty important since we didn't know any of the steps. However, everyone danced. We were many ages and levels of competence, but it was awesome!
Another highlight was the pilgrimage. We were part of a 7 mile off-road exploration of the island. We began at St. Martin's Cross, an 8th century Celtic Cross and one of the earliest surviving ones. We walked over hill and dale, to the highest point island, to St. Columba's Bay, which is the most beautiful stone beach I have ever seen. Joe and I went back there later to collect rocks and find some Columba's tears, which are marble stones with bits of green serpentine in the shape of tears. Though these are not the oldest rocks on the island, there are some of the oldest rocks on earth there - up to several billion years old! We also walked through the ruins of the nunnery and a wonderful peaceful spot with the remains of a hermit's cell.
Being part of this Christian community for a week was truly a privilege. Though based on the island, Iona Community is a world-wide dispersed ecumenical community of members and friends committed to "working for peace and social justice, rebuilding of community and the renewal of worship."
The present one was built in 1203 and restored in the 20th century. The Abbey marks the foundation of a monastic community established by St. Columba in 563 when he was sent from Ireland to do penance on Iona. The monastery he founded was influential in spreading Christianity to the British Isles. The famous illustrated manuscript known as the Book of Kells was created on Iona.
Anyway, the Abbey Church was where we worshipped twice a day for the week we were on Iona. We were part of an intentional community of about 50 people for the week. We lived together, did chores together (I washed windows and Joe cleamed toilets), ate meals together, drank endless cups of tea and coffee together, and participated in a program facilitated by John Bell and Jo Love of the Wild Goose Resource Group, the small staff of which creates wonderful music and creative worship materials.
Our group had people from the US, Canada, Australia, Scotland, England, the Czech Republic, Cameroon, and Sweden. We were clergy, music directors, lay church workers, and people interested in exploring their own spirituality on Iona, truly a "thin place."
A couple of highlights of the week for me was the ceilidh, a marvelous and energetic evening of Scottish dancing. It's kind of like contra dancing or square dancing, but with its own unique flavor. We had a brief instruction time before each dance, which for Joe and me was pretty important since we didn't know any of the steps. However, everyone danced. We were many ages and levels of competence, but it was awesome!
Another highlight was the pilgrimage. We were part of a 7 mile off-road exploration of the island. We began at St. Martin's Cross, an 8th century Celtic Cross and one of the earliest surviving ones. We walked over hill and dale, to the highest point island, to St. Columba's Bay, which is the most beautiful stone beach I have ever seen. Joe and I went back there later to collect rocks and find some Columba's tears, which are marble stones with bits of green serpentine in the shape of tears. Though these are not the oldest rocks on the island, there are some of the oldest rocks on earth there - up to several billion years old! We also walked through the ruins of the nunnery and a wonderful peaceful spot with the remains of a hermit's cell.
Being part of this Christian community for a week was truly a privilege. Though based on the island, Iona Community is a world-wide dispersed ecumenical community of members and friends committed to "working for peace and social justice, rebuilding of community and the renewal of worship."
Photos of Edinburgh and the West Highland Way
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