tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-104048792024-03-07T08:56:30.112-05:00New Ministry, New PathsJoin the Journey, a Priest's PonderingsMarshall Shelly+http://www.blogger.com/profile/01553078129269667636noreply@blogger.comBlogger1347125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10404879.post-58230336033159572232023-10-10T11:33:00.002-04:002023-10-10T11:33:47.101-04:00Just a Word Can Lead To Bloodshed<h2 style="text-align: left;">When People Pray for Peace And Succumb to Violence</h2><div>In case you didn't note in the title and heading for today's blog, this one is going to be a little dark. I hope you bear with me and join in this journey, at least its beginning. This trip is one we each have to take to its end, and by God's grace we might find healing and hope. For now, let's take these first few steps together. May God be with us, guide our hearts and help us to forge peace in the face of the spectacle of war, of hate, of dehumanizing violence.</div><div><br /></div><div>This is not just about the current explosion of violence in the Holy Land, but it begins here. Rather, it finds its moment of attention. Right now, we are seeing violence and bloodshed in a place many would love to see dedicated to peace and reconciliation.</div><div><br /></div><div>This is a story of humanity, of how a people lay claim to land, to an inheritance and to a place at the table, particularly God's table. It is about Israel. It is also about Christianity...and Islam. It is about East and West, with roots in conflict that date back to a very, very long time ago.</div><div><br /></div><div>At the dawn of history, empires and their gods battled for control and dominance over the land where missiles, bullets and armored vehicles are clashing today. Blood has soaked the earth at times as much as rain has fallen from the heavens.</div><div><br /></div><div>The need for land, rather the need to claim land and personhood, lies at the heart of most of these struggles. If we are to have peace in this life, we must have it in the places where we live and not just in our hearts. Our homes need to be surrounded by environs that we as human beings can feel safe enough in to work, to live, to raise children and care for our own. </div><div><br /></div><div>What happens when more than one people claims a place as its home?</div><div><br /></div><div>In the Holy Land, it has meant thousands of years of war, displacement and continuous cycles of human exile and return. It has meant people of different languages, ethnicities, faiths holding fast to the certainty that this land is theirs, a very gift from God. It binds land to theology, war to faith, God to human conflict. </div><div><br /></div><div>This leads us to a word: supersessionism. A word we seldom hear outside of classrooms does indeed lead to bloodshed.</div><div><br /></div><div>It is a theological construct that maintains God's blessing succeeds from one people to another. From its inception, a dark side of Christianity has been that some maintain God's focus of grace shifted from the people of the Torah to the Church. The people of the Covenant are superseded by the Church as the Body of Christ. For some, that meant that the Church found justification, not only for its existence but also for the persecution of other peoples of the Book. For others, it has meant a claiming of a peculiar grace, to be the chosen people of God. </div><div><br /></div><div>Can one wrest God's favor from another?</div><div><br /></div><div>I don't believe that is so. Yet, people do hew to that...</div><div><br /></div><div>In the end, it isn't about what may be "true." Rather, it is about who gets to claim fiat over truth. There is a difference. Moreover, and too often, those conflicts are really about who has power to determine how other people will live, where they will live and how they will be able to live. It fails be be about what is true, and defaults to a question of control.</div><div><br /></div><div>That vision has seen empires invade and transport whole peoples, dispersing them throughout conquered lands. It has prompted crusades. Jerusalem itself has been sacked and demolished for millennia. The Holy City for many faiths has been razed and rebuilt again and again. Temples, basilicas and mosques are erected on the ruins of other ancient sanctuaries. Small wonder that faith staggers along in the places where the air of violence hangs like smoke in the atmosphere.</div><div><br /></div><div>So virulent is the conflict that rages in the hearts of all who seek to live in that Holy Land, so communicable the struggle for control of both space and narrative, we are each of us bound to feel its impact...even if we don't know anyone personally who is affected. Over and over again, the news shows pictures of people breeching walls erected to divide conflicted peoples. Over and over again, newsreels show non-combatants being taken hostage and thrown bloodied and soiled into vehicles to be taken into redoubts as human shields against reprisals. Over and over again, people are reminded just how raw, how awesome and how terrible is humanity's ability to inflict harm on itself.</div><div><br /></div><div>What are we to do?</div><div><br /></div><div>We begin with prayer, and we continue with faithful witness. It is perhaps the hardest place to hold space, because it places us at the heart of those conflicts and wars. We are in the cross fire, if not of bullets and missiles, but as participants in the struggle for meaning and hope. We can't bring peace if we cannot work together on forging a justice that right now really does pass all understanding. We can't be faithful to our God if we refuse to honor the Divine in the other. </div><div><br /></div><div>One faith cannot supersede another. God does not dispense grace to one people or practice and withdraw it from another. We are not different, but for when our ability to see and celebrate the truth in the other fades, or fails. Right now, we are seeing that internecine failure writ large, but make not mistake: it has always been with us. It will continue to be so until we learn to set aside the words that lead to bloodshed and embrace a peace which lets all walk alongside each other.</div><div><br /></div><div>It is a dream, a hope.</div><div><br /></div><div>May it one day become real, for all of us.</div><div><br /></div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhnx5WNyVB895NLL2ZhfZZ8e1hkP3vn5nYT5hfyHBSBC8h5wt--FVH9oW2g3jHrx7LGR-e7ADeLKT6oZgnibm1iuLMV2lLxJQPLT_oVsxJ-KgYNOu_oonjcNFtBmG-rY7j18iL3W307MyI4OquvCZS0KPz6KqG3YJJKoPYfA9MSBOEg4besME03Hg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="271" data-original-width="367" height="236" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhnx5WNyVB895NLL2ZhfZZ8e1hkP3vn5nYT5hfyHBSBC8h5wt--FVH9oW2g3jHrx7LGR-e7ADeLKT6oZgnibm1iuLMV2lLxJQPLT_oVsxJ-KgYNOu_oonjcNFtBmG-rY7j18iL3W307MyI4OquvCZS0KPz6KqG3YJJKoPYfA9MSBOEg4besME03Hg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Face of War by Salvador Dali</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><br /></div>Marshall Shelly+http://www.blogger.com/profile/01553078129269667636noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10404879.post-38765379822771364752023-10-02T12:57:00.004-04:002023-10-02T12:57:40.346-04:00MEETING THE GOSPEL OF MARK ON THE EDGE OF THE WILDERNESS<h2 style="text-align: left;"> A Markan Sojourn</h2><div><div>1 ἀρχὴ τοῦ εὐαγγελίου ἰησοῦ χριστοῦ [υἱοῦ θεοῦ]. 2 καθὼς γέγραπται ἐν τῶ ἠσαΐᾳ τῶ προφήτῃ, ἰδοὺ ἀποστέλλω τὸν ἄγγελόν μου πρὸ προσώπου σου, ὃς κατασκευάσει τὴν ὁδόν σου· 3 φωνὴ βοῶντος ἐν τῇ ἐρήμῳ, ἑτοιμάσατε τὴν ὁδὸν κυρίου, εὐθείας ποιεῖτε τὰς τρίβους αὐτοῦ _</div></div><div><br /></div><div>Don't worry...and as the angels say, "Do not be afraid." This is good news. the passage above is the first few lines of the Gospel of Mark in the dialect of ancient Greek that most of Jesus' followers would have recognized as their <i>lingua franca. </i>Those words were telling a story in the common language of the time, koine Greek, a tongue spoken in the marketplace, in the local trade halls, amongst neighbors. The words were as familiar to all as your own local dialect is to you, today. </div><div><br /></div><div>The story begins abruptly, and remains in that tone. We are not in a rush, but we are not going to tarry. Each word strikes us and drives us forward to the next. Each phrase builds on the last in preparation for its successor. Each story propels us forward until we reach the end...of the beginning...of the story and testimony of Jesus, the Son of God.</div><div><br /></div><div>Are you ready to meet Jesus, with Mark as your guide? </div><div><br /></div><div>Put on your walking shoes. Get ready for a pilgrimage that will keep us on the road with few pauses or moments to rest or reflect. We have a lot to see and experience, and only 16 chapters to sojourn along the way.</div><div><br /></div><div>The Beginning: that first word is a statement and a notification that there is no where else to be that right here, and right now. We are here at the outset of the testimony of the good news of Jesus, the anointed (Christ, Messiah)...Son of God. </div><div><br /></div><div>What better way to herald that anointed one that with the words of the prophet Isaiah, one of the greatest voices God put to use in the Hebrew Scriptures to declare judgment on humankind, to announce exile and to open the hearts and minds of all to the return from exile that we all long for in this life, whatever shape or form that exile takes.</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">"The Voice of One Crying Out</div><div style="text-align: center;">in the wilderness,</div><div style="text-align: center;">Prepare the Way of the Lord,</div><div style="text-align: center;">make his paths straight."</div><div><br /></div><div>Before we meet this Jesus, we have to be ready, to let the story-teller set the scene for us. We won't meet the Messiah in a conventional manner. They will not be revealed in such a way that we might recognize them easily. The other Gospels spend a great deal of time and energy on exposition. There are angels heralding a miraculous conception. There are magi following stars. There are shepherds in their fields, tending sheep. Joseph is dreaming dreams. The cosmos have been waiting in prelude since the inception of time and space. </div><div><br /></div><div>In Mark, simply, we begin with a voice crying out:</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">Prepare.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">John the Baptizer arrives on the edge of the wilderness, at the seam between the untamed and the civilized. He cries out a word, and delivers a baptism of repentance. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Again, get ready. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">We are about to meet someone.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">So, dear friends, come along. We are about to being the Gospel of Jesus the Christ according to Mark. Strap on your walking shoes. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">It begins.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiyJwypcAEgSXz7hXvuiaRqmRqAnzndEAxjGs6BWTqPCrl-QwlSsA5YMS_7hpF0TLEoESl60APs_sQ2oRw5nuNwKZPOAKsetHmTxg6DfCK0NYlCMoHtPMtRIhyKs2ITWu8uwOCeHt00iDyirO0uZp9pyY3D8W3p5saYCBL5qTlwUfKMSRkot_1j_w" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="593" data-original-width="385" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiyJwypcAEgSXz7hXvuiaRqmRqAnzndEAxjGs6BWTqPCrl-QwlSsA5YMS_7hpF0TLEoESl60APs_sQ2oRw5nuNwKZPOAKsetHmTxg6DfCK0NYlCMoHtPMtRIhyKs2ITWu8uwOCeHt00iDyirO0uZp9pyY3D8W3p5saYCBL5qTlwUfKMSRkot_1j_w" width="156" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Souza's John the Baptist<br />c. 1963</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><br /></div>Marshall Shelly+http://www.blogger.com/profile/01553078129269667636noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10404879.post-18500998975188698242023-09-25T11:47:00.002-04:002023-09-25T11:47:18.104-04:00Reading a Gospel, and THE Gospel...<h2 style="text-align: left;"> Two VERY Different Things</h2><div>My love for the Gospel of Mark is a lifelong thing. It isn't lost on me that my family name is "Mark," in part because whilst my mother and father wanted to name me after my maternal grandfather, Marshall I was also granted a name more fitting for a child (and less likely to make young Marshall an object of abuse). Mark was the choice, because my mom always wanted her sons to have the names of one of the Evangelists (the "writers" of the four Gospels), and also because she had a "Marshall" in one of her classes who was called "Mark" because he was the fourth "Marshall" named in his family: "Big Marshall, Junior, Trip....Mark).</div><div><br /></div><div>Aside from the appellative harmony that the Gospel sounds in my heart, there is also my love for the brevity and intensity of the Gospel. Often attributed as the closest version of the Jesus story to the scholarly named "Quelle" (or "Q") source document for which we lack physical proof of existence, Mark feels like the most base of the stories accounting the life of Jesus. </div><div><br /></div><div>There is no birth narrative in Mark, no "Christmas." We don't meet the shepherds tending sheep in the field as we do in Luke. We don't encounter the Magi traveling in search of a newborn king as we do in Matthew, who bear gifts relating to the sovereignty, the sanctity and the mortality of the Christ child. We don't hear in Christ's arrival the last echoes of the birth of the universe, the very incarnation of the Word of God spoken to bring light, life and existence into being.</div><div><br /></div><div>We just get a sudden arrival, of John the Baptist. He arrives on the edge of the wilderness, proclaiming a word of repentance, whereupon Jesus shows up adult and ready to be baptized. The impact of Christ's arrival is immediate and from that point on, little time is spent on leisure. Jesus moves from moment to moment, from event to event and from teaching to teaching...immediately.</div><div><br /></div><div>Moreover, there is an emphasis on Jesus' part to keep all of these things secret. The story is to be kept, not shared, at least not until "later." As a result of that direction, we are being let in on a profound and powerful secret. The Good News is something we have to grab hold of, keep in hand and meter out in discreet portions. </div><div><br /></div><div>Even the end of the Gospel, the glory of Easter morning and the resurrection has a sense of imperative that drives us past the very entrance of the empty tomb. The place where the body of Jesus was placed is empty, and the good word given to the women who had traveled to the tomb to anoint his body after the Sabbath concluded is offered not as a reassurance of life but rather a direction to return with Jesus' brethren to Galilee, where Jesus will meet them.</div><div><br /></div><div>In effect, the Gospel of Mark is a circle. When we complete the transit of the story, we are directed back to the very place it began.</div><div><br /></div><div>That is, if we take for granted the second ending of the Gospel. In the first, earliest ending, the women flee the tomb and tell no one anything...because they were afraid.</div><div><br /></div><div>Reading the Gospel of Mark alone and of itself means setting down the expectations of a Jesus story that is blended and homogenized. If we read JUST Mark, then we have t let go of Christmas. Even Easter season has a very odd feel to it. Thomas doesn't have doubts, or become the patron of those who do not see and yet come to believe. Peter is not redeemed on the shore of the Sea of Galilee after his betrayal after Jesus' arrest. The disciples on the road to Emmaus never have cause to leave Jerusalem, or to return. </div><div><br /></div><div>Mark presents some challenges, yes?</div><div><br /></div><div>The Jesus we encounter in Mark has a lot to teach us, but little time to do so. Jesus doesn't meet the Syro-Phoenician woman, but Jesus does meet Moses and Elijah on the Mount of the Transfiguration. He doesn't raise Lazarus, but he does reach out to the Rich Young Man. We never meet the Samaritan woman at the well outside Sychar.</div><div><br /></div><div>Still, there is a symphony of grace in the Gospel of Mark. We meet a Jesus who is made for the road. He is on the way, and invites us to join him. The Good News can never wait. It has to be shared, to be told with an immediacy and brevity that helps it to hit, hard.</div><div><br /></div><div>God's love is immediate, and salvation is RIGHT NOW and not far off. </div><div><br /></div><div>In Mark, we don't linger or dwell for long. There is much to be done, and we therefore should be about the business of the Kingdom. Do not wait. Take up your staff in hand and follow.</div><div><br /></div><div>It is time. The Kingdom is at hand.</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhoI_2H2xIWXyxlr-x0yEkvr2RCOQc7G1tEVI0DRbeSGKZ3LwRW848HWNHcIuUHZLQc7BiuKqGK2VkRGTb9lp4xjxpNNKQ8MlL4MC33dJeyQS0uHIeCBdOnBK6F9jliLBklvgBcB1c3vNS5GqueetC1PYA3CDLl_qOt6pHW2LTFqLA-wLrHYVitPQ" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="496" data-original-width="600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhoI_2H2xIWXyxlr-x0yEkvr2RCOQc7G1tEVI0DRbeSGKZ3LwRW848HWNHcIuUHZLQc7BiuKqGK2VkRGTb9lp4xjxpNNKQ8MlL4MC33dJeyQS0uHIeCBdOnBK6F9jliLBklvgBcB1c3vNS5GqueetC1PYA3CDLl_qOt6pHW2LTFqLA-wLrHYVitPQ" width="290" /></a></div><br /><br /></div>Marshall Shelly+http://www.blogger.com/profile/01553078129269667636noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10404879.post-45553891209489277472023-09-18T11:28:00.003-04:002023-09-18T11:28:45.055-04:00The Bible in a Year: Returning to the Challenge<h2 style="text-align: left;"> A Pastor Reads and Bible</h2><div>Oh, how many are the ways to read the Bible. How many are the ways to interpret, absorb, embrace Holy Writ! </div><div><br /></div><div>How intimidating to take on a tome that sits up there by the altar, that looms over our lives and that is used by so many to direct and determine the lives of others. Reading the Bible can hold a whole host of personal and communal challenges. As a person of faith, the Bible is the focus point of our shared experience with human beings in search of God in community for thousands of years. To take on reading such a corpus of hopes, dreams and ideas <i>should</i> cause us fear and trembling. One should not take on reading scripture lightly, but reverently and mindfully. </div><div><br /></div><div>That's the problem. Like so many things in life that will make us better people, better communities, we hesitate. Are we good enough? Can I sustain that level of commitment? Is it even worth trying? I know that the minute I get into it I will probably become overwhelmed. I'll get distracted. Perhaps, I'll just not find it something that I can sustain right now in my life?</div><div><br /></div><div>Even more intimidating is the horror at the thought that if I <i>do</i> sign up to read the Bible with other people in community...and I stumble (because I know I will!)...what will they think of me!?! What will GOD think of me!?!</div><div><br /></div><div>There are so many reasons to walk away from the Bible Challenge we are getting ready to start here at St. Peter's when Advent rolls around. There are so many reasons to say, "Maybe next year....when I have more time/will/faith/discipline/resolve."</div><div><br /></div><div>Here's the thing: why not do it? Why not sign up to try? I remember the first time we took on the Bible Challenge. This blog was the portal of connection for many folks who read the Bible alongside us here at St. Peter's. Every day, as each set of verses were posted, your faithful blogger would offer up a brief reflection on the readings of the day, perhaps even with some artwork to look at that might give a visual point of reference to the stories being shared. </div><div><br /></div><div>I saw readership in the blog go up. I felt a deepening sense of Biblical literacy taking hold for me (yes, ME a PASTOR who PREACHES experienced growth of knowledge and comfort in the very thing I have forged my vocation from over decades of labor!). I struggled alongside all of you who joined the challenge and hoped to learn and grow in relationship with the scriptures of our shared tradition. Some days, I couldn't wait to open the Bible and the laptop. Some days, I was just so done with scripture that I couldn't connect with the task at hand (usually during the parts of Leviticus or Deuteronomy that are particular tedious, or when St. Paul got particularly nasty and judgmental).</div><div><br /></div><div>Always, I grew. </div><div><br /></div><div>I grew in experience as the continuity of scripture opened up before me. Each tale, each bit of the Bible connects to and relates to other parts. ALL of these bits are informed by, and inform, the context of how we understand our walk with Christ today. Holding the Bible in my hand, and taking some time each day to reflect on it in a systematic way meant that I could note how humanity's struggle with God related powerfully to the day to day struggles I was having in my life. </div><div><br /></div><div>Ancient stories became even more relevant to me. Antique words took on new import. When Christ, the evangelists or the writers of the Epistles quote the Hebrew scriptures I found myself getting the connection. In the end, it was worth it.</div><div><br /></div><div>My second attempt to take up the Bible Challenge failed.</div><div><br /></div><div>I got distracted. I got busy. I lost the bead on the blog, and interest flagged as well to catch up and keep up. </div><div><br /></div><div>So, going into this next effort, I am 1 for 1. </div><div><br /></div><div>Will you join me? Perhaps we can make it .600!</div><div><br /></div><div>See you soon in the Scriptures!</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM65HzEQ4EkDD75lNWw39g5YDNKVJ2Hif2BGQM9YFyVRUyWNIN3SM-fDFf31K1gHUuuzoVi8e0xDGPvntzpT6U30RsRSsTzk2H9wRHa9ik2ahR4z1g5hVoEBhIMblPXC-10tcp6AGPJcc4i3m3_43D31H6GEf9DHfefTT8Zw-O1IzTeZYbHectCw/s311/Ezra%20Nehemiah.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="162" data-original-width="311" height="162" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM65HzEQ4EkDD75lNWw39g5YDNKVJ2Hif2BGQM9YFyVRUyWNIN3SM-fDFf31K1gHUuuzoVi8e0xDGPvntzpT6U30RsRSsTzk2H9wRHa9ik2ahR4z1g5hVoEBhIMblPXC-10tcp6AGPJcc4i3m3_43D31H6GEf9DHfefTT8Zw-O1IzTeZYbHectCw/s1600/Ezra%20Nehemiah.jpg" width="311" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div>Marshall Shelly+http://www.blogger.com/profile/01553078129269667636noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10404879.post-70885863222387157492023-09-11T11:12:00.004-04:002023-09-11T11:12:34.119-04:00A Church in the Path of the Storm<h2 style="text-align: left;">Facing Change and Trying to Predict the Future </h2><div>Living on the East Coast, we are accustomed to storms rolling in from the Atlantic. From Nor-Easters in the winter months to coastal storms in the spring and early summer, our phones get alerts from the National Weather Service all the time. </div><div><br /></div><div>Sometimes, those predictive patterns are welcome. Weather fronts mean that rain we need is on the way. Changing vectors of arriving fronts can mean relief from the extreme temperatures swings that our climate is offering these days.</div><div><br /></div><div>Alerts chime for coastal flooding, that wonderful and awful mix of high tides and onshore winds. The weather radar alerts us to incoming storms that range in a wide array of colors from green to black (dread those darker shades as that means weather we DON’T want to see). One of those patterns we don’t want to see is the approaching onslaught of a hurricane. Seeing those predictive patterns that the hurricane watch services provide is a reality of late summer and early fall.</div><div><br /></div><div>Always, change is quite literally just over the horizon and being mindful of the forecast means being able to either plan ahead or adapt to the changes that are imminent. You might be seeing now where this blog is headed? The metaphor is weather, the reality is how we adapt to change in the life of the Church.</div><div><br /></div><div>For life in the Church, at this moment, we are checking all the places that anyone might offer a predictive pattern for what lies ahead for us. As denominations and parishes struggle with a world losing faith in their institutional integrity, and thus Churches are experiencing contraction and the decimation of models of existence that have been predictive enough in the past, we are starting to feel that same frantic anxiety that folks who live near hurricane zones know only too well.</div><div><br /></div><div>Is there a wisdom to be gleaned from our experience of surviving hurricanes when we look to the storms that are looming over us as a Church? There are some things to keep in mind, particularly as social media in pastoral circles lights up with postings by pastors leaving not only their calls, but also the vocation…and the responses from others who choose to remain and who will now attempt to ride out the storm that is swiftly approaching. </div><div><br /></div><h3 style="text-align: left;">The Cone of Uncertainty (Noting the Noodles)</h3><div><br /></div><div>When one seeks to observe the behavior of major storms in the Atlantic, the weather folks strive to offer the best information of where the storm might go based on predictive, mathematical and statistical models that computers create. Those computer models (there are several and they hardly ever agree) show possible paths that a storm might take, and attempt as well to determine the possible magnitude of the storm as it moves, changes, grows and contracts, strengthens and weakens.</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhkucirlPh345xArjaIlAHWKslUoPkjJC3mAg0749x2v_8qJokSY2rEIY2e_D7OE-EIiL5Y8fUH3jt4NEggwXtk06dywGWO48S7wyG6b0-jHxvsUFJ6tqNNI5DDZB41jhR-ksj0Ue7hE8NPcA-BgTWcI1udA_k5ngQfagFPIW8mDfe1dMNHMqNBiQ" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1273" data-original-width="1140" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhkucirlPh345xArjaIlAHWKslUoPkjJC3mAg0749x2v_8qJokSY2rEIY2e_D7OE-EIiL5Y8fUH3jt4NEggwXtk06dywGWO48S7wyG6b0-jHxvsUFJ6tqNNI5DDZB41jhR-ksj0Ue7hE8NPcA-BgTWcI1udA_k5ngQfagFPIW8mDfe1dMNHMqNBiQ" width="215" /></a></div>In the early stages of a meteorological event, the tangles of possible paths that a storm might take resemble a tangled mess of multi-colored spaghetti. In the midst of those noodles are magnitude nodes. Those nodes tell us that at a particular place and time, the storm <i>might</i> be here and <i>might </i>be this intense. The challenge is determining which noodle will be the one you need to worry about. That tangle mess could mean a looming storm. It might mean a near miss. It might mean nothing at all. Still, when that storm amplifies into the merest possibility of a looming threat, we start watching and wondering: Will it hit us? When?</div><div><br /></div><div>As the storm matures, the tangles of those noodles start to coalesce into a more consistent, perhaps even sensible trajectory. That might mean you can take a breath, or that you need to grab your jerry cans and run to the gas station while someone at home makes sure the generator is primed and ready to go. The reality is, though, that the tangle of noodles no matter how refined cannot compensate for the truth: STORMS WOBBLE.</div><div><br /></div><div>Even the best models cannot give you the certainty that one particular noodle is correct. Storms are subject to a global gestalt of factors that influence path, magnitude and impact. Even the best science, the best expert, the wisest elder cannot say that something will happen with complete certainty. Hence, another caveat to any model of storm tracking: the "Cone of Uncertainty." </div><div><br /></div><div>Look at any weather map that is seeking to predict where a storm will hit, and how hard and long it will affect your local community. Even the best tracking model can look only so far into the future. The impact of a storm in our lives and on our community can only be a story we tell each other after the fact. We learn about it in retrospect and glean wisdom for what might happen in the future by what we have been able to discern from the shared experiences of our communal past. It's exhausting, and awful because we always want to be able to rely on someone who knows better than we do about how to deal with what <i>might happen.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div>The truth is, we all live in that Cone of Uncertainty. Its size and the event horizon of facing a storm vary greatly. Will a hurricane hit us again? Yes, with certainty I can say that a hurricane will <i>eventually</i> strike us, someday and somewhere. Will a hurricane hit us this year? Probably. Will one hit us next week? Not likely...maybe.</div><div><br /></div><div>It depends.</div><div><br /></div><div>What can we do to embrace the anxiety of living in a world that entails facing storms (physical, institutional, existential)? We can spend all our time parsing predictive models. We can agonize over the proverbial (and real) Cones of Uncertainty. We can track the noodles and see if the one we are focused on will be the one that resolves into a storm's true path....</div><div><br /></div><div>...or we can make sure our hurricane "go bags" are packed. We can ensure that the generator is tuned and ready (yes, I need to do that!). We can understand that though there may be trends that show challenges ahead for us that perhaps threaten our hopes for continuity in the future are real, we can only do what we can do today, to the best of our ability.</div><div><br /></div><div>A Church in the path of a storm is a constant reality. We have been on those tumultuous seas since those first days when a group of students piled into a rickety fishing boat on the Sea of Galilee when their teacher told them to go across and that he would meet them on the other side. Our job is not to control the weather, or even refine our predictions before we cast off into the uncertain. Our task is to be the Church in the here and now, come heaven or high water.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4y-MIYMtIBdT_2Vd6f5JgLTCl4lY6PXWnInHZF58_zbT9e_S8jp9-5535UlRWHu-fucatdk2_wqyV_4t9anAxyybdWxDxZoQ5HfMK3Ozjjjp6plfj7qhGuKY9OfPOG32dvsK2DDxBJ_GTpTk4sA83_rvqsH5HDOTPo0m16BE2O4crbDoOc4fXhA/s897/Hurricane%20Lee%20National%20Weather%20Service.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="736" data-original-width="897" height="263" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4y-MIYMtIBdT_2Vd6f5JgLTCl4lY6PXWnInHZF58_zbT9e_S8jp9-5535UlRWHu-fucatdk2_wqyV_4t9anAxyybdWxDxZoQ5HfMK3Ozjjjp6plfj7qhGuKY9OfPOG32dvsK2DDxBJ_GTpTk4sA83_rvqsH5HDOTPo0m16BE2O4crbDoOc4fXhA/s320/Hurricane%20Lee%20National%20Weather%20Service.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Marshall Shelly+http://www.blogger.com/profile/01553078129269667636noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10404879.post-46368113479171136072023-09-05T15:32:00.008-04:002023-09-05T15:32:58.517-04:00Broken Like Bread<h2 style="text-align: left;">Turning Grain into Grace</h2><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJhGyuO5mQy2KCO0hG6mX9duYtkxCIxwfa43xQuU55ALRiIIW-DmykqnJ0Zezd9BLN2e5Wc76TJ0OHhFX8lXZFyzPot19ZWZNrHq0iHLAzZBK7iBuj0KQ2tDps1x768qSqLYSQ0MvJZIC72qO0Rn8cXKy4r1wZufyRxEBdwml61P2th5gLab7XRg/s2880/IMG_20190212_065430.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2880" data-original-width="2160" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJhGyuO5mQy2KCO0hG6mX9duYtkxCIxwfa43xQuU55ALRiIIW-DmykqnJ0Zezd9BLN2e5Wc76TJ0OHhFX8lXZFyzPot19ZWZNrHq0iHLAzZBK7iBuj0KQ2tDps1x768qSqLYSQ0MvJZIC72qO0Rn8cXKy4r1wZufyRxEBdwml61P2th5gLab7XRg/s320/IMG_20190212_065430.jpg" width="240" /></a>Many of us got into baking bread during the lockdown of the Pandemic. Some even started culturing their own sourdough cultures. Bread is not a very complicated recipe to pull together: it is just a combined ratio of flour, water, yeast and salt. The variations on a theme then expand outward from that standard. Different kinds, even different grinds of flour have varying levels of proteins. Proteins forms gluten, chains that create the structure of the loaf, its texture and crumb. Flours also add flavors and elements of character that make a bread spicy, tangy, light, heavy, fluffy...dense. </div><div><br /></div><div>Additions to the bread affect the way it rises. Add sugar, honey, molasses, syrups, fruit juice and there are changes in flavor, impacts on textures. Yeast responds differently to different sugars. All of those elements combine to affect the outcome, the experience of the bread.</div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-8KgU2P6XoNTCj9ggEVFl_yaDmmgE9dvI0qsANgmQrzdPj8oNYP7TzZAXb4z_fjo1dgfqkO9_pQmVweJbeZmayFxlSUq_ZE43B2dv81XRHBHE33E00_u-susfkd8eBWOVSR9td9Gb9i_Z93wxGY06FJ9WVRpSFZepie_RK-R1hxvBU_EhPKrpHQ/s4032/20190212_065804.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-8KgU2P6XoNTCj9ggEVFl_yaDmmgE9dvI0qsANgmQrzdPj8oNYP7TzZAXb4z_fjo1dgfqkO9_pQmVweJbeZmayFxlSUq_ZE43B2dv81XRHBHE33E00_u-susfkd8eBWOVSR9td9Gb9i_Z93wxGY06FJ9WVRpSFZepie_RK-R1hxvBU_EhPKrpHQ/s320/20190212_065804.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div>Even the water and salt have an effect on the final product. Anyone from New Jersey or New York will tell you that it is the water that makes the pizza, the bagels taste like they should. Some high end restaurants in other parts of the world actually import the <i>water</i> from particular places in order to make their product taste "right." Water does matter. Every source carries its own fingerprint of mineral content. Even salt, given its provenance, affects bread's rise, finish and taste.</div><div>So much goes in to grain becoming bread, and yet we take it for granted. </div><div><br /></div><div>Even Communion wafers, a simple construct of flour, salt and water have a story and a culture to share. There are providers that have been crafting communion wafers for generations. Some have the imprimatur of various denominations in the Church, who provide wafers under warrant on behalf of primates, popes and prelates.</div><div><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-CgIMWzpfxwUECsMHPrSyaATBhd3sM5S2dsR9kBvjCNe7jUNLoCKGwHfK-gYW-QYk727vV_q8rmjEs1z5IlQNe_TPUB7xBfjFfBYhwseT50LbxRmST_cYaU3rljL65HDo1WGoOcu-qpE3oHuywSYmdchhIA5zMEGdg8zjcGE5wc373_uE0Qv1tQ/s4032/20190212_072655.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-CgIMWzpfxwUECsMHPrSyaATBhd3sM5S2dsR9kBvjCNe7jUNLoCKGwHfK-gYW-QYk727vV_q8rmjEs1z5IlQNe_TPUB7xBfjFfBYhwseT50LbxRmST_cYaU3rljL65HDo1WGoOcu-qpE3oHuywSYmdchhIA5zMEGdg8zjcGE5wc373_uE0Qv1tQ/s320/20190212_072655.jpg" width="240" /></a></div></div><div><br /></div><div>Where does all that bread come from, even the bread baked in a factory? </div><div><br /></div><div>It comes from a field of grain, from a culture of yeast, from a sugar processing company, from a salt miner or harvester. Those ingredients travel to the hands of the baker and are mixed, kneaded, shaped and baked into food for community.</div><div><br /></div><div>All of that effort, that craft goes into a single loaf of bread, and in a moment it is taken, broken, blessed and given as the Body of Christ when that bread is tendered as the offering at Holy Communion. The work of many hands becomes for us the very Presence of the Christ in our midst.</div><div><br /></div><div><br />How do you find your bread? Can you see the many hands that have guided that grace to yours?</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXaEWR7gFIFC0sUFFd8dd2fv9hTmGxqQtMKI8kNciR0IPYSpIiukFJuipqhvMgbYwmH8PJxvUgjXuvFubFNUIkjTkoq0xXUxsvRkaBGdtFQ4MUwppPmEh-ZnocB8AbcJ5dYJc2Jaq6qxXcSpV4FuO1JHeX6iRkAy-kQt2EYut-f-1O9FH1v0XKxw/s4032/20190212_101150.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXaEWR7gFIFC0sUFFd8dd2fv9hTmGxqQtMKI8kNciR0IPYSpIiukFJuipqhvMgbYwmH8PJxvUgjXuvFubFNUIkjTkoq0xXUxsvRkaBGdtFQ4MUwppPmEh-ZnocB8AbcJ5dYJc2Jaq6qxXcSpV4FuO1JHeX6iRkAy-kQt2EYut-f-1O9FH1v0XKxw/s320/20190212_101150.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div></div>Marshall Shelly+http://www.blogger.com/profile/01553078129269667636noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10404879.post-9893570875716489662023-08-28T11:35:00.002-04:002023-08-28T11:35:55.841-04:00What is Church Growth?<h2 style="text-align: left;"> The New Now</h2><div>A new chapter has begun in my own life and ministry. This last month, I embarked on a new pilgrimage of formation and transformation. After nearly thirty years of ordained ministry in a parish context, I have started a Doctor of Ministry program at Drew Theological School. The core of the program focuses on the challenge of leadership and cultural change. Putting it into a nutshell, I would mark this educational program as a way for me to frame my own journey through the last three decades of leadership in such a way as to forge both a legacy for my ministry in context and for my primary focus: growing the Church.</div><div><br /></div><div>There is a loaded concept: growing the Church. Most of your reading this assume I am wanting to bring more souls to Christ and to the pews and ministries of my parish, welcoming folks into the life of Christ in this local context. Observationally, that is somewhat true. Who doesn't want to see a full church during Sunday worship? Who wouldn't want to be surrounded by the faithful to such a degree that the anxiety of pulling of an event or a program recedes into the background noise of general post-modern worry and wonder at the world's fragility? We all want to see our institutions as vibrant, vital and relevantly engaged in good works that expand to cover need.</div><div><br /></div><div>There is another growth, though, that I have become increasingly aware of in recent years. Are people growing in the pews, in the highways and byways, into a deeper relationship with God and into a deeper wisdom of being? Is a faithful spiritual practice of prayer and contemplation sustaining groups and individuals as they struggle with the day to day challenges of existence? Are people being transformed by their encounters with each other and with a living God who blesses, redeems and sustains them with salient and observable impact?</div><div><br /></div><div>This is the true grace of Church growth. A church that grows in wisdom, in practice and in mindful awareness of God and the other is the new now I hope to foster and lead. Skills and knowledge increasing to tender care, nurture, challenge and support to people who not only want a little more of the Divine in their lives...but are coming to know that they need it like they need the air of their next breath.</div><div><br /></div><div>Two stories present themselves to me as I ponder this new now that I hope to realize over the next few years: one from long ago when this blog began; the other from just a few moments ago as I write this missive. When this blog first began, I was serving a church that has many of its own struggles. In the midst of those struggles was a vein of conflict that this community had struggled with for generations. I was a rookie leader with little experience in managing that sort of deep conflict. I was a pastor who was a novice at helping people deal with the anxieties that come with feeling those deep struggles without being able to name or deal with them. It was a hard time. </div><div><br /></div><div>In the midst of that hard season of growth, I got to know a parishioner who wrestled with the creation of this blog. She expressed anxiety about my "online diary" and was concerned that people would read it. Yes, she understood penning a diary, creating a journal reflecting on ministry and life...but she failed to grasp that a transparent and public engagement with questions of leadership, both pastoral and political, could possibly benefit the community. </div><div><br /></div><div>"It is like you are just...sharing...things," she said to me once. At the core, I think she was anxious about my disclosure of pastoral confidences. I assured her that I would not be doing so. She also wondered about the time it would consume in my work day. I explained that no small portion of a pastor's work is to think, pray, meditate, research, reflect and seek counsel as a leader. This blog was part of that process (and it has been for nearly twenty years).</div><div><br /></div><div>Finally, she was worried that I would loose credibility. Your task, she maintained, was to be a leader who was confident, focused...and opaque. People don't need to know that you struggle, she opined. Your job is to inspire, and you can't do that if you are struggling.</div><div><br /></div><div>With the clarity of distance, I can see the care and concern she had for me. She knew the community we were living in, and the level of transparency and ruminative wonder I was engaging in would become a concern for many who wanted surety from their Church and its leadership, not wondering (read, <i>wandering</i>) in their pastors.</div><div><br /></div><div>Real Church growth, I have learned, is not about shoring up the institution. It is not about granting assurances of success to bodies that govern, that support, that observe. Those paths lead to eventual oblivion, because in the face of success is always the rising visage of incipient failure. As one leader once noted, if we aren't growing, we are dying....well enough...but if growth is only about numbers, successes then the flip side of that growth curve inevitably leads to ruination. Nothing is forever.</div><div><br /></div><div>What is durable about the new now I aspire to in these coming years? What is Church growth of a new age? It is an affirmation that our growth in Christ is not determined by success but instead by a transformation of repeated failures that we are willing to learn from in order to deepen our wisdom, our technique for being the Body of Christ. We are no longer able to assume that our Church is a sure foundation, an eternal bulwark against the crashing, eventual waves of history. We are instead navigating seas that change constantly, even as we are changing constantly in order to adapt to new challenges and situations. </div><div><br /></div><div>Church growth means adaptation, innovation, evolution and connection. It means embracing the rate and pace of change as the constant, and then working together to walk alongside each other as we grow and learn together how to embrace NOW.</div><div><br /></div><div>This leads me to the current moment: In the course of just three weeks, I have been present with personal, parochial and diocesan notices that deep crises are unfolding. Be not afraid, all who read this...for these crises are <i>always</i> unfolding in one way, shape or form <i>all the time</i> in parish ministry. What is different about them is that this moment finds me in a refreshed awareness that the crises at each of these levels is an opportunity for growth. </div><div><br /></div><div>A ministry that needs to evolve will now have to evolve. Questions about our missional presence in our community will find new manners of expression, soon. Unsustainable expectations from our diocesan reality need to adapt to changing circumstances. </div><div><br /></div><div>This is Church growth, the real thing. </div><div><br /></div><div>The odd lesson I am learning? That when we look to the growth that transforms us, those pews tend to fill up, after all....but it begins with the root of transformation that is Christ rising from the dead to lead us into new life.</div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi6KcvrI23QvZFFm8hf8Kl-_sYvBuhjnlKs_uL0roUAn1eBzy3IhrXuq62lq7KoxjGObSZgXygnfsg0H2SDAFAixolr0AVKL_FxISAr2kjOL3UgVHocAmOVTlIwzrwbSksIPFUKF9r6kRO1aE4uJgrkFB3JO6COQ_sZK8OIRsOWYUDAKFA9t8jLhw" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="760" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi6KcvrI23QvZFFm8hf8Kl-_sYvBuhjnlKs_uL0roUAn1eBzy3IhrXuq62lq7KoxjGObSZgXygnfsg0H2SDAFAixolr0AVKL_FxISAr2kjOL3UgVHocAmOVTlIwzrwbSksIPFUKF9r6kRO1aE4uJgrkFB3JO6COQ_sZK8OIRsOWYUDAKFA9t8jLhw" width="320" /></a></div><br /><br /></div>Marshall Shelly+http://www.blogger.com/profile/01553078129269667636noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10404879.post-64751730730529314482023-08-21T10:18:00.001-04:002023-08-21T10:18:51.208-04:00Supporting Those Seeking a Church<h2 style="text-align: left;"> Welcome Home</h2><div>I have heard it many times, those close to me as well. After a Baptism, a Wedding, a Funeral the people who attend a service in order to love and support a family member marking that season of transition and transformation remark on the welcome they felt. The comment on the warmth, the accessibility and the sense of community that our parish and pastoral ministries offered up in the course of that particular celebration. There is usually a note of surprise in their commentaries. They hadn't ever felt that sense of inclusion before from an institutional, mainline denominational faith community.</div><div><br /></div><div>"If I lived closer to you, then this would be my church."</div><div><br /></div><div>We hear that a lot. We even experience a return from time to time. We have several folks that, as they visit family in our area for holidays, make it a point to come back and worship with us. That said, these are folks who are already well ensconced in their home churches. Still, it is a reminder to all pastors and people that when we play the welcome card in our life of testimony to the love of Christ we are often playing the long game. The seeds we plant might wind up germinating in another field far away. A person experiencing welcome in one place might seek it out in another that is closer to home. </div><div><br /></div><div>The sadness abounds in that not all churches seek to embody the challenge of a radical welcome like my parish has been learning to practice over the past few years. A radical welcome, as we envision it, is one that seeks not only to make the arriving person feel safe, accepted and desired as a participant in a common life. It is also one that on the behalf of the people extending hospitality sets a standard of expected transformation. The arrival of someone means that the community <i>will</i> be transformed by their presence.</div><div><br /></div><div>When someone is seeking a church community, there is always a check list. Are my family members going to be welcome? Will the service be transparent enough that I won't look foolish trying to follow along? Is the preacher accessible? Do I like the music? Is the building warm, comfortable and inviting?</div><div>Did people seem friendly enough for me, and will I want to connect with them on later visits? Did I leave the service feeling that I was welcome, and not overwhelmed by that church's needs?</div><div><br /></div><div>The down side to people seeking church communities, and we see this too often, are folks who are either fleeing a set of experiences, or ones that arrive seeking confirmation of their previous biases. The wounded of the Church are plenteous. People know just how bad a church experience can be, having seen rejection, condemnation, abuse, misconduct and more as a VERY fallible human institution struggles to hold up the Gospel while also being led by broken human beings. Can a church community be a safe place to work those traumas out? Are we willing to deal with our own struggles in a manner that brings healing, and not further harm, to ourselves and those who seek refuge from their own trauma?</div><div><br /></div><div>You are starting to see how challenging this experience can be. For most members, this Sunday morning is much like many others. For those arriving for the first time as seekers of community, the number of factors on their check list <i>just to feel part of things</i> is longer that most church aisles can cover.</div><div><br /></div><div>To support those seeking a church means realizing that our first task as members of the Body of Christ is to offer a warm welcome that covers the visitor with just enough care to know that they are in a secure moment to be at ease. As well, hearing their story of arrival is key. "What brings you here today," is not just something the pastor asks at the door as the seeker leaves. What if that level of interest is expressed by the person who was in the pew next to that seeker?</div><div><br /></div><div>Finally, the last plug for most communities...we fear reaching out to most people we don't recognize because we don't want to impose...and we also fear shame (turns out the person you thought was a newcomer has worshiped here for decades!). </div><div><br /></div><div>Why not use that faux pas as a gateway to connect, to forge a new level of relationship with someone you haven't met yet? Turns out, even a regular attendee can be someone seeking a deeper connection with the church....</div><div><br /></div><div>You won't know until you ask.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqQNLlS7z1lHutji9x7AX_ras-xRPWA9TIg0ZANDEGHdjn_hNSdlvrU5hH_DEegYx13X6MCecOkJLLlKPL4nvZ612HT_IEs5kHRHfo_53XDnJ0mArAJdi-v9zcotWGZNeGKUpoEGaUHMZxvLE3AW0BpYxmJZjzNjvsvnSL-OF4ot-YnBZ5v-5b1A/s768/kind%20hands.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="714" data-original-width="768" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqQNLlS7z1lHutji9x7AX_ras-xRPWA9TIg0ZANDEGHdjn_hNSdlvrU5hH_DEegYx13X6MCecOkJLLlKPL4nvZ612HT_IEs5kHRHfo_53XDnJ0mArAJdi-v9zcotWGZNeGKUpoEGaUHMZxvLE3AW0BpYxmJZjzNjvsvnSL-OF4ot-YnBZ5v-5b1A/s320/kind%20hands.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /></div>Marshall Shelly+http://www.blogger.com/profile/01553078129269667636noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10404879.post-8250889677438910792023-08-15T13:13:00.002-04:002023-08-15T13:13:29.487-04:00Before there was Barbie<h2 style="text-align: left;"> Toys with Social Value</h2><div>We were those kids whose parents made sure we had toys with social value. The standard playthings we did not have access to growing up were many and varied. I never owned even a squirt gun until I was over ten years old. Dart guns, not in our house...that had to wait until I could go to the store unsupervised with my own allowance money. All those action figures that boys wanted were beyond reach until I was "older" and my mother and I could have a "mature discussion" about the values inherent in playing with toy soldiers. Do you remember those ubiquitous green plastic army men? Getting access to those required a discussion about the politics of war and the value of human life in the face of conflict.</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPeL8iYImuYEYA4-3HNvqy-9TzyzHmx88tDSCkjrRFaG9aPWzOBz5F9mg8CKUqpex4bfURWhGcm5M-fCIKq88reb-AfaQM_5Q1cq-SaZ8It_C_SWm2kyobGVFWQPEaeuuhCaMRquNocGr9xB0ynvCmDDPXJC4tvR5AB7t5mczgnORRgXrUiyaoVQ/s1600/Vintage-Sunshine-Family-dolls-and-playsets-at-Click-Americana.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPeL8iYImuYEYA4-3HNvqy-9TzyzHmx88tDSCkjrRFaG9aPWzOBz5F9mg8CKUqpex4bfURWhGcm5M-fCIKq88reb-AfaQM_5Q1cq-SaZ8It_C_SWm2kyobGVFWQPEaeuuhCaMRquNocGr9xB0ynvCmDDPXJC4tvR5AB7t5mczgnORRgXrUiyaoVQ/s320/Vintage-Sunshine-Family-dolls-and-playsets-at-Click-Americana.jpg" width="320" /></a>My sister had it just as tough. Her first dolls after Dressie Bessie and plastic baby dolls with handkerchief diapers were not Barbies or Ken dolls. There were no dream houses. Instead, she was given access to the Sunshine Family, to dolls with stories about family life, parity between genders, etc. </div><div><br /></div><div>She and I even played with boy scout action figures (created by Kenner toys) back in the day. Wholesome young people who went on adventures with uplifting and morally straight aims and outcomes. Granted, my sister "regendered" several of the boys, because there should have been Brownie and Girl Scout figures as well, but we did our best!</div><div><br /></div><div>We had toys with social value.</div><div><br /></div><div>Please don't lament, or wonder how we turned out.</div><div><br /></div><div>I still found ways to create guns from sticks. I lashed together forts from twigs and moss and used rocks and pebbles as stand in army men. My friends and I staged massive Hot Wheels campaigns that would have put Mad Max fans to shame. My sister did the same with her friends, turning off market dolls into fashion icons and even the model Sunshine family went through divorce and remarriage at several points when the dad didn't value the mom's career, or the kids got in trouble with the imagined law.<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjReoAH4hQpCCg35NgkGlRuzt3SDZmeg5sAv5pTkDgWDbBVX7fVgyLixU1IYBXTH9KVbMQhsQfEWRKQejbyzqpl5r7bjs1C_k8jNTSNHJcUFUR43dJ2dnM-qorkhyTwMoodboPsEUQy5C8JbI8dbzq_dR8tuXrjej2LadRDgfmhpDc2nc-eBz-7hw/s550/Steve%20Scout%20Kenner%20Action%20Figure%20Set.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><br /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjReoAH4hQpCCg35NgkGlRuzt3SDZmeg5sAv5pTkDgWDbBVX7fVgyLixU1IYBXTH9KVbMQhsQfEWRKQejbyzqpl5r7bjs1C_k8jNTSNHJcUFUR43dJ2dnM-qorkhyTwMoodboPsEUQy5C8JbI8dbzq_dR8tuXrjej2LadRDgfmhpDc2nc-eBz-7hw/s550/Steve%20Scout%20Kenner%20Action%20Figure%20Set.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="412" data-original-width="550" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjReoAH4hQpCCg35NgkGlRuzt3SDZmeg5sAv5pTkDgWDbBVX7fVgyLixU1IYBXTH9KVbMQhsQfEWRKQejbyzqpl5r7bjs1C_k8jNTSNHJcUFUR43dJ2dnM-qorkhyTwMoodboPsEUQy5C8JbI8dbzq_dR8tuXrjej2LadRDgfmhpDc2nc-eBz-7hw/s320/Steve%20Scout%20Kenner%20Action%20Figure%20Set.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div>The point is, we remember a time before we had access to toys that sought to define for us the values of the culture in which we found ourselves growing up. We were encouraged by our parents to create narratives that were not defined by the latest fashion or adventure accessory packet. I still found myself wanting those items, seeing the commercials on television or in print ads for toys that told you their story. The latest GI Joe with the Kungfu Grip? Yes, please!</div><div><br /></div><div>Before there was Barbie in our house, though, there was the work our parents put in to empower us to forge stories from our imaginations. Even the Lego sets we were given were not from kits that built just one item. We got packets of random parts, and were tasked with creating something out of the generic blocks, wheels and parts that could be anything, anything at all.</div><div><br /></div><div>When we live this life in this world, marketers of every sort and type don't just want to sell us an object. They want us to subscribe to a narrative, to embrace a story that is of their choosing. Better yet, in order to get us to commit long term to that narrative, they add chapters and volumes of narrative to the baseline. With that, the accessory packets will keep on rolling in forever. Buy the dream house, and you can then get the beach house. Buy the doll with the kungfu grip and get the invitation to buy the one that has the "auto-kick" function as well!</div><div><br /></div><div>When you translate to adulthood, the sequence of progression is established. Your old phone is obsolete, get the newer model. Your old care doesn't have the features this newer model has, turn it in!</div><div><br /></div><div>Even with our upbringing, noted above, I can still say with honesty that I am part and parcel of that matrix of story, market and the profound desire to always embrace the upgrade.</div><div><br /></div><div>Where does it end?</div><div><br /></div><div>Quick answer: it doesn't until we make a conscious decision to break those cycles of desire. If we are willing to articulate our needs over our wants, then we have a shot at breaking the exterior narrative and thus begin to have the time, energy and space to forge our own pathways through this material culture.</div><div><br /></div><div>I learn that every day, from a spouse who reminds me that there is a difference between appetite and hunger. I have learned that from a community of friends and neighbors who stress relationship over possession. I have learned it over and over again when attaining a material want pales after consumption. What endures? Truth, faith and hope in a world that is better for having stories in it that are closer to truth and reality than assumption and consumption.</div><div><br /></div><div>It isn't easy, but it is a lesson that so many of us have had to learn over and over again, having been formed by a culture that even uses breakfast cereal to cross market.</div><div><br /></div><div>More to follow.....</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div><br /></div>Marshall Shelly+http://www.blogger.com/profile/01553078129269667636noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10404879.post-39715727832548260642023-08-08T09:36:00.002-04:002023-08-08T09:36:36.254-04:00Moving Into the Past Tense: "She Was/He Was..."<h2 style="text-align: left;"> Grappling with Grief</h2><div>This has been a summer. Just this past week as my family and our friends gathered to remember my sister Elizabeth, we got word that a dear friend passed away after a long battle with addiction. Prayers and thoughts are welcome, truly. Pray for the family of that beloved friend, and for all who mourn. Even a death that is anticipated, even welcome, is always a shock. It means the end of a chapter of suffering for many, including the one who now rests in the healing arms of a loving God. It also means creating a life that is after...after them, after that moment.</div><div><br /></div><div>When I counsel families at the death of a loved one, I always remind them that the first breaths taken after someone has ceased their own are often the hardest, and the most needed. Every breath taken, every word spoken and every action expressed means that the person we knew-perhaps even loved-is no longer. Their lives are for us now in the past tense. "He was...," "She was...," or "They were...:" those phrases become a hard realization that the ones we knew are no longer here with us. They have ceased, their line of connection to us is sundered from the present, and from the future.</div><div><br /></div><div>I have seen it dozens and dozens of times. That moment when a person slips into the past tense means a finality has begun to be accepted. It cannot change, and once spoken, once realized it is now a truth. That breath, that word spoken, that decision made, that next step means we move on without them in the world. </div><div><br /></div><div>In this age of social media, we get an odd, even false sense of that person still being with us. In a fashion, posting on their pages or tagging them in a new memory or observation is an effort to re-member them as being in our midst. They have moved on. As hard as that is to accept, to embrace, it is so. Grappling with grief means being open to that shift in context, in relationship to the one who has died.</div><div><br /></div><div>Death brings many things into our lives. It brings reminders of the significance that person had to our existence. It reminds us of the impact that a human life can have on us, and the echoes around us as we come to appreciate just how far the proverbial ripples radiate out from their lives, much as ripples in a lake radiate out from a stone thrown into it. Those waves travel out, continuously, and sadly for us they do not return. </div><div><br /></div><div>As distance increases, we might begin to see just how profoundly that one human life changed the whole matrix of humanity. Even the most modest of lives has a profound impact, but at the same time there is that point when we will all enter into the past tense. Beyond the questions of what happens next, the life that comes after (for Christians, it is resurrection), we are here and now. We are on our way to becoming, even as the ones we loved become memory.</div><div><br /></div><div>Grappling with grief means more than just finding healing, wisdom, peace or resolution. It means coming to terms with the grace of a whole life lived that has ended. It means standing at a point from which perspective on that life might inform our own present moment. It means coming to a place of hope even as the past tense hits us hard, again and again.</div><div><br /></div><div>In my faith, death is not an end. It is a transition from one state of being to another. Still, death is real and it means that the ones we love-and eventually we ourselves-will pass from the present tense into the past. Every breath we take reminds us that this is true, and it is perhaps the bitterest of sweet truths to embrace. </div><div><br /></div><div>We grieve because we loved. </div><div><br /></div><div>From present to past tense. </div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEguSC9ocoT22cVLen8gzPxtPScsKuQBkTyTUWIFMyyUqIPXg8OzKi8oTZsJxRSdTw2pLgr2l9boe2n7ZbpJ0W7YD1ufJvSa9LOOJD49AnK9Bd2uMDS-EzVvCNj6eIIY7gMhWvUIk1V3bAiUnfnAi0hemia3M2EPhM4YhV4__3SVChzk56HjihvDOQ" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="105" data-original-width="420" height="80" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEguSC9ocoT22cVLen8gzPxtPScsKuQBkTyTUWIFMyyUqIPXg8OzKi8oTZsJxRSdTw2pLgr2l9boe2n7ZbpJ0W7YD1ufJvSa9LOOJD49AnK9Bd2uMDS-EzVvCNj6eIIY7gMhWvUIk1V3bAiUnfnAi0hemia3M2EPhM4YhV4__3SVChzk56HjihvDOQ" width="320" /></a></div><br /><br /></div>Marshall Shelly+http://www.blogger.com/profile/01553078129269667636noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10404879.post-60452284095973540912023-07-27T10:04:00.001-04:002023-07-27T10:04:36.744-04:00New Paths, New Beginnings in the Midst of Grief<h2 style="text-align: left;"> A Double Loss: Past and Future</h2><div>At my mother's funeral, my aunt and I were having a moment of reflection on her life. Even as we were doing that act of memorial, we were connecting on another level. Her sister and my mother had died just a few weeks ago. My sister and her niece had passed just days ago. My aunt observed, in her late 70s, that when your sister dies your childhood is at an end. All of the memories that you shared intimately with your sibling are still there in your heart, but the echo of those memories in another's being has been sundered. </div><div><br /></div><div>As well, both of us have to release the future we shared with them. There will be no more shared holidays, no more quick check-ins on the phone, or another moment of visual confirmation of existence with each other over a video call. We are now repositories of memories, our relationships with these two women is to be saved and savored in retrospect, like photos in a shoe box taken down from the shelf and caressed as memories flood back over a faded print. This is the reality of loss...</div><div><br /></div><div>A double loss, one for which there is little vocabulary.</div><div><br /></div><div>Both of these formidable women, my mother and my sister, were struggling with cancer until their last breath in this life. My mother's cancer was gastric, metastatic esophageal to be more exact. Her struggle lasted 18 months. My sister's cancer was also metastatic, a non-small cell lung cancer with ALK+ mutations. Her thriving with cancer-and I do mean thriving-lasted over six and a half years before the therapies she was on failed to affect the progression of her disease.</div><div><br /></div><div>Mom died in early June. My sister passed away just a few weeks later at the beginning of July. To say that we were ready for the former and not the latter is accurate. It is also an understatement. Both women wanted more life, and both had to face their own mortality in their own unique ways. Their husbands bear the greater grief, and I weep and pray for them. My spouse and I are also walking with our grief at their passing. None of the many people who called them cousin, niece, friend and colleague are immune from having their own unique pathway as we all walk this way of mourning.</div><div><br /></div><div>Yet, each of us is having a unique experience.</div><div><br /></div><div>This will be the first blog I write that they will not read.</div><div><br /></div><div>Another hard aspect of grief is that the path is treacherous, and poorly lit. There are all manner of obstacles and places to stumble as we walk these ways of loss. Tripping over those roots, rocks and catching our feet on those stumbling blocks of memory are hard enough; but from time to time we also have to remember that we have lost the future with them as well. There were projects on my mother's to do list, political rallies to support and issues to work on in her community. She had books she wanted to read, prayers to offer and scripture to study. My sister wanted to write a children's book about a cat she once kept well and safe in the face of multiple health challenges (the cat's, not her own). She had trips she wanted to take, and people she wanted to help as she championed the causes that meant the world to her and her husband.</div><div><br /></div><div>A double loss is hard, and I know others have gone through this and survived. We are surviving, and even through the tears we are finding ways to laugh and celebrate their lives, well lived. We are living the lives we have NOW, as we move forward in time. All of this is real and true in the face of a faith we share in a God who is one of the living, and in whom our dead and departed have life in Christ. Still, it is something true that we have to labor on, releasing our grief and sharing in the work of keeping and celebrating the past, releasing the futures we were hoping for and embracing the grace of a present moment that we can share and curate for the glory of God and the mutual care of each other.</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFV3C7c4DC_Tuf6p_LoqXVi0FIG4MGgqDyu0PP_1HQ5cUBPpGtJf2fudHRQgcXLhPZLxr2meGgUIQ5CdX5bHexPn8kd3vQP3LrdOhPXxFcAVxJoAQ8iowGQOziBuLmmGMf4LpBdSmf4aGxO7SUYJgZstWF9CsFxwBu6l43VRpUakWP1Hi4FXjqHA/s960/mom%20and%20lib%20at%20kenny%20rogers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFV3C7c4DC_Tuf6p_LoqXVi0FIG4MGgqDyu0PP_1HQ5cUBPpGtJf2fudHRQgcXLhPZLxr2meGgUIQ5CdX5bHexPn8kd3vQP3LrdOhPXxFcAVxJoAQ8iowGQOziBuLmmGMf4LpBdSmf4aGxO7SUYJgZstWF9CsFxwBu6l43VRpUakWP1Hi4FXjqHA/s320/mom%20and%20lib%20at%20kenny%20rogers.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><br /></div>Marshall Shelly+http://www.blogger.com/profile/01553078129269667636noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10404879.post-7816238411830390772023-06-22T10:40:00.000-04:002023-06-22T10:40:00.204-04:00After the Pilgrimage<h2 style="text-align: left;"> As the Dust Settles</h2><div>It has been a few weeks.</div><div><br /></div><div>After returning from pilgrimage with my colleague group, life hit the ground running. The parish needed attention, and we had a family crisis come to full fruit. After months of struggle, my mother succumbed to cancer. With her death, a chapter ends on our lives as a new one begins. This "after the pilgrimage" reflection is intended to offer some insight on that transition.</div><div><br /></div><div>Being present to someone in the dying process is a gift, an honor and a burden. It is a gift because that ending of life is a precious time. Like the pilgrimage I just walked, we walk through life. We don't travel in a circle. We don't hike out and back. We pass through, from beginning to a vast middle and then to the end. My mother had a remarkable journey, one with many twists and turns, challenges tinged with celebrations and lamentations, and ultimately there was peace at the end of a long struggle. </div><div><br /></div><div>I came off the path with muscles toned for walking, feet shredded with blisters and some joints that needed time to recover. As the family mourns mom's passing, that same wear and tear, as well as a new found resilience, are showing themselves in our reflections and time together. The living have to continue, one day follows another. We can't just stop, though grief and sorrow would have time cease for a moment as we transit loss. The clock keeps ticking. We keep moving. Life needs to be lived fully, even in the face of endings, even death.</div><div><br /></div><div>Eventually, the dirt and mud will wash from clothing. Feet will heal. Hearts will mend. Grief will bear its fruit and go dormant until a new season demands its harvest. </div><div><br /></div><div>We will make ready for the next pilgrimage. In this life, after all, we are just passing through.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtzRK6QXbMrgKe5_ShnVdnA-mzXVAlUXlWj5cNmgTNntx_Togn2pmvYMawryTo9mV0mQJ0nR8TozhGkSF7LHc7OeiNlgeAhGoNSTMEtd97PX1oBr5q4nqZaxwWybiGVmXGyRR5puPzW2a-xRH-uzIOB74_A-FkgOL-x5os_wHKJrvfOnWNHfbtgA/s4618/20230516_151113.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4618" data-original-width="3464" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtzRK6QXbMrgKe5_ShnVdnA-mzXVAlUXlWj5cNmgTNntx_Togn2pmvYMawryTo9mV0mQJ0nR8TozhGkSF7LHc7OeiNlgeAhGoNSTMEtd97PX1oBr5q4nqZaxwWybiGVmXGyRR5puPzW2a-xRH-uzIOB74_A-FkgOL-x5os_wHKJrvfOnWNHfbtgA/s320/20230516_151113.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div>Marshall Shelly+http://www.blogger.com/profile/01553078129269667636noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10404879.post-58690274047364340712023-05-16T08:54:00.001-04:002023-05-16T09:36:56.583-04:00Cuthbert's Place<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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</div></div><div><br></div>Ruins have an odd story<div>With temptation pressing</div><div>To assume their tale</div><div>Is of failure,</div><div> Of loss.</div><div><br></div><div>Rather, they are</div><div>Memory,</div><div>Remnants preserved </div><div>In decay, bits and bobs</div><div>Left over of lives richly,</div><div>Abundantly lived.</div><div><br></div><div>Roman walls, forts</div><div>Towers,</div><div>Held for hundreds of years,</div><div>Abbeys lifting prayers,</div><div>Protecting trade</div><div>For a thousand, more.</div><div><br></div><div>An errant king,</div><div>A rising tide,</div><div>A season of raiders,</div><div>A changing climate</div><div>Might render what has been</div><div>Into past, fragments.</div><div><br></div><div>What doesn't change,</div><div>That well drew water for thousands.</div><div><br></div><div>That meadery took the work </div><div>Of millions of bees</div><div>To brew honey wine.</div><div><br></div><div>That altar stone was the foundation</div><div>For a thousand years</div><div>Of prayers.</div><div><br></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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</div><br></div>Marshall Shelly+http://www.blogger.com/profile/01553078129269667636noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10404879.post-50628393919426418802023-05-16T03:48:00.001-04:002023-05-16T03:48:12.941-04:00The Ubiquity of a MuffinEach morning,<div>Lunch,</div><div>Tea...</div><div><br></div><div>A packed lunch travels</div><div>With us:</div><div>A bag of crisps,</div><div>That small, crisp apple and</div><div>Sandwich with ham</div><div>Shredded cheese,</div><div> Butter,</div><div>Cucumber perhaps</div><div>Tomato,</div><div><br></div><div>And that muffin,</div><div>Blueberry.</div><div><br></div><div>Black paper folded around it</div><div>Glazed with a wash of sweet egg.</div><div><br></div><div>Every inn,</div><div>Pub,</div><div>Breakfast corner, </div><div>Buffet.</div><div><br></div><div>The ubiquity of a muffin.</div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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</div><br></div>Marshall Shelly+http://www.blogger.com/profile/01553078129269667636noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10404879.post-23818674147494684692023-05-15T04:22:00.001-04:002023-05-15T04:22:32.796-04:00Of the last day on the Way, and Sentinel TreesWhat stands out on pilgrimage? The experience of walking through a landscape, from the point where you begin, to where ypu end for the day. We are used to loop hikes. We are accustomed to out and back rambles. On pilgrimage, we pass through a space, and won't likely be back again.<div><br></div><div>That means seeing the road open with each turn. It means seeing something, and wanting to hold on to it, even as it recedes from sight. It is astounding how fast memory has to begin the process of integration of what was, even as what is being revealed presses in.</div><div><br></div><div>One of the casualties of the processing for me has been sleep. The moment I lay my head down to rest, my mind races. Images, thoughts, feeling roil through my head and heart. There is no soothing, rather seething with all that has passed in the day. Small comfort that this insight comes on the last day of our walk. It is what it is.</div><div><br></div><div>Still, that is also the gift: the roil of experiences. It is evidence that so much has had a significant and meaningful impact on life in this moment. It holds up the conflict of being away from home and being out in the world. It celebrates the novel and highlights the grace of the familiar. </div><div><br></div><div>As we have walked, one of our group continued to point out sentinel trees. These old giants stand at the confluence of the stone walls the border the fields and pastures we are walking through on our way to the sea. Each has its own particular manner of reaching out and up. Each is rooted in its own place and has its own story. Each looms over our horizon as another recedes.</div><div><br></div><div>The challenge is to catch the moment it offers, and then release ourselves to the next. Pilgrims are not sentinels, but they can carry their witness onward. We just have to remember that we, unlike trees, lack roots the fix us in place. Even at home, we are still on the Way.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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</div></div>Marshall Shelly+http://www.blogger.com/profile/01553078129269667636noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10404879.post-14917143745733496912023-05-13T13:00:00.001-04:002023-05-13T16:32:33.938-04:00A Man with No Religion<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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</div>Over breakfast at the inn,<div>A man about to wed asked</div><div>For our story. </div><div>Pilgrims,</div><div>Priests and bishops</div><div>Walking Hadrian's Wall,</div><div>With two decades friendship</div><div> And so many steps alongside.</div><div><br></div><div>"I am a man</div><div> Of no religion,"</div><div>He confessed, and then</div><div> His voice broke,</div><div><br></div><div>"For my</div><div> Wife, please</div><div>And for our marriage,</div><div> Will you pray a blessing for us,</div><div>On the Way?"</div><div><br></div><div>Her name is Caroline.</div><div><br></div><div>We blessed her with prayer, and him as well</div><div> A man</div><div>With no religion,</div><div> His eyes filled with prayer.</div>Marshall Shelly+http://www.blogger.com/profile/01553078129269667636noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10404879.post-75164971584893193002023-05-11T03:40:00.001-04:002023-05-11T03:40:59.576-04:00The Morning Pack<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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</div>After the first day, the miles are somewhat abstract. It just feels like a hard day got lived through. Does it matter if we walked 5, 10, 15 miles? Of course, there is a cost to the effort. Blisters, or the potential for same remind you that no pair of shoes or item of clothing is perfect to the task. <div><br></div><div>What stands out? The church where Edward I lay in state after his death near Carlisle in 1307 on my birthday? The man we met who had walked 31 miles the day before, on his way to Wallsend, where we began, to find his journey's end? The lamb that walked up to me as we crossed the field? The Cathedral, Cuthbert's pulpit? The meal last night at a memorable Indian restaurant?</div><div><br></div><div>The moment on the river Eden as we walked along the water, in full sunlight as a freshet of rain cooled and refreshed us for the last 4 miles...<br><div><br></div><div>We feel the impact of the impending day with the repack for the anticipation of today's weather, the challenges of the road ahead. Does the rain gear go on top? Do I pack more water than less? Where are the nutrition bars I threw in my bags three days ago?</div><div><br></div><div>A quick census of resources, intentions, hopes and dreads hover around as the day's pack is accomplished. Such is the path before us. </div><div><br></div><div>We are 1/6th done. By the end of the day, 1/3....tomorrow, half way.</div><div><br></div><div>What do you need for the road before you today? What will keep you present, and prepare you for what lies over the next horizon?</div></div>Marshall Shelly+http://www.blogger.com/profile/01553078129269667636noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10404879.post-219220760643084402023-05-10T07:18:00.001-04:002023-05-10T07:18:26.195-04:00The Beginning of the JourneyAt the gate...<div>A blessing to the traveller;</div><div>Still, each step is ours to make</div><div>And to take.</div><div><br></div><div>The road doesn't change,</div><div>We do.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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</div></div>Marshall Shelly+http://www.blogger.com/profile/01553078129269667636noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10404879.post-65958432983779854922023-05-09T04:34:00.001-04:002023-05-09T04:34:39.597-04:00Arrival at a place for the first time, again...The beauty of returning to a place after decades of absence is that you will be able to see the familiar with surprise. Being back in Scotland has reminded me of being here when I was studying abroad. There is wonder in being in Edinburgh and knowing a bit while also seeing it with new eyes means a sense of challenge and refreshment. From the pubs to the Royal Mile, it is new and old again. <div><br></div><div>This morning, I served as translator for my friends when our server offered breakfast in a heavy brough. Last night, I got to welcome my friends and an -80shilling ale. Today, a visit to the Scottish National Gallery before we head to Carlisle. Tomorrow, we hit the trail head.</div><div><br></div><div>Feeling the blessing and support of family, colleagues and friends. This is a good day. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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</div></div>Marshall Shelly+http://www.blogger.com/profile/01553078129269667636noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10404879.post-12947077181989219962023-05-07T19:43:00.001-04:002023-05-07T19:43:33.916-04:00Waiting to BoardA sea of humanity waits to move,<div>Doors to corridors,</div><div>Waiting on one thing or another</div><div>And then the gift of an update</div><div>That isn't one.</div><div><br></div><div>We wait...that's the challenge.</div><div><br></div><div>Getting there requires</div><div>Getting going, but going</div><div>Can't happen until</div><div>The doors open....<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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</div></div>Marshall Shelly+http://www.blogger.com/profile/01553078129269667636noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10404879.post-48394841793704767542023-05-01T14:35:00.002-04:002023-05-01T14:35:44.882-04:00Departure and Arrival<h2 style="text-align: left;"> On the Way</h2><div>The concept of pilgrimage is an ancient one. A person commits to a journey, not just in order to arrive at a destination, but to also be on the way. Even the ancient trade routes and those who used them were not just there in order to travel from point A to point B. You took the journey in order to learn, grow, explore and ultimately to bring home treasures of experience and memory. In the end, it isn't about the end. It is about being on the way.</div><div><br /></div><div>At this moment, as I prepare to make pilgrimage with my colleague group, I am also on the way with a dozen other journeys. One cannot just be on a single pilgrimage with a single destination in mind. That is not how human beings are wired. We carry more along with us than is in our bindle. </div><div><br /></div><div>We carry our relationships, and all that is happening in their contexts. We carry our past, as well as our anticipated (or dreaded, or desired) futures. We carry our hopes, our worries, our joys and all that grieves us. Every step along the way is one both enervated and elevated by all that we pack along with us. The journey brings distance and a sense of perspective. Being on the way means having to rely on your companions, as well as on your own self for coping with the moment. Being on the way means growth and change.</div><div><br /></div><div>Pilgrimage is all about taking a trip for the trip's own sake, while also being open to the transformation. That means being invested in being on the way, and not so focused on the Departure, or the Arrival.</div><div><br /></div><div>I have been praying about that idea (and ideal) these past weeks of preparatory walks. I notice that the first few miles of each hike have me minded of the aches and pains of the past hikes. At some point, as my muscles warm, my thoughts calm and my body relaxes into the moment I am able to just be present. Toward the end, I start to anticipate my arrival...at home, at that moment of rest, when this walk is done and the next chapter is not to be writ until the morrow.</div><div><br /></div><div>Pilgrimage: more than departure or arrival; it is being on the way.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7j-vWR0xzXI9Msq4QtURgzvsS-hFKcXG-jecfWsHXmtlT_P2cStewIf9lyQs3JRoSWYqgUFec-s_vsvZQzh8dJZPQnhdUH_QmEHfVGsg7PKpHDYtNNGQtCj7Kz41RoBejkKmUqSb3tqIij1DpkBp9L8k9bzBHqa8VUTHynV86svTG6WBC4Bw/s900/Hadrian's%20Wall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="718" data-original-width="900" height="255" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7j-vWR0xzXI9Msq4QtURgzvsS-hFKcXG-jecfWsHXmtlT_P2cStewIf9lyQs3JRoSWYqgUFec-s_vsvZQzh8dJZPQnhdUH_QmEHfVGsg7PKpHDYtNNGQtCj7Kz41RoBejkKmUqSb3tqIij1DpkBp9L8k9bzBHqa8VUTHynV86svTG6WBC4Bw/s320/Hadrian's%20Wall.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div>Marshall Shelly+http://www.blogger.com/profile/01553078129269667636noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10404879.post-25284665148354726502023-04-24T16:34:00.001-04:002023-04-24T16:34:12.777-04:00On the Way<h2 style="text-align: left;"> Training to Walk</h2><div>84 miles.</div><div><br /></div><div>7 Days.</div><div><br /></div><div>12 miles a day.</div><div><br /></div><div>27,000 steps a day.</div><div><br /></div><div>My colleagues and I are preparing for a pilgrimage, and our itinerary as a plan for us to walk across the waist of the United Kingdom along Hadrian's Wall from East to West in a couple of weeks. The challenge of a ramble like that is manifold. We are not young, and though I have made a concerted effort to get into better shape for the days of hiking, the experience is going to be overwhelming. That is something to expect and welcome: overwhelm.</div><div><br /></div><div>During my training walks, I have taken note of the impact that walking long distance has on me. There is an impact on my cardiovascular recovery. Muscles that don't get used often in my pastoral work are being tested. That testing means tearing down and building up. It means putting my feet, ankles, knees, hips and back through the ringer.</div><div><br /></div><div>Still, with each hike and as each day passes I can feel my body hardening up for the sojourn. There is a sense of being capable and ready taking root in me heart and mind that I appreciate. I also know that one cannot simply take a few preparatory hikes and be ready for a week of flat out pacing. The challenge of being ready is not just in being prepared. It is also about being open.</div><div><br /></div><div>To take on a walk like this one, we are going to have to be open to the pain of hot spots and blisters. We will have to be receptive to bodies that might not be up to the task on a given day. A knee might give out. An ankle might swell. A back may seize. We will leave changes in diet and water to the side, but you can appreciate that our....balance....might be a little off because we are traveling from one country and climate to another.</div><div><br /></div><div>We can only, simply, be open to the experience. Whatever transpires in us, around us and between us is part and parcel of the journey. Our task is to embrace whatever is presented to us on the way. Much like life itself, we cannot know for certain the twists, turns and surprises that await us on a given day or in a given chapter of the journey. What we can do is resolve, prayerfully, to simply open ourselves to the experience.</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhQAHHtmJS4P_dhF_WxtLV6S-5jMOqyw0bclcAsKD0aJVYCeD35GO3zdfh49knUe6_6R1wNatfKZWhQx4kK_4EGVUz7Rtv06QuH1MxiBt2zXoZ3pm6_q06xqoP7FVVaDRbjQzibgTELrKELFSnBY8y1KzMTr4PcRktoBHy9PHbHusVWhZyo53s" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="426" data-original-width="1002" height="136" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhQAHHtmJS4P_dhF_WxtLV6S-5jMOqyw0bclcAsKD0aJVYCeD35GO3zdfh49knUe6_6R1wNatfKZWhQx4kK_4EGVUz7Rtv06QuH1MxiBt2zXoZ3pm6_q06xqoP7FVVaDRbjQzibgTELrKELFSnBY8y1KzMTr4PcRktoBHy9PHbHusVWhZyo53s" width="320" /></a></div><br /><br /></div>Marshall Shelly+http://www.blogger.com/profile/01553078129269667636noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10404879.post-65380819373134427922023-04-17T19:13:00.001-04:002023-04-17T19:13:24.028-04:00Preparing for Pilgrimage<h2 style="text-align: left;"> 30,000 Steps a Day</h2><div>In a few weeks, I will be joining a group of fellow clergy (my colleague group these past 20 years), for a pilgrimage across northern England and southern Scotland. We will be walking Hadrian's Wall. Among the many walks and rambles in Europe and the United Kingdom, this walk is one that many see as one of the most beautiful and moving of the lot. We will travel West to East, with the prevailing winds that blow across the island of Britain. Our timing is intended to mitigate the harsher weather of early spring with the more temperate weather of early summer. The pilgrimage itself will culminate with a visit to the Holy Island of Lindisfarne. After a celebratory meal (and perhaps a pint or two) in Edinburgh, I will wend my way home to New Jersey.</div><div><br /></div><div>A lovely thought!</div><div><br /></div><div>But make no mistake, this will be a challenging walk. We will be clocking about 12 to 15 miles a day, with moderate changes in elevation for a week. For someone who spends the majority of his days at just about 9 feet above sea level, even those slight changes will be a challenge, to say nothing of going from around 12,000 steps a day (counting exercise on the ergometer and with HIIT) to over 30,000 steps a day for a solid week. </div><div><br /></div><div>This blog is not so much about the pilgrimage. It is about the preparation for it. We have to be ready to walk in any weather with a light day pack on our backs for just over a week. For a group of older men, this is a challenge. It is a challenge to our fitness, but also a challenge to our resilience. I have been trying to train, with intervals of long and short hikes, some with a heavy pack and some without. The thing I am beginning to realize is that being fit is one thing. Being toughened up is another.</div><div><br /></div><div>The amount of wear and tear on joints, feet and body when you walk long distances is remarkable. I have a host of little things left over from a life of sports and folly. </div><div><br /></div><div>There is the big toe on my right foot that sustained some damage over thirty years ago during a long drive from New York to Columbus Ohio. The nerves are just a little tender. Hard use can give me a numbness or pain. There is the knee that was damaged while I was training in aikido during a throw called "Heaven and Earth." After years of soccer, my ankles stiffen and ache with too much use. None of us on the trip are young. You can add arthritis and general aches and pains to the mix. a twelve mile hike will put the hurt on you, to be sure. Now, get up after that walk and do it again the next day...and so on.</div><div><br /></div><div>I am not complaining, just acknowledging that a pilgrimage carries with it a cost of fatigue, pain and the expenditure of energy that whittles down on our collective quotient of resilience.</div><div><br /></div><div>Once upon a time, I remember reading the account of a mountaineer who climbed to the summit of a high mountain. Arriving at the summit, he looked around and down at the whole world at his feet...and felt nothing. Hypoxia and fatigue had drained his ability to have an emotional reaction. At the heights of achievement, he just felt...nothing. It was only in retrospect that he was able to process what he had experienced. </div><div><br /></div><div>The goal of a pilgrimage is not just to get from point A to point B. It is also about being on the journey itself, being on the way. </div><div><br /></div><div>I realize that as we prepare for this ramble across the United Kingdom, I am enjoying the challenge of getting my body ready for the trek. I can feel my fitness increasing, my feet toughening up, my joints absorbing the work and getting stronger. I am also aware of the pain, the challenge of keeping up a good pace, of getting rest as well as putting the miles up on the board.</div><div><br /></div><div>We all have journeys to undertake in this life. Some are treks of a few steps. Others are accomplished supine in a bed due to illness, or are forced due to changes in employment.</div><div><br /></div><div>All of them involve us getting in touch with what our minds and bodies can and cannot do in response to a challenge. What is your pilgrimage challenge these days? Are you preparing for the journey, or on it already?</div><div><br /></div><div>Are you on your way to the summit, or having crested the rise are preparing for the return?</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhCMIEWVbclgkUQNAdU6jTqu9f11Cb2OjOnU-3WtrJ-_oHoIO9gNNib5VjtTU2cYmMX2W35YywxtInQo-6dgjRg0SVYxSLBtZsGTlayVJrrdp6mMUEgzli-i6HdrG9WfA9_gPalmmHdWaEqEj1qdoXSoyx6HiRYToRZ27b7OjXptteX-T2iAlg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="351" data-original-width="624" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhCMIEWVbclgkUQNAdU6jTqu9f11Cb2OjOnU-3WtrJ-_oHoIO9gNNib5VjtTU2cYmMX2W35YywxtInQo-6dgjRg0SVYxSLBtZsGTlayVJrrdp6mMUEgzli-i6HdrG9WfA9_gPalmmHdWaEqEj1qdoXSoyx6HiRYToRZ27b7OjXptteX-T2iAlg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><br /></div><p><br /></p>Marshall Shelly+http://www.blogger.com/profile/01553078129269667636noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10404879.post-74510161551150472032023-04-03T11:12:00.004-04:002023-04-03T11:12:53.887-04:00Holy Monday: The Scent of Nard, Overwhelmed by the Moment<h2 style="text-align: left;">The Outrage of Extravagant Abundance</h2><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIvQzofbntg5cRNu6WaaJ-TzMHSvyezVv51oaFt5bgmL-Icj8AHDRdmYi_yZaasmMNGGWgR0fceXriXk0YTZTXVDpry_kwhOfmaEi8URDdh7uwqKnwAH_cWFv-28dfW14fVGkgjPwfwxFPUfTQ8I5-f1HPw4tZCtbqy_9-0UKUr9fohPN7ZOc/s630/the-anointing-at-bethany-01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="445" data-original-width="630" height="226" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIvQzofbntg5cRNu6WaaJ-TzMHSvyezVv51oaFt5bgmL-Icj8AHDRdmYi_yZaasmMNGGWgR0fceXriXk0YTZTXVDpry_kwhOfmaEi8URDdh7uwqKnwAH_cWFv-28dfW14fVGkgjPwfwxFPUfTQ8I5-f1HPw4tZCtbqy_9-0UKUr9fohPN7ZOc/s320/the-anointing-at-bethany-01.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>The recent experiences of emergence from the pandemic are truly a bit much for all of us. As we attempt to resume our lives, which for the most part is happening apace, there is a residue of grief and loss that we still have to come to terms with in our shared and common life. As well, we are all walking with no small amount of trauma in our lives as we attempt to frame a future that does not hold a great deal of perceived promise. <div><br /></div><div>That struggle applies to the macro-issues of environmental change, geopolitical conflict and just a general foment over a host of talking points up and down the social and political spectrum. It also applies to the daily challenges we all face in this life as we seek to provide for those we love and perhaps do a little bit more for those in need in our community. We seem to be living in a time of great inner and shared conflicts, ranging from disagreements over basic values related to human existence to the challenge of navigating the commute to work and school, not that traffic has returned to "normal."</div><div><br /></div><div>In the midst of this tumult, churches are dealing with their own emergent moment of realizing that our entire landscape or membership and participation has changed. Leadership in local churches, lay and ordained, are coming to terms with a world that has lost its sense of routine participation in religious life and practice. People have, truly, fallen out of the habit of church...and of being church. As a result, we are all experiencing a frisson of anxiety and dread that we won't ever get back to where we were before this all began. </div><div><br /></div><div>For those who prefer foreboding prophecies of doom, the words "the bottom has fallen out of the Church" are becoming axiomatic. For optimists, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. The Church is in the midst of a great transformation triggered by these latest crises. There is growth on the other end of this journey. We just don't know what it will look like as of yet. For hopeful realists, this is another confirmation that we are a people of faith whose deepest roots are in the inheritance of the Resurrection of the Christ and the sure knowledge that before we are gathered in as a bountiful harvest by the One who creates, redeems and sanctifies....there must be a winnowing of the grain from the chaff.</div><div><br /></div><div>We are being winnowed.</div><div><br /></div><div>For grain, that means being hauled to the threshing floor. It means being trod on and broken, feeling grain separated from chaff. It means being thrown into the air and feeling a significant part of ourselves consigned to the wind as waste...whilst the useful bits fall back to the ground. After that, we are going on a trip to the miller for grinding...and then to the baker to be leavened and then to the oven.</div><div><br /></div><div>Only after all that transformation, trauma, loss and change will we be ready to be broken and shared with a world hungry for the good news that is US as the Body of Christ.</div><div><br /></div><div>That brings us to Holy Monday.</div><div><br /></div><div>In today's Gospel story, the disciples are having a common meal. The custom of the day was to gather and ablute hands and feet soiled by the day before the evening meal. That task would usually be performed by the lowest servant in the host's home. (Hold on to that image...we will revisit on Maundy Thursday!) Sometimes, the water offered would be scented with roses, herbs or orange blossoms. Sometimes in addition to cleansing water, anointing oils would be offered. These are the basics of hospitality that a host would offer a guest. The minimum would just be a good rinse of clean water so that hands could reach into the common feeding bowl without offence or risk.</div><div><br /></div><div>On Holy Monday, though, something else happens...and it challenges us to this day.</div><div><br /></div><div>A woman (sometimes she is named and sometimes she is not...) appears at the shared meal that will be set before Jesus and his followers. She takes out a jar of costly perfume, proceeds to empty it out on Jesus' feet and uses her own hair and tears to wipe them off. </div><div><br /></div><div>Such an extravagant, overwhelming gesture. The gospel accounts record that the scent filled the whole house of the place where the group was gathered. Breaking open and pouring out an entire bottle of perfume is one thing...now imagine it being the most expensive scent you can imagine. Imagine as well your throat, eyes, even the food you are eating being FILLED with that smell.</div><div><br /></div><div>Such extravagance is not welcome. It wasn't welcomed then, and we would struggle to welcome it now. This is not a celebration of abundance. It is a waste of a resource that should be directed to the current crises we are all facing, then AND now!</div><div><br /></div><div>Yet, every year we return to that room and the woman who is pouring out her most precious possession in order to do a thing for her teacher. She is making a free gift of herself and sees no need to hold back anything from the moment. In a season of life and Church when it all seems to be a struggle for survival, we need to remember that we are called to be a people of radical hope. We are a people reborn of resurrection. We are a people whose call to be in the moment is more than just getting by, but in giving our whole selves over to the Glory of God in service to the other. </div><div><br /></div><div>If you are reading this while wondering how to add one more thing to a plate already overfull, then pour it out in abundance. If you are struggling in the knowledge that you COULD be more faithful in attendance and service to God in your faith but fret over what has to give in order to do that, then pout it our in abundance. If you have fallen away feel guilt or shame over having walked away from your faith community and worry about eyes judging you if you return, then pour it out in abundance. If you are one of those who has kept the practice in your faith, but wonder where everyone went, then pour it out in abundance.</div><div><br /></div><div>Don't hold anything back. Holy Week, and Holy Monday in particular is a chance to take all that struggle, all those blessings, all those regrets...and pour them out. </div><div><br /></div><div>Let the scent of that struggle fill the house. Let Christ himself be anointed with all that we possess...all our struggles and worries and all out strengths and resources.</div><div><br /></div><div>Pour it all out and give thanks that we can do that today, tomorrow and for the ages to come. If we hold nothing back in our striving to love and serve God in Christ and in each other...then there is no challenge we cannot face, no crisis that cannot be transformed into opportunity. </div><div><br /></div><div>That is the true blessing of the overwhelming scent of nard....and our need to embrace the outrage of extravagant abundance.</div><div><br /></div><div>A blessing on your Holy Week....<br /><div><br /></div></div>Marshall Shelly+http://www.blogger.com/profile/01553078129269667636noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10404879.post-46342354359469992262023-03-27T16:52:00.002-04:002023-03-27T16:52:31.389-04:00The Disruption of Holy Week<h2 style="text-align: left;"> The Challenge of Real Time Worship</h2><div>I live in New Jersey. When you couple the essential Jersey personality with a general East Coast desire to be on our way with little delay, you see some remarkable behaviors in and around worship in Church. Colleagues talk about their strict practice of timing their sermons to the minute on Sundays (8 minutes for 8 AM; 10 minutes for 10 AM). I have seen people in congregations look at their watches when the preacher hits their assumed limit (even the Bishop). </div><div><br /></div><div>Also, there is this odd habit in many churches (not my current one, for the most part) of people arriving on the minute when worship is scheduled to start. One church I served decades ago saw a Sunday with about 27 people in the procession, and as we entered the church for worship the nave (where people sit) was empty. By the time the procession arrived in the sanctuary and my rector and I turned around, there were almost 200 people in the pews.</div><div><br /></div><div>People have schedules to keep. God, you are on the clock!</div><div><br /></div><div>The challenge of being one who leads worship in real time (the realm of clocks and calendars) is that we are committing to worship a God who does NOT live in real time. Instead, time for God is more than just the sweep of the second hand. It is the turning of the seasons, the arc of history. It is the fullness of time. God neither makes, nor keeps appointments as we do in this mortal realm. </div><div><br /></div><div>So, what do we do when we have to figure out how to make time for God?</div><div><br /></div><div>As the effects of the pandemic on our social systems continues to make its impact felt, I have seen more and more people struggle to make time in (and as) Church a priority when it comes to time management. It is difficult to carve out time in a day, a week, a season when so many other things in our lives and time and date certain. Classes, sports, competitions and events are shoehorned into the spaces around the regularly demanding schedules that families must keep in order to educate, specialize and prepare their children for life. Work has returned to the all day, seven days a week routine that was disrupted by the shut down. Sunday mornings are essential to many just for the simple opportunity to NOT have something to do, or somewhere to be.</div><div><br /></div><div>Then, along comes the disruption of Holy Week. Most churches attempt to engage some of the wildly demanding opportunities that Holy Week presents. Our church does almost every one of the possible 33 liturgies a person could observe. That includes the four services of the Daily Office, along with worship for each day of Holy Week (with at least two services on Good Friday!). A person committed to walk in real time with Jesus could see most of their "down" time consumed with church. Most clergy attempt to economize and make sure that they don't schedule too much, but rather just enough in order to "get the feel" of the journey that Jesus and his disciples make from the triumphal entry into Jerusalem to the moment when the women encounter the empty tomb on Easter morning.</div><div><br /></div><div>Sprinkle in an overnight watch on Maundy Thursday, a Good Friday fast and a Great Vigil with more than 9 possible readings....you get the point!</div><div><br /></div><div>Holy Week is a reminder that all the busy demands of this life, and the truth that we too often allow those demands to come between us and God, don't always bear the weight of justification. Call to mind the old aphorism on the tombstone: "No one ever carved 'I wish I spent more time at the office' on their headstone...."</div><div><br /></div><div>Still, I am one who struggles along with the rest of humanity with getting as much done in as many places and with as many people as possible. Even as I write this blog, I am getting ready to lead Evening Prayer online, welcome a couple right after that for premarital counseling, going home to dinner with my spouse and then sitting down to edit the parish's electronic newsletter. Oh, and I need to record, edit and post a vlog as well....</div><div><br /></div><div>That doesn't make me special. I am blessed with a day that is full of moments for me to pause and give thanks for my walk with God in ordained ministry. I am NOT complaining! What I am doing is noting just how much we need the disruption of Holy Week as people of God. We NEED to take a look at how hard we push ourselves and just for a moment take our feet off the accelerator and slow down, be present and put a quiet and unhurried moment with God and each other at the top of our list of daily to-dos.</div><div><br /></div><div>Remember that story about the empty church, suddenly full? </div><div><br /></div><div>That Sunday continues to stick out for me, because apart from that off beginning there was a notable and memorable sense of everyone being fully present and engaged in worship. The hymns sounded sweet, the reader did a great job, the rector preached a fine sermon, the kids enjoyed running around and playing underfoot at a coffee hour that went on longer than it usually did. </div><div><br /></div><div>We might have been rushed in our arrival, but no one was in a hurry to leave. </div><div><br /></div><div>That is the welcome disruption that Holy Week brings to me this year. A reminder is about to break over us like an unexpected wave at the shore...It's time to hit the rest button on our busy-ness and get down to the business of being the people of God, gathered and at peace.</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhFhhGMejb2AzEr7kORoQ61Zwvp45G0f5cuWu2OWz7ju62pxJ3bxhLR8F8Ma_EBT8PwAQmz_gcVZ84q3iTmqBbUBq8_xcXMFwYgcVvwRUfoP6O59LrJsXZ1_EsLPhOk7QrVQc8117312rqJ5pI494Pe44pkaxiHz12Ghe-Hlwpqu5CY8edsqoI" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="3020" data-original-width="3020" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhFhhGMejb2AzEr7kORoQ61Zwvp45G0f5cuWu2OWz7ju62pxJ3bxhLR8F8Ma_EBT8PwAQmz_gcVZ84q3iTmqBbUBq8_xcXMFwYgcVvwRUfoP6O59LrJsXZ1_EsLPhOk7QrVQc8117312rqJ5pI494Pe44pkaxiHz12Ghe-Hlwpqu5CY8edsqoI" width="240" /></a></div><br /><br /></div>Marshall Shelly+http://www.blogger.com/profile/01553078129269667636noreply@blogger.com0