More New Prints From This Spring

Its been a busy spring but I have managed to create several prints. This top image is the most recent and draws connections in both theme and aesthetic to the Religion as a Chain of Memory series. This print takes an image of my mother and places it over Medieval manuscript image of a family tree. Along side it is another Medieval image of the annunciation to Mary. My hope is to suggest similar things to those prints of my father, but without using text.

The next image is a reworking from another failed attempt. I like the idea, but both this and the previous rendering have failed to live up to the idea for me so I have begun again to create this print. The image on the right is John the Baptist from the Isenheim Altar piece. In it, he points to Christ on the cross. In place of the crucifixion, I have instead replaced it with consumer logos that are meant to correspond to the four central parts of the Easter Vigil (roughly the services of Light, Word, Baptism, and the Eucharist). All of which hover over the text of John 1 in Latin.

The last print is just a little experiment from both my printmaking and alternative processes photo class (those images to come later this week). It takes a lithograph of a cropped Medieval manuscript drawing of the Ascension and places it over wonderful cyanotype image of a late summer Iowa sky.

Liturgical Calendar

I couple of days ago I posted the schedule for Holy Week from our local Episcopal Church, St. Paul's. Several people posted comments about the full week within the higher liturgical traditions. This whole flurry of liturgical activity was a surprise to me also until a few years ago and began to explore the riches of higher liturgical churches. Im no expert and maybe I am just a sucker for symbol and ritual, but the rhythms and cycles of the church calendar have quickly reshaped the way I think about my faith, witness and means of worship.

While there are many people my age climbing the proverbial liturgical ladder, there are many who are simply unaware of these liturgical traditions, and likely some who may reject them altogether because of their perception that these are Catholic things (Steve Harmon's recent article for CT is a good example). Though perhaps I underestimate folks, and a livelier Lenten liturgical tradition is thriving in low churches. I grew up in the Reformed Church in America (a mid ladder liturgical church) and can remember going to Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Morning Services. Perhaps it was my age or perhaps my general inability to understand spiritual things, but I never came close to living in the narratives of this week.

Anyway, today I ran across a great little site: churchyear.net. It has very basic information on the various seasons and special days within the liturgical calendar. It mentions history and symbolism needed to live into the depths of the narrative as embodied in higher liturgical traditions. The section called All About Lent will be especially helpful for those who might be looking at going to some of these services.

The Spatial Character of Liturgy II

Continuing on with Marianne H. Micks appraisal of the role of space in liturgy she suggests that while theologians have suppressed or ignored the spatial character of liturgy it is prevalent in contemporary imagination (particularly the sciences and arts). Contemporary humanity, according to her, has not lost its awe or appreciation of place noting, “The question would appear to be not whether we are going to think about ultimate questions in terms of space, but how?”

How indeed?

Micks chooses to look at three phenomena related to liturgical expressions and space: church buildings, orientation and matters of catholicity or universality in liturgical practices. My hope is to explore each of her three realms in a more detailed analysis.

First though, I want to deal with a couple of quite profound statements she makes as means of introduction to her three phenomena and how the liturgy comes to relevancy in the discussion.

Micks claims, “For man’s Weltanschauugen…are indeed rooted in his Lebenswelt.” For those of you who are not German scholars (which I am not either) a rough translation would be, “Our worldviews are rooted in our environments.” In essence, our surroundings shape our understandings. Most human anthropologists and even theologians of place would recognize the reciprocity of influence between humanity and place. But for Mick’s central concern it is how the liturgy (environment) shapes our outlook or worldview. She sums this up by saying, “the Christian landscape and the Christian mindscape appear as Siamese twins.” Or at least that is the hope of liturgical formation.

Don Saliers has suggested that, “Patterns of prayer, reading, proclamation, and sacramental action are precisely the practices of communal rehearsal of the affections and virtues befitting ‘life in Christ’: the baptized life of faith in the world. This is no mere ‘imitation of Jesus.’ Rather, communal worship is a participation in the mystery of God’s life poured into the human condition. The symbolic forms and action of liturgy are the school for conceiving and receiving such a patter of life.” (Worship as Theology)

The ecclesial community that is immersed and attending to their liturgical Lebenswelt are being formed in the appropriate Weltanschauugen of actions, virtues, hopes, etc. Micks is suggesting that our physical reality or environment contributes to our understanding of the world around us. Maybe my mother was right…if you hang out with the bad kids you will probably become a bad kid yourself.

The Spatial Character of Liturgy

So much for a vacation.

Time to get back to work I suppose.

Over the next while I want to take a look at chapter seven (In All Places) in a Marianne H. Micks book, The Future Present: The Phenomenon of Christian Worship.

Micks, who I presume is Episcopalian, takes a phenomenological vantage point of our eschatological hope made present in the liturgy. The first part of her text wrestles with the hearkening of that future reality embodied in ritual. The second half suggests what that reality is like in the present. It is in this section that she deals with concepts of place/space.

Micks points out the spatial character of the Eucharistic prayers.

Eucharistic Prayers A – D share these responses.

Celebrant The Lord be with you.
People And also with you.
Celebrant Lift up your hearts.
People We lift them to the Lord.
Celebrant Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
People It is right to give him thanks and praise.

Eucharistic Prayer A & B share this wording.
“It is right, and a good and joyful thing, always and every‑
where to give thanks to you, Father Almighty, Creator of
heaven and earth.”

Eucharistic Prayer C
“At your command all things came to be: the vast expanse of
interstellar space, galaxies, suns, the planets in their courses,
and this fragile earth, our island home.
By your will they were created and have their being.”

While all prayers contain some form of tangible reality in terms of creation and place, C is my favorite.

Micks suggests, “Such activity in such a place cannot be understood only in the language of time.” I agree. We must try to re-imagine the Christian faith in terms of place/space in tandem with time. Edward Casey, among many others, has pointed out how place was replaced by a preference for space which ultimately gave way to Modernity’s complete reliance upon time. Noting that both place and space have been variously ignored, and even suppressed, we must ask what have we lost? What are the dangers in a time based Eucharist? And in Micks’ purview eschatology? And not to mention all other doctrine.

Micks asks what are we to do with our ancient (and for modernity, bankrupt) metaphors that plead us to “lift up our hearts” when we know that God is not “up” there? The modern emphasis demanded that we reclaim concepts of transcendence from notions of space/place thus freeing both God and humanity from the bondage of topography. Micks is right to point out modernity’s distrustful impetus here, but I feel she even underestimates the differences that this makes for cosmology. She accurately notes the loss of transcendence, but as of yet, has not marked the thrust of immanence championed by modernity which, I believe has introduced some dire difficulties into our concepts of ecclesiology. Similarly, I wonder if through the loss of transcendence, does this also open the door for both panentheism or a little further down the road in pantheism?

Themes Amidst the Void: A Holy Saturday Homily

Invitation:
We who are sitting here today have both the benefit of knowing history and the outcomes of this story: Good Friday brings Easter Sunday. And yet, because we know the story, we can never experience it again for the first time. But let me invite you to part company with your preconceived notions. Suppress your tendency to know what will happen. Try to hear the story with virgin ears not dimmed by your memory. And perhaps then we may glimpse a new reality of this dark day.

Readings:
Old Testament Job 14.1-4
Psalm Psalm 130
Epistle 1 Peter 4.1-8
Gospel Matthew 27.57-66, John 19.38-42 (Blended)

Remembering our Journey Thus Far
We are here appropriately scattered and silent. We have come this far in this Holy Week to sit here in silent wonder…confusion…sadness…profound tension of life and death. We have journeyed with Jesus into Jerusalem where crowds have thrown their cloaks and branches as he passed by in triumph on a donkey. We have witnessed intimate moments among friends. We have dined with Christ and the apostles in the Last Supper. We have watched helplessly as Judas betrayed his friend. We have been witnesses at the trial. We have seen injustice. We have suffered the horror of seeing God incarnate hung on the cross.

And now, our Christ lies dead behind a great and immovable stone. And we wait in this the longest of days.

Themes Amidst the Void

Today is a day of tensions.
Our historical vantage point allows us to know of what comes tomorrow. But today we are in between…caught in the middle of sorrow and hope. Today is lived in the tension between the crucifixion and the resurrection…between despair and joy…between presence and absence…between the darkness of Friday and the light of Sunday…between the defeat of life and the victory over death…the end and a new beginning.

Today is a day of silence.
Today we sit in a no-mans land of scripture. With only few words of history. Our scriptures say little of this day. Only Matthew (26.62ff) shares that the priests and Pharisees visit Pilate on the morning of the Shabbat, asking to secure the grave. As scripture is silent on this day, we become silent. In this sparse day of words, we are left to contemplate and re-live the disorientation of the original followers. Scattered, they observed the Sabbath in utter confusion… weariness… and hopelessness. As Christ lays silent, dead in the tomb we sit in silence to consider our own impending death.

Today is a day to consider our mortality.
We live in a death denying culture. Even in death, the mortician tries to beautify the body. We go to the doctor, take vitamins and medication, eat right and exercise not just to be healthy, but to prolong life and delay death. We all dedicate significant mental and physical energy to postponing that final breath. But the truth is we are dying from the moment we are born. Death is not one final act but the final moment of a long process of dying. Today we are reminded of our finitude that we may, as the Epistle has told us to live the remainder of your days “not by human desires, but by the will of God.”

Today is a day of mourning.
It was for the faithful of that time a day of profound loss. Not just of a friend and rabbi, but failure of a communities Messianic dreams. Their hope for salvation crushed, hung out to dry on a cross, and now dead in a tomb. Regardless of how these men and women understood salvation and Jesus as the Messiah, those hopes had literally been killed. This is a day of mourning of the loss of a friend and shared dreams. Today the alter remains bare. Today there is no celebration of the Eucharist, for Christ is not present here.

Today is a day of rest.
The tendency of today is to rush in preparation for tomorrow. Groceries to buy. Meals to prepare. Homes to clean for family gatherings. Miles to travel. And yet, the heart of this day is the Jewish Sabbath. A day of rest. Today we are to see the connection to the first Sabbath…the Sabbath of creation. On the seventh day of creation God ordained a day of rest from the work of creation. Today, God incarnate rests in a tomb from the work of redemption.

Today is a day of waiting.
Again because we are caught in this tension of historical knowledge that this Jesus will rise, we must wait in this tension. I suspect that we are prone to jump all too quickly through this dark day. We don’t like to dwell too long on such topics. But to forget about this day in between the extremes of death and the resurrection is to miss a significant part of the original experience. What we transverse in a few moments of reading was played out historically over a good number of hours. In the course of only a few verses we move from Friday afternoon to Sunday morning. To make our journey complete, we must not rush through this day. We cannot speed up the hours no matter how uncomfortable they may be. We must wait and pray like the disciples horribly suspended between Friday and Sunday.

Today is a day of hope.
As God rested from the work of first creation on the first Sabbath preparing for the for the eight day of creation and the first week; we are to see God Incarnate resting in the tomb from the work of redemption because tomorrow begins the first week of new creation…a new covenant. In the work of the cross we are to see an image of original creation.

Tomorrow, what was lost, will be reclaimed.

Tomorrow, the old will be made new.

Tomorrow, what was broken will be restored.

Tomorrow, those in exile will be welcomed home.

Yesterday’s end brings tomorrow’s new beginning.

And those amidst death, as we are, can hope for new life and resurrection because tomorrow we will see the death of death itself.

Holy Week @ Church of the Good Shepherd

Stanley Hauerwas & Reflections on Lenten Practices

This past fall I had the opportunity to read The Peaceable Kingdom and Prayers Plainly Spoken by Stanley Hauerwas. This was my first real engagement with his works but it was wonderfully productive. I was struck, once again, by his claims that we need to recognize the depths of our sinfulness. Thus it is a fitting time to explore these thoughts at the beginning of Lent. This past Wednesday was Ash Wednesday.

The service from the Book of Common Prayer reminds us,
“Dear People of God: The first Christians observed with great devotion the days of our Lord's passion and resurrection, and it became the custom of the Church to prepare for them by a season of penitence and fasting. This season of Lent provided a time in which converts to the faith were prepared for Holy Baptism. It was also a time when those who, because of notorious sins, had been separated from the body of the faithful were reconciled by penitence and forgiveness, and restored to the fellowship of the Church. Thereby, the whole congregation was put in mind of the message of pardon and absolution set forth in the Gospel of our Savior, and of the need which all Christians continually have to renew their repentance and faith.
I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance;by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God's holy Word. And, to make a right beginning of repentance, and as a mark of our mortal nature, let us now kneel before the Lord, our maker and redeemer.”

This practice and prayer reminds us of our sinfulness and our punishment:
“Almighty God, you have created us out of the dust of the earth: Grant that these ashes may be to us a sign of our mortality and penitence, that we may remember that it is only by your gracious gift that we are given everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen. Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Hauerwas states, “We must be trained to see ourselves as sinners, for it is not self-evident. Indeed, our sin is so fundamental that we must be taught to recognize it; we cannot perceive its radical nature so long as we remain formed by it…[we are sinful] because we deceive ourselves about the nature of reality” (PK, 30-31).

For Hauerwas, sin is primarily an “overreach[ing] of our powers. It is the attempt to live…as if we are or can be the authors of our own stories (this is also primary emphasis of the modern individual). Our sin is a challenge to God’s authorship and that we are characters in the drama of the kingdom (PK, 31). In turn, we use force and violence over others to ensure this illusion of control and self-authorship.

We can only learn what our sin is by discovering our true identity by locating the self in God’s life as revealed in the life, death and resurrection. Only when we are aware of our sinfulness, can we claim the forgiveness and peace with God that is offered through Jesus.

Thus the awareness of sin is a primary theme in Hauerwas’ collected prayers. Prayers, such as these, become a practice of doing something about our sin…it is a means of self-examination in community and confession. Here are a few excerpts.

One prayer begins, “Dear God, we often ask you to invade our lives, to plumb the secrets of our hearts, unknown to ourselves. But in fact we do not desire that. What we really want to scream, if only to ourselves, is “Do not reveal to us who we are.” We think we are better people if you leave us to our illusions” (PPS, 39).

A line from another prayer suggests, “We want you to like us, and so we try to hide who we are” (PPS, 66).

Hauerwas states, “For without such a narrative the fact and nature of my sin cannot help but remain hidden in self-deception. Only a narrative that helps me place myself as a creature of a gracious God can provide the skills to help me locate my sin” (PK, 31). Only in a community committed to studying this particular set of stories and displaying them can we rightly recognize our sin.

In another he speaks, “Gracious God, forgive us our presumptions to confess our sin. Only your favor makes it possible for us to know and acknowledge our sins” (PPS, 67).

Hauerwas suggests that unless we learn to relinquish our perceived powers of self authorship, we are not capable of the peace of God’s kingdom. Peace is movement of God’s people who have put themselves under God’s story and authorship rather than be driven by an assumption that we control history. Once we accept our emplacement in God’s ongoing story we no longer need to manipulate the world around us to promote our own story.

Hauerwas prays, “You have called us to your peaceable people. We do not like it, but help us live it and in the living learn to love you” (PPS, 65). This peace does not just exist between God and us, within ourselves, or even with others, but also creation…there is an ecological component. One prayer in particular caught my attention. “Help us to live at peace with those creatures not like us-that is, dogs, pigs and even, God help us, chickens. And help us to live in peace with ourselves.” (PPS, 57).

who we are...where we came from

The past two weeks Fr. Tim has been using an army chant to direct his sermons. Everywhere we go - People want to know - Who we are.

This past week we looked at who we are via where we have come from. Fr. Tim focused on a) all different walks of life, b) the waters of baptism and c) we come from Christ, who sends us into the world. Our identity comes from our history and in particular a story that has been passed down through generations and traditions. But this is not just historical or present reality. Who we are suggests telos as well. Who we are tells us also, as Fr. Tim pointed, what we are to do along the way.

All of this came marvelously alive as we returned to the liturgy in preparation for the Eucharist. During Advent, Christmas and Epiphany, our congregation is using a liturgy borrowed from the Anglican Church of Kenya. Before the sanctus is sung, the celebrant recounts the story of Israel and the church by saying,

“From a wondering nomad you created your family; for a burdened people you raised up a leader; for a confused nation you chose a king; for a rebellious crowd you sent your prophets. In these last days you have sentus your Son, your perfect image, bringing your kingdom, revealing your will, dying, rising, reigning remaking your people for yourself. Through him you have poured out the Holy Spirit, filling us with light and life….”

Fr. Tim’s sermon prepared me once again to claim this story as my own history. This is my family’s story. Through faith we are incorporated into this powerful narrative that when we say who we are, we are telling the story and history of our faith.