The Dying Church: Why I can't quite buy it

They say the Church is dying, especially this week.  Especially since the Pew report came out, the blogosphere is lit up with apocalyptic predictions of the church’s death and resurrection, or stories denying the proclaimed death, or fingers pointing.  Conservative voices say, “The Church is too liberal and has gone too far from Christ.  It is just a community organization with pretty music.  It is just Christianity Light.”   Liberal voices say, “The Church is too judgmental, too out of touch, too busy spouting off about sexuality to take care of the poor and love the world as it should.  The church must die in order to be resurrected.”  Now, I am no closet liberal; I wear my bleeding heart loud and proud: theologically liberal, spiritually liberal, socially liberal, politically liberal.  But, I can’t quite get on board with the death march.  Perhaps I am sitting happily on the deck, listening to the band play Nearer My God to Thee, as the ship sinks under me. Perhaps I am utterly oblivious to the death throes all around me. Still, I can’t fathom the death of the church I love so dearly, because today, we baptized some babies.

I know that two little souls initiated into the body of Christ does not a revival make.  I know it is a mere drop in the bucket, and that many parents of baptized children do not become active church members.  It’s not the act that got to me today, it is the symbolism, and the memories of what it means.  Unlike many Episcopalians, I remember clearly the day of my baptism.  I was raised in the Mennonite church.  I grew up wrapped in the bosom of a church, eating crackers and candy to keep quiet during church, making crafts out of coffee filters and yarn in Sunday School, playing hide and seek in the choir loft, memorizing hymns in the youth choir, swimming in the lake at church camp, rebuilding areas devastated by tornadoes on service trips, being minded, raised and loved by a community of mothers and fathers who kept me safe, taught me manners, and acted out the love of God in their daily lives.

I was baptized at 15, the age of consent, the age at which a young person is supposed to be able to understand the mystery of Christ, the meaning of sacrifice, and the power of grace, the age at which a person can commit to a life of humble service.  What 15 year old, or 30 year old, or 95 year old can actually understand all of that?  I suppose they pick 14 or 15 because it’s old enough to have an intelligent conversation matters of faith, and young enough to still do things to please one’s parents.  I remember that spring morning, after a year of catechism, when I stood in front of my congregation and said the baptismal covenant, pledging to renounce evil and to turn to Christ.  I remember looking out at my parents, my Sunday School teachers, my choir directors, my youth group leaders, and telling them, “Yes, I respect what you taught me.”  I remember the cool water on my head.  I remember the congregation greeting us, the newly baptized, shaking our hands and hugging us.  I remember the little old lady who hugged me fiercely, saying, “You are blessed.”  All of those memories flooded back as I spoke the words of the baptismal covenant today.

I know what it’s like to leave the bosom of the church, too, to walk away happily and freely, unwounded and proud.  Not long after my baptism, I decided I was done with church.  I loved the people there, but I didn’t see my beliefs reflected in their theology.  I didn’t believe in some old-man-in-the-sky who was judging me.  I didn’t buy the idea of original sin.  I wasn’t sure about the immaculate conception, or about Jesus’s divinity.  I had learned all the answers to the questions in my catechism, but I just didn’t quite feel them.  Church wasn’t for me.  I went out in the world, formed from my church’s teachings, but sure I could figure things out for myself.  I was going to be a Buddhist, or maybe an atheist, or maybe just a spiritual-but-not-religious type of person.  While I was gone, the church may have been dead to me, but God was not. (You can see that I made a pretty poor atheist, no matter how much I tried.)  God sustained me through my father’s death, through years of infertility, changes in career, challenges to life and love.  God loved me when I knew I was unloveable.  And, when my babies came to me, I sang them to sleep with hymns.  I didn’t realize, until I had to sing babies to sleep, how few songs I actually knew by heart.  All those years of the church choir came back to me and my children fall to sleep to the words of Amazing Grace, Be Thou My Vision, ‘Tis a Gift to be Simple, and many others.  Those songs were engraved in my heart, buried deep, but indelible. So, I loved God, but I didn't think he lived at church. I had left that part of my life behind me... I thought.

It took over fifteen years for me to realize that the Sunday School version of faith I left was my childhood idea, not the actual mystery of the Christian faith.  Eventually, I realized that Christ was an agent of unearned, universal grace, and that my own need for control and power was my deepest, darkest original sin.  Eventually, I gave in to the lure of the story of Christ, the God who laid down his divinity to become human, and then laid down his very human life, so that we may connect with the divine. Eventually, I began to understand the words to the hymns I knew by heart, how amazing grace can save a wretch like me, how the fount of every blessing can bind my wandering heart to God.  Grace led me back to church, searching for a message of love lived out in human life, like I had known as a child.

I am currently embroiled in raising my own little family, and, once again, I am wrapped in the bosom of a church.  My children now play hide and seek in the social hall, make crafts with coffee filters and yarn, and learn the Doxology in Sunday School.  My entire family now is cared for, watched over, taught, inspired, and challenged by my church.  I guess that’s why I can’t understand that the church is dying.  Because, today, we baptized babies into the DEATH of Christ, and proclaimed their (and our) everlasting LIFE. We are the church, my friends!  We are the body and blood of Christ!  Are we living out our love in commitment to service, in expanding our education, in embracing the needy?  Are we living out our baptismal covenants?   Are we loving our enemies as we love ourselves? Are we loving our God, with all our hearts, with all our souls, and with all our minds?  Because my friends, if we are, then death has no sting for us.  If we are truly laying down our lives for each other, then there is no life but Christ’s for us anyway.  If we are truly the church of the risen Christ, then we believe in the resurrection of the dead and the LIFE of the WORLD to COME!

Cancer, Nehi soda, Ecology, and the Tao: lessons from my father

May 7, 2015 is the 10th anniversary of my father's death. Usually, I write an essay about how wise, kind, and special he was. This year, I will let his own words speak for him. While he was fighting cancer, Dad began writing a memoir for his family. Here are some excerpts from it, for those who knew and loved him, and my other friends who didn't have the pleasure of knowing this extraordinary man.

April 7, 2005

“What am I here for, except to set an example?”  Dr. Deb Bennett

“I know stuff.”  That’s a line from a justifiably low-rated movie that has been in my mind for some time now.  In the movie, an old man, who appears to be an old biker dude is asked why he is kept as a member of a post-apocalyptic, young group of rebels battling against the power of a feudalistic, brutal society rising out of a power vacuum after a great war of destruction.

Indeed!  He did know a lot of stuff.  He had been, in his long life, a warrior, a scientist, and an astronaut.  His knowledge and experience were invaluable, and decisive for his rebel group.

Well, I know some “stuff” too.  I sure don’t have that old man’s knowledge but I have gained, as anyone else of 59 years would have, or should have, a small collection of “stuff” that might be of interest and maybe even help, on occasion, to his offspring.

That’s the reason for this writing. I’m in the hospital with some complicated complications to colon cancer.  I was diagnosed in October 2003 and the medical details aren’t germain, except that the most important thing I know about things like this and I’ve known it for a long time, is that to survive is to accept.

In accepting the true circumstances of your life you can begin to deal with them, however gloomy they might be.  Acceptance does NOT mean surrender.  It means ACCEPTANCE.

Considering this, it’s clear that if I’m going to pass on a little of my “stuff”, I’d best be doing it.  So now I’ll endeavor to begin (even though I’m actually planning on about 20 years to complete the job.)

April 8, 2005

        I was born on August 16, 1945.  My mom said it was a hot and humid, sticky summer day.  I’m sure it was just because I’ve always hated that kind of weather.  One of the things about my age that I want to be perfectly clear about is that I’m NOT a Baby Boomer.  The Japanese surrendered on August 14.  The Baby Boom began almost a year later.  Why  this should matter so much is almost a mystery to me except that I’ve always sensed some laziness and moral weakness in the slightly younger generation (witness President Clinton’s sexual exploits) what he did didn’t matter to me, but his lies did.

        At any rate, just so you can know a little about my boyhood, we’ll get the hell away from politics and talk about “Nehi” soda.

        Quite a bit of my growing years were spent in and out of mischief with the other boys at this tiny town called Somerdale where my Dad’s parents and kin lived and their descendants still do.  A lady named Bessie Banks ran the town grocery.  To call it a grocery is a bit beyond the strictest truth.  Actually, it was a store of sorts, though, in the bottom of an old house that hadn’t been lived in for years.  It was just a big room with old oily floors and a big pot-bellied stove in the back where Bessie’s dad and his cronies played checkers and spit in the coal pile.

        Between the stove and door were a bunch of shelves holding canned goods from fresh to ancient, but the heart of us boy’s attention were two old refrigerators beside the front doors which held the pop.  There was Coke in the old small bottles and Pepsi in the same size and best of all, Nehi soda in many great flavors.  I don’t know if they even make it any more, but they should, especially that good old “cream soda”.  This was our refreshment on those long, hot summer afternoons when we mighty white hunters desperately needed a break from the dangerous stalk of the deadly starlings that harassed our little town, so we slung our “Daisy Red Riders” over our shoulders and headed for the store.

        We would pool our pennies and determine our shortfall.  One bottle, as I recall, cost a nickel and there was a 1 cent deposit.  Since starling hunting paid poor wages, we usually needed to set off along the tar bubbled, boiling roads, looking for enough bottles to fulfill our shortfall.  When we got them, we sat under the old walnut tree and drank and burped and considered basic economics.

April 11

        Economics wasn’t the only thing, though, that we learned in those days.  If you turn on the tv today and scan through the channels it won’t be long till you find one or more lecturing, effectively I hope, about a concept that was being carefully taught to us youngsters.  The current correct name for this is one we never heard of in 1955, “ecology” and it means the interconnectedness of all things natural.  Actually, of all things “period”.

        The thing that now surprises me most about the modern approach to the fact of ecology is that it’s treated as something special. As a unique and separate branch of knowledge.  Of course, this is true, it is a needed science but to treat it in only this way is to cut it off from the simple “common sense” that it really is.

        The whole idea of interconnectedness was introduced to us kids by our various families—grandparents, parents and uncles--as simple and obvious facts of existence.

        When we were trusted, finally, with the huge responsibility of ownership and control of our first Daisy’s, it came with stern and repeated lectures on the sacredness of all life.  Now, we were also taught that there is also a balance in nature that needs to be kept and that the destroyers of this balance, through the years, were us humans.  This, as Grandpa taught, has put upon us heavy debt.

        We were all hunters.  Nothing was more natural to us than to stalk and eventually to kill some sort of prey.  But, we were hunters of Honor, and this is the heart of our debt.  We were carefully indoctrinated to the fact that to honor our prey we must actually feel, not merely empathy, but true love for it and true sorrow for its destruction.  If all you feel is the false pride of a good shot, then you are not a hunter, but a killer.

        Farmers, for example, hate to have ground hog holes in their fields.  Who could blame them?  Machinery is expensive.   Groundhogs, though, have a reason to exist, too.  They provide food for foxes and sometimes hawks and their burrows make secure homes for all kind of critters from snakes to rats to rabbits.  Sometimes all at the same time.

        But farmers have a right to live, too.  In fact, they feed us, don’t they?  Too many ground hogs need to go.  It’s time to make a payment on our debt.  The payment includes not just the bullets and the time and the fun of the stalk, but a serious look at the little, bloody, ball of fur, that just a few moments ago was just trying to make a living.

        We were allowed to shoot all the English sparrows and all the starlings that we could get our sites on.  That was because they were thought to destroy the native songbird eggs.  We were never to judge these little victims, though.  It wasn’t their fault they were brought to a land with no niche for them.  It was just another imbalance needing correction that was caused by our human arrogance.

        You see, what our grandfathers, or at least mine, were eventually teaching us, when they gave us our first Daisy’s and .22’s and shotguns was not how to hunt.  That’s a skill we could learn well by ourselves.  What they were teaching was the great depth of connectedness between all creatures and the oneness of all life.

        A precious lesson, indeed, and one not taught much these days.  Grandpa would be much upset if he saw the hunting morals practiced by some of the current generation of “sportsman”.  I’m sure he would growl something about them not having a community, or a village, to teach them “the Way”.

        “The Way” is a pretty interesting concept.  The “Tao”, as I prefer it, is, I guess, a very ancient way to describe a really religious path of life and it’s what we were actually taught as hunters, and it is remarkable that the teaching comes not from a Bible or some religious tome, but from the entire community.

        So now we have a path to follow and some moral reason for it, but what path?  Who knows?  The way of our lives is in the future and will, I promise you, be a surprise.  It’s not likely, though, that there will be much hunting in it.

        Most likely, there will be several paths.  Some may be for economics.  “How much money can I make?”  Some for fun, or fame or whatever, but among these there will be at least one (especially one) that will go straight to the marrow.  The funny thing is that this one may be hard to recognize even though it is your one true calling.

       

The Peaceful Pain of Pruning Shears

The Acts 8 Blogforce asks its participants, "Where have you experienced resurrection in this Easter season?" I was stumped at first, bone-dry and tired, with no inspiration. I figured I would sit this one out, as fascinating as the question was. Then, I started thinking about plants.

I am a rotten gardener.  Periodically, I buy a plant and hope to keep it alive.  Unfortunately for the plant, my hopes inevitably fail.  I may water it from time to time, but usually too little or too much.  I don’t understand when to repot a plant, so they end up strangling themselves with their own roots.  I have no concept or knowledge of pruning.  Even the plants that are supposed to survive just about anything eventually kick the bucket if I am in charge.  Luckily, I am pretty good with mammals:  dogs, cats, hamsters, rabbits, horses, and children do pretty well under my care.  But when it comes to plants, my thumb is black.  So, it’s a little difficult for me to relate to gardening metaphors.  Give me a metaphor about training horses to load in a trailer, training dogs to walk on the leash, or training children to not be wild animals during church, and I can relate.  Pruning branches, not so much.

I suppose the point of the message might be that I am the plant that requires pruning.  If I were a branch, I would a pushy one, that oversteps its boundaries and reaches too far.  I would be the one striving further, growing faster, and grasping out for neighboring plants.  Lately, I’ve been going about 100 miles per hour, 95% of my life is scheduled, between work, kids’ activities, church commitments, exercise, etc, my calendar runneth over.  I like things this way; it makes me feel important and necessary.  I can check things off my list and feel accomplished and valued.  But, the ambition of my little branch is not always what’s best for the entire vine of my family, my workplace, or my church.  Sometimes I need to be told to “settle down”; sometimes I need to be pruned.

Pruning hurts.  It requires cutting off parts of myself, saying “No, I can’t do that,” settling down and abiding in the Lord.  Abiding (waiting) is not my forte.  I’ve got a share of patience for working with young people or animals, but when trying to accomplish a project, I want to get the job done quickly.  It is extremely difficult for me to just be, to abide in Christ, and to grow organically through his love.  I am a product of my overachieving culture, believing that if I do not have a consuming project going on, then I must not be living up to my potential.  It is difficult to wait upon the Lord when church becomes another item on my to-do list.  Today, I had a lesson to learn.

Today, I went to church a little cranky; I went like I was going to work on a Monday, not like I was ready for spiritual sustenance.  I went like I had a job to do.  Then, I heard the Word of God. I heard about how I am just a single branch of a huge vine, not worth much by myself, but worth a great deal when combined with all the other branches.  I heard how in order to bear fruit, I must be pruned.  I must give up all the extra branches I try to produce, all the show-offy branches that are only there to impress the neighbors, all the pushy branches that are only trying to encroach on the other plants, all the unnecessary branches that are sucking up the plant’s energy.  When I give up the extra distractions, fruit will grow.  I heard that I must abide in Christ.  Not DO--ABIDE; not ACT--WAIT.  I heard that without Christ’s love I am nothing but extra leaves fed to the fire.  I heard that without Christ’s love nothing will grow in me; that it doesn’t really matter how much I try to produce, I cannot produce a single berry with my own will.  I heard, and I rested.  

I rested, and cried in relief. I couldn’t speak the words of the Nicene creed, because of the lump in my throat and the tears in my eyes.  As I managed my responsibilities so I could check another item off my list, God told me to “Settle down, chick.  Settle down, let it be, and smell the roses.  Or rather, become a rose for others to smell.  Let me help help you grow.”  The knot in my chest loosened, the furrows on my brow smoothed, and the weight on my shoulders lightened.  This, my friends, is what church can do.  This, my friends is what it means to let Christ prune us, to allow ourselves to grow in the love of God. As my inspiration died in my heart and withered on the vine, I found resurrection in the gospel, in the liturgy, in the community of my church. I may be a rotten gardener, but with, God’s help, I pray to be a fruitful plant.

John 15:1-8 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. 2He removes every branch in me that bears  no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. 3You have already  been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you.  4Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the  vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. 5I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who  abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. 6Whoever  does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.  7If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done  for you. 8My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.