Wayside Pulpit

Stories of the story

What is a story? A story has a plot, characters and a setting. It also has readers, a writer, and some reason for its existence. Even if that reason is simply for pure entertainment.

It is beyond pedestrian (mundane actually) to talk about the gospels being "stories." Their narrative quality is so obvious that even children can tell you the story of Jesus-and-this or Jesus-and-that. So, is there really anything else to say about the fact that the gospels are stories?

I think probably not.

Yet, I do think that there is something to be said about the stories we make of stories. We hear a story (really any story) and off we go making a story about that story. In a sense we cannot ever really hold onto just a story. We are inclined to make it our own by telling something about it. This telling is an aggregation of our opinions, thoughts, feelings, and even imagination.

I am sure you see where I am going with this.

So, I really do not care much any more about the stories of Jesus and his band of not-so-merry followers. What I do find interesting are the stories today's Christians tell about the stories regarding Jesus.

If you, or I, really care about The Feeding of the Five-thousand, it makes much more sense to care about that caring than the story itself. The story never changes, I can go read it right now and guess what? The plot, the setting, and the characters will be exactly the same as it was when I was only eight. And you? If you go read it right now, you'll experience the same thing.

Yet, when I make my own story about the story, THAT is something to hang a hat on; something you and I could really dual about. We could even learn a bit about each other from our stories of that story.

I am for a new gospel: a gospel of the people that is meant to change daily, a gospel that strives to take that which is "something old" and make it "something new." I am not referring to just retelling (that happens on too many Sundays from lazy pulpits); rather, I want a recreated gospel where, us, the people of today, tell the story of the story.

A Bell in Heaven Tolls

There are so many reasons not to write. Though, I suppose, there are just as many reasons to write. It just seems like the reasons to not write pull so much harder; their force exerts unimaginable strength. Only if you’ve ever felt this force would you understand.

After class today a student told me that she was going to do NaNoWriMo and she seemed at that moment like an angel. I had been considering it, though I have too much to do. Well, I always have too much to do. Yet, I need something to pull me out of the funk I am in. Creativity feels so far away, while it used to be so close. I have given too much to love and it has hurt me in many many ways. Though, I admit I gave it freely, the giving has come to haunt me. I don’t know where I lost myself, but I have. I don’t know where that creative thinking, being, and living went, but it is gone. It is gone and I desperately miss it. I think sometimes I sleep so much because I hope that I’ll find it in my dreams. Yet, the more I sleep and the more I love, the more I loose. And, to be perfectly honest, I don’t have much more to loose; there is very little of me left.

I have not felt like I was drowning, but I have felt stagnant water surrounding me and movement has been very difficult. The little angel voice the belled in the empty classroom today reminded me of those cheesy recordings of humpback whale songs. The voice resonated more than had meaning; I felt it more than I understood it. Yet, in the feeling I knew the desire to create something (a feeling that has been so given away for the happiness of another), even if it is a novel that no one will ever read, or really even care about. Perhaps in the writing of it something of this mess I am in will work itself out.

Remote Control

I am dismayed by how infrequently I have written in this space in the past year or so. My lack of writing has not been for lack of ideas to share. My absence from this space is the result of two intertwining issues. First, I am a constantly failing perfectionist. As a result, I don't write because I want only to craft as close to perfect as I can. Yet I know I can't be perfect, so I don't write--the ideas and words all stay tightly guarded. The second issue is simply making time. I am crazy busy, just like most of the world, but I have time if I make the time. I use time as an excuse; it is how I pretend issue number one doesn't exist.

I believe I carry a voice that this world of Christianity might benefit from. Yet it is this voice never gets enough air time, or better said, I never give this voice enough air time. I continually set the dial to a different station.

I won't promise myself or this space anything, but I intend to make a difference.

Oblique Strategies

I just finished writing the hardest sermon I’ve ever had to write. I still don’t know what it was so difficult. There wasn’t one moment when the ideas flowed, it was like slogging through wet snow to put together the final 2000 words. The text, Hosea 1:2-10 was a challenge for me and though my final interpretation is interesting, I’m still not sure if it will fly tomorrow morning. You think with preparing a manuscript ahead of time one would know if the thing was good, but the pulpit changes everything. I just never know what will happen.

I’ve been meaning to put a plug in for my favorite sermon writing help – Oblique Strategies I’ve rarely written a sermon without their help and this time around they were indispensable. The Oblique Strategies were first put together in card form by Peter Schmidt and Brian Eno in 1975. There were a number of hard card editions, but I use a freeware set put together by Curvedspace software for Mac OS X.

I can’t exactly explain how they work, but the Strategies are these creative unstuckers that get things moving again when all I’m seeing is a nice big wall. I usually pull out the cards when I catch myself leaning back in my chair and saying, “I have no idea where to go next.” Usually it only takes one or two cards to find the next direction, but sometimes, like in this sermon, I used at least five at various different points. The ones that synched the deal for this Hosea text were, “Retrace your steps” and “Which parts can be grouped?”

There is something really sweet about using a tool made by Brian Eno to help craft better sermons.

Past Three O'clock

I sung a song, as part of St. Olaf’s Manitou Singers, titled, “Past Three O’clock.” The song, an old English carole, is a Christmas piece about the birth of the christ child. Though I sung it nearly eighteen years ago, I still remember the melody and the strange winter magic that the composer captured in that particular arrangement. The song plays loud in my head this early morning as I look at the clock on my cell phone and see that it is just past three A.M..

Just past three A.M.. An hour when thieves seem to run my neighborhood streets stealing cars and breaking into homes. An hour that isn’t quite night, but isn’t quite morning. An hour that stretches long enough for murders to be undertaken, for cars to crash and babies to need feeding. An hour where the moon has set but the sun is far from rising. An hour, just like any hour, some would say. But it is for me, an hour that always seems to catch me off guard with how it holds my fears, my concerns and my deep desire to leave this life.

Am I talking about suicide? Not really. I am talking about the desire to leave the life I am living, Am I talking about packing up and changing towns, houses, jobs? Not really. I am talking about the quest for my soul, and how, somehow, I just can’t find it in this life. There is something tangible missing inside of me. This isn’t something I’ve lost, rather it is something that I have never had. This magical conglomeration of beauty, contentment, peace, groundedness has never been mine, rather it has been the grail that haunts my dreams.

My mind turns to, “Three O’clock Blues,” by B.B. King. It is nice to know that I am not alone in this hour. In fact, I am comforted to realize, through a quick search on iTunes, that the hour of three A.M. holds unlimited grief and longing within the hands of sixty minutes.

well now its three o' clock in the mornin’
and I can't even close my eyes
three o' clock in the mornin’
and I can't even close my eyes
can't find my baby
and I can't be satisfied

I think of the magi and their archetypal quest for the christ child. The myrrh, the incense, the golden nugget; everything is brought on the search. It all has to come because there is no other search like it and it takes everything to survive the journey. This isn’t the pursuit for just a swaddling clothed mewing human child. Rather, it is the all out expedition for the divinity within, the flash of creativity that started the world and the desire to know why your heart keeps beating.

A Science Project

My daughter choose the brachiosaurus for her second grade dinosaur science project. I helped her cut out the side out of a shoe box, bought her clay and paints and let her go to town doing whatever she would like to do. She had a bit of a snag getting the legs to stay on the body, so we pushed in paperclips to make it all stick together. She painted the sun with yellow glitter glue, made rocks out of clay and stuck tomato stems to the box for trees. All in all, when we left the house this morning I thought it was a pretty good second grade project.

That was until I saw the other projects that ended up in second grade. There were molded T-Rexs with ceramic fish in their mouths. Some boxes were filled with peat moss, real water and suns that were electric. I saw one mom set down a project that made roaring noises when you pushed a button. Very few of the projects looked like a kid actually did them, rather I could tell that their parents spent hours and hours building them.

I watch one mother gently carry in her son’s box and set it on the table. Her face had a glow about it, as she adjusted the fake little trees made with real plants and put the finishing touches on the spine of a triceratops. I heard her exclaim, “Wow, I’m so glad that is done, but it sure was fun!” Then I realized, for many of these parents this was a creative activity for THEM. They actually got to build something, do something artistic; something that other people might actually appreciate.

Once I realized this, my annoyance at the whole idea of a parent doing a kid’s science project evaporated. It was replaced with a sadness that for many people, living a creative life just isn’t something they’ve thought about. But I know there is a yearning for many people to be creative, to bring new things into existence, to express themselves. I believe that this creative drive comes from a spiritual place in each of us. In fact, I don’t know if one can be spiritual without also being creative; they are two sides of the same proverbial coin.

If all that expended energy that I saw today (the energy poured into dinosaur dioramas) was put into creative endeavors, this community would be a different place. Not only could new ideas be written, paintings created, political problems solved, but the people, the parents and the kids would be so much more fulfilled.

Bottom line, we are created to create. Figure out how to be creative in your life, in your own way and right there, in that space, you’ll find your salvation.