Transmission

When I was at Church of the Apostles a few weekends ago, I was impressed with something they did called “open space.” Basically, after the service broke down: Some people started group discussions, others knelt at altars, and others just sat and listened to the music. It was cool. One of the dangerous things about innovative ritual is that not everyone will want to participate and COTA made it possible for everyone to be comfortable doing whatever they felt a need to do.

I’d like to do something similar this week at Transmission - so far our rituals have been focused and participatory, but I think Advent lends itself to a plurality of activities because Advent is an extremely complex time with lots of layers of meaning. It’s a time of hope, a time of darkness, a penitential time, a time for shopping, and much more. Rather than trying to pick a theme for the service and going with it, we thought we’d go ahead and use ALL the themes, giving each theme a separate station and not trying to reconcile them with each other.

So here are some station ideas - please contribute your own as well, and we’ll try to incorporate them!

~Advent represents preparation for Christmas, and thus for Jesus.

~Advent acknowledges that the world is a dark, scary place. Frankly, we still need hope and we’re still desperately praying for deliverance. It’s not just about waiting for the birth of Christ, it’s also about waiting for the second coming of Christ.

~Advent is about tension with our own society. It is difficult to observe Advent since the secular world considers this to be “the Christmas Season.” There’s something amazing with spirituality vs materialism and jesus vs santa.

~Advent is about mulled cider and pumpkin bread.

~Advent is about supercessionism. Have you ever actually read the lyrics to O Come O Come Emmanuel? How do I sing that song with a straight face around my Jewish friends?

Posted in: musings, ritual