Seven Transmissioners (plus babies) are meeting up in
North Carolina for the first Wild Goose Festival this weekend. This is a big moment since Transmission launched five years ago at Greenbelt. We’d love to meet you there!
Sacred Space presents…
Transmission, an emergent house church from New York City, blends interactive games, improv theater, and liturgy to explore scripture, sacrament, and community. Come prepared
to participate and interact!
Saturday
12 pm
Storytelling and Performance Tent
Ash Wednesday with Faith House
April 26, 2011
DUST IN THE WIND: Ash Wednesday
At FAITH HOUSE, March 9, 2011
PROGRAM (90 minutes)
Opening – When The Night Becomes Dark – Taizé (5 min)
When the night becomes dark, your love, O Lord, is a fire;
Your love, O Lord, is a fire.
PART I “Remember You Are Dust”
First Reading – Genesis 3:1-24 “for dust you are and to dust you will return” (5 min)
First Speaker – Share a personal anecdote, provide context for dust/creation/sin, instructions for next activity (5 min – ULA)
First Activity – Write confession on paper, burn in aluminum bowl (10 min)
PART II “And to Dust You Shall Return”
Second Reading - Ecclesiastes 3 “all come from dust, and to dust all return” (3 min – Caleb)
Second Speaker – Personal anecdote, provide context for mortality and Ash Wednesday, instructions for stations (5 min –SARAH)
Second Activity – Stations –pour soap and ashes into tin foil molds, Savasana, imposition of ashes, read Obituaries in the NYTimes, recorded music TBD (15 min)
PART III “Lent, a Season of Preparation”
Third Reading – Matthew 6:1-6,16-21 (3 min – Elaine)
Third Speaker –
Personal anecdote, provide context for season of lent/practices/giving things up, instructions for small groups (5 min – DAN)
Third Activity – get into groups of three, each person names something they can give up, something they can do regularly for charity, or a new prayer regiment they can practice regularly (10 minutes)
CLOSING – O Lord Hear My Prayer
Prayer w/ Taizé as opening, closing and antiphon between petitions (10 min – Bowie lead)
O Lord, hear my prayer O Lord, hear my prayer When I call answer me listen to me
O Lord, hear my prayer O Lord, hear my prayer Come and
Acknowledgements & Announcements – Bowie (5 min)
Fall Happenings
September 21, 2010
Here’s a list of our upcoming meetings:
Tues Sept 7: host-Patrick, cook and ritual-Isaac
Tues Sept 21: host-Sarah, cook-Mabel, ritual-Johannes
Sat Oct 2: Michael Mass hike
Tues Oct 5: host and cook-Amber, ritual-Sarah
Tues Oct 19: host and cook-Caleb, ritual-Katie
Sat Oct 30: Planning meeting and Halloween Social hosted by Johannes
Tues Nov 2: All Saints Day! host-Amber, cook-Patrick, ritual-Ula and Isaac
Tues Nov 16: Math and Physics are Fun! host-Isaac, cook-Sarah, ritual-Johannes and Isaac
Sat Nov 27: Thanksgiving Social event in NYC, host-TBD
Tues Nov 30: Isaac and Katie host movie and games night
Tues Dec 7: Advent! host-Johannes, ritual-Patrick,
cook needed
Tues Dec 21: Advent! host, cook, and ritual needed
The Lord is My [blank]
March 22, 2010
About a year ago, I led a Transmission focused on prayer. The scripture from the Daily Office happened to be Psalm 23, so as part of the ritual we created our own versions of of the psalm. I was really moved by the personal psalms that came out of this activity, so
I thought I would share. Without introducing Psalm 23, ask participants to write down answers to the following questions:
- What is your metaphor for God? Do you think of God as a father? a friend? a rock? the color purple? What image makes sense for you when you think about God?
- Where does your soul find rest?
- Where does God lead you?
- What are you afraid of?
- How does God comfort and protect you?
- How does God bless you?
Then give participants a paper with lots of space between the following lines:
The Lord is [blank]
I shall not want.
God makes me [blank]
God leads me [blank]
God restores my soul.
God leads me in paths of righteousness for God’s name’s sake.
Yea though I walk [blank]
I will fear no evil, for You are with me.
Your [blank] comfort me.
You [blank]
You anoint my head with oil.
My cup runs over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
Each blank corresponds with an answer to the question prompts in order. Give participants some time to craft their psalm. Invite people to share aloud. If you try this with your faith community, let us know how it turns out!
May 15 Roof Garden Ritual, Draft 1
May 3, 2009
Dear friends, Paul and I are planning a ritual around Jesus’ story of the sower, the seeds, and the good soil. Please see draft 1.0 below and post a comment… what do you notice? Email bowie@faithhousemanhattan.org for directions if you’d like to come on Friday, May 15th at 7 PM.
Opening
Paul awakens our wonder with a “fool’s mass” of garden items
Remembering
Someone reads Gospel story about sower, seeds and soil
Second Reading Genesis 1
Thinking
Group discussion
Doing
Bowie helps people put together bags of seeds and soil, offers ideas on sowing.
Departing
Group prayers and blessings on our bags
The Emerging Church: A Few Questions
June 9, 2007
Not sure where or how I want to start this post to our group but having been on the east coast for a couple years now, being originally from California and having lived in London, my experiences of churches in these places has been really… eye opening…
I never realized till I left California (2 years ago) how different the traditional church there, is to my experience of church in other parts. A traditional church in California tends to have a group of people coming together in a strip mall shopping center where the church is renting some office space / store and has a number of chairs lined up side by side to look like pews. The people show up in anything from the really casual attire such as jeans and a t-shirt to slightly more dressy attire such as “business casual”. Or I think you call it “smart casual” if my memory serves. The traditional church in this part of the world tends to sing songs to a “rock band” in some form of contemporary worship and then the pastor will speak. This is such a contrast to “traditional” church in NY and England where there are pews and big gothic looking churches which remind you in their splendor how big God is in comparision with us. This form of traditional church has an actual priest in most cases who dresses in the traditional robes and communion is taken with real wine instead of grape juice. Having grown up in the first and not in the later, my concept of church tends to be more modern and contemporary in comparision with my later counterparts. In a church much like the second type that I speak of, I tend to get very uncomfortable and uneasy. It is hard for me to relate to and understand the ritual and liturgy of that style. I try to connect with it but I don’t know how. The thing for me here is that this style is not something I am accustomed to so I don’t understand why we need to go through each step of the liturgy to reach out and touch God because to me God is reachable whether or not we make those steps. If I want to speak to God right here and now I do not need to walk through each of those steps, I just simply call out. If I want to understand God’s thoughts and mind, I read the word. I don’t need an experience of God or have a ritual to tell me God is here with me, right here, right now.
V-DAY RITUAL
February 15, 2007
2/14/2007
Valentine’s Day House Church
SETTING: 2-bedroom apartment in west Harlem. seven folks arrived, cooked dinner, welcomed our new guest, ate snacks, then started ritual.
* kiss of peace
* ritual reading of Song of Songs
* prayer: bodies – folks strike a pose, everyone follows suit, say a prayer
* prayer: love song lyric – pass out selections from popular love songs that could be read to address a lover relationship with the divine. folks select one, read or sing it to the group. sing alongs welcome
* dinner, dessert, wine and good conversation
SoS RITUAL READING
Instructions –
* prep and procure the props
* make copies of readings in large font for participants to read
* when gathered, explain interactive component before each reading – have people perform the asterisked ritual before, during, or after the reading
* afterwards, invite people to share how they heard God speaking to them in the text
I SoS 1:12-17 (from bible or TJS translation below)
* SMELL – cedar balls and spices
Where you recline in light of noon
I’ll fly to lie beside you soon
With Spices, wine and ripest fruit
Have my desire in finest bloom
Baptized in your divine perfume
The time is right, we’re wise but new
The time is right, desire consumes
Our couch is green, our rafters pine
Our house is cedar beams and grafted vines
The clouds our canopy on high
Our town this Eden ‘neath the sky
Feel your left arm beneath my head
Your right my sheet, your side my bed
But I won’t sleep for love is ready
And I won’t rest till love is dead
II SoS 2:8-13
* VISUALIZE – close your eyes, listen, and see the scene in your mind’s eye
III Song of Songs 4:9-16
* SMELL – light incense
Valentine’s Day Transmission
February 11, 2007
2/14 @ 7pm
* Readings from Song of Songs
w/ pomegranates, figs, apricots, honey & wine
* Body Prayer
* Dancing
* Dinner, dessert & more
~ feel free to bring chocolates, wine, flowers and friends
LINKS
St. Valentine
Romantic Love
how to get my ex to be sweet to me again
href=”http://bograss.vox.com/library/post/column-on-the-song-of-songs.html” target=”_blank”>The Song of Songs
Bowie’s column on the S o S
Sexy Jesus (track 9) by Wayne & Wax
The ritual began by setting up paper lanterns, taping pieces of paper together and setting them around a candle. Each candle had two quotations on it, one from the Christian tradition and one from an Eastern tradition. Not only did this create a beautiful effect, but the texts actually obscured the light – a very important metaphor.
The sides of the lanterns which did not have texts had 
After finishing our mirrors, we set them up, wandered around, meditating and praying with the each other's mirrors just as we did with the texts. Finally, Katie brought out a big basin of soapy water and we washed the mirrors clean, reminding ourselves that it is God whom we worship, not our conceptions of God.
This ritual worked for several reasons. First, the activities engaged us visually, verbally, and tactilely. Secondly, although we were given things to think about, we were also given the opportunity to explore our own ideas, share them, and get to know one another just a little bit better. Finally, the ritual made no doctrinal demands of us; Tran