Transmission for Wednesday November 15th 2006
November 20, 2006
The very first Christian “churches” to exist were house churches. Every week on the Sabbath Christians would gather at someone’s house to eat, pray, sing, dance and worship the Lord Jesus Christ. These early Christians lived in a very harsh, cold world. They were generally peasants who were often sick and on the verge of starvation, and their Christian status meant they were persecuted by the Roman government. But when they met in their house churches they could forget about these troubles. Everyone brought what little food they had, so there was plenty for all. In these small communities there was no differentiation between slaves and free, between women and men, or Roman and non-citizens. (Gal 3:28) For just a few hours these poor persecuted people could forget about their troubles and experience the Kingdom of Heaven here on Earth.
In our present day we are fast approaching the last Sunday of the liturgical year, before it all starts over again with Advent. In some traditions this Sunday is called “The Sunday of Doom,” because on that day we think about the future when Jesus Christ will come again and Judge the world. It is said he will break through the murky clouds of this earth with a shaft of light and a trumpet sound and restore the Kingdom of Heaven on this world. (Rev. 1:7)
These two elements created the back drop and the theme for our worship experience last Wednesday night.
We started out with a game, usually played at youth group or leadership events, where everybody gathers in a cluster. Each person then grabs the hands of two other people, at random. Now we are in the natural state of this world, disorganized, confused, and uncomfortable. With a little team work and God’s help we were able to untangle this disorderly knot and create a circle without letting go of each others hands. Once in a circle we heard Matt 18:20 “For where two or more are gathered in my name, there I am, in the midst of them.” Then, we all joined in a rousing chorus of “Jesus Walk with Me.”
After this the lights were turned low and we broke bread and drank wine together. The food was a little delayed, but as we waited and eventually ate, we began to share with each other our own experiences of God. The question, “When have you felt God’s presence, or experienced the divine, in your life?” There were many deep and passionate stories. Some people told of finding God at a funeral in the deepest despair, or when they were far away from home. One person talked about getting lost in the Spirit at a concert where that person was able to sing out with his\her whole being. And still others said they did not find that God came in an epiphonic moment, but rather in small everyday actions.
After our bellies were full of food and our minds full of stories, we passed around a bowl of oil and blessed one another so that our hearts would be full of love.
To close the service, we said prayed together, ending in a unison Lord’s Prayer. Then, because we were trying to create a little slice of Heaven on Earth with our worship experience, we sang “Donna Nobis Pachem,” or “Grant Us Peace.” This quiet song quickly gave way to a spontaneous but quite uplifting chorus of “I Got Peace like a River in my Soul.”
After that, we cleaned up Bowie’s apartment and wished each other well.
U2charist on TV tonight
November 10, 2006
Nightline is doing a segment tonight on a U2charist put on by a church in Westchester. I happened to be there, so TiVo it if you want to have some stock footage of me praying…
I think it’s interesting that they’ve gotten so much press for this because, frankly, the service wasn’t all that cool. I applaud what they’re doing, but there are a lot of small things they could have done to make it much more effective. If anyone’s interested, I wrote an entire critique of the ritual from an “emerging” perspective…
12/20 xmas cookies!
November 10, 2006
Iced Sugar Cookies, originally uploaded by jessamynnorth.
I just got a whole tin of cookie cutters from my dad, who just moved to Puerto Rico to start a retreat center (so I got a lot of family stuff) – and I think we should make cookies for transmission house church on 12/20!
we can also light advent candles
sing some Christmas carols
and what else?
what are your favorite Christian Christmas traditions?
what do you remember doing with family in Advent?
what should we incorporate into our house church night?
and, do you have a favorite cookie recipe?!
Marigold Path Grid Blog: Ritualizing Shrines
November 2, 2006
This post is part of a gridblog for people around the globe remembering those that have passed away
All Saints Day 2006: Transmission met for house church – for eating, singing, socializing, praying, and ritualizing together. The central part of our ritual (see post below) was based on remembering those who have died before us and contemplating our own mortality. We built shrines in silence and then lay down dead (in the yoga style corpse pose), until Isaac woke us with song. Then everyone shared about their shrine. Below are thumbnail photos of their shrines with snippets of the stories they shared.
Paul built a shrine to his grandfather (a simple man who lived for a time in an orphanage in Ohio);
Isaac assembled one for his great-grandmother from Indiana (a good farmer’s wife who loved to bake);
and Katie commemorated all the relatives and traditions that have been lost, along with the knowledge of her family line beyond her grandparents.
Bowie remembered the victims of Katrina;
Elaina built a shrine to Bono (who’s not dead! but is inspirational in his work to prevent unnecessary death from poverty);
and John molded a lizard out of playdough to represent Jim Morrision (who died at the same age John is now, and who will only seem younger to John as he journeys forward in life).
You can see more photos of our shrines & us on Bowie’s flickr feed
Nov 1 is All Saints (Come for House Church)
October 30, 2006
Makeshift Shrine for Mamama, originally uploaded by bowiesnodgrass.
overnight the time changed -
a new season of longer nights
and windy days, a brisk chill
in the air while the dead dance
Come Join Us For All Saints’ Day/ D??a de los Muertos
This Wednesday just happens to be November 1st, a major Christian holy day. So we’ll be doing a (little longer) 45 minute ritual followed by a hot meal and apple crisp. If you’d like to come, please email epiphany.ny@gmail.com
rough draft for ritual
- song (Isaac lead)
- scripture (john is picking, maybe Ezekiel 37)
- activity – make shrines* and lie dead
- song (What Wondrous Love is This?)
- share about shrines and pray for each other
- song (Katie leads, Old Irish Blessing)
making shrines
We’ll be making shrines this week for a person who has died, someone you admire and whose life has touched your own. This can be someone in your life or someone you never met. If you can, bring some items that remind you of them (a photo, momento, etc.)
Our shrines only need to have three components:
- an object (anything that can represent the subject of the shrine),
- an offering (candle, flowers, etc.),
- and some sort of sign of the season (we’ll have dried leaves, etc.).
upcoming dates
1st and 3rd Wednesdays – November 1 and 15; December 6 and 20
Hallowmas & Heads Up!
October 27, 2006
SAVE the DATES
Upcoming Transmissions: Wed Nov 1 & 15; Wed Dec 6 & 20
If you’ve never been and would like to come or
would like to plan a ritual or bring food/drink
or if you’d just simply like to come –
please email epiphany.ny@gmail.com
regarding OCT 25th
Well, Transmission last night was pretty good, although only about half of us where there. I’ve got a few points of self-criticism regarding the ritual:
1) Both the ritual and the music were designed for a group of about ten people. A group of five has a very different dynamic. For all of my polemic against leader-centered worship, I spent way too much energy trying to make the ritual into what I had in my head rather than letting it unfold as it was.
2) I need to figure out a way to move smoothly from one part of the ritual to another without breaking the mood. It was way too easy for conversations to break out at cusp points during the ritual, which means that I was doing something wrong. Maybe the meal and the ritual should be separate events?
for NOVEMBER
In any case, it was decided that in November Transmission will be on the 1st and 15th, with a possible Brooklyn Transmission happening on the 8th. On the 15th, Paul will lead us in something and on the 1st, Bowie and I will prepare something based on All Saint’s Day.
The last two Transmissions have both followed a “people sitting around a table talking” model and I think I’d like to break out of that a little. Perhaps we could set up a few stations around the room with pictures of saints (Francis, Gandhi, Bono, Granddad, etc) along with an activity (written prayers/reflections, candles, leaving an item of remembrance from someone who’s died, etc). Or maybe we could each take those items of remembrance and share stories with each other of important people in our life who aren’t around anymore.
I want to use music again and I’m a particularly fond of “What Wondrous Love is This” – I think it highlights the whole life/death cycle which is prevalent on this feast day. We’ve been pretty low-tech so far, and in some ways that’s been because I’ve been shying away from the stuff I’m pretty good at because I don’t want to be too flashy, but that might be a mistake. Perhaps I could write some ambient music for the meditation which would bridge smoothly into a backing track for the hymn.
Thoughts?
Day of the Dead candle
Originally uploaded by haruspex.
Ritual Guide
October 24, 2006
Heya, guys – I just tossed up some of my ideas on what makes a ritual good. I’d love some feedback on it! These things always need tweaking. You can read it here.
Also, I’m refining my ideas for tomorrow. Here’s what I’m thinking at the moment:
1) gathering, saying hi, taking off coats, etc
2) breaking and blessing bread
3) eating a meal and reflecting on the story of Bartimaeus from the viewpoint of the crowd (bibliodrama led by me)
4) prayer
5) pouring and blessing wine (post-meal)
6) sitting back, sipping wine, making plans for next month, and generally shooting the shit
Sound good? I’d like to do something interesting with the space. Maybe we could tell most of the story in the dark and then light a few candles when Bartimaeus receives his vision. A dark room can loosen up inhibitions, especially since we’re asking people to express themselves creatively.
Prepare to transmit this Wednesday!
October 22, 2006
So we’re coming up on our next gathering, and I had some ideas about what to do:
1) I’d really like to get some music going, but I’d like to do it without relying on paper. Music should be a welcoming, gathering, and mutual experience while paper tends to alienate people from each other. Maybe some niggun? Maybe Taize? I’d love to do some easy part-singing, especially since we’ll be doing it a capella.
2) Keeping in mind Renata’s desire to keep things rooted in the Word and John’s desire for “more Jesus, less Christ,” I was thinking it’d be fun to unpack the story of Jesus and Bartimaeus (mark 10), maybe in the style of my good friend, Peter Pitzele. It’s a story which is frequently used to impress people with how badass Christ is, but there are a lot of more subtle Jesus-moments to be pulled out of it. Additionally, I just finished writing a ten-page commentary on the pericope for school so I’ll actually be able to contribute something…
The basic idea behind Peter’s method is that the congregation gets to discover meaning in the text for themselves by placing themselves in the story. For example, “you are Eve and you just took your first step outside of Eden. How do you feel?” The leader (i.e. me)facilitates the discussion rather than preaches his or her own opinion.
How does that sound?
Psalms 39:1-13 – Meditation
October 18, 2006
A fellow Christian from my old church in California forwarded me this write up about meditation. Being one who tends to think way too much in that my brain rarely shuts off, I have been contemplating learning to meditate. The only concern is that half of the time I end up falling asleep rather than focusing on our Creator! So I thought I would forward this in case anyone else is desiring to learn about it.
Tomorrow’s Ritual
October 10, 2006
or, perhaps, yesterday’s ritual: I’ve been mulling over Bowie’s proposal for tomorrow and have been repeatedly struck by how similar it is to early church practice. The early church was pretty much a bunch of folks getting together in a home with food, telling stories about Jesus. Eventually these stories were told often enough that they became pericopes, and after that the gospel redactors took the pericopes and compiled them into Gospels. We’re kind of doing the opposite: having heard the gospels piece-meal in pericopes every week for so long, we’re turning them back into stories. Sweet.
Anyway, I came across an appropriate bit from Tom Driver’s book, “The Magic of Ritual” which is a book EVERYONE needs to read. Right now. Seriously – don’t finish reading this post until you’ve ordered a copy online…
Driver ends his book by examining how a truly liberating and liminal Eucharist might unfold, and this excerpt is especially pertaining:
14. Telling stories together. Traditionally, the story of The Last Supper is told before the bread and wine are served, during the prayer of consecration and just before the elements are distributed. I suggest here three innovations:
1) Place the story after the food is consumed. This gives it a more convincing location, because it follows our usual sequence of interpreting actions after they occur. It also follows the more likely sequence of early Christian worship, which was to let the common meal evoke stories about Jesus, not holding the meal in obedience to a specific story. Now that the meal has been taken and the people are still gathered at the table, it is story time.
2) Let the story be told by the people, using their own words, one person starting it off, telling just a part, then letting someone else pick it up, then another, and so on until the story’s end. This time-honored way of telling a familiar story expresses community and builds collective memory.
3) Let other stories be told, too. It is unrealistic, and perhaps a denial of the action of God’s spirit, to imagine that at the communion only one story is being remembered. The emergence of others should be encouraged.
15. Sharing Christ Together. As the bread is the broken (shared) body of Christ, so the sharing of Christ can be done sacramentally by the people’s sharing their experiences of Christ with each other. Before the people leave the table, let each turn to a neighbor and each ask the other, “Who is Jesus Christ for you today?” Let each in turn answer this question, speaking to the neighbor who has asked it.