When Nothing Seems to Come to Mind

Don't sit there watching the wind. Do your own work. Don't stare at the clouds. Get on with your life. - Ecclesiastes 11:4 (The Message)

I am worn out today. My mind doesn’t seem to be able to hold onto a train of thought for any reasonable length of time or for a coherent path. It is so much so that even trying to think up a word or phrase to put in my Bible search software to come up with a passage for this Musing seems nigh impossible. As an introvert, I have reached my limit and can tell that my tank is empty and even the reserve that is meant to get me to the next fill is dry. When I’m feeling this way the voice of duty and responsibility and even shame seems to shout in my head things like the above passage.

I know you have felt this way in the past. I know that I am not a bad person because I feel this way. I know that everyone at some time needs to pause and stare at the clouds or watch the wind. I just want to be able to do the things that I think are needed, necessary, important or that I know bring me life. These Musings fall into that category. That’s why I am doing this today, because it does help me, it energizes me and even though it may seem counter intuitive it really does help me recharge.

I bet you always thought these Musings were for you, the people who receive them and might read them. In fact, they are for me. They allow me to share some of who I am and what I believe and how I see and interact with the world, God and all that. They help me to organize my thoughts and feelings and give me an avenue to express myself without worrying to much about blow back. This is far different than a sermon or teaching a class. It is just me, my reflections that I just happen to share.

I am struggling to figure out how this might fit with the new position I will be taking on July 1. I have been doing these since June of 2005. 12 years of my reflections and, as George Carlin often said about his reflections, brain droppings. I think that it is time to let this expression of myself come to an end. It is time to find a new way of sharing what I think and feel and believe and muse about. What that will be is still a mystery to me. I do know that whatever it is it will be on that immortal and eternal medium known fondly as the internet. It will likely take the form of a blog but the subject or the point of it is still what is in flux.

I plan to do two more Musings. One the week of June 4 and the last one the week of June 11. I hope to have whatever I will be doing up and running the second week of July. There will be a link on the Cascadia District website when it is up and running if you happen to want to see what I will be doing, you will find it there.

I want to thank you for taking the time to read these Musings. For the replies you have sent. For the times you have shared with me how they have sparked something in you. Thank you for allowing me these opportunities to drop on you my frustrations, worries, joys, concerns, mental and emotional and spiritual failings. I truly believe in these often emotionally disconnected times, when we are more connected than ever to the world but seem so lost and disconnected from others, that honest and open sharing is important. I encourage you to muse and share your musings with others. Take the risk and be willing to just let them be without apology or defensiveness. If you get nothing else from these past 12 years please take with you the critically important reality that connections with self, God and others are what give and sustain life.

Dear God, thank you for giving me a mind to think, a heart to feel and a spirit that seeks to connect with all creation, myself and you. Amen.

Worth the Cost?

For you always have the poor with you, and you can show kindness to them whenever you wish; but you will not always have me. - Mark 14:7 (NRSV)

The Lord said to Moses: 2 Tell the Israelites to take for me an offering; from all whose hearts prompt them to give you shall receive the offering for me. 3 This is the offering that you shall receive from them: gold, silver, and bronze… 8 And have them make me a sanctuary, so that I may dwell among them.  - Exodus 25:1-3, 8 (NRSV)

I saw that a congregation completed a new sanctuary. It cost them $90 million. This got me to thinking about church buildings and their cost and what they signify. So, to give some perspective I Googled “How much would it cost to build a medieval cathedral today?” Here are two of the answers I found:

 St. Peter's is the most renowned work of Renaissance architecture and one of the largest churches in the world.  the Great Construction of the present Basilica, replacing the Old St. Peter's Basilica of the 4th century AD, began on 18 April 1506 and was completed on 18 November 1626, almost 120 years to built so knowing the fact this project can take a lot of money according to my estimate around 600 million Dollars or may be more.

My guess would be in the neighborhood of $3/4 - 1 billion.  The National Cathedral in Washington DC was built from 1907-1990 and cost $65 million.  Figuring the cost of living during these years versus today and assuming an equal amount of work was paid for each year.  Add on the increased cost for more stringent building codes and the much higher cost of land.  Of course, the National Cathedral is one of the larger cathedrals.

We Christians, and I believe most of the world’s great religions, spend vast amounts of money and other resources to build our temples, cathedrals, shines, and places of worship. We have done so for, I would guess, as long as we have had any sort of organized religion. The question that haunts me is why? Why do we feel we must spend vast resources to build edifices for our faiths? What motivates us and what do we hope to gain from them?

Before I go any further I must confess a bias. I believe that buildings built for the sole purpose of worship are a relic of the past. If I were starting a community of faith today I would not build a building unless it was to serve a particular ministry in the neighborhood to those who live there. I would only build if the campus were to be used every day to serve and minister to those around it. A part of the space could be used for the purpose of worship when that was to happen but it would not be its sole purpose.

I understand the need to invest time, money and resources into the campuses we already have when it makes sense to keep those assets for mission and ministry with, to, and for the people who live near them. If we have no such ministries and missions then those campuses need to be looked at from the vantage point of how they might be utilized for service of the area where they are located. But to keep a campus just because it is a place of worship is bad stewardship and I think unfaithful.

I believe that in the past people funded and built these places of worship for reasons that no longer apply. They were seen as honoring God. They were ways to profess your faith. They were seen literally as the “house of God” on earth. Funding them was a way to earn indulgences (an indulgence is "a way to reduce the amount of punishment one has to undergo for sins") for yourself or those you love. And they were ways to sanctify a place considered holy. They were meant to create a space where the presence of God was felt and the faith honored.  Most if not all of these reasons no longer seem relevant or even theologically sound. God doesn’t seek an elaborate space for honor or housed or as payment for sin or need a special space to be felt. God wants us to be inspired by creation and one another. God is honored when we accept and love each other. God is housed in each part of creation and is celebrated when we protect and preserve creation. God loves us as we are and does not expect a payment for us to earn favor or receive forgiveness.

$90 million or $1 billion or even a modest $1 million seems like a lot of resources to expend just to have a building to sit in to worship God. Don’t get me wrong. I love to walk into a massive cathedral. To stand in the muted glow of a glorious stained glass window. To hear a grand organ, belt out a Bach mass. I have felt God in sanctuaries and shines and am thankful for these glorious spaces. But I have also had those same feelings and experiences on the lakeshore at camp, standing by the ocean celebrating communion, sitting under the stars in a Taize worship experience, listen to a concert in the park, and when a community of faith gathers for worship in a gym or a restaurant or a hotel ballroom. Faith communities always should have spaces but not spaces for the sole purpose of worship. James says: The very moment you separate body and spirit, you end up with a corpse. Separate faith and works and you get the same thing: a corpse.  - James 2:26 (The Message) which I think applies to what I am trying to say. A building just for worship is faith without works, a body without spirit.

I hope that we can come to the place where we can see buildings like a Christian community that formed in the Arlington, Virginia after World War II known as the Church of the Savior did. They never had a church building for the sole purpose of worship. In fact, they really were a network of specific ministries addressing specific needs in the greater Washington, D.C. area. They had a coffee house before Starbucks, they operated a bakery, they ran a children’s home, etc. Each place focused on a specific ministry and when they worshiped as a community they did it in the coffee house, in the bakery, in the dining hall of the children’s home. I think this is the model for a faith community. So if we want to invest $90 million in a building let’s build apartments for low income families, a coop and training day care campus for single parents in a poor urban area, a farm that uses the best sustainable practices and teaches others how to use them, a manufacturing plant in West Virginia that uses old plastic to make bricks for building low cost structures, or as a loan pool for micro loans to poor people throughout the world to start small businesses for themselves, their families, and their villages.

Doing these things honors God, shows how faithful we are, inspires people, houses God, and are places where the holy can be known and experienced and they can also provide space for worship!

Dear God, help me to see all that I have and know that you call me to be the best steward of it that I can be. Help me to experience you in all places. Help me to honor you with all I say and do. Help us all to realize that you love us as we are and that you don’t need a grand façade because you live in each act of love and compassion. Amen.

Maintenance

"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? - Matthew 6:25 (NRSV)

Today I am sitting in the waiting area of our car dealership as they do the routine maintenance on one of our cars and it got me musing about the common, everyday things we all need to do and how they can consume so much of our time and energy. On an average day, 85 percent of women and 67 percent of men spent some time doing household activities such as housework, cooking, lawn care, or financial and other household management activities (from:

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.nr0.htm). According to the DailyMail: Americans spend $140,000 in their lifetimes and 30 days every year on boring household tasks like cleaning and laundry. I couldn’t find a quick answer to the question about how much time the average American spends on car care but I think you get my point, a lot of our time is spent on routine care and maintenance of our homes, cars, and families.

This got me thinking about the time and effort I spend on the maintenance of other aspects of my life: my health, my spiritual self, my intellectual side, etc. I would guess that it isn’t what it needs to be for me to be the healthy, happy, satisfied person I want to be. It is easier to see that the dishes are dirty and need washing or the pile of laundry needs doing or the check engine light is blinking and take care of those things then it is to see the atrophy in my spirituality or the lack of muscle tone in my brain.

But you and I are both aware of the fact that regular time, attention and effort spent on our spiritual, physical, emotional and intellectual health is just as important to our lives as prepping for dinner or cleaning out the lint trap. And the fact of the matter is that regular attention and maintenance of our spiritual, physical, emotional and intellectual selves can be a whole lot more fun than cleaning the bathroom or changing the litter box. And I think it is just as important!

I try to take advantage of those moments in my day where I have some unexpected time. Waiting in line, sitting in traffic, even washing dishes. I will use those times for a quick breath prayer or to reflect on a passage of scripture that I am working with. I will take the time between finishing my chores and watching one of my regular TV shows to surf the channels and seek out the National Geographic or Smithsonian or Science networks and catch a few minutes of some nature or exploration show. When I am working on my computer (like now) and feel I am stuck or need to take a break I will often click on Google Earth or the NASA site and surf around. My daughter plays a game with her family that when they get change from a purchase they all guess something that happened in the year the change represents and then when they get home they search the date and see who might have been right but also learn what happened on that date (both CE and BCE are acceptable in your guess😊).

Given the way life goes we all need to take advantage of the moments we are given and use them in ways that feed us, mind and body and soul. Sometimes it means just breathing. Other times it may be a game or an internet search. And sometimes it will be meditation or prayer. And maybe even spend some of those moments just relaxing, listening to music or taking in the scene outside the window. This is called living an intentional life and I believe that it makes for a healthier, happier life. Now I’m going to finish this up and see what I can find to work my brain or deepen my spirit or help with my wellbeing.

Dear God, help to see all the moments of my life as a gift. Help me to use that gift in ways that make me a better person and in ways that make the world a better place. Help me to know that working on me is as important as any other activity I engage in. Amen.