Circus Riding and Church Call

Perhaps that high school student's misappropriation of the term "circuit rider" is not so far off the mark.

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As I talked with Someone in the Know about my situation last week, I mentioned having preached several times for a church whose membership is falling off and whose most faithful members tend to have white hair.  What I had seen in them was a need for a pastor who will accompany them, through her preaching and teaching and pastoral care, through the challenges that we face late in life: serious illness and death, loneliness and isolation, retirement and dislocation, the joys and problems of children and grandchildren.

"But what they see," she said, "is a church losing membership and a need for an influx from younger generations.  That's why so many churches want younger pastors with growing families," she continued  ~ "they think that's what they need to appeal to the generation they've lost."

I've been thinking about what she said, thinking about how critically important my grandparents were in my life, thinking about how everything that strengthened them strengthened us as well, and about how much of our lives consisted of an invitation to join in theirs.

I'm not discounting the need for churches to reach out to people of all ages and walks of life.  But why do we think that the young want (or need?!) the spotlight beamed on them?  Might it not be also life-giving (and church building) to support the older generations in who they are and in what they have to offer?

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There is a young pastor in my John of the Cross class; she has been with her first call church for three years now. She talked recently about her church having been excited about her because of her youth, and their hopes that she would be the miracle worker to revitalize them. 

She is also not the first pastor to have talked with me in the past few weeks about longing to bring a more contemplative spirituality to a church congregation that equates church with programming, and spirituality with activity. 

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Karen mentioned that within a 24-hour span I posted both my poem/prayer a la John of the Cross and the circuit rider/circus rider humor.    That's part of what I mean about the approach I am taking these days to the word integration.  All part of life.  A little more extreme than the other Karen's beautiful post yesterday about her cats, in which she writes calmly of the role they've played in their family's life, including in her daughter's death and illness, but the same topic.  All part of life.  

I think that's what the church is about as well.  Integrating all of it.  That integration is part of what I love about my home church, and what I hope to carry with me into another.

But not,  I think,as the solo, dazzling, balancing and sparkling circus rider.

More, I think, as the person who waters and feeds and brushes.  Along with everyone else.

Prayer ~ John of the Cross

I'm taking a class for a few weeks on John in the Cross, and for each night two or three of us are asked to prepare prayers or meditations based on the week's reading.  Mine, for tonight:

We would ourselves choose, always, the light. 
We would choose the light sparkling across the water, the sun burning our shoulders, the warmth of friendship, the sparkle of romance. 
We turn on the lights as we enter a dark house, knowing darkness as the place in which we stumble, bump into tables, trip on the stairs.
We instinctively look up when we go out into the dark, seeking illumination from streetlights, from the moon, from the stars.
We choose Orion's Belt over the blackness of space.
We set our sights on the tail of a comet, not on the darkness through which it speeds.
We aim our spaceships for the moon and our telescopes toward Saturn, toward light, toward something ~ not toward emptiness.
And You are in all things -- in the sunlight, in the warmth, in the lights, in the stars and in the planets.
We count on you to be there.
And we cannot see you in the dark.

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We walked and walked in the night.  It was so dark.

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Is this where you nourish your beloved?
Is this where you impart strength?
Is this where your river flows, silently and imperceptibly?

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We walked and walked in the night.  We did not run away.  We walked right into the dark.
We walked into your embrace.
Your silence.
Your stillness.
Your reticence.
Your humility.

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Do you scoop your beloved up in the dark?
Do you catch those who fall in the silence?
Do you embrace those who find themselves wrapped in emptiness?

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You create a space for yourself where we cannot.  Will not.  Do not want.
You seek us completely for yourself, and you give us the dark in which to find you.

Enigmas (Today's)

1. Preaching in a new church to a sea of blank stares that cause you to ponder, "What could I have been thinking when I put this together?" ~ only to have people seek you out afterward to thank you, genuinely and profusely, for you know not what.

2. Simultaneously reading the Dalai Lama on the art of cultivating happiness and John of the Cross on the art of making space for God  to cultivate the darkness.

Saturday Morning Musings

Lotta snow out there.

After a full week, I completely crashed yesterday.  I still struggle with energy issues. But I came to around dinner time and went out for Mexican with The Lovely Daughter, whose insights into her life and mine continue to astound me with their maturity and wisdom.

Felt on top of things this morning and headed out into the blustery winter to the bakery, Target, Office Max, the grocery, and the dry cleaner.  Outlined my idea of what the answer to one of yesterday's ordination exam questions might be for a friend whom I've been helping to study.  Remembered to be grateful that those exams are behind me.  Looked at the RevGals discussion and wished  I were preaching tomorrow, but glad to be able to worship at my home church.

Full week ahead:

I'm starting a six week class (once a week) on John of the Cross through our fabulous local Ecumenical Institute.  I spent a lot of time last winter trying to sort out my own experience ~ depression? grief? spiritual desolation? dark night?  ~ and deal with it; now I'm ready for an academic approach. 

I'm teaching Freud's The Future of an Illusion to my college freshmen.  I love love love teaching college religious studies classes. 

I'm going to the information night for the program from which I earned my spiritual direction certificate to add my encouraging .02 to prospective students.  I'm going to a meeting of the advisory board for said program. I'm going to a continuing ed day sponsored by same on the topic of family systems.

I guess this is going to be a big John Carroll University week.  Oh yeah, it really is ~ I forgot; it's Ignatian Heritage Week there.  So I'm going to a couple of events for that, one of them a presentation by an artist who has an exhibit hanging there of her work based on the Spiritual Exercises, and one a presentation by former Wonderful Spiritual Director who's talking about vocation.  I've really pushed that one for my students, all of whom are thinking about big life decisions, but ~ here I am, in the call process, and I'm thinking about them, too!

When do I get to crash again???

 Image: Ignatius the Pilgrim at Wernersville Retreat Center (PA) ~

October 2010