Counter-Culture

Last week, I got to have tea with a friend who used to come to St. Mark’s, but she and her family moved down the highway a bit, and it had actually been a couple of years since we’d been able to sit and talk.  They attend the Episcopal church in the town they live in now, and we started talking about how there aren’t as many young families coming to church as regularly as there used to be. 

 

“It’s weird, but it’s just become something we plan around now…we don’t do sleepovers on Saturday nights, and we’re just…there, every Sunday, unless we’re out of town.  The kids expect it, and like it, and it’s just become what we do now.  But it feels almost counter-cultural!  People just don’t seem to go to church anymore, not even at Christmas and Easter!”  Their church is also, like St. Mark’s, going through a rebuilding, after losing a number of families over a stretch of years.  They, too, are exploring ways to expand their offerings for children and youth, to make church a place where families want to be.

This idea of church now being counter-cultural is really interesting; I suspect that many people have negative connotations about what church is, based on politics and media and the entertainment industry.  It certainly feels at times that extreme interpretations of certain religions dominate our thinking about them.  That makes it hard to invite people to church, because we’re not sure what they’ll think.  We know we are not judgmental, irrational, and after their money, but what if that’s the only message they’ve ever gotten about people who are in any way “religious”?  How many times have you heard people say “I’m not religious, but…”?   Church definitely seems to be out of fashion at the moment…but what was that Bible passage?  The geeks shall inherit the earth?  On my Facebook page, under Religious Views, I have a quote attributed to St. Francis:  “Preach the Gospel.  Use words if necessary.” 

 

Who cares what people think?  If church makes sense for you, if it helps you live a more meaningful, focused, fulfilled life, come.  If it slows things down, if the music soothes and inspires you, if church helps you remember we’re all in this together, come. And invite a friend.  Because we want to share with our friends what’s good in our lives…that makes it even better.

 

Bess

Amazing Grace

Amazing Grace

I grew up in Alaska, and when I came East for college, to the Northeast to be more precise, I noticed some distinctly Roman Catholic influences in the general culture, things like how the dining rooms (we had dining rooms then, rather than dining halls) served fish on Fridays, all the yards decorated with statues of Mary (or the Blessed Mother, in Catholic-speak), and of course the Catholic churches themselves.  In my college town there were three right in a row: the Italians, the Poles, and the French-Canadians each had their own (I’m not sure where the Irish went).  I became aware at some point of the importance of the song “Ave Maria” to people of that faith; I had never heard it, but I learned that apparently it is sung at many Catholic funerals, and could bring Catholics to tears within the first few notes.

The other Sunday at St. Mark’s, it occurred to me that “Amazing Grace” might be the Ave Maria for Protestants.  We sang it that day as the sequence hymn.  As is the custom, we sang the fourth verse (“Through many dangers, toils, and snares…”) a capella, and then Doug came in again, the organ triumphant, for “When we’ve been there ten thousand years…” It was powerful, and I choked up.  I looked around; I wasn’t the only one fighting tears.  A few people were wiping their eyes, some chins were quivering as people sang, one or two that I saw had stopped singing altogether and had bowed their heads, letting the music wash over them. 

We all probably have a connection to that song.  I think of Arlo Guthrie singing it on the album Precious Friend, with Pete Seeger, of the elderly, developmentally disabled man who used to stand outside my dorm with his hand on his heart, serenading us with it, of hearing it on a steel drum in a subway station in New York City, and haunting renditions played by lone bagpipers. 

It was a special moment in a place conducive to special moments, and I won’t forget it.  The children, who have taken to packing themselves together in one of the front pews, aren’t likely to forget it either, even if they weren’t completely aware of what was going on; we, as a church, planted a seed that day.  We gave them a glimpse of the power of church, of love, of grace.  It was amazing.

 

Bess

 

HallowThankMas 

I shuddered the first time I heard someone refer to the impending trifecta of holidays as HallowThankMas, because it implied that it’s just one overindulgent, chaotic, sugar-fueled blur, which sadly, it can be, if we let the “dominant cultural narrative” take over.  And it’s hard not to.  I know I’m not the only one who panics when Halloween candy appears right after the 4^th of July, when Thanksgiving decorations are already on sale (in September) at Jo-Ann Fabric, and when the Muzak in Rite-Aid sounds suspiciously holiday-like in October.  A friend of mine is blogging this month about planning for Christmas.  My first reaction was “oy!”, but facing the blur head-on is actually a really good way to slow down and let each part be its own thing.

A few years ago, Stew, Maggie, Sally, and I were on our own for Christmas.  My sister, Hannah, her husband, Steven, and their girls were going it alone as well.   We both fled to my parents’ house in Massachusetts the next day, however, a four-hour drive for us, eight hours for Hannah and Steve.  We arrived wringing our hands and asking our parents “How did you do it? How did you make it so special and entertaining and awesome year after year, just you guys?”  My brother-in-law had the best things-you-can’t-believe-you’re-saying-to-your-kids line from their morning: “Get upstairs and don’t come down until you’ve found some Christmas spirit!” All I remember is our girls opening their gifts and being happy and excited and then looking at us like, “now what?”  I was exhausted from months of trying to make sure they had the HallowThankMas experiences all the media and advertising suggests they should.  It was an instructive moment; all that “stuff” didn’t matter as much as other things did, the deeper magic the girls could sense in the day.

I don’t think there was much parental reassurance beyond some back-patting, knowing laughter, and “you’ll be fine.”  But I realized that I had fallen prey to the “dominant cultural narrative” that says that I have to “make” Christmas (and Halloween and Thanksgiving) happen with gifts and food and decorations, the more the better, even though I have seen “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” more times than I can count.

So as HallowThankMas approaches, a little planning might help, and a little perspective might, too, so that when these holidays come, they can be enjoyed for themselves, and not as part of one big simultaneous sugar high and food coma.  We’ll try to slow things down for the kids at St. Mark’s, with the Turkey Supper October 20^th to raise money for the Homeless Shelter (and to maybe take the edge off of turkey cravings?), special crafts and lessons in the coming months, and yes, they’ll be watching the Grinch in December.  Maybe it’ll take.

Bess

WalterandLouise

WalterandLouise

My Godfather, Walter Hannum, died yesterday morning in California.  He lived a long and full life and was ready, I’m sure, to meet his Creator and rest, finally, in that heavenly peace.  Walter and his wife, Louise, were not present at my baptism, which took place in Shageluk, Alaska, a small Athabascan Indian village on the Innoko River.  My father baptized me in September, 1971, and perhaps only a handful of villagers were in attendance.  But Walter and Louise, who had no children of their own, were faithful Godparents, and I know I was only one of countless children whose spiritual care had been entrusted to them.  They have written to and prayed for me all my life, and they made the trip East when I married Stew, in 2000.  It was one of the small handful of visits I had with them in person, yet they were ever-present, always “WalterandLouise.”
 

I’ve needed a lot of praying for sometimes.  Walter and Louise were like parents to my parents, rocks from which they drew strength.  Together, and with many others, they formed a circle of love around me, a warm, golden, flowing love that sustains me – that’s what baptism brings us into.  We open our arms and say “Come in – we are here waiting for you. We love you – come in!”  Whether we know it or not, whether we go to church regularly or not, that love is always there.  In my life there have been times I’ve gone to church and times I haven’t.  There have been times when I was too anxious to stay through a whole service, and times I sat in a back pew and couldn’t stop crying.  But wherever I went and wherever I go now, I know it’s true.  My parents gave me that, Walter and Louise gave me that, the people in the churches I grew up in gave me that, the knowledge that I am truly and deeply loved, by them, and more importantly, by God.

We are doing that at St. Mark’s for our children and each other, welcoming each other in, welcoming each other back, welcoming each other if we haven’t had a church home for a while, or ever, until now.  The children sense it, feel it, depend on it, BRING it in ways we may have forgotten we know.  Walter’s death into new life has reminded me of that.  Who is your WalterandLouise?  Whose WalterandLouise are you?

Bess