Another thought...

With the Taize, this little group seems to be going through some changes. What we've been doing so far we've been referring to as bible study and we've been meeting for a while now and we've seen various people come and go. Over the last several months we have been simply getting together for dinner and discussion of the bible. Now, though we are still tiny (very tiny) I think we are ready to be something a bit more and I think we have come to a place to see ourselves as a kind of community. Bible study is over (at least as it has been happening) and we have decided to stop calling it "bible study." While a name for the group is a little beyond us right now, we may be at the beginning of moving in a specific direction, and a different kind of energy may be emerging.

I can't really say where we are heading yet, how long it will take, and what it will look like in the end. I have some ideas of where I'd like it to go, but it isn't all up to me either. But, it is going somewhere and I'm excited to see where exactly. As one person said, "We've birthed this baby, now lets christen it."

Sounds good to me.

One More Taize Picture

Steve with violin in the dark. Not the best picture, but kinda fun.

Taize

Well, at the end of April we had our first Taize worship experience and it was lovely. We again used the empty storefront on Hamilton Street and had about 12 people attend. We did this at 9:30 at night and lit the place up with candles. Lots of candles. We had a small altar set up against the wall and inserted Holy Communion in the middle of the service. For those of you who aren't familiar with Taize, check it outhere.

Basically, this is a contemplative prayer service that is sung. You sing each prayer slowly and you repeat them in order to center, to open yourself up to an experience of God. We sung a few prayers, had a reading from the gospel, a sung psalm and then communion--and the prayers here were also sung. We had some silence and continued singing with the Lord's prayer. Steve, our musician, lead us with his violin and did a marvelous Job. We, as a group, had never sung together and I didn't know everyone in the room even. We did a wonderful job so, we're going to do it again.

Here's a picture of Julie, who is now off in Vietnam serving the world, lighting the candles.

Passover

Now, I don't come from any kind of Jewish background and have very little experience with the Jewish holidays, but one of our bible study members does and so he and his partner are graciously opening up their home this coming Saturday to host a passover Seder. From what Steve says we are going to be spending some time participating in the meal as he figures it will run about 2-3 hours and this is the short version. Those I have spoken to from the group seem eager to be there; I know I am.

One of the things I and others have been keen to include in the realm of "group" activities are monthly meals. This desire, I believe, is part of what has lead us to be gathering for Passover. It is also what will hopefully bring us together next month for a meal during which we will participate in the Eucharist. I mention all this about the Saginaw group because it seems we are on the edge of some kind of change. I'm having a difficult time articulating that, but it seems that now we can perhaps move a little beyond being simply a bible study. Particularly since worship is being introduced there seems to be another dynamic making its way into the group that while not eliminating "bible study" will change it. However, the group itself will be undergoing a fairly large change in the near future when several of the college students who have been helping to form a core to the community graduate and leave the area. What we will look like after that, I cannot say. I only know that it seem the time has come for us to begin seriously talking about who we are, what we believe, and where we think we are going in Christ.

My challenge is that I have always take "church" for granted. In this setting that is impossible and it is always a new thing that we are creating. And for me, striking that balance between my helping it being created and me creating it is tricky. I don't want to impose too much structure, yet too little and what are we doing? Right? I think that's why right now things feel like they are shifting, more structure is being added, but I also think I'm not the only one adding it. So, perhaps for now, we are right where we should be. Even if I can't quite get my head around it.

Oh Lord, let it be so.

Stations 2

Ok, here is the second half of the meditation. It kinda cuts off abruptly, but with a ten min. cap, this is what happens.
In addition to watching, we also had people reading the story of the Way of the Cross (taken from the Book of Occasional Services) as well as saying the prayers that appeared on the screen (following the leader, response format). This helped bring the two dimensional movie into the three dimensional world. Anyway, we kept it really basic and there seemed to be a desire to build on it for next year.

I really think that we will be doing more with the visual/audio world as we get better at it. So, here is the second half of our Stations:

Ok, Wow. So, a lot has happened over the last few months

So, finally I'm back. Its been a couple of crazy months--I got ordained, Lent, and then finally Easter! There is sooooo much that I am going to be catching up on today.... Anyway, we've been busy. Our little bible study continues to meet, I think to grow, and to evolve. We had our first sort of worship experience. A couple of the guys and I put together an Imovie of the stations of the cross. Thanks to Jim Best for sending me these amazing photos of the stations! What we did is basically put together an elaborate slide show of pictures depicting the stations (traditional stations of Jesus and his mother, Simon and so on) and positioned them along side more contemporary photos (provided by the MaryKnoll Brothers and my digital camera). We laid over tracks from the movie "The Hours" and made a kind of meditation using a sound system and a projector. Really basic and we had a small gathering for it. I wasn't even sure we'd be able to do this so I didn't even start putting things up until the week we did this (Holy Week).

Since I only know how to upload this to youtube, and since you can only upload so much at a time on youtube, here is the first half of our stations:


The quality is not so fab. here and it did come out much better in real life. But this will give you an idea of what we did. I'll also upload the other half of the meditation as soon as I create it. I think this went well for us, and we had a wonderful bible study last night with great conversation, looking ahead and enthusiasm. I hope we can maintain this energy! We are looking ahead to going to and having our own Taize service as well as getting together for a Passover meal next month. So, the Saginaw groups is, at this moment, going well.

Now, Midland: who wants to try stuff like this here?

Mars in Retrograde

Wow, its February already and its been a month since I last blogged--goodness! January was an interesting and rather long month. For my part, I've been working on keeping bible study strong and getting ready for my ordination; all of which is a lot to think about and I've been full of various feelings. I'm definately looking forward to my ordination, and I've invited many of the people I've met over the last few months to share that day with me--hopefully you'll all come! At the same time, I've been working on keeping bible study consistent, interesting, and inclusive in order to work on building community. Some days I feel really good about how things are going, other days not so much. January in particular was a roller coster of "oh, this is never going to work," to "ok, I think we are headed somewhere." One of the things we did was move our meeting location from the Magic Bean coffeeshop, to the Mixx bar in old town. I think we're going to enjoy the bar better than the coffee shop; the ambiance is certainly more cozy and those who couldn't come to the coffee shop, are able to come to the bar (in other words, the bartender's schedule changed so we moved to help accomodate it.) So far, so good and we had a better number this week than last (not that its about numbers...)
Another thing we've been working on is getting involved. All of our bible study people are involved someway in the community and I think that's fabulous. At the same time, I'd like to unify our efforts more and thus focus our energy on one particular need. One of our members in particular has been identifying needs in the downtown Saginaw area and has been very good about showing us these areas. He grew up in the Tri-cities, and I have learned a lot from him about what's up and what's down in Saginaw. Its pretty basic right now but even those efforts, I discovered, are greatly appreciated. So, I and a few other people are going to be in Saginaw tomorrow pulling usable stuff out of homes that are scheduled to be demolished. In this way, perfectly good building material can be reused. To be honest, I was a bit skeptical at first, but then saw that this was indeed something good, yea, necessary for the improvement of the neighborhood. It is a simple task really, but one around which energy can be put and one where we can also see the fruit of our labors.
So what does this have to do with Mars? I chose the title Mars in Retrograde after hearing it commented on by one of our bible study people. I really don't know what it means, but she said that anytime something significant happened in her life, Mars always seemed to be in retrograde (so, obviously it has something to do with Astrology). After hearing her talk about it like this, I thought I'd use it to point out that small things are indeed happening within this little group. I think significant things are beginning to happen and there seems to be a kind of energy emerging (dare I use that word?). I pray that it is the Spirit starting to move, because I'm dying to see where she takes us.