Guest Post: Prayers from the Scene of a Wound

This is a guest post by Tim Snyder. To download these prayers click here: Prayers From the Scene of a Wound.

Earlier this summer, I had the opportunity to be a part of an ordination of a close friend, Nate Preisinger. Nate and I have been friends for the better part of the last eight years. Our friendship and conversations have shaped each other’s vocations and lives in strange and profound ways. What was even more is that Nate was being ordained through an alternative route to ordination. So, when Nate asked me to be a part of the ordination I was honored to do it.

But, as I sat down to write the prayers I discovered the task to be harder than I had imagined it would be. You see, I am wildly ambivalent about our church’s current practice of ordination. There’s many sociological and theological reasons why we ought resist the existence of a professionalized clergy. Still, other parts of it—like education, for example—are highly valuable. I’m doubtful the way forward in the future will be less educated leaders for Christian communities.

And while all that above rationalizing is true, there’s more. The truth is my own ordination process was a disaster. It failed. I had to withdraw from my own path to ordination because a denominational leader decided the community in which I first heard my call was not “sustainable.” What happened next involved deceit, denial and disjunction. For years Nate and I had been running parallel paths. But now my path would diverge from his and I would leave ordination behind to seek healing.

In her most important theological work, Places of Redemption: Theology for a World Church, Mary McClintock Fulkerson writes:

Theologies that matter arise out of dilemmas—out of situations that matter. The generative process of theological understanding is a process provoked, not confined to preconceived, fixed categories. Rather, as Charles Winquist is reported to have said, creative thinking originates at the scene of a wound. Wounds generate new thinking. Disjunctions birth invention—from a disjuncture in logic, where reasoning is compelled to find new connections in thought, to brokenness in existence, where creativity is compelled to search for possibilities of reconciliation.^[1]

I had been wounded, yes, but it was a wounding that had its roots in a larger wounding: our church’s inability to acknowledge the days of settled life are over. But I believe that Nate’s ordination was just the kind of creative thinking that arises from the scene of a wound. As a church, ordaining Nate was certainly about affirming him as a future leader, but it was more than that. It was about us, as a church, being honest about our wound, confronting our disjunction and fumbling our way towards new possibilities.

So, when I prayed for Nate at his ordination, I imagined returning to the scene of my own wound and I imagined what it would be like to let that scene speak not only for me, but for the community, for the church. This is what I prayed:

+   Prayers of the People +

I. “For Nate”

God of Mercy,
We break in to worship
On this day
That you have called Nate
To the ministry of Word, Sacrament (and Community).

Nate —
In the out-of-the-way places of your heart
This beginning has been quietly forming

May you trust the promise of this opening
May you unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
May your spirit of adventure awaken & may you find ease in risk
And a home in the rhythms of this new call

LORD in your mercy,
All: Hear our prayers.

II. “For All of Us”

God of Mercy,
Break our hearts open
And teach us to love.
Deeply and thoroughly
And not just those who are easy to love…

But help us somehow love like you do.
Help us
If it’s even possible
Make visible the life of Jesus
In our bodies
With justice for the oppressed
Food for the hungry
Freedom for the captives
Care for the poor, strangers and widows.

And if it is possible, tangible
We thank you for that.

LORD, in your mercy.
All: Hear our prayers.

III. “For Those in Need”

God of mercy,
Help us not to be content with false cheerfulness
And vacant optimism.
This thing is broken.

Trouble won’t go and peace won’t stay.
Cycles of the earth still devastate
Violence lingers
Conflicts deepen
Despair is still crippling
And many who are sick will not get better.

Help us to see all this
Help us to not shelter ourselves from it
But rather find our way to faith
Through our broken hallelujahs.

LORD, in your mercy.
All: Hear our prayers.

IV. “For the Church”

God of mercy,
Help the church
To proclaim Christ crucified
Not to be concerned too much for itself
Its particular longevity
Its numbers, or influence…or even relevance
Its growth or failure.

Help us resist the seduction of safety and certainty
The gray promise of sameness
Rather, may our elders see visions
And our young dream dreams
Dreams that call us outside ourselves
To something more beautiful, mysterious
And true.

LORD, in your mercy
All: Hear our prayers.

V. “For the World”

God of mercy,
Help the world.
Where it is too settled, unsettle it.
Where it is too unsettled, settle it.

Help us not to draw false distinctions:
us/them
sacred/secular
church/world
But rather help us lose ourselves
So that we may find ourselves
Renewed, redeemed and reconciled.

Into one creation,
A community of faith, hope and love.

LORD, in your mercy.
All: Hear our prayers.

Finally, God, because our words fail us…
Meet us now in this extended silence.

(silence)

Amen.

 

Note: When I write prayers (esp. those “of the people”) I borrow heavily from prose, song lyrics, other prayers, scriptures, etc. I do not bother to cite any of this formally because that seems awkward. So just know that these prayers are something like the “sampling” that happens in hip hop, rap and spoken word. And in that sense they are original compositions, improvised for a particular time and place.

Morning Prayer, Interrupted

This is a guest post by Kimberlee Conway Ireton. Kimberlee is the author of The Circle of Seasons: Meeting God in the Church Year. She writes about reading, writing, and raising her four kids on her blog. A few years ago I interviewed Kimberlee about her book. After reading this fantastic post, take some time and read “Lived Theology: An Interview with Kimberlee Conway Ireton.”

I’ve fed the babies oatmeal and applesauce, and I’ve eaten my own. Doug and the older kids sit across from me at the table, finishing their eggs and oatmeal. The babies are quiet in their high chairs for the moment, so I open the prayer book.

“Oh Lord, open my lips,” I say, making the sign of the cross over my mouth.

Jack, Jane, and Doug chorus back, “And my mouth shall proclaim your praise.”

Together, we cross ourselves. “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

I start to read the psalm for the day—one hundred forty-eight, one of my favorites. “Hallelujah! Praise the Lord from the heavens; praise the Lord in the heights.”

Doug reads the next verse. “Praise the Lord all you holy angels; praise—”

Suddenly Jane shrieks. “Luke’s pooping! Look! Look! He’s making his poop face!”

I look. Sure enough, Luke’s face is red, his lips pursed. Jack and Jane howl with laughter. Doug and I exchange a bemused glance as I take Luke out of his high chair. “Would you have Jack read my part?”

From the bathroom, I can hear Doug and Jack reading. “Praise the Lord from the earth, ye dragons and all deeps; fire and hail, snow and fog…” It seems either Doug or I spend a lot of time listening to morning prayer from the bathroom.

By the time I get Luke cleaned up and diapered, they’ve finished the psalm. I pop Luke on the floor with a book and a set of stacking rings. Then I sit back down and pick up the Bible. We’re reading through the book of Mark, and today we’re finishing chapter ten, the story of blind Bartimaeus.

As I read, Ben starts fussing. I give him a spoon. He throws it on the floor and starts to cry. Loudly. I hand the Bible to Doug. “We’re on verse 49,” I say as I get Ben out of his high chair. I hold him on my hip, and bounce him as Doug reads. Ben calms down—and yet I’m having trouble concentrating. Maybe it’s all the jiggling I’m doing to keep him quiet.

“And immediately,” Doug reads, “he recovered his sight and followed Jesus on the way.” He pauses a moment. “The Word of the Lord.”

Jack, Jane, and I say, “Thanks be to God.”

“Thank you, God,” I pray, “for your word. Thank you for healthy babies and healthy children. Thank you for sunshine. Thank you for Doug’s good job.”

Doug says, “Thank you for good music and nice weather for biking. Thank you for delicious biscuits. Thank you for my children.” Luke squawks loudly, excited about getting a ring on the stick.

“Good job, Luke!” Jane says. “You did it! Mama, did you see? Luke put the ring on the stick!”

“Way to go, Luke!” Jack starts clapping.

Doug smiles. “All right. Let’s keep praying. Jane, what are you thankful for this morning?”

Jane says, “I’m thankful for a floor so we aren’t walking on dirt. And I’m thankful for electricity so we can see at night. And I’m thankful for our roof so we don’t get rained on and our beds so we don’t have to sleep on the floor.”

Ben starts babbling in my arms. “Dadadadada,” he says. “Dadada. Dadadada.” His voice gets louder the longer he talks.

Jack says, “That’s not your dada, Ben. That’s your mama.”

“Jack,” I say, “what are you thankful for?”

“Dadadada,” Ben says.

“You want your dada, Ben?” Jack says. “He’s right here.”

“Jack,” I say again, “what are you thankful for?”

“I’m thankful for the babies, that they’re cute, and funny, and that they have lots of nicknames.” He looks at Ben and singsongs, “Don’t you have lots of nicknames, Temp? Yes, you ickle do.”

“Jack!”

“Sorry, Mama. I’m thankful that the babies have lots of nicknames and that they’re well-loved like babies should be.”

“Okay, God,” I pray, “I know it’s a little chaotic around here—” Ben starts squirming in my arms “—but I also know you can hear us in spite of the chaos.”  Ben squirms harder. I pop him onto the floor. “So we pray for the people we love—”

Ben crawls happily over to Luke and promptly steals the stacking ring out of his hand. Luke starts to cry.

“—the people we love who need your healing, helping touch on their lives.” I scoop Luke up and hand him to Doug.

Jane prays for her godfather’s father and her best friend, both of whom have cancer. Jack prays for our sponsored child in Guatemala. Luke and Ben punctuate our prayers with babbles and squawks and shrieks.

After we pray the Lord’s Prayer and say amen, I take a deep breath. Doug half-laughs. We exchange a wide-eyed look that says, Why do we insist on doing this again?

Sometimes I do wonder about this crazy ritual of Scripture reading and prayer. It’s not restful. A lot of days, like today, it doesn’t even feel prayerful.

But even on such days, if we pay attention, we glimpse the holy: Jane’s prayers of thankfulness, Jack’s affirmation that the babies are well-loved, both children’s faithful prayers for healing and provision for people we love.

If we didn’t keep praying together day in and day out, we’d miss these moments of grace and goodness. And so we keep at it, despite the diaper changes and the thrown spoons and the shrieking babies and the distracted children.

We keep praying because it is the only way we can learn to pray, the only way we can teach our children to pray, and because we want our family to be shaped day by day through the Word of God.

We keep praying because we trust that God will work in spite of—maybe even through—the interruptions.

The Accidental Anglican

I have written now and again about how in my own life I have experienced a spiritual renewal in recovering the liturgical practices that I forsook while in evangelical and Baptist contexts. So, a book with the title The Accidental Anglican certainly caught my eye, especially the promising sub-title “The Surprising Appeal of the Liturgical Church.” Unfortunately, the title is a bit misleading. There is not as much a discussion of why liturgy should be so appealing it is taken for granted that the appeal of liturgy is self-evident to the reader.

That being said, this is a great book. It is part memoir, part apologia for conservative Anglicanism. Hunter’s journey from the Vineyard movement into an Anglican context is fascinating, and one that is affirming to those who are journeying back to more liturgical contexts.

The apologia Hunter presents in this book is the foundational beliefs for why he is now a missionary bishop within the Anglican church and how this role is an extension of his calling to plant churches. The churches Hunter is planting are inspiring. They are a microcosm of their bishop: charismatic, missional and deeply liturgical. In essence, they are a product of the ancient-future movement and the evangelistic and charismatic zeal of the Vineyard movement (see my review of John Wimber’s Power Healing). Having worked with Wimber for so many years, Hunter has the pedigree to lead such a movement, and the later portion of the book is basically a defense of his model of church planting, which I find convincing.

This book is a delightful memoir and welcome addition to any conversation about how Protestant churches can return to our liturgical roots.

The Accidental Anglican: The Surprising Appeal of the Liturgical Church
Todd D. Hunter
InterVarsity Press
$10.28 (Amazon)

The Turning Over of Traditional Tables

Speaking to a professor at Liberty University, Frederica Mathewes-Green was surprised to find out that the professor and some of the young people at Liberty were going to a Celtic liturgical service at a local Baptist church (link; relevant conversation starts at the 28:50 mark). The professor related that the baby-boomers wanted the contemporary worship—with guitars and drums—while the young people of the church were willing to go to the 7:30am service on Sunday morning for a traditional Celtic service. Even more, these young Baptists were asking for intercession and litany.

Recently, in the 50th issue of RELEVANT, many of the faith trends the magazine summarized in coverage of their publishing history dealt with a return to liturgy, ancient-future worship and spiritual disciplines. There has been a huge surge in liturgical interest among young people like myself that Christian media has really picked up on.

The Gen-Xers and Baby Boomers see this as a “trend.” It’s something that young people are into, like Arcade Fire, Invisible Children, social justice or Tom’s Shoes. In part, it’s seen as “cool” or “hip.” They see a return to liturgy as a turning over of traditional evangelical or low-church Protestant tables. It’s a way to stick it to the man or not be part of the status quo.

I do agree that this liturgical, ancient-future worship movement is a turning over of traditional tables. But, this turning over of tables is not a spilling over of  a century’s worth of low-church Protestantism as the table is flipped over. Instead, this movement is a return to the center. It’s a journey back home. It’s a realization that almost 2,000 years of vibrant Christian worship had been totally eclipsed and stuck in closets or the histories found in dusty theological books.

This movement of my generation is a turning over of traditional tables: but we’re not flipping them over and sticking it to our parent’s and grandparent’s generation. We’re righting the tables. We’re dusting them off and putting the chairs back under it.

Liturgy isn’t cool. It holds no cultural currency or hipster value. Liturgy isn’t valuable. It’s old enough to be in the public domain, which means you can’t make any money off of it. Liturgy isn’t special. It’s not something that is canonical or God breathed.

Instead, let me say that liturgy is true and peculiar. It is the oral tradition of a peculiar people that, while changing over several hundred years, has been solely focused on instilling spiritual disciplines and practices in a worshiping people of God so that they can be God’s mission and see his kingdom come. Is there no greater reason than that to right the table?

Was the Royal Wedding Evangelism?

Last Friday, early in the morning, we turned on our TV to watch Michael Scott’s last episode on The Office on our Roku box.  As our TV flashed on, the Royal Wedding was in full swing, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams presiding over the couple as he read from the Book of Common Prayer.

Beyond all the glitz, glamor and gossip that surrounded this monumental event watched by around two billion people is the this: two billion people were watching a service of worship from the Anglican liturgy, the Book of Common Prayer. Think about that, two billion people hearing the order of service for the wedding, about Christ at Cana, about the Christian understanding of marriage, about the joy of spiritual union.

If Billy Graham or Bill Hybels or Rick Warren preached a sermon in front of two billion people it would most certainly be called the greatest single evangelistic outreach ever recorded.

Why not the Royal Wedding? What is it about the non-sermon parts of a service that condemns it to be the non-evangelistic portion?

This question has always befuddled me, and I think it stems from a misunderstanding of what is evangelistic, i.e. presents the good news. Evangelism is often thought of as a passive action. Someone listens, then he or she responds. But really, the good news is presented in participation: in song, in silence, in communion, in funerals, in weddings, in prayer, in confession, in dance and in preaching.

The marriage service presented the good news in clarity, for those who have ears to hear and eyes to see.

Highlights and Lowlights

In a recent post Kimberlee Conway Ireton, author of The Circle of the Seasons, writes about how she has learned to appreciate life more through practicing the examen in her post “The Gift List“:

I began to see that, even on the worst days, there were blessings, places God met me, things to be glad about or grateful for. And as the examen became more a part of my daily life, I began to notice those mercies not only as I reflected at the end of the day but sometimes in the moment, as they were given.

What is the examen? You can go to another one of her posts that provides more detail. Basically, it is a practice of examining your day to pick out the highlights and lowlights. It is an ancient Christian practice that guides us to see God’s presence in our most ordinary lives.

My wife and I have different spiritual practices because we worship differently, but this is a practice I think is beneficial for the whole family to do together, as Conway Ireton suggests.