Open Choir ...and questions

7/23

Open Choir

Jeremy G and Lloyd are in working out details for tonight’s  Open Choir and screening.

I’m having a conversation with Thomas B who conducted the orchestra for Milica’s Composers’ Concordance (http://www.composersconcordance.com/) festival last year at West-Park. He’s coming  back to the city, looking for work, community. Another outlaw musician as it were. I wish I had a large enough congregation or….I’ll think about this. Must be a way to work him into this.

TK is working with Marc on sound for the Hiroshima event. RL’s asking questions, looking for answers. Too much going on at the same time.

The Open Center’s Open Choir is in session. At least 40 people in a circle, singing songs from the African-American church tradition. It is Christian music, but non –sectarian, the singing transcending boundaries. Katherine calls it a contained ecstatic experience without context, but nevertheless, something is happening.

There is a screening of Action at Aya Irini, a performance by Mario and the Work Center outside of Istanbul in an abandoned basilica. An extended performance of a text from the Gospel of Thomas in Coptic, which they translated themselves. Dance, song, theatre, performance.

The music is set to a sampling of these texts:.

1. And he said, "Whoever discovers the interpretation of these sayings will not taste death."

2. Jesus said, "Those who seek should not stop seeking until they find. When they find, they will be disturbed. When they are disturbed, they will marvel, and will reign over all. [And after they have reigned they will rest.]"

3. Jesus said, "If your leaders say to you, 'Look, the (Father's) kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the (Father's) kingdom is within you and it is outside you.

When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living Father. But if you do not know yourselves, then you live in poverty, and you are the poverty."

4. Jesus said, "The person old in days won't hesitate to ask a little child seven days old about the place of life, and that person will live.

For many of the first will be last, and will become a single one."

5. Jesus said, "Know what is in front of your face, and what is hidden from you will be disclosed to you.

For there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed. [And there is nothing buried that will not be raised.]"

After all, there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed, and there is nothing covered up that will remain undisclosed."

Jesus said, "Have you found the beginning, then, that you are looking for the end? You see, the end will be where the beginning is.

Congratulations to the one who stands at the beginning: that one will know the end and will not taste death."

19. Jesus said, "Congratulations to the one who came into being before coming into being.

22. Jesus saw some babies nursing. He said to his disciples, "These nursing babies are like those who enter the (Father's) kingdom."

They said to him, "Then shall we enter the (Father's) kingdom as babies?"

Jesus said to them, "When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female, when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then you will enter [the kingdom]."

But meanwhile they are drunk. When they shake off their wine, then they will change their ways."

They said, "Otherwise he can't do it."

106. Jesus said, "When you make the two into one, you will become children of Adam, and when you say, 'Mountain, move from here!' it will move."

That Thomas again, coming from that other place. The other Christianity we are only now discovering. It’s a moving film. Except that the projector keeps overheating and stopping.

But I keep pondering. What is the connection? How does this work connect to building a new church? How does this become a community of mutual commitment? Accountability? Service? Maybe we’ll get close to that tomorrow night in our conversation. Bug the question continues to burn inside of me.

Visit RL to hear about a hard week. Talk turns to Fred Neil. Songwriter. Lover of dolphins. Best known for Everybody’s Talkin at Me from Midnight Cowboy. RL introduces me to A little bit of rain…(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYl5v5OV_y8)

As I leave, Marc is in the sanctuary screening  an old movie about Frank Sinatra…projector seems fine….

From Climate change to Palestine

7/23

Summer Israel-Palestine reading series

Time at the office sandwiched between two events. An early morning clergy  breakfast at the Ethical Culture Society to plan a September 21^st People’s Climate March. The goal is to equal the million 1982 march against nuclear proliferation (planned at West-Park) that drew over a million people to the city. Rabbi Michael of the Labor-Religion Coalition invited me and it’s one of the most diverse groups of clergy I’ve seen in awhile. Our speakers include Black Pentecostal, Buddhist and of course, Judson Memorial. We are reminded that climate change has its greatest impact on the vulnerable poor and communities of color. Think asthma in Harlem and the South Bronx. Katrina and Sandy. I’m impressed by the level of organization already. I feel like I/we can commit to this action. There is criticism of having a major national march on  a Sunday morning, or on anyone’s Sabbath. Or on the day of the annual African-American heritage parade. And almost boos when it is said that the NYPD would not grant a permit for a march that would interfere with Broadway matinees. It is said that sometimes we need to be prepared to, as Heschel said in reference to Selma,  worship and pray with our feet . I think of what Russ said about maybe some Sunday mornings, that marching is our worship and begin to think about how to make that happen.

To read more about it, go to http://peoplesclimate.org/march/.

I have just enough time to run down to Chelsea and retrieve my laptop from Tekserve before heading to Advent for another in our summer series of readings from Israel-Palestine. Tonight’s book, Faith in the face of Empire: Reading the Bible through Palestinian Eyes by Mitri  Raheb. I remember a visit with Pastor Raheb several months ago at pastor Heidi’s church. It’s interesting to compare his book to Naim Ateek’s. Both are done with the current discourse on empire. Mitri sees today’s Palestinian Christians as the direct descendants of historic Biblical Israel and makes his case. Whereas Naim focuses mainly on right wing Christian Zionists, Pastor Raheb takes on liberals as well. Pastor Heidi sees the book sometimes coming dangerously close to supersessionism or replacement theology, the idea that Christians have replaced Jews in God’s salvation story.

She does see that this can be a corrective to the traditional evangelical narrative that the Jews must possess the holy land in order for Jesus to come back again.  She has recently discovered her own Jewish family background and has been exploring that reality theologically. She also fears that the book’s argument denies any connection to the land whatsoever.

I make the following points:

* Any statement has to be looked a from the perspective of who has the power to do what to whom when. The same words/analysis has a very different meaning when  spoken by a European or American Christian in a situation when Jews are in a vulnerable minority than when made by a Palestinian Christian under Israeli occupation. How can they not see themselves in the role of Christ and the Israelis in the role of Rome?

* American Christians have little theology of land. It was in Central America I learned the expression, la tierra es la vida: the land is life. We cannot deny the mythic role of Israel over millenia on Jewish self-identity. Each year, Passover ends with the words, next year in Jerusalem.

* Wink, Brueggeman and others have wrestled with a theology of land. It has been said that the Jewish people needed land in order to reenter history, it takes land to be incarnated.

* BUT, living on, in, the land does not necessarily have  equate to sovereignty in a modern political nation state.And ultimately the idea of a Jewish democratic state is an inherent contradiction. It can be one or the other, not both.

It is extremely difficult to have this discussion in the context of the ongoing daily terror and trauma of the siege on Gaza.

                   

Creation (still) groaning: god wrestling

7/22

Ready to hit the road

A busy and full day.

It took the Collection until 4:30AM to find a place where they could park their van and trailer. Some place in the Village. So they’re a bit sleepy. I want to give them a socio-religious overview of where they are. How the religious and social history of this place connects with the new reality  they are creating. 

Tricia is the director who has begun readings of her take on Othello, coming up in the fall. She was here last night and blown away by the energy and activity. Jeremy G’s seed group. The reGroup theatre rehearsal. The Collection family getting ready for their gig. It felt magical to her. Inspirational.

Berik is in to get his stuff out of the old medical room, my old office, so that it can become a green room. 

Deacon James back looking for Danielle again and again we’ve got a full house. 

While I was talking with the Collection, a very (successful, by certain standards), evangelical Christian group was in looking at the space.  They’re interested in the whole show. I will hand it to them, they do celebrate multiculturalism…and service…and discipline and commitment…BUT..there is a triumphalism, a rejection of women’s leadership and don’t even mention LGBTQ issues…I don’t understand why young adults are drawn to this at all. 

Jeremy G is in with Danielle finalizing plans for this weekend’s conversation. 

While I’m hard at work, Don stops in. He’s got some extra staff time this week. Can they help us with web site? Yes, of course. How do we make that concrete? That’s one of our biggest needs  right now. We’re one foot into a new site with lots of blank spaces. 

Russ stops in. I’m hoping he can at least meet David Wimbush, given his work at Wild Goose. He’s well known as the guy with the white hat….Everyone is still waiting for David to return. We wait for awhile but decide to head out for conversation. I try to explain what’s inside of me. How I look at the celebration of the life of Pete Seeger last Sunday. The thousands who came out. How I finally learned the subversive power of what he was trying to do with all of his sing alongs. The sustaining power. Like the black church and it’s creation of liberated space within  the context of life  denying slavery and oppression. My Harlem neighbor, First Corinthian Baptist, is living  that out whether they know it or not. I know that a community with mutual accountability, with disciplines of worship and prayer, stewardship, study and witness, could be a powerful presence. And  wonder again if I can do it. Somewhere between the intensity of the Open Center folks, the power of sung song in the Seeger tradition. As I looked around at the septuagenarians and octogenarians in the audience, I thought that what was most visible was hope. As Jim  Wallis said, Hope is believing inspite of the evidence and having the courage to work to make the evidence change.

 And I look at David’s Collection, these young Christians (in a post Christendom sense), with their combination of self-protection, who really wants to open up their soul to vulnerability and get hurt? and passionate, existential ahistorical wrestling with Jesus, like Jacob with the angel, somewhere in that gritty mix is the new church, or new Christianity being born.

The real dialectic is plain to see. The historic mainline church is irrelevant to this moment. Yes, they have  enough money to continue into the future perhaps indefinitely. But their power to shape what Christianity means is over. The dialectic is between the god wrestling, paradigm breaking grassroots radical discipleship on the one hand and the rapidly growing disciplined Muslim brotherhood style of conservative Christianity on the other. I know that new community can come into being. Is coming  into being. I want desperately for us to help bring it into being. But I don’t see all the how. That’s why my heart burns. That’s what Russ and I talk about. Is he down for that struggle? Everything about  him seems to say yes.

David Wimbush and Bob

When I get back, David and Mira are on the steps. Still waiting for the van. Stuck in rush hour traffic in the village. We talk about some of this. Inside, folks are getting bored. Instruments are coming  out. People trying out their own songs. Some Johnny Cash. Folsom prison. That  kind of thing. David comes back, opens up his violin. I’m about to get my own guitar. See if RL wants to come down. But just about then, the van shows up. And it’s the VW clown scene in reverse. How much can you put into that van? Soon enough, they’re ready to head out to Philadelphia. Leaving me pondering. Burning. I wave goodbye. Just like any rock band. But some serious Jesus wrestling going on in there. Keep struggling.

Waiting for the van to come

Spend some time with RL. Allow him to rail at me regarding how I accomplish my mission. Again. Knowing he does this because he cares. 

Collection connection

7/21

The Collection at the Rockwood Music Hall

Deacon James looking for Danielle. She’s not in yet. She’s going to help him  sort through some legal  issues, some family issues. He’ll come back later.

Pat O, Marsha and then Jamie gather to  meet with our candidate for Construction Manager. who has come with his associate. He’s cool. Collected. Level headed. We go through the whole building, yet again. He sees things we don’t see. Sees solutions. practical. Pragmatic. We can do all this work within the grandfather provisions. He has made a good impression. People ready to move. Need to see some licenses. Some insurance. Some references. But we all  believe we can start work soon. I can almost see construction work beginning. 

Leila and Berik are in. Going to clear out all art stored in the old ,medical room so that it can become a green room for regroup and their Texas Trilogy production. 

Late afternoon, the van arrives. With its trailer. We are hosting the Collection Family Band from Greensboro, North Carolina. They are on tour. With their first CD. Connections. Friends with Kristen

Leigh Southworth, who has been in several shows at West-Park including her own Songs in  the Key of Redemption last year while I was in Berlin. She met their leader David Wimbish singing with him at the Wild Goose festival in North Carolina. An annual festival defined as  a community gathered at the intersection of justice, spirituality, music and art. (http://wildgoosefestival.org/) Our friend Russ J from our Palestinian work is the stage manager there every year. Connections.

Short story: their New York City housing connection fell through. Can I help? I offer them space on the floor, our showers not currently working. They’re overjoyed. I’ve got to run. David S will host them until they’ve got to head downtown for their concert at the Rockwood Music Hall, that lower east side emporium of fine music. I’ll head down there in time  for the show. It’s a big band. 13 members. Seeing them come out of the van reminds me of Bread & Puppet.  Or that old clowns out of the VW circus routine. They just keep coming. And they are so young…

From the balcony at the Rockwood, I look down in the show. A little loose at first, but turns solid, tight. Wimbish’s lyrics tackle questions of faith and doubt, somehow with both cynical distance, not wanting to get hurt, and desire, he takes this all very seriously. The Rockwood crowd taken aback by a 13 piece band. Guitars. Keyboards.Violins. Autoharps. Clarinet. Baritone horn. Trumpet. Drums. Mini glockenspiel. And well, there’s the didgeridoo, I knew there  was one in there somewhere. 

A touch of Sufjan. A touch of Arcade Fire. And maybe Mumford. But it all revolves around David and his lyrics. What I could do with a 13 piece band. (To sample their music go to http://noisetrade.com/thecollection)

I leave to make sure I can  be back at the church before they arrive. It’s after 1:30 AM when they get there. I tell them, they make me feel parental, waiting up for them. Welcome back home, kids.  They’ve got to try and find a place to park the van and trailer overnight. I’ll see them in the morning. 

It's been a hard week in the world

7/20

It's been a hard week in the world.  A Malaysian aircraft goes down over the Ukraine. Israel enters Gaza. The 2000 years old Christian community in Mosul, Iraq is over., driven out by ISIS. And it is estimated  that in 20 years, one out of 5 the world's species will be extinct. Tough time to bring good news.

Jeremy and I start the  morning  by working on Jacob's Ladder. And I may even try Precious Lord, take my hand. (where's Andre when I need him?)

We've got a new visitor from the neighborhood.

This week we read all the passages first before any conversation. Genesis 28: 10-19A, the Jacob's ladder passage. Psalm 139, God everywhere. Romans 8: 12-25, creation groaning in birth pangs. And Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43, another sower parable with wheat and tares. But we pause first to do Jacob's ladder, quasi Springsteen, quasi Seeger style.

First, I talk about that rough week. How disturbing it's been. We start with Genesis. We remember that last week, we had the Jacob and Esau story. Jacob winning the birthright through trickery. And that here we have Jacob being told that he will be a blessing. Point being, our blessings do not always come from whom or where we expect. Jacob is far from exemplary as a human being. But will be the patriarch of Israel. My favorite line is verse 16: Surely the LORD is in this place — and I did not know it! Sometimes we don't recognize the presence of God in  the place where we are. 

A point made clear by Psalm 139, which presents a no place you can run, no place you can hide image of God. I remembered with a laugh when Jim Costen, former President of the Interdenominational Theological Seminary in Atlanta, was Moderator of the Presbyterian General Assembly. We kept running into each other all around the country, then in Mexico and finally in Jerusalem. In the Holy City, he threw up his arms, laughed and said,  Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? and then we both laughed.

Romans speaks of the suffering of this present time (18) and a creation wait(ing) with eager longing (19) and that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains (22). What we know when we look at our present world is that things must change. Things cannot remain this way. If this  is indeed a groaning, let it be for the birth of something new

Ultimately, the passage leads to a discussion of hope. . (24-25) and as I have so many  times before, talk of hope as a radical theological  category, not optimism.  It's King saying that the  arc of history bends towards justice. Or Jim Wallis' classic definition, Hope is in believing despite the evidence and having the courage to work to make then evidence change.

Finally, Jesus' second sower parable. Admittedly, it' a tough one with it's talk of wheat and weeds. (Tares, in the King James version.) If there is a  Good News point, it is that we can't go trying to tear out weeds because they're so similar to the wheat, it would destroy the wheat too. (Like Israeli smart bombs taking out 4 children on a beach...) It's not our job. We're all a mixture of weeds and wheat. And if there is this weeding out at the end, that's God's job, not ours.

Marsha quickly points out that issues with this passage. The fire and brimstone angle. But more, even in my good news version, there's a movement towards passivity. Certainly the Wallis quote about hope asks us to have the courage to work to change the evidence...And the wheat and weeds imagery has dangerous repercussions in the real world.  Israelis and Palestinians demonize each other. And Jeremy is deeply disturbed by the  death of Eric Garner. A large African-American man, Garner was a victim of Police Commissioner Bratton's broken windows law enforcement policy in which small crimes are aggressively policed inn order to prevent larger ones. Garner was a well known loosie (as in loose cigarette) salesman, an inevitable business in a city where packs of cigarettes can run $13 a pack.

Police were attracted by the commotion of a fight Garner was breaking up, he had that reputation in the neighborhood, a peacemaker. But the police went after  his stash of loosies. He held up his hands, resisting cuffs. A choke hold was applied. He went to the ground, died shortly later. He was a married father of 6 children. Something has to change.

                                                                 Eric Garner video

Martha, our visitor, talks about journalism and control of the news and how can we judge wheat and weeds without information. And I recall visiting with my son when he lived in Ramallah, his highly watching of BBC, AL Jazeera and Russia Today and realizing how uninformed we are as Americans. And how ironic it is that our most reliable news sources tend to be comedy shows, eg, last Sunday's John Oliver Show focusing on income inequality. 

Can we get back to the Good News?

Marsha mentions our American obsession with end times, the rapture, etc. So I talk about the new TV show, The Leftovers. A scenario in which, in one moment, 2% of the world's population vanished. The show begins 3 years later, while people are still trying to deal with it. Understand it. A celebration has been planned to honor our heroes, a statue commissioned. A slightly unhinged Episcopal priest with a small, dwindling congregation (I'm sympathetic already) has taken on the task, is obsessed with the task, of researching those who disappeared and proving that this was no rapture. How this one abused children, this one cheated on his wife, this one sold drugs. He is clearly not popular. If we can't separate out the good from the evil, then all meaning is lost, he says.

And he's right. There is that which is clearly evil. Even though discernment can be difficult, we are called to resist. The message would appear to be that it is our means of resistance that makes all the difference. That's what we'll leave with today.

Jeremy had persuaded me to try Precious Lord, take my hand. And I do.Not my best, but I keep working on expanding my range. 

The Session meets. Approves a job description for our administrative position. Sadly, Danielle will be leaving in the middle of August. It's hard for me to imagine doing this without her. 

On Friday nights, you just never know

7/18

Mindy and RL

The lock in the office door is getting more and more difficult to open so handyman David S is on the case to fix it.

A young woman and man with  a keyboard come in to audition for Berik. He’s got live music at every opening now.

Ravi from the Interfaith Assembly comes in to ask what upcoming interfaith events we might have happening. I tell him about the Hiroshima event coming up in August. And he shows me the video of my talk at the Assembly’s most recent action on the City Hall steps. Ravi did video of everything. Still photos too. 

Late in the afternoon, an older couple comes in. They're interested in the church. And maybe Open Mic. I give them the standard tour and we talk. Turns out he’s Presbyterian clergy too. But a professor at Knoxville College, one of our historically black colleges. And she plays the violin. They decide to stay. They are soon joined by a man with kind of a biker guy thing going on. He’s here for the Open Mic as well. 

Matthew Brady

The show opens with Matthew, who despite his biker look, plays a decent guitar and sensitive original songs. Then he surprises us by inviting up his new friend, Mindy from Tennessee, to play fiddle with him. She starts off slow, then gets his song and goes full fiddle on. And there are smiles and laughs all around and RL says that’s why we do this.

In Mindy’s own set, she treats us to Tennesee’s state song, Rocky Top, then invites Matthew up to play with her. You just never know what’s going to happen. And of course, RL invites her up to join in with him.

Mindy and RL

We’re clearly giving her a great vacation story. David L keeps stepping out further each week. Mandola Joe does one killer of a recitation of Casey at the Bat in honor of the All Star game. Pat O brings his original about old soldiers out again and Joel has another improv journey through his spoken word. 

I’ve waited until my friend Beppe arrives. It’s one last visit for us before he takes off for Sardinia. I’ve changed my set list three times, finally settling for one that could involve Mindy, but it’s late and she and her husband leave before I get up, so one more recalculation. I start off with my Queen of the Factory Town song, then my New Mexico song, then finish with the Fred Rose classic made famous by Willie Nelson, Blue Eyes Cryin’ in the Rain. As I leave the stage, RL says That was a fine performance of that song, and I thank him and he says, Did you hear that? And I say yes. Back in the early ’80’s, Tulsa’s most popular disco place always played that at 2AM as its closing song after and a night of Bee Gees, KC and the Sunshine Band and whoever else was disco hot in those days. Roy Acuff sang it first. Also Hank Williams. And Elvis. But Willie owned it.

Marie

One more surprise. Marie M has arrived. Known as Monday Marie for her every Monday night gig at the Gate, a human  juke box who can play virtually anything you can name, plays a set of originals. Which I’ve always wanted to hear her do. She too, complements both my factory town song, says it could be in a movie, and my Blue Eyes. After hearing her so many Mondays and sharing  an after show drink with her and RL, I feel good that she recognizes me as a player too.

We’ve got a hip hop artist, Wavy Don, who is far and away the best rapper we’ve ever had. 

Wavy Don

And then RL closes, as always, with Stay Awhile. And it’s time to head to the Gate for a studied review of the evening.

Some day when we meet up yonder,

We’ll stroll hand in hand again

In the land that knows no parting

Blue eyes crying in the rain.