This year, i'll make all new mistakes.

This has been my New Year's Resolution for the past several years. Some say that it is too pessimistic. Up until about 2003, i would have agreed.

Until 2003, i thought of "mistakes" as "learning opportunities" -- in conversation with others. In my own self-talk, however, i harshly criticized myself for choices regarding my own learning opportunities. My fear of failure kept me frozen, unable to choose something new that had any chance to "turn out bad."

I remember being at a New Year's Eve house party years ago with several dozen others i hardly knew. In a polite conversation, someone asked me, "What is your New Year's Resolution?" I had never made a New Year's Resolution, nor did i feel any obligation to construct one that year.

To my great surprise, i spoke a sarcastic answer that became truth. "This year, i'll make all new mistakes."

This negative-sounding thought was so liberating that it changed the direction of my life. No longer did i oppressively think of each choice as a black-and-white, succeed-or-fail, do-or-die type of decision. I could suddenly consider many options, knowing that each one would not necessarily invite the most optimal results. But i was willing to give an idea a chance to get me further toward what i thought was right.

Trial-and-error was suddenly transformed into a constructive method of learning, as opposed to a terrifying binary system of life-or-death choices. The freedom to make a choice that was not the absolute fastest way to success led me to learn to do the things to which i am called by God (or the things i am inspired to do, or "meant to do").

At the time of that New Year's Eve party, i remember looking around for a friend i could trust with my revelation: I have been making the same old choices (mistakes) year after year. It has led me to the same old disappointment and self-doubt. Why would i continue to make the same mistakes, over and over, year after year, expecting a different outcome?

But those at this particular party exemplified my choices. I would not trust any one of them with feelings or thoughts about anything deeper than the weather.

New mistakes, new possibilities, new choices, new perspectives, new ways of responding to bad stuff have led to new educational options, new jobs, new paths, new relationships, new friends (much better than those at that party!), new hope beyond hope. This year, i will make choices that have the potential to be mistakes. I'm not afraid of mistakes.

Here's a new fear: I'm afraid of making the stupid choice to freeze in fear of failure, rather than learning something new while running the risk of being a part of something great.

In this new year, i hope you feel invited to make a new mistake. Make it a happy one.

In Competition with my Ego

Have you ever felt like you were wrestling a force far bigger than yourself? And that force was winning? And maybe you ended up sabotaging otherwise really great work?

This Sunday is about Romans 12: 9-21. Justin Allen, our new Dean of Spiritual Life at SU, will share a message entitled "In Competition with my Ego." From this graphic, it looks more like "David and Goliath."

go ahead; text in church!

Our Wednesday evening chapel service, WNL, just ended a little bit ago. This is a liturgical rundown of the nontraditional means of celebrating ancient and traditional rituals.

For a prelude, we had a flurry of conversations via text message between our worship leaders and two students who were accompanying their friends to the hospital for illnesses that were urgent enough to need emergency care. Those at the hospital kept us apprised of the conditions of the ailing students throughout the service, too.

Our opening prayer was spoken via speakerphone by a student who was sitting with his father at a far-away hospital awaiting test results from cardiac issues.

Our sermonic element was delivered by a student whose family had planned to drive the 2 hours to hear him speak. His brother had come down with a nasty flu and the family decided to stay home. His father posted on my Facebook status update regarding my excitement over the service, saying he wished he could be there. We set up a computer and he and the family worshiped with us via Skype.

Tinker Toys were used to symbolize our places in the Body of Christ during the testimony. We gathered around the Tinker Toy Masterpiece, photographing it with our cell phones.

Our benediction included a song, sung while we were gathered photographing the lovely symbology. I posted one of the photos, which i borrowed from a student's Facebook page.

At SU's worshipping community, we define "koinonia" as "an ancient word for 'authentic community.'" Technology is not a substitute for real, live ministry with one another. Technology-aided communication does, however, offer opportunities for community in real-time ways that haven't been available until recently.

Perhaps we might consider prayerfully blogging about that ;).

In the mean time, you are invited to read this "Good Word", or "Benediction", that we used tonight, paraphrased from Aaron's ancient blessing as we photographed (on our smart- and not-so-smart-phones) some Tinker Toys.
God bless you and keep you.
God's face shine on you.
God's peace surround you and lead you. Amen.

Un-Corporate Worshiping

On a moody spring day that cannot decide between clouds and sun,
when the air feels as though i can wear it like a brand-new, cozy fleece hoodie,
and the ground is so ripe for gardening i can almost taste the sting of the garlic that might sprout there,
i am blessed and lucky to walk with a friend
in deep understanding
of what community is and should be.

How i wish this day could be every day.
But, if it were, would i remember well how to love it?

Spiritual Direction

Think about the difference between "direction" (singular) and "directions" (plural). "I need direction in my life," means something completely different from "I need directions to the site."

Wouldn't it be great if GPS marketed an app for "Spiritual Directions?" I can hear it now: that infuriating voice that is always telling us to make the first safe and legal u-turn "recalculating" our route to include a turn that threatens to lead us astray.

If only it were that simple.

I talked with a friend who said she felt as though she was losing her faith. We wondered together if that was an entirely bad thing. I knew her to have grown up in a church and family in which no one was to question the teachings of the pastor, yet the pastor abused his access to vulnerable people. Questions were not permissible because they gave voice to the doubting of faith in the leaders of the church, who claimed to be called by God to their leadership positions. Yet many of those same parishioners were being abused by that faith. She had not explored church, spirituality, or religion further; she simply stopped attending. She didn't build a new faith on a firmer foundation, but rather, she let her faith construct shrivel up unattended.

The difficulty with "direction," rather than "directions," is that it doesn't offer a clear, black-and-white path or destination. Instead, it gives us the tools we need to use the wisdom God gave us, in consultation and community with others who sojourn with us.

So, instead of the GPS voice giving step-by-step, inch-by-inch instructions, we have to be still and know that God is God. I continually try to remind myself of this: "Have patience with yourself; you'll get there in time." It might be a different "there" than i expected, and at a different time.

Next step: Invent a Universal Positioning System ;)...

I share an office with a seminary intern, Josh Howard. His arrival to SU, along with the other seminary intern, Amy Howard (who happens to be his wife) changed the scape of our office in a wonderful way. One day, Josh and i were loudly working out a drum part for a service for which we were planning. Rhonda walked began laughing just as loudly in the hallway.

She was so tickled because she passed our boisterous office and walked into our next-door office neighbors, including Amy, who were quietly pouring over charts and graphs and narratives and other instruments of assessment. Rhonda was delighted by the diversity of tasks -- all necessary -- that keep Spiritual Life going around here. It reminded me of the Body of Christ.

When we experience differences of opinion in our churches regarding Worship Arts, or any other theological aspect, we have an opportunity to act as the Body of Christ, too. I've shared with many that we are the Body of Christ because we are all needed to fulfill the diverse needs of our world. We can't all be eyes or hands or asses or hearts: each of us is a cherished child of God, precious in the sight of God. I am not commissioned to go into all nations and make everyone agree with me. I am commissioned to go to all the world and make disciples... teaching others to observe the peace-building, hope-bringing, love-spreading lessons that Jesus modeled for us.

We need the drummers and the list-makers as we teach, and learn from, our sisters and brothers. Perhaps we can ask ourselves, "What are my gifts? And am i using them to be my best example of my part of the Body?"

Burying Alleluia, part II

This Ash Wednesday, friends and colleagues are commenting on a Youtube i posted at the beginning of Lent 2010. I've been grateful to find that these lyrics, written by my friend and colleague, Rhonda VanDyke Colby, have been meaningful to some who hear it. It came from a conversation during a planning session last year.

Rhonda recalled fond memories of burying alleluia as a child in order to dig it up at Easter. She suggested that we take on this practice for the season of Lent 2010. True to form as a Questioner of All Rituals, Rites, and Regularities, i asked if we must do that this year. It had been a tremendously difficult winter with record-breaking blizzards in our area. Among loved ones, illness, natural disaster, and unemployment wreaked havoc. In some cases, students could not return to school and families lost their homes. Looking back on my personal life at that point, my own attitude at that time, frankly, sucked.

It felt as though "Alleluia" had long since been buried.

But we were reminded that praise, gratitude, and honor belong to God at all times, in all circumstances. Contextually, it did not seem appropriate to bury the alleluia. Rather, in these troubled times, it felt as though we should be the ones reminding others to sing it, scream it, live it.

In response to my description of this Youtube as "reverent" and "blasphemous," someone posted "I don't see the blasphemous part." I'm speaking to the present-day Pharisees who might view my refusal to bury alleluia as incorrect or even wrong. In any case, i am grateful that Rhonda called me with her lyric to Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," asking if i thought the words were too "dorky " :). Those who know Rhonda's work know that it is consistently eloquent, lovely, artful, thoughtful, astute, and creative. She gifts us with the products of these qualities daily.

So, if you are too liturgically correct to sing or say it, live it anyway. In Cohen's compelling story that has been covered by hundreds of artists, it says:
"...There's a blaze of light in every word. It doesn't matter which you heard: the holy or the broken 'hallelujah.'... and even though it all went wrong, i'll stand before the Lord of Song with nothing on my tongue but hallelujah."