Text - Psalm 100
I've been thinking a lot about praise and worship and prayer. I have conversations about these words with people and it rarely fails that we define these words differently. For some people worship includes prayer and for others it doesn't. Sometimes worship and praise are interchangeable words and sometimes they are not.
No matter what the specific definition of the words for a person, we do tend to agree that generally speaking all these words are talking about reaching toward the Sacred.
There was a time when I was very very sad and scared. I didn't know what to do with myself. I didn't know how to be who I was. I didn't know who to be. Everything was all mixed up.
The church I attended at the time had two components. The first was a praise and worship time. Basically we sang for an hour. There was a song leader who had chosen the songs. We also had lots of band members. The song leader would direct the whole thing. I could be very powerful ... very moving.
Sometimes, though, the music just didn't match up to how you were feeling. One morning I was feeling quite desperate and I was hoping for some music that would help me work through my struggles. I wanted to sing a song like, this one from the book of Hosea:
Sow to yourself in righteousness
Reap in mercy, reap in mercy
Break up your fallow ground for it is time to seek the Lord
Till God comes and reigns righteousness upon you
Or this one from Psalm 42:
As the deer thirsts for the water so my soul thirsts after you
You oh Lord are my hearts desire and I long to worship you
You oh Lord are my strength and shield
To you oh Lord does my spirit yield
You alone are my hearts desire and I long to worship you
But what I got was a song that was happy. It was upbeat. Then I got another upbeat song that was less lively but still a hopeful wonderful song. I was not feeling hopeful or wonderful. I was not feeling the songs in the service. But at one point I decided that I was going to sing with all my heart. I was going to break through my own hopelessness and despair and praise God in what I called faith. I had never sung a happy song with grief in my heart and tears flowing out of my eyes before, but I did that morning.
One of the songs that I remember singing was this one. Some of you may know it with a different melody line.
I love you Lord and I lift my voice
To worship you, oh my soul rejoice
Take joy my king in what you hear
Let me be a sweet sweet sound in your ear
We exalt you
We exalt you
We exalt you
Oh God
This song helped me to break through. I realized that I could sing a song about my soul rejoicing even though it felt like I was dying because I could truthfully sing the words, "I love you, Lord." I love you. I decided that if I still knew that I loved God that that meant my soul still had something to rejoice about. All I wanted to do was to reach out to the Sacred. I wanted to take the hand of my Divine Beloved and I wanted to be wrapped in my Beloved's arms. I needed shelter and I needed acceptance. I wanted to be loved back.
Music has been a good way for me to reach out. Sometimes it isn't with words. Often I reach out with my drums. I used to reach through playing my clarinet. That was a long time ago. Some people use art or poetry. Some use dance or theatre.
It seems to me that whatever someone uses to reach past the struggle, if it isn't motivated by love it won't have the strength or stamina to fully tap in. This whole Christian journey; the reason we build and continue to be a part of a faith community; the desire to reach out and share with others; all of this has to be motivated by love.
I wanted to talk before we sing today to name a few things. First I want to name the motivation of love as being primary. Sometimes we don't feel love, but we may have a loyalty or devotion that is attached to our love that can make love more tangible. Next, I want to name that sometimes we have to push through a struggle to praise God. Struggling is important. I think being in an honest struggle is healthy. It gives us a depth to our soul and our living. I would rather struggle and push to get to another side than to pretend that there is no struggle and be silently miserable or to have the pain masked even to myself. Struggle for the sake of struggle, I think, is counter productive. But I do not want to silence my pain or anyone else's pain. I also do not want to stop praising The Holy, The Presence who loves me and wants me to be consciously close.
That morning of praise for me was powerful because I figured out I could be in that moment of contradiction and the result was that I did not die. Rather I ended up being more fully present to my Divine Beloved and to myself. I couldn't do it as just a ritual. I had to do it for love. I had to do it to be consciously close to God.
Today I want us to sing a few songs. They are the songs in the insert to the bulletin. I don't know if any of you know them. And again, I might know a different melody line, so we'll figure it out. The how of singing is not as important as the singing itself and the being together.
Our text today has one of my favourite verses - Make a joyful noise to the Lord. Love is not always pretty. It is not always harmonious. Sometimes there is dissonance or passing tones that help us figure out the direction the song needs to take. I invite you to find your voice - find a harmony part if you wish. Or let your body do whatever it wants to do ... sway or stand or sit ...
We will do each song several times through, kind of in a Lectio Divina style. My hope is that as we sing these songs repeatedly we have the opportunity to go deeper. Two of the three songs are scripturally based. The third song is a love song to God.
We are all struggling with something - some of us with many things. As we use this meditative style, praising and worshiping through song, I invite you to be present to yourself and to look for and encounter your Love. This love that I am talking about is the love that you hold in you and Love which is calling to you through the Holy Spirit or The Sacred or however you name it.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Thursday, February 19, 2009
A Certain Type of Exodus - story collecting
A Certain Type of Exodus is the story of faith in the LGBTQ community. While many LGBTQ are people of faith, we struggle with how our religion views us. We struggle with how God sees us. We struggle to either walk away from the faith we have always known, or stay within our faith as a gay/lesbian/transgender member. Our stories of exodus give us the ability to find an accepting God, whether within our faith or not.
Loralei Matisse is currently collecting stories from LGBTQ members of different faith organizations to place within an anthology. The goal for this book will be to help open (and in many cases, continue) the conversations within faith community. It will also be part of a healing retreat designed by Ken Phillips (currently in concept phase). They both hope to heal the wounds we receive coming out in our faith - which can be more trying than coming out to family.
Please contact her at loraleimatisse@gmail.com with questions or stories.
THANK YOU!
Loralei Matisse is currently collecting stories from LGBTQ members of different faith organizations to place within an anthology. The goal for this book will be to help open (and in many cases, continue) the conversations within faith community. It will also be part of a healing retreat designed by Ken Phillips (currently in concept phase). They both hope to heal the wounds we receive coming out in our faith - which can be more trying than coming out to family.
Please contact her at loraleimatisse@gmail.com with questions or stories.
THANK YOU!
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Pain and Words Matter - Sermon from February 8, 2009
Matthew 18:1 - 7
When I was training to be a hospice chaplain one of the first instructions they gave was, "If someone tells you they feel pain, believe them."
How often we dismiss someone's pain as being "not that bad" or "in their head." Often when someone says they are in pain - physical, emotional, spiritual, or intellectual pain - judgment follows. The person is seen as "looking for attention" or not being "tough enough." The more I thought about the instruction, "If someone tells you they feel pain, believe them," the more I realized that this obvious thing to say was actually necessary.
How sad. How amazingly sad. What a shock it was to realize that words acknowledging pain too often become immediately overlaid with judgment.
Years ago I started to hear words of pain being expressed by people of colour regarding Biblical and religious language. I heard my dark-skinned colleagues and friends share that white and light being good and black and dark being bad was not helpful to them. Not all people of colour were saying this, but there were voices in the room agreeing that this language was painful.
I have heard lots of white people dismiss or negate that pain saying these sisters and brothers are being too sensitive or that they are missing the point of the metaphor. I have also heard justification of these metaphors based on facts like, light really does help us see in the dark. And while it is true that light helps us see in the dark, it is equally true that when the light is in my eyes I put on "shades."
A metaphor is just a metaphor. It is limited. We need lots of metaphors of different kinds to understand the fullness of things like "God" or "holiness." Unfortunately Christianity is overloaded on the metaphors for light and white. I think this is true because of systemic racism. The power structure privileging light skinned people goes way back.
We could deconstruct the historical foundations of white privilege. We could talk about how worshiping the sun and light has grounded us in a pattern of systemic racism. All those things are interesting and important to me. If they are to you too then maybe we can develop a six week study on the foundations of racism in religion.
But for today, this 2nd Sunday of Black History month, I want to talk about the pain I hear people feeling today. I want us to believe it when someone says the words in our worship hurt them.
In the 1940's, Kenneth and Mamie Clark, did a study on racial biases in education. You have met both Dr. Kenneth Clark and Dr. Mamie Clark, in the bios I read of them from Columbia University. You have also heard some of Dr. Kenneth Clark's words in the excerpt read from Dark Ghetto.
Their most famous study was the doll study. In this study, African American children were shown two white dolls and two black dolls. They were each asked question about the dolls such as, which doll would you like to play with and which is the nice doll? They were also asked what colour the dolls were. Finally they were asked which doll they looked most like. Overwhelmingly these African American children chose the white dolls as the nice dolls and preferable to play with and when they were asked to identify which doll they looked most like, they became upset, some did not answer and some left the room. This study was used in the 1954 Brown vs Board of Education case and was instrumental in bringing about the ruling that public school segregation is unconstitutional.
But I said I was going to talk about today. In 2005, Kiri Davis recreated the Clark doll study. Ms. Davis is an African American filmmaker. At the time she filmed this study she was 18 years old. She created a seven-minute documentary called, A Girl Like Me. I'd like to show you a clip from that.
The first time I saw this, I was devastated. The devastation only deepens with each sequential viewing. This is the pain I heard in those conversations when we talked about the light and dark metaphors in religious language. This is the pain that my sisters and brothers of colour were talking about. I had to hear it from children to get it in my gut. My head was processing like crazy but to feel it I had to see this.
This documentary shows the impact of our culture, and I believe that our language in worship is part of that. When kids are surrounded with the notion that white is good and black is bad it easily become transferred to people and what colour they are. The metaphor of the sun bursting through the darkness so that we can see in the daytime is fine on its own, but it isn't on its own. This language is accompanied by the history of slavery in this country and by Jim Crow laws and lynchings and nooses being hung in trees as a supposed joke at a high school in Jena, Louisiana. Nothing is done in a vacuum.
The metaphor of our need for shelter from the bright harsh sun is rarely talked about. Metaphors about flowers and vegetables in their surprising array of colours are not used much either. The metaphor of the brown earth from which our creation story says we were made - that doesn't get much play either.
It is in my heart to write songs and liturgy that explore all these amazing images. It is also in my heart to eliminate the harmful images as best I can. Here is the Streams songbook that I use at home when picking songs. I have gone through the book and noted the light/white and dark/night metaphors. I don't use those songs. I think these metaphors have become stumbling blocks. In verse 7 of our reading in Matthew today it says, "Woe to the world because of stumbling blocks! Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to the one by whom the stumbling block comes!"
Is my choice a little over the top? Some say that it is. I don't think I'm quite over the top yet though. I don't think I've come close to the top of this mountain. If the words that I use hurt somebody, if the words that I use cause someone to stumble - and by stumble I don't mean sin - If what I do causes someone pain, I want to know that and I want to stop. Woe to me if I don't.
More needs to be done than just altering these images of dark and light, but if I can do this small thing, it might make a huge difference in someone's life. More liturgy needs to be written ... more songs need to be written that explore the abundance of colour images. I am working on that too.
This is important to me at my core. It drives me and it impacts the choices that I make. The words that we say matter. People's pain matter.
When I was training to be a hospice chaplain one of the first instructions they gave was, "If someone tells you they feel pain, believe them."
How often we dismiss someone's pain as being "not that bad" or "in their head." Often when someone says they are in pain - physical, emotional, spiritual, or intellectual pain - judgment follows. The person is seen as "looking for attention" or not being "tough enough." The more I thought about the instruction, "If someone tells you they feel pain, believe them," the more I realized that this obvious thing to say was actually necessary.
How sad. How amazingly sad. What a shock it was to realize that words acknowledging pain too often become immediately overlaid with judgment.
Years ago I started to hear words of pain being expressed by people of colour regarding Biblical and religious language. I heard my dark-skinned colleagues and friends share that white and light being good and black and dark being bad was not helpful to them. Not all people of colour were saying this, but there were voices in the room agreeing that this language was painful.
I have heard lots of white people dismiss or negate that pain saying these sisters and brothers are being too sensitive or that they are missing the point of the metaphor. I have also heard justification of these metaphors based on facts like, light really does help us see in the dark. And while it is true that light helps us see in the dark, it is equally true that when the light is in my eyes I put on "shades."
A metaphor is just a metaphor. It is limited. We need lots of metaphors of different kinds to understand the fullness of things like "God" or "holiness." Unfortunately Christianity is overloaded on the metaphors for light and white. I think this is true because of systemic racism. The power structure privileging light skinned people goes way back.
We could deconstruct the historical foundations of white privilege. We could talk about how worshiping the sun and light has grounded us in a pattern of systemic racism. All those things are interesting and important to me. If they are to you too then maybe we can develop a six week study on the foundations of racism in religion.
But for today, this 2nd Sunday of Black History month, I want to talk about the pain I hear people feeling today. I want us to believe it when someone says the words in our worship hurt them.
In the 1940's, Kenneth and Mamie Clark, did a study on racial biases in education. You have met both Dr. Kenneth Clark and Dr. Mamie Clark, in the bios I read of them from Columbia University. You have also heard some of Dr. Kenneth Clark's words in the excerpt read from Dark Ghetto.
Their most famous study was the doll study. In this study, African American children were shown two white dolls and two black dolls. They were each asked question about the dolls such as, which doll would you like to play with and which is the nice doll? They were also asked what colour the dolls were. Finally they were asked which doll they looked most like. Overwhelmingly these African American children chose the white dolls as the nice dolls and preferable to play with and when they were asked to identify which doll they looked most like, they became upset, some did not answer and some left the room. This study was used in the 1954 Brown vs Board of Education case and was instrumental in bringing about the ruling that public school segregation is unconstitutional.
But I said I was going to talk about today. In 2005, Kiri Davis recreated the Clark doll study. Ms. Davis is an African American filmmaker. At the time she filmed this study she was 18 years old. She created a seven-minute documentary called, A Girl Like Me. I'd like to show you a clip from that.
The first time I saw this, I was devastated. The devastation only deepens with each sequential viewing. This is the pain I heard in those conversations when we talked about the light and dark metaphors in religious language. This is the pain that my sisters and brothers of colour were talking about. I had to hear it from children to get it in my gut. My head was processing like crazy but to feel it I had to see this.
This documentary shows the impact of our culture, and I believe that our language in worship is part of that. When kids are surrounded with the notion that white is good and black is bad it easily become transferred to people and what colour they are. The metaphor of the sun bursting through the darkness so that we can see in the daytime is fine on its own, but it isn't on its own. This language is accompanied by the history of slavery in this country and by Jim Crow laws and lynchings and nooses being hung in trees as a supposed joke at a high school in Jena, Louisiana. Nothing is done in a vacuum.
The metaphor of our need for shelter from the bright harsh sun is rarely talked about. Metaphors about flowers and vegetables in their surprising array of colours are not used much either. The metaphor of the brown earth from which our creation story says we were made - that doesn't get much play either.
It is in my heart to write songs and liturgy that explore all these amazing images. It is also in my heart to eliminate the harmful images as best I can. Here is the Streams songbook that I use at home when picking songs. I have gone through the book and noted the light/white and dark/night metaphors. I don't use those songs. I think these metaphors have become stumbling blocks. In verse 7 of our reading in Matthew today it says, "Woe to the world because of stumbling blocks! Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to the one by whom the stumbling block comes!"
Is my choice a little over the top? Some say that it is. I don't think I'm quite over the top yet though. I don't think I've come close to the top of this mountain. If the words that I use hurt somebody, if the words that I use cause someone to stumble - and by stumble I don't mean sin - If what I do causes someone pain, I want to know that and I want to stop. Woe to me if I don't.
More needs to be done than just altering these images of dark and light, but if I can do this small thing, it might make a huge difference in someone's life. More liturgy needs to be written ... more songs need to be written that explore the abundance of colour images. I am working on that too.
This is important to me at my core. It drives me and it impacts the choices that I make. The words that we say matter. People's pain matter.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Guest Post at Womanist Musings
Hi all,
Renee at Womanist Musings has graciously accepted a guest post that I wrote. Check out her blog. It's great. While you're there, you can read my guest post.
Renee at Womanist Musings has graciously accepted a guest post that I wrote. Check out her blog. It's great. While you're there, you can read my guest post.
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