Among the many abilities I wish I posessed is painting. I have a crude cast of mind to dash an image onto paper but the refined set of hand and the conscious knowledge that gives power over the image are beyond me.
Here are two paintings I would turn out if I could.
1) A Wisconsin summer landscape turned mythical: green hills rising in successive ripples and quilted with soy-bean fields, corn fields, back yards, farm yards, and adorned with various structures and trees; all being shaken out like a blanket by two gods of the earth. I think I would make it in three frames. The central one would contain the landscape only so it could be recognized and considered for itself. The landscape would edge into graspable fringes in the sides of the two auxiliary frames, which would be longer and thinner in dimmension than the landscape frame, and the two gods, one in each side frame, would grip the edge of the blanket/landscape. The gods would stand straight and be bulky in build; their feet would be very solid and their adornment precious metal and gems. The different dimmensions of the frames would show that the two things were happening in different worlds but were the same reality.
2) A painting expositing the maddeningly delicious tussle of gray, black and white in a winter scene. A gray country road scarred by faded skid-marks, trundling down through blackish empty fields where round hay bales cast colorless shadows and snow huddles in dirty white patches. The field is ringed by white-and-black-paper birch trees which stand against gray skies scathed with chalky skitters of cloud and edging into mauve haze at the horizon; in the foreground a gray cat with black eyes dancing around the edge of a water puddle that reflects both white snow and gray sky in duller guise then edges out into a stretch of black mud.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Monday, July 30, 2007
The Cry of the Wild Kinderbeast
My son Ian is not only a baby boy. He's a manchild, and I have been aware of this fact from the first moment that he stared appraisingly into my eyes that night in the hospital.
I was fully grown, powerful, able to endure - and had just proved this fact through six hours of labor.
He on the other hand was tiny and completely helpless. Yet in that first hour, when he was still able to take his existance for granted, the soul that stared out of those baby eyes was critical, interested and domineering. And then he closed his eyes and slept in my arms.
I was fully grown, powerful, able to endure - and had just proved this fact through six hours of labor.
He on the other hand was tiny and completely helpless. Yet in that first hour, when he was still able to take his existance for granted, the soul that stared out of those baby eyes was critical, interested and domineering. And then he closed his eyes and slept in my arms.
Like his fully grown counterparts, Ian only gives hugs after a victory in some athletic endeavor such as throwing, kicking, or catching a ball, or walking or getting down from the sofa on his own. Cuddling for cuddling's sake has never been acceptable from the first moment; he prefers endorsement of his activites. When I nursed him naturally he averted his eyes from mine in a show of decency. And once I switched to a bottle he made it clear that he preferred to face away from me while I held it in his mouth. No, he does not hate me. In decent manly situations he's perfectly happy to send the most beautiful smile in the world my way.
Ian is is blessedly free from the need to ponder his own feelings and he gives his attention to objects external to himself. During the first weeks we had him home he managed to communicate to us his desire to be held up in front of the picture over our couch. He stared at it until my arms or Josh's gave out countless times. As soon as he was able he arranged matters so that when I held him he faced outward, not in. And from that vantage point he steered me as I walked, body stretched out in one taut line in the direction of his choice.
Ian is never of two minds on any subject.
Then one day he found that while lying on his tummy he could, by a feat of strength inolving his neck muscles, raise his head and look around him. Uncounted objects of mystery and intriuge presented themselves to his view - the pedals of a piano, three balls of various sizes and colors, a door stopper, CD's arranged by color in a shelf, shoes, legs, and tiny pieces of lint.
On that day the desire for conquest bloomed in his heart. He set himself a regimen, attempting to crawl long before he was ready. As soon as he could crawl he methodically taught himself to stand by holding on to objects. Then came cruising, and by now his progress was accelerating. He began to let go of his support for a few moments at a time while standing. Then, early this month he found himself in a squatting position on the floor. And from that position in a swift elegant movement he stood to his feet. And looked coolly at me. I applauded him joyfully. He shrugged. Within a week he was taking steps.
All this, so that he can appropriate every object in his father's house and close his mouth over it. Like a dog marking his territory. Or a king with a harem.
He is impervious to any normal pain or fear. If a chair falls on top of him that is one thing. He will condescend to cry - or rather roar in enraged protest. But from the first time the nurse at the hospital pricked his heel to the last time I tried sp*nking his bottom as a form of discipline, Ian responds quite coolly to these misadventures of life.
In fact, when it comes to discipline, resisting it is almost a sport. Only his father can intimidate him. Somehow, despite the fact that I am six or seven times as large as he is, he see right through to the fact that I'm a woman and he's not. All this in spite of the fact that his father is the gentlest man God ever made.
"No, Ian."
(Giggles.)
"Ian. Mama says NO. You must NOT do that."
(Giggles harder, continues with forbidden action.)
"I'm sorry, but I must punish you now."
(Wheels turning in head - she's sorry - she doesn't mean it - giggles become insane.)
I sl*p him as hard as I can bear to.
He outright roars with laughter.
In fact the only thing that ever moves him to do my will is a mixture of respect and gallantry. This usually involves my explaining to him in gory detail exactly what I went through to give him life. Perhaps this recital reminds me, as well as my son, who I am, and the self-respect that creeps into my voice renders him ammenable to helping me out a bit by doing what I'm telling him to do.
Ian himself understands many words but does not need them. All my efforts to incite him to say "ma-ma" and "da-da" are met with crushing inattention. His needs are simple and his ingenuity in making them known is admirable.
Let's say, for instance, he has decided that he and his red block need to ascend on to my lap. He throws the red block onto my lap, sending it before him in the faith that where his heart is he himself must follow. Then he stares earnestly into my eyes and makes a sound implying unutterable longing. Up he goes. Don't mistake his meaning. My lap is not a place of comfort but a launching pad for further conquests - the computer, a cup full of pens, a plate with the most astounding collection of crumbs leftover from my lunch.
Or let's say that he has decided that he's tired. He crawls into his room and fetches his bottle. He brings it to me and throws it on my lap. But before I can scoop him up he's off to his room again. Halfway there he stops and looks at me over his shoulder with an expression that clearly says "cottoned on yet?"
Of course if it's something he can get for himself, there's no need to let us know. Josh and I will never forget looking up from the sofa toward the kitchen where Ian was playing to see him surround in a perfectly shaped mound of cheerios, calmly placing one solitary O in his mouth.
There's one word, however, that he delights in saying. And it interests me because I had always assumed that at the heart of the desire to talk is the desire to name things. But Ian's one word, that he's willing to say over and over, is "Hi".
This is a very different kind of word than Mama or Ball. It's a word that you exchange with other people. It connects you to them on equal terms - they give it to you, you give it back. Like playing ball (to be distinguished from naming ball.)
It's a kind of ritual. And Ian loves rituals.
There's the one where I tell him what to do if he needs me when I am putting him to bed. I act out it, exxageratedly yelling "MAAAAA MAAAAA" (this, by the way, is the call of the wild kinterbeast - his greatest weapon - but more of that later) and then pretending to be me jogging back into the room saying breathlessly, with servile interest, "What is it, Little Baby Ian?" He laughs hysterically.
Then there's his getting up ritual. Once in my arms he wriggles himself into a steering position and heads for the shelf where there's a figurine of a pregnant woman. She came to me faceless but I painted a face on her during my own pregnancy. It's a face of patient suffering, latent fear, and hope beyond hope. Ian takes it in his hands. I tell him its name ("This is a figure of a mother, Little Baby Ian") and he gently and reverently inserts the entire head into his mouth. Then he puts it back on the shelf. Or rather he shoves it towards the shelf and I had better catch it before it heads for the floor.
And all of his favorite games are rituals. Repeating the same delightful action again and again, preferrably with the same form of words. Is he seeking form? Is he obssessive compulsive? Are obsessive compulsive people seeking form?
Ian has one use for the word 'mama'. He won't use it to please me or to engage me. He will only use it to boss me around.
For instance - say we are both taking a nap. I'm exhausted; he awakes before me. He stands up in his crib while I sleep peacefully, unsuspecting. He looks across the room. He sees his toys on the shelf. None of them are in the crib with him. He cannot get out of the crib on his own.
Then it comes: a high-pitched roar that nothing else in nature can duplicate, rending without pity my comforter of slumber. The wild, the untamable, the insistent cry of the Wild Kinderbeast.
"Maaaaaaa-MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!"
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Worship with Gold
When we visited The Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in Milwaukee last Christmas, we were astounded to see gold as part of the adornment on the walls. We were brought up to think that gold in a house of worship was wasteful. It deprived the poor, it was unnecessary and pretentious. Our friend brought up the crucial question.
Is it possible to worship without gold?
The answer came to me today; it's simple.
No. You cannot worship without gold if you have gold. If all you have is silver then you cannot worship without silver.
Worship, I must remind myself, is not something that happens to me. I am not asking about the conditions under which I can recieve a certain experience. Rather I am asking what is my duty.
My duty is to offer to God whatever is my best. And the church's duty is to offer to God whatever is her best, collectively. I once saw part of a television program which surveyed the best churches in England. One cathedral was mentioned because of the tiny but lovely paintings at the top of the walls next to the ceiling. The church was so tall that almost no one ever saw those paintings until the modern age when video cameras and cranes and very tall ladders made it possible. The paintings weren't there to be looked at by men. They were an offering to God. This illustrates not that adornment in church should always be invisible to the worshippers, but that the beauty of our worship is not primarily for our own benefit.
This is the kind of waste in which our souls need to indulge and in which our churches need to indulge. This is the same waste on a ecclesiastical level as an hour spent in secret speechless prayer is to the individual, where there are no petitions offered, no boons granted. Resources thus lost to any earthly benefit are truly given to God. This is how the giving of material gifts can become an act of the soul. And let us not forget that kneeling and bowing, that singing and praising, are physical acts. We cannot add to God nor benefit him, whether by gifts material or spiritual. All we can do is break our alabaster box of priceless ointment and lavish it recklessly on his feet.
(And don't listen to the guy in the corner talking about how it could have been sold for the poor. His story doesn't end well.)
Is it possible to worship without gold?
The answer came to me today; it's simple.
No. You cannot worship without gold if you have gold. If all you have is silver then you cannot worship without silver.
Worship, I must remind myself, is not something that happens to me. I am not asking about the conditions under which I can recieve a certain experience. Rather I am asking what is my duty.
My duty is to offer to God whatever is my best. And the church's duty is to offer to God whatever is her best, collectively. I once saw part of a television program which surveyed the best churches in England. One cathedral was mentioned because of the tiny but lovely paintings at the top of the walls next to the ceiling. The church was so tall that almost no one ever saw those paintings until the modern age when video cameras and cranes and very tall ladders made it possible. The paintings weren't there to be looked at by men. They were an offering to God. This illustrates not that adornment in church should always be invisible to the worshippers, but that the beauty of our worship is not primarily for our own benefit.
This is the kind of waste in which our souls need to indulge and in which our churches need to indulge. This is the same waste on a ecclesiastical level as an hour spent in secret speechless prayer is to the individual, where there are no petitions offered, no boons granted. Resources thus lost to any earthly benefit are truly given to God. This is how the giving of material gifts can become an act of the soul. And let us not forget that kneeling and bowing, that singing and praising, are physical acts. We cannot add to God nor benefit him, whether by gifts material or spiritual. All we can do is break our alabaster box of priceless ointment and lavish it recklessly on his feet.
(And don't listen to the guy in the corner talking about how it could have been sold for the poor. His story doesn't end well.)
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
The Experiment of the Partly-Poem
If anyone has read my last four posts (poems I through IV) it's possible I've come to look pretty arrogant. What did I mean putting up such an odd collection of rather poor efforts?
In fact this is an experiment. Poems III and IV are posted for the purposes of comparison. The poem I wrote at sixteen has a lot of lifeless extras, it's rough and immature and its vocabulary strikes me as limited. The poem I wrote a couple of weeks ago is more polished and each word carefully chosen, and moreover it is thoroughly ossified because it flow was so sluggish I was not able to complete the verse.
I suspect that the immature poem has "that spark" flitting about its words somewhere. It's the mark of a wild feeling that I used to associate with composing. It's real, it's a necessary component of true art, and I believe I've lost it.
Poems I and II (obviously, two versions of the same poem) are an experiment - me fishing around in my soul to see if any of that spark is still left and, if so, what's clogging it up. I'm not into self-revelation so I'll not say what I think I may have found. However the result itself interests me and may interest others. Someone may wish to imitate the experiment. It's short and fascinating.
Between nine and ten on the clock, when my body was winding down for sleep, I put myself into a sort of half-trance, my eyes open only enough to see the screen, my fingers moving automatically to type the words as they came to me, awareness of any bodily comfort greatly diminished. I did not have to think about the rhyme; it just came. So with the meter (which I notice is a mundane four beats per line, but interestingly enough not primarily imabic - in my mind iambs sound lazy.) Of course the words are the most interesting.
This morning I made the poem more coherent, substituting a few words and phrases. Although I used the same method to find one word as I had when looking for the whole poem, this process did involve some intelligent interpretation on my part.
There is only one way to read a poem like this. The reader must not try to "interpret" it, as that usually means deciphering a larger signification that seems to lurk behind the whole. A poem like this, however, is actually as inarticulate as it appears. There is meaning there, but it is superificial; that is, it is contained in whatever about the poem strikes you on a first reading or two, provided you pay sufficient attention. The meaning is not behind the sentences, rather it is in the words. You will hear it in the way the words sound upon your ear, in the half-rememberings that certain found or borrowed phrases will trigger in you, and in the emotion that the progress of one line to another stirs in you.
I call this a partly-poem. My ideal whole-poem would have the spark, the honesty, and the feeling on the one hand, and the ingenous structure and high articulation on the other. That is, feeling and intelligence would be married.
Thoughts?
In fact this is an experiment. Poems III and IV are posted for the purposes of comparison. The poem I wrote at sixteen has a lot of lifeless extras, it's rough and immature and its vocabulary strikes me as limited. The poem I wrote a couple of weeks ago is more polished and each word carefully chosen, and moreover it is thoroughly ossified because it flow was so sluggish I was not able to complete the verse.
I suspect that the immature poem has "that spark" flitting about its words somewhere. It's the mark of a wild feeling that I used to associate with composing. It's real, it's a necessary component of true art, and I believe I've lost it.
Poems I and II (obviously, two versions of the same poem) are an experiment - me fishing around in my soul to see if any of that spark is still left and, if so, what's clogging it up. I'm not into self-revelation so I'll not say what I think I may have found. However the result itself interests me and may interest others. Someone may wish to imitate the experiment. It's short and fascinating.
Between nine and ten on the clock, when my body was winding down for sleep, I put myself into a sort of half-trance, my eyes open only enough to see the screen, my fingers moving automatically to type the words as they came to me, awareness of any bodily comfort greatly diminished. I did not have to think about the rhyme; it just came. So with the meter (which I notice is a mundane four beats per line, but interestingly enough not primarily imabic - in my mind iambs sound lazy.) Of course the words are the most interesting.
This morning I made the poem more coherent, substituting a few words and phrases. Although I used the same method to find one word as I had when looking for the whole poem, this process did involve some intelligent interpretation on my part.
There is only one way to read a poem like this. The reader must not try to "interpret" it, as that usually means deciphering a larger signification that seems to lurk behind the whole. A poem like this, however, is actually as inarticulate as it appears. There is meaning there, but it is superificial; that is, it is contained in whatever about the poem strikes you on a first reading or two, provided you pay sufficient attention. The meaning is not behind the sentences, rather it is in the words. You will hear it in the way the words sound upon your ear, in the half-rememberings that certain found or borrowed phrases will trigger in you, and in the emotion that the progress of one line to another stirs in you.
I call this a partly-poem. My ideal whole-poem would have the spark, the honesty, and the feeling on the one hand, and the ingenous structure and high articulation on the other. That is, feeling and intelligence would be married.
Thoughts?
Poem IV
A couple of weeks ago
O let my words
Flow from a fountain of mirth
Let them spring
As fresh from the frolicking earth
Comes the cold cheering stream.
O let my words
Flow from a fountain of mirth
Let them spring
As fresh from the frolicking earth
Comes the cold cheering stream.
Poem III
At 16 years old
It is not strong darkness
But where is the light?
Dead is the daylight,
coming th night;
the moon is risen,
the sun just set
and in the cold
a cloud breathes wet
across the field.
I heavily run
and wish that I
had beat the sun.
Still, there's something
in the white
of mist and moon
and almost night.
It is not heaviness of feet that pulls me down to take a seat.
The moon so strangely shimmers, and the mist floats out a clinging hand
I didn't know.
Still, what would be
this ghostly place
without a tree?
Beneath a barren birch I lean
And learn a fear that is serene.
Masculine black intricacies
Whispering, shifteing, pierce and tease
the sky
with spiritual liveliness;
vast sky of shade and windiness
Strong dark branch and strong dark branch
Myriads in and against the blanch
And through it all there skims a soul
Dragging its body up the knoll.
It is not strong darkness
But where is the light?
Dead is the daylight,
coming th night;
the moon is risen,
the sun just set
and in the cold
a cloud breathes wet
across the field.
I heavily run
and wish that I
had beat the sun.
Still, there's something
in the white
of mist and moon
and almost night.
It is not heaviness of feet that pulls me down to take a seat.
The moon so strangely shimmers, and the mist floats out a clinging hand
I didn't know.
Still, what would be
this ghostly place
without a tree?
Beneath a barren birch I lean
And learn a fear that is serene.
Masculine black intricacies
Whispering, shifteing, pierce and tease
the sky
with spiritual liveliness;
vast sky of shade and windiness
Strong dark branch and strong dark branch
Myriads in and against the blanch
And through it all there skims a soul
Dragging its body up the knoll.
Poem II
This Morning
Shiver when I slice the fish
Lest your heart forget its holes
Never has the ancient dish
Lashed itself to such repose
Mother, mother, make me cry
My squawk forgets the bricks are high
Out comes the sun and dries up all the rain
Will I never cry again?
Heart of my own heart speak me kind
Over and over the haints rewind
Thrashing hopes the storm comes true
But underfoot my sod sinks through
I do not dare to speak his name
In saner moments when in came
In the air and out declare
Out, out upon you, fair despair!
Why should I cry, my – oh my –
Oh my heavens and oh my head
And oh the dream days I have sped...
Kill what chokes it in its bed.
Shiver when I slice the fish
Lest your heart forget its holes
Never has the ancient dish
Lashed itself to such repose
Mother, mother, make me cry
My squawk forgets the bricks are high
Out comes the sun and dries up all the rain
Will I never cry again?
Heart of my own heart speak me kind
Over and over the haints rewind
Thrashing hopes the storm comes true
But underfoot my sod sinks through
I do not dare to speak his name
In saner moments when in came
In the air and out declare
Out, out upon you, fair despair!
Why should I cry, my – oh my –
Oh my heavens and oh my head
And oh the dream days I have sped...
Kill what chokes it in its bed.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Poem I
Tonight
Shiver when you slice a fish
The heart forgets its only holes
Never has the ancient dish
Lashed itself to such repose.
Mother, mother, make me cry
My wail forgets the wall is high
Out comes the sun and dries up all the rain
Never will I mind again
Heart of my own heart spare me kind
Never again will I remind
Wildness hopes the rain is true
But underfoot the sod fails you.
I do not dare to speak his name
In saner moments when in came
In the air and out declare
Out, out upon you, fair despair!
Why should I cry, my – oh my –
Oh my heavens and oh my head
And oh the dream days I have sped
Kill what throttles me in my bed
Make it stop. Stop. Just cry.
Shiver when you slice a fish
The heart forgets its only holes
Never has the ancient dish
Lashed itself to such repose.
Mother, mother, make me cry
My wail forgets the wall is high
Out comes the sun and dries up all the rain
Never will I mind again
Heart of my own heart spare me kind
Never again will I remind
Wildness hopes the rain is true
But underfoot the sod fails you.
I do not dare to speak his name
In saner moments when in came
In the air and out declare
Out, out upon you, fair despair!
Why should I cry, my – oh my –
Oh my heavens and oh my head
And oh the dream days I have sped
Kill what throttles me in my bed
Make it stop. Stop. Just cry.
Sunday, July 22, 2007
The Brown Pixie
The only taxonomist who ever glimpsed some real pixies wondered for the rest of his life why some were mud-brown and the rest bright blue.
Emily, a little girl I am going to tell you about, found out more about it than anyone.
She was a clever girl. And she was short. So short that her cousin Holly, when Emily first moved in with her and their grandmother, once taunted Emily about it.
“You’re so short you should go live with the pixies! My mother always said so!”
This was particularly thoughtless since neither of the girls’ mothers was living.
Their grandmother overheard Holly’s taunts, and after a mild scolding Holly apologized. But Emily had to live in the same room with Holly and use the short dresser and sleep on the bottom bunk, and it rankled.
Then one afternoon Emily left her grandmother’s house without telling anyone. She placed her note in her top desk drawer so that no one would find it too quickly. It read,
About the time the sky was readying for sunset Emily heard a tiny voice somewhere beneath her.
“If the monster doesn’t move before sundown the entire party will be ruined!”
Emily saw in an instant what must have happened and struggled to suppress her laugh.
“So we’re allowed to make noise now?” spoke a slightly gruffer, but still miniscule voice.
“Look at it lying senseless in a tree, with those monstrous blunt ears – I’m sure it’s very unfeeling and dull. I’m going to get back to work.”
After this came rustling and muttering. Emily dared to cast her eye downward but she never saw the owner of the voice.
“You’re not so dull, are you?” a third small voice hissed in her ear.
Emily tensed and didn’t move. “Come where I can see you” she said.
A blue pixie as long as Emily’s thumb shot around and sat on Emily’s arm, in front of her eyes. Emily silently took its measure and thought that if living with the pixies meant being the biggest, she might not mind it.
“I’m Shaver,” it said. “I’m a Blue Pixie.”
“I know you’re blue, I’m not colorblind” Emily answered.
“Oh, well, the brown ones can’t see color and we’ve never managed to convince them we look different from them, apart from their not having wings. They think it’s most unnatural for us to live in the grass instead of the mud on the creek bank, but we’d be rather conspicuous there, wouldn’t we?”
“Do you have a Queen?” Emily asked.
“Are you one?” Shaver asked curiously.
“I could be. I’m so big, I could see everything at once and keep track of my subjects.”
“Can you see my mother down there roasting a caterpillar?”
Emily frowned. “I’m not sure yet where to look.”
“Take my hand” Shaver said, floating upwards into the air. “I’ll show you around.”
Emily was not sure how this would work but she sat up and touched her hand to Shaver’s. The next second there was a jolt downwards and Emily had fallen off her branch. But instead of crashing on the ground she found herself rushing downward through wailing air and long green swords of grass. When she and Shaver finally landed, Emily looked up and saw the pixie towering over her.
“Stand up” said Shaver. “Well, you’re not so tall after all, are you?”
Emily only came to Shaver’s chin. “Change me back,” Emily said.
“That’s up to you. Undo the last moment when you took my hand.”
“I can’t change time, you idiot.”
“Can’t you? Well, there’s nothing to do, then. If I had known…”
“I want to go home.”
“I thought you wanted to be the Pixie Queen.”
“I don’t have my camera or my fireworks or anything I would need!” Emily cried, who had been dreaming up ways to compel the awe of the pixies.
“Pity” said Shaver.
***
When Emily had been missing for nearly two days, some policemen from the nearest town searched her and Holly’s room. Holly was embarrassed and begged her grandmother to stop the search.
“Don’t you want them to find your cousin, child?” Grandmother asked.
“No” Holly whispered.
Grandmother stared at her.
“What’s this?” a detective asked, pulling a box from under Emily’s bed.
“No!” Holly screamed. “Those are Emily’s pictures!”
The cop began handing out the photos and the room fell silent.
“Child” Grandmother said, dropping three photographs. “Why didn’t you tell me Emily was doing these things to you?”
Far away, as far as three whole fields, Emily the Brown Pixie was roasting a grub in the tiniest mud hut on the creek bank.
**********************************************************************************************
Here ends the story of Emily the Brown Pixie. Below is the original, unfinished sketch from which I took the start for the story above, which is a writing assignment.
***********************************************************************************************
The only scientist who ever looked at pixies wondered for the rest of his life why some of them were blue and some were brown. However, I know a little girl named Emily who watched a colony of pixies for an hour (sitting very still in a tree until her foot fell asleep) and she explained it to me.
The blue pixies, she says, live in the black mud around the pond. The brown ones live in the marsh grass. “So everything makes sense” she said.
Emily ran down my green backyard, and when she came to the end of it she was looking at a green alfalfa field, so she ran down that too. When she came to the end of the alfalfa field, she was looking at a lot of trees. A narrow green trail opened on the very edge. Emily could never resist a trail.
That is how she came to find the pixie colony. At the other end of that trail was a grassy place with a pond, and trees all the way around it. Emily could not see any houses or cars, which was exactly how she wanted it, so she crossed the grassy place and climbed the tree in the middle.
She sat there long enough for fifteen mourning doves to land on the tree and then fly away again when she moved; and it was also long enough for the sky to begin turning a little purple, getting ready for sunset.
Then she heard a voice far below near the roots of the tree.
“If that monstrosity isn’t gone by sunset the whole party will be ruined!” hissed a small voice.
“Mother, she’ll hear you!” another voice said even more quietly.
“With those big ears? I’m sure it’s as dull as a bumblebee!”
A gruffer voice broke in here. “So we’re not being quiet anymore?”
“Oh, phoo” said the mother voice, “It’s sitting in a tree, isn’t it? What’s more dull and solid and unhearing than a tree? I’m sure I could prepare the whole party and it would never even suspect my existence!”
It seemed that whoever was talking thought that Emily would become like a tree simply by being in a tree, which is not very reasonable. However, people will believe unreasonable things when they want to.
Emily kept very still for a few moments as the voices below her stopped talking. Then she slowly lay down along a branch and put her hands behind her head.
“See there” the mother said. “I was right, it’s ignoring us completely. Help me tie these two berry sprigs together, Hammond!”
As soon as she dared, Emily turned over and cast an eye down toward the roots of the tree. She found herself looking into the very small eyes of a very small brown pixie, who immediately squeaked and sat down suddenly on a tree root.
“What is it, Shaver?” the mother pixie asked petulantly. Emily carefully stared across the grassy plot to other trees keeping her eyes from looking at the group below.
But as soon as poor Shaver opened her mouth, she got the hiccoughs very fast and high-pitched and couldn’t say a word. The Pixie Mother sent poor Hammond, who seemed to be her husband, down to the pond to dunk Shaver in it till she should get over her hiccoughs. (I would not recommend this method of curing hiccoughs, but Emily thought that the pixie mother simply made up the remedy on the spot so that she could work in peace.)
“And don’t talk to your blue cousin Arnold on the way, and hurry back to help me with the caterpillar pie” she said to her husband.
“Fine, simply fine, Weskitch” Hammond answered cheerfully.
Emily glanced at the frightened Shaver as the convulsed little pixie was being dragged away by her father, and made a little shuddering motion at the mention of caterpillar pie.
This did not help Shaver at all, because she started to laugh and hiccough at the same time, which was probably very painful.
Then Shaver and Hammond had disappeared from view, and Emily was left to watch Weskitch, the pixie mother, pull a caterpillar out of a hole in the ground and prepare it into a sort of pie, which was then cooked in another hole in the ground. Hammond returned back in time to start the fire.
“Where’s Shaver?” asked her mother.
And Hammond replied, “I left her talking with Arnie so I could come back and help you.”
Hammond was a blue pixie who was married to a brown pixie. Both had very long hair and no clothes, and no need of clothes as far as Emily could tell.
Emily watched Hammond and Arnie running back and forth between the little grass tent decorated with bright red and orange berries, set up at the roots of her tree, and a larger grass tent a little further out. Soon she saw that where the long brown grass had fallen down on top of other grass during lat year’s autumn, the pixies had woven it together to make a roof.
Emily was very interested when guests began arriving for the party. Most commented on the wonderful smell of caterpillar pie. Emily smiled when she heard this, and then nearly fell out of the tree when a raspy little voice said in her ear, “You’re glad, aren’t you, that you’re up here where you can’t smell it!”
“Sit in front of me where I can see you” answered Emily.
So Shaver, who had climbed the tree to talk to Emily and get some sympathy from her about the pie, leaped lightly onto a branch across from Emily’s face, and they spoke very quietly, looking down at the party.
“The occasion of the party is that light-spraying machine there” Shaver explained. Emily looked down and saw a box-like object a few feet away from the grass party tent.
“Ah, someone’s dropped their flashlight” Emily said.
“My mother will start the flashlight into flashing when darkness settles on us, and surprise everyone” Shaver explained further. “They’re all wondering how she’s going to light up the party. No one’s ever had an evening party this early in the year, before the fireflies are about.”
This may seem like a long speech to you, but it seemed even longer to Emily, because Shaver acted out every idea by leaping up from her branch, and swaying and making other motions with her whole body.
But after Shaver was finished, she and Emily didn’t talk for a little while, because an argument broke out below them.
“That’s Arnie” Shaver whispered.
Arnie was shouting at Wesktich, “Have you forgotten what it means to be a pixie? How can you sell your pixie soul to a light-machine?” As he said this he pointed with both hands to the flashlight and threw his head back to the darkening sky.
Weskitch was yanking her own hair furiously. “Are you done?” she squeaked. “Hammond has some things to say in my defense!”
“Ouch!” whispered Shaver, throttling her own throat and dropping down chest-first onto her branch.
She seemed, Emily says, to be acting out her father’s feelings, and Emily reports that Hammond did look terrified when Arnie turned on him and exploded with a “Yes?”
Emily, a little girl I am going to tell you about, found out more about it than anyone.
She was a clever girl. And she was short. So short that her cousin Holly, when Emily first moved in with her and their grandmother, once taunted Emily about it.
“You’re so short you should go live with the pixies! My mother always said so!”
This was particularly thoughtless since neither of the girls’ mothers was living.
Their grandmother overheard Holly’s taunts, and after a mild scolding Holly apologized. But Emily had to live in the same room with Holly and use the short dresser and sleep on the bottom bunk, and it rankled.
Then one afternoon Emily left her grandmother’s house without telling anyone. She placed her note in her top desk drawer so that no one would find it too quickly. It read,
“Grandmother, I have finally taken Holly’s advice and I am going to find the pixies. At least they will not be able to call me “Shorty”.After placing the note Emily walked out her grandmother’s back door, ran down a long soy-bean field, passed through a barrier of trees, and walked across a field of Queen-Anne’s lace up to her waist. After looking around for a few moments, she turned to her right and plunged over a ditch hedged by large berry bushes. On the other side of the berry bushes she found herself in a sheltered meadow with one sprawling oak tree in the middle. She walked out to it, and as there didn’t seem to be any place to go next, she climbed it and, lying along the bottom branch, almost fell asleep.
About the time the sky was readying for sunset Emily heard a tiny voice somewhere beneath her.
“If the monster doesn’t move before sundown the entire party will be ruined!”
Emily saw in an instant what must have happened and struggled to suppress her laugh.
“So we’re allowed to make noise now?” spoke a slightly gruffer, but still miniscule voice.
“Look at it lying senseless in a tree, with those monstrous blunt ears – I’m sure it’s very unfeeling and dull. I’m going to get back to work.”
After this came rustling and muttering. Emily dared to cast her eye downward but she never saw the owner of the voice.
“You’re not so dull, are you?” a third small voice hissed in her ear.
Emily tensed and didn’t move. “Come where I can see you” she said.
A blue pixie as long as Emily’s thumb shot around and sat on Emily’s arm, in front of her eyes. Emily silently took its measure and thought that if living with the pixies meant being the biggest, she might not mind it.
“I’m Shaver,” it said. “I’m a Blue Pixie.”
“I know you’re blue, I’m not colorblind” Emily answered.
“Oh, well, the brown ones can’t see color and we’ve never managed to convince them we look different from them, apart from their not having wings. They think it’s most unnatural for us to live in the grass instead of the mud on the creek bank, but we’d be rather conspicuous there, wouldn’t we?”
“Do you have a Queen?” Emily asked.
“Are you one?” Shaver asked curiously.
“I could be. I’m so big, I could see everything at once and keep track of my subjects.”
“Can you see my mother down there roasting a caterpillar?”
Emily frowned. “I’m not sure yet where to look.”
“Take my hand” Shaver said, floating upwards into the air. “I’ll show you around.”
Emily was not sure how this would work but she sat up and touched her hand to Shaver’s. The next second there was a jolt downwards and Emily had fallen off her branch. But instead of crashing on the ground she found herself rushing downward through wailing air and long green swords of grass. When she and Shaver finally landed, Emily looked up and saw the pixie towering over her.
“Stand up” said Shaver. “Well, you’re not so tall after all, are you?”
Emily only came to Shaver’s chin. “Change me back,” Emily said.
“That’s up to you. Undo the last moment when you took my hand.”
“I can’t change time, you idiot.”
“Can’t you? Well, there’s nothing to do, then. If I had known…”
“I want to go home.”
“I thought you wanted to be the Pixie Queen.”
“I don’t have my camera or my fireworks or anything I would need!” Emily cried, who had been dreaming up ways to compel the awe of the pixies.
“Pity” said Shaver.
***
When Emily had been missing for nearly two days, some policemen from the nearest town searched her and Holly’s room. Holly was embarrassed and begged her grandmother to stop the search.
“Don’t you want them to find your cousin, child?” Grandmother asked.
“No” Holly whispered.
Grandmother stared at her.
“What’s this?” a detective asked, pulling a box from under Emily’s bed.
“No!” Holly screamed. “Those are Emily’s pictures!”
The cop began handing out the photos and the room fell silent.
“Child” Grandmother said, dropping three photographs. “Why didn’t you tell me Emily was doing these things to you?”
Far away, as far as three whole fields, Emily the Brown Pixie was roasting a grub in the tiniest mud hut on the creek bank.
**********************************************************************************************
Here ends the story of Emily the Brown Pixie. Below is the original, unfinished sketch from which I took the start for the story above, which is a writing assignment.
***********************************************************************************************
The only scientist who ever looked at pixies wondered for the rest of his life why some of them were blue and some were brown. However, I know a little girl named Emily who watched a colony of pixies for an hour (sitting very still in a tree until her foot fell asleep) and she explained it to me.
The blue pixies, she says, live in the black mud around the pond. The brown ones live in the marsh grass. “So everything makes sense” she said.
Emily ran down my green backyard, and when she came to the end of it she was looking at a green alfalfa field, so she ran down that too. When she came to the end of the alfalfa field, she was looking at a lot of trees. A narrow green trail opened on the very edge. Emily could never resist a trail.
That is how she came to find the pixie colony. At the other end of that trail was a grassy place with a pond, and trees all the way around it. Emily could not see any houses or cars, which was exactly how she wanted it, so she crossed the grassy place and climbed the tree in the middle.
She sat there long enough for fifteen mourning doves to land on the tree and then fly away again when she moved; and it was also long enough for the sky to begin turning a little purple, getting ready for sunset.
Then she heard a voice far below near the roots of the tree.
“If that monstrosity isn’t gone by sunset the whole party will be ruined!” hissed a small voice.
“Mother, she’ll hear you!” another voice said even more quietly.
“With those big ears? I’m sure it’s as dull as a bumblebee!”
A gruffer voice broke in here. “So we’re not being quiet anymore?”
“Oh, phoo” said the mother voice, “It’s sitting in a tree, isn’t it? What’s more dull and solid and unhearing than a tree? I’m sure I could prepare the whole party and it would never even suspect my existence!”
It seemed that whoever was talking thought that Emily would become like a tree simply by being in a tree, which is not very reasonable. However, people will believe unreasonable things when they want to.
Emily kept very still for a few moments as the voices below her stopped talking. Then she slowly lay down along a branch and put her hands behind her head.
“See there” the mother said. “I was right, it’s ignoring us completely. Help me tie these two berry sprigs together, Hammond!”
As soon as she dared, Emily turned over and cast an eye down toward the roots of the tree. She found herself looking into the very small eyes of a very small brown pixie, who immediately squeaked and sat down suddenly on a tree root.
“What is it, Shaver?” the mother pixie asked petulantly. Emily carefully stared across the grassy plot to other trees keeping her eyes from looking at the group below.
But as soon as poor Shaver opened her mouth, she got the hiccoughs very fast and high-pitched and couldn’t say a word. The Pixie Mother sent poor Hammond, who seemed to be her husband, down to the pond to dunk Shaver in it till she should get over her hiccoughs. (I would not recommend this method of curing hiccoughs, but Emily thought that the pixie mother simply made up the remedy on the spot so that she could work in peace.)
“And don’t talk to your blue cousin Arnold on the way, and hurry back to help me with the caterpillar pie” she said to her husband.
“Fine, simply fine, Weskitch” Hammond answered cheerfully.
Emily glanced at the frightened Shaver as the convulsed little pixie was being dragged away by her father, and made a little shuddering motion at the mention of caterpillar pie.
This did not help Shaver at all, because she started to laugh and hiccough at the same time, which was probably very painful.
Then Shaver and Hammond had disappeared from view, and Emily was left to watch Weskitch, the pixie mother, pull a caterpillar out of a hole in the ground and prepare it into a sort of pie, which was then cooked in another hole in the ground. Hammond returned back in time to start the fire.
“Where’s Shaver?” asked her mother.
And Hammond replied, “I left her talking with Arnie so I could come back and help you.”
Hammond was a blue pixie who was married to a brown pixie. Both had very long hair and no clothes, and no need of clothes as far as Emily could tell.
Emily watched Hammond and Arnie running back and forth between the little grass tent decorated with bright red and orange berries, set up at the roots of her tree, and a larger grass tent a little further out. Soon she saw that where the long brown grass had fallen down on top of other grass during lat year’s autumn, the pixies had woven it together to make a roof.
Emily was very interested when guests began arriving for the party. Most commented on the wonderful smell of caterpillar pie. Emily smiled when she heard this, and then nearly fell out of the tree when a raspy little voice said in her ear, “You’re glad, aren’t you, that you’re up here where you can’t smell it!”
“Sit in front of me where I can see you” answered Emily.
So Shaver, who had climbed the tree to talk to Emily and get some sympathy from her about the pie, leaped lightly onto a branch across from Emily’s face, and they spoke very quietly, looking down at the party.
“The occasion of the party is that light-spraying machine there” Shaver explained. Emily looked down and saw a box-like object a few feet away from the grass party tent.
“Ah, someone’s dropped their flashlight” Emily said.
“My mother will start the flashlight into flashing when darkness settles on us, and surprise everyone” Shaver explained further. “They’re all wondering how she’s going to light up the party. No one’s ever had an evening party this early in the year, before the fireflies are about.”
This may seem like a long speech to you, but it seemed even longer to Emily, because Shaver acted out every idea by leaping up from her branch, and swaying and making other motions with her whole body.
But after Shaver was finished, she and Emily didn’t talk for a little while, because an argument broke out below them.
“That’s Arnie” Shaver whispered.
Arnie was shouting at Wesktich, “Have you forgotten what it means to be a pixie? How can you sell your pixie soul to a light-machine?” As he said this he pointed with both hands to the flashlight and threw his head back to the darkening sky.
Weskitch was yanking her own hair furiously. “Are you done?” she squeaked. “Hammond has some things to say in my defense!”
“Ouch!” whispered Shaver, throttling her own throat and dropping down chest-first onto her branch.
She seemed, Emily says, to be acting out her father’s feelings, and Emily reports that Hammond did look terrified when Arnie turned on him and exploded with a “Yes?”
Friday, July 20, 2007
A Reference
Here's an interesting article (though not from a very orthodox perspective) that illustrates the impossibility of returning to the primitive church. What results is 1) confusion 2) heterodoxy and 3) division over petty instead of important issues.
Again, our feeling is that the best we can do is to try to remain in the stream of what sprang truly from the teachings of scripture (so sparse on so many of these topics) and from the practices of the early church.
1) We will not move against scripture in any way. It comes first and is the Word of God.
2) Next, we respect the processes that the church went through in history to come to doctrinal and practical concensus, though in the case of Rome these practices became increasingly heavy-handed and we do believe that corruption occurred. (The best evidence of this is the prevalance of evil "fruit" in the lives the spiritual leadership at various times in RCC history.)
3) Therefore we also respect the Reformers. We respect their judgment concerning what to keep and what not to.
4) The question is ultimately one of authority. It is not enough to say that the Bible is our only authority. The fundamental Baptists are good illustrations of this. They claim that the Bible is their only authority but they hold to orthodox doctrines. In order to do this they almost have to pretend that they came up with them. Does the church have authority? If so how do we submit to it in these times of division and lost history?
Again, our feeling is that the best we can do is to try to remain in the stream of what sprang truly from the teachings of scripture (so sparse on so many of these topics) and from the practices of the early church.
1) We will not move against scripture in any way. It comes first and is the Word of God.
2) Next, we respect the processes that the church went through in history to come to doctrinal and practical concensus, though in the case of Rome these practices became increasingly heavy-handed and we do believe that corruption occurred. (The best evidence of this is the prevalance of evil "fruit" in the lives the spiritual leadership at various times in RCC history.)
3) Therefore we also respect the Reformers. We respect their judgment concerning what to keep and what not to.
4) The question is ultimately one of authority. It is not enough to say that the Bible is our only authority. The fundamental Baptists are good illustrations of this. They claim that the Bible is their only authority but they hold to orthodox doctrines. In order to do this they almost have to pretend that they came up with them. Does the church have authority? If so how do we submit to it in these times of division and lost history?
And Furthermore...
Josh says that he is not quite where I am on everything I said in yesterday's "Saints" post, but he will be posting comments in order to clear that up and keep the discussion going.
To continue from yesterday, I'm moving into slightly more speculative territory for me.
I said yesterday that in any worship practice we ask the important question: "How good is this?"
What I want to point out today is that there is a proper methodology for coming to answers on such questions. And it's a related method to the proper way of coming to doctrinal conclusions.
What makes worship good? What makes anything good? These questions have been explored by philosophers at length, but two important answers stand out.
First, to be good any object or phenomena in the physical world must partake to a larger extent than not of some absolute or timeless virtue from the spiritual or nouminal world. That means that pure spiritual "good" has an existance of its own, and we or the things around us are only good to the extent that we have that original good in us. The good exists and has its immutable nature apart from us and now we take part in it. Of course the final existance of any virtue is in God's being.
Second, to be good something must be proper. That means that it must have characteristics that belong to the class of things which it claims or is intended to be a part of.
What beauties of the spiritual world must imbue our songs for them to qualify as "spiritual songs?" Likewise, what belongs to worship? What is proper to the Christian's approach to God?
Ladies and Gentlemen, we are a long way from understanding these questions fully and tracing them to their final answers.
But just as a new Christian is not expected to formulate the doctrine of the trinity on his own, but rather to submit to the formulation which the church agreed upon and has held since Athanasius, so he should not be expected to invent a whole new program of worship, especially not for the Church as a Body.
What I am saying is that there is an orthodoxy to worship just as there is to doctrine. It is not enough to "hold to" the creeds and confessions of the church catholic if we do not worship with her. Until we have obeyed, experienced, and understood the long-standing practices of the church in worship, we are not ready to add to that tradition.
I'm sure Josh will have more to say on this subject. Perhaps in another post sometime soon I will describe a liturgical service for those who are not sure exactly what is being discussed here. Meanwhile there are many other discussions of this topic even on the web that anyone can find and read for more information.
To continue from yesterday, I'm moving into slightly more speculative territory for me.
I said yesterday that in any worship practice we ask the important question: "How good is this?"
What I want to point out today is that there is a proper methodology for coming to answers on such questions. And it's a related method to the proper way of coming to doctrinal conclusions.
What makes worship good? What makes anything good? These questions have been explored by philosophers at length, but two important answers stand out.
First, to be good any object or phenomena in the physical world must partake to a larger extent than not of some absolute or timeless virtue from the spiritual or nouminal world. That means that pure spiritual "good" has an existance of its own, and we or the things around us are only good to the extent that we have that original good in us. The good exists and has its immutable nature apart from us and now we take part in it. Of course the final existance of any virtue is in God's being.
Second, to be good something must be proper. That means that it must have characteristics that belong to the class of things which it claims or is intended to be a part of.
What beauties of the spiritual world must imbue our songs for them to qualify as "spiritual songs?" Likewise, what belongs to worship? What is proper to the Christian's approach to God?
Ladies and Gentlemen, we are a long way from understanding these questions fully and tracing them to their final answers.
But just as a new Christian is not expected to formulate the doctrine of the trinity on his own, but rather to submit to the formulation which the church agreed upon and has held since Athanasius, so he should not be expected to invent a whole new program of worship, especially not for the Church as a Body.
What I am saying is that there is an orthodoxy to worship just as there is to doctrine. It is not enough to "hold to" the creeds and confessions of the church catholic if we do not worship with her. Until we have obeyed, experienced, and understood the long-standing practices of the church in worship, we are not ready to add to that tradition.
I'm sure Josh will have more to say on this subject. Perhaps in another post sometime soon I will describe a liturgical service for those who are not sure exactly what is being discussed here. Meanwhile there are many other discussions of this topic even on the web that anyone can find and read for more information.
Thursday, July 19, 2007
...And in the Communion of the Saints...
Last week my family's two-year experiment with housechurching came to a close, leaving the Roberts family with a whole new set of sensibilities about Christian worship and no place to take them. My family went back to the Baptists after finding a pastor they hope will be able to minister successfully to their teenagers.
I'm not entirely sure about the others' reasons for entering on our experiment in the first place, but Josh and I believed we had been materially damaged in our ability to worship and to understand God's will. We wanted to pare off the extra-biblical elements of our religious practice. I even went so far as to say that many of those elements amounted to "false religion" because they are required of people to be considered righteous. (For people listening closely I clarified that I did not mean that fundamentalism and so on was a false religion.) We wanted to pare down to essentials, to find out what they were and what was their power. If a practice wasn't specifically named in scripture as an activity of the church, then we weren't going to do it.
So, after two years practicing a very primitive form of Christianity how did we come out with a desire to join a liturgical church? Isn't liturgy a non-essential, an extra-biblical element? Isn't it false religion?
To answer those questions I need to talk about what we learned during our experiment.
First of all, we learned what the church really is. The church has both an essence and a continuance - an origin, an irreducible core of being on the one hand, and a sphere of growth and development on the other. Our minimalist or primitive experiment clarified for us that the essence of the church is as follows.
The church is most basically a gathering; specifically, a gathering of Christian disciples. It is also the group or society, with an identity, formed by the regular communion of such a gathering. At the same time the church is mystically what Christ has designated and created it through his death and resurrection - his body and his bride.
A true church, fully birthed, functions through an orthodox preaching ministry and the ministry of the sacraments or ordinances, and through the commonality of worship, faith and love. By these activities it gives glory to God as an individual can never do.
In our housechurch we believed that we had a nascent church - that we were obeying the command not to abandon "your gathering". Although we never reached the fully formed stage I spoke of above, we were that gathering and that group, and we believed that we were in spiritual communion with the Church.
But the fact remained that however we might have tried to reproduce the church's t primitive origin, the True Church already began two millenia ago and it has developed since then.
We realized that the church in regard to its order could never have limited itself to explicit statements of scripture. If it had there would be no church government, for though the scriptures speak of various officers, little explanation is given as to their structure or function. Likewise with hymns. We are told to sing hymns but do not find the names or texts of these hymns in scripture. We are told to celebrate the Lord's Table and baptism but find no manual for how to approach them. Moreover if we are going to do these things all in one meeting, they have to be done in a specific order. But that order is not given in scripture.
A question began to grow in our minds. Should the things not addressed by scripture be left to happenstance and thoughtless custom? Should the way the clergyman presents the elements of the Supper be imbued with symbolism and agreed upon beforehand? Or should he be left to give them any way he deems suitable? Should the worship leader announce the hymn in whatever way comes to his mind? Or should he have words to use that convey the significance of what he is asking us to do when we turn to page 55?
Answering these questions is where our two-year wilderness journey helped us most. What came to us was not so much the answer to these questions as the knowledge of how to frame them properly. To a fundamentalist, every question begins with "Should...?" I don't wish to pick on S. A., but an article of his is the most recent example I've seen. He wants to prove that print media is better than visual media. The possibility that anyone could do that interested me and I began to read the article. But he named his ultimate goal as demonstrating that thoughtful people "should" choose print when they have the choice between the two. The fundamentalist always wants to extend his argument into a ruling that binds the conscience of another. That is the function of a his ever-present consciousness that anything he cannot defend explicitly with a verse of scripture will be attacked. Perhaps it is also a function of a lingering progressivist or activist sensibility from fundamentalism's 19th century roots.
Be that as it may, Josh and I hope that we can ask better questions now. We don't need to prove that a Christian "should" cross himself when he is performing a sacred act. Indeed, we would not wish this requirement to be forced on anyone. That would be false religion indeed. But we do want to know why the church developed this custom. What does it express? Ultimately the real question for us is this: "Is this practice a good one?"
We thank the Baptists for setting us on the path to so many truths, not the least of which is soul liberty and the importance of the individual conscience. I will never give up, I hope, the belief that spiritual leaders must never require of their people that which their Lord and Master has not required of them.
What Josh and I are beginning to sense, however, is what it means for the Church to be a society and a communion. The excellence of a Free Society, which is what Soul Liberty makes the Church, is that its people can corporately develop good practices and prune back false or unhelpful ones. I'm not talking about a business meeting to institute the reciting of the apostle's creed. I already know that would be voted down in every church I've ever joined. What I mean is that in such a society, a common feeling can grow. Out of such a social apprehension of the truth and through the body's trust in its spiritual leadership can come practices that are there not because they are required, but because they are helpful and truly good.
So why do I still object to VBS, church drama, invitations, pool-party baptisms, many Bible translations, and a host of other modern church practices? Don't we have the right to do them?
Aside from the fact that these practices simply do not tend to the church's mission, the ironic thing about them is that they spring from church groups who were formed to ostensibly cleanse themselves of extraneous and idolatrous practices of liturgical churches. These are the ones that had the ideal of a return to a more primitive practice. They claim descent from the Puritans, many of who would not even sing a hymn unless it was written in Scripture. But instead of returning to "the pure church," they've simply replaced the old, thoughtful order with a new, pragmatic one.
The fact is that every church must develop customs and practices. That is the nature of human society and culture. It's inescapable. So why does today's church pride itself on the newness and separateness of its practices and on being spiritual descendants of those who overthrew the old ones? Are its representatives sure they understand what ancient sentiment and knowledge was contained in the ancient expressions of piety? Did the men who gave us our definition of the trinity know nothing about adoring it? Are we sure we are doing better without them than we would with them? Are we sure our leaders are providing us with inventions truer to the spirit of Christ, the scriptures, and the saints and angels in heaven?
What Josh and I mainly desire is to worship God in communion with his body. We wish to kneel; to gaze on objects of contemplation that remind us of the nature of Him we worship; to sing only the best hymns; to hear music in church that says "God transcends you - Fear Him;" to have the forgiveness of our sins not only preached as a possibility but pronounced as a certainty; to say with all the saints, "I believe in God, the Father Almighty...and in His Son, Jesus Christ...and in the Holy Ghost."
These are desires that we share with most of the church through the ages.
What we object to is the slandering of these activities by people who furtively follow an impoverished, unwritten, unapproved, incommunicant order of their own. If a reader here really believes in primitive religion, I would not take that from him. But let us at least see in him the fruits of Puritanism before he condemns our search for traditional piety.
I'm not entirely sure about the others' reasons for entering on our experiment in the first place, but Josh and I believed we had been materially damaged in our ability to worship and to understand God's will. We wanted to pare off the extra-biblical elements of our religious practice. I even went so far as to say that many of those elements amounted to "false religion" because they are required of people to be considered righteous. (For people listening closely I clarified that I did not mean that fundamentalism and so on was a false religion.) We wanted to pare down to essentials, to find out what they were and what was their power. If a practice wasn't specifically named in scripture as an activity of the church, then we weren't going to do it.
So, after two years practicing a very primitive form of Christianity how did we come out with a desire to join a liturgical church? Isn't liturgy a non-essential, an extra-biblical element? Isn't it false religion?
To answer those questions I need to talk about what we learned during our experiment.
First of all, we learned what the church really is. The church has both an essence and a continuance - an origin, an irreducible core of being on the one hand, and a sphere of growth and development on the other. Our minimalist or primitive experiment clarified for us that the essence of the church is as follows.
The church is most basically a gathering; specifically, a gathering of Christian disciples. It is also the group or society, with an identity, formed by the regular communion of such a gathering. At the same time the church is mystically what Christ has designated and created it through his death and resurrection - his body and his bride.
A true church, fully birthed, functions through an orthodox preaching ministry and the ministry of the sacraments or ordinances, and through the commonality of worship, faith and love. By these activities it gives glory to God as an individual can never do.
In our housechurch we believed that we had a nascent church - that we were obeying the command not to abandon "your gathering". Although we never reached the fully formed stage I spoke of above, we were that gathering and that group, and we believed that we were in spiritual communion with the Church.
But the fact remained that however we might have tried to reproduce the church's t primitive origin, the True Church already began two millenia ago and it has developed since then.
We realized that the church in regard to its order could never have limited itself to explicit statements of scripture. If it had there would be no church government, for though the scriptures speak of various officers, little explanation is given as to their structure or function. Likewise with hymns. We are told to sing hymns but do not find the names or texts of these hymns in scripture. We are told to celebrate the Lord's Table and baptism but find no manual for how to approach them. Moreover if we are going to do these things all in one meeting, they have to be done in a specific order. But that order is not given in scripture.
A question began to grow in our minds. Should the things not addressed by scripture be left to happenstance and thoughtless custom? Should the way the clergyman presents the elements of the Supper be imbued with symbolism and agreed upon beforehand? Or should he be left to give them any way he deems suitable? Should the worship leader announce the hymn in whatever way comes to his mind? Or should he have words to use that convey the significance of what he is asking us to do when we turn to page 55?
Answering these questions is where our two-year wilderness journey helped us most. What came to us was not so much the answer to these questions as the knowledge of how to frame them properly. To a fundamentalist, every question begins with "Should...?" I don't wish to pick on S. A., but an article of his is the most recent example I've seen. He wants to prove that print media is better than visual media. The possibility that anyone could do that interested me and I began to read the article. But he named his ultimate goal as demonstrating that thoughtful people "should" choose print when they have the choice between the two. The fundamentalist always wants to extend his argument into a ruling that binds the conscience of another. That is the function of a his ever-present consciousness that anything he cannot defend explicitly with a verse of scripture will be attacked. Perhaps it is also a function of a lingering progressivist or activist sensibility from fundamentalism's 19th century roots.
Be that as it may, Josh and I hope that we can ask better questions now. We don't need to prove that a Christian "should" cross himself when he is performing a sacred act. Indeed, we would not wish this requirement to be forced on anyone. That would be false religion indeed. But we do want to know why the church developed this custom. What does it express? Ultimately the real question for us is this: "Is this practice a good one?"
We thank the Baptists for setting us on the path to so many truths, not the least of which is soul liberty and the importance of the individual conscience. I will never give up, I hope, the belief that spiritual leaders must never require of their people that which their Lord and Master has not required of them.
What Josh and I are beginning to sense, however, is what it means for the Church to be a society and a communion. The excellence of a Free Society, which is what Soul Liberty makes the Church, is that its people can corporately develop good practices and prune back false or unhelpful ones. I'm not talking about a business meeting to institute the reciting of the apostle's creed. I already know that would be voted down in every church I've ever joined. What I mean is that in such a society, a common feeling can grow. Out of such a social apprehension of the truth and through the body's trust in its spiritual leadership can come practices that are there not because they are required, but because they are helpful and truly good.
So why do I still object to VBS, church drama, invitations, pool-party baptisms, many Bible translations, and a host of other modern church practices? Don't we have the right to do them?
Aside from the fact that these practices simply do not tend to the church's mission, the ironic thing about them is that they spring from church groups who were formed to ostensibly cleanse themselves of extraneous and idolatrous practices of liturgical churches. These are the ones that had the ideal of a return to a more primitive practice. They claim descent from the Puritans, many of who would not even sing a hymn unless it was written in Scripture. But instead of returning to "the pure church," they've simply replaced the old, thoughtful order with a new, pragmatic one.
The fact is that every church must develop customs and practices. That is the nature of human society and culture. It's inescapable. So why does today's church pride itself on the newness and separateness of its practices and on being spiritual descendants of those who overthrew the old ones? Are its representatives sure they understand what ancient sentiment and knowledge was contained in the ancient expressions of piety? Did the men who gave us our definition of the trinity know nothing about adoring it? Are we sure we are doing better without them than we would with them? Are we sure our leaders are providing us with inventions truer to the spirit of Christ, the scriptures, and the saints and angels in heaven?
What Josh and I mainly desire is to worship God in communion with his body. We wish to kneel; to gaze on objects of contemplation that remind us of the nature of Him we worship; to sing only the best hymns; to hear music in church that says "God transcends you - Fear Him;" to have the forgiveness of our sins not only preached as a possibility but pronounced as a certainty; to say with all the saints, "I believe in God, the Father Almighty...and in His Son, Jesus Christ...and in the Holy Ghost."
These are desires that we share with most of the church through the ages.
What we object to is the slandering of these activities by people who furtively follow an impoverished, unwritten, unapproved, incommunicant order of their own. If a reader here really believes in primitive religion, I would not take that from him. But let us at least see in him the fruits of Puritanism before he condemns our search for traditional piety.
