Learning to Pray Again.

Growing up I loved to take part in electronics and put them back together. There were many times that I took something apart and then I couldn't figure out how to put it back together. My sister's cd player stopped working and I offered my services. I took part in the entirety of the stereo. Only to realize that one I could not fix the broken cd player and now two I couldn't put her cd player back together.

I have found for most of us deconstructing our faith is the easier part of our journey. We name the toxicity of how our faith journey might have harmed and disappointed us. Maybe causing us to rethink our relationships with family and friends. Rethink what it is we read and our spiritual practices. We might even in this process fully abandon anything that looks and smells like the church experiences we have come from. Our deconstruction becomes a bunch of pieces that we are now left to figure out how to put back together.

And this is the challenge on our faith journey is how to discover a faith that enlivens us and grounds us. One in which our wounds can be healed. This is the part that takes work.

Someone recently said on an NPR show I was listening to, "Don't aim at what you are trying to avoid... look at where you want to go." I am captured by how simplistic yet how profound these words are.

Are we trying to extrapolate all the fears, triggers, and shame inducers so that we might not feel those feelings? So we surgically carve out a faith, a community that won't ever hurt us or challenge us? Yet so many of us begin our pursuit of deconstructing and reconstructing our faith in this way.

Albeit each of our journeys are different. Some of us have been deeply harmed by the church and that will deeply affect our journey. Some of us were just bored with our faith... and so we started to pursue other ways that might enliven us. Others of us simply want to continue to pursue a more meaningful pursuit of Christ.

My journey is different from yours. Your journey is different from mine. But I do think there is space to learn from one another. Over the last 10 years, I have found deep meaning and vitality in the traditions that have been carried down for generations. One of these traditions is the continued practice of praying the Lord's prayer. And maybe the traditional prayer, "Our Father, who art in heaven..." is limiting and might wreak off the places we are trying to leave... I have found that the church has found life in this prayer in the myriad of translations and languages.

And that this prayer was introduced to a group of disciples eager to "learn" how to pray again. Jesus was introducing the difficult task to his disciples of reconstructing their faith. Jesus gave them a prayer that comes from various Jewish prayers. One that addresses the divine and human relationships.

Our experiences have shaped what we believe about prayer. But I want to ask in a fresh and new way how might we reconstruct this spiritual practice in a new way that might give us life and vitality as we together learn to pray again.

Reframing Children and Holy Communion

I took this picture of Micah Gaddy breaking the communion bread and breaking and dispersing it on the grass after one of our worship gatherings a few weeks ago.

Our traditional view of discipleship for children and adults is sitting in a circle with a teacher explaining what it means to follow Christ.

For me this picture displays discipleship. It embodies a holy and sacred action that the Eucharist doesn’t just nourish the human body but all of creation.

Starting a New Faith Community where people come from a myriad of religious backgrounds has formed and shaped us in many ways. We all come from religious traditions that have beautifully shaped our lives while other parts have been traumatic, disappointing, and harmful.

I recognize the challenge it can be to come into a community that practices Holy Communion each week.

For many of us Holy Communion has been a guarded practice in the life of the church. It was a closed table for those who were faithful disciples of Jesus Christ, had sincerely repented of their sins, and were members of that particular church.

We as a community have sought to reframe the practice of holy communion in a radical way. And in particular that this table is open to all. Open to those who profess Christ, open to those who haven’t developed language yet enjoy delicious bread and juice, open to those who question and doubt their faith, open to those who are agnostic and atheist, open to those who don’t know, open to those trying to figure out their journey. And most importantly open to children.

Our hope is that through this practice is that we might recognize that we are in deep solidarity with one another no matter where we are on our journey as we go out into the world each week.

Particularly important and significant is that we are teaching and offering to our children the beauty of this practice and a radical open invitation to participate in this sacred act.

This in itself can be challenging when children, particularly young children, can be loud, wiggly, and boisterous, which can sometimes impede the solemn nostalgia of this practice in former contexts that we have come from.

Traditional in many contexts is that the leftover elements of bread and juice are disposed outside into creation or are consumed by the priest/pastor. For some, this act is because the elements have been consecrated so it is desecrating to throw them in the trash or to pour the juice down the drain.

I take on a more theologically practical view that we are joining with all of creation into this holy work of bringing about the restorative work of Christ by dispersing the elements outside our gathering area.

In the previous churches I served there tended to be one person who cleaned up after Holy Communion. Their practice was often to throw the leftover bread in the trash and then pour the juice down the sink. I would ask them politely to disperse the juice outside and to break the bread up and throw it outside.

And then the next time we participated in Holy Communion… the person would throw the bread in the trash and the juice down the sink. This service and practice was engrained deeply and no wet behind the ears pastor was going to change this.

Yet now at Storied Church people like my friend Amy would take my son, Isaac, and other children outside after worship and break the bread up for the birds and squirrels and pour the juice into the ground week after week. It became an exciting communal process. Adults and children together dispersing this meal that brought our community together for creation to feast alongside us.

We have a lot of conversations in our community about children. How much are children involved in our Sunday morning gatherings? What programs should we think about creating for our children? How should children act in a worship space? And these are vital conversations that our community needs to have and journey together in search of the answers.

But at the same time, this picture of Micah (who also makes sure that our Christ candle is lit before our worship gathering) is also held. After our worship gathering, he has taken the bread himself, takes it outside to break it into pieces, and disperses the bread.

I think about all the different ways we have been harmed by this sacrament of Holy Communion. The ways in which some of us might have been harmed and hurt by it. It made us feel like we didn’t belong and weren’t included. And then I see how Micah and the other children are learning and experiencing this holy practice in a new and life-giving way.

A sacrament that says that they belong, one which invites them into this holy work of being the hands and feet of Jesus. A practice that invites the messiness of being a child and figuring out the world.

And it displays to us the essence of discipleship for children showing all of us that we are all in this holy work together and that none of us are left out of this narrative.

Hope: Finding our agency and Learning to Ride a bike

As a parent teaching your child to ride a bike is a rite of passage.

A few months ago I asked Laurel if she would like to try to ride her bike without training wheels. And she said yes not really aware of what would come next. The first time I ran with her as she rode her bike. I was catching every little imbalance so that she wouldn’t fall. And then the second time around I let go some. “Look up at where you are going, don’t look down…” And then she goes… for a moment and then she crashes. Then she doesn’t want to do it anymore.

She demands I put back on the training wheels.

I resist for a moment. Then I put them back on.

A few weeks later... without consulting Laurel… I took the training wheels off. I threw them in the trash. For a few months, her bike sat on the ground untouched. It’s like her bike said to her... remember if you ride me… you are probably going to fall down.

Then one day I asked Laurel again if she would like to ride her bike. And she obliged. This time a little more courage. She was learning to fall gracefully. Putting her foot out to catch her fall. She was learning to feel her body, balance, and ride. She was discovering the joy of riding her bike. Each time she needed my help to get on the bike and ride. But each time a little more on her own.

A few days later I look outside and I see Laurel riding in circles on her bike in the driveway. Wait? How did you do that? Then I saw her practicing by herself. Falling. Getting back up. Falling. Getting back up. Figuring out how to start and stop riding her bike on her own.

She was finding her agency.

As I watched Laurel start and stop this feeling of pride washed over me. As a parent, you question whether throwing away the training wheels and letting your child fall is good parenting. Then you see your child take agency. It made me so proud of her.

Later that night as I put Laurel to bed I told her how proud I was of her. Her response was, "what is pride?” I fumbled over words. I knew the feeling but couldn’t define the word. I have walked with her question… and pride at this moment is seeing my child take agency and risk to learn something new like riding a bike.

Laurel was teaching me hope.

Hope isn’t a transcendental, out-of-this-world word. It is tangible.

During the pandemic, someone said, “I hope Storied Church is around in a few years…” Hope was used like it was some kind of voodoo word… if we just close our eyes… then just maybe… we might be around in a few years.

Hope is many things. But one-way hope is tangible is through the word agency. Agency is defined by action or intervention that will bring about a particular result.

Hope asks the question what action am I willing to do that might further this vision and mission of a community? What is required of me?

And then doing that thing.

The question we hold is how much are we willing to put our ideas into action. Failure or success.

Life is a lot like riding a bike (and a box of chocolates). It can be discomforting when we realize that our training wheels are nowhere to be found. We become vulnerable to failure and success. And it can be scary. We can engage or becomes despondent.

There are moments that I wonder in the silence of my heart, "God are you sure I am called to do this work?" It is really hard. There are a lot of unknowns. I feel like sometimes God has thrown my training wheels away, and that I am learning to trust. I am learning to put one foot in front of the other. I am learning to hope.

What I am learning is that when we can be present in our vulnerability and continue to find our agency. There in that place, we will find, inexpressible, out-of-this-world joy. A God who is proud.

I can see it in the smile of my little girl.