THE ROOM WHERE IT HAPPENS

STAY WITH ME FOR A MINUTE. This is one of those ideas that's clear in my mind, but I have difficulty in the explaining. Let's start with this:

Is it Art, or is it Craft? Maybe it depends on where its done. If it's done in a Studio; is it art? If it's done in a Shop; is it craft? Is that an oversimplification?

How about this: let's say a group of folks who share a kindred spirit meet in a coffeehouse to talk and read and sing about faith, life and beauty. Is that Church, or a gaggle of mis-guided liberals?

[Time for a shameless moment of grandfatherly bragging. This is, after all, About POPS. I can pretty much say what I want.]

Our oldest GrandGirl, Karlee, is a gifted dancer. One of this season's dances for her is in an ensemble. Their number is based on the musical "Hamilton", specifically the song, "The Room Where It Happens". It's a song about being where the important decisions are hashed and made. I've watched "Hamilton" on Disney+ and I have to say, without prejudice, that Karlee and her dance mates do a stirring rendition of the number.

that’s Karlee. there in the middle. the one being whispered to.

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Here's a sample from the lyrics:

No one else was in
The room where it happened
The room where it happened
The room where it happened
No one really knows how the game is played
The art of the trade
How the sausage gets made
We just assume that it happens
But no one else is in
The room where it happens.

I don't know that I've ever been in that metaphorical, political "room where it happens". I do have assumptions that there would a lot of posturing and power playing, compromise of opinions and ideas, along with compromise of values, morals and justice. But I'm just guessing [based on the insincere smiles on the participants faces and the knives in their backs as they exit the room.]

So, let's recount: we have studios, shops, coffeehouses, churches and those dark rooms in the bowels of politics [and by politics I mean all institutional politics, not just the governmental variety]. Let's add schools, bars, courtrooms, banks, libraries and retail. Picture the room and you have a pretty good idea of what happens there.

We have expectations about what happens in these places. We know not to take our dry cleaning to an ice cream shop. We also know that we might need to take our dry cleaning to the dry cleaners after visiting the ice cream shop.

Lets come back to Church--those buildings sitting on a corner somewhere in most every town, and in front of a graveyard along country roads. There was a time when most everyone claimed some affiliation with a church. As a matter of fact, applications for schools, clubs and some jobs had a line that asked: "Church preference?" [I remember once answering that question "Red brick", thinking I would be appreciated for my sense of humor.]

Now many of the old red brick churches are nearly empty these days. Should we be alarmed? Is "church", can "church", happen in other kinds of rooms?

We like to get off the Interstates when we travel. We've noticed that around these parts on the less-traveled roads a growing number of "cowboy churches". These are metal buildings that look like at one time they could have been a boot-scootin bar or a place where backyard storage buildings were manufactured. I guess you could say, with the exception of the very recognizable logo, the ubiquitous "life church.tv" is sort an architecturally non-distinguishable structure that could be a skating rink or antique mall.

Maybe this drift from steeples, stained glass windows and pipe organs is appropriate for worshipping a "God, who made the world and everything in it, is Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples made by human hands." --Acts 17:24

Can we assume that what happens in a room called a church is really church? All of my life, for the most part, the answer is yes (if I get to define church). My childhood is full of memories of community; community gathered for potluck suppers, Christmas pageants, Easter celebrations, singing and people serving. Some of those people volunteered to teach us about God and his only begotten Son. Was their theology "right"? Frankly my dear, I don't give a darn. What they did for us came from a caring, genuine love. And that's where the real lessons and the real gospel were.

Today, I fear that "church" has become something else, a political wedge and hammer distorting building blocks of goodness, truth and beauty into stones of dogma and twisted doctrine. I'm sad that politicians have taken to touting their faith in their campaign ads. It rings hollow like an empty church to me. All the politicizing, posturing and posing belongs elsewhere. Sometimes I wonder if we could still look at a church and know what happens in those rooms.

It's all morphing for sure. The pandemic and its quarantine showed us that church might be our living room, watching a sermon on YouTube. Church as we've known it is changing. I just hope we don't keep twisting the pursuit of faith to serve lower purposes.

I am optimistic. I am hopeful. When it comes to community and fellowship and the honest, kind pursuit of truth and understanding; lately, I've been in a few "rooms" where it happens.

FREE?DOM

WHAT DO KATY PERRY, THE JONAS BROTHERS AND POPS have in common?

Well, Katy’s real name isn’t Perry and Pops is not my real name (except to my Grand-Kids). But as far as I know the Jonas Brothers use their actual names, so it’s not that.

Fun story: I’m a big fan of the app for ordering from a certain fast food place. I registered for the site using my Google account so my name shows up on my orders at this place as “Pops”. The other day I was picking up an order there. The young lady delivering my order asked, “Is your name Pops or are you a Pops?”

I told this story to one of the Grand-Girls and she replied “Both!” Well, to her anyway.

Back to the puzzler—what do we all have a common? At least two of the three are nominal musicians? Maybe, but not the answer we’re looking for.

We’re all P.K.s! Preacher’s Kids.

There is a P.K. stereotype. Maybe two, or more:

“First, there’s the model child, who lives by the rulebook and follows in the footsteps of his or her minister parent. In many churches, this is an expectation as much as it is a stereotype. Yet perhaps the dominant stereotype of the pastor’s kid is the prodigal—the wayward child, the rebel who has fallen away from the faith, the backslidden who’d rather strike out on their own than live in the shadow of the steeple.” —barna.com

This is the kid who may or may not have released a flotilla of rubber duckies across the baptismal waters during a service, or added a touch of Boone’s Farm to the communion grape juice, etc. Then other days he might be found mowing the yard of widowed member of the flock.

From my experience the P.K. explanation from Barna, quoted above, isn’t an either/or proposition. It is possible to drift and hover between the two extremes over a lifetime.

Here’s an example: I wasn’t hell-bent on being a full-blown prodigal but I do remember the first time I exercised my FREEDOM to NOT go to church. In our house, we went to church. Twice on Sunday, Wednesday nights, revivals, January Bible Study Week, Vacation Bible School, and any other time the proverbial doors were open. I never saw the end of an episode of “Lassie”, or “The Wizard of Oz” because they aired on Sunday nights.

But when I set off for college, I was free; free to not go to church, for the first time in my life. I took full advantage of my newfound freedom.

Late one Sunday afternoon in the first week or so of my first semester, a couple of guys stopped by to say they were going to a local church for a cookout and “co-ed fellowship”. “Want to go?”

“No thanks. I’m not really going to church right now—especially on Sunday night. I’m free to NOT go, you know.”

They left. I sat there alone, solitary, imagining a bunch of students having a great time together. I had literally become a slave to my definition of freedom. Why couldn’t I understand that actually being free meant I could choose; all by myself. I guess in a way I did: I chose loneliness that night.

All of this came to mind the other day when I heard someone explaining that they were FREE—No one could make them take a COVID vaccination! And I wondered, maybe deep down inside if they would really like to have that vaccine. Secretly, maybe subconsciously, they would like to have the sense of relief and safety it brings. But, maybe they’ve become a slave to their freedom to say, Nope.

Before I wrap up this exploration of the Preacher Kid persona… Could it be that there’s a third stereotype? A rescuer, teacher, good communicator? This version is immortalized in a song. A song from the good-ol’ 60s, by Dusty Springfield:

The only one who could ever reach me
Was the son of a preacher man
The only boy who could ever teach me
Was the son of a preacher man
Yes, he was, he was, ooh, yes, he was

He was the sweet-talkin' son of a preacher man

I suggested to my Amazing-Missus that maybe this could be her theme song. She, in turn, had a suggestion or two for me.

SOLD OUT

SOMETIMES IT'S GOOD TO HAVE CROSSED THE THRESHOLD; to be on the inside when the sign on the door says, “Sold Out.” It means you’re in, your place at the table is secure, you have a seat for the show—a show that is worthy of being sold out.

What it is like to assume there would be room left, a ticket still available? You’ve looked forward to it, you got all dressed up, all psyched up, only to arrive, to come face to face with the “SOLD OUT” sign. You can see the others in the room. They made it. They signed up early. But you’re out: disqualified.

I am sure I’m too stupid to understand something as complex as immigration policy. Add to my stupidity the fact that I don’t  care much about economic theory. I'm intensely skeptical of the statistics regurgitated by ruminants, politicians and pundits regarding increased crime within immigrant populations. Even a hint of attitude of racial superiority makes my old, wrinkly, white flesh crawl.

I have always found anecdotes more persuaisive than analysis. I get that many people love the charts, the graphs, the conclusions drawn from some suspect concept of historical perspective, but I am persuaded when I hear a brilliant, eloquent law student from the Congo tell his story about how he gained access to the USA just days before new, heightened immigration policies, enforcements and theories, while his equally brilliant wife, whom he met in a refugee camp in Malawi, was not so lucky. Her paperwork wasn’t processed until a few days after the changing of the guard. He’s on one side of the door, she on the other.

Don’t try to explain it to me. I’m too stupid to see it all as anything but stupid.

Speaking of “selling out”, can we think about Faustian Bargains* for a moment. In my naive, stupid, liberal mind and soul, that is a threshold too costly to cross, but we do it? Why?! Why does that have to be a part of our human story?

Would you believe me if I said I’m not trying to be political, just human? But, I guess it inevitably has to be about politics. If so, here’s a viewpoint on one thorny issue of the current immigration debate which even I can grasp:

"We should have a better understanding and better relationship than we've ever had. Rather than talking about putting up a fence. Why don't we work out some recognition of our mutual problems?” —Ronald Reagan speaking of Mexico as "our neighbor to the south." Houston, TX, 1980.

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*Faustian bargain, a pact whereby a person trades something of supreme moral or spiritual importance, such as personal values or the soul, for some worldly or material benefit, such as knowledge, power, or riches. The term refers to the legend of Faust (or Faustus, or Doctor Faustus), a character in German folklore and literature, who agrees to surrender his soul to an evil spirit (in some treatments, Mephistopheles, or Mephisto, a representative of Satan) after a certain period of time in exchange for otherwise unattainable knowledge and magical powers that give him access to all the world’s pleasures. A Faustian bargain is made with a power that the bargainer recognizes as evil or amoral. Faustian bargains are by their nature tragic or self-defeating for the person who makes them, because what is surrendered is ultimately far more valuable than what is obtained, whether or not the bargainer appreciates that fact. —from Encyclopædia Britannica

To wrap things up on a lighter note—here’s my favorite rendering of the Faustian bargain.

O Brother Where Art Thou

Girl Power

You go Pope Francis! Normally I wouldn't pontificate so casually regarding the Pontiff, but this One seems to be inviting us to be more real and familiar.

I liked so much of what he is reported to have said in his recent interview. Particularly this, speaking of the social issues that the church obsesses over: 

The dogmatic and moral teachings of the church are not all equivalent. The church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently ...

We have to find a new balance; otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel. The proposal of the Gospel must be more simple, profound, radiant. It is from this proposition that the moral consequences then flow.

How about the role of women? When asked about this, he sounded pretty much like all male authority figures in the church:

I am wary of a solution that can be reduced to a kind of “female machismo,” because a woman has a different makeup than a man. But what I hear about the role of women is often inspired by an ideology of machismo. Women are asking deep questions that must be addressed.

Let me say clearly, I don't understand an "ideology of machismo." Apparently it is much clearer in Latin cultures and this Pope would know much more about that than I ever could.

So I will write what I do know. For many years I had a role in ministry to young people, mainly adolescents. All of this was within the Southern Baptist Convention. I am so sad to say that the most conservative of this denomination still hold to a narrow view of the role of women in the church and, unfortunately, beyond the church walls too. I am very happy to say that I've been blessed to know many, many women who identified with Baptists who were strong, effective leaders despite the rhetoric and ranting of church fathers. All of the dogma on the matter comes from a few verses in the letters of the Apostle Paul. I don't know of anything in the words or life of Jesus that would lead anyone to the conclusions the church has drawn on the matter.

Judy, Jane, Paula, Brooke, Jessica are just a few of the young women I've known who believed they had a calling to serve the church. It broke my heart to know of the hurdles, roadblocks and discouragement they would face if they pursued this calling in a Baptist church.

Again the good news is, as I've already said, many women have just forged on anyway: my Mom, my Aunt Betty, my Mother-In-Law Betty, my Daughter-In-Law Kara and my own Amazing Missus Arlene.

Yes that's my youngest grand girl, Harper, in the cape pictured above. I hope she  always believes she has super powers. Her cape is just as significant to me as the priestly garments of the Pope himself.

You go Harper and Karlee and young girls everywhere.