Faith Works 8-16-24
Jeff Gill
Bearing one another's burdens
___
Following some recent discussion of what makes us uncomfortable or even indignant as people of faith in a complicated culture, let alone a fallen world, I was reading last week in an online periodical aimed largely at a Catholic audience, but with implications I believe much more broadly applicable.
It was a post in "The Lamp," Issue 24, which calls itself "A Catholic Journal of Literature, Science, the Fine Arts, Etc." What caught my attention was an essay titled "Are All Welcome?" with the subtitle: "On attending Mass with special needs children."
The author, Kevin Tierney, is from Toledo, Ohio, so just up the road, both geographically and culturally. His family includes two special needs children, both with autism and having different degrees of outward symptoms, including something called "stimming" which can seem like noisemaking to someone not used to the situation, but is a largely involuntary response to changes in the environment. It can range from grunts and groans to seemingly nonsense verbalization, and the kind of thing that makes many people think "they should just stop it."
Tierney tries with great patience and charity to help the reader understand what it's like to be a parent with a child having such a diagnosis, and trying to attend worship. As I hope you know, the main point is that you can't "just stop it." Trying to force a child in such a situation to "stop it" is more likely to increase the outward vocalizations and expressions.
His point, which is where I think almost any faith community can stop and ask itself some questions, is around how children like this call the whole community to reflect on what constitutes "normal" behavior. Is silence, and attentiveness, and a reflective focus on what it going on in the service, the most important part of being in community? Are sounds and disruptions the worst thing that can happen, and enough so that it should result in a general wish for those who can't follow the community norms to leave the gathering space?
Or is the value of being together in community reason enough for us to reflect together on how we can gather everyone, even when some of the gathered community are not able to follow the norms of what we're used to thinking of as "normal" group behavior? Could we learn to accept a certain amount of difference across the assembly, and lift up our wholeness as the higher value, over deportment and decorum?
As Tierney asks: "Each member of the community must be willing to embrace being inconvenienced for the sake of the Gospel and its mission. I do not mean this in the clichéd sense of "offering it up." I mean this in the sense of being actively willing to bear the struggles of others. Maybe this involves training yourself not to shoot a glare backwards in the Church at someone who is loud or disruptive. Maybe it involves going over to a stressed parent and asking whether there's anything you can do to help."
If you are at a live performance or watching a movie where you've paid a steep admission price to see and hear the production, I get how there's an expectation to leave the room if you're making it hard for other patrons to get what they paid for. But is worship that sort of consumer experience? Is it necessary to enforce norms of behavior for everyone to get what they came for? It's a question, and I admit not with a simple, easy answer.
Tierney agrees, and as he closes his piece says "I do not write this to condemn. I don't want to offer a five-year plan to fix the Church. I want this to be an examination of conscience."
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he knows what it's like to seek peace and quiet, too. Tell him how you see this issue at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Note for editors: https://thelampmagazine.com/blog/are-all-welcome
Saturday, August 10, 2024
Tuesday, August 06, 2024
Faith Works 8-9-24
Nate or Ben — if this is too long, feel free to delete the next-to-last paragraph!
Pax, Jeff
===
Faith Works 8-9-24
Jeff Gill
Indignation is exhausting, but interest is sustainable
___
Reaction to my expression of discomfort over a billboard exhorting people to "Shack Up" along a major local thoroughfare, overlooking a place large numbers of high schoolers will be gathering soon for football games, was about what I expected.
It was almost all "you're upset about that? Here's something you really should be upset by!" Yep, that's the media environment we live in: pile indignation atop indignation, whereby one's point is made by being the most indignant.
In fact, I never said I was upset or indignant, I noted it was "puzzling" and left me feeling "discomfort," because I "wonder at the wisdom of this counsel in general" as to encouraging young environmentally concerned folk to "Shack up." Potayto, potahto one might say, but I'm going to stick to my guns and say I'm not indignant or terribly upset, just asking questions.
Similarly, I got a hatful of questions and comments from a variety of sources about the Olympic opening ceremony controversy. For the record, after the producers, the printed program available in Paris, and the International Olympic Committee all said the scene in question was, in fact, meant as a parody of sorts of "The Last Supper on the Banks of the Seine" the actual focus is really not in question. But I was asked if I was upset by or would condemn it.
Nope. Seriously, this is where Winston Churchill's counsel about such things and barking dogs comes into play (you can look it up). I can think, offhand, of the DaVinci "Last Supper" visual being referenced by "Lost," "Battlestar Galactica," and "Twin Peaks" (at least in promotional materials if not in the shows themselves); the film version of "MASH" famously had a pivotal scene very directly and more than somewhat inappropriately modeled on Jesus and the disciples all sitting on one side of a long table. Some of us suspect the last scenes of "The Sopranos" had an oblique "Last Supper" reference built into one shot from outside the restaurant (IYKYK).
Christianity can take such homages, whether done respectfully or teasingly or even mildly blasphemously. Was it a good idea in the Olympics? I don't think so, and there even was an apology, so to me it's a dead issue and no big deal.
What I find fascinating is that I've read a large number now of critiques of the Olympic opening ceremony from socially conservative viewpoints, and not seen any of them mention what I thought was a bad choice and worthy of an apology.
Not long after the Last Supper morphing into a Dionysian banquet, we had a trio of young people running around in a vast beautiful library, and quick shots of a series of books which were all, shall we say, sexually adventurous. Sigh, I thought, are we really going for that sort of stereotype for France? Oh yes they were.
The extended scene ends with a shredding of even those transgressive books (huh? still don't get that at all, and I don't like tearing up books, whether I like the contents or not), flinging the pages in the air, then running out, up a flight of stairs getting increasingly frisky with each other, then entering an apartment and teasingly closing the door. I don't think it's prudish at all to observe the point of the scene was a) a menage-a-trois, and b) it was not a quick or glancing aside, it was the point of the sequence.
I just think that was an incredibly stupid choice for a global audience with lots of kids watching. Maybe they thought it was late enough in the show kids were in bed, but the torch hadn't even been lit yet. And again, it plays into a silly stereotype about France but hey, I'm just an Ohioan.
But it was fascinating I've heard nary a peep about it in all the "indignation." What did you think?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he has questions. Tell him what yours are at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
Pax, Jeff
===
Faith Works 8-9-24
Jeff Gill
Indignation is exhausting, but interest is sustainable
___
Reaction to my expression of discomfort over a billboard exhorting people to "Shack Up" along a major local thoroughfare, overlooking a place large numbers of high schoolers will be gathering soon for football games, was about what I expected.
It was almost all "you're upset about that? Here's something you really should be upset by!" Yep, that's the media environment we live in: pile indignation atop indignation, whereby one's point is made by being the most indignant.
In fact, I never said I was upset or indignant, I noted it was "puzzling" and left me feeling "discomfort," because I "wonder at the wisdom of this counsel in general" as to encouraging young environmentally concerned folk to "Shack up." Potayto, potahto one might say, but I'm going to stick to my guns and say I'm not indignant or terribly upset, just asking questions.
Similarly, I got a hatful of questions and comments from a variety of sources about the Olympic opening ceremony controversy. For the record, after the producers, the printed program available in Paris, and the International Olympic Committee all said the scene in question was, in fact, meant as a parody of sorts of "The Last Supper on the Banks of the Seine" the actual focus is really not in question. But I was asked if I was upset by or would condemn it.
Nope. Seriously, this is where Winston Churchill's counsel about such things and barking dogs comes into play (you can look it up). I can think, offhand, of the DaVinci "Last Supper" visual being referenced by "Lost," "Battlestar Galactica," and "Twin Peaks" (at least in promotional materials if not in the shows themselves); the film version of "MASH" famously had a pivotal scene very directly and more than somewhat inappropriately modeled on Jesus and the disciples all sitting on one side of a long table. Some of us suspect the last scenes of "The Sopranos" had an oblique "Last Supper" reference built into one shot from outside the restaurant (IYKYK).
Christianity can take such homages, whether done respectfully or teasingly or even mildly blasphemously. Was it a good idea in the Olympics? I don't think so, and there even was an apology, so to me it's a dead issue and no big deal.
What I find fascinating is that I've read a large number now of critiques of the Olympic opening ceremony from socially conservative viewpoints, and not seen any of them mention what I thought was a bad choice and worthy of an apology.
Not long after the Last Supper morphing into a Dionysian banquet, we had a trio of young people running around in a vast beautiful library, and quick shots of a series of books which were all, shall we say, sexually adventurous. Sigh, I thought, are we really going for that sort of stereotype for France? Oh yes they were.
The extended scene ends with a shredding of even those transgressive books (huh? still don't get that at all, and I don't like tearing up books, whether I like the contents or not), flinging the pages in the air, then running out, up a flight of stairs getting increasingly frisky with each other, then entering an apartment and teasingly closing the door. I don't think it's prudish at all to observe the point of the scene was a) a menage-a-trois, and b) it was not a quick or glancing aside, it was the point of the sequence.
I just think that was an incredibly stupid choice for a global audience with lots of kids watching. Maybe they thought it was late enough in the show kids were in bed, but the torch hadn't even been lit yet. And again, it plays into a silly stereotype about France but hey, I'm just an Ohioan.
But it was fascinating I've heard nary a peep about it in all the "indignation." What did you think?
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he has questions. Tell him what yours are at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.
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