Moms

Last Sunday, the children got off easy. We actually did (shock horror) a craft. They were excited, because we practically never do crafts. They made bracelets for their moms. We talked about moms from the Bible, and about how God is like a mom (nurturing, loving, creative, hard-working). The bracelets came out a little short for moms (our friend at the bead store gave us some bad math). I was upset about that, but the kids were totally fine. "She can use it to pull the string on the fan," one kid said. Another pointed out that, while it might not fit Mom, it was just the right size for her.

My own mom came, which was really nice. She was a big help with Amanda, who was struggling with the beading. We also talked about how we're taking Josh to the Bookfair, because he reached his goal of 25 points. The girls are pretty close to the goal too, having stepped up their efforts since Josh beat them to it, and they talked about what we might do with them for their prize ("You could take us shopping. Or you could just give us a Peebles gift card."). Uhm. No, sorry. Amanda kept saying that she and Lachlan could do their prize together, but I need to make sure Lachlan is ok with that. She's kind enough not to tell Amanda that they aren't really best friends, as Amanda believes they are, but it's pretty clear that the two girls have very different ideas about their relationship.

The sermon, given by Mike, was really great, too. It was also about how God is like a mother, and how, without the female aspect of God, we have an incomplete picture. My mom really liked the sermon, though afterward she said, "Then why don't you let women speak in church?"

Good question. Some Churches of Christ do, we told her. I didn't have a great answer for that one--there's sort of conflicting New Testament information regarding women's roles in the religious community.

After church, we picked up Gary and Alex and met Mike and JoEtta for a picnic at the park. That was a lot of fun. I like for my mom to spend time with fun Christians, ones who don't balk every time my kid brother drops an F-bomb. Unfortunately, Mom sees these people as the exception, not the rule. Still, this was the best visit to my church that my mom has ever had, and that's a step.

Alex is probably living with us for about six weeks this summer, and doing an internship with the photo department at work. We're thinking about hosting a Sunday evening study group at our house (new house is about an hour from church...driving back there on Sunday evenings for small group....does not seem like something my limited willpower can accomplish regularly). I wonder if he'll participate....

Today is Girls' Day at church, and I need to go down there in a few hours to help with a skit I wrote for them. I've had a real struggle with this, because I don't really agree with how it's being run (Adult women are doing all the planning, and are speaking. The girls are just coming. Also, the girls didn't originate the idea or have much buy-in; one of the adult women just told them, "We're having a Girls' Day."). I think the girls would learn a lot more about how to be a woman in the church if they actually had to plan it. It's also been a struggle because there's been basically no flow of information. I didn't know until Wednesday what time I needed to be there. Last night, as JC and I were leaving work and driving to Bethany and Peter's for dinner, I got a phone call from one of the girls (I still can't figure out who it was) saying that they were all there decorating for Girls' Day, and could I please come down to help? I was, at this point, about an hour from the church. I had seen the woman who is running the thing on Wednesday and the previous Sunday. No one had said anything to me about when we were decorating. I told the girl that I was sorry, but no one had asked me to come, and I had other plans.

I guess what bothers me is that I really dislike being angry at church people. In this particular case, I like this person a great deal. And yes, I've tried to talk with her about this, and so has Amy. She just gets defensive and angry.

JC said he was proud of me for saying "no" last night (which I almost never do), but I felt pretty crappy about it. And, of course, what else was I going to do? We were far away. By the time I got there, they would have been mostly done.

Sigh
Ok, need to get breakfast and pack some boxes before going to Girls' Day. Wooo.

Restoration Roots

First off, I love that map loco thing at the bottom of the page--you guys come from all over, and it's really exciting to me to get visits from people in Australia, New Zealand, Spain, the UK, Japan, Korea, etc. Plus, every now and then, there's a hit from some place I actually know or somewhere I've lived (I was in Bethel Park, PA for about a year when I was six, and there's a regular from there). Sometimes I see places that I recognize because a friend lives there, and I always wonder, "Rachael? Is that you?" Anyway, leave a comment, let me know who you are, why you're here, will you come back?

Second order of business: My much-lauded Digg button has evaporated. It should be over there to the left. It was there the last time I checked...I'll have to look into that, but not right now, as my internet connection is acting weird.

JoEtta pointed out, correctly, that it was rather arrogant of me to insist that there aren't any good books on the Church of Christ, in a historical/theological kind of way. It turns out that there are several, but you only find out about them if you go to a Church of Christ university. She lent me several, and I just finished Discovering Our Roots: The Ancestry of Churches of Christ.

It's a very interesting introductory look at the historical currents that brought about the Church of Christ, with a focus on other Restorationist groups (Pentecostals, Baptists, Methodists, Anabaptists, even Mormons) and how we all are different. The authors, C. Leonard Allen and Richard T. Hughes, were both professors at Abilene Christian University. They do a very fair and ecumenical job of presenting the Restorationist arguments behind each group's thoughts, and they argue repeatedly against the culture of historical blindness present in the Church of Christ. "The sweeping rejection of tradition," they write, "results not in a traditionless and culture-free faith but in a faith even more vulnerable to blind traditionalism." Brilliant stuff.

However, in the section on Anabaptists (Amish, Church of the Brethren, Hutterites, Mennonites), I was really caught off guard by what the authors described as the major difference between Anabaptists and the Churches of Christ.

"The [Anabaptists] paid
little attention to the various forms and structures that have been important to the Churches of Christ in America...There is, for example, little evidence that [Anabaptists] concerned themselves with matters of church organization. Their chief concern instead was for the rule of Christ in the lives of the believers. And while the [Anabaptists] said little about the frequency of the Lord's Supper, they spoke much of its meaning and significance. Further, while they often practiced immersion, their first concern was for the baptism of adults who would commit themselves without reservation to the way of the cross."

I hate to kick my own church, but doesn't the Anabaptist focus sound...better? We Church of Christ folks come out pretty legalistic in that offing. (By way of disclosure, I should mention that my best friend is Mennonite, I live in the Menno capital of Virginia, if not the Eastern US, and a large number of the people at Rosetta Stone are Menno). It's interesting, because we talk a lot in our adult classes about avoiding legalism, and how what Christ brings is freedom from a legalistic mindset--but I can't imagine anyone ever suggesting that, hey, we take Communion every week, we stop thinking about it, stop appreciating it. Let's just skip it this week and it will mean more next week. I think that would cause a riot. We've also got some messy legalistic stuff about whether or not you can clap your hands along with hymns (I don't, but I think that's a matter of personal preference...others make a theological argument against it). When I look at my church, which has made a very good attempt at restoring the forms and practices of the "primitive" church (I hate that term, and it was all over this book. It makes Jesus & friends sound like cavemen. What's wrong with .. "Late Classical"?), I wonder why we chose to focus on that. True Campbellites would argue that the Bible provides a blueprint for Christian forms, and if we follow it, everyone will join our church and we'll be a unified Christian body once more. I hate to say it, but that whole uniting Christianity in the one true church thing doesn't seem to be working. We're not exactly the fastest growing denomination out there.

I don't know if the Mennonites are growing at all, but I admire their focus on capturing the spirit and motives of the first-century church. I love their passionate servant mindset, their radical pacifism, their insistence on living in a community.

I guess my question isn't why am I a member of the Church of Christ, rather than a Mennonite? (Rob says, "You can never become a Mennonite!") I think my question is, why choose? Why do we have to have form or spirit? Why not form and spirit?

I don't get it.

Digg it

My grandfather once wrote a textbook about archeology called (I am not making this up) Dig It, Man!

Following in the familial footsteps (and at Rob's advice), I'm adding Digg This buttons to the site. When you see stuff that you think is very neat...well, Digg it. I was going to do it on every post, but now I'm thinking that no one will want to digg any individual post in significant numbers, so I'm just putting it on the page overall.

If you think something on the site is neat, hit the "Digg This" button, and write a quickie note about it. It doesn't take very long at all, I promise.

More about the Sunday school later. Mom is coming to visit for Mother's Day, along with her fiance and my li'l brudder. Mom doesn't really like going to church with me, and it seems like every time she does come (twice, in the six years since my baptism), the sermon is one of those that makes me want to crawl in a hole and die. Example: The last time she came, it was the 45th anniversary of my congregation. I thought the guest preacher (I think he used to be the minister there, way back when) would preach about the joys of our church family. What better day to bring my mom than a celebration day, right?

He preached about obedience to God, and his primary example was the destruction of the Amelekites. Super. Needless to say=awkward conversation with Mom after (all those hard questions: "How can you love a God who punishes someone for not going through with, effectively, genocide?" uhm. Sometimes, I don't know.).

But this Sunday is Mother's Day, a day when we can usually count on a vaguely feminist sort of feeling from pulpit and pews, and rumor has it that my friend Mike is preaching. How much more safe can you get than Mother's Day at a church in the south?

When I was talking to Mom about her visit, she asked me, "Do you have church obligations on Sunday?"

Obligations? That's like asking her if she has...I don't know...contra dance obligations. It's not an obligation, I'm going because I want to, and because I love it--and, yes, because I'm obliged to teach Sunday School.

We have a Mother's Day craft, thanks to the help of Bead Store Maggie, our next-door neighbor. I told Mom that I'd appreciate it if she came, because an extra pair of hands would be a big help with the kids and the craft thing. We'll see if she bites.

Interestingly, my li'l brudder might be living with us this summer. I'm curious as to whether he'll come to even one service with us. We're talking about hosting a Sunday night group at our house, rather than drive the two-hour round-trip twice each Sunday (or trying to enjoy our Sabbath while killing time for the six hours between services). I wonder if he'll come to that.

Ok, back to digging....or probably playing some Civilization--even your devoted Sunday schoolmarm needs a bit of recreational computing every now and again.

A day of rest, eh?

Well, this has been a good, generally mellow weekend. But it's just after 8 and I'm feeling pretty wiped out already. Sundays end up being a lot busier for us than I would like, mostly with church stuff.

Today, JC taught our class by himself, while I attempted to do some work on Girls' Day with TGS. More on those later...

After class, JC and I volunteered in the nursery during services. Sarah, who used to be in our class, came by to hang out. We should probably have scolded her for not staying in the auditorium, but she's such a pleasant kid, I couldn't bring myself to fuss at her. Nursery was pretty low-key. We only had two girls in there, both about eighteen months. One funny/sad thing--Haven, Amy's daughter, was sitting in the rocking chair. JC was standing on the other side of the room looking at some of the toys. Suddenly, Haven furrowed her brow, took her pacifier out of her mouth, pointed at him and said, "No daddies!" Whenever he tried to help her with something, she repeated that at him. Like, "There aren't supposed to be daddies in the nursery; why are you here?" She wasn't angry or anything, just completely perplexed.
"It's ok," I told her. "He's not anyone's daddy." She pretty much ignored that, or didn't understand it. I worry about the messages our church sends to children, especially girls. Why shouldn't men work in the nursery? JC's the only one on the list, and the lady who solicits volunteers for it asked me especially if JC would mind. "We notice that he watches the babies in church," she said. "I just need to fill one more slot, and none of the women are available. Do you think he would mind?"
JC grew up with three sisters, two of them younger than him. He loves babies--and yes, he definitely selects our seat in the assembly based almost exclusively on where the families with babies sit.
JC is good with babies. He loves them. I want to have babies one of these years, and I want him to be a good, involved, and diaper-changing father. Where else will young men learn these skills if we bar them from the nursery? There's the conflicting issue of...limiting women's roles mean that women defend their allowed roles very seriously. Men aren't allowed in the nursery because women want something that's theirs. That's sad, but understandable.

So, after church, we moved a lot of stuff around and traded classrooms with another teacher. Our classroom is too big--the kids just randomly get up and wander around. It also echoes a lot when they are noisy. The other teacher has younger kids--first- and second-graders, and often more of them (sometimes as many as 14, where we hardly ever have more than 4). It was a trade that made sense, and I think will serve both groups well. It was a lot of work, though, and I was exhausted by the end of it.

We came home, ate some lunch, and then realized that the cat was missing--much wailing and gnashing of teeth----and an hour later, we found her, where she had jumped into the neighbor's window, and the neighbor's five-year-old had closed the window because she likes our cat and wanted to keep her "just for today." Cat recovered, success! Then, a little reading together, some housework, and JC had to go to a finance meeting for church. In a few more weeks, we won't be teaching for a while, but we're still on a half-dozen committees, and of course, getting ready to move house at the end of May, and balancing career (writing for RS) with hoped-for-career (querying every magazine under the sun, on topics as diverse as CouchSurfing and visiting presidential towns). We're too busy right now, and I don't like that.

So, class. Here's JC's report. He had them draw connections between the miracles of Elijah, Elisha, Jesus, and the apostles. He was trying to get them to categorize the miracles a bit, and think about how these individuals prefigure each other. JC was surprised to discover that, although they could see the connections between, say, walking on water and parting the Red Sea, they didn't want to put them into a category of "miracles controlling water." Maybe it's just the small sampling in our class, or maybe kids that age just tend to be more splitters than lumpers. He said that he had fun with them--it was just Lachlan and Josh again, as I think Amanda spends some weekends with her dad. He had them draw a mind map about the miracles and the individuals, and they liked that a lot--they love to write on the whiteboard, and graphic organizers are great for getting them involved.

As for me...I had a much less satisfying experience with TGS this morning. We were supposed to be rehearsing the skit, but only four out of seven girls showed up, and only two of remembered their scripts. That was ok though, because there was a lot of other stuff we needed to do for Girls' Day. Angie, who is organizing it, said that she had to stay home that morning (I think one of her kids is under the weather), and she asked Amy and me to work with the girls on some of the planning that remained to be done for the Girls' Day. That's when things started to go very, very badly. "What have you guys done for planning Girls' Day?" we asked them. They shrugged.
"Angie just told us we were having Girls' Day, and that's the last we heard of it," Hanna said.
"Angie said that you were in charge of decorations," Amy tried. This was the first the girls had heard about it.
"What's our budget for decorations?" one of them asked.
"Since we don't know, basically nothing," Amy told her.
We tried to brain storm with them about a few things that we could do around the "princess" theme. Ideas included using things from people's homes (like my princess dream net), possibly asking recently-married people if they had any fancy things or lengths of tulle around or something. The girls were not excited, and why would they be? They weren't given any agency in this at all. Angie's concept for the Girls' Day was that the adults would plan it and the girls would just come. At my in-law's church, they've had a few Girl's Days, but always entirely planned and executed (including leading singing, teaching sessions, etc) by the girls. It was a great learning experience for JC's sisters. They realized how much goes into planning that kind of thing, and they began to think about church events in a different--and much more realistic--way. When I heard that our girls were doing a Girl's Day, I hoped it would be like that--but it's not. So we were stuck trying to work with them on an aspect of the project that they hadn't previously been involved in, and didn't want to do. They also worked on some sashes for our skit, and did a great job on that--because they wanted to. They got to design them themselves. Amy and I stayed out of it, just gave them the materials. They organized themselves, found additional materials, passed out jobs, and came out with beautiful sashes. They'll be proud of wearing them in the skit. They have ownership.

Dealing with this whole thing has been seriously challenging. I hope that the Girls' Day goes well, and that next time, the girls are encouraged to do more. As Amy said, "Sure, you put a fifteen-year-old in charge of food and you might only end up with peanut butter sandwiches, but she learns. And who knows, she might surprise you."

I'm glad Amy will be taking over my class for the summer. She's a great mom (and therefore is FAR more qualified than I am to teach!), and she shares my values about education in the church--not so much with the coloring sheets, yay for real scholarship. She understands very clearly our need to balance kids' need to be kids with their need to learn what it means to be an adult in our church community.

TGS: The Play

As it turned out, the girls really liked the little play I wrote for them. I was afraid they wouldn't get it, or they'd think the jokes were dumb, but they were really positive. We did a read-thru and blocking last night. I'm glad Amy was there--I definitely needed the moral support! I felt so discombobulated all day yesterday.

I worried that, having directed in grad school, I wouldn't be very good at directing amateurs again. I was concerned that my snobbery and impatience would get the better of me. Instead, I had a great time with them last night. They're not perfect, of course. No one has even the tiniest semblance of technique. That stopped mattering, though. I rejoiced when they found the funny things that I had hidden in there for them. I found that I had underestimated them--I didn't have to explain nearly as much as I thought I would.

They all speak too fast, they all mumble, and they all turn their backs to the audience--but you know, I don't care. They'll be fine. It will be a good little play.

It's late, and I need to go to bed. Just two things.

First, I'm not sure if I've posted the link to Mars Hill Bible Church previously, but you should check it out. Their website is amazing (we're working on redoing our church site, and I just pray ours can be half as inviting as theirs), their sermon podcasts ROCK, and apparently they're really energizing the church in Grand Rapids. I found them on a website (which was not very good, and did not contain the information I was looking for) about the "Church of Christ-Emergent." What is that? (that's what the website didn't tell me) Is it related to the Restoration-Stone-Campbell Church of Christ or is it something entirely different (see also: International Church of Christ, United Church of Christ)? Anyone?

Normally people trying to make the church more "accessible" just tick me off. They water everything down and put it to pop music. This church, though, whatever they're doing is SO "accessible" and yet astute, and very deep. I want to learn more about this, and bring it home.

The other thing is this--just a smidge of an email I wrote to Rob. One of my old writing teachers used to say that the first two-thirds of everything you write is just garbage you need to get out of your brain until you get to the real stuff. I think that means I've just hit the two-thirds mark, because I found myself writing something I've been looking for since September. It's my mission with all this. And my goodness, is it ever ambitious! Nigh impossible....

Before I do this--backstory--Rob was my manager's manager's manager for a while at RosettaStone. Now he's at Stanford, getting an MBA. Rob is one of the smartest people I know, and when I told him I wanted to do something -- but I didn't know what -- with Sunday school, he told me to start a blog ("Like the Long Tail guy"). It's because of Rob that you're reading these words at all.

From the email:

I think I’ve even figured out exactly what it is that I want to accomplish through this whole thing. Eco-evangelism is huge right now, and growing. Some genius in the green movement realized that churches are powerful. Then he convinced the churches that environmentalism fit perfectly with the church’s morality. I think that’s what I want to do for education. The schools are very seriously failing the churches—and I don’t mean in terms of divisive issues like prayer in schools or evolution. I mean more in terms of giving students geography, history, and reading comprehension skills. Likewise, the churches are failing the schools. They aren’t creating citizens who understand self-sacrifice or honesty. Schools, like the one where my mom is a guidance counselor, now have “character-building” programs, which belong more in churches than in schools. I want to get both sides to stop failing each other. Modest goals, right? I think I’ll start with the churches, though.

Lessons on Elijah

Hello, faithful readers! I'm ever so sorry I've been a blog slacker. Life has been crazy, with the house (looks like we are buying it--closing May 29!), lots of family stuff (my gran in the hospital, each of JC's sisters being a nut in her own unique way), and some really challenging situations (though, unfortunately, not challenging assignments) at work.

So...as a special prize, here's a link to the play I wrote for the teen girls' day (May 19, email me for more info if you live in VA and are interested in attending) at our church. The theme/guiding book for the day is For Such a Time as This, by Lisa Ryan, who was a Miss California or something. Thus, the play is a beauty pageant. Not my finest work, but I think it's a pretty decent attempt, for something I wrote in a few hours. Hearsing it tonight, rehearsing it on Sunday.


So, Sunday school.
Well, first some sad news--David and his family moved a few weeks ago, without saying goodbye to anybody. I just heard through the grapevine that he wouldn't be in my class any more. I don't believe they left a forwarding address or anything. He's had a few rough deals in his life--I hope he turns out ok.

So, the past two weeks, we've been talking about Elijah with the kiddies. They seem to really get into Elijah--and they remembered some stories from other parts of the Bible and made connections!!! I really felt like we had made some serious progress with them, given that, when we started, they couldn't even piece together a rough chronology (and I mean rough, as in, who came first, Jesus or Moses?). We had to ask some leading questions, but they drew the connections themselves, the first week that we talked about Elijah, between the widow's flour lasting forever and Jesus feeding the multitudes, between Elijah resurrecting the widow's son and Jesus resurrecting people. "If you had grown up with a tradition that Elijah was going to come back some day, and then there's Jesus walking around resurrecting people, who would you think he was?" we asked them.

"Elijah," they said. So we had them read Mark 8:27-29. I think they've probably seen that passage before, but I doubt they fully understood it. They were really excited to have figured out something new about that passage. We also read the bit about where Elijah and Moses appear to Jesus and some of his friends. I'm not sure they really get this whole people-coming-back-from-beyond thing. They're all growing up in Christian families, but the idea of Jesus coming back must be pretty hard for a kid to get his mind around (or for an adult, for that matter!)

The second week we talked about Elijah, we discussed how he found Elisha and taught him. Josh & Lachlan were in a giggly mood for some reason and reading all that stuff about Elijah and Elisha just escalated the giggles. They were giggly in an involved, and not very loud, sort of way, though, so I didn't mind. In fact, I rather enjoyed it. They were so excited from last week, when remembering stories from other parts of the Bible helped them understand what we were studying, that they searched for those kinds of connections everywhere. When Elijah parted the water in the Jordan, both of them shouted, "Like Moses!" Granted, that's a pretty easy one, but I love that they are starting to think about the interconnected story that is the Bible. That was one of my goals for them, and we're getting there! :)

The chariot of fire was a pretty crazy one to explain. We did our best, and Lachlan said it reminded her of some commercial--since we don't have cable or even an antenna (TV=PS2/DVD monitor), we had no idea what she was talking about, but Josh agreed.

Here's a rough one to explain to little kids: Elijah doesn't exactly die. He...ascends? I think my theology is a bit vague on this kind of situation, which made it harder. JC wasn't there (he was feeling ill). When I asked him about it later, he said that his feeling was that Elijah was so in tune with the nature of God that he could transition from a physical being into a spiritual being without needing to go through the transformative experience of death. I thought that was interesting, and I wish that he had been there to say that, because I really floundered.

"Do you guys remember which other person in the Bible walked with God and didn't die?" I asked them. Joshua went over to the family tree and looked at the names--he knew it was early, but he couldn't remember who. He was looking in the right place, though, and where we had recorded the ages of the early folks, he saw Enoch and a note about him walking with God. "So, is Enoch still alive?" asked Lachlan. "Gross!"
"Well, he's not exactly alive, physically, in the world. He's with God...he just didn't have to die."

Yeah, I'm not so good at this metaphysical stuff.

We're taking the summer off from Bible class, but Amy is going to take over, and I know she'll do a great job--and NOT let them get spoiled with stupid coloring sheets and word searches!! They're really learning now; they've finally built a critical mass of knowledge, and they are starting to develop connections on their own. I LOVE this. This is the most fun and rewarding thing I've done all year (other than marrying my high school sweetheart... <3).

AND they are going to love this--for once we're doing a CRAFT in Sunday school. On Mother's Day, I'm going to bring in some wire and beads and things and we're going to make necklaces for our moms. Any ideas about scripture or stories I could do with this?

Also, JC's mom finally sent us the topic for Bible bowl in the fall--1&2 Thessalonians, 1&2 Timothy, and Titus. That's a passel of books I haven't studied much, so we should have a good time with that...if the kids want to do it. Which I don't know that they will, but we shall see.

Ok, it's officially time for me to start my work day. Sigh. I wish my job was teaching Sunday school... :)