Two Christmas Poems
This Christmas here are two poems I’m returning to:
“The Invisible Seen”
—St. Athanasios (c. 298-373, trans by Scott Cairns)
When our dull wits had so declined
as to set us mid the squalor of the merely
sensible creation, the Very God consented
to become a body of His own, that He
as one among us might gather our dim senses
to Himself, and manifest through such
incommensurate occasion that He
is not simply man, but also God,
the Word and Wisdom of the One.
Thereafter, He remained His body, and thus
allowed Himself to be observed.
his becoming joined to us performed
two appalling works in our behalf:
He banished death from these
our tender frames, and made of them
something new and (take note here) renewing.
“Nativity”
—John O’Donohue (1956-2008)
No man reaches where the moon touches a woman.
Even the moon leaves her when she opens
Deeper into the ripple in her womb
That encircles dark, to become flesh and bone.
Someone is coming ashore inside her,
A face deciphers itself from water,
And she curves around the gathering wave,
Opening to offer the life it craves.
In a corner stall of pilgrim strangers,
She falls and heaves, holding a tide of tears.
A red wire of pain feeds through every vein,
Until night unweaves and the child reaches dawn.
Outside each other now, she sees him first,
Flesh of her flesh, her dreamt son safe on earth.
Inventing Intentionally Transformational Emerging Worship
Check out this online course we will be teaching through the Center for Progressive Renewal. This course is open for anyone to register.
Course is postponed until January, shoot Troy or Josh an email if you have interest in the shape of the curriculum or other workshops we lead.
Inventing Intentionally Transformational Emerging Worship, a five-week course led by Troy Bronsink, an artist and pastor seeking the way of Jesus, and blogger, podcaster and activist Joshua Case, is designed to help you look at worship from a new perspective and to set the foundations for change. Not all healthy worship gatherings are organized as “emerging churches,” but the emerging design values of intention, transformation and participation are shared across the board. This course in designing worship keeps those values in mind. Whether you are starting a church or a new service, or you are ready to build these missional values into traditional worship gatherings, this course is for you.
Students will utilize skills from community organizing and design thinking to articulate their congregation’s hermeneutic and mission, and then design a four-week worship series in teams comprised of other students or artists in their congregation. Weekly written reflections will be based on assigned readings from ecclesiology, aesthetics, liturgical theology and contemplation. To model transformational worship, the course will be structured as a journey of spiritual formation for all participants. Like a mini-study leave, space will be created for participants to re-imagine/deconstruct/construct congregational and personal worship. In other words, it will be an interactive prayer.
The course begins Tuesday, November 16 at 7 p.m. EASTERN time with a conference call for all participants. Tuition is $249. For more information, please contact Rev. Gregg Carlson, CPR’s Director of Online Learning at gregg@progressiverenewal.org.
Exercises Worship Design Thinking
Here are some of the exercises in worship design thinking we discussed in our webinar tonight with the folk at NCLI.
Seek and Show:
1. In a large group, make an inventory of the songs, prayers, symbols,
artifacts, postures, spaces you’ve used for worship.
2. Then go on a scavenger hunt looking for new songs, postures,
places, artwork, stories, tools to use in worship.
3. How would you describe the dreams of God? Break your group into
teams of three to draw the gospel story like a movie story board.
4. Now take the list of traditional and emerging items and use them to
tell the gospel story
Ignatian Design:
1. Using lectio-divina and/or Ignatian prayer, have participants
engage the text with imagination.
2. Have them list images that come to mind
3. Then give those images to set designers, painters, and poets to
build a series or liturgical season.
For more info, make sure to email us for questions.
Josh
