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Name: larry
Country: United States
State: Massachusetts
Interests: Sending jokes to Zach. Being nosey. Walking Brewster. Music.
Expertise: Being proud of my kids. It's a tough job, but someone's gotta do it.
Occupation: Research and development
Industry: Research
Message: message meEmail: email me
Website: visit my website
Member Since:
1/19/2002
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| For reasons unknown, someone asked me to do a "ministry moment" at church last week. I was to represent the music ministry. Here's what I told them:
I'm not sure how I got asked to do a ministry moment on music. Presumably it relates to the fact that I'm one of the guys in the choir. I pretty much have been that, a guy in the choir, most of my life, and most of the time I've been here. This year I expanded my identity and am now also a guy in the bell choir. So, how did I get here? It pretty much goes back to high school. I was having some kind of discussion with my minister at the time (I grew up Presbyterian, so didn't find out that we are all ministers, presided over by a pastor, until I got here). Like most young people, I was a questioning and cantankerous sort. Somewhere during the discussion, I said I doubted that I believed "all of this stuff". It's probably fair to say that at the time, I believed "some of this stuff", but I just wasn't going to swallow "all of it". He seemed unperturbed. He merely said, "just sit in the choir and it will all come to you one day". When I think of this now, I am reminded of the amazing gospel song by the Harmonizing Four, Farther Along. I'm sure other folks have done this song too, but it's their version I know. I'll spare you my singing of it, in part because I don't have the mellifluous bass of Jimmy Jones, and in part because I haven't prepared my choir mates as a doo wop back up. Whatever, these words come to me:
Farther along we’ll know all about it,
Farther along we’ll understand why;
Cheer up my brother, live in the sunshine,
We’ll understand it all by and by.
So here I sit, year after year, waiting faithfully to "understand it all by and by". So far, the wait hasn't been so bad. One of the things I've learned from my time of being a guy in the choir is that your brain functions differently when you sing. You can make sense out of some of the things you sing about that don't necessarily make all that much sense when you rely solely on your intellect. I think of this as opening up a more direct channel to the divine. That's pretty cool! There are other benefits to being a guy in the choir. In addition to getting the buzz, which comes from the aforementioned opening up the channel to the divine, the shared fellowship is amazing. One of the reasons I joined with the bells this year is that I could see how much fun they had together. I wanted to have that kind of fun too. Perhaps kind of selfish of me, but I hope it hasn't hurt the group too much. They tell me that they hadn't heard a Bb or a C in rehearsal for several years. So even though vaguely inept—there are times when the Bb and C still don't sound—, I appear to be contributing in a way. So, in a way, I am giving, not just getting Many of us grew up with what one might term a "consumerist view" of the church. We come to sit quietly and let the minister or priest or pastor do the worship. We are spectators in worship, kind of like going to a football game or movie. After a while, this likely becomes unsatisfying. But now we are moving away from this to a more participatory view. We don't consume or spectate the practice of religion we participate in it. In essence, all us guys and gals in the choir are working in a shared ministry. This is a ministry to ourselves, to each other, and also to you all. It's the old Paul thing, we have many parts but are all one body. This is not just a choir thing, but a church thing. Some of us sing and some of us bake; some of us arrange flowers and some of us wipe runny noses; some of us visit the sick and some of us built pageant sets. But we are all necessary parts of the whole. Just like you can't have a complete body without hands and feet, eyes and ears, fingers and toes, mouths and minds, you can't have a complete church without all the various ministries—baking, wiping, arranging, visiting, singing, sewing, building, etc.—, ministries that we all mutually share with each other. So, while I'm here technically to encourage you all to throw your hats in with the music ministry—hey, we have no cuts, not such a bad deal—, I'm also here to urge you all to engage in any of our enticing ministries. My guess is that the practice of doing pretty much anything in concert with the other people of God, i.e. being one of the innumerable, essential parts of the body of Christ, will open up new channels of communication between you and the divine. I'm willing to bet that you will find that is pretty cool.
Oh, and here's Jimmy Jones and the Harmonizing Four with Farther Along. Posted via email from Slothoughts Hypolite | | |
|  “spiritual shortcuts” from nakedpastor Posted via web from Slothoughts Hypolite | | |
| That's the prescription we have been given for swine flu, or as we now like to call it, so as not to offend the sensibilities of our porcine brothers and sisters, H1N1. Of course what we were really told was to wash our hands endlessly, for a full 20 seconds at a time. If you actually look at a watch for 20 seconds, you'll see that is a rather long time. So long, in fact, that you can't even come close to guessing it. Thus, you need to find something to say or do while you're washing your hands all that time. Something that takes a full 20 seconds to say or do. That something turns out to be two complete Hail Marys. Now, given that I was born and bred a Protestant, one of the more liberal Protestant denominations actually (née UPC USA; currently UCC), how would I know about Hail Marys? Well, it seems that when I was in 7th or 8th grade, I used to listen to the radio a lot. I had rather a good one, a Hammarlund HQ100 A. I liked changing stations on both AM and shortwave to see what I could find. I would listen to stations from Buffalo, Nashville, Cleveland, Boston, Toronto, Moscow, Quito. You name it, I probably heard it at one time or another. One day, I chanced upon a group reciting the rosary. Over and over again they chanted: Hail Mary, full of grace,
the Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou among women.
Blessed is the fruit of thy womb,
Jesus Christ, Our Lord. Holy Mary, mother of God,
Pray for us sinners,
Now and at the hour of our death.
Amen. I may have this a bit wrong. Seventh or eighth grade was a long time ago. Whatever, when I started washing my hands, and looking at my watch to see if I'd done it for twenty seconds, those words from long ago popped into my head. I discovered that, when said at a measured pace, two full Hail Marys, at least as I had remembered them, took up twenty seconds. So that's how we combat swine flu H1N1: we spend quality time at the sink saying our Hail Marys. The Pope would be proud of me. Posted via email from Slothoughts Hypolite | | |
| I said something in my class a couple of weeks ago about visiting a Buddhist temple in Wakefield along with a comment on the art. That was a mistake, of sorts, in that my teacher, Catherine, then wanted me to post a link or two (which means work for me). Anyway, my friend, Roy, has a flickr page where he has posted photos of some of the art work. His photo stream has a picture of the dharma hall with the hanging lotus lanterns.
Every year, they tear down and remake all these lanterns. My attempts at paper art never got past folding origami cranes, so I found the description of the lantern making process quite fascinating. Roy blogged the process in steps: one, two, three, four. Posted via email from Slothoughts Hypolite | | |
| Some of the better off people in my neighborhood, like the guy who appears in a popular public TV production (and the hottie across and slightly down the street from him), can afford to hire "landscapers" to take care of their yards. Thus on a regular basis, Brewster and I, who spend quite a bit of time walking around the neighborhood, checking out the sights and smells, see platoons of little brown people scurrying around these people's lawns.
Yes, I know that sounds a bit racist. I also know that I have a son who has worked as a landscaper, so the stereotype isn't completely true. None-the-less, the vast majority of landscapers in my neighborhood are somewhat more swarthy than your average Anglo Saxon person, whose family has lived in the U.S. for half a dozen generations...or more. As nearly as I can tell, they aren't speaking English to each other either. I have no problem with that. That's just how things are in the suburbs north of Boston.
So it was quite interesting to me when YSOP assigned my mission trip group to be a landscape crew one day. After a long subway ride out from the center of Washington, D.C., and a bit of a walk, we found ourselves in front of a building managed by Mr. Barry. He has a last name, but I forget it. He likes to be called Barry, but, given that he's clearly the boss of his domain, he is "Mr. Barry" to us lesser folks.
Mr. Barry manages a transition home, Milestone Place, housing about 35 people for an organization called Community Family Life Service. He is quite strict with them: no loud noise; no drugs; no alcohol; no overnight visitors; clean up after yourself in common areas; etc. Mr. Barry doesn't take crap from anyone. If you leave your dirty dishes in the sink, figuring you'll do them later, you'll find them in the dumpster.
But, Mr. Barry had a problem. He doesn't have much of a budget for upkeep. If you don't keep a place up, the tenants soon get slack and things go to the dogs...so to speak. Mr. Barry, however, is a very smart man. He has found a solution to his problem: volunteers.
Yup, Mr. Barry gets volunteers to come out to his place and do maintenance of various sorts. Sometimes it's painting, sometimes repair, sometimes cleaning. For my group, mostly teenage girls, we were to do "yard work". We began with mowing the lawn and trimming the edges. We also did quite a bit of weeding and some general trash pick up in the parking lot. As I was pushing the lawn mower around, I suddenly realized how smart Mr. Barry was. Whereas my neighbors, like the public TV personality (and the hottie across and slightly down the street from him), have to pay good money to get little brown people to keep up their yards, Mr. Barry can get a platoon of little white people to keep up his yard for free.
He had something over 1700 volunteers last year, and expects to have even more this coming year to keep things neat and tidy for him. Don't take my word for it. Go visit Mr. Barry. You'll see a picture of the girls and me on his wall, along with pictures of the other several thousand volunteers he's had work for him over the past few years. Just don't forget to bring a rake, broom, or paint brush with you. Posted via email from Slothoughts Hypolite | | |
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