[Editor's note: Endnotes did not appear in the January 2009 Herald]
February 2009 Endnotes
Occam’s Ministry Plan
Perhaps you’ve heard somebody refer to “Occam’s Razor” and had no idea what they were talking about. That’s perfectly all right; they probably were just trying to impress you anyway. It has nothing to do with straight razors or shaving of any kind, by the way. Thankfully, Wikipedia is just a click away. Allow me to borrow and paraphrase a bit:
Occam’s razor (sometimes spelled Ockham’s razor) is a principle attributed to the 14th-century English logician and Franciscan friar, William of Ockham. The principle states that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory. This is often paraphrased as “All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best.”
Even that seems a bit wordy, so let me update it: Keep it simple, stupid!
Why bring this up? If you’re reading this magazine, you probably have more than passing interest in the Community of Christ and would like the church (individuals, congregations, mission centers, national churches, and mission fields) not only to survive, but thrive. Of course, that means starting with a plan. Actually, the word is plans—to organize, quantify, minister, grow, disciple, evaluate, and define (beliefs, priesthood roles, and all the other rules by which we operate).
I think we do a pretty good job developing plans. If you want more people in church school and worship on Sunday—start with a plan. If you want to bring more people to Jesus and baptize them—start with a plan. If you want to get your personal finances or your congregational financial balance sheet in order—start with a plan. If you want to develop a more-disciplined spiritual life—start with a plan. I could go on, but by now you get the point.
Now don’t get me wrong—I’m 100 percent for developing a sound, well-thought-out plan. But here’s where William of Ockham comes in. My dad built houses as a sideline most of his life, and growing up I spent many a summer helping him. He was the first to teach me the old carpenter’s adage, “Measure twice, cut once.” I still follow that anytime I find myself near a saw; it’s a rule that has served me and countless others well.
I wonder sometimes if we in the church take that carpenter’s adage a little too much to heart when we’re developing plans, though. Maybe it’s because we’re ultimately doing this for God that we want those plans to be as good as they possibly can be. As a result sometimes we not only “measure twice” but keep on measuring until they’re perfect. Here’s another adage worth remembering: “Only Jesus is perfect.”
The most perfect ministerial plan in the world, never begun, won’t be nearly as successful as a less-than-perfect one that is. I hope you’ll keep that in mind later this month when Lent begins. For years I’ve been telling myself I need to be more disciplined with my spiritual life, but I never quite get around to doing much about it. This could be the year.
—Richard A. Brown
End Quote
“How soon ‘not now’ becomes never.” —Martin Luther
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March 2009 Endnotes
The Spirit Is A-Blowin’
Every so often something pops into my in-box that piques my curiosity. Take the photo on this page, for example. It’s of a singing group called C-5 from the Carthage, Missouri, Community of Christ congregation. Patricia Sacry, the group’s director, sent the photo to me, along with a short explanation. Her congregation is supporting the youth choir as a way to focus on evangelistic outreach and inward spiritual development.
“My hope as their director,” she wrote, “is that the children will gain confidence and experience, as well as develop their talents, so that they might learn to minister to others comfortably. Their enthusiasm is contagious! They will succeed!”
Usually, items like this end up in “Snapshots & Snippets.” But I noticed Patricia had included short comments from her daughters. Ten-year-old Isabella wrote: “My family was inspired to start C-5 because we love music and because we think it is healing. When we began, several of the kids in our church said, ‘How about going to nursing homes, hospitals, singing at the Christmas parade, or stuff like that?’…I will always want to help build God’s kingdom and delight him with my voice.”
Added Gwyneth, her eight-year-old sister: “I love to sing and so I love C-5 a lot. I love to sing to people and make them happy. C-5 stands for Community of Christ Carthage Children’s Choir. Gerald Henning is our pastor, and our mascot is a lion named Gerald. I like to make people happy!”
Where do people get ideas like this? I’m pretty sure directives don’t arrive from International Headquarters here in Independence, Missouri. Of course, that’s not to say good stuff doesn’t come from here. It does. For example, check what the First Presidency has to say on page 16 of this issue, introducing We Share: Identity, Mission, Message, and Beliefs. That lengthy document, created and refined by lots of serious thinkers in the church, expresses who we are and who we are becoming (see it at www.CofChrist.org/discernment/weshare/).
I suspect, though, that long theological documents on their own don’t move families to start singing groups so they can share their love of Jesus in nursing homes and hospitals. The same is true for what is happening in other congregations (for starters, peek at the four Living Discipleship features beginning on page 17). Twenty years of editing Daily Bread taught me this: The Holy Spirit is alive and on the move. Just look around—and open your spiritual eyes.
This is not to say that “all is well” everywhere in the church. There’s struggle and pain and hard times all around. Yet I find it interesting that it’s often our children who ask questions like “Why don’t we start a kid’s choir to sing in nursing homes?” or “Why is that sad man standing on the corner holding a sign?” Other times it’s adults deciding their life is perhaps just too comfortable.
Yes, the Spirit is a-blowin’. And I would love to hear how that’s happening to you—so others can read about it here, too.
—Richard A. Brown
End Quote
“The wisest mind has something yet to learn.” —George Santayana
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April 2009 Endnotes
What’s Goin’ On
My earliest church memories include sitting in uncomfortable wooden pews in a little white-frame church a block off Main Street in my hometown. On one side of the rostrum area was a wooden rack that held movable numbers signifying the hymns to be sung during the worship service. Underneath those numbers were two additional lines for the previous week’s attendance and offering total.
You don’t see those wooden racks much anymore, at least not in newer church buildings. In part, I suppose, it’s because most congregations print a weekly bulletin. The growing use of praise music may have something to do with it, too, although large video screens actually may serve a similar function by presenting all the lyrics to songs.
I have a pet theory about those old wooden racks: We church people like to know what’s about to happen as well as what’s already taken place. Expand that theory out from hymn numbers, attendance figures, and offering totals, and maybe it helps explain why we spend considerable time and effort developing vision statements while studying church history.
Over the past couple of decades I’ve benefited from attending history conferences and theology forums. We in Community of Christ are part of a truly fascinating religious tradition. I’ve learned a lot by hanging out with all sorts of Latter Day Saints (the varieties are truly amazing). It was kind of special just to be crammed into the upper room of the reconstructed Red Brick Store in Nauvoo, Illinois, for a John Whitmer Historical Association panel discussion on the importance of the original store back in the 1840s.
Certainly one of my most unique experiences was a bus trip into the mountains above St. George, Utah, at a Mormon History Association conference back in the nineties. We toured Hildale, Utah, one of the two polygamous communities on the Utah/Arizona state line, and sat in the large tabernacle there as FLDS representatives shared their stories. This, of course, was a few years before that group established a colony in Texas and—well, you perhaps know how that turned out.
Opportunities to ponder where we’ve been as a faith community—especially with folks who are similar but different—don’t come around every day. On the weekend of April 17–19, though, one such chance will take place on the Independence, Missouri, campus of Graceland University: the second-annual Restoration Studies Symposium. And while no bus tours of polygamous communities are scheduled, the approximately twenty sessions planned should bring something of interest
The symposium will start Friday evening with the annual Wallace B. Smith Lecture, given this year by President Steve Veazey, who will speak on his experiences with Section 163. Keep in mind, the church doesn’t sponsor this symposium; rather, it’s a joint effort by Community of Christ Seminary, JWHA, and the Sunstone Education Foundation. Just consider it a twenty-first-century equivalent to a hymn-number rack on the wall.
—Richard A. Brown
End Quote
“We can complain that rose bushes have thorns, or we can rejoice that thorn bushes have roses.” —Abraham Lincoln
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May 2009 Endnotes
Shoveling Stuff
This March I spent an entire weekend catching up with long-overdue yard work around my house. Converting a covered deck into a new sewing room had left half of the back and front yards as bare dirt. Well, not exactly bare—I soon discovered chunks of concrete, pieces of lumber, and other construction debris scattered below and above ground. A front-loader and many trucks had left a well-beaten path from the street in front to the back, mocking my supposed reputation as a conscientious homeowner.
After fifty feet of raised flowerbed had been created around the new outside walls, the yard tilled and leveled, and fertilizer and grass seed scattered, I realized a lilac bush needed to be transplanted. Construction workers had damaged a few branches, but it was beginning to leaf out. I soon discovered, though, the lilac bush didn’t want to go. And so I dug and dug and sweated and, yes, muttered something about roots being excessively attached to their surroundings. My long-handled shovel scooped out more and more dirt, gradually piercing what appeared to be an enormous tap root.
Amid my increasingly futile efforts it happened: The shovel’s wooden handle split. It didn’t snap in two, but the resulting five-inch-long crack halted my project. I retrieved a spade from the garage and finished. But the sight of my long-handled shovel, its steel blade worn by decades of use, created an unexpected pang of sadness. Even though later that day I “fixed” it with wood glue and duct tape, I knew it would never be the same. Eventually I’ll have to replace the handle or the whole thing.
This isn’t about the shovel, of course. My sadness comes from having inherited it from my dad’s workshop after his death twenty-seven years ago. Sure, I’ve known I would have to replace that shovel someday, just as I’ve done with other tools I acquired from him. I suspect the wheelbarrow will be next. But now there is one less connection.
My two kids never knew him. Dad’s heart attack came just two days after the Easter Sunday my then-infant son was blessed. My daughter came along three years later. I think he would have made a pretty good grandpa to them. But that’s just speculation.
Sure, a shovel is just a shovel. It’s a tool for digging, and to invest it with more than that borders on futility or silliness. I don’t need a shovel to remember my father, but still it’s good to hold the same tools he held.
The standard advice I’d give at a time like this is “Life goes on; get over it.” Life is filled with stubborn lilac plants and pesky chunks of buried concrete. In the end it’s all just stuff. I have strong connections with the past (with or without shovels), and largely because of my kids I’m connected to the future. My wife and I are in-between, here in the present doing the best we can, keeping it all in perspective.
—Richard A. Brown
End Quote
“Who dares to teach must never cease to learn.” —John Cotton Dana
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June 2009 Endnotes
Plugging Along
I’d been keeping an eye on my pickup’s odometer for some time as it steadily inched toward 100,000. What is it about turning a nine into a zero that give us pause, whether it be mileage or birthdays?
On the one hand, I shouldn’t have that much to worry about with my 1997 truck. These little pickups, especially the Japanese ones, have a solid reputation for staying on the road longer than most cars the same age. Rust is sometimes a bigger worry than transmissions. And with the economy in the tank, there’s some comfort in not having to put “replace truck” at the top of my list of things that could happen at any moment.
Certainly, nothing magical happens when a vehicle odometer turns from 99,999 to 100,000. Maybe there’s just something hidden deeply in our DNA waiting to surface at times like this—a “worry gene.”
Birthdays with a zero have devastating effects on some folks. Part of it is just getting used to being in a new decade of life. It’s always the next decade that we think of as containing the “old folks”: We have met the geezers, and they are us!
The last time I experienced a zero-birthday I was more focused on other matters. About a week before I blew out those few candles symbolizing age fifty (well, who really needs a cake that big or to risk that much open flame indoors?) my name was put on a waiting list for a liver transplant. And so I was a bit more concerned with just making it to the next candlelit cake than dealing with the trauma of becoming a fifty-something.
There are distinct parallels between human bodies and vehicles. I change my pickup’s oil every 3,000 miles or so, give the tires the Lincoln-penny test now and then, routinely clean the blue-green crud off the battery posts, and keep a trusted mechanic’s phone number on speed dial. Every week I sit down at the kitchen table and fill a tray of pill cases with assorted medicines, vitamins, and minerals. Flipping through my day-planner, it sometimes looks like I have a doctor for nearly every body part.
But my truck and I just keep plugging along, kind of like the Timex watch I’ve been wearing so long I can’t remember when I got it. I’m pretty sure it was a gift from my immediate family (hey, what do you expect from someone my age). I’ve replaced the watchband at least three times and the battery even more, but the timepiece itself just won’t quit. One of my doctors told me a couple of months ago he used to have one just like it—back in the late eighties. Ouch. He might as well have asked if I was still into disco (by the way, I’m not, and never was).
Nines will keep turning into zeroes, whether it be trucks or people. It’s just as true of institutions. Next January, for example, this magazine will be 150 years old. The following April will mark the same number of years since the church was reorganized on its thirtieth birthday. We all just keep plugging along, don’t we.
—Richard A. Brown
End Quote
“The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.” —H.L. Mencken
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July 2009 Endnotes
The Noonday Demon
Sloth. An ugly word, even without noting it’s been one of the Seven Deadly Sins (with gluttony, lust, greed, wrath, envy, and pride) since the Middle Ages. It’s come to mean laziness—mental and spiritual, but especially physical.
In the fifth century the influential monk, John Cassian, called those seven sins “hiding places” and “caves” of the heart. It’s as if they were inside us all, from birth, waiting to bubble up as actions to be repressed but unfortunately never to be erased until some future Judgment Day—and maybe not then.
In the centuries before Pope Gregory the Great codified those seven words as acts of sin, religious folk offered a different perspective. Monastics, scattered throughout the arid regions of North Africa and the Middle East (known as desert fathers and mothers, or abbas and ammas) developed a similar list: the Eight Bad Thoughts. The abbas and ammas considered them to be like “demons” hovering around them, ready to turn believers from their path of discipleship. One of those desert abbas, Evagrius, described those “bad thoughts” as raindrops that could—and should—be shaken from the surface of the soul.
Sloth was on the list of eight, too. Known by its Latin name, acedia, it referred chiefly to spiritual apathy or dullness, an inability to care—something akin to what today’s parents of adolescents recognize in the all-too-familiar response: “Whatever.”
Acedia came to be known almost universally as the “noonday demon,” because it often showed up, unannounced, as a monk was toiling at regular menial tasks in the middle of the day. It’s not hard to imagine an abba or amma, with the hot sun beating down as the day slowly stretched out, thinking something like, “What am I doing here?” or “What’s the point of all this?” or maybe just “How much longer before I can stop for dinner?”
I’ve been reading Kathleen Norris’s latest book, Acedia & Me, a reflective journal on how the noonday demon has been an unwelcome companion much of her life. You may know her from previous best-selling books, The Cloister Walk and Amazing Grace. Norris is certainly not a physically lazy person. Laziness is not a trait I associate with the harshness of life on the high prairies of western South Dakota. On the other hand, one doesn’t necessarily have to live in such a severe setting to be plagued with a deep, weighty soul-weariness.
Acedia is an unfamiliar term today. We toss around related ones often, such as depression, boredom, and ennui. But those are clinical and medical terms rather than spiritual ones. We religiously oriented folk might gain some value in rediscovering this “bad thought” known as acedia, especially in relation to “church work.”
At least some of what happens in our congregations can be described charitably as “regular” or “routine,” and perhaps less kindly as “tedious” and “rote.” I admit to having thoughts, from time to time as I sit in a worship service or class, similar to what those desert abbas and ammas felt under the noonday sun. Maybe you have, too.
Theologians and church historians are more qualified to say if it was a mistake for the Eight Bad Thoughts to be codified as Seven Deadly Sins. Yet I don’t think we need be held accountable for thoughts (good, bad, or neutral) that pop into our brains. Acts of sin—well, that’s another matter.
What is far more important is what we do about those thoughts, and here the abbas and ammas have something to teach us. They believed the only way to counter bad thoughts was with “spiritual discipline.” There are the classic ones: prayer, scripture reading, journaling, meditation. But it takes spiritual discipline, too, to serve the poor, feed the hungry, house the homeless, or advocate for justice. Twenty-first-century abbas and ammas should expect the noonday demon to come visiting. We don’t have to be welcoming.
—Richard A. Brown
End Quote
“The malice of Sloth lies not merely in the neglect of duty (though that can be a symptom of it) but in the refusal of joy. It is allied to despair.” —Evelyn Waugh
