seduced

I can feel my brain being spun into goo in these last few days before Thanksgiving break. Fortunately, school has slowed down somewhat. Professors are smart people and realize that we are not at all present when a break is this close. Besides the molasses brain, this week has been pretty great. Peter and I have been talking a lot about experience and how our noses stuck inside books all the time is important but it does not make us very engaging people. Experience was the name of the game this week, and I have had quite a few meaningful ones. I made a connection with a progressive pastor last Sunday during phonathon. We'll hopefully be getting together to gush about Borg and revel in inclusivity and wide and deep grace and liberation against the grain of ultra rigid confessionalism and cheap grace when he comes for a kairos conference in December (plus he donated $50 which is a plus. ) I've spent long hours in conversation with LSS about our partnership and have been working hard on the giving tree program. Pip and I had a date, and I spent more time than ever getting to know other students during dinner. And wouldn't you know it, I have actually stayed up to date with school work. I am finally beginning to be able to balance school and still live like a real person.

Perhaps the most amazing experience I had all week was at church today. At the FTE conference on economic justice in June, my Episcopal friend told me the story of a friend of his who had recently become Episcopal. He spoke of how his friend originally hated saying the creed and the other parts of the liturgy during church because he didn't whole heartedly believe it. He felt as though he was lying. But in following months he came to find the liturgy to be very moving and even central to his faith. In a conversation over coffee he told my friend from the conference that he had been "seduced" by the liturgy. Though, he still did not believe factually in everything that the creed and liturgy said, the words became a part of his faith-a part of his being. Participation in the practices where we meet God propels us into God's activity in the world. God, that tricky coyote (read Asphalt Jesus by Eric Elnes), seduces us, causes us to fall in love with God and with meeting God through participation. This was made so clear to me at church today. The actual service at Jacob's Well was fine and dandy, a surprisingly normal stewardship service, but after the worship time we stuck around. Our conversations with people after the service made us feel more a part of that community than we ever have before. God began to seduce us into God's fold at JW. Then I went to Swahili church where my close friend Pastor Herb Hafferman was delivering the maneno. Hearing the service in Swahili and taking communion in the name of Baba yetu, na Bwana Yesu, na Roho Mtakatifu drew me into a place where I haven't been for a year. I experienced church and God so profoundly though that experience, and so did Peter and Steve. We hope to make it back to Swahili church once every month now. God is one fine seductress.