Kat and Jim's wedding! Hooray!!

For those who don't know, my awesome sister Kat and her totally kewl husband Jim got married last Saturday, April 1. HT to Megan who took most of these photos.

What are ...

The Catholic League has called the (now cancelled) display of a 6 foot tall, naked Jesus made entirely of chocolate an "attack on Christian sensibilities"

What exactly *are* "Christian sensibilities"? Did Jesus have them?

The Alpha course

My computer's hard drive crashed, and they put a new one in it, and then *that* crashed, so now I ended up with a faster computer with more RAM and a bigger hard drive. Kewl.
But it's also pretty annoying, since I had to reinstall all my software, *uninstall* all the unbelievably annoying boomph they install at the factory, and generally tweak and fiddle to get it into the shape I like to have it in. but that's mostly done now, and I kinda like it, although I'm still having one issue that I sense is going to take more work than I want to give.

Anyway, I wanted to tell you about the Alpha course. It's a introductory course on christianity which lots of churches all over the world do. It originated at Holy Trinity Brompton, which I've been to! Lovely Megs grew up helping out on Alpha courses, and since we got married, I guess it was inevitable that I would end up attending at least one.

the way they work is thus: there is a meal, generally quite yummy, and everyone sits down and eats. And then everyone watches a video (or sometimes an actual live speaker) talk about that week's topic. And then we sit around the table and talk about the topic, or whatever else we may want to talk about. The leaders are trained to *not* preach or teach, but rather to encourage and facilitate questions and discussions, and in my experience they do rather well with that.

so I attended my first alpha course some 2 years ago. It was kind of a strange experience because I was going through the process of unbecoming a christian, and the alpha course is kind of intended to facilitate the opposite process. But it worked relatively well.

Now I find myself doing the course again. Meg got invited to be a conversation facilitator at one of the tables at the alpha course which is being run by Union Church, whose pastor, Renee, Meg has gotten to know lately. And the church offered to provide babysitting if I wanted to come, and I thought, ah well, why not.

So I went the first week, and as in the fist time I found Nicky Gumbel, the speaker on the videos, unbelievably annoying. he just constantly says these things that don't work for me at all.

And then I skipped week two for E's birthday. And then week three was the first week when there was actually discussion (that is, there is no discussion time the first week, for some odd reason). And again I found Nicky really obnoxious, and then I found myself at a table with 7 other Christians, and no other non christians, and I felt a bit surrounded, and just generally with low level psychological discomfort, and I said to myself "Why am I doing this?" Finding no good answer, I decided to stop.

But a guy at my table who I kind of connected with a little bit expressed disappointment at my imminent non-return. He said "It's going to be pretty boring without you!". And I said "Well, maybe you and the rest of the table, if you get too bored, can put your heads together and come up with an incentive to convince me to return" To which he replied "How about a six pack?" To which I replied ".... Let me think about it. Ok! Deal!"

So I attended again tonite, and again found Nicky obnoxious. He reminds me of a slick car salesman. Tonite he talked about how there's no catch to Christianity--it's a free gift. That is such a half truth. yes, it's true, but it's only half the truth. The other half is that one is required to take up one's Roman death by torture device and follow me. One is required to lose one's life to find it. One is required to undergo the chastening promised to every son. Etc. etc. etc. There's no catch, except this one freaking enormous catch. Nicky generally absolutely refuses to talk about the dark side of Christianity, and I find this amazingly unpleasant.

But the discussion around the table tonite was a bit better. Nicky talked about how one of the ways one knows that one is a Christian is "The Holy Spirit's witness", included in which, he said, are the "fruit of the spirit: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, faithfulness, kindness, goodness, self control". So I asked my fellow diners if they thought there was any evidence that Christians possessed these items, on average, to a greater degree than non christians. And they more or less agreed that that wasn't really the case (emphasis on "more or less" here)

Anyway, I guess I've carried on at some length.

I think I shall continue to post each week about this course.

Unfortunately, the six pack didn't show up tonite. But my friend says he owes it to me and will make good on it shortly.

update on wayne and calvary fellowship mountlake terrace

Two weeks ago I posted here about my experience with a charity working party from Calvary Fellowship Mountlake Terrace and Pastor Wayne. In that post, I complained a little about ... proselytization by Wayne.
So I wanted to continue the story. Helen at CatE suggested emailing Wayne and just letting him know that I had felt a little uncomfortable with his multiple invitations to his church in spite of my repeated rebuttals. So I did. And then a very strange thing happened. Wayne emailed back this totally normal, humble reply in which he apologized. I was kind of astounded, as most of my experience with "Christian leaders" has been that they aren't about to apologize for coming on too strongly. Thankyou Wayne. You rock.
So as it turns out, my best friend Walter, who originally invited me to the work party, also invited me to go with him and his wife to the Christmas Eve service at Calvary Fellowship. And since I didn't really have any better options, being home alone and all, I decided to go. Just kind of a way of staying out of trouble, if nothing else...although that doesn't really work, since I generally don't like the tenor of my own thoughts when I am sitting in a Sunday Morning Church® service, which this more or less was.
There was, however, an incident which made me like Wayne even more. Before the service, I went up to say "Hey". And he said "Hey", and "How's it going--good to see you again." And I said "fairly ######--my wife and children are on a beach in Port Macquarie right now, while I rot in this dark cold raining lonely hell". So anyway, a man and a lady came up to us, and Wayne knew the man, and he asked him "So, is this your mother?" And the man said "nope, it's my girlfriend". Oops. So after they moved on, I told Wayne how that had happened to me at Megan's cousin's wedding, when I turned around and asked Aunt Meredith (who is, by the way, one of the most delightful people I've ever met) if John, who is actually her brother, and who was sitting next to her, was her son? Like "So is John your son?" Oops. Poor Megan turned six shades of pink. And then I told Wayne how I had gone afterwards and apologized, and lovely Meredith had been fine with it. And here's the kewlest thing. Wayne picked right up on that, which I hadn't at all intended, and he said "That's a great idea--I'm going to go apologize right now." Very kewl.

Alas, I should have known better about going to the Christmas Eve service. As is usual, my thoughts were mostly negative and confused. Some things that bothered/confused me:

1. They sang a bunch of Christmas carols with lyrics that just didn't work for me. The lyrics talked about Jesus being the savior, his glory over the whole earth, his causing oppresion to end, the wonder and beauty of experiencing his love and joy all around the world, and so forth. You know--typical Christmas hymns. Meanwhile, I was sitting there thinking that 25000 children will die today from starvation. Most of the people sitting in that service probably spent upwards of $1000 on Christmas presents, which would buy ... for instance, needed antiretroviral medications for 17 HIV positive children in the developing world for all of next year. Where is all the love, joy, peace, salvation, glory, etc which Jesus is supposed to have brought? When millions (yes, millions!) of children have HIV/AIDS? When 25000 children die every day from starvation? When armed conflict is the modus operandi of international relations? When .... well, clearly I could go on. Name your poison. I tend to always experience this oversized disconnect when I sit in Sunday Morning Church® services. It's a big part of why I almost never go to them anymore. Pastor Wayne asked god to bless and protect us as we do our family celebrations and partake of our feasts tomorrow. Mainstream christianity is no longer counter cultural--it's become this completey bastardized mezcla of Jesus/the gospels/the bible and typical culture within our country--so that it is fairly easy to be a christian and pursue the "American Dream", which of course, implies the "Developing World Nightmare".
stepping off soap box now. See. This is why I just shouldn't (there I go, shoulding on myself) attend Sunday Morning Church® services. It accomplishes nothing good, and actually creates a lot of negative vibes.

monkfish, calvary fellowship, and HHJJ

(a monkfish)
I had a lovely time at ThursdayPM/Monkfish Abbey. I felt very … safe, and understood, and … familiar. Brilliant. Like the fact that such a time/place exists makes me lean toward believing in god and that she loves me.

(Calvary)

On the other hand … I’ve made a committment to do something service oriented every week for these 7 weeks while my family is gone–kind of an attempt on my part to stay out of trouble. So today I went with my excellent friend Walter to help out at the monthly … thing where guys from the church get together and go out and do service for people in the community. Oh–it’s a thing that they do at Calvary Fellowship in Mountlake Terrace.

I almost cried when Andy told us about the family we were going to help today–they have a one year old who has cancer. So about 10 of us went over to their house and just did a bunch of odd things that needed doing to try to help out. It was fun kind of working and talking with the guys.

The senior pastor, Wayne, was along, and he was a reaonably kewl guy, but he did try at least 4 times in our conversation to convince me to come to some event at their church. So that didn’t feel very … excellent. I find it especially … unfortunate since just now looking up their web site I see they have this almost at the top of their main page

Secondly, by being friendly, but without being annoyingly aggressive. Some people want to check out a church without being “cornered”, and we respect that.

I didn’t even want to check out their church–I said right up front “I don’t go to church”. Now I feel like maybe I was somehow wrongly taking advantage of the opportunity they provided for me to fulfill my service task for this week while failing to allow for the implied associated … aggresive invitations. Or maybe I’m excessively sensitive. Hmmmm….

(some) christians make me nervous. Like again, on Calvary Fellowship web site, in the “our purpose” section, right at the top they say

Our purpose at Calvary Fellowship is to glorify God by pointing people to Jesus Christ, Who alone is sufficient for our every need.

Now not only is it monga wierd to capitilize pronouns referring to god, it also strikes me as very very strange to say of anything or anyone “who alone is sufficient for every need”. What does that mean exaclty? Because it seems to me that in order to say something like that, you either have to seriously wrest the word “sufficient”, or else you have to be brain dead (I mean as in a human vegetable–oh dear–I don’t mean to be crude–Eliza could help me out here–I mean literally completely cut off from almost all sensory experience or even consciousness) so you don’t see or feel the gargantuan enormitude of the need.
(I seem to have climbed onto a soap box. I’m stepping down now)

I think this might be related to HHJJ…

"what do I want?"

So I came to understand something about myself this weekend. I went to the OM Ships alumni reunion here in Seattle this weekend. There were perhaps 30 people there who had all served as volunteers at some point in the past 40 years on board OM ships. For those of you who don't know, back when I was generally over 50% Christian, I spent 2 years (1998-2000) working as a volunteer on board MV Logos II, a ship with an all volunteer crew of 200 people from 40 different nations. The experience was a lot like any human experience--that is to say, a combination of the good, the bad, and the ugly.

This morning after breakfast Myles (who, by the way, is another one of the people who has on a couple of occasions has created that lovely space that I spoke of in the George Macdonald post) invited us all to share one or two memories from our time on board the ship. The first two people who spoke shared these lovely, uplifting, encouraging, hopeful memories. I was sitting there trying to decide wether I should A. get up and leave or B. Say something quick. This was because my two strongest memories from LOGOS II are from just before my wife (then girlfriend) Megan and I were rudely and painfully kicked off (read: excommunicated) the ship and sent "home" (whatever the hell that meant at that point). In other words, my prominent memories were (still, after 6 years!) pretty freaking painful and negative. And with my overwhelming horror at fakeness and pictures of reality that are massively tilted towards the positvie etc. (read happy happy joy joy "Jesus took my burdens and he rolled them in the sea, never to remember anymore"), I wasn't coping very well with the idea of sitting there listening to another 10 or 12 or 15 people in a row share their happy happy joy joy memories. Well, gracious Myles noticed my agitation and graciously and very gently urged me to share. So I did--I told them the story. And they responded very graciously, mostly by other people getting up and sharing some of their painful memories and "thankyou, Benjamin, because I wasn't gonna say anything" and from the leaders of the alumni organization "Thankyou, Benjamin, because this is what we were hoping these reunions would be like", and so forth.

However, the second person who responded to me said "so what can we do for you, Benjamin--what are you looking for from us?". To which I responded, at that time, "I'm not looking for anything--I just can't stand unbalanced views of reality.". But afterwards I realized that I was looking for something from them, and what's more, I actually received what I was looking for. And it was that *they* honestly share their stories with me.
This was a lovely realization. My overwhelming dislike of happy happy joy joy is rootedly connected with my enormous need for REAL connection with other people. And when I am in a social setting and feeling (as I *often* do) like I can't stand another minute of all the fakeness and superficiality and positivity, this isn't just a negative/dislike thing, it's a reflection of a hugish desire for a good/like thing. That's me.