Connecting to others in a parish

Parishes offer mass.  How good are they at offering social fulfillment?

Circles of Friendship

 An interesting review by David Brooks of a new book by Robin Dunbar called

 

Friends: Understanding the Power of our most Important Relationships

No need to read the review if you don't have access to it. Its title is somewhat misleading. The italics below give the message

The Secrets of Lasting Friendships

If the author’s name means something to you, it’s probably because of Dunbar’s number. This is his finding that the maximum number of meaningful relationships most people can have is somewhere around 150. How many people are invited to the average American wedding? About 150. How many people are on an average British Christmas card list? About 150. How many people were there in early human hunter-gatherer communities? About 150.

I bought the Kindle Edition of the book but have not yet finished reading it. However. the chart that I have made summarizes the basic data and argument. The number of our "friends" i.e., our most important relationships, is limited by the capacity of our brains, and by the amount of time that we have available. The theoretical argument is that our brains evolved to handle social relationships. While most of our time is spent in work, i.e. hunting, gathering, farming, we are more than economic animals pursuing subsistence on our own, we are social animals that evolved to live in groups of 150 people. 

Eagle Scout Court of Honor

Today I attended a ceremony which I had never witnessed before: a young man from our parish became an Eagle Scout.

Peace be with you

 This is my homily for today, the Second Sunday of Easter.  The readings for today are here.

Confirmation Saints

This has been a Confirmation weekend.  We attended our oldest granddaughter's confirmation on Friday evening. Stayed overnight at our oldest son and daughter-in-law's house, and came home Saturday morning. Scary drive in a horrible windstorm, but made it okay. Then our parish had its Confirmation Saturday evening.  

It's always interesting to look at the program hand-outs and read what saint names the kids chose.  In both parishes they were 8th graders, which would be 13 and 14 year olds. 

Challenges and Opportunities of Livestreaming & Recording Liturgies

The Pandemic has brought livestreaming and recording of Masses to many of our parishes. Over the course of the pandemic, I have noted improvements in the quality of video and audio from these efforts. The future of livestreaming for parish life remains to be seen. 

The Challenges and Opportunities of Livestreaming/Recoded Liturgies

1. My hunch is some parishes will take up these challenges and opportunities and become models and magnet parishes for outreach and evangelization.

2. These parishes will make livestream access to all parish liturgies a priority, i.e., all weekend liturgies, plus all baptisms, weddings and funerals, unless there is a good reason for keeping them low keyed and private.  Like with sports, emphasis on livestreaming not simply recording will be the key to engaging people.  

3. These parishes, like progressive Anglican communities today, will include the video audience in their greetings, make worship leaflets available for their participation, and design their websites as much for their virtual congregation as for their physical congregation. 

4. These parishes will prioritize video outreach to parish members that do not regularly attend services, encouraging them to attend through livestreaming. These will include not only the homebound for health and disability reasons, but also people with heavy work schedules, those who need to take care of others, etc. The parish will work with parents with young children to provide a variety of ways both at church and in the home to facilitate the participation in liturgical worship

5. Communion to those at home will become a normal part of worship, e.g., ministers to the homebound will be dismissed after communion to people who are watching by livestream. Or in some cases these ministers may join people at home for the entire Mass bringing the reserved Eucharist with them so that all would communicate during the livestreamed communion.

6. Worship would the most prominent aspect of a parish website with videos of current hymns playing on the homepage. The choir would be a support for the entire parish, including the virtual parish, by livestreaming and recording choir practices. Typically, our choir warms up by doing the responsorial psalms plus hymns for next weekend before working on new songs.  In one of our local parishes where the choir practices these before Mass, there was a parish outcry when the music director proposed the choir practice elsewhere. People liked to hear these as preparation for Mass

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For many years NPM had an interesting article by Bishop Untener of Saginaw on their website.  He died in 2004; the article has disappeared.  In his article he described videotaping live Masses and studying them with his fellow priests. His pioneering work is very relevant now that many parishes are livestreaming and recording Masses.  I have a copy of the article and have shortened it to focus upon the videotaping.

Ritual and Community: What I've Learned in the Parishes

The Exsultet

I went to the Easter Vigil Mass as just a member of the crowd this year, which was kind of nice. One of the other music groups  was singing.  It starts with the Easter fire being lit, and the Easter candle being lit from it. From there the servers light candles, and passed the flame to the people holding candles. And we kept them lit during the singing of the Exsultet.  

The Exsultet is supposed to be chanted by a deacon, or the priest if a deacon isn't  available.   It is three pages of words in the missalette, and is a daunting challenge.  We had an older deacon who was a good singer, and did an excellent job. But it had been several years since he was able, and unfortunately he passed away this fall. My husband isn't a singer. The priest isn't a singer. Both turned down the task. The younger deacon drew the short straw.  He is a a good singer, but struggled through it, because he got a lung full of incense smoke a few minutes prior.  We kept our candles lit during the duration, though I blew mine out because wax was dripping on my hand through the holder. Everyone was glad when the Exsultet was finally over.  My modest proposal; they should let the choir do the singing of  it, the shorter  bracketted part, accompanied by soft keyboard or guitar chords. The chords would help with keeping time and staying on pitch. Probably not liturically correct, but less of a struggle.

Good Friday homily

 I gave this homily Friday night.  I know I'm a bit tardy in posting it, but it's only during this afternoon that I've been able to come up for air during this busiest church season.   

I should also provide a bit of prefatory explanation: in recent years I've presided at the Good Friday evening liturgy at our parish.  This is not necessarily how Rome envisions it (the rubrics for that celebration say something along the lines of, 'It's especially fitting that a priest celebrate Good Friday') but it's fairly common around here to have a deacon lead Good Friday service.  The reasoning is (a) there is no confection of the Eucharist on Good Friday, so a priest isn't 'necessary'; and (b) there is only one priest at our parish, and he appreciates the break, at least for one liturgy, from celebrating and preaching during this time when so many high holy days are clustered together. 

At any rate, here is the homily.  Sometimes, the text of what I preach comes to me easily.  This was not one of those times.  

The Holy Thursday Revolution

  

Today I read an interesting article by a progressive spiritual writer named Diana Butler Bass. I subscribe to her weekly newsletter.  She articulates much of what I have sensed, but never fully perceived until she clarified it  -

https://tinyurl.com/2thzmzrh

Thus, on the night of the resurrection, Jesus showed up there. With his friends. At the scene of the Last Supper. On Easter, Jesus goes from the tomb back to the table.

If you are writing a play about this, the scenes would be table, trial (with its various locations), cross, tomb (burial), tomb (resurrection), and table. The table is the first setting, and it is the final setting of the story. Indeed, when the disciples want to meet Jesus again the next week, they return again to the upper room to meet him at the table.

They never return to the cross. Jesus never takes them back to the site of the execution. He never gathers his followers at Calvary, never points to the blood-stained hill, and never instructs them to meets him there. He never valorizes the events of Friday. He never mentions them. Yes, wounds remain, but how he got them isn’t mentioned. Instead, almost all the post-resurrection appearances — which are joyful and celebratory and conversational — take place at the upper room table or at other tables and meals.

Table - trial - cross - tomb/tomb - table.

What if the table is the point?

The Communion of Saints

 Check out this piece by church music composer, Dan Schutte:

The Communion of Saints | National Catholic Reporter (ncronline.org)

The short video featuring images of saints known and unknown is very inspirational and moving. Made me start my morning with a few tears in my eyes.

Luke's Passion Narrative

 I always find the similarities and differences which the four Gospel writers bring to the Passion narratives interesting.  On Palm Sunday it was from Luke, which is my favorite.  It is lengthy, but rich in details, some of which are missing from the other three accounts.

In the agony in the garden scene, the disciples fell asleep, and an angel came to comfort Jesus. We have all seen the picture of the angel holding Jesus, who is fainting and ghastly pale. Small-t tradition has it that the angel of the agony is Gabriel, who was present at the beginning of Jesus' earthly life, and is there at the end. Luke writes, "When he rose from prayer and returned to the disciples, he found them sleeping from grief."  Which gives them a little more credit than some commentaries do, saying that they were drunk or uncaring. As it is, the disciples do not come off looking very well in the passion accounts

Then there is the account of Peter whacking off the high priest's servant's ear. Luke is the only account which has Jesus healing the ear.  The servant is named as Malchus in John's gospel. But he is not named in Luke. I think the healing is in character with Jesus, and hope that was really how it happened.

All of the Gospels mention that Jesus was crucified between two criminals.  But Luke's is the only one who has one of them being repentant, and Jesus telling him, "This day you shall be with me in paradise."  I have read commentaries which said that Jesus knew the man was only repenting from fear, and would never be a disciple, but forgave him anyway, and promised him salvation. Another small-t tradition thing has the man's name as Dismas, and is named as the patron saint of incarcerated people and those faced with capital punishment.

Veronica is not in the scriptural accounts, but is considered one of the daughters of Jerusalem, which are mentioned.

One mysterious passage is this one, "...if these things are done when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?"  I don't quite understand that, but what it makes me think of is wild fire. Which California and Colorado had so much of last year, and our state is experiencing lately, from the extremely dry grass.  Maybe someone has seen an explanation of this passage.

I think the centurion who said, "This man was truly the son of God" only speaks in Luke.

With Joseph of Arimathea claiming the body of Christ, I think of Caravaggio's famous painting of the Entombment.  Nicodemus is in the painting, but is not in Luke's account, he only appears in John.

A couple needing to change their living situation

There is an elderly couple in our parish.  They are friends of mine.  They live in a very nice home - a showplace. Prior to COVID, they were active in the parish.  But he has been in decline for a number of years, first with one serious condition, then another.  All of those ailments have left their marks on him, and he never bounces all the way back.  At present he has several big health issues to deal with, and cumulatively they have reduced him nearly to invalid status.  He is a big guy, and she is tiny, and if he falls, she is not big and strong enough to help him up.

Looking at it dispassionately, he needs to be living in a place where he can get a lot of healthcare assistance.  Assisted living, or perhaps even a nursing home.  But psychologically and emotionally, they seem not to accept this reality.  They have been in love for many decades, and they have lived in this home together for a very long time.  It seems they can't bring themselves to close this chapter in their lives.

They have adult children, but the relationship with the kids always has been complicated, at least since I've known them, and the kids live in states far away.  I don't know whether the kids are trying to prevail upon them to leave the house behind and move into a situation where he can get some assistance - but if they are trying, it isn't working.

The couple being together may be complicating their considerations of what must be done.  My sense is that, as long as they are together, they think they can stick it out together.  

This is not the only couple I know of who seem determined that, if/when they leave their home, it will be feet first.  My own parents have a strain of that, although (thankfully) their health is better than this couple's.  But my parents are in their 80s, and that health picture could change quickly.

For that matter, my wife and I have lived in this house for decades.  It seems perfectly set up for us to retire in.  We have no plans to leave.  As for retirement communities or villages, they don't appeal to me.  I want to live in a community with people of a variety of ages, with at least some of our kids nearby, and perhaps grandkids someday.  I don't want to be completely surrounded by elderly people - people in decline who gripe all day about their maladies.  So to some extent, I am sympathetic with this elderly couple.

I've been pondering what I could say to them which might move them to do what needs to be done.  I'm open to suggestions.

PALM SUNDAY PROCESSIONAL MUSIC

For those of you who like Palm Sunday Processional Music, here is my collection, originally put together on 4/4/2020. I have begun to play through it. As I do YouTube will sometimes give me related videos, which I add.  Also, I am annotating it 

PALM SUNDAY PROCESSION

I like it so much that I usually play it for Lauds (Morning Prayer) on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of Holy Week.

Why Europe Needs Ukraine (and the EU)

 Interesting Atlantic article on this morning's news feed. 

Why Europe Needs Ukraine

If you want to know how powerful the European dream still is, don’t go to Paris or Rome, Brussels or Berlin—go to Kyiv. Last October, I visited the city to speak with young and ambitious Ukrainians. They told me of their deepest wish for their country: membership in the European Union.

For these young people, the EU was synonymous with democracy and freedom, progress and prosperity. When I told them that most students in my native country, the Netherlands, find the EU boring and bureaucratic, they reacted with disbelief. In the past few weeks, I have thought a lot about those Ukrainian students. What we take for granted, they and their compatriots have been willing to die for.

 We preached human rights while we violated those of asylum seekers at our borders. We rolled out one austerity measure after another at a time when investments were desperately needed. In Northern Europe, leaders lost their sense of solidarity with those in the south, and in the south, democracy was suspended while technocrats took over.

This is what you get when you consider the EU as a purely economic project, instead of a community with shared values. We heard German politicians complain about lazy Greeks, when in reality the Greeks have the longest working week in Europe. We heard Dutch politicians grumble that southerners should collect more taxes, when in fact the Netherlands is one of the largest tax havens in the world. And we heard Brits complain about, well, everything before they finally left.

And yet, in precisely those years following the European debt crisis a decade ago, the zeitgeist began to shift, helping remind those in Europe of its ideals and its potential. Nowhere was that more evident than in the fight against global warming. A 16-year-old schoolgirl, Greta Thunberg, started a lonely protest next to the Riksdag, the Swedish parliament, after which a movement was born, helping put climate change at the center of subsequent European elections.

The author argues that while the Europeans are good technocrats, i.e., they are moving ahead on combatting climate change, they lack a culture of European values articulation, e.g., the Green New Deal that the U.S. has while we have the opposite problem, we articulate values without doing anything about them.  He wants a European Marshal plan to rebuild Ukraine.  Or as an American would say: “Ich bin ein Europäer.”  

Elon Musk, Twitter, Donald Trump and social media policies

Elon Musk has purchased a large stake in Twitter.  Is Musk paving the way for the return of Donald Trump?

The case of the missing altar server

The most recent parish staff meeting minutes mentioned that a nearby parish is going to open up altar server participation to adults and families.  Apparently this idea was favorably received by our staff, and they're going to consider doing something similar.

Why we would consider this idea isn't really a mystery at all.  On the contrary, it's plain to anyone who attends our masses: we have almost no altar servers anymore.  Before the pandemic shut us down, we were doing pretty well: we'd have at least two servers at most masses, and three servers at quite a few.  But nowadays, even though we've been reopened for over a year and a half, the families with altar-server-age children (4th grade thru senior year of high school) haven't returned.  

I have no theological objection to adults and families serving at the altar.  The age limits I mentioned above are enforced pretty strictly at the lower end (no second graders need apply) but there really isn't a hard and fast upper limit, and occasionally a college-age kid will help out.  The custom at this parish is that, at the weekend masses, altar servers are children, but at the parish in Michigan where I was baptized, adult men used to serve on Sundays.  My dad was an altar server at the 7:30 am Sunday mass for years.

But I admit I have a qualm. It's this: we'd be opening up the ranks of altar servers, not from a position of strength and generosity, but from a position of weakness and desperation.  We'd be welcoming adults because we can't find any kids anymore.  It's an attractive solution: it means we'd have servers who don't forget, don't oversleep, don't graduate and go away to college, and don't decide it's too uncool to be an altar server because what if my friends see me?    

Altar servers aren't even required.  We get by fine without them, although I'd much prefer to have them at each mass.  But instead of settling for adults, let's try a little harder to welcome the kids back.