Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending Tom Ryberg's installation at First Congregational Church of Battle Creek. I didn't get to to go his ordination, so I was particularly glad to be present for this event.
In the past month or two, four good friends of mine (and many others too!) got ordained. I wrote them a song. It was particularly interesting to write, because one friend was being ordained to be a pagan high priestess, one to be a local church pastor, one to do international peace work, and one to be a hospital chaplain.
Here it is:
Ordination Song
May you be comfortable in hospitals
and honest at your desk
may you have enough hunger
may you have enough rest
May you have find your joy in loving
may you find your hope each day
may you shout with the afflicted
and with the dying pray
It's not about who you are, it's about what you do
but the work to which you're called will be the birth of you
May you bring to this your full self
your ugly and your great
may you be forever faithful
may you share from every plate
May you bring some names to babies
may you bury beloved dead
may you join hearts and hands together
and may you break the bread
May your words fall like raindrops
or hammers or homes
may the Spirit be in front of you
may you follow where she roams
May your community build safety
and hilarity and peace
may its walls stand for welcome
and its windows for release
May your people love like crazy
may you love them full and free
may you know when to hold on as hard as you can
may you know when to let them be
it's not about who you are
it's about what you do
but the work to which you're called
will be the birth of you
may your wield your power gracefully
may you wield your grace with power
may the years keep you strange
and may you keep strange hours
may your family be glad of
the ministry you do
may you leave the work for others
when you rest and when you're through
this is not a life for glory
it's not wealth or fear or pride
but may it be the best life
and may I be by your side
may you be comfortable in hospitals
and honest at your desk
may you have enough hunger
may you have enough rest.
This link might work to download a rough .wav recording of a slightly-earlier draft of this song:
https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B7IjK0aIDVA6ZGEzYzE3NGQtYjZkMi00N2FmLWIxYTUtMmVhMmVmYmM5MjQ0&hl=en
Showing posts with label ordination. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ordination. Show all posts
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Friday, April 08, 2011
after one year ordained
Word and font and table.
I'm mostly a Baptist, these days, and when I got ordained, there wasn't any super-clear sense of what it was about. (Well, I was clear about it, but I didn't assume that anyone else was.) But I grew up United Methodist, and they're big into commonality and sharing senses of things, and there was a predominant sense that when one was ordained as an “elder', one was ordained to “word and sacrament” which is to say preaching and communion and baptism. So, I still at least partially think of it in those terms, though much of the preaching and communion I did was before I was ordained, and all the baptisms I've done so far were before I was ordained.
But in any case, as I reflect on the year anniversary of my ordination, here in the not-quite-warm part of spring in Chicago, in a year of tsunamis and revolutions, I'm coming back to those three, and three accompanying dreams.
Word:
In the first dream, which I had well over a year ago, I am preaching in an unfamiliar church. At first, people are sitting up front, but then they are sitting farther back. Of course, (this seems obvious in the dream, and it's obvious to my ministry- but more on that later) I leave the pulpit and start preaching at the front of the pews. (Or maybe I am already preaching at the front of the pews, as my childhood pastor taught me.) The people keep moving back, and soon I am halfway up the aisle, because they are sitting in the back pews of the church.
Eventually, of couse, they leave the church, but I follow them, and eventually I find myself in the lawns and orchards outside of their houses, while they try to eat their lunches and read their papers, preaching outside their windows.
When I woke up from that dream, I found it a little sad. But after talking it over with my spiritual director, I thought it was pretty cool, actually. These days I think it is awesome.
Table:
In the second dream, which I had a week or two before my ordination, Rachael and I are helping to run some youth or church or education event, which is to say any of dozens and dozens of things we've done, together and individually. Somebody mentions that nobody remembered to bring communion elements- juice and bread. So, I make a grocery store run, but for some reason I have to sneak out, like I'm in a spy movie about someone who's not very good at being a spy.
When I come back, I want to go in the front door of the church, but the lawn and the church building have tilted ninety degrees, so that it's a sheer, grassy wall instead of a lawn. In the dream, I feel nonchalant about this, though I am not much of a climber in real life. So, I shift the plastic grocery bag with the bottle of juice and the loaf of bread to the crook of my elbow, and begin to climb. I scale the lawn, and pull myself up the now-horizontal pillars on the front of the church. Rachael helps me climb up through the doorway, and then we go about our work.
Font:
Look: everybody who knows me well knows that I play a lot of Dungeons and Dragons. Something about connecting to a realm of fantasy, or cooperative storytelling, or magic or something, makes me want to do it once a week, for a few hours, with some friends. When I don't play for more than a week, I start to have dreams about it. Or I remember my dreams about it better. Or, I have whatever dreams I'd otherwise have, but they have that kind of mythic medievil fantasy tone to them.
In any case, in my dream, I am in some sort of magical or mythic world, and in that world, I am released from slavery. In the dream, I am both the person being released from slavery, and the person who breaks me out. In this world, one of the markers of being an enslaved person is that you're not allowed to have a name, so the closing, climactic scene of the dream is when I-as-liberator carve an initial into a metal ball or helmet as a gift for me-as-liberated. The carving is a letter, maybe a W, and the letter is a name, and the name is freedom.
Word. Table. Font. Preaching and communion and baptism. These three are not even close to the fullness of my call, but it's true that they're part of my call. (Nevermind that I think they are all part of your call, too.) But they stand for larger things, too.
Preaching like I pick up the phone at my office, and somebody wants to come volunteer with us. Preaching like it turns out the hotel workers union needs somebody in a clergy collar to show up and sit with them during contract negotiations. Preaching like dancing, preaching like shooting the breeze with my housemates in the kitchen, and preaching, yes and fully and difficultly and most lovingly, like preaching.
Table like just ordinary sharing food with people, table like deliberately pouring the communion juice so it overflows when I'm officiating as a guest preacher. Table like spending all afternoon making ridiculous pancakes on Shrove Tuesday with my friends, buying candy bars to put in the batter. Table like dinner at the shelter amidst the voguing. Table like sharing coffee and cookies late at night on the street with people experiencing homelessness, and maybe more than that, being so bold as to share coffee and cookies in the suburbs with people experiencing wealth.
And then the font. Sometimes, when I go to a new place, to a meeting with the bank manager that could help our program or to preaching at a new church, and I need to feel a little more centered, I put a little water on my forehead. Font like Jesus keeps re-newing me, whether I like it or not. Font like having a new title in my name that makes people read me a little bit differently, and deciding when to use it. Font like newness and rebirth. Font like the work, and font like the freedom. Font like healing me. Font like liberation.
In some ways, I am only a year in: it's a year since my ordination, anyway. But however you count it, here I am. One of the characters on 30 Rock psychs himself up in the mirror before a big presentation, and I decided to try it, before a church womens' event out by O'Hare. I shifted the rearview mirror of the borrowed car, and looked myself in the eye.
“Okay,” I said to myself, “This is the work you were born to do.”
I'm mostly a Baptist, these days, and when I got ordained, there wasn't any super-clear sense of what it was about. (Well, I was clear about it, but I didn't assume that anyone else was.) But I grew up United Methodist, and they're big into commonality and sharing senses of things, and there was a predominant sense that when one was ordained as an “elder', one was ordained to “word and sacrament” which is to say preaching and communion and baptism. So, I still at least partially think of it in those terms, though much of the preaching and communion I did was before I was ordained, and all the baptisms I've done so far were before I was ordained.
But in any case, as I reflect on the year anniversary of my ordination, here in the not-quite-warm part of spring in Chicago, in a year of tsunamis and revolutions, I'm coming back to those three, and three accompanying dreams.
Word:
In the first dream, which I had well over a year ago, I am preaching in an unfamiliar church. At first, people are sitting up front, but then they are sitting farther back. Of course, (this seems obvious in the dream, and it's obvious to my ministry- but more on that later) I leave the pulpit and start preaching at the front of the pews. (Or maybe I am already preaching at the front of the pews, as my childhood pastor taught me.) The people keep moving back, and soon I am halfway up the aisle, because they are sitting in the back pews of the church.
Eventually, of couse, they leave the church, but I follow them, and eventually I find myself in the lawns and orchards outside of their houses, while they try to eat their lunches and read their papers, preaching outside their windows.
When I woke up from that dream, I found it a little sad. But after talking it over with my spiritual director, I thought it was pretty cool, actually. These days I think it is awesome.
Table:
In the second dream, which I had a week or two before my ordination, Rachael and I are helping to run some youth or church or education event, which is to say any of dozens and dozens of things we've done, together and individually. Somebody mentions that nobody remembered to bring communion elements- juice and bread. So, I make a grocery store run, but for some reason I have to sneak out, like I'm in a spy movie about someone who's not very good at being a spy.
When I come back, I want to go in the front door of the church, but the lawn and the church building have tilted ninety degrees, so that it's a sheer, grassy wall instead of a lawn. In the dream, I feel nonchalant about this, though I am not much of a climber in real life. So, I shift the plastic grocery bag with the bottle of juice and the loaf of bread to the crook of my elbow, and begin to climb. I scale the lawn, and pull myself up the now-horizontal pillars on the front of the church. Rachael helps me climb up through the doorway, and then we go about our work.
Font:
Look: everybody who knows me well knows that I play a lot of Dungeons and Dragons. Something about connecting to a realm of fantasy, or cooperative storytelling, or magic or something, makes me want to do it once a week, for a few hours, with some friends. When I don't play for more than a week, I start to have dreams about it. Or I remember my dreams about it better. Or, I have whatever dreams I'd otherwise have, but they have that kind of mythic medievil fantasy tone to them.
In any case, in my dream, I am in some sort of magical or mythic world, and in that world, I am released from slavery. In the dream, I am both the person being released from slavery, and the person who breaks me out. In this world, one of the markers of being an enslaved person is that you're not allowed to have a name, so the closing, climactic scene of the dream is when I-as-liberator carve an initial into a metal ball or helmet as a gift for me-as-liberated. The carving is a letter, maybe a W, and the letter is a name, and the name is freedom.
Word. Table. Font. Preaching and communion and baptism. These three are not even close to the fullness of my call, but it's true that they're part of my call. (Nevermind that I think they are all part of your call, too.) But they stand for larger things, too.
Preaching like I pick up the phone at my office, and somebody wants to come volunteer with us. Preaching like it turns out the hotel workers union needs somebody in a clergy collar to show up and sit with them during contract negotiations. Preaching like dancing, preaching like shooting the breeze with my housemates in the kitchen, and preaching, yes and fully and difficultly and most lovingly, like preaching.
Table like just ordinary sharing food with people, table like deliberately pouring the communion juice so it overflows when I'm officiating as a guest preacher. Table like spending all afternoon making ridiculous pancakes on Shrove Tuesday with my friends, buying candy bars to put in the batter. Table like dinner at the shelter amidst the voguing. Table like sharing coffee and cookies late at night on the street with people experiencing homelessness, and maybe more than that, being so bold as to share coffee and cookies in the suburbs with people experiencing wealth.
And then the font. Sometimes, when I go to a new place, to a meeting with the bank manager that could help our program or to preaching at a new church, and I need to feel a little more centered, I put a little water on my forehead. Font like Jesus keeps re-newing me, whether I like it or not. Font like having a new title in my name that makes people read me a little bit differently, and deciding when to use it. Font like newness and rebirth. Font like the work, and font like the freedom. Font like healing me. Font like liberation.
In some ways, I am only a year in: it's a year since my ordination, anyway. But however you count it, here I am. One of the characters on 30 Rock psychs himself up in the mirror before a big presentation, and I decided to try it, before a church womens' event out by O'Hare. I shifted the rearview mirror of the borrowed car, and looked myself in the eye.
“Okay,” I said to myself, “This is the work you were born to do.”
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Invocation from Nate's Ordination
My beloved colleague Nate Dannison asked me to write an invocation for his ordination service, which happened earlier today. He said I could say whatever I wanted. Here's what I wrote:
Triune God, we call you to this place and moment-
knowing that you were herre before us,
and that you will be after we are gone-
but knowing that our hearts find strength
when we call out to you:
By the name of God the Mother and Father
who brings us to birth and to rebirth
who remembers every child,
who feeds every spark of liberation
and mourns every tear of oppression
By the Holy Spirit
who hovers over our lives
pulling us through distraction and despair
pulling us over the even-now-crumbling walls of empire
dismantling our sinful hierarchies
And by our brother the Risen Lord Jesus
who danced with us, even unto death,
who walks to the margins of the crowd
and snaps open his plastic case,
and takes out the world's rattiest
two dollar fiddle
and begins to play:
And when we hear his song
it is so familiar, so new; so bold and humble
so warm and troubling and romantic
that what can we do but
join his foolish dance eternal?
In the name of these three, and in the name
of the Beloved Communion of Saints,
who watch with us in joyful anticipation,
and in laughing certainty:
Come, Triune God,
and be present in this place and moment.
Amen.
Triune God, we call you to this place and moment-
knowing that you were herre before us,
and that you will be after we are gone-
but knowing that our hearts find strength
when we call out to you:
By the name of God the Mother and Father
who brings us to birth and to rebirth
who remembers every child,
who feeds every spark of liberation
and mourns every tear of oppression
By the Holy Spirit
who hovers over our lives
pulling us through distraction and despair
pulling us over the even-now-crumbling walls of empire
dismantling our sinful hierarchies
And by our brother the Risen Lord Jesus
who danced with us, even unto death,
who walks to the margins of the crowd
and snaps open his plastic case,
and takes out the world's rattiest
two dollar fiddle
and begins to play:
And when we hear his song
it is so familiar, so new; so bold and humble
so warm and troubling and romantic
that what can we do but
join his foolish dance eternal?
In the name of these three, and in the name
of the Beloved Communion of Saints,
who watch with us in joyful anticipation,
and in laughing certainty:
Come, Triune God,
and be present in this place and moment.
Amen.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
i feel like everyone should write one of these about themselves
I can walk as far as I need to.
I know a lot of stories.
I know a lot of songs.
I know that everyone can dance.
I can use words for magic. Which is to say to turn citizens into people, turn sitters into waiters, to pitch matches that are rhythms and slowly building metaphors. Ｉknow a half-dozen rituals that I can deploy at a moment's notice and can improvise more on a half-moment's notice.
I can turn bitching into planning.
I believe in enough things.
My name is David Weasley. And I fight demons.
I know a lot of stories.
I know a lot of songs.
I know that everyone can dance.
I can use words for magic. Which is to say to turn citizens into people, turn sitters into waiters, to pitch matches that are rhythms and slowly building metaphors. Ｉknow a half-dozen rituals that I can deploy at a moment's notice and can improvise more on a half-moment's notice.
I can turn bitching into planning.
I believe in enough things.
My name is David Weasley. And I fight demons.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Ordination Vows
I got ordained on Sunday by a whole crowd of wonderful and strange people.
The whole service was awesome. I don't know what else to say about it.
Here are the vows that I made, drawn from a wide variety of traditions and colleagues.
---Ordination Vows
We will begin with a reaffirmation of the vows made for you at your baptism and made by you at confirmation:
On behalf of the whole church, I ask you:
Do you renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness, reject the evil powers of this world, and repent of your sin?
DW: I do.
Do you accept the freedom and power God gives you to resist evil, injustice and oppression in whatever forms the present themselves?
DW: I do.
Do you confess Jesus Christ as your savior, put your whole trust in his grace, and promise to serve him as your Lord, in union with the church which Christ has opened to people of all ages, nations, and races?
DW: I do.
And continuing with new vows:
Do you believe that you are truly called to the work of the pastor as your vocation and ministry in this season?
DW: I do, God being my help.
Will you be faithful in prayer and devotion, in reading of the scripture and in examining of your own heart?
DW: I will, God being my help.
Will you invite others into the holy work of God, into the proclamation of the Gospel, into the movement for the coming Kindom of God? Will you seek to empower everyone you encounter in their own vocations, their own ministries and calls?
DW: I will, God being my help.
Will you refuse to follow the biases of the world, and seek to follow only the biases of God?
DW: I will, God being my help.
Will you be faithful in preaching and teaching the Gospel, administering the ordinances and rites of the church, in exorcising demons and in exercising pastoral care and leadership? Will you bear faithful witness to the history and practice of your Baptist tradition?
DW: I will, God being my help.
Will you endeavor to seek, always, the further edge of possibility? Will you bring a radical hope to mundane moments, a radical joy to terrifying moments, and a radical love to difficult moments?
DW: I will, God being my help.
Will you endeavor to know, always, the nearer shores of comfort- the solace of God's own embrace, through prayer, fellowship, rest, and play? Will you maintain friendships, interests, and intimacies outside the congregation of your service, as a commitment to your own full living?
DW: I will, God being my help.
Will you endeavor to release your grasping, to cede that which is not yours to control? Will you uphold your calling as a sign and agent of God's saving work in the world, remembering that you are no savior, but only the teller of salvation's story?
DW: I will, God being my help.
Will you care for all of God's creation, in its radical diversity, both in its present Now and its future Not-Yet, including your own self and body?
DW: I will, God being my help.
Will you be brave and honest, loving and clear, in understanding that people will sometimes look to you as a way of looking for themselves, the lost truth of the Divine Within, and in helping them in that search?
DW: I will, God being my help.
As an agent of truth, will you love the dishonest? As an agent of justice, will you love the unjust? As an agent of reconciliation, will you love the divisive? As an agent of kindness, will you love the cruel?
DW: I will, God being my help.
Will you relentlessly serve the cause of Jesus in the world until you cease to draw breath or until justice is won and we all feast together at the Great Welcome Table?
DW: I will, God being my help.
And now, after those 3 and 12 vows for the ordinand, there is just one for you:
Will you the gathered community support David Weasley in the ministry of Christ? (If so, say, "We will.")
The People: We will.
The whole service was awesome. I don't know what else to say about it.
Here are the vows that I made, drawn from a wide variety of traditions and colleagues.
---Ordination Vows
We will begin with a reaffirmation of the vows made for you at your baptism and made by you at confirmation:
On behalf of the whole church, I ask you:
Do you renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness, reject the evil powers of this world, and repent of your sin?
DW: I do.
Do you accept the freedom and power God gives you to resist evil, injustice and oppression in whatever forms the present themselves?
DW: I do.
Do you confess Jesus Christ as your savior, put your whole trust in his grace, and promise to serve him as your Lord, in union with the church which Christ has opened to people of all ages, nations, and races?
DW: I do.
And continuing with new vows:
Do you believe that you are truly called to the work of the pastor as your vocation and ministry in this season?
DW: I do, God being my help.
Will you be faithful in prayer and devotion, in reading of the scripture and in examining of your own heart?
DW: I will, God being my help.
Will you invite others into the holy work of God, into the proclamation of the Gospel, into the movement for the coming Kindom of God? Will you seek to empower everyone you encounter in their own vocations, their own ministries and calls?
DW: I will, God being my help.
Will you refuse to follow the biases of the world, and seek to follow only the biases of God?
DW: I will, God being my help.
Will you be faithful in preaching and teaching the Gospel, administering the ordinances and rites of the church, in exorcising demons and in exercising pastoral care and leadership? Will you bear faithful witness to the history and practice of your Baptist tradition?
DW: I will, God being my help.
Will you endeavor to seek, always, the further edge of possibility? Will you bring a radical hope to mundane moments, a radical joy to terrifying moments, and a radical love to difficult moments?
DW: I will, God being my help.
Will you endeavor to know, always, the nearer shores of comfort- the solace of God's own embrace, through prayer, fellowship, rest, and play? Will you maintain friendships, interests, and intimacies outside the congregation of your service, as a commitment to your own full living?
DW: I will, God being my help.
Will you endeavor to release your grasping, to cede that which is not yours to control? Will you uphold your calling as a sign and agent of God's saving work in the world, remembering that you are no savior, but only the teller of salvation's story?
DW: I will, God being my help.
Will you care for all of God's creation, in its radical diversity, both in its present Now and its future Not-Yet, including your own self and body?
DW: I will, God being my help.
Will you be brave and honest, loving and clear, in understanding that people will sometimes look to you as a way of looking for themselves, the lost truth of the Divine Within, and in helping them in that search?
DW: I will, God being my help.
As an agent of truth, will you love the dishonest? As an agent of justice, will you love the unjust? As an agent of reconciliation, will you love the divisive? As an agent of kindness, will you love the cruel?
DW: I will, God being my help.
Will you relentlessly serve the cause of Jesus in the world until you cease to draw breath or until justice is won and we all feast together at the Great Welcome Table?
DW: I will, God being my help.
And now, after those 3 and 12 vows for the ordinand, there is just one for you:
Will you the gathered community support David Weasley in the ministry of Christ? (If so, say, "We will.")
The People: We will.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
faces of a new generation
So... as many of you know, my ordination is coming up. I don't know if this is related or not, but here is an awesome youtube video my friend helped make a few months ago. I don't know what else to say about it.
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