Author Archives: Nanette Sawyer

Belonging Before Believing

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I’m all set up to teach an intensive 3 week class at McCormick Theological Seminary this May with my colleague Pastor Alise Barrymore from The Emmaus Community in Chicago Heights.

It’s called Belonging Before Believing: New Communities and Emerging Forms of Church. The class will run from May 13-June 3 if we get at least 6 students registered.

Week 0ne: History and Development
Week Two: Theology and Practices
Week Three: Strategies, Preaching and Worship

And here’s the full syllabus, in case you’re interested! This is a nearly complete draft, with the final syllabus being passed out at the first class: Belonging Before Believing Syllabus.

Church for the 21st Century

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Shawna's art notes-remix

Art notes by Shawna Bowman

I just returned from a 3-day leadership consultation with the national offices of the Presbyterian Church (USA). My good friend and colleague, Rev. Shawna Bowman was there too. She wrote/drew the amazing notes above, while we were talking about new things that are happening or that we wish were happening in the churches.

The gathering left me very hopeful about the larger church beginning to shift into a more creative era which addresses and engages our contemporary age more effectively. I met many inspiring leaders who are trying new things and facing many of the same challenges faced by Grace Commons.

One new friend is Dawn Hyde, the pastor at Mission Bay Community Church. She wrote a nice overview reflection on our group time in Baltimore this week. You can read it here. In part, she said:

I am renewed in my belief that God is still working among us and that we now have better ideas for how we can share our resources (intellectual, financial, artistic, and physical) with one another. We dreamt together about PCUSA TED talks, Craigslist for the church, church partnerships, funded sabbaticals and rest, organic new ministries found and funded quickly. We reflected on how we are called to be open… to God, to each other, and to this new reality that we experience in the church. We worshiped together and gave life and breath to words of Isaiah 43 “Do not be afraid. I have called you by name you are mine… [PAY ATTENTION] I am doing a new thing.”

What I love is that it’s not just pastors and leaders in emerging or “presby-mergent” churches that are doing new things. Pastors in traditional churches of all sizes are trying to do new things, too.

So I hope we’ll be able to develop some ways to share our resources better and quicker and support each other’s dreams and creativity.

Art notes by Shawna Bowman

Art notes by Shawna Bowman

Be Amazing

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Santa by Dale SawyerFor the last two weeks I’ve been preaching on 1 Corinthians 12, the verses where it talks about us having a variety of gifts empowered by the same spirit.

It’s a message that Paul was giving to the church at Corinth, so that all people in the community would be honored and so that people would use their gifts for the common good.

Charismas for the Common Good
1 Corinthians 12: 1-11
In the first sermon, I talked about my dad’s giftedness as a carpenter (he carved the santa pictured here), and how my mom once said to me, “he’s so amazing” when she was talking about the woodworking that he does. I actually started a blog for/about him over here: Handcrafted Woodworking.

(As an aside, I have several boxes of really cool hand-crafted toys by him that I’d love to sell on his behalf. Message me if you’re interested. But, I digress…)

My point about my dad is really a point about all of us. When we step into the gifts that God has given us, and do the things that we love, the things that heal and center us, then we all become amazing.

If we do that, then together we are much more than we could ever be alone. This is how we become a blessing for the world, by receiving and living into the blessings that God has given us.

Body of Christ, Body of Humanity
1 Corinthians 12:12-27
In the second sermon, I talked about how important it is to work for the healing of the world from a center of Love and not from guilt or anger or fear. To accept that we are loved by God, to forgive ourselves and to honor ourselves (and each other), is not to become passive, but to become brave.

Coming from this core place of loving and being loved can make us brave enough to work to change the world.

Audio links here:
Nanette Sawyer- Charismas for the Common Good
Nanette Sawyer- Body of Christ, Body of Humanity

Unambiguous Appearance of God

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icon-epiphany

Icon in-process of being created by Grace Commons and St. James Presbyterian Church.

Today is Epiphany, a day on which we celebrate the appearance of God in human form–the incarnation.

Although we celebrate the birth of Jesus on December 25th, today we celebrate the first “appearance” of Jesus to the Gentiles. This marks his being seen by the Magi, the “three kings.” They symbolize the first non-Jews who saw Jesus and his expansion of the circles of people he would touch.

The word epiphany is used in the New Testament to refer to Jesus’s birth, but also to his post-resurrection appearances and even to his future waited-for appearance.

A related word is theophany, the appearance of God. This is God being manifest in a burning bush, or a pillar of cloud or fire, or speaking to Hagar or Abraham in the form of an angel. The epiphany of Christ is also a theophany, an appearance of God.

One definition of Theophany is an “unambiguous appearance of God” such that the person perceiving God has no doubt that it is God. Well, when do we ever experience an unambiguous appearance of God these days? For me, God does not speak out of clouds or bushes when I walk by. I have to look for God in much subtler ways.

There’s no star for me to follow. There’s no manger at the end of my looking. But there is a place for me to fall to my knees, to be overcome with awe. Or to cry out in need for a strong and reliable comforter.

Those are two times when I often feel God’s presence. First, when I’m around incredible beauty, and second when I feel a very great need. These two kinds of situations crack me open.

What opens you? What makes you have an epiphany of God? What kind of moment or situation helps you open to God?

Here is my Epiphany sermon from this morning at St. James, in which I teach about traditions of celebrating epiphany, reflect on my own experience of epiphanies, and invite people to practice marking the doorways of their homes in blessing, as is traditional in Eastern Orthodox and some Catholic churches.

I love learning different ways of honoring and encountering God through other Christian traditions.

What I Want to Say

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pastor-catThere’s a saying that pastors have about five sermons that they preach again and again throughout their careers. It’s the core message that you want to get across to the world.

As I’ve been preaching weekly sermons for two months now, and weekly teachings and reflections for 10 years, I took a moment to list out what I think my top five are. Here’s what I came up with.

My core 5 sermons:

1. Be here now. It’s where everything is, including God.

2. God loves you and you are precious, exactly as you are.

3. Take Sabbath (honor it). It’s one of the 10 commandments.

4. God works through you, filling you with love and power. (And let God help you through others, too.)

5. God is a process, in process, transforming everything.

If these messages are helpful to you, (as they are to me), stay tuned here, because I think I’ll be looking for new ways to say these things in as many different and creative ways as I can. Hopefully the repetition will help it sink it–both to me and to you!

—

The drawing on this post was made by Julia at the celebration of my 10-year anniversary as a pastor. It’s a picture of me as a Pastor Cat. (love it!)

Nothing Special. Completely Precious.

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advent-2

Things change. Time passes. Does anything stay the same?

Today I am taking a few moments at my desk to remember. Just to remember who I am and where I come from. Just to remember what I have now and where I am.

For a moment I am not going to imagine where I am going or how I might get there.

I am taking a moment to notice what my body feels like, what’s happening in it right now. Noticing is a kind of remembering, too.

Today is the second week of Advent, the time when we prepare again to welcome God into the world. It’s a good thing to do repeatedly, as we often forget that God is here. Advent is a time to remember that God is here and that God comes to us again and again, no matter how many times we forget to notice.

Centering in the body is a good way to remember. It can wake us up to the present moment.

I can let myself do this if I make a list of the pressing things I am setting aside for the moment, and if I know that I will pick them up later and attend to them responsibly. But I don’t need to obsess about them now!

I still my breathing, making longer out breaths and taking slower in breaths. I consciously release the tension in my back, neck and shoulders. I relax my mouth, even let the edges of my lips curl up a little. My yoga teacher says, it’s okay to smile when you practice!

I have been ordained as a teaching elder, a minister of word and sacrament, for 10 years, as of yesterday, December 8, 2012. I am just me. Nothing special. And completely precious. Like every other human being that God has created.

Some things change. But that one thing never changes. Today, I take a moment to remember.

Nothing special. Completely precious.

No Future

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I have a wonderful spiritual director through The Claret Center in Hyde Park. We’ve been meeting for about 8 months and focusing on how to achieve balance in my life.

In other words, how can I rest? What stops me from renewing? Why do I let my sabbath time slip so easily away? How can I change the spirit with which I go through my days?

She asked me again this week…Well, really, I ask the questions, then she says, “what do you think?”

We sit on folded blankets and cushions on the floor facing each other, and I stared at the hard wood floor for a long time before answering her.

It boils down to this. I live most of the time with my mind in the future. I am very often thinking about all the things I have yet to do. I’m being overwhelmed by the things I haven’t done and I’m asking myself when I will do them. I’m feeling that I haven’t done enough, that I won’t be able to do enough, and that I’m therefore not good enough. There’s some way I need to become, there’s some place I need to get to. That way and that place are not here yet, so there’s some future that I’m half living into, grasping for.

I am RARELY living exactly in this moment now. And so my life flies by distractedly, filled with “never enough”–a week finished, an entire season gone, a year passed, 10 years completed doing my work in ministry. But much of the time it goes so fast because I’m already living in the next minute, the next day, the next week.

What if NOW is enough? What if the whole thing is here, now? What if all of my life, it’s right here, now? All of God’s love, it’s right here now. What if there’s nothing more than this?

I have the sense that if I could stop living in the future, that my days would actually feel longer. My days would certainly be calmer. I would notice more the beauty that is all around me. I would realize what a miracle it is that not only is my heart beating, but so is yours.

This self-examination I’m sharing is not an invitation for you to worry about me. I am in spiritual direction; I’m taking care of myself. But this is an invitation to see if you identify with the anxiety of striving. As we work on all these aspects of ourselves, we work with the same issues on subtler and subtler levels.

There are two widows featured in the bible readings for this Sunday, both of whom gave something away that it seemed they needed to survive into the future. The widow of Zarephath fed Elijah from the last available meal she had for herself and her son. She was prepared to die because of the drought and consequent famine that was going on. But suddenly, there was enough food to last until the rains came. She didn’t die of starvation.

The second widow is the one who gives away her last two coins to the Temple treasury. Jesus points out to his disciples that she has put more into the treasury than the gobs of money that the wealthy are offering.

What did she put in the offering plate that was more than money?

Did she put in all her fear about the future? Did she put in any last illusion that she was in control of her future?

We can’t know what the widow felt when she gave her last two coins away. But maybe she felt free. Maybe she was living exactly in that moment, and what she had to give, she gave. Maybe her whole life was complete in that moment. And she did what was the most joyful, the most generous, the most free.

—
The image is digitally manipulated by me, from a photograph by Marwa Morgan with Creative Commons license.

Passages

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Yesterday was my first day as the pastor at St. James Presbyterian Church, and this Sunday will be the first day I preach there in that capacity.

So I’ve been reflecting on the concept of passages, how we pass through to new places and new stages and even new ways of being throughout our lives.

In my sermon on Sunday, I’m pretty sure I’ll be speaking about liminality, and passing under the door lintel. These are two words that come from the Latin, limen, meaning threshold, or boundary.

At each new phase in our lives, we pass over a boundary, pass through a threshold, and it can be seriously disorienting. We may wonder who we are or who we might become. (There is a great wikipedia article about liminality that I enjoyed reading today.)

What is it that can support us, strengthen us, carry us through periods of liminality? I need to know there is something stable in the midst of the instability, the transition.

Spiritual practices that remind us of God’s presence are very helpful for me. When I give up the idea that everything rests on me, and I embrace the idea that everything rests on God and I only have to do the best I can with my little piece, then I breathe a sigh of relief. My pounding heart begins to slow it’s pace and my shoulders drop a couple of inches.

Here is a poem about water on the move. There’s a tradition of calling moving water “living water.” Isn’t that what Jesus promised to be for us? Living Water.

The narrator describes how nature is “unimpressed” by the burden he thinks he carries. My favorite line is about how the water “even made a little song out of all the things that got in its way.”

Now that’s perseverance without burden.

Passage                      by John Brehm

In all the woods that day I was
the only living thing
fretful, exhausted, or unsure.
Giant fir and spruce and cedar trees
that had stood their ground
three hundred years
stretched in sunlight calmly
unimpressed by whatever
it was that held me
hunched and tense above the stream,
biting my nails, calculating all
my impossibilities.
Nor did the water pause
to reflect or enter into
my considerations.
It found its way
over and around a crowd
of rocks in easy flourishes,
in laughing evasions and
shifts in direction.
Nothing could slow it down for long.
It even made a little song
out of all the things
that got in its way,
a music against the hard edges
of whatever might interrupt its going.

from Help is on the Way. © The University of Wisconsin Press, 2012.

God is Here, Now

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A Prayer Among Friends
by John Daniel

Among other wonders of our lives, we are alive
with one another, we walk here
in the light of this unlikely world
that isn’t ours for long.

May we spend generously
the time we are given.
May we enact our responsibilities
as thoroughly as we enjoy
our pleasures. May we see with clarity,
may we seek a vision
that serves all beings, may we honor
the mystery surpassing our sight,
and may we hold in our hands
the dirt of good work
and bear it forth whole, as we
were borne forth by a power we praise
to this one Earth, this homeland of all we love.

This was our closing poem at Poetry Vespers last night. Our theme was “God is Here, Now,” and our scripture was Solomon’s prayer of dedication of the newly constructed temple in Jerusalem.

King Solomon prayed, “If heaven, even the highest heaven, can’t contain you, how can this temple that I’ve built contain you?”*

And the answer to that rhetorical question is, it can’t. The temple cannot contain God. Nor can a church, a community, or even a religion.

God is transcendent, greater than anything we can conceive, above and beyond all our human constructions. But God is also immanent, here, present, now, all around us. Solomon’s prayer reflects this understanding.

The idea of a transcendent and also immanent God invites us to look for God all around us, in our neighbors and neighborhoods, in the beauty and sometimes scary majesty of creation, in the laughter of our friends.

The building of the temple was a significant turning point in the communal and religious life of the Israelite people, just as Grace Commons settling into a new worship space at St. James is. At moments like this, its a good idea to stop and pray, as Solomon did.

Let’s remember and remind each other that the most important thing is relationship–how we are with each other, with our neighbors, and with God.

May we share and serve with generosity, knowing that God is with us, both inside the building and outside of it. God is with us, both in the times when things are going well, and also in the times when we are challenged or feel lost.

God may be present with us in the church building, but God is not contained or confined. God is here, now. And God is also “there.”

~ ~ ~

Bible translation from the Common English Bible, a new translation from the original Hebrew and Greek.

I took the picture after Vespers last night, and I regret that I didn’t think to take it while all the people were sitting there. In my own defense, though, I did have other things on my mind…like Poetry Vespers!

New Place, New Ministry, New Possibilities

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Soon I will celebrate my 10-year anniversary of ordination. Unbelievable.

I have been serving Grace Commons and its predecessor, Wicker Park Grace, for ten years. Even as new possibilities open up, I will continue to serve as the pastor at Grace Commons–but things are changing!

Beginning November 1st, I will also become the half-time pastor at St. James Presbyterian Church in West Ridge (West Rogers Park), Chicago. On that day, my role with Grace Commons will also go from full-time to half-time.

I will be a full-time pastor, but for two communities simultaneously. Am I nervous? Yes. Am I excited? YES!

This will be a wonderful next step for me in my development as a pastor. I will explore and experiment with how to bring all that I have learned, discovered, and developed at Grace Commons, the art-gallery church, into a more traditional (albeit open, creative, and generous) church.

Grace Commons has been gathering for Spiritual Practice, our primary Sunday Gathering, at the St. James Church since September 9th, and we’ll keep on doing so. I believe that St. James will benefit from the vitality of Grace Commons, and Grace Commons will benefit from the stability of St. James. Both will maintain their own identities, but we are always changed when we make new friends–and I hope this will be no exception to that rule.

By “sharing” a pastor, these two communities are both taking a step toward a more relational, collaborative, connectional style of ministry. Each community has much to offer the other, and much to gain.

Gathering in West Ridge, quite a bit further north than our original location in Wicker Park, creates new challenges and new opportunities for Grace Commons. We know that many of our far south-siders, who could make the trek to Wicker Park, will not make the long commute to West Ridge every week. That’s the challenge.

The opportunity is this: we’re expanding our ministry to include a partnership with the Hesed Community Co-operative in the Little Village/Douglas Park area.

On the first and third Sunday’s of the month, simultaneous to Grace Commons gathering at St. James, some of us will gather at Hesed Community at 5:30 pm for a shared meal, spiritual practice, and creative, original communion liturgy that we are developing for this purpose. (We’re grateful to St. Lydia’s Dinner Church in NYC for their inspiration!)

On the second and fourth Sundays, we’ll all gather together at St. James. Our intention is that we’ll continue to grow and develop in both locations, but keep coming together as a whole community at least twice a month at St. James.

Just to be clear, Grace Commons will be gathering at St. James every single week at 5:30 pm. We want that stability and constancy, even while developing the secondary gathering at Hesed Community Co-op on the 1st and 3rd Sundays.

The St. James community also gathers for worship, and I will be leading that with the community and a wonderful lead musician, at 10:30 on Sunday mornings. This is yet to be developed, but I know it will be interesting and beautiful in its own way.

There’s much more to tell, of course. This is the beginning of a growing dream, and as one person recently said, “we’re sailing this boat while we build it.” So we don’t know what all will happen. I guess we never do anyway! But we are sailing forward with dreams and possibilities–and with each other–as our circles of relationship and spheres of influence continue to grow.