The Parable of the Great Pearl

I told the The Parable of the Great Pearl as a Godly Play story at church today. Now I'm reflecting on the experience.

There's much to be wondered about in the story. There's also much to be noticed and learned as a story teller.

I noticed my tendency toward a different kind of response to people's comments, depending on how well I felt they got at the meaning of the parable. I need to work with that!

Aside from the ridiculous arrogance of the idea that I know how the parable should be interpreted or what part should receive the focus, I'm sure letting my own judgements into my recognition of responses will short circuit the work of the parable, the Spirit and the people. If I lead people to feel that there are "right" responses at the expense of supporting exploration of possibilities or at the expense of honesty in our responses, we'll have a hard time to "hear what the Spirit is saying to God's people." The great openness of Godly Play, being able to play and discover what the Spirit is saying rather than pushing a prepackaged, predetermined answer, is part of what I love about Godly Play. But I notice it's easier for me to be comfortable with that as a participant than as the story teller. I wonder why...

I noticed there were wide ranging perspectives. For example, some thought the seller might have a use for all the things he got from the merchant. Others thought the seller had too much stuff.

I noticed that a lot of our reflection had to do with exploring considerations related to all the things the merchant exchanged for the great pearl. (What would he do without these things? What would the other person do with these things? Should some of the things redistributed to other places? Which things? What places?)

I noticed how little of our reflection was in keeping with what I've assumed the parable is supposed to illustrate. I've thought we're expected to see the exchange of everything for the great pearl as a wise, enlightened, fulfilling move. Maybe we are, maybe we're not. But I notice that this largely isn't how we feel about this great exchange. We question the wisdom of it. We're not comfortable with it. I think that might be something to pay attention to and wonder some more about.

I noticed & wonder about other things too....the interplay of literal vs. metaphoric reflections....interest in the biblical reference for the parable...my pacing, how I handled multiple voices at once in the circle...and more.

If you were there is morning, I'd be interested in any reflections you'd care to share. And if anyone wishes to offer feedback to help in my development as a Godly Play story teller, that's invited also.

Thank you.

Seven Word Summary - All Saints

All Saints: Ultimate issues most personally noted.

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Rollins' Hope to Believe in God

Well into the game, I've finally come upon Peter Rollins' blog. His post, One Day I hope to believe in God... hits a lot of things on the head for me.

If you have time for more reading, interesting pairings with it are Peter Morrow's comment to Rollins' post and Kester Brewin's parable, Footprints, also on Rollins' site.

Among my responses:

Many in and outside the church operate with the assumption "that we all have a shared understanding of what belief is and what we mean by the word 'God.'" (Rollins) The assumption isn't always true. Recognizing that it's operative and figuring out what to do about it is difficult, yet important.

The assumption is part of why meaningful religious conversation (with religous or non-religious people) and constructive changes in religious settings can be so challenging. We have our definitions of God in boxes. More often than not, those boxes resist being opened.

How do we have a conversation about God when we think about God quite differently than our conversation partner (and we may or may not realize this difference exists)? How do we talk about God when we know our understandings of God differ but we don't understand the other person's perspective, our partner doesn't understand ours, or we disagree with each other's perspectives?

I can see why our boxes resist being opened. Assumptions are strong and ingrained. It's difficult to conceive of what might be outside those assumptions. If we can conceive of it, we may or may not like it. Working with it takes energy in forms that can be hard to come by. It takes a lot of risk. It's scary and threatening. It can lead to reorientation of long held perspectives and beliefs and all they imply.

But not being able to find a bridge between differing understandings of "God" in relationships that matter has its own risks, frustrations, pain and sadness. This applies to personal relationships and to societal level relationships.

How can we communicate about God in ways that might be likely to start overcoming these challenges? How can we do so without throwing the baby out with the bathwater? Or in other words, how can we maintain that which we may find meaninful in religion and at the same time open boxes? How do we make it safe and appealing for ourselves and for others to open boxes? How do we let God and each other out of the boxes and more deeply, fully into our lives?

Proximity - Come on Down

How does being near or far the altar or front of church impact your involement?

What perspective do various positions give you?

Why do you pick the place to sit that you do?

Have you ever experimented with other places?

Have you participated in churches where physical seating had a different layout?



Read more at my post by the same title on Children in Church.

Link to Food Reflections

As my church has taken a focus on a food/food shelf ministry, I want to share this post that I came upon.

The Gastromical Jesus from the Painted Prayer Book.

Where Have I Gone?

Update as of Nov 22, 2009. The details in this post are no longer all accurate. However, you can still find me at each of the places below.

My more active blog is currently the 30 Seconds one.

You can also look for me at the The Garden's Ning.

Do you Twitter? If I know you, and you're so inclined, let me know if you're there. Many of my friends seem biased against it, but I'm intending to try it out & make up my own mind. (So far you won't find me in a Twitter search, so for now, comment here or something to let me know.)

A Little Experiment to Prompt Awareness and Reflection

Proposal:

Try calling God She.
Call God She as prominently, often and casually
as God is usually called He.

How does that feel?
Is is hard to do?
What does it make you think about?
Why?

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Women

I've been coming across current expressions of old religious debates about the role women.

They amaze me. Women having authority over men in the context of some secular employment is seen as a problem....what it means for a husband to have "final decision making authority" is discussed at length....

I could enter the arguments & debates: theological, semantic, social, logical etc. (I hate not to, because as a woman saying this I tend to feel I have to prove myself.) But what I think is more relevant and important for me to say just now, is from my experience.

The positions I read about the role and nature of women don't amaze me because I've never heard them before. They amaze me because of how familiar some of them have been, how much I've experienced them and how far from them I've come.

I hope it's not patronizing (or matronizing) to feel this way, but I feel bad for the many women who continue to live within these systems of belief. And of course I want to protect my daughter from as much of the sexism that pervades our culture as I can. At the same time I realize that in many ways I still live within it too. Years of personal experience in patriarchy and centuries of cultural experience in patriarchy don't go away just because one awakens to it a bit and starts to see things differently.

When I primarily identified with conservative Christian groups with predictably conservative views regarding women, I could never really come to terms with those views. It's not that it was always a burning issue. From time to time the issue would emerge, then dutifully get explained and swept back under the rug of rationalization and unawareness to be ignored awhile longer. At the time there wasn't much else I could do. But sometimes it would get noticed enough to be painful. As much as it might be presented otherwise, when I got in touch with it, I couldn't get around the deeply painful sense that in spite of explanation that said otherwise, in reality this position portrayed that women were inherently inferior to men and because of this women were by definition denied certain roles. In other words, as a woman, I was inherently and deeply inferior to that part of humanity that was male, and had to live in an accordingly limited way. I don't think all the explanations in the world, even ones that might be rationally and logically plausible; or the best experience possible in living out relationships with men who might live out this model in the most godly and gracious ways possible, could get me to truly accept this or feel alright about it, then or now.

I want to say to women: you do not have to rationalize this so you can keep yourself within a sexist definition of absolute truth, faithfulness to God and the way "He" made you. You can be honest with yourself and honest with God. You are not a 2nd class citizen because of your gender. You should fight those things from our religion and our culture, and those things within and around you; that say, imply, or make you feel that you are. You are not offending God by doing so.

I don't mean to say men and women, boys and girls are all the same. If nothing else, I've been a wife and mother too long to think that. But don't let your gender put you down or limit you. Trust yourself and trust God enough to be honest about the dynamics of your life, including those related to gender. Then do your best, with God's help, to live true to yourself, the relationships you have and the callings God has given you.

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