The Universe Is Knocking

[qos]

The universe has been pinging me lately. Two topics have come up several times, in different contexts, over the last few days, which means I need to pay attention to them.

Sumerian goddess, given the title “Queen of Heaven and Earth.” She is the Goddess of the Descent, making the journey down through the seven gates of the underworld, ritually giving up a piece of clothing/regalia at each point, representing surrender of her powers. At the bottom, “naked and bowed low,” she enters the presence of her sister Ereshkigal, who “fixes her with the eye of death,” and kills her. She hangs on a peg in the underworld for three days until Father Enki, roused to action by Inanna’s friend and officer Ninshubur, sends down two sexless creatures who empathize with Ereshkigal in her birthing pangs and win Innana’s corpse for a reward. They feed her the water of life and restore her. But the underworld must remain in balance, and if Inanna returns to the land of the living, someone else must remain in her place. Demons return with her to her life. She prevents them from taking Ninshubur and her own sons, who have mourned her. But when she finds her husband Dumuzi sitting on her throne, she has the demons take him. But Dumuzi is ransomed by his sister, Geshtinanna, who takes his place in the underworld for six months of the year.

Inanna is also the one who consecrates the human king through the hieros gamos or sacred marriage. She is the one who wins the me, the knowledge of the arts and sciences, from the father god, by winning a drinking contest, and gives them to humanity.

Inanna is my patron goddess, the one whose stories and powers resonate most strongly with my life. It was through studying the story of the Descent, in which she voluntarily surrenders that which identifies her and gives her her powers, that I was able to come to terms with having given my consent to an emotionally abusive relationship that brought me to the lowest point of my own life.

But I haven’t thought much about Inanna during the past few years. My spiritual explorations and energy have been focused in Christianity, working through my relationship with the church in which I’ve found my spiritual home, and the new and complicated theology of Swedenborg.

But late last week I had an exchange with queenofhalves that developed into a conversation about Inanna. And then last night, jaynefury showed me her beautiful and unique Inanna necklace. And I begin to think: I need to go back into this part of my spirituality. This is not something I should forget or ignore. What I’m going to do about it isn’t yet clear. It calls for some meditation.

The classic scriptural reference is about how you can not pour new wine into old wineskins. The old wineskins will burst.

I’ve been in an awkward place between stages in my spiritual growth. Being in a Christian church again has resurrected a lot of old patterns of worship and meditation. Old childhood patterns, I’m beginning realize – some perhaps not appropriate to where I am now. I was always happy and comfortable in traditional church services, and I’ve been having some tension sometimes with the way my current community likes to worship.

This was brought to my attention most recently through some conversations with two of my closest friends at church, who feel alienated when the services are too traditional and too heavy on scripture. I know they are closer to the majority feeling of our community than I am. One woman spoke of wanting to have a service entirely in poetry. That keeps echoing in my memory. It’s not something I would ever have thought about. And that bothers me.

Then, Doug, visiting from PSR/SHS, talked about his reading of Craddock, one of the modern masters of homiletics (sermon-giving), who writes about using an inductive sermon style: instead of starting with scripture, he advocates starting with life, and only at the end drawing the lesson together and showing how this fits with scripture. I always start the other way: with the text, and work out from there. Not, perhaps, the best method for the community I’m in.

Then, this weekend, Fr. R. pointed out that although Jesus was addressed as “rabbi,” there is no record of him being educated as a rabbi, and he does not teach the way rabbis usually taught. He knew Torah and the prophets, but he didn’t rely on them. He taught from the fabric of everyday life, and the gist of his teaching was that the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand, and a new way of life was called for. He didn’t say anything about church services, rituals, or the importance of forms. Quite the contrary. I felt myself suddenly as having a “default” worship and teaching style that, while not “bad” was not necessarily in tune with the spirit of Jesus’s style and what was important to him.

The phrase “new wine” kept coming up over the weekend in class, and each time it did I felt a personal poke, as if I was being asked to take a new look at myself and my habits, and to dare to step off into a way of being in a church community that is bolder, newer, more free. I may be comfortable with the older, traditional forms, but that doesn’t mean I should stay there.



This is way too much LJ typing for a work morning. I’d better stop here for now.
But it’s so nice to be thinking again!


Update: It took a few minutes for me to register the possible irony of contemplating a richer, newer form of Christian worship simultaneously with a sense of a need to re-connect with a powerful goddess archetype. The two are not necessarily in conflict, but are not immediate and obvious companions for most people -- and even in my own mind. Which is probably part of what I need to address right now.

Comments

[queenofhalves]

i've thought a lot about alternative christian worship. let me know if you'd like to have a conversation about that. :>

[qos.livejournal.com]

Of course I do!

Shall we do it here in the Comments section, or start a new journal entry?

[queenofhalves]

here, there, anywhere... :>

first, a book recommendation: the worship workshop by marcia mcfee. i had her workshop and thought it was fantastic. her basic thesis is that different people have different activities that get them feeling the sacred most strongly: for some it's music, others the sermon, visual cues, familiar liturgy, new liturgy, movement, etc. in her mind, good worship has something for everyone at least some of the time.

my church in austin had an alternative worship service that was really vital. when i was there, it looked something like this. (starting new comment so i don't run out of space...

[queenofhalves]

I. Befriending Creation

Welcome

Drumming and Calling of the Directions (five point invocation of air, fire, water, earth, and spirit -- I wrote a lot of these, and sometimes we took them from books, and sometimes the minister improvised them. Often we got lay readers to read them.)

*A Call to Celebration (the first verse from “For the Beauty of the Earth,” which we sang every week)

*Song of Praise (hymn or song appropriate to the weekly theme)

Celebrating Children- Story and Prayer Time
Song “Jesus Loves the Little Children”

II. Befriending Letting Go

Song for Centering (one verse from a hymn; changed seasonally)

Time of Letting Go (sometimes a performance, sometimes a guided meditation, sometimes a prayer, always something quiet and inward-drected)

Prayers of the People (individuals pray aloud)
After each petition, the leader will say, “Healing/Joyful Spirit,”
and all will respond: “Receive our prayer.”

III. Befriending Creativity

Scripture Reading

Witness in Word (sermon)

Witness in Art (performance by a guest artist, sometimes someone from the congregation -- music, dance, visual art, just about anything, really)

IV. Befriending Compassion

Offering of Our Gifts of Money for Nurture and Justice

Response to Offering (song, changing seasonally; usually from the same hymn as the Song for Centering above)

Earth Prayer (prayer read in unison, often a poem, and usually taken from either Earth Prayers or Life Prayers, which are both really good books)

Exchanging Signs of Peace and Welcome (greeting time)

Opportunities for Fellowship and Service (announcements)

*Song of Thanksgiving (hymn appropriate for the weekly theme)

A Playful Sending Forth (song with body prayer [movement] -- the same every week)

[queenofhalves]

the service is organized into the four paths of creation spirituality. i always thought this was a neat way to do it, and it gave the service some structure.

some of the issues we encountered in doing this kind of worship included:

1. people say they like it when you experiment with the music, but if you don't repeat the new hymn or song a lot, the congregation doesn't have a chance to learn it, and that means they sing it really badly. this is deadly for the people to whom music is the most important part of the service. having the choir lead new hymns is a good idea. i was always comfortable with having the pianist deliberately teach a new song, but that won't work if your service is very formal. in general, balancing repetition with new material is difficult. we found that people were unnerved when everything was unfamiliar, but bored when everything was familiar.

2. alternative services are more work than traditional ones, because there are more parts to fill up with cool stuff.

3. balance can be hard to maintain. some people are thrilled out of their minds if you get them out of their seats to do body prayers or other movement. (once we did sufi dances of universal peace!) other people are made very uncomfortable, even if you make it clear that they can "participate in spirit only." pleasing one contingent of the congregation often means alienating another.

4. allowing individuals to speak in church is one of the most deeply meaningful worship experiences i've ever had, but it can be dangerous as well. sometimes the congregation just bulldozes the minister and the prayer time can go on and on for twenty minutes. we never let them have the microphone, which helped the leader keep control of the situation, but also made it difficult for others to hear the prayers. (we addressed this by having the minister summarize prayers into the mike before inviting the response.) we did prayer time every week, but we'd also occasionally do meditations where people could call our words or phrases. again, this can be really profound, but you also risk somebody being inadvertantly inappropriate.


so, does that give us enough to start talking about? :>

[qos.livejournal.com]

so, does that give us enough to start talking about?

More than enough, considering I am actually at work today.

I'll go through all this more thoroughly this evening. My first impression is strongly positive, however, and I'm already thinking about sharing some of this with my pastor and the rest of the board -- as well as apply to my own meditations.

[queenofhalves]

if you like this stuff, i have lots more resources i can share -- book titles, copies of liturgy and hymns, etc. (i keep a file for just that purpose. :> )

[qos.livejournal.com]

I'll take it!
Do you still have my email address?

[queenofhalves]

ooh, actually in this case it is a fat paper file. i am happy to make photcopies of stuff and mail it to you, though... any idea what sort of thing you're interested in?

and of course the book recommendations i can make here, though not now because i have to do my dante homework. :>