A touch of heaven - pt 3, the churchy bit

Part 1
Part 2

So what does worship in a community of the vulnerable look like?

Well the pipe organ was still there - with an impressive musician enjoying it as we gathered and waited for 12.30. The seats filled up until the old balcony was in use too. Some were from a group visiting the project as part of a mission week, but they could be spotted by the uniform teeshirts. Most would have been local, some had been waiting on tables earlier, some eating at them.

There was no reverent silence before the service began (or at any time within it come to that). The organist came out to teach us the opening hymn which was a spiritual, and then it was greetings and notices - anyone could raise a hand to add one. Two solos followed - and if you are not sure about clapping contributions in worship, how about a standing ovation?

Prayers of the people were next - and this including a novel response, around the pews were homemade shakers which we were invited to make noise with in agreement with a prayer offered.  A noisy Amen to the prayers offered by various people (raise your hand and when acknowledged you speak up).  Giving the offering was a walk to the front to place in the bowl - though they missed out on the African tradition of dancing it up that I remember from Zambia.


The Bible reading was Matt 14 - Jesus walking on the water and Peter getting out of the boat, it was printed on the service sheet and read dramatically with voices around the room.  Then for the first time since the welcome the Pastor was on.  Sermon time, but this was a conversation, collecting in thoughts from the congregation.  This was when people spoke of what happened on the way to the jail and another about how rich he felt as someone with Jesus even if he stayed in a tent.

But this was not a dumbed down sermon - the pastor went on to quote Bonhoeffer - and the challenge that sinking is not a lack of faith, staying in the boat and not getting wet is. Faith is getting wet. Also that they had been in a storm and thought away from Jesus but he was closer than they realised.

The new part-time minister lead the communion prayer, and we lined up to take the bread and juice in the way that United Methodists do here - tear your own bread and intinct.  The organist played classic hymn tunes and people chattered - this could have felt very wrong and irreverent and somewhere else probably would, but it felt a natural part of the worship here.

We closed singing along to a recorded song - not a churchy one but not one I recognised from anywhere else either, but then that would cover a lot of popular, well known songs!

tSo a traditional order for UMC worship, bit different for prayers and sermon - but not in ways that haven't been tried in Wesley Church, Somewhere St.   The sense of a foretaste of heaven is not from some tweak to the pattern of worship, it came from the people who took part - those planned to share, those who brought their thoughts and prayers.  It came from being a place where community happened, where those who are so often relegated to the recipients of Christian charity were those giving, and teaching.   And yes I know that I am guilty of labelling in this description even though I am trying to explain an hour where it didn't seem to exist - the limits of trying to describe an indescribable sense of God's presence in that place and time.

A touch of heaven - pt 2, breaking bread

Part 1

I have been to a number of shared meals here, some shared by church folk after church, one after a funeral, and some inviting the community to share.  All of them have been on disposable plates, and either buffet or queue past the servers.  All very practical and utilitarian, and it seems America has not really grasped the eco message in a disposable world.

But here at the Wednesday Welcome Table serving nearly 500 people in 4 sittings - practical things have been laid aside for dignity.  We queue to get in, but then sit at laid tables with cloths,  real plates, cloth napkins, and servers come to the table. The salad and rolls are already on the table and we pass it around, conversation begins with Howard next to me, in the midst of the busy noise of the hall's echoes.

Today it is stroganoff  and the servers greet us as if they haven't done this for two sittings already, and with another to follow.   It is not unusual for churches here to have Welcome Table meals one day or other a week to which anyone can come and no-one charges a fee (though a box may discretely loiter for those who can afford to contribute), and being in the city centre it is not surprising to find the numbers higher.  But the higher the number of people the more likely we are to revert to more practical serving patterns, queuing past a hatch etc.

The decision to treat the meal as restaurant style, the rarity of real crockery in a disposable culture, the 100s of napkins that need someone to put them through a washing machine every week, these lift it beyond providing people's food need, to something that greets individuals as valuable people - whether they sleep on the street, have a home and a hard time, or are a visitor who can afford to be on a trip from abroad.

There was communion in the service that I went to later but as the pastor leading this adventure said in his welcome and notices, they have church upstairs and downstairs.  And there was for me a real sense of


communion in the breaking of bread, serving of salad and enjoyment of stroganoff.

PS. Dogs were welcome too, to come in and sit under the tables at one end of the hall.  (Across my visit I got a variety of substitute doggy cuddles)

Part 3

A touch of heaven - pt 1, Welcome to Hayward St

Before I came to North Carolina I did some web searches to see what I wanted to visit whilst here. I discovered a church in the city centre, a place where the homeless and troubled are served and welcomed, not just giving to those in need but building a worshipping community.

Today I made my first visit to an adventure that started 4 years ago. A church building that had once been at the heart of a residential community to the edge of a town centre, the centre extended, the interstate highway came through cutting the community off from the church.  In time (as I understand it, I have a formal meeting with the minister next week) the congregation declined, then the other city centre Methodist congregation adopted the site - hemmed in on 3 sides by freeway and entry roads - and a minister with a vision given space to dream a dream.


Hayward Street Congregation

This is a congregation, supported by christians from across the city yes, but a local congregation - a worshipping community where someone can say ' last week when I was being taken to jail...' and another declare that they are 'the richest poor person in the county because they know Jesus'.  A place that provides for the needs of the most vulnerable, not just in body but in meeting them as precious people.

part 2
part 3

Dying differently.

Ok so the title is inaccurate, this post is actually about how different the saying goodbye is, but didn't want to waste a good alliterative heading.

Today is Saturday and I have come home from the funeral of a church member who died of heart failure on Tuesday afternoon - yes I do mean this Tuesday, just 4 days ago.  That is the first difference, how quickly funerals go ahead.  A glance at the obituary page of the Asheville Citizen Times shows the short timescale as normal here. I presume it is linked to the pre-refrigeration era and the hot climate - but it does feel very rushed for the family.  Our slower pace allows for the fact of death to begin to sink in before the funeral.

Visitation - this took place yesterday at the funeral home chapel, a whole new concept to me.  As well as the funeral service, the obituaries announce when visitation will be.  This is a designated couple of hours when the family are available and anyone can call by and offer their thoughts and condolences. I think there is a good side to this - having an agreed time and space for such greetings may lessen the onslaught of supportive visits at home that could be overwhelming if family need space.

In practice though I am less sure, imagine the family line at a formal wedding do - where you queue to pass and greet everyone in line. Place that family line next to the coffin - an open casket - and ask them to stand there for several hours, only a few days from the loved one's death, and smile politely at all comers. It is an intense expectation.

And so to the funeral itself - there is lots I could reflect on the service, but I understand that this is very dependent on the minister leading it - in this case more Biblical quotes than references to the deceased and the life lived, and some self indulgent focus from the retired pastor.  So off to the cemetery, a full procession of everyone - cars having been parked up in formation before the service ready to be led out, with the full right of the road, through red lights, whatever, up to the graveside.

A web image 

And there the casket is set on a strange contraption above the excavated grave, last post and the flag for a former soldier and the minister's prayer - time to lower the casket? No, apparently it is the family's choice but very rarely do they stay to see the coffin lowered these days.  But surely that is the point of the graveside prayers, and the final committal - ashes to ashes, dust to dust?  I can see my liturgy tutor in full flow on the need to mark 'liminal moments' such as the final farewell.

And I missed seeing the contraption in action - designed to lower the casket into the lined vault (required for all burials in NC) and then to move the heavy lid into place to seal it before backfilling the grave.  It seems that there is a desire to avoid the inevitable decomposition - shutting out the earth, the world etc, alongside maintaining the surface neat and level for the groundskeepers.  

An advertising introduction to burial vaults

It all seems a long way from our wooden coffins and the occasional funeral where the rainwater needs pumping out of he gravesite, But then we avoid any sight of the deceased.  How much do we all dodge the reality of death in this day and age.  We can celebrate reduced mortality rates in our communities at least, but one effect has been to distance ourselves from the one certainty in life.

Riding the buses

Tuesday I had to be at Sardis church for breakfast and planned to get the only bus that comes out this part of town, and stops near the church, to head into 'downtown' Asheville.  In the end someone drove me in via an errand at the bank (we went in but they have drive thru banking facilities here!)

I pottered around the downtown, it felt abandoned by day to day shoppers - great for arty types and quirky restaurants but lacking the things that would draw locals in regularly, so understand when my lift giver had said she hadn't been in the town centre for several years.

I found my way to the bus station and with my bus so long to wait for another plan emerged, and that led to several bus changes and riding the bus the long way out in the opposite direction (rather than a long wait out in the sun) before actually reaching the place where the locals shop at a retail park.

Buses are levellers - we wait together at the stop and we have to share the same space on the journey - no  hiding away in our own tin cans.  The services here are very limited but do serve some of the more vulnerable communities, as I rode the buses around a full lap the pattern of ethnicity of those riding with me changed. As did the view of the housing, the areas we travelled through.

There is something important in being able to explore a community with eyes open to the world around us, something that concentrating on driving I wouldn't have been able to take in. What do we need to take time to notice in our own communities, but familiarity or busyness distract us from? It might not need a bus ride, but maybe we need to take eyes off the road we are travelling and onto the people we travel amongst.

Oh and though Asheville routes are few enough and infrequent, their buses do have a cyclists dream - a fold down frame on the front that can hold up to 3 bikes...

'It's church Jim but not as you know it....'

So its Monday evening, and my first week here in North Carolina is drawing to a close. Yesterday was church - 9.30 at Reeves Chapel, and Sardis at 11am  before a shared lunch back with the folk at Reeves.

People are the same interesting mix of characters where ever you are, but the experience of church can feel like another planet. The service patterns here may not be typical of all American Methodists, but it was certainly different to church as I know it back in our British Methodism.

There was opening music by the choir, and a set piece in the midst of worship, but only 2 congregational hymns in one church and 3 in the other. Other aspects of the service would be familiar to the liturgical traditions and the UMC does have its roots in the Wesleyan higher church patterns so that might be expected.

It is the lack of hymns and the poor singing of those that were there that really seemed strange to me as one who was brought up with the concept of Methodism being 'born in song'. Apart from the Quakers, I have been used to the concept of church services and singing together being natural partners, even our more liturgical friends get 4 hymns a week.

My efforts were well received at both places, but need to be wary of my jokes - a comment about not taking to the local food 'grits' let to a special pot being conjured up in time for my return to Reeves Chapel for  lunch!

Culture Gaps

The famous quote (debatable tough who said it according to various websites) that Britain  and USA are 'two nations divided by a common language'.  How very true, but there are culture gaps way beyond what words we use.

I arrived at my temporary home in Asheville, North Carolina almost midnight on July 1st, the 2nd was unpacking, a walk about the area (shocking the natives and discovering that sidewalks are considered optional on the edge of the city) then collected, taken for lunch and to visit the churches.

So Thursday it was time to get deeper into the culture - a trip to the local Bi-Lo supermarket that I had located in my wanderings the day before.  I am not home alone as my exchange partner's family are still here, and the grown daughters will be most of my stay, though they are busy with work.  So I am not shopping for full food, so for the needed exercise, and leaving the car adapting for a day with company, I set out with my back pack for the less than a mile hike along the verges.

I looked closely up and down all the aisles - found that here Jif is something to eat not a cleaning brand and 'dirty rice' is a good thing - and lots of differences as well as similarities. One thing I was hunting for was the equivalent to squash - the drink not the vegetable.  At lunch the previous day it came up in chat after I said I didn't drink tea etc. I thought that knowing it was called cordial in Australia (and they had Americanisms there) this 'bilingualism' would be the key. But still no comprehension.

Have you ever tried to explain something so basic and day to day to someone with absolutely no concept of what you are talking about, and you have no tangible example to offer?  It is incredibly hard, and it strikes me that this is what we encounter as we speak of our faith experiences - even to other Christians half the time, let alone the rest of people.

It is also the same with health experiences that you are living with and others can only look on - they may think they understand the words you are using but the concept is beyond them, not out of their failure to try, but just beyond their reach.  For example in mental health issues we use words that others recognise as sadness, bad days, low times - but mean something so much deeper, longer and tougher.

It seems to me that we don't need to cross the pond to find ourselves 'divided by a common language'.
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PS - in case you were wondered, the shop search showed nothing like our squash,  the nearest thing, tucked in a corner of an aisle, being a powder to add to water, but means making up a full 2 quart batch at a time.  Otherwise you drag home big bottles of ready to drink stuff.