Thursday October 7, 2010

insight on authors - Keith Howard and Ed Searcy

I DON'T HAVE TIME TO LIVE
A Conversation with Keith Howard and Ed Searcy

What comes to mind when you hear about a book titled, I Don't Have Time to Live? I immediately went down the track of workplace stress, burnout, time management, and sabbaticals. However, when I met with co-authors Keith Howard and Ed Searcy, it didn't take more than a few minutes to be dramatically re-oriented to the more challenging direction they intend to pursue as they shape this book over the next year.

Keith is director of Emerging Spirit, an initiative of the United Church of Canada focused on establishing and nurturing a relationship between the United Church and Canadians who don't attend church, with a particular focus on those between the ages of 30 and 45 (www.emergingspirit.ca/blog/keith_howard ). Ed has been the minister at University Hill United Church in Vancouver for fifteen years (www.uhill.net/searcy.htm).

Keith: Time is a big issue, a big topic, and it seemed to me that Christians have more to offer to the conversation than, “Well I hope it doesn't kill you,” or “If you had the proper time management techniques you wouldn't be facing this,” or “If you were a better person you'd get everything done.”

Tim: Was there a specific catalyst that got you thinking about this Christian aspect of time?

Keith: The idea came from some reflection on the calendar Salt of the Earth, which Ed has been shaping with the University Hill congregation over the past decade or so. It just seemed to me from my work in Emerging Spirit, where time is one of the key issues facing 30 to 45 year-olds, that there was a happy convergence of our mutual concerns.

Tim: I've used the calendar for many years now and love the way that it orients me to the seasons of the church year. Ed, what was the origin of the calendar?

Ed: For the last 15 years here in my ministry I've been exploring the counter-intuitive idea that what's really needed for the church is to be more peculiar, more Christian, more complex as a language community. I think that learning to be Christian is like learning a foreign language: there's no easy way. And it's not just a language. There’s a culture that comes with it. So how do you form a living community with the capacity to live counterculturally or subversively?

Tim: And one of those ways is through the calendar that the community follows?

Ed: That's right. Living a subversive story is functioning under the radar of the media, being a sub-culture, which is very much what the Jews have been doing for most of 2000 years. Every religious community has a unique way of marking time. And the way you mark time is one of the ways you tell your children who you are.

We got at the time issue because we realized the dominant year (January to December) was not Christian. It's the emperor's time. We're working at the issues of time in our congregation because we think that by keeping time in a different way we live with a sense of the kingdom of God, and not as citizens of the regular clock time.

The way we mark time is a story. When a new person comes to U. Hill United Church and says they don't really know the Christian story, we tell them that if they come to church every Sunday from Advent to Pentecost they'll learn the story of Jesus Christ in those six months. We tell it every year.

Tim: Keith, you've travelled a lot. When have you bumped into those religiously alternative ways of marking time?

Keith: There's nothing like being in Jerusalem for a week or so to make you realize that the common assumption we have about how time is kept in the West is not universal. All you need is one of those calls to prayer from the minaret outside your window at four in the morning to make you make you wonder, “What's going on here?” Devout Muslims stop, find a place, and pray, and they do that five times a day. Maybe the nine to five work day isn't as universal as we think it is.

Tim: In my teaching recently and in my work as a spiritual director I've had more contact with rabbis and have become more aware of the place the Sabbath has in their keeping of time.

Ed: I've been very strongly influenced by Abraham Heschel's book The Sabbath, which taught me how Jews understand the Sabbath. Heschel makes the point that non-Jews - Gentiles - tend to think of the Sabbath as a time of rest to recharge us to do the important work of the week. But for Jews that is totally inverted. They understand that the world is organized so that there are six days to get ready for the one day when you get to live in eternity now. The Sabbath is an experience of time in God: you spend your six days getting everything done and organized so that on the Sabbath you do all the things that you don't have to do. You eat together as a family, you worship God, you talk about important things, you make love, you eat some more. It's not a day set aside in order to be more productive for the rest of the week. It's actually being productive for the week in order to experience time in all its fullness. Gentiles create temples in space but Jews understand they are creating a temple in time. Their construction of the sacred is not a geographical location; it's a location in time.

Tim: The example of these two different approaches to Sabbath time really illuminates the two cultural realities we inhabit and shows the size of the challenge we face as Christians if we are serious about living counterculturally.

Ed: It's not up to us to save the universe. God is doing that. That's really what Jews are trying to say every time they stop doing things.

This is a long term project since the church spent most of 2000 years running the culture and setting up time. It's kind of a new experience for us to have to organize our whole life helping people resist the cultural norms and live different habits.

Tim: I'm beginning to get a sense of the dimensions of this book and the import of it for this time.

Ed: Our culture wants us to think of ourselves as individuals because so long as we are individuals, it is really difficult to resist the call to consume in a certain way and live a certain kind of time. So that is why Christians always have to be called into communal life. In some ways, it is a community of resistance – an alternative that is also part of the conversation we're hoping to have.

Tim: As you're talking, Ed, I'm thinking that this is as much a process of remembering a way as it is of building a culture.

Ed: That's right. It's essentially the diagnosis that Walter Brueggeman offers. He says that the symptoms of the church in North America – its decline, its anxiety, its paralysis – are all symptoms of a disease which is called amnesia – communal amnesia. George Lindbeck argues that the recovery of community memory takes probably 20 to 30 years in any congregation. When you say, “The Lord is my shepherd, I don't need anything else,” you're really saying, “We don't have any troubles as long as we are following Jesus,” in a culture that says, “Unless you've got your RSP's lined up, you're in deep trouble.” My ministry is full of all kinds of different strategies and practices related to helping people recover a memory of what it is to be a Christian.

Tim: The book is a way of bridging this kind of historical and theological analysis to the reality of the intergenerational community we want to be forming through communal practice and story living.

Ed: I'm imagining with Keith's help that we'll keep it light and address it to our kids as well as to the wider community. It's really an invitation and an encouragement to join with other people of shared concern and to keep time in our peculiar way. For example, what does it mean to keep the 12 days of Christmas in a culture that thinks it's over on Boxing Day? What is Advent and why is Advent different from the Christmas shopping season? How would you keep Advent if you want to live counterculturally?

Tim: What have you been learning about this in the life of the University Hill congregation?

Ed: We've been experimenting slowly as a United Church congregation, slowly recovering practices. We celebrate communion 25 Sundays a year and I would imagine that within a year or two we will celebrate communion every Sunday, because we've come to realize that the central experience of the future God intends for the world is eating together at the table. In ways beyond our knowing, God is bringing a future for the planet and the universe that is about reconciliation and healing. We need to practice that every single Sunday so that we get that hope deep inside our bones. That's what the Eucharist is; it's an eschatological experience, not just of what happened a long time ago, but of the future breaking into the present. For one day in the week we experience the kingdom come on earth as in heaven.

Tim: Keith, it's clear that the book will draw significantly on Ed's experience with the University Hill congregation. What perspective will you bring as you accompany your friend in making that perspective more available “in the public sphere”?

Keith: Ed and I stand in the same place but face different directions. Ed has been concerned with formation of church and intentional Christian community, helping the church recover from amnesia; I've been looking at the people who are repelled by the current incarnation of church and trying to tell them how we bear witness (to use that old language) to that which we have been given without first saying, “You have to first do all these things before we can even have the conversation.”

Ed: We want to write a book that people feel invited into. We want to imagine a world and a life which has a lot to chew on, a lot to work at – a lifetime's worth of material. You're not going to be bored after six months because you've figured it all out. Essentially, we want to get at Christianity through the common problem of how we manage time in our culture.

Tim: Thank you for taking this time with me and for taking me way beyond where I first expected to go with the title of the project.

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insight on small groups

by Tim Scorer

The interview I Don't Have Time to Live that appears in this edition of insight offers a transformative vision from two key leaders within contemporary Christianity. We are offering the fullness of this conversation as a resource to be used by members of small groups who want to have their own challenging and transforming conversations.

Make copies of the interview available for group members to read prior to the session you are planning.

Use the following process suggestions to initiate conversation in your groups.

1. What was most striking to you personally from the interview with Ed and Keith?
2. The calendar – Salt of the Earth – that is referred to in the interview presents the 365 days of the year as seven Christian seasons, rather than as the twelve months of the Julian calendar. The eleven images artistically represent aspects of those church seasons. In speaking about the purpose of the calendar, Ed Searcy says: We're working at the issues of time in our congregation because we think that by keeping time in a different way we live with a sense of the kingdom of God and not as citizens of the regular clock time.
   • In what ways might you as a community begin to live more intentionally into time as God's gift rather than time as our problem?
3. Ed calls our attention to two theologians who have addressed the issue of communal memory: It's essentially the diagnosis that Walter Brueggeman offers, which is that the symptoms of the church in North America – its decline, its anxiety, its paralysis – are all symptoms of a disease which is called amnesia – communal amnesia. George Lindbeck argues that the recovery of community memory takes probably 20 to 30 years in any congregation.
   • What are the ways that you sustain and deepen your community memory?
   • How do you do that in a way that invites those on the outside in, rather than building walls of exclusive identity that keep people away?
4. Other traditions have much to teach Christians about identity and story keeping. Ed Searcy makes reference to the Jewish community practice of Shabbat and Keith Howard reports on his experience of being woken in the early morning light of Jerusalem to the amplified sounds of the call to prayer.
   • What experiences of encountering the practices of other faith traditions have each of you had that might inform and inspire your journey to deeper faith memory and identity?

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insight on spirit-centred leadership

by Tim Scorer

The interview I Don't Have Time to Live that appears in this edition of insight offers a transformative vision from two spirit-centred leaders within contemporary Christianity. Read the interview and then take time to reflect on your own spirit-centred leadership by using the following five statements as catalysts.

1. Time is God's clear message to us that our living matters.
2. Clarity about my spiritual faith identity is critical now that I know I am leading in a global village.
3. Spirit-centred practices make it possible to speak authoritatively about things that really matter to me.
4. Helping friends give voice to their deepest passions is a form of spirit-centred leadership.
5. Sometimes it takes years of gestation before a child of my imagination is ready to be given expression.

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insight on spiritual practice: the keeping of time

by Lois Huey-Heck

SPIRITUAL PRACTICE: THE KEEPING OF TIME

In his interview with Keith Howard and Ed Searcy, Tim Scorer offered that he is becoming more and more aware of the place of Sabbath in the Judeo tradition of keeping time. Ed responded by talking about one of my favourite books – the classic text The Sabbath by Abraham Joshua Heschel (1951). Interestingly, the book has been alternatively titled The Architecture of Time.

From my reading of Heschel and others, I’ve gleaned an appreciation for the value of non-doing, or stepping out of commerce (both buying and selling) and productivity (judging the day and myself as “successful” by measuring what I’ve accomplished). This is profoundly counter-cultural. The pull to consume and accomplish is deeply ingrained in the cultural psyche. Most of us have internalized the value of productivity all too well. It’s not easy to stop doing. For me, the reasons to stop have to be at least as compelling as the compulsion to keep doing.

Heschel (via Ed Searcy’s interview) has answered the “why bother” of keeping Sabbath time thus: “The world is organized so that there are six days to get ready for the one day when you get to live in eternity now. The Sabbath is an experience of time in God… [an opportunity] to experience time in all its fullness.”

The Invitation

Step One: Reflect 
During your prayer/contemplation time, and/or in your journal, consider your relationships to doing and being. Who are you when you’re doing no-thing? Are you able to affirm your worth as a being? In what ways might a Sabbath time nurture your relationship with the Holy?

Step Two: Practice
Get out your calendar and look for a space at the same time of day each week where you can intentionally have a Sabbath time. If this is hard to find, pay attention to that! Commit to some Sabbath time every week until Christmas, even if it’s just one hour a week when you can disengage from commercial activity and be in the eternal now.

Step Three: Share
I know of a bright and faithful group of young leaders in the church who created a community of support for themselves around Sabbath practice. They set the intention of increasing their Sabbath day by one hour a month. I don’t know what the long term results of that practice have been but I do know that it was an enriching experience. Find someone you can talk to about your learnings, observations, successes, and challenges. It may be a friend, someone in a pastoral role, a spiritual director, a partner, a colleague.

Step Four: Deepen
I highly recommend that you read Heschel’s book (even if you’ve read it before). It’s encouraging and inspiring. Donna Schaper’s little book Sabbath Keeping (published by Cowley) is a good introduction to Sabbath. And, of course, watch for the release of Keith and Ed’s upcoming book.

Keeping sabbath is a decidedly different way of living… It is living out an intentional witness, a resistance to the way things are. When we live differently, we live with God. – Donna Schaper

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