Gain

I saw this photo riding my bike to the grocery store. At first I thought it was from the Bible. (Perhaps a reference to Mark 8:36  What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?) Wouldn't it be great if gas stations and pharmacies used their spelling letters to give us messages about the well lived life and attendant mortality?

The Bible has been a lot more in my life than in a long time since I've started going to church at Broad Street Ministries. I really took my time about going over there, although I had read a lot about it and been very impressed, because I really don't think of myself as a Christian. 

I've been going to Unitarian churches for most of my adult life, and although I love the philosophy, the experience is certainly lacking. The very best UU churches offer  all the balm for distress of a neurobiology lecture and slightly less spiritual uplift than NPR. The worst ones give you a smug but temporary sense of superiority while you listen to trite platitudes that reveal the lack of empathy for suffering that comes with not acknowledging it. 

Most of my life is about thoughtful consideration, measure and analysis. When it's Sunday morning I want to sing loudly, stomp, clap, lean in and say amen. So it's back to the Christians.

I once taught a Sunday School class called "The Radical Jesus" for fourth graders that took the Jefferson Bible as it's text and just focused on things Jesus actually says in the Bible. No walking on water, plenty of giving your shirt as well.And the Christians at BSM are The Radical Jesus Christians. Like, "Do not make my father's house a house of trade," hanging with the lepers and the prostitutes, rigorous inventory of one's place in the world Christians. They remind me of the ones I remember meeting back during the Iraq protests who rag dolled down in civil disobedience and got dragged off to jail. The Christians at BSM ripped out the pews in their sanctuary to make room for homeless people to eat. 

With a congregation that must be at least 40% homeless, and includes people of many races and most ages there are ways in which the church achieves the actual diversity that mostly white, mostly 30's/40's mostly upper middle class UU's talk about. But in the most important way, everyone's the same. You can't go there and ignore the worst kinds of suffering because everybody's there. Addicts, the food insecure and the actually very hungry, the homeless, those just out of prison those just out of the hospital, the jobless. 

These are not people who sit with their hands folded and listen to the sermon. They get up, they walk around they make noises that they can't help making, and when it's time to sing, the people who sing SING. And dance and clap and stomp and yell. 

What is it about needing the song that makes the song so good?

I've always had one foot in the theater and one in the church, and these places have been side by side or the same throughout history. There's something to learn about the way we sing and what it does for us in those places. There's something also to learn from the craft of taking passages from the Bible--a text that is as set as texts can be (and the book which Sarah Vowell wonderfully described as "many mansions of eccentricity" from which it is possible to argue any case) and turning them into stories that mean something to the actual people in the room. 

A couple of weeks ago the pastor preached on some obscure passage which largely lists what groups come to a wall for a fast day. It's pretty boring and you'd have to be pretty inspired to make it meaningful. But good preaching can do that, and good theater could, too. Neither is about the words on the page and both are about the living communication, the translation of the words into an experience for breathing participants. 

That sign wasn't a Bible passage, though. It was an ad for a sale on Gain detergent, which costs (while the sale is on) $4.94.