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Martin Luther King, Jr. and The Still Small Voice

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Today Memphis bustles with almost 100,000 visitors who are commemorating the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. While I was a self-focused and distracted college freshman in Virginia, many of my friends and acquaintances lived here in Memphis when the murder took place in 1968. Their experience of the event and its repercussions were visceral and vivid. Over the years, King’s untimely death has magnified both the struggles and the vitality of the city. This week is jam packed with commemorative events sponsored by the The Civil Rights Museum (which is a must for visitors to Memphis), churches, colleges, and historical and community organizations throughout the city.

I plan to participate in two events. One is today at Calvary Episcopal Church: a worship service and placing of a new historical marker near the church. The marker acknowledges the vast wealth amassed from the slave market that existed near the church and was owned by Nathan Bedford Forrest. The second event is a reenactment of the Ministers March from St. Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral to City Hall in support of the 1968 Sanitation Workers Strike. The Cathedral’s website describes the original march:

On the morning of April 5 after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination in 1968, about 300 clergy gathered at St. Mary’s Cathedral. Most were members of the inclusive, multi-racial ministerial alliance of the Memphis Ministers’ Association. After prayer and soul-searching discussion, they adopted a statement favoring the striking city sanitation workers. Then, approximately 150 of them marched from the Cathedral to Mayer Henry Loeb’s office and presented their demands. Dean Bill Dimmick led the march with the Cathedral cross. 

I cannot write about Martin Luther King, Jr. because compared to others who have lived in the circle of his life and death, I know very little.  But there are many words I associate with the work and ministry of this holy and flawed hero. These words about his ideals, his issues, his causes, his character… surround the painting below of Dr. King by Roy DeLeon. Roy is the author of Praying with the Body: Bringing the Psalms to Life and the illustrator of a new book by Jon Sweeney called The Pope’s Cat.

In the late 1990’s my choreographer friend Gwen Spear Jones danced to Martin Luther King’s I Have A Dream speech. Before she danced I sang a song by Bob Franke called A Still Small Voice. It seems appropriate for this special day. Here is a YouTube of the song sung by Bob Franke. The first verse is below:

In a still small voice in the middle of the night, Brother Martin heard the simple truth,
And he followed its pleading ’til it led to a crossroads parting in the days of my youth. 
In the heart of my city came a single scream,
And I heard it through all the white noise.
And the papers told me that they’d killed the Dream,
But they never killed the still small voice.

Phyllis Tickle: A Life

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When I first opened Phyllis Tickle: A Life and landed on the Chronology page at the beginning of the book, I started to cry. Here was a quick summary of Phyllis Tickle’s bio in three pages. It was a life I had been privileged to be part of for a dozen years.

From Jon Sweeney’s new, official biography of Phyllis, I learned so much more about the complex woman I loved, admired, and respected. Jon tackles the difficult task of organizing and analyzing the life of a woman who cannot be boxed in. There are so many overlapping and contrasting circles that describe her but do not contain her: Christian, spouse, mother, teacher, lecturer, analyzer, visionary, thinker, evangelist, sociologist, writer, poet, mentor, monk, extrovert, friend…. But Jon’s book does not just send out accolades on every page. It is an honest look at an amazing woman who struggled to juggle and balance those demanding and often conflicting and controversial roles. Phyllis Tickle: A Life expands my admiration for the breadth of her professional accomplishment and for the depth and discipline of her personal faith in God.

P.S. Without Phyllis Tickle, Praying in Color might still be just a secret prayer practice in my personal journal. When I met her in 2004 and showed her the way I prayed with doodles and color, Phyllis said “You’re going to write a book!”  Being in the South, I said, “Yes, m’am” and went to work. She was my encourager, my mentor, and my writing midwife/doula. Through emails and conversations, Phyllis helped me to birth a book–as she did for dozens, maybe hundreds of other writers. Phyllis Tickle: A Life is not a series of testimonials by grateful friends and authors, like me. That may yet be another book.

Lenten Calendar Templates 2018

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Using a calendar template is one of my favorite ways to keep a daily discipline during Lent.  The discipline can take three minutes or thirty. What matters is the daily regimen of participation and presence.

Each day I choose a word to ponder or a person to pray for. I write the word or name in the allotted space and draw or doodle around it. If words come to me as I draw I pray them. If not, I stay quiet. Returning to the calendar each day helps me to create a hallowed place where I can be present to God and listen. Each mark or stroke of color is a small movement prayer. It is a one day at a time, visual and kinesthetic way to have a Lenten practice.

The accumulation of words or peoples’ names is a visual tapestry of my mini spiritual journey through the forty-plus days of Lent.

Below are four templates to choose from in jpg or pdf form. Each calendar has 46 spaces which include Sundays. (Officially Sundays are not a part of the 40 days of Lent. So feel free to do something special for the Sundays, if you like–or leave the spaces empty.) On the Cross Calendar, the spaces on the cross itself are part of the 46 count. The traditional Box calendar is dated; the Tears template suggests a path to follow. The other two allow you to move around and choose the space you want to use on a given day. Date them as you go. Since the spaces are small I take the template to a copier and enlarge it (129%-132%) onto an 11″x17″ piece of card stock. Staying inside the lines is not a requirement! Add words or draw around the designated spaces.

Children can mark the daily walk through Lent with the calendars, also.

This is an example of a calendar from 2017. It includes the original blank template  on the left (also available this year), the first few days of one calendar, and another finished version. Words on the third version came from daily meditations by Walter Brueggemann in his book: A Way Other Than Our Own: Devotions for Lent.Here are some ways to use the calendars:
1) Pray for a person each day of Lent.
2) Use a daily book of Lenten meditations. Read the mediation for the day and select a word that jumps out at you. Meditate on the word as you draw and color around it. Let it enter your heart and mind. Ask God what you need to hear from the word.
3) Follow a daily lectionary and choose a word from one of the Scripture readings.
4) Read the same Psalm each day and choose a daily word. Psalm 51, for example, is a penitential Psalm with lots of juicy (sometimes depressing) words in it.
5) Read a different Psalm each day and choose a word.
6) Use nouns or adjectives that describe the nature and character of Jesus: savior, redeemer, healer, radical, obedient, forgiving,…
7) Since Lent is a time for reflection and self-examination, scatter your confessions, character defects, regrets, worries, dreams, sorrows, and hopes around the Cross template one day at a time.
8) The Tears template provides space above the line at the top to mark the arrival of Easter. Write the word Easter and/or use words or a drawing/doodle in the space to reflect the mood of the passage from Revelation 21:4 (NRSV) “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more.”

  Tears .jpg or .pdf  Cross .jpg or .pdf  Box .jpg or .pdf  Lily .jpg or .pdf

Click on .jpg or .pdf below the desired template. Make sure to download the template with the downward facing arrow in the top right before you print. These are also available on the Handouts Page on this website.

Epiphany Word Tree

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Besides the cake, the best part of the birthday parties I attended as a child was the “tray game.” Before the party the mother or father of the birthday girl placed numerous objects on a big tray and covered it with a tea towel or large cloth napkin. During the game part of the party an adult brought the tray out and placed it on the floor in the center of a circle of chiffon-clad, giggling partygoers. With the flourish of a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat, the covering was removed and we had 90 seconds to memorize the contents of the tray. Giggles turned to silence and smiles to serious lip-biting and furrowed brows as we catalogued the tray’s twenty or so items in our minds: red pencil, penny, sugar cube, barrette, paper clip, comb, toothpick, bubblegum, spool of green thread,….This memorization was serious work and for the person who could recall the most objects, there was a prize at stake.

We must had been at least six or seven when we played the game because I remember writing a list of the tray’s contents when it exited the room. I was pretty good at the game and tried to get my friends to play it on a regular basis, not just for parties.

As a high school and college student I carried the idea of the tray game into the way I studied and took notes. Instead of writing on the lines, I often wrote at odd angles or in blobs.. The unusual pattern on the page stuck in my brain and helped me to remember facts, words, and formulas better. It was as if the page was a party-game tray full of ideas and images.

If this way of learning was supposed to fade as an adult, it hasn’t for me. Notes from lectures and conferences are still in blobs and odd configurations on the pages of my notebooks and journals. Colored highlighters and pencils emphasize and underline important words and thoughts. Praying in color is one of the main ways I pray because it engages my body, my eyes, and my mind, but also because the colorful and visual display helps me to remember my prayer list better.

It is January 15, Martin Luther King Day, the ninth day after the Feast of the Epiphany. Every year I mourn the passing of Epiphany as just a single day on January 6. Epiphany deserves more attention than it gets, so some of us think of it as a whole season lasting until Lent. It means “shining forth” and is really the “So what?” after Christmas. It is the story of strangers following a star to a babe in the manger, of Jesus’s baptism, and of his first miracle. Epiphany is about how this story spreads like wildfire beyond the boundaries of a small town in the Middle East and scatters the Gospel in faraway places to faraway people. Martin Luther King was an Epiphany man. He spread the not-always-comfortable good news of the Gospel in his preaching and his activism.

There are so many juicy words, ideas, and names associated with Epiphany that I want to put them on a tray and commit them to memory. So I made an Epiphany Word Tree and taped it on the wall. It will stay there until Lent. My prize for memorizing the words will be a rich vocabulary and the Gospel story that strings them all together.

You, too, may have words and stories you associate with Epiphany. Find a way to keep them in your sight and your thoughts during these next few weeks before Lent.

Third Week Advent 2017

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.Advent seems so short this year. This is the sixteenth day of Advent and already three Sundays of Advent are gone. Here are my two daily disciplines for this Advent:

1)  I have been reading Walter Brueggemann’s Celebrating Abundance: Devotions for Advent. The daily readings are challenging and loaded with fresh and surprising Advent words. Each day I choose a word that jumps out at me, write it on a small envelope, and doodle while I think about the word. I pin the envelope on the Advent tree (i.e. our future Christmas tree). Some of the words on the tree are: Relinquish, Solidarity,Protest, Welcome, Outrageous…. This collection of words and Brueggemann’s meditations remind me that Jesus’s coming into the world is meant to turn my comfy, tame life on its head, that “God’s rule of starchy justice and generous mercy will arise on the earth…” Coins and dollars we collect in the envelopes will go to some organization that witnesses to that starchy justice and generous mercy.

2)  AdventWord is a worldwide experience of prayer using social media and images. A new Advent word is posted each day.Recipients reflect on the word and share images or photos on a worldwide Advent calendar.The Society of St. John the Evangelist started this four years ago. This year Virginia Theological Seminary is contributing short meditations with the word. I’m using the word they provide in connection with one of the Advent calendar templates I created. The words from the Brueggemann book have captured my spiritual imagination more than the AdventWords, but I love the idea of a worldwide daily discipline of  prayer and collective visual response.

 

Zechariah Echo Pantomime

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One of my favorite intergenerational Christian Formation tools is the echo pantomime. Echo pantomimes tell a story with words and movement. They are a playful, full-bodied way to learn a Bible story and to build community. Here’s how the form works:
1.Choose a leader–an adult or a child who can read.
2. The leader reads a line of the script and performs the indicated action at the same time.
3. The group echoes the leader’s words and gestures.
4. The leader says the next line with the action; the group copies the words and actions again.
5. The back and forth between leader and group continues until the story is complete.

Echo pantomimes can be used with a large group of people or even with a small family. Adults seem to enjoy the movement and playfulness  as much as children. The Zechariah story below can be repeated over and over during Advent. With lots of repetition a group can eventually do it together without a leader, almost as a dance.

Below is the Luke 1 Echo Pantomime of Zechariah’s encounter with the angel Gabriel. It was first published in The Season of the Nativity: Confessions and Practices of an Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany Extremist (2014)  You can download a .pdf or .jpg version of this Zechariah Voice and Body piece.

.pdf    or .jpg

Last Call for 2017 Advent Calendar Templates

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There is still time to download an Advent calendar template. Advent starts this coming Sunday, December 3. This year is the shortest possible Advent season, only 22 days. Here are the possible templates. To download these free pages and for instructions about how to use them go to my blog post from November 7.

I made a cool discovery with the help of my friend Roy DeLeon. I have an art app on my IPad called Procreate. I imported one of the templates into Procreate and discovered I can doodle and color the template right on my IPad. I suspect there are other tablets and art apps that allow the same thing. Here is a practice run for couple of days on the calendar. I have a lot to learn–like how not to erase or smudge lines I want to keep.

Four Books for Advent

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Since Advent is my favorite season of the year, I always look for new books on the market. Here are several good books for this year. You can click on the title to read more about the book.

Look!: A Child’s Guide to Advent and Christmas   by Laura Alary  (Paraclete Press)

Look back, look around, look ahead…LOOK is a terrific circumnavigation and exploration of the season of Advent for children (and adults.) With a child as our guide and narrator, we travel to ancient Jerusalem, to church, to home, and to the neighborhood to get a panoramic view of the rich paradoxes and themes of Advent. With the simple storytelling of a child and colorful, inviting illustrations, author Laura Alary masterfully and gently connects the Biblical story, the church’s story, and our personal story with the ongoing story of God in our midst.

Look introduces some creative and wonderful Advent activities to do at home; but this is not just a cheery “let’s get ready for Christmas and Jesus’s birthday” book. This book honors a child’s ability to be a young theologian, to pay attention to not only what is right in front of them but to spin 360 degrees to look at the way God moves in the world—past,  present, and future.

All Creation Waits: The Advent Mystery of New Beginnings  by Gayle Boss

All Creation Waits is visually and verbally beautiful. This is a daily reader but unlike most Advent meditation books, the focus is not on us. The focus is on twenty-four different animals and how they prepare for and survive the dark, cold, and foodless months of winter. Wonderful woodcut portraits of each animal accompany the writing.

Author Gayle Boss makes the connection between our practices in Advent and the behavior of creatures in the wild. Here are a few sentences from the introduction:
[Advent] is Christian tradition at its best, moving in step with creation. When the sun’s light and heat wane, the natural world lets lushness fall away. It strips down. All energy is directed to the essentials that ensure survival. Engaging in Advent’s stripping practices—fasting, giving away, praying—we tune into the rhythms humming in the cells of all creatures living in the northern hemisphere. We tune into our own essential rhythms.

Parents can read aloud the daily entries and learn along with their children about the Painted Turtle, the Chickadee, the Common Loon, the Honey Bee and the winter habits of twenty other miraculous creatures  in this cyclical and mysterious world.  Who knew that that 20,000 female Honey Bees shiver in the hive to keep the Queen and the honey warm? An e-version is also available from Paraclete Press.

Coloring Advent: An Adult Coloring Book for the Journey to Bethlehem by Christopher D. Rodkey, Jesse & Natalie Turri (CBP)

Coloring Advent is not just a coloring book. It is a terse and sophisticated daily journey through Advent. With unexpected words and characters, the author and illustrators give us a fresh take on the Advent and Christmas story. Nathan, Baruch, Ethan, and Malachi make appearances in the text—not the usual seasonal suspects. The two-page Crib Notes from Bethlehem: A Theological Introduction is worth the price of the book.

God First Enters the World, the title of the first coloring page, introduces God as cloud: When the fullness of time arrives, God enters the world as a cloud descending upon the flesh of a woman, so that we might receive the same Holy Spirit and the entire world will call upon our Universal Parent.  The cloud imagery recurs throughout the book in word and image and shakes up my tired, worn-out metaphors for God. Cloud makes me think “covering, protection, infinity, presence, blanket, enfolding….”

The coloring pages themselves are interesting but not overcrowded with designs. I would probably use some of the space to add words or write responses to the mini reflections of author Christopher Rodkey. Daily pages follow the nativity story from Advent to the Epiphany on January 6. Below are some samples.

Mandalas, Candles, and Prayer: A Simply Centered Advent  by Sharon Seyfarth Garner  (Upper Room Books)

Mandalas, Candles, and Prayer offers a soup-to-nuts Advent experience combining a weekly ritual of lighting the Advent wreath and a daily practice of contemplative coloring. Each week author Sharon Seyforth Garner provides seven copies of a simple but lovely circular coloring template to use with a new way to pray. The four different forms of prayer are: praying for others, examining the day, mining a passage of Scripture, and finding focus in stillness. Each is a rich way to concentrate on the Advent themes of hope, love, joy, and peace. Sharon gives clear instructions on how to use the mandalas with the prayer forms.

These coloring pages and prayer practices are a great way to prepare for Christmas, but they also provide sturdy tools for the journey with God the other eleven months of the year.