How many of you have said with some certainty, when you’ve heard rap music, “that’s not music!”? The Pulitzer Prize committee recently thought otherwise when it awarded rapper Kendrick Lamar its award for music. Maybe you had the same thought when you first learned about John Cage’s 4’33“. Or maybe you’ve been to an exhibit at, say, London’s Tate Modern, and wondered “how can that be art?”
Who heard about Bob Dylan winning the Nobel Prize for Literature last year and said, “HUH?”?
We’re all entitled to our opinions, of course, but don’t these examples give you at least a moment’s pause in weighing the actual worth of your opinions? Doesn’t the idea that your mind might be just a few sizes too small ricochet around your brain when you see that something you don’t value has been honored or appreciated in ways you don’t understand? You don’t wonder if maybe you just might be wrong? That maybe you need to stay open to new definitions of art and music?
I’ve been thinking a lot about what a new definition for church might be, and some of my ideas would cause a lot of you to say “HUH?” As I think about redefining church for myself, I’m really only clear so far about what it shouldn’t be. It shouldn’t be boring, nor a place where drama and intellectual curiosity are feared as too showy or esoteric. For me, it can’t be a place of complacency, where people lie about others or to themselves, or a place where good enough and lackluster are equivalent. There is more than enough mediocrity and hypocrisy in our lives already. There are plenty of forms of entertainment in our lives too, without needing our spirituality to also be entertaining.
I’m starting to see some of the ways that we might redefine church, including those things that people have long described as their experiences of what is sacred outside of church – nature, service to those in need, neighborliness, artistic expression. I don’t think I’m saying anything revelatory when I suggest that traditional church often fails and needs to be reimagined, even as it attempts to honor the very human needs for community and ritual.
No answers, just questions right now. I recently experienced church in a way that colored outside the lines. It was a concert of music and spoken word that illuminated some of those who have, historically, been side-lined in the creation of art – women and African-Americans. I know people on that Friday night were hearing and thinking about things that they hadn’t before, and I suspect their hearts were opened to a more loving way of seeing the world. That feels like church to me.
Peace,
Sonya
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This blog represents my attempt to put thoughts together on various things that seem to connect – in my mind anyway. More often than not new ideas first involve reaching back to what was and I can only hope that the prehistoric San cave painting at the top of this page inspires all kinds of connections between old and new.
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Notes for a New Day 