November Missionary Experiences in Issaquah - November 26th, 2013

       This has been an interesting month in regards to people evangelizing to me about their faith in Issaquah. The first involved an older woman who had lost her social security, and the second involved Mormon Missionaries. I'll also leave a little blurb for facebook friends who have evangelized this month too.

        The older woman is a woman I've seen at the Issaquah library when I go there on lunch breaks during work. She always greets everyone (including cars) with a "Have a great day," She is definitely kind and unique. The time she did what I would call missionary work or experience is when she gave my coworker and I poetry about Jesus. She told us, "Food for thought," and then left. Apparently others have had this experience with her too as far as her expressing her faith in any social situation or environment. If you drop by Issaquah and the library you'll probably meet her.

     The second experience was also at the library, except outside of it since it was closed. I had just gotten off work and was reading "The Adventures of Telemachus," a great book and one of my current favorites now by Louis Aragon when two Mormon missionaries dropped by. We talked about mythology for a while and they attempted to try and get me to talk about the Church, my reasons for leaving and unbelief were not a conversation I exactly wanted to have so I told them if I had any questions I'd just ask my Dad's family who is almost all Mormon (not to mention just recall memory from when I was growing up and do research). So they asked if I wanted a prayer and who for...My life is great, I don't need anything really. I have an amazing support network, I currently don't have any physical or mental ailments and there are people who honestly deserve others thoughts and actions a lot more than me. So I asked them to pray for the Philippines and those going through the Tsunami and other disasters. It was there the two young guys did the prayer and I used to remember too (and think of best action to take to help those going through that suffering). After they gave me a card the Bellevue Festival of the Nativity, hosted by the Mormon Church (may go for nostalgia, nativity shows were a staple growing up in Elementary school during the Holiday season). They went on their way.

      The third thing I've noticed is evangelizing by friends. Most are of the Catholic and Evangelical Christian variety, with a few Mormon family members also doing a post or two, and the majority of the time it is the person doing it by facing the reasons they believe and the honesty in facing themselves, or part of the work they are doing within a community. It is not always the case though, sometimes it can involve targeting of a group such as going against the gay community or sharing links of those who are...and I have trouble seeing how that can be love in any way. In the future I'll do another post explaining why I believe Gay Marriage is a right and how it is just as ethical and gives as much to the common good as any other stable consensual relationship built around a community.

   In the end I don't see it as bad. Missionary work can be harmless as long as the one doing the work accepts "no" as an answer or leaves room for other view points and can see the humanity in another person and respect them for who they are, and who uses the opportunity to do service within the community they are in. Any person can live with virtue, and if you're putting yourself out there with your religious beliefs, virtue is the best thing you can do too. 

    We all advocate are points of view in different ways, the key is how you do it and what you do. Is what you are doing taking the rights away from another? Are you coming from a place of self and ego or awareness of all members of the community? What you do and how you do it are part of what it means, to live with virtue. 

All Saints Day - Saint Mary's Catholic Church - Mt. Angel, OR - November 1st, 2013

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d0/OR_Mt_Angel_StMary_Church.jpg

      All Saint's Day is a day the Saint's are commemorated and remembered, predominantly in the Catholic tradition. It is a day that Catholic's are also supposed to attend. Going into this visit, I didn't really know what to expect. The Church is in a small conservative catholic town but I've been surprised in my visits before, the catholic churches I've known also tend to be just as likely to have more liberal leaning priests as conservative leaning priests. So there is that.
   
     The music at the service was beautiful and overall it was a really wonderful service. The one thing I didn't like though was how narrow the prayer was. Usually there are at least a few mentions of people outside the church and wishing them the best beyond them being recruited to the faith. The service today failed to get beyond the community of the faithful at all, beyond bringing more people in.

    The sermon itself referenced Pope Francis's sermon on this day which was polar opposite. Francis said that there are Saints among us and in our lives and that we may know them. This broad interpretation of Sainthood was spot on in my opinion since it captured how anyone can live virtuously and inspire others to good. Anyone can be selfish, just as anyone can be loving...how we choose to live along those lines is usually mixed but we can do what we can to get it as close as possible to living with love and virtue towards our fellow human beings. This is to me what makes a Saint. The example of Christ is used a lot, which I think is understandable, but I also see good people who would also be saints in the non-religious variety or of other faiths. Francis's speech captured that I think.

    Francis's speech was also a contrast to the priest who was distant and formal, and how historically politics can be a big reason for making people saints...not so much the actions they lived in their lives. Though, sometimes it can be a mixture of both.
  
     Overall it was a great visit and a day of contrasts. To end, who do you consider a Saint and why? What makes a Saint in your opinion?

   

University Temple United Methodist Church - Seattle, WA - October 27th, 2013

      The University Temple United Methodist Church is a church I've been meaning to go to for a while. It is a beautiful church I pass every time I visit University of Washington. The church sits right across the street from campus and on my visit up to Seattle I planned to go with a friend who I've done church visits with in the past.

      What I knew about the church before hand was that it was highly involved in social justice in the area. It hosts a needle exchange to help addicts recover, a thrift shop and coffee shop that is extremely cheap and made for those who have little, and at one point they hosted a GLBTQ Church in their building. Suffice to say I had a lot to admire going into this.

    Well I was not disappointed, though there were two things that turned me off from the good I experienced. The first was the greeters felt too eager. It was hard to really just have time to self and let everything sink in, since there is a lot to see in the church...most churches this big and this beautiful tend to be High Church churches like Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Episcopal and Lutheran. Every greeter greeted me more than once and even asked if I could wear a name tag. For a guy who likes being anonymous during these kinds of things, that was not something that was all that comfortable. 

    The second factor was money. In the talk about the churches goal for what they needed to raise a main focus was on how generous the congregation was before most of the members went up to give their pledges, this does not include the basket being passed before the sermon. I know churches need money to support themselves, but they've never mixed very well to me. 

      There was a lot of positive though. The message was Christian while at the same time remaining universal. The premise is confronting the Burning Bush within yourself (Holy Spirit, confronting ego, etc.) you can be transformed and that it is difficult. He talked of his own experience with this doing street ministry for drunks and homeless and how God forced him to confront his prejudices and grow through them and become more Christ like in the process. I liked it because confronting the truth about ourselves is how we grow. Weather that is an outside being inside of us, or just us facing ourselves is beside the point, the outcome is the same when truth and honesty are involved. It was one of the best sermons I've heard since doing this blog. 

      Lastly, the music was beautiful...there were many songs that I knew from Handel's Messiah, to Our God you Called to Moses and Joyful, Joyful we Adore Thee. I do like all the good the church does, and it was an overall great experience with a wonderful friend. 

 

Eucharist Morning Service - Church of the Resurrection - Bellevue, WA - October 24th, 2013

       The Eucharistic service today was just what I needed for the panic that was to hit later in the day. As I write this I just dealt with my bank account being robbed for the first time, it is kind of hard to remain calm under such duress but the service today did help keep me calm all things considered.

    The service was meditative and it was small, I was one of the other two people there. It also was a bit of a history lesson since the lesson was around "Holy Men, Holy Women" which took examples of Saints and people who lived Christ like through history and incorporated them into the reading. The reading was about King Alfred who was able to save a lot of the history in England from the invasions and also commissioned the creation of schools in England. The readings had to do with wise kings, and he is seemed to fit that description for his time, according the reading.

     It was here I realized it much easier to meditate though when there is a large group. I right around the altar with the other person in the small pews nearby and at times it felt like the ritual of the prayers was overtaking the point of them. It was after the Eucharist that I had the chance to start letting everything sink in, before that there were chants and prayers that I've read in every mass, which were hard to think on during the process of because we simply would move on to the next part of the service.

   The Pastor was kind though, and I do plan on grabbing coffee with her at some point. The Church of the Resurrection is a beautiful Church.

     One thing I've noticed while doing these visits, they've helped me with expressing my own beliefs. As much I appreciate the High Church and the rituals of Christianity, I don't think I'll ever be a Christian. Knowing that God exists for one thing, and all the miracles of the book, not to mention seeing things in the older book as Good are steps I cannot take, for any leap I need more certainty than I've experienced, I need more proof for claims so great. If I had to define myself I would consider myself an Agnostic Humanist and definitely closest to the Unitarian Universalism faith that I grew up in through high school. It's ethics most match up to what I see as the closest we understand Good at the current time, though I do consider my experiences with Christianity and Buddhism to have also influenced my beliefs within humanism and mysticism.

Kingdom Praise Church - Issaquah, WA - October 23rd, 2013

     The Kingdom Praise Church is located on Tiger Mountain. It is a House Church (meaning it is located inside of a room set aside in the house for worship) and in a area with no lighting, well that is Tiger Mountain for you. I had tried getting there once before but to no avail, luckily this time I was successful.

    This Church was a great exploration of what I see as the pros and cons within the Evangelical tradition as well as the blind spots in Conservative Christianity as a whole, the greatest blind spot which is its view of homosexuality. I noticed this when the old man leading the service referred to his married brother as living the homosexual lifestyle, because the Bible was literal truth (and the reading was from the Old Testament) it didn't matter if God's laws were unethical and wrong in regards to the matter, because it was God's Law it was good by default. I think this nails why I prefer philosophy to religion as well when it comes to ethics...if someone said God did it and there is evidence in a book inspired by God, anything is permissible no matter how it may hurt others.

     The pros I noticed in the service were how each time there was an attempt to call back to not judge, that each persons experience and knowledge of God was personal and from their own exploration of the Bible, the man leading it even said that quickly after his judgement on his brother...which honestly gives me hope for him seeing the love in his brother's relationship someday. There was also passion and kindness, I was a complete stranger who only two of the people had met once at the Healing Rooms of Issaquah that I did in one of my past visits, but they respected me and the fact that I said I'd just come to listen and observe.

     The talk was mostly focused on Genesis and the ark and it was there some of the mystic tradition came out too. With Ego being man before the flood and enlightened man escaping on the ark, Jesus being the ark was not as much of the service until later in the service...before that time there was emphasis on God almost being metaphor of our greater selves, God living within us and us escaping our base nature. It would later take a turn of being read as an historical narrative, which changed that metaphorical view though...

   It was a fascinating experience, but one I don't plan on repeating. The places I plan to visit multiple times are those that line up with my humanistic values which I see as much closer to whatever the Good is (and are closer to Jesus lived) than the condemnation of innocent groups and allowing of wrong by God because the Word is seen as literal.

"Learning to Grieve with Hope" - Community Church of Issaquah - Issaquah, WA - October 20th, 2013

     Here is to those surprises when you find gems that line up with your schedule (whatever those gems are). The Community Church of Issaquah has a 1:30pm service that matched up perfectly with my schedule for a visit before later things in the day.

     Right now they are having services in the building that hosts the Issaquah Christian Church while their new building gets built. The main difference between the groups that I can gather from their websites is the Issaquah Christian Church is an Evangelical Church verses The Community Church of Issaquah who are Baptists.

    The first thing I noticed was the congregation, the congregation is old and small. There is a closeness among them too and everybody knows everyone. They are also kind to strangers as I experienced after the sermon.

   The Pastor looked the role of the Baptist preacher. He had a grey suit, tie, glasses and grey hair. He also had a lot of anecdotes during the course of the worship service. The service began talking about their missionary work in Myanmar and the volunteer doctors and nurses their (as well as their expansion) and after there was a prayer for all those sick, in surgery, going through cancer and a prayer for the country to elect virtuous leaders or for people to lead with virtue. Next were two songs praising God before the sermon began.

       The service was about "Learning to grieve with hope." The readings also had to do with the sermon as well were about Paul talking to his followers about how they had hope from Jesus rising from the Dead that they would rise again with him. The Pastor than talked about grief relating stories about what it was like to lose his grandparents and parents and his relationships to all of them.

     He then talked about how people choose not to believe. The reasons he believed people don't believe is from Intellectual barriers (he said Spiritual disability - which was the one thing I really took issue with during the sermon, since those intellectual issues are in fact valid, just look at all the questions asked throughout time not just in regards to Christianity but any religion and the proofs that are honestly needed, my appreciation for the philosophers grew after this sermon), or people who have been hurt by their community (which if a community does hurt a person they should leave, no one should stay in an abusive relationship with another person or community).

      Afterwords was the closing hymn and I briefly talked the pastor and one of the Bible Teachers, they both introduced themselves to me. I think I will drop by the Bible study sometime during the course of the blog. They are kind community and I'm curious to learn more about what they are all about and their intpretations and experiences.There were a few liberal bumper stickers (one said Obamacare in a positive light), which was something I did not expect. It just goes to show that there truly are such a wide range of political thoughts within any congregation and within the different congregations inside a denomination.

Cross of Christ Lutheran Church - Bellevue, WA - October 20th, 2013

 

      Cross of Christ Lutheran Church is located in one of the most beautiful areas in Bellevue for the location of a Church. The only one that compares is the Quaker Hall (which I will be visiting again, have not been there since High School) that is located on the other side of Bellevue. Both are completely surrounded by trees, and in the case of Cross of Christ, have the addition of a Garden. 

 

    What brought me to Cross of Christ? First and foremost it was to see my friend Kyle who is the organist at this Church (he was my friend who was married recently at Saint Mark's Cathedral). He was amazing per usual, it is always a pleasure to hear him play. The second was that I haven't visited a Lutheran Church for a while, and third was that it was a traditional service (reason for the Organ use). Traditional High Church services have always had a special place for me, I found they are good for thinking and are good at appreciating silence within a service. 

    Now for the service proper. It began with the confession from the congregation (which made me realize, if someone hadn't done anything bad would they still need to confess? This goes for confessional within Orthodox and Catholicism and other Christian sects too).

     Next was the reading, the readings were focused on good listening and and answering prayers. For Old Testament the story was told about Elijah verses the Baals and how Elijah's God was able to call down fire while theirs were not. The pastor spoke next, he reminded me a bit of Santa Claus, but skinnier, his speech patterns also reminded me of Santa. He was a large and kind gentlemen and used the example of God wants us to pray so he can listen to us because he loves us and he commands it. He used the example of calling his grandchildren to him.

    The question I had (since the service didn't really mean any room for God as part of us, it was very much God be an entity outside of us), why have the miracles stopped? How do you know when God is talking? How does prayer communicate verses just thinking a desire wish or an intention? 

    This was followed by greetings, the congregation was very kind to me. They were an older congregation and I do hope to visit again. This lead to Thanksgiving and Communion:

 "If you believe God is in the bread and wine come and take of communion." This was after the blessing upon both. I don't so I stayed seated. This brought forth more questions too, I think this tradition might have risen out of focus on the first part and not the second part of what Jesus said, "This is my body and blood" rather than "Eat this in memory of me." The items don't actually transform, so it seems much more fitting as a memorial...remembering a wise teacher or person who spoke for something greater. At least that is the greater meaning I have been able to find in communion when I've been invited to take it by different Christian traditions. 

     After communion was the final blessing and announcements. The one social justice thing was shoes for foster children, and they might have more programs but I wish I'd heard about or seen more. Regardless it was an interesting and good experience. I do plan on catching Vespers here sometime in the future.