It’s been a really full day, getting to the last rehearsals before the big concert tonight, and packing everything up at the house. We had My Father’s pizza tonight, and the kids were as happy as they could be. It’s a great last dinner to have, since all we have to do is throw boxes and paper plates away. Everyone has had their shower, and are dressed in their nicest clothes, and we’re shuttling them down to Anderson Auditorium for the final concert. After the concert we’ll follow tradition and go to (can you guess??!) the Huckleberry for ice cream, this time on Mary! It’s always lots of fun, but it’s also insanely busy there right after the concert, but they seem to love it.

The first picture is of Noah singing in Senior High Chamber Choir Thursday night. They sounded awesome! They did the Missa Brevis by Jonathan Dove, When I Survey, arr. Dan Forrest, and When The Trumpet Sounds by Andre Thomas. Some really lovely music! I couldn’t get a picture of Tressa, who sang in the Adult Chamber Choir. They sang selections from Levitt’s Requiem, Greater Love Hath No Man by John Ireland, I’m Gonna Sing Til The Spirit Moves In My Heart by Moses Hogan, My God Is A Rock, arr. Alice Parker and Robert Shaw, and Rejoice In The Lamb by Benjamin Britten. It was a great concert!

Dancing in the barn Thursday night! Lots and lots of energizers, which they were all really into. I was tempted to join in, were it not for the fact that my son would have died of embarrassment.

Bell ringers at the worship service today. They did a great job!

At Huckleberry after dancing in the barn!

The sermon on Thursday was remarkable, but I’m not going to type out the whole thing again (smile). Here are excerpts:

1912 World Series was the first to be decided in the last inning of the last game. Fred Snodgrass of the NY Giants dropped a routine fly ball. Newspaper called it the $30,000 muff, alluding to the amount of money each player lost due to that dropped ball causing them to lose the World Series. That turned out to be the defining moment of his entire career. He was a good player, and later went on to be a very popular mayor in California. But when he died in 1974, his obit in the New York Times said, Fred Snodgrass, 86, dead. Ball player muffed 1912 fly ball in World Series.

Peter denied Jesus three times, and his denials became one of the defining moments of his whole life. He left his best friend alone in his hour of need. Went back to the only thing he knows – fishing. But he was casting about as always on the wrong side. But just like the Easter story, history turns a different direction when the risen Jesus shows up. There on the beach is Jesus cooking a heart-healthy breakfast, literally one that would fill Peter’s heart.

Most of us spend so much time fishing out of the failure side of the boat. I’ll never get things right. I’ll never move up the ladder, get all the love I need, have friends. I’m a failure. I’m ugly, I’m fat. I don’t have as much talent as that other kid. I’d be happier if I were in a bigger church with maybe a few more resources. My Learning Disability makes me feel like a freak. My church is stuck in the dark ages. No one likes the hymns I choose. We throw the net into those places and pull up emptiness out of ourselves.

Jesus invites us to cast our nets in a different place. Interestingly by asking us to say I love you over and over again. Jesus calls us to cast our nets into the part of ourselves where God dwells. Deep within us. The love of God, in, with, under us. The deepest part of our being. Pull it up from there, not from the other side where it’s all emptiness.

I don’t know if this is true for you, but I can hardly go a week before I start to fish on that old side. I start to define myself by things that I did wrong, or my insecurities. Or I start to think I’m less because my neighbor has better stuff. Or everyone elses’ relationship seems so tidy, while mine seems to be a work in progress.

There are probably musicians in this room who went to bed last night thinking about that one mistake, rather than the whole gorgeous piece that God has been playing through you from the day that you were born.

Over and over again, we write headlines about our lives. Loser proves it again. We need the bread of heaven, the cup of salvation, to write a different word on our heart, to catch us in a different way. I love you. I have always loved you, and no matter what, I will never stop loving you, forever and ever and ever. Amen.

– Bradley Schmeling | Gloria Dei Lutheran Church, St. Paul, Minnesota | Preacher for Montreat 2013 Conference on Worship and Music (excerpted)

Of course, as a singer, this line caught my attention, but it’s for all of us, singer and non-singer alike:

There are probably musicians in this room who went to bed last night thinking about that one mistake, rather than the whole gorgeous piece that God has been playing through you from the day that you were born.

I want to have that on a t-shirt! There was a collective… not a gasp, but a ripple of recognition when he said those words. I don’t know how else to put it. It was a powerful moment.

– Sharon, the ‘love me some music analogies’ blogger

Last night was the first-ever Concert of Liturgical Dance. There were dances by the adult ligurtical dance class, as well as the middlers, and also the Moving Liturgy Dance Ensenble as well as a couple of other liturgical dance troops here this week. The concert was held in Convocation Hall, and I think they had more in attendance than they had planned for. It was standing room only. But we got there early and were on the front row. The middlers sat on the floor in front of us, which is where the dance director wanted them. At one point the adult dancers in the big liturgical mumus spun down the aisle, and poor Jack, who was on the edge of the aisle, was hit in the face by multiple mumus, and at one point I swear his head was buried entirely.

Our kids did a wonderful job. At one point they asked for readers, which is what Reilly is doing in that one shot.

The middlers and senior high went to Huckleberry last night after the Hymn Sing, but the children came back to the house so we could get them to bed. So in exchange they got to go this morning for BREAKFAST! I was in the room when Nate asked Amy, his mom, if he could have a Pop-Tart. She said, “Aren’t you going to have Huckleberry’s ice cream with the rest of us for breakfast?” Nate’s face was priceless! He just froze and stared like she had just said the most incomprehensible thing he’d ever heard, his mouth half open. Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus!

Last night the chaperones stayed up and made S’mores (ssshhhh! Don’t tell the kids!), and I had to get this picture. It’s of Mary and Elizabeth cooking their marshmallows over the electric burner! It worked surprisingly well. Again, since I like mine burned, I took the lighter and my marshmallow on the deck so I could flame it up without fear of the sprinklers being triggered in the house! Another chaperone, who shall remain nameless, used what looked to be a miniature flame-thrower at the dining room table to cook his marshmallow. Luckily, no alarms were tripped and no one got wet.

We started with one kid with a fake mustache, and it’s spreading! This one is priceless!

The middlers went paddle-boating in their free time today. Thanks to Jonathan for the pictures!

Classes are going well this morning. Here are a few shots:

– Sharon, the ‘little miffed I didn’t get ice cream for breakfast’ blogger

The sermon Wednesday was especially good. The parts about disability resonated with me, since that’s my field. The sermon seems to have clicked with everyone else too, because it has come up in conversation several times over the last 24 hours. I recorded it so I could listen to it later, being afraid I’d miss the main points. I started to try to summarize it, but then decided to type it out almost verbatim, to keep from shortchanging you, dear reader. I found Bradley after the sermon today and asked if he minded me sharing this on our blog, and he said he was happy to have it shared.

I failed Christianity 101. That’s the basic level, a beginner’s class. It happened when I walked parts of the Camino Santiago, which is an ancient pilgrimage route that starts on one end of Spain and ends at Santiago de Comostella, the place where the bones of St. James are buried. When I began that walk with 12 other pilgrims, I imagined our time together would be filled with holy conversation and spiritual insight and prayer. Well I quickly realized that the main topic of conversation was feet. They ached, they blistered, they Charleyhorsed, and by the end of the day, oh, how they stank. One in our group had serious blisters. Whenever we would stop for coffee in some quaint little Spanish village, she would pull off her shoes, peel off her socks, and examine the day’s damage. This often happened at the table, and usually involved a needle to pop the blisters (everyone groans). See? You’re with me. I couldn’t stand it. I didn’t want to sit at the same table. I didn’t want to hear about that every day. I didn’t want to see blood and that juice. I was there for the spirit, not juice. But I knew Jesus would want me to pay attention to her feet. He would have washed them, annointed them with salve, and told me that paying attention to her feet was the same as loving him. This is why I’m so impressed with Thomas. Far from being a doubter or an example of weakness or the symbol for intellectual reserve, I actually think he’s bold because he wants to touch the wounds of Jesus. He wants to not only see the hole in his hands, he wants to put his finger in it. You should try Googling ‘Thomas’ and click images to see all the paintings of this. If you’re in fifth and sixth grade, you’ll love this because they are really gross! Because the wound in Jesus’ side was open, and there is Thomas with his hand up to the knuckle in Jesus’ side. Jesus’ resurrected body is still wounded.

Wouldn’t you think the heavenly body would be without its disability. No, in the new Heaven, Jesus is still the crucified one. In fact, the only way to know if the resurrection was a real thing is to come close to the wounds that are created by suffering and death. I’m not sure I understand that. It sort of goes against the grain. I prefer to imagine a resurrection in which all signs of suffering were wiped away. I’d rather have a superhero body for eternity – endless praise to the Savior around the throne with six-pack abs and a full head of hair – that’s Easter! That would probably be Easter in the new Superman movie – perfect bodies and muscles – that’s the ideal, as if being raised and made new was going through a kind of cosmic plastic surgery. That is not the picture we get in the gospels about resurrection. The living Jesus is recognized by his wounds. Life with God and brokenness are bound together in some mysterious way. He quoted a theologian, Nancy East, who lived with a congenital bone defect. She was clear that the resurrected body wouldn’t be perfect. The perfect body she felt was a construct made up by advertising, or by those in the ‘temporarily abled’ category. For her, she believed that her disability would find its way into heaven with her, because it was part of who she was. Just like Jesus cannot be the living Jesus without the evidence of his suffering, she felt she couldn’t be Nancy without her disability. The difference is that in heaven it would not cause pain or separate her from the full life with God and the communion of saints. She said her disability would be transformed, not erased. For her that was an important distinction.

Thomas yearns to touch the wounds of Christ to know that he is alive (he meaning Christ, and he meaning himself). Because Thomas is the one who is transformed by that encounter with the wounded Christ. In a way his desire to touch the wounds of Jesus was his prayer. Prayer for us is the place where we stand in the presence of God and dare to touch the suffering of the world. It’s the place where we stand next to God’s own suffering, who experiences all of our suffering. On Sunday when we say the prayers, that’s the place where we can reach across and hold hands with children who are caught up in war in Syria. It’s the place where we can touch the hurts that are created by bullying and injustice. It’s the place where we put our hand in the side of an Earth that is being crucified because of human greed. It’s also the place where we make an empty spot so the Spirit can enter in and pray for us in sighs deeper than words. And it’s the place where we first start practicing how it is that we will attend to blisters and suffering, where we risk being changed by the suffering of others. In prayers we ask for the courage to look and to touch and to heal.

There is an African language where instead of praying “John is sick,” they say “we are sick in John.” That makes prayer a risky place that’s not all platitudes and fancy words. Because like Thomas, not content just to talk about resurrection, prayer invites us to come alive by touching life in the same way that Jesus did. Certainly God hears our deepest lament and our deepest desires for suffering to be taken away. But maybe our most profound prayer is that not that we are taken out of suffering, but transformed and resurrected in the midst of it.

Bishop Gene Robinson says, “Sometimes God calms the storm. But other time God lets the storm rage and calms the child.” That’s the mystery of the Gospel, that Jesus chooses not to pass the cup, but to trust that God’s will is done even in suffering and death, and that in dying something new will occur. I don’t know how that works. I prefer to avoid the pain than lean into it. It’s not a logical, natural thing for us to do. But the promise is that suffering will not ever have the last word. Even if they make blisters and scars. Life has the last word. God always has the last word.

I had a spiritual director once who through conversations would lead me and try to help me understand the deep place of longing and loneliness and sadness in myself as the place that is connecting to God’s loneliness and sadness. I never wanted to get close to it because I was afraid I would fall in. You know, start crying and not be able to start. But she would lead me to that place and say, “Just stand at the edge of it.” When I felt I was there she said, “You won’t fall in.” It reminded me of my father on vacation to the Grand Canyon, and I was afraid to get close to the edge. He said, “I’ll hold you. Don’t be afraid.” That’s what we discover in the depth of human suffering, even in the deepest places of our own emptiness. Christ is right there in the midst of suffering.

Nancy East went on and talked about her scars. In her lifetime she’d had many surgeries to try to fix the bone defect. Her body was covered with scars and she was afraid it would frighten her daughter. So they would lay in bed and Nancy would tell her little girl that her body had train tracks that could take them to amazing places. They would draw their fingers on the scars and pretend they were taking fabulous trips around the world. Nancy would say, “Where do you want to go tonight?” and they would talk about the beautiful things they would see, the interesting people they would meet, all that they would learn. Her scars became the site of a new world. That world was no less real than the one they lived in every day.

That, too, seems like what we do in prayer. It’s the place where we imagine and name the worlds that are filled with beautiful and amazing things. Where we dream of societies that are structured by compassion and mercy, rather than greed and power. A place where we name out loud our hope that the wolf can lie down with the lamb, or at least Republicans next to Democrats. It’s also the place where we stand together despite our differences. Some of us today are celebrating that the Defense of Marriage Act has been struck down. Others of us are deeply concerned about the direction of our country, but all of us stand together with God in prayer, and trace the contours of the world that has sparkling water and food enough for all. Where no one labors in vain and everyone has a home, and there is enough medical care to live to be 100, like Isaiah dreamed. A place where all the women are strong, the men are good looking, and the children are above-average.

Yet we don’t simply imagine it. We name them out loud so we can take them into our own hands and let our prayer shape our life. They become real in the ways that we speak with one another. The ways we knock down barriers into justice. The ways we approach abuse or addiction. We carry the new Heaven in these bodies, as disabled as they are. The new Heaven isn’t just in our prayers, it’s in this gathered body, this scarred and wounded, broken and divided body. God’s very reign of peace and justice is a living thing that can be touched and tasted and trusted by the whole world.

In just a moment you will see it with our own eyes, lifted up, God’s dream, our dream, Christ’s body, broken and shared. Christianity 101.

– Bradley Schmeling | Gloria Dei Lutheran Church, St. Paul, Minnesota | Preacher for Montreat 2013 Conference on Worship and Music

With so many things in the world dividing us – war, cultures, social issues – I cling to Bradley’s words about prayer being the place where we stand together despite our differences. Wolf and lamb, Republican and Democrat. Christianity 101.

– Sharon, your humble blogger

We had the best lunch of the week, according to the kids – chicken patties, mashed potatoes and green beans! That after the best breakfast of the week – a delicious french toast casserole that made the whole lodge smell like heaven. It’s going to be a new favorite in the Downs household.

After lunch we all went to the Montreat pool. Sadly, after only a short bit it started thundering, so we had to all vacate the pool. We hoped that we could wait the 30 minutes required and get back in, but it kept thundering and then started to pour. We were shuttled by chauffer Jonathan to the general store, to spend the rest of our free time looking around there and in Ten Thousand Villages.

Tonight is the hymn-sing, which is a personal favorite of mine. Classes the next couple of days will be intense, because everyone is preparing for the concerts on Thursday night and Friday night. I’ve witnessed some great teaching this week with the children and the middlers in choir. The choir director for the middlers has them at 8:00, for which I told him they should give him hazzard pay. He said he teaches middle school choir at 8:00 in his job back home, and he’s used to the dazed looks and slow participation. At one point he got on to them for being so lackluster, and said something I appreciated, “Your parents paid a lot of money for you to be sitting here right now, so you’re going to do your daydreaming on your own time. Right now it’s time to work, and have fun doing it!” Amen! (To clarify, our middlers are participating very well, but the same can’t be said for several in there.)

Here are some pictures for your enjoyment. The first are of William leading his global music class (mostly adults) by teaching them a new song. The teacher said he was the best one to lead and asked him to play drums in worship with him! Thanks to Elizabeth for the pictures!

Morning Orff: Reilly rocking the egg shaker and tubano drum

This face says it all about Huckleberry!

A post on the sermon today is coming soon.

– Sharon, the determined blogger (determined to get more than 4 hours of sleep tonight!)

My 9:00 hour is sublime. I go to Huckleberry’s and get a toasted blueberry bagle with philly cream cheese, and sit on the patio overlooking the Lake Susan dam. The water sounds are ever-present and provide a lovely backdrop for my blogging hour. A group of nine kids next to me just left, so the volume has gone down appreciably. They were squeezed around a three-seater round table like mine. Apparently there was some drama about one of the girls inside Huckleberry who slighted a couple of them, so they relocated out here and the friends who sided with them followed suit. After they had groused about Anna Beth being stuck up and the other one being a snob, when they realized the time, they said, “well, let’s go get Anna Beth and them and head to class!” Drama over I guess.

It was another gorgeous day at Montreat. We are enjoying the milder temperatures, although when we’re walking back up the mountain after worship at 12:00 noon, all the way from Anderson, we are all red-faced and sweating. If this were Arkansas temperatures, we’d have to be shuttled one car-load at a time up the mountain. It would be just too much to ask! The walking is good for us, although my knees are so worn out from all the stairs that I was afraid to squat down to find the strawberries in the fridge this morning. I worried that I wouldn’t be able to get back up again!

Here are a few more pictures from yesterday – this one is the Senior High kids walking to class on Tuesday.

Noah, Emma, Ozan and William – what a great group of kids!

Middlers with one of their teachers.

Jack, Jackson, James and Harrison in dance class, obviously having fun.

Will enjoying himself in class.

– Sharon, the bagel blogger

Tuesday afternoon and evening was awesome if for no other reason than this: S’MORES!! I personally like to catch my marshmallow on fire, let it burn all the way around, then let that über-hotness liquefy the Hershey’s. In the words of the great George Takei, OH MY!!

Mac approves!

Emma is working here to get marshmallow out of Nate’s hair. Seems sweet of her to do, but since she’s the one who got it there, it’s only fair! She zigged and he zagged. I’m not sure he even noticed.

“But I don’t wanna put down the stick, Mom!”

Tuesday night was FORCED FAMILY FUN NIGHT!! After enjoying our burgers, hot dogs, and S’mores, and since it wasn’t raining, we went down for rock hopping. Marsha and Jonathan were rocking it on the swings! Not easy on swings that are hung so low!

You can see how much the kids love rock hopping. It makes them so happy to have another opportunity to get in that frigid water! They especially love going down to Whale Rock, what they call that really big rock they like to climb up on. They wanted to go a bit further, down to the bridge, but the waters were a little rough for the little ones, so we passed this time. Maybe the bigger kids can go back there later this week.

Hmmm… four of our boys flirting with a girl from the conference. 🙂

Most of the Middlers and Senior High went with Marsha and Jonathan to the talent show after rock hopping. The children and the rest of us came on back, so we could get them to bed early. They’re starting to look and act pretty tired. I’m not sure we accomplished getting them to sleep as early as we’d hoped, but we tried! I skipped the talent show myself so I could get to bed early. Yeah, that didn’t work out either. As the kids would say, YOLO! You only live once, and we can sleep on the way home, right?

We opted not to all go to the talent show simply because no SPC kids were in it. Since we have several in chamber choir, we’re going to that concert Thursday night. Looking forward to that!

– Sharon, the sleep-deprived blogger