Kirkepiscatoid

Not only do Dave Walker's cartoons about the church tickle my funny bone (and my ironic bone) with his pointed wit regarding the joys and perils of Anglican/Episcopalian parish life, I also find I "get what he's saying" in a different kind of way. Some of his cartoons make me laugh, and this one made me reflect.

He's absolutely right about what he refers to as "the plight of the creative freelancer." Dave's Twitter friend Hugh puts it quite nicely: The ability for some of us to create, whether that creativity is through writing, art, sculpture, pottery, gardening, etc. is balancing "the need for stimulation" against "the need for isolation." The problem is that our need for isolation often has "touching our own painful places" as a part of this process. I think about how some of the funniest people in comedy had severe tragedy in many places in their lives. My blog friend Elizabeth recently reminded me that some of the most truly beautiful things she has felt I have written for worship communities to gather together have come from the places in my own soul that break open and bleed too easily--places that if I don't express what's in the wound, it will simply stink and fester.

It's a reminder that art is transformational, but for the artist to transform, he or she truly needs that "special office" that Dave talks about.

Some of my "special offices" are physical; the most important spiritual "special office" for me is my own church's cycle of Bible reading and worship, the Daily Office. I normally do the Daily Office in the quiet of my own living room or yard, usually once a day, but sometimes twice a day. When I am away from home, I find Josh Thomas' Daily Office site and his blog very valuable. I also find the photographs and art he uses at both sites helpful for quiet reflection.

What I find the most important use of the Bible in all this is not to debate the stories, not to fuss about the history, but to simply hear the voices of the people in the stories as they are told. As I read aloud their stories, their mistakes, their sins, their transgressions--both the people of the Hebrew Bible and the people in the Early Church--they hook me. They grab my own joy, my own mistakes, my own sins, my own fears. In all of them we are told that time and time again God redeems us through grace. I hear my own anguish, my own grief, my own anger in the Psalms--raw and intense. In the stories of Jesus, I meet "someone I've never seen in this world; yet someone I've seen bits and pieces of in many people." All our humanity and all our divinity as children of God, rolled up in "one guy."

In short, I'm now addicted to the Daily Office after having been using it as my #1 discipline in my spiritual practice. If I miss it, I miss it as much as runners miss running or alcoholics miss vodka. I invite you to share my addiction and simply listen to the stories these people of the Bible tell you about your own stories!