New Creation!

October 1, 2014 -- Episcopal Church of the Annunciation, Memphis
Photo by the Rev. John Burruss, who takes good pictures even if he's in a bee keeping suit.

Usually I try to avoid posts that are about church itself, but I'm going to break my own rule for just one post. But with all of the noise about "the end of theological education as we know it" because of the crisis at General Theological Seminary (if you haven't heard about this, good for you!) and the fact that I've been in contact with dozens of my classmates over the last two weeks, I feel like I need to say something a little more pointedly church-oriented. So, if you're brave, keep reading. If you're smart, tune in next week.

There's a narrative about mainstream Protestant churches which claims that the churches are slowly dying. Churches are merging, or being closed down, and selling their buildings. Millennials are suspicious of institutions, the median age of church goers is older than ever, and more people than ever before don't affiliate with any religion at all. I understand that.  But that's not what I'm actually hearing from my friends who are one or two years out of seminary.

A friend who graduated with me is starting an ecology initiative with the church's land that will eventually support ministry to sex-traffiked women in Memphis. This year, they had their first crop of honey, and are working on preparing the soil for planting a huge garden that will grow herbs for tea and herb rubs. The community took what had been a burden to them -- acres of land to keep -- and made it into an asset for good. Now they stand for something. The church had been shrinking, but it's growing now.

Another priest friend is starting a print shop with his church community in Kentucky that will teach printmaking skills to those in hallway houses and prison, and will be a place where those people can be employed until they can find other employment. This project is in its very beginning stages, but it's exciting to see it get put into motion.

Another friend moved to Texas, and is teaching American Civics classes in Spanish at his church, to help immigrants pass the citizenship test. That church is growing, too.

I heard story after story from friend after friend -- and even if people weren't working on entrepreneurial and self-sustaining projects, they told stories about neighborhoods coming back to life in Baltimore, of growing youth groups in South Carolina, of creating safe havens for the LGBT community in Arkansas, of dinner churches for young adults being established in Southern Maryland, of public and liturgical witness all over the country, of laundromat ministry in DC, and some really amazing outreach in bars and coffee shops.

We choose the stories we tell, and I choose these stories over the narrative of the decline and death of the church. When we allow these sort of creative ministries to happen, even if it means having priests who don't look or act like the parish priests of the past, or priests who are one foot in the secular world and one foot in the church world, we tell the story of our faith in a way that speaks to others. In the news the past few weeks, and from the older seminary alums I was working with in meetings this week, I heard the death and dying narrative repeatedly. But what others see as death and dying, I see as an opportunity to prune back the branches, and to allow new growth to flourish.  Besides, it's already happening.

On the Page and on the Stage

The Atlas Performing Arts Center - October 2013

I'm very excited to announce something very exciting!

A few weeks ago, I announced an upcoming feature of The Vicar of H Street: a (still) yet-to-be named oral history feature, in the style of Studs Terkel.  As grace would have it, word about this project made its way over to the Atlas Performing Arts Center, where it was brought to the attention of one of the artistic directors there, who contacted me about the project. We had a wonderful and fruitful conversation. If all goes well, the stories collected for the blog will be adapted into a theatrical performance for the Atlas's Intersections Festival in February of 2015! This is a great opportunity to help the stories of the neighborhood be preserved and (re)incorporated into the life of the community, especially as we stand at a juncture in the history of this neighborhood. I'm delighted to be included in their mission to "make the Atlas a center of community conversation."

During the last few weeks, when I haven't been running around with Holy Week or Easter, I've been working on getting the word out, finding participants, and arranging times for interviews. I still need many more people though, from a broader spectrum of the H Street experience. 

If you would like to participate, or have a lead (I would especially like to hear from some of our elderly neighbors -- a personal introduction to them would be irreplaceable) please contact me at vicarofhstreet@gmail.com. I would love to hear from you!

Heal H Street

Last night, I stood around with a gaggle of neighbors, friends, coworkers, and curious strangers on the corner of G&9th to watch the premiere of Heal H Street, a documentary short by H Street local Craig Corl. Because the permits hadn't been worked out with the Sherwood Rec Center, the film ended up being projected onto the side of a neighbor's house, lending a bit of novelty to the atmosphere.

G & 9th NE, April 22, 2014

The film covered the recent history of the neighborhood, beginning shortly before MLK's assassination through the aftermath of the riots and neighborhood neglect, to the start of gentrification and the ensuing cultural shifts.  The film also traces the filmmaker's personal growth as someone who was born a few years before the riots in an entirely different world, and who struggled to come to terms with his existence as a gentrifier on H Street. While perhaps the process of gentrification and H Street investors are portrayed as probably more deliberately hostile than they are, as I'm more inclined to see the small-stepped micro-decisions and individually-made logical decisions that make up a wave of neighborhood change, the documentary rings true about the relationships that need to be forged among new and old residents in whatever H Street is becoming, and the need to remember the past. 

Heal H Street is now available online for anyone who would like to view it -- and I would certainly recommend it. 

Storytelling 101

Every Tuesday night for the last month I've been participating in a story telling class with the fine people over at SpeakeasyDC, and I've been loving it. The instructors are super experienced, my classmates are an interesting and diverse group of people, and I'm learning spades about crafting, practicing, and editing a compelling story. Class has been great. I've been thinking about this experience constantly, but what I've been mulling over isn't class, or even my own story. I'm stuck on what happened last Tuesday.

Last Tuesday, instead of class, we were instructed to go the "Second Tuesday" Speakeasy show at Town. What I found there astounded me -- although we were an hour early, there wasn't a seat to be found. As the time approached, more people than I thought could fit in there crowded around the edges. Despite the frigid temperatures outside, it was actually starting to get a little warm inside. And what happened next was spellbinding. One after the other, nine people stood up and told a true story, and the entire time there was absolute silence. No one was fiddling with their phones. Not one stray chirp or alert. No whispers. We were enraptured by what was happening on stage.

Maybe I don't get out enough, but I haven't seen a crowd with such singular attention in a long time. What I can't put my finger on is why. Telling stories is about as low-tech as you can get. It's been around forever -- before Homer, before Abraham. The stories were entertaining, witty and sometimes heartbreaking, but so are movies and people text through them. There was the element of performance, of a real person, but as a preacher I know that a live person talking to someone is not enough to hold an entire crowd's attention for seven minutes (maybe I need to step up my preaching game). During a sermon, there's always a bit of chaos somewhere. But not at Speakeasy.

The only thing I can think of that's drawing such huge crowds (entirely unadvertised, except by website and word of mouth) is a hunger for stories such as these. The stories must be autobiographical, and despite the peculiarity of each experience, interpretations of the self have a universal quality, because as humans we're always interpreting our own selves. The stories were also vulnerable, a quality forsaken in our digital weltunschauung. The vulnerability, given to us by each of the story tellers, felt like a gift, as though that person were entrusting with a part of their selves, and trusting us to not poke at their wounds. The story tellers trusted us to empathize with them, and in the empathy, we were allowed to all be human together. I'm grateful.

Whole Foods on H Street: Why you should be more angry or less angry than you are

H Street is getting a Whole Foods. I know I'm late to the blogging game on this one-- the news (and here and here) broke last week about the $443M deal and there's been all sorts of chatter about it, and most of it divisive. There seem to be two camps: Develop the hell out of everything and get rid of the "riff raff" (real classy, commentator on Frozen Tropics) or keep things exactly the way that they were... fifteen years ago.

Aside of the all of the hilarious snark that is the byproduct of such a pitched fight, both sides have valid points that the other side seems uninterested in entertaining. Something needs to be done to the 600 block. Murry’s doesn’t exactly contribute to community health with its selection of prepackaged and hydrogenated foods. Conversely, Whole Foods is stupidly, nearly prohibitively expensive, and suburban bland. The same goes for the 430 condos that are slated to be built on top of the Whole Foods: there is a demand for housing that will be met, and which will stimulate the local economy. However, the design looks just like anything else in NoVA. And so, it’s a mixed bag, more than most are willing to admit.

Despite the pitched fight, it seems to me that no one is asking the right questions. Given the reality of development that is coming to H Street, how can we think creatively together to form a new way of being as a community? How do we welcome development in such a way that it brings new life to the neighborhood while working collaboratively with those who have been here a long time? What are the legitimate needs of everyone on both sides of the issue? Given the stories of the past, how are we retelling the story of the neighborhood, which in turn shapes how we see the future?

Ranting is satisfying, but it won't keep the developers at bay. We need to be having non-polarized discussions about the future of the neighborhood that involve all stakeholders.