Moderate Giftedness

-from Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut
I was obviously born to draw better than most people, just as the widow Berman and Paul Slazinger were obviously born to tell stories better than most people can. Other people are obviously born to sing and dance or explain the stars in the sky or do magic tricks or be great leaders or athletes, and so on.
I think that could go back to the time when people had to live in small groups of relatives - maybe fifty or a hundred people at the most. And evolution or God or whatever arranged things genetically, to keep the little families going, to cheer them up, so that they could all have somebody to tell stories around the campfire at night, and somebody else to paint pictures on the walls of the caves, and somebody else who wasn't afraid of anything and so on.
That's what I think. And of course a scheme like that doesn't make sense anymore, because simply moderate giftedness has been made worthless by the printing press and radio and television and satellites and all that. A moderately gifted person who would have been a community treasure a thousand years ago has to give up, has to go into some other line of work, since modern communications put him or her into daily competition with nothing but the world's champions.
The entire planet can get along nicely now with maybe a dozen champion performers in each area of human giftedness. A moderately gifted person has to keep his or her gifts all bottled up until, in a manner of speaking, he or she gets drunk at a wedding and tap-dances on the coffee table like Fred Astaire or Ginger Rogers. We have a name for him or her. We call him or her an "exhibitionist."
How do we reward such an exhibitionist? We say to him or her the next morning. "Wow! Were you ever drunk last night!"

My Little Pony

Yesterday I brought a second car load of stuff to Lynden and set up my room. I love doing that, and now my room is ready for when I go back in a week. My cousin Marika is training this miniature pony to jump. It is so small, but it can jump almost as high as its back. It is so funny to watch her run around with it. It is more like a dog than a horse. I gave it a try and had some fun with it too.

This is Not Jib Jam

Today we were supposed to do Jib Jam. Jib Jam is this annual event that MRD puts on. We build these ramps and then go to the ice skating rinks and get snow for the ramps. Throw in some rails and you have a snowboard competition in the spring. There is also a skate comp that we put on with prizes. Last year we had like four hundred people there. We had been preparing for week for it and Boone had done a lot of work getting sponsors and insurance and stuff. The only thing we needed was good weather.
Well this morning I get up and it is pouring rain. You can't have a snowboard competition in the rain and you can't skate either. I decided to go to the park anyways and see if anyone showed up. I got there around nine, when we were planning on starting to build the ramps and no one was there. I decided I should wait for a little bit and woke up at eleven. By that time it had stopped raining, but everything was still wet. I drove back to school, because nothing was going down. The strange thing was though was that little breaks in the clouds were starting to appear.
I got back to school and got in contact with Boone. Jib Jam wasn't going to happen, but we said that if it cleared up we should go to the park anyways and have a BBQ and stuff. Well, by around one, when Jib Jam was supposed to start, it was dry and we headed out to Brookswood park with a bunch of MRD people. We skated around a bit and gave out hot dogs and soda. We also had a bunch of t-shirts and a backpack to give away, so we did a little skate competition. It was pretty fun, and despite not having snowboarding, it was pretty fun.
At around four thirty it started to pour and then to hail. We packed up real quick and got out of there. The timing was perfect. We just finished the competitions and it started. There was that perfect period of the day though where the weather totally worked out for us. God totally answered our prayers, just not exactly how we had planned.

The Compline Choir

After Mars Hill we went to St. Mark's Cathedral for their Compline Choir service. Basically there are like seven prayers that monks do throughout the day, the last of these is the Office of Compline. Well, some music students started sing it every Sunday night back in the 50's and then it kind of caught on and tons of young people would come to hear. Then in the 60's they started broadcasting it on the radio (Interesting side note, the service is actually supposed to last twelve minutes, but they extended it to half an hour to fit the radio slot. See, technology does affect our worship). Now there is a eighteen man choir that sings it from nine-thirty to ten every Sunday night. Tons of people come to just sit and listen.
The real amazing thing about it is how many young people are there. We got there a little early, and we walked around the immense room in awe. It is so amazing in there. They have the lighting done very well in the room. Already people were starting to take their positions. Teenagers in every corner huddled in thought. Numerous people are sitting through out the pews, just sitting and listening to the silence. On emo type girl sits right in the middle of the highly light stage, right next to the altar, writing in her journal. The room is unfinished and the walls are covered with mildew. The cold floor echoes your steps as you walk around the room. One of the most amazing features is the pipe organ in the back. I have never seen everything like it. It's huge rusty pipes controlled by this little keyboard in the balcony.
We decided to just sit on the stage, a little weird because everyone in the pews is looking right at you, but we wanted a place to lie down. It may seem weird, but that is how it works. There are no rules about where you have to sit. Some people bring blankets and pillows, and pretty soon the stage is full of people.
The choir files in quietly and takes their position in the very back of the sanctuary. They say a prayer and then begin to sing. To tell you the truth, it was a little quieter than I had expected, but I guess it is a big room to fill. I just lay back and closed my eyes and listened to this amazing music just surround me. After a while I sat up and started looking around at the other people. I was amazed to see how many more people there were. The whole floor was covered with people, and everyone had their eyes closed with their head either bowed or looking upwards. You could almost see the sound soaring around the room.
One of the most touching points of the service was when this little girl walked down the isle with her stuffed animal and lay down right before the altar. And there she lay clutching her stuffed animal. It was such an incredible symbol.
When it was over, there was a special organ recital afterwards. That was incredible as well, and let me tell you, it can really fill the room. One guy from our group made the comment while walking around listen that he just felt like he should pray or something. There is something amazing about a worship space like that that allows you have such a different encounter with God. We could see a couple people in the balcony where the organist was, so a couple guys from our group snooped around to try and find I way up there. I followed and boy was it worth it. We got to be right behind the organist and watch him as he controlled this amazing instrument that surrounded us all.
Right before we left we were talking to someone form the church in the foyer. He found out that we were a class and he let us into this little side chapel. It is the only actual finished part of the building. The rest of the cathedral was supposed to resemble it, but after the stock market crash and the Great Depression, there was no money to do it. It was pretty cool that we got that little sneak peak though.
Well that was my experience of St. Mark's Cathedral and the Compline Choir. I would suggest it to anyone for their next trip to Seattle. Actually it is a must see. If I lived in Seattle it would be the perfect Sunday night wind down to prepare me for the week. Also check out the web links above and get the real story.

Mars Hill Church

My class got to Mars Hill Church in Seattle about an hour and a half before the service. We were going as a field trip for my worship class. I really wanted to go find the troll under the Arora Bridge, but no one else wanted to do it. I had seen a picture of the huge concrete troll as a kid, but had never been able to see it. It is one of those things I have always wanted to do. So instead we sat in the foyer of the church. The other people that came with me played some games and I worked on some homework. I know, what a loser. Let me tell you a little about Mars Hill. I remember hearing about it when it was in the Paradox Theater in the U-District. They were pretty tied in with these concerts they would host there of Christian and secular bands. This is the crowd they drew from. Anyways a while ago they moved across town into their own building, a warehouse that has been fixed up very nicely. They continue to host lots of concerts at their new location, which provides a good outreach to that community.
Mars Hill is probably considered an Emerging Church and appeals mostly to the postmodern crowd. The church I have been going to, Vintage 242, kind of modeled themselves after this church. Mars Hill has seen immense growth though. With weekly numbers of 3500 divided among four services and the acquisition of a new building a walk away, Mars Hill has changed a lot. What started out as a kind of rebellion against mainstream churches turned into a megachurch of its own, a little ironic. Anyways, there is one main sanctuary and then a side room with live video feed of the service. The service started off with two songs. The worship leader started off by explaining what worship actually is and we were going to do it in the service. This was right on and gave us some direction. The first and last songs were the only ones in the service that I knew. That is because they were hymns. The rest were all songs that they had written themselves. It was also very loud. Even in their newsletter they had a letters section. Someone wrote in saying that they really liked the church, but they could stay because it was so loud. Their response was to tell them to get earplugs from info booth. They kind of showy in their playing and many people in my class complained that it was like a concert.
The pastor came up next and preached for a little over an hour. It was amazing; he held our attention the whole time. And he didn't do anything flashy. All he would just read a couple verses and spend some time explaining them and how they apply to us. This is what they do every. To give you and idea of their pace, they are going through Genesis and were at the part about Isaac. They plan to be finished with Genesis in September. I really like that kind of preaching though. That is what drew me to Vintage. It is just so biblically focused and yet it doesn't get very overwhelming. And I can actually remember the sermons, and even without fill-in-the-blanks. The most amazing thing is that he does three of these services and in a year and a half he will be doing six.
The main singing section followed the preaching. During this time you could go to the front for communion and to bring your offerings as well. Speaking of offerings, in December they received almost double their budget. I really enjoyed the service overall, but it would have been cool if they had incorporated more creative elements into their service. Go check out their website to get some more info about them.

St. Herman of Alaska

I got up early this morning, especially because of the time change. I met a group of people at Ethical Addictions. Brian told about the Orthodox church he was taking us to as I drank my Chai tea. I was pretty excited because I have been looking for someone that goes to this church so that I could go with them. The church is called St. Herman of Alaska. Form outside the building looks like a normal small church. We went in and the service had already started. The room was not very big, the ceiling was made of cedar ( just like my house, haha ) and there were no pews or chairs. The room smells heavily of incense and the choir sings from the back left corner of the room. I stand right in front of them with the rest of my friends. One lady from the choir came over to us and explained some things about the service, so that we would have an idea of what was going on. Everyone is standing and there are priests and deacons behind a screen in the front performing some rituals that we cannot see. People of every age were there, listening, crossing themselves, and responding together as one man reads. He did not just speak the words, but instead he sung them. This is how scripture was read throughout the whole service, and always just a voice, never with an instrument. All of a sudden a curtain in the screen was drawn back to reveal the altar table with many ornamental objects covered with bright lights shone down from above.
A few people came in late and they went forward to the front of the room and bowed before a picture of Jesus. They then light a candle and placed it in a little box of sand on one side of this picture, where there were already a bunch of candles from the other people. Parents and children do this together and some even kiss the picture.
A few time during the service there is a procession where the priests and deacons come out into the congregation with incense and candles. One instance of this is before the scripture reading, where they come out with the Bible raised high.
During the sermon, most the people sat on the floor, while a few sat in pews that are against the walls. The sermon was the only spoken part of the while service. It also contained a few jokes and was not that different from a Protestant sermon.
During communion the people line up and the priest serves them. You must be a member of the church to do this, so I just watched. There was also bread up front for the fellowship meal. A couple people grabbed some of this bread and brought it to the people that did not participate in the Eucharist.
This was a special Sunday for them and they had a relic there. That one lady that had explained some stuff in the beginning told us that is was a little piece of the actual cross. People went forward and prostrated themselves before it a couple of times and crossed themselves and kissed it. She said that I could too, if I wanted. So, I was towards the end of the line and went forward. Who knows if I did it right, but everyone stands and watches you, so it is kind of intimidating.
The very last thing was were we go forward and hold out our hand and the priest puts some bread in your hands and gives a blessing. Some people would kiss the preist's hand, so I did that too. It was pretty funny, I was wearing one of my Further Seems Forever shirts and the priest kept me there for a while because he wanted to read it. On the way out the door, people would turn and face the front and cross themselves. The whole service lasted two hours.
One of the priests greeted me in the foyer and talked with me for a little while. I also talked to this girl from Trinity that is a friend of Sheri Nelson. I had to go back to school after this so I could go on my field trip. I wish I could have stayed though, because they have a meal together every week and then classes later on where you can ask questions.
For my worship class field trip that I also went on today, I had to examine how the churches we visited related to culture and stuff like that. The Orthodox Church seems largely by culture in their worship. They continue to do things just as they have been done for hundreds of years. They make no changes in their worship in order to be more seeker sensitive. They are however extremely friendly. Many people greeted and talked with me, more than probably any church I have visited before. It is also obvious that they are very close as a family and get together throughout the week. I think that is why my friend enjoys going there so much. He says that church is now the highlight of his week.