WHAT'S THE GOOD WORD, PREACHER?

"...One of the shaman's jobs was ensuring that solar eclipses would be temporary. Nice work if you can get it." ~Robert Wright, The Evolution of God

It has occurred to me—with a combination of humility, seriousness, and not a little amusement—that I am the village shaman. (Perhaps I should say a village shaman.) The calling of the preacher traces its lineage back into the mists of pre-history, to the emergence of the tribal wise man, the shaman, the witch doctor (from which profession the line evolves and finally divides, leading, on the one branch, to the humble parish pastor and on the other, the medical doctor – who, for some reason, ended up making more money.)

Although in most religious communities the clergy person is charged with the task of passing on the sometimes narrow, dogmatic beliefs of a particular creed, I mean, for the sake of this discussion, to set that aside. I am speaking of the more general sense in which those who are called to lead various “flocks” are looked to as “wise” men or women – the ones who are expected to say something worth listening to regarding how to find meaning in life and a purpose for the living of one’s days, including:  “How do I go on now that my Mildred’s gone?” “Do I have to take that chemo?” and “What’s it all about, Alfie?”

For thousands of years the primary means of receiving this dispensed wisdom has been in a weekly address of between fifteen minutes and an hour or more in length. (We can take today’s standard sermon length and add five minutes for every fifty years going back in time.) My seminary professors would no doubt remind me (and I agree) that a sermon is not about the preacher’s personal philosophy or homey tips for living. (As one of them liked to say, “Remember, preach the good news, not your good views.”) But I’m speaking here of a kind of “folk” understanding of the preacher’s task.

Although one has to be either a megalomaniac or mighty humble to stand up before hundreds of people every week and presume to talk, uninterrupted, for fifteen or twenty minutes about the meaning of life(1), I think there is something to the premise I am putting forward here, both as a description and an expectation of the preacher’s assignment: The average parish pastor plays the role of something like a tribal shaman.(2) When I’m in the pew and not in the pulpit I do expect to get a word to instruct my life in one way or another.

My intention here is neither to ridicule nor to puff up the importance of my profession, but to observe, both from the inside and the outside, that all societies have had and continue to have their shamans. I write at a time when the persuasive power of the church and its preachers is (at least for the time being) waning. I know there are – and always have been – other “wise” ones to whom the community looks. I was going to list some candidates here, but let me ask, instead, who is your shaman? Is it important for someone to play that role in our lives, whether religious or secular? To paraphrase the Apostle Paul, “Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age?”

Where, dear reader, do you get the good word?

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Notes:


For many, the word "shaman" is synonymous with "charlatan." For this discussion, however, I mean it in its more objective anthropological sense as "tribal wise person."


1. "In some cultures shamans have struck anthropologists as psychotic, people who may indeed be hearing voices that no one else is hearing…. The Chukchee used to describe someone who felt driven to the shamanistic calling as 'doomed to inspiration.'” –Robert Wright, The Evolution of God

Martin Luther said that “after every sermon the preacher should fall on his knees and ask God to forgive him for what he’s just done”

2. This is one of the reasons that clergy who are charlatans, or who exploit for their own gain or sickness are so devastating: they’re messing with people’s understanding of life itself. Another post for another time.

IN LENT, AS FACEBOOK FADES FROM MEMORY... SORT OF

For two or three years, when our children were in junior and senior high, our family gave up TV for Lent.* Although it wasn’t their idea, our daughters went along with Dad’s scheme without too much persuasion. We put the television set in a closet, so there was no evidence of the bug-eyed monster in the house. My memory of that experience is that, after adjusting to the change for about a day, we really didn’t miss it. I can’t say that it resulted in idyllic sessions of Monopoly games or family readings in front of the fire, but we really didn’t miss it. I recommend it. Five weeks is a good amount of time to adjust to the change and then get on with a TV-less life. (A predictable question is, “Why did you turn it on again?” A good question.)

Now (at the time of this writing) I’m about half-way into doing without Facebook for Lent, and the result is much the same, with some variations. It was not the social connections I wanted to give up (certainly not you, dear friend!), but the process and screen-time of Facebook; and to evaluate how I use it. I don’t think I am any more a compulsive Facebook user than the next guy, which is to say that there is a bit of compulsion to it, and that’s what I’m temporarily weaning myself from, and quite happily.

I haven’t given up e-mail, and I have come to appreciate that digital niche more and more as a way of staying in touch with close friends and family. (I say “niche” because among the various e-communication media available to us: telephone, cell phone, texting, e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, etc., I actually find e-mail to be uniquely “intimate.”) But I have come to enjoy some of those old-friend-Facebook-reconnections – the kind of communication that only happens on Facebook (these folks and I will most likely not exchange e-mails during my dry spell) – and these connections are one of the reasons that I will reactivate my account at the end of Lent.

When I do think of Facebook, it is to analyze what I’m missing, if anything, and to get a sense of if (or how badly) I want to go back to it. And I find that the thought of re-activating causes me more cold sweats than did the prospect of shutting down. It’s not just that I once again open myself up to the reports of what my friend’s cousin’s roommate fed her cat, or having to decide if I’m going to accept a friend request from my friend’s cousins’ roommate. And it’s not just re-opening that struggle with the near-compulsion of the lure of the Facebook screen…

It’s limiting myself once again to the narrow slice of myself that I present on Facebook. Oh, it’s not a phony presentation, or somebody I’m not, but it’s a narrow part of myself: The goof-off. With a few honorable exceptions, I’m basically just horsing around on Facebook.  In her new book, Alone Together, author Sherry Turkle proposes that on Facebook we’re all “performing” for each other. Although it may be a fine line of difference, I would say, rather, that (speaking for myself), I’m just goofing-off, both in the old-fashioned sense of wasting time, and in the other sense of being a wise guy.

I have no doubt exaggerated in that last paragraph. (And the reader will note that I’m only speaking for myself.) But I still seek a nobler cause for Facebook; and whether or not it is a trivial or an important part of my life is still an open question for me. FB is in its infancy – it’s still the crank-telephone on the wall into which we shout for the operator. It’s about twenty per-cent pure silliness, seventy per-cent idle chatter, and maybe ten per-cent meaningful discourse. That’s what it is now; who knows what it will become. But I’ll be there. Right after Easter. I’ll try to be noble.

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*Lent is a six-week penitential season in the Christian calendar leading up to Easter. The rationale for giving up anything for Lent is a subject for another post for another time.

THOSE WACKY BLOOPERS -- AND A CAUTIONARY TALE

About once a year someone sends me one of those collections of “church bulletin bloopers,” and they actually make me laugh. Some of the perennial favorites:

The sermon this morning: "Jesus Walks on the Water."
The sermon tonight: "Searching for Jesus."

The Rector will preach his farewell message after which the choir will sing "Break Forth into Joy."

Weight Watchers will meet at 7 PM at the First Presbyterian Church. Please use large double door at the side entrance.

These are funny because they are most likely real bloopers – not made up. (At least I’m convinced.)

The blooper phenomenon brings to mind a sort of sub-category: the danger of the find-and-replace feature in word processors. Here’s one that most certainly had to have happened, because it could happen to me tomorrow:

The preacher discovered that his word processor allowed him to save the bulletin of his last funeral service and use it as a template for the next. One week it was a funeral for “Mary Jones,” a couple of weeks later a service for “Agnes Schultz.” He simply replaced every instance of one name with the other. Those attending the service that week were amused when, in the creed, they confessed belief in a Lord who was “born of the virgin Agnes.”