Sacred Journey: Sally Howell Johnson, Steven Blons, Robert Brinkley / Re-Imagining Collection / Duke Digital Repository

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And thank you so much Steve and Bob and Sally

0:04

for agreeing to be interviewed about reimagining.

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I'm gonna start with some background for each of you.

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Sally, why don't we start with you?

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Could you say your name and maybe spell it for us?

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Okay, Sally Johnson, J-O-H-N-S-O-N

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Okay thank you.

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And are you lay or clergy?

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I'm clergy, I'm an ordained deacon

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in the United Methodist Church.

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Thank you so much.

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And Sally, when and where were you born?

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I was born in Oak Hill, Ohio.

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Okay, and when were you born?

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Oh, 1953, a fine year.

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(laughs) It must have been.

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Where did you go to school, graduate, divinity school?

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I graduated with a degree in music from Ohio University

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and then from United Theological Seminary

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in the Twin Cities, in 19, I don't know 95.

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Okay good, good, thank you.

0:58

What work or ministry were you doing at the time

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of reimagining?

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Let's say it was 93 to 2003.

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I've had a lot of hats here at Hennepin Avenue

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United Methodist Church.

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At that time, I probably was doing,

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um, let's see, what was I doing?

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I was doing things related to worship, certainly.

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And adult education and before that I was doing

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children's ministry, so it's, there's sort of an overlap

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of that.

1:30

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Boy, you did wear a lot of hats, that's great.

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And what work or ministry have you done after reimagining?

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What are you doing now?

1:38

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I'm still doing worship, adult education,

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spiritual formation and now also congregational care,

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pastoral care.

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Wonderful.

1:47

I have one last background question for you Sally.

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When and how did you first become aware

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of feminist theology?

1:53

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Well probably at seminary because I was at United

1:55

at that time and we were reading

1:59

a lot of feminist theology,

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the women's bible commentary and all that.

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And so that was a part of it, and probably just from

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the stuff that I was reading as well.

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Sure, and how did you react to it, do you recall?

2:13

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Well, it felt like finally, ya know?

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Finally.

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Yes. (laughs)

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And it felt very

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illuminating and also freeing.

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To have a voice, to be heard.

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Well, no, I take that back, to have a voice.

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I don't know that it was always being heard

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at that point.

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Exactly.

2:38

That's great, thank you Sally.

2:39

Bob, could you say your full name and spell it

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for me please?

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Bob Brinkley, B-R-I-N-K-L-E-Y.

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Thank you, and are you lay or clergy?

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I'm clergy.

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Yes, and what denomination?

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Southern Baptist denomination,

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graduate of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary,

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think it was '62.

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Yes.

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Yeah.

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Great.

3:11

When and where were you born, Bob?

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I was born in Kansas,

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but because of that period in time,

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family was moving a lot, and eventually

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during my early years we finally moved to Texas.

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I'm a graduate of Baylor University.

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Oh sure, yes, great.

3:33

What work or ministry were you doing at the time

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of reimagining?

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Because of my connection with this church,

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Hennepin Avenue United Methodist church,

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and at that time as I recall, I was on support staff

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and also a contributor or participant in Sacred Journey

3:58

worship.

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So I think that was

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what introduced me to the reimagining.

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Mmhmm, great, okay good.

4:16

And you still on the support staff for Hennepin Avenue

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United Methodist?

4:21

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No, mostly now,

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I'm working with Steve and Sally

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in developing worship

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for Sacred Journey.

4:36

Yeah, and did a period of years making pastoral calls

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here too as well.

4:45

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Nice, great, and Bob, one last question,

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when and how did you first become aware

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of feminist theology?

4:52

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Well,

4:57

I think at its inception actually

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because my associations with people who

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were involved in that very much.

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Yeah, so it was very early on.

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And how did you have connections to people involved?

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Through work and friendship

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and a worshiping group.

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Yeah, in those ways.

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And I think but at another level though,

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it was, I heard Sally use the word freedom,

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it was very liberating for me that there was something

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that was searching to have this experience

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and understanding of the movement.

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That's interesting.

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How was it liberating for you, Bob?

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Um,

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That's a big, big question.

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(laughing) It is!

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And an important one.

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I think it was liberating, it was exciting,

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it was encouraging.

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I felt more hopeful because there were moments when

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I became very kinda disenchanted with organized religion.

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And so I really grabbed onto this in a personal way.

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And hoping that it will still have a great influence

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in our society.

6:52

Hope it does.

6:53

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Great, thank you, that's great.

6:54

Steve, could you say and spell your name please?

6:57

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Sure, my name is Steven with a V, Blons, B-L-O-N-S.

7:00

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Great and are you lay or clergy?

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I'm lay.

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And your denominational affiliation?

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I'm Methodist, United Methodist.

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Great.

7:13

And Steve, when and where were you born?

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Saint Paul, Minnesota in 1943.

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Bob, you actually escaped without having to say your--

7:22

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You know you're right, thank you!

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Bob, you didn't say when you were born.

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Oh, yes, I was.

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You were born?

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Good! (laughs)

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November 1934.

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Great.

7:39

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So I'm 81 right now.

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Great, thank you.

7:41

Thanks for catching that Steve.

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(laughter)

7:43

So where'd you go to school?

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Grew up in the Twin Cities, University of Minnesota

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undergraduate and graduate school.

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Graduate school in?

7:53

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Educational psychology and counseling.

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Masters degree and most of the course work for PhD

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which I never finished.

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And that area was in?

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Educational psychology also.

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Counseling student personnel psych is what the program

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was called.

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Great, good.

8:09

So what work or ministry were you doing at the time

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of reimagining?

8:13

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So I had just finished being the,

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I'd been the director of Koinonia Retreat Center,

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the retreat center owned and operated by Hennepin Avenue

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United Methodist church for nine years.

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And had, was on sabbatical from that position.

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A sabbatical from which I never actually returned.

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And was spending the sabbatical in Berkeley, California,

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participating in a renewal program, enrichment program

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during the time that the first reimagining conference

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occurred.

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And then upon returning from Berkeley,

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getting back connected here at Hennepin church,

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so that would have been like the following year,

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the Sacred Journey service was just starting

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and I got involved on the ground floor of that.

9:05

And so for the next period of time,

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during the lifespan of reimagining,

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I was involved here helping with worship

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and also playing as a freelance musician

9:19

and giving music lessons and that sort of thing.

9:22

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Yes, and what are you doing now, Steve?

9:26

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Exactly the same things.

9:28

(laughter)

9:29

I've continued to do the same things,

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play music, teach guitar,

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work on Sacred Journey service,

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and so I'm sort of retiring by attrition,

9:42

things keep kinda shrinking little by little,

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but I keep doing all the same things.

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That's great, that's great.

9:52

And Steve, when and how did you first become

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aware of feminist theology?

9:56

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Well, first of all I was married to a woman

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who became influenced by the feminist movement

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in the second wave feminism in the 60's.

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And we were caught up pretty much early on

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in all that and this was in my first marriage

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and she then went on to seminary.

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To United seminary and graduated and was appointed

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as clergy of the United Methodist Church.

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So it was just part of the conversation for a long time.

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And along the way I became a member of an organization

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called COSROW in the United Method Church community

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on the status role of women.

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And so helped to plan some events and

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so it feels like it's been,

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it's been in the water for me for a really long time.

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And you know, it was about feminism and then because

10:55

of my ongoing life in the church, it was almost immediately

10:59

about how does this relate to what we're doing here?

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And language became obvious right away.

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Yes.

11:10

Great, oh that's wonderful, great background.

11:10

I know at some point when we get to Sacred Journey

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you'll all chime in, but you all have

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different relationships with reimagining,

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so I might still go around and do you individually.

11:19

Sally you were at the '93 conference.

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I was.

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And I would love to hear what you remember

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about that conference.

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Well, I think that, so right out of the shoot,

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the very first song, what you hold, I'll start to cry

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talking about it.

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What you hold, may you always hold.

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I'd never heard anything like that

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and it just went right,

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right to my,

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you know, right into my body, into my soul.

11:45

And I still remember what the room looked like.

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I remember they used this tinkling bell chime thing

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as a part of the music and I just thought

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oh my gosh that's the most beautiful sound.

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And there were dancers.

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I think that one of the things that I remember so much

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was the attention to beauty.

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That we were meeting around round tables.

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Just sort of all of the attention to symbol.

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And that I lated unpacked, I mean, I didn't necessarily

12:16

know that at the time.

12:21

But dance, the movement.

12:22

The fact that there were these three canvases

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happening and painting on them that the artists

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were responding to what was happening in the room

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and then the fact that they didn't stay with

12:40

their own canvas, but then when we came back to it,

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they took up, the artist took up another canvas.

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Now somebody may remember this completely differently,

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but that was my memory.

12:55

The fact that the speakers turned.

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It was the first time I'd ever seen one of those Plexiglas

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podiums, and so you could see through it.

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You could see the person,

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they weren't hiding behind the podium,

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but they were an extension of it in some ways.

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And that they would, periodically because we were in

13:17

the round, they would just turn the podium

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and we got this different glimpse of the person speaking

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and it just seemed really right.

13:27

I do remember the different, some of the speakers,

13:31

but not so much what they said

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as much as the experience of it.

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And sort of all the way that the arts were

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incorporated throughout.

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It was my first experience also, I will say,

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of womanist theology.

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And that was like a slap upside the head.

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You know, because it was like woah, I didn't even know

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that this language was there, that people were talking

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about this, that there was sort of a rejection it seemed

14:03

in some ways of sort of the kind of,

14:07

seemingly dominant culture

14:14

feminist theology that got a different face on it

14:18

with womanist theology.

14:22

So there was that.

14:24

And the fact that there were people from all over the world.

14:26

And I'd certainly experienced that before

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at some United Methodist things, but the fact that

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all of these people had come

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to have this experience together.

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And it never occurred to me, not one moment did it ever

14:39

occur to me that this would be dangerous for anyone,

14:42

that people wouldn't think that this was just the best

14:46

thing ever.

14:49

And so the fact that there was a backlash just was

14:51

incredibly surprising.

14:53

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Yes, well, let me follow up on that for just a minute.

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So it was incredibly surprising to you.

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How do you, as you reflect on it,

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how do you account for that backlash?

15:02

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Oh, fear.

15:05

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Fear of?

15:06

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Change, the fear of women,

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the fear of the power of women all together,

15:12

like what will this mean for the institution?

15:15

Because you know, institutions are meant

15:17

to preserve themselves.

15:20

And this was not going to preserve things because

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it was really the power of all of these women,

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and there were some men, I remember sitting at tables

15:30

with men, but the power of women speaking all together

15:32

just was more than the institution could bear, I think.

15:39

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Yeah.

15:43

That's really good, Bob or Steve, did you want to add

15:45

to that about the backlash?

15:47

Any other thoughts on how you account for it,

15:49

your reactions to it?

15:51

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I have uh,

15:53

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This is Steve.

15:54

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Yeah, this is Steve talking.

15:54

I have an interesting little incident that happened

15:56

that reflected the backlash.

15:59

So down the road, I was asked to serve on the board,

16:01

on the conference, after Reimagine became an organization.

16:08

And we were on retreat and we had a task of revising

16:13

a pamphlet to describe reimagining so we were kind of

16:18

sitting around the table brain storming,

16:22

talking about stuff.

16:24

And for me, the essence of what,

16:25

this is now me speaking as a man,

16:30

so I'm not affected in all the same ways,

16:32

but to me, one of the powerful things that came out

16:34

of reimagining was the concept of proclaiming

16:36

the gospel of our experience.

16:41

And I lobbied really hard to have that be a defining

16:45

sentence in this pamphlet and we couldn't go there

16:48

because of the backlash.

16:54

Because saying that so clearly and boldly up front

16:56

was seen as too risky.

17:00

But I still to this day think that that's one of the

17:04

powerful legacies of the reimagining movement.

17:07

And you know, even right this minute, virtually,

17:10

we're spending the whole summer in the Sacred Journey

17:15

asking people to speak out of their experience,

17:17

what their gospel is.

17:21

So you know, it's like, it's,

17:23

and I think that's what, that's one of the other things

17:27

that really scared the established church,

17:30

and probably should have, to lift up experience

17:33

as valid over and against tradition and scripture

17:38

even though the Methodist sort of have that as part of the,

17:42

but still to really say no, this is really,

17:44

We're lifting this really up.

17:47

I think that just scared the heck out of people.

17:49

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Yeah, yeah, exactly.

17:52

Yeah.

17:53

Good, good.

17:56

That was great, I'm gonna move on to Bob about

17:59

how you got connected to reimagining.

18:01

Could you say a little bit about your connection

18:04

to reimagining and how you got connected?

18:06

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I was thinking about backlashes.

18:12

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Oh please, please do.

18:13

Any thoughts on that too, I'd love to hear.

18:15

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What I'm hearing from these two helps to jar my memory

18:19

a little bit.

18:22

I thought it was a nation-wide backlash.

18:25

Which was sorta surprising, not entirely.

18:31

At that conference, I--

18:40

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The '93 conference?

18:44

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Yeah the '93 conference,

18:45

I was aware that there were a few men there.

18:49

Which was encouraging.

18:56

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Yeah.

18:59

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Encouraging.

Some clergy as well.

19:01

I wanted to say, because now I'm going

19:06

tripping back into my memory, that remarkably,

19:11

this kind of backwater seminary in New Orleans

19:17

had a course on the mystics.

19:23

And um,

19:27

some women mystics.

19:30

And I was reading, early on, that was like

19:32

in the late 70s early 60s, I was reading women theologians.

19:35

I wish I could remember some of their names.

19:41

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Yeah.

19:43

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If I could probably something

19:44

you all would remember as well.

19:49

So,

19:52

that

19:56

was present in me.

19:59

And the fact that

20:02

years hence,

20:05

that I could see the connection between the mysticism

20:08

of the Middle Ages and what was

20:14

happening now.

20:18

And not at all surprised at their reactions,

20:20

negative reactions and digging in of heels

20:23

by traditional religion.

20:27

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To clarify, because that's been the pattern

20:33

in the past, is that why?

20:35

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Yeah.

20:37

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Yeah, mmhmm.

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It's changing.

20:41

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So how did you get connected to reimagining?

20:46

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Through these two people that are either side of me.

20:50

But also women in the Sacred Journey community gatherings.

20:54

That

21:01

and just

21:05

following something that I think was always

21:09

open to this and um,

21:15

so that when I learned about it through others mainly,

21:20

I was happy about that.

21:30

I think that's as much as I can say right now.

21:38

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Well that's great Bob.

21:41

Go ahead yeah, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off.

21:43

Steve, I just wanna talk about you also had the experience

21:46

of serving on the coordinating council

21:48

as you were mentioning.

21:50

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I did.

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And I would love to hear about your memories

21:51

of what it was like to be on the coordinating council.

21:54

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(laughs) So would I!

21:58

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(laughs) Do you remember when it was exactly?

22:01

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Uhh,

22:05

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I can look it up so don't worry about it.

22:08

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Yeah, I it's pretty vague, to kind of pin it down.

22:09

I'm trying to,

22:15

I can't attach it to other things very easily

22:16

in my memory so it's hard to pin down a time.

22:20

So what do I remember about that experience?

22:29

There was a lot of energy still around

22:33

creating additional events,

22:36

about communicating with people who'd been to past events.

22:41

About encouraging people to get into some kind of small

22:46

groups or communities, recognizing the need for support,

22:49

especially people who were not near major urban centers

22:53

and isolated and who you keep those people kinda going,

22:58

so, the fact that there was a newsletter.

23:01

And people were still concerned about the welfare

23:10

of those individuals whose careers had been jeopardized

23:14

and in some cases lost because of their involvement

23:18

in Sacred Journey, so there was a lot of concern

23:22

and grief and anger around that.

23:24

And I don't remember if,

23:30

I don't think I was still serving

23:36

at the time that the council had to start dealing with

23:38

what was sort of the dwindling energy of reimagining

23:42

as it was trying to either continue or not continue.

23:46

I wasn't part of that decision I know.

23:49

I do remember toward the end, that there was,

23:55

this is after I was off the council I think,

23:59

that there was this compilation, a book of resources.

24:01

Worship resources, ideas, it was really kind of a grab bag

24:05

of stuff and I participated in that.

24:10

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How did you participate in that?

24:15

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I wrote one or two pieces for that.

24:16

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Okay.

24:19

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And um,

24:21

and I still have my copy of that.

24:25

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Is this the Blessed Sophia book?

24:27

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Yeah, I guess so, yeah yeah yeah.

24:29

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Yeah, like a wire, a binder?

24:31

Yep, mmhmm, yes, yes.

24:32

How did you get on the coordinating council?

24:37

How'd that happen?

24:39

Do you remember?

24:39

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I don't think I just jumped up and said hey!

24:41

Is there any, ya know,

24:45

someone must have invited me to do it,

24:46

but I don't remember who.

24:52

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Sure.

24:53

And if you think about it, how would you say

24:54

feminist theology affected the way that that council worked?

24:55

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Well the,

25:10

it's hard for me to kind of separate

25:14

because I've lived, it feels like I've lived so much

25:16

of the last 25 years of my life in collaborative circles

25:21

that it's hard to remember a time when I didn't.

25:26

So um, so the sense of respect and collaboration

25:30

that existed there, in the way things were talked about

25:35

and the way decisions were made,

25:39

was certainly a part of it.

25:43

And um,

25:47

there were some strong voices.

25:50

There were people who had, you know, definite ideas,

25:52

there wasn't an absence of disagreement.

25:55

But you know,

26:04

this'll sound sort of self-serving I suppose in a way

26:09

when I say it this way, but

26:12

it felt completely natural

26:15

and comfortable to be a man in the midst of this

26:18

group of women talking about feminist theology.

26:21

'Cause it's like who I am and how I operate.

26:25

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Exactly, yes, yes, that makes sense.

26:27

Thank you.

26:30

Well, one important connection that you all have,

26:31

a huge connection is Sacred Journey.

26:34

And that was the group that provided music

26:36

for the very last gathering.

26:39

So I'd like to hear from you, first of all,

26:41

how Sacred Journey got connected up to reimagining.

26:44

Let's start with that and then I have other questions.

26:51

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Well I'm not sure connected up is it.

26:53

I think that what we recognized early on

26:56

when we began to have this service be more

27:00

than just like an alternative service you know,

27:04

here in a place that's pretty traditional

27:08

was that we had been influenced in ways that,

27:11

as I said when we were talking earlier,

27:18

that I'd had this experience and I could no longer

27:20

be the same.

27:23

And so it began to be sort of woven into what it is

27:25

that we were doing.

27:31

We often say that we're a creation centered spirituality

27:33

service, and there's truth in that, but there's also

27:37

or and, I guess I should say,

27:42

you know there's also threads of Celtic spirituality

27:44

and Native American, sort of lots of indigenous cultures.

27:47

And that reimagining was a way of saying,

27:52

oh and all of that is okay.

27:56

That the sort of bringing all of that to the table

27:59

of creating worship.

28:03

And so it was, and, that became very important

28:04

in the weaving it together,

28:10

and the idea that how it is that you use language

28:12

is really really important.

28:18

And how it is that you use language in worship

28:20

is extremely important.

28:24

And the ways in which we also use the arts,

28:29

so that it became a multisensory experience

28:34

out of, ya know, the experience that certainly I had

28:39

at the first reimagining.

28:44

And that was probably my first experience other than

28:48

you know those kinds of experiences that you have

28:50

like when you're at camp.

28:53

Where it seems to be okay to do all kinds of wacky stuff

28:55

and do it all together and call it worship.

29:00

This was an experience of oh we do this because we are

29:03

multisensory human beings and you know,

29:08

we worship out of our experience as Steve said.

29:13

-

Yeah.

29:15

Lemme step back just a minute.

29:16

How did Sacred Journey itself start?

29:18

How and when did it start?

29:20

-

This is a very pedestrian story.

29:23

-

Okay. (laughs)

29:26

-

I'm sorry, I'm away on sabbatical

29:28

and there's a congregational survey that's done,

29:32

out of which comes some fairly significant interest

29:36

in having some alternative way of worship.

29:41

In particular--

29:44

-

But in the summer.

29:46

-

In the summer, yeah.

29:47

-

Ah, yeah, okay.

-

In particular the two things that people wanted were

29:48

can we wear our shorts to church?

29:51

And can we be done early enough that we can get the heck

29:54

out of here and do other stuff on Sunday?

29:57

So this worship service started as a Sunday morning

30:00

summer service in the sanctuary.

30:03

And it was pretty successful for the summer as I understand,

30:06

there were a couple hundred people who

30:10

showed up pretty regularly for the service

30:11

and enjoyed it.

30:13

And when the summer came to an end,

30:14

there were people said, this is cool,

30:16

can't we continue this?

30:18

So initially it was this kind of little barnacle

30:21

on the hull of the big ship of worship here.

30:24

It was this group of about 25 or 30 people

30:28

that met at 8:30 in the morning in the sanctuary

30:32

'cause that's where it met, but had to be done

30:37

in 45 minutes to get out of the way

30:38

for the main worship, right?

30:40

And it continued in that format for a while,

30:42

and then later on said this is crazy,

30:44

let's move to the art gallery.

30:45

And then so what's become Sacred Journey

30:48

started out looking not at all like what it is now.

30:51

And just evolved, evolved, evolved

30:55

as people came, wanted this, ya know, ideas got fed in,

30:57

influences got fed in

31:03

and it's an example to me of a community intentionally

31:05

deciding how they want to be together in worship

31:12

and making that happen.

31:15

It's literally ongoing, it's still 22 years down the road,

31:16

it's still an ongoing experiment.

31:21

-

Yeah.

31:23

-

In which we periodically call the community together

31:25

and say, how's it going?

31:28

Are there things that are working or aren't working for you?

31:32

And then we've made, you know, with those responses,

31:35

made some shifts in how things work.

31:40

And,

31:45

-

This is fascinating, I'm curious,

31:46

is there sort of an over arching mission or vision

31:48

or how do you determine what fits in?

31:53

Is it sort of, whatever, how does that work?

31:55

It's really fascinating.

31:58

-

Well,

32:00

(laughter)

32:00

-

You're looking at the

32:02

(words obscured by laughter and cross talk)

32:03

-

It's also every week after the service

32:06

there's what's called seeds of celebration.

32:11

And seeds of celebration takes the scripture

32:13

for the week that is coming up

32:16

and hash it out

32:19

and have pretty free form--

32:22

-

Very.

32:26

-

Very free form bible study.

32:26

-

It's like, it's like, it's pretty much midrash

32:30

is what I would call it.

32:33

Just like open the whole thing up.

32:34

-

And the intention is we try every week

32:40

to make sure all of those sensory pieces

32:43

are also touched on.

32:45

And I think that that sort of process is also

32:49

very reimagining-like.

32:53

-

Say some more about that, that's fascinating, yes.

32:55

-

Because, number one, it is always in process.

32:58

And what happens,

33:03

many many people have had input in,

33:06

not one particular person.

33:09

And that's a core value.

33:12

-

Yes.

33:14

-

Right.

-

And so that's--

33:16

-

And then when the three of us sit down as we do

33:17

on Monday mornings, as we just did, to actually

33:20

put the pieces together that are going to make up

33:23

worship, we're building on the conversation that

33:25

happened the day before.

33:28

And then we're, ya know, playing this through our own

33:31

experience and our own filters and thinking of ways

33:35

that we can attach elements of worship and stuff.

33:37

And this process for me, you know,

33:41

again I said earlier about collaboration.

33:46

And this process is very collaborative.

33:48

And it frees me up,

33:50

I often think this,

33:53

it frees me up to throw out the most outlandish ideas

33:54

I can think of, knowing that if I don't get any

33:57

kind of support for this, I'm not gonna risk like

34:02

throwing us off the edge of the earth, ya know,

34:06

with some crazy notion.

34:08

So, the collaborative process allows us

34:10

to bring a lot more to the,

34:14

then, I mean I can't imagine,

34:19

and this happens all the time, I know,

34:22

where some one person sits down and figures out

34:23

this prayer and that hymn and it's oh my god I can't

34:25

imagine how you create worship like that

34:28

and have it have any connection to the life

34:30

of the community.

34:32

-

Yeah.

34:33

-

Mmhmm.

-

Very interesting!

34:34

Well, I'm wondering how, am I correct in saying

34:36

that reimagining was one influence among others

34:40

to form the community?

34:44

-

Yes.

And that the influence was through people who had

34:45

experience reimagining and joined this community?

34:49

And how would you describe how that worked?

34:52

It was sort of through that?

34:55

I know,

34:57

-

Um, I think yes to a certain degree,

34:59

but mostly I think that it was the influence of,

35:02

I mean, there certainly are people within

35:06

the Sacred Journey community now who were instrumental

35:09

in that first conference,

35:13

Sara Evans, for instance.

35:17

And yet I think that it was really,

35:21

let's see if I can say this in the way I want to.

35:25

That what it did was it tripped a switch in me

35:28

and several others that this is how worship could happen

35:33

because of what we experienced there.

35:39

And that not only could it,

35:44

but the power of having that happen.

35:46

And I think that it's only been at some point along

35:50

the way we named that.

35:56

We named it and then it was like oh yeah.

35:59

-

Say some more about you named it.

36:02

What do you mean there?

36:03

-

Well that we named that we're doing this in the way

36:04

that we're doing it because of the way reimagining

36:08

was created and what it conjured up

36:12

in the people who were there.

36:17

And certainly in me.

36:19

-

Yeah, so in this, go ahead Bob.

36:20

-

Okay, Bob, go ahead.

36:23

-

Just the thought that

36:24

okay Sacred Journey,

36:29

we were reimagining from the very beginning

36:32

without calling it that exactly.

36:35

And one big word would be participatory.

36:39

Because we'd meet in a round.

36:42

No pulpit presence.

36:46

But I think that some of the women

36:50

much connected with reimagine community

36:57

because of

37:02

our coming together at those meetings

37:08

found that this is where they could worship.

37:12

-

Ah yes.

37:15

-

But that same kind of liberation got into them.

37:16

-

I would use the word safety.

37:20

-

Safety.

37:22

-

So as we began to create a space that felt safe

37:23

for people, and it's like,

37:27

and people wanted this

37:30

and so let's keep doing this

37:32

and so other people were looking who couldn't feel safe

37:34

in worship where they were would find us

37:37

and say oh, here's a safe place.

37:40

You know, these people are not gonna talk down to me,

37:42

they're not gonna ignore me, you know, et cetera, et cetera.

37:44

So it was out of,

37:47

there's this kind of

37:48

I would call it a pastoral element to this as well.

37:51

It's like caring for the people who were disenfranchised,

37:55

who are alienated, who are exiled from their communities,

37:58

here's a place that you can come and belong and feel safe

38:02

and let's just figure out how to do this together.

38:06

I mean, that's what the women who did reimagine,

38:09

they just sat down, let's make this, let's create this

38:12

out of thin air.

38:14

So yeah, okay, if we can do that, let's do it!

38:16

-

Yeah, yeah.

38:19

And you do actually use some reimagining materials

38:20

or have?

38:23

-

Yes.

38:25

-

Could you say a little bit about that?

38:26

-

What you hold may you always hold is one of those,

38:27

we use that a lot.

38:31

And I think that in some ways,

38:32

I mean it's such an affirmation for whoever walks in

38:34

the door.

38:37

You sing that it's like, you're not giving up anything

38:39

to be a part of this worshiping community,

38:44

to be a part of what's happening there.

38:46

But it's like what you have is what's important

38:50

and hold on to that.

38:54

-

You teared up earlier when you talked about it.

38:55

Is that because that's what it means to you?

38:57

-

Absolutely, absolutely.

38:59

And every now and then I just know that I have to sing

39:02

that because you know, that institution wants to knock

39:04

you around a little bit about that.

39:08

-

True about reimagining community and ours as well,

39:10

is the use of ritual.

39:14

And through experientially

39:19

realizing that spirit

39:24

speaks to us in ways other than the word.

39:28

In some of us moreso than words.

39:32

And the use of,

39:40

of art.

39:44

We meet in an art gallery, the music, all of it.

39:47

Because we're different places from time to time,

39:54

and so this part of the worship spirit speaks most loudly

39:58

to me and some part of the worship service speaks

40:02

more loudly to someone else.

40:05

I'd like to hear Steve on the safety factor.

40:10

That meant a lot to me.

40:13

-

Did it Bob?

40:14

-

This is a safe place, there are people here.

40:15

You know, we're not underground.

40:17

But sometimes felt that way early on, I think.

40:20

-

I have to be bold about saying this was much

40:28

the work of the spirit, reimagining.

40:34

-

Mmhmm.

40:36

Mmhmm yeah.

40:38

-

Yeah, because in

40:40

the fact that it was allowed

40:44

to continue, because there were people in the early days

40:46

who thought that you know, what the heck are they

40:51

doing up there?

40:53

And would come and kind of stand in the door

40:55

and just kind of look and then would say things

40:57

to either the lead pastor or whatever.

41:02

And yet, here we are.

41:05

So it really is, it sort of defies the odds

41:07

in a lot of ways.

41:10

-

Yes, yes.

41:12

Did it ever become tenuous do you think

41:14

or did you always feel like it was secure?

41:16

Sacred Journey.

41:18

-

Oh I didn't feel it was secure for a really long time.

41:19

I thought that we were sort of an accidental creation

41:24

of this church.

41:29

And this church has a, actually has a,

41:32

I mean in a way it has this long history of initiating

41:35

things, has a hard time ending things as many churches do.

41:38

And this was going, it wasn't really interfering

41:42

in any particular way, it wasn't costing the church

41:45

that much additional money.

41:47

We kind of existed sort of on the margin

41:49

on the edge of the page sort of.

41:51

That's how it felt to me and we had a certain freedom,

41:54

but I had the sense for a long time

41:56

that at any moment the hammer could drop.

41:59

Someone could come in and say, what is this?

42:01

Is this Christian?

42:03

Is this Methodist?

42:04

What is this?

42:05

And it never happened.

42:07

And eventually,

42:09

we sorta, it became clear that this

42:13

was a significant, significant part of the whole

42:16

of the life of this whole community,

42:20

and was making a contribution in ways that were

42:23

important to the larger community, so,

42:27

-

What kind of contribution?

42:30

-

Well,

42:34

a number of people who have occupied positions

42:40

of leadership in the church structure continue to be

42:43

fed in their spiritual life by their participation

42:47

in Sacred Journey.

42:50

I'm not privy to these kinds of statistics,

42:53

I don't know this for sure, but I'm pretty sure

42:56

that we carry our weight financially in terms of

42:58

the support of the church.

43:01

And there have been eventually over time,

43:06

as we've gone from one senior minister to another

43:09

to another, people who in their heart feel drawn

43:13

to this kind of worship even though they're responsible

43:18

for leading a completely different kind of service.

43:21

So we kinda won the hearts of the clergy leadership.

43:23

The significant clergy leadership, for the most part

43:29

in recent years, so that's helped.

43:31

-

And attendance is not the most important predictor

43:33

of success, but roughly how many people would come?

43:36

On a Sunday morning would you say?

43:39

-

We usually have an average attendance,

43:40

now it's between 90 and 100.

43:41

-

Oh wow, yeah, that's great.

43:43

Yeah that's good.

43:47

-

Yeah, we may be outgrowing our space.

43:48

-

Really.

43:52

-

Then what, huh?

43:53

-

Yeah.

-

So I also wanted to say in terms of the input of,

43:56

You said something about your experience in the first

43:59

conference and I just kind of build on that because

44:02

I think we pay attention to the beauty of liturgy

44:08

in particular ways, you know, that way it's crafted,

44:11

the way it connects, the way it flows.

44:13

Besides the use of multi-sensory stuff,

44:16

just recognizing the importance of that

44:21

and connecting us to each other and so on.

44:24

The other thing I would say is that we're shameless.

44:27

I speak for myself, 'cause I do this a lot.

44:31

I'm shameless in banging around with the words

44:33

in songs.

44:36

You know, we're not only trying to make

44:38

to get rid of all the inappropriate gender references

44:44

in songs, we also go after the theology.

44:47

-

Mmm, give an example, what are you thinking of?

44:50

-

Well, we don't use the word kingdom.

44:54

We just lop the G off of that word all the time.

44:58

And ya know, every once in a while when people wonder

45:02

about that, we'll kind of re-explain how we're a,

45:04

that Jesus came to call us into a community of kin,

45:08

you know, he wasn't proclaiming some kind of rule.

45:12

So there's that.

45:17

We just have no time,

45:19

there's very little of the cross in our theology.

45:24

You know, the suffering Jesus, the atonement theology stuff.

45:28

So we either, if we can't figure out a way of rewriting

45:32

a verse to get rid of that stuff,

45:35

we just don't use the song.

45:37

Because the songs, that's the thing that continues

45:39

to amaze me,

45:42

how the people who embrace traditional worship,

45:44

and therefore the traditional hymns

45:48

are inadvertently embracing all this traditional language.

45:50

And how can you not be shaped by that.

45:54

So we're very vigil and ruthless about that.

46:00

-

And I want to include too,

46:08

the inclusion of other world faiths

46:16

their spirituality that speaks deeply to us

46:26

is often used as well as Celtic

46:31

and Native American.

46:34

Which is a remarkable thing to have in this day and age,

46:42

I guess.

46:45

-

Mmhmm, yeah, thank you, Bob.

46:49

I wanna ask, you did, you provided the music for the

46:52

2003, the final gathering of reimagining,

46:56

and I wonder if you have any memories of what that

46:59

experience was like.

47:02

I know it's been a few years now.

47:04

-

Well, I think, ya know we were, that's when we really

47:06

were on the, like with the group.

47:09

Because we knew that it was a planning of an ending

47:12

of sorts and so that the central theme was river.

47:15

And there was some great language created

47:22

and

47:27

recognizing that

47:31

yes, it was an ending of sorts,

47:32

but it was really like a river, that the river was

47:34

flowing into something greater.

47:37

And that that was the image that we were going for.

47:39

And so all the music and the liturgy that was created

47:43

was all around that.

47:48

And also we kinda made this chuppah thing over the stage

47:50

with fabric and I think we got, Mary Plaster, I believe,

47:54

right?

48:01

-

Maybe.

48:02

-

Yeah, yeah, a puppeteer from Duluth and visual artist.

48:03

And so we were doing that.

48:07

So the idea that yes, it is

48:09

this particular iteration

48:13

is ending, but it's flowing into something else

48:15

and that became the real,

48:19

the metaphor that held everything.

48:24

-

So you were involved in planning this?

48:27

-

Yes, yeah yeah, and then doing the music for it as well.

48:29

-

Would you see Sacred Journey as part of that river

48:33

flowing on?

48:36

-

Oh, absolutely.

48:38

-

Metaphorically speaking,

sure sure.

48:40

-

Yeah yeah.

48:41

-

Not to say that reimagine is the only influence

48:43

on Sacred Journey,

48:45

(cross talk)

48:46

-

So,

48:47

it was a hoot

48:49

(laughter)

48:50

is what I remember.

48:51

It was just a great, it was a great time.

48:53

And you know, by this time we'd had about almost 10 years

48:56

of doing Sacred Journey under our belt.

49:01

So we were basically taking all of that

49:05

stuff that had learned and were doing

49:09

and were embodying and sort of turned it around

49:12

and brought it back in to the reimagining space

49:14

and had kind of another playground

49:17

to play in, a bigger playground.

49:19

And so that, it was just a lot of fun to do that.

49:22

And um,

49:27

I remember Rita Nakashima Brock was a speaker.

49:31

Was Rebecca there too?

49:35

-

I think so.

49:36

-

Yeah, I think so, they were both there.

49:37

And that was great.

49:39

And there's a little personal bit memory that I associate

49:44

with this event which I wanna share.

49:46

-

Please.

49:49

-

It has nothing to do specifically with reimagining

49:49

but so this was 2003.

49:51

And by this time, my son, who's now gone to seminary

49:53

in Berkeley at BSR and is serving a church in Berkeley,

49:58

an ACC church in Berkeley.

50:04

So at the end of the conference a woman comes up to me

50:05

and she says, "I was just in Berkeley.

50:08

"At a church in Berkeley, do you have a brother?"

50:12

(laughter)

50:15

And I said, oh sweetheart, you just made my week!

50:18

That was my son.

50:21

So whatever was happening to me that made me look young

50:23

enough to by this guy's brother was good.

50:26

-

Yeah, I love it, that's great Steve.

50:29

-

Well, I do remember the final song that we got everyone

50:34

involved in, and I think they had pieces of blue fabric

50:36

that they were, or like streamer kinds of things.

50:39

And it was the song swimming to the other side.

50:43

And it's a great, a great song.

50:46

And everyone sang that, and it was,

50:49

it felt like, while I remember I believe it was Sara Evans

50:53

did a lovely sort of this is where we've come to,

50:57

this is where we've been and then we sort of launched

51:01

into that and it felt like we really were sort of like

51:04

(makes whooshing sound) going to someplace.

51:09

I mean it didn't feel sad.

51:13

It didn't feel as if there was a defeat

51:14

or anything, but that there really was this,

51:17

maybe I'm dramatizing that as I am wont to do.

51:20

-

I'm curious whether this would resonate with you Sally,

51:24

so, 'cause it's feeling as I'm thinking about this now,

51:27

it was almost as if, by being invited to do this

51:30

we were sort of being blessed by the,

51:34

-

Yeah, yeah.

51:37

And the thing is that I don't think that we necessarily

51:38

recognized that until I saw that you were doing this,

51:42

and then I thought, we should be in on that somehow.

51:46

Because this is a connection and so that's what led

51:49

me to say to Bill, ya know, I think we should be in

51:52

on this.

51:55

And so maybe yes, yeah, and I don't know that I've really

51:56

sort of made those connections until--

51:59

-

I'm so glad you did.

52:03

You absolutely needed to be.

52:04

So, two other things I wanted to ask about

52:08

before we talk about kind of legacy things.

52:11

You mentioned something about a Loring Park Easter Service.

52:14

What was that about?

52:16

-

So this was our taking the reimagining concept

52:19

and running hard with it.

52:22

It was actually an idea that was given to us by

52:27

a person came, was on our staff for a short time

52:29

who was this wild cauldron of creative pushy energy.

52:33

And so among the ideas that he suggested

52:39

is that we do a service off site on Easter Sunday,

52:42

at the Guthrie theater, so we did.

52:47

-

So we got our, the Hennepin foundation actually make

52:52

this little statement,

52:54

we got them to, we had a grant from them to be able

52:55

to do this.

53:01

-

Charles Gavue is this guy's name,

53:04

he also thought that we needed a labyrinth.

53:06

And so the labyrinth arrived literally like 48 hours

53:09

before, because it was to go on the stage

53:14

in the Guthrie and kinda be a part of the scenery.

53:17

So we created an Easter Sunday celebration

53:21

around the fundamental themes of Easter that wasn't

53:26

at all based on the traditional Easter story.

53:30

-

Say some more about this.

53:36

-

It wasn't about the cross,

it wasn't about, so you've got resurrection,

53:37

you got life, you got possibility, you got hope.

53:42

-

You got death.

53:46

-

You got death.

-

So, but we also saw those things grounded in how

53:48

creation is, and so ya know,

53:52

birth, life, death, rebirth,

53:57

and we sewed all of that together into liturgy

54:01

and music and--

54:06

-

So I think this might have been Easter of '95,

54:08

that's when I guess this would have been.

54:11

I don't think we would have done this as early as '94.

54:13

I think it was '95 or '96.

54:16

In any event, the Easter Sunday event at the Guthrie

54:17

was called Sacred Journey.

54:22

And until that time, we didn't have that name for this

54:25

service, we were just the 8:30 service.

54:28

-

Really?

54:31

How'd that name, where'd that name come from?

54:32

-

That's Charles.

54:34

(laughter)

54:35

(cross talk)

54:37

-

And when we decided well we have to have this,

54:41

what are the visuals that have to happen with this?

54:48

We contacted In the Heart of the Beast

54:51

puppet and mask creator.

54:53

And I believe, now maybe I'm mis-remembering this,

54:54

if that's a word, but I believe that Sandy Spieler

54:57

was a part of the original,

55:01

-

Yes.

55:04

-

Yes.

And so what we basically did was

55:05

use their big puppet

55:08

that they use at Mayday,

55:13

was buried underneath fabric

55:17

on the labyrinth at the Guthrie and when it came time

55:21

for resurrection, that big puppet, you know,

55:25

rises up out of everything.

55:28

-

It's funny because ya know, I know we were at the Guthrie

55:30

twice, and I'm not sure that Heart of the Beast was with

55:32

us both times, so we may be conflating this--

55:35

-

No, no, no they were, they were.

55:37

-

Both times?

55:38

-

Yeah, they were.

-

So we did this probably seven times.

55:40

-

Did you really?

55:42

Seven Easter services at the Guthrie?

55:44

-

Well not all at the Guthrie.

55:46

The Guthrie turned out to have, I mean it was expensive.

55:47

-

Well, what we should say is that first year

55:51

that they were doing it, they were doing some musical

55:54

that they thought was going to be a big hit for them,

55:56

that ended up not being a big hit.

55:58

And they were losing money like crazy

56:00

only to have us rent the space for a Sunday morning,

56:02

so we never were able to rehearse on the stage.

56:07

We sort of walked through how we thought it would look

56:10

and then we showed up early in the morning,

56:14

loaded in all the stuff, did this, and

56:17

when they opened the doors,

56:24

Well, what happened was the puppet, we rehearsed

56:26

with the puppet in the sanctuary and it made the paper,

56:28

the Star Trib.

56:31

And so here was the puppet in our sanctuary

56:32

and so what happened was they opened the doors

56:37

and 1400 people showed up, and they had to sit,

56:40

they were sitting in the isles.

56:45

And the Guthrie folks were flipping for all kinds

56:47

of reasons, you know fire marshal and all of that.

56:50

But what it said to us was man we scratched

56:53

ya know, an itch that was there.

57:01

-

So over the years we were at the Guthrie a couple times.

57:04

We were at the women's

57:06

-

Club.

57:10

-

Women's club, they have a little theater.

57:10

That was a good space for us.

57:12

We were at the Metropolitan Community College one year.

57:14

And you know, we had people on stilts, we had,

57:18

it was kind of like a, one of those medieval um,

57:21

-

Like the mystery plays.

57:27

-

Yeah yeah, sorta like that.

57:28

And every year we'd have to kinda come up with another way

57:31

of trying to figure out how to tell this story

57:33

and we kept getting pushed, I mean for us,

57:36

it was like having to confront the theology of Easter

57:38

over and over again in some new ways.

57:41

So it was very, it was very significant.

57:46

And the pagans loved it.

57:48

The pagans came in droves to this thing.

57:50

(laughter)

57:53

-

The Wiccans.

57:54

-

Yeah, it was so great.

57:56

-

But it was

57:58

it was so

58:00

obviously inter-generational.

58:02

Children were involved in all these services

58:05

in big ways.

58:09

In speaking and helping with creating art, visual stuff.

58:13

-

That was part of the event that the children

58:20

were creating art?

58:22

-

Well, they were, I mean they created things before hand

58:24

but they were intricately involved in the whole

58:26

service.

58:30

I don't think my children actually ever went to a

58:32

traditional Easter service until they were like

58:34

maybe in high school.

58:39

(laughter)

58:41

So they didn't really know all that stuff until that point.

58:43

You know, just in time to reject it.

58:47

-

Did interest in this continue over the years?

58:52

-

It did, I mean, I think our attendance wasn't,

58:55

I don't think we hit 1400 again, but,

59:00

and we had smaller spaces and um,

59:04

I think if we'd have had the energy to continue it

59:07

we could have run it a little bit longer too,

59:10

but eventually we were, we were done.

59:13

-

Yeah, a lot of work.

59:17

-

Well, and also it's, ya know what happens

59:18

when you try to reimagine that particular Sunday

59:23

in which even the most progressive liberal folks

59:29

still sing Christ the Lord is risen today

59:33

and want to do so, seemingly.

59:37

And at some point it's like hmm, well,

59:42

(laughter)

59:47

well,

-

And we did have this group of people,

59:49

this group of people who would come to the Loring

59:51

Easter Festival at the Women's club and come here

59:54

for the traditional service, both.

59:56

-

Oh interesting.

59:59

-

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:00:00

-

Some people,

1:00:01

I have no numbers but

1:00:05

came to these festival services

1:00:11

who had given up on the traditional church.

1:00:15

Darkened those doors for some time.

1:00:19

This caught fire with some of those folks,

1:00:23

and they came over and started being a part of Sacred--

1:00:26

-

Okay.

1:00:28

-

But I wouldn't say that in, ya know, in sort of the

1:00:30

traditional church growth stuff, no, we didn't do that.

1:00:34

-

Right.

1:00:38

-

Because mostly, the folks who came to that,

1:00:39

I think knew that that's the kind of thing that you

1:00:43

can't do Sunday after Sunday.

1:00:48

And we knew that certainly.

1:00:51

-

Did you experience any backlash against it?

1:00:54

-

Can't remember, community at large?

1:00:59

-

Hmm, no I don't, I mean, there was folks who thought

1:01:02

it was crazy and nuts, but I don't think that,

1:01:08

for the most part particularly this church,

1:01:12

you know if you bring in 1400 people and it happens

1:01:16

at the Guthrie and your name is in the paper,

1:01:19

then you know, that's a pretty good thing.

1:01:22

-

No demonstrations against us.

1:01:25

-

Yeah, right.

1:01:27

-

Yeah, I don't think so.

1:01:28

I mean, there would be folks that would say

1:01:30

well that really wasn't Easter.

1:01:32

-

It may have crossed my mind that we might get some flack

1:01:34

given this is post reimagining and all the things

1:01:39

that happened there.

1:01:42

-

I do remember the first couple that I would always

1:01:45

take the script to our staff meetings

1:01:47

a couple of weeks before hand and say,

1:01:52

just so you know, these are the words, these are the songs,

1:01:55

just so you know.

1:02:00

And no one ever said don't do that.

1:02:02

-

Great.

1:02:07

One last thing before we move on to legacy.

1:02:08

Steve you mentioned that you worked with Madeline Sue Martin

1:02:10

at United Theological Seminary.

1:02:13

She was so important to the reimagining community.

1:02:15

So any memories you have of her, we would appreciate.

1:02:18

-

Well, I think, my hunch is that everyone who spent

1:02:21

any time with her would probably say something like

1:02:25

I'm about to say about her.

1:02:27

She was consistently extraordinarily supportive

1:02:29

of every single person I think that she ever worked with.

1:02:33

She only had words of encouragement.

1:02:36

And she was your champion.

1:02:39

You know whoever, ya know that's certainly

1:02:42

what I experienced.

1:02:44

And it was, I felt very privileged that she asked me

1:02:50

if I would assist her with this class.

1:02:53

This is a time, I mean she started with health issues

1:02:56

all through this whole period of her life,

1:02:59

most of her adult life, I think.

1:03:02

So but at this point she recognized that she needed

1:03:04

some help to do this class.

1:03:06

So I got to be there for a semester.

1:03:10

-

What class was this Steve?

1:03:12

-

Well, she was teaching a class on liturgical music

1:03:14

at United, or liturgy I'm not quite sure what the title

1:03:18

was anymore.

1:03:22

And she got to expound her ideas, which I got to hear,

1:03:24

and people did projects and people created little tiny

1:03:28

ritual events that we did in the class

1:03:33

and we ya know, talked about them and critique them.

1:03:35

It was very experiential.

1:03:38

There was kind of a sharing of resources among people

1:03:41

and so it was the kind of a class that had the potential of

1:03:44

encouraging these seminary students to think beyond

1:03:55

the typical structures of worship.

1:04:00

How it may or may not have been manifest, I don't know.

1:04:03

As was true of United, there were people who were

1:04:07

not going to go on to work in churches,

1:04:10

they were actors in there and they were,

1:04:12

And then of course this diversity of theological

1:04:16

orientations so the Unitarians had to do their thing

1:04:19

in a different way than the,

1:04:21

And Madeline actually came here on one occasion I remember,

1:04:30

we invited her here and she did a little,

1:04:34

a little adult kind of workshop on my music,

1:04:36

talked about stuff.

1:04:40

And I still use, not, I would say I don't do this

1:04:41

very intentionally, but I'm still very much aware

1:04:46

of this, the way that she thought about these

1:04:50

four heart spaces that she talked about in worship.

1:04:53

Have you come across this reference?

1:04:56

-

I don't think so, remind me.

1:04:57

-

Well, she had her own, her own language for this.

1:04:58

She talked about worship, that the worship experience

1:05:01

created what she conceptualized as a village

1:05:06

that she called Makea.

1:05:08

And these letters of this word stood for these four

1:05:12

heart spaces.

1:05:15

So the concept is that people come to worship

1:05:17

in one of these four heart spaces.

1:05:20

And that effective worship, for people to feel connected,

1:05:23

and as if they're being spoken to, and being met,

1:05:27

should somehow try to connect in these four different ways.

1:05:30

So, M was for maranatha.

1:05:39

And marantha had to do with this sense of mystery

1:05:43

about God meaning spirit, so God is Spirit,

1:05:47

God is mystery, God is invisible, God is unknowable,

1:05:50

God is maybe so far away from me that I have no experience

1:05:54

of God, you know, that kind of place of,

1:05:59

And then,

1:06:02

there's an E in there,

1:06:06

which is the other side of that dimension which is Emanuel,

1:06:08

Which was God, completely present God here in my heart,

1:06:12

God in my body, God, so full of God, so, M and the E.

1:06:16

And then A was for Allelujah which was all about joy

1:06:22

and celebration and praise and all that.

1:06:27

And the K was for Kyrie.

1:06:32

So for lament.

1:06:38

So as I thought about this, I kinda thought of it as

1:06:40

so there's one, it's like a cross intercepting,

1:06:43

like this dimension, where am I with God?

1:06:47

God's close, God is far away, where am I in my life?

1:06:50

I'm in joy, I'm in lament, and so all those four ways,

1:06:53

people come into the worship space.

1:06:58

So she would say, for example, there are denominations

1:07:00

or individual churches that spent all their time

1:07:04

only doing alleluja, there's nothing other than hallelujah.

1:07:07

And you can't connect with the people who are in lament.

1:07:11

You can't connect with the people for whom God is absent

1:07:14

or distant if you don't go there in your prayers

1:07:16

in your music some how.

1:07:19

So I thought it was really helpful.

1:07:21

-

That's great, oh I'm glad you--

1:07:23

-

And I think it's in that Sophia--

1:07:24

-

Blessed Sophia book, yes, yes.

1:07:27

Good, that's really good.

1:07:29

I wanna move toward the future

1:07:31

and just kind of end up with the last couple

1:07:33

of questions.

1:07:35

In the end, what do you think is the greatest legacy

1:07:36

of reimagining?

1:07:38

The reimagining community.

1:07:39

-

Hm.

1:07:44

Well, I think that for me, I mean, greatest is really,

1:07:55

that's big, but this idea that

1:08:01

not only is worship

1:08:09

but also how it is that whatever it is that we're calling

1:08:10

our communal faith life,

1:08:16

that that is about the collaboration of

1:08:21

who's present, who's gathered.

1:08:26

And that saying of whoever shows up are the right people.

1:08:29

I claim that with great regularity on a Sunday morning

1:08:37

because sometimes you know, you look around and you wanted

1:08:42

so and so to be there, or so and so is there,

1:08:46

and you don't want them to be there necessarily. (laughs)

1:08:49

But the idea that the collaboration and that seemed to me

1:08:51

to be one of the pieces that was in the planning,

1:08:55

in the execution, in the visual and in the experience.

1:09:03

That it was no single voice.

1:09:10

Even though there were some powerful ones there,

1:09:12

not one single voice rises up as authority,

1:09:15

but it was the authority of the gathered people.

1:09:21

And that seems to me to be

1:09:25

one of the greatest pieces

1:09:30

of the legacy and certainly what I have hoped.

1:09:32

Like this summer when we've been doing this series

1:09:37

with people sharing their, a scripture that has been

1:09:40

a part of their lives, challenged them,

1:09:47

or that's been a favorite and then having them

1:09:50

tell that story out of their own experience.

1:09:55

A couple of weeks ago, I had this full body experience

1:09:58

of sitting there and feeling this is what you do.

1:10:01

And it was like having your calling affirmed all over again.

1:10:07

-

Yes, yes, this is who we are, this is what we do, yeah.

1:10:13

-

Well, there are,

1:10:21

there are kind of specific things

1:10:25

that I associate with reimagining that we talked about.

1:10:28

There are forms, there's the emphasis on process,

1:10:31

there's collaboration, there's a flatness of leadership,

1:10:34

there's attention to beauty, all of those things

1:10:37

I think are part of the legacy.

1:10:39

But I also think that, and I said this before,

1:10:41

before we were recording that this reimagining event

1:10:44

to me is one example of how as human consciousness evolves,

1:10:49

energy builds and suddenly starts peculating up

1:10:55

in these very specific ways.

1:10:58

And reimagining is one of these just bold examples

1:11:00

of an emerging kind of conscious you know,

1:11:03

kind of showing up.

1:11:09

So by its showing up, it teaches all of us

1:11:11

we're not stuck in these forms.

1:11:15

We're not stuck with these one set of ideas.

1:11:19

There's possibilities and the resources that we need

1:11:24

to realize the possibilities are here.

1:11:27

They're right here, that's us.

1:11:31

So, and you know, in some ways Sacred Journey

1:11:33

is the same thing, I mean, I don't know how long

1:11:37

any of these experiments are going to continue

1:11:40

or last or whether archivists a hundred years from now

1:11:42

will find evidence of this or not,

1:11:46

but it keeps,

1:11:49

it keeps evolution going.

1:11:53

And that's to me the real legacy.

1:11:57

It's ya know, so that the energy is still alive

1:11:59

and can be caught by another generation of people

1:12:04

to be expressed in some unimaginable way.

1:12:07

-

That's great, thank you.

1:12:11

-

Yeah, it's um, this may be too strong a word,

1:12:15

but I think it started a revolution that needed to start.

1:12:18

And it's continuing emboldening people.

1:12:23

That persons are getting in touch through that community

1:12:29

what's most deep within them

1:12:35

and we can live with the questions.

1:12:41

Questions that relate to

1:12:45

ultimate values.

1:12:50

So yeah, I think it was a revelation of sorts in its

1:12:53

own way.

1:12:57

May it continue, grow.

1:13:01

-

Great Bob.

1:13:03

And speaking of continuing and growing,

1:13:04

here's my last big question.

1:13:06

A big question and a very specific one.

1:13:07

What needs to be reimagined today?

1:13:09

Or what is being reimagined?

1:13:11

And I'm not just talking about the community now.

1:13:12

I'm talking about the church.

1:13:14

-

Oh boy.

1:13:16

-

What needs to be reimagined or is being imagined?

1:13:18

-

Well, um,

1:13:25

I don't know that we're in a very different place

1:13:29

than we were before reimagining happened.

1:13:34

I mean when I see the things that people within the

1:13:37

institutional church are embracing as successful,

1:13:42

as ways of growing,

1:13:49

much of that has to do with what I would say was

1:13:57

not much different than what was

1:14:01

happening in the 50's, 60's and 70's.

1:14:03

And it's, and a part of that I think is,

1:14:07

Well, ya know, Phyllis Tickle was here before her death

1:14:13

a few years ago and she talked about, ya know

1:14:16

that we're at this place where we're just about ready

1:14:19

to get through this 500 year gap of growth

1:14:23

and we're gonna swoosh through.

1:14:27

And I think that a part of this going back to

1:14:29

I think that there's some real male dominated ways,

1:14:36

power structures that are at work within the

1:14:40

institutional church that are the ways in which,

1:14:42

that are lifted up particularly for young clergy.

1:14:48

And that that has, I mean it really hasn't changed.

1:14:51

And maybe that has to happen before there can be that

1:14:58

swoosh into something new.

1:15:01

Or that the institutional church has to fall apart.

1:15:06

That it can't, that there can't be that kind of growth

1:15:13

that really is demanded by the evolution that's

1:15:17

happening in culture.

1:15:23

So, yeah,

1:15:30

I don't know,

1:15:33

I don't have much hope in that

1:15:36

part of the church.

1:15:40

But I do believe that in, out, with the whole spiritual

1:15:42

but not religious thing, I think is really serious

1:15:47

and that there's wonderful, wonderful things happening

1:15:50

in those spiritual people that don't want to be a part

1:15:55

of the institutional church.

1:16:00

-

Or maybe not even a part of traditional Christianity.

1:16:04

-

Right, yeah, yeah.

1:16:08

-

And theology is kind of a,

1:16:13

well, anyway,

1:16:22

theology is important to me and

1:16:23

as long as

1:16:29

there is the viewing of

1:16:36

human,

1:16:45

concepts of human sin et cetera

1:16:49

and a need for

1:16:52

sacrifice

1:16:58

to appease an angry God,

1:17:01

which really is still very present in popular Christianity.

1:17:04

Preparation in this world for the one coming I 'spose.

1:17:11

But rather than finding that Jesus is about helping us

1:17:19

that as he demonstrated from his own life

1:17:25

and his compassion and the people he associated with,

1:17:28

we too have this within us to become the best that we

1:17:37

can become.

1:17:42

It's not about payment for something.

1:17:43

-

Mmm, mmhmm, thank you Bob.

1:17:47

Any thoughts Steve?

1:17:51

-

Yeah, um,

1:17:52

I don't actually at the moment have a lot of optimism

1:17:56

that the church will be able

1:18:02

as an institution

1:18:09

to have a significant role in these next chapters

1:18:10

of the evolution of consciousness.

1:18:15

I mean, I think as much as the church as been involved

1:18:16

in past movements, social movements

1:18:19

and civil rights movements for example.

1:18:22

Until the last generation of, this is me talking now,

1:18:28

until the last generation of careerists who were shaped

1:18:33

and formed back in the 50s have kinda passed through

1:18:36

and are gone, there won't be much of a possibility

1:18:40

for very imaginative,

1:18:43

creative thinking to happen in the institution.

1:18:49

Meanwhile, the Spirit is not tampered down.

1:18:51

So what do we need to reimagine?

1:18:56

We need to reimagine what power means.

1:18:58

We need to reimagine what success means.

1:19:00

We need to reimagine what it means to live in a diverse

1:19:02

community, oh my God.

1:19:06

And so, if it's not gonna be the church

1:19:11

it's gonna be Black Lives Matter,

1:19:14

and it's gonna be Occupy Wall street,

1:19:17

and it's gonna be, ya know, the Bernie Sanders people,

1:19:21

and it's gonna be, ya know, it's gonna happen,

1:19:26

it's gonna happen.

1:19:30

In its own messy and imperfect way

1:19:33

because the Spirit, you can't cork the Spirit.

1:19:39

-

Thank you, oh wise answers.

1:19:46

Bob, yes?

1:19:48

-

But, what you just said at the very end is what

1:19:51

keeps us hopeful.

1:19:57

-

My last question's very specific.

1:20:03

Reimagining has reincorporated, doing a web site,

1:20:05

part of it is archival, we're digitizing the gatherings,

1:20:08

making them accessible, those kinds of things.

1:20:11

We also wanna have links.

1:20:14

You mentioned earlier, I think Steve, that people are

1:20:15

often doing things and they're not connected.

1:20:18

So part of the goal of the website is to bring together

1:20:20

the different places where this is happening.

1:20:24

So do you have ideas about links or resources?

1:20:27

What would you want in this web site?

1:20:32

Who would benefit from it?

1:20:34

What could be included?

1:20:35

-

Well, the first thing that comes to my mind

1:20:50

is community.

1:20:53

I'd want to know where are the communities,

1:20:54

however they're organized, however big or small they are,

1:20:57

who are trying to support each other in work

1:21:01

and live intentionally in the spirit of reimagining.

1:21:05

-

Hear their story.

1:21:10

-

Yeah.

1:21:12

-

Say a little bit more about hear their story, Bob.

1:21:14

-

Well, as we are freed up to tell our stories,

1:21:21

it always feels like it's complimentary

1:21:27

or it's helping to complete me.

1:21:31

And you can get very discouraged and disheartened

1:21:38

if you feel like we're this little group

1:21:43

and there are no others of like mind or spirit out there.

1:21:49

And we often talk about that,

1:21:55

how we can make connection with some of these other groups.

1:21:57

-

So in the, can't remember when it was,

1:22:03

but a few months ago, but I did an online retreat

1:22:07

with a group called Abbey of the Arts.

1:22:10

And they are also connected to the Holy Disorder of

1:22:13

Dancing Monks.

1:22:18

-

I love it, okay!

1:22:20

-

And in many ways the Abbey of the Arts,

1:22:22

the retreats, they're online retreats that they do,

1:22:26

and they're people from all around the world

1:22:29

and it's a theme and it's usually six weeks.

1:22:32

And there's something that you connect in every day

1:22:37

with and you know, there's always a piece of art

1:22:39

that's created, some writing that happens.

1:22:44

And it's very reimagining-like.

1:22:46

And it's a way of people sharing.

1:22:50

And the wonderful part about it is that there's kind

1:22:52

of a wide diversity of the ways in which people express

1:22:55

their theology.

1:23:00

But there's this connection that is affirming.

1:23:03

Like you know you can post a photo that you put on there,

1:23:09

or something that you've written and you get this

1:23:12

feedback from these people who,

1:23:16

and so there's that connection that's really,

1:23:18

that's really powerful.

1:23:21

-

Wonderful, I will look into both of, that's great!

1:23:23

-

You know Sally and I and Steve are long connection

1:23:26

with Jubilee in North Carolina.

1:23:28

-

Yeah, yeah.

1:23:31

-

Mmhmm, mmhmm.

-

We've made trips there, and exchange of ideas

1:23:34

and participating--

1:23:37

-

And we've stolen (word obscured by cross talk).

1:23:39

(laughter)

1:23:40

-

Yeah, we've stolen some--

1:23:41

-

They're great, yeah.

Very good.

1:23:44

-

And certainly Matthew Fox's,

1:23:45

You know because that's one of the other reasons

1:23:48

that we've gone to Jubilee.

1:23:52

-

And I don't have a specific resource here in mind,

1:23:54

but for a long time, this whole power of the arts

1:23:58

as a language for, as a spiritual language

1:24:06

and historically the church has asked artists to tell

1:24:11

the church's story, ya know, and if they don't do it

1:24:18

correctly then they don't mount the painting

1:24:22

or they don't show the sculpture or whatever.

1:24:24

But to take the position that art is inherently

1:24:28

spiritual and therefore we want to hear and see the artists

1:24:34

in the own terms.

1:24:42

And just that alone is a spiritual conversation.

1:24:45

So it's listening to the poets, looking at the paintings,

1:24:51

listening to the music.

1:24:55

Don't have to theologize it, just receive it.

1:24:57

Just receive it and acknowledge it and name it as spiritual.

1:25:01

My experience from talking to jazz musicians about this

1:25:13

is that there are some who are aware and think about

1:25:16

what they do as spiritual expression and some of them don't.

1:25:21

I would say that it's impossible to do art

1:25:27

and not be spiritual.

1:25:30

-

You may not have the language.

1:25:32

-

No, right.

1:25:35

-

The experience and the language to talk about it

1:25:37

in a way that another person might understand it.

1:25:41

-

Right, and I wouldn't wanna like insist with someone

1:25:44

agree with me about that, but,

1:25:46

-

Yeah.

1:25:48

-

Yeah.

-

Ya know, I'm fairly certain that we can give ourselves

1:25:50

credit for introducing the wider community to the labyrinth.

1:25:59

Lauren Artress came at one point,

1:26:07

after we got ours here.

1:26:09

Patterned after the one in Chartes.

1:26:12

-

Yeah, we got ours in '94 so that was just,

1:26:16

-

And that's enduring, you know?

1:26:19

And then there was this spurt.

1:26:22

-

Labyrinths coming out your ears.

1:26:25

-

Exactly!

1:26:27

-

History of arts has one.

1:26:28

-

Yeah, yeah, yeah, they're great.

1:26:30

-

Other places.

1:26:33

-

That's a great idea, absolutely.

1:26:35

Yeah, yes.

1:26:36

-

Spiritual practice, it's important.

1:26:38

-

Absolutely.

1:26:40

You have been very generous with your time

1:26:41

and your insights.

1:26:44

Is there anything that we haven't discussed

1:26:45

that you want to make sure that you mention

1:26:47

before we end?

1:26:50

-

May it be an ongoing one.

1:26:56

-

Yeah, the reimagining.

1:26:58

-

Yeah.

1:27:00

-

And it's exciting to--

1:27:01

-

Thank you for doing this

-

It's exciting to hear that you are still going on.

1:27:04

It's very inspiring, so thank you.

1:27:07

Thank you.

1:27:09

-

Thank you.

1:27:11

Sacred Journey: Sally Howell Johnson, Steven Blons, Robert Brinkley

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Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History & Culture

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