Seven Sacred Seasons: Incarnation Season

Despite our modern impression that Christmas starts as soon as Halloween (Canada) or Thanksgiving (United States) is over, traditionally, Christmas doesn't start until Christmas day. Everything leading up to December 25 is the celebration of Advent. I think Advent is a wonderful approach to Christmas, for both secular and spiritual adherents of the holiday. While the rituals for a Christian advent are readily available, with some tweaking, people who don't subscribe to any religion or who are of another faith living in a country where Christmas is celebrated, could find a way to light those four candles in the four weeks leading up to the holiday. 

We always celebrated Advent at the Gathering, and encouraged our community to spend Christmas eve and Christmas day at home with family. We held no services from the last Sunday of Advent until the closest Sunday to January 6, the Feast of Epiphany, when we would re-gather. In later years, when we switched to the liturgical rhythms of the Sacred Seasons, we encompassed Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany under the heading of Incarnation Season.

Just as my band was often tapped for All Saints because of our suitability to Halloween, Incarnation Season was almost always handled by a talented musical couple, Craig and Deborah Brososky, whose inspirations included Natalie Merchant, Tori Amos, Sarah MacLachlan, and Loreena McKennitt. Though the other musicians they included switched from year to year, the sounds they created were always well-suited to Christmas hymns and carols. They always practiced a surprise song, which ranged from obvious choices like "Linus and Lucy" from A Charlie Brown Christmas, to less obvious ones (but no less dear in our community!), such as "May it Be" from the Lord of the Rings films as part of their Christmas offerings. 

One of my favorite band slides - a little Queen influence.

I've included some slides I created for Incarnation Season at the Gathering. Feel free to use them in your seasonal worship. As a gift to make up for my lax posting over Advent, I'll be posting a script I was preparing for a Christmas production at the Gathering. Due to casting difficulties, I never finished it, but I was proud of it, and want to share it with my Gotthammer readers as a seasonal reflection of sorts.

The Risk of Birth, Christmas 1973

There is no time for a child to be born

With the earth betrayed by war and hate

And a comet slashing the sky to warn

That time runs out and the sun burns late

That was no time for a child to be born

In a land in the crushing grip of Rome;

Honour and truth were trampled by scorn --

Yet here did the Saviour make his home.

When is the time for love to be born?

The inn is full on the planet earth,

And by a comet the sky is torn--

Yet Love still takes the risk of birth.

- Madeleine L'Engle

Seven Sacred Seasons: All Saints

Here we are, balanced between All Hallows' Eve and All Saints Day. Unlike the loud advocates of Jesusween, we celebrated Halloween early in the Gathering's history, without the usual Evangelical whitewashing (come as your favorite Bible character!). We were of the opinion that there are many scary moments in the Bible (a number occur in the Christmas stories!), and wanted to celebrate a season where we recognized how the days were growing shorter in our hemisphere, and the darkness was increasing. We knew we couldn't make the whole season about Halloween or darkness without creeping out prospective attendees (more than we already were, at any rate), so we tried some other options.

Brad Nault originally drew this Leviathan and all the monsters on the other slides: I hope he's okay with me using this image here. I wanting to make the opening slideshow with "Monsters of the Bible" including their stats like they were D&D monsters, but ran out of time, and only did the Leviathan that way.

Originally, we celebrated this season as Michaelmas, which focuses primarily on spiritual conflict, but that seemed too narrow to make a yearly event, despite its clear resonances with Halloween. Instead, we went with something broader: All Saints. The theme was simple - we would look at the lives of the "saints" throughout history - those in scripture, those in history, and potentially even those in our midst. It was a time for telling our own stories or celebrating the lives of great spiritual leaders.

Sadly, I don't think this season ever cohered to its intended thematic content. What was repeated year, after year, was that my band, Seven Devil Fix, was often the music for the whole season, or just for our Halloween service. I remember the Halloween services particularly, but I don't recall much else about the season.

Seven Devil Fix always got the gig because we wrote songs intentionally about dark spiritual themes: "Ghostwood" was a song about longing for paradise using Twin Peaks allusions, Skeleton Army was about Christian martyrdom in the semi-legendary tale of the Salvation Army's initial opposition, The Burden was about communion told through the eyes of a vampire, and Tremendum was about relating to God as an expression of the literary sublime. Our name was a reference to the seven devils cast from Mary Magdalene, and one year we even wore horns just to underscore the idea.

I miss those Halloween services. They were the closest I ever got to creating worship experiences that mirrored the purpose of the Jack 'O Lantern. That is to say, our music could virtually ward off evil spirits by virtue of being more terrifying than they were. It was brazen, to be sure, but it never felt wrong. I've always detested the mincing around evil that some expressions of Christianity engages in. On the one hand, we were taught to be spiritually bold; on the other, we acted like there was a devil under every rock that could kick our spiritual ass. There was a lot of don't taste and don't touch in my hometown church. At the Gathering, we were somewhat fearless, and I loved the community for it.

Thankfully, I can share those songs with you now, thanks to former Seven Devil Fix drummer Taylor Reese uploading our entire discography to Grooveshark for your listening pleasure.

Seven Sacred Seasons: Gathering Season

When the Gathering started up, we didn't have sacred seasons at all. They were the byproduct of switching from one paid speaking pastor to utilizing a pool of speaking/teaching/worship leading volunteers in our third year. Initially, we just had a pool of people who rotated through the various roles. The problem was, we never achieved any unity to the speaking or themes of our worship. So in response, I designed a liturgical year which was honed and developed by our worship teams and leadership over the next seven years. The Gathering Season underwent the greatest change, initially acting as a bookend to Creation Season, our equivalent to Ordinary Time in other liturgical circles.

The first Gathering Season was held in June, right before what was Creation Season at the time, to commemorate the start of the Gathering in early June of 1998. Three years in, I began producing annual videos, short film montages to celebrate what had happened in the year prior. They became a favorite tradition of the Gathering. Sadly, they were produced in the years before massive hard drives, so they were always dumped to hard copy high-end tapes. I haven't digitally captured them again, but when I do, they'll get uploaded to the Net.

In the last four or five years of the Gathering, we stopped having two Gathering seasons. It seemed better to just celebrate Gathering Season in the fall, since the word had two meanings: our own fellowship, but also the Gathering of harvest. So Gathering Season came to be a sort of "harvest" season for us in an evangelistic sense. It was the only time of the year we gave a really hard push to see new people come, since September always felt like a new beginning anyhow. Further, we could commemorate our first public service in September 1998.

Unlike the other Sacred Seasons, Gathering Season never had a strong thematic core. It was up to the volunteer worship team, decor team, media crew, and speaker to decide on an appropriate theme. Some years, we had a number of speakers and musicians, to help new people get a fuller flavor for the Gathering.


I loved Gathering Season for its newness in those years. We become trained to the rhythm of the school year, and never really forget that sense of reboot that fall and a new school year brings. There was always a sense of excitement as we literally gathered together again after having been separated during the Sabbatical of Creation Season.

This last wallpaper was from the final Gathering Season, which had a double meaning. It was not only the reset of the church year for us, but also a last ditch effort to reset the Gathering. We had gone through some tough decisions in 2007, the worst being the decision to abandon our strip mall location due to rising real estate prices in Edmonton. We ended up renting from a Mennonite church that year, which caused an effective split in the church. After ten years of striving together, the Gathering became fragmented by the question of where we would gather. A handful of us pushed on for one last year. Every time I look at that wallpaper, I feel a bittersweetness. It was good that we took that last year. I don't think I could have let go the following fall if I hadn't tried my hardest, and gave my last energy to those final ten months. We hit reset in the hope that things would continue, but they didn't.

And yet, every year when the seasons change and school begins again, I feel the newness of Gathering season. May you also, wherever you gather today.

Seven Sacred Seasons: Creation Season

This wallpaper was done by Jeff Nelson, not me, but it was too brilliant not to include here.

Summer was always Creation Season for the Gathering, but the nature of it changed over the years. There was a period where we celebrated the Gathering's birthday after Pentecost season, and called that "Gathering Season." However, we also did "Gathering Season" in the fall, and since that really always felt like the startup of the church year for us, it remained so. To have two Gathering Seasons was confusing, and in later years, we took off both July and August for a sabbatical, given that we were a totally volunteer-lead organization. So to have any services in Creation Season, we moved the services to June.

This prayer has been placed over a photo of one of the Gathering's community, so we could pray for her while she was abroad, living in New Zealand. The photo was taken by Nathan Waddell, and is one of my favorite prayer slides.

The worship was evocative of Celtic Christianity and Spirituality, which has a strong element of eco-justice and awareness to it. We did prayer walks at the Parliament Grounds, labyrinths, picnics, outdoor/backyard services, and in general tried to spend time in Creation. The most memorable of these outdoor services for me was held in my backyard when the Gathering was between venues. There was rain in the forecast, so my industrious father-in-law brought over several king-sized tarps, and strung those from the roof of my house to the three massive trees that bordered my fence. It was like being under a massive tent. It was fortuitous that he'd done so, as the forecasted rain was a gross understatement. It was like a monsoon -- we were sloughing water off the tarps with broom handles, and the Djembe skin was too damp from the air alone to play properly. Nevertheless, I remember attendees dancing outside the tarp-zone, splashing joyfully in the fast-puddling water. We have no record of that event, as the heavy moisture in the air damaged the Gathering's digital camera, and we lost the photos.

The wallpaper for the last Creation Season we celebrated at the Gathering.

Sometimes we did services devoted to personal creativity rather than Creation itself. Here is a series of slides I made for one of our Creation Season services, all centered on that theme.

The G-Arts Festival was one of the core celebrations during Creation Season: it was held in August, and it simultaneously ended our time of sabbath and kicked off our fall season, without causing anyone an undue amount of planning duties. Everyone at the Gathering was encouraged to participate, and we stressed how creativity was more than just art or music. People brought their collections to display, art to present, music to perform, poetry to read. Children contributed. We saw belly dancing and dramatic improv, slideshows of home renovations, and one year Jenica and I performed a salsa dance. One of my Creation Season offerings was a work of art I'd collaborated on with Nathan Thomas, who went on to do many cool things in animation, such as working on cartoons such as League of Super Evil. We only had about a month to do the comic, and this in our spare time while working at a summer camp. Every night, we took an hour and drew furiously: Nathan did the pencils, and I did the inks. The idea for the strip was to make the book of Ezekiel a modern work, inspired by Maus.

Here's the first image, of Ezekiel looking down onto the River Chebar, and seeing the devastation there. I've had plans to colour the whole strip and put in text, but as I've proven yet again this year with Josh and Caleb still awaiting completion, these things are easier said than done. Nevertheless, I did a test panel for Creation Season to demonstrate the process of drawing a comic.

 

 

Here is a frame of Ezekiel speaking prophecy. The first image shows Nathan's pencils.

The above image shows Nathan's pencils, now with my inks.

Next, I erase the pencils by a process of raising the contrast and brightness. I left them in very faintly, because I want there to be concrete record of Nathan's involvement, and I like that dirty approach.

Now for the colors, done first in flats.

And finally, the finished version, with shadows and desaturated colors. I tried to strip all the bright colors out, as my use of color and dodge and burn effects in Josh and Caleb drove Nathan a little nuts. I really like how this turned out, and look forward to getting the opportunity to present the whole strip here at Gotthammer in the future.

This last wallpaper was done by Taylor Reese, my brother-in-law, and features the brilliant humor of Gary Kurtz of PvP fame:

This last wallpaper was one of my first cracks at using a program that built digital landscapes. I no longer remember the name of the program, but I remember being in awe of the way it combined a simulation of creation, and encouraged the creative process.

Seven Sacred Seasons: Pentecost

Immediately following Holy Week (Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday), the Gathering celebrated Pentecost Season. Officially, this is the Easter season, but people get confused when you say that, since in North America, it seems every high holiday is over the day you actually celebrate it (like Christmas, which is the end of Advent and the start of Christmas proper).

This was a time for reflecting on the Body of Christ: the Church. The Gathering had a strong belief in the Priesthood of Believers, and this was one of the times we celebrated it. Worship themes centered on the work of the church, how to be the Body of Christ, what is the Church supposed to be doing. I wish I had an audio option here on Blogger, as I have a few decent sermons from this season I'd love to share. We often did Spiritual Gift inventories in this season, and in later years, to give our speakers a break, we tried out videos of speakers, which was met with mixed success (Rob Bell was a hit, Eugene Peterson was not). As the years wore on, we moved from test-style inventories to discussions of the gifts, and actively recognizing them in others. I've included my Spiritual Gift inventory slides as a gift to those still engaging in these discussions. Neither the text nor original photos belong to me - I just mixed them up and Photoshopped a bit.

What's of interest to me is how we ever needed an inventory for this sort of thing. We should have just looked at each other and said, "Hey, you're good at this." I think this is especially true of the less flashy gifts. I'm also not convinced any gift list was meant to be exhaustive.

Once upon a time, I scored highly in faith, leadership, prophecy, and teaching. Those were my top gifts, year after year. At some point, I stopped scoring highly in faith: where once I had believed that God would always be there to catch my fall, I began experiencing great disappointments that I have never quite recovered from. I am still a hopeful person, but not in the way I once was. I stand with the father of the demoniac boy who asked Jesus to help his poor faith. I'd be lucky if my faith were weighed and measured and it came anywhere close to a mustard seed's mass. Where I once was a leader, I now prefer to be in the background: I am content to sit in the pew in Church, and to serve under another person's leadership in the workplace. I do not want to be in charge of anything. I believe I experienced what is called Caregiver Burnout at some point, and no longer enjoy being responsible for other people other than my family. In staff meetings I sit as silent as I can, trying to avoid asserting myself for fear that "natural leader" who plagued me since grade one will rear his head. As for prophecy, I continue to exercise what appears to be a prophetic voice to some, but is likely only my critical eye and cynicism leveled at the excesses of the North American Church. But teaching I retain in full, though I am dubious as to the whole idea of the Holy Spirit gifting anyone beyond the skills and talents they were born with or developed with age. I have always been good at communicating, and continue to do so. It was my identification of teaching being the only part of the pastoral work I still loved towards the end that spurred me on to finally leave paid ministry entirely, and become an academic.

For those who retain those other gifts, feel free to use these slides as they are helpful. My apologies that they are not larger: they were made eight years ago, and I've lost the original images. These were saved from power point presentation backgrounds.