Cascade Church Portland

Liturgical Flow:: Presence with Self

Liturgical Flow:: Presence with Others

Mother's Day

Listen in to our new liturgical flow in action as we create space for grief, the release of shame and a celebration of joy. 

((Some moments of silence have been edited out of the podcast to avoid confusion on if the podcast was still playing)) 

Liturgical Flow:: Piñatas & a D.J.

When I started officiating weddings I was shocked to learn that none of what we traditionally associate with weddings are necessary for people to get married. 

Vows? Nope. 
1 Corinthians 13? Nuh uh. 
I do's? You don't. 
"I now pronounce you"? Nein. 

All that you need to do to make it official is fill out the paperwork with a couple of witnesses. You could wrap it all up at a courthouse in the time it takes any of our bureaucracies to stumble along. 

It reminds me of what we do with our church services. We think that they have to look a particular way because of what we have seen or experienced before. While this tradition is helpful in many ways, it can actually keep us from getting to the heart of what we could be doing. 

Good Friday:: Leroy Barber, Donna Barber, Sunia Gibbs, Andru Morgan, Treneil Washington and Mark Charles

Hear this amazing reflection on Good Friday with Leroy and Donna Barber, Mark Charles, Sunia Gibbs, Andru Morgan and Treneil Washington. 

Easter Sunday:: Why do you Look for the Living Among the Dead?

If you've ever walked through the Home section in a Target then you'll probably recognize the collection wall decals and nick nacks that feature the "true enough" sayings. These are the quotes and sayings that have a sliver of truth in them, but require specific circumstances to be true. 

 

On a number of occasions I've dreamt about hovering 4 feet by the power of my mind off the ground and it's yet to happen.  

If how badly you want something is the key to unlocking life, I would have conquered eating an entire sheet cake by now. 

There's still truth in both of these statements, so I'm not trying to invalidate the power of dreaming of realities that don't exist yet or the power of eliminating certain desires when I realize how weak the drive behind them is. The problem is that when we consume true enough, we usually end up deeply disappointed in the complexity of life. If we sit with deep wisdom we find truth that can negotiate this complexity. 

I think the Jesus story and Easter Sunday is deep wisdom that's been packaged as true enough wisdom. We've been sold calligraphy on a wood pallet and a decal for our wall, when it's always been meant to expose the deepest truths of life, loss, fear and hope. 

My hope is that we'll sit with deep truth this Easter Sunday in ways that illuminate the ways we individually and collectively have settled for the good news of true enough. 

Contemplative Practices:: If You Can Do Anything...

Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.
James 5:16
 

This one Bible verse filled me with so much hope and so much dread early on in my faith. 

The hope was linked to the feeling that my prayers could be powerful and effective. Power and effect meant that I would have the ability to enact real positive change in the world. Cancer could be miraculously healed, relationships could be restored and pain could be avoided if I could unlock this whole "righteous" conundrum. 

And that's where the dread came into the picture. There's a terrifying lack of specificity to being "righteous". What was I doing or not doing that could compromise this identification? Had I lied too often? Had I neglected to serve and help enough people? I was pretty sure I was a devout person that loved God, but the elevation to being righteous always felt just out of reach. 

Honestly, I thought that if you had ever considered yourself righteous it would immediately disqualify you from being righteous. It was like being humble. The only way to be righteous was to be afraid you weren't. 

The ultimate effect of this kind of relationship to prayer was that it all depended on me. If God was all powerful and was all good, than the only reason good things weren't happening was my lack of righteousness. 

That's a real easy place to pray from, honestly. I was praying all the time because more prayer equaled more righteousness and this was the best path towards getting my prayers to be answered.

The content of my prayers is what was the problem. It was filled with fear and anxiety. My prayers cycled around trying to find the right combination of self-doubt to unlock the righteous achievement to get my prayers answered. 

I think it's time to start declaring there are versions of prayer that shouldn't exist. Prayers to a petty and indifferent God shouldn't be prayed. Prayers that require anxiety to be answered can't possibly be prayed to a good God who created all things. This is such the antithesis to what we read about the character of Jesus who was demonstrating the nature of God in tangible ways. 

Cascade Students Service Experience Share

Contemplative Practices:: Meditation

When I was growing up yoga and voodoo were synonymous.  Anything Eastern was to be mistrusted  and it was a way that the devil could infiltrate your soul.  While that language sounds over the top, I can promise you that is a direct quote.  Where does this kind of fear come from? Why would people in relationship with the One God of all people be scared of other religious practices? If your faith requires isolation to be safe, then what kind of faith do you really have?  This isn't to say that I think that every idea is neutral or beneficial. I think there are very real dangerous thoughts that lead to all kinds of very real dangerous practices. The way that I know these ideas are dangerous is because we've seen the harm they've created in the world.  The key difference was that the mistrust of Eastern practices and ideas I was exposed to was rooted in ignorance. Could you really say that yoga and meditation has created harm in our world? This is the same culture that taught me to consume products at an unsustainable pace for sake of the economy, but people who focused on breathing while stretching were evil?? This message is the wrap up to our message series on prayer and contemplative practices. I think it's important to evaluate barriers in our history that are keeping us from helpful prayer practices for no discernible reason. I hope this message meets you ready to open to a wider definition of prayer to get the core of connecting with a good and loving God.

Cara Meredith:: Awakening to Sacred Personhood

I was recently reading an article about stand-up comedians who were processing jokes they told early in their career that they now regretted. 

Jokes have been a powerful tool for perpetuating harmful thoughts and ideas about people in our world. A joke allows you to share offensive stereotypes without taking any accountability. The person who is offended is the one who needs to "lighten up" and "take a joke". The typical response is to laugh or shake your head disapprovingly with a smirk. 

I find articles like these interesting because even though there aren't a lot of pure apologies (a lot of justifying and caveating instead) there is an awareness that we change over time. I actually think Christianity should be leading the charge in these kinds of conversations. We're a community with a specific word and theology for changing ideas and behavior. 

Repentance is one of my favorite phrases. It literally means to turn around and go the other way. It's already assumed that there will be times when we gain new insights and awarenesses and our reaction is supposed to be change. The idea of "doubling down" on ignorance or bad information is foreign to the language of the Bible. 

This Sunday my friend Cara Meredith is going to be sharing about a shift in her life that was led by a relationship and how honoring the personhood of others is key to Christianity. I encourage you to come hear Cara's journey of change with new information and the freedom that comes from repentance. May we be the kind of people that model growth and utilize repentance in that journey.