Need a place for a small gathering or retreat?

Lyric Springs Retreat House is now available for rental!

Check us out here:
Lyric Springs Retreat House

 

The Josiah Community

The Josiah Community is a co-housing community we’ve been considering if we move back to Chicago.  It pretty much encompasses EVERYTHING we have ever dreamt about in how we’d like to live.  We struggle about whether or not we are meant to be the catalyst for a community like this or merely participants at this point in our lives.  Perhaps it really does make more sense to come alongside a group of people who already have something going rather than attempting to convince people down here to help plant this in East Nashville.

It is a worthy endeavor.

check it out:

 

Questions Come With Knowing

-David Bunker

Questions come with knowing.

Maybe the agonizing believers experience over the desired certainty of their faith is less about certitude and more about the overwhelming sense of emptiness that can grab the soul unawares in fear. All my life, (I am the son of preacher man), I have been in proximity to the dissemination of truth claims. Right belief was offered to me as a spiritual prophylactic from the ways of the world and if I only would capitulate to the ways of the Spirit, I would find myself floating above the mundane struggles of the spiritual proletariat.

Now, in retrospect, I sense that as a small child I became skilled at the “storing up” of claims that bolstered my parents’ desired certainty. I did not ask many questions. Those matters of course were not on the radar of a small lad but in my teens for sure I was asking a lot. Many of the queries were submerged in teenage angst and pushed through the cipher of my emerging sexuality and individuation but my questions were real to me.

They were less about rebellion and more about a more nuanced reading of the story. It was as if I kept getting the “Cliff Notes” on this exquisite account of life, time, and Father God instead of the more graceful renderings offered by poets, story tellers and novelists. I was asking not merely for the right beliefs but the manner in which I could believe in the right way. At some point in my teen years I began to wonder if all the “talking” about God was the problem. All this incessant debating. Peter Rollins, undoubtedly one of the emerging churches most articulate theological philosophers brings this exchange into focus when he juxtaposes the words of Wiggenstien with his experience with charismatic evangelicalism.

On one hand our talk of God can become prattle and arrogant chattering void of depth and humility. To this tendency one might agree with Wittgenstein when he said, “What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.” An homage to the shear incomprehensibility of the transcendent is alluded to here and my superficial entrance into mysticism tells me this is true. However, as Rollins, I am a child of evangelicalism and the charismatic renewal. Thus, God is one subject of whom I can never stop talking.

 

Thanksgiving in the Woods….

 It is that time of year again; the air turns colder, the leaves begin to litter the land with their magical hues, leaving bare branches behind like empty rooms of the arbor high rises along the road to our house.

It is really quite a sight, especially on Thanksgiving Day where we’ll be smoking a turkey, saucing some cranberries and basically making merry all the live long day.

If you’re around and need a place to hang out, eat too much, have some great conversation, share your favorite Thanksgiving handiwork (food-related, if you please) and maybe even see a return of the traditional Carlson Thanksgiving Fireworks then let us know!

We’d love to have you.  Email me at angelacarlson@mindspring.com and I’ll sign you up.

If you’ve never been here before you’ll need to know that it’s a little hard to find.  Just email me and I’ll send you stellar directions, promise.

Also, for those football types; yes, we have a large television, comfy seating and basic network reception…we aim to please.

-Dave and Ang

 

Harvest

Last year we did a very cool Harvest thing as The Wellspring. We gathered people on evening around a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving here at our place. We led them down a path lighted with candles into the edge of the woods. They were instructed to choose something to carry with them on the hike, something weighty, or sweet or sour…we carried these things to the altar and placed them there. As we did so we talked about what we brought, what it meant and what we thought about it. We left them all there.

When everyone had returned from the altar we sang together, we prayed and we lifted it all up. We drank cider and had s’mores. We stood around the bonfire and talked about how cool that was, how we wished church was like that more often in the real world and what we thought the upcoming New Year would hold for us.

Today as I reflect upon it I think of this verse, “The Harvest is plenty but the workers are few” and I feel sad.

I’d like to do another Harvest gathering. With the house on the market and Dave working like a crazy man it’s hard to imagine how it would happen. It would be nice to gather, to sing, to pray and to lift it all up again. The workers would have to move forward toward US though, because we are too weak now to carry the weight we feel on our shoulders.

I’m waiting for a sign, actually, I’m waiting for an email…I don’t actually care who it comes from per se but I’ll put this out there; The place is here still and the path is here still, the altar is here still. Who would like to gather? Is there anyone who will come if we build it? Is there anyone who will help to build it?

 

No Gathering Sunday Sept 9th

just that…no gathering here at the Carlson’s on sunday sept 9th.  don’t worry, we’ll come back, we always do…

: )

 

Why being a home church scares me…

Being a home church scares me because it’s weird. It is…it just is and you all know it. Even those people who read this blog that do the home church thing know it. You know it’s weird.

It’s weird for me because it’s so far outside of how I was raised. Church was a PLACE, not a PEOPLE. Church was a denomination, an institution, bingo, raffles and long sermons.

I’ve been looking into other “home churches” and some sites are cool and interesting. I think to myself, “I’d like to join THEM” but then I see they are in New Zealand. It’d be cool if someone read this blog and thought, “gee, they look good, I’d like to join THEM!” Of course, those people are all in NEW ZEALAND probably…so, no dice.

It’s not about the numbers…it’s not about the numbers….

It’s hard to be doing a home church because we live in the middle of nowhere. It’s hard to get here from, well, just about anywhere. If someone wanted to come here they’d have to really want to be here, cause it’s a commitment, at least it’s a gas commitment.

So, there are a TON of days when I think…”WHY ARE WE DOING THIS? It’s weird and we don’t live near anybody.”

But we just keep doing it. And we keep getting blessed.

A couple of weeks ago during our church time we each picked up a heavy rock and talked about things that burden us. Each of the kids took a turn which was cool. My oldest, who is 10, said something about being afraid she wouldn’t find another book to read that she likes now that Harry Potter 7 is out and she’s finished it.

So we all nodded…and prayed that God would guide her to another book or something to that effect…and then later, she pulled me aside. She said, “there’s something else that burdens me but I was too shy to say it.” I asked her what it was and she said, “I’m afraid of growing up. There is so much responsibility that comes with growing up and I just want to keep being a kid as long as I can…so that’s a burden I have.”

Ok, how awesome is that?

So, in essence, that day, I GOT what we were doing here. We’re creating space for God to speak and for us to get our focus right and we get to do that together and I like that.

Is it enough? Is it church? Is it weird?

YES

 

Invite the misfits….

We have been using The Message translation for the last couple of weeks so that the kids could grasp the concepts in each of the readings. I was checking out the Lectionary for our readings for September 2nd and found that this week the Gospel comes from Luke. The “title” of the reading is “Invite the Misfits” and I’m taking that as a prophetic word at this point.

Luke14: 7-14

7-9 He went on to tell a story to the guests around the table. Noticing how each had tried to elbow into the place of honor, he said, “When someone invites you to dinner, don’t take the place of honor. Somebody more important than you might have been invited by the host. Then he’ll come and call out in front of everybody, ‘You’re in the wrong place. The place of honor belongs to this man.’ Red-faced, you’ll have to make your way to the very last table, the only place left.

10-11 “When you’re invited to dinner, go and sit at the last place. Then when the host comes he may very well say, ‘Friend, come up to the front.’ That will give the dinner guests something to talk about! What I’m saying is, If you walk around with your nose in the air, you’re going to end up flat on your face. But if you’re content to be simply yourself, you will become more than yourself.”

12-14 Then he turned to the host. “The next time you put on a dinner, don’t just invite your friends and family and rich neighbors, the kind of people who will return the favor. Invite some people who never get invited out, the misfits from the wrong side of the tracks. You’ll be—and experience—a blessing. They won’t be able to return the favor, but the favor will be returned—oh, how it will be returned!—at the resurrection of God’s people.”

So, misfits…here is your official invitation. Come on by…we’re having chili…bring cornbread or sody pop…or whatever you want but come.

 

More and Enough…

-By Angela Doll Carlson

A long time ago when Dave and I were first married he told me something I remember in times of our lives that look messy and weird. We have a lot of time like this. It’s starting to feel like “messy and weird” defines us, this is our Ordinary Time.

What he told me was that he wished that at night he could go to sleep and allow God to be Sovereign over everything left undone that day. He wished to go to bed each night and think “Today was enough.”

I’m not sure what brings this to mind today except that it’s a struggle…between “more” and “enough.” How can I fight against the dominant paradeigm in this country that tells me that more is more by letting it all, each day, each moment be ENOUGH? The world tells me that I need to keep wanting more, to feel discontent, to compare myself and my life to my neighbor…But if I really sit and listen, if I really wait and breathe and rest then the pace slows, the comparisons disappear, the noises quiet and the word comes, “it is enough.”

One day, perhaps it will NOT be a struggle. Perhaps one day it will come as naturally as breathing. Perhaps but for now, to even ponder it feels like enough…

 

Sunday August 26th -Ordinary Time: Week 39

This week at our home gathering we will be focused on the readings for Week 39, which is the 13th Sunday after Pentecost. This week the readings center around “Proclaiming the Faith.”

Is 66:18-21
Ps 117:1-2
Heb 12:5-7,11-13
Lk 13:22-30

There will be a time of reflection, worship and prayer followed by a potluck lunch. If you’d like to join us email me at angelacarlson@doxasoma.com

Each week the children will participate in our gathering and then also have a short time together to integrate the lesson as well through discussion, art, music, prayer.

God’s peace

The Wellspring Home Church Group