About Jodi-Renee Adams

Jodi-Renee is a curious mesh of "heretical orthodoxy": evangelicalism, post-modern philosophy and liturgical practice. Oh, and she's a perpetual student of theology and humankind...as in "I'm still learning how to be human." She is currently pastoring an urban church and working as a writer and musician in various settings from funk bands to liturgical guilds. Her reasons for getting out of bed in the morning include designing formal and informal spaces for people to reflect on Mystery, raising compassionate children, and eating green chili. She resides in Denver with her brilliant jazz-man husband Justin, her high-schooler Sara, middle-schooler Anna-Michelle, and Kinder Leo, along with Dogma the Boston Terrier.

A Thousand Voices. A Single Story.

by | September 22, 2011

There was so much hub-bub recently surrounding Rob Bell’s book (Love Wins) about heaven and hell. Either people were wrestling with what they perceived as “universalism” or some groups struggled with what seemed to them to be an obvious and long standing theory about spiritual afterlife. I have absolutely no desire to rehash those talking points, but I have to admit how fascinated I was by the fear that seemed to resonate from my own tradition (Evangelical) that was masking as preservationist. It got me thinking – as a follower of Jesus and somebody’s who’s tied my life to the Nicene Creed – that the conversations that followed Rob’s book were as close to Interfaith Dialogue as some of us might venture.

What a pity.

There’s a Native American proverb that sits on my inspiration board: “It takes a thousand voices to tell a single story.” The power of many being greater than the power of the one. The ideas and experiences of many being more potent and – maybe even more necessary – than the experience of the one.

We have started to embrace this idea in worship… and to accept what comes with that: the messy expressions, the ambiguity of mystery, the humility it takes to receive another’s experience as something that informs our own. Pulling this philosophy into our exploration of GOD and spiritual formation is something that we’re still working out practically, even if working on it theologically is still the sticking point for some of us.

But what if it’s absolutely true that it takes a thousand voices to tell this Story? In Paul Knitter’s book “Without Buddha I Could Not Be a Christian” he starts with the idea that our development and spiritual and emotional maturity will naturally find a place to settle, to make ourselves comfortable, and to become stiff, unbending and unlearning. Unaware – to use my own word. The challenge is to venture out on a spiritual quest of sorts, to intentionally and purposefully venture into the traditions and philosophies of another faith and carry back into our own tradition what is enriching and beautiful and true.

All truth is GOD’s truth. All beauty is GOD’s beauty. How can one not read the works of medieval rabbis or the Sufi poets and not encounter that transcendent element? What might be the obstacle to that practice?

As we contemplate the idea of interfaith dialogue, especially from the perspective of worship curators and artists, maybe it’s best if we let go of the notion that dialogue is talking and embrace the idea that dialogue often begins with deep listening. Start with letting the poetry and sacred texts of other faiths sit with you as prayer or meditation. Challenge your experience with the low drone of listening to fervent men in prayer.

I love that image that Knitter brings… of venturing into another territory and drawing the most beautiful and true resources to carry back in the hopes of enriching my own tradition and exploding my naturally shrinking GOD-box. What would this look like in your context? How can you draw from the thousand voices to tell this Story? We could start here – with dialogue between our traditions, sharing resources, and celebrating our experiences.

Peace to you on this great spiritual quest.

Image © iStockphoto

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The Story Wall

by | September 15, 2011

I’m sitting in a room with a large group of relative strangers watching as their pens move very thoughtfully over the paper in front of them. In about fifteen minutes, this group will have their names changed from Mr. Blue Plaid Shirt and Ms. Fabulous Hair to Dave Who Learned To Play Guitar As a Response To The Bullies and Nancy Jo Who Marked Childhood Decembers With an Advent Wreath. My newly acquainted colleagues are working through an exercise to capture their stories on paper – but not the way we tend to tell our stories. No, this is a chance to take them from a chronologically contained relaying of the cognitive and anonymous and move into a fluid unfolding, move them into the vulnerable beauty of their unique human experience. Some of their prose makes me laugh. Some of it moves me by it’s tenderness. And some of it scrapes like fingernails along my skin with its tragedy and grief.

This wasn’t simply an exercise to nurture our creativity, even though we’re sitting under the projected image of The Art of Curating Worship and I’m here to prompt people’s sacred imaginations; it seems that we are exercising our ability to open up, to be compassionate, to challenge our expectations of who we are and who that is sitting next to us.

The pieces are hanging on the wall now, moving slightly in the blow of the creaky air conditioner. This section of dry wall seems animated with spirit and soul, dancing under the stories that dress her. It’s hard to not notice it. It’s harder to not be curious about the hearts laid bare on paper.

Story is such a powerful tool. It seems to be woven into our deepest humanity. No wonder Christ used story as his greatest practice for awakening the soul! It draws us out of our assumptions, our selfish expectations, our own limited (and sometimes limiting) experiences. Story has the unique potential to serve as a portal to the mysterious and transcendent, to affect us in a holistic way. Reading these narratives fluttering on the wall engaged my heart in people’s experience, provoked my imagination with their pictures and landscapes, challenged my prejudices – and in turn, my body responded with goosebumps, sinking stomach, bubbling laughter. Story draws us deeper into an experience of our humanity by inviting us into an experience of another’s.

The invitation into experience and out of myself is powerful. And possibly transformative, depending on the story we’re telling.

Worship breaks down to a beautiful story of a GOD pursuing humanity with a reckless love – at least once the props are pulled away and the theological arguments quiet. How does it change your work as a curator if you approach worship as a storyteller? What words would you use?

Pulling the story of GOD out of either an emotional moment in time or a chronological relaying of historical events and into a prose and flow of encounters, experiences and insights into the heart of GOD makes the worship narrative a profoundly reshaping experience – and the narrative makes room for everybody. It can invite everybody. It can provoke everybody.

So be a bard, a story-teller, a poet. It is, after all, the first language of our souls.

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Work as Liturgy, Liturgy as Work

by | September 8, 2011

For days now, I’ve been reflecting on this idea of “Work as Worship.” I have to admit to feeling incredibly humbled at the prospect of having anything worthwhile to say on the matter when there are wise and poetic voices to inspire us on this topic: Brother Lawrence, Kathleen Norris, the Desert Fathers & Mothers, John O’Donohue. After reading their works, it was easier to find the presence of GOD in the tasks that would otherwise feel mundane or unglamorous.

This is such an interesting topic to me. In my pastoral experience, I’ve met so many earnest people who seek careers in ministry because of the seeming nobility of the work, the purposefulness, the “rightness.” It seems to them, at that horizon of their life, that this kind of work is somehow better or more exhilarating than an office job or the barista job at Starbucks or finishing that teacher licensure. (HA! Oh, sorry…) Any Divine call on your life for the sake of the gospel must be into vocational ministry, right? Hmmm…

The concept of “Work as Idol” is not new to us. We could sit for hours together, no doubt, and talk about the pursuit of glory in American capitalism, etc. etc. etc. It’s easier to justify to ourselves, though, when we start talking about ministry or the work we do as spiritual directors, pastors, worship curators. But I always wonder: how many of us find our Christian identity in the work we do – the title we possess, the validity of having a check from an institution – than we do from the actual process of our work? I meet just as many people inside the Church who have made their job their idol (and identity or hiding place, the list goes on) as I have met people outside the Church who seem to have sold their souls to The Man.

At the end of the day, work gets a bad rap. It was part of the curse, after all. We forget that man had work before (the tending of the garden) he just didn’t hate it, or resent it. I wonder if actually the metaphor exists to tell us that he just hadn’t yet created a hierarchy of “good work” and “bad work.” The power scheme shifted from the egalitarian, interdependence of the Garden to the hierarchy of humankind’s power and identity-making titles. In the Eden place, maybe humankind’s purposes and identity guided her decisions and actions instead of the other way around.

This same dynamic of work-as-identity happens in the worship gathering. I find that my list of volunteers who want to sing or preach or make art tends to be much, much longer than my list of people willing to set up stations, inventory altar supplies, help in the nursery, run sound or push the button on the media presentations. Ah yes, the mundane and the unglamorous.

Perhaps the problem lies in our definition of work. And maybe even in our definition of worship.

The word liturgy literally means “the work of the people.” The work. So we’ve made that to mean certain things, a certain prioritized list. Interestingly, the word came from a people who knew this to extend to the temple sweepers, to the bread makers for the feasts, to those who polished the silver in the temple, those who guarded the doors, those who cleaned up the floors after the sacrifices. They extended it to the collective voices in prayer, the active listening as Holy texts were read, to the work of gathering your sacrifice.

How inspiring. To draw a lesson from our ancients: it’s the intentionality in our work that makes it worship, not the task itself. It’s the presentness, the centeredness, and actually – this is what grates on our American sensibilities – the taming of our own ego in the process.

In whatever vocation you have been given, what would it look like for you to be present? Intentional? What would it look like for that ‘sense of presence’ to flow from your idea that GOD is at work in our work? Oh – and how can you participate and work in worship this week?

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How Big Is Your Musical Pond?

by | September 1, 2011

I have ruined my children. Yep. My kids were nurtured in an auditory environment where much of what was being celebrated in popular music (Christian or otherwise) made me want to puncture my eardrums with the nearest dull object. Despite our best intentions, all the kids are musicians: bass for the eldest, alto sax for the middle, and violin for the youngest. They run their scales. They can spot a I-vi-ii-V progression. They know that dissonance is ridiculously awesome sometimes. These little people woodshed with the fundamental spiritual insight that the music is a force bigger than they are, a living place where their voice is really only made possible by the people that have come before them, a place where identity (and music) is only as meaningful as your ability to collaborate and make music with other people.

Their musicianship is the source of a lot of fun moments and a great source of mama-bear pride for me, but nothing compares to the lesson they’re constantly teaching me about the transformative power of artistic integrity and self-awareness.

Kids are the best representations of artistic integrity–which ultimately, isn’t about excellence or quality; it’s about honesty. Kids create out of their own desire to give something to the world, not just to “say something.” Their art comes directly out of their minds and imaginations because they don’t know how to be false. Their pleasure over what they’ve created, what their friends have created, is contagious. On the other hand, you’re not going to find my six-year-old’s art hanging in the MOMA exhibit next month. Kids get, without getting their feelings hurt, the idea that there is honest art and then there is skilled art.

And maybe, just maybe, you can be honest without being skilled, but in order to be culture-changing skilled, you’ve got to be honest.

When Christ said that the Kingdom of GOD belongs to those who are like children, I’m firmly convinced that this attitude of honesty and imagination is what he envisioned.

This is more than music, art, writing. There’s an intense, interdependent relationship between our own artistic integrity, our self-perception as artists, and our own willingness to be spiritually formed.

This became more and more apparent to me when I began worship coaching, working with church musicians during the week and heading off to my “professional” gigs later on in the week. At the church, I would often be one of the strongest musicians in the group, but on a gig, without question, I was often the weakest link and almost relished the opportunity to get shredded by people who were much better than I was. The skill differential that existed between the church musicians and the “pros” wasn’t what freaked me out as a newly-returned-to-the-church Christian: it was the attitude I got from so many of the church musicians I played with; an attitude that said they were the better musicians despite the fact that they had to capo to play in anything other than four or five keys, that all of the music was a carbon copy of a carbon copy of some song they heard on the radio. Not only could they not do it–they resented that I asked them to do it. I’ve got story after painful story about getting nasty comments and passive-aggressive attitudes from church musicians because what I asked of them musically was exposing–on many levels. And without exception, the most visibly irritated players all thought: They. Were. The. Stuff. Not outwardly, of course, and maybe not even very consciously because I truly doubt most people are that sinister, but to any outsider it was like a neon sign hanging around their neck. And yet they seemed completely unaware of their own musical inadequacies or disjointed self-perception. Or the connection between their own artistic process and their spiritual formation.

Big looming question: If you can’t confront your own music in a neutral and honest way, how can you confront the rest of yourself? If you can’t perceive the reality of your musical skills and voice in an objective, “we’re-all-on-a-journey” kind of way, how do you open yourself up to the disturbing beauty of personal and spiritual formation? If you need to keep the musical pond small so that you feel safe, how small do you have to keep your GOD?

So, how big is your pond?

Image © iStockphoto

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Worship Thresholds

by | August 25, 2011

Denver, the city that I “allegedly” live in according to Twitter, holds a small collection of old Victorian mansions, carriage houses and the like. Granted, in our city’s plebian newness, our version of “old” tends to be laughable in the face of centuries-long standing architecture that our brothers and sisters to the east (and even farther) can boast of in their cities. Still, the snapshots of our beginnings – of an industrial cow town trying to be a big city, a luxe city – stand around as monuments to our beginnings and aspirations. Being a complete and total history nerd, I love every opportunity to walk through the old buildings, though most of them have been converted to offices, B&B’s or just odd reliquaries of the past.

My favorite part of the old architecture: vestibules. Thresholds. In-between spaces that usher you from one place to another. Our modern and contemporary architecture doesn’t possess this same value. Trust me, I love how my little 1950’s bungalow flows – all the space bleeding into each other, the layout designed for openness; but I have a longing for the front entry of the old houses and that past value on in-between-ness, on taking a moment to pause, orient yourself and prepare for whatever was waiting on the other side, what was happening on the inside.

If I was forced to sum up my role as a worship curator, this is the picture I would use. I’m a threshold designer. I admit frankly, I get a little creeped out by worship leaders who say that their job is to give people an encounter with GOD, to create it. The experience of GOD cannot be manufactured or “created,” boxed or invoked – that’s what experience and those older and wiser have taught me. And certainly, within my human limitations and small speech, I don’t even know if it can be named without robbing it of the power.

Stephen Mitchell, a linguist and scholar, interprets some of the names for GOD to be Unnameable One, Unknowable One, Deep Well of Mystery. (Mitchell’s book, A Book of Psalms – selections adapted from the Hebrew, is a dog-eared, marked up go-to resource for me in my planning and praying.) In the Merriam-Webster, “Eucharist” is actually listed as one of the definitions for mystery. My own anecdotal experience has taught me that the longer I live and the more I know, the less I actually understand. This is the Cloud of Unknowing.

My caution for worship leaders: the notion that we can within our own power create an experience or encounter of mystery is arrogant or at least very, very naive. What we can do – with integrity and beauty and a tremendous amount of imaginative intentionality – is to create thresholds, liminal spaces, where people can enter into mystery. The great author Henry Miller said, “Any genuine philosophy leads to action and from action back again to wonder, to the enduring fact of mystery.” Our philosophy has given us actions that lead us to and from places of action – whether it’s in the natural world, in the compassionate work of relationships, or in the prescribed ritual of communion. It seems to me that, if we embrace the piece of our philosophy that calls us to worship the Unnameable One, the Deep Well of Mystery, that each of these actions would bring us back to wonder. Back each time to wonder: the vestibule of mystery.

As we contemplate the thresholds we’ve passed through to discover mystery on the other side, I invite you, I urge you to consider how we create thresholds with our spaces, our words, our images, and our deep intentions. How do we practice wonder? How do you do this in your worship? How do you do this in your home? Or relationships? I would love to hear your practices.

Image © iStockphoto

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