I have decided that I am going to attempt to move my sleeping schedule from monophasic to polyphasic.

Briefly, monophasic sleeping is what you most likely do – you sleep in one phase.  You go to bed sometime in the late evening, sleep for 7-8 hours before waking up in early morning.  Maybe you take a nap, maybe you don’t.  More than likely, if you’re sleepy, you just ingest some caffeine or sugar to give you a boost to make it to bedtime.

Polyphasic sleeping, on the other hand, rests on the contention that the 1-2 hours of REM sleep that is obtained during monophasic sleep can still be obtained, but on a different schedule (EEG studies suggest that 1-2 hours of REM is all that is needed in order to feel rested).  Polyphasic sleepers sleep in multiple phases, and adhere to many different schedules.  The most pure form is called “The Uberman” and consists of 6 20-30 minute naps thaken throughout the day.  However, many prefer the schedule known as “The Everyman” which involves taking a 3 hour “core nap” during the night and combining it with 3-5 20-30 minutes naps during the day.

I’ve barely put this experiment of mine out there (on Twitter and Facebook), and I’m already intrigued by the push back I’m recieveing from well meaning friends and family.  Mostly they ask “Isn’t that physically harmful?  Why would you do that?”

I have discovered that I have been sleeping according to polyphasic principles for quite some time now. I have often and unknowingly used one of the easier schedules called “The Seista”, which has a “core nap” of about 6 hours long, plus a 20 minute nap sometime in the early afternoon.  According to this schedule alone, one sleeps 1 hour 40 minutes less, but still gains the benefit of the REM cycles.

Many times, I will catch a “cat nap” in the evening and then be up until 2ish, or I will wake up around 2a or 3a and not be able to fall back asleep.  I usually get up, maybe taking a quick “nap” around 5a or 6a, and then I go on with my day, not any more hindered than normal.

The fact is: I just don’t sleep as much as the normal person, and when I do (or when I get more sleep – that should be good, right?) I feel horrible all day long.

I also have a lot I want to do.  I have a spouse and 4 children I want to be in relationship with, I pastor a church full time, I have a large garden, I produce and direct a weekly radio show, I would like to blog more, I have a ton of reading I want to do, I would like to enage in multiple prayer times during the day, I have a book proposal (hopefully just “book” soon) that I need to finish writing, and (as an introvert) I need some me time.

My plan is to use “The Everyman 3-nap” schedule. Obviously, some tweaking and adjustment will happen, but my plan is to “core nap” from 11p-2a, with daytime naps at 7a, 12p, and 7p. (The good thing about this schedule is the ability to shift naptime by up to 2 hrs either way.) If I succeed in adhering to “The Everyman” schedule, I will gain 4 more hours a day to achieve my goals.  4 hours a day is 1,460 hours a year, or 60.83 days – almost 2 months!

I’ll be offering some updates here and on Twitter/Facebook relating to my progress, adjustment, and thoughts associated with polyphasic sleeping.

Hmmm….almost time for a nap….

(A version of this post appeared at pomomusings.com as part of the Plurality 2.0 blog series.)

Within the first 18 months of my time at the church I serve 12 different people decided to leave.

Some gently and respectfully slipped out the door, and others made a big damn deal of their departure, but every single person made it clear that the major (if not only) reason they were leaving was because I believed “that everyone was going to go to heaven.” And they said it like it was a bad thing.

To a person, they could not get it through their heads why I would preach about God’s grace the way I did – a way that (to their minds) absolved individuals of making a decision to be and behave in a way that was different from how they had previously lived. As one gentleman told me, “Let’s face facts – God loves us all, but some people are sinners and are going to Hell.”

Obviously, when someone’s on their way out, that isn’t the time to make clear that I don’t subscribe to “Christian universalism” (that Christ’s death and resurrection is salvific for all, regardless of adherence to the Gospel). Rather, I consider myself a “Christian pluralist” (I believe that God’s relationship with humanity can and does take many religious forms). Regardless, their point remains: in the classic sense, I have no need to convince people to “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus” and avoid the fiery pits of Hell.

GOOD THEOLOGY AND BAD THEOLOGY

From where I sit, I believe that it is of utmost importance to take into account what a theological system calls us to do as we are constructing these systems. Some systems are more tightly constructed than others. Some make use of narrative as their primary thread, while others make use of propositional statements. But no matter what they look like, there is good theology and there is bad theology. The difference between them is their ethics.

In other words, you can tell whether your theology is Christlike or not by how well it equips you to love your neighbor. What does your understanding of the work of the Holy Spirit contribute to your ability to serve the least of these? How does your experience of the Creator help you to serve Creation? Are humans sinful? How does that affect your understanding of the Church?

What always amazed me in my interactions with the “church leavers” was that while I was being accused of having poor theology (“You think its just fine for a child molester to go on molesting children because they’re gonna be saved anyway.”) I was also witnessing these folks passing harsh and swift judgment upon someone they considered to be “sinful” at best, and “unredeemable” at worst.

Their diatribes usually ended (and so did our conversations) when I cut them off. “I’m sorry, but I will not allow you to speak of So-and-So that way. You may have problems with my theology, but my theology does not allow for us to speak of one another that way. Does yours?”

It’s not that my theology doesn’t allow it because there is a rule against it. Its that it doesn’t allow it because it would be counter to the entire notion of who I understand God to be. Because that’s how good theology is built – an understanding of God should dictate good ethics, and good ethics should point us towards an understanding of God.

WHY I’M A CHRISTIAN PLURALIST

Pluralism is not just an acknowledgment of difference. Pluralism is the answer to the question “How do we live with difference?”

I am a pluralist because I would like everyone to treat me with respect regarding my faith and practice, and so I am committed to offering them the same.

I am a Christian because I know God revealed through the work and person of Jesus the Christ. The God revealed in Jesus Christ never demands that difference be ignored or eradicated.

Therefore, I am a Christian pluralist because my understanding of God and creation dictates that my theology acknowledges difference and forces me to act appropriately. “Do unto others…” I think I heard that somewhere once…

(h/t Bruce)

As the vid asks at the end: “So what does it all mean?”

Discuss…

A friend of mine – a female rector at a high church, Anglo-Catholic parish – asked me yesterday if all my talk of “theodrama” was just another word for what her Anglican Communion calls “liturgy.”  I think its a very good question, and one that she is particularly qualified to ask.  If you’re the female rector of a “smells and bells” parish, then you had better be able to do it right (cause all the boys are watching you).  In other words, the good reverend is not asking the question as a hack.

In true pomo/open source fashion I want to answer her: “Yes and No.”

“Yes”

At its truest, Christian liturgy has always been infused with some form of theatrical sensibility.  Pope Gregory the Great introduced choirs for the purpose of leading responsive singing, adding a bit of dramatic flair to a worship service.  In “liturgical” churches, the worship leaders all wear what is essentially a costume.  In my tradition (Reformed), which is heavily centered on “the Word of God proclaimed,” it is helpful that I have had some theatrical training.

The purpose of liturgy has always been to function as an ordered guide for a group of people engaged in a public act of worship.  All worshipping bodies employ a liturgy, although they may not call them that.  Mostly, when we say “liturgy” we mean an form of guided worship that proscribes prayers, songs, etc. that are at least rooted in the resources of antiquity, if not drawn from those sources verbatim.

Hidden in the good rector’s question is an assumption (I think) concerning ritual action and whether that consitutes a form of theodrama.  Typically, our liturgies simply consist of serialized ritual action, and, to be sure, in order for these various rituals to communicate what we intend them to, we need to use some theatrics.  Yet, there is a fundamental difference between theatrical engagement in a series of ritual action and worship as theodrama.

“No”

The word theodrama is made of two Greek words: “theo”, which means “God” and “drama”, which means “action.”  So theodrama according to the strictest definition means “enacting God.”

In Aristotle’s Poetics we are treated to an analysis of what good drama should be comprised of (I’m using “poetics,” “drama,” and other terms as interchangeables for the sake of this little quick and dirty.  Forgive me):

• Plot
• Character
• Theme
• Speech
• Melody
• Spectacle

Essentially, a good drama must take you on a journey (plot) along with people that you can identify with (character).  The journey must have a point (theme) and that point is fleshed out in explict/cognitive ways (speech) as well as subtle/emotional ways (melody).  But the drama will not perform its function if one is not allowed to enter into it as a presented reality – it must be shown not told (spectacle).

Theodrama, as drama, is an event in which those gathered experience and rehearse their lives in God.  Theodrama is something that those gathered must be allowed to fully experience, not simply participate in.

Worship is a Rehearsal of Narrative

So while there are those that may suggest that “At its essence, all good liturgy is theodrama,” I respectfully disagree.   Theodrama as worship is (by its very nature) a fully experiential, participatory event that engages the body, mind, and spirit.

Most liturgy lacks plot and character, which are the undisputed cornerstones of good drama (and literature).  The biblical narrative is exactly that – a narrative, not a series of ritual actions.  Yet we normally plan our worship as as series of ritual actions that are either speech or melody (prayers, songs, sacrament, sermons, etc) based on a theme.

Assuming you believe what I do about the power of drama, simple ritual action isn’t good enough any more (if it ever was).

And, by the way, wearing pretty robes doesn’t constitute spectacle.  That just makes you a “liturgical drag queen.”

I recently finished Peter Rollins‘ wonderful book Fidelity of Betrayal.  In it, he offered a word that he often uses in reference to an activity of the community he serves – theodrama.

I love this word.  I’m fairly certain that I don’t mean what he means by it, but I love this word.  I love it so much that it has begun to infect the very process by which I am now planning worship.  “Theodrama” forces me to ask a new question as I plan worship.  Namely, this: “If our holy story is a story to be lived, what can we do in worship to help us rehearse that story?”

In other words, the “lecture” sermon is not good enough.  People sitting and listening is not enough.  Watching people in the chancel sing or read or talk is not enough. If people don’t have an opportunity to participate in the theodrama, then the worship leaders have not done their job.  No wonder people want worship to last only an hour – they’re bored to tears from just watching you all the time!

If I am convicted by what I preached last week, that belief comes after behaviors that are rooted in belonging (another concept that Mr. Rollins fleshed out in the book – I’d heard it before, but he made it shine), then I don’t know that I can justify “preaching ideas” most of the time any more.  I think that what is expected of me is to lead people through experiences of behaviors.

This Sunday I am going to guide the congregation through a theodrama that begins with tribes and ends with none.  I have encouraged the congregation to wear clothes from their favorite college team (we’re waaaay into the Missouri/Kansas Border War around here), and I am planning to don referee stripes and a whistle.

Let’s hope this theodrama doesn’t become an anthropo-tragedy!

This post is part of a writing project on the connection between the Christian faith and the open source movement.  Feedback is welcome and desired.

Good, well-intentioned Christians love to quote Paul’s letter to the Galatians in making a case for what they consider to be a better, higher form of religious expression. Galatians 3:28 has become (for many) the proof-text needed to establish the reality of a distinct Christian identity.

There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

As the reasoning goes, Christ has set us free from these former associations, therefore these associations should not be used to define ourselves. But as Tanner shows us, if you have been born and raised a Jew, you will engage the world as a Jew does. If a person is born a woman or a man, they cannot suddenly not have any gender. If you are a slave, you are not only conditioned to operate as a slave, but you are forced to. You are not allowed to give up that designation – that is why you are a slave!

I do not believe that Paul was arguing for the dissolution of these associations, but for the truth that the Christian faith cannot be solely equated with them.

Paul understood his mission to be the proclamation of the Gospel of Freedom to the Gentiles. As such, the scriptures tell the story of how he masterfully wove himself into the culture in which he found himself and made sure that the people there discovered and benefited from the freedom found in Christ.

In the first section, we learned about Paul’s feeling towards those that came to inform the Gentiles that they needed to be circumcised. Circumcision was a mark of identity. To be circumcised meant that you were a Jew. At issue was whether or not you needed to be a part of the Jewish tribe in order to be a Christian.

Acts 15 tells of The Council of Jerusalem, at which this issue of circumcision was decided. Paul came with a Gentile convert, Barnabas, and together they recounted to the church leaders there “all the signs and wonders that God had done through them among the Gentiles.”¹

The leaders of the church in Jerusalem heard proof that God had been working among another group of people – people who were not identified with God’s chosen people. They came to realize that although circumcision was fundamental to the way in which they understood a relationship with God, it should not be required that all be in relationship with God that way. Rather, they only asked the Gentiles to abstain from practices that were associated with idol worship in pagan temples. Elsewhere, in Paul’s letters, we find that the Jerusalem church asked Paul to teach the Gentiles to remember the poor (a practice he indicated he always taught).

Because of the evident work of God through the life of the Gentile Barnabas, I am able to reflect on these events. Because the First Church heeded the call from God to recognize the contextualization of the Gospel, I – as an American, 21^st century Gentile – am able to say that I follow Christ.

I do not have to be a part of a particular group to call myself a Christian. I do not have to believe any particular doctrine, go to any particular church, or say any particular words. Rather, my identity as a Christian is found in the practices I engage in – the practices of worshiping Christ as the one who brings Freedom, and in the care of the poor, outcast, and oppressed. Persons in all times and places can and have engaged in these practices, and have molded them to better engage their particular contexts.

1Acts 15:12

This post is part of a writing project on the connection between the Christian faith and the open source movement.  Feedback is welcome and desired.

Just as God contextualized the message of freedom to the exiles, and just as God’s very self was contextualized in the person of Jesus, Christ continues to be contextualized in all times and places through the Body of Christ, the Church. According to missiologist Andrew Walls (using Christ’s ancient designation as The Word of God, which we explored in the previous section): “For Christians…the divine Word is translatable, infinitely translatable.”¹ Walls contends that the spread of the Gospel has, in fact, been dependent upon its ability to be translated.

…this vulnerability [that the center of the Christian world keeps shifting locations] is also linked with the essentially vernacular nature of Christian faith, which rests on a massive act of translation, the Word made flesh, God translated into a specific segment of social reality as Christ is received there. Christian faith must go on being translated, must continually enter into vernacular culture and interact with it, or it withers and fades.² (emphasis mine)

His contention has been a truth that competent missionaries have always known: one is only as successful as one’s ability to harmonize the message of freedom with the context in which it is proclaimed. Elsewhere, Walls describes what an instance of this “withering and fading” looks like:

John Mbiti has a wonderful story about the African student who goes home to his village with a Ph.D. in theology. This son of the village is greeted with a service of welcome and afterward a big party. During the party there’s a shrieking and a howling and a banging in the tent — his sister has become possessed. Of course, the villagers immediately turn to the new Ph.D. — he’s the expert, the one who has received the best theological training. But he’s completely incapacitated for dealing with this African event.³

Context is everything. The Ph.D. student did not know how to address the matter. His training had not prepared him for this. The faith represented by the Ph.D. withered the day his sister was possessed, and rightfully so.

Yet, this is not a matter of the survival of the Christian faith for survival’s sake. This is a matter of ensuring that the message of freedom is effectively brought to every time and place. When God’s message of freedom is not contextualized it ceases to be freedom at all. It becomes, essentially, colonization and oppression. How can we say this? We can say this because, as human beings, we do not have the option to not contextualize, and to deny this truth is to deny people a part of their very nature.

Theologian Kathryn Tanner has written extensively on this idea of “Christian identity.” Her contention is that Christian communities, and those individuals who make them up, do not exist apart from established cultural institutions. As “Christians”, they have no separate culture of their own, but, rather, they appropriate aspects of the culture in which they find themselves (in which they were often born and raised) and “sanctify” those aspect, so to speak.

Where efforts are made in Christian history to turn Christian social practices into a full-blown society comparable to that of the Greeks or the Babylonians, the peculiar nature of the effort seems bound to prevent its success…Thus, in the early medieval period, Christian social practices took on the character of a society comparable to the Roman world only by borrowing from it – its laws, its political structures. Unlike the usual case of a social group, when Christian social practices are up and running they do not start with a full compliment of institutions they can call their own. In order to become a social alternative to the Roman Empire, Christian social practices must, therefore, borrow from the very society they oppose.⁴

Tanner goes on to contend that our fixation with having a “Christian identity” apart from the culture in which we find ourselves is “nothing short of idolatrous.”⁵

1http://www.gospel-culture.org.uk/1999.htm

2Ibid.

3http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2052

4Tanner, Kathryn, Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997), 98

5Ibid., 102