1 - FAITH & VERTIGO

Sun. April 15 / Mon. April 16

Please share your comments, critique and questions from the first session here!

Sign it with your first name and which day you attended (optional).

It was great to see 40+ folks Sunday morning sharing in the multimedia session.
And 30 attended Monday night.

The most important medium of communication is yours (your words and interpretations).
Please ask questions here as well. We'll try to start a FAQ topic for those answers.

Peace,
Brent & Shane

The review below gives an idea of what we discussed and heard.

Session 1 review: FAITH & VERTIGO

Set list:
Vertigo
I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For
40

vertigo. Dictionary.com. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/vertigo (accessed: April 14, 2007).

Vertigo
I’m at a place called Vertigo
It’s everything I wish I didn’t know
but you give me something to feel

How do you experience vertigo in life?

RESPONSES from participants:

• News is maddening, don't know how to react to it.

• "Donuts" in the neighborhood (vandalism with cars)?

• One person literally suffers from vertigo.

• High school seniors: No time to think. So much to do in little time.

• Sandwich generation's empty nests – losing parents and children moving out.

• So much violence

• Parent/child decisions – which college? What are right decisions on any issue?

• No easy answers.

• Disillusionment at dismantling parents' home, deconstructing their lives – finding out so much of what we thought was (true), isn't.

• Too many places to go, not enough time...

• Being the only person in a 4-person house with a job (overwhelming responsibilities)

• Too many responsibilities - How to priorities?

• When your pushing 85 and every time you forget something, thinking you have Alzheimer's.

• I'm pushing 57 and feel the same way.

• Having unrealistic expectations – getting disappointed.

• Turning attention away from anything that isn't God (turning away from God)

I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
I believe in the Kingdom Come
Then all the colours will bleed into one
Bleed into one.
But yes, I'm still running.

You broke the bonds
And you loosed the chains
Carried the cross of my shame
Oh my shame, you know I believe it.

But I still haven't found
What I'm looking for.

What kind of faith is this?

RESPONSES from participants:

• Constantly being evaluated – measured at the time.

• The faith of every day life.

• One person said he experienced this kind of faith at age 17 when a friend who was very religious and a positive influence on his faith talked of committing suicide. He was able to help talk his friend out of it.

• Faith and doubt.

• Faith is a journey... I don't usually see until looking back, that I found what I was looking for.

The opposite of faith is not doubt:
It is certainty.

-Anne Lamott, April 27, 2005 on Salon.com

40

I waited patiently for the Lord.
He inclined and heard my cry.
He brought me up out of the pit
Out of the miry clay.

I will sing, sing a new song.
I will sing, sing a new song.
How long to sing this song?
How long to sing this song?

How long—believing is not the hard part, waiting is the hard part.

How long this vertigo?

"How long" is also in two other songs “Sunday Bloody Sunday" and "The Saints are Coming."

But notice people of faith never stop singing.

Songs of thanksgiving and imagination—that’s faith.

Songs of lament and waiting and pain—that’s faith.

Faith is keeping the song going.

Faith as singing the new song.

Faith as not forgetting about the painful songs.
Faith is the voice that never stop singing.