Pathways and Possibilities

Our roundtable worship is not the re-enactment of fixed liturgies, even though it has developed a fairly stable form that would be familiar to most Christians. It is first of all an exploration in the light of God’s work of reconciliation among us. The Roundtable Gathering is a public expression for our understanding of God’s activity. It is a public means for forming us to participate in God’s call to reconciliation and renewal of the earth. In taking this path in our worship life we have seen some new possibilities as well as experienced many challenges. In this section I want to lift up some of these discoveries and challenges to help inform others as they set out on this path.

A.  Of Size and Space

Our roundtable gatherings usually consist of 10 to 15 people. While it could be larger, this is a good size for a circle conversation. It enables people to participate but it is public enough that we stay focused on what is common rather than what is purely individual. It is not a setting for group therapy, though it is healing in another way. This is a decisive difference from worship models that reach toward thousands of people gathered in auditoriums and stadiums.

The optimal shape of the space for this event is a square or circular room. Most of our church buildings are rectangular, with the focus of attention against one wall housing the stage, altar, and pulpit. It is a setting for performance and presentation, not interactive participation. Church buildings tend to be shoeboxes rather than circles. Circular worship spaces do exist, but as the number of participants enlarges, they begin to be re-configured to put the focus to one side.  In my own dreams I envision a domed, circular room that could accommodate up to a hundred people. (See my worship fantasy in The Politics of Religion (United Church Press, 1970, ch. 7.) As it is, we have to carve out places within the shoeboxes and performance spaces of our existing churches.  In any case, the roundtable gathering needs a space that enables the group to experience silence, to hear and see one another, to assemble in circle around the table, and to be as undistracted from their common purpose as possible.

Size and scale have a different impact on the possible non-verbal elements in roundtable worship. Ritual movements, whether dancing and circling the table or processing in various ways, are more effective with greater numbers and in larger spaces. While there are important rituals for the conversational scale, such as passing the talking piece, there can be other meaningful movements and actions in a larger space. How a gathering wants to balance and implement these elements will vary with the members and their sensibilities. Although the roundtable worship we have pursued places a great emphasis on verbal action, there are many other ways that people can internalize the circle processes of reconciliation.

If more people wanted to participate in our roundtable gathering, either we would have to establish additional roundtables of the same size, thus preserving the circle conversation, or we would have to symbolize this circle dynamic in a larger setting but forgo many participatory elements of the circle process itself. The first choice is, in one sense, already present in many large churches in the form of the small-group movement. In this case there could be roundtables of ten to twenty people along with large gatherings whose form is derived from the core model. Much of this small-group/large-group model is already happening in churches, but without the core commitments and processes I am describing here. Providing a short summary of these principles and practices is the reason for writing this little book, which seeks provide a common and portable understanding of what we are attempting. It is, if you will, a kind of covenantal document, but one open to continual reworking and interpretation.

Whether or not a church has the smaller roundtables, planning for roundtable worship in a large assembly dedicated to this understanding of reconciliation requires both an attention to the crucial principles of the roundtable gathering and an ingenious capacity to pursue these values with flexibility. For instance, the judicious use of travelling microphones enables people to participate in large gatherings – town hall forums, for instance –in ways that were not possible only a few years ago. In a larger gathering a small panel might represent the conversation of the whole group. We can also be attentive to language, symbolism, and many other aspects of Roundtable worship that do not depend on size or arrangement of the assembly. What must be resisted, however is a change in arrangements that distorts the circle back into a shoebox or creates a performance stage rather than a circle of participation.             Unless we have these principles in place we revert to the one-way communication model dominating our religious heritage.

B.  Language and Symbolism

We are committed to language that engages our actual situation in this world of conflict and reconciliation. In addition, we want our language to reflect the equality of all participants at the table, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, and the many other divisions we have erected between us. The divisions of social class and education are perhaps the most difficult of all to overcome. In the face of all these barriers, we want to embody the invitation “All are welcome.” This involves more than gracious and hospitable invitations for people to come to the table. It also requires that our form of worship model the patterns of reconciliation grounded in the life and spirit of Jesus.

The reconciliation we are trying to live into has many dimensions. It is interpersonal as well as familial. It involves how we make decisions in organizations and business corporations. One of the most important is, of course, governmental and political. Reconciliation must constantly be negotiated among competing interest group and, aggrieved enemies. Courts must address criminal and civil injuries. The language they use in doing this shapes our lives very deeply, whether it is in phrases like “paying his debt to society,” “reaching across the aisle,” or “being brought to justice.” Worship that really seeks to live into God’s reconciliation has to select an appropriate language from the competing ways we talk about injury and repair, self-interest and cooperation, rights and obligations.

In our own time, after a long, long struggle, people around the world are trying to address their conflicts and need for cooperation with some form of republican and democratic order. They are gradually extending these democratic values to women and minorities in their populations. Even tyrannies, dictatorships, and repressive theocracies use republican and democratic language in order to claim legitimacy in the eyes of others. Yet our historic language of prayer and worship still reflects the feudal monarchies that gave it birth. The church speaks the language of baronial England rather than Washington, Berlin, New Delhi, and Jerusalem. Not only does this keep us from addressing our world; it also keeps us from fully expressing the essential dynamics of circle conversation at the center of reconciliation at Christ’s table.

As an example of our efforts, let’s take another look at the “Hope Prayer” we are currently using in our gatherings. It is obviously patterned after the model prayer Jesus taught his followers. In Jesus’s time it was expressed in the language of kingdoms and monarchs. In the version we are using, a different political model gains expression. Here it is again:

O Source of Life, You alone are holy.

Come and govern us in perfect peace.

Give us today all the food that we need.

Release us from sin as we release our enemies.

Save us in the trials of judgment.

Liberate us all from evil powers.

For in you is our justice,

Our constitution, and our peace. AMEN.

Here, God is addressed as “Source of Life.” The term “Father” as the title of God the Creator is central to a patriarchal culture, but in our own time this name cannot convey that ancient combination of authority, creativity, and care. Neither our biological nor our political understandings support it. Whereas for the ancients family roles and governance roles were combined, we have separated them for the sake of greater political justice. So we are using “Source.” We then use language of governance rather than “will” and “kingdom” to call for the complete realization of God’s purposes in this world — that is, for a new pattern of relationships among all the creatures of this earth. In the following lines of the prayer we retain much of the language of English versions to express this longing for fullness of life. The terms of forgiveness in the original could be rendered as “debts,” thus bringing in the sharp economic reality of our injustice toward each other and the earth. The last lines of the traditional version, missing in the Gospel accounts (Matt. 6: 9-15 and Luke 11:2-4), bring governance language to the fore, with an emphasis on glorification of the ruler. Using contemporary words we have tried to render this affirmation of God’s underlying right order in terms of constitution (drawing on old covenantal themes), justice, and peace.

Other Gatherings could work out their own understanding of how Jesus’s ancient formula should speak in our own time. In this way we enter more vividly into the effort to sustain a conversation with God that nurtures God’s purposes in this world – one that recalls us to God’s way and renews us with God’s promise.

In other parts of our liturgy we often speak of the Spirit “presiding” in our midst. For instance, one of our litanies of remembrance says this:

You were at the burning bush,

Giving courage to Moses in his quest for liberation.

You were in the anguished cries of prophets

Yearning for your justice,

You put your spirit in the mouth of Jesus,

Claiming Isaiah’s vision for his own.

You were present in the garden,

Giving voice to Mary Magdalene.

Here at your table now you feed us,

Presiding in our conversation.

All: Presiding Spirit, now we welcome you.

The challenge to build a better language is not an easy one to address. We struggle with words like “Lord” or “kingdom” that still have a familiar and comforting ring for most of us, even though we would reject their political forms in our everyday life. We also struggle with the use of contemporary terms like republics or constitutions that may not have the ring of transcendence. Even the word “worship” has become a problem for people who feel in it the dead hand of the past rather than the living longing for renewal. Our search for words that transcend gender often leaves us with cumbersome sentences and labored constructions that are ethically sound but verbally unmusical. Though there is a sense of breathing fresh air when the new language of partnership clicks, we know we still have a long way to go to unite our worship with our ethics and aesthetics.

In spite of these challenges we have decided that it is better to speak than remain silent in the face of mysteries. We know that we are clumsy interlopers in a conversation with a world known more by faith and hope than ear and eye. While we work hard to use songs, prayers, and liturgies that embody our aspirations, we try to be charitable and forbearing, patient and forgiving, as we draw on whatever words we can use to share from the heart with others in conversation and prayer. These virtues, too, are useful for the work of reconciliation!

C.  Gathering as Formation

Every form of worship assumes a prior process of training. As children, most of us were taught to be quiet and sit still in worship. Worship was formation in passivity if not receptivity to a presentation. Some of us learned to sing “classical” music in harmony. A few of us learned to play keyboard instruments. In a similar way, the roundtable gathering has to assume and provide a process of formation in speaking briefly but from the heart, of listening attentively, and addressing others in circle. We are formed here to offer not only our money but also our thoughts, prayers, songs, and symbols at the table. This formation is not accomplished solely, or even primarily, by words, but in movements, symbols, rituals, song, and rhythm. It is an action forming the whole self of body, mind, and spirit.

Methodists will see in our gatherings the “classes” that early Methodists assembled to re-form people in their faith and practice. Moravians will see elements of the agape meal. Quakers will see our circle as a meeting for deep listening to the Spirit. Indeed, we have learned from all of these and more, although at crucial points we also go beyond them. Early on in our meetings we heard that remains of an ancient church had been uncovered on the plains of Megiddo, near Nazareth, Israel. According to the account, “One of the most dramatic finds suggests that, instead of an altar, a simple table stood in the center of the church, at which a sacred meal was held to commemorate the Last Supper. “ A mosaic at the site contained an inscription that a woman by the name of Ekeptos had “donated this table to the God Jesus Christ in commemoration.”  [Ha’aretz (Israel) 06/11/2005] That the basic form of Christian assembly was a gathering around a table reinforced our experience of the power of this form of worship. We are gathered in an ancient tradition that can also engage the work of reconciliation today.

Formation is not only being steeped in a tradition, but also in personal experiences that are continually reinforced as we gather with others over time. Many of us have already experienced the power of circles, whether in recovery and therapy groups or in mediation and small working groups. We bring those habits and expectations to the roundtable, even as we refine them in light of the wider transcendence we seek to open up in that setting. Sometimes one of us begins to wander in our words, or we do not find the heartfelt center from which to speak. It is at these times that we need the circle steward to care for the work of the circle to give encouragement where needed, restraint where necessary, and respect for silence and listening.

Let us recall the role of the circle steward. The steward is not running the process. This is the work of the Spirit of the circle. The steward is minister to the circle and the Spirit presiding in it. The steward reminds people at the beginning of the conversation about their covenant, about speaking simply from the heart, and about our commitment to attentive listening. The steward is “forming” the participants for conversation. The steward is helping the Spirit of the table to “in-form” the assembly around it. At all times, the steward needs to help create a sense of the holy process of the circle, one to which we are constantly needing to be formed and re-formed. This formation in worship occurs not merely for the sake of individual growth but also to help us engage the conflicts around us in a reconciling manner. It is for the sake of our world.

We do not have a formal process to prepare people for this kind of gathering. There is no initiation process into our commitments or to the circle process. Perhaps we need something like this, whether in the form of a study circle or a manual. But we would have to think about whether that would create a barrier rather than an invitation. We need an instructive but also an inviting pathway into the gathering. Perhaps this little book may help in this process.

D.  Diversity at the Table

Like so many churches and associations we lament our lack of cultural, racial, or demographic diversity. Part of that lack arises because our gathering is based on commitment to a common purpose rather than transformation of a specific conflict. While diversity does not create conflict, it often fuels its flame. It is in diversity that the work of reconciliation appears most vividly. Not to have a diverse group at table is to reduce the expansiveness of our vision and our entrée to the world around us. Because of our focus on a common purpose, like most voluntary associations, our diversity is reduced. Becoming more diverse, as any church or association knows, cannot be a goal in itself but must arise from pursuit of its mission. If the mission – such as witnessing to reconciliation – is taken seriously enough, diversity will arise. Much of this work of diversity emerges in the circle conversations we have spun off from our worship table.

E. The Gathering and the Circles

We call our worship time a gathering. We gather in response to a call from Christ’s table of reconciliation. It is not usually or not yet a time for the transformation of actual conflicts. For that purpose we have begun a wider umbrella we call Roundtable Ministries, a term which has also been used elsewhere. Our gathering is part of this wider work of reconciliation. Within Roundtable Ministries we seek to implement the kind of circle conversations and processes Thomas Porter has set forth in The Spirit and Art of Conflict Transformation. Drawing on Porter’s work with JustPeace, we have conducted training sessions for circle stewards. These help deepen our circle stewardship practices at worship and in these circle conversations in the community.

Over the past few years we inaugurated circle conversations around difficult issues such as homosexuality, war, and immigration. In bringing people together around immigration issues, for instance, we automatically engage diversity. This may not appear in the worship gathering that nourishes people engaged in this circle, but the two circles inform each other. The circle dealing with a specific problem in our community is interdependent with the circle gathered at roundtable. They nurture each other.

In particular, the worship gathering seeks to form people for the work of circle conversation and conflict transformation by providing rituals and symbols of and for this work – the hospitable invitation, the circle conversation, the sharing of food, trusting in the Spirit presiding at the table, and grounding our hopes in God’s power rather than our own weakness.

Rather than merging these two circles, which might exclude people from both, we pursue a life of interlocking circles with differing special tasks but sharing, we believe, in the one work of God’s reconciliation. Keeping them in a genuine relation of mutual recognition remains an ongoing task.

F.  The Challenge of Ecological Reconciliation

The reconciliation toward which God calls us is also a reconciliation with God’s creation. In the Christian Biblical narrative full reconciliation between God and creation is the grace-filled renewal of the original garden. Ecological themes are beginning to appear (or reappear) in Christian worship, but we are only at the beginning of re-thinking the central theme of reconciliation in terms of our relationship with God’s creation. (See H. Paul Santmire, Ritualizing Nature: Renewing Christian Liturgy in a Time of Crisis [Fortress, 2008].) As we think about this in terms of a roundtable worship that takes ecological reconciliation seriously we have many questions. How do we give other creatures and actors in creation a “voice” at table? How do we re-imagine our conflicts in terms of conflicts over territory, water, energy, and beauty? How do the habits formed by being part of a conversation reshape our understanding as creatures who are part of creation rather than its masters?

In our worship we have some small signs of the changes we might need. We place elements of non-human nature at the table in terms of plant, feather, bread and juice. Sometimes our conversation revolves around ecological themes. The circle itself is rooted in the forms of creation, as Black Elk has reminded us. In assuming that the reconciliation process is rooted in the transformation of conflict, we move away from the simple view that creation is a clock “obeying” God’s laws. Rather, it is an ongoing, living creation whose many expressions of God’s creativity are constantly interacting with each other at various levels of power and novelty.  Some are as enormous and spectacular as exploding supernovae. Others are as tender and invisible as the love of people who have given life to one another. This is one more example of moving from a theology and world-view shaped by the image of obedience between Father and Son to one rooted in evolving systems shaped by fields of attraction as well as dissolution.

This systems view of evolving creation is reflected in the centrality of conversation rather than that pattern of preaching the “Word of God” and responding in obedience. It is also reflected in the priority we give to God’s abundance in creation over our own progression to moral perfection. These are only small steps. The challenge of living into an ecological understanding of reconciliation confronts us all. We believe that in the roundtable gathering we have a peculiar possibility for addressing this challenge in the years ahead.

Summary

Our Roundtable Gatherings have constituted a journey as well as a process of constructing a new home for worship in the broad Christian tradition. Some elements have become fairly reliable. I have tried to describe and explain them in the first part. Other features stand as boundary questions – of size, diversity, language, formation, and the ecological character of God’s work of reconciliation. They contain possibilities and pathways we are only beginning to address. They require entry into a wider conversation, which I hope this little book will stimulate.

At this point I can say that we see this form of worship as the kernel of Christian worship.  It sings the song of God’s reconciliation at the core of our worship, but it does so in a new key. By focusing on the Holy Spirit’s work at the roundtable, it moves us away from an excessive preoccupation with the sacrificial contest of fathers and sons and from the monarchies and patriarchs of an earlier politics. By focusing on God’s nurturing goodness at table it builds up our capacity to help each other in our weakness and limited vision. By forming us for conversation in circles of mutual respect it helps us forge new covenants and relationships deeper than legal conformity.

The roundtable can be a worship gathering in any church in addition to the traditional or contemporary praise forms. It would lift up for people a way of coming to Christ’s table that is also engaged with the practices of reconciliation, conflict transformation, and peace-building emerging all over the globe. From it can flow practices that can influence both the other worship gatherings as well as ways of transforming conflicts in the church and its communities.

The various Christian traditions may well find that the Roundtable both resonates with and also clashes with particular features in their own heritage. One question that has arisen is Who presides at this table? Our overall theological response is to say that it is Christ’s spirit that presides at the table. Each one of us acts to seek to make this presidency real. However, different traditions have different ways to try to make this presidency real, whether through the presence of clergy recognized by a particular church organization or formal and informal means of leadership training and selection. In addition, the presence or absence of certain words, liturgical actions, or formulas can be seen as critical to whether people can trust that this is indeed Christ’s table. It is obvious that we cannot solve these age-old problems here. We have only tried to set forth our own practices and why we engage in them, hoping that others can find ways that they can be related in a vital manner to their own traditions without sacrificing the crucial elements of the roundtable experience.

While our own form of roundtable worship is clearly rooted in Christian tradition, I think it can also find an expression in Jewish practice. The Jewish High Holy Days provide one example. The passage from the new beginnings proclaimed at Rosh Hashana to the reflections and repentance of the subsequent days of Tsuvah (“turning,” similar to the Greek Christian term of metanoia) and then to the celebration of forgiveness and reconciliation in Yom Kippur shares a paradigm common to the two traditions. Certainly the tradition of table and conversation are deeply rooted among Jews of all persuasions! We also need to explore points in Muslim worship, such as the fasts and feasts of Ramadan, where roundtable forms might gain root.

At its core the roundtable offers basic elements for interfaith dialogue that still need to be explored. This is a pathway that can be rich in new relationships, understandings, and commitments to building up bonds of reconciliation in our violent age. A number of people have been exploring how the image of Abraham’s tent of hospitality in Genesis 18 provides an invitation for people in the Abrahamic tradition to come together at table in conversation and nurture. (See A. Waskow, J. Chittister, M. S. S. Chisti, The Tent of Abraham [Beacon, 2007].)

The roundtable gathering is a powerful pattern of worship rooted in ancient traditions and contemporary commitments. It carries the possibility of re-forming us for the work of reconciliation in our sorely troubled world.