Aj Schwanz

So I’ve shared some about the process of the group.  At least, I feel as though I did:  does it make sense to you?  What are you fuzzy about?  What would be helpful to hear more about?

During this process I read a great book called Permission Granted To Do Church Differently in the 21st Century.  It’s written by Gary Goodell, a person I know not a lot about, and Graham Cooke, a person who has become key in my spiritual journey.  Graham Cooke, originally from Great Britain so he’s got a *great* accent, leads a prophetic ministry centered in Vacaville, CA.  Dad introduced me to Graham in the form of videos and audio cassettes which I listened to while going for morning walks around my neighborhood.  He is one of the kindest, to the point, challenging, loving teachers I’ve ever heard.  So when I heard about this book, I knew I’d need to read it.

Section 1:  The authors talk about the “Third Day” church God’s told them that we’re moving into (there’s lot of references in the Bible about moving into something new on the third day).  Development of people and churches; Church as a living system - organic and organizational paradox (the church is a field - flexible and changing (this is the response to our cultural context) - and a building - rigid and unchanging (these are our values) - how do we hold to both?).

Section 2:  Third-Day Worship; God-centric Worship; the Worship Feast

Section 3:  Third-Day Meetings; Embracing the Unpredictable; What’s Really Sacred?

Section 4:  Transition (Oh, my, how people would be helped if they read this - to actually understand what we’re going through.  It doesn’t make it easier necessarily, but it’s nice to understand what is actually going on).

Section 5:  Third-Day Preaching

Section 6:  Third-Day Mission.

Good stuff, eh?  One chapter really struck me:  Groups of Tens, Groups of Fifties, and Groups of Hundreds.  “It is not that we just need more than one meeting.  In fact, it doesn’t matter how many meetings you have in a week or a month.  What is important is to see the potential of different sizes of meetings that create different atmospheres or venues, and thus produce different outcomes or results” (109).  We have different sized meetings at NFC, but I don’t think we know why we do, nor do I think we always have placed the correct desired outcomes on those meetings.

The first group is groups of ten.  “These smaller groups are home-based, intergenerational meetings, where we share our lives on a regular basis, make our needs know to each other, and bear each other’s burdens.”  This seems to happen with small groups and Listening Life groups and some Sunday School classes.  “These groups are not cell groups, or even home groups; they are real churches - complete and autonomous churches.  They have leaders; the often receive offerings for missions, the poor, the needy.  They evangelize the lost, baptize converts, dedicate babies, marry the wed and bury the dead, and obviously celebrate the sacrament of communion.  These small groups are not just extensions of the ‘mother ship’ local community church that has a central campus around which all life swirls.  They are the Church” (111).  He then goes on to talk about the theological importance of having The Meal together.  “The local church does not do small groups; the local church is a small group where everyone participates” (117).

Groups of Fifties:  “This is the group where everyone worships” (117).  “These groups are not meant to replace the whole body, but rather make possible a type of meeting in which all ages, including children, can participate” (118).  There has been a concern voiced about what to do with the kids during our six-week fast:  people are concerned for their spiritual welfare if they aren’t in Sunday School.  I’m a bit concerned for their spiritual welfare if they don’t know how or get to have an opportunity to contribute to the larger body!  “This meeting is based upon the full priesthood of all believers with mutual edification and mutual up-building for the purpose of personal strengthening” (118).  And Goodall notes that this is not the entire body, but a gathering of several smaller churches or simple churches in a larger setting (even a home, a park, a backyard).

Groups of Hundreds:  “This is the group where everyone listens and learns.”  The point of these groups is for the larger body or network of churches to consider direction.  They are generally led by teams, not an individual, embodying fivefold ministry.

The other week my husband was getting poked by God to consider the point and purpose and elements of worship.  He was questioning the focus on the sermon:  is that very worshipful?   We do need to be taught, but perhaps we have been putting the wrong function on the different group sizes.  It’s like putting a wrong car part in a car engine:  I will probably be frustrated when it does work well, but can the part change to meet my expectations?   Not so much.  When we try to wed worship and teaching, the focus is divided.  When we aren’t being church in small group ways, we’re probably not prepared to worship:  we have to play catch up in worship to get to that worshipful place.  When we try to get our individual needs met in the large group, people will fall through the cracks:  people can’t be held accountable very well in groups of hundreds.

So, as we think about where we are stepping next and who we are stepping with, perhaps we need to make sure the “parts” are serving their intended function, otherwise we’re going to get stuck on the side of the road, and I don’t think Click and Clack will be able to gufaw our way out of this one.

Now that you’ve heard a bit of our process, you may be wondering where our recommendations came from. Remember: I’m sharing only from my experience and journey.

I shared with the group some about my thoughts on worship and community as I experienced them as a child. I also wondered if such an experience would be possible at NFC. We have three services with half and hour in between. The service structure is packed: not a lot of time for flexibility.

And not a lot of space to congregate, so if service runs over, people are backed up everywhere — and not in a good way when it’s commonly known as the “cattle shoot”. When I first experienced worship at NFC, I was floored at how quickly folks vacated the sanctuary. I figured it was to congregate somewhere superdupercool because why else would people run out as though their pants were on Holy Fire? Because where I came from, the earliest we got home from church was about an hour and a half *after* service had ended. People chatted; kids played; kids maneuvered their parents into going out to lunch with friends so that the conversation and community didn’t have to end.

As the Next Steps group shared their longing for community, we recognized we didn’t really have either the space or the time. So folks began to brainstorm: what would it look like if we went to two services and had a longer time for fellowship? What if we knocked down the walls to the library and built out onto the lawn? What if we removed the pews from the sanctuary and installed interlocking chairs that could be moved around for fellowship time? Should we remodel the Friends Center to make it more conducive to congregating for a longer period of time?

People got excited. But they also felt bogged down by the idea of fundraising: did God want us to spend our time raising money to build a bigger building? Is that what would help us reach out to those in our community, or would that weigh us down?

I started to wonder if the setup of Newberg created an environment for fellowshipping for longer periods of time. If we had space, would we actually use it? When I lived in Boise, I lived 20-25ish minutes away from the church. After getting up, getting dressed, getting fed, getting in the car, we weren’t going to go anywhere for quite some time after arriving at church: we were settled. So we’d go to children’s church and then Sunday school and hang out with friends and come home after a long bit - enough time to make the drive “worthwhile”.

But in Newberg, everything is close and convenient. A drive across town is about seven minutes. It’s easy to have a ‘drop-in’ mentality: I’ll drop in to church, and then drop in to the store, and then run back home. If I forget something at home that I wanted to take to church, I can make it there and back and not miss any significant amount of time. I don’t know that people would come and stay for fellowship at NFC.

So what does that mean? I started thinking about Newberg in general, noticing the types of buildings and establishments. And you know what’s abounding right now? Empty buildings. A number of businesses have moved or closed, and empty facilities are left standing. I wondered what it would be like for faith communities to move into those empty places: not necessarily as a church building, but perhaps as a ministry, creating space for the community of Newberg as a whole to fellowship. What would it look like if we moved into one of those buildings as a community center? And on Sundays we could set up activities for fellowship after church (to “drop in”)? Or what would it look like if some folks from different faith gatherings took on leasing a building and putting in a business that helped those who needed a job have one? Or make it a place to teach? Or just hang out (a bowling alley? Hello!).

There’s an empty building I pass every day as I drive from Newberg to Dundee, and I’m so moved to pray that God will fill that building with something that will bless the people of Newberg. I hope my faith gathering gets to be a part of that - the redeeming of the empty places . . .

The whisks have been rescued, and the boys are fitfully slumbering for the moment (kinda like our weather:  all blusterylike).

Meeting the folks nominated to be on the Next Steps group was similar to meeting folks from any newly-formed group.  Some of them I knew, some of them I didn’t.  Some of them I’d never met before and had no clue that they attended my church (probably at a different service gathering).  A few folks had been on the previous committee, and others had no clue that there had been any sort of group exploring a sense that God was calling us to something different in the area of worship.

Mark Ankeny had offered to clerk.  I grew up with his daughters, and my dad had worked with him previously with yearly meeting business, so there was history.  However, I hadn’t known his personal story:  that he felt called to start a sort of alternative service a few years ago and did not receive a blessing or encouragement.  This (and job changes/moving) led to him exploring other faith gatherings.  To me, this was huge:  Mark had been our Yearly Meeting business meeting clerk *and* he’s an Ankeny (who seem to be an old time Friends family) . . . and he’d been attending a non-Friends gathering?!!  And had been frustrated by our faith community to the point of attending elsewhere?  His sharing of this really set a tone of transparency and creating a safe place to question and discern.

The first meetings were really hard for me:  I felt like I was spinning wheels.  Part of it came from having thought about this type of stuff a lot, while this sense of an itching frustration was totally new to others:  they sensed NFC was in a good place, and why would we need to change, and just scratch the itch and move on!  We explored our values, as a church, as Quakers, as Christ-followers, and were supposed to come up with some statements.  Of course, in my group, we came up with questions (because I’m difficult like that):  we didn’t know that we were even asking the right questions to begin with.  The idea of having a task of looking at models of worship seemed so off the mark:  so what *should* we be looking at?  What was bringing this task force together?  What was at the heart of the issue?  If we could figure out what the *right* question was, perhaps the answers would fall into place — or at least we’d know better how to equip to embark on the journey.

And so we shared our stories — about community, about true worship experiences, about the ideal worship experience for us personally, about places we felt worshipful, about ways to prepare.  We started to read — books like Permission Granted (if folks at NFC would read this, I think that would really help prepare us for the road ahead), The Shaping of Things to Come, Present Future, etc.  We attended other worship gatherings:  some Quaker, some non-denominational, some young adult-oriented, some multi-generational.

As we read and pondered and talked with our spouses (who are probably all honorary members of Next Steps) and questioned our small groups and prayed and listened, we began to notice threads –

• of wondering what true hospitality is
• of thinking about what elements of worship truly are important
• of noticing that we don’t have a good space to congregate
• of recognizing that we desire to be together and hear each other’s stories
• of feeling moved to be more present in our community
• of wanting to repent of spiritual pride that holds us back from worshiping fully
• of wondering how our Quaker distinctives can be tools to help us and others encounter God more fully rather than plaques on the wall

So, what to do with all of those threads . . . .

I don’t have a pulpit, but I do have this blog that can be used as a place to share my story, explain some thoughts, prompt questions, encourage action and contemplation.  If I were a really quality blogger, I would have the journey planned out into a series of blog posts that fall into a theme.  But instead I have brief moments between chasing a magazine-eating bebe, playing instruments with a preschooler, and wondering what it would take to start making my own condiments.

I must confess:  I rarely answer my cell phone.  I don’t answer our landline either, mostly because I don’t have one.  :)  People may think that I’m ignoring them, but actually I have a very selective window of being able to talk on the phone, because when I talk on the phone, this strange condition comes over my household in which people under four feet are compelled to demand my attention and/or destroy things.  It does not make for ideal conversation.  So I use my cell phone as a really expensive answering machine and often respond to folks by email, because for some reason, the small people don’t realize that I can communicate with the outside world through my computer . . . yet.

Gregg called and left me a message.  It was a long message as I sat waiting for the “whirl” of the phone to say that I had a “new message!”  When I listened, I was a little flumoxed.  “The elders have appointed a group to look at worship at NFC. . . . Called “Next Steps” . . . Next step after the first worship assessment group who did the surveys . . . Going to be implementing things . . . Hadn’t included you in first group because thought you’d be more suited for implementation than assessment . . . Elders wondered if you’d be part. . .”

First, I felt flattered:  it’s fun to be included.  Second, I felt relief about why I hadn’t been included in the first group:  honestly, my feelings had been a little hurt because, hello:  who babbles about worship stuff all the time?!!  And then came the conflicted feeling:  you know, that feeling of “oooh:  do I *really* want to do this?”  Yes, it sounded like a natural fit.  But . . .

• Did I really want to spend *that* much time thinking about Sunday morning worship?
• Did I really want to get into looking at “models of worship”?
• Did the elders really think that a plan of changing worship, kind of like changing a business plan, would really make a difference?
• Is that what God had in store for NFC - an alternative service, or more upbeat music?
• Was that really it?

I had chatted previously with my hubby about this sort of stuff, and he seemed to have a lot of opinions about it, which, if you know him, is a bit shocking:  he tends to be an opinion-withholder.  As I listened to Gregg’s message, I had this sense that perhaps Jason should be on the committee instead of myself:  my attitude seemed more frustrated/jaded than his.  Gregg talked with the elders, but the elders felt that the folks being asked to contribute had been prayed about and led to be asked specifically.  So, I figured:  enh, it can’t hurt…

Our first meeting took place on a Sunday afternoon.  The meeting began at 2:00, but folks were encouraged to gather at 1:30 to pray for the church and the group and the process.  Elders and a few others were present:  a little disheartening.

The same structure was set up for each following meeting, and only one or two people in total showed up to pray beforehand.  I understand that it was most likely not an easy time to gather, but I also wondered if the congregation really knew what we were being tasked with and how God could be leading us to a place that could shake us to our core.  When that few of people showed up, was it because our individual schedules were more important than the corporate schedule?  Or had it not been communicated well to the congregation what was going to be explored?  Or did the faith community just not care?

Little People are playing drums . . . with my good whisks.  Look for the next installment in a bit.

My dad gave me my first personality test when I was sixteen:  it was one of those Myers-Briggs type indicator things.  I’m an INFJ - one letter off from perfection, according to my father (who is an INTJ).  My brother wanted to take the test, but Dad said he didn’t have a personality to test yet. 

In college I really got into looking at personality types.  Perhaps it was the selfish side of me, or perhaps I was so confused about what to do in life that if I could figure out my self, then I could figure out the rest.  One night, probably after working too late at a coffee shop and then coming home to a household consisting of twelve other embodiments of estrogen (far above what is healthy for any human being to endure), I came up with a theory:  religious denominations are not so much about theological agreements, but personality types.  Quakers - introverted/contemplative.  Nazarenes - service-oriented.  Baptists - extroverted/social group oriented.  Pentecostal - demonstrative.  Etc., etc., etc.  With that thought in mind, each denomination would have a lot of the same strengths *and* a lot of the same weaknesses:  the lack of personality diversity leads to one-sidedness, lacking the “shadow side”.  I know:  lots of problems with the theory, but there may be some truth to it.

I’ve been thinking about that more this week as I’ve been hearing feedback regarding the Next Steps recommendations.  Yes, any change is generally perceived as loss, but I’ve been amazed (not in a good way) at the amount of difficult feedback that’s been expressed.  Some people feel in the dark about the implementation of the recommendations; understandable - hopefully something will be shared from up front once the logistics are figured out.  Education needs to happen:  what does “fasting” mean, and what will happen during this time?  Why do we think it’s important?   What was the journey of folks coming to the Two Services recommendation?  Etc.  All legitimate questions.

These things have been brought to the business meeting:  they have not been kept confidential.  And folks on the Next Steps group have been more than willing to share with those who were interested (my poor husband and small group are probably now having to feign interest:  they got to hear updates whether they wanted to or not  :)).

But hearing questions at this point in the process like:

• Well, why was this committee appointed at all?
• Who appointed them?
• Where is this coming from?
• Why do we have to change?
• How long has this been going on?

with an overtone of suspicion is really surprising (and frustrating).

What I’m recognizing is a lack of trust in authority in our faith gathering.  And I wonder where that comes from.  I don’t sense that our hired pastors have done anything to deserve a lack of trust:  they lead in very open and transparent ways.  The elders have been fair and thoughtful and intentional as far as I’ve known.  So then I start to wonder:  do Quakers have a problem with authority in general?

My husband comes from the Nazarene tradition which is much more hierarchical than Quakers (well, almost *anyone* would be more hierarchical);  I don’t sense that such a recommendation would be an issue for them (but I could be totally off). It seems that if elders (i.e. people the church has trusted in having a sense of leading and leadership for the faith gathering) felt the need to appoint a committee, and the folks on that committee spent a lot of time and work and prayer and thought and conversation and passion and tears and self working hard to discern the next steps, and then that committee made their recommendation to the elders (who are supposed to be some of the wise folks of the church), and the elders approved that recommendation — it would seem that perhaps the recommendation should be considered to be a good thing and acted upon without having to prove it’s legitimacy and win over every.single.individual.

Yes, I know there are exceptions to the rule; yes, I know it’s wonderful that an individual’s voice is considered in the Quaker business meetings.  But good Lord:  how ever will we get anything done if we don’t trust?!!  What’s the point of having elders if we don’t believe they have our good in mind?  Why bother listening to the leaders for a Sunday morning message if they don’t have a sense of where we’re going in the first place?  Is that why Quakerism is dwindling down?  I hear that the message our denomination contains is refreshing and freeing and life-giving:  so why are our meetings dying?  Is it because we can’t submit - to one another, to leadership, to the Spirit, to God?

I told Jason I felt uneasy bringing this up because I know I have a problem with submission.  My parents didn’t call me “No Nap Gerick” for no reason.  :)  But perhaps my inability to lay down my preferences for others enables me to see it more clearly in other places in the world.  I’m telling myself that I don’t have to prove my experience or my belief in what I hear God calling us to to anyone:  if I feel manipulated to have to prove myself, I am choosing to feel manipulated (hurrah for CBT).

Initially I felt that Next Steps was about discerning where NFC is called to go.  Now I wonder if it was more about dealing with embedded sins and dysfunctional dynamics that must be named and repented of before we can even think of stepping into a new revelation that God has in store for our faith community — and denomination.  That’s not easy work.  But I’m excited to do it, and I hope and pray that others might engage on the journey as well.

Spirit:  unite and ignite us.

Today at Women’s Bible Fellowship we began a series with Pam Lau titled “Vital Unity with Christ in a Culture of Distraction.”  Right off the bat she asked what takes away our attention from Christ:  my answer - “managing consumption“.  Not a lot of response to that - started making me think that I’m too heady of a thinker - which got me a bit distracted - so maybe it’s a bit more.

Today on Oprah she asked a family to give up eating out, watching TV, buying items, using cell phones, and wasting energy (turning off lights, not having the thermostat set to 75+).  I know the topic of the show was about consumption, but I also wondered how much of it was about distraction:  not paying attention, numbing oneself from reality.  When the wife couldn’t fall asleep without watching TV, I wondered why:  I know I’ve done that in the past, but usually when I didn’t want to hear the voices in my head or didn’t know how to cope with painful void of silence.  I didn’t finish watching the show, seeing as how the act of watching it was distracting me from my life and engaging in a behavior she was asking the family to give up.

Dan Kimball wrote an excellent piece about the importance of theological thinking in today’s worship bodies.  What I noticed was the miscommunication that can occur within our culture of distraction:  either we don’t know what to communicate or aren’t in a posture to receive communication because we’re not fully focused on the issue at hand - we’re distracted.  Being theologically grounded refines that focus.  In my own denominational gatherings I’ve heard so much misinterpretation regarding consensus and the “priesthood of all believers”:  basically the idea that any individual can stop a business item from proceeding forward, whether they’ve sat with the item and prayed over it for a considerable amount of time or not or if they have a relationship with the Lord or not or their life is bearing fruit or not.  I wonder if we were more committed to creating space in our lives to focus on balancing the praxy with the doxy if things would sort themselves out instead of splitting off over and over and over.  [And I think attending a Quaker seminary, even if it's mostly nominal, is wearing off on Kimball:  did ya notice how many questions he asked?  Hello:  queries.  :D].

I meant to go to bed half an hour ago.  But I got . . . distracted.

Again, crossposting a review for my Seminary class.  Thought it could stand some good ol’ Friendly input. 

When “Professor” Clark alluded to the fact that some of us were going off-roading with our elective reading choices, I think a bright flashing neon sign lit up above my head.  :) 

After reading about liturgy and fighting commodification through liturgy, I thought it would be beneficial to explore the core elements of worship and its manifestations within differing traditions.  For the past few weeks I’ve been sitting with Evelyn Underhill’s book “Worship”.  I say that I’ve been sitting with it because, at least for this sleep-deprived reader, it’s not a quick read.  Underhill’s most known work “Mysticism” explores the wider topic of communion/experience/”yadah” with God; this follow-up looks at some more practical ways individuals and groups experience this.  Divided into two parts, the book first details the purpose and the elements of worship and then explores these principles and values in specific denominational expressions. 

“Worship is here considered in its deepest sense, as the response of man to the Eternal; and when we look at the many degrees and forms of this response, and the graded character of human religion, its slow ascent from primitive levels and tendency to carry with it the relics of the past, we need not be surprised that even within the Christian family there is much diversity in the expressive worship which is yet directed towards a single revelation of the Divine” (xxi).  This statement contains elements of the sentiment of Luke Bretherton’s picture of Deep Church drawing from the same well of tradition as well as Andrew Walker’s thoughts on Deep Church and paradosis:  “What is new about this retrieval is that it is a quest for something old, and its modus operandi is not a technique, but a turning back (epistrophe)” (50). 

While looking at the fundamental characteristics of worship, Underhill often details the extremes manifesting from the response to Reality (most often comparing the Anglican church and the Quaker meetings) sharing the strengths and weaknesses of each expression.  For example:  “Habit tends to routine and spiritual red-tape; the vice of the institutionalist.  Attention is apt to care for nothing but the experience of the moment and ignor the need of a stable practice, independent of personal fluctuations; the vice of the individualist.  Habit is a ritualist.  Attention is a pietist.  But it is the beautiful combination of order and spontaneity, docility and freedom, living humbly - and therefore fully and freely - within the agreed pattern of the cultus and not in defiance of it, which is the mark of genuine spiritual maturity and indeed the fine flower of a worshipping life” (22).  This almost reminded me of the characteristics of the modern (ritualist) and post-modern (pietist) movements.  As she moves on to describe early Christian worship, she notes that the earliest form of Charismatic expression was taken on by Hellenistic Christians who moved away from the Jewish models (180).  This seems similar to the modern/postmodern movement as well where the postmodern group is trying to follow a new expression of worship that seems so dissimilar to the previous standard.

Underhill gives some details not only about current worship, but the history of worship starting with the Hebrews and moving to the early church and the denominational splits.  Interestingly she noted in Jewish life that “it was surrounded by a number of small ritual observances; which can easily be dismissed as formal or superstitious, but were really directed - like the small external pieties of the ‘good Catholic’ - to the sanctifying of all the common events of everyday life, by a constant and humble remembrance of the claims of the Eternal God and His Law” (156).  Sounds a little bit like Bretherton’s “mundane holiness” to me where “in our day Christian disciplines and practices must act as antidotes to the attempt to shape our personhood through consumerism, technology, and the myriads to Pasnopticanlike institutions of the corporation state” (244). 

I spent more time looking at Underhill’s evaluation of Quaker/Free Churches than the other denominations because this is the tradition I come from.  I have been a bit disheartened reading “Consuming Religion” with Miller’s thesis that liturgy fights commodification of religion.  One of the main characteristics of the Friends is the lack of symbol/ritual/liturgy of the high church.  In the preface to George Fox’s “Journal”, William Penn notes, “The bent and stress of their ministry was conversion to God, regeneration and holiness, not schemes of doctrines and verbal creeds or new forms of worship, but a leaving off in religion the superfluous and reducing the ceremonious and formal part, and pressing earnestly the substantial, the necessary and profitable part, as all upon a serious reflection must and do acknowledge.”  After hearing this most of my life, it’s easy for me to assume that Quakers are anti-ligurgy.  Miller quotes Terrance Tilley:  “The significance or meaning of the doctrine of the Real Presence can be paraphrased or summarized theologically, but it cannot be fully understood except when it is connected with the ritual practices of the community that holds the doctrine” (202).  Tilley was speaking of the Eucharist, but his reference to the “Real Presence” seems to mesh with some of Underhill’s thoughts:  “It points past all signs and symbols to the Invisible Holy, trusts the immanent presence with men of the Invisible Holy, and perpetually reminds us of the awe and humility, the pause, the hush, the deliberate break with succession, with which man should approach the great experience of communion with teh living God:  ‘not hurrying into the exercise of these things, so soon as teh bell rings, as other Christians do’” (237).  Perhaps there’s more liturgy involved than I had previously thought, but it simply looks different.  But what does that look like today within the differing branches of Quakerism with some being evangelical and some not, some being programmed and some not? 

I’m uncertain as to what to do with this book.  It seems very black and white, all or nothing.  Underhill describes strengths and weaknesses, but it’s either the best of the strengths or the worst of the weaknesses - not a lot of inbetween or what happens with the introduction of shallow bricolage.  It reminds me of the difference between analyzing something in the lab under ideal conditions versus using it in the real world with unknown variables.  Her explanations of symbols and sacraments were incredibly helpful (they are a means of God sharing Truth with us).  I greatly appreciated the pointing out of similarities of truth and purpose and principles within the traditions:  she detailed the similarities without making them the “same” - showing the beauty of each characteristic or expression, like a family portrait.  Perhaps as I chat with others we can take some time to gaze deeper at our latest family pictures - the good and the bad, the modern and the postmodern, the institutional and the emerging, and see the beauty of each grandparent and parent and child and wait in anticipation of the generations to come.