Carving soap and meeting neighbors

Our church throws a block party

by Ken Rummer for Presbyterians Today | Special to Presbyterian News Service

“Old man with beard,” c.1985, and “Owl,” 2021. (Carvings and photo by Ken Rummer)

Last month I coached soap carving. Our church, Ankeny Presbyterian Church in Ankeny, Iowa, was throwing an outdoor block party for our neighborhood — hot dogs, a bounce castle, donuts made to order, even a fire truck. One of our neighbors offered to play guitar and sing, so we had live music, too.

In the craft area, beside the friendship bracelets and the flowers cut from muffin papers, I set up a card table topped with a beach towel and sharpened ice cream sticks and laid out 44 bars of Ivory soap. As a sample, I brought a piece I had done years ago, a balding man with a Rip Van Winkle beard, carved from a single bar of soap.

I set the beard-man out on the table and got started on an owl. I also had a few patterns ready for use: a star, a car, a turtle, the owl and a fish.

A middle school sister and her early elementary brother stopped to see what I was doing. I showed them the owl in progress and asked if they would like to give soap carving a try. They thought they would, so I gave them each a bar of soap and invited them to pick a pattern or make their own design.

After they traced around the pattern with the sharpened ice cream stick, I showed them how to use the edge of the stick to scrape shavings off the bar and lower the background. When that was done to their satisfaction, I demonstrated rounding over the raised design and adding some details. The last instruction was to carve their initials on the back of the soap.

Before the first two had finished, some more kids arrived. I passed out soap and carving sticks and got them started. And so it went through the two and a half hours of the party, and so I began to meet some neighbors.

The adults stopped by and admired the creations, but it was the kids who were willing to try something they might not be good at. After a couple of hours we had made quite a pile of chips and shavings. Soap scent and frying donuts, that’s my nose memory from the party.

The Rev. Ken Rummer, who’s honorably retired,  blogs regularly for Presbyterians Today.

I salute the courage of the organizing teams. They hung invites on front doors for three or four blocks around the church. “Everyone welcome,” they said. But with such an open invitation and with no RSVPs required, how do you plan the food?  How many hot dogs do you buy to feed a crowd of guests that might number 30 or 300?

Our congregation’s mission statement points us to sharing God’s love beginning in our own neighborhood. And when it comes to loving our neighbors, actually meeting them seems like a good place to start.

I can report that neighbor-meeting did happen at the block party, assisted by fire truck stickers, caramel apple donuts and Ivory soap.

Ken Rummer writes about life and faith from the middle of Iowa by the High Trestle trail. Previous posts are available here.

Sightings - To speak a blessing

Hebrew Blessing, Numbers 6:24-26.  Calligraphy by K. Rummer.

Photo by Bob Rummer.

A vision and an invitation

by Ken Rummer

The walking path leads me along the edge of a wooded draw. Glancing down through the shadows of the trees, I notice a bright flash of light. With a turn-aside and a second look, I see that the creek has managed to pull the sun out of the sky, all the way down to the lowest place in the woods. From the water there, the sun blazes up at me.

I think blessing-speaking is like that. To speak a blessing is to be the creek, drawing down God’s light, even into low places, and reflecting it, even into shadows.

The Lord bless you and keep you.

Years ago, at the end of the service that ordained me as a Minister of Word and Sacrament for the Presbyterians, I was given the opportunity to do the benediction. Newly robed and stoled, my first act of ordained ministry was to offer a blessing.

Over the course of the next four decades, raising my hands over the gathered congregation and pronouncing the benediction became one of my favorite parts of the Sunday service, and Numbers 6:24-26 became one of my favorite benedictions. It’s the one that begins, “The Lord bless you and keep you.”

I don’t remember hearing that benediction from the pastors I had growing up, but our church choir often sang an arrangement of it at the end of the service. When I got old enough to sing with them, I sang it, too. Even the overlapping and interlocking Amens at the end. 

As a pastor, my regular use of the Numbers benediction grew out of a Presbyterian worship resource, The Service For the Lord’s Day, that came out in 1984. The editors elevated “The Lord Bless You and Keep You” to the second option for an end-of-service blessing, noting Calvin’s use of this benediction in his liturgy of 1542.

Updated language clarified the meaning behind the traditional lifted countenances and faces caused to shine:

The Lord bless you and keep you.

The Lord be kind and gracious to you.

The Lord look upon you with favor and give you peace.

It was this version that I often used as a pastor at the close of worship, though memory sometimes tripped me up by suggesting a phrase from the older wording.

The Lord be kind and gracious to you.

A younger congregant and fan of the Star Wars movies once told me that he liked the part of the service when I held up my hands and the lightning shot out of my fingers. I’m not crazy about being compared to an evil emperor, but the young man may have been on to something.

As I’ve come to understand it, the benediction isn’t just words about a blessing. The words actually convey the blessing. The language is performative. There is actual blessing taking place. Hence, the lightning.

In Numbers, the job of speaking the blessing is given to Aaron the priest, but I haven’t wanted to limit the benedicting to pastors. 

One Pentecost Sunday, I passed out red crepe paper stoles to the children and had them join me at the front. We held up our hands and offered the benediction together. 

Other times I invited the whole congregation to turn toward the center aisle and raise their arms and offer the blessing to each other. 

I suggested such an “all-bless” at the end of a recent video conference meeting for a presbytery committee I moderate. The power of that blessing, even across miles and through screens, surprised me.

The Lord look upon you with favor and give you peace.

So let me invite you to join me in speaking a blessing or two.

It’s a way to be the creek, reflecting God’s light. It’s a way to bless others, and even, as Jesus taught, our enemies (Luke 6:28). 

And if we need some good words to use, Numbers 6:24-26 stands ready to help. “The Lord bless you and keep you … ”.

One caution. When you undertake to speak such a blessing, you might want to stand back just a bit. 

On account of the lightning.

Ken Rummer, Teaching Elder PCUSA, Honorably Retired

Ken Rummer writes about life and faith from the Middle of Iowa by the High Trestle Trail. His previous posts are available at  http://presbyterianmission.org/today/author/krummer