Tent Improvisation
Toward an Improvisation Approach
This is a follow up to my essay, Tents Within Tents. The metaphor of tents, and especially that of the “big tent,” is helpful when thinking of relational interaction within faith or philosophical frameworks. I hope this can be an explanation and even practical help for how we can move and work within the tents humanity pitches in ways that inform, grow, and strengthen our humanity and our faithfulness. Think of the people within the tents as players in a musical combo; I’ll use jazz as a base because it can explain how to see interactions between and within the tents through improvisation. When I write improvisation, I do not mean MacGyvering* it. Rather, improvisation is a completely relational trust between musicians in an agreed-upon language.
Before we get to the music, consider the tents with center poles holding them up. This is a picture of a centered set in which are tethered to the particularity of “our” tent while freely moving around and into other tents at the edges. For an extended treatment of centered versus bounded sets, see this essay entitled The Prime Directive The tent centers help to keep conversations grounded and remind us of those things we see as essential. Centers help us avoid exclusionary ideas like certitude and sectarianism. But to interact outside our tent, we need trust and an agreed language. Trust should exist to allow us to reach out and within the tent for ideas and to help us grow. For those of us in Wesleyan contexts, the centers help us emulate John Wesley’s curiosity and drive to work out pastorally how people can live transformed lives, including physically, within relational holiness.
I have mentioned before that I view the way Wesley “did” theology as akin to improvisational jazz. He had a center of understanding in God as love and he engaged with voices near and far, contemporary and ancient, in working out how his experiences of God working in creation could reconcile what he read in scripture. His experience and wide reading causes Wesley to review and revise his own theological framework as he grew in understanding, culminating in what Randy Maddox terms “the mature Wesley.” Wesley shows an intense curiosity for understanding God and scripture considering Jesus and his experiences as a pastor. I believe that Wesley’s Methodism increased and spread because of his attention to being rightly related rather than right thinking. Not that Wesley downplayed truth or orthodoxy, but that his attention to those was informed pastorally by his understanding of God as love (see the book of First John). Wesley even included those he saw in error within Christianity (I deal with that in a later paragraph.)
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Jazz improvisation is a relational system of trust between musicians. Often extended improvisational solos or combinations mark live performances of jazz. These performances require the system of relationship between each individual musician and the instruments of those musicians. Each musician plays and “speaks” within a shared language and relationship according to the piece played or style of jazz. Within the performance, there are ebbs and flows in which various instruments will come to the fore as their “turn” arrives and they shine in the spotlight. Herbie Hancock, one of the most prolific jazz pianists of the last modern age, describes the way this shared language can cause new branches and directions. During a live performance with the Miles Davis Quintet, Hancock played a wrong note. Miles Davis paused just for a moment and then incorporated that note into a branched melody. Hancock relays that Miles “didn’t hear it as a mistake, he heard it as something that happened, an event, as part of what was happening at that moment.” (Miles)
The story of Herbie Hancock and Miles Davis illustrates the concept of how improvisation works between trusted partners. This is an existential style of work, as it forces us to be in the moment. While we can look to the future, the past is only helpful, as it grounds and centers us. The past is best used as a measure of growth and increased understanding. While the past and tradition are important, living in the past leads to death. That may sound hyperbolic, but when we continually seek to recreate a past event, we become frozen in time and cannot live. The Wim Wenders' film Until the End of the World is an example of this as the main characters become addicted to viewing their dreams in a technological device and cannot recognize the peril of the present or hope of the future they once saw in those dreams. The past becomes a seductive call to look back rather than around and ahead.
John Wesley always saw how humanity and creation could be transformed through encounters with a present and loving God, and he constantly looked around and ahead. These encounters invite us into a growing in holiness as we love God and love our fellow humans. Wesley explains his understanding of the breadth of Christian expression in his sermon on the Church. Wesley understood his centeredness in the Church of England, but he did not see that as the totality of those he called Christian.
“I dare not exclude from the Church catholic all those congregations in which any unscriptural doctrines, which cannot be affirmed to be 'the pure word of God, ' are sometimes, yea, frequently preached; neither all those congregations, in which the sacraments are not 'duly administered. ' Certainly if these things are so, the Church of Rome is not so much as a part of the catholic Church; seeing therein neither is 'the pure word of God ' preached, nor the sacraments 'duly administered. ' Whoever they are that have 'one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one God and Father of all, ' I can easily bear with their holding wrong opinions, yea, and superstitious modes of worship: Nor would I, on these accounts, scruple still to include them within the pale of the catholic Church; neither would I have any objection to receive them, if they desired it, as members of the Church of England.” (Wesley Sermon 74)
Oh, that we could recapture that catholic spirit of John Wesley rather than the spirit of certitude, sectarian factionalism, and fundamentalism. Call me an optimist, but I believe this is possible through prayer, trust, and graceful improvisation. I genuinely attempt to put this into practice in my ministry. While I realize I can be criticized for believing in the “big tent” so strongly, yet I criticize those whose impulse is sectarian; I believe it is consistent. My issue with most sectarians is not that they have a different view, interpretation, or concept that I do. My issue is that they claim that to be the only genuine expression of Christianity, holiness, a denomination, or theological framework.
In my role as Discipleship Pastor in my local church, I create class plans, review materials for our teachers, and oversee the way we teach. Sometimes a study is imperfect or has ideas I disagree with. But if those ideas are orthodox and fit within our doctrines, I am OK with them. One reason is that I truly take the big tent seriously. Another is that, when considering the class makeup and the teacher, I realize that sometimes for a deeper truth to be grasped, the language I may be uncomfortable with is required to lure people. What does that mean practically? I may have issues with some language in a study (regardless of its source) but see an underlying truth that needs to be received. Sometimes the language I dislike is required for the students to receive the truth; they need a familiar base from which to build a better language. I’ll be honest, that was one of the hardest ideas for me to embrace, but it has made a tremendous difference in the way I minister and teach.
What I long for is the ability for Christians to embrace the wonder and curiosity of people like John Wesley, Phoebe Palmer, Mildred Wynkoop, Ray Dunning, Randy Maddox, Tom Oord, Tripp Fuller, Aaron Simmons, and so many more voices speaking of God. I will frankly settle for the opportunity for clergy to discuss and learn from one another without the fear of being labelled as heretic or other terms. That’s my prayer for our world.
*Rigging and piecing together
“Miles Davis According to Herbie Hancock - YouTube.” Accessed June 23, 2021.
Wesley, Sermon 74. https://www.resourceumc.org/en/content/sermon-74-of-the-church