when you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you don't blame the lettuce...

As a part of my commitment to self-care AND professional development as both pastor and spiritual director, this week I began a five-part reflection at Wisdom Ways. The Rev. Dr. Cynthia Bourgeault has revised her "Introduction to Wisdom School" course, designed to help practitioners move beyond mere information to "knowing more deeply rather than knowing more." She writes:

Wisdom schools appear throughout history during two critical periods: when humanity stands on the edge of evolutionary leaps in consciousness, and, during times of great planetary instability. Our current era fulfills both of these conditions as we struggle between individualistic consciousness and an emerging collective awareness that can think from the whole to the part.

Taking on this commitment of study and practice - including renewing my on-
again, off-again romance with Centering Prayer - brought to mind a poem by Tich Naht Hanh he calls: When You Plant Lettuce.

When you plant lettuce,
if it does not grow well,
you don't blame the lettuce.

You look for reasons
it is not doing well.
It may need fertilizer,
or more water, or less sun.
You never blame the lettuce.

Yet if we have problems
with our friends or family,
we blame the other person.

But if we know how
to take care of them,
they will grow well,
like the lettuce. Blaming
has no positive effect at all,
nor does trying to persuade
using reason and argument.
That is my experience.

No blame,
no reasoning,
no argument,
just understanding.

If you understand,
and you show that you understand,
you can love, and the situation will change.

Blaming - and reacting - is not what's needed. Instead, to paraphrase Bourgeault, whenever we engage in conversation, it is best to do so from an inner quiet so that we might speak from silence with force and agency. For the past 45 years, I seem to learn and practice this only to gradually forget it and lose touch. Perhaps with each recollection, I go a little deeper, but then again, maybe not. There is a rhythm to my journey and it involves trust, rest, silence, and careful conversation.

reflections on relinquishing and renewal part two...

NOTE: This is part two of an unfolding reflection on relinquishing and renewal.

Over the past week, our small family marked the Feast Day of St. Francis and celebrated our grandson’s 12th birthday (they’re the same day), harvested our first 10lb pumpkin from our own garden, brought most of our plants indoors to escape the first frost, visited Ioka Farms for yet another family search for the Great Pumpkin, and blessed about 15 dogs, along with a few cats and a bunny, at church. It has been a full time. Autumn is now full-blown in these parts as the trees shed their colors and the squirrels and chipmunks snatch up the acorns. Soon, all the yellows, oranges, and browns will give way to silvers and greys, and the stripped-down hills and wetlands will invite us to return to the inward journey. All Hallows’ Eve is just around the corner, so too All Saints and Souls Days – thin places in time and matter where ordinary people sometimes sense something of the Creator’s vast albeit mysterious presence within and all around us. Parker Palmer puts it like this:

For years, my delight in the autumn color show quickly morphed into sadness as I watched the beauty die. Focused on the browning of summer’s green growth, I allowed the prospect of death to eclipse all that’s life-giving about fall and its sensuous delights. Then I began to understand a simple fact: All the “falling” that’s going on out there is full of promise. Seeds are being planted and leaves are being composted as Earth prepares for yet another uprising of green. Today, as I weather the late autumn of my own life, I find nature a trustworthy guide. It’s easy to fixate on everything that goes to ground as time goes by: the disintegration of a relationship, the disappearance of good work well-done, the diminishment of a sense of purpose and meaning. But as I’ve come to understand that life “composts” and “seeds” us as autumn does the Earth, I’ve seen how possibility gets planted in us even in the hardest of times.
(check it out: https://www.yesmagazine.org/orphan/2018/10/22/parker-palmer-on-autumn-aging-and-acceptance)

One layer is diminished – and dies – while another simultaneously sends seeds of new life outward to prosper and grow in their own time. On Indigenous Peoples Day in the USA – a national holiday saturated in our culture wars – I find my heart singing the wisdom of the ancient prophet Isaiah, who captured the paradox of creation in his poetic oracle.

Seek the Lord while he may be found; call upon him while he is near; For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose and succeed in the thing for which I sent it. For you shall go out in joy and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress; instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle, and it shall be to the Lord for a memorial, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.(Isaiah 55)

This sounds to me like both the first inhabitants of this land—the Pocomtuc and Nipmuc nations of the Machican/Algonquin region—and St. Francis of Assisi. Without appropriating their respective cultures, I am grateful to recognize that my own Western spiritual tradition celebrates a holistic spirituality that honors the unity of creation, too.

To be sure, the Franciscan way is a minority report in Christianity – what Richard Rohr calls a generous and alternative orthodoxy - but so too the practices of ancient Celtic spirituality that peeks its head up in culture from time to time. For those who practice, we have now entered one of the unique, but all too often ignored, liturgical season called Allhallowtide. Officially, it spans only the three days between October 31 and November 2. Aesthetically and incarnationally, however, it feels like it has already begun. In this, nature clearly manifests a wisdom greater than the contemporary church, as the greenery, mammals, birds, and reptiles of this region prepare to withdraw from their outward activities in anticipation of winter.

Those who live close to the land grasp this as their once-abundant fields are

harvested and ploughed under before the frost. But rather than honoring the rhythmic wisdom of nature with rest, New Englanders initiate a new cycle of activity: schools reopen and students return, organizational budgeting ramps up, and church programming kicks into high gear after the summer hiatus. This feels increasingly wrong to me. Could it be yet another contradiction of domination long embedded into our culture, economics, and politics? Trisha Hersey of the Nap Ministry is on to something when she observes that:

We are grind culture. Grind culture is our everyday behaviors, expectations, and engagements with each other and the world around us. We have been socialized, manipulated, and indoctrinated by everything in culture to believe the lies of grind culture. For a capitalist system to thrive, our false beliefs about productivity and labor must remain. We have internalized its teachings and become zombie-like in Spirit and exhausted in body. So, we push ourselves and each other under the guise of being hyperproductive and efficient. From a very young age, we begin the slow process of disconnecting from our bodies’ need to rest, and we are praised when we work ourselves to exhaustion… Our bodies and Spirits do not belong to capitalism, no matter how it is theorized and presented. Our divinity secures this, and it is our right to claim this boldly. I’m not grinding ever. I trust the Creator and my Ancestors to always make space for my gifts and talents without needing to work myself into exhaustion.

Small wonder the ancient Celts created a 40-day Advent season that not only mirrors Lent but constructs an intentionally counter-cultural season of rest and respect that resonates with Mother Nature. In Celtic Advent, a wheel was removed from one of the farm’s working wagons to become the prototype of our Advent wreath. It thus slowed work down while providing a frame for candles to illuminate a darken home. Ms. Hershey adds:

Rest is as natural as breathing and waking up. Rest is part of our nature. Resting is about getting people back to their truest selves. To what they were before capitalism robbed you of your ability to just be. Rest is anything that slows you down enough to allow your body and mind to connect in the deepest way. We must focus on knowing that our bodies and our worth are not connected to how many things we can check off a list. You can begin to create a “Not-To-Do-List” as you gain the energy to maintain healthy boundaries. Our opportunity to rest and reimagine rest is endless. There is always time to rest when we reimagine.

I rather like the way Randy and Edith Woodley, co-founders of the Eloheh Indigenous Center for Earth Justice and Eloheh Farm and Seeds, put it: “To overwork—that is, to spend time working for what one does not need—means that one’s life is out of balance, and it breaks the circle of harmony.” I have come to trust that the liturgical calendar I have inherited – and cherish – holds some additional possibilities for reclaiming a more balanced way of being. Like the great Red Maple in the wetlands behind our home that first bursts forth in wild yellows before becoming gray and bare, there is a time for every purpose under heaven – and now is clearly a time to journey inward.

reflections on relinquishing and renewal: part one

NOTE: In keeping with the spirituality of this season, I’ve been drawn to craft a multiple-part reflection on relinquishing. Over the next few weeks, I will attempt to articulate some of the reasons why St. Paul’s call to kenosis has become a touchstone. In Philippians 2, the apostle borrows a baptismal hymn from the early church: “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, assuming human likeness. And being found in appearance as a human, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross. Therefore, God exalted him even more highly and gave him the name that is above every other name, so that at the name given to Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

 Part One:

When we moved from Tucson to Pittsfield – a dramatic journey that included emotional peaks and valleys as well as geographic ones – we not only slowly wandered through deserts, prairies, mountains, and farmland before crossing the Atlantic for an extended romp through London, but we also returned to the land of our respective births. In ways that continue to be revealed, we began a sojourn of relinquishment: travelling backwards through lands once vanquished and violated by so-called pioneers and settlers, our return to New England has been an expedition of reversal. To say that this was not clear at the outset would be an understatement. Yes, I felt a warm sense of security when we first hit the rolling hills of the Berkshires. Clearly, the terrain around Webster and Lake Chaubunagungamaug had long been a family homeland. At least four generations regularly made the lake our vacation destination. A variety of church retreats and numerous honeymoons also took place here. And experiencing all four seasons was ecstatic.

But it wasn’t until I returned to gardening that the magnitude and meaning of this move was clarified. You see, while I experienced blessing after blessing while doing urban ministry in Michigan and Ohio, and genuinely loved the Sonoran Desert with its big sky, wild flora, and almost prehistoric fauna (okay, I am not a fan of rattlesnakes!). I could never get the hang of gardening in those places. In Saginaw and Cleveland, there wasn’t adequate space. And in Arizona, without perpetual drip irrigation, plants placed outdoors in the morning withered and died by sunset. I was able to amass an unruly collection of houseplants for a few years, but nothing grounded me like the feel of cool, dark soil in my hands as I carefully nestled seedlings into fertile earth. I had not realized how much I missed intimacy with Mother Earth. Nor did I know how much she wanted to teach me about owning, grieving, relinquishing, and then revisioning my heritage as a Scots-Irish settler. The Native American wisdom-keeper, Robin Wall Kimmerer, put it like this:

“Action on behalf of life transforms. Because the relationship between self and the world is reciprocal, it is not a question of first getting enlightened or saved and then acting. As we work to heal the earth, the earth heals us.” (Braiding Sweetgrass)

 It began with the seasons. New England blessed us the first year back with a smorgasbord of colors. The trees in the wetlands behind our home burst into vibrant yellows, reds, oranges, and browns, while sumac turned a deep crimson, and sunflowers and goldenrod waved to us in the wind. The aroma of burning wood wafted our way as daylight gave up to midnight in the afternoon. At first, it was disorienting to enter a store at 3:30 pm only to exit into a shroud of darkness. But those late October and early November days helped me reconnect with the numinous mystery of thin places in time and space – small wonder that All Hallows’ Eve and All Saints' and Souls' Days became ensconced in these months.

Add to that our first local Halloween parade, with costumes and floats right out of “Northern Exposure,” and it was clear that we were no longer in Kansas anymore, Toto. We promised ourselves we wouldn’t carp or whine about winter – it rarely even hints at freezing in the desert – so we soon gathered protective thermal underwear, snowshoes, and eventually hand-me-down cross-country skis. I discovered the varying shades of grey and brown of winter to be soothing after a decade of 300+ days of sunshine in the Sonoran Desert. The barren trees and frozen rivers offered a calming call to join nature’s inward journey, which led me to Parker Palmer’s “spirituality of the seasons”.

 Autumn is a season of sacred beauty, but it is also a season of decline: the days grow shorter, the light is suffused, and summer’s abundance decays toward winter’s death. Faced with this inevitable winter, what does nature do in autumn? She scatters the seeds that will bring new growth in the spring — and she scatters them with amazing abandon. In my own experience of autumn, I am rarely aware that seeds are being planted. Instead, my mind is on the fact that the green growth of summer is browning and beginning to die. My delight in the autumn colors is always tinged with melancholy, a sense of impending loss that is only heightened by the beauty all around. I am drawn down by the prospect of death more than I am lifted by the hope of new life. But as I explore autumn’s paradox of dying and seeding, I feel the power of a metaphor. In the autumnal events of my own experience, I fixate on surface appearances — on the decline of meaning, the decay of relationships, the death of a work. (For more, please go to:  https://fetzer.org/news/the-paradox-of-fall-a-sacred-meditation/)

 Palmer put me back in touch with Thomas Merton, whom I had read in the 1970s but lost touch with as my ministry matured. “There is in all visible things…a hidden wholeness,” Merton contends. A sacramental way of seeing wherein “the visible world of nature conceals a great truth in plain sight: diminishment and beauty, darkness and light, death and life are not opposites. They hold together in the paradox of the 'hidden wholeness.” A Zen koan says: When the student is ready, the Buddha will appear. And my Buddha was Mother Nature, who was starting to sound a lot like the Grateful Dead in “Ripple. (Additional parts to follow as autumn unfolds.)

personalism, nonviolence and seeking the left wing of what is possible...

One of the most complex challenges I experience doing ministry in this ever-shifting moment in history has to do with radical Christian love. Let me note from the outset that I am NOT talking about a sentimental spirituality that denies the reality of evil; nor am I advocating a naive notion of grace like Rodney King said after the LA riots of 1991: Why can't we all just get along? No, as a life-long student of MLK, I affirm his spirituality of personalism that was shaped by both the mystical Howard Thurman and the philosophical Jacques Ellul. This way of engaging the world posits a third way between the radical laissez-faire individualism of conservatives and the inclination of liberals to craft a one-size-fits-all collectivism. 

Christian Personalism emphasizes the significance, uniqueness, and inviolability of the individual, while also highlighting the person's inherently relational nature. "It's a philosophy that stands in contrast to the forces of massification and dehumanization Ellul saw in modern society, particularly within the context of technology. Authentic human relationships should be characterized by loving engagement and meaningful dialogue, rather than manipulation or control." At least these insights are at the core of this discipline:

+ Each person is unique and valuable, and should be treated with integrity rather than as part of a faceless mass. Ellul and King believed that realistic love challenges the movement towards conformity endemic to institutional bureaucracy, the intrusive dehumanization of unrestrained technology, and the cruel indifference fostered by rugged individualism. David Brooks recently shared a 21st-century take on this in a recent NY Times essay: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/07/opinion/happiness-community-wealth.html

+ Personalism finds ideological abstractions to be destructive. In all matters, especially conflict, relationships matter. "A genuine human connection, characterized by love and dialogue, as opposed to the impersonal relationships fostered by technology and mass society, is vital. Modern society tends to reduce individuals to cogs in a machine rather than recognizing and affirming the inherent dignity of each person." And both Ellul and King practiced a Christianity founded upon "the importance of loving one's neighbor and recognizing God's image in every individual."

For me, this means striving to NOT judge another based solely on the obvious. So many of those I disagree with politically, pragmatically, aesthetically, and spiritually are profoundly complex, loving beings. I barely know even the surface level of their stories. Over the years, I have come to realize that I have neither the wisdom nor the grace to make informed judgments about how they spend their time or resources. God knows I've been a mess inside and out of my own life at different times, and people made time and space for me to ripen and ask for forgiveness. I can't help but think of Kris Kristofferson's song about Dennis Hoppe: The Pilgrim.

See him wasted on the sidewalk, in his jacket and his jeans

Wearin' yesterday's misfortunes like a smile

Once he had a future full of money, love and dreams

Which he spent like they was goin' out of style

And he keeps right on a-changin' for the better or the worse

Searchin' for a shrine he's never found

Never knowin' if believin' is a blessin' or a curse

Or if the goin' up was worth the comin' down

He's a poet - He's a picker - He's a prophet - He's a pusher

He's a pilgrim and a preacher and a problem when he's stoned

He's a walkin' contradiction - partly truth and partly fiction

Taking every wrong direction on his lonely way back home

At this late stage in my ethical/moral development, I rarely find much value in linear credos. Of course, they are sincere attempts to articulate some profound convictions in this season of sanctified slippery slopes. As both the Left and the Right like to say: if you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything. So, if these laundry lists of convictions give birth to meaningful conversations, I'm all in. My preference, however, is a commitment to what my spiritual tradition used to proclaim: never place a period where God puts a comma. For me, this means

listening more than speaking, asking more questions than pronouncements, and meeting others where they are rather than where we think we should be. When I can do this, I am often blessed by where the relationship takes us.

Now, I have no illusions that this always works. Dr. King used to say that laws rarely change another's heart, but laws can keep some of us from harming others - especially those who are most vulnerable. King was as much a Niebuhrian as well as a personalist. After decades of living into my training as an organizer with Cesar Chavez and the farm workers union, as well as a variety of faith-based community organizations shaped by Saul Alinsky, I have come to understand that, strategically, a personalist committed to justice can have no permanent enemies. Too often, ideologues - or the privileged - sacrifice the good in pursuit of the perfect. I like the way Michael Harrington, founder of Democratic Socialists of America, used to put it: our quest is to discover the left wing of what is possible. This is a practical way of incarnating a spiritual discipline that abhors self-righteousness. The challenge in our conflicts then becomes a quest to discover and fortify our shared self-interest. Two examples come to mind:

+ First, Chavez was able to win collective bargaining rights for farm workers that simultaneously limited the power of landowners while giving agricultural laborers a voice in their own destiny. This did not happen through acts of noblesse oblige or a moral change of heart (although one grower's deep commitment to Torah led him to sign a contract with the union as an act of faith). Most of the time, however, it took well-trained picket lines, sophisticated organizing among a variety of potential allies, including spiritual, cultural, and news organizations, as well as an international boycott of table grapes, Gallo wine, and head lettuce. There were clear goals in this struggle, not abstract pep rallies. There were discernible payoffs for all involved, too, as everyone's self-interest was clarified. The key was recognizing the differences between selflessness and selfishness: one turns us into doormats, the other bullies. The third way, self-interest, acknowledges that we ALL have skin in the game and seeks to celebrate this. Crafting a personalist way of being is always a work in progress, but suggests a path through the wilderness. 

+ Second, the late Harry Belafonte told U2's Bono about a moment before the Voting Rights Act of 1965 became law. The marshals of the civil rights movement were together considering next steps. They were frustrated and started to slander then Atty. General Robert Kennedy: "He's nothing but a rich Southie from Boston filled with ugly race hatred." Dr. King interrupted this bitching with clarity and conviction. "We will NO longer meet and strategize if all we can do is complain about RFK. Your job is to find a moral way to move forward that is both congruent with our nonviolent principles and recognizes that even RFK is a beloved child of God." Belafonte went on to say that King told his allies: We know that Kennedy is a deeply religious man, so make his faith come alive. This led some of the architects of liberation to meet with RFK's bishop; who, in turn, met and prayed with Kennedy. Over time, these relationships not only changed the younger Kennedy into a righteous crusader for the civil rights movement he once opposed but also transformed the hearts and minds of those on the front llne of the civil rights movement.

This commitment is unlikely to bear fruit among the true believers of the current regime. If you've read M. Scott Peck's, People of the Lie, the Army psychologist charged with investigating the My Lai massacre (which the Army immediately refused to publish) explains how evil incrementally consumes our soul when we refuse to see our wounds and deal with them honestly. The more we lie and deny our faults, the more evil grows within. Roman Catholic priest, Greg Boyle, who founded Home Boy, Inc. - a community of transformation among the gangs of LA - is clear that none of us is born evil. When we endure violence to our body, mind, and soul, however, we start to pass our damage on to those around us. Our wounds can be redressed and healed through honesty, encouragement, courage, and love, but it takes a community of solidarity and accountability to make it happen. We all yearn to belong, to be loved, to be cherished. A lifetime of denial and lies not only subverts the possibility of renewal but also fertilizes the seeds of evil within. So, barring an act of God, too much water has gone under the bridge for the President to change. 

But that need not be true for many who voted for him - and this is where a strategic, disciplined, and consistent love can be a catalyst for change. Lead singer of REM, Michael Stipe, used to say: "Labels are for soup cans, not people." And in this is where I find my heart calling, even as fear, hatred, and destruction is ratcheted up. Gandhi taught us to BE the change we desire. I understand this to mean incarnating nonviolent love, not in a capricious, random way, but strategically and with discipline. The wisdom tradition of my faith tradition says that to everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven. In the face of all that is dying around us, could one aspect of resistance include radical and sacrificial love?

a border crossing experiment...

We are conducting a quick experiment that involves crossing the border into Canada by car. When the current regime came into power - and began their cruel and random attacks on people of color who MAY be undocumented - we were freaked out. We have some deep friendships in Canada. We love the groove and feel of both Montreal and Ottawa. I have long participated in the L'Arche Community. And both Di and I regularly slip away to the Eastern Townships while the rest of the US celebrates Thanksgiving and Black Friday. But the capricious way ICE has been working - and their illegal incarceration of innocent people - was unnerving. That is, of course, exactly what the architects of this hatred wanted - and I must confess to being cowed. Not internally, where we have a network of allies and friends, but externally. And my fear was heightened when beloved Canadian colleagues called off a visit to our home because they did not want to be subject to ICE violence. 

So, we regrouped and spent a late spring retreat in Northern Maine with a few trips to groovy Portland. And our wider family postponed a birthday trip to Montreal for our granddaughter, Anna, who loves this city, too. We will meet at our home, rejoice in her 8 years among us, and savor the safety and beauty of our garden. We mustered a bit of courage after some in our family had no problems with their trip to Nova Scotia. So, in anticipation of Anna's next birthday, we chose to find out for ourselves. And, I am delighted to report that entering Canada was smooth and friendly. During the first Trump administration, I was hassled by some surly Canadian border patrol types at an out-of-the-way crossing late at night. In a quid pro quo, they confiscated my cell phone and laptop, searched my rental car vigorously, and finally concluded that my trip to a Franciscan retreat house during Holy Week was neither a threat to national security nor anything more nefarious. (NOTE: to this day, however, I refuse to use that port of entry!) I suspect that the real test will be coming home, which is what we've chosen to explore.

I will keep you posted on whatever shakes out. I want to get back to visiting my L'Arche friends. I want to retreat from American avarice and rest over Thanksgiving in anticipation of a holy Advent. And I want to plan a glorious birthday for our precious granddaughter. More as it unfolds...

a time for weeping... and singing

There are times these days when I sit and weep. I am not desolate. Nor am I bereft of faith, hope, or love. Yet I still weep – mostly at what is being lost during this season of sorting out. Intellectually and spiritually, I own that this is part of the inevitable political, emotional, cultural, and spiritual winnowing that accompanies creation’s pruning in its quest for balance. It occurred within my own heart, family, spirituality, profession, and worldview over time, so on one level, that it is taking place in this era comes as no surprise. The world-weary Babylonian preacher, Qoheleth, said as much in the Jewish wisdom book of Ecclesiastes in 450 BCE: To everything there is a season and time for every purpose under heaven… for there is nothing new under the sun. As Asian wisdom-keepers assert, it has happened before and will happen again. But it is one thing to acknowledge the ever-swinging pendulum of time, culture, and history, and something altogether different to accept it. My tears are evidence of a grief in pursuit of reconciliation, contemplation over our current reckoning with the cruelty that is yet to come. Over the years, I have found myself returning to this insight from the late Frederick Buechner, bard of Vermont, who wrote:

"YOU NEVER KNOW what may cause them. The sight of the Atlantic Ocean can do it, or a piece of music, or a face you've never seen before. A pair of somebody's old shoes can do it. Almost any movie made before the great sadness that came over the world after the Second World War, a horse cantering across a meadow, the high school basketball team running out onto the gym floor at the start of a game. You can never be sure. But of this you can be sure. Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears, it is well to pay the closest attention. They are not only telling you something about the secret of who you are, but more often than not God is speaking to you through them of the mystery of where you have come from and is summoning you to where, if your soul is to be saved, you should go to next."

This round of tears was evoked upon hearing the news that, after 60 years, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was closing shop. Except for the New York Times, which I have been reading since my first subscription in 8th grade, I have relied upon PBS and NPR to make sense of the world around me. Yes, NPR’s current “hip” greetings (hey Ari, oh hey Ayesha) are annoying – so, too, the hyper-causal attire of some reporters – but since the middle 60’s, these resources have consistently been a part of my daily and weekly prayer cycles. Not only have they shared more facts than spin, but they also offer meaningful and compassionate analysis.

Like the death of any long-trusted friend, I feel an aching emptiness. I know my grief includes the horrific and cruel genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, the relentless lies of the current administration, the war in Ukraine, the escalating damage of climate change, and the assault on the democratic institutions that have long contributed to the incremental redress of grievances in our search for a more perfect union. My tears are also aligned with my recent visit to my 94-year-old former Sunday School teacher. Malcolm has been a constant source of wisdom, gravitas, and integrity – and while he is still sharp and strong – the handwriting is on the wall. To everything there is a season, to be sure, and this is my time for tears.

David Brooks, one-time social conservative and now middle-of-the-road analyst for both the Atlantic Monthly and the NY Times op ed page, put it well this past Friday on the PBS Newshour: Why, he wondered, are Americans not rising-up against the authoritarianism of this regime like the rest of the world? Public repudiation is essential for dismantling neo-fascists, Brooks added, yet so many of us remain stunned and silent. Why? What else is at work in our confusion? Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the MAGA movement has been successful in attacking mostly those on the periphery of bourgeois society. Most of us have yet to feel the pain and terror of ICE raids. Most of us are still able to live as if the foundations of our civil society are not shifting under us. Most of us, as Pastor Neimöller confessed after collaborating with the rise of the Nazis in Germany only to wind up in a concentration camp himself, have yet to feel the crack of the whip on our flesh or the boot heel of bullies on our throat to say nothing of our inability to accept that concentration camps are being constructed with our tax dollars that might soon incarcerate some of us.

"First, they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the Socialists and I did not speak out because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me."

This current terror is not the end, but it has not matured fully either - and there will be more grief and suffering before the semblance of balance returns. Until then, I keep singing, and weeping. I preach the love of Jesus, seek ways to build new connections among all who are wounded and afraid, and trust that God is not finished with us yet!

church as a parable of holy/human possibilties...

It appears that I have not posted here in two months! To say that life has been full
would be an understatement. There's been a great deal to do as the interim pastor, our bands have been playing more and more locally, we finally got on top of this year's garden, and checking in with our family has happened, too. It has been a ripe and rewarding summer. What I want to share today is yet another attempt at clarifying how I comprehend the charism of the church as the living, albeit broken body of Christ.

For years, I have been alienated from both the mean-spirited exclusivity of the so-called Christian Nationalists as well as the self-righteous carping of so-called progressive believers. The first seems to serve a God created in their own rigid imaginations - a deity of strict judgment without nuance, creativity, or compassion - while the latter seems obsessed with complaining about political problems they cannot change. One cadre strives to pound all of us who are not a part of their realm into a social/sexual/emotional homogeneity that looks like white, cisgendered, patriarchal supremacy. The other with an incomplete Christology that celebrates only the Jesus who turned over the tables of the money changers in the temple. One is brutal in the drive for conformity; the other is fixated on a political Messiah who sanctifies just the progressive cognoscenti. 

Neither appears to trust God's grace that trumps karma and is freely offered for the healing of the cosmos. How did the mystical St. John put it? For God so loved the world that God incarnated the Son not to condemn but to heal creation. Jesus said: Come unto me ALL ye who are tired and heavy laden and I will give you rest. This invitation was extended to Pharisees and Sadducees, Jews and Gentiles, women and men and children, wealthy tax collectors, Syro-Phoenician mothers pleading for their children, artisans and soldiers in the Roman Empire, as well as Republicans, Democrats, liberals, conservatives, spiritual but not religious folk as well as  Democratic Socialists, free market investors, those who are well, those who are sick or broken, and everyone in-between. My tradition proclaims that we are a big-tent community serving a still-speaking God. But all too often, that vision is too narrow. Too homogenous. Too self-satisfied to be genuinely inclusive.  

All of which has incrementally reshaped my understanding of church. We have not been summoned by the sacred to be either the Democratic or the Republican Party at prayer. Nor have we been called to bless our friends and punish our enemies in some post-modern theocracy. Rather, to borrow from the Taize Community of France, we are to be a parable of counter-cultural possibilities for the world. Not a one-size-fits-all solution with all the answers, but a living community of trust, incarnating real but always incomplete ways of making faith, hope, and love flesh in our generation. 

The prayer we are bold to pray each week in worship, what tradition calls the Lord's Prayer, is clear:

+ We hallow a Creator God - not an Emperor, King, Queen, President, political party, or ideology - and strive to live in such a way that shalom and charis become flesh on earth as they are already normative in heaven.

+ We pray for our daily bread. This is an incomplete translation that literally reads: give us today our bread for tomorrow. Amy Jill-Levine, as well as many other Bible scholars, tells us that this is a way of praying for the blessings of God's realm to be reality for us now. Give us all that is promised in a once and future spiritual kingdom right now. Empower and help us make flesh today some of the blessings we hope for in the future. Ours, then, is a prefigurative parable that seeks to humbly realize right relations between people, Mother Earth, and all creatures "that on earth do dwell" and show the despairing and broken-hearted what is possible right now.

+ And we know that because we become what we love, we dedicate ourselves to forgiveness and reconciliation. We seek the assurance of pardon by doing our best to make amends with all we have wounded or shamed. Like Anne Lamott wrote: "Jesus is clear that loving your enemies is nonnegotiable. This means trying to respect our enemies, it means identifying with their humanity and weakness without surrendering to the unconditional acceptance of their crazy behavior."

Fr. Richard Rohr continues to tell us - activists as well as contemplatives of all persuasions - that the social transformation program that Jesus lived was fundamentally non-cooperation with the status quo. 

Jesus does not directly attack the religious and institutional sin systems of his time until his final action against the money changers in the temple (see Matthew 21:12–13; Mark 11:15–17; Luke 19:45–46). Because of this, Jesus’ primary social justice critique and action are often a disappointment to most radicals and social activists. Jesus’ social program, as far as I can see, is a quiet refusal to participate in almost all external power structures or domination systems. His primary action is a very simple lifestyle, which kept him from being constantly co-opted by those very structures, which I (and Paul) would call the “sin system.” Jesus seems to have avoided the monetary system as much as possible by using “a common purse” (John 12:6; 13:29). His three-year ministry, in effect, offers free healing and healthcare for any who want them. He consistently treats women with a dignity and equality that is almost unknown in an entirely patriarchal culture. At the end of his life, he surrenders to the punitive systems of both empire and religion by letting them judge, torture, and murder him. He is finally a full victim of the systems that he refused to worship.

This suggests to me that as we strive to follow Jesus, we must simultaneously disengage from our self-centered political obsessions and quietly discern new ways to build trust, compassion, and community. Again, Anne Lamott presciently wrote that  "you can safely assume you've created God in your own image if that God hates all the same people you do!" Worship is, therefore, not primarily a place to carp - especially about those issues we cannot change. It is a time to celebrate and share something of God's beauty. And healing. And call to be changed from the inside out through generous and radical acts of compassion. Liturgy literally means the work of the people. The prefigurative work of being nourished by the promised bread of tomorrow right now in the present today. It is also the embodied way we pray the Serenity Prayer. 

God, give me grace to accept with serenity

the things that cannot be changed,

Courage to change the things

which should be changed,

and the Wisdom to distinguish

the one from the other

Living one day at a time,

Enjoying one moment at a time,

Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,

Taking, as He did,

This sinful world as it is,

Not as I would have it,

Trusting that He will make all things right,

If I surrender to His will,

That I may be reasonably happy in this life,

And supremely happy with Him forever in the next.

Amen.

time to say goodbye for now...

Resting by the shores of Lake Gardner has been restorative: the gentle waves breaking on the stones, some geese and a mallard duck came to visit, a variety of birds feeding outside our breakfast nook (as well as a relentless, infuriating, and ultimately amusing red squirrel who insisted on warfare over the bird feeder). There was sunshine and rain, quiet and a silence I'd long forgotten. We spent time by the lake and the ocean, on rocks and in the forest, and went into town, too, occasionally. We explored. We talked. We walked, slept, savored local goodies, wrote, read, and celebrated the chance just to be. I am grateful. St. Mary Oliver put it well in her poem: Today.

Today I'm flying low and I'm

not saying a word.

I'm letting all the voodoos of ambition sleep.

The world goes on as it must,

the bees in the garden rumbling a little,

the fish leaping, the gnats getting eaten.

And so forth.

But I'm taking the day off.

Quiet as a feather.

I hardly move though really I'm traveling

a terrific distance.

Stillness. One of the doors

into the temple.

celebrating the slender strands of synchronicity - part two

The American poet, William Stafford of blessed memory, put it like this:

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among

things that change. But it doesn’t change.

People wonder about what you are pursuing.

You have to explain about the thread.

But it is hard for others to see.

While you hold it you can’t get lost.

Tragedies happen; people get hurt

or die; and you suffer and get old.

Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.

You don’t ever let go of the thread.

I am not certain when I began to pay attention to that thread; it has long been a point of reference, but I suppose I consciously started to hold on to it while studying Celtic spirituality. Not only did the ancient Celtic monks practice a unique pilgrimage - they would venture out into the world without a fixed destination, rather than head for an established holy destination - but they would wander until they found a place of personal resurrection. That's a unique distinction that squares well with Maritain's commitment to personalism, yes? A traditional pilgrimage is linear: each sojourner chooses their destination in advance, experiences personal insights into the care of their soul along the way, and then celebrates completing the peregrination at the end of the road. Think of the Camino de Santiago to the church dedicated to the brother of Jesus in Spain. Or the various sacred journeys believers make to Lourdes, Chimayo, or Fatima. I've been on one of those treks and value it profoundly.

Christine Valters Paintner writes, however, that a Celtic pilgrimage was quite different. Sometimes seekers would wander without a clear destination, waiting and trusting that the spirit would reveal herself when the pilgrim was ready. Think of St. Columba who left Ireland in a coracle (a small, simple boat) and eventually founded a monastery on the Isle of Iona. Those seekers waited prayerfully for the wind (or the Spirit) to literally carry them to their resurrection center without much control. (Talk about a counter-cultural spirituality!) Other times, given their deep appreciation of spirals, suppliants would walk three times around a tura - a circular space dedicated to contemplation - resembling a labyrinth. Dr. Valters-Paintner writes:

These Celts had a deep understanding that walking embodies prayer, and walking in a circle has a way of moving our brains out of their desired linear course. When we are discerning our direction in life, we often want the next best step to appear, if not the entire path clearly ahead. But discernment in this tradition is more like a spiraling inward and a deep attentiveness to what is happening in the moment.

She adds that walking these turas was a multifaceted spiritual practice:

Walking helps to slow us down. The poet Wallace Stevens once said “the truth depends upon a walk around the lake.” We allow ourselves to arrive fully in a sacred place, both body and soul, and ask permission to be there and receive the gifts offered. Walking in a circular manner helps to move us out of linear ways of thinking. It allows us to rest into the spiral nature of time and see things from a new perspective. Pilgrimage is never a straight, step-by-step journey, but one of continual unfolding and listening to wisdom arising from dreams and nature. Walking helps us to bless the earth with our feet, so that our whole being becomes a prayer. Instead of walking to “get somewhere” as we might when journeying to a particular place, walking the rounds invites us to continue journeying in place. https://godspacelight.com/pilgrimage-and-walking-the-rounds-by-christine-valters-paintner/

The mystical and serendipitous nature of the Celtic pilgrimage appeals to me and offers a corrective to my illusions of and inclinations toward control. How did St. Paul put it? "Let it be, let it be, let it be, yeah, let it be: whisper words of wisdom, let it be." During our current wanderings this week, yet another slender strand of synchronicity was revealed in the words of Barbara Brown Taylor. Her most recent Substack column describes how once the words of traditional theology opened insights into the meaning of life for her. Esoterica like theophany and eschatology carried her into college, seminary, advanced studies, and in time, the Episcopal priesthood. Incrementally, though, these same sacred words of illumination soon became unsatisfying. They were disembodied - abstract - and she was yearning for incarnation through a life of connection and belonging.

In books and concepts, I not only found names for holy mysteries I had never been able to name before; I also experienced the kind of ecstasy others talked about finding in worship and prayer. The medium of this encounter was the written word. The experience was being known by writers I had never met. The ecstasy came in the process of yielding to minds greater than mine that had no desire to dominate me. They didn’t point me at anything; they pointed me beyond. From them I learned that the yearning to know God might be as close as I ever got, and it was plenty These writers had such an effect on me that I decided to make my living with words as well—some spoken, some written, all in the service of beyond—which was how I learned the difference between words that have bodies and words that do not. Take a look (at what I have just written above) and you may notice there is not a single word in it that has a color, temperature, taste, or smell. This was not on purpose; it just happens when I am thinking theologically. You may have added some bodily details to “ecstasy” or “dominate” based on your own experience, but I didn’t put them there. You did. When I started noticing this, I decided to put more trust in words made flesh.

https://barbarabrowntaylor.substack.com/p/words-made-flesh?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3382211&post_id=163430122&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo3MTcxMDc5LCJwb3N0X2lkIjoxNjM0MzAxMjIsImlhdCI6MTc0NzE0MTI4NSwiZXhwIjoxNzQ5NzMzMjg1LCJpc3MiOiJwdWItMzM4MjIxMSIsInN1YiI6InBvc3QtcmVhY3Rpb24ifQ.EASwNNFZfmqiZ8G2ocpBXbRcvLnkm0whs6FHDblTm2k&r=49p8n&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Like Taylor, Brooks, Martian, the Pope (old and new), those writing from a spiritual but not religious perspective, feminist authors, hundreds of musicians, and their countless popular songs, I, too, began to see that while human angst, confusion, and inner fury are a part of the human condition, they aren't the whole story. It's clear that some of us have been blinded by our culture's obsession with unbridled individualism. Others have endured the starvation of their souls in societies built upon a one-size-fits-all bureaucratic collectivism. Some have been wounded by religion, others have been kept ignorant of or afraid of its blessings, and still others who found their hearts, minds, and flesh set free by the promises of faith. Small wonder that brother Brooks believes that perhaps NOW is the time for a Maritain revival

The first responsibility of personalism is to see each other person in his or
her full depth. This is astonishingly hard to do. As we go through our busy days, it’s normal to want to establish I-It relationships — with the security guard in your building or the office worker down the hall. Life is busy, and sometimes we just need to reduce people to their superficial function." But personalism asks, as much as possible, for I-Thou encounters: that you just don’t regard people as a data point, but as emerging out of the full narrative, and that you try, when you can, to get to know their stories, or at least to realize that everybody is in a struggle you know nothing about.

Jazz critic extraordinaire and public intellectual, Ted Goia, also brings something to the table of synchronicity in his recent explication of the "new romanticism" that is rumbling just below the surface of popular culture. As one often labeled "a total downer," Goia replies that he's more of a truth teller in a culture of denial. He is savvy, sassy, and seriously attuned to the wisdom beyond the obvious in popular culture. (check out his Substack column @ The Honest Broker.) Take a careful look at this reflection on the emerging rebellion against life ruled by algorithms In the 1800s, cultural elites assumed that technology, science, the pursuit of profits, and linear reason would unlock an earthly paradise. 

As that century dawned, the creative class (as we would call it today) increasingly attacked rationalist currents that had somehow morphed into violent, intrusive forces in their lives—an 180 degree shift in the culture. For Blake and others, the name Newton became a term of abuse. Artists, especially poets and musicians, took the lead in this revolt. They celebrated human feeling and emotional attachments — embracing them as more trustworthy, more flexible, more desirable than technology, profits, and cold calculation. The new paradigm shocked Europe when it started to spread. Cultural elites had just assumed that science and reason would control everything in the future. But that wasn’t how it played out. Resemblances with the current moment are not hard to see.

“Imagine a growing sense that algorithmic and mechanistic thinking has become too oppressive. Imagine if people started resisting technology. Imagine a revolt against STEM’s dominance. Imagine people deciding that the good life starts with NOT learning how to code.”

This rings true to me personally, professionally, and politically. It seems to be true on the edges of culture, too. Goia observes that stepping back from the overly optimistic promises of rationalism includes relinquishing our " aesthetics of light" for an "aesthetics of dark." More mysticism than map-making. More trusting the slender strands of synchronicity than the propaganda of Meta and X. He writes:
"When rationalistic and algorithmic tyranny grows too extreme, art returns to the darkness of the unconscious life—and perhaps of the womb." His closing insights speak to my heart as this personal pilgrimage ripens:

Beethoven turned against Napoleon—and this is emblematic of the aesthetic reversal sweeping through Europe (during the first age of romanticism). Not long ago, Beethoven and other artists looked to French rationalism as a harbinger of a new age of freedom and individual flourishing. But this entire progress-obsessed ideology is unraveling. It’s somehow fitting that music takes the lead role in deconstructing a tyrannical rationalism, and proposing a more human alternative.

Could that happen again? Imagine a growing sense that algorithmic and mechanistic thinking has become too oppressive. Imagine if people started resisting technology as a malicious form of control, and not a pathway to liberation, empowerment, and human flourishing—soul-nurturing riches that must come from someplace deeper. Imagine a revolt against STEM’s dominance and dictatorship over all other fields? Imagine people deciding that the good life starts with NOT learning how to code. If that happened now, wouldn’t music stand out as the pathway? What could possibly be more opposed to brutal rationalism running out of control than a song?

https://www.honest-broker.com/p/notes-toward-a-new-romanticism

All of which leads me back to "The Power of Love." I am not suggesting this is the ONLY song that covertly challenges the status quo, but it is one we need to hear again. So, too, the gentle masculine harmonies of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. The lyrical wisdom of Joni Mitchell. The way our band, Wednesday's Child, deconstructs old songs like "Runnin' on Empty" or "Paint It Black" to reveal the deeper lament that is aching for expression. This music is tender. Uncluttered. It makes room for improvisation alongside well-rehearsed and complicated vocal harmonies. It is genre-bending rather than squeezed into the confines of "auto-tune." And it celebrates the beautiful particularities of life that tremble with holy wisdom for those with eyes to see and ears to hear. Josh Ritter captures this new romanticism affectionately. Michelle Ndegeocello, too. Brooks closes his essay on personalism with prescient words of caution and promise that speak to me of the music I'm committed to sharing: music that is participatory, music that honors our feelings, music that is saturated in darkness but unafraid of the light, music that celebrates beauty over ideology, and creativity as a key to blessing.

Personalism is all about availability: to be open for this kind of giving and friendship. This is a tough one, too; life is busy, and being available for people takes time and intentionality. Margarita Mooney of Princeton Theological Seminary has written that personalism is a middle way between authoritarian collectivism and radical individualism. The former subsumes the individual within the collective. The latter uses the group to serve the interests of the self. Personalism demands that we change the way we structure our institutions. A company that treats people as units to simply maximize shareholder return is showing contempt for its own workers. Schools that treat students as brains on a stick are not preparing them to lead whole lives. The big point is that today’s social fragmentation didn’t spring from shallow roots. It sprang from worldviews that amputated people from their own depths and divided them into simplistic, flattened identities. That has to change. As Charles Péguy said, “The revolution is moral or not at all.

celebrating the slender strands of synchronicity: part one

As our anniversary vacation/retreat ripens on the shore of Lake Gardner, and Brother Sun has rejoined us for another day of beauty and warmth, a few seemingly random - but most likely related - thoughts keep swimming through my consciousness. These quiet and tender connections - the slender stands of synchronicity, as spiritual director, Christine Valters Paintner says - are neither random nor foreordained. Rather, they are mystical reminders of creation's heart and soul. When observed and honored, synchronicities can bring clarity to our quest for meaning. They can instruct us gently in the sacramental wisdom that saturates all of creation and reminds us that there is a love at work in life that is greater than the obvious chaos of this present darkness. One wisdom-keeper at Being Benedictine writes:

I think of synchronicities as connections seen with the inner eye. They are holy coincidences. Both mysterious and meaningful, these holy surprises open our eyes in new ways. The voice of synchronicity encourages us to be aware, to look and listen deeply... There are so many invisible forces and connections weaving a web that holds us in its grace. The more we look, the more we see. It is only with eyes open to wonder, holy surprises, and synchronicity that we experience the humbling and awesome fall to our knees. There we are uplifted by invisible forces and surrounded by angels who “walk among us in seen and unseen forms.” In these moments, we see new pathways and possibilities. I agree with Brian McLaren who said “The closest thing to God is when we say WOW!” Holding tight to this knowing sustains us when our faith is not as strong or challenges present themselves. 

living from the heart...

Yesterday was saturated in paradox. That's true daily, but I was more keenly aware as Saturday ripened. First, it was cold, grey, and wet. Buckets and buckets of rain poured down upon our small retreat house, so we hunkered down in front of the fireplace and took it slow. Second, despite the outward serenity, my insides hurt: from out of nowhere (or so it seems to me), I had a painful flare-up of diverticulitis. Not the end of the world, and certainly not the worst pain I could experience, but it still hurt. Third, a beloved old friend died. We'd started emailing about a year ago, and two months ago she told me she had an incurable, fatal disease. We made a point to spend some time on the phone earlier this month - and then her oldest daughter reached out to let me mom had crossed over the day before Mother's Day. I rejoiced that for Bettye, all pain and suffering were over, even as I grieved her precious family's loss. We had spent lots of time together at my first church in Saginaw, MI - even travelling to the former Soviet Union with our youth group as part of a people-to-people peace brigade. And then, one of the men I am doing spiritual direction with checked in to let me know his dad was likely close to death now, too.

One of the blessings of pastoral ministry is being connected with others in love. Not co-dependent, but blessed by the ties that bind. I can compartmentalize with the best of them, but sharing the ups and downs of real life always cuts deep for me. I still weep in sadness and celebration whenever I sing verse three of the new/old hymn: Won't You Let Me Be Your Servant? My experience of ministry might best be summarized as:

I will weep when you are weeping, when you laugh, I'll laugh with you;
I will share your joys and sorrows till we've seen this journey through.

This type of ministry is not bound by political ideology or activism of one type or another - and that's why I love it so. My mentor in pastoral ministry, the Rev. Dr. Ray Swartzback, used to tell me that before people are willing to make a change in their lives, they must trust you - and trust is not portable. Every new person and context requires not only showing up with compassion and attention, but also choosing to walk together in solidarity without judgment. Phoning it in is NOT how true ministry takes place. And my experience over 40+ years is that Swartzy was right. Despite my own discomfort yesterday, and the many miles separating us all, we found a way to stay connected, trusting that as human beings we have more in common than we realize. As that same hymn adds:

We are pilgrims on a journey, we are travelers on the road;

We are here to help each other, walk the mile and bear the load.

I will hold the Christ light for you in the nighttime of your fear;

I will hold my hand out to you, speak the peace you long to hear.

Today, the sun is shining on the glorious little lake in front of us. My discomfort is slowly abating. A new Pope shares the promise of solidarity with the world even as he struggles to make peace with his own unique blessings and blind spots. Sorrow shall return, of course. So, too, injustice and fear. I like the way Fr. Richard Rohr puts it:

In our ugly and injurious present political climate, it’s become all too easy to justify fear-filled and hateful thoughts, words, and actions, often in defense against the “other” side. True spiritual action (as opposed to reaction) demands our own ongoing transformation and a voluntary “exile,” choosing to be where the pain is, as Jesus exemplified in his great self-emptying. You and I are placed in this world of hatred, violence, anger, injustice, and oppression to help God transform it, transfigure it, and change it so that there will be compassion, laughter, joy, peace, reconciliation, fellowship, friendship, togetherness, and family. We are here to bring others out of exile.