alas, I wish I'd never read Niebuhur...

I wrote the following paragraph a month ago - and today it rings more true than before:

After playing a truly uplifting gig with All of Us last night at Pittsfield's best live music venue, Methuselah Bar and Lounge (http://www.methbar .com/), I wearily sighed, "Damn, I wish I'd never read Niebuhr..." My sweetheart smiled knowingly and replied, "Now THAT'S an overheard!" But alas, it is all too true: no matter how hard I try, his paradoxical Christian Realism continues to shape my thinking, ethics, and my all-too-modest activism. Would that pure simplicity and/or ideology were options!

That said, my hope today is NOT to rant. There's already too much of that swirling all around us. Some consider Niebuhr a cynic. Others, an elitist. And still others an ally be they conservative or liberal. My take is that he is none of the above, just a public intellectual who recognizes the challenge of following Jesus and the necessity of compromise in our public commitments. One of his most famous quotes restates the words of St. Paul:

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope. Nothing that is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we must be saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore, we must be saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness. (The Irony of American History)

Here's my challenge: my world, heart, mind, life, and soul are no longer defined only by politics. That's almost ALL many of my progressive and conservative friends seem capable of discussing. Politics. Spin. Despair. Disdain. Who is winning and who is losing. Those who have accepted the heresy of Christian Nationalism celebrate the overt cruelty of their leaders and work overtime trying to separate the Jesus of Scripture from their warped MAGA ideology. My liberation colleagues spout a variety of radical critiques and concerns about the current regime that cost them nothing and are essentially irrelevant to the challenges of 21st-century men, women, and children. The vast majority, defamed by some as the Silent Majority and others as closet supporters, reject both extremes and see no point in arguing against reality. They are working too hard to love their children, earn a decent living, pay for unaffordable health care, and maybe have a beer at the end of the day.

To which Niebuhr would say: where's the hard-to-find middle ground? At the moment, it appears elusive - and that's a reality we have to endure. But, as Little Steven of Springsteen's E Street band used to sing: EVERYBODY wants the same things, don't they?

If you opt out of empty arguments, liberals say you're part of the problem. If you engage with any degree of sophistication and/or compassion, conservatives call you a victim of woke disease. And so it goes. Often, I want to join Lou Reed and say: Stick a fork in ALL of them. They're DONE! And then I hear that still, small voice of the Resurrected yet Wounded Messiah: whatsoever you do unto one of the least of these, my sisters and brothers, you do unto me. 

Today, and most days, I trust that small acts of tenderness matter. I believe, Lord help my unbelief, that community and conversation matter. And I have seen how practicing seeing by faith, not sight, can be a game-changer. I trust that God's love is greater than death. I look for where to go next by contemplating God's first word: Mother Nature. I play music with my mates to advance the cause of joy and solidarity. And I wait in the challenging company of Brother Niebuhr who keeps telling me:

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope. Nothing that is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we must be saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore, we must be saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness. 

the triduum has quietly arrived...

Today marks the start of the Christian Triduum - the three holy days before Easter Sunday - that give shape and form to the blessings of God experienced in Jesus. The journey begins tonight with Holy Thursday - or what the Reformed tradition calls Maundy Thursday, from the Latin maundaaum for commandment. My high-church siblings in the Spirit get it right, starting with washing one another's feet, celebrating Eucharist, and then stripping the altar until the Feast of the Resurrection on Easter Sunday. This is followed on Friday with a service venerating the Cross and Saturday with the earliest night liturgy: the Easter Vigil.

My low-church friends tend to avoid footwashing like the plague, but have now added an ancient monastic set of readings and actions from the 9th CE called Tenebrae. This was only added to the Reformed realm in the early 20th century, but has become wildly beloved even as the most scripted liturgical act in our repertoire. Initially, Tenebrae took place in monastic communities during matins and lauds - the first two community prayer cycles after midnight at the start of the Triduum. It began with 15 candles but has now been simplified in contemporary Protestant churches to between 8 and 12. The readings in the Reformed version have also changed to foreshadow Christ's crucifixion on Friday. There is drama and grit to this service, and I would hate to lose it, even though I much prefer the order of my liturgical sisters and brothers. As Carl Jung put it: "The symbols of the Catholic liturgy offer the unconscious such a wealth of possibilities that they act as an incomparable diet for the psyche."

No matter how one observes the Triduum, however, it is a time for deep and sober reflection. I look forward to doing this in community - a genuinely counter-cultural commitment - in this age of hyper-individualized bottom lines and obsessive multitasking. What a shallow culture we've created with neither time nor encouragement to ponder and discern. We rush off to war without counting the cost; we speed-dial and date; we relentlessly binge-watch our favorite video distractions; and forsake the dinner table for a bag of burgers and fries in the car. Nevertheless, the Triduum quietly creeps into being and patiently invites us into alternative ways of thinking, speaking, and living. The poet, Jane Kenyon, put it like this:

I am the blossom pressed in a book,
found again after two hundred years. . . .

I am the maker, the lover, and the keeper....

When the young girl who starves
sits down to a table
she will sit beside me. . . .

I am food on the prisoner's plate. . . .

I am water rushing to the wellhead,
filling the pitcher until it spills. . . .

I am the patient gardener
of the dry and weedy garden. . . .

I am the stone step,
the latch, and the working hinge. . . .

I am the heart contracted by joy. . . .
the longest hair, white
before the rest. . . .

I am there in the basket of fruit
presented to the widow. . . .

I am the musk rose opening
unattended, the fern on the boggy summit. . . .

I am the one whose love
overcomes you, already with you
when you think to call my name... .

Tonight, whether Catholic or Reformed, in a high-church haze of incense or a low-church encounter with Tenebrae, I give thanks that some will pause to call your name,

darkness cannot drive out darkness...

One of the daily disappointments I experience on FB is how some of my friends, colleagues, and professional contacts regularly belittle, defame, and slander one another with an unholy zeal and abandon. The viciousness of these attacks is staggering and cuts across ideological/political lines. So, too, the ugly aftertaste these barbs leave in my consciousness that requires a physical, spiritual, and emotional catharsis bathed in silence. To be sure, I mostly enjoy the brilliant memes on Facebook that make me laugh out loud. I savor seeing photos of children, grandchildren, pets, and vacations that loved ones share. And periodically, I find visuals and graphics that are both inventive and instructive. What kills my soul, however, and poisons my day are the cruel and noxious ad hominem attacks we make against one another. 

Let me be clear: I am NO fan of the current regime. Even when it advances a good idea - which is rare but nevertheless true - their rollout is almost always so mean-spirited, chaotic, and saturated in hyperbole that it takes me weeks to figure out WTF is really going on. That said, not everyone who voted for or even continues to support certain policies is a Nazi, fascist, pedo, or insurrectionist. Yes, Christian Nationalism is a heresy that diminishes Christ's call to heal and love. Without a doubt, racial and gender bigotry in this administration has gone way beyond traditional dog whistles to openly celebrate race and gender hatred. The hubris of the President and his closest advisors defies comprehension, not just because their PR is so manipulative and sloppy, but more importantly, because it destroys our ability to know what is true and what is a lie. Thank God an independent media can still fact-check. 

Suffice it to say that I have come to see the current resident of the Oval Office as a tragic, pathetic, dangerous, and ruinous embodiment of everything that has historically been wrong in these United States. Other administrations have been racist. Just below the surface, many have also pandered to the rich and famous. And there have been equally incompetent and incoherent Commanders in Chief. Just not all at once - and that may be the paradoxical charism of what is taking place these days. Without illusion, diversion, or apology, many of us now get to witness and experience the shadow side of our nation that has long been known by people of color, the LGBTQIA community, countless creative and courageous women, and those who exist on the periphery of power. Today, we can see that the emperor has no clothes, that the man behind the curtain is a hard-hearted grifter, and that some of his supporters actually want to destroy all that is good, true, and noble about the land of the free and home of the brave.

But not everyone - and that is a vital distinction. Not everyone buys into the fear, nor wants to see it spread. Not everyone who voted for lower grocery prices, an affordable mortgage, safe and effective schools, or an immigration policy that works is the enemy, nor are they all corrupt or dangerous. Nor are all those who experience confusion about gender and the breadth and depth of human sexuality people of hate. To be sure, not everyone grasps the magnitude of our current morass. Still, it is my experience that many, if not most, of my fellow Americans genuinely want a more perfect union. They weep when their neighbors hurt, they rejoice when our local sports teams triumph, they volunteer in food banks, schools, and social clubs, they bring a hot meal to those who are sick. They send cards when they don't have words to express their concern. They pay their taxes on time. (Not always happily, but most still know that taxes and civil engagement are part of the bargain necessary to maintain a democratic society.) They may not all vote. I get that. How did Pete Townsend put it more than 50 years ago? "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss!" But they still care and seek to redress our shared grievances, even as our failing state flounders. 

So, please, please, please: do not be so simple-minded as to confuse my concerns here with the President's willful obfuscations after the neo-Nazi violence in Charlottesville in 2017 or the 1984-esque propaganda offered after the attempted insurrection of January 6, 2021. I am not giving a pass to the Gestapo-like destruction perpetrated by ICE and their minions in Minneapolis. Rather, I write, live, analyze, pray, and share my resources from a distinctly traditional Western Christian perspective. I understand that not everyone is committed to this way of following Jesus. I get that our multicultural society is harder to govern than a homogeneous tribe: competing needs clash, complicated incentives like carrots and sticks are paradoxically essential to maintain peace and stability, the doctrine of unintended consequences regularly subverts our better angels, and there are always winners and losers. One of our nation's finest theologians (not perfect, but powerfully insightful), Reinhold Niebuhr, put it succinctly: "Man's (sic) capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary". He argued that while humans have the capacity for goodness, their inherent selfishness and tendency toward corruption require a system that checks power. A few quotes will clarify:

Democracy is finding proximate solutions to insoluble problems... Original sin is that thing about man which makes him capable of conceiving of his own perfection and incapable of achieving it... One of the most pathetic aspects of human history is that every civilization expresses itself most pretentiously, compounds its partial and universal values most convincingly, and claims immortality for its finite existence at the very moment when the decay which leads to death has already begun.

Niebuhr's abiding advice, beyond the brilliance of his Serenity Prayer, is found in his Irony of American History: 

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore, we must be saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness.

And so the search for common ground continues. The current degeneracy will not abate any time soon. The forces unleashed by a variety of religious, political, and social zealots since the 70's must run their course. You see, once Pandora's box is opened... But this current darkness is not the end of the story - and that is the light within the darkness that I strive to trust. Dr. King's words from 1962 continue to be right:

 

random thoughts on ash wednesday 2026...

I did not grow up observing Ash Wednesday. As a middle-class, white Protestant child of New England in the 50s and 60s, it was just my Roman Catholic friends who wore the ashen sign of the Cross on this strange day. If memory serves, my uber-Congregational church in both Connecticut and Massachusetts barely mentioned Lent, let alone practiced a sacramental spirituality grounded in liturgy and the seasonal cycles of life. It was well after seminary and ordination that my tradition published the 1986 United Church of Christ Book of Worship, which included an order of worship for... ASH WEDNESDAY! 

By then, however, I'd been smitten by both Gertrud Mueller-Nelson's liturgical masterpiece, To Dance with God, and the folk-music innovations being crafted by the Community of Celebration in Aliquippa, PA, who linked the poetry of the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer with a tender-hearted, charismatic creativity. I made a host of pilgrimages to that sacred co-ed monastery just outside of Pittsburgh and beat cheeks to the high church, smells-and-bells observances of Lent celebrated at the Anglican Cathedral in Cleveland, OH, too. By the late 1980s, I'd drawn on the insights Kathleen Norris shared in Dakota and The Cloister Walk, along with my encounters with Eastern Orthodox chant and iconography, and had become a born-again sacramentalist serving low-church congregations. Beauty, ritual, well-written liturgy, poetry, silence, and a deep reverence for new/old ways of praying with all our senses became foundational for me. I chaffed at the studied sloppiness of most Protestant worship. I came to despise the wordy pseudo-intellectualism of so many so-called social justice sermons. And found myself fleeing from the clutter and trinkets that too often adorned so many chancels in their sad attempt at religious art.

Forty years later, I still honor the texts that friends and colleagues created for The UCC Book of Worship. And I am still trusting it to guide our small circle of friends as we gather for Ash Wednesday this year. The Community of Celebration used to sing, "We have another world in view," and now, more than ever, as a pastor and a believer, I find myself clinging to that upside-down, counter-cultural alternative vision of life that Jesus proclaims. Our current culture of anxiety, chaos, cruelty, and greed idolizes our obsessions, sanctifies our addictions, denigrates every pursuit except short-term material conquests, and shames and/or defames those who pursue solidarity and compassion. Thank God for Ash Wednesday! It reminds me that we all lack something. It shows me how to relinquish what is broken by trusting a love that not only leads me through the wilderness but also incrementally and quietly fills me with a gratitude that evokes space for everyone who wants to join the party.  

A Franciscan teacher recently wrote that Ash Wednesday invites us to practice giving up, giving in, and giving to. Giving up is about fasting - letting go in a conscious act of relinquishment - a practice that illuminates what is truly essential while helping us let go of our ego, our habits, and our oh so inflated and self-important opinions. Fasting is a physical and spiritual discipline that helps me listen more, speak less, and hold on to only that which is a foundation. It is an embodied prayer that nourishes both vulnerability and patience. And patience, I am learning, is essential for my faith and any act of ministry. Giving to, as the Franciscans tell us, is sharing resources and love, while giving in is what we might all prayer. I know that as I strive to be grounded in these unsettling times, the tender initiation to give up, to, and in redirects my anxieties towards trust and shows me why patience is salvific.

sometimes it's a bitch to practice what I preach...

"There are times when I hate having to practice what I preach!" That's what I said to my loved one over breakfast as I shared the news that David Brooks is leaving the New York Times. I have come to celebrate the sacred wisdom embodied in seasons, trusting that nature has always been the first Word of the Lord. I strive as well to honor the long obedience embedded in Ecclesiastes 3: to everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven. And as a clergy person well-acquainted and practiced in presiding at funerals and memorial services, I understand that nothing - and no one - lasts forever. Still, I felt sad to hear about David's transition. As a septuagenarian, I've had to let go of long-standing comforts, resources, habits, foods, ways of traveling, children becoming adults with children of their own, and all the aches and pains that come with being an old, bourgeois white guy with too much education. Such is one of the paradoxes of the journey, yes? It is not only a lengthy series of good-byes and not-so-voluntary relinquishments but, as the late Pete Seeger used to say about learning a new song, "Just about the time you've mastered it, it's over!"

It's not like Brooks will disappear, mind you: he'll still join Jonathan Capehart on the Friday evening PBS Newshour. He'll also serve as a staff writer at The Atlantic and share insights in a part-time teaching gig at Yale. It's simply another sign that life goes on beyond my control. One more nudge to practice what I preach and accept my powerlessness and mortality. Deep in my heart, I yearn to be more like Francis of Assisi than John Calvin, more like Carrie Newcomer than Bob Dylan, more like Mary Oliver than Mr. Magoo. I cherish the charisms of her poem: The World I Live In. 

I have refused to live

     locked in the orderly house 

        of reasons and proofs. 

The world I live in and believe in 

is wider than that. And anyway, 

    what’s wrong with Maybe? 

You wouldn’t believe what once or 

twice I have seen. I’ll just 

    tell you this: 

only if there are angels in your head 

    will you ever, possibly, see one.

Most mornings start off that way - content with the maybes and in love with the angels in my head - until some jackass cuts me off in the parking lot of the grocery store and ALL my serenity goes out the window. Or no matter HOW loud I turn up my new hearing aids, it's still impossible for me to understand what some call-center techie is trying to tell me about my so-called smartphone. Or before the damned gas pump will allow me to fill my tank, I have to answer 3 or 4 dumb ass and irrelevant computerized questions when the windchill feels like -35 below zero. First world problems, to be sure. And often I can choose not to react and maybe even laugh at myself afterwards. But these encounters with my inner tyrant are clear reminders that I am not as serene within myself as I would like. There are times that I truly hate the wisdom of the Serenity Prayer! How did Beck put it?

Also beyond my control, I sometimes meet one of the salty saints of the church I currently serve - men and women who have been to hell and back more than a dozen times - and THEY renew my quest with their love of life. They have such hard-won wisdom and compassion to share. They go out of their way to make me feel welcomed and at home until I hear myself singing: Amazing grace! My mentor in ministry (and one of my first older buddies) Ray Swartzback, used to tell me: if you're paying attention, this journey is a total roller coaster. So, don't fight it, man. Make the best of it. To which I now whisper under my breath: You're right, Swartzy, you're right. Still, sometimes it's a bitch to have to practice what you preach...

our weariness is an invitation into grace...

No worship or fellowship today - or tomorrow - as a real

snowmageddon delivers 1-2 inches an hour in these rolling Berkshire hills. All the hoopla and hollering of the past week felt more like hyperbole than honesty. Besides, real New Englanders know how to traverse a winter wonderland, and we haven't had a doozy for a few years - but we do today, and so far I am loving it. Silent. Beautiful. Powerful. And mysterious. Granted, I can make such observations from within the warm safety of our little home - and not everyone knows such privilege. So, it's with a measure of gratitude and humility that I sit silently in my study, savoring the snowfall. 

Perched within the security of my solitude, this blizzard is simultaneously majestic and disturbing. Like standing on the seashore during a storm, there's no way to escape the raw, unharnessed fury reining down upon us. There is neither rhyme nor reason to this storm. The Potawatomi author and poet Kaitlin Curtice rightly notes that those who live in these environs cannot avoid winter; we can only go through it. So, I hope to avoid even the hint of sentimentality as I confess to being awed by its elegance. Rudolph Otto wrote in The Idea of the Holy that an authentic encounter with the sacred is always a "fearful and fascinating encounter with mystery." The mysterium tremendum et fascinans is wholly other and entirely beyond the ordinary, evoking wonder; it is saturated with power and awe that is uncontrollable, and despite our fears, also attracts us with the presence of joy. Don't get me wrong: there are times I HATE to drive in such a mess, but I'm not out on the roads today. No, right now I am savoring the mystical bounty of this storm.

My inward/outward serenity rests in jarring contrast to the violence and fear that now engulfs Minneapolis and Portland, ME. ICE thugs, hellbent on terrorizing - and now murdering - their opponents, are pushing us ever closer to civil war as they give shape and form to our nation's shadow. No matter that the current regime literally tries to white-wash our origins and sanitize our memories by taking down historical markers and applying Soviet-era photo scrubs at the Smithsonian, the  United States will always be a nation conceived in a cauldron of contradiction: freedom and the pursuit of liberty (read: property) for the landed elite have long been parasitically twinned with acts of genocide, slavery, scapegoating, and gun violence. Yes, since 1607, we have made authentic albeit incremental progress towards a more perfect union through the blood sacrifices of brave and compassionate martyrs. But almost like clockwork, these advances are clawed back in an unholy ebb and flow that punishes the most vulnerable among us while rewarding the 1%. I choose to believe that our better angels always seek to create the land of the brave and the home of the free, but because we're at war with ourselves and refuse to acknowledge this truth, we can't help but attack, demonize, and destroy with a vengeance those who seek the same blessings the privileged take for granted. 

Indeed, our national soul is so riven with contradictions, coupled with an incredible tolerance for shedding innocent blood, self- deception, and periodic propaganda that no matter how many times the Holy tells us that God's bounty is to be shared by all so that there is scarcity for none, our habits, fears, history, and addictions insist upon a zero sum ideology where other's gain only if we lose. It is a vicious downward spiral that has once again raised its ugly head and become normative. 

And I'm not the only one locked in lament: North American theologian and podcaster, Tripp Fuller, recently published an insightful essay entitled, "The Exhausted Soul and a World Gone Mute," which begins: "I want to tell you about a moment that changed how I see the world. I was sitting at my desk a few years ago, staring at my inbox, when I realized something that should have been obvious but somehow wasn’t: I was losing."

Not losing at anything in particular. Just... losing. Falling behind. No matter how early I woke up, no matter how efficiently I worked, no matter how many productivity apps I downloaded or time-management systems I tried, the gap between what I needed to do and what I could do kept widening. I went to bed each night—as the German sociologist Hartmut Rosa puts it so perfectly—as a “subject of guilt,” unable to work off my ever-expanding to-do list. And here’s the thing: I wasn’t alone. Everyone I knew was drowning in the same invisible flood. What if this isn’t a personal failure? What if it’s something much larger—something structural, something spiritual, something that goes to the very heart of what it means to live in the modern world?

Please read the full essay here (https://open.substack.com/pub/ processthis/ p/the-exhausted-soul-and-a-world-gone?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web) knowing that he makes three clarifying insights: 1) One of the reasons for our culture of exhaustion is that modernity is ALL about accelerating. "What used to take months now takes minutes... as we move faster, produce faster, and connect faster than any generation in history." 2) Acceleration renders time-tested skills and values obsolete as "the institutions we once trusted disappear and the ground shifts beneath your feet." And 3) Multitasking has become normative, meaning we strive to compress more and more into lives that are finite, resulting in "burnout, burn up, and burndown." As Canadian author and theologian Ralph Heinzman notes in Rediscovering Reverence, contemporary Western culture has lost the very idea of reverence and awe.

Reverence conveys a human attitude of respect and deference for something larger or higher in priority than our own individual selves... Reverence results in humility as a Jewish text puts it... (And) awe is the emotion we feel when we encounter someone or something that transcends our normal life, and embodies qualities of excellence, or beauty, or some kind of power or authority that force our admiration, and to which, in some way or other, we submit ourselves, voluntarily or no... (pp. 18-19)

Which brings me back to what I am learning about a spirituality of winter in general and our encounters with snow in specific. "We cannot force the snow to fall. But we can go outside and wait. Grace cannot be manufactured. It arrives—or it doesn't. This is what the contemplatives have always known. This is what Sabbath practice is about. This is what silence and solitude offer. Not escape from the world, but a different relationship with it—one based not on aggression and acquisition but on receptivity, response, and cooperative participation in the ongoing creation of the world." (Fuller, ibid) From my perspective, this means at least the following:

+ First, we must recognize that there is a momentum to a storm that can not be stopped. We may rail against it - piss and moan, bellyache, and carp till the cows come home, too - but none of that matters. We must go through this storm as both Meister Eckhart and the Serenity Prayer tell us: reality is the will of God. It can always be better, but we must accept what cannot be changed and make our peace with it. We are now in a radical and cyclical realignment that is not only bringing to a close 70+ years of rule of law but also the ethos of social equality. I am not saying we must like this - I hate it - but culture, politics, and religion are shifting in ways that are challenging and dangerous. Nostalgia for the past is pointless. So, too, the self-righteous posturing of the Left that's long on elitist blame but short of practical solutions to economic, cultural, and spiritual alienation. The blathering of the Right with its hatred and denigration is equally destructive. The time has come to steel ourselves for our current "dark night," practicing the time-tested tools of contemplation, including centering, stillness, celebration, and small acts of service and care for those most vulnerable. 

+ Second, if storms cannot be changed or tamed but, rather, only endured, it is also true that they don't last forever. It is neither fantasy, naivete, nor ideological projection to suggest that a slowly emerging majority of ordinary Americans are growing weary of the current cruelty and chaos. More and more are realizing that WE are not" failing modern life, but modernity is failing US!" (Fuller) This transition is far from complete - and will clearly take more time - but objective evidence points to those who are once again shifting their political and emotional alliances. Those who have lost faith in this current darkness and brokenness are seeking solace. And those who recognize that the storm cannot last forever are starting to build bridges. A recent poll taken immediately after the murder of Alex Pretti documents that many of the young and Latino voters who shifted loyalties in the last national election are now shifting back with a vengeance. A small but growing number of Republicans and their pundits are breaking away from the monolith by demanding a joint investigation into Mr. Pretti's murder. And a few new media outlets are pointing out both the outright lies of the current regime, as well as their ugly and dangerous consequences. An old movement song reminds us that, "It's always darkest before the storm..." Today the snow is still coming down - and we already have more than 24 inches to deal with - but my eyes are not lying: this storm - and all storms - will end. 

+ And third, this snowstorm has slowly pushed some towards a new level of cooperation. It is too early to say too much about the all too new mayor of NYC, but he put together a winning coalition that tapped into the real angst of real people without much ideological carping or blame. He clearly respects our wounds and vulnerabilities. He also knows how to bring desperate communities back into relationship with one another in pursuit of the common good. Cultural critique, Ted Gioia at Substack's "The Honest Broker" has named the work of Mamdani and others the ascent of a "new romanticism." (read his essay @ https://www.honest-broker.com/p/25-propositions-about-the-new-romanticism?img=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%

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More than two years ago, I predicted the rise of a New Romanticism—a movement to counter the intense rationalization and expanding technological control of society. This idea had started as a joke. Oh Beethoven, come save us! And give Tchaikovsky the news. But when I dug deeply into the history of the original Romanticist movement, circa 1800, I stopped laughing. The more I probed, the more I was convinced that this provided a blueprint for countering the overreach of technology, the massive expansion in surveillance, and the centralization of both political and economic power.

A few weeks back, right after Renee Good was murdered, I awoke from a deep sleep with an aching panic attack. I'm not prone to these, but have experienced them from time to time when my inner equilibrium is being challenged and/or changed. Over the past decade, I've had to confront my anxieties in pursuit of both personal equanimity and social compassion. Initially, I concluded that there was something wrong or broken in me that caused me to inwardly come apart at the seams with grief and uncertainty. But on the night in question, two things happened that I now recognize as sacred revelation. First, lying silently in bed that night with my anxiety over the violence and hatred allowed me to feel it deeply. I wept. I felt unhinged. Or, in other words, I grieved. I practiced what I've preached. Like Job, I didn't distract myself from my despair. I felt it. Fully. Part of what I realized in my silent darkness was that I was doubting God's grace and love: could the way of the Cross REALLY transform reality? Was it enough? Was there something MORE I could or should do?

Doubt is NOT the absence of faith. Rather, it's an act of clarifying and I started to sense that whenever I felt overwhelmed with anxiety, it was NOT an inward fault but the very voice of God calling me deeper. Like the Rumi poem, Love Dogs, says: 

One night a man was crying,
“Allah, Allah!”
His lips grew sweet with the praising,
until a cynic said,
“So! I have heard you
calling out, but have you ever
gotten any response?”
The man had no answer for that.
He quit praying and fell into a confused sleep.
He dreamed he saw Khidr, the guide of souls,
in a thick, green foliage,
“Why did you stop praising?”
“Because I’ve never heard anything back.”
“This longing you express
is the return message.”
The grief you cry out from
draws you toward union.
Your pure sadness that wants help
is the secret cup.
Listen to the moan of a dog for its master.
That whining is the connection.
There are love dogs no one knows the names of.

Give your life to be one of them.

My feelings of emptiness and yearning were the Via Negativa - the silent call of the sacred - into deeper trust. So, while holding my despair, I read a few lines from Cynthia Bourgeault's The Wisdom Jesus about kenosis - Christ's commitment to self-emptying that empowered him to get over himself and trust God ever more deeply. And as I read, and let the words speak to my heart, I could feel the anxiety lift. It was palpable. It was awesome. It was restorative. Not that my feelings changed anything objectively in the world. No, what the presence of grace did was change me. A little bit. Enough to get grounded again. Enough to trust that Dr. King was right: hatred cannot conquer hatred, only love can do that; just as the darkness cannot overcome darkness but needs the light. Call this my new credo: be still and know - reconnect to small celebrations as I seek and serve - and trust that grief and emptiness are just as much of the Lord as jubilation. And just in case I wasn't listening, I just received this announcement from Kaitlin Curtice about the creation of her Aki Institute of Peace and Justice, built upon three pillars: rest, resistance, and responsibility. (check it out along with me @

https://kaitlincurtice.substack.com/p/announcing-the-aki-institute?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=29242&post_id=185735318&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=49p8n&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

aging, letting go, and rocking into a new year

Somewhere along the line, I came across this quote from Meryl Streep: Aging means letting go, it means accepting, it means discovering that beauty was never in our skin... but in the story we carry inside us. Ten years ago, while on sabbatical in Montreal, Di and I read aloud The Art of Aging by Alice Matzkin. It added depth to our own experiences with aging and breadth to Streep's paraphrase of Carl Jung's insights about:

Moving from outward ambition to inward meaning, a process he called individuation, where the second half of life becomes about integrating unconscious aspects to find wholeness, wisdom, and a deeper self, rather than mere decline. He described this as the "afternoon of life," shifting focus from accumulating achievements to cultivating inner richness, embracing one's whole story, and becoming truly oneself.

This insight keeps drifting through my mind, especially as we played a rocking set at the Sideline Saloon earlier this week. Our band, All of Us, is certainly "over the hill" by popular standards: we're all over 70. Nevertheless, we still rock hard, get jiggy with it, and encourage others to shake it up with abandon. In addition to backing up two friends on Neil Young and Bob Dylan tunes, we did "Baby Blue" by Badfinger, "Main Street" by Bob Seeger, and the extended rock version of Lou Reed's "Sweet Jane." 

I'm not as spry as I once was: my lower back often aches after playing a gig, my hearing is increasingly compromised, and I get klutzier and klutzier with every passing month, tripping over guitar cords, gear, and knocking down more microphones than I care to admit. But while packing up, a young local musician said to me: Dude, you guys are freakin' awesome, and I LOVE that you're keeping the candle of joy. resistance, and beauty alive! It filled my heart to overflowing to hear this, as THIS is precisely the band's mission. Not just playing oldies, but playing songs so passionately that we nourish one another's joy. St. Lucinda sure as hell gets this right:

That's why we invite other local artists who affirm our mission to join us at our various gigs: we want THEM to have the musical support needed to multiply the joy in the miracle of music. 

I've come to realize that's also why the sacred pushed me back into ministry. I thought I was done. Like Lou Reed snarled, stick a fork in it, it's done, in the Last Great American Whale. I was tired, worn, and burned out, discouraged and profoundly disappointed with so-called organized religion. So, I called it quits, spent a few years of solitude, gardened, and settled into being grandpa. True, I created an online spiritual reflection during COVID that I kept up for a few years, exploring the mystical aspects of following Jesus. But I stayed as far away from a local church as possible. 

After the pandemic, however, I was invited to serve as a worship leader and provide pastoral care to a North County congregation for 6 months. I'd been away for half a decade, so I gave it a shot - and loved it. That extended break - and the ministry we crafted together - not only replenished my soul, but gave my body an extended rest. Clearly, there are times we're called INTO ministry just as there are times we're called OUT, too. Today, I'm about to start year three of a ministry in Palmer, MA - and I love it.

So, what have I learned and made flesh as an aging rock'n'soul disciple of Jesus? At least the following:

+ Wisdom-keeper. Kaitlin Curtice is right when she writes: like winter itself, the only way through this moment in reality is through it. "There is no other way to approach winter but to travel through it. We can’t go around it, can’t avoid it, can’t pretend it’s not there." I resonate with her poetic articulation of this:

It was never around but through, never the easiest way, but the one that guarantees us the chance to know and love ourselves at the end. So, open the door, go through the portal, stand at the threshold, carry yourself through the winds of grief, walk the perimeter of your soul's deep forest until you are ready to journey through. Get your shoes on. It's time.

+ Small is Holy - so quit trying to make it big. My ego and training pushed me to try to do something significant with my life. But mostly that's bullshit: what truly matters is being awake, present, and loving with whatever is right before you. In trying to be a hotshot, I missed loving those closest and most dear to me. It's not that I wanted to ignore them; I simply wasn't paying attention. A few years ago I found these words for a song I called "small is holy."

Thinking big and acting strong – led me into all that’s wrong Hitting bottom taught me well .– strategies to get through hell

Touch the wound in front of you, that’s all you can really do
Keep it close, don’t turn away, make room for what’s real today

SMALL IS ME, SMALL IS YOU, SMALL IS HOLY AND RINGS TRUE
SMALL IS HARD, SMALL REVEALS
THE WAY OUR HEARTS CAN BE HEALED

Blame is such a viscous deal, wastes your time and never heals
Pay it forward’s more the way, grace trumps karma every day
Live the questions, wait your turn, take a deep breath, try to learn
Losing is one way to win what once has died might live again…

Wisdom’s blessing’s upside down
Something’s lost and something’s found
Each day brings us something good
Carry water, chop the wood

When my life bewilders me – it's time to listen silently
Don’t say too much, don’t push too hard
What helps the most is in your backyard
Let it lead your soul to rest
Just like a child on momma’s breast
The arc of love is slow but true
And waiting to come home to you…

+ Music is the best way to articulate and share spiritual wisdom. Theology has its place for those who want a linear explication of grace. But music, as Tricia Gates Brown writes: cuts deeper. I've known this for ages, but in the last decade have devoted myself to going deeper into this gift. Ms. Gates Brown puts it like this:

I have found that for me, nothing stirs my pot like listening to certain kinds of music; and listening in a certain heart-wide-open way. I have come to see this heartful listening as the closest thing to prayer for me. It is not that listening to such music leads me to pray or puts me in a mind for prayer. No, it is that the experience of listening itself is prayer. Heartful music listening has become my most impactful and meaningful prayer experience. Sometimes I have this experience when I’ve read an amazing poem, but rarely. When listening to my favorite music, I become so filled with love/empathy/awe for my fellow creatures and life itself, and feel so deeply in touch with the divine, that prayer is all I know to call it.

And when I am PLAYING and SHARING music... OMG! Giving up some of my former understanding of ministry simply to groove has been life-changing. Getting older - and owning it - as the New Year embraces us DOES invite relinquishing a lot. But letting go also opens new gifts and blessings way beyond my control. Happy New Year dear friends.  

cultivating a sacramental consciousness during advent...

We are quickly approaching the Fourth Sunday of Advent. My spiritual tradition asks us to embrace a threefold discipline during the four weeks before Christmas by getting grounded in the practice of patience, cultivating a contemplative presence each day, and trusting the spirituality of this season, wherein the earth shares wisdom with us if we have eyes to see and ears to hear. It is a practical mysticism committed to nourishing a sacramental consciousness: a way of being that discerns both the facts of our reality and their more profound truths. Chris Webb suggests that living sacramentally means consciously acting so that "everything we do and everything we experience in the material world - the depth and breadth of our existence - is an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace."  Interfaith author, Kaitlin Curtice, talks about this as "wintering" - going inward, watching, waiting, and wondering what will be revealed and experienced during the unfolding darkness - a core commitment of her Potawatomie heritage. My soul hears a parallel in Gertrud Mueller-Nelson' description of Advent spirituality:

Waiting is mysteriously necessary to all that is becoming. As in a pregnancy, nothing of value comes into being without a period of quiet incubation: not a healthy baby, not a loving relationship, not a reconciliation, a new understanding, a work of art, never a transformation. Rather, a shortened period of incubation brings forth what is not whole or strong or even alive. Brewing, baking, simmering, fermenting, ripening, germinating, and gestating are the feminine processes of becoming, and they are the symbolic states of being that belong in a life of value, necessary to transformation. (To Dance with God, p. 64)

Cultivating a sacramental consciousness has always been a challenge, all the more so in these days of perpetual engagement with our digital distractions. Nevertheless, my musical colleagues and I in Wednesday's Child believe that we can not only interrupt the tumult of our culture by offering a bit of respite in what we call our Blue Christmas/Longest Night liturgy, but also share tools for unplugging, too. I have partnered with these gifted and faithful musicians for over 15 years of music-making, gift-bearing, consciousness-raising, and soul-sharing. We create in pursuit of faith, hope, and love. In doing so, we have become a small but eclectic collective that spans different ages, backgrounds, genders, spirituality, family, aesthetics, and perspectives. A small faith community nourished by song, striving to integrate each person's unique gifts, quirks, and blessings into the whole. As we've been preparing our 2025 take on the Longest Night (December 21) through music, song, silence, poetry, candlelight, and presence, I've heard a sacred invitation to learn from the darkness.

Darkness scares us. Darkness can feel like a nightmare. We’ve been taught to fear it, to avoid it, to keep the lights on, to think happy thoughts, to pretend everything’s all right, and to not go into “that dark place.” Yet because God created both light and dark, day and night, and called ALL of creation good, we are invited to learn to see in the dark. It is, to be sure, an acquired art, without which we will miss what is there. Barbara Brown Taylor, put it like this in her book, Learning to Walk in the Dark: "I have learned things in the dark that I could never have learned in the light, things that have saved my life over and over again, so that there is really only one logical conclusion. I need darkness as much as I need light....new life starts in the dark. Whether it is a seed in the ground, a baby in the womb, or Jesus in the tomb, it starts in the dark."

After collecting the songs and poems that resonated with us this year, three discrete yet interrelated challenges surfaced. One recognized the fullness of our respective schedules: it hasn't been easy to ensure the whole band is consistently together for rehearsals. Because we deconstruct songs before refashioning them, having folk away slowed the simmering process of creativity down considerably. There are a ton of reasons why this has been so, and there's no blame; it's just the luck of the draw that's made this year more complicated.

A second challenge involved new material and genres: the core of this year's liturgy is built on seven songs from Gen X and Millennial culture, which is a big shift for some of us old timers. It's been exciting, but also required a longer learning curve to make the art of Alanis Morrissette, NIN, REM, David Bowie, and others work within our groove. Which points to wrinkle number three: how to close this gig?  After finding a path through the first two challenges, we came to a strategic and aesthetic fork in the road. After tossing away a few good but as yet unformed songs, there was no consensus about how to bring it all home.

At first, this was vexing to me: with only a few days before it was time to stand and deliver, I was yearning for clarity, and it wasn't coming. Further, my heart genuinely wanted us ALL to weigh in and clarify how we thought it best to wrap things up, but we had to do this virtually. Would that we had a few more weeks to meet, talk, and rework some tunes in person, but we'd already used all the available time. So, after probably too many IMs and emails, we agreed to trust simplicity and see how that shakes out. My point in recounting these challenges is that creating art and worship in community is an existential act of practicing sacramental consciousness. We were listening to what the heart wanted us to know. What were likewise searching through the wisdom of our flesh, too, even while discerning how the whole presentation fit together intellectually. Aesthetics, culture, liturgy, and experience mashed together with reality, trust, love, confusion, and our mission to create a safe space for contemplation. I won't speak for others, but this strikes me as a growing edge for the band. Tricia Gates Brown wrote in her Substack column:

Listening, singing, and sharing music in a certain heart-wide-and-open way has become for us closest thing to prayer we know. And it’s not that listening leads me to pray or puts me in a mind for prayer and we become so filled with love/empathy/awe for my fellow creatures and life itself, that we feel deeply in touch with the divine.

Creating and sharing sacramental consciousness music in cooperative solidarity is transformative. It is not always easy and never simple, but rich, rewarding, and blessed in ways I could never have imagined. Come join us this Sunday in Palmer, MA @ 4 pm.

a week of sorting clutter...

Advent One 2025: I HATE clutter. Always have and always will. So, on what became a delightful snow day, I gave my attention to dusting, vacuuming, sorting, tossing, and scouring our home. I have no idea when this happened last, but the accumulating detritus was contributing to my weariness and needed the old heave-ho! (There's still a bedroom in need of attention - and my personal study is a wreck - but that may have to wait for another day.) The "Two of Us" band practice was cancelled, a chicken is in the sink defrosting, and soon our satchel of Advent/ Christmas music will reappear to grace our home with the sounds of Loreena McKinnitt, Vince Guaraldi, John Rutter, George Winston, and a host of subdued Celtic and French carols. All of this, as well as the silence of the snowfall and the absence of our clutter, has brought me a measure of blessed serenity - and I am grateful.

To say that this Advent feels like a reckoning of sorts for me would not be wrong: I am increasingly aware of my own mortality, conscious that on some days my energy dwindles and requires a newfound attention to choices, profoundly concerned about the ups and mostly downs of my loved one's health, and perplexed about the long-term consequences of my nation's ongoing obsession with chaos and cruelty. Earlier in the day, I read C. Christopher Smith's Substack column, Paying Attention to Poetry, which noted that:

Poetry (can be) a way to practice paying better attention—a habit that is essential to resisting the ever-encroaching allure of exploitative technology and consumerism and to being formed more deeply into the image of Christ. Paying attention is a key part of what makes us human, and poetry can be a valuable tool for developing that skill.

https://cultivatingcommunities.substack.com/p/paying-attention-to-poetry?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Could it be that in this season of watching, waiting, and paying attention, beyond the clutter, it's the poetry of Advent that is calling to me for a new hearing? I'm rather taken with this from Wisława Szymborska: A Little Bit About the Soul

A soul is something we have every now and then.
Nobody has one all the time
or forever.

Day after day,
year after year,
can go by without one.

Only sometimes in rapture
or in the fears of childhood
it nests a little longer.
Only sometimes in the wonderment
that we are old.

It rarely assists us
during tiresome tasks,
such as moving furniture,
carrying suitcases,
or traveling on foot in shoes too tight.

When we’re filling out questionnaires
or chopping meat
it’s usually given time off.

Out of our thousand conversations
it participates in one,
and even that isn’t a given,
for it prefers silence.

When the body starts to ache and ache
it quietly steals from its post.

It’s choosy:
not happy to see us in crowds,
sickened by our struggle for any old advantage
and the drone of business dealings.

It doesn’t see joy and sorrow
as two different feelings.
It is with us
only in their union.
We can count on it
when we’re not sure of anything
and curious about everything.

Of all material objects
it likes grandfather clocks
and mirrors, which work diligently
even when no one is looking.

It doesn’t state where it comes from
or when it will vanish again,
but clearly it awaits such questions.

Evidently,
just as we need it,
it can also use us
for something.

This is an act of faith - trusting that our elusive souls can and will use us for something - an incarnational paradox resolved only by patience and practice. Lou Reed sang, "It takes a busload of faith to get by" -  and he wasn't kidding. Kate Bowler adds, "Advent begins in the dark—with one small candle and a stubborn kind of hope. Not the shiny, everything’s-fine version. The gritty, keep-going kind. We wait. We bless what’s unfinished. Because the world is still a mess. And God is still coming." Her reflection for Advent One rings true to me and feels like I do today:

The church, in its wisdom, starts the new year not with champagne toasts or gym memberships but with a candle in the dark. Advent is the beginning of the Christian calendar, though you’d be forgiven for missing that detail if your mailbox is already stuffed with glossy holiday catalogues. We start here—not at the finish line of Christmas morning—but in the long, deliberate work of waiting. Advent always begins on (or around) the feast of St. Andrew, the first disciple to follow Jesus and the first to drag someone else (his brother Peter, no less) along with him. Andrew is not the most memorable apostle. He’s not Peter with the speeches or John with the poetry. He’s the brother in the background. But he is the one who told his brother, “We have found the Messiah” (John 1:41).

The first week of Advent is devoted to hope. Not optimism, which is a little too seamless, too unrealistic, too pie-in-every-sky. And not nostalgia either. Remember those childhood Christmas concerts in drafty school gyms, where a dozen shaky recorders and one out-of-tune piano were supposed to sound like angels singing? We didn’t care—it was magic. But nostalgia can trick us into thinking the best days are behind us. Advent hope is grittier. It looks squarely at the world as it is—fragile, unjust, unfinished—and still insists that God is not done yet.

And so it is, has been, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen. Last Sunday, I taught the children of the church some of our Advent hymns - and how to use the hymnal. After worship, we all made Advent wreaths to take home and I was given this stunning and arresting crucifix made of wire and nails. It took my breath away. This Sunday, our children will present the congregation with a new white altar cloth. We will baptize a newborn, too, before gathering around the Lord's table to celebrate Eucharist. Indeed, the world is still a mess - and God continues to come to us for the Holy One is not done yet.

this year's advent wreath...

I love Advent almost as much as All Saints/All Souls Days: these semi-barren early winter holy days speak to my soul like this blessing from Jan Richardson.

Go slow if you can.
Slower. More slowly still.
Friendly dark or fearsome,
this is no place to break your neck by rushing,
by running, by crashing into what you cannot see.
Then again, it is true: different darks
have different tasks, and if you have arrived here unawares,
if you have come in peril or in pain,
this might be no place you should dawdle
I do not know what these shadows ask of you,
what they might hold that means you good or ill.
It is not for me to reckon whether you should linger
or you should leave.
But this is what I can ask for you:
That in the darkness there be a blessing.
That in the shadows there be a welcome.
That in the night you be encompassed by the Love that knows your name.

Given the complexities of contemporary blended families, we head out of town for the feast of Thanksgiving in the USA. We cherish the quiet solitude of Quebec's Eastern Townships and take a few days to bask in the stark boldness of the land. This also lays a foundation for the practice of Advent that always begins with the call to watch and wait. The Community of Corrymela in Northern Ireland frames Advent well in this prayer:

God, the thief who breaks into this world;
God, the child who cries out with new life:
as we prepare ourselves for Christmas,
and bed down for this season,
surprise us in the night.
Steal us away from the gloom.
May we find ourselves separated
from monotonous tasks
and ready
for the coming of light.
Amen.

To suggest that I was replenished and well rested for today's Advent One worship would be an understatement: I was pumped! And the good souls in Palmer outdid themselves in setting the environment with tasteful holiday lights, garlands, a lovely little tree, and the Advent wreath. I am partial to Advent wreaths having been schooled by Gertrud Mueller-Nelson's insights in To Dance with God. Some years back, while going deeper into Celtic practices, we celebrated Advent for a full 40 days. This is the Advent wreath from that year.

This year, after our church's Advent wreath workshop, a fun intergenerational event that was well attended, I schlepped home through a mini-snow squall on the mountain, I had a thought about this year's home wreath. I still have a TON of pumpkins - my autumn/early winter delight - and wanted to incorporate them somehow into the mix. So, with a bit of ascetic and sacramental liberty, this is what I came up with for this year.

There's pumpkins and Native corn, apples, evergreen, candles in Advent blue, and a Tohono O'otham nativity painting from Tucson crafted by Ted DeGrazia. This year's wreath is ALL about Mother Earth and solidarity with what is small, vulnerable, and ultimately holy. And so, like the lone candle, I begin another cycle of watching, waiting, and trusting that a small sign of blessing will break forth from the darkness.

from thanksgiving eve to blue christmas...

For 30 years, in the spirit of Pete and Arlo, my various churches celebrated Thanksgiving Eve as a Night of American Music. In one incarnation, it was like a Prairie Home Companion: lots of group singing, emphasis on folk songs and the blues. In time, it became more like the Last Waltz with special guests playing short sets, the house band rocking things up, and a few a capella gospel tunes added for good measure.

All that came to a close 12 years ago when a massive snowstorm shut down the town. The Thanksgiving Eve shows never recovered. And while we have shared a variety of other benefits, one era had clearly ended - and, truth be told, I am still nostalgic for the magic we shared on those sacred nights.

After COVID, the core band regrouped into what is now Wednesday's Child. On Sunday, December at @ 4 pm in Palmer, MA, Wednesday's Child will offer up a "BLUE CHRISTMAS/LONGEST NIGHT" encounter with song and silence, prayer and candlelight, as an act of refuge and solidarity with all who grieve during this season. It is a quiet and safe space to feel all those complicated emotions truth so often obscured by popular culture.

These days, the promise and potential of that first Massachusetts Thanksgiving in 1621 still resonates in my soul. That's why we slip out of town for a few quiet days of rest and reflection on the big picture - NOT the sentimental or sanitized version of this holiday that ignores the genocide the white settlers committed not long after the harvest feast - but the whole story. For we must own that legacy even as we strive to live into and through it. Historians agree that the English Pilgrims and others didn't make contact with the Wampanoag people for the first four months on North American soil.

"The "real history" of Thanksgiving involves a 1621 harvest feast between Plymouth colonists and the Wampanoag people, which was a brief moment of cooperation that contrasts with the subsequent history of conflict and oppression. The traditional narrative focuses on the 1621 event, while more complete histories acknowledge the violence and displacement of Native Americans that followed. From a Native American perspective, particularly the Wampanoag, Thanksgiving is often seen as a day of mourning, not celebration."

If you are free, please join on in December. We're using the music of Sarah MacLachlan, Bruce Springsteen, Alanis Morissette, David Bowie, NIN/Johnny Cash, and others for a quiet time of owning and sharing the complexities of this season.