reflections on doubt, trust, and getting out of our own way...

EASTER 2 Worship Message: Learning to See by Faith NOT Sight

(with gratitude to the SALT Project and Richard Rohr for their wisdom)

One of the truths about living into faith is that it is more of a journey than a destination – and no matter how well we plan, there are always surprises, problems, interruptions, and sometimes unexpected blessings. Some of you know I have an OLD car – almost 16 years old to the day – and, outwardly, it’s in pretty good shape, with minimal rust and a strong disposition. That said, making my commute from Pittsfield on a regular basis has awakened me anew to the very real challenges of making this journey by faith. I TRUST that God has called me to be with you – and I give thanks to the Lord that I am here – and yet there have been times when the trip has been trying.

· After worship and meetings one Sunday during my first year, I discovered that the new brake job I had done on Friday was defective when, no sooner did I get ON the Pike, than I had no brakes. That was a wild time in prayer, and I rejoiced that I was carried home safely that evening.

· Another time, about two months ago, I couldn’t figure out where a weird rumbling sound was coming from until, after getting home, I saw that my left rear tire was barely hanging on by two out of five lug nuts.

· And no sooner did I get home from Maundy Thursday this year than the power steering, AC, and muffler gave up the ghost as soon as I pulled in the driveway. Now, I’m NOT saying that God caused these problems to test me. That would be superstitious. What I AM saying is that each of these – and a variety of other challenges of my journey – prompted me to pray, act with extreme caution, and then return thanks to the Lord each time I got home safely. Please, do not worry about the Beast or ME – a new vehicle is in the works relatively soon!

I recall this simply to note that I have some experience with the uncertainties of a journey, whether physical, emotional, mechanical, international, or spiritual. So did St. Paul, who likened living into Christ’s resurrection as a pilgrimage – not something that happens all at once – but through practicing seeing by FAITH, not sight. TRUSTING God rather than just what is obvious. Honoring the Spirit’s grace and guidance deep within

· That’s what the Scriptures of Eastertide are all about: learning to see and trust God’s loving presence by faith, not just by sight – and doing our part to honor this mystery. During the seven weeks of Eastertide, poetically one week longer than Lent, we read stories of the risen Jesus appearing to his followers in order that we, too, might embrace the teachings of Jesus and share intimacy with God as they once did.

· And a recurring theme in these post-resurrection stories is how, from the very outset, Christian communities struggled to perceive and believe that God had truly raised Jesus from the dead. For starters, the risen Jesus isn’t recognized at first. Magdalene thought he was the local gardener.

Later in John, the disciples don’t recognize him on the beach. Next week, in Luke, two of Jesus’ followers have an extended conversation with and about Jesus without realizing who he is! Both John and Luke go out of their way to suggest that the resurrection means something more mysterious than simple resuscitation: Jesus has risen and, at the same time, is somehow different. Part of what’s going on is the early Christian community wrestling with the fact that great numbers of people didn’t notice Jesus' return because “resurrection” defies conventional categories. Jesus was clearly back, but only a few had eyes to see that it was really him, his closest followers needed help, and we, too, are asked to learn to see by faith, not merely by sight. (SALT Project)

Today’s story begins by telling us it’s the evening of “the first day of the week,” a day of fresh starts. Mary Magdalene has just declared to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord!” and Peter and John have gone to the empty tomb in confusion. But as night falls, the disciples are perplexed, huddling in a locked house for fear of the religious authorities. (NOTE: these words ought to warn us about ANY talk of creating a theocracy in the USA, Israel, Iran, or anywhere else! Forcing religion on another is always trouble and thwarts rather than supports the cause of Christ.) So, to start, this is a story of one type of Easter doubt: the fear that all is lost – a very human reaction.

· Suddenly, Jesus arrives and stands among his frightened friends unhindered by the locked doors, saying, “Peace be with you,” which is an astonishing greeting — these are the same men who denied and deserted Jesus just a few days ago, when it mattered most! (SALT Project) And now he brings them a holy blessing because HE sees each of us by faith rather than sight.

· And immediately after this blessing, Jesus shows the disciples his wounds. “Does he look so different that the wounds act as identifying marks? Does he look more or less the same, but the wounds prove he is the person they saw crucified, rather than a doppelganger? Or is he trying to assure them that torture and death have indeed been overcome — that he has somehow, like Lazarus, come out of the other side of the tomb alive? Whatever the details, Jesus addresses another kind of Easter doubt: suspicion that death still has dominion, that physical resurrection is impossible, and that no one can die and rise again.” (SALT Project)

According to St. John, sometimes our journey LOOKS and FEELS as if all is lost. At other times, it floods our minds with the fear that God’s loving power is NOT greater than death. Some Bible scholars also suggest that there’s a third type of Easter doubt. “This one isn’t so much focused on confirming that it’s really Jesus or the plausibility of the resurrection — after all, according to St. John, the disciples have only recently witnessed Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead (the very reason the powers-that-be mobilized to have Jesus killed.) No, this third kind of doubt focuses on whether Jesus is truly the Messiah, for to some, the genuine Messiah would not arise from death in triumphant, invulnerable splendor, but rather as a suffering servant still marked by vulnerability, by fragility, by wounds.” (SALT Project)

· You may recall that the prophet Isaiah spoke of a suffering servant, a Messiah who will make intercession for transgressors. This would be the true Messiah, acting on behalf of a wounded world and showing up as a wounded savior.

· From this perspective, it would make sense that Jesus immediately displays “his hands and his side” to show his friends that God’s Beloved comes not as a military conqueror without blemish, but rather as a strong and peaceful shepherd bearing the wounds of the world, a child of God and a child of Humanity. Jesus is the Word made flesh — and “flesh” means vulnerability, wounds, struggle, and challenge. (SALT Project) Womanist theologian Yolanda Pierce writes that:

By sharing his wounds, Jesus reveals that our wounds are places for God’s healing presence and love, too. This is a blessing for the wounded, for those who are still healing, and even for those who aren’t quite ready for healing. The risen Savior insistently welcomes the doubting, the uncertain, and the grieving to touch and see that he is real and present and here with us. (CAC)

The risen Savior, who had been abandoned, denied, betrayed, and crucified, doesn’t hide his wounds or rush their healing (so that our wounded souls) encased in the frailties of human flesh might also summon enough grace and kindness to acknowledge that our own very human wounds need time to heal? Seeing by faith is living INTO Christ’s resurrection – striving to incarnate our better angels – getting out of our own way so that God’s grace might triumph, albeit imperfectly or haltingly. Practically speaking, that often boils down to learning NEW habits, acquiring NEW inner tools, and interrupting our emotional reactivity for more silence, patience, and compassion. Again, St. Paul is at his best when he articulates what it looks like to be born from above, or servants of the Lord Jesus who seek ye FIRST the kingdom of God, or simply disciples of faith, hope, and love. This contemporary restatement of Romans 12 is spot-on!

So, here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you. (The Message)

Did you know that before he became the Apostle to the Gentiles, welcoming non-Jews and Jews alike into the community of Christ, St. Paul spent three years in TRAINING in the Arabian desert? The opening of Galatians chapter one states:

When God, who set me apart from my mother’s womb and called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son in me so that I might celebrate his way among the Gentiles, I did NOT consult with many. I did not go up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before I was but instead went to the Arabian desert. After three years, I returned to Damascus and later went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Cephas – whom you know as Peter - and stayed with him for conversation and prayer for fifteen days.

No one is precisely sure who taught Paul the spirituality of the desert, but a few clues are embedded in this short text.

· First, the desert as metaphor: in Judaism at the time of Jesus – and many other spiritual traditions as well- the desert is either a place or a period of time set aside for discernment, silence, testing, isolation, and preparation for serving the Lord. It is NEVER a place of punishment, but rather a place to grow in trust, clarify and cleanse both heart and mind, and let go of all the extraneous distractions of life to grasp what is truly important. In the desert, the prophet Isaiah spiritually heard the Lord proclaim:

Seek my love wherever it may be found; and call upon me while I am near; return to the Lord, that I may have mercy on you. But know this: my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways. 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 shall accomplish that which I purpose and succeed in the thing for which I sent it. (Isaiah 55) First, the desert tells us St. Paul withdrew to do some inner work.

· Second, the desert reminds us of where Jesus fasted for 40 days and 40 nights: before beginning his public ministry, Jesus learned the wisdom of the Lord incarnated in nature from his Wildman cousin, John the Baptist. Paul also went to the wilderness in the spirit of the Chosen who had wandered for 40 years after being liberated from Egyptian slavery by Moses.

· And third, we’re talking about the Arabian desert, where Mt. Sinai stood in all her majestic splendor. It’s the mystical place of uncertainty where the prophet Elijah fled to listen more closely to the still, small voice of the Lord. Mt. Sinai, you may recall, was also where Moses received the 10 Commandments from the Lord and celebrated the first covenant between God and his people. Some have been so bold as to suggest that one of the reasons Paul went to the mountain was to clarify and comprehend God’s new covenant in Jesus.

All of which serves to remind us that if study, preparation, testing, and discernment were essential for God’s first followers, so, too, then in our era of confusion, challenge, and change. Inwardly, we may have experienced grace, forgiveness, renewal, and love, but to make that feeling and those words flesh takes training, practice, making mistakes, and lots of time. We don’t mature in faith all at once, but incrementally; falling down is just as important as getting back up again. And let me say out loud that just this weekend, I had yet another in a lifelong series of learning experiences involving getting out of my own way so that God’s love might flow through me.

· Some of you know that my wife, Di, was recently diagnosed with a rare blood disease that requires immunotherapy. Her first session was on Friday, and during round one, she had an episode where her breathing became labored – one of the normal side effects of this particular drug.

· Her attending medical helpers were excellent and at the top of their game, and got it resolved quickly. Unfortunately, the spasms returned at about 6 pm, didn’t respond to any of our meds, and necessitated a LENGTHY trip to the ER. Thanks be to God, things worked out, and by early morning, we were back home again, safe and mostly sound.

During the first few hours of this episode, my tendency to freak out was on steroids. I’ve long reacted to threats to my loved ones with a fight-or-flight response – I can be chill and focused with most others – but bring a hurt to those I love best, and I become outwardly ferocious and inwardly terrified. And that old reaction was popping around inside of me that night, which was the LAST thing Di needed from me. She needed comfort and clarity, support and presence – which I knew – but really had to struggle to manifest in the moment. As I was heading out the door, I saw these hanging from a stand by my bedside – prayer beads – a Protestant version of rosary beads I used to make for folk. So, I grabbed them, stuffed them in my pocket, and headed off. And while she was having X-rays & EKGs, I sat and prayed with my beads.

· A lot in our tradition really don’t “get” prayer beads – we’ve been taught that only CATHOLICS use them – and often superstitiously. But that’s hooey and judgmental. What one of my mentors taught me is that praying with these beads not only helps refocus my heart on God’s love but also distracts my habits and brain from simply reacting. They help me get out of my own way so there’s more room for God.

· So, that’s what I did: I prayed a cycle of prayers over 15 minutes, and by the time I was done, she was finished with her tests, and we settled in for a LONG wait for her doc.

I need all the help I can get to get over my unhelpful and inwardly wounded places so that I can partner with the Lord. Maybe you do, too, so that we can see by faith, not just by sight. So that we can serve the Lord rather than deepen the angst. You see, if I simply let my emotions remain in charge, if I relied only on my immediate reaction… well, it wouldn’t be pretty and certainly wouldn’t help the one I love most. Part of being born again, growing deeper in faith, and seeing reality by faith rather than just sight, is practicing letting go and letting God. Going deeper into trust rather than our assumptions, reactions, or limited perspective. Do you know the story of Jesus wandering the desert until he meets an old man?

"What brings you to the desert?" Jesus asked. To which the man replied: “Well, I’m looking for my son. I lost him many years ago.” "How did you lose him?” Jesus wondered. “Can you tell me what happened?" "I had one son – not by birth – but by a heavenly miracle. He had tremendous struggles with temptation. And at one point, he even died and came back to life!" Jesus couldn't believe it. Could this really be his father? So, he asked one last question: "Are you by any chance a carpenter?" To which the old man answered: "Yes, yes, I am!" At which point, Jesus rushed forward, embraced the old man, and cried: "Father, it is I! Oh, how I’ve missed you!" Overwhelmed with feeling, the old man smiled and said, “I’ve missed you, too, Pinocchio!”

Today’s story about Jesus, his disciples, and Thomas's doubts gives shape and form to some of the doubts we all have about God’s loving presence. Thomas personifies what our doubts and fears might look like and shows us that we ALL need time to cultivate and incarnate the love of God in our ordinary lives, habits, thoughts, and prayers. Which brings me back to the idea that following the Resurrected Jesus must include learning to see by faith as a journey – and journeys are always hard. Learning NOT to react but discern can be hard. Knowing that we won’t always get it right can be hard, too. That’s probably why I like the way Kate Bowler put it:

Living into Easter is not a feeling – especially one that tells us everything has been fixed or healed – nor is it a resolution to our wounds or an emotional closure. No, a living Easter is the practice of patient and imperfect trust that empowers us to live alongside sadness, boredom, fear, or despair. Easter expands our capacity to hold paradoxical truths together at the same time. For that’s the testimony of Scripture. Jesus wept at the grave of Lazarus even knowing the resurrection is coming. St. Paul wrote that we are sorrowful yet rejoicing, grieving NOT as those who have no hope, but grieving nonetheless. And Revelation 21 promises a future where God will at some point wipe away every tear from our eyes, not a promise that we won’t cry now.

Easter is a reality AND a journey – and it is hard. So, let me teach you a prayer song from South Africa that you can use to step back from reacting, interrupt your default position, and open your heart to the blessings of the resurrection. It’s simple… and I use it a LOT while driving and I can’t access my prayer beads…

Come with me for the journey is long (4x) 

The journey, the journey, the journey is long (4x)

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.