how I stay grounded in our challenging culture...

I was recently able to have lunch with our oldest daughter’s godfather and my favorite Sunday School teacher, Malcom, as we celebrated his 95th birthday; as the week matured, I had a chance to play guitar with my grandson and create visual art with my granddaughter. Later still, I discovered that my wife’s disability application was finally approved, visited with our younger daughter to discuss her thoughts on the recently departed poet Wendell Berry, held a few potentially significant pastoral visits, prayed with my tears, ordered a new set of clerical stoles from Bethlehem, and came across this poem by a Christian pastor, John Swales, who works on the fringe of a fading industrial city in England that begins:

I don’t want to be a Christian who forgets how to feel—who hides behind answers, quotes verses like shields, and silences sorrow with a song. I don’t want a faith of romanticized abstraction, where resurrection is polished, and the cross is theory. Give me something real—flesh and blood, grief and grace. I want to weep with eyes wide open. Tears that speak truth. Tears that rise from the ground of compassion, from the jagged knowledge that the world is not as it was meant to be.

Real flesh-and-blood encounters are not only what matters to me each day, but also what I remember when reviewing the ups and downs of each week to discern where I might have met the Lord. These days, I no longer have much time for abstract ideas or whatever obsession has captured this moment’s news cycle. Don’t get me wrong: I don't ignore what passes for the “news.” In fact, I often find myself praying tears of exasperation, grief, or solace for what I see on TV. But I strive to take it in and then let it go, as Jesus tells us in the Sermon on the Mount: Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day.

Once upon a time, like many who are overeducated and reasonably comfortable, I was consumed by politics and news programming – and many of my friends and colleagues still are. But three insights helped heal this addiction: First, no matter HOW much I disagree with what I see on the news – no matter how much I rant and rail at politicians on both sides of the aisle or weep in solidarity over the violence in Gaza, Ukraine, or Sudan, to say nothing of the agony caused by natural destruction like tsunamis or earthquakes – there is precious little I can do to effect change on behalf of compassion and right relations. Yes, I make financial donations; and write letters, too. But when it comes to the grand issues of the day, I can neither touch them in any significant way nor make any real difference in their outcome.

About ten years ago, therefore, I started to practice what my friends in the L’Arche movement call the “10 -foot rule.” L’Arche, as you may know, is an international movement of tenderness for people with intellectual and physical disabilities. They create small communities worldwide where people with and with- out disabilities simply live together. Take care of one another together. Learn to honor the heart of God in one another and everyone together. They teach that regional and international tragedy and injustice may break our hearts, but most of the time, we can only make a genuine difference by paying attention to those within 10 feet of our lives. There, we can listen, assist, learn from, honor, love, and work together in harmony in ways that can be transformative and salvific. What’s more, when we ourselves act in ways that matter to another, when we can see and touch the fruit of our labor up close and personal, despair starts to disappear, and hope rises within like the resurrection. So, first, the 10-foot rule has helped me let go of a ton of anxiety and wasted effort. 

Second, the older I get, the more it becomes clear that social transformation comes and goes in waves, and it’s impossible to predict where things will land in the short term. I once heard this story…

There was once a farmer in rural Japan. He didn't have much money and, instead of a tractor, used an old horse to plow his field. One afternoon, while working in the field, the horse dropped dead. Everyone in the village said, "Oh, what a horrible thing to happen” but the farmer said simply, "We'll see." He was so at peace and so calm that everyone in the village admired his attitude and gave him a new horse as a gift. Over and over, the community said aloud: "What a lucky man to receive such a gift." And the farmer said, "We'll see." A couple of days later, the new horse jumped the fence and ran away. The whole village shook their heads and said, "What a poor fellow!" To which the farmer smiled and said, "We'll see." Eventually, the horse found his way home, and the community rejoiced, crying, "What a fortunate man!" And the farmer said: Well… we’ll see. A year came and went and the farmer's young boy went out riding on the horse, fell and broke his leg, prompting the village to weep: "What a shame for the poor boy” but the farmer said, "We'll see." And two days later, the army came into the village to draft new recruits. But when they saw that the farmer's son had a broken leg, they decided not to recruit him. "What a blessing has come to this young man," the villagers proclaimed while the farmer just smiled again – and said: “We’ll see.”

No wonder Jesus advised us to chill out, hold off making final judgments, and trust that each day carries with it worries and wonders sufficient for the day: a second perspective that brings a measure of inner and outward serenity is choosing NOT to rush to judgment. 

And third, is a notion that I've been exploring for a long time but only recently found words to describe it: prefigurative sacramentality. That's an all too lofty way of describing my dedication to the aesthetics of beauty that creates a hint of what could or might become real. 

Decades ago, the late Elie Wiesel wrote an op-ed for the NY Times at the dawn of Yom Kippur. It has long nourished and haunted me as well. The essence was this: Wiesel was still furious, perplexed, and bewildered with God, given the anguish, death, and cruelty of the Holocaust. That will never change, he confessed. At the same time, however, he had now decided he would embrace his tradition’s response to absurdity and staggering violence: he would dance. Rather than try to comprehend or find meaning in his grief, he would engage the dance of paradox, resistance, courage, and even grace rather than submit to vile chaos.

St. Leonard Cohen echoes Wiesel’s challenge in “Dance Me to the End of Love” as does St. Lou Reed in both “Dirty Boulevard” and “Busload of Faith.” It is an aesthetic refusal to surrender the spirit of love to avarice as our inevitable destiny. It is a rejection of reality as only the art of the deal. A worship and praise song put it like this: “we have another world in view.” Dostoevsky believed that “beauty could save the world,” and Solzhenitsyn, in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize, wrote that when truth and goodness have been corrupted, compromised, or else held ransom by totalitarian propaganda, beauty alone can subvert power by touching our hearts and inspiring a rebirth of solidarity and moral integrity.

That's what I believe our two bands, Wednesday’s Child and All of Us, are about:
we, too, have another world in view. It is a worldview that respects rather than fears diversity, trusts that a love greater than self guides the cosmos, recognizes that joy regularly dances next to grief, that celebration often sings in the same key as suffering, and that a mystical yearning for authenticity and life itself pervades both all of creation including human nature. The writers at this month's Friends of Silence recently wrote that our awakening to autumn reminds us of this:

Early Autumn reminds me of this “and” mentality. I wake up and put on a sweater only to sweat and remove it moments later. I watch the young growth from my late summer succession planting while pulling old tomato stalks to mark the end of their time. We move about during the day like it is still summer, only to be ushered back inside by an earlier sunset into the more reflective inner work of the incoming season. Each day holds room for it all, just as you and I are a manifestation of the myriad.

We are grateful.
We are overwhelmed.
We are joyful.
We carry deep sorrow.
We are changing.
We are eternal.
We are dying.
We are alive.

Wednesday's Child recently played an end of summer and welcome to autumn Barn Gig. As I went to sleep the night before the event, a vision of the counter-cultural cabarets of the Weimar Republic came to mind. Yes, they were often scandalous, lewd, genre-bending in every conceivable manner, and even decadent. And they were an embodied aesthetic refusal to accept the cruelty of fascism. They, too, had another world in view, one in which outsiders might find acceptance, the vulnerable might experience safety, and our differences could become an invitation into the mystery of transcendence and trust. Before we played, I told this to the band noting that for a time their worldview was outlawed but it outlasted the death camps and crematoria. That is what we are doing, too. 

I knew someone who stopped using the word ‘but’. Everything was ‘and’. It cracked open the hard pericarp of my thinking, revealing a pithy inner chamber. It substituted phrases like, “It was hard, but I did it,” with an empowering reminder that one does not preclude the other. “It was hard. I did it.” A subtle but meaningful change. Not in spite of the difficulty, which certainty also feels true, but alongside the difficulty, with the difficulty. (Friends of Silence)

As I was packing up after the gig, someone said to me that this gathering felt different – there was a palpable sense of community and trust – and they wondered why this time was different from other concerts. Well, I thought, it has something to do with intentionality: we are very careful in our choice of songs and poems. There is a profound commitment to bringing our best to the music, too. And, dare I say, we are willing to be vulnerable and counter-cultural. As if in affirmation, today I received four liturgical clerical stoles from Bethlehem in Palestine. They are stunning. Yet another small sign of artists committed to giving shape and form to a worldview bathed in beauty.

the wisdom and grace of mystery...

In this week's summary of reflections at the Center for Contemplation and Action, Barbara Brown Taylor's synthesis of the apophatic spiritual tradition really spoke to my heart:

I trusted God to be God even if I could not say who God was for sure. I trusted God to hold me and those I loved, in life and in death, without giving me one shred of conclusive evidence that it was so.

One blessing of the Eastern Church is its willingness to live with ambiguity. Yes, some of the creeds are laborious, and the liturgy itself can feel like a spiritual endurance test. Simultaneously, however, there is a deep respect for silence, the wisdom of our senses, beauty, poetry, and what some have called a generous and sensual orthodoxy. Like any other religious tradition, it, too, is far from perfect. Still, their commitment to and trust of mystery is worthy of deeper consideration. This massive icon in St. Vladimir's Cathedral in Kyiv alone offers more grace to me than most of the scholastic theology of the Reformed Church combined.

 

the wetlands are shining this morning: sabbath thoughts

This is my favorite time of year: the gradual letting go of Terra Mater's warm colors of autumn as she begins her slow descent into the starkness of early winter. The ancient Celtic (Gaelic) calendar calls this Mabon's journey of abundance into the emptying liminal time of the New Year at Samhain. Now, I am about as far from a practicing neo-pagan as the Pope, but I find this season's light, energy, and possibilities extraordinarily pregnant with significance. Those old Druids were clearly on to something as they celebrated the season's second harvest at the Autumnal Equinox; its balance of light and dark en route to the dark wisdom of winter's death invites us to practice both relinquishment and anticipation. And if I am paying attention, the wetlands behind our home communicate this to me in the yellows of goldenrod, the maroons of sumac, the ethereal whites of the thistles and asters, and milkweed, as well as the fading browns of Joe Pye weed. 

The recently departed Wendell Berry, apostle of God's abundance in a slow life,    put it like this:

The woods is shining this morning.
Red, gold and green, the leaves
lie on the ground, or fall,
or hang full of light in the air still.
Perfect in its rise and in its fall, it takes
the place it has been coming to forever.
It has not hastened here, or lagged.
See how surely it has sought itself,
its roots passing lordly through the earth.
See how without confusion it is
all that it is, and how flawless
its grace is. Running or walking, the way
is the same. Be still. Be still.

“He moves your bones, and the way is clear.”

After a joyous month of going slowly in both urban and rural Québec, where we walked and watched, listened and sang together at the speed of Anna (our blessed granddaughter with whom we celebrated her 9th trip around the sun), we returned home to car troubles and emergency oral surgery. That is behind us now, so it's time to harvest the tomatoes, savor the sunlight, and do what we can to keep the pace gentle. My congregation and I have taken the next steps in extending my time of ministry - and I am wildly grateful. 

My challenge over the next three months is to stay grounded in the rhythms the Creator is revealing in nature, at a time when it would be all too easy to be held for ransom by the turmoil of culture. The absurd cruelties of midterm elections saturate the airwaves. This week marked both the first anniversary of the assassination of Charlie Kirk and the twenty-fifth anniversary of September 11th. Gas and grocery prices are skyrocketing. War rages in Iran, Sudan, Yemen, and Gaza. Parts of Mother Gaia are on fire while others weep in floods, hurricanes, and the excesses of El Nino. It would be easy - and natural - to despair or escape into denial. 

Thankfully, Wendell Berry offered an alternative when he rephrased Jesus' advice in a quasi-interview with a reporter from The Atlantic shortly before his death. Berry had articulated this insight long before in a variety of poems, the most famous being "The Peace of Wild Things."  

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

His analysis of worry is equally liberating: it is exhausting and unnecessary. He notes that most of the disasters and bad outcomes he's been anxious about have never come to pass. He then references Jesus in St. Matthew's account of the Sermon on the Mount: "Take no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. A more contemporary rendering of this text from Matthew 6: 34 says: So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today. Prompting Berry to conclude: "Taking thought for the morrow is fairly predictably a waste of time... what we call the 'future' is a flimsy and insubstantial thing at best - a phantom we obsess over that never really arrives, or never arrives in the way we imagine." The interview in The Atlantic adds:

By taking thought for the morrow, we have invested and wasted a lot of effort in preparing for morrows that never came. (To which the writer adds: he's right! When we become too obsessed with a future that may or may not befall us, we tend to turn our backs on the moment we're in.") Saying the time is coming when it will be too late to save the world, oh, oh, oh, (suggests) that we and the world are dead already. The present is going by and we are not in it. (Joe Fassler, Atlantic, September 5, 2026.)

Berry does not banish lament. Nor does he surrender to passivity. In his own way and time, he has done what little he actually has control and agency over and calls that sufficient for the day. Tomorrow he will encounter tomorrow with as much equanimity as today - and leave the rest to the Lord. Before his recent death at 92 years, Berry spent most of his sabbath days walking his farm and then writing a sabbath poem as the day's worship. Like his contemporary, Annie Dillard, or his Native American ally, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Wendell Berry married beauty and science with faith filtered through awe. A poem from 1979 captures his essence:

I go among trees and sit still.

All my stirring becomes quiet 

around me like circles on water.

My tasks lie in their places

where I left them, asleep like cattle.

Then what is afraid of me comes

and lives a while in my sight.

What it fears in me leaves me,

and the fear of me leaves it.

It sings, and I hear its song.

Then what I am afraid of comes.

I live for a while in its sight.

What I fear in it leaves it,

and the fear of it leaves me.

It sings, and I hear its song.

After days of labor, more in my consternations,

I hear my song at last,

and I sing it. As we sing,

the day turns, the trees move.

(This Day: Collected and New Sabbath Poems)

For me, this is sufficient for today.

shifting gears in autumn and a quest for koinonia...

We've been back home from Canada for a full week now: it was a joy to enter each day without an agenda and be fully free from anxiety or stress. It was truly a restorative reprieve - and I am grateful. Now it's time to get back to music-making and soul care. Our band, All of Us, will be playing a private party in Otis this Sunday at one of the many vacation camps that is closing up for the season. My brother-from-another-mother, Dave, and I are the core of this band, and three new/old friends will be part of the magic this week: guest bass player Jim; female vocalist Eva; and percussionist Andrew. In some ways, this incarnation feels like a whole new groove! David and I, of course, have been working together on and off for over 15 years. Eva, too, has been part of the music as a foundational part of our other ensemble, Wednesday's Child, for 17 years. And Jim is a well-seasoned local pro who, along with Andrew, has played with both groups periodically, too. But this is the first time we'll all be together in the same place at the same time. It should be a gas.

Being back in worship with Palmer's faith community was equally refreshing and joyful. After nearly a year of discussing, studying, praying, and waiting upon the Spirit, it became clear to me that the suggested UCC process for exploring issues of sexuality, equality, and justice no longer works. I'm not sure it ever did, but it clearly doesn't fit us now. Without deep trust built on conversation, careful listening, risk-taking, prayer, vulnerability, and time, making bold choices in pursuit of justice feels dangerously capricious and even immature. 

If the Biblical stories of the early church - and the wisdom culled from subsequent vigorous historical study - suggest anything, it is that the Body of Christ incarnates radical hospitality first and then, over time, searches for wisdom. It used to be said that ours is a faith seeking understanding - fides quaerens intellectum - or orthopraxis before orthodoxy - right action before right doctrine or belief. After 18 months as interim minister, my head and heart sensed that before we make any significant changes to the Open Table of Jesus ministries, we strengthen at least these two time-tested Christian formation practices:

+ Careful conversation and listening: Our 21st-century culture has forgotten how to listen carefully, let alone wrestle with hard realities with love and respect. Families no longer eat together. Our nation lives in segregated siloes and gated communities that banish the complicated gifts and challenges of diversity from consideration. And life moves too fast for anything except a surrender to economic, political, and cultural homogeneity in pursuit of relief from anxiety and fear. 

+ Congregational spiritual formation: Our era of bottom-line ethics, fast food living, and economic insecurity has eliminated time for spiritual reflection and study for most individuals and families. If our attend worship, they barely receive 130 minutes of Sunday School each month. Likewise, our elders who attend public worship can only receive about 190 minutes of scripture, prayer, music, and interpretation each month. That means almost no one has time to look beneath the surface of popular culture concerning what "motivates and forms" our thoughts, words, values, and actions. With Sunday worship being our only time to equip believers with a taste for the counter-cultural values of Jesus, we need new strategies to reconnect our lives with the grace of God.

My proposal, endorsed by our leadership team, is to start an experiment in relearning how to talk together about what is essential to our faith. The German Evangelical and Reformed church used to emphasize: in essentials, unity; in nonessentials, diversity; and in all things, charity. I am reminded of the wisdom the late Fr. Raymond Brown brought to the table in his study, The Churches the Apostles Left Behind. My takeaway is that while the early church gave shape and form to the New Testament, it included seven different emphases (see https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/739501. The_Churches_The_Apostles_Left_Behind) that were unique and situated in the realities of their discrete contexts. Nevertheless, they celebrated koinonia, the unique fellowship and community crafted by Jesus, and found the grace to welcome those with differing theologies to the shared open table of the Eucharist.

Brown's close examination:

... reveals the distinguishing characteristics that delineate the differences among these seven churches: Christology, church structure, exclusivity, community, liturgy, good works, the Spirit, the Eucharistic meal, salvation and, interestingly, Jewishness. These somewhat arcane nuances that define each church are essential in understanding the New Testament. The author points out that there is a pro-Jewish conception of Christianity and a pro-Gentile view that are struggling side-by-side to capture the soul of this emerging religion (17). One of the big questions faced by the early church: Is it necessary for a Christian convert to become Jewish first before becoming a Christian? On one hand there is the Jerusalem church, represented by James and Matthew, who want to see the Jewish Law strictly followed and “…the smallest letter, not even the smallest part of a letter of the Law…” (41) altered. This church consists of mostly Jewish Christians and is advocating for the circumcision of all new Christians. 

Then there is Paul, who has a more libertine attitude toward the Jewish Law, and is troubled by these Christian Judaizers (21). He makes a radical missionary decision (after his vision is restored) to replace the very physical act of circumcision with the spiritual act of baptism. The spirit of Baptism received through fire, water or the laying of hands becomes the preeminent marker of Christian identity. Once the Spirit arrives, it alters the soul of the individual and the nature of the entire church. It liberates the individual from its slavery to worldly sin and it propels Paul and the other apostles to bring Jesus’ good news to the ends of the earth. The Holy Spirit, sent by the Father once the Son ascends to heaven, guides Christ’s body on earth (i.e. the Church) and is of “massive importance”(67) in every step of church history. It is the fulfillment of The Law that makes adherence to God’s statutes possible.

This commitment to koinonia is key in the work we are crafting for at least the next year as we start to talk and listen to one another about what is essential to our church. What we hold in common is our unabashed desire to follow Jesus more authentically without surrendering to exclusivity or judgment. I have found the research and practical wisdom of C. Christopher Smith and the Slow Church movement, which focuses on the patient way of Jesus, to be foundational. These five texts have been clarifying for me:

+ The Virtue of Dialogue by C. Christopher Smith

+ The Form of the Word by Stephen E. Fowl

+ The Shape of Our Lives by Philip Kenneson, Debra Dean Murphy, Jenny Williamson, Stephen Fowl, and James Lewis

+ Slow Church by C. Christopher Smith and James Pattison

+ How the Body of Christ Talks by C. Christopher Smith

Of equal importance has been my slow read of the new translation of the New Testament by David Bentley Hart and the synthesis of Fr. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's theology by Kathleen Deignan and Libby Osgood. This time of year, filled with a transition from the abundance of summer to the slowing down of autumn, and the latency of winter, is a great time to refocus and regroup. I think Mary Oliver got it right:

In the deep fall
don’t you imagine the leaves think how
comfortable it will be to touch
the earth instead of the
nothingness of air and the endless
freshets of wind? And don’t you think
the trees themselves, especially those with mossy,
warm caves, begin to think
of the birds that will come – six, a dozen – to sleep
inside their bodies? And don’t you hear
the goldenrod whispering goodbye,
the everlasting being crowned with the first
tuffets of snow? The pond
vanishes, and the white field over which
the fox runs so quickly brings out
its blue shadows. And the wind pumps its
bellows. And at evening especially,
the piled firewood shifts a little,
longing to be on its way.

grateful for divine patience...

The late John O'Donohue put it best:

When our eyes are graced with wonder, the world reveals its wonders to us. There are people who see only dullness in the world and that is because their eyes have already been dulled. So much depends on how we look at things. The quality of our looking determines what we come to see. Too often we squander the invitations extended to us because our looking has become repetitive and blind. The mystery and beauty is all around us but we never manage to see it. When the imagination awakens, the inner world illuminates. We begin to glimpse things that no-one speaks about, that the outer world seems to ignore.

But let's not be naive or absurdly romantic: this does not happen automatically. Yes, a few organic innocents still walk the face of Terra Mater, but most lose this grace by middle school, for that's how reality is ordered. This is not cynicism, mind you; it is, as John Prine used to say, just the way the world goes round. Or as Meister Eckhart insisted: Reality is the will of God - it can always be better - but we must first start with what is real. I don't have a lot of patience for cynics or those they are certain they know better than anyone else... probably because I've been that person in the past and found myself insufferable. As Jung teaches: what we bristle at in others is pointing out to us something we don't want to deal with.

So, knowing that, today I give thanks for God's patience: with me, with you, with all of us.  In Diana Butler Bass's morning meditation, she included this prayer that obliquely recalls Moses being called by name by the One who Is and Always Shall Be. Its tenderness feels just right today:

This people had no temple,
no worship-place.
This people built temples
for others,
for gods they dreaded,
rising in terrible power
over them, having
no regard for
their misery.

They prayed under
the weight of their burdens.
They cried out in
the unprayer of pain,
and God, having no need
of temples, heard,
as God always hears.
And God, leaning to the
brokenhearted, saw,
as God always sees.

For the very earth is holy.
The ground under our feet.
Take off your shoes and feel it,
feel the dry-ground-powder
and the sharp stones,
the infinite tiny beings
that call the earth home.
Take off your shoes.
Know you are part of
all this, part of the
the glory that fills
all things, as the waters
fill the seas.
You will be heard,
wherever you are.
You can listen,
wherever you are.
You are home.
— Andrea Skevington, “Holy Ground, barefoot”

at journey's end...

Tonight is the close of our journey North of the 40th parallel: it is always bitter sweet to leave both because we're eager to be back in our own home AND because we adore Montréal and  Les Cantons-de-l'Est du Québec. Three parting thoughts:

+ We drove through some of the places we have visited in former sojourns as a way of remembering and returning thanks. We hadn't intended to wind up in Magog but we did - and loved it once again. There is a very accessible nature walk that closed out today and it was a joy to visit this old friend yet again.

+ Some have mistakenly interpreted my reflections on pilgrimage and engagement in these confounding times as a retreat into quietism. Not to be engaged in the challenges of justice and compassion would not only violate a lifetime of commitment, but would be antithetical to the God I love and serve. Jesus chose Non-cooperation with the status quo more than any other action and encouraged his followers to do likewise. When we must, we render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's. But most of the time, instead of carping, whining, or beating his head against a wall that would not budge, he found ways to love and heal those who were closest to him. Well into my 70's, that is where I find myself these days, too.

+ So, in addition to making creative and joy-filled music with colleagues I cherish and trust, I preach, teach, and stand in solidarity with a small faith community in Palmer and trust that sharing life together is what the Lord requires. 

Tomorrow we return to the US: we'll cut the grass, tend our overgrown garden, go to the doctor's office, and prepare for Sunday worship. Next week All of Us will play a private party in Otis after Sunday worship. On Saturday the 12th, we play Methuselah in Pittsfield and start preparing for a barn party on October 4th @ 2 pm in Richmond. We'll also celebrate our beloved grandson's 13th birthday that weekend and rejoice with the wider family. Be safe, dear ones, more to come...

inward/outward journey - part two...

On and off since Easter 2026 - with periodic other forays, as well - my heart has been aflame with interest in both the Mothers and Fathers of the desert as well as the Holy Fools of the Eastern Orthodox realm. Seeing the God Beyond by J.P. Williams is an excellent introduction to Christian apophatic spirituality, while Tricia Harrison Warren's What Grows in Weary Lands: On Christian Resilience offers a 21st-century take on the mothers and fathers of the desert. I'm finding that Ian Crone's reissue of Chasing Francis supplements these other two resources as I take another step into the mysterious absurdity of trusting Jesus.

Most of my adult life has been a balancing act between a passion for Christ's foolishness and the "trust but verify" Christian Realism of Reinhold Niebuhr, Douglas John Hall, and Paul Tillich. After more than forty years of walking this self-imposed tightrope, however, it's time to fall off into the mystical embrace of the God beyond. Long ago, I gave up on Catholic scholasticism and never resonated with the delicately crafted theology of Reformed believers like Calvin or Zwingli. No, the poetry of St. Paul in I Corinthians has long energized my faith: he instructs the new believers in Corinth to consider themselves servants of Christ's mysteries(I Cor. 4) after articulating the essence of the Paschal Mystery like this in I Corinthians 1:

The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being formed by the Cross, it is the power of God. For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.” So, where is the one who is wise? Where is the scholar? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of the proclamation, to save those who believe. Jews ask for signs and Greeks desire reason, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to some and foolishness to others, but for those who are the called (from any realm) Christ can be the power of God and the wisdom of the sacred. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength. Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to abolish things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God. 

As I am coming to trust, there are at least three outward implications to choosing - or accepting - life as a fool for Christ: a) I must let go of my desire to be effective; b) I must let love rather than success be my guide; and c) I must rest in God's power rather than my own initiative. Looking for effectiveness causes me to hedge my bets. Striving to be successful pushes me to compromise and/or withhold love. Acting like peace, justice, or hope depends on me is both arrogant and exhausting. "Come unto me, all ye who are tired and heavy laden... and I shall give thee rest... Learn what this means: the Lord your God desires mercy, not empty ritual." (Jesus in St. Matthew's gospel) 

St. Francis has been quoted as saying: "Start by doing what is necessary; then do what is possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible." The early advocates for the intellectually and physically challenged at L'Arche taught that "life by the 10 foot rule" could be salvific: "we can only truly touch, change, assist those who are near us; so stay connected there and leave the rest to the Lord." Or as rabbi Joshua Abraham Heschel insisted: "Honor the sabbath and leave it to God's care, and you might learn to trust the Lord more deeply on Monday as well." This is, of course, sacred foolishness. It is also the key to living with equanimity in a harsh and judgmental world. Radical trust is the essence of Christ's foolishness. Perhaps that is why I have appropriated Psalm 131 as foundational: 

Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty: neither do I concern myself in great matters, or in things too high for me. Rather, I have behaved and quieted myself, as a child that is weaned of his mother: my soul is even as a weaned child.

Writer and wisdom-keeper, Anne Lamott, said much the same thing in today's reflection.

The same rules apply whether you are trying to help a sick friend or our country or the earth. As above, so below. You show up. You take the next right action and the insight follows, not vice versa. The insight is that caring and giving are what fill us up. The insight is that the greatest blessing is to be able to be a blessing for others. The insight is the title of that beautiful Raymond Carver story, “A Small Good Thing.” Help a little. Suck it up and let others help you. Be blessed.

... and become a blessing, too. This is the foolish, cruciform shape of the outward journey that continues to call to my heart.

inward/outward journey - part one...

As our quiet time away winds down, I came upon an insight from Thomas Merton that is worth sharing: "The geographical pilgrimage is the symbolic acting out of an inner journey." I've known this intellectually for decades, having been a pilgrim intentionally and unintentionally for years. This time around, however, I have a visceral awareness of why this matters to me; the word pilgrimage comes from the Latin peregrinus, meaning "a person wandering the earth in exile,  or someone in search of a spiritual homeland." (Ian Morgan Cron, Chasing Francis: A Pilgrim's Tale." And cuts to the chase.

When we left the USA three weeks ago, what was swimming around inside at first was inchoate: a vague feeling that, like Bob Dylan's Mr. Jones, something was going on all around me, but I didn't really know what it was. Dylan's "Ballad of a Thin Man" feels ominous. He's an angry, young poet with sneering stanza after accusatory stanza falling out into the world about clueless and withered arbiters of a stagnant status quo. My disequilibrium was equally disorienting, but not as menacing as the bard's barbs. It was more muddled than sinister; like driving through fog engulfing a mountaintop that will, in time, unavoidably be burned off by the persistent presence of the sun, who is for some unknown reason currently just meandering to work. My haziness carried the inevitability of fate, minus the current apocalyptic gloom of popular culture.

Like many Americans trying to sort out this moment in time, my reflections at the start of this sojourn were intuitive. Tentative. Trusting but incomplete. But last night the light broke through the darkness as I realized that not only are we collectively experiencing the end of an epoch - with all the vagaries this implies - but I, too, am entering the closing years of my life's work in pastoral ministry - with all its uncertainties as well. I knew something was percolating within when I read David Bentley Hart's introduction to his revised translation of the New Testament. The first followers of Jesus, he reminds us, were certain that, within a generation, the world as they knew it would end with God's Messiah ushering in the heavenly banquet of the beloved community. The kingdom of God would finally be realized on earth as it was in heaven. Two thousand years later, local pastor Maggie Helwig published a collection of sermons, now widely available in independent bookstores across Canada, titled Instructions for the End of the World. I bought them both as well as two new reflections from First Nations elders living above the 40th parallel unpacking their experiences of living into decolonization. Something, indeed, was going on all around me. But it took Cron's Chasing Francis to connect the dots for me:

The era Francis lived in and the one we live in today are very different, but... there are a few interesting parallels. First, Francis lived in the gap between two historical periods - the Middle Ages and the pre-Renaissance days that opened modernity. We're living in the synapse between two moments in history as well: modernity and postmodernity. (NOTE: I will qualify this observation written in 2006 later.)  People in Francis's time felt the anxiety that comes from living in a rapidly changing society that we do today. Another similarity...has to do with the state of Christendom. In Francis's day, the church was hemorrhaging credibility. It was seen as hypocritical, untrustworthy, and irrelevant. Some people even wondered if it would survive. Clergy were at the center of all kinds of sexual scandals. It had commercialized Jesus - selling pardons, ecclesiastical offices, and relics. Sermons were either so academic that people couldn't understand them, or they were canned. Popular songs ridiculing the church and clergy could be heard all over Europe. The laity felt used by the professional clergy, as if they were to serve the institution, not the other way around. The church had become dangerously entangled in the world of power politics and war. Some fringe groups were beginning to say you couldn't be a Catholic and a Christian at the same time. Disillusionment... inspired many to turn to astrologers and other alternative spiritualities. The demise of feudalism and the return of a money economy brought the rise of the merchant class and a ferocious spirit of aggressive capitalism. Greed ran riot in the culture. And to top it all off, Christians were at war with Muslims. (Kron, p. 50)

We, too, each and all of us, socially and personally, are living into the end of an epoch: Fifty years of liberal government, culture, and religion are being challenged and dismantled in the United States - and the chaos is rippling all over the world. What once seemed like the natural, gradual expansion of human rights, freedom, and social tolerance is no longer a shared national commitment. Canada's Prime Minister, Mark Carney, recently articulated what this end of the epoch means in clear, sober, and realistic terms. Kron then adds what I have been stumbling into and towards: living boldly as a fool for Jesus and his love. St. Francis:

...didn't criticize the institutions of his day, nor did he settle for doing church the way it had always been done. He rose above the obvious alternatives and decided that the best way to overhaul something was to keep your mouth shut and simply do it better.

He simply trusted love. He sang to flowers. He befriended wolves. He offered healing to beggars without pauperizing or enabling them. He embraced the sun, the moon, and the stars. And loved others like Jesus loved him - and that is where I find myself all these years later.

on wandering, as a form of meditation...

Slowly wandering each day through another small area of les Cantons-de-l'Este (the Eastern Townships of Quebec to the East of Montreal) is good for my soul. The weather has been spectacular - mid 70sF - with periodic cloud bursts late in the evening. Our current domicile for the next week sits atop a small mountain surrounded by trees, wildflowers, and golden rod where it is drop dead silent, thanks be to God, and oh so restorative. Yesterday we hunted down some fresh corn and also scored the best tasting cherry tomatoes I've eaten in years.

Each day offers a chance for writing and reflection, guitar practice, naps, and wandering. A former colleague in Tucson told us the French have a word for this: flâneur. Apparently, the poet Charles Baudelaire popularized it as he strolled about the city without any apparent goals or destinations. This is clearly how we treat our time away. The ancient Celtic monks took this one step deeper in their approach to pilgrimage: they, too, would wander without a clear destination until they found a locale that touched their heart with the spirit of resurrection - and then they would rest, listen, and wait.

Last night and this morning, I came across these words during my very slow reading of a few selected insights by Fr. Teilhard de Chardin that evoked a resurrection feeling in my heart:

No longer simply a religion of individuals and of heaven, but a religion of humankind and the earth: that is what we are looking for at this moment - the oxygen without which we cannot breathe.  

I am going to sit and later walk around with this in my head and heart today. It strikes me as in invitation to consciously and carefully connect my faith with acts of compassion that nurture myself and others rather than diminish any of us, yes? More an inclusive spirituality of welcome, radical hospitality, and possibilities instead of the shame, judgement, and locked doors of the past. St. Mary Oliver of Provincetown put it like this:

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

reflections on that small strand of synchronicity woven into 70+ years of life...

For the past three days of this retreat I've been inwardly focused. Specifically, I've been listening to, remembering, praying over, and connecting key insights, ideas, hunches, and commitments made over the past 40+ years of ministry. I felt like I needed to be able to clearly describe the small strand of synchronicity woven through my years that I've tried to hold on to as I begin a new phase of ministry. You see, at some point during the next few months I'll need to make my case to those who don't really know me why going deeper with my current faith community is right. And if I can't describe why this is so to my self, how in the world can I make the case to others? 

Thankfully, we claimed the time and space to make this happen. I've given multiple hours to this reflection with dozens of edits and revisions. Suffice it to say, stumbling upon this poster this morning cut to the chase. My introduction outlines perspective like this:

One of the most satisfying surprises of becoming a septuagenarian is recognizing how God’s grace has consistently given shape and form in my life. Author and Prioress of the Abbey of the Arts, Christine Valters Paintner, creatively links our awareness of God’s call in our lives to both the path of pilgrimage adapted by the ancient Celtic monks and the wisdom expressed in William Stafford’s poem: “The Way It Is.” Recognizing, observing, and then following the thin strand of synchronicity woven throughout our existence is, she suggests how our days are filled with sacred fidelity.

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.

My unique strand of synchronicity is the way music has mystically opened
my heart to the transformative mysteries of Jesus that incline me towards compassion. Through various stages of time, geography, culture, and theological awareness, music has been sacramental for me. It doesn’t matter whether I’m creating, sharing, studying, praying, playing, or simply listening to songs of the heart: my soul is refreshed and compels me towards living eucharistically....Over time, I have learn to describe this spirituality as the Paschal Mystery filling my ordinary existence with extraordinary meaning. I’ve found precious little solace or support for this in the linear and all too limited certainties of Reformed Christianity. But have been energized and enlightened by the apophatic aspects of Eastern Orthodoxy that are poetic rather than linear; that are grounded in silence and beauty more than the convoluted catechisms of the Western Church; that recognize chant and song as an authentic incarnational spiritual practice.

Yesterday, we took a long walk through a wooded bog alongside a gentle river that was displaying a variety of bird houses. It was a quiet way to let go of my thinking and simply let ideas and feelings bubble up as they may. Later we stopped by Lac Brome Books and and unobtrusively stumbled upon author Louise Penny just before she sat down for an interview. Ms. Penny's Inspector Gamache books were our first introduction to the Eastern Townships of Quebec almost 20 years ago. They are carefully crafted character studies of complex individuals in the small, imaginary Quebecois town of Three Pines. Once, without knowing, we wander into an early book signing event; in later years, we intentionally attended a few others. Afterwards, we headed down to Penny's new cafe for a Gamache sandwich (jambon, fromage, pomme sur un croissant.)

Twice as yesterday unfolded, friendly and helpful locals approached us to welcome us to their village, offer kind suggestions concerning the upcoming town festival, and ask if they might be of assistance in any way. It was another small sign of grace embedded in our souls - and I was grateful.

 

reconnecting...

After four full days of family connections, including marking the ninth birthday of our granddaughter Anna along with a week of wandering and exploring Montreal ... 

...we've settled into the Eastern Township of Quebec village of Mansonville for 10 days of relative silence and solitude. The contrast couldn't be more profound.

I find that I need to regroup for another year of ministry and reclaim my daily time of quiet contemplation. For while I cherish this practice and have made it my own for over 40 years, I still regularly forsake it two or three times a year before stepping away from the busyness to recommit. Small wonder I'm an aficionado of Leonard Cohen, yes?

Our time away at the end of the summer has become a regular reset for me: this year, as the month started, I began savoring a "pray the hours" resource focusing on the insights of Fr. Teilhard de Chardin. Tomorrow, I'll supplement that with a quiet centering prayer and the daily liturgy of the Community of Northumbria. 

Sitting in the darkness last night, it became clear that our current retreat center is absolutely silent - every bit as quiet as the Sonoran Desert House of Prayer that I used to visit - with the added bonus of autumn's early colors breaking open. I know all too well that when I abandon nourishing my inner life, I outwardly run out of gas. Staying connected to the source helps me push back when despair knocks and encourages me to let go of my all-too-shallow judgments. For unless I step away from the fray from time to time, I am devoured by it. Rumi's poem, "The Song of the Reed Flute," gets it so right.

Listen

Listen to the story told by the reed,
of being separated.

“Since I was cut from the reedbed,
I have made this crying sound.

Anyone apart from someone he loves
understands what I say.

Anyone pulled from a source
longs to go back.

At any gathering I am there,
mingling in the laughing and grieving,

a friend to each, but few
will hear the secrets hidden

within the notes. No ears for that.
Body flowing out of spirit,

spirit up from body: no concealing
that mixing. But it’s not given us

to see the soul. The reed flute
is fire, not wind. Be that empty.”

Hear the love fire tangled
in the reed notes, as bewilderment

melts into wine. The reed is a friend
to all who want the fabric torn

and drawn away. The reed is hurt
and salve combining. Intimacy

and longing for intimacy, one
song. A disastrous surrender

and a fine love, together. The one
who secretly hears this is senseless.

A tongue has one customer, the ear.
A sugarcane flute has such effect

because it was able to make sugar
in the reedbed. The sound it makes

is for everyone. Days full of wanting,
let them go by without worrying

that they do. Stay where you are
inside such a pure, hollow note.

Every thirst gets satisfied except
that of these fish, the mystics,

who swim a vast ocean of grace
still somehow longing for it!

No one lives in that without
being nourished every day.

But if someone doesn’t want to hear
the song of the reed flute,

it’s best to cut conversation
short, say good-bye, and leave.