Higher ground...

How can one person be so blessed?  To be sure, I am almost running on empty these days, but some wonderful things are happening in my life.First, after our annual meeting at church, we're heading down to NYC to see daughter #1 and her husband for a LONG weekend. I didn't get much of a break after Christmas so this is pure R and R (rock and roll!)  There will be a time for MOMA and some jazz, lots of time for the wonderful company of my sweet family and a chance to chill without any responsibilities for four days! One of my most favorite things in the whole world is to wander about a city without any plan or agenda... and see where the Spirit leads.

Second, because we had such a gas doing Thanksgiving Eve, many of the musicians who played that benefit are going to do a "Fat Tuesday Goes Blues and Jazz" party at church on Tuesday, February 21st.  I just sent out the invitation last night to some folk and already they are confirming. This, too, will be a benefit - for the local emergency food center - but it will also be a whole lotta soul food for those who gather. I can't wait to bring this cast of artists back together again as they create a little taste of heaven.  (More on this in the next few days...)

And third, a small group of us from the Berkshires are going down to Nashville at the end of February for a "Jazz Liturgy" workshop.  My music director is one of the key presenter and we not only want to support him, but want to learn and reflect on how to take this music deeper in our context. Check it out @ http://www.scarrittbennett.org/programs/jazz.aspx

Tomorrow I will post about our up-coming annual meeting and my message for the congregation:  I will try to articulate what I sense our mission statement is calling us into for 2012 in light of God's love. In reality this, too, is a blessing - as well as a challenge - and I am getting excited about celebrating what has been happening within and among us as a faith community. Just today, at our midday Eucharist, we gathered and prayed and shared before feasting on the goodness of the Lord in communion. We shed tears about some hard times and offered to give them over to God, too. It was a microcosm of what is taking place throughout the whole congregation.

I read these words earlier today:  One of the reasons that people need pastors is precisely because God is always present, but not always apparent...The parish minister's soul becomes a crucible in which sacred visions are ground together with the common and at times profane experiences of human life.  Out of this sacred mix, pastors find their deep poetry, not only for the pulpit, but for making eternal sense out of the ordinary routines of the congregation. (The Pastor As Minor Poet, M. Craig Barnes.)

One of the things that I am going to have to pay attention to this year is pacing ~ finding and embracing a better balance between the public and private realms of my life ~ so that I don't get worn out. I can already feel it happening around the edges ~ especially after Turkey and then Christmas ~ that's why I'm getting out of town next week after our meeting. Practicing self-care is a constant challenge for me. And now that so much is happening, it is going to take more practice and discipline than ever before.

In writing this I feel like Siddhartha in Hesse's retelling of the Buddha's tale:  time and again he finds himself standing in front of the same river ~ at exactly same spot on the river bank ~ watching the water move past him.  And every time he realizes he is back at the river, he simultaneously realizes how much he has changed and how much he has stayed the same. For most of my life I have often tried too hard ~ crammed too much into too little time ~ flirted with and given into the addiction of workaholism.  And, while I am healthier and more balanced at 60 than I was at 25... it seems that once again I am back at the same river and the same spot.

The poet, William Stafford, speaks to this in a poem called simply, "Poetry." 

Its door opens near. It's a shrine
by the road, it's a flower in the parking lot
of the Pentagon, it says, "Look around,
listen. Feel the air." It interrupts
international telephone lines with a tune.
When traffic lines jame, it gets out
and dances on the bridge. If great people
get distracted by fame they forget
this essential kind of breathing
and they die inside their gold shell...


There are so many blessings in my life ~ and that means there is also a whole new way of learning to slow down, too ~ and they often seem to be wrapped in each others arms like lovers. Christian McEwen writes in World Enough and Time, it is essential to recall that "every piece of music is made up of sound and pause, sound and pause, which is to say that it also includes silence. The trumpeter Miles Davis was praised for creating good music because he opened up the space between the notes and stepped inside."   

And that seems to be enough for this day, yes?