I only lasted 45 with the democrats last night...

Ok, I confess that I only made it through 45 minutes of last night's Democratic debate. With all due respect, I already know that I will be voting for whomever becomes the nominee. It is a matter of moral magnitude to make 45 a one term disaster. Not that last night's show promised a slam dunk. After all, this regime rode into office harnessing the shadow side of the American dream. In combination with an obscene amount of cash, media manipulation by Russia, misogyny alongside 20+ years of demonizing the Clintons, the despair of Americans long forgotten and trapped in an opioid infested, de-industrialized heartland, the demise of critical thinking in public discourse, the revenge politics of nativism and right-wing populism, and our sordid national obsession with all that glitters: who else but a reality TV con man could ascend to the highest office in our land?  I'll return tonight for another 45 minutes knowing that both the candidates and their interlocutors will drive me crazy. 

Please don't misunderstand: I believe many of the candidates to be wise people of integrity. Perhaps the same can be said for the CNN panel, too. Still, the network created a weird vibe that was part civil religion en regalia, part carnival side show, and part gotcha bickering. I would rather an in-depth conversation about issues and solutions. As both an antidote to the sleaze and a cleansing for my soul, I was grateful to come upon this poem by Tess Gallagher. For me, it evokes a part of the American culture that I cherish, a part that I pray we might reclaim, because it but is slowly evaporating all around us.

What Does It Say

that the only shoe repairman in town
has retired? He who mended suitcases
and purse straps. Who loved to chat
but could turn taciturn. How we laughed
over my fondness for shoes that were
clearly worn out. “Fair-weather
shoes,” he pronounced like a benediction,
trying with seasons to extend

the life of my loafers. A tall man with nimble
fingers on an oversized hand, the gaze
surgeon-like. How I admired your Lazarus
revivals! For it’s feet in failing shoes
that rule the world. Barefooted, we had
the ways of birds, equipped from the womb—splashing
in puddles, running after dark, bearing our troubles
and joys place to place. Addiction to shoes

came later. Whether quietly falling
apart, coming unglued, or
scrubbed down at the heels, they’d still
find a dance floor once in a while and shake
the body around to remind it how, in or out
of shoes, everything depends on the feet.
In your imagination toward repair, you gave
hope and salvage to those without money

for new shoes, or who, like me, had to
eke out their days with unmanageable feet, depending
on a makeshift tangle of sandals—a few cloth straps
stapled to a cork sole— thereby asking you to take up
the world of miracles. Shoes that had worn
themselves to feet until pain
took off its hat and stood on the curb.

You seemed to connect with us through time, cheating
it day after day, with small, momentous
restorations. And what, after all, is a world
that walks around
only in new shoes,

that stops asking for a guy like you, a man true
to this gradually
falling-apart era, alive
to our need to be treated
mercifully, our wish
to be mended and remended?

Someone to companion our fragile hopes
in the form of these emptied-out
unsalvageable steps.

(For more, go to: https://www.slowdownshow.org/ episode /2019/07/17/168-what-does-it-say

a time to speak out and a time for silence...

When a joy-filled weekend with family came to a close, I read an interview with Washington Post columnist George Wills. in The Atlantic by Peter Wehner (see:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/what-makes-a-true-conservative/594889/) While I only see eye-to-eye with Wills on a few things, I have long appreciated his thoughtful and critical eye when it comes to culture and politics. He is one with whom I can respect even as we vigorously disagree. Or as they used to say: we can disagree without being disagreeable. 

Such is no longer the standard by which popular or political culture operates. Rather, we now exist in a swamp of vulgarities. The mire has been bubbling up for decades, to be sure, but its ascent to acceptability as the new normal has been accelerated by Trump and his regime. "It’s all vulgarity, coarsening, semi-criminality” Wills contends - and frames his concern like this:

The norms, that is, what are normal and what are normative, cease to be normal. And cease to be normative.” His point is that Nixon, for all his crimes, evaded norms; he didn’t challenge them. He didn’t dispute them. He didn’t degrade them. In fact, he was ultimately done in by them. Donald Trump promised when he ran for president that he would overturn our norms, Will has said, and that’s one promise he’s kept. "It’s amazing to me how fast, and we saw this in the 20th century in a number of ways, how fast something could go from unthinkable to thinkable to action,” Will recently told MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell. “And it doesn’t seem to me it’s going to be easy to just snap back as if this didn’t happen. It happened. And he got away with it. And he became president. And there will be emulators.” (Because) you can’t un-ring the bell. You can’t unsay what he has now said is acceptable discourse in the United States.” (ibid)

From my perspective, Wills is right both about the coarsening of public discourse and the normalization of destructive and degrading attitudes. And not merely on the political right - but throughout the body politic - right, left and center. As i was scrolling through my FB notifications yesterday, I was startled to read a meme from a local intellectual announcing that: ALL MEN ARE ASSHOLES. My shock was not at the scatological reference, however, but at the certainty of the comprehensive nature of this crude condemnation. A flood of reactions coursed through my head and heart including these three:

+ Certainly all men have assholes and most of us have acted like assholes some of the time. That some of us continue to do so repeatedly though is not proof that all of us remain in that camp. Such an ad hominem assault is both ethically and intellectually bankrupt.

+ What if the gender of this broadside had been reversed? Or rendered even more offensive by using some of the ugly and hate-filled words that reference a woman's anatomy? Would that be acceptable? True? Useful? 

+ And then why post such bullshit on Facebook? As a person of faith the Tweets of DT are not our standard. The one we know as Messiah said, "If you have an issue with a sister or brother, take to them in private." Not Facebook. Or Twitter. I know we all do stupid things from time to time. I know I have - and will likely to do again. In the past, for example, I have unwittingly written some one-dimensional comments about Jewish spirituality. They were not intended to be hurtful but they came out that way. Thanks be to God a few of my Jewish and Christian colleagues called me out on them. Helped me clarify and correct them, too. That's what people of good will do: we own the log in our own eye before speaking privately to our friends about the splinter in theirs - but we do speak out. Wehner makes this point in his interview and pushes the envelope with Wills when he writes:

Trump supporters argue, I told Will, that the president may be a little rough around the edges, that his tweets might be over the top now and then, but those things are mostly inconsequential and ephemeral. What matters, they say, is what Trump does, not what he says, and what he has done is advance conservative policies and appoint conservative judges. Will replied that he hoped Trump supporters are right—but he’s pretty sure they are wrong when they say that what Trump is doing to our culture, our politics, and our civic discourse is ephemeral.

Trump’s supporters on the right “misunderstand the importance of culture, the viscosity of culture, and I think they are not conservatives, because they don’t understand this,” Will said. “Nixon’s surreptitious burglaries were surreptitious; that is, they were done in secret because they were unacceptable to the country, and once exposed, they were punished and the country moved on. What Mr. Trump has done is make acceptable, make normal, a form of behavior that would get a third grader sent to the principal’s office or to bed without dessert.” Will argues that Trump’s agenda, to the degree it pleases conservatives, is what any Republican president would have done. “So the question is, What does Trump bring that’s distinctive?” Will said. “And it’s all vulgarity, coarsening, semi-criminality.”

For almost two years, I have not written much about the policies, actions or vulgarities of the current regime except when it comes to their atrocious actions against immigrants. I have also largely opted-out of participating in the partisan politics of my area, too. My limited energy has gone into small acts of cultural resistance and renewal: making hope-filled music throughout our region; learning how to wait and pray as part of the rhythms of Mother Earth; listening to the spiritual quest of beloved colleagues and friends; participating in local poetry conversations that empower people of all ages to find their true voice and share it out loud; offering music, love and presence to my friends at L'Arche; taking time to love and cherish our grandchildren;writing and reflecting on ways to honor the holy in our ordinary existence.

And I will continue to do mostly these things because this is how I can embody the "10 foot rule" of engaging the world that is within my grasp. It is where and how I can embrace sisters and brothers with encouragement, tenderness and respect. It is small. And slow. And often invisible. But let's be clear: there is also a need to speak out. Humbly, to be sure. Tenderly, too. But with precision and hope as well in order to rebuke those who abuse their power, to encourage those who are powerless and to evoke an alternative to the vicious vulgarity that has become the new normal. 

One expression of this speaking out is the public presence of William Barber and the Moral Mondays movement. (go to: https:// www.commondreams.org/ news/2019/07/29/it-doesnt-have-be-way-faith-leaders-rally-detention-center-demanding-end-inhumane) The same holds for the work Carrie Newcomer and Parker Palmer are doing throughout the US with their Growing Edge events (https://www.newcomerpalmer.com/home) And locally let me lift up the Word X Word gatherings (http://wordxwordfestival.com/index.html) 

All is not bleak. After our recent visit with our grandchildren, I also came across this that gets it right:

breathing in the sabbath...

This morning, on the Christian Sabbath, I returned thanks to God for the love, presence, blessings and challenges of my life with a five year old boy who said he wanted to make "chalk drawings of welcome" on our driveway. Let me tell you, there are no better ways to "do" worship than getting down on your knees with this gentle soul and breathing-in the moment.

Last night, he and I made fresh pesto from the basil we picked on our deck. Earlier, we weeded the raised-bed terraces and sprayed the pumpkin plants to combat a soil related fungus. He husked fresh native corn with "Dima" (Di) before we feasted on pasta with pesto, broiled salmon and native corn. A few minutes into the meal, he said to me, "Gwad, I normally wouldn't think corn would go with pesto." Interesting, I thought and replied,  "I mostly agree, Chef. But here's the thing: the corn season is so short that I want to eat as much of it as I can while it lasts." He looked deeply into my eyes for a silent 30 seconds - then nodded in agreement - and returned to the repast. Before bath time and bed we all sat out on the deck as the sun set and ate chocolate while telling family stories and laughing.

I have learned never to take these moments for granted. They are sacred gifts born of a grace freely offered with generosity, but always fleeting and tenuous, too. I missed more than I care to confess of these blessings when my daughters were small. It goes with the territory, of course, but "burn me once, shame on you; burn me twice, shame on me." Pete Townsend was right: we won't get fooled - or burned - again. At least not while we still have strength and breath and our precious little ones are so close.

At lunch today, before the Brooklyn crew returned home, we spoke about the up-coming Democratic debates. "Did you see the last ones?" I shook my head with a slight smile as incredulity was realized. "It was mostly an oversight," I added, "but I mostly didn't want the hassle. I'll be watching round two," I assured the group as we ate pizza, "You can count on it." And I will. Mostly as penance but also as prayer. 

The current regime must be defeated and taken down decidedly. So regardless of what the progressive pundits tell me, I believe that there are a host of decent, creative, bright and capable candidates: Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, Julio Castro, Elizabeth Warren. None are perfect, but I
trust the political wisdom of the late Michael Harrington who said, "Let's be the left wing of what is possible!" In my not so humble opinion, that means it is time for Bernie to quit playing the spoiler and well past time for Uncle Joe to wake up, smell the coffee and grasp that his time has come and gone. I pray that the Democrats heed the wisdom of another who has urged them NOT to form a circular firing squad but rather rally around whomever rises to the top of the heap so that the the current inhabitant of the White House is repudiated beyond all reasonable doubts. At the same time, I tend towards the soul of this cartoon.

One of my dearest and oldest friends and teachers, Martha in St. Louis, sent me a note highlighting Maria Popova's delightful, Brain Pickings, and a posting entitled: "Leo Tolstoy on Kindness." It confirmed my worship choice for this Sabbath and my inward proclivities with this opening paragraph: 

“Practice kindness all day to everybody and you will realize you’re already in heaven now,” Jack Kerouac wrote in a beautiful letter to his first wife and lifelong friend. Somehow, despite our sincerest intentions, we repeatedly fall short of this earthly divinity, so readily available yet so easily elusive. And yet in our culture, it has been aptly observed, “we are never as kind as we want to be, but nothing outrages us more than people being unkind to us.” In his stirring Syracuse commencement address, George Saunders confessed with unsentimental ruefulness: “What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.” I doubt any decent person, upon candid reflection, would rank any other species of regret higher. To be human is to leap toward our highest moral potentialities, only to trip over the foibled actualities of our reflexive patterns. To be a good human is to keep leaping anyway.

And long after the day's activities had come to a close - long after my nap, the harvesting of still more fresh basil, and the early evening thunder storm - still another loved one sent me a note which included these words of wisdom:

 

Silence is never merely the cessation of words... Rather it is the pause that holds together - indeed, it makes sense of-all the words, both spoken and unspoken. Silence is the glue that connects our attitudes and our actions. Silence is the fullness, not emptiness; it is not absence, but the awareness of a presence. (John Chryssavgis, In the Heart of the Desert: The Spirituality of the Desert Fathers and Mothers)

This year - and the American presidential race for president - is going to require a great deal of silence for me. A great deal of reflection, loving engagement with allies of compassion and a renewal of prayer, too. The beloved Wendell Berry put it like this (a prayer/poem I just added to my prayer wall) in something he calls: "How to Be a Poet (to remind myself)"

Make a place to sit down.

Sit down. Be quiet.

You must depend upon

affection, reading, knowledge,

skill — more of each

than you have — inspiration,

work, growing older, patience,

for patience joins time

to eternity. Any readers

who like your poems,

doubt their judgment.

Breathe with unconditional breath

the unconditioned air.

Shun electric wire.

Communicate slowly. Live

a three-dimensioned life;

stay away from screens.

Stay away from anything

that obscures the place it is in.

There are no unsacred places;

there are only sacred places

and desecrated places.

Accept what comes from silence.

Make the best you can of it.

Of the little words that come

out of the silence, like prayers

prayed back to the one who prays,

make a poem that does not disturb

the silence from which it came.

God woos us into the wilderness...

This picture of the view off our back deck captures my heart, soul, mind and spirit these days...

The late Mary Oliver put it like this:

The dream of my life

Is to lie down by a slow river

And stare at the light in the trees —

To learn something by being nothing

A little while but the rich

Lens of attention.

I am so easily distracted - caught up in fleeting feelings of frustration or anxiety, tempted by titillation or just the self-serving demands for loyalty that politicians and clerics demand over and over again - and then I see this. Or I eat a peach from a local orchard. Or fresh native sweet corn. Or hold my grandchildren. Or see my grown children as they embrace their old man after a long absence. Or walk with my dog in the woods. Or hold my dear heart after a long day in the garden... and perspective returns. Nancy and Marv Hiles put it like this in All the Days of My Life and I believe they are right:

We are overdosed on data and underfed on the mysterious. Our brains inflate while our souls wither. Constant interference by interpreting and explaining can distance us from life itself. God woos us into the wildness of unknowing where we are tempted by deeper senses.

poems and solitude: midsummer in massachusetts...

As noted previously, this has been a deliciously contemplative week for me: no music gigs to play, no meetings to attend, no shopping trips to plan, and precious little interaction with the wider world. Ok, I gave Robert Mueller the benefit of the doubt and tried to listen for 30 minutes but it was too painful. Besides, I can read the text - or summaries - at another time at my own pace. So, while it rained I read, prayed, wrote and cleaned house. It seems that sister rain has taken a vacation over the past 48 hours giving Frère Jacques a chance to cut grass, prune some branches, weed the garden and replace a few steps on our wooden deck.

Along the way, two fascinating poems made their way into my consciousness today: "Saturday Morning Market" by Carrie Newcomer and "Casa" by Rigoberto Gonzalez. Each speaks to something true within me although, at first blush, they feel like contradictions. Newcomer, as some know, is a favorite singer/songwriter artist who shares some of the most moving and heart-warming songs I have heard in decades. The Boston Globe describes her as a "prairie mystic" and Rolling Stone writes that "she asks all the right questions" in her songs, poems and seminars.

In 2019 she was the recipient of the Shalem Institute Contemplative Voices Award. Recent media appearances include PBS’s Religion and Ethics and Krista Tippett’s On Being. In the fall of 2009 and 2011 Newcomer was a cultural ambassador to India, invited by the American Embassy of India, resulting in her interfaith collaborative benefit album Everything is Everywhere with world master of the Indian Sarod, Amjad Ali Khan and his sons Ayan and Amaan. In 2012 and 2013 Carrie traveled to Kenya and the Middle East performing in schools, spiritual communities and AIDS hospitals. She has 17 nationally released albums on Available Light and Rounder Records, including The Point of Arrival, The Beautiful Not Yet, A Permeable Life, and Everything is Everywhere. Newcomer has also released two companion books of poetry and essays, A Permeable Life: Poems and Essays and The Beautiful Not Yet: Poems, Essays, & Lyrics. Newcomer’s first theatrical production, Betty’s Diner: The Musical, was performed at a sold out run at Purdue University in 2015 and is now available to interested theaters, universities, and spiritual communities... She regularly works with Parker J. Palmer in live programs, including Healing the Heart of Democracy: A Gathering of Spirits for the Common Good and What We Need is Here: Hope, Hard Times, and Human Possibility. Newcomer and Palmer also are actively collaborating on The Growing Edge, a website, podcast, and retreat. Spirituality and Health Magazine named The Growing Edge collaboration as one of the top ten spiritual leaders and programs for the next 20 years... She lives in the woods of southern Indiana with her husband and two shaggy dogs. (For more information, please go to her website: https://www.carrienewcomer.com/home)

Her poem evokes all that is gentle, honest and restorative about small town farmers markets and those who make a commitment to cherish the community they create. Having had the privilege of making music at some of these gatherings, her words ring true.

I am awash with a deep abiding love
For shiny purple eggplants
Real and rounded in such womanly ways.
I am beside myself with wonder
At the many shapes and hues
Of crook-necked squash and new potatoes,
Earthy red and ochre tan,
Goldfinch yellow and deep summer green.
I am grateful to tears
For fresh beet greens and rhubarb,
Green peppers and Swiss chard,
And for the first vine-ripe tomatoes
That are so perfect you go ahead
And eat one like an apple,Leaning forward
Without looking
To see if anyone is watching.
I am blessing the names
Of the farmers and bread bakers,
Sunburnt and beautiful,
Freckled and friendly,
Who make change
And comfortable conversation.

This is real abundance
Of the senses and spirit,
A true kind of church,
With its arms open wide
To the eaters and eaten,
The growers and grown,
To all who come looking
For what is common and earthly,
Luminous and lasting,
And to be dumbstruck with wonder
By what we carry back home
In an ordinary basket.

González hails from Bakersfield, CA, was raised in Michoacán, Mexico and currently lives in NYC. "He is the author of several poetry books, including So Often the Pitcher Goes to Water until It Breaks (1999), a National Poetry Series selection; Other Fugitives and Other Strangers (2006); Black Blossoms (2011); and Unpeopled Eden (2013), winner of a Lambda Literary Award".

He has also written two bilingual children’s books, Soledad Sigh-Sighs (2003) and Antonio’s Card (2005); the novel Crossing Vines (2003), winner of ForeWord Magazine’s Fiction Book of the Year Award; and a memoir, Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa (2006); and a book of stories Men without Bliss (2008). González earned a BA from the University of California, Riverside and graduate degrees from University of California, Davis and Arizona State University. The recipient of Guggenheim and NEA fellowships, and of various international artist residencies, González writes a Latino book column for the El Paso Times of Texas. In 2014, he was awarded the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize by the Academy of American Poets. He is contributing editor for Poets & Writers, on the Board of Directors of the National Book Critics Circle, and on the Advisory Circle of Con Tinta, a collective of Chicano/Latino activist writers. (For more information, please see the Poetry Foundation @ https://www.poetryfoundation.org/po)

There is wisdom and honesty in this poem, too - but it is not immediately easy to hear. Written from the perspective of a house that once was a home, the first pass for me was jarring. It made me sad (not a bad thing, but still a surprise.) After a few more readings, however, the heart of this work took root - and I was moved by an unexpected depth of tenderness born of real life and love.

I am not your mother, I will not be moved
by the grief or gratitude of men
who weep like orphans at my door.
I am not a church. I do not answer
prayers but I never turn them down.

Come in and kneel or sit or stand,
the burden of your weight won't lessen
no matter the length of your admission.
Tell me anything you want, I have to listen
but don't expect me to respond

when you tell me you have lost your job
or that your wife has found another love
or that your children took their laughter
to another town. You feel alone and empty?
Color me surprised! I didn't notice they were gone.

Despite the row of faces pinned like medals
to my walls, I didn't earn them.
The scratches on the wood are not my scars.
If there's a smell of spices in the air
blame the trickery of kitchens

or your sad addiction to the yesterdays
that never keep no matter how much you believe
they will. I am not a time capsule.
I do not value pithy things like locks
of hair and milk teeth and ticket stubs

and promise rings—mere particles
of dust I'd blow out to the street if I could
sneeze. Take your high school jersey
and your woman's wedding dress away
from me. Sentimental hoarding bothers me.

So off with you, old couch that cries
in coins as it gets dragged out to the porch.
Farewell, cold bed that breaks its bones
in protest to eviction or foreclosure or
whatever launched this grim parade

of exits. I am not a pet. I do not feel
abandonment. Sometimes I don't even see you
come or go or stay behind. My windows
are your eyes not mine. If you should die
inside me I'll leave it up to you to tell

the neighbors. Shut the heaters off
I do not fear the cold. I'm not the one
who shrinks into the corner of the floor
because whatever made you think
this was a home with warmth isn't here

to sweet-talk anymore. Don't look at me
that way, I'm not to blame. I granted
nothing to the immigrant or exile
that I didn't give a bordercrosser or a native
born. I am not a prize or a wish come true.

I am not a fairytale castle. Though I
used to be, in some distant land inhabited
by dreamers now extinct. Who knows
what happened there? In any case, good
riddance, grotesque fantasy and mirth.

So long, wall-to-wall disguise in vulgar
suede and chintz. Take care, you fool,
and don't forget that I am just a house,
a structure without soul for those whose
patron saints are longing and despair. 

Tomorrow our loved ones from Brooklyn will arrive late. On Saturday morning, we'll go to a family concert at Tanglewood featuring the Boston Symphony. And eat native sweet corn for supper. We'll laugh and sing and play, too. González is right: the emotions and memories we celebrate are born of our humanity not our place. Like Newcomer, I am still grateful for a safe and beautiful sanctuary to nourish these memories and our shared humanity. I can't help but think of her song, "I Believe."

bewildered by small changes - and grateful, too

This week is restorative for me: a series of small, quiet projects envisioned and completed in solitude. It has been raining in the Berkshire hills for the past 36 hours giving me the chance to write, read, pray, nap and scour the house. At times such as these my mind moves towards Kathleen Norris little book: Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy and Women's Work: “The ordinary activities I find most compatible with contemplation are walking, baking bread, and doing laundry.” Norris grasps, like Brother Lawrence and countless others who move with a monastic groove, that most of our days are given to small, ordinary and sometimes tedious tasks. "Whatever you do repeatedly has the power to shape you, has the power to make you over into a different person— even if you’re not totally engaged’ in every minute!” I like how she puts our little domestic rituals into a larger, sacred narrative.

The Bible is full of evidence that God’s attention is indeed fixed on the little things... not because God is a Great Cosmic Cop, eager to catch us in minor transgressions, but simply because God loves us—loves us so much that the divine presence is revealed even in the meaningless workings of daily life. It is in the ordinary, the here—and—now, that God asks us to recognize that the creation is indeed refreshed like dew—laden grass that is “renewed in the morning” (Ps 90:5), or to put it in more personal and also theological terms, “our inner nature is being renewed every day” (2 Cor 4:16). Seen in this light, what strikes many modern readers as the ludicrous attention to detail in the book of Leviticus, involving God in the minutiae of daily life—all the cooking and cleaning of a people’s domestic life—might be revisioned as the very love of God. A God who cares so much as to desire to be present to us in everything we do. It is this God who speaks to us through the psalmist as he wakes from sleep, amazed, to declare, “I will bless you, Lord, you give me counsel, and even at night direct my heart” (Ps 16:7, GR). It is this God who speaks to us through the prophets, reminding us that by meeting the daily needs of the poor and vulnerable, characterized in the scriptures as the widows and orphans, we prepare the way of the Lord and make our own hearts ready for the day of salvation. When it comes to the nitty—gritty, what ties these threads of biblical narrative together into a revelation of God’s love is that God has commanded us to refrain from grumbling about the dailiness of life. Instead we are meant to accept it gratefully, as a reality that humbles us even as it gives us cause for praise. The rhythm of sunrise and sunset marks a passage of time that makes each day rich with the possibility of salvation, a concept that is beautifully summed up in an ancient saying from the monastic tradition: “Abba Poeman said concerning Abba Pior that every day he made a new beginning.”

It has taken most of my adult life to catch this vision. I have always hated clutter, and, I am inherently lazy. That's a deadly combination that often became a frenzied approach to household chores. They were neglected for weeks on end only to be attacked on a Saturday morning like Sherman's march to the sea. Take no prisoners! Devour every mess in my path! Enlist any and all residents in the house, too! Sometimes, if accompanied by the right music as soundtrack, these cleaning campaigns could be fun. But all too often, they were simply oppressive. They got the job done but without any joy and little satisfaction.

Oddly, I don't know when my perspective and practice changed. I know it did, but I have no idea when or even how. I just know that sometime while living here I began to enjoy cutting the grass. And washing the floor. And now baking the bread, working in the garden, pruning the trees, washing the clothes and cleaning the kitchen at the end of each day. It is quiet and meditative time. It is time to be focused on one task at a time, too. My bread baking, for example, has helped me learn to follow the recipe carefully. Repairing the lawn mower has given me a new appreciation for tools and owner's manuals. And working with a friend as we repair our deck has opened my heart to the world of power tools with a new commitment to safety. There can be no rushing when working with these resources. Every task takes as long as is necessary to get it done, right? And that is part of the contemplative life: the regular practice of mindfulness and prayer as the path into mature patience.

The past two days I have been sorting out more junk, washing more floors, dusting behind the furniture and finishing up our stacks of laundry. Now that the rain has stopped, I'll be out in the yard. And then painting bathrooms and even repairing a few stairs on the deck. A poem I read at the start of the day speaks to the gentle but mysterious transformation we sometimes discover has taken place in our lives:  on our way to some place else, we found what we needed. Dan Gioia calls it, "The Road."

He sometimes felt that he had missed his life
By being far too busy looking for it.
Searching the distance, he often turned to find
That he had passed some milestone unaware,
And someone else was walking next to him,
First friends, then lovers, now children and a wife.
They were good company–generous, kind,
But equally bewildered to be there.

He noticed then that no one chose the way—
All seemed to drift by some collective will.
The path grew easier with each passing day,
Since it was worn and mostly sloped downhill.
The road ahead seemed hazy in the gloom.
Where was it he had meant to go, and with whom?

feasting with st. mary magdalene...

Today is the Feast Day of St. Mary Magdalene. There is a soft but insistent rain falling on our Berkshire hills. I can't help but smile thinking that for us Mary is "ringing out here handkerchief," as an old English legend puts it, "in preparation for joining the feast of St. James on July 25." Mary loves to feast. She is equally at home, however, with fasting, too as she embodies a spirituality that is fully grounded and at peace with mind, body, and spirit. As Cynthia Bourgeault teaches: in the gospel according to Mary Magdalene, she sees with her heart.

In the Near East, the heart is not the seat of one's personal emotional life, but an organ of spiritual perception... the heart is primarily an instrument of sight - or insight - "Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God." Its purpose is to navigate along the vertical axis and stay in alignment with the image of one's true nature. (The Meaning of Mary Magdalene, p. 51)

As best as anyone can interpret, the gospel according to Mary Magdalene takes place "in temporal history sometime between Jesus' resurrection and ascension - that is... it is a version of the 'upper room' appearances of Jesus in John and Luke... Jesus gathers his students around him once again to reflect on the meaning of his passage through death and to leave them final instructions and encouragement before his departure in physical form." (p. 47) After Jesus encourages his followers - men and women - not to lay down any rules for others beyond what he has already shared (the commandment to love one another as he loved them by washing their feet and to celebrate Eucharist in remembrance of him), Mary begins to teach the disciples saying: "Do not weep and grieve... Do not let your hearts remain in doubt... for he has promised us the grace" to encounter his presence wherever we go for "those who seek him in their hearts will find him." (p. 54) Bourgeault urges us to be clear about what this means:

(Mary's) actual words are, "He has prepared us so that we might become fully human." To become fully human is a modern translation of the words "to become an anthropos" - that is, a completed human being. (p.g 54) 

It is Bourgeault's thesis - and I embrace it - that Magdalene shows us what a mature and healthy disciple of Jesus looks like: she is at home with body and spirit, heaven and earth, fear and joy, celebration and solitude, life, death, resurrection and grace. Not so for the male disciples in the gospel stories: they are wracked by anxiety and guilt. They have betrayed Jesus and gone into hiding. Only Mary stays with Jesus through the passion, into the emptiness and then the resurrection. That the early Church was conflicted over her witness is clear - and we have all been the poorer for it. But to paraphrase Robert Bly when he said, "I was born a Norwegian Lutheran, raised a Norwegian Lutheran and will die a Norwegian Lutheran. But I don't have to be a stupid Norwegian Lutheran!" Same with each and all of us who seek to love Jesus and care for one another in embodied compassion: we were born into institutional traditions of Christianity - Reformed, Anabaptist, Catholic or Orthodox - but we don't have to remain stupid or inert in those traditions. Rather, we can learn from St. Mary to seek balance as we practice "seeing from our heart." In this, we can embrace the wisdom of divine feminine alongside the insights of the sacred masculine.

To that end let me invite you to read a beautiful essay by Lindsay McLaughlin at Friends of Silence (https://friendsof silence.net/blogs/lindsay/tender-things) I read "Love of Tender Things" the first thing this morning and found myself nourished for the whole day. McLaughlin's words speak of living in the balance of pure grace and beauty knowing full well that the world is filled with catastrophes
and perils, too.  

This is the unfair dilemma in which we find ourselves: how to hold the miraculous belonging, to accept the precious, joyous gift of kinship and community, while absorbing the telltale signs of a deeply unwell world and the unpreventable suffering of those we love. I have been thinking about this lately as the outer landscapes we love are more and more subject to the destructive forces of climate change and the inter-landscapes of human relationships have become increasingly disconnected and hurtful.

Here is what I have come to: we cannot and should not take this lying down, cannot and should not crumple into despondency and hopelessness. I recently came across this line from the poem "A Brief for the Defense" by the late American poet Jack Gilbert: "We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of the world. To make injustice the only measure of our attention is to praise the Devil." 

We are not alone in living into this balance: we have allies and friends to keep us connected to gratitude - poets, story-tellers, mentors and wise ones to guide us back on to the path when we inevitably stray - and we have prayer however we understand it. The reflection ends like this: "Call out to the whole divine night for what you love. What you stand for. Earn your name. Be kind, and wild, and disciplined, and absolutely generous. Amen." Indeed, last night a dear friend and colleague posted this prayer that I amplified and amended with a prayer another friend regularly uses (from Mychal Judge) to fit into my morning contemplation:

O God of Grace, God of tenderness, God of presence and awe:
As this day unfolds and opens
Take me where You want me to go;
Let me meet who You want me to meet;
Tell me what You want me to say;
And keep me out of Your way.

Keep my anger from becoming meanness;
Keep my sorrow from collapsing into self-pity;
Keep my heart soft enough to keep breaking;
Keep my anger turned toward justice not cruelty
Keep me fiercely kind and remind me that all of this – every bit of it –
is for love.

Grant me wisdom sufficient for this day in the Spirit of Jesus.

Glory be to the Creator + and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.
As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be,
World without end. Amen.

With the rain - and my prayers, my friends and my icon - I sensed St. Mary Magdalene encouraging me as I took in McLaughlin's reflection this morning: do not weep and grieve only, but rejoice also as you keep moving towards that sacred balance on the road of becoming an anthropos. I believe, I believe, Lord help my disbelief.

celebrating the mystical st. mary magdalene on her feast day: July 22

The late Karl Rahner, German Jesuit priest whose imprint upon Vatican II was profound, mused that, “The Christian of the future will be a mystic or will not exist at all.” This insight has clearly become true throughout the Body of Christ in the West: the quest for ethical integrity, happiness, social inclusivity, as well as spiritual intimacy and experience informs the soul of Western Europe, where 60% or more of the populations of England, Germany and France now believe that religion is no longer necessary to live the good life, and much the same is true in the USA, too.(see https: //www.pewforum.org/ 2018/ 10/29/ eastern-and-western-europeans-differ-on-importance-of-religion-views-of-minorities-and-key-social-issues/) While clearly different according to geographical region, 23% of North Americans no longer trust/believe in the value of participation in organized, formal religious institutions - and this does not include those who self-define themselves as atheist. In both New England and the Pacific Northwest, the "spiritual but not religious" (SBNR) sector has become the dominant spirituality surpassing all Protestant varieties as well as Roman Catholic. (see https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-number-of-americans-with-no-religious-affiliation-is-rising/)

Fr. Richard Rohr has recently been reflecting on the meaning of mysticism in his daily blog. At the Center for Action and Contemplation (https://cac.org) he summarizes the essence of mysticism clearly:

+ A mystic is simply one who has moved from mere belief or belonging systems to actual inner experience of God. (Sunday)

+ A mystic sees things in their wholeness, connection, and union, not only their particularity. Mystics get the whole gestalt in one picture, beyond the sequential and separated way of seeing. (Monday)

+ A Christian is one who can see Christ everywhere else and even in oneself. (Tuesday)

+ If you want to find God, then honor God within you, and you will always see God beyond you. For it is only God in you who knows where and how to look for God. (Wednesday)

+ Saints embody goodness while mystics embody love. (Thursday)

My point in sharing this as prelude is that tomorrow, Monday, July 22, 2019, is the feast day of St. Mary Magdalene. Pope Francis recently elevated her day of remembrance to that of a feast noting that Mary was not only the "apostle to the apostles" but that, Her tears at Christ's empty tomb are a reminder that sometimes in our lives, tears are the lenses we need to see Jesus.(https://www.catholic news.com/services/englishnews/2016/pope-elevates-memorial-of-st-mary-magdalene-to-feast-day.cfm) Sometimes our experience of the holy becomes our prayer. Sometimes our inner encounter with the sacred nourishes our heart. Sometimes our feelings and emotions are far more true than abstract doctrine or formal participation in an institution.

It is heartening to me that Mary has been raised up to be one of the saints. Her mystical way of living into the truth of Jesus is articulated well in Cynthia Bourgeault's book, The Meaning of Mary Magdalene: Discovering the Woman at the Heart of Christianity. Quoting another mystic, Fr. Thomas Merton, Bourgeault reminds us that the essence of Magdalene's spirituality is the integration of all things - female and male, wholeness and brokenness, joy and sorrow, hope and fear - into her heart:

At the center of our being is a point or nothingness which is untouched by sin and illusion, a point of pure truth which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory o f God in us. It is, so to speak, God's name written in us, as our poverty, as our indigence, as our dependence, as our intimate connection. It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. (p. 60)

Magdalene is a saint who did her own work long before the men of the Jesus movement. In fact, Magdalene was the only disciple to stand with Jesus all the way through his betrayal, passion, death, descent and resurrection. She stood witness to the transformative experience of the love of Jesus in the darkness and the light, in fear and desertion, in understanding and confusion, in sorrow as well as joy. Even when the men arrogantly dismissed her testimony that God's love was stronger than death with disdain, Magdalene stayed the course. Her celebration as "apostolorum apostola" (apostle to the apostles) is long over due.

There are two traditions that suggest what may have occurred to Mary after the Ascension:

The Eastern tradition maintains that she went to Rome, and then to Ephesus with Our Lady, where she died. Her relics were taken to Constantinople in the 9th c., to be translated later to Rome and France. The Roman tradition is that, in A.D. 48, she -- along with SS. Martha and Lazarus -- were seized by the Jews of Palestine who put them on a rickety boat without any oars and cast them away into the stormy sea. They made their way to France, and once there, settled in and converted all of Provence. While St. Martha gathered about her a community of women, and while St. Lazarus became a Bishop, Mary is said to have retired to a cave in a hill in La Sainte-Baume to live a life of penance for thirty years. When she was dying, the angels are said to have carried her to the Oratory of St. Maximinus in Aix where she received Viaticum and died. Her body is said to have been deposed in St. Maximin Oratory in Villa Lata until A.D. 745, when she was moved to protect her relics from the Saracens. Later, when the Dominicans built a convent in La Sainte-Baume, the shrine was found intact, with an inscription indicating why the relics were hidden. This church was destroyed during the French Revolution, but was later restored, and the head of Mary Magdalene is said to be there to this day..
((https://www.fisheaters.com/customstimeafterpentecost3x.html))

So how do we mystics - those connected to our various formal communities as well as those SBNR - celebrate this important new feast day? A few spring to mind:

+ Take a look at the Gospel of Mary Magdalene. Bourgeault synthesizes it well in her text and has also published a commentary on it, too.

+ Give yourself - or a loved one - as massage with perfumed oil. Given Mary's tradition this could be an embodied prayer of love and gratitude.

+ Bake and share Proust's famous Madeleine (French for Magdalene) cookies. The recipe is as follows as taken from the Feast of St. Mary Magdalene web site (https://www.fisheaters.com/customstimeafterpentecost3x.html)

Madeleines 

1 stick (1/4 lb.) unsalted butter
3 eggs
3/4 cup sugar
1 lemon
2/3 cup milk
2 cups all purpose flour
1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
butter (at room temperature) for the madeleine pan molds

Butter 2 madeleine molds (molds of 12) and put into the refrigerator. Butter them again in 15 minutes, making sure the butter coats the indentations on the top. Chill molds until ready to use.

Grate the zest from 1/2 of the lemon and reserve. Squeeze the lemon and reserve the juice. Whisk the flour and baking powder together. Melt the butter and set aside. Whisk the eggs, sugar, lemon zest and lemon juice together for about 30 seconds. Don't overmix.

Thin the mixture with 1/2 cup of the milk. Add the flour all at once and, using a whisk, blend just long enough to eliminate lumps. Gently stir in the rest of the milk and the melted butter.

Refrigerate the batter for 20 minutes. Preheat oven to 425°. Spoon the batter into the shell-shaped molds and bake for 15 to 20 minutes, turning the pans halfway through the cooking time so they bake evenly. Immediately remove the cookies from the molds and allow to cool on racks. Sprinkle with powdered sugar just before serving (not when hot!).

One final note: an old English saying is that if it rains today, it is Mary Magdalen washing out her handkerchief, preparing to attend St. James's fair. The Feast of St. James is a few days from now, on the 25th of July (her sister Martha's Feast follows hers in one week).(see fisheaters above.)

Reclaiming the mystical traditions - and importance for our personal and collective well-being - is a joyful way of going deeper into our embodied prayers. Rain is predicted for my part of creation. I hope you find a way to join me and countless others. Today I start my preparations with this poem by Rilke:

THE RISEN ONE

Until his final hour he had never
refused her anything or turned away,
lest she should turn their love to public praise.
Now she sank down beside the cross, disguised,
heavy with the largest stones of love
like jewels in the cover of her pain.

But later, when she came back to his grave
with tearful face, intending to anoint,
she found him resurrected for her sake,
saying with greater blessedness, “Do not –”

She understood it in her hollow first:
how with finality he now forbade
her, strengthened by his death, the oils’ relief
or any intimation of a touch:

because he wished to make of her the lover
who needs no more to lean on her beloved,
as, swept away by joy in such enormous
storms, she mounts even beyond his voice.

credits:

+ https://stmarymagdalenes.weebly.com/st-mary-magdalene.html

+ https://www.pinterest.com/pin/155303887141363482/?lp=true

+ https://catholicsstrivingforholiness.com/2016/07/21/july-22-st-mary-magdalene-feast/

+ https://www.sheislove.com/mary-magdalene-celebration

different ways to pray...

The various icons - and images - that have nourished my heart and called me into deeper communion with those I love and my wider community.

  

  

  

    

    

    

 

 

  

  

  

  

I am struck by the abundance of images recasting the Holy Family - and the Theotokos - into contemporary settings in a variety of cultures. Also the stunning way my friends at L'Arche Ottawa became icons, too. This poem by Naomi Shihab Nye, "Different Ways to Pray," continues to ring true.

There was the method of kneeling,
a fine method, if you lived in a country
where stones were smooth.
The women dreamed wistfully of bleached courtyards,
hidden corners where knee fit rock.
Their prayers were weathered rib bones,
small calcium words uttered in sequence,
as if this shedding of syllables could somehow
fuse them to the sky.

There were the men who had been shepherds so long
they walked like sheep.
Under the olive trees, they raised their arms—
Hear us! We have pain on earth!
We have so much pain there is no place to store it!
But the olives bobbed peacefully
in fragrant buckets of vinegar and thyme.
At night the men ate heartily, flat bread and white cheese,
and were happy in spite of the pain,
because there was also happiness.

Some prized the pilgrimage,
wrapping themselves in new white linen
to ride buses across miles of vacant sand.
When they arrived at Mecca
they would circle the holy places,
on foot, many times,
they would bend to kiss the earth
and return, their lean faces housing mystery.

While for certain cousins and grandmothers
the pilgrimage occurred daily,
lugging water from the spring
or balancing the baskets of grapes.
These were the ones present at births,
humming quietly to perspiring mothers.
The ones stitching intricate needlework into children’s dresses,
forgetting how easily children soil clothes.

There were those who didn’t care about praying.
The young ones. The ones who had been to America.
They told the old ones, you are wasting your time.
Time?—The old ones prayed for the young ones.
They prayed for Allah to mend their brains,
for the twig, the round moon,
to speak suddenly in a commanding tone.

And occasionally there would be one
who did none of this,
the old man Fowzi, for example, Fowzi the fool,
who beat everyone at dominoes,
insisted he spoke with God as he spoke with goats,
and was famous for his laugh.

This year I have prayed with bread and gardens, community and photographs as well as laughter, poetry and music.