montréal reflections: day six

NOTE: We are on holiday for rest and reflection in Montréal before a new year of engagement, teaching and creativity begins. This is the sixth in a series.

Last night we were tired - and the walkway in front of our loft was buzzing with a sea of young college students filled with life. It was a fascinating paradox. We like to saunter and explore. Yet for the past few days our neighborhood has been saturated with hundreds of newly arrived frosh students at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) whose energy cannot be contained. With nearly 35K undergrads living less than a mile away - all of whom want to know the best places to hang, drink, dance, eat and perhaps hook up - Rue Prince Arthur (our street) has been transformed into a moving, pulsating festival of excited young bodies all dressed to kill. Over Labor Day weekend the street takes on the groove of Mardi Gras.

Consequently, it made sense for us old folk just to walk up and down Blvd St. Laurent for a spell in the cool air and then sneak over to the fountain at parc du carré Saint-Louis. It was virtually deserted given the buzz of the street fair and the crush of frosh orientation. The hibiscus surrounding the perimeter of the fountain were huge. The sound of gentle, running water was soothing. And the familiar scent of Montréal's uniquely pungent ganga omnipresent. When we were here during our sabbatical four years ago, we joked that the reason our very nervous dog, Lucie, would chill out while walking through the park at night had something to do with all the ganga and her getting a contact high. Some evenings, it is a distinct possibility. In time, we headed back to the flat to read and head to bed early even as Party Central was in full tilt boogie til the wee hours all around us.

That's when another paradox showed up as I read these words from Cynthia Bourgeault's The Wisdom Way of Knowing and the festival raged on below:

In the psychological climate of our times, our emotions are almost always considered to be virtually identical with our personal authenticity - and the more freely they flow - the more we are seen to be honest and 'in touch.' A person who gravitates to a mental mode of operation is criticized for being 'in his head'; when feelings dominate, we proclaim approval that such a person is 'in his heart.' (But) in the Wisdom tradition, this would be a serious misuse of the term heart. Far from revealing the heart, Wisdom teaches that the emotions are in fact the primary culprits that obscure and confuse it. The real mark of personal authority is not how intensely we can express our feelings, but how honestly we can look at where they're coming from and spot the elements of clinging, manipulation and personal agenda that make up so much of what we experiences as our emotional life today. (pp. 32-3)

It takes most of us about 30 or 40 years to grasp this - and another 15+ to put it into practice with the semblance of consistency. If we're lucky. If we're intentional. It takes a ton of effort, practice, and encouragement to break free from our culture's confusions. More often than not, and I write from personal experience, we keep doing the same things over and over while expecting different results. We refuse to recognize the Wisdom of our wounds. Or, as they say in AA, we deny that "if we always do what we've always done; we'll always get what we've always got." Jung used to teach that we have to keep making the same mistakes over and over until we've learned their lessons. That is why Bourgeault writes: "The heart (or our emotions) at the service of the personal, psychological self is not a heart at all: the heart is not for personal expression, but for divine perception." (p. 34)

Watching that throng of young college students reminded me of my own college days. My hip may hurt from too much walking these days and I get worn out more easily, but living through that haze once was more than enough. I ached to be loved. And like Springsteen sang, when you're hurting and afraid to be alone: "You do some sad, sad things baby, when it's your you 're tryin' to lose. You do some sad and hurtful things, I've seen living proof..." Beyond the booze and the buzz, there were a lot of broken hearts last night - and perplexed and hurting bodies this morning, too. No judgment in any of this, ok? Been there and done that, too. Everyone is just looking for life and a "little of that human touch." The Boss put it like this: 

Ain't no mercy on the streets of this town, 

Ain't no bread from heavenly skies

Ain't nobody drawin' wine from this blood, 

It's just you and me tonight

Tell me, in a world without pity, 

Do you think what I'm askin's too much

I just want something to hold on to 

And a little of that Human Touch

 

So I had to smile to myself when I put Bourgeault down and read these words from Henri Nouwen before heading into bed. In an early book, Reaching Out, he writes:

Without some form of community, individual prayer cannot be born or developed. Communal and individual prayer belong together as two folded hands. Without community, individual prayer easily degenerates into egocentric and eccentric behavior, but without individual prayer, the prayer of community quickly becomes a meaningless routine. Individual and community prayer cannot be separated without harm. This explains why spiritual leaders tend to be very critical of those who want to isolate themselves and why they stress the importance of continuing ties with a larger community, where individual prayer can be guided. This also explains why the same leaders have always encouraged the individual members of their communities to spend time and energy in personal prayer, realizing as they do that community alone can never fulfill the desire for the most unique intimate relationship between a human being and his or her God.

Nouwen himself also learned this truth the hard way. He ached to be loved. He denied the conflict within his heart. And he crashed and burned just like all of us do when we try too hard. It took nearly two years of intense prayer. spiritual direction and therapy in a safe and loving community for Nouwen to embrace and trust the wisdom of his wounds. Becoming real and loving is hard work. It cannot happen in isolation. 

As I watched some of the children of Montréal play at yesterday's street fair, surrounded by loving friends and family who cheered them onward in their larger than life water balloons, I became aware of yet another paradox. In an age where most young people no longer have any contact with communities of faith - or people other than their peers - events like street fairs, concerts, poetry readings, and parks take on a deeper significance. They become, as Leonard Cohen sang, "the holy places where the races meet." These encounters are not perfect, and they are not yet deep communities where transformation and healing can be learned, but they evoke a measure of trust, diversity, joy, depth, integration and the possibility of loving-kindness in a life that often seems anxious, confused, and even cruel. I have heard much the same thing from young LGBTQ folk when they speak about the internet. Say what you will, it offers a place to know you are safe and real.

One of the reasons we cherish Montréal is that there is a commitment to sharing safe public spaces. Along the boulevard's street fair, there are rest stations as well as play stations, mixed with public art and green space. A real touch of humanity and even tenderness out in the open. In my own culture, I don't see much room for tenderness these days. Or safe public spaces. And the whole of the US is the poorer for this absence. Walking in this grand city has become yet one more paradox: a time of personal rest and wonder as well as a silent lament for contemporary America. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

montréal reflections: day five

NOTE: We are on holiday for rest and reflection in Montréal before a new year of engagement, teaching and creativity begins. This is the fifth in a series.

Last night we went to listen to Christine Tassan, a jazz guitarist from Paris who makes her home in Montréal playing jazz manouche (gypsy jazz), at a variety of venues including our favorite Diese Onze. As we walked, we both felt the strain of tired muscles we have been exercising over the past week. It was a good tired, but tired nonetheless. It called into memory a question Cynthia Bourgeault asks repeatedly in her wisdom school: where are your feet? That is, what is your body feeling? Are you grounded or floundering? At peace or caught in chaos? Listening to the wisdom in our flesh is crucial for spiritual integrity.

As I took in the jazz - watching both the movements and chops of these artists at work and play - a quote Di sent me popped up. "It is not given to every man, when his life’s work is over, to grow old in a garden he has made," wrote Sir Robert Stillwell. Sitting in our favorite bistro in Le Plateau, I found myself giving thanks to God: Part of this time in Montréal for me is discovering new/old words and ways to clarify my clearly quotidian spiritual disciplines.

Bourgeault insists that our deepest spiritual insights are usually first expressed in gestures turning the rhythmic movement of window or floor washing, raking leaves, kneading dough, or cutting grass into a type of apprenticeship in embodied wisdom. By practicing being present to life in these physical tasks - feeling the air on our faces, smelling the baking bread, experiencing the tension and release of hard manual labor as well as the satisfaction of a job well done - our emotional center can be awakened. As we give ourselves time and space to move and feel, we then find that our physical activity has evoked an awakening in our intellectual center, too. Quiet reflection begins to beat in time and sing in harmony with our bodies and emotions.

For the past 18 months I intuitively returned to the quotidian mysteries of bread baking, gardening, floor cleaning as well as a little music-making. I wasn't fully sure of all the reasons why except to say that I had a hunch that I had to physically slow down if I was going to relearn the basics of my inner life. I gave away most of my theological library. I quit reading the periodicals that had once sustained my professional identity. Like the Buddhist monk said: it was time just to chop wood and carry water. Apparently, this is foundational to all wisdom school traditions: we re-discover the grace that embraces the totality of creation incrementally by practicing gestures that open us to surrender, trust and hope. The Stillwell quote concludes that those who give themselves over to the spirituality of gardening can: "Lose in the ocean roll of the seasons little eddies of pain and sickness and weariness, to watch year after year green surging tides of spring and summer break at his feet in a foam of woodland flowers, and the garden like a faithful retainer growing grey in its master’s service. But for him who may live to see it, there shall be a wilder beauty than any he has planned." 

A wilder beauty, indeed. A beauty that invites balance. And tenderness. Even hope for those with eyes to see. Bourgeault believes that we in the West have been living out of balance for the past 500 years. We have lost touch with both our emotional and physical centers in our obsession with intellectual wisdom. In doing so there have been brilliant advances, but also tragic consequences. Our technology is stunning, but rarely is it put into service on behalf of the poor, the broken, the weak or the wounded. No, it serves wealth and power. Having perfected the means of mass destruction rather than feeding and housing our neighbors, our culture has become a cynical, greedy and fearful collection of post-apocalyptic automatons oblivious to the faith, hope and love that formed and sustains us all. As MLK warned, "Today our science has outrun our spiritual power creating guided missiles and misguided men (and women)." 

My gut response was to the fear and chaos - as well as my own lack of focus - was to build a small terraced garden and raise fresh tomatoes, herbs and pumpkins. I didn't understand why this was vital for me before our time of walking and watching in Montréal, but I trusted it was true. Living by faith, St. Paul called it, not by sight. Trusting that when the student was ready, the Buddha would appear. Or as Martin Luther used to say when he was overwhelmed with anxiety: I am baptized. In other words, there is a love and grace bigger than I can comprehend right now and I am going to trust it. Imagine my delight when Bourgeault began to teach about the centrality of "the moving center" - the realm of gestures and embodied prayer - in her on-line wisdom school course. I laughed out loud this morning when I read these words from Richard Rohr who affirmed the integrity of living an embodied spirituality that reconnects the flesh with the emotions and intellect. 

Just as different ways of interpreting scripture and various types of truth (e.g., literal vs. mythic) are valuable for different purposes, so scientific theories have different applications while seeming to be paradoxical and irreconcilable. For example, we have the Newtonian theory of gravity, Einstein’s theory of relativity, and quantum theory. Physicists know that each of them is true, yet they don’t fit together and each is limited and partial. Newtonian mechanics can’t model or predict the behavior of massive or quickly moving objects. Relativity does this well, but doesn’t apply to very, very small things. Quantum mechanics succeeds on the micro level. But we don’t yet have an adequate theory for understanding very energetic, very massive phenomenon, such as black holes. Scientists are still in search of a unified theory of the universe. Perhaps the term “quantum entanglement” names something that we have long intuited, but science has only recently observed. Here is the principle in everyday language: in the world of quantum physics, it appears that one particle of any entangled pair “knows” what is happening to another paired particle—even though there is no known means for such information to be communicated between the particles, which are separated by sometimes very large distances.

Scientists don’t know how far this phenomenon applies beyond very rare particles, but quantum entanglement hints at a universe where everything is in relationship, in communion, and also where that communion can be resisted (“sin”). Both negative and positive entanglement in the universe matter, maybe even ultimately matter. Prayer, intercession, healing, love and hate, heaven and hell, all make sense on a whole new level. Religion has long pointed to this... as Paul’s letter to the Romans says quite clearly “the life and death of each of us has its influence on others” (14:7). 

Rohr goes on to quote Judy Cannato, a visionary of a new cosmology:

Emergent theories seem to confirm what mystics have been telling us all along—that we are one, not just all human beings, but all creation, the entire universe. As much as we may imagine and act to the contrary, human beings are not the center of the universe—even though we are a vital part of it. Nor are we completely separate from others, but live only in and through a complex set of relationships we hardly notice. Interdependent and mutual connections are integral to all life... My heart tells me that the new physics is not new at all, but simply expresses in yet another way the fundamental truth that underpins creation... What science is saying is not contradictory to but actually resonates with Christian faith and my own experience of the Holy. As I continue to reflect, the new physics gives a fresh framework from which to consider the action of God’s grace at work in human life. 

Clearly, our culture is not there yet. Our politicians are trapped in outmoded ideas that fan the flames of fear and cruelty without consideration of the consequences. More and more people of every age, class, gender and race are abandoning traditional religious practices, too. Cynicism alongside nativist pandering is ascending. But fear and anxiety are not at the heart of creation. They are neither the end of this cycle nor what binds us together: quantum entanglement is. In ways none of us can fully articulate, we know this is true. This poem by Li-Young Lee gets close.

I loved you before I was born.
It doesn’t make sense, I know.

I saw your eyes before I had eyes to see.
And I’ve lived longing
for your every look ever since.
That longing entered time as this body.
And the longing grew as this body waxed.
And the longing grows as this body wanes.
That longing will outlive this body.

I loved you before I was born.
It makes no sense, I know.

Long before eternity, I caught a glimpse
of your neck and shoulders, your ankles and toes.
And I’ve been lonely for you from that instant.
That loneliness appeared on earth as this body.
And my share of time has been nothing
but your name outrunning my ever saying it clearly.
Your face fleeing my ever
kissing it firmly once on the mouth.

In longing, I am most myself, rapt,
my lamp mortal, my light
hidden and singing.

I give you my blank heart.
Please write on it
what you wish.

montréal reflections: day four...

NOTE: We are on holiday for rest and reflection in Montréal before a new year of engagement, teaching and creativity begins. This is the fourth in a series.

When I was a young boy in Sandy Hook, CT - probably in the second grade - I used to love sitting in the sun on the hill behind our house, listening to my older friend, Lee, tell me stories of the saints. He was in catechism class and took it quite seriously - and I ate it all up. These tales were ecstatic. Bold. Inspiring in both compassion and courage. And best of all, they were embodied: his stories of women and men who both felt the presence of God in their flesh and shared their experiences with others in their ordinary lives were unlike anything I had heard of in my hyper-intellectual Congregational background. Honestly, there was no way I could get enough - and probably still can't.

It seems that I have always been drawn to a "smells and bells" spirituality. For the better part of my adult life, however, I thought I was a freak. Or at the very least a wanna-be Catholic outsider within my Reformed Protestant tradition. I cherish Eucharist. I chant the Psalms. I use incense and candles in my own personal prayers at home. I find sacramental theology far more useful and real than the tortured, abstract constructs of most systematic theologies. And, I have experienced kneeling, using prayer beads, and physically making the sign of the Cross essential. Clearly I have been drawn to the incarnational practices of greater Christianity without ever understanding why. It felt right, so I did it, but never knew why. 

This intellectual confusion didn't stop me, of course, as I have continued to practice embodied prayer personally and professionally. Still, this uncertainty raised questions I could not answer - until now. One of the gifts I have received in taking the Center for Action and Contemplation's "Wisdom School with Cynthia Bourgeault" - and studying her The Wisdom Way of Knowing as a companion resource - is her explanation of the centrality of the body's wisdom in pursuit of spiritual integrity. The body knows, practices and expresses wisdom through gestures – embodied actions - that teach us how to be centered. "When we connect with our body, we are reconnecting with the wellsprings of faith."

The most subtle lessons of the spiritual path are conveyed in gesture, not in words... in fact there is an actual "alphabet" of gestures through which sacred knowledge has traditionally been handed down. (Movement and physicality is how we learn and "know") humility, self-emptying, adoration... Most of us learn some of that sacred alphabet simply in the process of growing up... from learning how to ride a bicycle when I was seven I came to know something about interior balance, getting the hang of something from the inside out. From learning to float (in water) I discovered that trust means relaxing and letting something else hold you up. From ecstatic lovemaking, I learned not to fear dissolving into oneness. The language of spiritual transformation is already written deeply within our bodies; when we get the hang of the gesture, we discover the spiritual truth it illuminates. (pp. 30-31 in The Wisdom Way of Knowing)

No wonder I was attracted to yoga. Or Islam's physical prayers. Or sitting Zen meditation. Or Centering Prayer in community. Or genuflecting before the presence of Christ on the altar. Or sharing and receiving Eucharist. Or weeping in sorrow or joy. Or clapping my hands with the gospel choir. Or embracing my children and grandchildren. Or making music. Or even dancing with the Grateful Dead as a part of the tribe. It turns out, I wasn't such a (complete) freak after all: rather, I was responding to the call of one of the centers of sacred wisdom that God created within me (and all of us) before there was time. Small wonder I wound up becoming a bass player, too! I need to feel my flesh connecting with the pulsing rhythms of creation.

Such are some of the consoling gifts offered in embodied wisdom. There is also a more anguished wisdom in the body. During a time of intense therapy, I experienced excruciating pain in my forearms. There was no rhyme or reason for this affliction except to say it was an encounter with traumatic muscle memory. The deeper I went into the sources of this sorrow, the more it tortured me. Wise massage therapists helped, but the pain didn't quit until I made peace with the injuries of my past. I can still feel this distress whenever I enter unsafe places or get lost in the emotions of anxiety and fear. As I have noted in other posts, thanks be to God for Fr. Ed Hays who wrote about the "wisdom of our wounds." Body wisdom is always holy, but not always obvious: learning to translate their messages is crucial. Our wounds do not justify exploding into anger, getting swept away by lust, etc. Rather, as is often true in the way of Jesus, the wisdom of our wounds is upside down and invites us to do the opposite of what we feel. Want to run away? It would probably be better to stay put. Feel like a rant? Best to be still. Want to tell someone off? Why not try listening for a change?

The spirituality of L'Arche takes the body very seriously: making words like
affection, tenderness, humor, forgiveness and compassion flesh is foundational. Henri Nouwen, who lived his later years in community at L'Arche Toronto, once wrote that,“L’Arche is built upon the body, not the word. Words are secondary. It is a spirituality of love through small things, everyday actions like holding the hand of someone as they cry," Jean Vanier put it like this:

There, for me, is another profound truth: understanding, as well as truth, comes not only from the intellect, but also from the body. When we begin to listen to our bodies, we begin to listen to reality through our own experiences; we begin to trust our intuition, our hearts. The truth is also in the “earth” of our own bodies. So it is a question of moving from theories we have learned to listening to the reality that is in and around us. Truth flows from the earth. This is not to deny the truth that flows from teachers, from books, from tradition, from our ancestors, and from religious faith. But the two must come together. Truth from the sky must be confirmed and strengthened by truth from the earth. We must learn to listen and then to communicate.

Tonight I give thanks that I can take time with these insights and slowly walk around with them in the late summer sun of Montréal. This is soul food and I give thanks to God for the wisdom made flesh.

montréal reflections: day three...

NOTE: We are on holiday for rest and reflection in Montreal before a new year of engagement, teaching and creativity begins. This is the third in a series.

Today the rain has arrived after a few days of glorious sun and cool breezes. We have put in about five miles of walking each day, so chilling-out for a bit will feel grand. A morning poem, "The Momentum of Existence" by Ed Nixon, has evoked a bit of paradox for me: it seems to celebrate the buoyancy of life without ever honoring the place of silence and serenity. Have I missed the implied subtlety, or, is this an ode to mania? Could it be the exaggerated musing of a professional puer, or, just the groove of a guy who is averse to nuance? Something else? All of the above? I confess to being apprehensive whenever contemplation appears absent from consideration. And, at the same time, I sense some truth here, too.

Sometimes you don't get a chance
To pause and rest
Even to just take it all in
Sometimes life just goes too fast
And if you halt, even for a moment
You could get rolled over
By the momentum of existence
So, push yourself and keep going
Because once you stop
You may not get started again
And if you need a breather
Do it after the big stuff is done –
I guarantee you the view
Will be a whole lot better

My experience has been that it is precisely at those times when it feels like you "don't get a chance to pause and rest... just to take it all in" that it would be wise, healthy and creative to do so. The call to "be still and know" continues to ripen as my guide. Not that I always do it, mind you. I am often swept away by feelings, events and blind spots. St. Ireneus, the second century monk from Smyrna who helped strengthen Christian communities in southern France, taught that human beings were created imperfect. Mistakes, therefore, are not sinful but the way we ripen and become more like God. Divinization - or what the Eastern Church calls theosis - is the antithesis of Augustine's doctrine of original sin. Rather than being born corrupt, Ireneus affirms that the holy asks us to learn from our brokenness, go deeper into humility through our failures, and discover a rhythm to engagement and reflection that brings meaning to all that we do. Call it a quest for inner and outward balance, or a commitment to embodied contemplation, there is a place for learning how to be still. Like my friends in AA like to tell me: If you always do, what you've always done; you'll always get, what you've always got. 

In my heart, I suspect this poem by Andrea Cohen,"The Bargain," obliquely gets closer to the nuanced challenges of exploring the invitation into balance.

We paid him next
to nothing—less than the little
he’d asked for—to lead us

at dusk from the pyramids
on camels into the desert.
Such slim wages

to take us, without
complaint, all that way—
so far, without a star.

We were in the middle
of nowhere, or at its edge.
Friends, he asked, from

inside that blackness,
what will you pay me
to take you back?

This is another reason why we periodically like to get away from our routines to be in Montreal: as we walk and watch, speak and listen, engage and rest, we often experience small, quiet clues about what is already bubbling up from within that we've been too busy to recognize. Like that unplanned time of Taize worship four years ago at a monastery on Boulevard Mont-Royal. We had not gone to public worship for over four months. Consequently, entering the sacred space made me feel like a guest walking into Sunday worship for the first time. I was nervous. Uncertain of the drill. And it was all in French so there were to be extended times of confusion. Still I knew most of the songs. And - and this was transformational - we all sat on the floor. Horizontal theology and liturgy I called it afterward as it was an encounter of radical unity. There were song leaders, of course, and well-practiced musicians, too. There was a liturgical ebb and flow to sound, song and silence that was intuited and directed by still others as well. Yet everything about this time of horizontal worship worked to deconstruct physical and theological hierarchy. There is something humble and lovely about sitting together on the floor with strangers. (For those unable to do so, yes there were small benches and pillow, too.)  

When we left and re-entered the bustle of Boulevard Mont-Royal at 8:30 pm on a Thursday night, we both walked in silence for a time. Then Di said to me something like, "You're not done with the Church yet, right? Maybe local church work, but you were totally ALIVE just now, weren't you?" She was right. she often is. Later I found myself appreciating the way wisdom teacher and scholar, Cynthia Bourgeault, puts it in her small volume: The Wisdom Way of Knowing.

There can be no question that the future lying right before us demands a different attitude toward religion. Now we have to do better than ecumenism and tolerance. We have to positively appreciate what the many spiritual traditions have to offer us in our own spiritual search. At the same time, no one wants to merely sample the traditions, taking what we find appealing at the moment and co-opting them into our favored philosophy, or pilfering only the superficial bits that are not challenging.

After a full day of walking - chatting up our favorite Anglophone bookseller and buying bagels - we napped and showered before heading out to Diese Onze. We arrived early enough to hear a killer 18 person big band finish their set. After salads and hummus, we were able to move closer for Alex Bellegarde's jam. He played a variety of styles for 45 minutes before inviting young players from the region up to join him and try out their chops. I love Diese Onze: their food is great, their commitment to a wide spectrum of jazz is edifying and satisfying, and the care they share with their guests always makes me feel at home. At 1:30 am as I was walking home in the cool quiet, I gave thanks to God who has tenderly welcomed me into a way of holiness born of my humanity, tenderness, beauty, joy, sorrow, action, contemplation, sound and silence as well as all of my mistakes mixed with grace.  

montréal reflections: day two...

NOTE: we are on holiday for rest and reflection in Montreal before a new year of engagement, teaching and creativity begins. This is the second in a series.

From time to time I am asked, "Why is wandering without a plan and watching the day unfold in Montreal so renewing for you?" It is a fair question. Others, and myself at times, too, appreciate the silence and solitude of a traditional spiritual retreat. "To everything," sang the heart of wisdom, "there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven." So here's what I have figured out...

It begins with a quote from the late Thomas Merton that has danced with my soul for decades. Once, upon leaving the monastery of Gethsemani in Kentucky for the city of Louisville, Merton wrote: "In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers." I experience a similar epiphany every time we come to Montreal. Merton's celebration of incarnation and confession of solidarity sings in my heart. It animates my prayers. It energizes my body. And confirms a long held hunch that God is not only present within all things, but calls to me to embrace the holy in the totality of the human experience. Last night these words from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin rang out as an affirmation: "By virtue of the Creation and, still more, of the Incarnation, nothing here below is profane for those who know how to see.” 

After a long day of walking and watching yesterday, we went to a lovely upscale jazz club in Le Vieux Port: Modavie. It holds a sacred place in my memory with Di. At the finale of our shared sabbatical here four years ago, we watched as fire works magically illumined the St.Lawrence and the Old City. Just down the street we purchased our new wedding rings after renewing our vows 20 years into our marriage. And two years later, we would steal an early supper here after her exhausting CELTA/English as Another Language lessons came to a close. I cherish it as a place filled with a host of life-changing memories.

When the young woman server came to our table, she welcomed us in French. And as I often do I replied, "Merci beaucoup, mademoiselle, mais je ne parle pas plus français, un peu mais..." To which she quickly replied, "Ca va mais voudriez-vous pratiquer?" It took a moment for this to register but then I nearly shouted, "Mais oui. Oui! Merci beaucoup... mais un peu lentement?" To which she smiled and said, "Avec  plaisir, monsieur." And so we did: he was patient and kind and smiled upon us with affection. It was a grand meal with excellent wine. At the end, after taking care of le facture (the bill) I expressed my gratitude in halting phrases. She paused in silence, touched her heart and said (in my loose translation): "In the Old City most folk come in demanding and expecting to speak English. We do, of course, and always want to be helpful. But the arrogance... It was an act of respect and openness for you to try to speak my language so I wanted to do everything I could to help. Thank you." And she touched her heart again.

Tenderness and even embodied prayer in a jazz bar. Respect, vulnerability and meeting Christ in the other, too. "Nothing here below is profane for those who know how to see” indeed. Such benevolence and trust is particularly important these days for those of us from the United States. Given our current regime's boorish crudities, ugly and mean-spirited policies, and overwhelming arrogance and stupidity I sense a burden to advance the cause of loving-kindness. To be sure, we're open to such blessings wherever we go: Wal-Mart, the local package store, with our friends at L'Arche, at the public library. Yet it was in Montreal that I experienced a whole new layer of scales falling from my eyes. So, it feels like a pilgrimage of sorts to return with gratitude.

Montreal is also where I experienced my call out of the local church and into the wisdom and ministry of Jean Vanier and L'Arche. (More on this later.) Here too, during sabbatical, I felt for the first time in nearly 40 years what it was like to simply be me. Not me with a role. Not me with another's expectations. Not me with a public identity. Just me - the old guy with long, white hair who likes jazz and speaks crappy French - just me. (NOTE: one of the gentle and funny illuminations I had last night re: my crappy French came at dinner. Di told me that often my pronunciation is a weird mixture of Spanish and English accents. "Your vocabulary is ok and you clearly aren't afraid to jump into conversations. But, for example, you still say the word Saint as if you were in Tucson saying "San..." I could only smile and note that it was clearly time fro me to up my game in this realm.") In Montreal I experienced my calling into "horizontal" liturgy and spirituality - a calling into solidarity rather than leadership - purchased my contre-basse, worked on upright bass grooves and saw some of the old jazz masters like Wayne Shorter and Ron Carter.

And so we keep returning. Today we'll walk to another favorite neighborhood just to see what's going on. Tonight we'll head over to Diese Onze to take in Alex Bellegarde's jazz improv night with local young musicians sitting in with the old master. And we'll try to listen and look for the holy with ears to hear and eyes to see.

montréal reflections: day one...

NOTE: we are on holiday for rest and reflection in Montreal before a new year of engagement, teaching and creativity begins. This is the first in a series.

Back in my days in the church, I was often frazzled, flummoxed and eventually flattened whenever I was called to sit with another in pain. In time I came to understand this was all I could do really do - sit in silence and share another's suffering - but, at first, it always felt inadequate. Indeed, the staggering agony of someone's anguish regularly struck me as excruciating. Harrowing. And incompetent. Always incompetent. As a young and inexperienced clergy person, I wanted to help - and I was certain that helping meant easing and resolving another's torment. Isn't that what Jesus did?

Years and years later, after decades of sitting in silence at countless bedsides, hospital rooms and hospice centers as well as serious work with both my therapist and spiritual director, I was able to own two truths. First, I am not Jesus. Never was and never will be; that's a biggie for all clergy (male as well as female) as we often carry a not too subtle Messiah complex.  And second, while sharing another's wound in silence rarely feels like it is very much, it is both all we can do and is sufficient for the day. One wise soul has concluded that being present in another's pain - holding it and honoring - lightens another's load. Compassion is solidarity in suffering: the human equivalence of God's grace with healthy boundaries.

I will hold the Christ light for you 

In the night time of your fear

I will hold my hand out to you 

Speak the the peace you long to hear. 

I will weep when you are weeping 

When you laugh, I'll laugh with you 

I will share your joy and sorrow 

Till we've seen this journey through. 

Sitting in silence, holding another in their sadness and pain, opening our hearts in compassion without trying to fix what cannot be fixed still feels incomplete. And it is supposed to. We are not God. We are barely in control of our own lives. Serenity, peace, a measure of hope, and a taste of joy come to us in this realm  through courage and acceptance. They are gifts. Like the late Jean Vanier of L'Arche put:

When we listen to stories of terrible pain and we know we can't do anything about it, we touch our own vulnerability. We have heard the scream of pain, but we don't know what to do with it. None of us knows what to do with the deep brokenness of our world. Maybe that realization can bring us back to community. We can do nothing on our own. We need somewhere to be together.

What I came to know - and still need to trust and relearn repeatedly - is that my emotional and spiritual inadequacy is not only a true reflection of my humanity, it is also a quiet call to stay connected in community. We are rarely asked to be heroes. What's more, we need to know that the pain will always hurt. It should. It must. 

Yet even in our sorrow, within the confines of a healing and holy human heart, this pain leads us into deeper life. St. Paul experienced this and shared it with us in Romans 5: "We can celebrate our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because hope is God’s love being poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit."

A contemporary rendering by the poet Connie Voisine cuts to the heart in her: "A world's too little for thy tent, a grave too big for me."

There aren’t enough doves

in North America to fill

the gondola of you.

Onions are fallible, only

pretending to be infinite,

and the Great Plains—

well, they’re not that great.

You might fit a thousand of me

in your purse; the distance

between my nose and lip is mere

centimeters. I know I am only a pat

of butter, a blueberry, an aspirin,

a quivering cell about to dissolve,

to you.

Haven’t you noticed that even 

the sphinx is growing smaller

each day? What can that fawn,

retreating, legs a pile of cutlery,

expect from the approaching dog?

What good is my will when your voice

is what I mistake the freight trains

that shake my windows for?

When I close my eyes, I return 

to the tomb of night. I return

to you, or the idea of you, and 

I walk down corridors dragging

my fingers along the wall,

looking for that café, warm 

and brightly lit, where I stopped

asking so many questions.

I ate a sandwich and was called

something dear by a stranger.

living into the circle of life...

We celebrated precious Anna's second birthday yesterday morning with our dearest family. Then, while some headed off for a country fair, Di and I returned home to pack for our holiday. We have not walked or "flâneur-ed" together for over three years. A  variety of family changes, demands of new work, and a commitment to the community of L'Arche Ottawa has kept us from doing so for far too long. It will be delightful to visit with our friends at Diese Onze for jazz and Beaufort Bistro for exquisite Quebecois cuisine again. When we return home, I have chosen a new level of engagement with L'Arche that will bring me back into community more often. Both Di and I will also be adding some online tutoring of Syrian refugees in English to our lives. And we will be organizing a late fall music and poetry concert to raise funds for the local sanctuary movement. It will be delightful to pause, breathe, walk and rest together.

Two recent postings from very different sources spoke to me as we gave thanks to God for Anna's ripening and our time away. The first is from the reflections of the late Henri Nouwen who wrote:

I know how great a temptation it is in times of anguish and agony to look away from our painful center and expect peace and a sense of inner wholeness to come from some external source. But I am increasingly convinced that, at times of anguish and agony, we have to choose a contained life where we can be in the presence of people who hold us safe and bring us in touch with the unconditional affective love of God. Do not get involved in experiences of living that will lead to dissipation. What is so important is to have a deep sense of inner safety, of being held by a love that is in no way using you, manipulating you, or “needing” you.

One of the reasons we keep returning to cherished musical and artistic friends here - and beloved colleagues in community at L'Arche - is to combat dissipation and manipulation. Our culture is currently saturated in an ugly obsession with using people for selfish, short-term goals and then discarding them like used tissue. Every week I read notes from friends who are exhausted and anguished, wise and sensitive souls who seem to be at wits end, staggering about without hope or emotional/spiritual reserves. 

It is not my place to judge why or how this is so - the climate in these United States is mean-spirited and vicious - so it is no wonder many feel brittle. I often wonder though if my friends who ache for peace and justice but feel unmoored have found redemptive, renewing allies or communities of faith to help them live through this hard journey? We can't make it by ourselves. We cannot live into our best selves or most compassionate convictions as solitary entrepreneurs negotiating the ravages of a bottom line culture/economy of greed without encouragement and spiritual nourishment. It simply cannot be done. Brother Nouwen's words and experience rings true to my own reality: "I am increasingly convinced that, at times of anguish and agony, we have to choose a contained life where we can be in the presence of people who hold us safe and bring us in touch with the unconditional affective love of God. Do not get involved in experiences of living that will lead to dissipation."

One of the truths I have learned in conscious communities of tenderness that deserves comment given these harsh times is that there is a rhythm to grace just as there is a rhythm in nature. We tend to forget this and get lost in our feelings. Yet all around us in these parts the evening air is becoming cool and the leaves are threatening to change color. We are clearly on the cusp of something beautiful, but is not quite here. The more I pay attention, however, the more I know it is true. The second posting that spoke to me is this poem by W.H. Auden called, "Musée Des Beaux Arts."

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or
just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the
torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Brueghel's Icarus, for instance: how everything
turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

In the midst of suffering, Auden reminds us, there is often the presence of beauty and hope right next door. Wherever there is true life, stagnation is impossible. Summer does not last forever, but neither does winter. The green in the wetlands behind our home is now becoming yellow and brown - soon it will be barren. But just as God intends, then there will be new life. And new hope. And a host of shades of green that I cannot yet imagine. 

Anna is now two. Before I know it, she will be 20 - and I may even live to see it happen, but probably not much more. That is how it is supposed to be, truly beautiful yet sobering all at the same time. Louie will start first grade in a few weeks; that is marvelous as well. The cycle of life is active all around me these days - and within myself, too. I give thanks to God for it all.

why i keep going to L'Arche Ottawa...

Last night, as I pulled back into town after a few days in community with L'Arche Ottawa, I stopped to purchase some red wine. In general I like to shop with local merchants rather than in the national chains because most small vendors have built their businesses through one-on-one relationships cultivated over decades. And while there is a place for the giants - we have become well acquainted with some of the clerks at our regional Wal-Mart, for example, after entering the era of reduced income in retirement - I am committed to shopping locally whenever possible.

The person on duty last night is genuinely friendly. And kind, too. Over the years I have enjoyed chatting with her whenever I can - and last night the store was empty so we had time to speak about our work, our families, and our faith traditions. Once again I was awakened to how the presence of the holy is always hovering just beyond the obvious in the most ordinary circumstances. Like St. Paul put it: "Now I see as through a glass darkly, later I shall see face to face." My hunch is that every time I listen to another - or my own heart - carefully, my awareness of the sacred comes into focus. That has been a slowly ripening truth in my life that has found increased clarity through my small participation with L'Arche and the insights of Jean Vanier. 

In an extended reflection written by Fr. Christian Salenson, L'Arche: a unique and multiple spirituality, he notes that L'Arche is "primarily an experience!" It is also a unique type of embodied encounter: simultaneously vulnerable, profound, life-giving and unforeseen. It is "eruption that you do not control." Fr. Salenson goes on to say that these eruptions and encounters are never about charity, but rather about mutuality, parity, and the in-breaking of the kingdom of God where "the lame walk, the deaf hear, the dumb speak, the blind see, the dead are risen up, and the good news is announced to the poor."

The quality of the encounter can be measured not in terms of what I hope to bring to the other, but my openness to receive... it does not depend on what I have brought... but what I have received... The washing of the feet (by Jesus shortly before his journey to the Cross) is the paradigm of this. Only those who allow their feet to be washed, and in so doing enter into this dependence and vulnerability, can move forward on the pat of self-giving. Even Jesus... learned that lesson from Mary of Bethany who introduced him to the total gift of his life! She gave him the gesture of giving that Jesus used with his apostles.

For a moment in time last night, chatting over the counter at my local package store, the veil was lifted and a customer and a merchant honored the holy in one another with tenderness. That doesn't always happen to me while buying red wine. Sometimes I am too busy to really notice the other. Or they are harried after a trying day. Or other customers are crowding the cash register. Or I am simply not embodied or grounded. Last night, however, after six hours of riding in the car and reflecting upon my time at L'Arche, I was open to what I often fail to see.

Like my first night in community at supper: it was a birthday dinner for one of the L'Arche assistants as well as a long standing volunteer. It was light hearted and simple. When the meal was winding down, after gifts and cake and ice cream, I had been asked to lead a few songs with my guitar. That is one of the ways I connect at L'Arche. So I started to play "La Bamba" and it was like a spark ignited a room full of candles. I played a few other tunes, too including "Good Lovin'" by the Rascals, "I've Just Seen a Face" by the Beatles and "Country Roads" by John Denver. My friend John, seated beside me, had kindly taken out his phone and pulled up lyric sheets so that we wouldn't be impaired by my forgetfulness. And for about 45 minutes we sang and laughed. And then some of the core members started to dance. It wasn't their first time dancing, of course, but it hadn't happened in a long, long time. And for those few moments there was clarity mixed with groove in joyful abandon. It was kingdom time, or, as some prefer, kindom time. Unplanned. Unexpected. Thoroughly moving and life-giving.

L'Arche is not God's kingdom. It is human. Sometimes broken and often very demanding. And it is a way of living that is counter-cultural. People are not treated as products or a means to an end. Around the dinner table at the end of each day there is laughter. And time to be real. Conversation and celebrations take place, too. There are frustrations and anger, to be sure; times of failure and sin, too. Still, I find that the way Fr. Saleson puts continues to ring true:

L'Arche is primarily an experience... and this notion is very original. It would be more logical that an institution that takes care of people with learning disabilities should define itself primarily as an institution, equipped with an educational project and the necessary human resources that must be managed with authority, etc... (So) it takes courage and determination today to stick with that position. The current social context is more one of the empire of regulation, of organisation, of management as we like to say, but the risk - and it is more and more widespread - is to kill from within the whole human dimension of a project. In many places, in some shape or form, we often see seeds of conflict taking root between the values of human experience and those of the enterprise: profitability, security, organisation, regulations... and personal experience is disregarded...

L'Arche - at its core and at its best - simply asks "each person to come as they are. The person is foremost..." I keep thinking of the old song by Nirvana.

I need to be a part of this community. My soul needs this. I know I have a few gifts to share, but of equal or maybe even greater importance, I know my own emptiness, too. Someone asked me at Tuesday evening's dinner why I kept coming back to L'Arche Ottawa from Massachusetts? "Certainly there are places closer to you, yes?" (Sometimes the border crossing guards ask me the same thing!) All I could reply was, "I have visited other communities. And there are some that would be more convenient. But my heart has been touched and opened here... so like St. Paul in his travels, it appears that I need to go to another land in pursuit of the way of Jesus. I don't fully know why. I just trust that it is true." Now we see as through a glass darkly, indeed. The founder of L'Arche, the late Jean Vanier, put it like this in the daily reflection from L'Arche Canada:

I know a man who lives in Paris. His wife has Alzheimer's. He was an important businessman -- his life was filled with busyness. But he said that when his wife fell sick, "I just could not put her in an institution, so I keep her. I feed her. I bathe her." I went to Paris to visit them and this businessman who had been very busy all his life said, "I have changed. I have become more human." I got a letter from him recently. He said that in the middle of the night his wife woke him up. She came out of the fog for a moment, and she said, "Darling, I just want to thank you for all you're doing for me." Then she fell back into the fog. He said, "I wept and I wept."

Me, too.

thanks be to god for times of quiet, joyful acceptance...

Henri Nouwen once explain the essence of prayer like this:

Maybe someone will say to you, “You have to forgive yourself.” But that isn’t possible. What is possible is to open your hands without fear, so that the One who loves you can blow your sins away. Then the coins you considered indispensable for your life prove to be little more than light dust that a soft breeze will whirl away, leaving only a grin or a chuckle behind. Then you feel a bit of new freedom and praying becomes a joy, a spontaneous reaction to the world and the people around you. Praying then becomes effortless, inspired, and lively, or peaceful and quiet. When you recognize the festive and the still moments as moments of prayer, then you gradually realize that to pray is to live.

On Tuesday, I prayed, lived, ate, danced and sang in community with those I love. On Wednesday I did some planning, praying and talking with a wise and faithful colleague and then helped cook dinner for my friends at La Source. Today, before driving back home in the glorious autumn sunshine, I shared in a retreat with the Spirituality Committee of L'Arche Ottawa as we assembled this year's spiritual life calendar. One of my new commitments is to spend about a week each month in community in Ottawa so that my soul can be fed, my gifts can be shared, my joy can be replenished and I can have proximity to my friends. L'Arche, you see, is an experiential spirituality that cannot mature in abstraction nor ripen from afar. It will be a full and challenging year of listening, learning, waiting and praying with my whole self. I love these words from the founder of L'Arche, Jean Vanier, who wrote:

When we want to change people, we have power. We have goodness. We have generosity. But we create a cleavage when we want to do good things for people.

The quest - the journey - the challenge as well as the blessing is acceptance: radical, revolutionary, quiet acceptance.

going into and through our wounds: part two...

NOTE: In part one of this reflection re: discovering and embracing various parts of what some speak of as the wisdom tradition within Christian contemplation. I shared a part of my early questioning as well as three clues and resources that spoke to both head and heart: 1) The Benedictine tradition of balance; 2) Centering Prayer; and 3) The spirituality of Fr. Ed Hays in St. George and the Dragon. In part two, let me add just one other resource that has offered intellectual clarity and practical insights concerning the descent into my brokenness: 1) the serenity prayer/spirituality of imperfection. In what will likely become parts three and four I will consider the importance of :anam caras (spiritual guides or friends), Taize, and Jean Vanier and L'Arche. I will also add a word for appreciation to the once unpublished but now collected spiritual direction/formation notes of Henri Nouwen, too. And, in whatever becomes the conclusion (probably late next week) I will note the ways baking, gardening, creating music, poetry,t ears and Eucharist have been my spiritual guides, too.

Wendell Berry put it like this a poem he calls: How to Be a Poet (to remind me).

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.

I cherish this poem because it says what I need to remember in plain words. There are blessings in being an intellectual, mind you, but not so much when it comes to the spiritual realm. Therein the words of Jesus, "Unless ye become as a little child..." take on added significance. For decades, there was one old dude in recovery who used to say to me: "You're too damn smart for your own good." At nearly every monthly lunch he said this to me adding: "By now you should know that you can't think your way into anything of value." By then, indeed, I did know that he was right. But still he persisted, so most I just kept eating my grilled cheese sandwiches in silence. In time it would dawn on him that I wasn't biting, so he would look at me with curmudgeonly affection, shake his head and proclaim one more time, "You're still full of shit, smart guy. Cuz deep down inside I know you still believe that you can think you way into recovery. Or grace. Or anything else, man, and that's just total bullshit."

My commitment to a spirituality of imperfection advocated by AA and 12 Step groups is all in that story: intellectuals truly do believe that we can think our way into and out of everything - and it is total bullshit. As those who work the steps know, the only way out of hell is through it. The only way to endure the journey of descent is through grace freely given accompanied by some wise personal guidance. Most of us, you see, need to be humbled before we're ready to taste and see God's grace: without being sick and tired of being sick and tired we will keep on trying to think our way out of bondage. And why not, being smart has had its rewards, right? Our teachers loved it. Our parents celebrated it. And most of our employers depend upon it. It is only natural to resist what has worked for so long. Besides, letting go is hard and we come from a get rich quick culture and economy. Richard Rohr hit a home run with his description of 12 Step wisdom in his Learning to Breathing Under Water. 

All mature spirituality, in one sense or another, is about letting go and unlearning... We suffer to get well. We surrender to win. We die to live. We give it away to keep it.You cannot heal what you do not first acknowledge... How you do life is your real and final truth, not what ideas you believe.

The fourth resource in my exploration into the way of descent comes from the Serenity Prayer and what Ernest Kurtz calls a "spirituality of imperfection." The Serenity Prayer, authored by Reinhold Niebuhr, distills the essence of the spiritual journey into 25 words: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference. Three petitions: peace, courage and acceptance are all dependent upon God's grace and our emptiness. In what I consider to be a brilliant commentary on 12 Step wisdom, A Spirituality of Imperfection by Ernest Kurtz brings together hundreds of stories from the Sufi, Hassidic and Mothers and Fathers of the Desert traditions describing how encounters with failure can open us to humility. It is not an accident, Kurtz is quick to tell us, that the words humility, humiliation and humor all come from the same root:  humus. Each is constructed upon "the ancient Indo-European, ghum, that has been rendered as humus in English."  Our dictionaries add: humus is "a brown or black substance resulting from the partial decay of plant and animal matter" filtered through worm excrement." (p. 191) Kurtz continues:

Humility involves learning how to live with (and even rejoice) in a reality that is not all-or-nothing, but rather one of mixed-up-ed-ness... of our being both saint and sinner, both beast and angel... and acceptance comes for owning our imperfection rather than trying to find some specialness. Humility is the foundation and keystone of any spirituality of imperfection - and this spirituality is first and foremost free-ing. (p. 192)

Learning to laugh at myself became a spiritual practice for me. Still is. Giving up sarcasm was critical too. Self-deprecating humor is much healthier and a lot funnier because it takes our bullshit and turns it into something wise. Coming to grips with my young adult daughters' various fears drove me to the Serenity Prayer in those times when I couldn't fix or help anything. Same again with my now deceased parents untreated alcoholism - and cancers. I don't think there is a better personal prayer for sitting with a friend or parishioner during their last hours of life than the Serenity Prayer. It became a go to essential - and still hangs on my wall at my home study. 

It surprises me how long this reflection is turning out to be, but oh well. I head out for a few days with my friends in community at L'Arche Ottawa tomorrow, so I don't think I will have time for much writing. Like so much of this journey, you have to play it as it lays. So, I'll take my time and keep sharing until this one is done. Be gentle with yourselves.