an evening of music and poetry for Sanctuary in Pittsfield: November 22 @ 7 pm

Some thirty years ago I started to shape a series of community-building experiences that combined secular and/or traditional holy days with poetry and a variety of music.  There was always some group-singing, too to connect us one to the other. We have a long albeit forgotten history of shared song in this land from union/civil rights/anti-war songs to the memory bank and revival hymns of our churches. And let's not forget Christmas carols! To be sure, we have not done nearly as well as other nations in honoring the original or folk poetry of the Americas, but there was a time when public education celebrated the words of Dickinson, Shakespeare, Virgil. Clifton, and Whitman - so that was central to these gatherings, too. 

In time this experiment evolved into a series of annual events that included Thanksgiving Eve, Good Friday, the Feast of St. John the Baptist, and sometimes the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi. I was inspired to try this after seeing Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie put on their annual Carnegie Hall show during the long Thanksgiving weekend. The song by Bob Franke, "Thanksgiving Eve," added icing to the already baked cake. (Sally Rogers' take was my first introduction to this gem and you I like how Garnett Rogers and the author, Franke, do it, too.)
    
As my life and ministry changed - and our collective lives became increasingly complex - circumstance and bad weather forced an end to these encounters. A blinding blizzard on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving was the first death and it was both heart breaking and liberating. Many of the artists who performed in those concerts - as well as folk I would meet at the grocery store - told me that they were bereft and unfocused when the Thanksgiving Eve shows stopped. We regrouped and made a few more attempts including our interpretation of Paul Winter's "Missa Gaia" (which this year celebrates its 40th anniversary on the winter solstice at St. John's Cathedral in NYC) and our take on John Coltrane's masterpiece, "A Love Supreme," on the 50th anniversary of the composition. In retrospect, those two shows were artistically stunning and probably the best way to put the whole enterprise to rest. "To everything there is a season..."

After a four year hiatus - and significant personal and professional changes - we are now planning a revival of sorts, gathering many of the old players to raise funds and spirits in solidarity with the Sanctuary movement in our scrappy little city. Ironically, this gathering will take place close to Thanksgiving, too - and that resonates deeply with me. (For more info: see the end of this posting for the promotional poster.)  Christopher Hill summarized well the confluence of key ingredients when he wrote:  "Three things must come together to open up the experience of sacred time: the ritual and theology of the Church, cultural and/or family traditions, and the (cycles of nature) and the environment." (Holidays and Holy Nights: Celebrating Twelve Seasonal Festivals of the Christian Year, p. 6.)

When we first started these artistic/liturgical experiments, I resisted offering my interpretation, preferring to let them stand on their own. At one conference re: religion and the arts I had watched as a painter stumbled and fumbled his way through a question and answer session. It was agonizing for the artist as well as the audience. My take away was: never ask an artist to interpret/explain their creation. Not only are most artists ill-equipped for explications, but their song, painting, film, dance, poem, or sculpture already says everything needed to be known. So, for a few years, I hesitated to explain what was going on, asking instead: "What did you experience?"   

What I failed to grasp, however, was how confusing participatory art was in a genre-bending context. I had a sense of building bridges between art forms and invited the wider culture to carry this metaphor beyond the walls of our comfort zones. But at least half of those who participated did not think metaphorically. They had rarely been encouraged do so and had not frame of reference for genre-bending. They were linear, rational, and utilitarian both by nature and by habit. So, I needed to find ways to interpret these encounters and help my new friends connect the dots beyond the limits of their usual tools of analysis. At times, I offered spoken commentary. Other times I included an annotated listing in the printed programs. And periodically I used this blog to unpack what we were striving to accomplish.

For the Coltrane gig on Good Friday - an intuitive stretch for many - I first had to talk about the blues and lamentation in the Psalms and African American culture. Then it made sense to situate the artist in a context of oppression, addiction, resistance to a harsh fundamentalist Christianity, the possibilities of liberation born of the civil rights movement, and the meditative qualities of improvisation that empowered Coltrane to get clean from heroin and expand his art form in the process. It helped. It also helped those who were not grounded in jazz to hear how a William Billings composition could be interpreted with vocal and instrumental improvisation. Our musical director also wisely insisted that the musicians help the audience connect to their creativity by playing each phrase of musical improvisation twice: the first was for the artist, the second was for the audience. One pushed the limits, the next offered a frame of reference for others to follow. Brilliant.

My vision for the up-coming show is equally layered. Our goal is to raise funds and awareness for our interfaith Sanctuary project. It would be simpler to just ask a hundred people for twenty dollars - and such pragmatism has its place. But the power and potential of bringing a hundred people together to experience beauty, creativity, and challenge in solidarity expands the impact of the monies exponentially. Hearts can be stirred. Minds can be opened. New relationships beyond the confines of culture can be forged. To accomplish this means we must serve as artistic midwives bringing a symmetry of form and content to the music and poetry presented on Friday, November 22 @ 7 pm. Here is how I think this is coming together:

+ First, the music and artists are wildly eclectic: in form, sound, style,

  background, perspective, education, race, class, and gender we are profoundly different. At the same time we are gathering as one body in a unified mission to create safe space for undocumented neighbors in need. We will share our distinctions in support of a common goal, using what is unique and beautiful in our differences to add depth, heart, and soul to our music and poetry. I expect some of the poetry to be jarring and challenging. I know some of the music will be tender. There will be times of shared song alongside solo performances. And I intend to bring all the performers together - musicians, poets and everyone in-between - for the finale. For a few hours we will be Jew and Gentile, Catholic and Protestant, Muslim and Buddhist, GLBTQ and cisgendered, young and old, well to do and struggling, European Americans alongside African, Latino, Asian and Middle Eastern Americans, too. In my heart this sounds like both Dr. King's beloved community and the great banquet of Isaiah and Jesus: "On this mountain the LORD Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of aged wine - the best of meats and the finest of wines. On this mountain God will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations; God will swallow up death forever. And the One who is Holy will wipe away the tears from all faces." (Isaiah 25:6-8) 

+ Second, the opening sequence sets the stage for what follows: much like an opera's overture, this concert's beginning gives shape, form, and sound to the heart of the experience. We will use the Glen Hansard/Marketa Irglova song from the film Once, "Falling Slowly," to evoke the promise of strength and vulnerability, trust and hope, cultural humility in service of all that is true and beautiful. Hansard is an Irish man, Irglova is a Czech woman; he plays guitar, she plays piano; she emigrates to his homeland; they unite to use their differences in culture, art, sexuality and history to create a tender beauty many cherish. This opens the concert quietly. Acoustic instruments under blended harmonies. When "Falling Slowly" is finished one of our five poets will share their spoken insights after which we'll launch into my rewrite of Bob Marley's "We Don't Need No More Trouble." Reggae is all about overcoming alienation and oppression. The group, Playing for a Change, kicks up the power of this song by mixing into it artists from all over the world. It has always been an anthem of defiance with a visionary call to action. When the electric groove is fused with the spoken word as well as the aching tenderness of the acoustic tune, I sense the embodied tension of creativity married to human compassion. To my heart, this juxtaposition brings shape and form to Psalm 85: "Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; righteousness and peace will kiss each other.11 Faithfulness will spring up from the ground and righteousness will look down from the sky." After a word of welcome, we'll close this overture with our version of the Beatles' "Come Together." Another upbeat anthem of unity in a weird world that continues to be covered by contemporary musicians like Guy Clark.

+ Third, the remainder of the concert will blend this tension as poets and musicians from a variety of genres share their take on living in solidarity: A folk artist from Guatemala beside an American jazz quartet, an evangelical worship team next to fiercely secular young poets, rock'n'roll in dialogue with acoustic folk musicians, old friends returning while making space for new artistic encounters, too. And all of this to be shared in the grand hall of First Church, the founding congregation that gave birth to the town of Pittsfield, which will open its doors yet again to advance the common good beyond the fears and threats of the current climate of fear.

The poets have complete autonomy to articulate their insights with no guidance from me. Same goes for the musicians who have been asked to simply respect the time constraints while remaining free to create the music they feel inspired to share. Our house band will set the mood and then get out of the way to let the Spirit lead us where she wants us to go. And then we'll wrap it up with a few songs picked by the house band to send us all out into the world to intensify our promise of solidarity - including Springsteen's, "The Rising." If you are free on Friday, November 22, 2019 @ 7 pm, come on down to the house.

                                             An Evening of

Music, Poetry and Solidarity

  A Benefit for Berkshire Interfaith Organizing (BIO)

First Church on Park Square

27 East Street, Pittsfield, MA

413.447.7351 - http://www.firstchurchpittsfield.org

Friday, November 22, 2019 - 7:00 pm

(Suggested donation is $12)

We act towards justice by building relationships within our communities and across lines of difference, developing our leaders' skills in the public arena, and taking action on issues of common concern. The proceeds from tonight’s concert will support a sanctuary congregation in the Berkshires – a place of safety supported by the inter-faith community for those seeking a new and hope-filled life in a new land – an act of love and solidarity in the face of all the forces of hatred that wound us all. 

Andy Kelly – Charlie Tokarz -Linda Worster – 

Jon Haddad- John Hamilton – Between the Banks – Eileen Markland -John Kelly -Juan Pablo – Jesse Miner

Berkshire County Poets and more!

here comes - and goes - the sun...

Today the sun showed up for one of its semi-regular appearances during this season as well as the next. For much of late autumn and most of the winter, too, these hills are shrouded in shades of gray. When we lived in Tucson, the jewel of the desert Southwest that boasts at least 286 annual days of sunshine, I could not imagine returning to what I once considered New England's gloom. After all, I grew up here. I knew all too well the endlessness of our drab and ashen skies to say nothing of the bone-aching cold. Before returning more than twelve years ago, I thought of late fall and winter in this region much like Dante describes in his Purgatorio: a place where once the sun sets, pilgrims were prohibited from ascending the holy mountain in pursuit of heaven. 

And then we returned to visit here during one painfully frigid February - and my cold heart began to thaw about this place. The land was not only bleak, and it was, but the bleakness had its own beauty. Shorn of their leaves, the frozen trees could show off their nutty browns or silvers. Their absence also showed me that there was big sky here, too: without all the greenery that clogged the firmament, the little, twisty roads no longer felt claustrophobic. One old salt told me, "Apparently you've never had the right gear for living here with the proper appreciation." True enough. My feet were always frozen and damp. My hands stung and tingled. And my lungs barked relentlessly as one ugly cough after another took up residence within for weeks on end. For decades, when winter came, I stayed inside and endured.

Then it snowed on that first trip back - and the whole land took on a magical stillness. I couldn't walk in it during that visit because the soles of my cowboy boots were too slick to be safe. But I could savor it while sitting by the fire place. So I did. In time I learned to enthusiastically albeit awkwardly slip around for a spell wearing cross country skis so I could be outside. The kids bought us snow shoes that I found far more satisfying than the skis. They got us some serious winter overcoats as well. Incrementally, as I experienced a change of heart about winter, I also discovered other realities that needed to be made new. Like relearning how to drive. Or needing to trade-in the old, light weight, desert, pick-up truck for an AWD Subaru (the ubiquitous vehicle of choice in the Berkshires.) Or how to dress. Ah, the once hidden joys of layering. I now sing the blessings of fleece long johns. And let me never forget the joy of thick wool socks. Or water repellent silicone shoe spray. Or massive woolen scarfs. These days I am eager to make my annual pilgrimage to Wal-Mart to select three new pairs of gloves as well and a toque or two (for I am notorious for losing the gear that keeps my extremities warm as the season grinds on.) It took time and the wisdom of others - our annual reprieve to Tucson for a week or two in January does wonders as well - but I can now join Gary Schmidt and Susan Felch in saying:

Winter is the seat of what will come: the freeze that reminds us of the thaw, the hope pensively waiting, the moment pausing, the rhythm at its nadir but poised to begin its upward swing. "We felt the stir of hall ans street, / The pulse of life that round us beat," writes Whittier. This is winter, too: the pulse of life halting at its proper point, but still a pulse, and still a life. (Winter: A Spiritual Biography of the Season, xxii)

Now the sun has gone: in 90 minutes its visitation came and ended calling to mind the local adage that, "this too shall pass." It will. It has. And it will again. Like St. Paul Simon sang: "Slow down you move too fast, you got to make this morning last." The shift will start to feel more profound this weekend when the clocks are set back an hour and the day turns dark at 4 pm. Yet that is our part of living into a life of gravitas and gratitude: slowing down long enough to see - and savor - what is going on all around us all the time. St. Bob Dylan hit the nail on the head back in 1965 when he oozed out these lyrics to fans calling him Judas: "Something's going on all around you - and you don't know what it is - do you, Mr. Jones?" I sense the poet Rilke telling us much the same thing but without the angst when he wrote:

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,

then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,

go to the limits of your longing.

Embody me.

Flare up like flame

and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.

Just keep going. No feeling is final.

Don’t let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.

You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand. 

We have now lived here longer than any other place in my life. I am still surprised.

today is the template for winter...

The day is gray and wet: most of the leaves have now fallen off and there is a slight chill in the air. It looks and clearly feels as if the season of autumn has tipped towards winter. Not completely - there will be a few more unexpected bursts of sunshine - but the Berkshires have certainly started to slip towards all that is cold and dark. Yesterday radiated warmth while I raked up the lush yellows and reds. Today urges me to stay inside while the hills shimmer in their sodden silver and brown. Even our dog, Lucie, who thrives outdoors, asks to be house-bound today.

It is a taking stock day that will soon become a season to do likewise. My Growing the Northeast Garden guidebook tells me that: "Winter in the Northeast is when the garden and we, as gardeners, take a rest. Like it or not, winter is the coda of seasons - a chance to stop and regroup before beginning again." (p. 203) That feels right. And yet over the winter I will have a great deal to work on. Not so much in the garden, but with my community of L'Arche Ottawa. They are preparing today to return from a 10 day pilgrimage of trust at Taize, France. Soon there will be a November community retreat and then the start of Advent. Driving the six hours each way to Ottawa not only gives me an extended time of solitude in my mini-monastery on wheels, but also dazzles me with the changing terrain of each season in all its beauty. The mountains will be stark for a time but without snow. The rivers will be strong and full. The fields will sometimes flood as streams overflow their banks. And the sky will rarely look blue.

Before all of that happens, however, my tradition asks me to get grounded in the wisdom and beauty of All Saint's Day and All Soul's Day. When I was active in ministry, our communities soberly marked this time by remembering those who had died in the past year. Sometimes it was a joyful remembrance; other times there was solemnity and anguish. In the culture of 21st century North America, most of us don't have time to remember those who have gone ahead of us into death. Christopher Hill writes:

We in the West are oriented to the future. We strive to be ever new, to regenerate the world. Our civilization has accomplished a lot this way. But we've lost something, too. We have gone along with a flow of events that has somehow ended up making us too busy to respond to that buried sense of the heart that says there must be more: more meaning, more color, deeper excitement. We live in a world where so many authoritative voices - the successful, the influential, even the scholarly - say that commerce and power are all there is; a world where we work fifty-hour weeks for years, then get five days off. We are all Bob Cratchtis these days, chained in our money-changing cubbyholes for hours that even Ebeneezer Scrooge would hesitate to demand... Yet for most of human history, people have experiences time very differently. The patterns was not a line, but a circle or cycle.
(Holidays and Holy Nights, p. 4/7) 

That is why pausing to enter the holy wisdom of the All Saints/Souls feasts has become increasingly important to me and how I try to live in this world. Hill goes on to say that three things must line up in order for us to experience time as holy: "sacred rituals, cultural and/or family traditions, and the natural cycles of the environment." I know that spending this past year closely connected to the ebb and flow of the land has increased my interest and desire for celebrating sacred time. For too long I have been "cut off from the moon, the night, and the waters of mystery" and now yearn for a deeper intimacy. Small wonder I have constructed a family altar dedicated to those faithful departed. Same, too, for my love of pumpkins and autumn colors and smells. My other gardening primer, New England Gardner's Handbook, reminds me that the fallen leaves of this season contain 50-80% of all the nutrients our trees have created and stored. Applying their richness - even in death - to the soil brings healing and strength to that which is tired and helps ensure another season of verdant wonder. 

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Christian tradition tells us that we have received two books of diving revelation: the book of scripture and the book of nature. Creation itself is a sacred text through which the presence of God is revealed to us... (No wonder Thomas Merton wrote) How necessary it is for monks to work in the fields, in the rain, in the sun, in the mud, in the clay, in the wind: these are our spiritual directors and our novice-masters. They form our contemplation. They instill us with virtue. They make us as stable as the land we live in."
(Christine Valters Paintner, Water, Wind, Earth and Fire, p.2)

The poet, Maggie Dietz, put it like this in "November."

Show's over, folks. And didn't October do
A bang-up job? Crisp breezes, full-throated cries
Of migrating geese, low-floating coral moon.

Nothing left but fool's gold in the trees.
Did I love it enough, the full-throttle foliage,
While it lasted? Was I dazzled? The bees

Have up and quit their last-ditch flights of forage
And gone to shiver in their winter clusters.
Field mice hit the barns, big squirrels gorge

On busted chestnuts. A sky like hardened plaster
Hovers. The pasty river, its next of kin,
Coughs up reed grass fat as feather dusters.

Even the swarms of kids have given in
To winter's big excuse, boxed-in allure:
TVs ricochet light behind pulled curtains.

The days throw up a closed sign around four.
The hapless customer who'd wanted something
Arrives to find lights out, a bolted door.

Today is a template for the season to come: a time to rest and pray, a time to be still and remember, a time to practice staying warm and alive in the midst of so much aqueous decay. Some loved ones are flying home from France. Others are hunkered down at home. Some colleagues depart today for mission conversations in Cuba. Others are lifting up the host and chalice in worship. Or welcoming in new pastoral leadership. And if memory serves me, my grandson has just finished singing in a children's choir in a Manhattan sanctuary. In love and gratitude, we hold them all quietly in prayer as we await a family feast together next weekend.