Pentecost worship: May 31, 2020

Today's Pentecost worship with First Congregational Church, Williamstown.

worship online tomorrow with first congregational church, williamstown

Tomorrow, Sunday, May 31, 2020, is Pentecost Sunday. I will be leading worship for First Congregational Church, Williamstown, MA in place of my regular FB live-streaming reflections. For friends who have joined me on Sunday morning on the Be Still and Know page, this week I invite you to log onto the FB page of First Congregational Church of Willimastown as I will be leading their Zoom worship. Worship starts at 10 am. Please find the link to join the streaming @ https://www.facebook.com/FirstChurchWilliamstown/

My heart grieves tonight - as well it should - for racial and economic justice too long deferred in the United States. As our cities burn and our people rage in righteous anger, I think back to my time in Cleveland when I had the privilege of being part of an inter-racial reform team along with Larry Lumpkin, Susan Leonard, and Leon Lawrence. Working with Mayor Michael R. White and his education assistant, my friend Chris Carmody, was a most satisfying, demanding, wild, creative, challenging, hopeful but only modestly successful endeavor. I will forever be grateful to those on both sides of the divided city - black and white - who not only welcomed me and our team even if it never accomplished all our goals, but also taught me so much about acceptance, earning trust, and keeping the faith.

 

nobody told me there'd be days like this...

This is a grand time to be present in the Berkshires: I planted phlox this afternoon, transplanted 8 wild sunflowers, walked around the garden to see how the gladiolas and irises were doing (quite well), and took the time to bask in the simple beauty of this place. The lilacs are here. What might be Otto Luyken Laurel is happening, too even as the cherry blossoms fade. It is a weird juxtaposition of realities for me: while I wander quietly through my floral bubble of privilege, so much of my country is suffering, Indeed, this is a day when grief fills the air as yet another white police officer murders yet another black man and we achieve the ghastly milestone of 100,00+ cornavirus deaths (80K of which were preventable! and 60% of whom are black and brown people.) Being an old timer, my heart drifts back to Brother John Lennon singing: Nobody told me there'd be days like this... strange times indeed!)

Earlier in the day I finished writing (well, almost) my message for this Sunday. It is the feast of Pentecost and I will be live-streaming with my friends from First Church in Williamstown. NOTE: I will be posting a link to this web page so that those who would like to tune in @ 10 am may do so; this will be a one week change from my regular Be Still and Know setting, ok? So watch for the details. We had a Zoom meeting/rehearsal, too. What a joy to reconnect with this faith community. Back when sheltering in place/self-quarantining was a novelty, I had the privilege of helping them go live with worship. And now we get to do it again for Pentecost - only this time with Zoom! 

During all of this solitude, I have found myself taking on a few books I never got around to when they first arrived. Like Karen Armstrong's short overview of "the Bible," Gertrud Mueller-Nelson's look at fairy tales entitled, Here All Dwell Free: Stories to Heal the Wounded Feminine, and Ancient and Medieval Legacies in the United Church of Christ Living Theological Heritage series. Next week it is on to: Inviting the Mystic/Supporting the Prophetic by Dyckman and Carroll; The Little Way of St. Therese of Lisieux by John Nelson; The Other Side of Silence by Morton Kelsey; The Givenness of Things by Marilynne Robinson; and a reread of The Ideal Bakery by Donald Hall.

Di turned me on to a new poet, Beth Hautala, who crafted this gem.

Sometimes,
beautiful things fall apart.
That doesn't mean
they weren't beautiful.
Grief doesn't cancel joy.
It highlights our capacity
to hold it.

This rings so true to me today...

wendell berry's "questionnaire"

For some odd reason I awoke before sunrise today. I struggled to keep my eyes open, and periodically returned to my bed for a nap or two, but have continued to ponder this poem by Wendell Berry I read at about 6:00 am. "Questionnaire" is worth our reflection on a day set aside to pay our respect to  sisters and brothers who gave themselves over to death in our various wars. Freedom is always costly. So as some of my fellow Americans flaunt their rights today by refusing to honor social distancing, disregarding the possibility that their actions could be infecting another more vulnerable citizen with the deadly corona virus, and ignoring the necessary balancing always required between freedom and responsibility, I wonder if we have become what we hated. I know deep inside that the overwhelming majority of my nation despise these willful acts of both
ignorance and arrogance so I pray we are able to keep some perspective. This poem helped me...

Questionnaire - from his book Leavings (2010)

1. How much poison are you willing
to eat for the success of the free
market and global trade? Please
name your preferred poisons.

2. For the sake of goodness, how much
evil are you willing to do?
Fill in the following blanks
with the names of your favorite
evils and acts of hatred.

3. What sacrifices are you prepared
to make for culture and civilization?
Please list the monuments, shrines,
and works of art you would
most willingly destroy.

4. In the name of patriotism and
the flag, how much of our beloved
land are you willing to desecrate?
List in the following spaces
the mountains, rivers, towns, farms
you could most readily do without.

5. State briefly the ideas, ideals, or hopes,
the energy sources, the kinds of security,
for which you would kill a child.
Name, please, the children whom
you would be willing to kill.

reflection on ascension sunday, tears and the sacrament of humility...

SPIRITUALITY OF TENDERNESS: The Feast of the Ascension 2020
One of my favorite centering prayer chants is the children’s song: “Frère Jacques.” Do you know it?

Frère Jacques, Frère Jacques: Dormez-vous – Dormez-vous?
Sonnez les matines – Sonnez les matines: 
Ding, dang dong, ding, dang, dong.

I reclaimed this little ditty as a resource for getting grounded during a sabbatical in Montreal some five years ago. Like many, I learned to sing it phonetically as a child, but had no idea what the words meant. Part of the unexpected but blessed revelation of that sabbatical was revisiting the core of my spiritual life: finding out what still worked, what didn’t, and letting the garbage go. Bringing a similar methodology to this song showed me that it was a gentle call to prayer in the real world for Friar James.

· Now I had no idea what it meant to be a friar. As a young boy, I was a big fan of Robin Hood – so I knew that Friar Tuck added comic relief to the drama – but I had no idea what a friar did or how he differed from a monk?

· Fr. Richard Rohr teaches that Franciscans are not monks, they are friars, those who are called to care for the whole community. A monk is cloistered – living a life of prayer for the world within a discrete community that is set apart from others – while a friar freely moves throughout the city sharing love, food, shelter, presence, and encouragement.

Most friars are neither priests nor pastors, they are simply brothers - Frère Jacques – equals living in the world with love and service to all without rank, authority, or hierarchy. That was my first discovery – and being a New Age friar fit my emerging spiritual identity. The second was that the song asked Brother James if he was sleeping: dormez-vous? Are you awake, alive, and engaged, or, are you out of it? Sleepwalking or distracted because you’re too busy to know what’s really going on?

If you are dozing, and it happens to us all, just listen, listen to the gentle bells of Matins: sonnez les matines. There’s music to bring you into the morning's first office of prayer. So come, Brother James, come in gentleness to join the others, lending your voice and presence to the day. No guilt or shame, ok? No false sense of importance or drama either. Just awaken to the bells of Matins and take your place. What a life-giving, tender-hearted spirituality in this little song: bells and prayer, music and silence before sharing yourself with the people of God throughout the city. This felt like a gift to me – a revelation – much like the way St. Paul spoke in this morning’s first reading as he prayed that his sisters and brothers might see with the eyes of their hearts: I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Source of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and insight, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may trust the hope to which God has called you… 

That is foundational to the Feast of the Ascension – seeing with the eyes of the heart – being awake and aware of the presence of Christ that illuminates creation. Each liturgical season in the Christian year teaches us something about how to go deeper into God’s loving presence. As I’ve said before, Advent takes us into the silent darkness of waiting in anticipation, Christmas and Epiphany flood our senses with comfort and joy. Lent leads us into the dark waiting of grief before revealing the unexpected blessing of new life on Easter. The pilgrimage of 50 days in-between Easter and Pentecost is yet another time of kinesthetic learning where we wait again for guidance in the inspiration of the Holy Spirit; this time we wait by contemplating the foolishness of Christ, the upside-down nature of the kingdom, what some call the Paschal Mystery where new possibilities emerge from out of the embrace of human suffering and God’s gifts. 

The gospel for today puts it like this: After his death, Jesus presented himself alive to his friends in many different settings over a period of forty days. In face-to-face meetings, he talked to them about things concerning the kingdom of God. As they met and ate meals together, he told them that they were on no account to leave Jerusalem but “must wait for what the Father promised: the promise you heard from me, God’s power from on high. John used water, but soon you will be baptized by the Spirit. Then, one way of engaging the presence of Jesus ended, it appeared as if he rose into the sky, and a new time of wonder washed over the disciples: quit staring up at the empty sky, the angels said, and starting figuring out how you are going to go out into the world again to share Christ’s tender love with those outside the community. That’s just what Jesus had said: God has called me to com-mission you: Go out to everyone you meet, far and near, with this way of life, marking them with signs of the threefold name: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Instruct them in the practice of all I have commanded you – and I will be with you always and in all ways.

The content of contemplation between Easter and Pentecost is the new commandment: love one another as I have loved you. Jesus embodied this by washing the feet of his disciples, enduring the Cross with a mystical trust in God’s grace, and then reminding his friends through prayer and reflection on the scriptures of all the ways God shares compassion for real live, hurting human beings. The Ascension announces that now is the season to figure out how to take Christ’s healing into the world using our lives. You are not me and you can’t do what I did, Jesus told his friends, but you are you – blessed and beloved of God – and you must figure out how this love becomes flesh through your thoughts, words and deeds.

In the liturgical calendar that’s what the nine days between the Feast of the Ascension and Pentecost represent: after learning, praying and practicing the essence of trusting God through the vulnerability of foot-washing, now we are called to go beyond the safety of our sanctuaries and homes. The work of the Ascension is discerning how our gifts can best bring Christ’s love to life in our ordinary circumstances. I think that’s why Frère Jacques grabbed me so profoundly. It validated that I was now more of a friar than a pastor in these later days of ministry – and invited me to use my gifts of music, presence and prayer throughout the city – beyond the confines of professional expectations, titles, and institutions. A poem by the late Denise Levertov she calls “The Gift” speaks to this truth:

Just when you seem to yourself
nothing but a flimsy web
of questions, you are given
the questions of others to hold
in the emptiness of your hands,
songbird eggs that can still hatch
if you keep them warm,
butterflies opening and closing themselves
in your cupped palms, trusting you not to injure
their scintillant fur, their dust.
You are given the questions of others
as if they were answers
to all you ask. Yes, perhaps
this gift is your answer.

Frère Jacques was an answer, of sorts, making it clear that it was time for Brother James to wake up, honor the tender call to prayer and music floating throughout the world, and join in the full celebration of live. I didn’t know it at the time, but the opening words of Matins are the same ones I use to start this gathering every week. From Psalm 51: O Lord, open my lips and my mouth shall proclaim your praise. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence and take not your Holy Spirit from me. Give to me the joy of your saving help again and sustain me with your bountiful Spirit. All glory be to the undivided Trinity: Creator, Christ, and Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and every shall be, world without end. Amen. The heart and soul of the Feast of the Ascension is discerning what unique gifts God has entrusted to us and how to share them to strengthen compassion?

Jesus promises that if we trust the Spirit to show up at the right time, the Spirit will show us how best to do this – meaning we can let go of our anxieties because now we’ll be acting on God’s timetable. One wise old soul put it like this: Your calling by the Spirit is wherever your greatest joy intersects with the world’s greatest need. Our life in the world must be authentic and salvific for both you and creation. No more guilt tripping by the church. No more exhaustion from resentment either; just your greatest joy embracing the world’s greatest need. I am certain that’s what Jesus meant when he said: Follow me, I will fill you with peace as you learn to live into the unforced rhythms of grace. Or as we used to say: Come unto me all ye who are tired and heavy laden and I will give you rest. I rather like the way Glennon Doyle put it in a short poem: “Life cannot be handled. The secret is simply to show-up. It’s about witnessing it all – even the pain – and letting it touch you and make you not harder, but more tender. Showing up, feeling it all – this is my new kind of prayer. I call it praying attention, and it’s how, for me, everything turns holy.”

· And here’s the most startling blessing born of Christ’s grace and freedom that I have experienced: the more I trusted, the more pondered how to use my gifts for the love of God, the more I wept. Now, let me tell you, I would never have called my tears a gift from God. For most of my life I’ve HATED how easily I cry: my father used to ridicule me about it when I was a teen because I would weep when I was happy and cry when I was sad; quietly shed tears of joy when beauty took me by surprise – in a song, a poem or a movie – or sob keen when grief, anguish, or injustice washed over me.

· In my house, tears were considered a sign of weakness for a boy. So, while I could never stop them, I learned to hide them. Bury them and deny the. But three Roman Catholic priests in three different places kept encouraging me to make peace with my tears – these were men who were strong and tender, real and faithful, open even in their wounds – and they kept telling me that there was a blessing to receive in this peculiar gift.

Fr. Richard Rohr of New Mexico put it like this: Unless you somehow let yourself weep over your own phoniness, hypocrisy, and woundedness, you probably will not let go of the first half of life. The gift of tears helps you embrace the mystery of paradox, of that which can't be fixed, which can't be made right, which can't be controlled, and which doesn't make sense. But if you don't allow this needed disappointment to well up within you, if you surround yourself with your orthodoxies and your certitudes and your belief that you're the best, frankly, you will stay in the first half of life forever and never fall into the Great Mercy. Many religious people never allow themselves to "fall," while many sinners fall and rise again.

Fr. Edward Hays at Shantivanum House in Kansas wrote: Tears are the prayer-beads of men and women because they arise from a fullness of the heart. Such an overflowing can be the result of great sorrow, or else great joy. Tears appear as an expression of the heart – and seeing with the eyes of the heart is always good prayer – so that makes tears one of the ways we worship God. The prayer of our tears are not manufactured, manicured, memorized or controlled… they are free and flowing… making tears sacraments of humility. Fr. Ed used to tell a story about a reporter interviewing an old, Indian guru about his work in giving spiritual guidance to Americans. “What is the first thing you try to teach Americans?” the reporter asked. And the old man answered, “I try to teach them how to cry again.”

And Fr. Jim O’Donnell of Cleveland, a mentor and spiritual director, said: James, Jesus wept – and that should be all the permission you need to make peace with your own tears - but probably you won’t until you make a confession. So, the sooner you do so, the quicker you’ll be able to honor the blessing of those tears. And Fr. Jim was right: my first formal confession took place during Lent at Fr. Jim’s retreat center house. It unlocked such a reservoir of tears that they poured out of me for 30 minutes only to make room for a joy that was sublime. I get it when the old hymn sings: I once was lost, but now I’m found, was blind but now I see.

Tears became for me a sacrament of humility and the prayer beads of a full heart. When Jesus wept over the death of Lazarus, he gave form to what compassion means in the midst of sorrow. When St. Paul wept, he showed us the way out of religious rigidity and into the unforced rhythms of grace. When Magdalene wept, she first embodied a full-hearted prayer that was simultaneously sensual and salvific, and then gave us an expression of gratitude as the apostle to the apostles. When St. Peter wept, first he remembered his tears of fear that caused him to betray Jesus; as he owned his tears of shame that compelled him to run and hide, Christ accepted all of those tears and they became tears of joy and in the forgiveness of Easter. When my children wept, they opened my heart and called me to comfort their hurts. When my grandchildren weep, it breaks my heart – especially now when I can’t hold them – and can only hear their tears virtually. And when my wife weeps, it is a summons to stop whatever I’m doing and pay attention because in that moment her tears are the only thing that matters.

Each of these saints have taught me a little about praying the sacrament of humility through their tears. They have helped me honor my own tears, too. Frederick Buechner put it like this in his little book, Telling the Truth: 

YOU NEVER KNOW what may cause them. The sight of the Atlantic Ocean can do it, or a piece of music, or a face you've never seen before. A pair of somebody's old shoes can do it. Almost any movie made before the great sadness that came over the world after the Second World War, a horse cantering across a meadow, the high school basketball team running out onto the gym floor at the start of a game. You can never be sure. But of this you can be sure: Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears, it is well to pay the closest attention. They are not only telling you something about the secret of who you are, but more often than not God is speaking to you through them of the mystery of where you have come from and is summoning you to where, if your soul is to be saved, you should go to next. 

So, let me add two more names to my list of mentors in weeping: Michael Daniels and Lou Reed. They both broke open my heart in different ways. Driving back to Massachusetts after attending a jazz and liturgy workshop in Cleveland, someone in the back of our van said, “Oh, damn, Lou Reed just died.” We were at a rest stop on Interstate 90 outside of Buffalo and it took a few seconds to register: “Lou Reed just died.” It was Sunday, October 27, 2013. I grew up with Lou Reed and the Velvets. Not literally as part of Andy Warhol’s Village scene, nor figuratively as part of that pale tribe of misfits who “only came out at night.” But chronologically and aesthetically, I came of age with those musicians and felt that they expressed something dark and alive in my psyche. I bought their first LP – the one with a banana on the cover – one afternoon after submitting to a forced haircut back in June 1967. It was suburban CT in the summer of love.

Today I ask myself, “What the hell did I know about ‘waitin’ for my man with 26 dollars in my hand up on Lexington and 125th Street back then?” But back then, somehow, I got it – or part of it. Not the smack or the grit. But the aching energy behind those pounding guitars sounded a whole lot like my own throbbing emptiness. And when I played Lou Reed alongside “A Day in the Life” by the Beatles – both were released in the same month – something told me this was truth. This music made me cry. I didn’t know words like paradox or the via negativa in the ninth grade, but I did know that something was going on that helped me live even as I hurt.

And now Lou was dead. It was disorienting. He had been my guide into genre and gender bending. He raged against the same sentimentality that I saw sucking the soul out of the religion I loved. He encouraged me to “take a walk on the wild side” when I really didn’t know what that meant. He prophesized against eco-disaster and class war, pseudo-mystical cheap sex and the collapse of culture with the cry: “you need a bus load of faith to get by!” When my sister, Linda, was shriveling on the vine of life with cancer of the cervix and radiation ate her alive, I wore out Lou’s “Magic and Loss” cassette driving between Cleveland and Walter Reed Hospital.

Howling along as the master I lamented: “What good is seeing eye chocolate, what good’s a computerized rose? What good is cancer in April, no good – no good at all.” For decades, Lou Reed had been one of my spiritual anchors – and now he was gone. Later that same night, as if by design, I learned via email that another old friend from Cleveland, Michael Daniels, was also six feet under as well. I met Michael one nasty, sleeting night on Cleveland’s West Side. My church office had received a call that Cheryl Daniels' father had died and she wanted to plan a memorial service. We set up a pastoral visit and I headed off into one of the rougher public housing projects.

When I found their darkened house both residents were trashed: Mike let me in and stumbled back to his recliner while Cheryl shouted a garbled welcome from the bathroom. There was garbage, newspapers, pizza boxes, and unopened mail everywhere. As Michael fumbled around to clean off the sofa for me, and search for his missing cigarettes, a revolver fell to the floor from under more unopened mail – and he never batted an eye. I was certain I would never get out of there alive. Still, I sat on the sofa and waited – waited for ten excruciating minutes of silence – while the blackest man I had ever met stared at me and smoked cigarettes with his gun on the floor. Cheryl eventually appeared and somehow amidst the liquor, smoke, and unmentioned pistol, we planned a memorial service. Three days later the liturgy came and went, and I wondered if I would ever see anyone from the Daniels' clan again.

It often happens with people wrestling with grief and addiction: they show up in the life of a church only to disappear after the crisis passes. They come and go without any conscious plan – getting what they need for the moment - and moving on. After a few weeks, that’s what I thought would be true for Mike and Cheryl. Ten months later, however, Michael called me in tears saying that Cheryl had disappeared. She’d been treated for bipolar disorder and after quitting her meds had gone missing. We searched bus stops and homeless shelters, drove down dark streets and checked-out popular dumpsters for a few nights.

Eventually she showed up in the psych ward of the county hospital just around the corner from our church. In time, she was released, but her new meds made her almost catatonic. People from church helped them move into a new apartment after being evicted from public housing. And things seemed to be getting better. Six days after the move though I got another frantic call from Michael saying he had just been arrested. When I got to the city jail he told me that when he’d gone out that morning for cigarettes, Cheryl put his gun into her mouth and killed herself. “That God-damn gun again!” I thought to myself as he confessed that she had gone off her meds one more time and he didn’t know what to do. Afternoon slid into evening as I waited with Mike until, finally, the police determined that Cheryl’s death was suicide. I was free to take Mike home. Only now he had no home – during his incarceration all his belongings had been thrown out the window on to the front lawn by his landlord. And by the time we got to his address, the junkies and scavengers had ravaged through everything of value and Michael had been evicted once again.

With nowhere else to go and in shock over his wife's death, I took him home with me, put a mat-tress on our living room floor, and begged my wife and children to be patient. They were understandably nervous having an alcoholic, homeless stranger sleeping on their living room. But he stayed for another few days until a room in a transitional housing dorm opened up. One of the non-negotiables in the shelter was that everyone stayed clean. Mike managed a white-knuckled sobriety for three days but fell off the wagon one afternoon thinking he could fake-out his hosts. They gave him one last chance. But the day after Cheryl was buried, he blew it again and was kicked out of this port of last resort. More tears and shame followed as we sat in my church office. I wept with him because now we both had run out of options. At some point I recall saying some-thing like: Man, the time has come to make a choice. I can't bring you back to my house and I can’t leave you here. So, either we say good-bye right now, walk away from one another and who knows what the hell happens next? Or, I drive you to the detox unit right around the corner and maybe we can start again.

With almost no hesitation Michael said, "I done lost EVERYTHING I loved already... just take me to there. It can't be any worse than this." Twenty-eight days later, he came out clean and sober – and stayed clean and sober for twenty more years. On the anniversary of his sobriety, Michael would call me making jokes that the only reason he went to rehab with me that night was because I was the blackest white man he ever knew. A brother. "Dude, I know you are passing" he laughed. "But your secret is safe with me; just never forget I know you be black.” This man who once terrified me to my core was now making jokes with me. Together through our tears he had come to trust me – and I him – and beyond the divides of race and class those tears led us into a friendship of tender-ness. And now he was gone – both Lou and Michael were dead – on the same day.

It’s funny in an odd way how tragedy can lead to healing, but those two deaths gave me permission to trust what all my mentors in weeping had said. So, I wept for those guys – really wept – and those tears connected me to all the tears I hadn’t shed for the ones I had loved and lost over 40 years of ministry. And the more I wept, the better I felt. I wasn’t hiding them anymore and found myself weeping again when a hymn touched me or the grocery clerk smiled at me on a hard day. I cried in terror and gratitude when our first daughter greeted us in her hospital room after the birth of our first grandchild. As I made a pilgrimage through that reservoir of tears, my tears freed me from a ton bull shit – mine and others – because now life was just too precious and short to do otherwise.

And I’m telling you this long-winded story right now because during this pandemic, even as one phase winds down but the rest roars on in all its life-defying uncertainties, I know many of you have been weeping, too. Some are exhausted from all the tears you’ve already shed while others are just getting started. And I suspect that if we’re honest a whole lot more of us will be weeping this week-end in solidarity and grief over the 100,000 American dead. So, what I want you to know, wherever you on this journey, that your tears are sacred. Holy. And part of God’s healing for you.

This time is like the uncertain in-between time of the Ascension and Pentecost. The first followers of Jesus were just as unnerved by this in-between time as we are right now. They had been assured that Jesus would be with them always. But now he was gone – they were left on their own – and they didn’t know what would happen next. In those in-between days, the early believers felt every bit as unsettled and anxious as we ourselves. And our tears are much like theirs. So, let me say this as clearly and tenderly as possible: “Our tears right now are the prayerful activity of mature women and men searching for the presence of God.” Beloved, I want you to know that the divine is with us in these tears. Fr. Ed once wrote: If we find in Jesus a pattern for our own prayer and way of living, if his love and grace makes sense to us – and we remember that he prayed a prayer of tears over the city of Jerusalem, at the tomb of his dear friend Lazarus and probably countless times not recorded but ever so real when he walked and lived among us – like when his friend was married at the wedding in Cana, or during that mystical meal he shared after washing his disciples’ feet, and what about in the garden when he was abandoned and facing certain death…then we must know that our tears are bathed in the holy… Our tears, like those of Jesus, show us what it means to be fully alive, fully compassionate, fully grounded in reality.

I trust that the prayers of our tears are heard and honored by God. Right now in America our old myth is dying – and as David Brooks wrote in the NY Times: “something more profound is taking place in that death. We are undergoing a more permanent shift in national consciousness, a true reconstruction of meanings, symbols, values, and narratives. If the old American creed grew up in an atmosphere of assumed security and liberty, the new one is growing up in an atmosphere of vulnerability and precariousness… and we are learning to value community over individualism, being connected over autonomy… and the new American identity that is growing up in the shadow of the plague celebrates our shared vulnerability, the humility that comes with an understanding of the precariousness of life, and a fierce solidarity that emerges during a long struggle against an invading force.” As much as it hurts, I give thanks for our shared tears.

It has taken me the better part of 50 years to make peace with them – and sometimes I am more at peace with them than at others – but I know they connect heaven to earth and the holy to our humanity in a sacrament of humility. So, as you ponder this, let me play for you my reworking of an old Lou Reed song: “Sweet Jane.” He used to do it hard, punching out the lyrics under a raunchy rhythm section that cut like a knife. The words, however, were tender. They were humble and I think they sometimes got lost in the noise. So, as I listened to them – and reclaimed their sweet message – they, too became another prayer for me like old Frère Jacques. Take a moment and see what bubbles up for you now…

Standing on the corner, suitcase in my hand
Jack’s in his corset, Jane’s in her vest and me, me I’m in a rock and roll band
Ridin’ in a Stuz Bearcat, slim, o, those were different times
All the poets, they studied rules and verse, and the ladies rolled their eyes
Sweet Jane…

Now Jack he is a banker, and Jane she is a clerk
And both of them save their money, honey, when they come home from work
Sitting by the fire, the radio it plays, little classical music for you kids,
And if you listen closely, you can hear Jacky say:
Sweet Jane…

Some people like to go out dancing, others like us we gotta work
And there’s even some evil mothers who’ll tell you life is made from dirt
That women never really faint, that villains always roll their eyes,
That children are the only ones who blush and life is just to die

But anyone who ever had a heart wouldn’t turn around and break it
Anyone who’s ever played a part would turn around and hate it
Anyone who’s ever had a dream, anyone who’s ever played a part
Anyone who’s ever been lonely, anyone who’s ever slit apart
You’re waiting, waiting down and ally – you’re waiting all alone
You’re waiting down the corner so you can come back home
Sweet Jane

grateful for to dance with god...

One of my favorite books arrived today: To Dance with God by Gertrud Mueller-Nelson. I have held at least one copy in my library since it was published in 1986 - and sometimes more. I have given some away as gifts, purchased study copies for a three congregations, and as Advent arrived last year shared what turned out to be my remaining copy with my daughter's Brooklyn family. In winnowing out my library in retirement, I was certain I kept a few of these old friends around. Apparently that was wishful thinking. So, while I am delighted that Ms. Mueller-Nelson is being appreciated and engaged in NYC, I found I needed her in the Berkshire hills, too.

In the first chapter, she articulates the challenge of living humbly as an adult person of faith who is still willing to trust God like a child. Not an easy quest - and one we never get quite right. She puts it like this: "I had to wonder what happens in our development that as adults we became a serious folk, uneasy in our relationship with God, out of touch with the mysteries we knew in childhood, restless, empty, searching to reqain a sense of awe and a way to "dance with God." I still remember a Roman Catholic nun saying to Jesse's momma and myself shortly before we departed for California to work with Cesar Chavez and the farm workers, "We come into this world at peace with all of creation and our Creator - and we spend the rest of our lives trying to get back to this peace as adults." Mueller-Nelson echoes this insight:

Life's tasks of learning to think and compare, to sort and choose began with our taste of 'knowledge of good and evil' and for that fruit we have developed a great appetite. That knowledge changes our innocent relationship with God. And we spend the rest of our days circling the garden of our original innocence, yearning to find our way back in. The route we choose is marked with the mysteries of the human condition: peak experiences and pitfalls, births and deaths, joys and suffering. Our 'fall' from innocence is double-edged; it is both our sickness and our salvation. It is our painful, guilt-ridden split and separation of what is human from the divine. But it also sets us forth on the natural and saving journey of the human process to ultimate wholeness. Our way back to a connection with God is through the profound experience of our humanity and the discovery of meaning. When we are struck with the meaning of our most human experiences, we are most closely connected with the divine.

I have learned so much about how the liturgical year - at its best - leads us back into ever new and deeper connections with the sacred. Joined with Thomas Keating's, The Mystery of Christ: the Liturgy as Spiritual Experience, and you have the best of Western liturgical theology in two highly satisfying volumes. I am so very grateful Ms. Mueller-Nelson is back in the house.

thank you, L'Arche Ottawa...

NOTE: Each Friday for the past two months, I have had the privilege of sharing a short reflection on scripture for our L'Arche Ottawa community. Given the constraints of the lock-down, there is a Tuesday evening gathering as well as a Friday afternoon event. On Zoom there is bi-lingual sharing of joys and concerns as well as prayers. At the start I lead a song in English and close with one in French. In-between I share a thought concerning the lectionary reading for the day. It is a blessing for me to stay connected in this way - and I pray it brings a measure of hope to those in lock-down. I miss you all! Here is this week's words in both French and English.

Jean 16:20-22: En ce temps-là, Jésus disait à ses disciples: « Amen, amen, je vous le dis : vous allez pleurer et vous lamenter, tandis que le monde se réjouira; vous serez dans la peine, mais votre peine se changera en joie. La femme qui enfante est dans la peine parce que son heure est arrivée. Mais, quand l’enfant est né, elle ne se souvient plus de sa souffrance, tout heureuse qu’un être humain soit venu au monde. Vous aussi, maintenant, vous êtes dans la peine, mais je vous reverrai, et votre cœur se réjouira ; et votre joie, personne ne vous l’enlèvera.

John 16:20-22: Jesus said to his disciples: “Truly, truly I say to you, you will weep and mourn while the world rejoices; you will grieve, but your grief will become joy. When a woman is in labor, she is in anguish because her hour has arrived; but when she has given birth to a child, she no longer remembers the pain because of her joy that a child has been born into the world. So, you also are now in anguish. But I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you.”

Reflection
Both of my daughters, now adult women in their 40s, were born at home. Not only was I present along with two midwives during their births, I had the privilege of delivering both girls as they came into this world from out of their momma’s womb. Not only did I serve as a labor coach for their momma, but under the guidance of two wise, women midwives, I helped my daughters enter life, tied and cut their umbilical cords, and gently washed them as they nursed in their momma’s arms. It was an intense, ecstatic, sobering and holy/human time. And the reason I tell you this is because I am not sure St. John ever went through a real delivery of a child with a real woman, because while there is a very real joy after the baby arrives, there is also pain – and it is not quickly forgotten.

I think that’s how it should be: we were meant to remember some of our pain so that we might be tender with others when they are hurting. The midwives who helped us with our babies remembered their own pain – and the pain of other mommas they helped, too – so we trusted them to guide us. Remembering how we felt when we hurt, you see, is part of the wisdom of our wounds: it can help us live as people who know how to share love in a healing way. Everyone has times of sorrow or suffering. We all know what it is like to hurt – or feel alone and broken-hearted – or be so sick that our bodies ache without relief, right? When I am hurting – physically, emotionally, or even spiritually – I need help sorting out what to do with my pain. I don’t always know what’s the best way to go forward: sometimes I need a doctor,sometimes I need pain medication, and sometimes I just need some encouragement to tough it out and get through it. I need somebody who takes my pain seriously. Somehow, when I am listened to in these times, I feel loved. And while the love doesn’t take my pain away, it often makes it a little easier to handle.

That’s why I think Jesus told his friends about the woman giving birth: he wanted them to remember their pain and use it wisely in caring for others who are hurting. Remembering can help us be tender, patient, open, and real to those who need us when they are hurting. It is an upside-down gift, to be sure, but the wisdom of our wounds can bring healing and hope to others – an 

ourselves – if we remember it.

Réflexion
Mes deux filles, maintenant adultes dans la quarantaine sont nées à la maison. Non seulement j’étais présent ainsi que 2 sages-femmes durant leur accouchement mais j’ai eu le privilège de les accueillir directement dans ce monde, du ventre de leur mère. Non seulement j’ai été un partenaire auprès de leur mère à leur naissance mais sous les conseils des deux sages–femmes, j’ai aidé mes filles à entrer dans ce monde, j’ai coupé et attaché leur cordons ombilicaux, je les ai lavé doucement pendant qu’elles allaitaient au sein de leur mère. Ce fut un moment intense, enchanteur, grave, sacré et très humain. La raison pour laquelle je vous parle de ce moment c’est parce que je ne suis pas certain que St. Jean ai eu l’occasion de vivre la véritable naissance d’un enfant avec une vraie femme, parce que même s’il y a une véritable joie après la
naissance d’un bébé, il y a aussi de la souffrance-cela ne s’oublie pas facilement.

Je pense que c’est la façon dont cela doit être nous sommes destinés à se souvenir d’une partie de cette souffrance afin que nous puissions être tendres envers les autres quand ils souffrent. Les sages-femmes qui nous aidaient avec nos bébés se rappelaient leur propre souffrance et celle des autres mères qu’elles avaient soignées- c’est pourquoi nous leur avons fait confiance pour nous guider. Se souvenir de la façon dont nous nous sentions quand nous avons souffert fait partie de la sagesse de nos blessures : cela peut nous aider à vivre comme des personnes qui savent comment partager l’amour qui apporte apaisement. Toute personne a des moments de chagrin et de souffrance. Nous savons tous ce que cela veut dire d’avoir mal- ou de se sentir seul, avoir le cœur brisé ou d’être malade au point ou notre corps fait mal sans répit ? Quand je souffre physiquement, psychologiquement ou même spirituellement- j’ai besoin d’aide afin savoir ce que je peux faire avec ma douleur. Je ne sais pas toujours quelle est la meilleure façon d’avancer : parfois j’ai besoin d’un médecin, parfois c’est un médicament contre la douleur et parfois j’ai juste besoin d’encouragement afin de tenir le coup et de passer à travers. J’ai besoin de  quelqu’un qui prend ma souffrance au sérieux. D’une certaine façon quand je me sens écouté je me sens aimé. L’amour ressenti n’enlève pas ma  souffrance mais souvent cela m’aide à y faire face. 

C’est pourquoi je pense que Jésus a parlé à ses amis de la femme qui accouchait : il voulait qu’ils se souviennent de leur propre souffrance et de l’utiliser sagement en prenant soin des autres qui souffrent. Se souvenir peut nous aider à être tendre, patient, ouvert et vrai avec ceux et celles qui ont besoin de nous quand ils souffrent. C’est certainement un cadeau à double tranchant mais la sagesse de nos propres blessures peut apporter guérison et espérance aux autres- et à nous-mêmes- si nous nous en souvenons.

Today, given the political buffoonery of our disastrous president, missing our children and grandchildren in ways that ache, and Di being tested positive for yet another tick-born disease: I rejoice that I can share a little bit of love with my L'Arche community. Thank you, dear friends, thank you.

resilience...

Today was perfect: sunny, cool, fresh, and beautiful. My work was all about getting focused for my Sunday, live-streaming gig. (check it out here @ https:

//www.facebook.com/913217865701531/live/)

As do many of the Christian communities in the West, we will mark the Feast of the Ascension together on Sunday even though it officially will be celebrated tomorrow. For many in my Reformed tradition, it is overlooked and even misunderstood. The Feast of the Ascension is not about Jesus rising beyond the clouds in some anti-science, superstitious manner. Rather, it is about how we experience the presence of Christ within and among us beyond the limits of time and space. I have been sitting with the poem by Jane Hirschfield for a week. It doesn't precisely evoke all the layers of mystery in the Ascension, but it does touch upon some. She calls it "Optimism."

More and more I have come to admire resilience.
Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foam
returns over and over to the same shape, but the sinuous
tenacity of a tree: finding the light newly blocked on one side,
it turns in another. A blind intelligence, true.
But out of such persistence arose turtles, rivers,
mitochondria, figs — all this resinous, unretractable earth.

Tomorrow I will edit and rewrite Sunday's message, clean the sun room of all remnants of winter, and get the rest of the bulbs into the warm, sweet earth. I will practice playing "Sweet Jane" a few times in anticipation of Sunday's live-streaming gathering and follow-up with a local church who has asked me to lead their Zoom worship for Pentecost. These are strange and trying times - and I ask for some of Hirschfield's resilence. Now it is time to cook up some salmon marinated in maple syrup and soy sauce.

loving to cut the grass...

One of my favorite ordinary experiences is cutting the grass on a cool, sunny day. Perhaps golfers have a similar encounter with taking your time to soak up the beauty while engaged in a simple task. We can't hike much in the woodlands right now because this area has been infested with deer ticks. And some of the local trails are still closed to help us practice social distancing. So once a week I get to work up a sweat outdoors while prowling around our property with our old school reel push mower. In a super, scaled-down way, I engage cutting the grass like Wendell Berry does wandering around his farm on the Sabbath. It is just a quiet time in a beautiful place with a minimum of distractions. 

Sometime last week, on the way to finding something else, I rediscovered the collection of his most recent Sabbath poems (2014 and 15) as well as an essay concerning "the presence of nature in the natural world." A Small Porch is a little gem.

Now comes the overflow
not to be imagined but in time,
in season, in presence. This is
the splurge of beauty, transcending
every need we know. In her
greater knowing, great dame Nature
has called them, and they come,
the flowers in their thousands
under the still-bare trees, over
the dead leaves rising, moving,
lightly as the air moves:
twinleaf, bloodroot, anemone,
violets purple and yellow and white,
bellwort. And the bluebells, whose perfume
cannot be recalled until
they are called back again. Who
would refuse this joy, this gift,
because in time it cannot last? 

Someone far wiser than I said, "Using a push mower to cut the grass is cheaper than a gym - and more satisfying, too." I agree. One of the things I have to do later this week is sharpen the blades and realign the reel on the mower. This will be another beginner's mind experience for me;I did it last year, but can't recall for the life of me exactly how it happened. Figuring it out will be half the fun! Same with the few carpentry repairs we need to make around the house while the weather is lovely. I was tallying these chores while cutting the grass this morning: mostly replacing some rotting trim and a few low boards around the base of the deck. Another opportunity to use my new chop saw - and practice good measuring - which is not my long suit but a skill I look to strengthen as the summer unfolds. These ordinary tasks have become a type of walking mediation for me as I notice what's going on and discern how to respond.

Lucie likes to be outside with me when I do work in the yard. She watches me work, chases a few insects, and then dozes while the mower moves through our very crabby grass. Over the weekend we weeded a small garden island and she romped around chasing twigs until either eating something troubling or being stung by an irritated bee. We don't know for sure, but she was lethargic and limping most of Sunday evening. Was she close to the end? Thankfully, a blast of doggie aspirin revived her, and now she's back to her wacky self. 

My morning was given to writing a short reflection for this Friday's L'Arche Ottawa prayer gathering - and cutting the grass. I have to start working on my Sunday live-streaming reflection this afternoon and Zoom with the little ones in Brooklyn, too. Then this evening the New Story Festival starts with Brian McLaren sharing insights into the first of six shadow challenges for our culture. The festival's promo material sets the stage like this: 

Throughout this Journey, we will delve into six destructive “shadow” stories that have shaped our lives and our world, and then push beyond them toward healthier and more hopeful stories for better lives and a better world:

From Domination => Servant Leadership

From Revenge => Restorative Justice

From Isolation => Contemplative Action

From Purification => Compassion & a Shared Future

From Victimization=> Empowerment & Healing

From Accumulation => Appreciation & Generosity

Ultimately (we are) seeking a New Story defined by compassionate action for collective liberation and radical reconciliation.

We have consciously been living outside the box of organized religion for the past three years: it was time to let that part of our hearts rest. Currently I connect in community through L'Arche. As a couple, we are learning about the Radical Love project of Valerie Kaur.  I've been doing a few web courses through the Center for Action and Reconciliation while Di is doing an onlline study of medieval mystics. In June, we'll dd a workshop with the Image Journal together and I'll explore the New Story Festival. In so many ways, this is an era none of us ever imagined and are certainly not prepared to embrace. So we're moving slowly, trying to revel in it all thoroughly so that we can respond to the invitation of the Spirit as it is revealed.

live streaming on tenderness...

NOTE; The sound quality on today's live stream was poor. I will re-record later today and get it online. Thanks. Here is the new version... much better!


REFLECTIONS ON TENDERNESS FOR MAY 17
Let me begin this morning’s reflection on tenderness with quotes from two time-tested guides. They offer a context for why I have become an advocate of a spirituality of tenderness – and why I would value your company along the way. The first, from Fr. Richard Rohr, speaks to the big picture. The second, from Brené Brown, summarizes my studies to date. Fr. Rohr tell us that:

If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it—usually to those closest to us: our family, our neighbors, our co-workers – invariably, the most vulnerable, our children.

Like Michael Stipe of the band REM sings: “Everybody hurts.” The challenge is to figure out what to do with our pain. The Judeo-Christian holy texts tell us that if we do not transform our wounds into wisdom and tenderness, “the sins of the mothers and fathers will be passed on to the children of the third and fourth generation.” (Deuteronomy 5) If you know anything about addiction, abuse or family systems theory, you know this is true. Maybe you know it yourself from your own hard experience. Brené Brown synthesizes what she has learned about one of the ways our pain can be transformed from her work as a social scientist working with the military and sports organizations.

Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity. It is the source of hope, empathy, accountability, and authenticity. If we want greater clarity in our purpose or deeper and more meaningful spiritual lives, vulnerability is the path. You see, vulnerability, like authenticity, is a collection of choices that we have to make every day. It’s about the choice to show up and be real. The choice to be honest. The choice to let our true selves be seen.

That’s probably as clear a description of living into the way of tenderness that I know: choosing every day to show up, greet reality with vulnerability and let it nourish us with clarity. The late Mary Oliver put it more wistfully in her poem: “Angels.”

You might see an angel anytime
and anywhere. Of course you have
to open your eyes to a kind of
second level, but it’s not really
hard. The whole business of
what’s reality and what isn’t has
never been solved and probably
never will be. So I don’t care to
be too definite about anything.
I have a lot of edges called Perhaps
and almost nothing you can call
Certainty. For myself, but not
for other people. That’s a place
you just can’t get into, not
entirely anyway, other people’s
heads.

I’ll just leave you with this.

The quest for a life of authentic tenderness that helps us transform out wounds into wisdom so that we don’t transmit it, and also ripens patience and compassion within our culture, is all about a conscious inward/outward journey. Life as a pilgrimage, if you will, “a path or radical unknowing” as Christine Valters Paintner writes: where we “stop reaching, forcing and trying to make our experiences into something… and give ourselves over to the tender grace of God’s fertile darkness” that shows us how to just be and mature into the serenity of trust.

Don’t misunderstand me: there are times, like Jacob’s encounter with the holy, when we don’t realize something sacred is taking place until it is over. What does he say in the text? “Clearly the Lord was in this place and I – I – did not know.” But Jacob was willing to learn, to be guided by the Spirit into a deeper way of being, so that inside and out he experienced the blessings of trusting the holy. I think the early disciples who chose to follow Jesus were a lot like Jacob in this story: they, too, wanted to go deeper but did not fully know what that meant. They wanted their brokenness to be transformed but were not certain how to go about doing it. As another verse in the Christian texts puts it: they were like sheep without a shepherd – and when Jesus looked upon them, he felt compassion for he saw men and women consumed with anxiety and confusion.

· Like the prophetic mentors and prophets of ancient Israel who walked before him, Jesus taught with actions, words and silence. In this morning’s lesson, he has just washed the feet of the disciples before celebrating what was likely the Passover feast. Jesus assumed the role of a servant to teach them about trust and invited them to become vulnerable and open. If you have ever had your feet washed before, you know how vulnerable you feel taking off your shoes to let another hold your naked foot and bathe it carefully. Talk about kinesthetic education!

· Afterwards, Jesus interpreted this encounter with embodied wisdom with words and silence telling them two essential truths: first, your experience with vulnerability and trust – your feelings of uncertainty mixed with openness as you let go – are of the Holy Spirit. You can’t see the Spirit, but you can experience her and you are starting to trust this to be true. Second, the more you practice radical love – laying down your life for those you care about – the more the Spirit will guide you into places of greater vulnerability. Then he put the icing on the cake by silently looking each person around the Passover table in the eye and let it all sink is for a moment.

Finally, he wrapped it up saying, “I can tell you these things now because you are starting to trust your vulnerability. You are no longer servants or students, now you are my friends, living with me heart-to-heart.” Collectively, as well as personally, we, too are living into a time of profound vulnerability. Some of us are unsettled, others are anxious and confused, and a few sense that God is giving us all the chance to go deeper into the ways of tenderness so that we might consciously create new ways of living.

Life in this time of contagion has exposed again to white America the terrifying consequences of our racism – and all the ways we deny it. Whether it’s the fact that more people of color are dying of the virus because of economic and health disparities; or that white fear is so out of control that a father and son in Georgia felt free to murder Ahmaud Arberry from the back of their pick-up truck trusting that they would not be prosecuted: we can no longer avoid confronting our nation’s original sin. The NAACP’s new call to action, We Are Done Dying, is right on the money – and ALL people of good will know it.

Perhaps that is why people of every race and spirituality are also finding new ways to express their solidarity. A growing coalition of people who never would have allied themselves with Senator Bernie Sanders are now joining his call to guarantee that the 36+ million recently unemployed Americans get health care during this crisis. What’s more, despite what we see online from a bold minority, in our everyday lives most Americans are looking out for one another. David Brooks writes in The New York Times that folks in “red and blue states are staying home at nearly exactly the same rates. There is little correlation between whether a state is red or blue and how it is doing in fighting the disease… What’s more the best polling data tells us that the share of Americans who feel they live in a divided society has fallen from 87 percent to 48 percent. Eighty-two percent of us now say we have more that unites us than divides us.”

Brooks concludes, and I concur, that beyond the cynicism of our public culture, we are all learning about endurance. Trust. Vulnerability. “The pandemic has revealed (to us) the rot in many of our political dogmas and institutions, but also a greater humanity, a deeper compassion in the face of suffering, and a hidden solidarity, which I, at least, did not know was there.” So let me call to your attention two stories you may not have heard much about.

Last week in Montreal, a multi-cultural consortium of musicians invited some of the Hasidic Jews from the Outremont neighborhood to join them in singing their evening prayers for the city out loud from their balconies. Local musician, Martha Wainwright, was the catalyst for what has become a weekly event on the famous balconies of Montreal as well as Face Book. For 30 minutes each Wednesday night, that city gathers individually to sing together songs of the heart to strengthen one another for our long journey into vulnerability. It is like NYC’s 7 PM nightly people’s chorus of song, pot banging and praise for the health care workers, grocery store clerks, fire fighters and every other citizen dedicated to the common good who carries on their work in public while the rest of us love one another in self-quarantine.

Like Dickens wrote in A Tale of Two Cities, “it was the best of times and the worst of times.” And that is so among us, too. While some of our politicians choose profit over human life – what some are calling an act of genocide to save Wall Street – others, like the teachers of Minnesota, are putting together an all-state read of the children’s book, Because of Winn Dixie, with a state-wide Zoom gathering on May 20th.

Have you heard about the New Story Festival? It is a seven-month, on-line commitment by some of our culture’s wisest and most creative souls calling us together to “exchange our story of separation, selfishness, and scapegoating for one in which each of us finds our place, our needs are met, our gifts shared, where connection, creativity, and beauty become the most obvious characteristics of our lives.”

I’ll put a link to it up on my Be Still and Know Face Book page so that you can check it out. But here’s the deal: The New Story Festival grows out of the conviction expressed by the author, Arundhati Roy, in a bitingly insightful essay claiming that this pandemic is a portal: a way into a new and potentially better reality—if we have the courage to step through it—if, as I put it, we choose to consciously commit to and practice the inward/outward pilgrimage into vulnerability.

So let me share with you what I have been studying, pondering, praying over and trying to embody in practice over the past five years – what I have come to call a spirituality of tenderness. For me it has become essential to ground my spiritual practices in my own tradition. Some prefer a more eclectic approach, a salad bar or smorgasboard spirituality, where they pick up an insight from Buddhism, add it to a prayer from Islam, mix it together with a pop song and work in some New Age meditation. Thomas More writes that this is finding our own religion – and if it works – God bless you. At this point in my life, I’m with Mary Oliver when she wrote: I don’t care to be too definite about anything. I have a lot of edges called Perhaps and almost nothing you can call Certainty. For myself, but not for other people. That’s a place you just can’t get into, not entirely anyway, other people’s heads. I’ll just leave you with this… For me I feel most grounded with Merton’s invitation to grow where I was planted.

So, first I wondered where the word tender came from? The etymology of the English word tender started with the Old French, tendre, as well as the Latin, tener. It assumed its current form after the Norman conquest of England in the 15th century. Tender has always been distinct from the word gentle that began in Latin as gentilis – meaning of the same clan – which, in time, became the root of the Old French gentil - of high or noble birth. Gentle was linked to the courteous nature of nobility during the Middle Ages. And from this came the implication that gentle is about moderation while tender suggests compassion. Gentle arises from "a disposition" of kindness offered to others from above while tender is more about a shared sense of our common fragility.

Frederick Buechner speaks about tenderness like this: “Beneath our clothes, our reputations, our pretensions, beneath our religion or lack of it, we are all vulnerable both to the storm without and to the storm within." Henri Nouwen explores tenderness in his "wounded healer" reflections and the L’Arche community that I volunteer with in Ottawa has been influenced by the late Jean Vanier's work that says: “Every child, every person, needs to know that they are a source of joy; every child, every person, needs to be celebrated. Only when all of our weaknesses are accepted as part of our humanity can our negative, broken self-images be transformed” rather than transmitted.

· To be tender, therefore, is to move outward: it is relational and anticipates interacting with others who are equally vulnerable. One who is tender receives others without harshness. These words touched Henri Nouwen’s heart when he chose to leave the competitive world of Harvard for a simpler way of life: “I am struck by how sharing our weakness and difficulties is more nourishing to others than sharing our qualities and successes.” This is the recognition that we are all wounded whatever our public circumstance. Just below the surface we are all broken, beautiful and beloved children of God.

· I also found out that sometimes speak of some foods as "tender" - that is, not tough. We say that some plants are "tender" and need special attention. Some parts of our bodies are tender and require extra care and protection. Those "of a tender age" require a unique sensitivity. And some subjects warrant extra tact in our speech and action because they are "of a tender nature” as Merriam Webster puts it.

A spirituality of tenderness, therefore, must deepen sensitivity to our own wounds, accept as normative the vulnerability of all living creatures, and invite us all to enter the world with care by treading lightly whether we’re acting, speaking, writing or living. That’s when I needed to understand the biblical foundation for this way of being. Granted, it has been around since the start as a minority report, or as Richard Rohr says, “an alternative orthodoxy,” and it continues to leaven the whole. From my perspective there are five key insights from the Hebrew and Greek scriptures of Judaism and Christianity that help me shape an "applied spirituality tenderness." And that is what spirituality is all about, right? A way to consciously live into our values integrating our experiences of holiness with our everyday humanity.

The first key word is hesed (חֶ֔סֶד): it appears over 241 in the Hebrew Bible and is often translated as either "loving-kindness" or "covenant loyalty." The Septuagint, the Hebrew texts translated into Greek, almost always translate hesed as mercy ( Ἔλεος). The ethical core of the covenant involves building right relationships that embody God’s fairness, trust, and tenderness in real time. It is a way of ordering our time and energy that strengthens solidarity with one another and God. And there is nothing abstract about being in covenant relationship with real people and striving to treat them as God treats you. It takes work, awareness, intentionality and a whole lot of forgiveness.

· Two texts are illustrative: Micah 6 states: God has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God? The other is Hosea 6:6: For I (the Lord your God) desire steadfast love and not sacrificial rituals, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.

· To do justice involves building right relations between real people who can be just as dense and annoying as yourself. To cherish kindness is to engage creation with the tenderness of our Creator. And to walk with humility is to know, like Mary Oliver, that you are not the center of the universe.

The second word from the Hebrew Bible is rachm (רַחוּם: Often translated as compassion in English, rachm speaks of God's powerful love from above or beyond us in ways that resemble a mother's love. It is illustrative to note that the Hebrew root grows out of the word for womb.

It is also important to say that this tenderness is not about what happens between people, but rather what takes place between God and God's beloved. That is, this tenderness does not evoke human solidarity, but intimacy with the holy. Psalm 86 comes to mind: But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. Or even Psalm 131 where the soul in prayer rests in serenity in God’s presence much like a child upon her mother’s breast.

Covenant kindness and sacred intimacy are part of a spirituality of tenderness. Three Greek New Testament texts are also worth our attention. They are shaped by the Hebrew Bible and inter-preted through the birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus as the Christ.

First is the word mercy in English – eleos (ἔλεος) in Greek – which is how the Hebrew hesed is translated by the rabbis in the Septuagint. Here the sense of solidarity within a community is key with tender feelings of support during times of suffering being essential. Mercy is quite different from pity: pity is an emotion experienced by the elite, those not connected to a particular pain, while mercy is all about sharing the sorrow of the afflicted. Mercy moves into action; pity remains a feeling among the aloof. Mercy is used 217 times in the New Testament and one of my favorite verses from St. Matthew is finds Jesus saying: “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but the broken.”

Second is the almost psychedelic sounding word for compassion in Greek – splagchnizomai (Σπλαγχνίζομα) - it appears 12 times in the Greek Testament. Like the Hebrew, rachm, that evokes tenderness from God deep within our vital organs, the Greek word is equally embodied: the Hebrew has its origins in a mother’s womb while the Greek arises from the seat of our affections found in “the nobler entrails of the heart, lungs, liver and kidneys.(Strong) Splagchnizomai is also like the Hebrew in that it involves a compassion shared with those in a covenant or committed relationship who are suffering.

It is not an abstract or universal experience, but one grounded in intimacy with the particulars of real people. In Mark 1: 41, it is a particular leper upon whom Jesus has compassion, not all lepers in general: “A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” Moved with compassion, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, “I do choose. Be made clean!” Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean.” The same particularity is true in Matthew 9 where Jesus moves through the various towns of the covenant in Israel healing first a paralytic, then a girl and a woman, two blind men and one who was mute. Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for each one who was broken, because he knew they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” In other words, Jesus was moved to bring healing and hope to the lives of individuals within his community of faith.

And third is the Greek word agape (ἀγάπη) which we know as tender, self-giving, generous and compassionate love for others. The Gospel of John uses it often, the letters of Paul are saturated in its wisdom and the Greek Testament speaks of this love 116 times. The key text, of course, is I Corinthians 13. And the radical implications of this tenderness are made most clear in Eugene Peterson’s brilliant reworking of the classic text from The Message:

If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love. Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self. It doesn’t want what it doesn’t have, doesn’t strut, doesn’t have a swelled head, doesn’t force itself on others, isn’t always “me first,” doesn’t fly off the handle, doesn’t keep score of the sins of others, doesn’t revel when others grovel, takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, puts up with anything, trusts God always, always looks for the best, never looks back, but keeps going to the end. Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled. When I was an infant at my mother’s breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good. We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us! But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.

As I hope is now clear, the inward/outward implications of a spirituality of tenderness are profound and invite us into a way of being that is at rest within – knowing God’s deep love – and engaged with the world beyond ourselves, too. The Finnish theologian, Paulina Kainulainen, in a short work entitled, Tenderness and Resistance: Women's Everyday Wisdom Theology, suggests that tender-ness is a resistance that: 1) embodies alternatives to consumerism, 2) challenges the technologicalization of everyday life: and 3) gives shape and form to what she calls a "quest for the Kingdom of Tenderness."

· This is a spirituality that honors feelings as much as reason, values as well as facts. It is wisdom theology - sapientia – seeing with the way of the heart that has been forgotten in the West but revered and practiced in the Eastern church.

· Wisdom theology is different from an academic theology that is built upon sciencia alone - hard facts and formula – or what Dr. Paulina calls a "theology of sure knowledge." "A theology of Sure Knowledge is interested in forming definitions and constructing systems to explain the world and faith." It creates a specialized language and seeks precision and intellectual comprehension. If you’ve spent any time in a major contemporary seminary you know this is true as highly motivated intellectuals speaks of soteriology, ecclesiology and eschatology. We have a specialized jargon that often locks ordinary people out of the conversation.

· Wisdom theology, on the other hand, looks to integrate the head with the heart and celebrates speaking of the sacred in ordinary language that real people use every day. This is how Jesus spoke, likening God’s kingdom to a wedding banquet or a feast of reconciliation. It is decidedly this-wordly. Never dismissing or ignoring the transcendent truths of our faith, a spirituality of tenderness remains grounded: Salvation now is more than an abstract promise. Salvation is now a get-together, an event, a kiss, a piece of bread, a happy old woman or a child resting on her mother’s breast. It is everything that nourishes love, our body, our life. It is more than happiness in the hereafter, even if we hang on to the right to dream of our eternal tomorrow. It is sacramental and incarnational – it sees the holy in our humanity and rejoices.

Now, I don’t know if that helps you, but digging through my tradition helped me discover just how foundational tenderness is to the way of Jesus. It gave me a language grounded in my scriptures – a lens through which I can see Jesus more clearly – as well as an ethical core to evaluate my politics, my check book (or ATM transactions), my relationships, and my time. It gave focus to my intellect and emotions, a measure of order upon the chaos of all around and within me, and helped me know how to ripen into my best self.

So, let me give you a tool that grows out of this study, a resource you can use to help ground you in the steadfast love of the Lord that endures forever. It comes from the always practical work of Dr. Cynthia Bourgeault who writes: “Of any number of spiritual practices both ancient and universal to bring us into a state of vulnerable openness, the most direct and effective:

… is simply this: in any situation in life, confronted by an outer threat or opportunity, you can notice yourself responding inwards in one of two ways. Either you will brace, harden, and resist, or, you will soften, open and yield. If you go with the former… you will be catapulted immedi-ately into your smaller self, with its animal instincts and survival responses. If you stay with the later regardless of the outer conditions, you will remain in alignment with your innermost being, and through it diving being can reach you and guide you. Spiritual practice at its n-frills simplest is a moment-by-moment learning NOT to do anything in a state of internal brace – bracing is NEVER worth the cost.

Let’s take a quiet moment right now and rest into this steadfast love of the Lord trusting that it is real and welcomes us into the silent serenity and safety of this place… let us pray. 

a jumble of little friday encounters...

Today my Face Book "memory" was a picture of me and my grandson, Louie,

playing music together. He was so intense - that hasn't changed - and so captured by the experience of making music together - that hasn't change either. Except that he is in Brooklyn with his family living into a vigorous self-quarantine and so am I. We haven't made music together in so long... I spent the morning with this picture floating around my head as I finalized my reflections for Sunday's live-streaming gathering on Face Book. 

After a simple lunch with Di out in the sun on the deck, I worked on the wee stone walk in the garden. Then we did our weekly Zoom visit with the clan in Brooklyn. And a short time after our Zoom-visit, I Zoomed with my community of L'Arche in Ottawa. We talked together of how it is we feel loved - personally and in community - and it was lovely. I shared a brief homily and a few new Taize songs, too. My text was part of the gospel reading assigned for this day:

TEXT: John 15: 12-15
Jesus said to his disciples: “This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father.

REFLECTION
To love one another as Jesus teaches is simple – and costly. Jesus gave his friends a model for them to practice when he washed their feet: it shows us that love is an action that includes tender caring for another and vulnerability. Love goes both ways – we give and we receive – and it takes time, commitment, patience, practice and trust. St. Paul taught his friends about the love of Jesus, too saying: “Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self. Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have. Love doesn’t strut, doesn’t have a swelled head, doesn’t force itself on others, isn’t always “me first,” doesn’t fly off the handle, doesn’t keep score of the sins of others, doesn’t revel when others grovel, takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, puts up with anything, trusts God always, always looks for the best, never looks back, but keeps going to the end.” (I Corinthians 13, The Message)

In community at L’Arche we try to love one another every day as Jesus commanded – and we know this is always a work in progress. None of us gets it completely right all the time, so we keep trying and keep being forgiven by the community – and God. Loving in the spirit of Jesus takes practice– and this became a whole lot harder when the pandemic hit. Overnight, we were living in lock down, something no one signed-on for: suddenly, we were having to love like Jesus 24/7 and into the foreseeable future, too. This is what happens in real time. We are so not in control of very much. What has been remarkable – even holy – is how well everyone has been loving one another: core members as well as assistants, families and friends, too. It isn’t easy. It isn’t always pretty. And no one knows for certain how long it is going to last. Probably at LEAST through July – and maybe longer. All we can do right now is our best in every moment and trust God for the rest. Being women and men committed to the love of Jesus takes work – and trust – and lots of forgiveness. Today we give thanks to God for everyone in our community who keep sharing the love of Jesus every day – and ask for God’s forgiveness, too. 

I prayed with Judy Woodruff, David Brooks and Mark Shields during the PBS News Hour, cleared off the deck in anticipation of a wicked thunder storm, cooked dinner and shared a few hours watching "After Life" and "Travels with My Father" with Di on Netflix. The rain is still falling as the day closes. Tomorrow, God willing, we'll be outside in the sun planting bulbs and seeds and working on another part of the garden. It is one of the ways we stay focused and return thanks to God during this season of isolation. I came across this quote from the late Gerald May going through evening emails that captures something of my soul right now: 

So in the end I am left only with hope.
I hope the nights are transformative.
I hope every dawn brings deeper love,
for each of us individually and for
the world as a whole. I hope that
John of the Cross was right when
he said the intellect is transformed
into faith, and the will into love
and the memory into – hope.
~ Gerald May in THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL