saying good-bye to the friar for a time and making room for the monk...

This week Di and I were able to make time each day to share a simple late

morning breakfast on the deck before heading into our respective tasks.There's hot tea with milk and toast as we tell one another stories from the day past, consideration of the most outrageous overnight political developments in the news, and questions about how we might chart a course for engaging in life beyond the threshold of our quiet gardened sanctuary. It is just the right way for me to ease into the ups and downs of the day.

For reasons of age and health, you see, we continue to live in both intentional and literal seclusion even as the Commonwealth "re-opens." After nearly 150 days, it feels as if we are encamped on the edge of civilization. The lush foliage in the wetlands behind us is beset with every shade of green imaginable. The woods are replete with birds, woodchucks, foxes, coyotes, squirrels, chipmunks, and deer. The raised-bed garden terraces - and herb pots- are increasingly ample. And our tiny social bubble remains nearly fully sealed. Most of our groceries continue to be delivered to the garage by brave and conscientious essential workers. No one calls our house - nor our cell phones - since my retirement. And friends and colleagues conscientiously choose not to violate our self-imposed quarantine. Perhaps once a week I suit-up for necessary errands like mailing a bill or hunting down lumber for a home repair, but that's it. With one exception: the periodic pizza delivery late some Friday evenings. Ok, I own it: we are still pretty damn bourgeois even in our extended semi-monastic solitude.

What is being revealed to me after five months is that this is a time to own, confess and reckon with my wander-lust, monkey mind way of praying. For decades I have made the way of the flâneur an art form. It is my preferred

path to being surprised by grace, encounter new souls to listen to and learn from, find beauty in the most unlikely places, share a caring presence in the midst of life's tussles, and take-in the wild creativity of cities as well as countrysides. But this is truly a different season and calls for a vastly different inward discipline, too. What I am discovering is that at 68 I am neither as emotionally or spiritually supple as I once was - or that I like to believe I still am. Christine Valters Painter has a gentle way of saying this in her insightful collection of stories of the Celtic saints: she calls it "the slow ripening of the soul." I am choosing to claim that as what is taking place within me these days although there seems to be a lot more slow and a lot less ripening. Be that as it may, as Ecclesiastes observes: to everything there is a season and a time and purpose for all things under heaven.

This week on my Sunday morning live streaming reflections I plan to go more deeply into this challenge. You are likely making sense of it for yourselves in your own way, too. Last night, when I couldn't go back to sleep yet again, I started to make a list of all the ways I am being called to get centered in this new era including:

+ Honoring that this is the season of the monk rather than the friar.

+ It is a time for the monastic charism of stability rather than the more free-wheeling experience of le flâneur or pilgrimage.

+ Obliquely, it is a time to go deeper into the wisdom of the Paschal Mystery and St. Paul's confession that: "now we see as through a glass darkly, later we shall see face to face."

+ And, in my heart, this is a time to wrestle with what it means to trust that the presence of the holy in this season is to make "our joy full." Complete. Real and earthy as per the gospel of St. John.

Toni Morrison has written: This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need or silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.

Tomorrow we will experience our first family reunion since the start of the plague as our loved ones from Brooklyn head north to feast and rest with us for four full days. Talk about joy upon joy! I will post pictures for sure but may not be online very much as I want to savor the fullness of this blessing. 

I hope you will join me on Sunday morning, August 2 @ 9:55 am on my spiritual directions Face Book page: https://www.facebook.com/Be-Still-and-Know-913217865701531.

small is holy sunday reflection: the treasure of the ordinary

Every week, as I sit down to prayerfully reflect on what I am experiencing during this extended time of solitude – and what some of you may be encountering, too – I listen for clues to share with you as we make this journey together albeit apart. Sometimes it shows up in a poem, other times in a song; periodically one arrives while taking-in the nightly news on PBS, and from time to time, a notion catches my attention while I am reading. For the past few weeks, I have been playing an old tune by Kate Wolf as a meditation. I’ve known it since before my daughters were born – forty plus years – and I’ve wondered why it chose to show up again right now?

· So, I’m starting a new/old spiritual practice that begins with the words: I just don’t know. Whenever I can’t figure out why I am thinking or feeling, singing or doing something mysterious these days, I say to myself and to the sacred: Hmmm, I just don’t know. It’s a liberating little prayer to acknowledge my limitations and uncertainties – a path towards a certain humility, too. Those four little words help me “release those things to which I too often cling too tightly,” things Christine Valters Paintner names as “my need to be in control, my need to feel secure” and all the rest. (The Slow Ripening of the Soul, p. 3) “I just don’t know.”

· Accepting and trusting the unknown by stepping into the mystery is an embodied prayer – what the ancient Celtic monks called “crossing the threshold” – and it doesn’t come easily to me. Maybe that’s true for you, too. But the more I, “let go of controlling the outcome, the more these thresholds become rich and graced places of transformation.” (ibid) For as I step through the certainties of what I know into the mystery of what I don’t, I start to notice, “the threads of synchronicity, serendipity and beauty” as they unfold before me. Dr. Paintner likes to call this, “honoring the slow ripening of the soul” rather than insisting upon fast tract solutions for the bottom line.

One of these enigmatic threads that I am noticing as my soul slowly ripens during my solitude is a link between St. Paul’s call to live as a fool for Christ and Kate Wolf’s desire for rest. Both sense a sacred symmetry between the longing of our heart and the tranquility of grace hidden within our humanity this is aching to be discovered like a treasure in a field. Stepping into and then through our uncertainties is what Kate prays for when she sings: won’t you lay me down easy. And what the apostle promises whenever we foolishly honor God’s upside-down grace knowing that in Jesus:

God chose what is small in the world to challenge the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to challenge the strong; God chose what is vulnerable in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are so that no one might boast about themselves…. In this we have become fools for Christ… choosing to live on the edges of society by faith to honor God’s love and offer alternatives to those ensnarled in the rat race.

Let me play Kate’s song for you as one pilgrim’s reflection on the mystery of the ordinary. Like so many of the tunes I use for personal prayer, not all her words sound meditative – and they’re not at all religious. Yet there’s something about this tender, little tune that cuts deep for me – could be the synergy of melody and mood – or the chorus that sounds like so many of my own prayers since March – or the invitation of Jesus to come all ye who are tired and heavy laden - I just don’t know for sure – except to say it calls to me…

Sitting in the sunshine, trying to sing the blues away
Wondering why they came and how long they'll stay
Picking out a little tune I never heard before
Yes, and wishing you were here at the door 

Won't you lay me down easy - lay me down easy in my mind
'Cause babe, I've got the blues and there's something you can do
You can lay me down easy in my mind, in my mind

Well babe, you know how it is when you wake up feeling old
You wonder if you’re doing what you should
And everyone around you — they can’t read what’s on your mind
And they might not want to if they could if they could…

Now the seasons of my life they go turning through the days
I’ve seen bitter winters come and go
And here I am in sunny times not feeling like I could
And wondering when the winds will start to blow…

There is a pathos and integrity – an honesty and humility, too – in this song that feels like deep calling to deep: won’t you lay me down easy. It’s what I pray almost every day for myself, for you, and for so many in this world: Lord, in your mercy, won’t you lay us down easy this day and by your grace help us be at rest with ourselves, our world and your love? Sometimes it feels foolish to keep offering up that prayer: life feels harsh and demanding right now – exhausting and maybe suffocating, too – even while sheltering at home. And watching the news? Trying to make sense of the magnitude of death in the US? And the world? The uncertainty and cruelty of it all? I really don’t know what to do with all of that except to say that sometimes it all feels like too much.

I don’t know if you’ve said this out loud – or kept it to yourself – but it is increasingly clear that we’re going to be in this chaos until at least Christmas – and probably longer. Winter is the earliest we can expect a vaccine no matter what lies come out of the White House. Add to this grim fact what we know about the final 100 days of this election cycle - how this regime is already ginning-up fear and hatred by sending 21st century storm troopers into Portland – and what we said after the 2016 election is increasingly true: it is going to get worse – much worse – before it gets better.

I suspect that is why I keep praying: lay me down easy, Lord. It’s my hunch as well that my affinity with Paul’s call to live as fools for Christ right now is another thread of synchronicity for it insists that NOW is the time for more sacred fools incarnating God’s love. When life is at its most complex, when all we can see is the madness and cruelty of our days, the Spirit often intercedes for us with sighs too deep for human words and invites us to become servants of love even as the chaos rages. It's a call to step through the threshold of what we know into the mysterious reality of what we don’t, trusting the Lord of tenderness to empower us with a holy love that feels intellectually foolish – but ethically right and so soul satisfying. St. Paul talked about the early church as those who “had become fools for Christ” when they visible chose to live on the edge of society by trust, and offered tender-hearted loving alternatives to the empire to all who were tired and heavy-laden.

That’s what I hear in this weird little parable from Jesus, too: the foolishness of sacred love. It has long been perplexing to me what we are to do with this story. For decades it has been relegated to the “well, I don’t really know” pile. Some preachers try to render it with piety by scrubbing away the gritty scandal of grace as they insist it is about discovering the precious beauty of God as our treasure. Others insist that the promise of blessings that could be ours is revealed only to those who work hard enough to dig up the treasure box. But both of those solutions violate the scandal of grace and just don’t ring true. So, while there’s a lot in this weird little story that I don’t get, I have come to trust three insights:

· One is that the treasure in this parable had been sitting there in the ground all along just waiting to be discovered. It has nothing to do with anything the man did: he didn’t earn it or create it and he wasn’t rewarded because of his virtue. Rather, like grace, this treasure just popped up in the middle of his work as a total surprise and it was absolutely free.

· A second insight is that the treasure doesn’t automatically make this man’s life better. Truth is, it caused a dilemma. After discovering this free gift, the laborer secretly reburies it and uses all of his resources to deceptively purchase the land without ever once revealing to the original owner anything of the hidden treasure. See where this is going?

· And third, it is this secret selfishness that reveals the scandal of the story: Without an honest and public way to share this treasure, its bounty becomes useless to the man. In his zeal to possess the treasure all for himself, he acted unethically – understandably, of course, but still dishonestly – and now although he physically owns it, he must keep the treasure in the ground. Hidden. His greed and delight over finding it has trapped him: he is secretly wealthy after spending everything to buy the field but publicly worse off than before.

One thing that helps me make sense of what to do with this parable is where it takes place in the story of Jesus. St. Matthew’s gospel places it by the seaside shortly after Jesus tells his mother and brothers that he must move beyond the limits of family with God’s love. You may recall that after a year of wandering through ancient Palestine teaching and healing, Mary and the brothers of Jesus became increasingly worried that the Roman state and the religious authorities were going to crack down on Jesus because he was challenging their shared power.

There is always trouble when the power of the state gets mixed up with religious authority and that was as true then as it is now. Still, Jesus kept going out to the grain fields to teach the working people of his day that there was more than one way to live in alignment with God’s steadfast love: observing only the outward rules of the Sabbath may not nourish our hearts. This infuriated and frightened the sincere but fundamentalist believers of his day. And it still does. Strict guidelines help some feel safe and Jesus was saying it was spiritually ok to say, “I don’t know? Let’s trying something different.” No wonder the family of Jesus was worried about a crackdown.

I worry that our daughters could be snatched up and carted away in an unmarked car by anonymous paramilitary soldiers wherever they join Black Lives Matter demonstrations – so the family of Jesus had reasons to be concerned. In time, the family of Jesus went and asked him to give it a rest: take a break until the heat dies down. That’s a reasonable request from any parent. But when the crowd noticed that Mary and her other sons were waiting to bring Jesus home, Jesus replied: “Who is my mother and who are my brothers? And pointing to his disciples he replied: Here is my family, too, my extended family by God’s love. For whoever is doing the will of my Father in heaven – making sacred love flesh – is brother and sister and mother to me.”

The key is NOT that Jesus wanted to separate from his family, but that he wanted to expand it. His vision of God’s love – the will of his Father to use traditional language –was to make the circle of the covenant bigger. I love you – he told his flesh and blood – and will always love you. But right now, I have some important public work to do in the Spirit of God’s love, so please don’t get in my way. There is a Beloved Community to be birthed within and among us now in the ordinary world – an alternative to the rat race and a way of healing what is broken among us – so please help me out. And this is the context for the collection of parables found in chapter thirteen of St. Matthew’s gospel: they are all about empowering the Beloved community in the most ordinary albeit unexpected places.

Now, scholars of the Scriptures note that the word parable – parabole in Greek and mashal in Hebrew - means to toss or lay one thing beside another for the sake of comparison. Here Jesus is saying that God’s kingdom – God’s presence and the soul of right living – can be discerned by “laying it beside certain symbols or signs.” Fr. Thomas Keating of the Centering Prayer movement writes:

Unlike a simile (which compares one thing to another for emphasis as in ‘brave as a lion’ or ‘crazy like a fox’) a parable actually contains the truth within that comparison… By using a parable Jesus is saying that the kingdom really IS like… a mustard seed. Or a lost coin that is found. Or here as a treasure. (Keating, The Kingdom of God Is Like, p. 75)

To claim that the kingdom of God is like a treasure was nothing new. Jewish wisdom literature often made such comparisons and Jewish rabbis created thousands of comparable parables to those of Jesus during the early years of the Christian community. What makes this parable unique – and even problematic and scandalous – “is what happens once the treasure is found.” Keating writes: The man in this tale was a day laborer. In those days, people did not always have a bank handy… and sometimes hid their treasures in a field. Think of another parable where one servant hides his talents in the ground while the other two invest and multiply theirs and increase its value. It would not have been unusual for a day laborer working in somebody else’s field to come upon a buried treasure. But how in the world can the kingdom of God be compared to a treasure that gives rise to such improper and even deceitful conduct? Clearly the laborer was trying to conceal the treasure from its rightful owner – the one who first possessed the field – so how is this deception like the kingdom? (Keating, p. 76)

I think it has something to do with the fact that the treasure was there in the field before the man ever found it. Jesus is saying that the kingdom of God is often right there among us whether we recognize it or not. The kingdom is a part of our everyday, ordinary circumstances whether we have eyes to see or not. But that’s not all he’s saying because Jesus uses the symbol of the treasure in a unique way. In his story the treasure does not appear as a reward for the man’s efforts or virtues. Unlike other morality tales like Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings or Galahad and the Holy Grail where the hero gets the ring, the prize or the princess after enduring the rigors of a trial or a series of events that prove his courage and tenacity. Here Jesus is saying, “God makes the treasure of grace available” to everyone without respect to our proving anything. Grace is the scandalous blessing that trumps karma every time.

Another scandalous aspect is that while we love grace for ourselves, we often feel uncomfortable accepting that God’s love and forgiveness – God’s sacred presence – is just as available to those we hate and fear as it is for us. In our insecurity we know that we need forgiveness. But when it comes to the same failings and weaknesses in others, we want them to be punished.

I remember walking through what was then Leningrad in the former Soviet Union, talking with a Russian Orthodox priest about the struggle for God’s peace and justice in the world. In those days I was a hot head pushing a one-size fits all understanding of God’s judgement. And after some strong words had been share, he looked at me with tenderness and asked, “At the end of your life, and you come face to face with the Holy, who do you want to meet? The God of grace or the God of judgment?” Now I was then – and still am – a straight, white man of privilege and had probably never been confronted by such theological acuity. Walking on in silence for a few minutes, I considered my life to date. Then I confessed that if I was honest, I hoped to meet the God of grace at the end of my life. “Me, too,” he smiled and added “to be a follower of Jesus you can’t be such a hard ass, ok? Ask and ye shall receive. Seek and ye shall find. Knock and the door shall be opened. When you pray the Lord’s Prayer, open your heart to grace for you will be forgiven by God in the same measure that you forgive others.” That’s part of what this parable: we experience judgment in the presence of grace.

Unfortunately, that is a truth we must learn through the slow ripening of our souls. Organically, in our bottom-line culture, we believe we must grab all the treasures for ourselves as quickly as we can. We are rarely as generous to others as we want God to be to us no matter how many times we recite the Lord’s Prayer. Until the words become flesh, we’re just passing. This tiny parable’s offense is that the man who found this blessing by accident – and did everything is his power to make it his own – finds himself following the rules of the status quo not the Beloved Community. He’s a working man who wants a break and does everything in his power to hold on to his treasure. But once he owns it, he can’t do anything with it without creating a public scandal when people ask: where did all this new money come from? There was no lottery ticket to buy. So even though he is now in possession of a fortune, he’s worse off than before because he’s sold everything he owned to buy the field – and still can’t honorably access its bounty. Keating writes: “This parable alerts us to the fact that the kingdom, although given as sheer gift, is not given to us just for our personal benefit. To share this gift with others is part of the joy in receiving it. And not being able to do so becomes a scandal and even a curse.” (p. 78)

This free gift, you see, was not fully considered – there was no sacred wisdom at work here– so he finds himself in a bind because of his own actions. It’s not the fault of the treasure just his own response. Jesus would have us know that God, like the father in the story of the Prodigal Son, is always there to take us back repeatedly. But knowing this can be risky, too: for like Bonhoeffer said, part of the scandal of grace is that “we often treat divine mercy like cheap grace.” And while this never alters God’s love for us, it serves as a warning that we are prone to putting ourselves through hell as a consequence of confusing the steadfast love of the Lord for cheap grace. 

Finding a treasure encourages us to escape from everyday life… this treasure freed the day laborer from the rigors of working and dealing with everyday experiences in ordinary reality… and that’s where the scandal hits because when we get lost in grandiosity we live like we’re the center of the universe. Most of us would love to win the lottery or experience the bounty of a miracle to which Jesus says, “Ok, but watch out.” Most of us don’t know how to handle such extraordinary things. Often, without our knowing, we become trapped in the habits of our culture. Would that we quit looking for a magic bullet or get rich quick schemes and open our eyes to the treasures in every day – the presence of the kingdom already within and among us – “Seek ye first the kingdom of God” Jesus said, “and all these things shall added unto you. The treasures of the kingdom are NOT for ourselves alone and never release us from our commitments to the Beloved Community. (Keating, paraphrased.)

I can’t help but think of the scandal the United States has recently created over wearing a face-mask in public. What an ordinary blessing – a way to share the gift of life and safety with the most vulnerable among us – but some are so locked into the habits of the status quo that turns every-thing into a competition rather than a journey of solidarity – that this simple act of compassion has become an ideological battle ground.

Same for the suggestion NOT to sing for a while whenever public worship resumes. In late May, the Christian Century magazine reports, a CDC guideline was drafting saying the act of singing may contribute to the transmission of COVID-19 through the emission of aerosols. This scientific fact was scrapped and omitted from the final report because the Trump administration feared angering his white, evangelical base. What an ugly American – especially white American – spirituality of entitlement. Right here, right now we have the chance to share an ordinary blessing that strengthens God’s treasured gift of life and our selfish stupidity to have everything OUR way is causing an ever increasing morbidity rate to climb over 1000 every day. As someone far wiser than I said: this is the same death rate as if 50 planes fell out of the sky every day and killed everyone on board.

I hear this weird little parable telling us that the gifts of the kingdom are ordinary – filled with everyday possibilities for us to bask in joy and tenderness – if we have eyes to see. Tish Warren, an Episcopal priest and writer, hit a home run in her book: Liturgy of the Ordinary – Sacred Practices in Everyday Life when she wrote: 

Of all the things he could've chosen to be done "in remembrance" of him, Jesus chose a meal. He could have asked his followers to do something impressive or mystical like climb a mountain, fast for forty days, or have a trippy sweat lodge ceremony. But instead he picked the most ordinary of acts, eating, through which to be present to his people. He says that the bread is his body and the wine is his blood. He chooses the unremarkable and plain, the average and abundant, the bread and wine to reveal the kingdom of God” and calls us to do it, too.

And this is where I see our lives having the greatest chance to strengthen the Beloved Community. There will be a time when we’re going to have to stand up to the evil of this era in bold, heroic and public ways. More than at any other time I’ve known since 1968, our land is open to encountering the foolishness of God’s love. Not so much in many traditional churches, although I sense that most of the time Pope Francis is pushing the envelope of gracious, foolish love in the Roman Catholic realm. And not in a majority of white, evangelical churches either for they have turned Jesus into some kind of paramilitary thug who kicks ass and takes names on behalf of a punitive, jingoistic, homo-phobic, and misogynist God. But out in the streets… yes? With Black Lives Matters and the Poor Peoples Campaign, yes. In Portland where anonymous, unaccountable fascist troops recruited from our most rabidly racist cadre of federal warriors have been met with moms creating a human shield around the young protesters – and then dads standing watch over the moms – in a beautiful display of people power guided by the foolishness of love in action.

Our time will come when the grand sweep of the Spirit calls us out of our safety and into the fray of dissent. But for most of us right now our calling is smaller. More humble. We’re on a search for the hidden, ordinary treasures and mustard seeds and invitations to rest that we can share wherever we find ourselves. Every person I hear speaking in the store these days or on the TV news is asking for a little bit of Kate Wolf’s prayer. Maybe not in her exact words. But we know we need a little lay me down easy time – time to feel some rest – and know some love in a safe and holy way. None of us knows when or where we’re going to be asked to share some of this treasure. That’s still another mystery – real to be sure– but a threshold still to be revealed.

Following the thread of Kate’s song, I suspect that’s part of why I’ve been singing it two or three times every day. I need to practice being ready to look for God’s treasure wherever I go. When we least expect it, we’re being asked to help celebrate the everyday treasures that are often hidden from our sight right but are just waiting to be revealed when we really need them. Every day I come face to face with the fact that my culture, my habits, my addiction to the ways of empire keep me from seeking first the kingdom of God in what is ordinary.

And this is precisely why we’re asked to practice an alternative. Jesus says when you feel like running away, do the opposite. Choose the foolishness of the kingdom rather than the logic of Cesar. The kingdom of God is like a treasure hidden in the place where we already live. Do we have eyes to see? Can we make it your own honestly and openly? For me, and maybe you, too, this sheltering in solitude is challenging my soul to slowly ripen. It is what I am starting to call my Wendell Berry retreat time – and brother Berry has just the poem to bring this all to a close in something he calls “How to Be a Poet.” 

Make a place to sit down. Sit down. Be quiet. You must depend upon affection, reading, knowledge, skill—more of each than you have—inspiration, work, growing older, patience, for patience joins time to eternity. Any readers who like your poems, doubt their judgment.

Breathe with unconditional breath the unconditioned air. Shun electric wire. Communicate slowly. Live a three-dimensioned life; stay away from screens. Stay away from anything that obscures the place it is in. There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places. Accept what comes from silence. Make the best you can of it. Of the little words that come out of the silence, like prayers prayed back to the one who prays, make a poem that does not disturb the silence from which it came.

following the threads of synchronicity, dreams and serendipity

During the on-going sheltering-in-place of the semi-lock-down for people like myself, I have been reading my way through a variety of unknown books that have gathered on my shelves over the years. In the middle of March, I slipped into the garage to forage through boxes once destined for donation. Then I combed the bounty of the bookcases lining the walls of my study. To date I have made it through two of Karen Armstrong's theological histories, a few volumes of Wendell Berry poetry, Malcolm Bell's new edition of The Attica Turkey Shoot, two works by Christine Valters Paintner, the male initiation trilogy from Richard Rohr, and a valiant albeit unsuccessful attempt at Neil Douglas-Klotz's The Hidden Gospel of the Aramaic Jesus. (It just doesn't hang together with any depth or zip for me.) As summer ripens, there is still a T.S. Eliot anthology to embrace, what will be my second savoring of Marilynne Robinson's Gilead as well as Noman MacLean's A River Runs Through It and John O'Donohue's Anam Cara.

At present I am enjoying Christine Valters Paintner's The Soul's Slow Ripening from 2018 re: Celtic spiritual practices and a slim overview of spiritual direction from 1981 by Katherine Marie Dykman and. Patrick Carroll entitled Inviting the Mystic, Supporting the Prophet. Both have heart and soul with a tone of intellectual gravitas and time-tested wisdom, too. Dyckman and Carroll have served as spiritual directors for decades. They have helped seminarians construct grounded practices of spiritual formation and trained hundreds of lay leaders in the art of spiritual friendship. And Valters-Paintner keeps unearthing new ways to take general readers deeper into the ancient wisdom of embodied Celtic spirituality. She does her homework. She finds fresh ways to share the mystical tradition with 21st century souls. And she does this with a degree of humor and humility that encourages us to let the words become flesh. 

Like me, Paintner appreciates the systematic approach to the spiritual journey

offered through Ignatian exercises, but prefers the more "organic " way of Celtic monastics. "There hopefully comes a time when we have to admit," she writes, "that our own plans for our lives are not nearly as interesting as how our lives long to unfold - that these plans are indeed too small for us to live. That when we follow the threads of synchronicity, dreams, and serendipity, we are each led to a life that is rich and honoring of the soul's rhythms, which is a slow ripening rather than a fast tract to discernment." To that end, she offers this poem by David Whyte that rings oh so true for me: "What to Remember When Waking."

In that first hardly noticed moment in which you wake,
coming back to this life from the other
more secret, moveable and frighteningly honest world
where everything began,
there is a small opening into the new day
which closes the moment you begin your plans.

What you can plan is too small for you to live.
What you can live wholeheartedly will make plans enough
for the vitality hidden in your sleep.

To be human is to become visible
while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others.
To remember the other world in this world
is to live in your true inheritance.

You are not a troubled guest on this earth,
you are not an accident amidst other accidents
you were invited from another and greater night
than the one from which you have just emerged.

Now, looking through the slanting light of the morning window
toward the mountain presence of everything that can be
what urgency calls you to your one love?
What shape waits in the seed of you
to grow and spread its branches
against a future sky?

Is it waiting in the fertile sea?
In the trees beyond the house?
In the life you can imagine for yourself?
In the open and lovely white page on the writing desk?

aging, isolation and a shrinking sense of what's important...

My world continues to get smaller as I age. I suppose that's how its meant to be as interests, desires, energy and needs contract - but its not how I thought it would turn out. I've seen many people grow old - I came of age living in my parent's home for the aged after all - and have presided over hundreds burials, too. My great grand-mother started a boarding house sometime before the Great Depression in Stamford, CT. After WWII, my father's mother continued that work but shifted the emphasis towards elderly and infirm men and women. By the time my parents took the business over there were only ancient women living with us as "guests." 

What a wild menagerie accompanied me as I entered adolescence! A retired doctor of osteopathy who taught me how to massage another's foot. "Madame" from France who was terrorized in her bouts of PTSD when she was certain that the fireworks from our Fourth of July were the dreaded gunshots she'd heard as a child in the First World War. A wealthy Christian Scientist whose relatives once held my parents hostage upstairs at gunpoint on a Sunday afternoon while other family members were in the kitchen negotiating with our family doctor over future medical treatments and the contested contents of a will. The kindly Mrs. Cain whose nerve damage kept her from walking but not from sharing her accumulated wisdom, candy and abiding affection. Their lives and deaths were woven into the tapestry of my teens. Same, too for the assassinations of my generation: John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Robert Kennedy, the martyrs of Kent and Jackson State, Fred Hampton, John Lennon. They have taken their toll within as have nearly forty years of ordained ministry filled with countless hospital rooms, prayers, hymns, tears, laughter and funerals.

Still, nothing really prepares you for your own ripening on the vine of life. There have been clues, of course. But as Tammie Terrell and Marvin Gaye sang before they both passed: "Ain't nothing like the real thing, baby." I knew something had shifted within when earlier this summer I didn't immediately order Bob Dylan's new and celebrated album. I love St. Bobby's work and was mildly annoyed with myself when I did nothing to get it. God knows I haven't listened to any new music since before Christmas with the exception of the online concerts of Mary Chapin-Carpenter and Carrie Newcomer. My upright bass still stands untouched after six months. And I have slowly realized that the only songs I am playing on my guitar are the ones I know well. George Harrison. Bill Withers. Lou Reed. Joni Mitchell.

Another clue caught my eye while reading the unhinged politically paranoid

commentary of an old friend about the danger of face masks: they're the first signs our society is sliding down the slippery slop of socialism. I had to shake my head in astonishment. "I know there are crazies out there," I said to myself, "but not among my buddies!" But the more I read the more absurd and frightening it became: "over four months we have given up our birth right to freedom as we trust faceless bureaucrats with deciding our fate." I kept waiting for an appeal to take up arms. "Good Lord," I said at breakfast, "I live in such a bubble!" Reading some of America's reaction to Dr. Fauci only underscores the limitations of my social engagement - a very small and shrinking circle of friends - reduced further by sheltering in place. 

But my ever-narrowing weltanschauung hit me between the eyes last night upon receiving an email from my primary care doctor. He's a trusted friend and musical collaborator whom I love and respect. Beyond professional commentary on my recent medical tests, I was stunned when he confessed: "I have not been much interested in music these days." That nearly took my breath away. Not only has music been vital and life-giving to his life until the consequences of the corona contagion claimed most of his energy, but music has been a shared window on reality for us both. We've spent hours together sipping red wine while discussing how Jefferson Airplane changed our worlds forever. Our friendship began in New Orleans on a Habitat mission trip after Hurricane Katrina. When work for the day was done, we'd take a quick shower and head into town to hear the local musical genius. And for over a decade we've played live music together with other loved ones to heal our own wounds and raise funds for environmental justice. To now hear that music has become a void in his world alerted me to a similar emptiness I have been trying to avoid of late within my own.

Living in isolation for more than four months has mostly been just fine with me. I prefer the solitude. But I am beginning to own that it has also caused some convictions and commitments to atrophy. It has exaggerated my loss of perspective and diminished my ability to sense the bigger picture. Zoom, FB and emails have their place - and I am grateful for the connection they allow - but they have clearly not been enough. Artist and theologian, Jan Richardson, put it well the other day when she wrote:

I mean, I'm used to living in those threshold-y, liminal, betwixt places,

but I am keenly aware that this is one of the longest, most stubborn between-spaces ever. Whatever these threshold days (weeks, months) are holding for you, may there be grace. May there be sustenance. And may there be, perhaps, a few angels to meet you.

BLESSING FOR THE PLACE BETWEEN
When you come
to the place between.
When you have left
what you held
most dear.
When you are traveling
toward the life
you know not.
When you arrive
at the hardest ground.
May it become
for you
a place to rest.
May it become
for you
a place to dream.
May the pain
that has pressed itself
into you
give way
to vision,
to knowing.
May the morning
make of it
an altar,
a path,
a place to begin
again.

Perhaps this cumulative loss is what inspired me to take in another live streaming musical concert yesterday afternoon: the Folk by the Oak Family Nest Fest. It was grand and I was particularly taken with a performer new to me: Kitty MacFarlane. She knocked me out.

This dawning of my diminishing world is not all darkness: it has called me to pay more to my lazy prayers and the carelessness of my inward journey. It has also spoken to my heart about my need to make an effort to reach out to reality and find ways to embrace it even in this solitude. I have been awakened, too, to how aging can accelerate all of this. This morning's poem on Poetry Unbound was Mary Howe's poignant, "My Mother's Body" and called out to me with clarity.

Bless my mother’s body, the first song of her beating
heart and her breathing, her voice, which I could dimly hear,

grew louder. From inside her body I heard almost every word she said.
Within that girl I drove to the store and back, her feet pressing

the pedals of the blue car, her voice, first gate to the cold sunny mornings,
rain, moonlight, snow fall, dogs . . .

Her kidneys failed, the womb where I once lived is gone.
Her young astonished body pushed me down that long corridor,

and my body hurt her, I know that—24 years old. I’m old enough
to be that girl’s mother, to smooth her hair, to look into her exultant frightened eyes,

her bedsheets stained with chocolate, her heart in constant failure.
It’s a girl, someone must have said. She must have kissed me

with her mouth, first grief, first air,
and soon I was drinking her, first food, I was eating my mother,

slumped in her wheelchair, one of my brothers pushing it,
across the snowy lawn, her eyes fixed, her face averted.

Bless this body she made, my long legs, her long arms and fingers,
our voice in my throat speaking to you now.

sunday reflections: the mustard seed and the voice of nature in the pandemic

SUNDAY REFLECTION: July 19, 2020
More and more I have come to believe that one of the best ways our hearts are strengthened, and our souls renewed, is by setting aside regular times for quiet reflection. I believe we all need small moments of unrushed refuge where the Holy Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for human words and nourishes us from the inside out. Like Jesus stepping away from the busyness of his public life to rest completely within the safety of God’s love, our quiet time can incrementally take us into holy tenderness more deeply, too. In this, our connection to creation continues as we are awakened to the potential in every moment. I was moved by the words of poet and singer-songwriter, Carrie Newcomer:

Often it is the fine detail, a small thing, 

that snaps me back into the here and now.
Amber light coming through the trees, 

the slipper soft sound of creek water
Running beneath a tender filigree of ice,
Ella-Bear, my mutt dog, rolling in the fresh snow,
The give and chop of a carrot on the cutting board,
The image of two grown men, wiping tears of laughter, 

from the crinkled edges of their eyes.
It is as easy to be lost as it is hard to be lost,
But I am growing bored with tomorrow,
With what will be and how I will be then,
Weary of worried speculation or detached dreaming
Which are phantoms only, the flip side of creative imagining.
I am happiest these days when yesterday is an old friend
With whom I share much history, and tomorrow is willing to wait
For its own time above the horizon line.
I am most content now when I hold my own life
Right here, in the bowl of my cupped hands,
And sense that the hollow spaces are actually filled with Light,
Light that was already there, before I knew to look.

Like a pot of hot Scottish Breakfast tea in the morning, I need simple, quiet times every day to lead me back from the fury and fear of these days and into the light that was already there before I knew to look. It is how I practice choosing life over death. It is where I learn to embody my place within the sacred unity of the cosmos. It is when I most trust most the hallowed albeit paradoxical connection between my greatest need and my greatest gift. It is why I comprehend my calling to be part of our existential gestalt that links social justice to spirituality, physical and emotional health to meaning-filled work and play, community to solitude as well as faith, hope and love to the arts, history, sexuality and the values we embody as we move throughout our ordinary, everyday lives. And it is from within these on-going encounters with contemplation that I know St. Paul’s words about God working good from even the whole of creation groaning in travail like a woman in labor to be true.

· Frederick Buechner captured the essence of our particularity being embraced by the universal when he wrote: we stand on holy ground when we’re in that place where our deepest gladness meets the world’s greatest need.

· And I think that all of this and more is happening when Jesus playfully ponders: “What is the kingdom of God like? And to what can I compare it? Well, it is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in the garden; it grew and became at tree so that the birds of the air made nests in its branches.”

What I hope to share with you today is an interpretation of this parable that includes its immediate significance for our individual spiritual journeys as well as what the voice of nature might be saying to all of us in the unfolding covid pandemic.

Jesus told parables for two reasons: it was a politically safe way to talk about dangerous things in a symbolic form, and, the upside-down nature of parabolic logic trained the hearts of those closest to him in the ways of non-dual thinking. Fr. Richard Rohr likes to say that “Jesus was the first nondual religious teacher in the West.” Dualistic thought is seeing reality “from the position of our small and private self.” We ask: “What’s in it for me?” or “How will I look if I do this?” Rohr writes:

It is the ego’s preferred way of seeing reality and is essentially binary, either/or thinking. It knows by comparison, opposition, and differentiation. It uses descriptive words like good/evil, pretty/ugly, smart/stupid, not realizing there may be a hundred degrees between the two ends of each spectrum. Dualistic thinking works well for the sake of simplification and conversation, but not for the sake of truth or the immense subtlety of actual personal experience. Nondual thinking, or contemplative consciousness, is seeing without judgment, without labeling anything up or down, good or bad. It is a pure and positive gaze, unattached to outcome or critique… it does not come naturally to modern and postmodern people. You have to work at it and develop practices whereby you can recognize your compulsive and repetitive patterns and allow yourself to be freed from them. Moments of great love and great suffering are often the first experiences of nondual thinking. And practices of prayer largely maintain what many people first experience in deep love and suffering. (Richard Rohr, Center for Action and Contemplation, January 30, 2017)

· By using parables Jesus was simultaneously doing a spiritual dance that challenged the prevailing religious mythology of first century Palestine, and, helping his disciples practice nondual thinking. He wanted them to have eyes that could see from the heart into all the connections God had built into creation.

· In the parable of the mustard seed, Jesus was saying that the kingdom of God was NOT about power, but the quiet presence of peace in our ordinary lives. He also said that humanity is NOT the crown of creation, but just a part of a unified matrix of life.

I very much appreciate Fr. Thomas Keating’s insight that part of a “parable is to subvert the dis-torted myths by which people live their lives.” Take the myth of the ‘All American Boy’ where most often a young, white man gets straight A’s in college and grad school, climbs the executive ladder, becomes head of a multinational corporation so that he and his family might live happily ever after. Or the myth of the ‘American Dream’ that puts two cars in every garage, vacations in Florida, houses in Spain and all the rest. Keating calls them the national myths of American invincibility and absolute entitlement that have been defined dominant culture for a few hundred years. These myths have been on shaky ground since the Vietnam War and this past year has profoundly dis-qualified them as the pandemic rages and the Black Lives Matter social uprising matures. It doesn’t matter that the Liar in Chief keeps trying to sell us this bill of goods: his base may be nostalgic, but more and more ordinary Americans know it isn’t true.

That’s part of what the emerging Presidential election is all about, yes? The wise souls of the New Story Project have said: Even before the pandemic, we sensed the need to exchange our cultural addiction to separation, selfishness, and scapegoating for a new and better story in which each of us finds our place, our needs are met, our gifts shared, and connection, creativity, and beauty become the most obvious characteristics of our lives – and now that need is undeniable. Interestingly the mustard seed parable speaks directly to this truth but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Here’s the parable’s context: In ancient Israel during Jesus’ time a dysfunctional national myth every bit as troublesome as our own was creating “tension between everyday reality and the vision that Israel was God’s chosen people.” Fr. Keating writes: “From the heyday of national power and prestige during the reign of King David and King Solomon, ancient Israel had been on a downhill slide for several centuries, its kingdom conquered and divided several times over. If one lives in occupied territories, as the Israelites of Jesus’ time did, the question naturally arises: Is this ghastly oppression a punishment from God or is our suffering just a part of the human condition?”

For many living in occupied Israel, the national myth of what a kingdom looked like was symbolized by the great cedar of Lebanon tree. They were like our redwood forests in California: straight and strong, standing two or three hundred feet high or more. They provided shelter for the birds, were used to build the temple in Jerusalem, and evoked a sense that Israel’s kingdom would once again be the greatest of all nations “just as the cedar of Lebanon was the greatest of all trees.” To which Jesus said, “Well, not really, the kingdom of God is more like a… mustard seed planted in a garden.”

See where this is going? Those who heard this back in the day knew that not only was the mustard seed the smallest and most insignificant seed, hardly a cedar of Lebanon, but it was also prohibited by the rabbis as unclean. Over time, you see, “the Jewish view of the world identified order with holiness and disorder with that which was unclean.” Think how the Bible starts: The Spirit brings order to the chaos and creates clearly defined clusters of life with distinct boundaries between the land and the water, the heavens and the earth, the mammals and the fish, etc. This story emerged during Israel’s captivity in Babylon when the scribes and priests had to figure out a NEW Jewish identity beyond the old sacrificial order of the now demolished Temple in Jerusalem. One aspect of this new way included extremely clear divisions separating what was kosher and what was not. This meant there were strict rules about “what could be planted in a household garden. The rabbinical law of diverse kinds ruled that one could not mix certain plants in the same garden making the mustard seed forbidden because it was so fast spreading that it would invade the space of all the other plants.” (Keating p. 38)

Right away those who were paying attention knew that Jesus was telling them something upsetting because he likened the kingdom of God to an unclean mustard seed. But that’s not all – mustard seeds produce a fast spreading, invasive plant that only grows about four feet high. It has a few branches, and with a bit of imagination, you might be able to house a few birds in its shade, but it would be pretty shabby. Nothing like the great cedars of Lebanon.

And this, Jesus said, is really what the kingdom of God is like: the polar opposite of the cedars of Lebanon. He was ridiculing the prevailing national myth saying: The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed which somebody planted illegally in their garden. In time it became a shrub where a few scrappy birds were able to nest in its modest branches – but that’s it! Now there are some beautiful, humbling truths being shared here for those with ears to hear. Contrary to ancient Israel’s hope that one day a Messiah would restore their kingdom to the grandeur of the cedar, Jesus said, “It’s time to look for “God in everyday life – a humble and tender God – who brings us small blessings” in the most ordinary circumstances. No need to wait for an apocalyptic deliver-ance: the kingdom is available right now and right here. He also offers three more insights:

· First, Jesus wants us to know that God is NOT going to intervene in the world to

force us to do anything. Social justice is for us to do: we have been given the moral tools and natural resources to construct a society that cares for one another. So, we must do our work and not wait around for some final judgement or apocalypse. That’s what I find so moving about the organizing being done by the Rev. Dr. William Barber. He and his wise cadre of servants understand: This nation has invested in systemic racism, poverty, ecological devastation, and the militarization of our communities for too long. Now is the time to invest in expanding democracy and establishing peace and justice across the land. Before COVID-19 there were 140 million people who were poor or one emergency away from poverty. In the past few months, millions more have lost their jobs. Tens of millions are on the brink of eviction. Millions more are forced to pick between their lives and their livelihoods. Too many of us lack healthcare in the face of a deadly virus. And this is to say nothing of the environmental crisis before us. In other words, we have some work to do so let’s get ON with it! (If I were preaching right now in a church I’d ask: can I get an amen?!) That’s first.

· Second, as we give up our grandiose theologies, we’re going to be delighted, surprised, and maybe even scandalized at all the ordinary places where God is at work. Don’t look to the cathedrals or temples, just get over to the family garden plot that you take for granted. “The kingdom is going to be found in everyday lives with its ups and downs and humility because God’s presence - the kingdom - is accessible to everybody.” Not just spiritual giants or the most pious. And not just those who can afford it. Everyone is welcome into this very humble and tender kingdom.

· And third, we need to start saying that grace is like that mustard shrub that grows and spreads but will never turn us into a cedar of Lebanon. The good news is that we are just a bush – and an ordinary bush that some have labeled unclean at that – but this bush that most will barely notice unless we have eyes to see keeps can help mature into nondual thinking and contemplative consciousness if we’re paying attention for it inverts everything.

Now that’s one layer of this parable: Christ’s invitation to celebrate a small is holy way of being. He is teaching us that tenderness and humility are at the heart of the kingdom. That grace grows within our ordinary lives in ways that are rarely heroic, but always simple and satisfying. Not grandiose but available to everyone. And, I love this – that God’s kingdom is here – in the light that was already all around me – in the ordinary – in the little things of real life. I’ve recently reclaimed a little prayer song to underscore this new way of being.

If you want your dream to be – take your time – go slowly
Do few things but do them well – heartfelt work grows purely
If you want to live life free – take your time – go slowly
Do few things but do them well – heartfelt work grows purely

This little tune written by Donovan for Franco Zeffirelli’s movie about Saint Francis called, “Brother Sun, Sister Moon” keeps popping back into my consciousness and helping me to get focused. You see, at its heart is the experience Francis had after being wounded in the Crusades. For weeks he was delirious with fever and pain, slipping in and out of consciousness. When he finally regained a measure of clarity, he felt the urge to pray. Going into the small, run down chapel of San Damiano, Francis knelt before a Byzantine cross in quiet contemplation. At some point he sensed that Jesus was speaking to him from the Cross saying: Francis, rebuild my church. Who knows exactly why but Francis didn’t want to be complicated in responding to this request – so he took it literally. Stone by stone, he began to physically rebuild the collapsing chapel in San Damiano until it was restored to beauty: a chapel where the wounded, broken outcasts of his community could praise God in humility rather than feel judged in the main church in Assisi. This wee song celebrates the simplicity – the small is holy quality of Franciscan spirituality – and it speaks to my heart.

If you want your dream to be – take your time – go slowly
Do few things but do them well – heartfelt work grows purely
If you want to live life free – take your time – go slowly
Do few things but do them well – heartfelt work grows purely
Day by day, stone by stone, build your secret slowly
Day by day, you’ll grow too, you’ll know heaven’s glory
If you want you dream to be – take your time go slowly…
Do few things but do them well – heartfelt work grows purely

Ok, that’s the core of the parable’s theology: it is an invitation to discern God’s presence in the small, ordinary parts of our lives. It rejects our grandiose myths and invites us to simply grow in our small gardens and share that blessing. But I have come to believe that there is another part to this parable, too.

In the context of our contagion the parable’s nondual vision asks us to listen to what nature is trying to compassionately communicate with us and move beyond our either/or obsessions. Maybe seven years ago while I was still a local church pastor, our Sunday School curriculum included a five-week session called: The Season of Creation. Because I always felt jammed for time in those days, I didn’t pay much attention at first. But as the church program year started, and the Sunday School got into it, I had to get up to speed. In doing so, I learned that in 1989, the Ecumenical Patriarch of the Orthodox Church proclaimed September 1st to be an Orthodox Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation. Soon congregations in New Zealand, the UK, Canada, and Europe formed a consortium of churches to collaborate on the creation of a new liturgical season. From September 1st through the Feast Day of St. Francis on October 4 Christians throughout the world would try to reclaim the voice of God’s first word, creation itself, and respond with love in worship, study, and action. Pope Francis eventually embraced this in 2015 and now the Season of Creation is observed through thousands of local churches in all our denominations.

Working with the liturgies and study materials of the Season of Creation, I realized that I had never considered that the sea might truly be singing God’s praise, that the forest might be warning us about climate change, or that the creatures of the desert might be trying to tell us about their joys as well as their sorrows. In a word, I came up against my own anthropocentrism – my bias that placed humanity above all of nature – in the belief that only humans thought and spoke and had feelings. Every week during this new creation season, I had to listen to the water. Or the animals, or the mountains and deserts, the forests, rivers lakes, and trees. And slowly my awareness shifted as I came to trust that not only was ALL of creation speaking and praising God, but much of creation was also trying to communicate with humanity but we weren’t doing a very good job at listening. It was a deep shift in my consciousness, and I am still only a novice with a lot more to learn. For the past few years I have started to prayerfully listen to the spirituality of our seasons and learn from Mother Earth how to live in community with nature.

As I read through the Bible’s words this week about creation groaning like a woman in travail, about the Holy Spirit interceding for all of creation with sighs too deep for human words, and the kingdom of God in a mustard seed, I sat up and took notice. I had just come across an article by Timothy Seekings of the Gratefulness Network about the work of artists, monastics, and epidemiologists who believe nature is trying to communicate with us in a constructive manner through epidemics. I’ll post the whole article online but an overview begins with a recent documentary by artist James Bridle titled, “Se ti sabir,” an essay by Brother David Steindl-Rast called, ‘Spirituality as Common Sense,‘ and the work of David-Waltner Towes concerning the “language of epidemics.”

Artist James Bridle was fascinated that between the eleventh and the nineteenth centuries a lingua franca was created around the Mediterranean using a pidgin language to facilitate trade, travel, and communication between members of different nations. In this language, the word “sabir” – spelled S-A-B-I-R – meant “to know.” It was used as a question and a greeting where people would meet and ask: Sabir? Do you know lingua franca and can we speak together?” Bridle wonders if a new lingua franca might exist as artificial intelligence becomes increasingly sophisticated and we realize that other types of intelligences exist in nature, in plants, in animals and other ecological communities. As we come to grips empirically with the fact that humans possess multiple forms of knowledge within a living planet shared with other types of intelligences – and the idea that the mind is not an exclusively human feature is taking root – could a new lingua franca be possible within the totality of nature?

Brother David Steindl-Rast, a monk on the cutting edge of spirituality and science for 30 years, provides a tentative answer suggesting that common sense does not refer just to problem solving, but is more like the basic human senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. "These allow us to connect to the world around us – and are not exclusive to human beings. All life connects to the surrounding world through these common senses. Humans know this whenever we connect with animals, trees, or other parts of nature with awe, gratitude, or wonder. If this is so, is it possible for all of life itself to have a common language? We know that all life shares a common code: DNA and RNA. Is it possible for life to have a common language of the senses, not a language based on a system of semiotics, but based on a common sense, a language that we might understand in principle through feeling?" 

Cut to the work of Dr. David Waltner-Towes who has been studying the newly

emerging infectious diseases like MERS, SARS, and H5N1. He has shown how these are not random occurrences, but the consequences of human actions and inaction as well as the result of dominant social and economic structures. He believes these infectious outbreaks can be understood as “complex messages from the natural world” and points to the example of livestock. “The domestication of animals in human history brought with it zoonosis, the leaping of pathogens from other animal species to humankind. Most harmful diseases that we have faced throughout history originate from livestock. And among the diseases to emerge in recent decades, 70 percent are of animal origin. That’s one insight from human action.” (Seekings, p. 4)

Another stems from our inaction. “Once pathogens make the leap to humans, they encounter breeding grounds like modern, densely populated but socially alienated cities, in which healthcare is more about treating diseases than wellness. In 2008 the WHO determined that the main social determinant of health was social injustice, and still income gaps continue to expand, and unequal distribution of power, money, and resources persist.” Because our economic commitment is always to growth rather than sustenance, we have created a mass of marginalized poor people, isolated from access to everyday wellness care but essential worker cogs in our so-called service economy. He goes on to say: “As we push farther and farther into primary forests and protected areas, bringing humans, livestock, trade, and travel closer together we are creating the perfect storm that welcomes zoonotic passageways for pathogens to take up residence in the human species.”

New epidemics are therefore not freak occurrences that will simply go away a la Trump. They are the consequences of decisions, economic systems, “pressures, relationships, and structures that are innate to the modern global (economic) system of our modern lifestyles. And they are trying to tell us something. “Decades ago,” the Seekings article concludes, “ethnobotanist Terrence Mckenna stated that “nature is alive and talking to us and this is not a metaphor.” Waltner-Toews has now documented how this must be understood in relation to epidemics.

· If nature is alive and talking to us, it has been sending a lot of messages – and it is well past time to consider what life’s lingua franca, this common sense shared by living beings, is telling us. We must literally come our senses and begin to listen. Covid-19 is not a random problem, but a “complex message from nature that we have failed to perceive because we don’t understand the language.” Americans are pig-headed when it comes to learning the language of another: we want English only and GO USA! We’re equally stubborn when it comes to honoring science. But now is the time to become multilingual and “learn the lingua franca of our living planet.”

· Remember our Scriptures begin with a story that in the beginning God formed all creation – all living beings were formed from within the heart of that creation – and God cherished what God created and called it good. Then God formed man and woman in the divine image from out of that same earth that the rest of creation was formed, and God called them very, very good. God created life in balance with a place for every living being in a way that sharing by all meant scarcity for none. When we are out of balance our story tells us that ALL of creation groans like a woman in travail – the soil, the air, the water, the trees, the animals, the sea – and we ourselves.

Every day in the US another 70,000 people are being infected by the current contagion and over 14 million have been infected throughout God’s creation. I have come to believe that the tender, contemplative consciousness of Jesus is telling us to trust that the kingdom of God is like that mustard seed – and it is urging us to listen to what God’s creation is trying to communicate to us in this virus. We cannot thrive any longer with grandiose notions of power, American dreams that divide and conquer God’s children according to race, gender, and class. We cannot continue with cedar of Lebanon mythologies that deny our inter-connectedness with nature and every other living being. And we cannot exist any longer with just an America First lie that deny the wisdom of the cosmos.

· The mustard seed is telling us to get real. To get small. To trust our vulnerability and tenderness. For then the blessings of grace will be seen for we will have eyes to see and ears to hear. Our work is to keep on keeping on: keep on encouraging one another, keep on trusting the marriage of heaven and earth, the unity of science and spirit, tenderness, and justice for in this doing our part as the Lord requires.

· Of course, there are moments when we get tired of waiting. "Remember: God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. The Spirit will do our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. God’s Spirit knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love is being transformed into something good. Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ’s love for us? No way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing. None of this fazes us because Christ’s love is within us and God’s Spirit among us. That is why, like St. Paul, I’m absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love because that is how God structure creation." (Romans 8, The Message)

small is holy: sundays @ 9:55 am

There is a brilliant and challenging article online at the Gratefulness Network by

Peter Seekings entitled, "Learning the Language of Nature." It considers what creation, God's first word, is trying to tell anthropocentric humanity through the rise in epidemics and pandemics. I will be using the heart of it in tomorrow's online reflection. 

Check it out here: https://gratefulness.org/resource/learning-the-language-of-nature/. 

And join me if you can on Be Still and Know @ 

https://www.facebook.com/Be-Still-and-Know-913217865701531/

lay me down easy...

A midday pot of Scottish breakfast tea - with milk - hallelujah!  A small bit of

heaven has been restored unto me. Another First World problem to be sure, this prepping for GI tract tests. Neither the end of the creation but hardly one of its delights, the two day modest fast prior to the procedure is inconvenient and just... meh! Whatever. Consuming the dreaded extra strength purgative is no big deal either - these days it tastes tons better than its older cousin - and barely annoys our innards unlike it's vile predecessor. For me, the whole ordeal was truly no big deal except...

... no hot, loose tea brewed to perfection with sweet milk in the morning! Agony. Or should I say, disappointment? Damn it, a man has needs, right? Morning rituals! Time-tested ways of entering the day with a modicum of sanity and glee! That's what I found most upsetting about this time in purgatory: I cherish making a quiet entrance to the day, tentatively greeting creation and my loved ones silently before sipping ambrosia from my flowered ceramic pot. Then, as the haze within slowly burns off, I love finding myself surrounded by flowers, recognizing the precious, trusted face of the one dearest to my heart, and even scratching our mongrel Lucie's ever itchy backside. But without this - the taste as well as the timing - the day felt flat. Bothersome. The rush of caffeine is essential, I know, but so is hearing the roiling water in the kettle, inhaling the malty bouquet of dry tea leaves, prying off the top of my favorite canister emblazoned with Celtic knots and Gaelic colors, to say nothing of entering the day with the one I love in a whisper. All of this and more grounds me in the moment. It lightly leads me into an embodied sense that each day possesses the promise of small but delightful blessings.

All of this came to me while sitting in my hospital gown on a gurney awaiting the anesthesiologist who promised to wheel me away quickly. Quickly must be a relative term in a hospital, yes? Still, I have always been one who prefers to ease into the day rather than spring into it with zeal. Or be forced into the WC by an alarm clock. Morning chemistry classes were so easy to blow off in college. So, too, sung morning prayer. Forget vigils and lauds, I'm more of a terce kind of guy. A free and easy friar who loves being in a candle lit Sanctuary with incense, just not at the crack of dawn. We once drifted into York Minster Cathedral for sung evening prayer. Now that was sacred ground - and the visiting boy's choir added joy upon joy as their English chant circled the Gothic columns and rose towards the heavens. Like the late Kate Wolf used to sing, "Lay me down... easy." (Oh do I still love this song!)

After more forms and questions, the doctor of anesthesia told me the name of his drug of choice adding "It's a good one. Enjoy it." Dude! "You'll be surrounded by good people in a safe place," he quickly added and smiled through his plastic PPE face covering. (A later day Owsley or Ken Kesey I mused to myself?) Then one of the wee people, the actual anesthesia administrator, floated into the room announcing, "We're ready, sweet heart, ok?" "Who am I to interrupt the parade?" I thought and replied, "Let's go." And away we wooshed at a speed I could never have predicted. Her agility and grace inspired confidence and I found I was actually looking forward to the magic she was about to perform. Inserting a weird little tooth guard apparatus with a breathing hole to facilitate the endoscopy came next, then an oxygen mask followed by the words, "This will be nice sweet heart. Breathe deeply." I saw my surgeon suit up. I heard him say, "See you on the other side." And before I could fret about the double meaning of those words... I was waking up 23 minutes later in the recovery room.

On the table beside my bed was a written report of both ends of this adventure - pictures included - so I took the time to read what had just happened to me. Thanks be to God there was nothing cancerous. And while a small polyp had been removed, everything was in order, hardly different from 10 years before. I got the ok to dress. My surgeon came in to talk his report over with me - he is a doctor I really, really like and respect who closed by saying "see you in about three years, ok?" - and then I was in a wheel chair awaiting my ride home. The anesthesiologist was right: I was surrounded by good people AND the drug was pretty damn fine, too.

And then... tea. Terra firma. And whole wheat toast (I have to up my whole grain and high fiber intake.) And a 90 minute nap. My life is blessed. And privileged. And to those whom much has been given, much is required. Not as in noblesse oblige, but more like: this is my new commandment - love one another as I have loved you. As a servant. On your knees washing feet. In solidarity. With tender acts of earthy compassion and real social justice not empty platitudes. 

Letting all of this sink in, I prayed myself into Padraig O'Tuama's "On Being/Poetry Unbound" series: Raymond Antrobus - A Poem About When We're Disbelieved." The actual poem is entitled, "Miami Airport." O'Tuama - an Irish poet, theologian, peace activist and LGBTQA advocate - is the poet/theologian in residence at Krista Tippett's online poetry meditation series. I started listening-in while driving to and from my time in community with L'Arche Ottawa in January of this year. Each segment transformed my Subaru from a warm, safe SUV into a monastery on wheels. When the pandemic shut the border between Canada and the USA down, I quit listening. Now have returned. (Please take the time to listen in to this poem and O'Tuama's insights @ https://onbeing.org/programs/a-poem-about-when-were-disbelieved/ . You won't be sorry.) Halfway into this meditation, Padraig says: 

I think there’s a fundamental human experience about being believed.

And you can track into this by asking groups of people, “When have you been disbelieved?” And then make all the time in the day you have to listen to everything that unfolds from that. And so many people have stories of being disbelieved, of not being an authority in the story of your own life and having to be gently defensive with somebody who was aggressively questioning and finding the way to be ten times more magnanimous to somebody who has absolutely no interest in being kind towards you in the context of their questioning. And I have found it an opening question, with groups of people in group work in the context of conflict, over years, to say, “Can everybody here, as we gather together, tell a story of a time when you were disbelieved?” and then to think, what is the collective wisdom in the room about what that communicates to us.

Today I am so grateful to be alive. I didn't really think I would die today, but the thought crossed my mind more than ten times over the past few nights. So I am grateful to be alive at this moment in history, in this place, among this family, this house, this town, this crazy fucked-up country, this old and modestly healthy body and facing all of the terrifying possibilities and potentials this season holds. We all need a place and a space where, like Kate Wolf sang, we can lay down easy in safety, trust, respect, and even love. Krista and Padraig facilitate this on public radio. My offering happens on Face Book where I discover again and again that my greatest need is also paradoxically my greatest gift. Or as Frederick Buechner said more poetically: The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet. Time to get cranking on relearning Kate's tune...