a frost arrives as our souls seek consolation...

It looks as if our short growing season has ended: there was a frost while we were

in Brooklyn and the basil is dead and the tomatoes look pretty withered, too. I'm going to try that old New England gardener's trick of bringing the tomato stalks inside, hanging them upside down, and waiting for the fruit to ripen. It worked like gang busters last year and is worth a shot today as well. Upon returning, I quickly retrieved the undamaged plants where they now surround us in the sun room to rest in its warmth for the next seven months.

In the wetlands, the grapevines are currently bringing a lush maroon. The drought is contributing to the rapid arrival of deep browns as well while the golden rod struggles to share her contrast of saffron. All that's missing from perfection is sister aster's violet wonders - a sight that fills my heart with joy - but that will have to wait until next year. Somehow we missed finding wild asters to plant this spring so we'll just have to enjoy the blessings that have been given. Which is, it seems to me, both the essence and point of embodied prayer, yes? 

Listening this moring to Pádraig Ó Tuama's reflection on Patrick Kavanagh's earthy poem, "The One," I couldn't help but gaze upon the wisdom on display just beyond our deck. In its own autumn splendor, the wetlands pulsates in sync with the words the Irishman wrote:

Green, blue, yellow and red-
God is down in the swamps and marshes
Sensational as April and almost incred-
ible the flowering of our catharsis.
A humble scene in a backward place
Where no one important ever looked
The raving flowers looked up in the face
Of the One and the Endless, the Mind that has baulked
The profoundest of mortals. A primrose, a violet,
A violent wild iris- but mostly anonymous performers
Yet an important occasion as the Muse at her toilet
Prepared to inform the local farmers
That beautiful, beautiful, beautiful God
Was breathing His love by a cut-away bog.

Yesterday, the wise Diana Butler Bass wrote about the arc of American messianic fervor in both our politics and our religion. It was part of her personal response to the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg and the reactions her death is causing throughout the nation. Clearly, the Notorious RBG inspired hope for many. She was a righteous warrior for women's equality and a champion of integrity in her public and private life. Bass noted that Ginsberg's death has opened the door of dread for many: in a season saturated with anxiety and cruelty, a time where any hint of autonomy has been erased from our lives, many among us are heart sick. We counted on Ginsberg to hold back the tide of hatred, white supremacy, Christian triumphalism in our politics, and this regime's continued war on women. And now she is gone. What Bass then shared deserves an extended quote not only for its clarity, but also for its corrective insight:

In recent decades, American politics has turned increasingly messianic. Instead of politics being about compromise, the art of the possible, and enlarging freedom and equality, it has become about ideological purity, institutional takeovers, and charismatic saviors. Our nation is now less religious about religion, and more religious about politics. American politics has always had a religious tone - a substitute perhaps for having no state church. But its piety waxes and wanes. For most of the twentieth century, politics was largely secular, with vague references to being a “Judeo-Christian” nation. 

That changed around 1980, with the rise of the religious right and the election of Ronald Reagan. Fundamentalists invested messianic hope into the presidency, bringing evangelical fervor and their specific biblical hopes to the White House. Jesus might save us for heaven, but Reagan would save us from high taxes, feminism, and Communists - and he’d save millions and millions of unborn babies, too. The presidency took on a new mythology, including the power to control or destroy lives, with escalating pretensions to divinity, like an American king sitting at the right hand of God.

The influence of fundamentalist politics isn’t just about issues. It is also about leadership - and what we look for in leaders. Although Republicans and conservatives have long sought savior-politicians, liberals and progressives slowly embraced the messianic presidency as well - and now perhaps a messianic Senate and a messianic judiciary, too. In recent years, primaries and general elections resemble theological crusades or religious battles, almost a war between the gods, where losers are treated like captives or must be destroyed. (This is not a “both-sides-ism” thing, this is an observation.) We don’t just want decent leaders. We want leaders who will save us from an apocalypse and punish our enemies.

I share this in the context of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death because I fear we turned her into a savior. She was smart, bold, and heroic, and she was an increasingly frail woman whom we burdened with our fears. We needed her to live 45 more days. But death came for her - as it comes to all of us - at the most inopportune of times. Because, of course, none of us is a Messiah. She couldn’t be ours. 

Justice Ginsburg was a human being, an incredible woman of valor. And her passing can remind us that while there are no political saviors, we all can work to save the world. God alone saves. Yet, we, fragile humans that we are, do the work we are given to do - whether as lawyers or politicians or preachers or teachers or doctors or florists or writers or waiters or clerks. And we do our part for the common good. When we do what we are called to do well, wherever we are called to do it, with courage and grace, we contribute to the healing, the salvus (the word salvation comes from the Latin word “to heal”) of the world, what the Jewish tradition refers to as “repairing” the universe. God is the Savior, the Healer, the Great Physician, the Comforter. But we help save - as repairers of the breach, the bringers of peace and grace, the seekers of a more just world..

I am profoundly grateful for these words. They restore a measure of clarity to our

quest for mercy, justice, beauty and compassion in 21st century America. So much of our cultural/political anxiety is rooted in our misplaced messianism. Our desire for a more perfect union is not wrong, but our warped understanding of how it comes to pass is. In fact, it is debilitating for it deludes us with false promises that can never be reallized. A healthy spirituality celebrates that we are co-creators with the holy in repairing the breach. To which Bass writes in a manner like a recent reflections from Fr. Richard Rohr that now we must renew our commitment to nourishing gratitude within and among us.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was one of us. An extraordinary example of work well done, of standing in the gap between injustice and justice, and of dedication to the whole human family. Not a savior but a co-worker, a sister standing in a long line of courage. The temptation is to look for a king - or queen - when what we really need is the beloved community, each one doing his or her or their part in turn. Doing good work. Sometimes we are on the winning side; often we find ourselves in the dissent. And so? After this sad and shocking weekend, and knowing that many sad and shocking days lie ahead, I find myself making room for gratitude and remembering that I can - and must - do my part. Each night ask yourself a question before sleep: Where did I find gratitude today? One thing, two, perhaps three. Scribble the answer in a notebook. No dissertation, just a few words. Or gather a of couple friends in a gratitude group text - and share your daily gratitudes with them.

Let me add part of what Rohr wrote, too as it amplifies and deepens the blessings and clarity that Bass commends. Rohr writes that Psalm 62 is one source that grounds him in grace during these challenging times:

In God alone is my soul at rest.
God is the source of my hope.
In God I find shelter, my rock, and my safety.
Men are but a puff of wind,
Men who think themselves important are a delusion.
Put them on a scale,
They are gone in a puff of wind. (Psalm 62:5–9)

What could it mean to find rest like this in a world such as ours? Every day more and more people are facing the catastrophe of extreme weather. The neurotic news cycle is increasingly driven by a single narcissistic leader whose words and deeds incite hatred, sow discord, and amplify the daily chaos. The pandemic that seems to be returning in waves continues to wreak suffering and disorder with no end in sight, and there is no guarantee of the future in an economy designed to protect the rich and powerful at the expense of the poor and those subsisting at the margins of society.

It’s no wonder the mental and emotional health among a large portion of the American population is in tangible decline! We have wholesale abandoned any sense of truth, objectivity, science or religion in civil conversation; we now recognize we are living with the catastrophic results of several centuries of what philosophers call nihilism or post-modernism (nothing means anything, there are no universal patterns).

He goes on to ask that we learn to become "sentries at the door of our senses" in the months to come. Quoting the poet Yeats in "The Second Coming," Rohr gets it right by confessing that ours is a time when it feels like:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Somehow our occupation and vocation as believers in this sad time must be to first restore the Divine Center by holding it and fully occupying it ourselves. If contemplation means anything, it means that we can “safeguard that little piece of You, God,” as Etty Hillesum describes it. What other power do we have now? All else is tearing us apart, inside and out, no matter who wins the election or who is on the Supreme Court. We cannot abide in such a place for any length of time or it will become our prison.

God cannot abide with us in a place of fear.
God cannot abide with us in a place of ill will or hatred.
God cannot abide with us inside a nonstop volley of claim and counterclaim.
God cannot abide with us in an endless flow of online punditry and analysis.
God cannot speak inside of so much angry noise and conscious deceit.
God cannot be found when all sides are so far from “the Falconer.”
God cannot be born except in a womb of Love.
So offer God that womb.

Stand as a sentry at the door of your senses for these coming months, so “the blood-dimmed tide” cannot make its way into your soul... If you will allow, I recommend for your spiritual practice for the next four months that you impose a moratorium on exactly how much news you are subject to—hopefully not more than an hour a day of television, social media, internet news, magazine and newspaper commentary, and/or political discussions. It will only tear you apart and pull you into the dualistic world of opinion and counter-opinion, not Divine Truth, which is always found in a bigger place. Instead, I suggest that you use this time for some form of public service, volunteerism, mystical reading from the masters, prayer—or, preferably, all of the above. 

I was struck by how both Bass and Rohr realized they were being called by reality into the role of public pastor. I have been wrestling with this as well since the start of the pandemic. That is why I persist in my weekly live streaming on Face Book each Sunday morning. (Check it out @ https://www.facebook.com/Be-Still-and-Know-913217865701531) This strange invitation to articulate both comfort and strategic engagement in our broken culture has been complicated by lives shaped by quarantine in the pandemic. And yet even this has created a chance to include others beyond a small circle of friends given the necessity of virtual interaction. So let us move forward with grounded hearts and stable souls. As the great mystics of every tradition insist: in this we have nothing to lose and everything to gain.