THE FEASTS OF ALL SAINTS/ALL SOULS DAYS: November 1, 2020
Epistle: 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died. For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died. For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage one another with these words.
Gospel: Matthew 5:1-12
When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
For the word of God in Scripture, for the word of God within us, for the word of God among us: Thanks be to God.
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That’s Carrie Newcomer’s “All Saints Day.” She’s one of my favorite singer-songwriters and captures something of the mystery of this feast day and time of year as well as anyone. November seems to be a season of transitions – a month when the veil between life, death, and life beyond death is thin and porous – an occasion for learning how to let go on so many levels. “This is the season when the dance of surrender is obvious,” writes Sr. Joyce Rupp, “nature’s presentation of what it looks like to discover large spaces of emptiness where something beautiful once lived.”
As leaves fall, a precious emptiness appears… the naked beauty of the branches can be seen, the birds’ abandoned nests become visible… through these gaps mountain ridges become visible… and at night if you stand beneath a tree and gaze upward, stars now peer through the once full branches. This is autumn’s lesson: when certain things fall away there are other things that can be seen more clearly. (The Circle of Life, p. 167)
That’s certainly what I have been feeling all week as I walked around with my
head in the mist of autumn’s mysteries. The once vivid ambers out in our wetlands are now charcoal grey and brown. Saffron, rose, and apricot leaves cover the ground like a salad of stained-glass. Wedges of songbirds and geese dot the sky on their southward trek for the winter – and it snowed here for Halloween. Existentially, a realignment comparable to nature seems to be taking place within, too:
· My body’s been exhausted but my mind’s been working overtime. My soul feels grounded in the grace of God’s love yet part of me continues to be troubled about the upcoming election.
· And in ways I can barely comprehend I’ve perceived all around and within me the sweet albeit unsettling presence of precious family and friends who have already gone home to the Lord: they’ve been in my dreams, on my FB page, in my songs – and they seem to want me to know that the road ahead of me is a LOT shorter than the one behind.
I sensed this while reading the reviews and interviews of my man Bruce Springsteen on the release of what many say is his best recording in 20 years – but may be his last, too. A double-whammy of sorrow and gratitude hit me upon word that our neighbor, Arlo Guthrie, is retiring from music-making after a series of small strokes. I’ve been going to Arlo concerts with my family for over 40 years – and now that he realizes it’s time to hang up his GONE FISHIN’ sign (an awareness I know well and fully endorse) – there’s still a brooding emptiness in the place that his beautiful songs and wit once filled.
And then last Sunday night, after sharing my thoughts with you about All Hallows’ Eve, All Saints and Souls Days, a picture popped up on Face Book of me signing with my family on the evening of my father’s memorial service six years ago to the day. It recalled the Tom Waits’ tune I played that day in his honor, “Hold On.” When I tried to play it again later that night, I was overwhelmed with a rush of big feelings and tears…
… they were all good, mind you, but they so took me by surprise as they swirled up from out of no-where that I had to call it quits with the music. That night my Dad showed up in my dreams – my two sisters and mother who have all passed on, too – as well as a few guest appearances by St. Lou Reed, Michael Daniels, and three or four others who’ve shared love with me over the years. It was uncanny – I woke up and sat with a host of competing feelings and memories in the darkness – as they encouraged me to take stock of the time that still remains. And who do you think popped up next day on my FB page? Lou Reed – whom I consider a saint despite and maybe because of the life he lived – and for the first time since his death knocked me on my ass 7 years ago I noticed that St. Lou died just one year to the day before my father’s passing.
I hadn’t connected those dots before, but I did last week – and it was one of those aha epiphanies – that helped me make a little more sense of my feelings. Now, I don’t want you to worry that I’m going to get all wonky and weird on you, ok? I simply sensed a connection that had always been there and smiled to myself knowing that coincidences are one of the ways God remains anonymous. It was like now that I was paying more attention, I had eyes to see and ears to hear what my family, my musical mentors, and my spiritual guides needed me to know: namely, that like everyone else, my time was finite – so why not make the most of what remains this side of the veil.? Kabir, the 15th century Indian mystic, got it so right when he said: “If you don’t break your ropes while you’re alive, do you think ghosts will do it after? The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic just because the body is rotten – is all fantasy. What is found now is found then. If you find nothing now, you will simply end up with an apartment in the City of Death. But if you make love with the divine now, in the next life you will have the face of satisfied desire!”
Saints – and those within that great cloud of witnesses who continue to love and pray for us – come into our lives to help us become whole, holy, and fully human. Like Gertrud Mueller-Nelson wrote: “Saints were not perfect… they simply lived their fate with creativity and participated in the evolution of human consciousness and compassion so that we, too might live life more authentic-ally.” The ancient Celtic Church and their offspring in the Celtic spirituality renewal teach that nature does much the same thing as our saints by awakening us to the sacrament of the seasons.
Autumn, you see, will not stay with us forever (any more than summer or spring.) It will soon fall into the womb of winter. In that dark resting place, another dimension of depth will be revealed (if we have eyes to see) because each season’s entrance and departure is part of the gracious turning of the circle of life. Autumn will return to the land and to our lives at just the right time – for the wheel keeps turning. (Rupp, p. 169)
For the past 15 years I’ve been learning and listening to the Celtic way of wisdom and believe there are three insights germane to our celebration of All Saints/All Souls day. So, before considering a bit of today’s Scripture through their lens, I want to highlight for you the Trinitarian nature of Celtic vision, their sacramental view of the world, and their commitment to community and relational religion rather than simply an individual’s quest for private salvation.
There is broad unanimity among those following this path that wisdom, religion, politics, nature, and the spiritual journey are all rooted in what the Rev. Dr. Cynthia Bourgeault calls the law of the three. We’ve simplified this by naming God “Father, Son and Holy Spirit” or “Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer.” And the synergy of the holy in community is one of our most important if misunderstood charisms. But the law of the three cuts deeper than any one faith tradition and has been celebrated by our Druid Celtic ancestors as well as mystical Sufis, those honoring the practices of Zen Buddhism, and even classical Marxists!
Bourgeault believes that the Holy Trinity describes the sacred process of how the
loving Word of God becomes flesh in everyday human experience. It is the interweaving, she says, of affirmation, denial, and reconciliation. This is similar but less mechanical than the insights of Marxist theory which posits history to be the evolution of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. For us the holy three sways beyond involuntary movement, acting more like a dance that is always situationally discerned, and always aching for reconciliation rather than conflict. Fr. Richard Rohr writes that: Solutions to impasses or sticking points generally emerge by learning how to spot and mediate the third force – reconciliation – which is present in every situation but generally in a hidden and mysterious manner. By way of explanation, Rohr adds:
Consider the seed, as Jesus said: unless it falls into the ground and dies, it remains a single seed. If this seed does fall into the ground, it enters a sacred transformative process. Seed, the first or “affirming” force, meets ground, the second or “denying” force (and at that, it must be moist
ground, water being its most critical first component). But even in this encounter, nothing will happen until sunlight, the third or “reconciling” force, enters the equation. Then together the three generate a sprout, which is the actualization of the possibility latent in the seed and a whole new “field” of possibility.
Celtic Christianity is saturated with hymns and practices dedicated to incarnating the Three in One and the One in Three. We insist that God, who is love, is the embodiment of community – and all authentic community flows outward into the world to bathe it in blessings – so one Celtic affirmation from the Iona Community says: “We affirm that we are made in God’s image, befriended by Christ and empowered by the Spirit; with people everywhere we affirm God’s goodness at the heart of humanity and nature that is planted more deeply than all that is wrong; and with creation we celebrate the miracle and wonder of life, the unfolding purposes of God, and our participation in them as we live and move and have our being.”
Whether it’s the shamrock or the Celtic knots adorning the Cross that we’ve inherited from our pre-Christian spiritual mentors: Trinitarian love is foundational to Celtic spirituality. The law of the three rules. That’s first. Second is a that this spirituality is sacramental rather than purely cerebral. Our sisters and brothers in the Northumbria Community put it like this:
All around us and within us - yet it's only at times we notice
It's real as rain, and soft as stardust –
we know deep down what no one told us
Can't you feel it ever closer? We breathe it in and then exhale
We touch both sides and now eternal standing closer to the veil
Now is just a moving image - not a ribbon, a start or end
There's a bird, a hidden singer that calls and listens and calls again…
Centered down and moving outward sometimes almost too sweet to bear
There are endless ways to reach home
just keep pm walking I'll meet you there…
There's a blurring of the borders and I swear that I heard voices
Every act of simple kindness calls the kingdom down and all around us…
+ That’s Carrie Newcomer’s “All Saints Day.” She’s one of my favorite singer-songwriters and captures something of the mystery of this feast day and time of year as well as anyone. November seems to be a season of transitions – a month when the veil between life, death, and life beyond death is thin and porous – an occasion for learning how to let go on so many levels. “This is the season when the dance of surrender is obvious,” writes Sr. Joyce Rupp, “nature’s presentation of what it looks like to discover large spaces of emptiness where something beautiful once lived.”
As leaves fall, a precious emptiness appears… the naked beauty of the branches can be seen, the birds’ abandoned nests become visible… through these gaps mountain ridges become visible… and at night if you stand beneath a tree and gaze upward, stars now peer through the once full branches. This is autumn’s lesson: when certain things fall away there are other things that can be seen more clearly. (The Circle of Life, p. 167)
That’s certainly what I have been feeling all week as I walked around with my
· My body’s been exhausted but my mind’s been working overtime. My soul feels grounded in the grace of God’s love yet part of me continues to be troubled about the upcoming election.
· And in ways I can barely comprehend I’ve perceived all around and within me the sweet albeit unsettling presence of precious family and friends who have already gone home to the Lord: they’ve been in my dreams, on my FB page, in my songs – and they seem to want me to know that the road ahead of me is a LOT shorter than the one behind.
I sensed this while reading the reviews and interviews of my man Bruce Springsteen on the release of what many say is his best recording in 20 years – but may be his last, too. A double-whammy of sorrow and gratitude hit me upon word that our neighbor, Arlo Guthrie, is retiring from music-making after a series of small strokes. I’ve been going to Arlo concerts with my family for over 40 years – and now that he realizes it’s time to hang up his GONE FISHIN’ sign (an awareness I know well and fully endorse) – there’s still a brooding emptiness in the place that his beautiful songs and wit once filled.
And then last Sunday night, after sharing my thoughts with you about All Hallows’ Eve, All Saints and Souls Days, a picture popped up on Face Book of me signing with my family on the evening of my father’s memorial service six years ago to the day. It recalled the Tom Waits’ tune I played that day in his honor, “Hold On.” When I tried to play it again later that night, I was overwhelmed with a rush of big feelings and tears…
… they were all good, mind you, but they so took me by surprise as they swirled up from out of no-where that I had to call it quits with the music. That night my Dad showed up in my dreams – my two sisters and mother who have all passed on, too – as well as a few guest appearances by St. Lou Reed, Michael Daniels, and three or four others who’ve shared love with me over the years. It was uncanny – I woke up and sat with a host of competing feelings and memories in the darkness – as they encouraged me to take stock of the time that still remains. And who do you think popped up next day on my FB page? Lou Reed – whom I consider a saint despite and maybe because of the life he lived – and for the first time since his death knocked me on my ass 7 years ago I noticed that St. Lou died just one year to the day before my father’s passing.
Saints – and those within that great cloud of witnesses who continue to love and pray for us – come into our lives to help us become whole, holy, and fully human. Like Gertrud Mueller-Nelson wrote: “Saints were not perfect… they simply lived their fate with creativity and participated in the evolution of human consciousness and compassion so that we, too might live life more authentic-ally.” The ancient Celtic Church and their offspring in the Celtic spirituality renewal teach that nature does much the same thing as our saints by awakening us to the sacrament of the seasons.
Autumn, you see, will not stay with us forever (any more than summer or spring.) It will soon fall into the womb of winter. In that dark resting place, another dimension of depth will be revealed (if we have eyes to see) because each season’s entrance and departure is part of the gracious turning of the circle of life. Autumn will return to the land and to our lives at just the right time – for the wheel keeps turning. (Rupp, p. 169)
For the past 15 years I’ve been learning and listening to the Celtic way of wisdom and believe there are three insights germane to our celebration of All Saints/All Souls day. So, before considering a bit of today’s Scripture through their lens, I want to highlight for you the Trinitarian nature of Celtic vision, their sacramental view of the world, and their commitment to community and relational religion rather than simply an individual’s quest for private salvation.
There is broad unanimity among those following this path that wisdom, religion, politics, nature, and the spiritual journey are all rooted in what the Rev. Dr. Cynthia Bourgeault calls the law of the three. We’ve simplified this by naming God “Father, Son and Holy Spirit” or “Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer.” And the synergy of the holy in community is one of our most important if misunderstood charisms. But the law of the three cuts deeper than any one faith tradition and has been celebrated by our Druid Celtic ancestors as well as mystical Sufis, those honoring the practices of Zen Buddhism, and even classical Marxists!
Bourgeault believes that the Holy Trinity describes the sacred process of how the
Consider the seed, as Jesus said: unless it falls into the ground and dies, it remains a single seed. If this seed does fall into the ground, it enters a sacred transformative process. Seed, the first or “affirming” force, meets ground, the second or “denying” force (and at that, it must be moist
ground, water being its most critical first component). But even in this encounter, nothing will happen until sunlight, the third or “reconciling” force, enters the equation. Then together the three generate a sprout, which is the actualization of the possibility latent in the seed and a whole new “field” of possibility.
Celtic Christianity is saturated with hymns and practices dedicated to incarnating the Three in One and the One in Three. We insist that God, who is love, is the embodiment of community – and all authentic community flows outward into the world to bathe it in blessings – so one Celtic affirmation from the Iona Community says: “We affirm that we are made in God’s image, befriended by Christ and empowered by the Spirit; with people everywhere we affirm God’s goodness at the heart of humanity and nature that is planted more deeply than all that is wrong; and with creation we celebrate the miracle and wonder of life, the unfolding purposes of God, and our participation in them as we live and move and have our being.”
Whether it’s the shamrock or the Celtic knots adorning the Cross that we’ve inherited from our pre-Christian spiritual mentors: Trinitarian love is foundational to Celtic spirituality. The law of the three rules. That’s first. Second is a that this spirituality is sacramental rather than purely cerebral. Our sisters and brothers in the Northumbria Community put it like this:
To live in a sacramental way is to say nothing is secular because everything is sacred and nothing existing outside of God’s love and grace. It is the conviction that all that is ordinary is extraordinary and all that is earthy has been baptized by heaven.” Esther De Waal, an Anglican scholar in the recovery of Celtic wisdom, put it well: “The Celtic approach to God opens up a world in which nothing is too common to be exalted and nothing is so exalted that it cannot be made common.’ They believed that the presence of God infused daily life and thus transforms it, so that at any moment, any object, any job of work, can become a place for encounter with God. In everyday happenings and ordinary ways, we have prayers for getting up, lighting the fire, getting dressed, milking the cow etc.
Much like our cousins in Judaism, the Celtic path crafted prayers covering all the quotidian mysteries of baking, cleaning, farm chores, loving making, and more. I rather like the way the poet, William Butler Yeats, playfully presents this in his poem, “Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop.”
Like Leonard Cohen’s masterpiece, “Anthem,” Celtic spirituality shouts: ring the bells that still can ring, forget your perfect offering, there’s a crack, a crack in everything – that’s how the light gets in. We see God in everything – including nature – and strive to find reverence for every iota within God’s creation. In Western civilization, Celtic spirituality is the font of eco-justice theology. Small wonder, then, that this way of wisdom is also radically relational – that’s my third insight – noting that even Celtic monasteries were all about serving the wider community by welcoming IN the stranger, including women and men inside the cloister, preserving the intellectual writings of both the mystical Muslims alongside Aristotle while creating the Book of Kells, and honoring lay as well as ordained folk within the work of worship and compassion.
Much like St. Francis some one thousand years later, the early Celtic Church insisted upon preaching the gospel everywhere but only using words when necessary. It was a way of being holy grounded in reality. It’s not that Celtic spirituality was anti-intellectual; rather they rejected the Western church’s obsession with gnosis – pure knowledge as arrogant elitism - and favor ed acsesis – the practice of discovering holiness in community. In relationships they crafted a spirituality that was more “do as I do” than the “do as I say” style of the priesthood. The once Irish priest become lay poet and mentor, the late John O’Donohue, spoke of this path as anam cara – soul friend – a wise, equal partner on a shared pilgrimage rather than a spiritual director as elite guide. I think he captures this brilliantly in his poem: “Courage.”
Three practices – three spiritual commitments – three ways for moving within the world that helps us discern truth, direction, meaning, and purpose in real life: the law of the three, sacramentality, and relational religion. More than many, I have found those practicing Celtic spirituality to grasp more clearly what Jesus was getting at in the Sermon on the Mount – and especially the Beatitudes which are the appointed texts today for All Saints Day – than many others. Those far wiser than I have written that over time Christian theologians have named 36 discrete interpretations of the Sermon on the Mount.
I won’t even try to articulate them because some are so obscure as to be
offensive; while others are so dumbed-down as to be scandalous. At some level, we know these words of Jesus are the quintessence of his wisdom way even when we’re perplexed. So, let me offer two clues that might make sense in your pursuit of compassion and inner peace this week that have been shaped by the Celtic insights I spoke of earlier.
The first has to do with the word blessed: blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the meek and those who hunger and thirst after righteousness. Blessed is how the Greek makarios has been translated into English. And this isn’t wrong, just too small. Jesus is describing a way of wisdom, the practice of nourishing serenity within and compasssion without – so a better rendering might say: “How happy you would be if…” IF you were poor in spirit, IF you were meek, and all the rest. We might re-phrase this as: how at peace you would be “if you put your trust in God rather than in possessions or symbols of status or security.” (Fr. Thomas Keating)
This insight isn’t only about personal feelings – although that is part of a blessing – nor is it just about DOING something to control our outer environment. Rather, this is about experiencing bless-ing by living into God’s presence is in all of life – including those hard things and places that hurt us. Think political chaos. Poverty. Race and gender violence. In each of the beatitudes Jesus is saying: God’s peace will elude you so long as you obsess over what is missing outside of you. Fr. Thomas Keating writes: “The experience of being at peace in the face of destitution, poverty, and affliction is the fruit of accepting what is. By accepting reality (like the Celts) we are free of our predetermined demands of what should be ours. This isn’t passive, it is receptive, finding out where God is already bringing presence and comfort to us in what is real.”
I might sound like a broken record, but this is precisely what the Serenity Prayer promises: peace in what cannot be changed, courage in what must be challenged, and the wisdom to know one from the other. The abiding promise of Christ’s blessing is: consider “how happy and at rest you would be if you did not want to control every situation, other people or even your own life – if you possessed the freedom to accept insults and injustice without being blown away” or devastated.” (Keating, Invitation to Love, p.106) This is the first clue I have about the Sermon on the Mount.
And the second is this: the incarnational, sacramental way to open our hearts to this blessing is acceptance: coming to terms with real people and circumstances in community without needing to change them. Traditionally, the path to making peace with reality involves “upsetting our habits of eating, sleeping, being caressed, and having our bodily needs promptly serviced.” That is, when we practice interrupting our habitual way of living, we discover that we can find equanimity even in hardship. That’s why there are spiritual vigils as well as fasting and simplifying our lifestyle. It is a way to practice letting go – relinquishing our needs and addictions – for a short time so that we realize it can be done. Inner rest IS possible. It takes practice and time. But when the dance of surrender is shared incrementally, we see that just as autumn and winter move into spring, so too can hardship lead us into peace.
Additionally, people of faith usually practice giving up trying to control others in… community. Being with those who sometimes drive us crazy – or confound, unsettle, or simply ask us to pay attention – is where we learn to accept and even love others just as they are. It may only be for two minutes at a time, but the focus is a love that replaces fear or resentment. Back when I was doing training at the Hazelden Clinic in MN, one of the instructors said: “If you come from alcoholic parents (like I did) they always want to control you – and when you are around them you’ll likely slip back into all the unhealthy ways of being you learned as a child. So, it is up to you to pull the plug on the disease by only staying with them for as long as there is love. If that means getting up and leaving after just five minutes – that’s what you must do.” When my mom and dad were alive that meant two things that I slowly made a difference: one was we couldn’t stay in the same house with them – we had to make other arrangements during visits for safety and sanity – and the other was we had to get back on the road no later than 48 hours after showing up. Anything more became toxic.
And it made all the difference in the world. I could be loving and at peace with them – eventually for up to 36 hours at a pop – and they learned how to back off just a little, too. Not a lot. They were still their frustrating, beautiful, broken and loving selves when they died. But it was enough for a little love to grow in a a healthy way for us all – and that was wonderful. Unlike the desert fathers and mothers of the fourth century the early Celtic monasteries made a point of going out beyond the walls of the cloister to feed the hungry, visit the lonely, care for the sick, and befriend those in prison. They gave shape and form to what we now call the corporeal and spiritual works of mercy.
Today, in our essential solitude, it is much more complicated to practice letting go
in community, right? Talk about the upside-down practices of Christ’s wisdom! So, we must find new ways – novel and creative ways – to connect with others. This is one forum – there are many others, too. I have found it essential nearly every week to stay connected with my friends at L’Arche Ottawa. Every Friday I am committed to being part of our Zoom prayers and bring some songs to the community – and sometimes a homily – because simply connected helps me practice letting go. It reminds what’s really important and what is just my own junk! Same with joining the Iona Community many days for morning prayer.
Saints are formed over time by practicing letting go and sharing our gifts in community with love. God is saying this to us in nature right now as she does the dance of surrender. If you don’t have another community to connect with let me suggest that you join with me for a Celtic Advent pilgrimage of 40 days. Before the 7th century when Rome brought the Celtic Church under strict control, their Advent lasted for 40 days. It mirrored Lent. So, I am going to try to live into a simple Advent discipline starting on November 15th and running through Epiphany on January 6th. It will be a time of shared prayer, candle lighting and commitment to hold one another prayerfully in God’s love. If you want to explore this, I invite you to join me and I will share some written resources with you, ok?
Now just three days before the most important election in our time – in the midst of this damnable contagion that is claimed 100,000 new people on Friday of last week alone and as our sisters and brothers in the Black Lives Matter movement stand fast against our systematic violence against black and brown men, women and children – holding one another in prayer, lighting candles and focusing on Advent may not seem like enough. In a time like our own, why the hell would I suggest such a thing? Well, one of our saints, author C.S. Lewis put it like this in a sermon he gave to the Oxford University community at the start of WWII. In the fall of 1939, in the chapel of St. Mary the Virgin, Lewis addressed the question of why bother with academic study, the arts, and even prayer during a war? When human life is SO vulnerable – and time is so precious – why explore the higher goods of the soul given the fierce urgency of NOW? Here’s how St. Clive Staples Lewis put it then – and I wonder if you will find that it rings as true to you as it does to me right now:
I think it is important to try to see the present calamity in a true perspective. The war creates absolutely no permanent human situation; it simply exaggerates the permanent human situation so that we can no longer ignore it. Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice. Human culture has always had to live under the shadow of something infinitely more important than itself. If we had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until we were secure, the search would never have begun.
You and I have lived through a moment in culture when ALL things of beauty, spirituality, and grace have been written out of our public budgets as incidental and unnecessary. So too with our encounters with silence: there is hardly a place free from some type of noise, commercial, or mood music. Even pump-it-yourself gas stations and taxi cabs now have TV screens blasting tidbits of pop culture minutia at us. Noise, business bottom lines, and busyness became our new normal – along with gun violence and crimes against women – to which pandemic exhaustion must now be added to the mix. St. Clive continues saying:
We are mistaken when we compare war with “normal life.” Life has never been normal. Even those periods which we think most tranquil, like the nineteenth century, turn out, on closer inspection, to be full of crises, alarms, difficulties, emergencies. Plausible reasons have never been lacking for putting off all merely cultural (or spiritual) activities until some imminent danger has been averted or some crying injustice put right. For humanity long ago chose to neglect those plausible reasons. They wanted knowledge and beauty now and would not wait for the suitable moment that never comes. So, what is exaggerated now? Our perception of the importance of death. War changes our perspective by bringing what is potentially very far from us potentially very close to us; so, does a pandemic. But the relative proximity of a thing does not radically change its nature. War and disease do not change whether we are going to die; they only change when we might die.
This moment in time, in all its challenge and complexity, gives us eyes to see, ears to hear, and hearts to feel what is ULTIMATELY true: we are nearly always just moments away from death. Our saints knew this and found ways to both cherish life and share consolation with others so that within the brokenness there was also blessing. Listening to them, learning from them opens us to communion with all in that great cloud of witnesses who have gone before us in ways that fortify love for one another in the real world.
St. Brigid of Kildare, the OTHER patron saint of Ireland used to put it like this: Let me seek you, Christ Jesus, for you show us how to bring harmony out of conflict, light to the darkness, and hope to the downcast. Your mantle of peace can calm those who are trouble and lead us to the path of serenity in our hearts and in our world.
In whatever time remains, in whatever way I can, that is where I want to give myself, my energy, my time, trust, resources, and love. Perhaps this resonates with you, too. And perhaps we might sojourn together… let’s pray in preparation for our time of Eucharist…
I met the Bishop on the road and much said he and I.
Those breasts are flat and fallen now, those veins must soon be dry;
Live in a heavenly mansion, not in some foul sty.'
Fair and foul are near of kin, and fair needs foul,' I cried.
My friends are gone, but that's a truth nor grave nor bed denied,
Learned in bodily lowliness and in the heart's pride.
A woman can be proud and stiff when on love intent;
But Love has pitched his mansion in the place of excrement;
For nothing can be sole or whole that has not been rent.’
Much like St. Francis some one thousand years later, the early Celtic Church insisted upon preaching the gospel everywhere but only using words when necessary. It was a way of being holy grounded in reality. It’s not that Celtic spirituality was anti-intellectual; rather they rejected the Western church’s obsession with gnosis – pure knowledge as arrogant elitism - and favor ed acsesis – the practice of discovering holiness in community. In relationships they crafted a spirituality that was more “do as I do” than the “do as I say” style of the priesthood. The once Irish priest become lay poet and mentor, the late John O’Donohue, spoke of this path as anam cara – soul friend – a wise, equal partner on a shared pilgrimage rather than a spiritual director as elite guide. I think he captures this brilliantly in his poem: “Courage.”
When the light around you lessens and your thoughts darken until
Your body feels fear turn cold as a stone inside,
When you find yourself bereft of any belief in yourself
And all you unknowingly leaned on has fallen,
When one voice commands your whole heart,
And it is raven dark,
Steady yourself and see that it is your own thinking
that darkens your world.
Search and you will find a diamond-thought of light,
Know that you are not alone, and that this darkness has purpose;
Gradually it will school your eyes to find the one gift your life requires
Hidden within this night-corner.
Invoke the learning of every suffering you have suffered.
Close your eyes. Gather all the kindling about your heart
To create one spark that is all you need to nourish the flame
That will cleanse the dark of its weight of festered fear.
A new confidence will come alive to urge you towards higher ground
Where your imagination will learn to engage difficulty as its most rewarding threshold
Three practices – three spiritual commitments – three ways for moving within the world that helps us discern truth, direction, meaning, and purpose in real life: the law of the three, sacramentality, and relational religion. More than many, I have found those practicing Celtic spirituality to grasp more clearly what Jesus was getting at in the Sermon on the Mount – and especially the Beatitudes which are the appointed texts today for All Saints Day – than many others. Those far wiser than I have written that over time Christian theologians have named 36 discrete interpretations of the Sermon on the Mount.
I won’t even try to articulate them because some are so obscure as to be
The first has to do with the word blessed: blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the meek and those who hunger and thirst after righteousness. Blessed is how the Greek makarios has been translated into English. And this isn’t wrong, just too small. Jesus is describing a way of wisdom, the practice of nourishing serenity within and compasssion without – so a better rendering might say: “How happy you would be if…” IF you were poor in spirit, IF you were meek, and all the rest. We might re-phrase this as: how at peace you would be “if you put your trust in God rather than in possessions or symbols of status or security.” (Fr. Thomas Keating)
This insight isn’t only about personal feelings – although that is part of a blessing – nor is it just about DOING something to control our outer environment. Rather, this is about experiencing bless-ing by living into God’s presence is in all of life – including those hard things and places that hurt us. Think political chaos. Poverty. Race and gender violence. In each of the beatitudes Jesus is saying: God’s peace will elude you so long as you obsess over what is missing outside of you. Fr. Thomas Keating writes: “The experience of being at peace in the face of destitution, poverty, and affliction is the fruit of accepting what is. By accepting reality (like the Celts) we are free of our predetermined demands of what should be ours. This isn’t passive, it is receptive, finding out where God is already bringing presence and comfort to us in what is real.”
And the second is this: the incarnational, sacramental way to open our hearts to this blessing is acceptance: coming to terms with real people and circumstances in community without needing to change them. Traditionally, the path to making peace with reality involves “upsetting our habits of eating, sleeping, being caressed, and having our bodily needs promptly serviced.” That is, when we practice interrupting our habitual way of living, we discover that we can find equanimity even in hardship. That’s why there are spiritual vigils as well as fasting and simplifying our lifestyle. It is a way to practice letting go – relinquishing our needs and addictions – for a short time so that we realize it can be done. Inner rest IS possible. It takes practice and time. But when the dance of surrender is shared incrementally, we see that just as autumn and winter move into spring, so too can hardship lead us into peace.
Additionally, people of faith usually practice giving up trying to control others in… community. Being with those who sometimes drive us crazy – or confound, unsettle, or simply ask us to pay attention – is where we learn to accept and even love others just as they are. It may only be for two minutes at a time, but the focus is a love that replaces fear or resentment. Back when I was doing training at the Hazelden Clinic in MN, one of the instructors said: “If you come from alcoholic parents (like I did) they always want to control you – and when you are around them you’ll likely slip back into all the unhealthy ways of being you learned as a child. So, it is up to you to pull the plug on the disease by only staying with them for as long as there is love. If that means getting up and leaving after just five minutes – that’s what you must do.” When my mom and dad were alive that meant two things that I slowly made a difference: one was we couldn’t stay in the same house with them – we had to make other arrangements during visits for safety and sanity – and the other was we had to get back on the road no later than 48 hours after showing up. Anything more became toxic.
And it made all the difference in the world. I could be loving and at peace with them – eventually for up to 36 hours at a pop – and they learned how to back off just a little, too. Not a lot. They were still their frustrating, beautiful, broken and loving selves when they died. But it was enough for a little love to grow in a a healthy way for us all – and that was wonderful. Unlike the desert fathers and mothers of the fourth century the early Celtic monasteries made a point of going out beyond the walls of the cloister to feed the hungry, visit the lonely, care for the sick, and befriend those in prison. They gave shape and form to what we now call the corporeal and spiritual works of mercy.
Today, in our essential solitude, it is much more complicated to practice letting go
Saints are formed over time by practicing letting go and sharing our gifts in community with love. God is saying this to us in nature right now as she does the dance of surrender. If you don’t have another community to connect with let me suggest that you join with me for a Celtic Advent pilgrimage of 40 days. Before the 7th century when Rome brought the Celtic Church under strict control, their Advent lasted for 40 days. It mirrored Lent. So, I am going to try to live into a simple Advent discipline starting on November 15th and running through Epiphany on January 6th. It will be a time of shared prayer, candle lighting and commitment to hold one another prayerfully in God’s love. If you want to explore this, I invite you to join me and I will share some written resources with you, ok?
Now just three days before the most important election in our time – in the midst of this damnable contagion that is claimed 100,000 new people on Friday of last week alone and as our sisters and brothers in the Black Lives Matter movement stand fast against our systematic violence against black and brown men, women and children – holding one another in prayer, lighting candles and focusing on Advent may not seem like enough. In a time like our own, why the hell would I suggest such a thing? Well, one of our saints, author C.S. Lewis put it like this in a sermon he gave to the Oxford University community at the start of WWII. In the fall of 1939, in the chapel of St. Mary the Virgin, Lewis addressed the question of why bother with academic study, the arts, and even prayer during a war? When human life is SO vulnerable – and time is so precious – why explore the higher goods of the soul given the fierce urgency of NOW? Here’s how St. Clive Staples Lewis put it then – and I wonder if you will find that it rings as true to you as it does to me right now:
I think it is important to try to see the present calamity in a true perspective. The war creates absolutely no permanent human situation; it simply exaggerates the permanent human situation so that we can no longer ignore it. Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice. Human culture has always had to live under the shadow of something infinitely more important than itself. If we had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until we were secure, the search would never have begun.
You and I have lived through a moment in culture when ALL things of beauty, spirituality, and grace have been written out of our public budgets as incidental and unnecessary. So too with our encounters with silence: there is hardly a place free from some type of noise, commercial, or mood music. Even pump-it-yourself gas stations and taxi cabs now have TV screens blasting tidbits of pop culture minutia at us. Noise, business bottom lines, and busyness became our new normal – along with gun violence and crimes against women – to which pandemic exhaustion must now be added to the mix. St. Clive continues saying:
We are mistaken when we compare war with “normal life.” Life has never been normal. Even those periods which we think most tranquil, like the nineteenth century, turn out, on closer inspection, to be full of crises, alarms, difficulties, emergencies. Plausible reasons have never been lacking for putting off all merely cultural (or spiritual) activities until some imminent danger has been averted or some crying injustice put right. For humanity long ago chose to neglect those plausible reasons. They wanted knowledge and beauty now and would not wait for the suitable moment that never comes. So, what is exaggerated now? Our perception of the importance of death. War changes our perspective by bringing what is potentially very far from us potentially very close to us; so, does a pandemic. But the relative proximity of a thing does not radically change its nature. War and disease do not change whether we are going to die; they only change when we might die.
This moment in time, in all its challenge and complexity, gives us eyes to see, ears to hear, and hearts to feel what is ULTIMATELY true: we are nearly always just moments away from death. Our saints knew this and found ways to both cherish life and share consolation with others so that within the brokenness there was also blessing. Listening to them, learning from them opens us to communion with all in that great cloud of witnesses who have gone before us in ways that fortify love for one another in the real world.
St. Brigid of Kildare, the OTHER patron saint of Ireland used to put it like this: Let me seek you, Christ Jesus, for you show us how to bring harmony out of conflict, light to the darkness, and hope to the downcast. Your mantle of peace can calm those who are trouble and lead us to the path of serenity in our hearts and in our world.
In whatever time remains, in whatever way I can, that is where I want to give myself, my energy, my time, trust, resources, and love. Perhaps this resonates with you, too. And perhaps we might sojourn together… let’s pray in preparation for our time of Eucharist…
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