taking a break in september...

It is now LATE August: when I started sharing my weekly Small is Holy Sunday reflections I never anticipated I would still be sharing them 18 months later. As I have noted before, what began as a temporary act of spiritual solidarity amidst the chaos of a bewildering and brooding pandemic grew into a discrete weekly gathering for kindred spirits willing to engage the "new normal" as a pilgrimage of trust. That is how I am thinking about Small is Holy these days: a contemplative wandering into and through the pandemic portal on the way to embodied trust. It is a quiet, tender, liturgical meeting place where we practice following what Christine Valters Paintner calls the small threads of serendipity that run throughout our days. Like Celtic monks of old, our pilgrimage is of the heart rather than a destination. Paying attention to the small threads of serendipity is one way to follow the guidance of the Holy Spirit who Jesus tells us in John 3:8: "blows where it wishes: you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

In our time together we've woven together tapestries of poetry, song, scripture and silence. One touchstone for me comes from T.S. Eliot in the opening stanza of Choruses from the Rock:

O perpetual recurrence of determined seasons,
o world of spring and autumn, birth and dying
The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to GOD.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Bring us farther from GOD and nearer to the Dust.

A second guidepost for Small is Holy is the wisdom of Gertrud Mueller-Nelson who encourages contemporary people in To Dance with God to practice a counter-cultural commitment to patience. As a Jungian analyst with a deep appreciation of the liturgical seasons of the Western Church, Ms. Mueller-Nelson encourages us to reclaim a "feminine state of being: waiting" even in our era of covid and the chaos of our frenetic culture. "Waiting will always be with us... and can be made a work of art." In our public and outward lives, "our masculine world wants to blast away waiting from our lives. Instant gratification has become our constitutional right and delay an aberration. We equate waiting with wasting."

But (while) waiting is unpractical time, good for nothing, it is mysteriously necessary to all that is becoming. As in pregnancy, nothing of value comes into being without a period of quiet incubation: not a healthy baby, not a loving relationship, not a reconciliation, a new understanding, a work of art, a transformation. Rather, a shortened period of incubation brings forth what is not whole or strong or even alive. Brewing, baking, simmering, fermenting, ripening, germinating, gestating are the feminine processes of becoming and they are the symbolic states of being which belong in a life of value, necessary to our transformation. 

Slowing down, listening, watching, and waiting for the holy have become the heart of Small is Holy. These practices guide what takes place each Sunday morning and inform my search for music, poetry, and readings from the Bible. So, too the rhythm of the seasons as informed by Celtic spirituality. The writings of the early Celtic masters and their modern interpreters have shown me ways to honor God's first incarnate word: creation. Gardening and caring for the land we call home is now prayer. Savoring the movement of the sun, moon, and stars across the wet lands behind our home is a sensory encounter with the steadfast love of God that endures forever. I did not grow up with gardens - or power tools. So, while I bring beginner's mind to this practice, it is filled with multiple mistakes and missteps all of which show me how to stop, breathe, and begin again. In another incarnation of living this would have driven me mad. These days it is mostly funny and yet one more path into humility. From within this practice I have found soul friends in the words of Mary Oliver, Wendell Berry, John O'Donohue, Henri Nouwen, Ed Hays, Joan Chittister, J. Philip Newell, Christine Valters Paintner, Cynthia Bourgeault, Carrie Newcomer, Naomi Shihab Nye, Rumi, Rilke, and Richard Rohr as well as the Celtic communities of Iona and Northumbria. 

My heart continues to be formed by my relationship and commitment to the community of L'Arche Ottawa. Not only do I find encouragement and love among the core members and long-term volunteers, I experience God's gracious words of love made flesh, too. Parallel to my sharing Small is Holy each Sunday morning has been my almost weekly participation in another venue: Friday prayers with L'Arche. In concert with our small Spirituality team, a liturgy of music, laughter, celebration, updates, silence, intercessory prayer, and short homilies has emerged using the charism of Zoom to keep our hearts connected during this extended season of social distancing.

Today, after 18 months of creative community building, I sense a need to step back into the silence for my own well-being. That is, because I wish to continue with Small is Holy - clearly our pilgrimage through the portal of the pandemic has only started even at this late date - I am feeling the need to personally be still for a bit so that I might know how to proceed. In a few hours, we'll be off to see the Brooklyn family and will not share anything online this Sunday. I will be back in the saddle for the first Sunday of September 5th, but then will sign off from online livestreaming for the rest of September. Those three weeks will be a bit of retreat for me. To maintain our connections, however, I want to do two things:

+ First, on both my personal blog, When Love Comes to Town, and my professional link at Be Still and Know (and also on Face Book), I will share regular written reflections based upon our Montreal retreat. I have NO idea what those will involve but trust they will be guided by the Spirit. They may not be daily notes but will be regular each week in September.

+ And second, I will be gathering new musical ideas - and invite your help in collecting songs, poems, and artists who speak to your soul. Write to me, send my your thoughts and recommendations so that I might incorporate them upon the return of Small is Holy on October 3rd when we mark the Feast Day of St. Francis.

In my heart of hearts, I know that my away time is already being shaped by my favorite passage of Scripture:

Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”

NOTE: For those who have not followed my blog, When Love Comes to Town, you can find it @ https://rj-whenlovecomestotown.blogspot (you must add the . com to this address; Facebook has banned this site for the past 4 years when some one complained about a Good Friday graphic I used. UGH! So, I have gone around the obstacle by posting on Facebook without reference to this site.) Also, you can go to my personal Facebook site or the Be Still and Know site to get these updates.

finally a bit of reality in the news...

In the last few days - FINALLY - various mainstream media are beginning to acknowledge the impossibility of anything except a "messy" departure of the US from Afghanistan. As both the NY Times news summary newsletter wrote yesterday and Ezra Klein opined today: given all of the moving parts and players, the Biden administration has executed the best of a bad situation with verve and clarity. It has been ugly and tragic - we should not have expected anything less after 20 years of war-making we could never win fueled by realities we have never understood with in-country allies we could never trust. Our people could have expediated the visa process a bit; that is true. But all the other Monday morning quarterbacks and pundits have posted unrealistic and improbable alternative strategies for how we might have left Afghanistan - and as Klein puts it: they are attempting to "rescue the reputation of bad ideas by attributing their failure to poor execution."

To state the obvious: There was no good way to lose Afghanistan to the Taliban. A better withdrawal was possible — and our stingy, chaotic visa process was unforgivable — but so was a worse one. Either way, there was no hope of an end to the war that didn’t reveal our decades of folly, no matter how deeply America’s belief in its own enduring innocence demanded one. That is the reckoning that lies beneath events that are still unfolding, and much of the cable news conversation is a frenzied, bipartisan effort to avoid it. (Ezra Klein @ https://www.nytimes.com /2021/08/26/opinion/afghanistan-us-withdrawal.html?)

David Leonhardt was equally clear in his daily news summary for the Times when he wrote:

What might a more successful exit from Afghanistan have looked like? I have spent some time talking with colleagues and experts about that question, and it is a difficult one to answer. President Biden’s exit certainly has not gone well. The “orderly” withdrawal he had promised did not happen, and the world has watched agonizing scenes of Afghans trying to escape. But I’ve also noticed a naïveté about some of the commentary on Afghanistan. It presumes that there was a clean solution for the U.S., if only the Biden administration (and, to a lesser extent, the Trump administration) had executed it. The commentary never quite spells out what the solution was, though. There is a reason for that: A clean solution probably did not exist. The fundamental choice, as my colleague Helene Cooper told me, was between a permanent, low-level U.S. war in Afghanistan — a version of what John McCain once called a 100-year war — and a messy exit. “The pullout was never going to be a simple thing,” says Helene, who covers the Pentagon. “It was always going to be an ugly pullout.”

I encourage you to read the full article @ https://www.nytimes.com /2021/ 08/ 25/briefing/afghanistan-policy-biden.html. It is clear-headed, well-written, and strategically insightful. He answers the woulda/coulda scenarios put forth by those trying to sanitize their hopeless war with a variety of smoke screens that accuse the current leadership team for failing to execute the ever-shifting goals of what the late John McCain called "the 100 years of war" plan. You may also find the daily newsletter, "Letter from an American" by Heather Cox Richardson edifying (https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/august-25-2021) She notes that:

The first days of the evacuation after the Afghan army crumbled and the Taliban swept into control of the country in nine days were chaotic, indeed, but since August 14, the U.S. has evacuated more than 82,300 people, bringing out 19,000 people yesterday alone. It has evacuated at least 4500 U.S. citizens and has sent more than 20,000 emails and made more than 45,000 phone calls to Americans who had notified the embassy they were in the country (since Americans do not have to register with the embassy, it is unclear how many citizens are there). A rough estimate says there are probably 500 U.S. citizens who want to leave, while another 1000 are not certain or want to stay.

From my perspective, it is high time clarity cut through the confusion, posturing, and obfuscation. I expected propaganda stations like Fox News to emphasize the authentic pain of this extraction. But I've been surprised that PBS News and CNN are fanning the flames of critique that are nothing but fantasy, manipulation, and wishful thinking. One old friend recently suggested that in their obsession with appearing fair and balanced, these news outlets have gone overboard in painting a bleak picture when, in reality, over 100,000 people have now been evacuated safely from this hell hole. Critique and accountability of any administration is essential, and there are places where the Biden team might have done things differently. But fabricating sensationalistic analysis and then masquerading it as the truth with cherry-picked video clips that isolate the inevitable horrors of this departure strikes me as unethical and dangerous.

I accept that broadcast news has become another commodity. I don't have to like it to acknowledge that selling advertising is the name of the game. Twenty years ago, while serving a parish not far from David-Monthan Airforce Base in Tucson, AZ, I had the privilege of being the pastor of young men deployed to Afghanistan (as well as Iraq.) We corresponded from time to time, periodically used the internet to check-in, and then spent a LOT of time after they returned to the US from their various tours of duty. These dedicated young people were circumspect about the war - and their role in it. They were loyal to the US and honest to their conscience. And they carefully called into question what the hell was really going on without ever once betraying their commitments to serve and defend. I learned a lot from them. I know that while they are heart-broken over the current melee, they are equally sickened by the way the media is describing the evacuation as a dark comedy of errors. Even with the new attack from ISIS, our troops and leaders are proceeding with clarity in the chaos and integrity under unimaginable stress. 

My prayer is that we are extravagant in welcoming to the US (and other locales) Afghani refugees. We owe them a debt of gratitude.

One of the testimonials in The Gathering, a collection of observations and analysis at the close of conversations and ceremonies that spanned thirty years between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous peoples living along the coastline of Maine, caught my attention. One Anglo woman confessed that before participating in the bi-annual "gatherings," she often felt physically displaced and disconnected from the land. An elder from the Wampanoag nation suggested that if it was at all possible, she visit the land of her ancestors before trying to settle into partnership with her "new" homeland. In time, this resulted in a sojourn to Ireland where she sensed a spiritual solidarity with the landscape and its caretakers: it felt like "bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh." Within the parameters of her privilege, she finally relocated to Cape Cod, where her North American people first settled, and began to make a new life for herself at peace with the land - and in relationship with the Wampanoag people of Mashpee.

This is one of the varied gifts to be found in The Gathering: Reimagining Indigenous-Settler Relationships (ed. Shirley Hager/Mawopiyane, University of Toronto Press, 2021.) Serendipitously, while also reading John O'Donohue's posthumous anthology, Walking in Wonder: Eternal Wisdom for a Modern World, his insights about landscape shared something similar. He, too, recognized that all of us were born into a landscape that eternally feels like home. We can always leave it - for wayfaring or pilgrimage - but the physicality of a place will always be a part of our souls, too. 

These two wildly different texts from geographically distant places and people clarified why I have long felt at home here in the rolling hills of Western Massachusetts. I was literally conceived in these parts as my newlywed parents honeymooned beside Lake Char-goggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg in Webster, MA. My paternal grandparents purchased lake front property there in the 1930's so that my father's father could serve local Unitarian congregations each summer. His Stamford, CT church would close every year between Memorial Day and Labor Day resulting in an extended down time with no income. My father, and then his children and his children's children, spent decades by this lake every summer - and sometimes in the fall and winter as well. Even as a small child I remember feeling a sense of ease wash over me as we made our way over the Berkshires on the way to "the Lake." Di and I spent a month there after our wedding ceremony, we've regularly vacationed there over five decades, and the cremains of my parents and late sister Beth still grace the waters of that hallowed place.

Following the lead of both the Gathering folk and O'Donohue, I first began to connect these emotional/spiritual/physical dots when Di and I journeyed to Iona. There was something about the west coast of Scotland in general - and Iona in particular - that evoked "home" to me. It was uncanny how an inchoate calm bubbled up from within as we settled down in this new/old place. The more we wandered Scotland, the more profound this resonance became. And I nearly wept when we stumbled up from a North Sea beach in Aberdeen into a small Indian restaurant where the owner asked my name: Lumsden, James Lumsden. "Well, welcome, then brother. I know the Lumsden clan well..." An unanticipated home coming of sorts to some of the best Indian food I've eaten followed along with copious amounts of the local brew. I felt that same growing inner warmth and rest when, driving out of NYC in February to interview for a post in the Berkshires, I saw the frozen browns and greys along the highway. "Lord," I thought to myself, "this looks and feels like home." And it was - and has become even more so over the past fifteen years. O'Donohue writes:

Landscape has a huge, pre-human memory. It precedes everything that we know. I often think that you could talk almost of a "clay-ography": the whole biography of the earth. Everything depends of course on whether you think landscape is dead matter or whether you thing it is a living presence.

The Indigenous participants in "the gatherings" made it clear to the settlers - and they are equally clear that this is the name that best describes those of us who arrived as colonizers - that they were welcome to live in harmony upon the land of their ancestors. But they must learn to live as a part of the land rather than as owners. There is a sacred partnership necessary so that everyone, the land included, can thrive. Only now, some 400+ years later, are we settlers starting to grasp what this means for ourselves, our families, for the First Nations people of this land, for sisters and brothers throughout creation, and for the land itself. I know this is true for me. Perhaps it is true as well for those finally awakened by the recent UN Report on Climate Change. As I head outside now, I'm moved by O'Donohue's poetic insights: In Praise of the Earth.

Let us bless
The imagination of the Earth,
That knew early the patience
To harness the mind of time,
Waited for the seas to warm,
Ready to welcome the emergence
Of things dreaming of voyaging
Among the stillness of land.

And how light knew to nurse
The growth until the face of the Earth
Brightened beneath a vision of color.

When the ages of ice came
And sealed the Earth inside
An endless coma of cold,
The heart of the Earth held hope,
Storing fragments of memory,
Ready for the return of the sun.

Let us thank the Earth
That offers ground for home
And holds our feet firm
To walk in space open
To infinite galaxies.

Let us salute the silence
And certainty of mountains:
Their sublime stillness,
Their dream-filled hearts.

The wonder of a garden
Trusting the first warmth of spring
Until its black infinity of cells
Becomes charged with dream;
Then the silent, slow nurture
Of the seed’s self, coaxing it
To trust the act of death.

The humility of the Earth
That transfigures all
That has fallen
Of outlived growth.

The kindness of the Earth,
Opening to receive
Our worn forms
Into the final stillness.

Let us ask forgiveness of the Earth
For all our sins against her:
For our violence and poisonings
Of her beauty.

Let us remember within us
The ancient clay,
Holding the memory of seasons,
The passion of the wind,
The fluency of water,
The warmth of fire,
The quiver-touch of the sun
And shadowed sureness of the moon.

That we may awaken,
To live to the full
The dream of the Earth
Who chose us to emerge
And incarnate its hidden night
In mind, spirit, and light.

rest in peace charlie watts: you ROCKED our world

It ripped me up to hear today that brother Charlie Watts, drummer extraordinaire with the Rolling Stones, went home to that never-ending sacred concert beyond this realm today. As others have wisely noted: Charlie NEVER played too much or too little. Just what was needed to rock the house and keep the rest of the band grounded.

Damn but that boy could play - and tears are flowing listening to Charlie kick ass while Keith, Mick and Ronnie tear it up at the front of the stage. My band, Creepin' Jesus, used to play "Gimme Shelter" and it is still as fresh in 2021 as it was in 1969. There isn't a shitty version out there on You Tube but this is one of the hottest with GREAT sound. And dig the fact that it's Charlie holding it all together when it could become a run away train at any moment. (And don't miss Ms. Lisa Fischer who takes it to another level!)

Another ALL TIME favorite where the whole band is sublime happens in "Can't You Hear Me Knockin!" Keith explodes with his opening riff, but Charlie slams a punch to the gut with his off beats and snare/kick drum finesse. Mick is a monster before the whole groove shifts and Bobby Keyes wreaks havoc with his sax. OMG this is STILL pure bliss.

Whether it's "Satisfaction" or "I'm Just Waitin' on a Friend," or even "Jump on Top of Me, Baby" dear Charlie of blessed memory brings home the bacon with his spot on drumming. I would be remiss if I didn't add this... Rest in Peace and thank you for the ride. It was ecstatic.

landscape as prayer...

In a posthumous publication,

Walking in Wonder, John O'Donohue writes about many things - including the spirituality of landscapes. I have long known that I am enraptured by streams in a woodland. Small rivers can take my breath away, too. But I am especially awed upon finding an unanticipated stream flowing through the heart of the forest. Di tells me I become peculiarly silent upon such a discovery and continue our walk imbued with a serenity boarding on the mystical. Since taking stock of truly being grounded in the gentle hills of Western Massachusetts, certain trees have come to communicate a sacred wisdom to me, too. O'Donohue notes that there is a certain "symmetry in a tree."

Between its inner life and its outer life, between its rooted memory and its external active presence. A tree grows up and grows down at once and produced enough branches to incarnate its wild divinity. It doesn't limit itself - it reaches for the sky and it reaches for the source, all in one seamless kind of movement. 

He, like me, has come to trust that landscape "is an incredible, mystical teacher, and when you begin to tune into its sacred presence, something shifts inside you." One of those shifts for me is how I pray. In addition to quiet contemplation and carefully constructed liturgical prayer, I have come to realize that simply being still outside - taking it all in without movement or comment - allows the earth itself to lead me into prayer. Imagine my delight upon finding O'Donohue's confirmation:

One of the lovely ways to pray is to take your body out into the landscape and to be still in it. Your body is made out of clay, so your body is actually a miniature landscape that has got up from under the earth and is now walking on the normal landscape. If you go out for (a period of time), your mind begins to slow down, down, down. What is happening is your body is retrieving its own sense of sisterhood with the great clay of the landscape.

I think of the Iona Community's Eucharistic Prayer wherein by celebrating holy communion we become "bone of your bone, O God, and flesh of your flesh." That is, we are not only embraced by Christ, but Mother Earth and Holy Spirit as well. O'Donohue adds: "I feel that landscape is always at prayer, and its prayer is seamless. It is always enfolded in the presence (of the sacred) Every stone, every field is a different place. When your eye becomes attentive to this panorama of differentiation, then you realize what a privilege it is to actually BE here."

Now that Hurricane Henri has mostly come and gone, leaving us with another 2" of precipitation, I look forward to a week of being outside. There are still a few carpentry repairs to be prayerfully made as well as sacramentally tending the yard and garden after the storm. By week's end we'll be ready to head into the city to celebrate the glorious 4th birth of blessed Anna.

pray ALL ways series closes with sabbath spirituality...

Today marks the close of our summer pray ALL ways series: for the past three months I’ve used the insights and wisdom of Fr. Ed Hays as a guide into embodied prayer. We’ve considered tears as well as laughter, fasting and feasting, suffering and celebrating along with ways that our nose, eyes, ears, and tongue can connect us to the sacred Mystery in our ordinary days. Fr. Ed writes that incarnational spirituality recognizes and honors the “difference between PRAYER and prayers. Prayer is a way of life in which we are always facing the Mystery, while prayers can take many forms within that way of living.” This week, as Fr. Ed asks us to consider how taking a nap might be sacramental, I’ve experienced a sense of cosmic irony or paradox as the conclusion of our series arrives in a week saturated with sorrow and sacrifice.

Perhaps like you, I’ve been overwhelmed: as COVID continues to confound, torment, scar, and kill us all the world over; as our brothers and sisters in Haiti once more are pummeled by earthquakes, pelted by hurricanes, and locked in a morass of political confusion and assassination; as wildfires rage, floods rise up, a suicide bomber parked his truck blocks from the Capitol in Washington, DC, and the battered people of Afghanistan once again found themselves subjected to life under the bootheel of the Taliban. Over the course of 11 days, their 300,000-person army vanished, their political class collapsed, and the United States wisely but tragically withdrew military support for a failed state after twenty years of combat, inept nation-building, and counterinsurgency.

For the better part of this week it felt like devoting any time today to the

seemingly inconsequential task of taking a nap was not only callous and cruel, but trivial and foolish when so much shit is hitting the fan. I wrestled with this disconnect over and over, taking-in only an hour of world news each night, reading the NY Times every morning, and sitting contemplatively with multiple layers of anguish and lament. I kept seeing that meme, if you’re NOT angry – or anguished – you’re not paying attention, flashing in my brain.

So, as I often say to those consulting with me for spiritual solace: when you don’t know what to do or say next be still and stay silent. It is NOT the time to hurry up and do SOME thing, but rather the time to intentionally do NOTHING. Practitioners of contemplative spirituality say we must first take a long, loving look at reality. Especially when chaos swirls around us, sitting with the questions of our anxiety, judgement, terror, and angst is critical rather than reacting. and all too often over-reacting, to our perceived powerlessness and dismay. Both Malala Yousafzai and NY Times columnist, Nicholas Kristof, wrote that now is neither the time for drawing conclusions about what went wrong in Afghanistan nor a time to offer critiques. Rather, as Malala wrote in a NY Times OP/Ed piece: “We will have time to debate what went wrong in the war in Afghanistan (later), but in this critical moment we must listen to the voices of Afghan women and girls. They are asking for protection, for education, for the freedom and the future they were promised. We cannot continue to fail them. We have no time to spare.” Kristof added that it is hard to:

… disagree with the Biden administration for pulling out troops. Resources are limited, and if we couldn't defeat the Taliban with 100,000 US troops in Afghanistan (and 300,000 Afghani sol-diers) I don't think we could have done so with 3,000. Many Pashtuns I talked to over the years didn't like either the Taliban or the Afghan government, but they at least thought the Taliban were honest, albeit uneducated brutes.

Listening carefully to the cries of our sisters and brothers while taking a long, loving look at reality I came upon a link for Women for Afghan Women which I’ve posted on this page. These pros are on the ground, time-tested, vetted, and most able to bring a measure of relief to those in the greatest need in this dark hour. Sitting in the challenging silence with my questions brought to mind this poem by Mary Oliver she calls, Mindful: it bubbled-up to the surface at just the right time. She writes:

Every day - I see or hear……..something

that more or less kills me ….with delight,

That leaves me - like a needle - in the haystack of light

It was what I was born for – to look, to listen, to lose myself inside this soft world –

To instruct myself - over and over – in joy – and acclamation.

Nor am I talking about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful, the very extravagant –

but of the ordinary, the common, the very drab, the daily presentations.

Oh, good scholar, I say to myself,

…………how can you help but grow wise with such teachings as these –

…………the untrimmable light of the world, the ocean’s shine,

……..the prayers that are made out of grass?

What a sublime, simple affirmation, yes? Every day something seeks to kill me with delight even as I sit with those damnable, excruciating, tormenting albeit sacred questions. And when it is time – whenever it is time – from within the stillness you will know how to “look, listen, and lose yourself inside this SOFT world like a needle of light within a haystack.” The tragedy does not abate, it is still all too real, and yet at the same time there is beauty and light and even love. Mary Oliver helped me rethink Fr. Ed’s suggestion to consider taking a nap a sacramental prayer; speaking from experience, nap-taking has immediate verve and integrity. But like every sacrament, there’s more going on than first meets the eye. The longer I waited, listened, and looked, the clearer it became that Fr. Ed was ALSO speaking about sabbath spirituality. At its core, his message is about nourishing a rest so deep that from within the storms of our lives three things can come to pass:

· One, we might become as much at peace as Jesus was when he fell asleep and napped in that boat crossing the Sea of Galilee;

· Two, we might know from the inside out how to regularly cultivate this inward peace by practicing solitude and renewal;

· And three, that our peace might become available to be shared with others who are often as troubled, hurting, afraid, or anxious as we are sometimes, too.

Now, I grant you, this take is a bit slant, but I stumbled upon another Mary Oliver poem this week, too that helps to trust its validity. She proclaims:

I have refused to live locked in the orderly house of reasons and proofs.

The world I live in and believe in is wider than that.

And anyway, what’s wrong with Maybe? 

You wouldn’t believe what once or twice I have seen.

I’ll just tell you this: only if there are angels in your head will you ever, possibly, see one.

Too often I’ve read some of our Bible stories as extraordinary tales about that really do not have much to do with reality. When the truth is that these stories are poetic words of encouragement – metaphoric summaries of what contemplation and embodied prayer might mean for us – rather than abstract mythologies. Once upon a time, an old Presbyterian minister told me that early in his ministry he was startled to hear the way his leadership team talked about Mother Teresa. “They admired her” he said. “She’s so wonderful and compassionate, so unlike most of us.” Over and over, they raved, oohed and ahhed, which is when it hit him: his team of well-seasoned believers knew all ABOUT Mother Teresa, but they had NO idea about how to become like her. They acted like her patience and love was magic or else like she fell from the heavens fully formed as a strong but tender disciple of Jesus when the truth was, she practiced making sabbath rest her core! They knew all about her but not how to become like her.

In one of Fr. Henri Nouwen’s journals he writes much the same thing: while

visiting holy Mother Teresa of blessed memory he asked her what the key to her life was. To which she said, “Get some rest, sit alone with God in silence for an hour every day, and help those who are closest to you.” He left India despondent for even the great Henri Nouwen wanted some magic rather than nitty gritty of spiritual practice. I saw this put another way last week in a Face Book meme where a music fan asks his idol: How do you play so well. Practice she answers. It MUST be an innate gift that fan says only to be told: it’s PRACTICE. Oh, I have never understood why some people have such talent; it’s magical and a mystery. No, it’s practice.

What I’m trying to say is that naming nap-taking as a sacrament – a visible, outward, and embodied sign of a profound inward, and spiritual truth - is shorthand for sabbath spirituality. Practicing DEEP physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual rest is what gives us the ability to wait in trust, the strength to act with love at the right time, and wisdom to know the difference. Fr. Ed writes: “Our word sleep lends itself to a natural care-less spirituality. Our English word sleep comes from the German word “schlaff” which means “loose.” To sleep, then, or to nap is to hang loose, to be un-tight and know how to let things go.” Sleeping or napping is, therefore, a beautiful expression of prayer since it is resting in God. It is letting go of our control of life. It is a parable or prayer as well as an embodied prayer. If we look only at the front side of sleep we might miss a hidden insight… The front door of sleep is bodily rest… but the back door is an external sacrament built upon letting go of trying to manage every aspect of our lives.

Which is EXACTLY how Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel talks about sabbath spirituality. If we can learn to practice resting for one full day, trusting that God’s loving kindness and care can manage things without us, maybe we can come to trust God beyond a mere 24 hours? Heschel believed that the greatest challenge facing contemporary people was a loss of a sense of the sacred:

Our world has been reduced to the utilitarian bottom line where success and usefulness are the only criterion that matter. “In our attempts to master our physical surroundings through technological advancement, we have become desensitized to the grandeur and beauty of life, both in the natural world and in the faces of other people. In our rush to industrialize we have become so focused on gaining economic and political power that we have forgotten our ultimate purpose: to serve as co-creators with the Divine in the establishment of a just and compassionate world.”

Another reason I’ve chosen to trust my slant take on napping as prelude to sabbath spirituality has to do with synchronicity. If you’ve been with me on this journey for a while, you know that I tend to look for the holy connections that show up in unplanned ways within the ordinary details of my humanity. Christine Valters Paintner calls this following the wee threads of synchronicity that flow through the maze of our days like those early Celtic monks on pilgrimage.

· For the past month I’ve been reading two books about the Indigenous and First Nations people of the US and Canada. One is a searing history by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz in the vein of Howard Zinn’s A Peoples History of the United States; who, it turns out, challenged her to write a First Nations’ history of the United States after she told him how much HE left out of his life’s work. It’s tough reading for an old, bourgeoise white guy – but so clarifying.

· The other is the collected testimonies by Shirley Hager and Mawopiane from a thirty-year conversation between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous allies living and meeting along the Northeastern shore of Canada and the US entitled The Gathering. It’s striking that almost word for word the Indigenous elders in both texts describe the agonizing challenges confront-ing us today much like Rabbi Heschel and those grounded in sabbath spirituality: we’re out of alignment – disconnected and desensitized to the grandeur and beauty of life – as the Creator intended.

For over 400 years, they tell us, white settler-colonizers have incrementally lost touch with God’s first wisdom as incarnated in nature. That’s why we poison the water, set Mother Earth on fire, abuse our children, hate more than we love, and believe everyone different from us is out to get us. We’re alienated from the holy – exhausted and afraid – and it is killing us all. Alma from the Wabanaki Nation put it like this:

It seems as if it is the Aboriginal peoples’ job to take care of this land we call Turtle Island. It’s been our job to help non-Natives see the error of their ways and to help them reconnect with Creation… They have come to the horrific realization that they are destroying the land that they took and have not respected it. Now the lives of their own children and grandchildren, the survival of their own people. Is wrapped up in whether or not they get it. My people have been saying for a hundred years that if you destroy the land, poison the water, you are going to die! (In the beginning) everything was in perfect harmony and balance and provide everything we needed to live a good life. Life thrived. When the sacred colors of humankind were place at the four corners of the Earth, each was given a path to walk on and each was given a Sacred Bundle with instructions to life. Somewhere along the way, someone felt they could ignore the Sacred Words – they told the world that we come here to Earth to suffer, then we die an go to a better place. Our Elders teach that this is not true: the reasons we have suffered here is because those things that the Creator gave us to live a good and happy life were taken away… restoration is the start of reconciliation.

This is sabbath spirituality – original blessing not original sin – restoration of the holy in the human by balance and trust. Small wonder that Scripture tells us Jesus took a nap, right? He’s literally incarnating the soul of Sabbath rest in that tiny boat. And he keeps telling and showing his beloved how to do likewise. Fr. Ed puts it well: “Jesus did not have to work overtime since he was fully aware of who really was working in and with and through him. Jesus knew that he did not have to save or heal the world all by himself.” He trusted – and rested regularly – as prayerful proof of a life grounded in God’s love.

· When our children were small, they would often say something like: We like you a LOT more, dad, when you’re on vacation. I know that I liked me a lot more when I was on vacation, too; and while I knew my babies were speaking truth to my heart, for decades I didn’t pay attention. No, I believed that I had to earn my keep in creation and Christianity. I had to prove my fidelity to God and stay busy doing good things so that others would know I loved Jesus. I didn’t really believe in my own heart that I was God’s beloved – and found out the hard way that you can’t give what you ain’t got and you can’t lead others where you’ve never gone.

· Sabbath spirituality, of which sleep and napping are but two embodied signs, is ALL about experiencing from the inside out the Serenity Prayer: O God grant me the serenity to accept the things I can-not change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. It is learning to trust God beyond the bottom line so that we have love to share from well-rested hearts and minds.

Two more tiny threads of Celtic pilgrimage and synchronicity showed up last week as I was sitting with sabbath spirituality. After finishing the first half of today’s message, I got an email from Soul Play, a tender-hearted Canadian community dedicated to slowing down, waking up, and loving well. The note started out: Are you ramping up or down? 

If you had asked me this question about a month ago, I would have said, with great hope and optimism, that I was ramping up to the fall season ahead. I was looking forward to permanent post-lockdown connections, worry-free experiences, and easier freedom with the worst behind us. It lasted for about 9 days. Now, while I am still enjoying the summer, and hopeful for the remainder of this year, I find myself now cautiously tending to the reality that "ramping up" might not be as simple and straightforward as I had hoped. It now looks like we will be doing a few things, simultaneously: ramping up, staying the course, and slowing down our expectations for how the future will unfold. It can be a lot to hold. It has the flavor of vertigo but really, its what reality tastes like. It's an acquired taste, to be sure, and it's taking me a while to digest. Add the daily stream of soul-sapping news of ecological collapse, natural disasters, rising cases, and the heart-breaking impact of war and conflict, how can anyone find the solid ground of solace, and wisdom to keep walking well?

· Have you ever experienced vertigo? I haven’t tasted it but have had a few bouts over the years where the inner ear crystals slip out of balance, everything starts spinning before your eyes, and dizziness and nausea soon to follow.

· Reading this description of our moment in time from my Soul Play friends was yet another wee thread of synchronicity that helped me go with my take on sabbath spirituality – especially when Soul Play noted that the time-tested way to regain sure-footing in a time of cultural vertigo is… patience, generosity, gentleness, and adequate rest.

The second nudge came while wondering how the fruit the Holy Spirit as described

in both the First and Second Testaments of our Bible are related to practicing sabbath spirituality. St. Paul as well as the Hebrew prophets of ancient Israel teach that those who are well-rested AND saturated in trust give shape and form to love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Our New Testament give us two different words for embodied good: agathos is “the quality of something that is good in character, beneficial in effect, and useful in action.” Peter Marty, editor of the Christian Century magazine writes that “food shared with those in need is a goodness that is precious to a hungry body.” Acts of love, working for peace, listening, patience, gentle, compassionate corporate acts of mercy are this type of goodness, too. Marty notes that when Primo Levi “wrote about being an Auschwitz survivor:

Primo begins by celebrating the man who smuggled soup and bread to him every day. ‘I am alive today,’ Levi confesses, ‘not so much of Lorenzo’s material aid, as for his having constantly reminded me by his presence, his plain and gentle manner of being good, that there still existed a just world outside of our own.”

This points towards the second New Testament word for good – kalos – which is “the word reserved for something or someone that expresses goodness incarnationally in a winsome or beautiful way.” Jesus uses kalos regularly in his instructions for growing a healthy, sabbath soul. “Let your light so shine before others,” he tells us in St. Matthew’s gospel, “that they may see what is good (in you) and glorify God in heaven.” Same, too, when he speaks of being anointed by Mary Magdalene in St. Mark’s gospel: “Let her alone,” he tells those who grumble about wasting expensive perfumed oil. “She has performed a good service for me by anointing me in a beautiful manner.” Jesus is speaking about the inner peace that is expressed outwardly generating beauty and peace – and dare I say trust?

This week, taking a long, LOVING look at our broken reality while sitting silently with the seemingly incongruence of Fr. Ed’s notion that napping is sacramental prayer, my heart and mind were opened to the importance of sabbath spirituality. Deep rest is essential to peace-making, gentleness and compassion. It is foundational - especially in uncertain times – to cultivating a character that evokes trust and love in others, too because it gives shape and form to the very source of life. No wonder Jesus regularly calls out the harsh teachers of scrupulosity: chill, hang-lose, take a nap won’t you?”

“Those who execute a strong need to point out the failings and errors of others,” says one wise old soul, “more often than not ends up repelling more than attracting.” As this weird, evolving, anxious and awesome time of Covid and chaos unfolds, the good news for those with ears to hear is to be found in sabbath rest and cultivating trust within our all-too ordinary but holy flesh.

see the video here: https://fb.watch/7yp0ArG0u7/

as afghanistan once again embraces itself...

One of the distracting dangers of our 21st century interconnectivity involves seeing the pain and chaos of the world in real time and living color. We know that for the most part there is nothing we can actually DO with the suffering we've taken in. But like rubberneckers passing a wrecked car on the highway, we seem unable or unwilling to avert our eyes. Because we can, therefore we invariably do, only to wonder why we then feel emotionally drained, ethically impotent, and spiritually numb. Gazing upon the horrors of another's wound from a safe distance has become a cultural fetish: it evokes something like compassionate sentiments but fails to heal our hearts, change the facts on the ground, or satisfy our endless addiction to virtuous voyeurism. As chaos currently boils over the top of the cauldron that has become Kabul, where thousands await a promised but uncertain escape by air and millions try to reconcile themselves to the brutality yet to come, it is agonizingly hard not to look and then shake our head in resignation or despair.

This tragedy, however, need not become merely another masochistic encounter with privileged feelings that are temporarily disquieted only to be surrendered to our perpetually violent status quo. The late Dorothee Soelle, post-Holocaust liberation theologian from Germany, posits an alternative where the Holy Spirit empowers us to leave our "pervasive tendency toward passivity in the face of social evil, our massive failure of moral nerve that is the product of apatheia" which she defines as "our freedom from suffering and inability to suffer."

Christian apathy... prevents our realizing how profoundly involved in the life of God we actually are - God in us and we in God. (Carter Heyward)

The Spirit awakens our heart. It gives us eyes to see, a willingness to ignore the distractions of privilege, and the tenacity to resist our culture's conviction that compassion is simply too exhausting and costly to celebrate in real life. Over the past 20 years, our political. religious, and economic leaders have worked tirelessly to distract us, lie to us, and drive us into bourgeois inertia/apathy as they ruined yet another region of the world: Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. NY Times columnist, Nicholas Kristoff, summarized it well:

So what went wrong? I don't disagree with the Biden administration for pulling out troops. Resources are limited, and if we couldn't defeat the Taliban with 100,000 troops in Afghanistan, I don't think we could have with 3,000. Corruption and lack of will destroyed the Afghan security forces, and I don't think we paid enough attention to the legitimacy and authenticity of those forces. Many Pashtuns I talked to over the years didn't like either the Taliban or the Afghan government, but they at least thought the Taliban were honest, albeit uneducated brutes. So if we had stayed another couple of years, I think we would merely have delayed the inevitable. I think of Vietnam: Should we have stayed two extra years and left in 1977? Probably not. That said, the Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden administrations all made mistakes that undermined our prospects. I was one of the first reporters to warn (many years ago) that we were losing ground in southern Afghanistan, partly because of corruption, and the refrain I always heard back was: Yes, we have problems, but in another year or so the Afghan army will be strong and able to take over. That was delusion. And of course Afghan leaders were corrupt and showed no leadership, and Pakistan quietly helped the Taliban, and there was a general fecklessness -- with the exception of the brave girls who risked so much to go to school.

In the confusing months after 9/11, moral action seemed clear: terrorism had to be thwarted. Our shared fear as Americans clouded our thinking so we united under the mantle of invasion. Rhetoric soon escalated into overt lies about weapons of mass destruction. Our obsession with slaying the dragon called Osama Bin Laden took on murderous proportions. And before most of us knew what was truly happening, our historic colonizing habits once again exploded throughout the Levant in ways that not only emboldened the Taliban, but giving birth to ISIS, too. The current Biden administration may have misread aspects of the Taliban's prowess - the stunning collapse of the US supported regime was bewildering - but the President is getting close to truth-telling by acknowledging that the US and our allies should never have started this shameful and deadly adventure in the first pace. In countless ways, Biden is pushing us to live into the wisdom of this moment in time which is ALL about modesty and accepting limits. Mr. Biden is not perfect, nor are all his words transparent. But he realizes, as does his team and millions of other Americans, that reality is calling us down a different path.

 

That is why I have no tolerance for those toadies on the Right who are already trying to smear President Biden with the blood of innocent Afghans. Make no mistake, we KNOW there will be incomprehensible quantities of blood to come. That was set in motion hours after the Taliban attacks of September 11, 2001 and systematically sacralized for two decades by Presidents Bush, Obama, and Trump. It is disingenuous war-mongering - callous and unprincipled manipulation of our better angels, too - for analysts like Bret Stephens to cry crocodile tears today in anticipation of the likely slaughter of innocents. In today's NY Times, Stephens' flogs our collective conscience with deceptive appeals to solidarity and pseudo-patriotism writing: 

Watch — if you have the stomach — videos of the aftermath of an attack in May on Afghan schoolgirls, which left 90 dead, or the massacre of 22 Afghan commandos in June, gunned down as they were surrendering, or Taliban fighters taunting an Afghan police officer, shortly before they kill him for the crime of making comic videos. One Taliban official declared that their jihad was directed not against ordinary Afghans but only “against the occupiers and those who defend the occupiers.” Yet the list of Afghans who fill that bill reaches into the thousands, if not higher. Women will become chattel. There are roughly 18 million women and girls in Afghanistan. They will now be subject to laws from the seventh century. They will not be able to walk about with uncovered faces or be seen in public without a male relative. They will not be able to hold the kinds of jobs they’ve fought so hard to get over the last 20 years: journalists, teachers, parliamentarians, entrepreneurs. Their daughters will not be allowed to go to school or play sports or consent to the choice of a husband.

Truth-telling, however, requires more than temporarily ruffled emotional feathers. Living by faith requires clear eyes to see, open ears to hear, and loving hearts to act beyond all the distractions and hyperbole. As with the current ecological crisis, this is an era of limits. Columnist Tom Friedman whispers what this might look like when he confesses:

For years, U.S. officials used a shorthand phrase to describe America’s mission in Afghanistan. It always bothered me: We are there to train the Afghan Army to fight for their own government. That turned out to be shorthand for everything that was wrong with our mission — the idea that Afghans didn’t know how to fight and just one more course in counterinsurgency would do the trick. Really? Thinking you need to train Afghans how to fight is like thinking you need to train Pacific Islanders how to fish. Afghan men know how to fight. They’ve been fighting one another, the British, the Soviets or the Americans for a long, long time. It was never about the way our Afghan allies fought. It was always about their will to fight for the corrupt pro-American, pro-Western governments we helped stand up in Kabul. And from the beginning, the smaller Taliban forces — which no superpower was training — had the stronger will, as well as the advantage of being seen as fighting for the tenets of Afghan nationalism: independence from the foreigner and the preservation of fundamentalist Islam as the basis of religion, culture, law and politics. In oft-occupied countries like Afghanistan, many people will actually prefer their own people as rulers (however awful) over foreigners (however well intentioned).

Beyond the obvious need to get as many US citizens and their allies out of Kabul as fast as possible, including the families of interpreters, reality has called us into yet another reckoning with our collective and destructive history. Last summer, we began to own the legacy of white privilege and our heinous violence against black and brown people. We were awakened, too to anti-Asian discrimination and the

hollowness of our mythology re: rugged individualism that is now seen as totally dysfunctional in the age of contagion. With the so-called collapse of Afghanistan, some are able to see a bit more clearly that our reckoning must include American adventurism and exploitation. A nation built upon colonial genocide is going to have a hard time coming to grips with our true story. It is paradoxical. It is still unfolding. It is horrible as well as holy, filled with beauty right next to viscous brutality. I choose to believe that young Amanda Gorman helped move us a step closer when she proclaimed "the hill we climb..."

When day comes we ask ourselves,
where can we find light in this never-ending shade?
The loss we carry,
a sea we must wade
We've braved the belly of the beast

We've learned that quiet isn't always peace
And the norms and notions
of what just is
Isn't always just-ice
And yet the dawn is ours
before we knew it
Somehow we do it
Somehow we've weathered and witnessed
a nation that isn't broken
but simply unfinished

But the jury is still out. Tonight my heart is sad: I love my people - and my homeland - even as my soul joins others in lamentation. I will watch 30 minutes of the news machine and pray with my tears. But then I will renew my focus with this old prayer Dr. Soelle used to share:

Why are you so one-sided

people often ask me

so blind and so unilateral

I sometimes ask in return

are you a christian

if you don't mind my asking

And depending on the answer I remind them

how one-sidedly and without guarantees

god made himself vulnerable in christ...

...god didn't come in an armored car

and wasn't born in a bank

and gave up the old miracle weapons

thunder and lightening and heavenly hosts

one-sidedly

places and kinds and soldiers

were not his way when he

decided unilaterally

to become a human being

which means to live without weapons

Let me add that the alternative of virtuous voyeurism and its corresponding despair is what one wise old soul called the 10 foot rule. We can do very little for those in Afghanistan (except, of course, donate to the UNHCR @ https://www. unhcr.org/en-us/). But we CAN reach out and touch someone in need close by: the synergy of authentic compassion is simply doing our small part within the immediacy of our lives. Within 10 feet of our home. Our place of worship. Our work. This is how our ideals - and the word of God - becomes flesh. O Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

the feast day of mary's assumption: august 15th

Tomorrow's "Small is Holy" Sunday reflection will FINALLY take place outdoors. It is the Feast of the Assumption of Mary, a holy day I don't fully grasp given my roots in the Reformed realm of New England, but which intrigued and energized Jung. One of my most trusted wisdom-keepers, Gertrud Mueller-Nelson, counsels 21st century seekers that "this feast is the ultimate celebration of the feminine - not just of Mary or of women, but of every aspect in nature and in our experience that carries the Yin element of your Yin-Yang totality." (To Dance with God, p. 198) She adds:

At the time of its proclamation (in 1950) there was a great and varied reaction around the world. Some theologians responded with learned considerations, both dogmatic and historical. Some liberal theologians protested the dogma and felt seriously embarrassed. Outsiders felt this as an example of the Church's medieval mentality. It caused tremendous concern in ecumenical circles. Some Catholics blushed and changed the subject. Others managed to avoid thinking about it at all. And some were content; they booked another trip to Lourdes. Hardly anyone understood the profound implications of this dogma as an expression out of the unconscious or dream language of the Church. But Carl Jung, the Swiss Protestant psychiatrist, responded promptly saying that the proclamation of Mary's bodily assumption into heaven was the most important religious event since the Reformation. Jung, with his deep respect for the symbolic life, with his skillful and creative imagination, could hear and see the symbol that the Pope was offering humankind. He indicated that this was the beginning of a new age - and that NOW things would begin to happen.

Two foundational truths resonate with me. First, to use Mueller-Nelson's words,

"Mary, the archetypal feminine, queen of the earthy, dark, unconscious and frightfully fruitful - who had been left to the darkness where all that is feminine is feared or honored, served or oppressed - symbolically or literally - was now being raised into the light of new understanding." Finally, what folk religions and human intuition knew to be true for millennia - namely that the feminine virtues of waiting, nourishing, simmering, baking, brewing and birthing are integral to health and happiness - was now being honored, celebrated, and trusted in public. It was now out in the light of reality. Even finally out of the closet. It is abundantly clear that while institutional religion did not grasp what this new age of the sacred feminine would bring into being, it is not coincidence that both the birth of rock and roll and the civil rights movements of the 50's and 60's took shape and form not long afterwards. As Bono noted in his Rolling Stone tribute to Elvis Presley: Coretta Scott King recognized that Elvis looked, acted, sounded  and incarnated America's embrace of radical equality and liberation when a Southern white boy wore mascara, put on the pink, and shook his booty with his mixture of Black blues and White country music. The genesis of the movements for saving Mother Nature as well as second-wave feminism came of age during this time, too.." So, on this feast day we give thanks for the ever emerging presence of the sacred feminine in real time. 

Second, while "even the Church," writes Mueller-Nelson "has reduced its response to only a caution and wariness toward apparitions rather than consider the message and meaning at the heart of such phenomena, apparitions continue to be reported and continue to catch the attention of many." It is NOT a literal Mary who keeps appearing, of course, but her spiritual presence who keeps encouraging, and birthing the presence of Christ within and among us. The Assumption of Mary into the heavens celebrates the integration of the feminine with the male, the Alpha with the Omega, the holiness of nature, the fecund vitality of the sacred in creation, the renewal of grassroots movements for liberation that refuse to die despite Christofascism in our generation, and the creative mystery of mysticism at the heart of all love and compassion.

credits:

1) mosaic by members of Christ City Church, Memphis, TN: https://prayerandverse.com/2018/12/24/our-souls-magnify-the-lord/

2) assumption of mary https://www.pinterest.com/cottingham0971/assumption-of-mary/

nourishing patience as embodied prayer

Last Sunday, after our morning reflection and Eucharist – and a short nap as I was unusually tired – I was walking among the flowers and garden vegetables when a burst of yellow caught my eye: it was my long absent friend golden rod. Living in these parts and renewing my appreciation for the North Country over the past 15 years has caused my adoration of this wildflower to ripen. Gazing upon a field of golden rod six feet high swaying in the breeze while framed by a ring of purple asters is to me pure ecstasy. Soon our neighbors will place their statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary at the edge of their yard and the wetlands where she will be surrounded by a sea of golden rod and become for a season Our Lady of the Fields. There’s just something about the quality of this yellow adorning these late summer visitors that I find arresting…

· … and I must confess, a bit sobering, too. For within the beauty of this glorious wildflower is a message that summer is slowly sneaking away and will soon become Mother Autumn. Fall may well be my favorite season of the year; for so many mystical reasons autumn awakens me to the sacred rhythm of life and death as greens becomes brown, orange, and red, the harvest is starting to be gathered in, and acres and acres of pumpkins will soon appear on the hillsides of New England.

· Yet catching sight of creation’s first golden rod is still startling to me: I know fall is coming, I look forward to its return, yet seeing it’s first signs fills me with a tender melancholia. It’s a beautiful yet humbling reminder of God’s gracious presence in a world way beyond my control. St. Mary Oliver of blessed memory put it like this:

In the deep fall don’t you imagine the leaves think how comfortable it will be to touch
the earth instead of the nothingness of air and the endless freshets of wind?
And don’t you think the trees themselves, especially those with mossy, warm caves,
begin to think of the birds that will come — six, a dozen — to sleep inside their bodies?
And don’t you hear the goldenrod whispering goodbye,
the everlasting being crowned with the first tuffets of snow? The pond vanishes, and the white field over which the fox runs so quickly brings out its blue shadows. And the wind pumps its
bellows. And at evening especially, the piled firewood shifts a little, longing to be on its way.

This tender melancholia is, at least for me, an awakening to the Earth’s quiet invitation to make peace with patience. Fr. Ed Hays in his small guidebook to pray ALL ways writes: “Patience as a quality of the heart seems to be a feminine grace… It is the ability to wait and suffer time… as its Greek root word suggests.”

Hupomone is the Greek New Testament feminine noun for the capacity to endure and persevere. It is sometimes translated as steadfast or even the willingness to wait behind rather than rush ahead to the forefront. In one of St. Luke’s apocalyptic passages, Jesus tells those closest to his heart that there will be times when persecution and hatred will afflict the faithful so they must be steadfast and patient trusting God’s love.

They will arrest you… and hand you over to prisons where you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name. This will give you an opportunity to testify. So, make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance; for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict. There will be times when you will be betrayed even by parents and brothers and sisters, by relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death. You will be hated by all because of my name. But not a hair of your head will perish for by your endurance – your sacred waiting rather than rushing, your patience - you will gain your souls.

St. Paul uses this same word throughout Romans telling us that those committed to trusting God are able to celebrate suffering with endurance because:

Suffering cultivates patience and endurance, waiting on the Lord quietly in turn strengthens our deepest values, as these values give shape and form to our outward character, they eventually give birth to hope for hope is a gift from God which pours the presence of the Holy Spirit into our hearts.

Sacred hope, as opposed to sentimental or naive optimism, is a spiritual gift cultivated by quiet waiting. It is stillness rather than yearning. Trust instead of anxiety. And St. Paul insists that it takes practice – especially in a ginned-up culture of instant gratification and over consumption – to grow strong. “Patience” Fr. Ed writes, “is one way of examining our inner spiritual balance.” He adds that many of us do not know how to peacefully suffer time. “We want everything right now. We want love, success, happiness, social justice, equality, reform, our clothes cleaned and pressed, our hair dried, our rice cooked, and our meals ready to eat right NOW! And, it seems, that we want the Kingdom of God right now, too.” To which one of our tradition’s contemporary elders, the wise Gertrud Mueller-Nelson, replies in her Advent meditation:

Waiting, because it will always be with us, can be made into a work of art and a way of prayer… Our masculine world wants to blast away waiting from our lives… we equate it with wasting… and yet the tempo of our haste has less to do with being on time or the efficiency of a busy life – it has more to do with our inability to wait without anxiety. Paradoxically, God has constructed creation in such a way that the unpractical waiting of life is mysteriously necessary to all that is becoming. As in pregnancy, nothing of value comes into being without a period of quiet incubi-tion: not a healthy baby, not a loving relationship, not a reconciliation, a new understanding, a work of art, never a transformation. Rather, a shortened period of incubation brings forth what is not whole or strong or even alive. Brewing, baking, simmer, fermenting, ripening, germinating, gestating are all the feminine processes of become and they are the symbolic states of being which belong in a life of value.

Have we ever, in our contemporary collective experience, lived into a time that so aches for patient endurance as this one – where our days demand a peaceful suffering of time – even as our souls grieve it all? I know that in these maddening days of covid surges and the anxiety they carry, it is essential for me to continue cultivating the practice of “suffering the slow growth of inner stillness” and deep trust. I was SO ready for a different autumn – and so heartsick when our public health experts said slow down and wait some more for this damned pandemic to run its course. I wasn’t even consciously aware of my sorrow until I saw that golden rod last week; when it caught my eye, it whispered autumn’s words of wisdom saying: things are once again changing beyond your con-trol. Could it be time to check within once more to see if you’re grounded in my steadfast love? If you’re going to ride out the approaching storms still to come with even the hint of equanimity, you must become still – patient – and then you’ll know.

And just so that I would take stock of my golden rod friend’s reminder, I started to have a melt down a few days later when a credit card company locked down my ability to pay a bill online. I had apparently entered some wrong passwords, or numbers, or something into their exasperating questioning where after three wrong tries, you’re locked me out. I understand the security of this hassle, but on this particular day it still pissed me off royally. I was actually unnerved – angry and anxious at the same time – and I wanted someone else besides myself to blame for why I was feeling unmoored. It only took a few minutes for this totally First World problem to be resolved. But my feelings of impending doom were a wake-up call to pay attention to what was going on just below my surface because NONE of it was peaceful, patient, or pretty. Fr. Richard Rohr tells us that:

Living in a transitional age such as ours is scary: things are falling apart, the future is unknow-able, and so much doesn’t cohere or make sense. Our uncertainty (can either be an emotional trap door that sinks us) or the pathway into mystery, the doorway of surrender, the road to God that Jesus called “faith.”

Another word for this is trust: the patient endurance that knows how to suffer time peacefully and readies our hearts to receive God’s spirit of hope. Interestingly, this time I caught myself melting down, giving in to frustration, and embracing those as still unacknowledged disappointments. So, I lay down, literally, breathing deeply so that my anxiety might become a portal to prayer Paul the apostle advised saying out loud to Di: I don’t know all the reasons why I become such an anxious a-hole whenever money problems pop up in real or imagination incarnations, but I hate it. I hate how I sound to you, I despise how I sound to myself, and I’m exhausted by this overwhelming anxiety. It’s got to end. So, I’m just going to lay down here, shut up, and give it all a rest, ok? And WHAT started singing inside me when I closed my eyes to be still?

When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me speaking words of wisdom: let it be! And in my hour of darkness she is standing right in front of me, speaking words of wisdom, let it be: Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be, whisper words of wisdom, let it be

Paying attention to our angst matters – it is part of the pathway into the prayer of patience – for as Fr. Rohr came to realize in his own life: It takes great trust and patience to remain stunned, sad, and silenced by the tragedy and absurdity of human events. To feel the confusion rather than deny or hide it, to let it become God’s invitation for you to slip into stillness is how suffering gives birth to quiet endurance, and sacramental waiting matures into a heart of hope. For SOME reason, THIS week I finally got it – both the wisdom of St. Paul – AND a taste of God’s grace-filled stillness.

That OTHER St. Paul, St. Paul McCartney of Liverpool, sang to me the wisdom of Psalm 40 in a new way and I heard again the sacred words of wisdom: be still and know that I am God. I don’t think it was mere coincidence that as this week unfolded, I came upon another gift from the wise souls at the Center for Action and Contemplation.

Each day at CAC we begin our morning sit by repeating a line from Psalm 46:10: “Be still and know that I am God.” With each repetition, we drop a word from the verse until we finally say only “Be,” before entering the silence together. It is a reminder that no matter how we arrive that day, we are called to be, and be still, before God. Barbara Holmes affirms that stillness is important for all who want to transform their pain instead of transmit it: “Stillness is a state of wholeness, an antidote to the fragmentation… that comes with marginalization. Sitting in stillness allows the pieces of us to reassemble.” It seems that we have forgotten what rocks, plants, and animals still know. We have forgotten how to be—to be still, to be ourselves, to be where life is: Here and Now.

· One way to cultivate patience and nourish a sacramental endurance so that we might be whole and holy is to use that prayer: Be still and know that I am God as Rohr suggests. So before moving on, we should try it – and then maybe we’ll use it with some consistency. So make yourself comfortable – close your eyes or not as is your preference – and pray along with me as we use the be still paradigm. I’ll speak each line leaving a time for a few silent breaths and then move on leaving off a word, ok?

· First, breathe in and out gently as I say: Be still and know that I am God… (silence) Be still and know that I am… (silence.) Be still and know… (silence.) Be still…(silence.) Be… (silence.)

That’s one simple and time-tested way to get grounded again in stillness on the path towards inner patience. Another is to interrupt your chain of thought by bringing your attention to a “stone, a tree, or even a bird or and animal – not to think about it – but just to let it hold your awareness.” Spiritual directors have learned that when you perceive something natural, you take on something of its essence. “You can sense how still it is, and in doing so let that same stillness arise within you. You sense how deeply it rests in Being—completely at one with what it is and where it is. And in realizing this, you too can come to a place of rest deep within yourself.” That’s one of the many blessings I experience in our garden: there’s so much beauty to contemplate and so much stillness, too.

In my recent frustration with myself and my still buried anxieties about the year to come, after my let it be rest within the stillness, I said out loud: “Jesus Christ, I’m almost 70 years old. I’ve been going down this inward journey road for more than half of my life. I should be able to do a bit better at all of this.” And, while it’s true on one level that I want to get a little better living in peace with myself, as I was saying it I realized how unnecessarily judgmental I sounded, too. That’s something else nourishing patience as prayer wants us to experience: we are blessed by grace just as much as anyone and everyone else.

· We KNOW that God shares grace with others in the world freely and joyfully. What we often forget is that God does so to us, too. I don’t know HOW many times I’ve prayed that passage from Romans 5 – or how many times I’ve preached it, taught it, pondered, fretted, and wept over it. In so many ways, it has been liberating to me over the years – AND – last week I GOT it in a profound way.

· Within and beyond me, finally from the inside out, I knew intimately that owning my wounds leads to hope because my wounds not only link me to all of creation, but to that amazing grace that I trust God shares with the world is always available to me, too! James Baldwin once made this confession that is sooo right:

You think your own pain and heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.” A mentor and professor, the late Dorothee Soelle, taught that our suffering is where we most honestly come to God’s common table to feast with the rest of the world. Our wounds are what we have in common with every other living person. Through them we can ripen in tenderness and dis-cover how to share the presence of the holy with others with compassion, safety, and respect. Fr. Ed puts it like this: “Patience is vigilant waiting, a waiting that is full, pregnant with dreams, hopes, ideas, and peace. This waiting is NOT resignation… this patience is loving and dynamic surrender. In Islam, this patient surrender is often expressed in the term, “Inshallah” which means “if God is willing.” In God’s deep love, it doesn’t matter HOW long it takes me to grasp that grace was meant for me, too: we are ALL works in progress, all doing the best we can at any given moment, and all – dare I say it from a wisdom long forgotten – bozos on this bus? Sister Joy Harjo captures the bounty of resting in the stillness of such grace in her poem, Perhaps the World Ends Here:

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live. The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on. We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it. It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women. At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers. Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table. This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun. Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory. We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here. At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks. Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.

I hear Sr. Harjo recognizing that the patience nourished by inner stillness not only bathes us in grace but connects us to all of creation as well. As Fr. Ed puts it at the close of his chapter on patience as prayer: “Patience is a sign that our needs – at this very moment – must be in balance with the needs and lives of others. Waiting for anyone or anything is a prayer of communion with the rest of the cosmos. In this, it is a prayer of humility and truth – the truth that we are but a part of a much greater whole and not the sum total of all.”

That’s an aspect of patient waiting that this new phase of moving through the portal of the pandemic is trying to tell us: we ARE all connected – it is no coincidence that 99.9% of those being hospitalized and dying of the covid Delta variant are unvaccinated – and the only reason this surge is not MORE horrible is that 70% of the rest of us made the commitment to wear masks for 18 months, shelter in place, and get our shot in the arm when our time opened up. The selfishness, ideology, fear, reluctance, stubbornness, sometimes stupidity, and sometimes harsh realities of working without the benefit of time off to GET a vaccination, and then who the hell knows what else that continues to keep 30% of our sisters and brothers away from the doctor’s office is now threatening everyone well-being and threatening to upset our needed economic and emotional recoveries, too. NONE of us WANT to practice this type of waiting – we want the whole mess to be over and done with – but that’s not going to happen any time soon. I wish to God that weren’t true, but we’re in for a long haul. Owning this tragedy in the light of our interrelationships and faith tradition, it seems that those among us who choose to honor its humbling truths must find an even deeper repose with suffering time peaceably than we’ve ever practiced before. INSERT

And let me try to articulate what this means because I don’t want to lay a heavy burden on you in any way, shape, or form. In the 17th chapter of St. John’s gospel Jesus prays to the Lord that all might become as one. Fr. Henri Nouwen offers that this prayer for unity is not only for his current disciples, but for everyone born into this life. “May they all be one, Father, just as you are in me and I in you . . .” (John 17:21).

· In his day as in ours, social unity was not on the horizon: his disciples mistrusted one another, civil society was on the edge of revolution, Israel was under the bootheel of imperial Rome, and rich and poor hated one another as much as America’s walking wounded despise our cultural and economic elites. There was a desire for social unity, but no formula for it to happen. So, notice two truths in the prayer of Jesus: first, when Jesus prays for unity, it is as a gift from God by grace NOT human achievement; and second, it is grounded in the humble reality that God can hold together what we cannot.

· Every social movement I’ve participated in – and nearly every faith community, too – yearns for solidarity. Deep trust. Even love. As Nouwen observes we try to accomplish this unity by discovering common ground with one another: what values, hopes, dreams, art, music, and culture do we all share? This often works for a time until “we eventually become disillusioned with one another realizing NO human being is capable of consistently offering us the care and compassion we all want profoundly.” Often, our disillusionment leads us into bitterness, cynicism, and a brittleness that finds enemies lurking everywhere except within our own hearts.

I still recall vividly how broken-hearted I became while working for Cesar Chavez and the farm workers movement: as young idealists in the early 70’s we were certain we were going to change the world – at least advance the revolution of love and peace. But, for reasons deeper than anyone knows, Cesar became distracted – self-destructive and un-moored as well – and began to systematically chase out of the movement everyone who disagreed with his narrow vision including its early founders. I left after a year of ugly and cruel attacks upon mostly young, vulnerable Anglo volunteers who were open-hearted and committed to La Causa but emotionally naïve. I was angry, wounded, and resentful that the man once celebrated as the Mexican Gandhi had become a Little Cesar dictator. My own spiritual naivete was so fractured by this experience that for three years I couldn’t speak about what it meant to see my hero’s feet of clay.

Thanks be to God I didn’t get stuck there – that’s what James Fowler calls the adolescent stage of faith development – where disillusionment becomes normative and always looks for someone else’s demons out there. Never within. In time God led me into seminary where I came under the guidance of a wise and humble mentor, Ray Swartzback, who showed me over and over again that it’s not my brother nor my sister, not the deacon nor the preacher, nor even the rabbi or the mullah, but it’s ME, it’s me, it’s ME o Lord standing in the need of prayer. Ray was a master at helping me get over my hurt and get over myself and learn some good Biblical theology, too. He would sometimes kid me and ask: What did old St. Paul say in Romans 7? And when I didn’t know at first, he told me to go and find out. I love Peterson’s rendering of this text:

If I know what is loving but still can’t do it, if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I can will it, but I can’t do it consistently. I decide to do good, but don’t really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. It happens so regularly that it’s predictable. The moment I decide to do good, my false self is there to trip me up. And while I truly delight in God’s commands, it’s pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me rebel just when I least expect it…

That’s why Jesus didn’t pray for a unity based on what we know or want or will: he taught us that the love needed for unity and solidarity is greater than our ability. So, he prayed that we find unity through resting in God’s love and opening our hearts to God’s compassion. It won’t come about, simply by singing “Solidarity Forever,” or bowing down to doctrine, dogma, systematic theology, or institutional hierarchy in ANY religion. To paraphrase Marcus Borg, Jesus told us that: Centering in God is what transforms us. It changes us. It produces what Paul called ‘the fruit of the Spirit’ and ‘the gifts of the Spirit.’ It is what Jesus meant when he said, ‘You will know them by their fruits.’ The fruits of centering in God are many and intertwined, but the most important are compassion, freedom, courage, and gratitude. No one is more important than the other – they are all essential – and all flow from being centered in God’s grace.

THIS is the unity Jesus advocated: being mystically centered and grounded in God’s love – experiencng from the inside out and beyond anything we have done or earned – the blessed grace of being the beloved of the Lord. About this time last summer, I sensed that our charism together was going to be quietly revolutionary: we – and others like us – were being invited by God to offer a clear alternative to the fear, anxiety, hatred, and ignorance so prevalent in this country. Like the first disciples, our sacramental action was NOT about strengthening an institution, but living with such trust and simple compassion that a new way of being was visible for others trapped and oppressed by the status quo. I believe this NOW more than I did a year ago. So, as the uncertainty of late summer 2021 opens to the mysteries of autumn like the greens of the wetland behind my house are giving up their verdancy for yellows, browns, and reds, let us be those who practice transforming our fear and anger into patience, listening, and sharing the beauty of God’s love wherever we find ourselves. If you are able, pray with me again the short “be still prayer” as anticipation of living Eucharistically: Breathe in, breathe out gently: Be still and know that I am God… (silence) Be still and know that I am…be still and know… be still… be…