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.