anyone? anyone? bueller...?

It won't come as news to those who know me well that I'm often "late to the party" when it comes to discerning social trends, new tunes, resources, politics, or authors. And forget about the wonderful world of film - I'm hopelessly behind the times here when I used to go to a new film (or three) every Friday. Such is the fate, blessing, and curse of solitude and contemplation, yes? 

One of the many reasons I stepped away from pastoral ministry after sensing in Montreal that God wanted something different from me, was the realization that my artistic references were so outdated that those both older and younger than myself often had no idea what I was talking about when sharing a popular culture quote. "Anyone, anyone? Bueller?" was still drop-dead funny and appropriate to me, but only so for an increasingly smaller cadre of those in public worship. And that circle was rapidly shrinking, too even before the pandemic. As it became increasingly clear, I no longer shared a common cultural language with that small handful of souls who were interested in public worship: from time to time we might find a measure of unity in mutual emotions, but rarely in a lingua franca of culture. 

The deeper I retreated into silence, the more I accepted that "to everything there is a season," including my time in the local church. Paradoxically, while I was still committed to the way of Jesus, the importance of spiritual reflection upon culture, and the joy of making music in public, my old ways had not only become to me irrelevant but personally unsatisfying as well. So, while the Psalmist was probably right in telling me it was time to "Sing a new song unto the Lord," I had no idea what that might sound like let alone what words to use.

In time it dawned on me that this was a season to create the space to wait upon the Lord. I was at an age when I could afford to slow down rather than push the envelope in frantic uncertainty. And while waiting and discernment have never been my long suit, the time was right. Trusting that darkness would always be part of the journey towards light, I said, "Let's give it a go, Joe!" And after months of inward/outward waiting, fretting, trusting, and doubting, two new/old practices showed up to help me find my focus: 1) listening to Mother Nature as I gardened and walked through the wetlands; and, 2) reclaiming a few important old songs on the acoustic guitar. 

Listening to the the rhythms of Mother Nature has been a consistent path for both celebration and resistance among First Nations people for millennia. Their practices are not mine to appropriate in any way, shape, or form. Yet their wisdom re: the rhythms of nature are well-known the world over. For the past three years my sacred listening and moving about required reclaiming my people's way of listening with the charism of Celtic spirituality. The beloved 4th century Welsh heretic/saint, Pelagius, insisted that: if you want to know the Creator, you must spend time with what's been created. Learning the rhythms of the seasons - and their corresponding spiritualities - has been life-changing. Getting my hands in the dirt, building raised garden beds, exploring native seeds to refashion our common space into a sacred sanctuary, and to doing so with plants, flowers, and vegetables that support bees and butterflies is teaching me a bit about patience as well as a new way to hope. Incrementally I am learning to engage reality at the speed of Mother Nature as a spiritual discipline that will carry me gratefully to my final resting place in the soil. Every Lent I used to say, "From ashes we came and to ashes we shall return," before making the sign of the Cross on the foreheads of saints and sinners. Now, I scour seed catalogues and blogs for appropriate plants that might help renew a bit of life within the ashes of this small corner of God's green earth. 

And returning to my acoustic guitar: I haven't played jazz or rock bass in three years. Writing this makes me sad. But after an intense 7 years of serious music, it was time to leave my upright bass sitting in the corner of my study. These are small and quiet days. My soul seeks gentleness and nuance. It started writing "Small is Holy" three years ago with an opening verse and chorus that showed up almost automatically:

Thinking big and acting strong – led me into all that’s wrong.
Hitting bottom taught me well strategies to get through Hell.
Touch the wound in front of you – that’s all you can really do.
Keep it close, don’t turn away, make room for what’s real today.
Small is me, small is you, small is holy and rings true.
Small is hard, small reveals the way our hearts can be healed. 

But I couldn't get the rest of it right: I tried some Tom Petty-esque grooves but they felt derivative. Other verses and the bridge sounded preachy. I was searching for something more gentle and quiet, but I didn't yet know what that was. About this same time I exited music making with my dear friends because I felt stuck - and my stalled song was the outward and visible sign of my inward and spiritual pothole. We took a quick trip to Tucson to see old friends and get a break from the winter and when we got home: BAM it was covid time and solitude and silence became our new normal. 

Curiously, inch by inch, a whole new melody, chord structure and lyric started to emerge from the shell of "Small is Holy." It began to feel "real" and even alive to me. That's when I realized what a second spiritual discipline of listening slowing to the sacred within was asking of me. To date, I've reclaimed "Healer of My Soul" from JM Talbot's catalogue, Leslie Duncan's elegiac "Love Song," my stripped down take on St. Lou Reed's "Sweet Jane" and a few quiet hymns. During Advent 2021 I found beauty and rest in an instrumental setting for, "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" and "In the Bleak Midwinter." Revisiting these small, quiet songs has been salvific and satisfying. For as much as I like to tear it up, shake my booty, and rock'n'roll all night long, that's not where my heart is most of the time these days.

One other new/old blessing that has arrived while waiting on the Lord has to do with following the small threads of serendipity into the synchronicity of the Holy Spirit. I've noticed six important clues showing up over the past 36 months that make me smile and sit up and take notice. Like the old adage says: "When the student is ready, the Buddha will appear." You may enjoy following these links, too.

1) The writing and music of Alana Levandowski: 

https://www.facebook.com/groups/alanalevandoski

2) The writing of John Philip Newell:

https://www.earthandsoul.org

3) The online wisdom and music of Carrie Newcomer.

 https://carrienewcomer.substack.com

4) The novels of Richard Powers and Louise Erdrich:

http://www.richardpowers.net - http://www.richardpowers.net

5) The music of Robert Plant and Allison Krause:

6) The insights of Kaitlyn Curtice:

https://kaitlincurtice.com

james baldwin, caitlyn curtice and jesus...

The late Thomas Merton – monk, author, and activist – discerned that to speak of Christ’s blessing to the weird among us, he needed poetry more than prose and wrote:

Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for him at all, Christ comes uninvited. But because he cannot be at home in it, because he is out of place in it, and yet he must be in it, His place is with the others for whom there is no room. His place is with those who do not belong, who are rejected by power, because they are regarded as weak, discredited, denied status of persons, who are tortured, bombed and exterminated. With those for whom there is no room: Christ is present in this world.

Today’s appointed lesson from the gospel according to St. Luke says much the same thing. As Jesus opened the scroll of the prophet Isaiah at his home synagogue, his public ministry began among friends and neighbors. They were eager to hear what he might have to say about this ancient text – and hoped he might bring them a word of comfort, too.

He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Merton, Jesus, and the prophet Isaiah are explicit: when we are inspired to share
compassion and act to right human relations one with the other and all with creation, it is the Spirit of the Lord at work within us. The incarnation did not occur only ONCE in theology or history, but wherever the poor or wounded experience comfort and solidarity, God’s word becomes flesh. James Baldwin and Kaitlyn Curtice have accepted this anointing – one old and one young – albeit in different contexts.

One is black, the other mixed race; one is male, the other female. But to paraphrase words ascribed to St. Paul from a baptismal liturgy in Ephesians 4, Baldwin and Curtice are of one heart : leading lives worthy of the calling which comes from the Spirit; with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (we trust that) there is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called into the one hope of… one Lord, one faith… and one God and Creator of all. This is what Baldwin and Curtice have done as writers, poets, and activists: they’ve linked their literary creativity to faithful activism challenging the status quo on behalf of the oppressed as the spirit empowers them to give shape and form to the blessed weirdness we’re celebrating on the road to Lent. The astute words of marketing renegade, Rob Siltanen, proclaim:

Here’s to the so-called crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules and they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them; disagree with them; glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as crazy, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do it.

So, let me offer a few insights about today’s text from St. Luke’s gospel before considering the anointing the Spirit has poured upon James Baldwin and Kaitlyn Curtice. As kindred within our tribe of blessed weird ones, I invite you to open your hearts with me in prayer that we might be ground-ed in grace. Using Padraig O’Tuama’s words from the Corrymela Community of Belfast, we pray:

O God of Yesterday, we knew you then: your promises, your words, your walking among us. But yesterday is gone, and so, today, we are in need of change. Change – and change us. Help us see life now not through yesterday’s stories but through today’s. Amen.

Today’s story, like all New Testaments texts, is layered with multiple meanings and best NOT to treat it as literal, linear history. St. Luke’s purpose in writing both this story as well as the Acts of the Apostles – part two of his gospel – is to teach a Gentile community how the ministry of Jesus is both the natural continuation of the blessings God first shared with ancient Israel in the Exodus wilderness and to show the world how the church now supersedes Israel’s once favored status. As Dr. Amy-Jill Levine notes in The Jewish Annotated New Testament: Luke’s “presentation of Jews and Judaism is complex… it solidly locates Jesus within a vibrant Jewish environment of faithful Jews engaged in faithful Jewish practices… while also depicting the synagogue as a place of violence (including) scathing caricatures of Pharisees and chief priests.”

· She adds that while the “harsh rhetoric resembles that of the Biblical prophets and the Qum-ran writings (of the Dead Sea Scrolls), the distinction is that Jesus’ criticisms against his fellow Jews are now embedded in a text directed primarily to Gentiles.” One critique was internecine, a family feud among Jewish equals, while the other is oppositional between theological and cultural adversaries. We should note, too that by the time St. Luke’s gospel had been codified, most likely at the close of the 1st CE or the start of the second – after Roman legions had beaten back a Jewish insurrection, decimated the second temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE, and banished Jews from living in their own capital city – this gospel told a story from the perspective of the victors of history, not the vanquished.

· Consequently, St. Luke sometimes romanticizes Christian community, creating idealized descriptions of life in the church that were never historically accurate; other times it willfully misrepresents the intent and practice of Jewish rituals; and regularly minimizes the tensions existing between the followers of Jesus before the Temple’s destruction in 70 CE and those enforcing the Roman occupation of ancient Palestine. It’s a REAL mixed bag. And while I love lots within it, it’s good to be clear about its baggage as well, ok?

What I want to highlight today, however, is St. Luke’s refusal to spiritualize the pain and suffering of those allied with the Jesus Movement of his day. Our text, as well as the version of the Sermon on the Mount in chapter 6 of St. Luke, use what most scholars consider some of Christ’s earliest words: Blessed are you who are poor for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who hun-ger now for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now for you will laugh. Here Jesus doesn’t speak metaphorically about the poor as St. Matthew does in his beatitude where the poor become: “the poor in spirit.” Rather he uses the word for those who are dirt poor – ptochus in Greek – those who have been reduced to begging in the street because they are “destitute of resources – especially farm and family.”

Jesus in St. Luke’s text addresses the discarded homeless who beg for alms and sometimes find themselves locked away in debtor’s prison. St. Matthew universalizes God’s blessing while St. Luke exposes the agony of class struggle. Consider the careful restatement of these differences in Eugene Peterson’s The Message. In Matthew’s “sermon on the mount” we read: You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and God’s rule. You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you. Luke’s parallel verses become: You’re blessed when you’ve lost it all. God’s kingdom is there for the finding. You’re blessed when you’re ravenously hungry. Then you’re ready for the Messianic meal. Do you sense the distinctions? One is metaphorical and personal; the other is existential and class conscious.

Like Matthew and Mark, Luke sets this story as Jesus returns from his desert vision quest: he’s been initiated by his wild man cousin, John the Baptist in the Jordan River; he’s fasted and prayed for 40 days in the elements of Mother Nature; and now starts to slowly meander through the region taking-in what’s happening to his kin as he teaches in the synagogues of the area where the text tell us he was well received wherever he went.

Scholars suggest that this is the evangelist’s way of saying that Jesus had started to assume the mantle of a prophet. He’s wandering, watching, listening, learning, and responding to the broken and discarded among his people and receives their blessing. In time, he returns to his hometown of Nazareth where, on the Sabbath, he reads from the prophetic poet’s promise of God’s Jubilee Year from the scroll of Isaiah. In our era, this portion of Isaiah is only ritually included in the “haftarah” – a passage from the prophets (Nevi’im) that complement the sabbath Torah lesson – at one specific time of year: the last Sabbath before Rosh Hashanah and the Days of Awe called Yom Kippur.

· We should recall, however, that during the time of Jesus there was a measure of fluidity in the public liturgies of the synagogue as Jewish tradition was still emerging in the 1st CE. So, whether in keeping with the practices of his home community or personal innovation, Jesus reads Isaiah’s poetry about God restoring and renewing blessings upon the most destitute: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because I have been anointed to bring good news to the dirt poor of Israel.

· Closing the scroll, he then identifies himself within the Jewish Jubilee tradition of Leviticus 25 and Deuteronomy 15 telling the congregation: Today, in your hearing, this promise of the Lord has been fulfilled.

To make sense of this proclamation, let’s note that Leviticus articulates a series of

practices de-signed to make the rest and renewal of a holy Sabbath normative within Israel’s economy. The first stipulation states that people as well as the land and its animals be allowed to lay fallow and free every seven days. To honor the Sabbath and keep it holy in creation is to practice weekly what God once set in motion in history: Six days shall ye labor but on the seventh you shall rest. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the Lord your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.

The second qualification was that Sabbath rest was to be given to the land every six years to allow creation itself the restoration and replenishment human beings need to thrive. And the third obligation was that every seven weeks of years – that is seven years times seven years – on the day of atonement THAT year was to be marked as the acceptable year of the Lord: The Jubilee where all land, humans, animals, insects, and all of creation seen and unseen would celebrate God’s grace by freely experiencing God’s rest and renewal for the entire community. Jubilee opened the doors of the debtor’s prisons and returned any land that might have been sold during the past 50 years to its original owners. Over a thousand years, Deuteronomy built upon the older Jubilee of Leviticus insisting that the seventh year of sabbaths bring rest to the economy by liberating any acquired slaves. In St. Luke’s gospel, THIS is how Jesus begins his public ministry: proclaiming to his home synagogue that the ancient prophecy had been fulfilled by his anointing. Small wonder the poorest and hungriest cheered, yes?

Now, we should be clear that Jubilee in ancient Israel was more often a sacred intention than a well-developed fact: it was the aspiration of a people committed to God’s generosity some fifteen hundred years before Jesus told us that we cannot serve both God and wealth. I think our tradition’s wisest contemporary scholar of the Hebrew Bible, Walter Brueggemann, got it right when he wrote:

God’s holiness was not simply a cultic affair or a religious phenomenon. God’s holiness was relentlessly committed to the neighborhood; for that reason, holiness tilts toward covenantal neighborly justice. And the Bible insists – most clearly in the Jubilee tradition – that faith and ethics are necessary aspects of the same coin, though they are by no means identical. Faith must demonstrate its authenticity by the way it operates in the ordinary affairs of life.

Given this spiritual and ethical legacy, coupled with the condition of his kin as they struggled under the boot heel of Roman occupation, it is no surprise that Jesus would search for the scroll of the prophet Isaiah and reclaim the Jubilee promise as the acceptable year of the Lord. My seminary advisor, Cornel West, used to tell us that: Justice is what grace and love look like in public.

Biblical sociologists Bruce Malina and Richard Rohrbaugh amplify this in their definitive Social Science Commentary on The Synoptic Gospels writing: The passage Jesus recites in the context of his ministry is Isaiah 61: 1-2. The captives he is referring to are probably the debtors in prison for nonpayment (of loans.) Debtors (in that day) were put in prison as a form of extortion since it was their families that would have to pay for their release. The release proclaimed is that of the Jubilee year in which ALL debts were canceled. The acceptable year of the Lord was the Jubilee: a year-long Sabbath. Which to my weird way of holding the sacred and the profane together – honoring the unity of both the heavenly within ALL that is human – the struggles of real people for bread and dignity as the marriage of justice with grace – a Jubilee Jesus sounds a lot like both God’s blessed weird ones we know as James Baldwin and Kaitlyn Curtice. Brother James spins it for us like this in “Jimmy’s Blues” from 1983.

If the hope of giving is to love the living, the giver risks madness in the act of giving. Some such lesson I seemed to see in the faces that surrounded me. Needy and blind, unhopeful, unlifted, what gift would give them the gift to be gifted? The giver is no less adrift than those who are clamoring for the gift. If they cannot claim it, if it is not there, if their empty fingers beat the empty air and the giver goes down on his knees in prayer knows that all of his giving has been for naught and that nothing was ever what he thought and turns in his guilty bed to stare at the starving multitudes standing there and rises from bed to curse at heaven, he must yet understand that to whom much is given much will be taken, and justly so: I cannot tell how much I owe.

From out of the African-American community, Baldwin arose as a bi-sexual prophetic poet of love and fear, writing novels, plays and prose that named the demon of race hatred as America’s original sin even as he searched for common ground with his oppressors. Curtice, born into a white /native mixed family in Oklahoma, traces her roots back to the First Nations Potawatomi people of lower Wisconsin. From her experience she rages, celebrates, laments, and challenges us much like Baldwin did a generation before she was born. Her 2017 poem, “Why EVERY Day is Indigenous Peoples Day” is righteous:

Step out and beyond. There are invisible realities in the world, stories the history books cannot tell us. Put your bare foot into the water of a river or a lake and let it remind you– there are unspoken histories that can only be honored, felt, often misunderstood. Because so many of us walk around with invisible prison bars around us. We are bound by our currencies, our schedules, our loud voices and un-listening ears. Do you wat to know why every day is Indigenous Peoples’ Day? It is because of the land. It is because of the rivers and rocks, mountains and trees. It is because the dirt still holds our feet to the ground and the fires that still burn. The forest trees still shed their leaves, the wind still blows, the waters still erode the rocks to create stones that we skip across her reflective face. You see, we belong to the land, not the other way around. That is a constant lesson that indigenous peoples are taught, that we continue to learn, that we wish others learn as well. She is our storyteller, our creation keeper. She continues to re-create us, to tell us our own story. So we take the sage and sweetgrass, tobacco and cedar, and while we let their smoke rise over us, we listen. For non-native people, the stories are still there. People still came before. Learn their names. Learn their stories. That takes more than an afternoon, doesn’t it? It takes more than resisting a colonial holiday? And so, every day we continue to learn. Every day that I look in the mirror, I celebrate that I am indigenous. That I am still here. Every word I write is to bring us closer to the Kingdom of God, the God who sees and knows my Potawatomi blood, who mourns when I mourn and celebrates when I raise my head and pray in my native language, Migwetch, Mamogosnan. Migwetch Mamogosnan. Every day is Indigenous Peoples’ Day because our histories tell our stories, our language tethers us to each other and this earth, and while we are here, there is justice to be done. There are wrongs to be made right, and there is healing on the horizon. Will you join me there, beyond our prisons? Will you join me on the other side?

This is 20th and 21st century Jubilee poetry: sacred, righteous worship talk mixed with a call to action asking what do we want: chaos or community? Race wars or circle dances? A barren earth of strip mines, strip clubs, and strip malls, or, the beloved community where I cherish the sacred in you and you are safe enough to trust doing the same for me? James Arthur Baldwin was born in New York City’s Harlem in 1924. Kaitlin B. Curtice was born in an Indian hospital in Ada, Oklahoma in 1988. Brother James died a year before Sister Kaitlin was born – but what does the Appalachian hymn tell us about the circle? It’s unbroken, right? We are surrounded by a great cloud of witness bigger than time, class, race, gender, and culture. And I cannot help but see and hear these two weird, blessed souls as part of God’s never-ending choir inviting us to join them singing: O freedom, oh freedom, oh freedom over me; and before I’d be a slave, I’d be buried in my grave, and go home to my Lord and be free.

Before I ever heard the early feminist insight that the personal is political, Baldwin’s fiction spoke to me of a quest for identity and meaning that mirrored the intertwined tumult raging through the United States in the 50’s and 60’s. His first novel, Go Tell it on the Mountain from 1953, speaks of a young black man coming of age in the city who aches for more love and creativity – more freedom than he found within the constraints of his father’s Pentecostal religion. At 15, I was struck by the contradictions in my own New England Puritan spirituality – it’s blind spots, sexual hypocrisy along side its inspirational hymnody and legacy of social justice – Baldwin’s words rang true for me.

I still remember watching the debate between Baldwin and William F. Buckley on our black and white TV in February 1965: I was knocked-out by Baldwin’s clarity, moral outrage, tender heart, and articulate challenge to the pompous, white arrogance of Buckley’s just barely constrained bigotry. When Baldwin said, looking straight into Buckley’s eyes, “It came as a great shock around the age of 5, or 6, or 7, when I discovered that the flag to which you have pledged allegiance, along with everybody else, has not pledged allegiance to you.” In a manner inconceivable to me in 2022 – but still all too real – Buckley replied without a hint of irony, “You, sir, have been treated with kid gloves as you claim to be a victim. But the fact that your skin is black is utterly irrelevant to the arguments you raise.” If you’ll pardon my bluntness, that same bullshit is being said about critical race theory today almost 60 years later. Buckley’s refusal to acknowledge a reality in these barely United States that was different from his privilege, race, gender and class can be found today among those giving credence to the Big Lie. So, what makes Baldwin’s words and witness so blessedly weird – even salvific to me – is the “complex and creative way he honors the social, psychological, spiritual, and personal pressures of his race, gender, and class with clarity, humility, and pizzaz!”

I experience the wisdom and wonder of Kaitlin Curtice in much the same way. She’s much younger than Baldwin. Her oeuvre is more limited, too – although every week she adds to it through blogs that didn’t exist in the era of Brother James. This past Indigenous People’s Day, Di and I were away from America’s discord for a short retreat to Quebec’s Eastern Townships, I spent some time with this insight from Curtice:

The trees are nearly bare, and leaves cover the ground. It’s taking a long time for Autumn to visibly come to an end and we still have a few weeks left. We wait and wait for the next season to come, and when it does, we forget how magical it is. We forget that the leaves changing and falling are teaching us something every day about the way things work, perhaps about magic, perhaps about love. We are still learning to love and honor the earth’s ways, and we are still learning to love and know ourselves. I continue to be amazed at my AHA! moments, how they come from nowhere and tell me something new that I never realized, or something I had for-gotten over the years… That’s why this year we cancelled Thanksgiving. November is always a hard month. Despite it being Native American Heritage Month, we watch people carry on toxic stereotypes of Indigenous peoples around the Thanksgiving narrative, especially in public schools. Despite the difficulty, I continue to romanticize the idea of a meal around a table, because I want these moments of hospitality and community to be perfect, meaningful, and good. I was ready to hold a special Friendsgiving meal with my family and a few friends, in the safety of my questions. I was going to cook Indigenous dishes and speak truth and acknowledgment. Then I got a stomach virus and everything was cancelled. When, as life happens, things don’t turn out so good or meaningful, I’m left disappointed, and I struggle with the tension of holding things loosely and being okay with things not working out when I hoped so much for them. I struggle with the tension of things left unresolved.

A big reason we left the US over our Thanksgiving holiday was respite care – taking a break from the tension of things left unresolved – to walk in the woods in the bitter cold and eat incredible French baguettes. Sister Kaitlin not only describes the spiritual and social schizophrenia of being a mixed-race woman in 21st century America, like Baldwin, she grasps that her discernment is both political and personal. She’s one of the wise voices I listen to as I try to make peace with this massively broken culture and country in the presence of Mother Nature.

It’s all too easy to slip into despair these days. Cynicism, too. Every week I’m bounced about on an emotional roller coaster that wears me out. Exhaustion and angst have become our new normal. And that’s why the witness of Brother James and Sister Kaitlin are so important for us all.

Baldwin lived through the murder of his beloved MLK, Malcolm X and Medgar Evers. He endured realities I only know in my nightmares. And still, with conviction and compassion, he told us: You think your pain and your 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. I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with their pain. That’s what he did – dealt with his pain with love and clarity – inviting us to encounter and trust one another’s pain as well. Jesus did exactly that when he told his home synagogue: I’ve been anointed to honor the wounds of the most broken poor among us. THIS is how our wounds are bound – by seeing them and sharing them – and honoring them with love.

Curtice, I think, walks this same road albeit as a 21st century Native woman. Her book, Native, tells of a time she joined the protests at Standing Rock against big oil’s pipelines. “Indigenous resistance s NOT a one-time even,” she writes. “It continually asks: what proliferates in the absence of empire and settler colonialism?” She answers that saying that when she stood:

With the elders as water protectors, gathered to both pray AND resist… the Spirit of creation said go and listen: listen to the land that is still broken but speaking. Listen to the acorns falling from the tops of the trees that remind me that gravity is meant to ground and sustain us right here. Listen to the birds arguing in the sky who remind me that my angle of seeing is limited. That I am small. Listen to the dying autumn leaves that remind me it’s part of life to die and then live again, that death itself can somehow be beautiful. And listen to the rocks and dirt at my feet that remind me that though they are sore, they still have something so say to me just like they had something to say to the people who came before me in this place.

Listening with love is resistance right now as we learn to trust that weariness and winter will one day become a spring of freedom and joy…

jumbled gratitude on mlk day...

Our spring seed order has shipped, I've spent the last few hours shoveling 5" of snow, the days are growing incrementally longer, and Di is taking a quick COVID test: welcome to MLK Day 2022 in our small corner of God's creation. The so-called "wintry mix"- some deranged meteorologist's idea of a poem for the dangerous, freezing slush that plagues these parts - is falling again with a vengeance. Last week's episode left our homes, trees, shrubs, and driveways coated in a quarter inch of ice that required hours of intense chopping to remedy. About half our deck has finally been liberated, but given the current precipitation, I'm afraid there's more mess to come. So, accepting and surrendering what I cannot change, I moved our most recent acquisition of Anna's art work to my desk to remind me of St. Julian's mystical insight: All shall be well - and all manner of things shall be well.

Obliquely, that's a theme wafting through the two most recent novels from Richard Powers: The Overstory and Bewilderment. Christmas gifts from our children two years running, both works of art are saturated with loss and our quest for meaning within the morass. We live in grim and trying times. So, I think Heller McAlpin of NPR comments ring true: "Powers informs us in an author's note, bewilderment has come to mean confusion and bafflement, but its original meaning was to head back into the wild."

Indeed, at times of extreme stress, Powers' bewildered duo do head back into the wild, where they find temporary solace — and where Powers clearly finds inspiration. Few writers capture nature's glories quite so vibrantly. A spectacular "fluted ribbon of fungus rippled through itself to form a surface as convoluted as an Elizabethan ruff." A millipede smells like almond extract, which reminds Robin of his mother's baking. The Milky Way spills out in the dark sky like "countless speckled placers in a black streambed. If you held still, you could almost see the stars wheel." In novel after novel, Powers has built a case for holding still and really looking at the natural world. He helps us see things differently.

Still, there is a wisdom at work in creation beyond our control - often beyond our seeing and knowing, too. I lived within an anthropocentric bubble for most of my life. I've been awed by nature's beauty and inscrutable power to create and destroy at times; but have not really paid close attention - for good and bad reasons - like so much of the rest of my life. Imagine my surprise when I was awakened to the world all around me by the relatively recent new liturgical Season of Creation some ten years ago. "I once was lost, but now I'm found, 'twas blind but now I see." That is, now I consciously listen and look for the wisdom of Mother Nature most days. Not perfectly and not consistently. But with a modest vigor and intentionality I trust that every day is going to surprise me with a sign of God's first word at work. My ongoing labor at a spiritual sanctuary in our garden has helped. So, too living so close to a New England wetlands. And without a doubt, caring for our special needs dog, Lucie, regular pushes buttons I never knew existed. Amazing grace, indeed.

Resting my weary and arthritic back after my third snow-shoveling endeavor, I paused this afternoon to give thanks to MLK. The good doctor, preacher, prophet awakened my conscience like creation awoke my awe. I was called into ministry in 1968 just two months after Dr. King's assassination. His witness, his writing, and his wisdom shaped both my time with the farm worker movement of Cesar Chavez and my undergraduate thesis on non-violent social change. MLK gave shape and form to my seminary days and my advocacy for poor children while serving as part of an inter-racial reform slate on the Cleveland Board of Education back in the day. Putting it all together feels a bit like Robert Hunter saying to the Grateful Dead: what a LONG, strange trip it's been. But that's what it's been: a LONG and STRANGE trip. 

On this national holiday, 24 precious hours set aside for reflection and service, I regularly find the insights of Dr. King speaking to me in new ways. This year I am moved by the strength of his revolutionary compassion during his darkest hours. He told the garbage workers of Memphis the night before he was gunned down that he'd been through some amazing ups and some horrible downs. He made it clear that the threats against his life had increased since coming out against the war in Vietnam and mixing the struggle for Civil Right with economics. If yo watch Brother Martin, he is weary. Exhausted. And then, as if lifted from above, he says the following:

And then I got into Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers? Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop... And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!

If you've never watched that speech, you owe it to yourself and your neighbors to do so without hesitation. It will give you a whole new perspective on what is being asked of us during pandemic fatigue, political dysfunction, and fear and loathing in America. "I been to the mountain top... and I've seen the Promised Land..." Check it out. It always puts my heart and soul back into perspective. And so tonight I am

grateful that Di's COVID test came back negative. I am grateful that I've been blessed to care for Lucie (even when she drives me mad), grateful for the solitude of shoveling snow and even the "wintry mix" on this quiet day in January, grateful for a loving family, a warm home, reasonably good health, friends in L'Arche Ottawa, friends who encourage me on "Small is Holy." Soul mates in the wild world of poetry and for exquisite novels the likes of those of Powers. All of this and so much more awakens me to the heart-break running amok among us right now. It is exhausting, frightening, trying, and surprising in ways that are often debilitating. So, I pause, rest a bit trusting that tomorrow I can do my small part to advance my trust that all manner of things shall be well, and return thanks to God for MLK.  

quiet time with garden thoughts during an ice storm...

It is a grim, cold, and gray day in our Berkshire hills: a thin coating of ice shrouds our bushes, the deck in increasingly a sea of mush, and the roads are treacherous. Good thing we're staying inside to drink Scottish Breakfast tea and listen to John Renbourn and friends play tunes from the old country. 

After tidying my study - including sequestering our suitcase of Advent/Christmas CDs back into solitude - it was time to order native seeds and plants for the vernal planting season. Late in the fall I dug two new seed beds which will become raised beds come March. 

Some five years ago, while wandering Brome Lake Books (home of Louise Penny and the Gamache series set in Québec's Cantons de l'Est (Eastern Townships), Di encouraged me to bring home Jessi Bloom's Everyday Sanctuary: A Workbook for Designing a Sacred Garden Space. It was a good call for a host of reasons. Early on Ms. Bloom quotes Joseph Campbell: "Your sacred space is where you can find yourself again and again." Then, before offering a wise overview of ethical concerns in designing sacred space, she writes: "What is sacred space? No two people have the same response to this question, but most focus on themes of peacefulness, protection from a harsh world, and rejuvenation." Bloom tells us that creating a sacred space garden must take time for pondering and prayer, research, planning, watching the movement of the sun across the land, discovering what animals show up, and then taking within the soul care that happens for all of us in the cosmos through these tiny acts.

The earth is alive, breathing and evolving, and all that she carries and supports forms a weave of complex ecosystems that are critical for life. I believe as stewards of the land, we are to honor it first and foremost. Then we can feel and envision what we need, want, and desire, and make sure this is in alignment with what the land needs in order to be cared for. As you design your sanctuary garden, refer to these ethical guidelines, which also form the foundation of permaculture, a design approach to living sustainably on the earth. Note that whenever one ethic seems to be in conflict with another, the first trumps the rest: 1) care for the earth; 2) care for people; 3) give back; 4) pace yourself.

Over the last half decade I've come to appreciate each of these markers - especially the last - pace yourself. As one who came of age in white Middle America in the 50s and 60s, I like to "get the job done!" But as Gertrud Mueller-Nelson advises: "Nothing healthy comes about through rushing..." So, as much as I want to see the fruit of my labors, I've learned a measure of patience in the crafting of the garden sanctuary. Early on I planted tomatoes without ample sun. Same, too with pumpkins. I dug a new garden bed in a place Lucie likes to pee in! I had NO idea what to do with voles. Or the mildew and mold that can show up on squash vines. Each challenge has been a lesson in research and slowing down. Bloom wisely notes:

It's not just about the end goal but also about how we get there. The approach we use is just as important as the end product. We want to acknowledge that any transition takes time. We are not going to change overnight from stressed-out urban dwellers to perfectly balanced beings who incorporate nature's gifts into our daily routines. We must be patient and gentle with ourselves as we engage the question of how to find every sanctuary and as we form new, healthier habits in our lives. Building our sanctuary space and practices may take a period of years and is best understood as an ongoing journey toward wellness.

Settling into this place as our permanent resting place was not part of our original plan when we moved from Tucson nearly 15 years ago. Once again, however, we had to learn how little we genuinely control, yes? Making peace with reality is a work in progress. A spiritual practice of letting go and discovering the holy in the quiet, small places. This sacred garden continues to teach me to wait - and ask simple questions including "what is the condition of our soil? Is it more clay, loam, or sand? Which areas remain soggy after a rainfall and which areas dry out quickly?" The second year brought a grand crop of wild flowers, but the deer soon ate away all the flower tips in record time demanding a new strategy for the next year. Wise old Wendell Berry said it well: 

Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.

beatitudes for the weird series: january 2 - february 27

For the next two months - the liturgical season of epiphany - my Sunday evening prayer reflections will consider how the "weird people" bring blessings to themselves and all the rest of us. The way I see "Small is Holy" before Lent 2022 will utilize the gospel reading from the Common Lectionary and the Poem, "Beatitudes for the Weird." Tune in Sundays @ 4 pm for the live streaming. @
https://www.facebook.com/Be-Still-and-Know-913217865701531

Blessed are the weird people: poets, misfits, writers, mystics, heretics, painters, and troubadours for they teach us to see the world through different eyes.
Blessed are those who embrace the intensity of life’s pains and pleasures for they shall experience uncommon ecstasy.
Blessed are those who see beauty in ugliness for they shall transform our vision of the world.
Blessed are the bold and whimsical for their imagination shatters ancient boundaries of fear.
Blessed are those who are mocked for unbridled expressions of love for your crazy kind of freedom is what the world is unconsciously begging for.
Blessed are those who have endured life’s brokenness for you are the resplendent cracks through which the light shines in.

January 2: Introduction

January 9: Wendell Berry and Robin Wall Kimmerer

January 16: Greta Thunberg and Malala Yousafzai

January 23: James Baldwin and Kaitlin Curtice

January 29: Lou Reed and Dorothy Day

February 6: Mary Lou Williams and Frank Zappa

February 13: Krista Tippett and Padraig O’Tuama

February 20: WEB Dubois and Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

February 27: Sounds of Sacred Jazz

new year's eve into new year's day...

Having read many of my favorite authors' end of the year summaries - some of which were insightful and moving - I've been pondering my own. We crafted something similar in the Christmas/Year's End letter we sent out in mid-December. I have no need to repeat myself except to say 2021 was a mixed bag: our entire family was vaccinated and boostered; we had the chance to visit Montréal, Ottawa, and the Eastern Townships of Canada; we feasted and grooved to great jazz at Dièse Onze (thanks Gary Tremblay); celebrated the high holy days with family; worked our gardens vigorously; loved one another tenderly; and listened more carefully to the rhythms of the sacred within Mother Earth. There were losses, of course, grief, anger and sorrow as well. I found value in the way Diana Butler Bass put it in her most recent newsletter:

I’m moved by the words of the blessing (below) from John O’Donohue: “We bless this year for all we learned, for all we loved and lost.” 2021 was anything but carefree. Many people will be glad to see it go. But I love the notion of blessing a year as it departs and looking back with gratitude to the last twelve months for the gifts — of grace and of grief — that came to our lives. Instead of just kicking the old year to the curb of history, we might listen to its world-worn wisdom even as we are wooed by the hope of a new-born year. It may be that we need reflective appreciation for what has been more than resolutions about what will be. Take a few minutes in the remaining hours of 2021 — What have you learned in the last year? What have you loved? What have you lost? (https://dianabutlerbass.substack.com/p/blessing-the-old-year?t)

Yesterday was spent living into those questions. Incarnating them, if you will. I gave a few hours to sorting out the clutter and dirt from the basement: the tools are now back on the work-bench, the gardening materials are ordered in their own places, CDs and books to pass-on to others are set aside, and the car's berth has been swept and readied for winter (which is likely to arrive early next week in these parts.) 

+ Di and I watched a French mystery from the TOPIC portal which became creepy and unsettling causing us both to agree we don't need to take in any more violence as entertainment (and canceled out that show.) We watched the new Jane Campion film, The Power of the Dog, too. In all candor, it was uneven, at best, and too heavy-handed in places as well. I was simultaneously intrigued and disappointed with how a creative story-line was mismanaged. From the get-go, setting a Western in New Zealand looked visually wrong: more like Fellowship of the Rings than Yellowstone. Watching it did evoke a deep conversation both about the plot and what we need in a visual story. So, we ate some cauliflower pizza, had a beer, and sang "Auld Lange Syne" at midnight before tossing back a toast of single malt to ring in the New Year.

+ I spent the morning editing my Sunday "Small is Holy" reflection on the Magi as some of God's blessed "weird people" who bring us wisdom and new perspectives. Di slept. And slept some more. She made crepes for brunch before we schlepped in the wetlands for a bit with Lucie. We lit the Christ candle, listened to old Celtic carols and took a wee nap. I'll prepare Greek Lemon chicken with basmati rice for supper and we'll check out something new on from France on TOPIC.

What I discern about last year's lessons and losses that inform the year to come might be best said in this poem by Lynn Ungar that is my prayer for 2022:

You are not obliged to be beautiful
You don't have to shine.
Blooming will happen when it happens.
If you can be still for a moment
you might notice that
the roots that feed you
are still reaching silently through the dark.

My commitment to L'Arche Ottawa will intensify - even long-distance - as I have a chance to serve using my gifts in a creative and life-affirming way. It is well past time to tune out ALL ugly media - so-called entertainment as well as 24/7 news - especially those vicious mind-sucks that start out as mysteries only to become an excuse for vicarious violence. My soul is too tender now to view these experiences any more (they give me nightmares) and life is too short, yes? There's much more time behind than ahead of me in 2022 - and I hope to savor it. Especially making music, writing, baking bread, being fully present to Di, loving my children and grandchildren more vigorously and.. oh yes, walking meditatively more in the woods. I cherish this prayer poem from Padraig O'Tuama.

So let us pick up
the stones over which we stumble,
friends, and build altars…

Let us name the harsh light and
soft darkness that surround us.

Let’s claw ourselves out from the graves we’ve dug.

Let’s lick the earth from our fingers.

Let us look up and out and around.
The world is big and wide and wild and wonderful and wicked,
and
our lives are murky, magnificent, malleable, and full of meaning.
Oremus.
Let us pray.