don't speak unless you can improve upon the silence...

OMG is it quiet here! One of the many things I miss about living in the desert Southwest is access to silence. Within 10 minutes of our old home in Tucson, you could be walking among the majestic Saguaro cacti - mesquite trees, kerosote and prickly pears, too - and hear nothing save the sound of your own feet on the rocks. There might be a few random animals scurrying for cover and once in awhile a stray planes engines, too. But with the exception of another hiker, it was stone cold silent. Oh what a healing gift - especially given the frenzy of Black Friday in the USA - so I'm rejoicing as I experience that blessing once again in this quiet section of Quebec's Eastern Townships. Mary Oliver once wrote:

It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.”

I'm not the first to lament the chaos and clutter that clogs our culture and keeps us from hearing that still speaking voice coming to us from within the stillness - and I won't be the last. The song leader and poet of ancient Israel prayed: "Be still - and know" in the Psalms My mentor and living connection to the holy, Jesus, regularly set aside the demands of his time for a night of silence under the stars. And Parker Palmer, wise elder of the 21st century, wrote that "we shouldn't speak unless it can improve upon the silence." So, I stood for a sacred moment last night in the pitch black night and soaked up the silence. It was yet another feast on Thanksgiving.

Some seven years ago, while struggling with my sense that I was being called out of pastoral ministry, Di and I were walking through another woods in the Eastern Townships of Quebec. Being in the woods - or sitting by an unexpected forest stream - always shuts my mouth and lowers my blood pressure. On this day, we happened upon three different carvings of Green Men - the Celtic incarnation of wild nature - on three different tree stumps. It was, I felt, an invitation to let go of what I knew for certain and trust that something even better would be revealed if I kept wandering. Mary Oliver, once again, evokes something of this revelation when she wrote:   

As deep as I ever went into the forest
I came upon an old stone bench, very, very old,
and around it a clearing, and beyond that
trees taller and older than I had ever seen.

Such silence!
It really wasn’t so far from a town, but it seemed
all the clocks in the world had stopped counting.
So it was hard to suppose the usual rules applied.

Sometimes there’s only a hint, a possibility.
What’s magical, sometimes, has deeper roots
than reason.
I hope everyone knows that.

I sat on the bench, waiting for something.
An angel, perhaps.
Or dancers with the legs of goats.

No, I didn’t see either. But only, I think, because
I didn’t stay long enough.

Thankfully we DID stay long enough to greet the Green Men (but not the dancers with legs of goats) as well as a few surprise forest streams. By the end of that hike it was clear: the holy was silently whispering to me to trust a new way of being. My resignation soon followed. I had no clear understanding of what was to come next except the assurance that the quiet wasn't lying. Be still - and know. Seven years later, a small ministry of presence is taking shape. A small group of musical comrades, too. And an ever-deeping connection with the community of L'Arche Ottawa. 

be still my soul: happy thanksgiving from bonsecours...

As the cold, grey morning quietly matures in our warm chalet in Bonsecours, Quebec, I'm sipping hot tea and looking backwards at my decision to live as a periodically displaced-by-choice American. Most of my adult life has been a conscious quest to make peace with the fact that I share Leonard Cohen's take on the USA: I love the country but can't stand the scene. I am ecstatic over the big sky of the desert Southwest. I celebrate our mountains, lakes, rivers and ocean beaches on both shores. I'm agog with joy over what is now called American roots music. And delight in the multiple delicacies of our regional comfort foods. I used to weep tears of gratitude while singing the national anthem at baseball games even as I found myself out of step with our politics and culture. Indeed, I felt my heart come alive reading this Langston Hughes poem:

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

The USA is a big, bad, bold, messy, inspiring, frustrating, loving, dispicable, and complicated muddle of a country. My disequilibrium over not really fitting in is, you see, part demeanor and part spiritual commitment. By dispostion, I'm an introvert, like 25% of the rest of this land. And despite notable hermits like Thoreau, Merton or Scott and Helen Nearing, we of this realm know that solitude and silence have never been a valued or integral part of the American soul. Same, too for spirituality: I tend towards the left of center wing of the contemplative movement; more Kathleen Norris than Billy Graham, more Dorothy Day than J.D. Jakes or Joel Osteen. I relish the mystical side of the Christian tradition, mistrust most of the advocates of ortho-doxy (right intellectual belief), and consider myself an ally of the ortho-praxis contingent (right practice.) Sung evening prayer with candles means more to me than a festival of preaching and coffee hours!

In this morning's solitude I recalled Sid Skirvin, then Dean of Students at Union Theological Seminary in NYC, who told me during my first fall term that after taking a battery of personality tests he thought "maybe I shouldn't plan on being part of a local church ministry - your score for introversion was off the charts, man - so maybe a career in research and study or something less public might be best?" Other denominational advisors agreed but my conviction was that if the soul of a contemplative could find no place in a local congregation then something was woefully wrong with the community not the contemplative. One of my dearest mentors, the Rev. Dr. Ray Swartzback, often said that if the church couldn't get the justice and compassion thing right in an urban settiing, where the pain was palpable, it would never be able to function as the Body of Christ in suburban America with our distractions, diversions, and duplicitous emotions. I borrowed Ray's insight, substituting advocates of BOTH the inward and outward journeys into the equation. And what was true 40 years ago, is ever more so in 2022.

I understand that left-leaning, non-conformist contemplatives will always be in conflict with the majority in any culture. So this is not a lament. Neither am I making a binary distinction of hierarchy: the pilgrimage of a mystic is simply different - no better or worse - than that of one energized and ingaged by the ways of the marketplace. I am grateful to God that there are those who draw life from the hustle and bustle. I just know that it's not me - so building quiet solitude into each day and week has become essential as I strive to care for self as well as the wider culture. Without safe space to be still, you see, I fall apart. I can do big events - and then I collapse. I revel in doing interactive music and worship - and then must take a nap. I have been blessed to study in some of this nation's great urban areas - but have also needed to retreat into nature from time to time to regroup. 

All of which is to say that this year's Thanksgiving Day feast will be small, quiet, and understated. We'll find a way to wander along the frozen lake for a bit. Then buy a few goodies to help us incarnate our gratitude. After all, feasting is endemic to ALL culture. We'll probably wind up listening to some gentle music by candle-light and then reading, too. I guess what I am trying to say is that there's a healthy ebb and flow rhythm to consciously not fitting in that's a like the hokey pokey: you put your right foot IN, you take your right foot OUT! It's engagement and retreat, speaking and silence, sharing life with family and community as well as resting into the unforced rhythms of grace. Never just one or the other, always both/and. 

Honoring this way of being necessitates getting out of the USA from time to time, too: Black Friday feels like soul murder next to the simple gift of utter silence in a darkened, star-lit woodland. We have often opted for walking through the quiet neighborhoods of Montreal to participating in our 4th of July festivities. Too much hoopla and fireworks for my old heart. And while I miss the merriment of being with our children and grandchildren, it's like John the Baptist said in St. John's gospel: I must decrease so that they may increase. For the past decade, they've been creating their own family celebrations that work for their own needs and charisms. Part of me still misses the bounty of blessings that once flowed during our various Thanksgiving Eve festivals of American music, too. But, to everything there is a season, yes? Joy Davidman once told her spouse C.S. Lewis that the emptiness and sorrow we feel during a loss is intimately connected to the love and blessings we knew earlier. I've been blessed by my loved ones over many years - and trust there will be a more times to bask in their presence. At this stage in time, however, solitude for Thanksgiving works best for me. The late Mary Oliver put it like this:

Be still, my soul, and steadfast.
Earth and heaven both are still watching
though time is draining from the clock
and your walk, that was confident and quick,
has become slow.

So, be slow if you must, but let
the heart still play its true part.
Love still as once you loved, deeply
and without patience. Let God and the world
know you are grateful. That the gift has been given.

le froid dans les Cantons de l'Est...

It makes sense for Di and I to get out of Dodge over the Thanksgiving weekend: too much craziness and the whole Black Friday crap has become overwhelming and depressing. So, we've started to explore the quiet joys of Quebec's Eastern Townships. There are a host of beautiful small communites - almost all are French speaking - so it is a chance to chill, explore another world that is lovely to us, and rest without the BS of contemporary America. For most of my adult life, I was a die-hard citizen of the USA. I felt like Bonhoeffer during the rise of the Nazis: if I want to participate in the healing of my homeland, I have to stick it out during the worst of times. So, I did. But now, maybe because I'm older and weary, I need a break so two things warrant a comment:

+ First, we are Francofonies. We can ad lib French for a bit - and stumble our way through key conversations - but our ability to really communicate is limitted. Still, it gives us a chance to listen carefully and practice speaking French in small doses. More than ever I bellieve this is an essential discipline for those of us who abide in the USA: listening carefully and NOT being in charge is a valuable spiritual and cultural lesson, so we get up here as often as we can.

+ Second, this is a beautiful part of God's creation in any season but especially grand in the early days of winter. I used to despise winter, too damn cold, and my feet always got wet. But I've learned to eat some of my discomfort and get good cold weather gear. Right now, there's about two inches of white powder on the ground with the possibility of more to come while we're here. We don't have any agenda except to be open to whatever comes our way. We'll wander both Sherbrooke and Magog over the next few days - some time in the local woods, too - and maybe tour three or four other little communities. It is an ongoing blessing.

So, yet again this year as our wider family gathers for their traditional gatherings, we'll do so contemplatively. In solitude. Because that just seems to work better for our dispostions. If you don't hear much from us over the weekend, this is why. Happy Thanksgiving to you all.

christ the kingd sunday 2022

One of my all-time favorite songs of faith is: “Seek Ye First.” It came on the scene in the early 70’s when many of us in the old-line or side-line churches found ourselves being touched and confused by the exciting movement of the Holy Spirit. Charismaniacs, some called us – adults speaking in tongues and praising God with abandon like it was Pentecost again – rediscovering that a life of faith could include joy, intimacy, and feasting as well as serious sacrifice, solitude, and ceremony.

Old-timers may recall the ecstasy that washed over some of us upon hearing Norman Greenbaum’s rock’n’roll anthem: Spirit in the Sky. (When I die and they lay me to rest, gonna go to the place that’s the best; when they lay me down to die, gonna go UP to the Spirit in the sky…) Same for the first time I sang, “Father, We Adore You,” with two or three rounds of a capella alleluias chanted during an ecumenical meeting in Saginaw, MI. Like St. Paul in II Corinthians 12: I felt I’d been lifted-up into the mystical third heaven as we sang together in faith and fervor. (Sing the alleluias … I eventually stole the melody last summer for a new song using a Quebecois pandemic affirmation: ca va bien aller – all shall be well with God – a prayer to be sung at any occasion.)

For years I maintained my associate membership in the Community of Celebration – a coed monas-tic community of the Anglican church – that creatively blended the passion and convictions of the charismatic renewal with beautiful liturgy and prayer. It was smells and bells and ritual mixed with tenderness, trust, and rhapsodic musical choruses carefully constructed to be sung by everyone. You see, Celebration did NOT do schlock – thanks be to God – they were poets, artists, scholars, and writers: women, men, and children reinventing the monastic tradition for the late 20th century with playful liturgies and Celtic folk songs linking tradition with incarnational compassion – and there was always room at Eucharist for everyone. For decades, Christ the King Sunday was in-complete for me if I didn’t sing this Celebration hymn: Alleluia, alleluia opening our hearts…

Sometime during that phase of my journey, I heard the words of Jesus, “I have come so that your joy may be full,” and it was as if scales fell away from the eyes of my heart, and I could see creation saturated with God’s presence for the first time – and that blessing has never been extinguished. "I have come so that your joy may be full."  I’ve been full to over-flowing sometimes with tears of gratitude as well as sorrow; made whole by grace as God intended for all of us since before the be-ginning of time; equipped by the Holy Spirit with gifts to live by trust even when the evidence is obscure; and mystically fulfilled – or spiritually filled full – like those urns of water turned to wine at the Lord’s first miracle at a wedding in Cana of Galilee. I’m NOT saying there haven’t been down times, not at all; I’ve known agonizing dark nights of the soul. But through the darkness, something of Christ’s joy lingered – and to this day I connect it with the paradoxical charisms of Christ the King Sunday. The wise scholars at the SALT Project put it well:

This feast day, Christ the King Sunday, is one of the rare times in the year when Christianity’s two major feasts — Easter and Christmas, the Cross and Incarnation — come into close connection. The one condemned before the crowds in Jerusalem is the same one born in a forgotten, back-water town. The one hailed by angels, shepherds, and philosophers from afar is the same one eventually betrayed, abandoned, and left to die in shame. “Silent Night” and “What Wondrous Love is This?” overlap and interweave, together creating another kind of song entirely. And this juxtaposition of creative tension is precisely the point. To paraphrase the great womanist theo-logian Delores Williams, the “kingship” of Christ can only be understood through this dissonance and harmony: “King of Kings!” on the one hand, as if sung by a resplendent choir; and “poor little Mary’s boy” on the other, as if whispered by an elderly woman standing alone. The “Reign of Christ” on one hand, and God’s child, exquisitely vulnerable, on the other. These two songs, Williams contends, sung back and forth in call and response, is “how the Black church does theology.” Each song needs the other for the complete truth to shine through our uncertainties.

THIS feast day, this time set aside to embrace the subversive upside-down kingdom of God that empowers society’s winners to humbly join those consigned to the back of the bus by joyfully ex-changing our privilege for solidarity in pursuit of equality is Christ the King Sunday for me. This feast day, where sisters and brothers who have been systematically locked out of life’s abundance are respectfully ushered to the head banquet table as honored guests at the feast of Christ’s love: this is Christ the King Sunday to me as well. And this feast day, where what has long been forgotten is remembered, where the lost find they’ve been found, and mourners rejoice, the broken dance, the blind see, and the deaf sing new songs: this, too is Christ the King Sunday. It’s where the cradle sits not far from the Cross, conventional notions of power are redefined by compassion, and selfish delight is relinquish-ed by carrying one another’s burdens in community: all of this and more is Christ the King Sunday. The Welsh poet, R.S. Thomas, says it well:

It’s a long way off but inside it there are quite different things going on festivals at which the poor man is king and the consumptive is healed; mirrors in which the blind look at themselves and love looks back at them; and industry is for mending the bent bones and the minds fractured by life. It looks like it’s a long way off, but to get there takes no time and admission is free, if you will purge yourself of desire, and present yourself with your need only and the simple offering of your faith, green as a leaf.

So, as you’ve clearly gathered by now, this liturgical feast day, while still defying any attempt to re-name it with a politically and theologically correct alternative, is hallowed ground for me. And while I wish there was a better metaphor than King to describe the spirituality of this feast…I keep returning to that masculocentric moniker, Christ the King, because even with all its bag-gage, it evokes the mystical paradox of Jesus as Christ better than all the rest. I’ve tried some of the suggested alternatives; inclusivity is important. And while most Americans don’t know much about Kings – or Queens for that matter – and we’re fuzzier still about what the realm of Christ means, the traditional words… what?

Well, they give shape and form to how I mystically experience God’s presence
within and among us: the kingdom seems obscure at first – but if I slow down and wait for eyes to see, I often find God’s blessing hidden in plain sight. The image of Jesus as Universal Christ points to the holy being incarnated in our humanity, the cosmic Alpha and Omega being revealed in a down-to-earth manner, and the marriage of all that is noble and lofty with all that is humble and vulnerable as well. Tricia Gates Brown, a theologian of the ordinary, writes: 

Of all the metaphors in the gospels, this is probably my least favorite. In part because it is confusing. I don’t like what kings, empe-rors, rulers, or presidents have done to the weak and marginalized in history; and the things they have done and are doing are generally opposite of what Jesus did and taught. But Jesus used the metaphor of ‘king’ frequently when he made ‘kingdom of God’ parables and sayings central to his teaching. So, these metaphors are critical to our tradition and we are forced to wrestle with them. So, let’s be clear she adds: Jesus was clearly redefining, subverting, flipping upside down, the whole concept of king and kingdom when he talked about the kingdom of God. God’s realm, or God’s kingdom, is characterized by the upside-down: God honors the weak not the strong; God wants us to give power to others, not to lord power over them; God wants us to abandon the dominant and the strong to seek out the vulner-able. The kingdom of Jesus looks like the opposite of what kings among us usually do.

For the past four months our Small is Holy gatherings have tried to identify some of the ways we might become living and incarnational prayers: allies of God’s upside-down kingdom. Today, our odyssey into embodied rather than abstract or intellectual prayer comes to a close as we complete the cycle of stories shaped by St. Luke’s gospel and anticipate another pilgrimage through the in-sights of St. Matthew’s text with Advent’s arrival next week.

Now we should be clear that the proximity of Christ the King Sunday to Advent is NOT an accident, ok? It’s an intentionally brilliant work of theological juxtaposition connecting the Alpha and the Omega, the struggle and celebration of faith, the mystical marriage of the human with the holy to both the Cross on Golgotha today and the cradle of Bethlehem next week.

Christ the King Sunday, you see, is NOT an ancient feast but a relatively contemporary con-struct. It came about after the world had endured the horrors of the First World War. What was supposed to be the war to end ALL wars, however, only emboldened violent fascists all over Europe. In 1925, Pope Pius 11th was afraid that the destructive influences of totalitarian-ism as seen in the brutality of the Russian Revolution, the ascent of dictators in Spain and Italy, and the threat of Nazi dominance being advance by Hitler in Germany, might unlock the hounds of hell unless held in check by an global spiritual revival. The Pope’s deepest hope – perhaps too naïve, in retrospect, but still heartfelt – was that by reclaiming and reemphasiz-ing God’s love made flesh in Christ, the madness of human hatred and idolatry might be thwarted. Simultaneously, we should note that Pope Pius also wanted to reign-in the influence of the Protest-ant movement in Europe. That’s why the first Christ the King feast was set for October 31st – it was to be a Roman Catholic Counter Reformation Day.

Sadly, it failed to inhibit the carnage being unleashed by the authoritarian juggernaut – and we had to wait another 25 years, in the aftermath of WWII, the Holocaust, the brutalities of the Korean conflict, and the Cold War, for a spirit of ecumenical cooperation to arise in the form of the Second Vatican Council. In this new era of peace and reconciliation, Pope Paul VI was able to change both the date of this new feast to the Sunday before the start of Advent and alter the appointed read-ings, too. Now the feast celebrates the whole arc of Christ’ birth, life, death, resurrection, and as-cension at a time when, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, nature’s darkness teaches us some-thing about the coming light of Christ. It was an extraordinary shift of sacramental spirituality al-igning the liturgy of the Church with the wisdom of Mother Nature that simultaneously created space for non-Catholics to enter the celebration as well.

Now, I don’t know what it’s like where you live, but it’s already getting dark here at this time of day; so, like our earliest ancestors, I find a bit of existential comfort in a liturgy that re-minds me that there is a light shining in the darkness that the darkness has not overcome. When our liturgies move within the flow of the seasons, it’s easier for me to rest into the un-forced rhythms of grace. With this background then, take a listen to the gospel appointed for Christ the King Sunday from St. Luke’s gospel:

When the Roman legions and the tortured Jesus came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. From the Cross, Jesus said, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” The Roman soldiers cast lots to divide his clothing. (Which, let me add, is where some tradition find a hatred of gambling.) A crowd of people stood by watching; while their religious leaders scoffed at Jesus, saying, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!” The soldiers also mocked Jesus, coming up and offering him sour wine, saying, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” They also hung an inscription over him: “This is the King of the Jews.” One of the criminals crucified there kept deriding Jesus saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” And Jesus replied, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

Having now lived into this feast day for almost 45 years, I see at least three discrete albeit linked layers in this text that join the subversive wisdom of the Cross with the subdued promise of grace in the cradle at Bethlehem.

· First there’s the contrast between Caesar as king, and more broadly ALL secular leaders, and the way Jesus embodies his calling as spiritual king.

· Second there’s the difference between a culture that deals with its fears and wounds by scape-goating and the counter-cultural trust that Jesus incarnated during his lifetime.

· And third this passage invites us to trust that even in the worst possible suffering Jesus finds a way to bring mercy and love to us personally.

This seemingly grim passage offers a macro, micro, and mini personal picture of

what the love of God made flesh in the Universal Christ looks like – and why it matters. Bible scholars ask us to: “begin with the stark portrait of kingship – the reign of Caesar and every other tyrant before and since – next to the reign of the Universal Christ.” In first-century Palestine, a common method of capital punishment was crucifixion – a punishment designed to execute and humiliate the condemned while intimidating the wider culture – it concretized the Empire’s dominance.

“For a Jew in Jerusalem, there could be no more terrifying, disgraceful death than to be “hung on a tree...under God’s curse” as Deut 21:23 articulates clearly.” At this point in his ministry, Jesus had been forsaken by his male friends and mocked and degraded by his enemies including the of-ficials of the occupying army like Pilate and Herod, the grunt soldiers on the ground, and finally by a common criminal condemned to death on the cross next to him. His torturers hung a sign above him on which they’d scrawled in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin stating: This is the King of the Jews. "Those in power wanted their subjects to know that the agony of the Cross is what happens to all who challenge the authority Caesar. It was a a crude and cruel public service announcement doc-umenting the “domination, terror, and contempt” of the Roman emperor."

· That’s the macro context – violence, shame, suffering, fear, and loathing – and it stands in stark contrast to everything St. Luke has consistently shown us about Jesus throughout his gospel; namely, that the mission of Jesus is to “declare the dawn of Jubilee: a new era, rooted in ancient Israelite history and myth where ALL the captives are released from bondage.” Release of the captives is the macro version of the personal proclamation: I have come so that your joy may be full: complete and satisfied.

· You see, Jesus knows that the heart of Jubilee is mercy not strict justice: God’s kingdom is not constructed upon wars, retribution, or acts of intimidation, but servanthood. So, with a staggering consistency, St. Luke shows us that Jesus has come among us as one who serves – as one who incarnates mercy just as God is merciful – as one who kneels to wash our feet and trusts that loving God and neighbor as ourselves is the foundation of Jubilee. Yes, some of the first shall become last, and the good news will always feel like bad news for some others, too; but fundamentally the Jubilee of Christ’s tradition is NOT about punishment. It’s about mercy. Grace. And there’s no more profound contrast between Christ and Caesar than this.

That’s underscored by story’s micro setting as well where Jesus repeatedly asks God to forgive those who are torturing, mocking, and even executing him. If it’s true on the macro level that the kingdom of God is the “perfect reversal of Caesar’s where, instead of domination there is servant-hood; instead of mockery, kindness; and instead of cruelty, mercy,” then it is equally true on the micro level, too. Jesus neither curses nor condemns the Empire’s soldiers who torture, spit upon, and ridicule him. He refuses to give-in to hatred when they mash their crown of thorns into his flesh. Or strip him naked and gamble for his robe. Or push vinegar to his mouth when he aches for water. Nor does Jesus curse those from within his own religious tradition who collaborate with the Empire. Mostly, he holds his suffering within in silence asking only at the end for God to forgive them ALL for they know not what they do. On the micro level the contrast could not be clearer: one kingdom is governed by violence and shame while the other practices patience and grace.

Same, too on the mini, personal level: “in Caesar’s kingdom the gates of imperial privilege swing shut — while in Christ’s, the gates of salvation swing open.” (SALT Project) The exchange that takes place between Jesus and the thieves beside him on the Cross condenses the totality of Christ’s life’s work into seven simple sentences. Remember these thieves were being executed by the state after being captured breaking into a Roman armory and stealing weapons for an emerging Jewish insur-rection, ok? So, with one Jewish revolutionary screaming at Jesus in fear and rage and the other asking to be remembered when Jesus crosses over into eternal life, the Universal revolutionary of love promises both men – and countless others, too – that today they shall be with him in Paradise. Jesus never says: “Today you will be with me in Paradise” only to the good or penitent thief while hanging the “bad” one out to dry, ok? Yet again Jesus incarnates the ironic, upside-down mercy of God’s kingdom for both criminals, subverting and debunking for good the idea that grace is a re-ward for good behavior. “The story’s point should be clear: when it comes to salvation, now and for-ever, God’s mercy falls on the just and unjust alike.” The tender-hearted and clear-thinking scholars at the SALT Project celebrate this truth by sharing a story from the Swiss Reformed theologian Karl Barth who wrote that: 

The church was born in this story, out there in the shadows on that desolate executioner’s hill. There, a meager congregation, not of the righteous, but of criminals, gathered around Jesus, listening for — and receiving — words of forgiveness and radiant good news. Accordingly, the church always finds itself surround-ed and pervaded by Caesar’s reign, and is nevertheless called to be a sacrament, an experience, and above all a proclamation of Christ’s dawning reign of love. It is a “kingdom” not of domina-tion, but servanthood; not of mockery, but kindness; not of cruelty, but mercy. For the fullness of that Great Jubilee in all its beauty, we wait, and pray, and prepare — especially as the season of Advent begins.

Today’s text gives us a clear contrast: the kingdom of Caesar or the kingdom of Christ Jesus. A scene of suffering that looks godforsaken, “that very place is likely to also be the ironic, revolu-tionary presence of the holy where God is not only present but active. God’s reign can be mocked, and Caesar’s reign often looks triumphant — yet there, and precisely there, in our hopelessness, God reigns. And that imperial inscription above Jesus’ head, the one meant to taunt, intimidate, and demean — there, and precisely there, God’s kingship is declared and incarnated.”

The elders of our mystical, contemplative, mercy-driven faith remind us that as we
take-in the wis-dom of the Cross on Christ the King Sunday today, we would do well to recall that this happens smack up against the eve of Advent where God arrives for us in the most humble, hidden, and vul-nerable way: as an infant in a manger with Mary’s milk still on his breath. THIS is the one we trust to become Christ the King: a king who incarnates greatness through humble service. “A king who refuses to use his power to fend off his opponents, much less take vengeance on them – who actually does the opposite calling upon the All-Loving One to forgive and then welcome them for eternity. (SALT Project)When I look around me these days, so much yearns to be made whole – not only the confusion and chaos of a world literally on fire – but also our politics, economics, culture, and religion. So much anger, so much anxiety, so much suffering. At the same time, given the ironic, revolutionary, and transformational blessings carried by the God who comes as an upside-down, compassionate and tender king, I know that there’s more going on than I can fathom and see. A poem by Carrie Newcomer puts it like this:

So much of what we know lives just below the surface.
Half of a tree spreads out beneath our feet. Living simultaneously in two worlds,
Each half informing and nurturing the whole. A tree is either and neither but mostly both. I am drawn to liminal spaces, the half-tamed and unruly patch where the forest gives way and my little garden begins. Where water, air, and light overlap becoming mist on the morning pond. I like to sit on my porch steps, barn jacket and boots In the last long exhale of the day, when bats and birds loop in and then out, one rising to work, one readying for sleep. And although the full moon calls the currents, and the dark moon reminds methat my best language has always emerged out of the silence, it’s in the waxing and waning where I most often live. Neither here nor there, but simply on the way. There are endings and beginnings, one emerging out of the other. But most days I travel in an ever present and curious now. A betwixt and between, that is almost, but not quite, the beautiful, but not yet. I’ve been learning to live with what is, more patient with the process, to love what is becoming, and the questions that keep returning. I am learning to trust the horizon I walk toward is an orientation, not a destination. And that I will keep catching glimpses of something great and luminous from the corner of my eye. I am learning to live where loss holds fast and where grief lets loose and unravels. Where a new kind of knowing can pick up the thread. Where I can slide palms with a paradox and nod at the dawn, as the shadows pull back and spirit meets bone.

So I KEEP singing to myself: Seek ye first the kingdom of God as a prayer. A mantra. An anticipation of the mercy I need – and WE need – to share and spread God’s love in times like these. To ready our hearts for Eucharist, perhaps you’ll join with me to sing:

Seek ye first the kingdom of God – and all its righteousness.
And all these things shall be added unto you: allelu, alleluia.
Ask and it shall be given unto you, seek and ye shall find;
Knock and the door will be opened unto you: allelu, alleluia.

check it out here: https://fb.watch/gWuUO8QUyh/

a sober appreciation for the sacramental triduum of samhain

Yesterday was All Saints Day - a liturgical feast I knew nothing about while growing up - and the same goes for today's All Souls/Day of the Dead. My coming of age took place in small town New England as a child of the Congregational Way. Being raised a true Yankee Prod meant I knew precious little about Roman Catholic spirituality. A few close friends sometimes showed up at school with a dark smudge on their forheads and periodically got out of school midday on Wednesdays for something called CCD. But visiting one another's house of worship was not even considered. Besides, mine was the faith of New England's founding fathers, and I held an abiding affection for my roots in the non-conformist wing of the radical Reformation. 

Being a white, middle class child of Connecticut and Massachusetts meant that I celebrated the Thanksgiving mythology of my Pilgrim forbearers without question.

As a young adult I went so far as to naively proclaim Thanksgiving to be an American Eucharist. We learned nothing about living upon land that was once the ancesteral homes of the Pequot, Wampanoag, Massachuesett, Nipmuck, and Mohican nations. I never heard about settler genocide until well into adulthood for our schools and churches treated Thanksgiving as a Pilgrim feast day. And to this day I cannot find whether or not the founding pastor of my home church, Moses Mather, was a slave owner. Of course, he was active in the Revolutionary War. Since its founding in 1737, ours was an intellectually creative and socially aware congregation as well. But our complicated and cruel origins were nevertheless always sanitized and romanticized - and never discussed with historical candor.

Small wonder then that I matured into a Congregational/United Church of Christ booster. Coming of age in the 60's was when the United Church of Christ mattered in the USA. Not only was our post WWII charism about deep ecumenism, we were grounded in a vibrant commitment linking the love of Jesus to bold social, racial, gender, ecological, and economic justice. As Jesus proclaims at the close of this week's gospel reading, we serve and worship the "God of the living" (Luke 20: 38.) At the founding ceremony for the United Church of Christ in 1957, we chose a motto from St. John's gospel: "That They May All Be One." Consequently, we were allies with Dr. King in the early days of the struggle for civil and social rights for people of color. We were advocates for fair housing and invested in public/private projects to build affordable homes throughout the USA. Just months after Dr. King's assasination, a few week's after RFK's murder, and a short time before the Democratic Convention police assault on antiwar demonstrators: I sensed a call to ministry on our 1968 youth mission caravan trip. 

The purpose of our trip was to show 25 privileged white teens the depth and breadth of our tradition's engagement with real life. Over the course of three weeks we visited five key United Church mission projects: a rural orphanage and farm, an arts and culture organizing project in Appalachia, an urban ministry within the Black community of Washington, DC, the Church of the Savior's Potter's House (a coffee house outreach to alienated artists and intellectuals), and an inter-racial, working class congregation in Baltimore, MD. It was a heady time to be a young believer committed to justice and grace. And as Karl Barth presciently quipped, it was an era when reading "the Bible in one hand and a daily newspaper in the other" was essential.

The Rev. Dr. Sam Fogal from my Connecticut home church helped ground me in the best of our tradition. He introduced me to the work of theologian Roger Shinn, historian Louis Gunnemann, the writing of both Niebhuhr brothers, the biblical scholarship of Walter Brueggemann, the sexual ethics of James Nelson, and the wisdom of doing local church ministry from Martin Copenhaver. These quiet UCC giants were at the core of my formation. Later mentors like the Reverends Jim Drake and Fred Eyster helped me understand the importance of organizing for justice. And everywhere I looked, it seemed as if the United Church was on the cutting edge of what was both just and possible.

+ Our national bi-annual convention, General Synod, interupted business as usual to send a delegation of clergy and laity to stand with Cesar Chavez and striking farm workers in California. 

+ We were committed to finding new ways of doing mission by sharing resources and compassion with international partners rather than trying to convert indigenous peoples to our way of doing religion. The Rev. Dr. George Weber, who gave shape and form to the Inner City Protestant Parish and later went on to be President of New York Theological Seminary, showed me how this could work in the US, too.

+ The Rev. Ben Chavis and others were exposing the links between racism and ecological polution. The Rev. William Johnson became the first openly gay clergy to be ordained. The Rev. Dr. Allison Phillips and Jeremiah Wright taught me about being an white ally in solidarity with Black colleagues. The Rev. Dr. Susan Thistlethwaite shaped our Just Peace commitments. And serious attention and creativity was finally given to a theology of sexuality.  

+ In the early 80's, an inclusive language worship book and hymnal came into being that set the standard for other traditions. I had the privilege to work with the Rev. Bob Strommen on urban concerns. And the Rev. Dr. Thomas Dipko on international peace relations. 

During my 40+ years as an ordained clergy person, I was blessed to pastor four very different United Church congregations. I was priveleged to serve the living God and her people as moderator of the SW Conference, work for social/racial justice in Michigan, and then give almost a decade to being the registrar of the Berkshire Association. I was called to assist two different congregations in their commitment to become Open and Affirming churches. And in the day, we were able to take a youth group (and their parents) to the former Soviet Union for people-to-people peace-making. Years later, in partnership with the National Council of Churches, I was chosen to lead the Ohio Conference delegation on a solidarity pilgrimage with believers celebrating 1000 Years of Christianity in Ukraine and Russia. And became a founding organizer for three very different faith-based social justice organizing projects that received financial and spiritual support from the wider United Church of Christ. My formation, development, and ministry was saturated with the charism of the United Church of Christ in its prime.

And now this once beloved tradition looks more like a shabby footnote in what passes for faith in our barely United States of America. We are a shadow of our former self - content with elitist self-congratutions - and irrelevant to the body politic. We squandered the possibilities of the "God is Still Speaking" campaign and lost our creative balance. No wonder that for the first time in a half century, I forgot completely about celebrating Reformation Sunday. Why bother? What was once vibrant is now moribund. I recall a pundit once quipped that the labor movement of the 1980's had become more of a labor "twitch" than a movement and that feels true for my denomination. A report from a regional judicatory meeting only documented our  demise noting that no one in the association was interested in serving any of the necessary elected offices. In fact, the minutes show that we could not even reach a quorum for an annual meeting. Church historian, Diana Butler Bass, put it like this in a recent column:

This week the Pew Research released a report modeling the potential future of Christianity in the United States. (They) developed a model to draw four possible futures for American Christianity and released the report a few days ago. Pew’s conclusion? By 2070, Christianity in the United States (the whole thing — all forms of Protestantism, Catholicism, and Orthodoxy, all racial and ethnic Christian communities in a single category) will be a minority faith in a nation with a majority of “nones.” The study states: "While the scenarios in this report vary in the extent of religious disaffiliation they project, they all show Christians continuing to shrink as a share of the U.S. population, even under the counterfactual assumption that all switching came to a complete stop in 2020. At the same time, the unaffiliated are projected to grow under all four scenarios." (Read her full commentary here: https://dianabutlerbass. substack. com/p/the-future-of-faith

To everything there is a season, yes? Perhaps that's why I have come to find solace and gravitas in the sacramental spirituality of the liturgical church rather than the overly abstract intellectualism of my origins. There is new life yet to come for the way of Jesus, but not so for many of our denominations. In fact, before new light and life arise, what is destined to die must be allowed to wither and atrophy. All Hallows' Eve, All Saints and All Souls/Day of the Dead help me embrace the cycle of life: they ground me in reality, they encourage me to grieve what is dying and dead, and to trust that God's grace is not yet complete just as spring surely follows the darkness of autumn and the solitude of winter. The Zen-Eco-Beat poet, Gary Snyder, puts it like this:

The rising hills, the slopes,

of statistics

lie before us.

the steep climb

of everything, going up,

up, as we all

go down.

In the next century

or the one beyond that,
they say,
are valleys, pastures,
we can meet there in peace
if we make it.

To climb these coming crests
one word to you, to
you and your children:

stay together
learn the flowers

go light.

I don't pretend to know what will be left of my tradition by 2070. Nor do I even try to speculate. What empowers me now is a "small is holy" spirituality rather than the inflated triumphalism of my roots. A spirituality linking God's first revealed word in nature with the arts and prayer. The mystical wisdom of silence, music, contemplation, and quiet acts of compassion in concert with trusted allies. A life of faith shaped by the circle dance of the Holy Trinity instead of the hierarchy of Jacob's Ladder. So, while I hold a great deal of sorrow in my heart for the decline of my once beloved tradition, I am not despondent. As Brueggemann points out: the prophets of ancient Israel insisted that there are times when God's people must grieve and empty ourselves of hubris and control before there's room to even consider a new way of being. Moreover, new life will not emerge from what has been completed nor from those with nostalgic obsessions for the soon to be buried status quo. No, a new fidelity usually arises from those creative artists consigned to the fringes of society. Like Jacob Nordby said: Blessed are the weird people: poets, misfits, writers, mystics, painters, and troubadours for they teach us to see the world through different eyes.

I will be sharing some of those creative and life-giving experiements this coming Sunday during the "Small is Holy" livestream at 4 pm. Perhaps you will join me @ 

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php

credits:

1_ Pilgrims and Wampanoag: https://historyexplorer.si.edu/resource/pilgrims-and-wampanoag

2) Angels in the Subway: http://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/alexey-kondakov-paintings/index.html?gallery=0

3) Art in the Cathedrals: https://www.theartdose.com/blog/art-in-the-cathedrals-b45.html

4/5) Personal photos