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.