living into the slower charism of summer...

After five months back at leading worship - and sharing pastoral care and support - it feels a bit off to be at home this morning. Not bad, mind you, as I've been resting profoundly. Just off a bit. One of the lovely traditions in Palmer is to truly take a break during the summer and share worship with two other congregations: the Universalists and Baptists. This gives me six Sunday's off before I take over the shared worship commitments during the later part of August. I will still do some pastoral care throughout the summer - some planning and meetings, too - but no Sunday morning commitments for 42 days!

The next three weeks will be full: some solitude and quiet in North Country for a week, a quick trip to Tucson for an important memorial service, a weekend in MD for our nephew's wedding, then almost a week with my brother and sister-in-law from San Francisco. This week is chock full of engagements: pastoral work tomorrow, rehearsal and playing Methuselah on Tuesday, packing the car to bring Lucie with us on vacation, and departure on Wednesday. We celebrated Di's birthday yesterday. We had hoped to pick strawberries together but the weather did not cooperate so we did the next best thing: hung out at Matt's Bookstore in Lenox. Later we feasted together and shared a killer chocolate fudge cake. 

I quickly forget both how much a cherish worship, and, how easy it is to get out of
the habit. I delight in this time off even as I miss being with the faith community. I had the same experience last year at this time when my "bridge ministry" in Williamstown came to a close. So, from the solitude of my garden, I offer up these words from the SALT Project and Mary Oliver as we all enter the mystery of this season.

Sweet Jesus, talking
his melancholy madness,
stood up in the boat
and the sea lay down,

silky and sorry.
So everybody was saved
that night.
But you know how it is

when something
different crosses
the threshold — the uncles
mutter together,

the women walk away,
the young brother begins
to sharpen his knife.
Nobody knows what the soul is.

It comes and goes
like the wind over the water —
sometimes, for days,
you don’t think of it.

Maybe, after the sermon,
after the multitude was fed,
one or two of them felt
the soul slip forth

like a tremor of pure sunlight
before exhaustion,
that wants to swallow everything,
gripped their bones and left them

miserable and sleepy,
as they are now, forgetting
how the wind tore at the sails
before he rose and talked to it —

tender and luminous and demanding
as he always was —
a thousand times more frightening
than the killer sea.

”Maybe” is one of Mary Oliver’s theological classics, just in time for this coming Sunday’s lectionary readings, which include Mark’s story of Jesus calming the storm (Mark 4:35-41; check out SALT’s commentary here). In a sense, Oliver picks up where the story leaves off: the sea is silky and sorry, but soon enough, the people get restless. Something different has crossed the threshold. We may plead for deliverance, but the truth is we’re often attached — more than attached — to the way things are, the devil we know, and wary when things threaten to change.

In this way, Oliver helps us understand Mark’s story, and its aftermath, on a deeper level. “Everybody was saved that night,” yes, the disciples and also the “other boats” Mark says were with them — but at its core, the episode is more unsettling than settling. The disciples are astonished, and also unnerved. “Who then is this?” they ask. Even they, who’ve left everything to follow him, who presumably believe him to be someone extraordinary, the Messiah, the deliverer — even they are perplexed, eyes widening. Who then is this?

The storm has gone silent. But now they’re left with him, and with his tender, luminous demands.

A thousand times more frightening / than the killer sea.

living into our existential anxiety takes practice...

Yesterday I saw a post from a long ago and far away colleague that spoke to my
heart: "Not sure which bothers me the most: the lousy performance by Biden or the hysteria taking over the Dems." And I would add: not just the Dems but a host of other good souls with tissue paper feelings who have grown accustomed to living in our bubble of privilege over the past 50 years. Those on the so-called Left (whatever that really means in the United States right now) have become isolated, arrogant, and afraid. And while these very real fears might impel us toward solidarity, like others of us dealing with our various addictions, more than likely we're going to need to hit bottom before we will accept reality - and Thursday's presidential debate gave shape and form to what that bottom looks like at this moment in time. Life under a MAGA régime driven by Project 2025 would be the contemporary  incarnation of A Hand Maid's Tale.

The knee-jerk, no context editorial the NY Times posted yesterday urging Biden to withdraw is an excellent example of liberal hysteria. In this era of digital magic where I can log on to the Times editorials in less that 5 seconds and still carp about how slow my high speed internet works, all perspective has been abandoned. The late Jim Morrison wailed prophetically in 1968: we want the world and we want it... NOW! I, too, would have preferred that Mr. Biden step aside before the primary season so that other candidates would have to tough-it-out in pursuit of the nomination, but that didn't happen. Had it been true then our Vice-President, Ms. Kamala Harris, would have had to complete as an equal even if considered the heir apparent. She's no shoe-in either in my analysis and carries her own inconsistent baggage. But again, competition did not happen. So, like the Serenity Prayer teaches, I need the courage to accept what I cannot change while changing the things I can. And politically, ethically, and spiritually there are a two insights that ring true to me:

First, we need to nourish both a long obedience and a commitment to reality. The church historian, Diana Butler Bass, framed this well when she quoted Teilhard de Chardin: Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability — and that it may take a very long time.

Our arrogant politics and social isolation didn't occur overnight and it's redemption won't happen any time soon either. Thomas Merton told us back in 1948: It is true that the materialistic society, the so-called culture that has evolved under the tender mercies of capitalism, has produced what seems to be the ultimate limit of this worldliness. And nowhere, except perhaps in the analogous society of pagan Rome, has there ever been such a flowering of cheap and petty and disgusting lusts and vanities as in the world of capitalism, where there is no evil that is not fostered and encouraged for the sake of making money. We live in a society whose whole policy is to excite every nerve in the human body and keep it at the highest pitch of artificial tension, to strain every human desire to the limit and to create as many new desires and synthetic passions as possible, in order to cater to them with the products of our factories and printing presses and movie studios and all the rest.

And don't forget the critique Eliot crafted in 1934: All our knowledge brings us near to our ignorance, All our ignorance brings us nearer to death, But nearness to death, no nearer to God. Where the the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries Bring us farther from God and nearer to the Dust.

We no longer know how to wait - or relinquish - and I dare say we're living into the consequences of this arrogance. It is a corrective - harsh and ugly, to be sure - but as the Dominican mystic, Meister Eckhardt, insisted: "Reality is the will of God... it can always be better, but we must start with what is real." What is real in 2024 is that millions of our fellow citizens have been shut out of hope let alone security and they, like Jim Morrison, want a cataclysmic change NOW. More than any other moment in my life time, 2024 has become the year when the Serenity Prayer reclaimed its political wisdom in much the same way it did before WWII when Niebuhr wrote it. We, too face the threat of a home-grown fascism that is not fantasy but fact. And while it will not endure forever, it will be harsh, ugly, punitive, and tragic for many of us and the entire world community, too.

Second, practicing a contemplative discipline that reminds us that our feelings are not the whole truth is a vital antidote to our culture's chaos and doing so in community is salvific.  Look, I'm worried about this era - sometimes terrified, too - but my feelings are not the totality of reality. They are clues about how to respond. Fr. Ed Hays calls this the wisdom of our wounds - and they are counter-cultural. The Anointed Jesus told us in the Sermon on the Mount that we are blessed when we're not so full of ourselves. When we feel filled with fear and want to run away or strike out, that's a sacred clue to do the exact opposite and stay connected and engaged. When we want to scream, its time to be still and reconnect to the unforced rhythms of grace. Unlike Jon Stewart who recently said it's time to contact a real estate agent in New Zealand, now is the time to be still, listen to what's going on all around us, and respond with a tender compassion that is reasonably consistent. To do so from within a spiritual community insures both a measure of accountability and periodic encouragement. The virulent anxiety that has become dominant today need not be normative for ever. The Talmud teaches:

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.

All of the spiritual masters of my Judeo-Christian tradition insist that until we can unplug from the chaos, we'll be a part of the problem, not the solution. This does NOT mean isolationism or abstract navel gazing. It does mean learning how to let go of all expectations so that we can rest for a spell within God's presence and come to trust grace. If we do not know at our core that the universe is a friendly place despite the set backs and pain, we'll either retreat into privilege, try to self-medicate our fears (which never works), or become what we hate. Merton once again cuts to the chase:

Without reverting to sentimentality or cynicism, Richard Rohr reminds us:

What empowers change, what makes you desirous of change is the experience of love. It is that inherent experience of love that becomes the engine of change. Faith does not need to push the river because faith is able to trust that there is a river.

In another, longer post he speaks truth to the challenges of this moment: "I think there are three basic levels of social ministry, and none is better than the other. I believe all are the movement of the Holy Spirit within us for the sake of others. I like to imagine a river flooding out of control—symbolizing the circumstances and injustices that bring about suffering—overflowing its banks and sweeping those in its path off their feet."

At the first level, we rescue drowning people from the swollen river, dealing with the immediate social problem right in front of us: someone hungry comes to our door and we offer them some food, or invite them inside. These are hands-on, social service ministries, like the familiar soup kitchen or food pantry. Such works will always look rather generous, Christian, charitable, and they tend to be admired, if not always imitated.

At the second level, there are ministries that help people not to fall into the swollen river in the first place, or show them how to survive despite falling in. In general, these are the ministries of education and healing ... that fill the world with schools, hospitals, and social service ministries that empowered people and gave them new visions and possibilities for their lives.

Finally, on the third level, some ministries build and maintain a dam to stop the river from flooding in the first place. This is the work of social activism and advocacy, critique of systems, organizing, speeches, boycotts, protests, and resistance against all forms of systemic injustice and deceit. It is the gift of a few, but a much-needed gift that we only recently began to learn and practice. It seeks systemic change and not just individual conversion.

I don’t think most people feel called to this third level of activism; I my-self don’t. It was initially humiliating to admit this, and I lost the trust and admiration of some friends and supporters. Yet as we come to know our own soul gift more clearly, we almost always have to let go of certain “gifts” so we can do our one or two things well and with integrity. I believe that if we can do one or two things wholeheartedly in our life, that is all God expects.

The important thing is that we all should be doing something for the rest of the world! We have to pay back, particularly those of us born into privilege and comfort. We also must respect and support the other two levels, even if we cannot do them. Avoid all comparisons about better or lesser, more committed or less committed; those are all ego games. Let’s just use our different gifts to create a unity in the work of service (Ephesians 4:12–13), and back one another up, without criticism or competition. Only in our peaceful, mutual honoring do we show forth the glory of God.

Ours is a moment of profound consequences and we all have a role to play in creating an alternative to the brokenness. The best contemplative wisdom invites us to: 1) take a LONG and LOVING look at reality; 2) Cultivate an inward practice of acceptance; 3) Nourish our practice with discipline and community so that we discern which of the three steps of social change are most important to us; and 4) Trust that God is a loving and just God. We are in for a long and agonizing journey but this moment is NOT the end of the story - only a part.

it ain't over til it's over: an inner debate between my head and my heart after presidential debate...

Well, last night's Presidential debate was NOT for the feint of heart: Mr. Biden not only looked lost in the beginning, but sounded... what? Disoriented? Drugged? At odds as to the consequences of a poor performance? All of the above? And Mr. Trump - our once Liar-and-Groper-in-Chief? He was certainly the more commanding presence even as he lied in the most outrageous manner. Accusing the Democrats of infanticide? Projecting his failures on to the Biden Administration? Dodging bullet after bullet with belligerence and obfuscation? All of the above and more? Without a doubt. 

Today I am experiencing an inner debate within myself concerning my head and my heart. No sooner did the President walk on the stage, shuffling and looking oddly pale as befits an 81 year old person fighting off a cold, than my heart sank: this is all over before it begins I felt wondering why someone on his team didn't consult Sir Paul McCartney who is also 81? When the former President took the stage a moment later, his orange hue had been toned down, his faux-Mussolini scowl was still intact, and he showed up exuding bravado - false or not - making Biden's pallor even more troubling. And for the next 30+ minutes, I found myself wondering: where IS the President and why is he so incoherent? Trump was bombastic in his lies, over powering the foggy insights Biden tried to articulate. 

Suddenly, about 25 minutes into the fray, the light inside Biden seemed to come on as he literally looked like he had risen from the dead. There was a sharp focus absent at the start. He spoke in complete sentences and had command of the values being contested by his opponent. He avoided the "cute stories about his dad" that have outlived their usefulness. And he was fully engaged. Trump simply ratcheted up his revilement - as is his want - without any relationship to the truth. Fact checkers afterwards (see https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/06/ 28/us/trump-biden-debate) noted 45's increasingly fraudulent hyperbole which was intended to appeal to our deepest fears. And from my perspective, Trump succeeded. He diminished Biden, he evoked emotion, and he continued to amplify the "strong man" persona celebrated by the current crop of fascists. Sadly, the President's resurrection came too late in the debate so the former President's grandiosity captured the moment. 

Given that most of my fellow Americans don't pay much attention to politics - for both good and bad reasons - this debate was clearly a win for Mr. Trump. And while Mr. Biden looked alive today in North Carolina - and sounded engaged, too - for the time being, angst will rule the day amongst those who oppose 45. Yes, it is still early in the struggle; and yes, President Obama failed to rise to the occasion during his first debate as President, too; so as Yogi Berra wisely told us: it ain't over til it's over! But my heart aches for another candidate - not RFK or any of the other pretenders - just someone more vibrant, articulate, and focused. I get why the Dems are wringing their hands, trying to clean up the President's mess, and doing spin control 24/7. But I think Nancy Pelosi had the most thoughtful response - and it is what my head is trying to hold on to right now. When asked if the Democratic Party needed a new nominee, she said: "NO. From a performance standpoint it wasn’t great, but from a values standpoint it far outshone the other guy,”

As a committed follower of Jesus, values matter - and no matter how you slice it - Joe beats Donald in this realm hands down. Biden has delivered working people a practical populism that remained only rhetoric during Trump's term. The President cares about those who are vulnerable and afraid; the former President only cares about himself. So, as one who trusts the Anointed and Resurrected Jesus over any and all politicians, my head impels me to stay the course with Biden. Calls for a new nominee, if truly useful, have time to ripen. My hunch, however, is that they will likely shrivel on the vine because it ain't over til it's over, right? And politics as life is filled with surprises. I lament last night. Even grieve it. But know that a poor performance in a debates is not the end of the story. I trust and serve a God whose love is greater than all of that - and that remains even should the Orange won win.

image credit: Avasna Pandey https://kathmandupost.com/miscellaneous/2017/06/10/head-over-heart

the embrace of june's feast days and our rock'n'soul music...

June is saturated in feast days - Pentecost, Sacred Heart, the Immaculate Heart of Mary, the Nativity of John the Baptist, and Saints Peter and Paul Day being the most significant - and I find myself reveling in the bounty. I didn't grow up with feast days. The Congregational Way threw that baby out with the bath water of the Reformation along with contemplative prayer, liturgy, chant, and the importance of discerning tradition. Our "solo scriptura" was both an earnest and arrogant attempt to reclaim primitive Christianity from institutionalization and empire. The mentors of my first nascent spirituality were cock sure they had a monopoly on the truth and soon joined the ranks of our earlier religious despots who somehow made peace in their souls with the misogyny and violence of the witch hunts, burning so-called heretics at the stake, torture, and genocide. 

I was duly indoctrinated and bought the sanitized mythology of the Pilgrims as celebrants of religious freedom without once wondering what happened to the first inhabitants of New England. Through prayer, study, resentment, and a degree of acceptance I've come to see my Puritan ancestors as haughty, adolescent bullies who convinced themselves of their own righteousness while wounding, abusing, and violating the land, its first caretakers, and all who couldn't stomach their religious zeal. There are aspects of my tradition that I cherish, it's rugged non-conformist tendencies being paramount, but this has included incarnating Merton's insight about learning to "grow where we're planted." I have had to reclaim so many spiritual babies from their discarded bathwater over the years including the sanctity of Eucharist, feast and fast days, mystical wisdom, and liturgical prayer being the most important. Thank God for communities like Taize, Celebration, and Iona who have been allies in reclaiming our lost treasures with a measure of humility.

I suppose its no wonder that ALL of my spiritual directors have been Roman Catholic - some priests some renegades - but all grounded in prayer, study, and the challenge of sorting out what is sacred and what is dross from tradition. Same holds true for many of my intellectual mentors including Thomas Merton, Richard Rohr, Joan Chittister, and Henri Nouwen. As Sr. Joan puts it: we must learn how to see the eagle within the egg if we're to renew what is holy in our traditions. A few brilliant and non-conformist women scholars from the Reformed tradition have been blessings, too: Cynthia Bourgeault, Barbara Brown Taylor, Margaret Guenther, Gertrud Mueller-Nelson, Diana Butler Bass, Phyllis Tribble, and Kathleen Norris being the most important. Add into the mix Walter Wink, Gustavo Gutierrez, Clarence Jordan, Thomas Keating, Mary Oliver, MLK, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Bono, Springsteen, Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Zappa, and Robert Bly and you have the faculty that has guided me through the haze into clarity over the past 60 years.

All of this is prelude to this moment when I've been reconnected to my earliest calling of sharing both rock'n'soul music for the body and mind (to paraphrase Country Joe and the Fish) and the spiritual renewal of individuals and congregations. Back in 1968, shortly after Dr. King's assassination, I was in the Potter's House in Washington, DC with my church youth group when I sensed a "call to ministry." As the artists of the Church of the Savior did experimental liturgy in their coffee house ministry, I "heard" the Spirit whisper: "You could do this, too!" Fifty seven years later this journey keeps on truckin' in ways that delight and astound me. Like the Dead still sing: What a LONG strange trip it's been! I feel that way weeding the garden, preaching in Palmer, playing music at the Sideline Saloon and Methuselah in Pittsfield, being grandad to my precious Lou and Anna, and loving my life partner. 

Last night at the Sideline, my heart was full to overflowing when the crowd started to get up and dance to our music. And clap. And singalong: whoa-wo listen to the music! When Dave played his extended lead guitar breaks during "Can't You See" I was in the zone of solidarity and ecstasy. In many ways, our wee band, ALL of Us, is a throwback playing with and reforming our rock'n'soul tradition. We're kin to the Allman Brothers, Gov't Mule, Joan Osborne, Dylan, Springsteen, Beatles, and ZZ Top: let's boogie while we can and care for one another tenderly in the process.  When this happens the blessings of our feast days becomes real for me in ways that transcend words. 

       

anti-zionism is NOT the same as anti-semitism

Let me start off by acknowledging that OFTEN I am late to the party practically, politically, theologically, sometimes spiritually but RARELY emotionally. My soul grasps the wounds and blessings of creation long before my head catches up to my heart. That's part of the legacy of being an adult child of alcoholics where rage was mixed with affection and safety came and went without warning. Being outwardly cautious, therefore, not only became my default position during times of conflict, but became a discipline I cultivated as I matured. My hesitations are a natural part of a childhood legacy - I KNOW I am terrified of conflict and physical violence - as well as part of my quest for wisdom and humility. In many situations, I find its best to go slowly rather than spontaneously both to sort out what is authentic and true when feelings are swirling and because no one can see their own shadow. Watching and waiting, observing and testing the waters of life have proven to be healthier and safer for me than all the alternatives. 

Which isn't to say I haven't rushed to judgment. Clearly, I have in matters of the heart, politics, the buzz of a party, the heat of an argument and so much more. But as St. Irenaeus of Lyons insisted during the second century CE: we were made to grow into the image of God by learning from our mistakes. There is NO original sin, just humans growing in faith and becoming incrementally more Christlike in the process. The Eastern Orthodox celebrate this as "divinization" and I affirm it in spades. As life has ripened, my mantra has become: be still and know! As well as: follow me and learn the unforced rhythms of grace.

Consequently, most of the time, it takes forever for me to share my take on the events of the day: not only are they transitory - and often a distraction from living into Christ's compassion - but shifting sands that are rarely clear at the outset. I am not one who will jump on today's cause celebre: intellectually, morally, politically, and ethically I can't do it. And that brings me to the agony of owning that Israel's war against Hamas is genocide. Today's horrors are the most naked example of Israel's historic hatred of Palestine. At times over the past 78 years their violence has been clandestine, at other times blatantly vulgar, and always a violation of the spirit of hope that emerged out of the ashes of  the Holocaust. 

I know such a conclusion is generational, ok? Like many of my peace-making peers, for decades I only heard part of the story. I was morally blinded by the incomprehensible horrors of Auschwitz. I knew nothing of the Nakba. I only read what the NY Times wanted me to read. Until the 90's I believed that Israel truly acted only defensively against aggressors hell-bent on its destruction. And while that's part of the truth, it's not the whole truth so help me God as the nearly 40,000 and counting Palestinian deaths document. The terrorist slaughter of October 7th can never be excused or rationalized as a righteous consequence of oppression. But let's be clear: the wildly disproportionate violence the IDF has rained down upon women and children as well as the innocent sick and elderly - to say nothing of the campaign of starvation currently in place throughout Gaza - stands as proof of Israel's commitment to genocide. I hate that this is true. But I hate the brutality and death that innocent Palestinians are enduring more than my own broken heart. 

So, what I have long known within - and been hesitant to say out loud - is now all too obvious . As Chris Hedges presciently wrote in February: 

There was never any possibility that the Israeli government would agree to a pause in the fighting proposed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, much less a ceasefire. Israel is on the verge of delivering the coup de grâce in its war on Palestinians in Gaza – mass starvation. When Israeli leaders use the term “absolute victory,” they mean total decimation, total elimination. The Nazis in 1942 systematically starved the 500,000 men, women and children in the Warsaw Ghetto. This is a number Israel intends to exceed. Israel, and its chief patron the United States, by attempting to shut down the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which provides food and aid to Gaza, is not only committing a war crime, but is in flagrant defiance of the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The court found the charges of genocide brought by South Africa, which included statements and facts gathered by UNWRA, plausible. It ordered Israel to abide by six provisional measures to prevent genocide and alleviate the humanitarian catastrophe. The fourth provisional measure calls on Israel to secure immediate and effective steps to provide humanitarian assistance and essential services in Gaza. https://scheerpost.com/2024/02/08/chris-hedges-let-them-eat-dirt/

Pope Francis has noted us that: we are living in an era overcome by the magnitude of the violence and the acute hopelessness that surfaces when the scale of destruction, violence and injustice comes to the surface... this sense of apathy and willful ignorance arises in the face of global violence. In today's world, the sense of belonging to a single human family is fading, and the dream of working together for justice and peace seems an outdated utopia. What reigns instead is a cool, comfortable and globalized indifference, born of deep disillusionment concealed behind a deceptive illusion: thinking that we are all-powerful, while failing to realize that we are all in the same boat. Or as Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel put it: few of us are guilty, but all of us are responsible. 

My caution has its place - I will always trust it - but now it has run its course and can serve only to excuse and deny the genocide born of blind and arrogant Zionism.