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.