our addiction to violence is part of our legacy...

I am deeply saddened by the attempted assassination of former President Trump. It was a horrible act of hatred. At the same time please note that Mr Trump has increasingly advocated violence against his political opponents and consistently thrown rhetorical gasoline on any attempt to de-escalate our polarization. I am glad he is safe and understand he is not the source of our chaos and pain but rather the most recent manifestation. 

I pray we stop lying to ourselves about violence being un-American: sadly we were founded on settler genocide, institutionalized the dehumanization of Africans in our founding documents, celebrated slavery as a source of financial necessity, fought a still unresolved civil war that is erupting again, periodically engaged in campaigns of terror against immigrants and political agitators, regularly resorted to assassination both internally and internationally, and continue to treat guns as more sacred than the lives of our children. We’ve romanticized vigilantes, taught our history with half truths, and consciously ignored the consequences. Today’s horrific act is not an anomaly but yet another example of chickens coming home to roost as Malcolm X presciently told us some 61 years ago. 

Violence is not our only legacy, of course: our pursuit of an ever more perfect union is a blessing we must strengthen and celebrate; but we’re long overdue in breaking our addiction to conflict resolution through murder and must begin to own our collective shadow that is destroying us from the inside out. This is an important albeit frightening moment in our evolution as a nation. May God’s grace and truth be our guide in the coming days.

LISTEN to the music...

So today I am pondering the joy and meaning of music-making after reading this poem by Hannah Fries entitled: Let the Last Thing be Song.

i.
Memory is safest in someone with amnesia.
Behind locked doors
glow the unmarred pieces—
musical notes humming
in a jumble, only
waiting to be
arranged.

ii.
What is left in one
who does not remember?
Love and music.

Not a name but the fullness.
Not the sequence of events
but order of rhythm and pitch,

a piece of time in which to exist.

iii.
A tone traveling through space has no referent,
and yet we infer, and yet it
finds its way between our cells
and shakes us.

Aren’t we all still quivering
like tuning forks
with the shock of being,
the shock of being seen?

iv.
When I die, I want to be sung across the threshold.
Don’t you? Doesn’t the universe,
with its loosening warp
and weft, still
unspool its symphony?

Sing to me — please —
and I will sing for you as all unravels,
as time continues past the final beat
of the stutter inside your chest.

Harmonize, at the edge of that horizon,
with the black hole’s
fathomless B-flat.

I have had the privilege of creating music with a variety of excellent artists. Over the years I have been blessed to find the most wonderful artistic companions wherever we go. In Saginaw it started small with a folk quartet we called the Saginaw Rounders, we went through a few small band iterations in Cleveland, then began a youth band as part of our ministry in Tucson only to see it morph into what I considered the "liturgical Grateful Dead" as about 10 seasoned performers joined the fun, and now our music-making continues with 2 or 3 discrete ensembles including the All of Us trio, the All of Us big band, and from time to time sitting in with Andy Kelly's Jazz Ambassadors. 

Each ensemble has its own niche: the trio is a straight ahead rock'n'soul bar band, the larger ensemble is built upon close 3 and 4 part harmonies with an emphasis on eclectic songs of solidarity (we play mostly to raise funds for peace and eco-justice groups), and the Ambassadors sometimes play New Orleans jazz and at other times Irish drinking music. What I've discerned is that each group shares a few commonalities:

+ First, if it ain't fun or aesthetically moving, we don't do it. Our music is NOT about ego: it's about joy. We rehearse hard, we have high standards, and then we let it rip and expect everyone to hang their egos up at the door. We can be spontaneous: last week someone at the bar suggested "Mustang Sally" so we tore it up at Methuselah while playing more acoustic Wailin' Jennys songs at Edwards Church in Northampton. 

+ Second, each band is committed to building community. In our polarized and mean-spirited culture of privilege and privation, we do NOT want to add to the misery. In fact, we trust that singing and dancing together can help us nourish a sense of shared commitment. We are not overtly political, more Grateful Dead/Allman Brothers groove than earnest folkies with the qualification being we work at building a safe and joyful space. Like the community of Taize used to say: we don't offer answers, just one living alternative carnival to the current culture of competition.

+ Third, we love to find ways of including the wider audience in the groove. I love group singing - so we make sure that it happens - and I love wild ass dancing - so we encourage that, too. Its easier most days to shake your booty in a bar than at church but like the song "Hell Yeah" insists, our faith communities could learn some important lessons in compassion and acceptance from some watering holes - so we do our best to be genre-benders pushing the limits.

+ Fourth, whether its rock'n'soul or hymns: it is ALL sacred to us. There is NO division between the human and the holy: we're ALL in this together. And that includes all of creation, nature, and its flora and fauna as well. 

Maria Popova added this to the mix that warrants review, too noting that Beethoven's Ode to Joy had "become the official Hymn of Europe — a bridge of harmony across human divides. I remember wondering as I sang whether music is something we make or something we are made of." Her extended reflection reminds us that:

That is what Pythagoras, too, wondered when he

laid the foundation of Western music by discovering the mathematics of harmony. Its beauty so staggered him that he thought the entire universe must be governed by it. He called it music of the spheres — the idea that every celestial body produces in its movement a unique hum determined by its orbit...The word orbit did not exist in his day. It was Kepler who coined it two millennia later, and it was Kepler who resurrected Pythagoras’s music of the spheres in The Harmony of the World — the 1619 book in which he formulated his third and final law of planetary motion, revolutionizing our understanding of the universe. For Kepler, this notion of celestial music was not mere metaphor, not just a symbolic organizing principle for the cosmic order — he believed in it literally, believed that the universe is singing, reverberating with music inaudible to human ears but as real as gravity. He died ridiculed for this belief. Half a millennium after his death, our radio telescopes — those immense prosthetic ears built by centuries of science — detected a low-frequency hum pervading the universe, the product of supermassive black holes colliding in the early universe: Each merging pair sounds a different low note, and all the notes are sounding together into this great cosmic hum. We have heard the universe singing.

I don't recall who said it but my recollection is that whomever it was clearly believed - like myself - that we were NOT made to spend our days battered by anxiety and manipulated by media. We were born to sing. To make love. To share compassion and creativity and that means turning off the news and reconnecting with humanity. When asked what was the first sign of human culture, anthropologist Margaret Meade replied that the first sign of civilization was a broken but healed femur. "A broken femur that has healed is evidence that someone has taken time to stay with the one who fell, has bound up the wound, has carried the person to safety and has tended the person through recovery. Helping someone else through difficulty is where civilization starts. Be civilized, be safe, be cautious.. be in care. We are at our best when we serve others."

And so we sing - and rock - and groove and harmonize and dance - and share it as boldly as possible: it's where I draw sustenance for the journey and hope for another day.

wandering in the wonder of it all...

In my personal inward/outward journey of faith - as well as my professional work as musician, pastor, and spiritual director (or Anam Cara - soul friend) - I consciously pay attention to that tiny string of synchronicity that has been woven into the fabric of my life. The poet, William Stafford, put it like this in "The Way it Is."

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among

things that change. But it doesn’t change.

People wonder about what you are pursuing.

You have to explain about the thread.

But it is hard for others to see.

While you hold it you can’t get lost.

Tragedies happen; people get hurt

or die; and you suffer and get old.

Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.

You don’t ever let go of the thread.

For decades I've intuitively trusted this to be a spiritual practice that is the essence of a prayerful life: a way to pray without ceasing. About ten years ago, however, I learned that the ancient Celtic monks - my kith and kin - consciously trusted the thin threads of synchronicity to be the way of wisdom and revelation. The sustained explorations into Celtic spirituality by John O'Donohue, Christine Valters Paintner, and John Philip Newell all celebrate this truth. Dr. Paintner wrote, "We cannot become so impatient for the destination that we arrive before we are ready." Consequently, these wisdom seekers from ancient Scotland, Ireland, and Wales transformed the ancient practice of pilgrimage from one driven by the goal of destination to a prolonged act of wandering till the heart experienced the rest and renewal promised by Christ's resurrection. "There's going to be these little synchronicities. And if we take them seriously enough, it becomes part of a conversation that's unfolding."

When we awaken to the holy shimmering in each flower, tree, and bird, we suddenly discover that we are woven into a vast community. We find ourselves nourished and supported in ways we didn’t see before. We are called to hold this deepening awareness and trust that we are sustained and called forth by the choirs of creation into our own creative journeys of expression. The Celtic imagination moves in circles and spirals; values dreams and visions; sees animals as wise guides; and gives reverence to Earth, her seasons, and land as wisdom guides. Living in Ireland has broken open my own creativity in new ways and has affirmed my own inner sense that the creative process is best nourished by letting go of our goals and opening our hearts to what wants to arrive each moment.

Like the indigenous wisdom-keeper, Robin Wall Kimmerer, suggests: this spirituality celebrates practice and embodiment over abstract thinking and belief as defined by creed and dogma. Bono wasn't kidding when he sang: Grace trumps karma. When synchronicity and awareness are recognized as an authentic and healing spiritual practice, or as Nick Cave puts it - when our yearning is honored as relationship with the sacred - then we find ourselves saturated in the earthy holiness of God. As one of my spiritual friends often tells me: "Thinking is NOT the same as being." 

I don’t hold a lot of attachment to belief. I hold a lot of attachment to practice and how we embody what it is that we hold most dear. Whether or not someone believes a particular doctrine is not as important to me as the conversation that happens—and how we are in relationship to each other, how we show up for one another. I often think that so many of our world’s problems could be softened, alleviated, solved if we danced together. You know, what if we just had space? What if our politicians danced together before some sort of big summit? Dance for me is a symbol of joy and release and surrender and vulnerability. We could be bringing that kind of spirit into our relationship to others—whether we agree with them or not, that isn’t actually that relevant to me.  
(From an interview with David Dault in the April 2024 edition of the Christian Century: https:/ /www.christiancentury.org/interviews/our-unseen-companions)

Imagine my delight this morning, therefore, upon reading the reflections of Carrie Newcomer, Richard Rohr, and Mark Longhurst as they each and all spend time pondering the sacred nature of synchronicity. Rohr calls it evolving faithfully:

To fight transformative and evolutionary thinking is, for me, to fight the very core concept of faith. I have no certain knowledge of where this life might be fully or finally heading, but I can see what has already been revealed with great clarity—that life and knowledge always build on themselves, are cumulative, and are always moving outward toward ever-greater connection and discovery. There is no stopping this and no returning to a static notion of reality.

Longhurst writes: As enjoyable as thinking is, it impedes me from being present to what is right in front of me. When I’m thinking, I’m not paying attention. I might be thinking about ways to pay attention, or waxing philosophical about how the French mystic Simone Weil considered attention a form of prayer—all while missing out on the unique sounds, needs, and people that the current moment is placing in front of me. When I’m present, I’m receptive to an uncertain immensity that might lead me to new places; when I’m thinking, I’m trying to control and direct reality.

And Newcomer adds: I love love love people and places and my always surprising, changing outward life as a traveling musician and story teller of human possibility. But I also know that by nature, I “re-charge” in solitude. That I am deeply drawn too stillness and I know the essential importance of attending to my inner journey and inner work. It feels like these days we’ve all been invited to a huge banquet table culturally... It seems as though there are countless entities vying for or claiming the “head of the table”, asking for our daily full attention with a million pings and notifications and screens saying, “hey look over here, you don’t want to miss this thing that will fill your head with fear or anxiety or FOMO" when most of us would actually rather spend time at the middle of the table, with perspective and access to a balanced view of things and more inclusive conversation. Some of us long for the conversations that can only happen at the quiet end of the table, with a new or trusted friend. This includes those inner conversations and inner work that is easier to do away from the din of lots of outer hubbub.

When I step away from the "head of the table" to wander and notice the thin strands of synchronicity calling to me in the quiet: I am renewed. Revitalized. Part of our sojourn into the Eastern Townships of Quebec is a chance to wander without any concern to outcome or destination. Part of it, too, is to slip deeper into stillness in a shared solitude. And still another aspect is to listen carefully to whatever emerges during our wandering. This Mary Oliver poem popped up a day ago and captures the soul of our quest:

Who made the world? Who made the swan, and the black bear? Who made the grasshopper? This grasshopper, I mean--the one who has flung herself out of the grass, the one who is eating sugar out of my hand, who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down --who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes. Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face. Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away. I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

our summer hiatus...

We are in the midst of our annual summer escape from the USA tour of Quebec's Eastern Townships: the hoopla and hype, the crass jingoism and MAGA madness that now permeates the Fourth of July has become intolerable. And just to add insult to injury, there's America's obsessive hand-wringing re: President Biden's health that's been exaggerated, manipulated, and twisted daily by frantic polling that's ostensibly been conducted to measure the micro heart palpitations of the electorate but is actually designed to keep us all anxious, angry, and afraid a la 1984. We started getting out of Dodge at least once during July about 15 years ago and have now extended this to include an annual retreat during the American Thanksgiving/Black Friday insanity. Like David Bowie sang with help from Nine Inch Nails: I'm afraid of Americans!

This summer our retreat is being housed in a refurbished Quebecois trapper's cabin with a nod to the 1600's in New France. We booked expecting an adventure and were both stunned and delighted to find a rebuilt chapel in the backyard as well as a mighty rustic cabin. What a treat! So we're resting a LOT, talking about our aging lives, walking slowly around Lac Orford, and savoring  the stillness and solitude of Mother Nature. 

This year we have Lucie with us as her kennel was all booked - and she's holding her own. Some of you know her as our special needs dog who requires careful handling: when rattled, she sadly gives new meaning to compulsive anxiety disorder. But with patience and tenderness she can find her way through the chaos to make the best of it. For the past 8 years, Lucie has been helping me stay grounded and without (too many) expectations. In a totally upside down way, she is one of my spiritual mentors along with reclaiming prayer according to the guidelines the late Fr. Ed Hays crafted in: Prayers for the Domestic Church. 

Silence is one of the blessings of these retreats: there is NO TV and precious little internet so we literally become secular monastics shunning the busyness of culture for long periods of solitude and study. We get a bit of walking in, too whenever Di's back allows it and take long drives in the countryside to soak in the beauty. Today we found our way to one of the lake's inlets, drove through the neighborhood of wealthy chalet owners, ate tourtière and monk's cheese for lunch, and will bring the day to a close sipping red wine and reading the new Ian Rankin (Rebus) novel aloud. Tomorrow we're off to walk about Louise Penny country and check out the local bookstore before returning to retreat central.

Last night I came across this poem by Naomi Shihab Nye that warrants a mention given the political and cultural chaos that currently grips our homeland. It isn't about the USA but the last line rings so true.

Before I Was a Gazan - Naomi Shihab Nye (1952 – )
I was a boy
and my homework was missing,
paper with numbers on it,
stacked and lined,
I was looking for my piece of paper,
proud of this plus that, then multiplied,
not remembering if I had left it
on the table after showing to my uncle
or the shelf after combing my hair
but it was still somewhere
and I was going to find it and turn it in,
make my teacher happy,
make her say my name to the whole class,
before everything got subtracted
in a minute
even my uncle
even my teacher
even the best math student and his baby sister
who couldn’t talk yet.
And now I would do anything
for a problem I could solve.

As Ms. Shihab Nye notes: there is tranquility and purpose before "everything got subtracted in a minute... and now I would do anything for a problem I could resolve." Life in the United States continues to become increasingly unhinged, vicious, and dangerous - and that's not going to change any time soon. Sadly,  we are in this mess until this era plays itself out; and from my perspective that means making peace with problems we cannot currently solve. We must learn to endure. And accept. And reclaim what is holy in the most ordinary and small places. We must strengthen our affection for one another while the desecration continues. And find ways, like Anne Frank, to return thanks every day. By faith, I trust that the violence and danger to come is not the end of our story. The Paschal Mystery is unequivocal: God can and does transform some tragedies into opportunities for new life for those committed to peace, love, and justice. Our calling is to nourish a deep reservoir of patience and prayer that we can share as the brutality intensifies.