yearning for all saints' day...

I am still blessed to have a few childhood friends. That may not be such an awesome reality for those who grew up in small communities and stayed there, but it was for me. Given my father's career path, we moved every two years until we stayed put in Southern Connecticut so that I might complete junior and senior high school. These are the friends and lovers I still hold close to my heart. I hear from them periodically on FB and rejoice in that simple pleasure. And when possible, I try to visit. This August, I spent an afternoon with my once Sunday School teacher, who now lives in a retirement community in Vermont. Last week, he told me that his beloved wife of over 40 years had died and wondered if I might be able to join the upcoming Memorial Service to sing the Paul Stookey song I sang at their wedding. "In a heartbeat, brother," I replied without hesitation and have started reworking the music for this occasion.

Her death - and others throughout 2025 - have awakened in me a yearning to celebrate All Saints/All Souls Day more intentionally this year. Once upon a time, we would use our annual Thanksgiving Eve gig to name and perform some of the music crafted and shared with the world by musicians who had crossed over that year. We would also mark those who had joined the journey home in our church. I find that this year I am keenly missing the presence of: Bill Moyers, Sly Stone, Brian Wilson, Diane Keeton, Phyllis Tribble, Robert Redford, Jane Goodall, Graham Greene, Lou Christie, Rick Derringer, Valerie Mahaffey, Ruth Buzzi, Jesse Colin Young, June Lockhart, Danny Thompson, Roberta Flack, Jerry Butler, Marianne Faithfull, Garth Hudson, Sam Moore, and Peter Yarrow. Everyone will have their own list, of course, and this is mine, highly subjective and top-heavy with musicians to be sure.

I trust that one of the reasons I'm so focused on the fleeting holy days of All Saints' and All Souls' this year is my own mortality. There's no escaping the fact that I know I am much closer to the end than the beginning. Another concerns the current chaos in our culture, which denigrates history and depth in relationships in favor of short-term profits and selfish acquisitions. Social critic Ted Goia writes that we are now living through a time when most social institutions are run like casinos, eager to bleed us dry in a fun house we cannot escape. If you've ever been in a casino, you know what I mean: countless seemingly exciting distractions, no easy way out, the lure of winning against the odds, and a conspicuous absence of any clocks. 

So, this weekend, we'll quietly slip out of Dodge for a few days and nights of quiet wandering. And reminiscing. And reconnecting with loved ones. I need a little downtime right now to feel both my loss and my gratitude. Tonight, our band, All of Us, will play some rock'n'roll Halloween favorites. Tomorrow, our Wednesday's Child band will work on this year's "Blue Christmas" gathering. This weekend, our church will present an intergenerational liturgical drama before celebrating Eucharist. And in between, there are leaves to gather, acorns to scatter, outdoor chores to be completed before the first heavy frost, and a whole lot of quiet time to take stock. The poet, Jacqueline Osherow, gets it so right for me this year with her "Autumn Psalm" poem. It's long, obviously, but well worth the time.

A full year passed (the seasons keep me honest)
since I last noticed this same commotion.
Who knew God was an abstract expressionist?

I’m asking myself—the very question
I asked last year, staring out at this array
of racing colors, then set in motion

by the chance invasion of a Steller’s jay.
Is this what people mean by speed of light?
My usually levelheaded mulberry tree

hurling arrows everywhere in sight—
its bow: the out-of-control Virginia creeper
my friends say I should do something about,

whose vermilion went at least a full shade deeper
at the provocation of the upstart blue,
the leaves (half green, half gold) suddenly hyper

in savage competition with that red and blue—
tohubohu returned, in living color.
Kandinsky: where were you when I needed you?

My attempted poem would lie fallow a year;
I was so busy focusing on the desert’s
stinginess with everything but rumor.

No place even for the spectrum’s introverts—
rose, olive, gray—no pigment at all—
and certainly no room for shameless braggarts

like the ones that barge in here every fall
and make me feel like an unredeemed failure
even more emphatically than usual.

And here they are again, their fleet allure
still more urgent this time—the desert’s gone;
I’m through with it, want something fuller—

why shouldn’t a person have a little fun,
some utterly unnecessary extravagance?
Which was—at least I think it was—God’s plan

when He set up (such things are never left to chance)
that one split-second assignation
with genuine, no-kidding-around omnipotence

what, for lack of better words, I’m calling vision.
You breathe in, and, for once, there’s something there.
Just when you thought you’d learned some resignation,

there’s real resistance in the nearby air
until the entire universe is swayed.
Even that desert of yours isn’t quite so bare

and God’s not nonexistent; He’s just been waylaid
by a host of what no one could’ve foreseen.
He’s got plans for you: this red-gold-green parade

is actually a fairly detailed outline.
David never needed one, but he’s long dead
and God could use a little recognition.

He promises. It won’t go to His head
and if you praise Him properly (an autumn psalm!
Why didn’t I think of that?) you’ll have it made.

But while it’s true that my Virginia creeper praises Him,
its palms and fingers crimson with applause,
that the local breeze is weaving Him a diadem,

inspecting my tree’s uncut gold for flaws,
I came to talk about the way that violet-blue
sprang the greens and reds and yellows

into action: actual motion. I swear it’s true
though I’m not sure I ever took it in.
Now I’d be prepared, if some magician flew

into my field of vision, to realign
that dazzle out my window yet again.
It’s not likely, but I’m keeping my eyes open

though I still wouldn’t be able to explain
precisely what happened to these vines, these trees.
It isn’t available in my tradition.

For this, I would have to be Chinese,
Wang Wei, to be precise, on a mountain,
autumn rain converging on the trees,

a cassia flower nearby, a cloud, a pine,
washerwomen heading home for the day,
my senses and the mountain so entirely in tune

that when my stroke of blue arrives, I’m ready.
Though there is no rain here: the air’s shot through
with gold on golden leaves. Wang Wei’s so giddy

he’s calling back the dead: Li Bai! Du Fu!
Guys! You’ve got to see this—autumn sun!
They’re suddenly hell-bent on learning Hebrew

in order to get inside the celebration,
which explains how they wound up where they are
in my university library’s squashed domain.

Poor guys, it was Hebrew they were looking for,
but they ended up across the aisle from Yiddish—
some Library of Congress cataloger’s sense of humor:

the world’s calmest characters and its most skittish
squinting at each other, head to head,
all silently intoning some version of kaddish

for their nonexistent readers, one side’s dead
(the twentieth century’s lasting contribution)
and the other’s insufficiently learned

to understand a fraction of what they mean.
The writings in the world’s most spoken language
across from one that can barely get a minyan.

Sick of lanzmen, the yidden are trying to engage
the guys across the aisle in some conversation:
How, for example, do you squeeze an image
into so few words, respectfully asks Glatstein.
Wang Wei, at first, doesn’t understand the problem
but then he shrugs his shoulders, mumbles Zen
… but, please, I, myself, overheard a poem,
in the autumn rain, once, on a mountain.
How do you do it? I believe it’s called a psalm?

Glatstein’s cronies all crack up in unison.
Okay, groise macher, give him an answer.
But Glatstein dons his yarmulke (who knew he had one?)

and starts the introduction to the morning prayer,
Pisukei di zimrah, psalm by psalm.
Wang Wei is spellbound, the stacks’ stale air

suddenly a veritable balm
and I’m so touched by these amazing goings-on
that I’ve forgotten all about the autumn

staring straight at me: still alive, still golden.
What’s gold, anyway, compared to poetry?
a trick of chlorophyll, a trick of sun.

True. It was something, my changing tree
with its perfect complement: a crimson vine,
both thrown into panic by a Steller’s jay,

but it’s hard to shake the habit of digression.
Wandering has always been my people’s way
whether we’re in a desert or narration.

It’s too late to emulate Wang Wei
and his solitary years on that one mountain
though I’d love to say what I set out to say

just once. Next autumn, maybe. What’s the occasion?
Glatstein will shout over to me from the bookcase
(that is, if he’s paying any attention)

and, finally, I’ll look him in the face.
Quick. Out the window, Yankev. It’s here again.

when you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you don't blame the lettuce...

As a part of my commitment to self-care AND professional development as both pastor and spiritual director, this week I began a five-part reflection at Wisdom Ways. The Rev. Dr. Cynthia Bourgeault has revised her "Introduction to Wisdom School" course, designed to help practitioners move beyond mere information to "knowing more deeply rather than knowing more." She writes:

Wisdom schools appear throughout history during two critical periods: when humanity stands on the edge of evolutionary leaps in consciousness, and, during times of great planetary instability. Our current era fulfills both of these conditions as we struggle between individualistic consciousness and an emerging collective awareness that can think from the whole to the part.

Taking on this commitment of study and practice - including renewing my on-
again, off-again romance with Centering Prayer - brought to mind a poem by Tich Naht Hanh he calls: When You Plant Lettuce.

When you plant lettuce,
if it does not grow well,
you don't blame the lettuce.

You look for reasons
it is not doing well.
It may need fertilizer,
or more water, or less sun.
You never blame the lettuce.

Yet if we have problems
with our friends or family,
we blame the other person.

But if we know how
to take care of them,
they will grow well,
like the lettuce. Blaming
has no positive effect at all,
nor does trying to persuade
using reason and argument.
That is my experience.

No blame,
no reasoning,
no argument,
just understanding.

If you understand,
and you show that you understand,
you can love, and the situation will change.

Blaming - and reacting - is not what's needed. Instead, to paraphrase Bourgeault, whenever we engage in conversation, it is best to do so from an inner quiet so that we might speak from silence with force and agency. For the past 45 years, I seem to learn and practice this only to gradually forget it and lose touch. Perhaps with each recollection, I go a little deeper, but then again, maybe not. There is a rhythm to my journey and it involves trust, rest, silence, and careful conversation.

reflections on relinquishing and renewal part two...

NOTE: This is part two of an unfolding reflection on relinquishing and renewal.

Over the past week, our small family marked the Feast Day of St. Francis and celebrated our grandson’s 12th birthday (they’re the same day), harvested our first 10lb pumpkin from our own garden, brought most of our plants indoors to escape the first frost, visited Ioka Farms for yet another family search for the Great Pumpkin, and blessed about 15 dogs, along with a few cats and a bunny, at church. It has been a full time. Autumn is now full-blown in these parts as the trees shed their colors and the squirrels and chipmunks snatch up the acorns. Soon, all the yellows, oranges, and browns will give way to silvers and greys, and the stripped-down hills and wetlands will invite us to return to the inward journey. All Hallows’ Eve is just around the corner, so too All Saints and Souls Days – thin places in time and matter where ordinary people sometimes sense something of the Creator’s vast albeit mysterious presence within and all around us. Parker Palmer puts it like this:

For years, my delight in the autumn color show quickly morphed into sadness as I watched the beauty die. Focused on the browning of summer’s green growth, I allowed the prospect of death to eclipse all that’s life-giving about fall and its sensuous delights. Then I began to understand a simple fact: All the “falling” that’s going on out there is full of promise. Seeds are being planted and leaves are being composted as Earth prepares for yet another uprising of green. Today, as I weather the late autumn of my own life, I find nature a trustworthy guide. It’s easy to fixate on everything that goes to ground as time goes by: the disintegration of a relationship, the disappearance of good work well-done, the diminishment of a sense of purpose and meaning. But as I’ve come to understand that life “composts” and “seeds” us as autumn does the Earth, I’ve seen how possibility gets planted in us even in the hardest of times.
(check it out: https://www.yesmagazine.org/orphan/2018/10/22/parker-palmer-on-autumn-aging-and-acceptance)

One layer is diminished – and dies – while another simultaneously sends seeds of new life outward to prosper and grow in their own time. On Indigenous Peoples Day in the USA – a national holiday saturated in our culture wars – I find my heart singing the wisdom of the ancient prophet Isaiah, who captured the paradox of creation in his poetic oracle.

Seek the Lord while he may be found; call upon him while he is near; For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose and succeed in the thing for which I sent it. For you shall go out in joy and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress; instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle, and it shall be to the Lord for a memorial, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.(Isaiah 55)

This sounds to me like both the first inhabitants of this land—the Pocomtuc and Nipmuc nations of the Machican/Algonquin region—and St. Francis of Assisi. Without appropriating their respective cultures, I am grateful to recognize that my own Western spiritual tradition celebrates a holistic spirituality that honors the unity of creation, too.

To be sure, the Franciscan way is a minority report in Christianity – what Richard Rohr calls a generous and alternative orthodoxy - but so too the practices of ancient Celtic spirituality that peeks its head up in culture from time to time. For those who practice, we have now entered one of the unique, but all too often ignored, liturgical season called Allhallowtide. Officially, it spans only the three days between October 31 and November 2. Aesthetically and incarnationally, however, it feels like it has already begun. In this, nature clearly manifests a wisdom greater than the contemporary church, as the greenery, mammals, birds, and reptiles of this region prepare to withdraw from their outward activities in anticipation of winter.

Those who live close to the land grasp this as their once-abundant fields are

harvested and ploughed under before the frost. But rather than honoring the rhythmic wisdom of nature with rest, New Englanders initiate a new cycle of activity: schools reopen and students return, organizational budgeting ramps up, and church programming kicks into high gear after the summer hiatus. This feels increasingly wrong to me. Could it be yet another contradiction of domination long embedded into our culture, economics, and politics? Trisha Hersey of the Nap Ministry is on to something when she observes that:

We are grind culture. Grind culture is our everyday behaviors, expectations, and engagements with each other and the world around us. We have been socialized, manipulated, and indoctrinated by everything in culture to believe the lies of grind culture. For a capitalist system to thrive, our false beliefs about productivity and labor must remain. We have internalized its teachings and become zombie-like in Spirit and exhausted in body. So, we push ourselves and each other under the guise of being hyperproductive and efficient. From a very young age, we begin the slow process of disconnecting from our bodies’ need to rest, and we are praised when we work ourselves to exhaustion… Our bodies and Spirits do not belong to capitalism, no matter how it is theorized and presented. Our divinity secures this, and it is our right to claim this boldly. I’m not grinding ever. I trust the Creator and my Ancestors to always make space for my gifts and talents without needing to work myself into exhaustion.

Small wonder the ancient Celts created a 40-day Advent season that not only mirrors Lent but constructs an intentionally counter-cultural season of rest and respect that resonates with Mother Nature. In Celtic Advent, a wheel was removed from one of the farm’s working wagons to become the prototype of our Advent wreath. It thus slowed work down while providing a frame for candles to illuminate a darken home. Ms. Hershey adds:

Rest is as natural as breathing and waking up. Rest is part of our nature. Resting is about getting people back to their truest selves. To what they were before capitalism robbed you of your ability to just be. Rest is anything that slows you down enough to allow your body and mind to connect in the deepest way. We must focus on knowing that our bodies and our worth are not connected to how many things we can check off a list. You can begin to create a “Not-To-Do-List” as you gain the energy to maintain healthy boundaries. Our opportunity to rest and reimagine rest is endless. There is always time to rest when we reimagine.

I rather like the way Randy and Edith Woodley, co-founders of the Eloheh Indigenous Center for Earth Justice and Eloheh Farm and Seeds, put it: “To overwork—that is, to spend time working for what one does not need—means that one’s life is out of balance, and it breaks the circle of harmony.” I have come to trust that the liturgical calendar I have inherited – and cherish – holds some additional possibilities for reclaiming a more balanced way of being. Like the great Red Maple in the wetlands behind our home that first bursts forth in wild yellows before becoming gray and bare, there is a time for every purpose under heaven – and now is clearly a time to journey inward.