this year's advent wreath...

I love Advent almost as much as All Saints/All Souls Days: these semi-barren early winter holy days speak to my soul like this blessing from Jan Richardson.

Go slow if you can.
Slower. More slowly still.
Friendly dark or fearsome,
this is no place to break your neck by rushing,
by running, by crashing into what you cannot see.
Then again, it is true: different darks
have different tasks, and if you have arrived here unawares,
if you have come in peril or in pain,
this might be no place you should dawdle
I do not know what these shadows ask of you,
what they might hold that means you good or ill.
It is not for me to reckon whether you should linger
or you should leave.
But this is what I can ask for you:
That in the darkness there be a blessing.
That in the shadows there be a welcome.
That in the night you be encompassed by the Love that knows your name.

Given the complexities of contemporary blended families, we head out of town for the feast of Thanksgiving in the USA. We cherish the quiet solitude of Quebec's Eastern Townships and take a few days to bask in the stark boldness of the land. This also lays a foundation for the practice of Advent that always begins with the call to watch and wait. The Community of Corrymela in Northern Ireland frames Advent well in this prayer:

God, the thief who breaks into this world;
God, the child who cries out with new life:
as we prepare ourselves for Christmas,
and bed down for this season,
surprise us in the night.
Steal us away from the gloom.
May we find ourselves separated
from monotonous tasks
and ready
for the coming of light.
Amen.

To suggest that I was replenished and well rested for today's Advent One worship would be an understatement: I was pumped! And the good souls in Palmer outdid themselves in setting the environment with tasteful holiday lights, garlands, a lovely little tree, and the Advent wreath. I am partial to Advent wreaths having been schooled by Gertrud Mueller-Nelson's insights in To Dance with God. Some years back, while going deeper into Celtic practices, we celebrated Advent for a full 40 days. This is the Advent wreath from that year.

This year, after our church's Advent wreath workshop, a fun intergenerational event that was well attended, I schlepped home through a mini-snow squall on the mountain, I had a thought about this year's home wreath. I still have a TON of pumpkins - my autumn/early winter delight - and wanted to incorporate them somehow into the mix. So, with a bit of ascetic and sacramental liberty, this is what I came up with for this year.

There's pumpkins and Native corn, apples, evergreen, candles in Advent blue, and a Tohono O'otham nativity painting from Tucson crafted by Ted DeGrazia. This year's wreath is ALL about Mother Earth and solidarity with what is small, vulnerable, and ultimately holy. And so, like the lone candle, I begin another cycle of watching, waiting, and trusting that a small sign of blessing will break forth from the darkness.

from thanksgiving eve to blue christmas...

For 30 years, in the spirit of Pete and Arlo, my various churches celebrated Thanksgiving Eve as a Night of American Music. In one incarnation, it was like a Prairie Home Companion: lots of group singing, emphasis on folk songs and the blues. In time, it became more like the Last Waltz with special guests playing short sets, the house band rocking things up, and a few a capella gospel tunes added for good measure.

All that came to a close 12 years ago when a massive snowstorm shut down the town. The Thanksgiving Eve shows never recovered. And while we have shared a variety of other benefits, one era had clearly ended - and, truth be told, I am still nostalgic for the magic we shared on those sacred nights.

After COVID, the core band regrouped into what is now Wednesday's Child. On Sunday, December at @ 4 pm in Palmer, MA, Wednesday's Child will offer up a "BLUE CHRISTMAS/LONGEST NIGHT" encounter with song and silence, prayer and candlelight, as an act of refuge and solidarity with all who grieve during this season. It is a quiet and safe space to feel all those complicated emotions truth so often obscured by popular culture.

These days, the promise and potential of that first Massachusetts Thanksgiving in 1621 still resonates in my soul. That's why we slip out of town for a few quiet days of rest and reflection on the big picture - NOT the sentimental or sanitized version of this holiday that ignores the genocide the white settlers committed not long after the harvest feast - but the whole story. For we must own that legacy even as we strive to live into and through it. Historians agree that the English Pilgrims and others didn't make contact with the Wampanoag people for the first four months on North American soil.

"The "real history" of Thanksgiving involves a 1621 harvest feast between Plymouth colonists and the Wampanoag people, which was a brief moment of cooperation that contrasts with the subsequent history of conflict and oppression. The traditional narrative focuses on the 1621 event, while more complete histories acknowledge the violence and displacement of Native Americans that followed. From a Native American perspective, particularly the Wampanoag, Thanksgiving is often seen as a day of mourning, not celebration."

If you are free, please join on in December. We're using the music of Sarah MacLachlan, Bruce Springsteen, Alanis Morissette, David Bowie, NIN/Johnny Cash, and others for a quiet time of owning and sharing the complexities of this season.

letting a word from the Lord choose me...

Sometimes we just don't know until it happens: a blessing, a sorrow, a joy, a grief, or a word. Over the past three decades, I've been slowly practicing the spiritual discipline of "listening for a word." The wise and creative spiritual director, Christine Valters Paintner, puts it like this:

Beginning in around the third century CE, a group of monastics known as the desert mothers and fathers retreated to the deserts of northern Egypt, Syria, and Palestine to pursue lives of silence and prayer. A key phrase, repeated often among the sayings of the desert mothers and fathers, is "Give me a word." Rather than choosing a word, I invite you to let a word choose you. What does this mean exactly? How am I chosen by a word? It means releasing your thinking mind and expectations and resting into your heart....What if I trusted that a word would come when the time was ripe? What if I let go of the need to find something for myself and opened myself to receive what comes? If you find yourself obsessing over the “right” word, it is time to breathe and let go. Pay attention to synchronicities around you. Look for images that shimmer and make your heart stir with delight. Notice what is making you uncomfortable, calling you to grow beyond the known edges of your life. These are the places where your word will make itself known. Eventually.

When I was considering leaving ministry in Tucson, I kept "hearing" the call to trust the "unforced rhythms of grace." During my sabbatical 10 years ago, it was "tenderness." And when my congregation offered me an insulting and professionally unacceptable offer in order to save money, after stealing away for a week of silence, what I "heard" was the word "behold." Behold what the Lord is doing! Behold what the Scriptures are saying. Behold what options are unfolding. And as I beheld, it became clear it was time to let go - so I retired. After Covid, a denominational leader suggested to me that just because I sensed it was once time to let go of ministry... we're a people of the resurrection, so maybe there's new life yet to be discerned. And she was right: new life became my word as I returned to ministry first in Williamstown and now in Palmer.

Once again, we are away for a few days of silence and solitude - and beyond any plans or expectations - an from Dr. Valters-Paintner arrived to "let a word choose me" for Advent or the unfolding year. As I felt my heart smile it hit me: Oh, THAT is what this Thanksgiving retreat is all about: listening for a word to choose me. The good doctor writes:

For some of you, the word may come right away, but others may find the process much slower. Trust that perhaps it is the waiting itself that is being offered to you as wisdom and practice. The word comes as a gift. You will often know it through an intuitive experience, a more embodied sense of yes. The word (or phrase) is one that will work in you (rather than you working on it). Remember that a word that creates a sense of inner resistance is as important to pay attention to as one that has a great deal of resonance.

This rings true... so may it be so. Tonight we'll light a fire in the fireplace, eat pierogis and sausage, and sleep in a new place. Tomorrow we will explore. We'll rest and wander, listen and pray in anticipation of the Feast of Thanksgiving.

christ the upside-down king, thanksgiving harvest, and letting go...

Today is Christ the King Sunday within the Western Body of Christ. It is a relatively new feast day crafted and advanced by Pope Pius XI in 1925 to challenge the rise of fascism throughout Europe after WWI. As one who came late to celebrating liturgical and sacramental spirituality, I cherish this feast, which closes the circular church calendar with a strong blast of paradoxical wisdom. To be sure, like many of the "imperial" festivities of formal Christianity, there is a literal and obvious focus to Christ the King Sunday - the cosmic rule of Christ over all temporal powers - which is what Pius intended. But as Diana Butler Bass so eloquently notes: 

One thing has messed up Christianity more than any other single problem — the desire of Christians for a king. If you consider the inquisitions, crusades, heresy hunts, persecutions, and wars conducted by a religion claiming the Prince of Peace as its savior, the problem of human kings seems obvious. For about 1,600 years — ever since Christians hailed the Emperor Constantine as the “Thirteenth Apostle” — the church founded by and for the poor has constantly given in to the temptations of worldly wealth and power. There will be a lot of sermons preached today on the kingship of Jesus. Jesus, the crucified King. Jesus, the King of a Kingdom within. Jesus, the King of love. Many of those sermons will relocate, redefine, or reconstruct the idea of kings and kingdoms. Most, I suspect, will be thoughtful and helpful. Then, churchgoers will lustily sing, “Crown Him with Many Crowns.” The real issue is not relocating, redefining, or reconstructing the language or imagery of kings and kingdoms — the problem is kings. Period. Kings are the problem.

https://dianabutlerbass.substack.com/p/christ-the-no-kings-sunday

Rather than advance this corrupt and corrupting practice, however, I have found myself searching for the "Paschal Mystery" rooted in the most profound truths of our faith. Like the Cross itself, Christ the King Sunday is saturated in subversive blessings: it is a time to clearly articulate the upside-down, paradoxical, and compassionate spirituality of God's "Small is Holy" realm. Our guide is the leader who empties himself to stand in solidarity with the wounded. It is a messiah born from below who washes feet and tells us that our new commandment is to do like wise. It is the Lord who incarnates God's presence through embodied acts of tenderness and restoration. This requires a sacramental spirituality rather than a doctrinaire or literal take on scripture and tradition. I have long been shaped by the clarifying words of Gertrud Mueller-Nelson in her brilliant text, To Dance with God.

Voting with the right wing or cheering for the left wing is our attempt to create a kingdom outside ourselves, but the kingdom we ultimately discover is "not of this world." It is not a perfect government, nor is it the kingdom of God, only a pie in the sky which we get in a better day than this one. It is a process in which each of us participates. It lies in our individual, inward relatedness to God. The kingdom God has prepared for us becomes ours as we participate personally, with growing consciousness, in its ultimate unfolding and fulfillment. In knowing ourselves, in living out creatively our unique way, and in loving relationships with our fellows, the process takes place, and we inherit the kingdom. (To Dance with God, p. 231)

Beauty, paradox, and the challenge of relinquishing control shape my take on the feast of Christ the King Sunday, all of which have been obscured in my tradition for too long by our sentimental attachment to the dominant culture's take on our secular Thanksgiving. Two more wise women have helped me move beyond the mythology and ideology of this holiday. Carrie Newcomer links God's revelation in nature at this time of year with a sacred invitation to make harvesting flesh:

I’ve always have connected the holiday of Thanksgiving to the concept of harvest. In September and October people are still stopping their cars at road side stands for the last tomatoes, red peppers, waxy light green cabbage, round womanly squash, sweet potatoes, sweet apples and cider. Although the unbridled abundance of July has slowed, the last crops are still completing their natural cycle. But by the end of November the harvest is now fully in and next year’s garlic planted. The fields, so recently lush with tasseled corn, are now dry stalks and stubble. The last golden remnants of warm air is now carrying the first early hints of the coming winter. Harvest is a time of cutting down and bringing in, preparing for leaner times and longer nights. And yet, I can’t think of harvest as a time comprised solely of dying. Yes, Harvest is the completion of a cycle of planting, growing and reaping, but it is also a time of taking stock and acknowledging the fruits of our labor. Harvest is a time to consider what has grown from the seeds we planted in hope and tended with our most sincere trying. Harvest is also about grace and gratitude for what we did not do—for the sunshine and rain, for natural processes, butterflies and bees, for all the things we did not create but only received as a gift.

Harvest is also about considering who the fruits of our work might feed. For I am surely the recipient of the work of those who came before me, the ancestors who did not meet me in person, but dreamt of me when they planted seeds that would take more than one life time to bear fruit. I am the receiver of all they envisioned and I am the keeper of a promise I carry forward. I am planting seeds for those I’ll never meet. I am sending songs into the air to fly where they will, landing like birds or apples in the grass. I am not done by a long shot with all my growing, but at the end of autumn I am considering who the harvest of my life might feed. This is one of the beauties of autumn, a reminder that the work of our lives is not measured in how much we did—but how deeply we loved, how hopefully we planted and how faithfully we tended our gardens the time we are given.

https://carrienewcomer.substack.com/p/in-the-time-of-harvest?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=49p8n&utm_

source=substack&utm_medium=email

And Kaitlin Curtice, a citizen of the Potawatomi Nation, amplifies this in the ways she encourages us to move beyond the algorithms of empire by returning: "to the dust, aki, earth, our wild selves, our relationship with Segmekwe refreshed and refined."

"Be wild; this is how to clear the river. In its original form, the river does not flow in polluted, we manage that. The river does not dry up, we block it. If we want to allow it its freedom, we have to allow our ideational lives to be let loose to stream, letting anything come, initially censoring nothing. That is creative life. IT is made up of divine paradox. It is an entirely interior process."(Clarissa Pinkola Etsés) Want to escape the technological grip on your life? Get to the woods, to the river, to a quiet spot of the house where you can stare at the leaves falling from trees or birds flying by.

https://kaitlincurtice.substack.com/p/rhythms-of-reciprocity

So, while dominant culture squeezes us into the mold of conformity by paying homage to the idols of Black Friday; empire ignores our legacy of genocide by confusing overeating and falling asleep in front of our TV sets with gratitude; and popular religion hides the subversive elements of Christ the King Sunday: the heart of the feast day insists that:

This is one of the rare times in the year when Christianity’s two major feasts — Easter and Christmas, Cross and Incarnation — come into close connection. The one condemned before crowds in Jerusalem is the same one born in a forgotten, backwater town. The one hailed by angels, shepherds, and philosophers from afar is the same one eventually betrayed, abandoned, and left to die in shame. “Silent Night” and “What Wondrous Love is This?” overlap and interweave, together creating another kind of song entirely. And this juxtaposition, this creative tension, is precisely the point. To paraphrase the great womanist theologian Delores Williams, the “kingship” of Christ can only be understood through dissonance and harmony: “King of Kings!” on the one hand, as if sung by a resplendent choir; and “poor little Mary’s boy” on the other, as if whispered by an elderly woman standing alone. Or, “Reign of Christ” on the one hand; and God’s child, exquisitely vulnerable, on the other. These two songs, Williams contends, sung back and forth in call and response, is “the Black church doing theology.” Each song needs the other for the truth to shine through. 

(SALT Project, https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/2019/11/18/power-and-mercy-salts-lectionary-commentary-for-reign-of-christ-the-king-sunday)

Every year, to honor THIS Christ the King as well as the discipline of Advent, we leave these barely United States of America for French-speaking Quebec to sit in the woods. To be still and know. To let go of all the superficialities of our native land so that we might discern not only what is real but what the Spirit may be asking of us as the new year of Advent ripens. Kaitline Curtice gets it right for me when she asks that this year: 

In the United States, it’s Thanksgiving Week, and, hardly anyone would know it, but the day after Thanksgiving is Native American Heritage Day.
And I feel a lot like the way it feels with a lot of things, how the build up to something is so big, so epic, so monumental—get Thanksgiving right or get out of the way. But I want something different this year. In the same way that I don’t necessarily endorse New Year’s resolutions in the sense that they are supposed to last all year—we need seasonal resolutions and goals—I wouldn’t endorse Thanksgiving to be the destination for us.

This year, I want Thanksgiving to be a beginning, not a destination.In other words, I want us to show up tenderly to this moment, whether it’s in our personal lives or in our collective ones. I want us to think of Thanksgiving as a marker on our journey, or the beginning of something, not the final destination. I think we put too much pressure on ourselves—to change, to say the right thing, to deal with people in the ways we think we should, to read the right books, to post the right things to social media. This is where the tenderness of words, of poetry, of the prophets of our time speak to us.

Slow down. Let the words come as they come. Don’t rush this process. You will be ready for everything when you’re ready.This week, we begin. We decide where we want to start from—the truth about Thanksgiving, holding nuance and complexity, honoring the sacredness of Mother Earth, or all of the above. We begin here, knowing that the journey is lifelong, that it isn’t just this holiday season, but the coming cold winter months that will guide us home to ourselves, the sacred Earth always tending to our wounds with us. That is where we begin, and that is how we hold space for a destination beyond and above us. We have arrived, but we are still arriving.

https://kaitlincurtice.substack.com/p/thanksgiving-as-beginning-not-as

Lord, may it be so for those open to a new/old way of being...

credits:

1) karl barth for dummies

2) kay redman: servant king

3) christ the king: ronald raab

 

heaven and earth shall become one...

One of my favorite lines in the Psalter is found in Psalm 85:10: Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other. (KJV) A The more contemporary rendering is equally evocative: Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; righteousness and peace will kiss. Faithfulness will spring up from the ground, and righteousness will look down from the sky. (NRSV) This verse revels in paradox while simultaneously revealing the sacred unity of creation. The wedding of our existential Alpha with the eternal spiritual Omega unites humanity with the holy, light with darkness, the feminine with the masculine, and spirit with matter beyond all dualistic distractions. It depicts wisdom within mystery - ecstasy within existence - awe and even trust within doubt. Other verses in the Psalter amplify this blessing as well:

+ Psalm 89:14: Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne, O Lord, as loving devotion and faithfulness go before you.

+ Psalm 112:4-5: A righteous person is gracious, compassionate and just... his/her affairs are guided by justice.

+ Psalm 103:6: The Lord works righteousness and justice for all the oppressed.

+ Psalm 145:8: The Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love.

Unpacking the implications of this text has long been essential to my spirituality and ethics. Mercy - or steadfast love - is how English Bibles translate the Hebrew word: hesed. My heart prefers compassion from: "the Latin "compati", meaning "to suffer with," and is a combination of the prefix "com-" (meaning "with" or "together") and the verb "pati" (meaning "to suffer"). It literally means to "suffer with" another person and is related to the English word "patient" and the Greek word for suffering, "pathos". Compassion is spiritual, emotional, and incarnational solidarity. Truth or faithfulness are how we have translated the Hebrew, emeth, a noun describing that which is certain or trustworthy. Righteousness, from the Hebrew, tsedek, could be rendered into English as justice or right relations especially when the Hebrew, shalom, is added. Peace often sounds too passive, as in the absence of conflict, when it is all about everything that makes creation whole, safe, and satisfying.

For me, these two verses offer a pattern to practice - a model for a living, nondual spirituality - or the path of embodied prayer. It is a way of being where I can experience the essence of the holy through the choices I make every day: it is not a sappy piety promising "pie in the sky" or eternal bliss in the great by and by, but sacramental living that trusts the promises of God. A spirituality that not only changes me but advances tenderness and healing in my relationships and choices. That's what I hear in part two of the text: Eternal verity will spring from the earth (from the Hebrew erets for our fields, soil, or the ground below the sky) as the bounty and blessings of heaven are given shape and form by our activity (from shamayim for the restorative power linking the love of the celestial realm with the nitty gritty earth cycle of life below.) 

Poetically, prophetically, and practically, Psalm 85 offers me both guidance for living a spirit-filled life as well as the assurance that compassion and right relations fulfill what became the Lord's Prayer: Our Father/Mother, who art in heaven... Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is already being done in heaven. Like the words of the prophet in Micah 6:8 - The Holy One has told you already, O mortal one, what is good and what the Lord requires: to DO justice (that is to become - ashah - an act of healing - from the Hebrew mishpat for the one who renders a just verdict), to cherish kindness (from hesed) and walk through this life humbly with the Lord (from halak for walking/behaving and tsana` for cultivating a perspective or vision born from below.) The wisdom of Jesus gives me the tools and practices to cultivate this holy/human embrace. St. Paul amplifies it in Romans 12: 

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for the Lord. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what God requires wants, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, and develops well-formed maturity in you. (From Eugene Peterson's The Message)

Last week was for me a series of mini-humiliations - nothing catastrophic or immobilizing (save a flat tire that is currently being repaired) - just a series of little upsets to my expectations. Both a bit of minor frustration encased in a sacred invitation to make some attitude adjustments. As things unfolded, and I resisted, I kept hearing Fr. Richard Rohr's words: I pray to the Lord that every day I face at least three humiliations, for they help me practice humility by knocking me off my high horse. These roadblocks to my expectations remind me NOT to believe my own public relations and to trust that my shadow is a gift that helps me live beyond my self-imposed limitations. The poet, Juan Ramón Jiménez, puts it like this in Robert Bly's translation of "Yo No Soy Yo."

I am not I.
I am this one
walking beside me whom I do not see,
whom at times I manage to visit,
and whom at other times I forget;
who remains calm and silent while I talk,
and forgives, gently, when I hate,
who walks where I am not,
who will remain standing when I die.

So, in the spirit of All Saints' and All Souls' Day -  and en route to the mixed-up and paradoxical holiday of American Thanksgiving - Di and I are preparing for a few weeks of letting go. Tonight we'll rehearse with Wednesday's Child for our Blue Christmas gig on December 21st in Palmer. On Friday, we head to Vermont with part of our family to join my Sunday School teacher at the memorial service for his beloved wife of 46 years. And soon afterwards, we'll get out of Dodge for a retreat in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, where solitude and rest will be the way we return thanks. The wise and time-tested Gertrud Mueller-Nelson recently suggested that gratitude is likely the best way to celebrate Thanksgiving. So, today, as I wait for my tire to be replaced, I choose to be grateful for this past week - roadblocks, shadows, and all. 

art work from Jan Richardon.

 

humility and gratitude embrace...

The Lord works in mysterious ways, God's wonders to behold. Sometimes I have to be reminded of that - especially trusting that something sacred is happening beyond the obvious and way beyond my control. Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder, author of Mother, Creature, Kin: What We Learn From Nature's Mothers in a Time of Unraveling, notes that:

Sacred as that which pulls us beyond the bounds of our individual selves, envelops us within mystery, and gives us a glimpse into the vast, entwined, eternal network of living beings that we are in relationship with.

On and off for 40+ years, I've been reminded of this when someone says to me after Sunday worship: "That message REALLY helped me today, pastor. Thank you." That is always nice to hear. But when my message was only modestly delivered - or worse, when I think it was a train wreck, no matter how hard I tried to do otherwise - not only am I immediately humbled, but mystically awakened to the way the Holy Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for human words. (Romans 8:6) I've loved quoting St. Bob Dylan over the years when he snarled, "Something's going on all around you and you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?" (Ballad of a Thin Man) And then it happens to me, and I don't hear it as a cynical snarl, but more like an invitation to rest and trust God's grace is bigger than anything I can control or even comprehend.

Our band, All of Us, played Methuselah in Pittsfield, MA, last night with some of our beloved friends. It was an uneven show. Our shared songs - with Sean and Deb and later with Wendy and Elaine - worked pretty well as they are always gracious and gifted. And a number of our rock and soul songs shook the house, too. But there were a few genuine clunkers that not only took me by surprise but left me a bit frustrated. It's happened before, of course, and will occur again. For some reason, I wanted last night to be special. Maybe my expectations got in the way - that's been known to throw me off balance before - and I'm aware there was only a limited time for rehearsal, too. But given the grief and angst that dampens life in these barely United States of America these days, I yearned to share a balm in Gilded. As I drove home in the cold, dark, early winter night, however, I was feeling blue. Not bereft or despondent, just tender and sad. The night air seemed to affirm the gig's ambiguity. (Photo credit: Lee Everitt)

When I woke up this morning, after re-editing this week's sermon about holding sorrow and celebration together as part of an integrated whole, not only did I get two beautiful emails of encouragement from friends that had joined us last night; but one included a tender rendition of a sweet song by Lowell George and the other not only a jazz reworking of "Bless be the Ties That Bind" but a request for our set list so that he might learn a few of our songs and add some addition harmonies. Truly, "something is going on all around me, and I don't know what it is, do I, Mr. Jones?"

It is wonderfully humbling to be confronted with truths I've been preaching for decades, but apparently still don't fully practice myself. As one note said: Your passion is infectious! All I can say is thank you - and thanks be to God.