darkness cannot drive out darkness...

One of the daily disappointments I experience on FB is how some of my friends, colleagues, and professional contacts regularly belittle, defame, and slander one another with an unholy zeal and abandon. The viciousness of these attacks is staggering and cuts across ideological/political lines. So, too, the ugly aftertaste these barbs leave in my consciousness that requires a physical, spiritual, and emotional catharsis bathed in silence. To be sure, I mostly enjoy the brilliant memes on Facebook that make me laugh out loud. I savor seeing photos of children, grandchildren, pets, and vacations that loved ones share. And periodically, I find visuals and graphics that are both inventive and instructive. What kills my soul, however, and poisons my day are the cruel and noxious ad hominem attacks we make against one another. 

Let me be clear: I am NO fan of the current regime. Even when it advances a good idea - which is rare but nevertheless true - their rollout is almost always so mean-spirited, chaotic, and saturated in hyperbole that it takes me weeks to figure out WTF is really going on. That said, not everyone who voted for or even continues to support certain policies is a Nazi, fascist, pedo, or insurrectionist. Yes, Christian Nationalism is a heresy that diminishes Christ's call to heal and love. Without a doubt, racial and gender bigotry in this administration has gone way beyond traditional dog whistles to openly celebrate race and gender hatred. The hubris of the President and his closest advisors defies comprehension, not just because their PR is so manipulative and sloppy, but more importantly, because it destroys our ability to know what is true and what is a lie. Thank God an independent media can still fact-check. 

Suffice it to say that I have come to see the current resident of the Oval Office as a tragic, pathetic, dangerous, and ruinous embodiment of everything that has historically been wrong in these United States. Other administrations have been racist. Just below the surface, many have also pandered to the rich and famous. And there have been equally incompetent and incoherent Commanders in Chief. Just not all at once - and that may be the paradoxical charism of what is taking place these days. Without illusion, diversion, or apology, many of us now get to witness and experience the shadow side of our nation that has long been known by people of color, the LGBTQIA community, countless creative and courageous women, and those who exist on the periphery of power. Today, we can see that the emperor has no clothes, that the man behind the curtain is a hard-hearted grifter, and that some of his supporters actually want to destroy all that is good, true, and noble about the land of the free and home of the brave.

But not everyone - and that is a vital distinction. Not everyone buys into the fear, nor wants to see it spread. Not everyone who voted for lower grocery prices, an affordable mortgage, safe and effective schools, or an immigration policy that works is the enemy, nor are they all corrupt or dangerous. Nor are all those who experience confusion about gender and the breadth and depth of human sexuality people of hate. To be sure, not everyone grasps the magnitude of our current morass. Still, it is my experience that many, if not most, of my fellow Americans genuinely want a more perfect union. They weep when their neighbors hurt, they rejoice when our local sports teams triumph, they volunteer in food banks, schools, and social clubs, they bring a hot meal to those who are sick. They send cards when they don't have words to express their concern. They pay their taxes on time. (Not always happily, but most still know that taxes and civil engagement are part of the bargain necessary to maintain a democratic society.) They may not all vote. I get that. How did Pete Townsend put it more than 50 years ago? "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss!" But they still care and seek to redress our shared grievances, even as our failing state flounders. 

So, please, please, please: do not be so simple-minded as to confuse my concerns here with the President's willful obfuscations after the neo-Nazi violence in Charlottesville in 2017 or the 1984-esque propaganda offered after the attempted insurrection of January 6, 2021. I am not giving a pass to the Gestapo-like destruction perpetrated by ICE and their minions in Minneapolis. Rather, I write, live, analyze, pray, and share my resources from a distinctly traditional Western Christian perspective. I understand that not everyone is committed to this way of following Jesus. I get that our multicultural society is harder to govern than a homogeneous tribe: competing needs clash, complicated incentives like carrots and sticks are paradoxically essential to maintain peace and stability, the doctrine of unintended consequences regularly subverts our better angels, and there are always winners and losers. One of our nation's finest theologians (not perfect, but powerfully insightful), Reinhold Niebuhr, put it succinctly: "Man's (sic) capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary". He argued that while humans have the capacity for goodness, their inherent selfishness and tendency toward corruption require a system that checks power. A few quotes will clarify:

Democracy is finding proximate solutions to insoluble problems... Original sin is that thing about man which makes him capable of conceiving of his own perfection and incapable of achieving it... One of the most pathetic aspects of human history is that every civilization expresses itself most pretentiously, compounds its partial and universal values most convincingly, and claims immortality for its finite existence at the very moment when the decay which leads to death has already begun.

Niebuhr's abiding advice, beyond the brilliance of his Serenity Prayer, is found in his Irony of American History: 

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore, we must be saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness.

And so the search for common ground continues. The current degeneracy will not abate any time soon. The forces unleashed by a variety of religious, political, and social zealots since the 70's must run their course. You see, once Pandora's box is opened... But this current darkness is not the end of the story - and that is the light within the darkness that I strive to trust. Dr. King's words from 1962 continue to be right:

 

random thoughts on ash wednesday 2026...

I did not grow up observing Ash Wednesday. As a middle-class, white Protestant child of New England in the 50s and 60s, it was just my Roman Catholic friends who wore the ashen sign of the Cross on this strange day. If memory serves, my uber-Congregational church in both Connecticut and Massachusetts barely mentioned Lent, let alone practiced a sacramental spirituality grounded in liturgy and the seasonal cycles of life. It was well after seminary and ordination that my tradition published the 1986 United Church of Christ Book of Worship, which included an order of worship for... ASH WEDNESDAY! 

By then, however, I'd been smitten by both Gertrud Mueller-Nelson's liturgical masterpiece, To Dance with God, and the folk-music innovations being crafted by the Community of Celebration in Aliquippa, PA, who linked the poetry of the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer with a tender-hearted, charismatic creativity. I made a host of pilgrimages to that sacred co-ed monastery just outside of Pittsburgh and beat cheeks to the high church, smells-and-bells observances of Lent celebrated at the Anglican Cathedral in Cleveland, OH, too. By the late 1980s, I'd drawn on the insights Kathleen Norris shared in Dakota and The Cloister Walk, along with my encounters with Eastern Orthodox chant and iconography, and had become a born-again sacramentalist serving low-church congregations. Beauty, ritual, well-written liturgy, poetry, silence, and a deep reverence for new/old ways of praying with all our senses became foundational for me. I chaffed at the studied sloppiness of most Protestant worship. I came to despise the wordy pseudo-intellectualism of so many so-called social justice sermons. And found myself fleeing from the clutter and trinkets that too often adorned so many chancels in their sad attempt at religious art.

Forty years later, I still honor the texts that friends and colleagues created for The UCC Book of Worship. And I am still trusting it to guide our small circle of friends as we gather for Ash Wednesday this year. The Community of Celebration used to sing, "We have another world in view," and now, more than ever, as a pastor and a believer, I find myself clinging to that upside-down, counter-cultural alternative vision of life that Jesus proclaims. Our current culture of anxiety, chaos, cruelty, and greed idolizes our obsessions, sanctifies our addictions, denigrates every pursuit except short-term material conquests, and shames and/or defames those who pursue solidarity and compassion. Thank God for Ash Wednesday! It reminds me that we all lack something. It shows me how to relinquish what is broken by trusting a love that not only leads me through the wilderness but also incrementally and quietly fills me with a gratitude that evokes space for everyone who wants to join the party.  

A Franciscan teacher recently wrote that Ash Wednesday invites us to practice giving up, giving in, and giving to. Giving up is about fasting - letting go in a conscious act of relinquishment - a practice that illuminates what is truly essential while helping us let go of our ego, our habits, and our oh so inflated and self-important opinions. Fasting is a physical and spiritual discipline that helps me listen more, speak less, and hold on to only that which is a foundation. It is an embodied prayer that nourishes both vulnerability and patience. And patience, I am learning, is essential for my faith and any act of ministry. Giving to, as the Franciscans tell us, is sharing resources and love, while giving in is what we might all prayer. I know that as I strive to be grounded in these unsettling times, the tender initiation to give up, to, and in redirects my anxieties towards trust and shows me why patience is salvific.

sometimes it's a bitch to practice what I preach...

"There are times when I hate having to practice what I preach!" That's what I said to my loved one over breakfast as I shared the news that David Brooks is leaving the New York Times. I have come to celebrate the sacred wisdom embodied in seasons, trusting that nature has always been the first Word of the Lord. I strive as well to honor the long obedience embedded in Ecclesiastes 3: to everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven. And as a clergy person well-acquainted and practiced in presiding at funerals and memorial services, I understand that nothing - and no one - lasts forever. Still, I felt sad to hear about David's transition. As a septuagenarian, I've had to let go of long-standing comforts, resources, habits, foods, ways of traveling, children becoming adults with children of their own, and all the aches and pains that come with being an old, bourgeois white guy with too much education. Such is one of the paradoxes of the journey, yes? It is not only a lengthy series of good-byes and not-so-voluntary relinquishments but, as the late Pete Seeger used to say about learning a new song, "Just about the time you've mastered it, it's over!"

It's not like Brooks will disappear, mind you: he'll still join Jonathan Capehart on the Friday evening PBS Newshour. He'll also serve as a staff writer at The Atlantic and share insights in a part-time teaching gig at Yale. It's simply another sign that life goes on beyond my control. One more nudge to practice what I preach and accept my powerlessness and mortality. Deep in my heart, I yearn to be more like Francis of Assisi than John Calvin, more like Carrie Newcomer than Bob Dylan, more like Mary Oliver than Mr. Magoo. I cherish the charisms of her poem: The World I Live In. 

I have refused to live

     locked in the orderly house 

        of reasons and proofs. 

The world I live in and believe in 

is wider than that. And anyway, 

    what’s wrong with Maybe? 

You wouldn’t believe what once or 

twice I have seen. I’ll just 

    tell you this: 

only if there are angels in your head 

    will you ever, possibly, see one.

Most mornings start off that way - content with the maybes and in love with the angels in my head - until some jackass cuts me off in the parking lot of the grocery store and ALL my serenity goes out the window. Or no matter HOW loud I turn up my new hearing aids, it's still impossible for me to understand what some call-center techie is trying to tell me about my so-called smartphone. Or before the damned gas pump will allow me to fill my tank, I have to answer 3 or 4 dumb ass and irrelevant computerized questions when the windchill feels like -35 below zero. First world problems, to be sure. And often I can choose not to react and maybe even laugh at myself afterwards. But these encounters with my inner tyrant are clear reminders that I am not as serene within myself as I would like. There are times that I truly hate the wisdom of the Serenity Prayer! How did Beck put it?

Also beyond my control, I sometimes meet one of the salty saints of the church I currently serve - men and women who have been to hell and back more than a dozen times - and THEY renew my quest with their love of life. They have such hard-won wisdom and compassion to share. They go out of their way to make me feel welcomed and at home until I hear myself singing: Amazing grace! My mentor in ministry (and one of my first older buddies) Ray Swartzback, used to tell me: if you're paying attention, this journey is a total roller coaster. So, don't fight it, man. Make the best of it. To which I now whisper under my breath: You're right, Swartzy, you're right. Still, sometimes it's a bitch to have to practice what you preach...