all things must pass in liminal time...

October is filled with celebrations and challenges. In New England, the season is a glorious in-between time: summer's verdant bounty gradually morphs into autumn's cornucopia of colors, enshrouding our hills and valleys in shades of orange, crimson, gold, silver, and mocha. In time, however, this gentle display gives way to the stark, barren greys of November, reminding us that the cycle of life always includes death. It's not the only truth, of course, but it cannot be denied.

That fact has been swimming around my head and heart a lot this October. Yesterday, my back and hip ached with unusual vigor after I moved a massive downed cherry-tree branch from the front yard. While sorting through my vinyl record album collection for a few treasures from the year our oldest daughter was born, a wave of quiet melancholia washed over me and stayed with me in my dreams. No doubt, the recent deaths of two of my peers - one from my first church in Saginaw and the other a Vietnam Vet who served as the custodian of my church in Pittsfield - are pieces of the puzzle, as are the passing of both Wendell Berry and Annie Dillard. Small wonder my Celtic ancestors sensed this season to be a liminal one wherein the unseen mysteries beyond our sight draws closer to us with a whisper of transcendence. St. Paul was not kidding when he told us, in "We see by faith, not by sight." And October seems to heighten this reality for me.

It began with our grandson's 13th birthday. I couldn't help but note that in another tradition he would've been preparing to become an adult member of the tribe. Sadly, authentic rites of passage for both men and women are in short supply in our culture, and we are collectively the poorer for it. His parents have done an outstanding job connecting him to the creative arts, as well as to moral integrity and compassion. No doubt that's why I see this brave little boy came into being on the Feast Day of St. Francis, incarnating aspects of that tender, artistic, nonconformist saint whenever he visits. Add to the mix my precious brother's 71st birthday earlier this week and the celebration of our oldest daughter becoming a quinquagenarian this weekend, and before you can sing "soul cake," the arrival of All Hallows' Eve and All Souls' and Saints' Day takes on a renewed significance.

So, as I sit with a growing awareness of my own mortality, a few clarifying gifts have popped up. One concerns the way God’s grace gives shape and form to my life. Author and Prioress of the Abbey of the Arts, Christine Valters Paintner, creatively links our awareness of God’s call to both the path of pilgrimage adopted by the ancient Celtic monks and the wisdom expressed in William Stafford’s poem, “The Way It Is.” She suggests that recognizing, observing, and then following the thin strand of synchronicity woven into our days is how we live with sacred fidelity. Stafford's poem is so precise:

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.

Another gift I'm honoring these days relates to what Kate Bowler calls the blessing of appropriate smallness. In her Substack column, she writes:

When there is a temptation to feel everything as enormous; when every election is described as THE MOST CONSEQUENTIAL of our lifetime; when very headline feels urgent or outrageous; and very disagreement starts to seem like evidence of someone’s entire moral character. We begin to imagine that faithfulness must also be enormous. But my friend Jeff Chu 朱天慧 has a phrase I keep returning to: appropriate smallness. Jeff volunteered on a working farm while he was in seminary. While the world constantly tells us to be bigger, more successful, more influential, more effective, he tended compost piles and paid attention to the slow, ordinary work of growing things. Jeff discovered the beauty of being appropriately small. Of recognizing what we can control, what we cannot, and what we must surrender. Smallness is not the same thing as insignificance. And it doesn’t mean we stop participating.

And Christa at Soul Play Canada suggested something similar:

I recently came across a Japanese philosophy called “Nagori”, that has got me thinking (and feeling!) Head straight to this article to learn all about it. "Nagori, literally translated, means “remains” or “traces,” and carries with it a particular feeling associated with a juicy gratitude and full melancholy when saying goodbye to something good and meaningful.
It is most often associated with the appreciation of the turning seasons in the natural world but can be connected to anything:

The last song at a wedding - the last sleep in your childhood house -watching your child go off to their first or last day of school - the last bite of a sweet summer peach. It’s a recognition that there is joy to be found as things depart and fade. It’s a deep knowing that there is sweetness in some goodbyes, and an invitation to embrace the true impermanence of it all. "Unlike the eager anticipation of a new beginning, nagori focuses on savoring the remnants of what is fading, whether it’s the last cherry blossoms clinging to their branches or the final taste of a summer fruit.”

She concludes with a spiritual practice I've stumbled upon in these later years, too: the value of looking and listening carefully to life's small things. Looking, lingering, and loving them. That's what I did last night with the record albums that will become part of our daughter's upcoming birthday presents. That's what I am trying to do by sharing gentle touch with "Bandit," our new/old rescue dog. Or with the challenges of Di's health. Or with the stories some of the seniors in my congregation share with me while racked with bodily pain. It's an upside-down way of being, the opposite of anticipation that's more like savoring without control. Or judgment. It is sitting as a human be-ing not a human do-ing. 

This, too, is a gift that age offers. St. John points to it at the close of his gospel, where Jesus tells Peter: "When you were young, you went where you wanted. But now that you are older, another will gird your loins and lead you into those places you do NOT want to go." A humble blessing for the second half of life, yes? And now it's time to finish washing the kitchen floor, vacuuming for our Brooklyn loved ones, and installing a new doggie gate to create some boundaries for our new four legged. Liminal time, indeed.

on poetry, great educators, patience, and passion...

One of the many truths about contemporary life in these periodically "United States" is that we have monetized everything - including educating one another for the future. What was once the essence of a well-rounded education - exposure to and celebration of the arts as partners with science, mathematics, and technology - has now become an extravagant incidental placed on life-support as we pay obeisance to the golden calf of "reality" as defined by the market. Intellectual depth, moral clarity, individual creativity, cultural breadth, and an awareness of long term consequences have been sacrificed to the idols of so-called efficiency in a vainglory rush to the bottom. (And lest you think I exaggerate, even the word "vainglory" now shows up first on Google AI as a video game developed by (no kidding) Super Evil Megacorp that can be bought and sold to the highest bidder.) In the 21st century, we have chosen to forsake transcendence because we don't know how to get free of the freaking transactional monkey on our backs. 

Many of our schools continue to be resourced by scores of self-sacrificing, valiant, and courageous educators who are dedicated to nourishing the common good as they empower young hearts and minds with the skills and awe necessary for a full life. Nevertheless, education at every level now resembles Star Trek's "the Borg" more than Plato's Lyceum: when students are rendered replaceable cogs manufactured merely to serve the machinery of consumption rather than discrete beings created just a little lower than the angels - and when students themselves only see school as a hoop to jump through to qualify for employment - education no longer helps us all rise to the call of illuminated citizens crafted the common good. Back in 1985, Gary Trudeau prophesized this in his "Doonesbury" cartoon:

https://www.nedgallagher.com/courses/documents/teaching.html

In his 1992 anthology of poems for men, The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart, the late Robert Bly makes this case in his foreword:

The relation of poetry to culture has been debated as far back as Plato's attack on Homer, through the Renaissance and the Puritan's Reformation, and continuing with the Romantic Shelly's Defense of Poetry and today's argument's for a core curriculum of great books. While our European-American traditions questions and argues, and has to teach poetry to sullen students in English classes, other cultures speaking Spanish, Russian, and Arabic, to say nothing of the many tongues of African and the India subcontinent, grow up inside poems, drenched through with poetic metaphors and rhythms. As we learn to criticize, to take a poem apart, to get its meaning, they learn to listen and to recite. By drawing this sharp contrast with other cultures, we are pointing to a defect in ours.   Men blame their own lives for a deficiency in the culture. For, without the fanciful delicacy and the powerful truths that poems convey, our emotions and imagination flatten out. (Bly, p. xxix)

One of my life's transformational epiphanies took place on a miserably cold night in a bookstore in Cleveland when I stumbled upon this very volume of poems. I was in the midst of a complicated divorce looking for a distraction. Outside, the freezing rain mimicked my inner bleakness when I inadvertently (or so I thought) stumbled upon these words from Rilke: 

Sometimes a man stands up during supper

and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking,

because of a church that stands somewhere in the East.

And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead.

And another man, who remains inside his own house,

dies there, inside the dishes and the glasses,

so that his children have to go far out into the world

toward that same church, which he forgot.

It was, for a time, as if I were in a trance. I don't know how long I went missing. All that was clear is that when I returned from who knows where, my heart had been warmed and those long-feared tears that freely ran down my face had become friends. Biblically, this was akin to what Job confessed to the Holy in the final chapter of that wisdom tale: Once I had heard, but now I know from the inside out. For twenty seven years I have cherished Bly's anthology for this awakening - giving it as gifts to countless other men struggling for light in the darkness - and continue to claim its contents as holy ground. My experience with poetry, however, seems to be shared all too rarely these days as all too often men and women move all too fast to linger in the land of poets yearning to freely share their hard won blessings with those who have eyes to see and ears to hear.  Inevitably, our DNA insists that before we can see beyond the obvious, we must face a death, a descent, or some other depravation. Only then are we able to discern that our "time in the ashes" is simultaneously a searing loss as well as sacred portal to new life. Michael Blumenthal puts this positively in "A Man Lost By A River."

There is a voice inside the body.

There is a voice and a music,

a throbbing, four-chambered pear

that want to be heard, that sits

alone by the river with its mandolin

and its torn coat, and sings

for whoever will listen

a song that no one wants to hear.

But sometimes, lost,

on his way to somewhere significant,

a man in a long coat, carrying

a briefcase, wanders into the forest.

He hears the voice and the mandolin,

he sees the thrust and the dandelion,

and he feels the mist rise over the river.

And his life is never the same,

for this having been lost -

for having strayed from the path of his routine,

for no good reason.

Rumi offers an ironic take on the path of descent.

Who makes these changes?
I shoot an arrow right.
It lands left.
I ride after a deer and find myself
chased by a hog.
I plot to get what I want
and end up in prison.
I dig pits to trap others
and fall in.
I should be suspicious
of what I want.

And Goethe covers the same terrain in tragedy in Bly's translation of "The Invisible (or Erl) King":

Who rides at night, who rides so late?

The father rides on, his child in his arms.

His arms are curled and firm round the boy,

He keeps him from falling, he keeps him warm.

"My boy, why is it you hide your face?
"Dad, over there do you see the King?

The Invisible King with ermine and staff?"

"Dear boy, what you see is a rolling mist.

"HEY THERE, MY BOY, COME ALONG WITH ME! there, my boy, come along I HAVE THE NEATEST GAMES YOU'LL EVER SEE.

ON THE SHORE MY DAISES BLOW IN A LINE.

MY MOTHER HAS SHIRTS ALL GOLDEN AND FINE."

"Dad, is it true you don't hear at all

The little gifts the King is offering me?"

"Calm down, my boy, no need for all this -

It's a dry oak leaves making noise in the wind."

'CHILD, GOOD CHILD, DO YOU WANT TO GO?

MY DAUGHTERS WILL CARE AND WAIT ON YOU, SO.

THE GREAT CIRCLE DANCE THEY DO EVERY NIGHT,

THEY'LL SING AND DANCE AND TUCK YOU IN TIGHT."

"Dad, it worries me that you don't see

The Daughters there at that ugly spot."

"I see the spot very clearly, my boy -

An old gray willow, that's all there is."

"YOUR BODY IS SLIM, AND I LOVE YOU

COME NOW, OR SEIZE YOU IS WHAT I'LL DO."

"Dad Listen, please Dad, he's got hold of me!

He's done something bad to me, he has!"

The terrified father rides wilder and wilder;

The boy i now groaning as he sits slumped over;

In grief and fear at last the father got home.

The boy lay dead in the father's arms.

Bly suggests that in the wisdom of the romantic era, "the rationalist father denies, frantically, any suggestion of the 'other realm' or the spiritual world, and the result is that his son dies. This poem is a miniature history of Europe." I would add it is also an agonizing example of our current addiction to an ethics of atavism which lures us towards the lowest common denominator and starves our souls of tenderness in the process. When everything and every one becomes a commodity destined for purchase, God's inclination to help us evolve beyond our most primal urges is twarted. 

Cut to Ted Gioia's insightful observations in s Substack essay: The Three Bad Typses of Humanities Professor. (https://www.honest-broker.com/p/the-3-bad-types-of-humanities-professor?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=296132&post_id=213132923&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=49p8n&triedRedirect=true) I'll leave it to you to enjoy his description of what makes for a good and bad professor. It's his closing comments that are particularly enlightening for me as he notes that helping students go deep, encouraging them to listen to their hearts as well as their head, and seek out what previous generations once discovered to be true, virtuous, and beautiful is vital. Sadly, this style of teaching is no longer normative in the United States but IS in... China!

The curious thing is that the passionate way of teaching that was once vital to Western culture is thriving right now—but outside of the West. In the US, the insiders who speak candidly will tell you that the humanities is in crisis. You can measure it in many ways—declining enrollment, shrinking departments, poor test results, increased cheating, resistance to reading, etc. All the metrics are bad. But that’s not what’s happening in China. The study of western culture is in the ascendancy there. You could even say it’s hot and trendy...there are good reasons why Chinese scholars take Western culture very seriously. They live in a world where discussing ideas is a dangerous vocation. The whole tradition of democracy and human flourishing, which we inherited from the ancient Greeks, is taken for granted in the West (foolishly, I must add, because it’s quite vulnerable right now). But these things are more obviously fragile and elusive in China. So when Chinese scholars grapple with the classic works of the Western canon, they are dealing with matters of life and death.

I call this to your attention because my life was changed by one most excellent humanities professor. To say that I was an uneven high school student would be a gross understatement. I was energized by history and literature, but captivated by rock'n'roll and miniskirts. So, what I didn't like or understand, I just skipped. I negotiated with my teachers, as was possible in the swinging 60's, to write my own poetry and music rather than endure the sentimental slop being crafted by some of my peers who were in love with Rod McKuen. I cut a deal with a young social studies teacher to record a history of American topical songs rather than endure the pro-Vietnam War propaganda rants of our Phys. Ed. coach - and weekly travelled to the University of Bridgeport with him to access their historic vinyl recordings. I was able to do an independent study of French songs so that I wouldn't fail that subject yet again. And, when all else failed, snuck away to hang out on the beach with my bandmates as we listened to the Stones, Beatles, and Yardbirds as it was far more satisfying than enduring one more interminable study hall. All of which is to say that I graduated in the bottom third of my high school class with limited college options. Yes, I'd read Kafka's In the Penal Settlement, all of the theater of the absurd plays by Becket and his peers, to say nothing of most of the fiction penned by Albert Camus, Eldridge Cleaver, John Steinbeck, and Richard Farina with a healthy doss of Ginsberg, but I was not on the fast track for success.

Thanks be to God for the attention given me by my high school guidance counselor, a former Franciscan monk who was once employed to do espionage for the US during WWII, who managed to get me accepted at Lakeland College in Sheboygan, WI. There, as part of our core curriculum, I took humanities and basic English writing with a young professor not a lot older than myself: Ms. Martha Baker. There's much too much to tell about her influence, so let me just note that her January seminar designed for upper class people on the works of both D.H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf changed my life. Eight intense novels in four short weeks, combined with hours of lengthy afternoon discussions, broke down all the barriers to higher education I'd ever constructed. Mother of God, it was heaven on earth! Finally, I was empowered to listen carefully, read profoundly, have my lazy ass challenged time and again by students dedicated to wisdom, and invited to become a part of a cognoscenti that had never been open to me before that bitter Wisconsin winter.

Somehow, by passion and the Holy Spirit, passed some of that drive and verve on to my two daughters - both of whom became master storytellers in their own right. These dedicated students with creative minds are now writers and educators entering middle age who are paying it forward. It thrills me to say that I literally passed on some of those life-changing Lawrence/Woolf novels to these precious women. So now, we are entering a second decade of ignorance, prejudice, anti-intellectualism, and fear-mongering. Having studied history, spirituality, and the arts, I know it won't last forever even as I accept that it will all become more cruel and violent before it gets better. My solace is to become  ever more monk-like in my quest to keep the light of the classics burning. 

Check out Gioia's essay when you can. Send me a note of your reaction. And reach out to an educator who saved your life and give him or her thanks, ok?

let's be still for a spell...

Someone's going to slam me as some kind of neo-con for this, but here goes. A few days back there was a reel posted on FB with a message that went something like: "If you aren't hearing about Cornell this week in worship... or ICE, the never-ending war in Iran, the various levels of pain this war is causing to Iranian civilians, US soldiers, or those of us on limited budgets in the US... there's something wrong with your church or its pastor because what good is faith if it isn't healing the wounds of the world?" That's not an exact quote, mind you, just what I can recall. 

Most of the time when rhetorical bromides appear on FB, I sit in silence for a spell. I suspect that I am as distressed by our cultural and political disintegration as the presenter. I just choose to give my energy, attention, resources, and prayers to people and events I can do something about. I sometimes share a check with a relief organization that's far away - most recently to Palestine - but only periodically. As noted elsewhere, I strive to practice the "10-Foot Rule" of solidarity. Or, as Pete Seeger used to say: "Think globally and act locally." Not only is connecting with people close by a strategy that strikes me as more effective than either/or diatribes, it also diminishes some of the cultural fallout that's been created when elitist and privileged souls whine in public about problems beyond their control. 

Is that too harsh? Let me explain: I've forgotten who first observed the phenomenon of confusing carping out loud with meaningful social and spiritual transformation, but it's become epidemic among 21st century liberals and conservatives alike. I don't know if it started with mistaking reading for knowledge - or equating words and ideas with embodied revelation - but it's become a social disease with dangerous consequences that has only been exacerbated by the flood of selective "information" we consume on the Internet, the triumph of a zero sum transactional economy, and the denigration of awe and wonder in popular and academic culture. Without a training in complex, critical thought and the capacity to experience mystery, everything from religion, politics and culture becomes an either/or, win/lose proposition. Such obfuscation has caused polarities to vanish, nuance to be erased from consideration, and paradox to be discarded into the dustbin of history. 

That is how I understand the rise of religious fundamentalism. It's a quest for security not truth in an era of anxiety. So, too, its bastard child: Christian Nationalism. Both "isms" work overtime to give greed, jingoism, sexism, white supremacy, homophobia, and moral hypocrisy a sacred pass. Shamelessly cherry picking Biblical texts taken out of context, the proponents of such spiritual security simultaneously scapegoat their critics while feeding the flocks with fear, fury, and shame. Kate Lore's poem, "Call Back the Holy" amplifies this:

A god who needs cruel men
to bruise the world into obedience
is a god cruel men have made—
shaped from their fear,
crowned with their hunger,
given a voice
that echoes only themselves.
Leave that altar. Come into the open,
where the Holy is still breathing
in leaf and lung,
still rising like dawn
beyond every border
drawn by fear.
God is the open hand,
the widening doorway,
the lamp left burning
to guide the lost home.
God kneels beside the wounded,
breaks bread with the stranger,
and gathers the banished
into the wide embrace
of belonging.
Let the gods of cruelty
crumble into dust.
Let Love rise instead—ancient as breath, gentle as mercy,
strong as the river
breaking winter’s hold.
Let Love rise in us
until every soul is gathered
within the circle of our care.
For God is Love. And Love asks only
that we become
its open hands.

One of the reasons I believe these heresies are thriving, and all too often considered to be normative in the US, is that those holding more generous or compassionate visions of creation are almost as Biblically illiterate as their opponents. Our addiction to binary thinking, you know, is not the sole property of conservatives. Adding insult to injury is yet another unintended consequence of a post-modern bigotry that is saturated in a simple-minded secularism: the obliteration of our historic reservoir of shared stories, myths, and songs. I'm all for expanding the canon of great literature, but why throw the baby out with the bath water? That's what my Protestant kin did with the sacred mysticism and contemplative practices of our Christian origins that are only now being reclaimed. Such intellectual and spiritual paucity now means we live, speak, think, shop, and engage the world primarily from within our respective siloes, denigrating outsiders who dwell beyond our gated communities, political parties, spiritualities, and ideologies, with a toxic disdain. This observation, of course, is not new: sociologist Robert Putnam pondered it in Bowling Alone in 2020, Neil Postman offered a similar analysis in Amusing Ourselves to Death in 1985, Charles Taylor's magnum opus, Secularism, cut deep in 2007, as did the dystopian works of Margaret Atwood, Aldous Huxley, and George Orwell.  

I suppose the catalyst of this essay began after hearing a recently aired radio program produced by New England Public Media's, Michelle Harven, for 1A entitled: If You Can Keep It: Mental Health and Democracy. (check it out here and listen @ https://the1a.org/person/michelle-harven/) The presenting proposition was clear: Since the January 6th attempted coup, Americans have been living through an era of social trauma (with trauma defined as an unsettling experience that has not been given enough time to be digested, grieved, and integrated into our lives.) All of us, regardless of our politics, have been unable to re-ground ourselves in stability and community. Consequently, anxiety rather than trust rules the day which leads me back to my opening frustration with the liberal Christian either/or meme. This moment in our combined history requires more compassion not more either/or religion that demonizes our neighbors. Now is the time to learn to listen to one another with a new commitment to the common good. And that can't happen without time, patience, a willingness to go slowly, and genuinely get over ourselves long enough to hear another's story. 

Liberals, I submit to you, are frantic because we've lost the privilege of influencing and shaping our culture. With rare exceptions, rather than grieve like adults, we've taken the path of cheap grace by carping like spoiled children who mistake noise for meaningful solutions. Since WWII, working class conservatives who have lost their economic standing now believe the promise of the American Dream is an impossibility. They have been caught up in a politics of "gotcha" that blames the liberation movement of the past 50 years for their diminished status; when, in fact, globalism, greed, and deindustrialization are the true culprits. Whether it is realistic to create new alliances between these factions through careful listening and discovering common ground is unclear. 

What is clear, however, is that there's a place true religious pluralism - especially for those who yearn to do what we've always done best: create safe centers for solace and compassion. Without a doubt, social analysis and transformation are integral to healing an infected body politic. And religious people should have a place at the tables where change is being discussed, planned, and protested. But that is not our ONLY role. For at the heart of true religion is a shared tenderness. A hunger for right relationships. A sacrificial trust that builds community. I don't know how many times I have had to point out that the symbol of Jesus over-turning the money changers tables in the Jerusalem Temple with a whip and righteous anger is powerful - but it happened only once - and is not normative. Rather, healing, listening, solidarity, time-tested wisdom, and spiritual practices are what is at the core of our tradition. Like the Taizé community of France likes to say: we are a festival of possibilities, not the complete solution to the wounds of the world. We prefiguratively incarnate alternatives to a status quo that is worn out and in its death throes. None of us needs more hyperbole or crude anger. Yes, there will likely be times when we must put our bodies on the line for another. But what is more come - and needed, too - are reminders like this poem ascribed to Mother Teresa that was written on the wall of her children's home in Calcutta.

Do It Anyway
People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered;
forgive them anyway.
If you do good, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
do good anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies; succeed anyway.
Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable;
be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, there may be jealousy;
be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
give the world the best you’ve got anyway.
You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God;
it was never between you and them anyway.

 

taking stock in unexplained ways...

About three weeks ago, after I was quietly informed by two ecclesiastical leaders that our request for a change in my ministerial standing had been affirmed, I did something extravagant: I purchased a new set of handmade embroidered clerical stoles crafted by women artisans in Surif, Palestine and marketed through the Star Bazaar of Bethlehem Bible College. (https://starbazaar.bethbc.edu/product/clerical-stoles-embroidered/) They are stunning. They not only give shape and form to my sense of call at this moment in time but also represent a shared spirituality grounded in small acts of tenderness in pursuit of solidarity. Like these women artisans, I, too trust that the creation of beauty can bring a measure of healing to our brokenness.

As a rule, in this later half of life, I tend towards simplicity in most things: my ministry and engagement with the world was summarized best by the late Wendell Berry when he wrote: My formula for a good life and a good community is simple and pleasingly unoriginal. Slow down. Pay attention. Do good work. Love your neighbors. Love your place. Stay in your place. Settle for less, enjoy it more. 

My idea of a good day begins by brewing a fresh pot of Scottish Breakfast tea in the morning. It continues with a few hours of prayer, study, and writing followed by either tending our garden, visiting those in my new congregation who are in need, or making music with my dear mates in Wednesday's Child and/or All of Us. A good day closes with a home cooked meal shared with Di and wrapped up with a well-made European TV mystery.  My worship attire has become equally simplified: a white alb, a hand-crafted cross along with a colorful symbol of the Lord's towel used on Holy Thursday to wash the feet of his disciples is sufficient to mark the liturgical calendar. 

When I retired the first time, I gave away most of my decorative liturgical garments. Yes, I held back my black Doctoral pulpit gown and D. Min hood from San Francisco Theological Seminary. For purely sentimental reasons, I also kept my first black teaching robe and the "ordinary time" green stole my parents gave me upon my ordination along with a few gifts my daughters have shared with me from their travels in Europe and Mexico. All the rest was passed on to other younger clergy along with hundreds of my cherished books. As St. Lou Reed smirks in "Last Great American Whale" from his New York album: it was time to stick a fork in me because I was done!

But, apparently, the God of resurrection, didn't agree. To be sure, at first there were a few quiet years of solitude. I needed to debrief, grieve, and recharge. And then something new began to take root within. Something simple, something creative, something guided by compassion. What I am experiencing now warrants taking stock for in ways I cannot yet explain, these elegant stoles from Palestine look like what I am feeling and encountering these days.

how I stay grounded in our challenging culture...

I was recently able to have lunch with our oldest daughter’s godfather and my favorite Sunday School teacher, Malcom, as we celebrated his 95th birthday; as the week matured, I had a chance to play guitar with my grandson and create visual art with my granddaughter. Later still, I discovered that my wife’s disability application was finally approved, visited with our younger daughter to discuss her thoughts on the recently departed poet Wendell Berry, held a few potentially significant pastoral visits, prayed with my tears, ordered a new set of clerical stoles from Bethlehem, and came across this poem by a Christian pastor, John Swales, who works on the fringe of a fading industrial city in England that begins:

I don’t want to be a Christian who forgets how to feel—who hides behind answers, quotes verses like shields, and silences sorrow with a song. I don’t want a faith of romanticized abstraction, where resurrection is polished, and the cross is theory. Give me something real—flesh and blood, grief and grace. I want to weep with eyes wide open. Tears that speak truth. Tears that rise from the ground of compassion, from the jagged knowledge that the world is not as it was meant to be.

Real flesh-and-blood encounters are not only what matters to me each day, but also what I remember when reviewing the ups and downs of each week to discern where I might have met the Lord. These days, I no longer have much time for abstract ideas or whatever obsession has captured this moment’s news cycle. Don’t get me wrong: I don't ignore what passes for the “news.” In fact, I often find myself praying tears of exasperation, grief, or solace for what I see on TV. But I strive to take it in and then let it go, as Jesus tells us in the Sermon on the Mount: Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day.

Once upon a time, like many who are overeducated and reasonably comfortable, I was consumed by politics and news programming – and many of my friends and colleagues still are. But three insights helped heal this addiction: First, no matter HOW much I disagree with what I see on the news – no matter how much I rant and rail at politicians on both sides of the aisle or weep in solidarity over the violence in Gaza, Ukraine, or Sudan, to say nothing of the agony caused by natural destruction like tsunamis or earthquakes – there is precious little I can do to effect change on behalf of compassion and right relations. Yes, I make financial donations; and write letters, too. But when it comes to the grand issues of the day, I can neither touch them in any significant way nor make any real difference in their outcome.

About ten years ago, therefore, I started to practice what my friends in the L’Arche movement call the “10 -foot rule.” L’Arche, as you may know, is an international movement of tenderness for people with intellectual and physical disabilities. They create small communities worldwide where people with and with- out disabilities simply live together. Take care of one another together. Learn to honor the heart of God in one another and everyone together. They teach that regional and international tragedy and injustice may break our hearts, but most of the time, we can only make a genuine difference by paying attention to those within 10 feet of our lives. There, we can listen, assist, learn from, honor, love, and work together in harmony in ways that can be transformative and salvific. What’s more, when we ourselves act in ways that matter to another, when we can see and touch the fruit of our labor up close and personal, despair starts to disappear, and hope rises within like the resurrection. So, first, the 10-foot rule has helped me let go of a ton of anxiety and wasted effort. 

Second, the older I get, the more it becomes clear that social transformation comes and goes in waves, and it’s impossible to predict where things will land in the short term. I once heard this story…

There was once a farmer in rural Japan. He didn't have much money and, instead of a tractor, used an old horse to plow his field. One afternoon, while working in the field, the horse dropped dead. Everyone in the village said, "Oh, what a horrible thing to happen” but the farmer said simply, "We'll see." He was so at peace and so calm that everyone in the village admired his attitude and gave him a new horse as a gift. Over and over, the community said aloud: "What a lucky man to receive such a gift." And the farmer said, "We'll see." A couple of days later, the new horse jumped the fence and ran away. The whole village shook their heads and said, "What a poor fellow!" To which the farmer smiled and said, "We'll see." Eventually, the horse found his way home, and the community rejoiced, crying, "What a fortunate man!" And the farmer said: Well… we’ll see. A year came and went and the farmer's young boy went out riding on the horse, fell and broke his leg, prompting the village to weep: "What a shame for the poor boy” but the farmer said, "We'll see." And two days later, the army came into the village to draft new recruits. But when they saw that the farmer's son had a broken leg, they decided not to recruit him. "What a blessing has come to this young man," the villagers proclaimed while the farmer just smiled again – and said: “We’ll see.”

No wonder Jesus advised us to chill out, hold off making final judgments, and trust that each day carries with it worries and wonders sufficient for the day: a second perspective that brings a measure of inner and outward serenity is choosing NOT to rush to judgment. 

And third, is a notion that I've been exploring for a long time but only recently found words to describe it: prefigurative sacramentality. That's an all too lofty way of describing my dedication to the aesthetics of beauty that creates a hint of what could or might become real. 

Decades ago, the late Elie Wiesel wrote an op-ed for the NY Times at the dawn of Yom Kippur. It has long nourished and haunted me as well. The essence was this: Wiesel was still furious, perplexed, and bewildered with God, given the anguish, death, and cruelty of the Holocaust. That will never change, he confessed. At the same time, however, he had now decided he would embrace his tradition’s response to absurdity and staggering violence: he would dance. Rather than try to comprehend or find meaning in his grief, he would engage the dance of paradox, resistance, courage, and even grace rather than submit to vile chaos.

St. Leonard Cohen echoes Wiesel’s challenge in “Dance Me to the End of Love” as does St. Lou Reed in both “Dirty Boulevard” and “Busload of Faith.” It is an aesthetic refusal to surrender the spirit of love to avarice as our inevitable destiny. It is a rejection of reality as only the art of the deal. A worship and praise song put it like this: “we have another world in view.” Dostoevsky believed that “beauty could save the world,” and Solzhenitsyn, in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize, wrote that when truth and goodness have been corrupted, compromised, or else held ransom by totalitarian propaganda, beauty alone can subvert power by touching our hearts and inspiring a rebirth of solidarity and moral integrity.

That's what I believe our two bands, Wednesday’s Child and All of Us, are about:
we, too, have another world in view. It is a worldview that respects rather than fears diversity, trusts that a love greater than self guides the cosmos, recognizes that joy regularly dances next to grief, that celebration often sings in the same key as suffering, and that a mystical yearning for authenticity and life itself pervades both all of creation including human nature. The writers at this month's Friends of Silence recently wrote that our awakening to autumn reminds us of this:

Early Autumn reminds me of this “and” mentality. I wake up and put on a sweater only to sweat and remove it moments later. I watch the young growth from my late summer succession planting while pulling old tomato stalks to mark the end of their time. We move about during the day like it is still summer, only to be ushered back inside by an earlier sunset into the more reflective inner work of the incoming season. Each day holds room for it all, just as you and I are a manifestation of the myriad.

We are grateful.
We are overwhelmed.
We are joyful.
We carry deep sorrow.
We are changing.
We are eternal.
We are dying.
We are alive.

Wednesday's Child recently played an end of summer and welcome to autumn Barn Gig. As I went to sleep the night before the event, a vision of the counter-cultural cabarets of the Weimar Republic came to mind. Yes, they were often scandalous, lewd, genre-bending in every conceivable manner, and even decadent. And they were an embodied aesthetic refusal to accept the cruelty of fascism. They, too, had another world in view, one in which outsiders might find acceptance, the vulnerable might experience safety, and our differences could become an invitation into the mystery of transcendence and trust. Before we played, I told this to the band noting that for a time their worldview was outlawed but it outlasted the death camps and crematoria. That is what we are doing, too. 

I knew someone who stopped using the word ‘but’. Everything was ‘and’. It cracked open the hard pericarp of my thinking, revealing a pithy inner chamber. It substituted phrases like, “It was hard, but I did it,” with an empowering reminder that one does not preclude the other. “It was hard. I did it.” A subtle but meaningful change. Not in spite of the difficulty, which certainty also feels true, but alongside the difficulty, with the difficulty. (Friends of Silence)

As I was packing up after the gig, someone said to me that this gathering felt different – there was a palpable sense of community and trust – and they wondered why this time was different from other concerts. Well, I thought, it has something to do with intentionality: we are very careful in our choice of songs and poems. There is a profound commitment to bringing our best to the music, too. And, dare I say, we are willing to be vulnerable and counter-cultural. As if in affirmation, today I received four liturgical clerical stoles from Bethlehem in Palestine. They are stunning. Yet another small sign of artists committed to giving shape and form to a worldview bathed in beauty.