our weariness is an invitation into grace...

No worship or fellowship today - or tomorrow - as a real

snowmageddon delivers 1-2 inches an hour in these rolling Berkshire hills. All the hoopla and hollering of the past week felt more like hyperbole than honesty. Besides, real New Englanders know how to traverse a winter wonderland, and we haven't had a doozy for a few years - but we do today, and so far I am loving it. Silent. Beautiful. Powerful. And mysterious. Granted, I can make such observations from within the warm safety of our little home - and not everyone knows such privilege. So, it's with a measure of gratitude and humility that I sit silently in my study, savoring the snowfall. 

Perched within the security of my solitude, this blizzard is simultaneously majestic and disturbing. Like standing on the seashore during a storm, there's no way to escape the raw, unharnessed fury reining down upon us. There is neither rhyme nor reason to this storm. The Potawatomi author and poet Kaitlin Curtice rightly notes that those who live in these environs cannot avoid winter; we can only go through it. So, I hope to avoid even the hint of sentimentality as I confess to being awed by its elegance. Rudolph Otto wrote in The Idea of the Holy that an authentic encounter with the sacred is always a "fearful and fascinating encounter with mystery." The mysterium tremendum et fascinans is wholly other and entirely beyond the ordinary, evoking wonder; it is saturated with power and awe that is uncontrollable, and despite our fears, also attracts us with the presence of joy. Don't get me wrong: there are times I HATE to drive in such a mess, but I'm not out on the roads today. No, right now I am savoring the mystical bounty of this storm.

My inward/outward serenity rests in jarring contrast to the violence and fear that now engulfs Minneapolis and Portland, ME. ICE thugs, hellbent on terrorizing - and now murdering - their opponents, are pushing us ever closer to civil war as they give shape and form to our nation's shadow. No matter that the current regime literally tries to white-wash our origins and sanitize our memories by taking down historical markers and applying Soviet-era photo scrubs at the Smithsonian, the  United States will always be a nation conceived in a cauldron of contradiction: freedom and the pursuit of liberty (read: property) for the landed elite have long been parasitically twinned with acts of genocide, slavery, scapegoating, and gun violence. Yes, since 1607, we have made authentic albeit incremental progress towards a more perfect union through the blood sacrifices of brave and compassionate martyrs. But almost like clockwork, these advances are clawed back in an unholy ebb and flow that punishes the most vulnerable among us while rewarding the 1%. I choose to believe that our better angels always seek to create the land of the brave and the home of the free, but because we're at war with ourselves and refuse to acknowledge this truth, we can't help but attack, demonize, and destroy with a vengeance those who seek the same blessings the privileged take for granted. 

Indeed, our national soul is so riven with contradictions, coupled with an incredible tolerance for shedding innocent blood, self- deception, and periodic propaganda that no matter how many times the Holy tells us that God's bounty is to be shared by all so that there is scarcity for none, our habits, fears, history, and addictions insist upon a zero sum ideology where other's gain only if we lose. It is a vicious downward spiral that has once again raised its ugly head and become normative. 

And I'm not the only one locked in lament: North American theologian and podcaster, Tripp Fuller, recently published an insightful essay entitled, "The Exhausted Soul and a World Gone Mute," which begins: "I want to tell you about a moment that changed how I see the world. I was sitting at my desk a few years ago, staring at my inbox, when I realized something that should have been obvious but somehow wasn’t: I was losing."

Not losing at anything in particular. Just... losing. Falling behind. No matter how early I woke up, no matter how efficiently I worked, no matter how many productivity apps I downloaded or time-management systems I tried, the gap between what I needed to do and what I could do kept widening. I went to bed each night—as the German sociologist Hartmut Rosa puts it so perfectly—as a “subject of guilt,” unable to work off my ever-expanding to-do list. And here’s the thing: I wasn’t alone. Everyone I knew was drowning in the same invisible flood. What if this isn’t a personal failure? What if it’s something much larger—something structural, something spiritual, something that goes to the very heart of what it means to live in the modern world?

Please read the full essay here (https://open.substack.com/pub/ processthis/ p/the-exhausted-soul-and-a-world-gone?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web) knowing that he makes three clarifying insights: 1) One of the reasons for our culture of exhaustion is that modernity is ALL about accelerating. "What used to take months now takes minutes... as we move faster, produce faster, and connect faster than any generation in history." 2) Acceleration renders time-tested skills and values obsolete as "the institutions we once trusted disappear and the ground shifts beneath your feet." And 3) Multitasking has become normative, meaning we strive to compress more and more into lives that are finite, resulting in "burnout, burn up, and burndown." As Canadian author and theologian Ralph Heinzman notes in Rediscovering Reverence, contemporary Western culture has lost the very idea of reverence and awe.

Reverence conveys a human attitude of respect and deference for something larger or higher in priority than our own individual selves... Reverence results in humility as a Jewish text puts it... (And) awe is the emotion we feel when we encounter someone or something that transcends our normal life, and embodies qualities of excellence, or beauty, or some kind of power or authority that force our admiration, and to which, in some way or other, we submit ourselves, voluntarily or no... (pp. 18-19)

Which brings me back to what I am learning about a spirituality of winter in general and our encounters with snow in specific. "We cannot force the snow to fall. But we can go outside and wait. Grace cannot be manufactured. It arrives—or it doesn't. This is what the contemplatives have always known. This is what Sabbath practice is about. This is what silence and solitude offer. Not escape from the world, but a different relationship with it—one based not on aggression and acquisition but on receptivity, response, and cooperative participation in the ongoing creation of the world." (Fuller, ibid) From my perspective, this means at least the following:

+ First, we must recognize that there is a momentum to a storm that can not be stopped. We may rail against it - piss and moan, bellyache, and carp till the cows come home, too - but none of that matters. We must go through this storm as both Meister Eckhart and the Serenity Prayer tell us: reality is the will of God. It can always be better, but we must accept what cannot be changed and make our peace with it. We are now in a radical and cyclical realignment that is not only bringing to a close 70+ years of rule of law but also the ethos of social equality. I am not saying we must like this - I hate it - but culture, politics, and religion are shifting in ways that are challenging and dangerous. Nostalgia for the past is pointless. So, too, the self-righteous posturing of the Left that's long on elitist blame but short of practical solutions to economic, cultural, and spiritual alienation. The blathering of the Right with its hatred and denigration is equally destructive. The time has come to steel ourselves for our current "dark night," practicing the time-tested tools of contemplation, including centering, stillness, celebration, and small acts of service and care for those most vulnerable. 

+ Second, if storms cannot be changed or tamed but, rather, only endured, it is also true that they don't last forever. It is neither fantasy, naivete, nor ideological projection to suggest that a slowly emerging majority of ordinary Americans are growing weary of the current cruelty and chaos. More and more are realizing that WE are not" failing modern life, but modernity is failing US!" (Fuller) This transition is far from complete - and will clearly take more time - but objective evidence points to those who are once again shifting their political and emotional alliances. Those who have lost faith in this current darkness and brokenness are seeking solace. And those who recognize that the storm cannot last forever are starting to build bridges. A recent poll taken immediately after the murder of Alex Pretti documents that many of the young and Latino voters who shifted loyalties in the last national election are now shifting back with a vengeance. A small but growing number of Republicans and their pundits are breaking away from the monolith by demanding a joint investigation into Mr. Pretti's murder. And a few new media outlets are pointing out both the outright lies of the current regime, as well as their ugly and dangerous consequences. An old movement song reminds us that, "It's always darkest before the storm..." Today the snow is still coming down - and we already have more than 24 inches to deal with - but my eyes are not lying: this storm - and all storms - will end. 

+ And third, this snowstorm has slowly pushed some towards a new level of cooperation. It is too early to say too much about the all too new mayor of NYC, but he put together a winning coalition that tapped into the real angst of real people without much ideological carping or blame. He clearly respects our wounds and vulnerabilities. He also knows how to bring desperate communities back into relationship with one another in pursuit of the common good. Cultural critique, Ted Gioia at Substack's "The Honest Broker" has named the work of Mamdani and others the ascent of a "new romanticism." (read his essay @ https://www.honest-broker.com/p/25-propositions-about-the-new-romanticism?img=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%

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More than two years ago, I predicted the rise of a New Romanticism—a movement to counter the intense rationalization and expanding technological control of society. This idea had started as a joke. Oh Beethoven, come save us! And give Tchaikovsky the news. But when I dug deeply into the history of the original Romanticist movement, circa 1800, I stopped laughing. The more I probed, the more I was convinced that this provided a blueprint for countering the overreach of technology, the massive expansion in surveillance, and the centralization of both political and economic power.

A few weeks back, right after Renee Good was murdered, I awoke from a deep sleep with an aching panic attack. I'm not prone to these, but have experienced them from time to time when my inner equilibrium is being challenged and/or changed. Over the past decade, I've had to confront my anxieties in pursuit of both personal equanimity and social compassion. Initially, I concluded that there was something wrong or broken in me that caused me to inwardly come apart at the seams with grief and uncertainty. But on the night in question, two things happened that I now recognize as sacred revelation. First, lying silently in bed that night with my anxiety over the violence and hatred allowed me to feel it deeply. I wept. I felt unhinged. Or, in other words, I grieved. I practiced what I've preached. Like Job, I didn't distract myself from my despair. I felt it. Fully. Part of what I realized in my silent darkness was that I was doubting God's grace and love: could the way of the Cross REALLY transform reality? Was it enough? Was there something MORE I could or should do?

Doubt is NOT the absence of faith. Rather, it's an act of clarifying and I started to sense that whenever I felt overwhelmed with anxiety, it was NOT an inward fault but the very voice of God calling me deeper. Like the Rumi poem, Love Dogs, says: 

One night a man was crying,
“Allah, Allah!”
His lips grew sweet with the praising,
until a cynic said,
“So! I have heard you
calling out, but have you ever
gotten any response?”
The man had no answer for that.
He quit praying and fell into a confused sleep.
He dreamed he saw Khidr, the guide of souls,
in a thick, green foliage,
“Why did you stop praising?”
“Because I’ve never heard anything back.”
“This longing you express
is the return message.”
The grief you cry out from
draws you toward union.
Your pure sadness that wants help
is the secret cup.
Listen to the moan of a dog for its master.
That whining is the connection.
There are love dogs no one knows the names of.

Give your life to be one of them.

My feelings of emptiness and yearning were the Via Negativa - the silent call of the sacred - into deeper trust. So, while holding my despair, I read a few lines from Cynthia Bourgeault's The Wisdom Jesus about kenosis - Christ's commitment to self-emptying that empowered him to get over himself and trust God ever more deeply. And as I read, and let the words speak to my heart, I could feel the anxiety lift. It was palpable. It was awesome. It was restorative. Not that my feelings changed anything objectively in the world. No, what the presence of grace did was change me. A little bit. Enough to get grounded again. Enough to trust that Dr. King was right: hatred cannot conquer hatred, only love can do that; just as the darkness cannot overcome darkness but needs the light. Call this my new credo: be still and know - reconnect to small celebrations as I seek and serve - and trust that grief and emptiness are just as much of the Lord as jubilation. And just in case I wasn't listening, I just received this announcement from Kaitlin Curtice about the creation of her Aki Institute of Peace and Justice, built upon three pillars: rest, resistance, and responsibility. (check it out along with me @

https://kaitlincurtice.substack.com/p/announcing-the-aki-institute?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=29242&post_id=185735318&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=49p8n&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

aging, letting go, and rocking into a new year

Somewhere along the line, I came across this quote from Meryl Streep: Aging means letting go, it means accepting, it means discovering that beauty was never in our skin... but in the story we carry inside us. Ten years ago, while on sabbatical in Montreal, Di and I read aloud The Art of Aging by Alice Matzkin. It added depth to our own experiences with aging and breadth to Streep's paraphrase of Carl Jung's insights about:

Moving from outward ambition to inward meaning, a process he called individuation, where the second half of life becomes about integrating unconscious aspects to find wholeness, wisdom, and a deeper self, rather than mere decline. He described this as the "afternoon of life," shifting focus from accumulating achievements to cultivating inner richness, embracing one's whole story, and becoming truly oneself.

This insight keeps drifting through my mind, especially as we played a rocking set at the Sideline Saloon earlier this week. Our band, All of Us, is certainly "over the hill" by popular standards: we're all over 70. Nevertheless, we still rock hard, get jiggy with it, and encourage others to shake it up with abandon. In addition to backing up two friends on Neil Young and Bob Dylan tunes, we did "Baby Blue" by Badfinger, "Main Street" by Bob Seeger, and the extended rock version of Lou Reed's "Sweet Jane." 

I'm not as spry as I once was: my lower back often aches after playing a gig, my hearing is increasingly compromised, and I get klutzier and klutzier with every passing month, tripping over guitar cords, gear, and knocking down more microphones than I care to admit. But while packing up, a young local musician said to me: Dude, you guys are freakin' awesome, and I LOVE that you're keeping the candle of joy. resistance, and beauty alive! It filled my heart to overflowing to hear this, as THIS is precisely the band's mission. Not just playing oldies, but playing songs so passionately that we nourish one another's joy. St. Lucinda sure as hell gets this right:

That's why we invite other local artists who affirm our mission to join us at our various gigs: we want THEM to have the musical support needed to multiply the joy in the miracle of music. 

I've come to realize that's also why the sacred pushed me back into ministry. I thought I was done. Like Lou Reed snarled, stick a fork in it, it's done, in the Last Great American Whale. I was tired, worn, and burned out, discouraged and profoundly disappointed with so-called organized religion. So, I called it quits, spent a few years of solitude, gardened, and settled into being grandpa. True, I created an online spiritual reflection during COVID that I kept up for a few years, exploring the mystical aspects of following Jesus. But I stayed as far away from a local church as possible. 

After the pandemic, however, I was invited to serve as a worship leader and provide pastoral care to a North County congregation for 6 months. I'd been away for half a decade, so I gave it a shot - and loved it. That extended break - and the ministry we crafted together - not only replenished my soul, but gave my body an extended rest. Clearly, there are times we're called INTO ministry just as there are times we're called OUT, too. Today, I'm about to start year three of a ministry in Palmer, MA - and I love it.

So, what have I learned and made flesh as an aging rock'n'soul disciple of Jesus? At least the following:

+ Wisdom-keeper. Kaitlin Curtice is right when she writes: like winter itself, the only way through this moment in reality is through it. "There is no other way to approach winter but to travel through it. We can’t go around it, can’t avoid it, can’t pretend it’s not there." I resonate with her poetic articulation of this:

It was never around but through, never the easiest way, but the one that guarantees us the chance to know and love ourselves at the end. So, open the door, go through the portal, stand at the threshold, carry yourself through the winds of grief, walk the perimeter of your soul's deep forest until you are ready to journey through. Get your shoes on. It's time.

+ Small is Holy - so quit trying to make it big. My ego and training pushed me to try to do something significant with my life. But mostly that's bullshit: what truly matters is being awake, present, and loving with whatever is right before you. In trying to be a hotshot, I missed loving those closest and most dear to me. It's not that I wanted to ignore them; I simply wasn't paying attention. A few years ago I found these words for a song I called "small is holy."

Thinking big and acting strong – led me into all that’s wrong Hitting bottom taught me well .– strategies to get through hell

Touch the wound in front of you, that’s all you can really do
Keep it close, don’t turn away, make room for what’s real today

SMALL IS ME, SMALL IS YOU, SMALL IS HOLY AND RINGS TRUE
SMALL IS HARD, SMALL REVEALS
THE WAY OUR HEARTS CAN BE HEALED

Blame is such a viscous deal, wastes your time and never heals
Pay it forward’s more the way, grace trumps karma every day
Live the questions, wait your turn, take a deep breath, try to learn
Losing is one way to win what once has died might live again…

Wisdom’s blessing’s upside down
Something’s lost and something’s found
Each day brings us something good
Carry water, chop the wood

When my life bewilders me – it's time to listen silently
Don’t say too much, don’t push too hard
What helps the most is in your backyard
Let it lead your soul to rest
Just like a child on momma’s breast
The arc of love is slow but true
And waiting to come home to you…

+ Music is the best way to articulate and share spiritual wisdom. Theology has its place for those who want a linear explication of grace. But music, as Tricia Gates Brown writes: cuts deeper. I've known this for ages, but in the last decade have devoted myself to going deeper into this gift. Ms. Gates Brown puts it like this:

I have found that for me, nothing stirs my pot like listening to certain kinds of music; and listening in a certain heart-wide-open way. I have come to see this heartful listening as the closest thing to prayer for me. It is not that listening to such music leads me to pray or puts me in a mind for prayer. No, it is that the experience of listening itself is prayer. Heartful music listening has become my most impactful and meaningful prayer experience. Sometimes I have this experience when I’ve read an amazing poem, but rarely. When listening to my favorite music, I become so filled with love/empathy/awe for my fellow creatures and life itself, and feel so deeply in touch with the divine, that prayer is all I know to call it.

And when I am PLAYING and SHARING music... OMG! Giving up some of my former understanding of ministry simply to groove has been life-changing. Getting older - and owning it - as the New Year embraces us DOES invite relinquishing a lot. But letting go also opens new gifts and blessings way beyond my control. Happy New Year dear friends.  

cultivating a sacramental consciousness during advent...

We are quickly approaching the Fourth Sunday of Advent. My spiritual tradition asks us to embrace a threefold discipline during the four weeks before Christmas by getting grounded in the practice of patience, cultivating a contemplative presence each day, and trusting the spirituality of this season, wherein the earth shares wisdom with us if we have eyes to see and ears to hear. It is a practical mysticism committed to nourishing a sacramental consciousness: a way of being that discerns both the facts of our reality and their more profound truths. Chris Webb suggests that living sacramentally means consciously acting so that "everything we do and everything we experience in the material world - the depth and breadth of our existence - is an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace."  Interfaith author, Kaitlin Curtice, talks about this as "wintering" - going inward, watching, waiting, and wondering what will be revealed and experienced during the unfolding darkness - a core commitment of her Potawatomie heritage. My soul hears a parallel in Gertrud Mueller-Nelson' description of Advent spirituality:

Waiting is mysteriously necessary to all that is becoming. As in a pregnancy, nothing of value comes into being without a period of quiet incubation: not a healthy baby, not a loving relationship, not a reconciliation, a new understanding, a work of art, never a transformation. Rather, a shortened period of incubation brings forth what is not whole or strong or even alive. Brewing, baking, simmering, fermenting, ripening, germinating, and gestating are the feminine processes of becoming, and they are the symbolic states of being that belong in a life of value, necessary to transformation. (To Dance with God, p. 64)

Cultivating a sacramental consciousness has always been a challenge, all the more so in these days of perpetual engagement with our digital distractions. Nevertheless, my musical colleagues and I in Wednesday's Child believe that we can not only interrupt the tumult of our culture by offering a bit of respite in what we call our Blue Christmas/Longest Night liturgy, but also share tools for unplugging, too. I have partnered with these gifted and faithful musicians for over 15 years of music-making, gift-bearing, consciousness-raising, and soul-sharing. We create in pursuit of faith, hope, and love. In doing so, we have become a small but eclectic collective that spans different ages, backgrounds, genders, spirituality, family, aesthetics, and perspectives. A small faith community nourished by song, striving to integrate each person's unique gifts, quirks, and blessings into the whole. As we've been preparing our 2025 take on the Longest Night (December 21) through music, song, silence, poetry, candlelight, and presence, I've heard a sacred invitation to learn from the darkness.

Darkness scares us. Darkness can feel like a nightmare. We’ve been taught to fear it, to avoid it, to keep the lights on, to think happy thoughts, to pretend everything’s all right, and to not go into “that dark place.” Yet because God created both light and dark, day and night, and called ALL of creation good, we are invited to learn to see in the dark. It is, to be sure, an acquired art, without which we will miss what is there. Barbara Brown Taylor, put it like this in her book, Learning to Walk in the Dark: "I have learned things in the dark that I could never have learned in the light, things that have saved my life over and over again, so that there is really only one logical conclusion. I need darkness as much as I need light....new life starts in the dark. Whether it is a seed in the ground, a baby in the womb, or Jesus in the tomb, it starts in the dark."

After collecting the songs and poems that resonated with us this year, three discrete yet interrelated challenges surfaced. One recognized the fullness of our respective schedules: it hasn't been easy to ensure the whole band is consistently together for rehearsals. Because we deconstruct songs before refashioning them, having folk away slowed the simmering process of creativity down considerably. There are a ton of reasons why this has been so, and there's no blame; it's just the luck of the draw that's made this year more complicated.

A second challenge involved new material and genres: the core of this year's liturgy is built on seven songs from Gen X and Millennial culture, which is a big shift for some of us old timers. It's been exciting, but also required a longer learning curve to make the art of Alanis Morrissette, NIN, REM, David Bowie, and others work within our groove. Which points to wrinkle number three: how to close this gig?  After finding a path through the first two challenges, we came to a strategic and aesthetic fork in the road. After tossing away a few good but as yet unformed songs, there was no consensus about how to bring it all home.

At first, this was vexing to me: with only a few days before it was time to stand and deliver, I was yearning for clarity, and it wasn't coming. Further, my heart genuinely wanted us ALL to weigh in and clarify how we thought it best to wrap things up, but we had to do this virtually. Would that we had a few more weeks to meet, talk, and rework some tunes in person, but we'd already used all the available time. So, after probably too many IMs and emails, we agreed to trust simplicity and see how that shakes out. My point in recounting these challenges is that creating art and worship in community is an existential act of practicing sacramental consciousness. We were listening to what the heart wanted us to know. What were likewise searching through the wisdom of our flesh, too, even while discerning how the whole presentation fit together intellectually. Aesthetics, culture, liturgy, and experience mashed together with reality, trust, love, confusion, and our mission to create a safe space for contemplation. I won't speak for others, but this strikes me as a growing edge for the band. Tricia Gates Brown wrote in her Substack column:

Listening, singing, and sharing music in a certain heart-wide-and-open way has become for us closest thing to prayer we know. And it’s not that listening leads me to pray or puts me in a mind for prayer and we become so filled with love/empathy/awe for my fellow creatures and life itself, that we feel deeply in touch with the divine.

Creating and sharing sacramental consciousness music in cooperative solidarity is transformative. It is not always easy and never simple, but rich, rewarding, and blessed in ways I could never have imagined. Come join us this Sunday in Palmer, MA @ 4 pm.

a week of sorting clutter...

Advent One 2025: I HATE clutter. Always have and always will. So, on what became a delightful snow day, I gave my attention to dusting, vacuuming, sorting, tossing, and scouring our home. I have no idea when this happened last, but the accumulating detritus was contributing to my weariness and needed the old heave-ho! (There's still a bedroom in need of attention - and my personal study is a wreck - but that may have to wait for another day.) The "Two of Us" band practice was cancelled, a chicken is in the sink defrosting, and soon our satchel of Advent/ Christmas music will reappear to grace our home with the sounds of Loreena McKinnitt, Vince Guaraldi, John Rutter, George Winston, and a host of subdued Celtic and French carols. All of this, as well as the silence of the snowfall and the absence of our clutter, has brought me a measure of blessed serenity - and I am grateful.

To say that this Advent feels like a reckoning of sorts for me would not be wrong: I am increasingly aware of my own mortality, conscious that on some days my energy dwindles and requires a newfound attention to choices, profoundly concerned about the ups and mostly downs of my loved one's health, and perplexed about the long-term consequences of my nation's ongoing obsession with chaos and cruelty. Earlier in the day, I read C. Christopher Smith's Substack column, Paying Attention to Poetry, which noted that:

Poetry (can be) a way to practice paying better attention—a habit that is essential to resisting the ever-encroaching allure of exploitative technology and consumerism and to being formed more deeply into the image of Christ. Paying attention is a key part of what makes us human, and poetry can be a valuable tool for developing that skill.

https://cultivatingcommunities.substack.com/p/paying-attention-to-poetry?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Could it be that in this season of watching, waiting, and paying attention, beyond the clutter, it's the poetry of Advent that is calling to me for a new hearing? I'm rather taken with this from Wisława Szymborska: A Little Bit About the Soul

A soul is something we have every now and then.
Nobody has one all the time
or forever.

Day after day,
year after year,
can go by without one.

Only sometimes in rapture
or in the fears of childhood
it nests a little longer.
Only sometimes in the wonderment
that we are old.

It rarely assists us
during tiresome tasks,
such as moving furniture,
carrying suitcases,
or traveling on foot in shoes too tight.

When we’re filling out questionnaires
or chopping meat
it’s usually given time off.

Out of our thousand conversations
it participates in one,
and even that isn’t a given,
for it prefers silence.

When the body starts to ache and ache
it quietly steals from its post.

It’s choosy:
not happy to see us in crowds,
sickened by our struggle for any old advantage
and the drone of business dealings.

It doesn’t see joy and sorrow
as two different feelings.
It is with us
only in their union.
We can count on it
when we’re not sure of anything
and curious about everything.

Of all material objects
it likes grandfather clocks
and mirrors, which work diligently
even when no one is looking.

It doesn’t state where it comes from
or when it will vanish again,
but clearly it awaits such questions.

Evidently,
just as we need it,
it can also use us
for something.

This is an act of faith - trusting that our elusive souls can and will use us for something - an incarnational paradox resolved only by patience and practice. Lou Reed sang, "It takes a busload of faith to get by" -  and he wasn't kidding. Kate Bowler adds, "Advent begins in the dark—with one small candle and a stubborn kind of hope. Not the shiny, everything’s-fine version. The gritty, keep-going kind. We wait. We bless what’s unfinished. Because the world is still a mess. And God is still coming." Her reflection for Advent One rings true to me and feels like I do today:

The church, in its wisdom, starts the new year not with champagne toasts or gym memberships but with a candle in the dark. Advent is the beginning of the Christian calendar, though you’d be forgiven for missing that detail if your mailbox is already stuffed with glossy holiday catalogues. We start here—not at the finish line of Christmas morning—but in the long, deliberate work of waiting. Advent always begins on (or around) the feast of St. Andrew, the first disciple to follow Jesus and the first to drag someone else (his brother Peter, no less) along with him. Andrew is not the most memorable apostle. He’s not Peter with the speeches or John with the poetry. He’s the brother in the background. But he is the one who told his brother, “We have found the Messiah” (John 1:41).

The first week of Advent is devoted to hope. Not optimism, which is a little too seamless, too unrealistic, too pie-in-every-sky. And not nostalgia either. Remember those childhood Christmas concerts in drafty school gyms, where a dozen shaky recorders and one out-of-tune piano were supposed to sound like angels singing? We didn’t care—it was magic. But nostalgia can trick us into thinking the best days are behind us. Advent hope is grittier. It looks squarely at the world as it is—fragile, unjust, unfinished—and still insists that God is not done yet.

And so it is, has been, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen. Last Sunday, I taught the children of the church some of our Advent hymns - and how to use the hymnal. After worship, we all made Advent wreaths to take home and I was given this stunning and arresting crucifix made of wire and nails. It took my breath away. This Sunday, our children will present the congregation with a new white altar cloth. We will baptize a newborn, too, before gathering around the Lord's table to celebrate Eucharist. Indeed, the world is still a mess - and God continues to come to us for the Holy One is not done yet.

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.