A note to my congregation...

NOTE: Every week I write a "prayers and programs" note to my congregation. Here is what I shared this week...

Some of you know that I have been studying (and blogging) about the importance of the Beat poets (i.e. Ginsberg, Kerouac et al.) in shaping a culture of justice and compassion in the United States after WWII. A decade before most churches and synagogues threw their support behind the movement for Black civil rights, the alienated intellectuals of the Beat generation (not their caricature - the beatniks - but the real deal) were searching for meaning amidst the jazz bebop artists of the day as well as the early pioneers of eco-justice, abstract expressionism, and peace. One commentator puts the challenge of that era like this:

Life was pretty uncertain after two world wars and two atomic bombs in too little time. By 1945, it could go either way and everybody knew it. Edward R. Murrow was on the wireless delivering poetic nightly accounts of the bombing of Europe. Centuries-old nations were tumbling by the month. Blackouts, rationing and depression were a way of life. The end was surely near. But leaning forward into this tension wind were some courageous artists transforming their media into gloriously honest expressions of the furthest and sometimes most beautiful reaches of our mind. Through a door opened by Freud and into a room lit by Jung, Reich, Stanislavsky, Breton and others, the expression of the subconscious self - the center, the soul, the truth - became the new goal of artists all over the world, some who happened to be drinking together and others who were drinking alone: Charlie Parker, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning...Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis... Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry... Marlon Brando, James Dean... and so many more. (Abstract Expression: From Bird to Brando by Brian Hassett)

A full generation earlier, Protestant theologian and pastor, Paul Tillich, discovered that after WWI it was the artists of his day who were best able to capture something of God's still speaking voice. Churches were caught up in their fears - or sentimentality - while the painters, sculptors, dancers, and musicians of the early 20th century were giving shape and voice to both the human condition and God's puzzling presence amidst the turmoil. Fifty years later, it was the Beat poets who rediscovered this insight within their own world while churches were caught up in a building frenzy that sacralized the spirit of consumerism in America. No wonder most congregations were stunned and terrified when American cities exploded and burned in the 60s: God was speaking to us through our boldest artists, but most of us were not listening. And so the guitars were electrified, the volume was pumped up, and everything grew more intense.

I underscore this during this week's Prayers and Programs because we are at another key turning point in America. The world is more inter-connected than ever before and what we do ripples across every continent to say nothing of the sky and oceans. So, we can either listen carefully and try to discern what God's still speaking voice might be saying to us amidst the Gulf Coast catastrophe, our two wars, and the on-going economic turmoil - OR - we can try to keep doing what we've always done only to discover that such a life is unsustainable. Repentance, you know, means changing our direction - turning away from what is sinful, destructive, and unhealthy - and moving towards the true image of God in which we were created. Poet Robert Bly put it like this:

Tell me why it is we don’t lift our voices these days
And cry over what is happening. Have you noticed
The plans are made for Iraq and the ice cap is melting?

I say to myself: “Go on, cry. What’s the sense
Of being an adult and having no voice? Cry out!
See who will answer! This is Call and Answer!”

We will have to call especially loud to reach
Our angels, who are hard of hearing; they are hiding
In the jugs of silence filled during our wars.

Have we agreed to so many wars that we can’t
Escape from silence? If we don’t lift our voices, we allow
Others (who are ourselves) to rob the house.

How come we’ve listened to the great criers—Neruda,
Akhmatova, Thoreau, Frederick Douglass—and now
We’re silent as sparrows in the little bushes?

Some masters say our life lasts only seven days.
Where are we in the week? Is it Thursday yet?
Hurry, cry now! Soon Sunday night will come.

One voice that offers a wise, sustainable and faith-based alternative to the current madness is Brian Mclaren who just "blogged" his reaction to President Obama's recent Oval Office speech concerning our addiction to oil, the BP disaster, etc. If you are looking for hope - or a light in the current darkness - you may want to read Mclaren's remarks at:
http://blog.sojo.net/2010/06/16/my-initial-response-to-president-obamas-speech/.

Here is a prayer litany for this week from our partners at the National Council of Churches:

A CONFESSION:
Creator God, author of life, source of all meaning, you made a universe of infinite complexity and beauty and entrusted us humans with the care of a tiny jewel called Earth. With the passing of time we came to believe we were owners, not fellow creature dwellers, of this bountiful planet and its extravagant web of life. We have used God’s creation without regard for the impact our rapacity had on the other creatures with whom we share our earthly home. We have acted with craven disregard for complex ecosystems we barely understand.

Our self-deception has led us to assume we have the capacity to manage environments we exploit to sustain lifestyles that defy the intrinsic interdependence of all life. Now we face the consequences of our idolatry. We thought we were gods; but our recklessness has brought us to our knees, to ask for your mercy and forgiveness for the chaos we have brought about. We pray for the oceans and all the creatures that dwell in it. We pray for the forests and the abundance of life they nurture. We pray for the very air we breathe, now laden with the toxic gases we produce. We pray for our children whose earthly home we have so imperiled. Loving God, have mercy on us, grant us forgiveness and the strength to make amends.

A TIME FOR QUIET REFLECTION

AN ASSURANCE OF FORGIVENESS There are no sins so great that the mercy of God cannot forgive. Go with God’s grace to make amends. Embrace lifestyles that will help restore balance and harmony to our Earthly home. Care for those whose environments have been destroyed by our actions and inactions. Amen.

PRAYERS OF PETITION

God, we come to you today with heavy and humbled hearts. We ask that your healing, comforting and strengthening presence be with all those affected by this unfolding tragedy:

For workers injured, missing, and presumed dead from the explosion on the rig and for their families and friends, Lord in your mercy, hear our prayers.

For people working tirelessly to contain the spill and protect fragile ecosystems and communities from its toxic impacts, Lord in your mercy, hear our prayers.

For individuals and communities whose livelihoods depend upon the Gulf of Mexico, Lord in your mercy, hear our prayers .

For your good Creation – from the smallest of sea creatures to the birds of the air - and all your magnificent handiwork at risk of exposure from our human errors, Lord in your mercy, hear our prayers.

For wisdom to understand our dependence on You and strength that we might walk humbly in the path of justice and right-relationships with all Your Creation, Lord in your mercy, hear our prayers.

(Tomorrow we leave for a weekend away at a family wedding... when I return I will be ready to move into Dylan and the Beats: Part Three.)

Strange days...

I remember vividly listening to the second album by The Doors - Strange Days - when it first came out in 1967. One of the guitar players in our band, Ross, was a MAJOR Doors-head so it was simply natural to descended into his basement - where the great sound system lay - and take in the new tunes. I continue to find a deep resonance in songs like "When the Music's Over," "People Are Strange" and the title tune.

Today was a totally strange day: I got lost heading off to Troy, New York to testify in a case involving child custody - then the case was postponed - and when it opened later in the day I was excused until tomorrow. So, tomorrow will be another court day... and then the celebration of the city's Third Thursday Street Fair.

So, rather than continue my posting re: Dylan and the Beats (part three is brewing) let me simply call your attention to this blog from Brian McLaren. I think he gets it exactly right concerning the renewal/reinvention/resurrection of American culture in the wake of the Gulf Oil Spill catastrophe. Here is his complete writing (if you want to know more about Brian, check him out at: www.brianmclaren.net/)

Initial response to President Obama's speech last night ...

I was glad the President emphasized the need to break our addiction to oil in his speech last night, and I thought he did a good job of demonstrating commitment to the people of the Gulf region. But if President Obama doesn't specify the way forward by offering a legislative path, who will? Congress? Politicians whose re-election campaigns are heavily subsidized by the fossil fuel industries, and who depend on voting blocs mis-educated by corporate media?

I hope that last night was simply the opening volley in what will be a focused, determined, well-planned, energetic agenda to make a new clean and sustainable economy the legacy not only of the President, but of the government, and not only of the government, but of our generation as a whole.

As I've thought about the current Gulf oil catastrophe and the longer-term issue of switching from a carbon to a solar economy, I think we need to make some bold commitments.

1. We have to envision a new and better way of life. We have to imagine that thirty years from now, virtually every roof of every home and building will be an energy producing station. We have to imagine every window and every wall being replaced or upgraded for improved efficiency. We have to imagine new generations of transport, heating, air-conditioning, and lighting technologies. This will mean we will retool our manufacturing and home-building industries so they contribute to this new green economy. Doing so will stimulate the economy in the right way - creating needed jobs and making a lot of good money (as opposed to dirty money) for wise entrepreneurs and investors. I believe that it will prove more profitable in the long run (in the best sense of the word profit - not measured in dollars alone) to be the planet's wise stewards than to continue on as its reckless, short-sighted, and greedy plunderers.

2. We need to divert creativity, entrepreneurial energy, and money away from building new oil rigs and coal mines and from fighting wars in oil-producing areas. We need to decrease expenditures on weapons - which are non-productive assets. And why invest in nuclear plants - which take decades to build and are ripe for their own kinds of disasters - when that money could produce better and longer-term results when invested in the research and development of solar, wind, tidal, and biofuel (algae- and grass-based, not corn-based) technology?

3. We need to direct creativity and money and education towards a new solar-based economy. It will take an innovative government-business partnership (the kind the Japanese and Koreans pioneered in jump-starting their auto industries) to turn this thing around. We have to imagine a different America - a new American economy. To get us there, again, we need to make an unprecedented investment in research and development and we need to open-source the most promising breakthroughs so as many companies as possible can work with them.

4. All this will surely require a change in tax strategy. To fund #2, how about a tax on the automated and derivative trading industries that contributed to the Wall Street collapse in 2008? How about a tax on too-big-to-fail corporations, shifting the advantage to small and medium-sized businesses that demonstrate ethical and socially responsible business practices? (See, for example, the kinds of businesses supported by Balle.) How about a rising tax on fossil fuels that steadily raises their cost to match the cost of renewable alternatives, so 100% of that tax revenue can be invested in research, development, and dissemination? This kind of tax reform would have a host of opponents, but it would increase the pressure on all of us to move in the direction we need to move in, and it would provide resources to the great endeavor in which we all have a vested interest: the conversion of a dirty economy to a clean one.

Speaking of taxes, perhaps its time to stop taxing income so much and start taxing pollution a lot more. Let's make it cheaper to earn "clean energy" money in a clean economy and more expensive to harm the environment in the dirty economy. Let's make it harder to privatize profits while externalizing costs and dangers by taxing the things we don't want instead of the things we do want.

5. This will also require a new kind of transparency - for government and for business. We can't afford to have only two choices - between an ideological left that holds business accountable but not government, and an ideological right that holds government accountable but not business. Where can the needed kind of transparency come from? I think it will require an enlivened democracy for starters, a democracy that takes more seriously not only its voting power, but also its spending power. That will require, among other things, a fair trade/ethical buying movement that is supported by a simple, clear, impartial rating system ... the kind of thing being recommended and explored in various ways. (See, for example, the ESRA and Goodguide.)

6. These kinds of changes require something deeper than a shift in policy. They require a deep shift in values and vision, in faith and hope, in commitment and priorities. That means the faith community in its many varied forms needs to "get saved" ... saved and sanctified from serving as obsequious chaplains to the old, polarized, paralyzed, incompetent politics of the old dirty economy. Our churches, synagogues, and mosques need to heed the altar call to become the vanguard in the prophetic and pastoral task of creating the new, clean and green economy needed by our children and grandchildren, not to mention every creature on our planet. Those of us who know something about the entrenchment and change-aversion in many of our religious communities know that this deep shift will take a miracle. But if politics is the art of the possible, isn't faith the art of the impossible?

If the current administration has become overwhelmed by the horrible hand of cards it was dealt, that would be understandable. Perhaps it's time for some courageous leaders from the faith community to move to the pulpit and say to all who are discouraged, "With faith, all things are possible." Perhaps it's time to tell political and economic leaders who are tempted by "realism" to start compromising on the needed vision even before it's been fully articulated, "Don't settle for less. Reach higher." Perhaps somebody needs to pull the President aside and encourage him with some good news to counteract all the bad news that's gushing in, and maybe even whisper in his ear every day or so, "Yes, we can!"

If political, economic, social, and faith community leaders start articulating a bold vision for a new economy, and start demonstrating determined leadership in achieving it, I think they'll find growing numbers of us are fired up and ready to go.

Saying good-bye is still hard for me...

Saying good-bye to those I love is still hard for me - and now it is time to say good-bye to one of my mates in music making. Eva - of strong voice, deep feelings and abiding faith - is leaving town a week from today. Her loved one has a GREAT new job offer in his field with a chance for growth and creativity. Our local economy is still tepid so... this is a no-brainer. And it is still hard.

Eva just came on board last year: she and Dianne blend musically in uncanny ways. What's more, Eva plays piano and has a KILLER instinct for country/Appalachian harmonies. So we've had a grand time making music together.

Last summer she just jumped into the fray and sang a close country harmony with Di during our "I'll Fly Away" sessions - and I knew she was a keeper. Even then there was always the chance that things would change after graduation - she just completed a medical technology degree - but we all hoped for at least one more year of internship or something. She has brought some sweet and beautiful music our way and enriched all of our lives with her presence, laughter, tears and faith.

But longevity was just not meant to be;I've experienced this over and over in ministry - some thing my friends in the military know well, too - that when your time is done, you have to move on often whether you agree with it or not. How does the old song put it: when the Lord gets ready... you gotta move! I've done it over 25 years of ministry and I've experienced it, too. But it never gets easier with those I love. (Soon I will write about our new recruit - never a replacement, ok? - a new recruit who brings a wealth of new gifts to the band. She, too, is a blessing but that reflection is for another day.)

This picture was taken about a week or so ago while I was thinking prayerfully about just this moment - would it come and what would I feel when Eva said she was leaving - and now it is here. So we'll skip band practice tomorrow night and share a meal and hoist a few pints to celebrate Eva's new opportunities. We'll shed some tears, too, because that's how these things work. Saying good-bye is still hard for me...

Dylan and the Beats: part two

As I noted in yesterday's posting - Dylan and the Beats: Part One - the exploration of the politics of ecstasy is a common denominator for both Allen Ginsberg and Bob Dylan. To be sure, Ginsberg celebrated the importance of Kerouac as the key to the maturation of young Dylan's vision - and there is a real 'on the road' legacy happening with him - but it is clearly Ginsberg who showed Dylan a way through the wilderness into his true potential as a poet. Kerouac had a groove - and the jazz poetry of "Mexico City Blues" is foundational - but without the passion, insight and bold imagery of "Howl," well...

Apparently the two artists met sometime in late 1963: Ginsberg once suggested that the two encountered one another during the Tom Paine awards ceremony of the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee - a wildass affair in which Dylan spoke of identifying with Lee Harvey Oswald in addition to ranting and spewing against the artistic straight-jacket he felt within the oppressive political correctness of the New York progressive world - but this is unlikely. Rather it was most likely at a party in the 8th Street Book Shop in Greenwich Village in December 1963. Dylan proposed that Ginsberg join him on tour - a fascinating idea that never came to pass - but marks the start of a lifelong friendship for both poets.

Dylan had explored the Beats during his stint at the University of Minnesota - reading "Howl" and other works in college - but there was no Beat influence on his first three albums:

+ The 1962 release of "Bob Dylan" was rooted in the blues/folk tradition of Woody Guthrie. Only two songs were originals - "Song to Woody" and "Talkin' New York" - and both were odes to Guthrie in style and content while the rest were reworkings of country and blues songs.

+ The 1963 album, "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan," showed the artist moving deeper into a contemporary take on Guthrie's topical/political material including songs like "Blowin' in the Wind," "Masters of War" and "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall." Ginsberg has said that upon returning from Europe someone played him this album and he was moved to tears by the beauty, depth and power of Dylan's lyric poetry.

+ And the 1964 debut of record number three, "The Times They Are a-Changin," shows no Beat influence either. In fact, this album builds on ethos of album number two - some have suggested in a sometimes heavy handed way - with songs like the title cut as well as "Only a Pawn in Their Game" and "With God on Our Side." It was a bleak and pessimistic collection of tunes - and when Dylan was finished he seriously considered getting out of music - but three inter-related events - and probably LOTS more - bring the spirit of the Beats back into Dylan's conscious creativity:

+ First, he meets Ginsberg in December 1963 and is reconnected to the Beat vision and the politics of ecstasy just before leaving on his "on the road" trip through America.

+ During this February/March 1964 road trip, Dylan returns to the poetry of Arthur Rimbaud - AND - discovers the joy and energy of the Beatles while in Colorado declaring, "did you hear that? That was fucking great!"

+ By April 1964 Dylan had started experimenting with LSD. During his folk music concert in Europe he meets Nico - later of the Velvet Underground fame - who travels with him throughout the tour. They take time off at the end of the tour during which time Dylan completes the songs for album number four in a small village in Greece.

What a difference some Ginsberg, a road trip, the Beatles, a wild woman and some acid made! Clearly something was going on here and almost NOBODY knew what it was, did we, Mr. Jones? Album number four, "Another Side of Bob Dylan" - a title he HATED but hadn't yet cultivated the inner strength or artistic clout to fight the "suits" of Columbia Records - was a radical departure from everything to date: the songs were introspective, the spirit was upbeat, wild and optimistic while sound has been described as Dylan's first rock and roll record albeit without a band!

+ The liner notes read like a 60s reincarnation of the Beat poets at their best and pointed to a style of song writing yet to come (watch out: Subterranean Homesick Blues is just around the corner!)

baby black's
been had
ain't bad
smokestacked
chicken shacked
dressed in black
silver monkey
on her back
mammy ma
juiced pa
janitored
between the law
brothers ten
rat-faced
gravestoned
ditch dug
firescaped an' substroked
choked
baby black
hits back
robs, pawns
lives by trade
sits an' waits on fire plug
digs the heat
eyes meet
picket line
across the street
head rings
of bed springs
freedom's holler
you ask of order
she'd hock
the world
for a dollar an' a quarter
baby black
dressed in black
gunny sack
about t' crack
been gone
carry on
i'm givin' you
myself t' pawn

+ Sometimes Dylan whoops like Little Richard - his early love - or maybe it's like the singing brakeman, Jimmie Rogers, on "All I Really Want to Do."

+ "My Back Pages" keeps telling us in the refrain: "oh but I was so much older then I'm younger than that now."

+ "And there are NO finger pointing songs on this record," as Dylan told Nat Hentoff of the Village Voice.

None - which made the cultural commissar of the American Left, Irwin Silber of Sing Out Magazine, write that Dylan had lost touch with the common people. Not only was he lost in introspection and dangerously adrift in a culture of consumption, but he was flirting with wasting the gift of his muse. Which was ideological and cultural bullshit, but carried a lot of weight with the folk music Stalinists of the day. No wonder Dylan had to hit the road and take acid! These people were stealing his soul!

This was the season, too, when "Mr. Tambourine Man," "Lay Down Your Weary Tune" and what eventually became "Outlaw Blues" were written... and they were only the tip of the iceberg that fused the spirit and sound of "Howl" with the sound of rock and roll and the new connections unlocked by LSD. The songs came out and were highlighted during the Newport Folk Festival in July 1964. Johnny Cash loved the new Dylan sound and started incorporating his tunes into his road show. The Byrds got wind of "Tambourine Man" and eventually made it a hit a year later. Even ultra-pop bands like The Turtles and Sonny and Cher were making hay with tunes from this album while the critics panned it.

They didn't know what to make of this "other side" of Bob Dylan - so he told them 11 months later when "Bringing It All Back Home" hit the world in May 1965. (Take a moment - or 7 - to dig Springsteen's great take on a song from this time in Dylan's development.)

Dylan and the Beats - part one

Sometime during the documentary, "The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg," writer Norman Mailer says: "Allen was all about the 'politics of ecstasy'... and this changed everything." (CORRECTION: I JUST GOT A NOTE FROM THE FILM'S DIRECTOR WHO REMINDED ME THAT IT WAS TIMOTHY LEARY - NOT NORMAN MAILER - WHO SPOKE OF THE POLITICS OF ECSTASY. PLEASE FORGIVE...)I believe this is what inspired Bob Dylan to return to his first love - rock and roll - after creating a monster career as a "protest folk singer" in the early 60s. James Miller, in his most excellent book, Flowers in the Dustbin: the Rise of Rock and Roll 1947-1977, writes:

It was on a meandering, month-long trip from New York to San Francisco in quest of America, by way of Harlan Country, Kentucky (to meet coal miners), Hendersonville, North Carolina (to speak with poet Carl Sandburg), New Orleans, Louisiana (to celebrate Mardi Gras), Dallas, Texas (to see where President Kennedy had been shot), and Denver, Colorado (to look up the folk singer Judy Collins), that Bob Dylan experienced - again - the rush of musical excitement he had first felt, years before, in high school listening to Little Richard. It was February, 1964. Dylan, twenty-two, was the most widely admired, young folk singer and songwriter in America, thanks to "Blowin' in the Wind" - a song of wistful longing and defiant hope, sung the previous summer at the civil rights March on Washington led by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. On the road, Dylan meant to consort with the ghost of Walt Whitman, the muse of Allen Ginsberg, the wayward spirit of Jack Kerouac... in search of America.

Instead, he discovered something else... blaring from his car radio: the Beatles! Dylan said, "We were driving through Colorado, we had the radio on and eight of the Top Ten songs were Beatles songs... they were doing things nobody was doing. Their chords were outrageous, just outrageous and their harmonies made it all valid. You could only do that with other musicians... and it started me thinking about other people and forming a rock and roll band." It was that Beat spirit and the politics of ecstasy at work: the joy, the hope, the possibilities of humanity and the bold sensuality of rock and roll as filtered through an insistent back beat that knocked Dylan on his ass and gave him a reason to play music again.

He had been ready to throw in the towel: the political correctness of the New York radical unions and leftists had rendered him physically exhausted, intellectually sterile and emotional vacant. Jumping through the hoops of one political cause after another was NOT what drew him to music back when it was fresh. Again, Miller is so right:

... like John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan had grown up with Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry and doo-wop rhythm and blues. While still in high school... he had formed a rock band... in the fall of 1959, when he went off to college at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, he discovered a bohemian student milieu similar to what Lennon hand found at the Liverpool College of Art and Keith Richards had found at Sicdup College of Art: a world of cheap wine, beat poetry and coffeehouse music - mainly jazz and folk.

So, Dylan took up what was happening - he listened and absorbed the Beats - and created identity after identity after identity: first it was an art student, then a hobo a la Woody Guthrie, then a protest singer rallying the idealism of America until it burned him out. He was experimenting - searching for integrity and ecstasy - not bull shitting. And when he heard the Beatles' "I Want to Hold Your Hand" the world was suddenly filled with possibilities again and he knew he had to give it a shot.

A uniquely American shot, if you please. He was VERY conscious of creating a new American poetry of rock and roll within the politics of ecstasy. Listen to his first attempt on Another Side of Bob Dylan - clearly his first rock and roll album (albeit without a band) - as he sings "All I Really Want to Do." He is a wild man. Same with "It Ain't Me, Babe." He took it to another level on Bringing it All Back Home where one side was Ginsberg meets LSD on an acoustic guitar. While side two was Walt Whitman and Arthur Rimbaud in a blender fueled by a bank of Fender amps and guitars. All of it, however, grounded in American folk and blues, yes?

Tomorrow I hope there will be time to go into more detail re: the electric connections between Dylan and the Beats because they are profound and under-represented. For now Mikal Gilmore's words will have to suffice in his brilliant essay about Ginsberg:

As much as Presley, as much as the Beatles, Bob Dylan or the Sex Pistols, Allen Ginsberg helped set loose something wonderful, risky and unyielding in the psyche and drams of our times. Perhaps only Martin Luther King Jr.'s brave and costly quest had a more genuinely liberating impact upon the realities of modern history, upon the freeing up of people and voices that much of established society wanted kept on the margins.

(NOTE: I just LOVE the sincere tenderness of Ginsberg talking about the first time he heard Dylan here; he is one of my saints - broken and wounded to be sure - but also so totally human and alive.)

Just as Dylan would later change what popular songs could say and do, Ginsberg changed what poetry might accomplish: how it could speak, what it would articulate and whom it would speak to and for. Ginsberg's words - his performances of his words and how he carried their meanings into his life and actions - gave poetry a political and cultural relevance it had not known since the 1840s' Transcendentalists (Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Thoreau among them) or since the shocking publication of Walt Whitman's 1855 classic, Leaves of Grass. Indeed, in Ginsberg's hands, poetry proved to be something a great deal more than a vocation or the province of refined wordsmiths and critics. Ginsberg transformed his gift for language into a mission - trying to save and heal the spirit of America - as he wrote... And in the process, he not only influenced subsequent writers like Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Lou Reed, Patti Smith and Jim Carroll, but his effect could also be found in Norman Mailer's Advertisements for Myself, in the writings and deeds of Czechoslovakian president Vaclav Havel, in the lives and exploits of the 1960s insurrectionists like Timothy Leary, Tom Hayden and Abbie Hoffman. And one can also hear Ginsberg's effect on later-generation artists such a s Sonic Youth, Beck, U2 and several of our finer hip-hop poets.

What's more - and Ginsberg himself was clear about this - Dylan was the artist who very intentionally picked up his challenge to save and heal the soul of America through the politics of ecstasy. And when he strapped on the electric guitar... well, that is a whole other story still to come!

More on my obsession with the Beats...

In Garrison Keillor's anthology, Good Poems, he writes: "Anybody who would rather read T.S. Eliot's Ash Wednesday instead of the love poems of Rexroth must be on the take. And yet Rexroth was never mentioned in the halls of the English Department when I was there, nor was Ferlinghetti, that great-hearted, God-gifted man. His City Lights bookstore has always been a mecca in San Francisco. His friend Allen Ginsberg, on the other hand, a good man, admirable in so many ways (especially for Kaddish), was something of a gasbag, not big on rewriting, and reading his Collected Poems is like hiking across North Dakota. I stopped just beyond Fargo."

I think that is only partially right: Ginsberg could be a gasbag and would have benefited greatly from an editor - and (always and... NEVER but) - and his vision of what was essential in poetry unlocked the mythic spirit of the sacred bard in Bob Dylan and rock and roll music has never been the same! For this Ginsberg and his Beat cohorts deserve more credit than they have achieved - and for the next few days I am going to explore the Dylan/Beat connection more fully.

Tonight, however, after a full and satisfying day, I am content with Rexroth even as I anticipate Dylan who wrote:

You are driving to the airport
Along the glittering highway
Through the warm night,
Humming to yourself.
The yellow rose buds that stood
On the commode faded and fell
Two days ago. Last night the
Petals dropped from the tulips
On the dresser. The signs of
Your presence are leaving the
House one by one. Being without
You was almost more than I
Could bear. Now the work is squared
Away. All the arrangements
Have been made. All the delays
Are past and I am thirty
Thousand feet in the air over
A dark lustrous sea, under
A low half moon that makes the wings
Gleam like a fish under water -
Rushing south four hundred miles
Down the California coast
To your curving lips and your
Ivory thighs.

Tomorrow, my lover and I will garden for most of the day, and then I will explore part one of my Beat/Dylan connection cuz I think the old man STILL gets it right.

A creative soul...

One of the genuinely exciting things about being in ministry with the folks in Pittsfield is their CREATIVITY! For example, a crew decided that for Pentecost we needed to have a bold visual image of God's love coming upon us. So Sue and Dianne gathered up all the ideas and turned it into this descending dove made from prayer requests...

It is so sweet that I don't want to take it down! I guess we'll keep it up for the rest of June. Last night at band practice, another creative group fashioned a truly beautiful collection of songs for this Sunday's celebration of Sunday School teachers. There are full participation songs - using bells and feet and animal sounds - along with a setting of Psalm 84 that uses an old Scottish folk song as the foundation. Additionally, there will be rounds, a reworking of Jewel's tune, "Hands" and some moving new hymns from around the world.

And then there is the crew who got so excited by Greg Mortenson's ministry a la Three Cups of Tea, that they are putting on a silent auction at the end of the month - June 28th to be precise - so that we might raise money to support education for girls in Afghanistan. And there is energy afloat to refashion our Christian Education ministry, too, so that we are able to connect better with children and young families. Later this summer we will start our Open and Affirming conversation. And our new website will be launched before the end of the month. Incredible...

These next three years will be fascinating: we've overcome many of the initial fears and worries about survival, dealt boldly with some of the financial problems (and have more work to do) and are now exploring ways of unleashing the creative spirit of the congregation. And all under the inspiration of Christ's invitation to welcome and embrace one another as sisters and brothers on a journey. I think this song from Pentecost - Message in a Bottle - gets it right...

Faith formation sunday...

NOTE: Here are my weekly Sunday notes for worship on June 13, 2010. This week is a celebration of our Sunday School teachers and their unique ministry of faith/spiritual formation. We will honor them - and also award a third grader a Bible - during worship. If you are in town, please know you are always welcome at the table of Christ's love with us.

Today is an ordinary but uniquely sacred day in the life of our con-gregation – Teacher Recognition Sunday – a time set aside to show honor and respect for those adults who have been called by God to pass on the faith to our children. Teaching Sunday School, you see, is not for every-one.

• Some people love children and the Lord but are simply unable to connect or communicate with children. Others have a burning passion to spread the faith, but are not comfortable with little ones. And still others have no patience or presence with children and need to be kept as far away from talking about the faith to our children as possible.

• Because, you see, Christian faith is always just one generation away from extinction, right? Some people don’t believe this – they think that as long as you were baptized once sometime in the dark, distant past – you are forever a disciple of Jesus.

• And in some vague and abstract way there is some truth to this but it is also true that unless our faith is lived – unless the Words of our tradition become FLESH – something is missing.

So we take the training of young disciples very seriously. This is faith formation work, beloved, essential for keeping the love of Jesus alive and well in our part of the world. Now there are three ingredients when it comes to authentic faith or spiritual formation – story telling, open discussion and questioning as well as action and reflection – and I want to talk about why each of these ingredients matters for our children as well as the mission of the church.

And I thought it might be fun to actually use this morning’s gospel reading from Luke – one of the great stories in our tradition – so that together we experience and celebrate the importance of faith formation. I would like everyone – children, teens and adults – to help me out with this for a few minutes because everybody here is important. Valuable. Unique and specially loved by God. And what you have to say might just wind up being what someone really needs to hear. So, let’s try this together.

Now the first part of faith formation is called story-telling – sharing both the words and mood of the Bible accurately with one another – and why is that important?

• First, it gives us a common language, yes? It is very tough to communicate values and compassion to one another without a common language. That’s why most of the people around the world still gather in the evening – often around a fire or in a warm and safe place – and pass on the stories of their people.

• It gives us a shared starting place for faith – common ground for building upon – and sadly American’s don’t do this very well any more. In a quest to overcome some of our bigotry and racism we are often more tuned-in to diversity than shared stories – what makes us different rather than what we hold in common.

• And while I support the celebration of diversity, without a common language rooted in stories… we have thrown the baby out with the bathwater.

The first reason we tell one another stories is to create and claim a common language. And the second is that stories are easier to remember than facts. Indeed, stories put facts into a context and help us share knowledge and collaborate creatively. Business guru, John Kotter, has said: “Stories stick in the brain in a holistic way, better than charts, numbers and concepts. As a result the probability that the message will have an impact on behavior goes up.”

So let’s tell one another the highlights of today’s story involving Jesus, a party, some expensive perfume and how some people react to the love on an uninvited guest.

One of the Pharisees asked Jesus over for a meal. He went to the Pharisee's house and sat down at the dinner table. Just then a woman of the village, the town harlot, having learned that Jesus was a guest in the home of the Pharisee, came with a bottle of very expensive perfume and stood at his feet, weeping, raining tears on his feet. Letting down her hair, she dried his feet, kissed them, and anointed them with the perfume. When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, "If this man was the prophet I thought he was, he would have known what kind of woman this is who is falling all over him."

Good stuff, in part one of this story, don’t you think? What are the highlights of this story for you so far…?

• Now there are two other parts to the story of Jesus: what he tells Simon – one of his disciples – and what the other guests say about the way Jesus treated the woman.

• Can you tell me what Jesus said to his friend Simon?

• And what about the reaction from the other guests at the party: how did they respond to Jesus and the woman?

Part one of faith formation is telling the story and building a common language: part of our ministry to children and young families is all about telling and retelling the stories of the Bible. Not only has our culture forgotten them, many in the wider church don’t know them all that well either.

Part two has to do with talking about the story – asking hard questions, too – so that we can figure out why this story matters. So, let’s cut to the chase:

• What do you think Simon thought of the woman in this morning’s story?

• What about Jesus: what did he think about her?

• What about the other guests: what did they think about the woman who poured expensive perfume on the feet of Jesus?

Now, let’s go deeper: what does this story tell us about what Jesus thinks of you and me? Any ideas? And going deeper still…

• Who do you find it difficult to accept or love?

• Are the people or groups of people that you don’t like?

• What is the challenge for us in this story?

It isn’t easy making the love and acceptance of Jesus real, is it? There’s nothing automatic about it: it takes practice and commitment and encouragement. That’s why we have Sunday School – and church, too.

Are you still with me? Part one is story-telling – Part two is talking and questioning the story – and Part three is putting the story into practice and seeing how it works. And there are a lot of ways to put this story into practice, here’s just one that comes from the creative work of Ann Scull: (find her @ http://seedstuff.blogspot.com/2007/06/proper-6-ordinary-11-pentecost-3-c-june.html)

Do you see the three tables at the front of the church? Each one has a bowl on it – and a sign – inviting you to do something as a result of today’s story.

• The first bowl is filled with salt water: if there is something you want to ask God for today, then go to that bowl, dip your finger into the salt water and make the sign of the cross on your cheek or forehead asking God in prayer for whatever it is you need.

• At the second bowl, there is lightly scented oil – maybe a little like the perfume the woman poured upon the feet of Jesus – so if there is something you would like to thank God for then go to that bowl and make a cross on the back of your hand.

• And at the third bowl there is a bunch of handy wipes – something to help you clean up in preparation for work – so if you sense that God is calling you to serve the church of the wider community in some way… get washed up and ready to go into action, ok?

Is that clear? Salt water to ask God for something in prayer – scented oil to return thanks to God – and handy wipes to get ready for action. As you come forward – and take your time and help one another, too – we’ll play a tune or two to keep things moving.

(As the people come forward, play “Hands” by Jewel)

The story for today ends with these words:

Jesus went forward according to plan, travelling to town after town, village after village, preaching God's kingdom, spreading the Message. And the Twelve were with him… including some women who had been healed of various evil afflictions and illnesses: Mary, the one called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out; Joanna, wife of Chuza, Herod's manager; and Susanna—along with many others who used their considerable gifts to provide for the company and keep the ministry growing.

Today we give thanks to God for those who keep the ministry growing by nourishing the faith of our children.

The rhetoric of the road trip...

NOTE: In part two of my reflection on why the Beats matter in the 21st century, it is necessary to offer a tip of the hat to Jack Kerouac. His rhetoric of "the road trip" not only impelled many of us to explore this wild and great land in our younger days, but also gave shape and form to a musical metaphor that evokes something of the longing within every soul, freedom and the quest/journey towards spiritual wisdom.

Before I understood what was going on, I LOVED "Born to Be Wild" by Steppenwolf. From the opening crack of the drums to the thundering guitar riff this song screamed: LET ME BE FREE! My high school band played it with abandon. I danced my ass off to it every chance I could get. And it still makes me smile whenever it pops up on rotation on the local radio. It is no wonder that Dennis Hopper (may he rest in peace) and Peter Fonda insisted that this song set up their rock and roll masterpiece: Easy Rider (which hasn't aged well but was THE rock and roll Western of the 60s.)

Jack Kerouac was the MAN who made "Born to Be Wild" possible: his 1957 book of wandering, adventure, spontaneous roadtrips and the joy of living - On the Road - has been called the "most beautifully executed, the clearest and most important utterance" of Kerouac's generation. (NY TIMES) It evokes what many of us have discovered during either a roadtrip or a pilgrimage: there is much to be discovered about the soul - good, bad and troubling - when you start a journey without a clear or final destination. What's more, if you are open to the wisdom of the road, you will find blessings you didn't know were waiting for you as well as answers to questions you hadn't yet formed.

Clearly Kerouac gave a jazz shape and form to the archetypal story of the hero's quest: Dean Moriarity and Sal Paradise are the bebop cousins of Frodo and Samwise in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy. What's more, Kerouac's rhetoric of the roadtrip paves the way for countless folk and rock and roll journeys into the core of life's meaning.

+ Sometimes these pilgrimages are joyful: the entire legacy of the Grateful Dead comes to mind along with songs like Cat Steven's "On the Road to Find Out," Canned Heat's "On the Road Again," "Route 66" in all its incarnations, the Allman Brothers' "Midnight Rider," America's "Ventura Highway," B52's "Love Shack," the Beatles' "Why Don't We Do It in the Road," Chuck Berry's "Back in the USA" and "You Can't Catch Me," Springsteen's "Rosalita" and "Stand On It," Johnny Cash's "I've Been Everywhere," Commander Cody's "Hot Rod Lincoln," Sheryl Crow's "All I Want to Do" and "Everyday Is a Winding Road," Taj Mahal's "Six Days on the Road," Kathy Mattea's "455 Rocket," James Taylor's "Country Road," "U2's "Where the Streets Have No Name," ZZ Top, "Jesus Left Chicago."

+ And sometimes the road is much harder: think Springsteen's "Thunder Road," "Drive All Night" or "Racing in the Street," Jackson Browne's "Runnin' on Empty" and "The Pretender," Harry Chapin's "Taxi," Dire Straight's "Telegraph Road," countless tunes by the Doors including "The End," Dylan's "Highway 61 Revisited," "Don't Think Twice It's Alright," and "Tangled Up In Blue," the Eagles' "Hotel California," Steve Earle's "Guitar Town" and "Transcendental Blues," Creedence, "Lodi," Green Day's "Boulevard of Broken Dreams," Roseanne Cash's take on "Movin' On," Hendrix's version of "All Along the Watchtower," Kristofferson's "Me and Bobby McGhee," Beatles' "Long and Winding Road," Lucinda William's "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road," or Bob Franke's "Hard Love" and For Real."

Without the Kerouac words and mythology of the road - often a barely paraphrased version of Neil Cassady's drug inspired monologues - contemporary rock and roll would be hard pressed to find a way to evoke the challenge and promise of contemporary living. Fortunately, the most creative rock artists have not remained bound by the often self-centered limits of Kerouac's ramblings. Joni Mitchell, Bob Franke, U2 and Bruce Springsteen along with Mary Chapin Carpenter, Lucinda Williams and Lou Reed have taken the image of the road and teased out new meanings and insights... and they aren't finished with it yet. (Dig this incredible remake of the Boss Man's "Open All Night" a la the Seeger Sessions where Springsteen mixes beat-style poetry with a whole lotta jazz. God do I love this song...)

Random shots in San Francisco...

During my recent sojourn to San Francisco, I had the chance to visit a variety of my favorite places in all of creation. The first was Jack Kerouac Avenue - a tiny little street connecting North Beach with Chinatown - that Lawrence Ferlinghetti had renamed to honor one of the Beat giants...

Along the street are quotes from some of the Beat poets as well as insights from some of the poets of China. On either side of Jack Kerouac Avenue you will find City Lights Books and Vesuvio. City Lights, of course, is known as both the publisher of Ginsberg's "Howl" as well as being the first American all paperback book store. It is a cultural landmark and a treasure to visit.

Constantly risking absurdity
and death
whenever he performs
above the heads
of his audience
the poet like an acrobat
climbs on rime
to a high wire of his own making
and balancing on eyebeams
above a sea of faces
paces his way
to the other side of the day
performing entrachats
and sleight-of-foot tricks
and other high theatrics
and all without mistaking
any thing
for what it may not be
For he's the super realist
who must perforce perceive
taut truth
before the taking of each stance or step
in his supposed advance
toward that still higher perch
where Beauty stands and waits
with gravity
to start her death-defying leap
And he
a little charleychaplin man
who may or may not catch
her fair eternal form
spreadeagled in the empty air
of existence
(Ferlinghetti)

Next door - and across Kerouac Avenue - is one of the Beat's favorite watering holes: Vesuvio. There are posters lining the walls of the great poets and writers of our era - from Blake and Yeats to Joyce, Woolf and a host of others. Vesuvio's is also one of the hangouts for Paul Kantner from the Jefferson Airplane (who still holds court from time to time.)The Airplane are still one of my favorite bands - sometimes too full of themselves (a flaw known to most of us, yes?) - but also adventurous, creative, beautiful and always lots of fun.

Another fascinating place just on the edge of Chinatown and North Beach is this work of art: flying and illuminated books. This area is saturated in the printed word and I think the city celebrates this heritage in a stunning way with this sculpture in neon.

Cool black night thru redwoods
cars parked outside in shade
behind the gate, stars dim above
the ravine, a fire burning by the side
porch and a few tired souls hunched over
in black leather jackets. In the huge
wooden house, a yellow chandelier
at 3 A.M. the blast of loudspeakers
hi-fi Rolling Stones Ray Charles Beatles
Jumping Joe Jackson and twenty youths
dancing to the vibration thru the floor,
a little weed in the bathroom, girls in scarlet
tights, one muscular smooth skinned man
sweating dancing for hours, beer cans
bent littering the yard, a hanged man
sculpture dangling from a high creek branch,
children sleeping softly in their bedroom bunks.
And 4 police cars parked outside the painted
gate, red lights revolving in the leaves.

(Ginsberg)

And last, but never least, is The Saloon, probably the oldest standing bar in San Francisco and home to blues/rock bands for generations. Whenever I am im town, I insist - which doesn't take too much encouragement - that my brother, sister-in-law and I head down to the Saloon to shake our booties. Seems to me I spent a WILD 50th birthday in this place and we shut it down a few times on this trip, too. Heard two exceptional new blues band this go 'round - one night there were 3 dueling guitar players - and the other a rock and soul quartet that was inspirational.

The Beats - going deeper - and why they matter...

NOTE: I am working on an extended posting about the importance of the Beat poets - particularly Allen Ginsberg - as an inspiration for a new art form in rock and roll music. Yesterday, I set out the overall design of my concerns; today I will attempt to create an artistic and historical context.

INTRODUCTION
As our awareness of the ecological disaster in the Gulf of Mexico matures, aided by photographs of endangered pelicans and plunging international stock markets, the words of Allen Ginsberg's poem, "Howl," cry out for a new hearing: "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness..."

There is madness and fear everywhere: America's addiction to oil and conspicuous consumption is driving two wars in the Middle East. This addiction not only blinds us to the destruction we create but has convinced us that our way of living is sustainable. We have lost a common moral language and no longer know how to speak of greed or the common good. Within this vacuum, the politics of fear have ascended as evidenced by the fury of the Tea Party movement and the acrimony of the recent Arizona immigration law.

Fine tuning the economy seems irrelevant. Public inquiries into the root causes of the BP catastrophe feel insulting. For this is an apocalyptic moment - a time of collapse and potential rebirth - that demands a moral reckoning: "a national discussion... about the fundamental moral issues at stake, and perhaps even a national reflection on our whole way of life based on oil dependence and addiction." (Jim Wallis, Sojourners, June 3, 2010)

In 1956, Ginsberg prophesied to the nation in "Howl." He unleashed both the oft unspoken moral judgement against greed that is necessary for social healing and a wave of artistic creativity that took shape and form in the maturation of rock and roll. Reclaiming the passion of the Hebrew prophets for social justice and compassion - and reclaiming a name for the idolatrous enemies of Israel - Ginsberg wailed:

What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?
Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks!
Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy judger of men!
Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgment! Moloch the vast stone of war!
Moloch the stunned governments!Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone!
Moloch whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch whose poverty is the specter of genius! Moloch whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen!

Here is something of the descent into brokenness and excess celebrated by Rimbaud; here, too, is Baudelaire's sensual and troubling honesty about our dark shadow.

It's Ennui! — his eye brimming with spontaneous tear
He dreams of the gallows in the haze of his hookah.
You know him, reader, this delicate monster,
Hypocritical reader, my likeness, my brother!

Here is the sacrament of erotic human love honored in Rexroth and Yeat's mystical encounter with all that is holy within the depths of our humanity:

I met the Bishop on the road
And much said he and I.
'Those breasts are flat and fallen now,
Those veins must soon be dry;
Live in a heavenly mansion,
Not in some foul sty.'

'Fair and foul are near of kin,
And fair needs foul,' I cried.
'My friends are gone, but that's a truth
Nor grave nor bed denied,
Learned in bodily lowliness
And in the heart's pride.

'A woman can be proud and stiff
When on love intent;
But Love has pitched his mansion in
The place of excrement;
For nothing can be sole or whole
That has not been rent.'

And here is Walt Whitman embracing William Carlos Williams as Langston Hughes looks on with words of challenge and encouragement:

Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be. Let it be the pioneer on the plain Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed-- Let it be that great strong land of love Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme That any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me.)

And within all of this, too, is Ginsberg's ode to bebop and the immediate, intuitive and improvisational spirit of true soul music. "Howl" is a written and oral celebration of the sounds of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonius Monk. It is an authentic jazz jeremiad about the totality of our humanity: sound and silence, shadow and light, debasement and enlightenment, fear and joy, politics and spirit, heaven and earth. Because, you see, Ginsberg loved - truly loved - God's creation and God's people. All of them - the wounded and the whole - the sinners and the saints - never just the winners but always the losers, too. Beautiful losers to borrow the words of another Hebrew prophet/poet Leonard Cohen, devoted to the blessings of real life.

Ginsberg was searching for a path of healing and hope amidst the darkness of America - a way beyond the madness that destroyed the best minds of his generation - a way of compassion that is still haunting. Like a Buddhist bluesman, an ancient Jewish prophet or an urban hipster on a quest for enlightenment, his lament continues to wail and moan:

(I watched those) who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade,
who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccessfully, gave up and were forced to open antique stores where they thought they were growing old and cried, who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse & the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors, or were run down by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality, who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually happened and walked away unknown and forgotten into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alleyways & firetrucks, not even one free beer...
the madman bum and angel beat in Time, unknown, yet putting down here what might be left to say in time come after death,
and rose reincarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the suffering of America’s naked mind for love into an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand years.

As I read the NY Times - and weep over the destruction, the lies and the fear our addiction has wrought in the Gulf Coast, in the Middle East and Asia, within our First Nation lands, in the hearts and bodies of women and men and GLBTQ and children and animals and water, soil and air - I give thanks to God for Allen Ginsberg. He was broken and vile, holy and human, just like us all. He set our language and imagination free in ways that still reverberate through the best of rock and roll.