Come on up to the house...

Back from a refreshing "wander" in Providence.  Wandering - with no plan except to discover the beauty and challenge of the moment - is food for my soul.  Spent a little time wandering through "Occupy Providence" and talking with one of the leaders who said, "Thanks, man, for wandering in and not being intimidated."  ("Damn," I thought, "these are my people!") Pictures to post of pumpkins and beautiful rivers, too.

I've started to work on the set list for Thanksgiving Eve. It is going to be a rockin' wildass sacramental event.  The theme - come on up to the house - says it all, too.

And as I was working on the set list I came across this poem by David Kirby that screams to be included in our  Festival of American Music and Poetry Thanksgiving Eve gig.  No insiders our outsiders here - no winners or loser either - just us in all our blessed, broken glory. It is called, "What Is Your Favorite Language?"

What's your favorite foreign language?" asks the cabbie,
and when I ask why, he says he knows "butterfly"
in 241 of them, so I say, "Okay, French!" and he says,

"Papillon!" and I say, "German!" and he says, "Schmetterling!"
and I'm running out of languages I know, so I say,
"Uh, Wolof!" because I'm reading a short story

where a woman speaks Wolof, and he says something in Wolof,
and the professor-y part of me wants
to say, You shouldn't call them foreign languages, you know,

because that means there's only one real language, but
I'd be saying that to him in our common
tongue, so it really wouldn't make sense unless I were chiding

him in, say, Wolof, a language in which he knows only
one word and I none. What's the best country?
Heaven, probably: as everyone knows, the cooks are French,

the mechanics German, the police English, lovers Italian,
and it's all organized by the Swiss, whereas
in Hell, the cooks are English, mechanics French, police

Germans, lovers Swiss, and everything is organized by the Italians,
which leaves out the Spanish,
though perhaps not, for the ancients say a man should speak

French to his friends because of its vivacity,
Italian to his mistress for its sweetness,
German to his enemies because it is forceful, and Spanish

to his God, for it is the most majestic of languages.
Hola, Señor! Okay if I put my suitcase
over here? Thank you for having me! Yes, I would

like to hear what they're saying in the other place, like "Dictators
over here" and "Corporate polluters
in this area" and "Aw, come on—another boring poet?"

Getting into the autumn groove...

It is autumn in my soul when 1) I start buying pumpkins and squash (I love those bad boys!) and 2) I start getting the annual Thanksgiving Eve gig together (another all time favorite.)  Well, I am truly getting into the autumn groove. 

Check out this incredible picture from the works of Ben Garver of the Berkshire Eagle that just showed up on Facebook. And I now have 8 musicians confirmed - plus poets and church folk interested in the ad hoc gospel choir - for our Thanksgiving Eve benefit to raise funds for emergency heating in the Berkshires!  And they are HOT in every way.

+ Andy Kelly - guitar, banjo and bass - is the consummate musician who can groove with jazz, rock, folk or country. I am blessed to count him as a friend and so buzzed to count him among my musical mates.

+ Between the Banks - my church band - keeps maturing and adding talented musicians and vocalists.  Dianne De Mott brings a strong indie-folk aesthetic to the mix and will do a tune this year by her favorite band: The Eels. Sue Noyes has a heavenly voice and is discovering her lower and more sultry registers - a true delight.  Eva Perri - once considered herself not a pop singer - but now OWNS her Appalachian sounds and will share a Mary Chapin Carpenter song.  Brian Staubach is a rockin' guitarist who is not only a treasure as a man, but writes some of the most creative songs, too.  Dave McDermott is a smokin' guitar man with a John Fogerty voice that I adore.  And Jon Grenoble brings his own sweet CSNY thing to the band and will lead us on "For What Its Worth."

+ Carlton Maaia is just a killer:  his piano work - gospel, jazz and classical - is pure and creative. Who knows what he will add as a solo piece, but his honey, Rebecca Leigh, will join the mix this year with "O Taste and See" and something gospely, too.

+ Bert Marshall, local Church World Service coordinator, is a well-respected and fun folk musician with a couple of beautiful CDs under his belt.  He has joined us for the pat few years and will bring some great guitar driven original tunes into the mix as well as his incredible voice.

+ Hal Lefferts, my old guitar mate from high school, is a sweet, salty angel who last year knocked us out with a John Hiatt song.  For those in the know, Hall also does a daily radio show on the smallest NPR station in the nation @ Robin Hood Radio starting at 2 pm.  I can't wait...

+ Linda Worster has just finished her most recent original CD and can now be a part of the fun.  She's been with us for a few years, too and brings an incredible sensitivity and playfulness to her compositions.  I am always moved to tears with the beauty of her work.

+ Graham Sturz - local performer of depth and integrity - returns this year, too with his soulful groove.  He totally blew us away last year and I'm very excited about what he will pull out of his bag of tricks this year.

So far there's a little Tom Waits, Grateful Dead, Buffalo Springfield and Edwin Hawkins in the mix - a little Dylan and Springsteen, too.  If you are around on Wednesday, November 23rd at 7:30 pm... come on up to the house!

Happy birthday dear brother...

Today is my brother Philip's birthday:  he is 56 years old.  I love him dearly - can you say DEEPER than a brother? I've been thinking about him all day today and dreamt about him last night, too. He is one of the people I love as much as I love life.

My earliest memory of Philip is when he was very young - perhaps three years old - and he had pneumonia.  I was 6 - and every afternoon I would sit with him and wipe his forehead. I was so afraid he was going to die.  A year later, when he was healthy and full of energy, I remember that he would run inside - while we were outside playing - wash his hands to get rid of the germs and then run back out to resume the game. I thought he was insane.

There were times as a child when I wanted to kill him.  Once he broke my favorite toy rifle - I was a big cowboy fan in my youth and still prefer cowboy boots to any other type of shoes - and when I told him how angry it made me he just shrugged and gave me his sweet smile. He got a lot of grace with that smile.  So I punched him - punched him right in his sweet smile - and he was shocked.  Me, too.  Another time, many years later when he was in 8th grade, he snuck out of the house wearing one of my favorite "hippie" shirts.  I'd forbidden him to wear it but... so what, right?  So when I saw him slinking across the front lawn (I just happened to step out onto the front porch before school) I shouted at him - and when he started to run away I chased him and chased him until I finally tackled him on our enormous front lawn and stripped him of the shirt shouting, "Can't I ever trust you, man?"  Ah, the joys of brotherhood, yes? (Let's just say the line between physical violence and love was blurred in the good ole days, ok?)

He used to accompany me and my high school rock band sometimes - and I loved his company.  And later, when I was in college, I used to hang with him and came to see him as very creative and loving.  We would go to wildass movies together - midnight shows - and just be totally wild and crazy tooling around listening to the Stones at 3 in the morning. I came to love him more and more and more.

For a time we grew apart:  I was an earnest young radical and he was a stoner.  He once turned my mother on to pot (and she swore him to NEVER tell my father!)  Then we grew close again and lived and worked together in Cesar Chavez's United Farm Workers union in St. Louis - and shared a common vision.  And when I moved to San Francisco and started a young family, he came to visit often.  Eventually he went to New College - a place I thought was a modern Sodom and Gomorrah - and we drifted apart again.  I went to his first wedding but thought it was so decadent that I barely got out with my life.

Then his marriage fell apart - and he wound up on my doorstep in Cleveland. He went through his own shit and we grew closer and closer.  He was one of the few people who wasn't judgmental when my own marriage gave up the ghost.  He embraced me and wanted to know how I was really doing. He listened - he is a an excellent listener.  And since that time we've grown closer and closer. 

When our mom died about seven years ago, he told a story at her funeral that stunned me. He had never told anyone else and it blew me away.  Sometimes, when he was about 8 he would wake up and not be able to get back to sleep.  So he and my mom would make french fries together and sit up and watch late night TV.  Then, he would give her a kiss and go back to a deep sleep.  His relationship with my mom was very different from mine and when he told this story it not only opened my eyes to his deep affection for this very wounded woman, but also gave me some insight into her love, too.

We've sung rock and roll together in our St. Louis apartment at all hours of the morning -  danced to "Fiddler on the Roof" - gotten stone cold drunk at the Saloon in North Beach (and I mean Dylan Thomas drunk) - been on the picket line in the bitter cold - celebrated his marriage to Julie on a sweet August day in San Francisco - wept over our sins and mistakes - taken him to a Mothers of Invention concert in Central Park - learned about poetry from him (he is a genius) - and tried to understand how to be brothers in a wonderful albeit totally fucked up family together.   He has changed my life and opened my heart and forgiven my failings time and again. 

And I have been blessed by being a part of his life so I pray joy and happiness to him on this birthday.  Who knows how many more we will be able to share, right?  When I turned 40 - and began a process that ended my marriage - he called me  and asked, "What did you do today, oh my brother?"  And I smiled and said, "Bought a CD of 'Disraeli Gears,' man - and listened to Wilson Picket." He laughed so hard we both cried.

I love you, man.  Happy birthday.

Passionate, prayerful and intelligent...

NOTE:  Here are my worship notes for Sunday, October 23, 2011: The 30th Sunday of Ordinary Time.  If you are in town, please know we would be blessed if you joined us at 10:30 am.

The Christian Century magazine – one of the oldest and most insightful journals on the American religious scene – describes itself as a resource that is about “thinking critically and living faithfully” in our times. Now let’s consider that for just a moment, ok? Because it sounds to me a lot like what Jesus tells his opponents after they challenge his commitment to ministry.

Peterson’s lively reworking of the gospel text puts it like this: When the religion scholars and lawyers had been silence by Jesus, they gathered one more time for an assault. (Did you catch that: for an assault?!?) Posing a question they hoped would show him up, one asked: "Teacher, which command in God's Law is the most important?" And Jesus replied, "'Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence.” (Matthew 22: 34-40)

This is serious business today: We’re talking about an assault on Jesus – not a simple difference of theological opinion or a preferred translation of the Bible or even our denominational inclinations – but an assault. And Jesus teaches those of us who seek to follow him that the way we respond to this assault is with all “our passion, prayer and intelligence.” To paraphrase the motto of the Christian Century, we respond to the assault on Jesus by learning to think critically and live faithfully.

But what does that mean – to think critically and live faithfully – to love the Lord our God with all our passion, prayer and intelligence at this moment in time? Well, St. Paul gives us one clue in Romans 12: I appeal to you, sisters and brothers, by the very mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to the Lord, for this is your spiritual worship. Do NOT be conformed to this world, but rather be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern the will of God and do what is good and acceptable and mature.

In The Message Romans 12 sounds like this: Here's what I want you to do: 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. For unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

• Did you get that? Critical thinking – using our minds creatively from the perspective of Christ to consider the joys and sorrows of real life – is one of the ways we challenge the assault on Jesus. 

• I am smitten by the way Brian McLaren puts it in his tenderly provocative book, Generous Orthodoxy: to be a Christian in a generously orthodox way is not to claim to have the truth captured, stuffed, and mounted on the wall. It is rather to be in a loving (ethical) community of people who are seeking the truth (doctrine) on the road of mission..." (293).

Now let me give you an example of this plucked from the headlines of the current social, political, ethical, cultural, economic and spiritual morass that we seem to be trapped within. There was an article buzzing around Facebook last week entitled, “10 Things Christians Should Know and Do About the Occupy Wall Street Movement” written by Roger Wolsey. I think he cuts to the case from within the heart of Jesus so I’m going to share an extended quote with you about this burgeoning protest. “I get it,” Wolsey writes, “Corporate greed needs to be challenged and corporations need to be taxed and regulated.”

The gap between the haves and the have-nots in the U.S. needs to be reduced. The Bush tax cuts for the wealthy need to be repealed. Student loans need to be forgiven. Banks that were bailed out by the taxpayers shouldn’t keep on screwing their customers over. And the USSC ruling that decreed that corporations are persons and can thus buy off our politicians and get them to do their bidding needs to be rescinded.

I agree with all of those aims of the “Occupy Wall Street” protesters. But even if all of those sensible demands somehow come to pass (including the many other ones that I didn’t mention), in the big picture it may not be all that meaningful. Much ado about nothing. You see, if all of those reforms were to happen, it would effectively put things back to the way things were 15-20 years ago. Though it would mean resuming our upwardly mobile middle class and reducing the gap between the wealthy and the poor, it would simply allow us to blindly press on with pursuing “the American Dream” where each generation does better than the one before it. And it would allow us to obliviously maintain the unjust global status quo where 5% of the world’s population (the U.S.) consumes nearly 1/3 of the world’s natural resources and disproportionally spews out more trash and pollution than the other nations do.

It would mean returning to a situation where the U.S. gives only a paltry 1/10th of 1% of our GDP to humanitarian aid to other countries. We could cut hunger in Africa in half in 15 years if we were to tax every American 1 penny per day. But we don’t and apparently aren’t about to. No one is protesting or occupying on behalf of the many millions of people in the world who are actually being screwed over the most. To the extent that the Occupy movement is nationalist, myopic, and insular, it’s merely rearranging the deck chairs on an economically segregated and unsustainable Titanic.
(check out the pix @ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/17/occupy-wall-street-faces_n_1015900.html)

To think critically – to love the Lord our God with all our passion, prayer and intelligence – is to engage our faith so that it challenges the assault on Jesus. “Do not be conformed to the ways – and habits and cultural blind spots – of this world,” taught St. Paul, “But rather, by the renewal of your mind, be transformed so that in your everyday, ordinary, walking around lives you embody the alternatives made flesh in Jesus Christ.

Now it is not coincidental that our tradition asks us to think critically before living faithfully, right? If we’re going to be passionate and prayerful about challenging the assault on Jesus, then we have do so in an intelligent, wise and humble manner. That’s the second insight from St. Paul for today. In advising the young Christians of Thessalonica, Paul could have said, “Look, baby, I’ve been through it all – not only have I been struck down and blinded by Jesus – but I’ve been picked up and healed by the Master, too. So, put a sock in it and listen up.”\

• And there are Christian leaders all over the world who teach that most of us need to shut up and follow – and literally just pay our dues, too – without having a voice or say in the ministry.

• One of my dear friends back in Tucson – a pioneer in HIV/AIDS ministry from the days when it was called “gay cancer” – said to me: As an out lesbian back in the late 70s my church told me that I was welcome to worship, sing in the choir, minister to the most wounded on the streets and make a financial contribution to keep the church solvent but… never, ever to even dream of having my voice or vote counted in the leadership.

And sadly, this is but one of countless examples of how the church turns the love and passion of Jesus on its head in arrogance. So Paul is explicit with all of us who have been given the privilege and responsibility of leadership when he says: We never threw our weight around or tried to come across as important, with you or anyone else. We weren't aloof with you. We took you just as you were. We were never patronizing, never condescending, but we cared for you the way a mother cares for her children. We loved you dearly. Not content to just pass on the Message, we wanted to give you our hearts. And we did.

To live faithfully in this – or any other – era demands that we think critically before making our words flesh, yes? Last week, during church council, we talked about this as we discussed the up-coming vote on the proposed and affirmed ONA statement. And we wondered together about next steps…

• Now I tend to be a leader who wants to tease out the nuances of the Spirit before charting a course. I try to listen and wait before leaping into action. So I suggested that if the congregation should be led by the Holy Spirit to officially accept this new commitment, perhaps we should wait for a while before creating an imple-mentation plan.

• Well, that opened up a serious and rich conversation within the council. Because they didn’t like the idea of waiting – they sensed the Holy Spirit was calling us to do something bold right out of the gate – but at first it wasn’t clear what that might look like.

So we talked and challenged one another, we questioned and listened carefully… and then a plan began to take shape and form: If we are led to move forward – and I pray that we are – we will start inviting guests from around the region to join with us in worship. We want this commitment to be at the core of our identity so Sunday morning is crucial. So we will ask our guests to bring us a message to us of how we might best live into our Open and Affirming commitment based upon their experience.


• How, for example, might we with join others in breaking down the barriers of race hatred in the Berkshires?

• What are the unmet needs of LGBT families in our area?

• How can we – and other faith communities – do more than offer band aids to our most vulnerable neighbors in need?

Do you hear what I’m saying? This approach has to do with humbly taking seriously the call to think critically before living faithfully, and then charting a course of action that doesn’t compound the assault on Jesus. It is both/and – thought as well as action – passion, prayer and intelligence.

That is how I understand we are called by God to challenge the assault on Jesus. Not shooting off our mouths in anger or ignorance – not arrogantly demanding that somebody hurry up and DO something – and not rushing to judgment because of our opinions or ideologies. We are to be a passionate, prayerful and intelligent part of Christ’s body.

And that, beloved, means that our lives must bear the fruit of faith – they must come to resemble more and more the heart, soul and mind of Jesus – rather than the status quo. The status quo drags us down to the lowest common denominator – it is not about the standards of God’s kingdom – but the dumbing down of all that is good, true and beautiful.

• So “do not be conformed…” admonishes the old saint. Rather, let the Holy Spirit go to work within you so that in God’s own time you start to bear the fruit of faith. 

• And do you recall how Paul came to describe that fruit? Not longevity of membership; not privilege of race, class or gender; and it has nothing to do with educational or economic status. No, in Galatians 5:22 Paul wrote that the fruit of God’s Holy Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

So here’s a test – and a challenge – and an opportunity: have you let the love of Jesus change you from the inside out? Is there any evidence in your history that your life looks more like Christ’s today than when you first started to worship? Has your faith given birth to the fruit of the Spirit?

One of the reasons why so many people think the contemporary church is bankrupt – and turn away in disgust and anger – is because they see a bunch of people who are just as cranky, selfish and mean-spirited as the culture all around them, right? They see us and wonder where is the love of Jesus – where is the evidence of the Spirit – why does this matter?

Now to be fair, when people outside the church say that to me – when they tell me that the church is full of hypocrites – I reply, “No, no, no, you are so wrong – we’re not FULL of hypocrites - there’s always room for more so come and join us!” But I also recognize that they have a point: like St. Theresa of Avila once said, “Sometimes we are the only hands of Christ that some people will see.”

So take a look at your hands right now:

• Are they open to welcome and embrace?
• Are they balled up into a fist to wound?
• Are they indifferent and irrelevant and bored?
• Or are they folded across your chest in fear or judgment? 

Ask yourself – test yourself – and look at yourself – because in the assault on Christ yours may be the only hands some will ever see…

More thoughts on occupy wall street...

Earlier today a post came across Facebook that I found interesting.  It's called, "10 Things Christians Should Know and Do About Occupy Wall Street" by Roger Wolsey.  (Check it out @ http://www.patheos.com/community/mainlineportal/2011/10/14/10-things-christians-should-know-do-about-the-“occupy”-protests/) 

One point was particularly insightful...

Critique (the Occupy on Wall Street) Movement...
Here’s an example. I get it. Corporate greed needs to be challenged and corporations need to be taxed and regulated. The gap between the haves and the have-nots in the U.S. needs to be reduced. The Bush tax cuts for the wealthy need to be repealed. Student loans need to be forgiven. Banks that were bailed out by the taxpayers shouldn’t keep on screwing their customers over. And the USSC ruling that decreed that corporations are persons and can thus buy off our politicians and get them to do their bidding needs to be rescinded.

I agree with all of those aims of the “Occupy Wall Street” protesters. But even if all of those sensible demands somehow come to pass (including the many other ones that I didn’t mention), in the big picture it may not be all that meaningful. Much ado about nothing.

You see, if all of those reforms were to happen, it would effectively put things back to the way things were 15-20 years ago. Though it would mean resuming our upwardly mobile middle class and reducing the gap between the wealthy and the poor, it would simply allow us to blindly press on with pursuing “the American Dream” where each generation does better than the one before it. And it would allow us to obliviously maintain the unjust global status quo where 5% of the world’s population (the U.S.) consumes nearly 1/3 of the world’s natural resources and disproportionally spews out more trash and pollution than the other nations do.

It would mean returning to a situation where the U.S. gives only a paltry 1/10^th of 1% of our GDP to humanitarian aid to other countries. We could cut hunger in Africa in half in 15 years if we were to tax every American 1 penny per day. But we don’t and apparently aren’t about to. No one is protesting or occupying on behalf of the many millions of people in the world who are actually being screwed over the most. To the extent that the Occupy movement is nationalist, myopic, and insular, it’s merely rearranging the deck chairs on an economically segregated and unsustainable Titanic!

There's something happening here - but what it is ain't exactly clear.  It seems to me that more than at any other time since the 60s, Americans are beginning to realize that not only is our current culture bankrupt, but that the values that have sustained it are wounded, too.  A deep sense of betrayal - and hope - are bubbling up from below that offers challenges the culture of greed that has become the land of the brave and home of the free.  But the Occupy Wall Street critique is incomplete -  it needs depth and gravitas - something that those in the progressive and creative Christian realm might offer so that we seize the moment.

In the GDR before the collapse of the Berlin Wall, progressive people of faith kept in deep communication with their counterparts throughout the world - offering critique and support to their secular friends within Germany.  And when the time was ripe, a nonviolent and rich movement for social change exploded throughout the Eastern Block.  What looked spontaneous, however, had been nurtured by Christian people of faith for decades.  Same, too, when Rosa Parks decided that her feet hurt too much to move to the back of the bus. Progressive people of faith had been praying, planning and organizing to move into action.

I look forward to being in dialogue and solidarity with the creative and brave young people who kicked Occupy Wall Street into action.  Dr. King put it best:  When evil men plot, good men must plan. When evil men burn and bomb, good men must build and bind. When evil men shout ugly words of hatred, good men must commit themselves to the glories of love.

It seems to me there is a clear place for progressive people of faith who sense they can es and advisers to this young movement.  Just like Oui3 took the old Buffalo Springfield song and made it new, so too this moment for the church?

a guest from Framingham...

Today, Jim Antal, the Conference Minister of the Massachusetts Conference of the United Church of Christ, was our guest preacher - and he was a blessing.  Not only was he gracious and encouraging about our renewal work, but he brought an important eco-justice message, too. His core insight:  people of faith have been a catalyst in the past to empower people and cultures to shift from an oppressive status quo to a more healthy way of living: think civil rights, abolitionists as well as peace and justice advocates.  Now the time has come to expand Christ's question,"Who is my neighbor" to include creation as well as future generations.  In fact, Jim preached, people of faith are essential in expanding the Golden Rule from the obvious to 2.0!

It was a vibrant morning:  Carlton enlisted some of our guitarists to join him for the opening selection - a jazz improvisation on a Chinese hymn - and I recruited some of our rockers to sing in the choir, too so that we had 5 male voices along with 10 women!  And the band, Between the Banks, preached the gospel of grace in our version of Point of Grace's "This Is Your Land."  Powerful traditional hymns on the organ, piano jazz with guitars and sweet, close vocal harmonies.  And families are starting to return to worship after a long summer away.

And just to push it over the top, we welcomed our new Christian Education director this morning by having the children surround her in a circle as I led them in a prayer of blessing and welcome.  As someone said upon leaving worship today:  "I love this church. There is a place for everyone and each person's gifts are honored and respected without anybody being guilt-tripped or pressured."   OMG - I think I am ready to give up the Ghost - what a sweet testimonial.

I am grateful that our guest from Framingham brought such an important word of challenge and hope to us - and I give thanks to God that the Spirit was blowing through the house.

Keep on rockin' in the free world...

When I first came to the Berkshires - after being a part of a sometimes 11 person rock and soul band at our church in Tucson - I was keenly aware of the more mellow and "wooden music" groove of our new home.  And so we started small and quiet - some accoustic guitar and folky duets - adding a few female vocalists to the mix, too. It was clearly a James Taylor kind of thing instead of Lyle Lovett's Large Band.

Tonight, however, we will be playing with 8 of the 9 people in our newly expanded band. (Andy has another gig.) So while our sound is still mostly tender, we've brought electric guitars and bass - and sometimes drums - into the heart of our sound so that we can do BOTH gentle AND edgy.  The event, a rally in support of Church World Service's CROP to End World Hunger will bring us into concert with two other bands (mostly young people.)  It will be like the reunion of Crosby, Still, Nash and Young or the Buffalo Springfield at a Wilco concert (with our band of middle-aged musians being the old-times)  It will be tons of fun and we will all be grateful for the chance to hang with some younger musicians in a church setting.  What's more, we get to groove with a band that includes people from 5 decades (that just hit me:  late 20s through early 60s!)

And while their repetoire will be mostly praise and worship tunes - and we'll share songs like  Collective Soul's "Shine," along with Bobby McFerrin's feminist 23rd Psalm - and a jazzy/blues rendition of brother Tom Waits' "Come on Up to the House" - it will also be a love fest and a blessing to be a part of this crazy mix!  Yet one more reason I love being part of the church.

NOTE:  We had a great time tonight: we were the liturgical "garage band" of the gathering - with the necessary wildass attitude and verve - while the kids were sweet and very talented. We had a ball.  Thanks be to God!

Soul sickness and anger redux...

For a long time I was confused about anger:  sometimes I was afraid of it, sometimes (as a man) I found that my fears came out looking and sounding like anger, sometimes anger felt destructive and sometimes it just felt right and true and just.  As I noted earlier this week, I have come to affirm what M. Craig Barnes wrote about anger and soul-sickness: "The primary symptom of a soul that has become sick is that it becomes blind to the poetry of life."  This blindness is often caused by an obsession with anger - it intoxicates us - while training us to become victims.  And "victimization is a waste of our suffering."

Once we take on the identity of victims, we are allowing nothing redemptive to occur, and since we have idolized anger, how can we be open to such divine gifts as healing, forgiveness or the gravitas that can emerge through adversity?

Clearly, there ARE victims, yes?  It would be stupid and cruel to argue otherwise; "but no one," concludes Barnes, "has to make that the defining mark of their identity."  As one of my favorite real-world monastics, Joan Chittister, writes:  "If we are really seeking God, we have to start in the very core of our hearts and motives and expectations. We can't blame the schedule or the finances or the work or the people in our lives for blocking our progress. We have to learn to seek from within ourselves. We have to stop waiting for the world around us to be perfect in order to be happy." (Wisdom Distilled from the Daily, p. 57)

I sometimes find myself arguing this point with colleagues who seem out of balance to me
around our call to social justice.  Their anger about Wall Street greed or famine in the Horn of Africa usually feels oppressive and controlling to me - almost a theologically acceptable form of bullying - and I run as fast in the opposite direction as possible.  Not because I disagree with the issues - I don't - and not because I'm afraid of a fight - I'm not.  It just seems, as they sometimes say in AA, "that if your only tool is a hammer, soon everyone starts to look like a nail."  And being bullied - or guilt-tripped - or shamed or pounded into a response is not of the Lord.

That expression of anger doesn't feel holy to me:  it feels like a public temper tantrum of a sick soul in need of refreshment, rest and healing.  Don't get me wrong, I know about rants and all the rest - they have their place.  But not at the expense of wounding others in order to feel momentarily relevant or powerful.  No, better learn from the example of St. Paul who after being touched - and healed - by the Spirit of Jesus spent 17 years in quiet apprenticeship in the desert.  We don't know for certain what he learned, just that when he went public he was speaking about a love that is patient, relentless and transformative.  He wasn't interested in stoning anyone anymore - just inviting them to the open banquet of the Lord.

If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love.

Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn't want what it doesn't have.
Love doesn't strut,
Doesn't have a swelled head,
Doesn't force itself on others,
Isn't always "me first,"
Doesn't fly off the handle,
Doesn't keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn't revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.

Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.

At the same time, there IS an expression of righteous anger and I think it  looks something like this: brilliant, clear, inviting and challenging all at the same time.

No shame - no bullying - no passive/aggressive bullshit either just a call to action born of compassion.  Joan Chittister amplifies this when she explores understanding - and then accepting - the will of God in our complex lives:

When circumstances persist even though I bend every effort to eliminate them, then clearly those are the will of God for me. There is something in them that I must learn to deal with. There is something about them that is essential to my growth. There are, at least, other ways and other answers and other plans than mine that obviously bear recognition if I am to grow beyond myself and come to appreciate the beauty in others... (For) the fact is I do not have unlimited freedom (and I would add wisdom). Obedience to God's will sets limits.

This is what Barnes meant when he wrote about missing the poetry of our lives: when our wounded and sick souls are so angry that we lock out redemption, healing and the chance to grow deeper and more humble it is time for some serious inner work.  Silence rather than words- spoken out loud or shared electronically - solitude instead of sharing - counsel and listening instead of temper tantrums.

St. Lou Reed once sang what it feels like to be assaulted by someone who refused to let the Spirit of Jesus bring rest and healing... it continues to be a prayer for me in the most upside down way.

My other favorite real world monastic, Richard Rohr, brings it home for me in a recent email about the Cross:

Jesus receives our hatred and does not return it.  He suffers and does not make the other suffer.  He does not first look at changing others, but pays the price of change within himself. He absorbs the mystery of human sin rather than passing it on.  He does not use his suffering and death as power over others to punish them, but as power for others to transform them.  He includes and forgives the sinner instead of hating him, which would only continue the pattern of hate.  Amazing that people cannot see that!  It’s interesting that Jesus identifies forgiveness with breathing (John 20:22-23), the one thing that you have done constantly since you were born and will do until you die.  He says God’s forgiveness is like breathing.  Forgiveness is not apparently something God does; it is who God is.  God can do no other.

A double whammy of blessings...

Today I experienced a musical-pastoral double-whammy.  Unbeknown to me, a BIG picture of me showed up in the local paper as part of our jazz in the schools education gigs throughout Berkshire Country.  It was sweet - and set up these unique outreach events in a pleasing and insightful way.  (And the video clip of the band playing with some young students was rockin' and righteous!)

Not only is this wonderful public relations about our congregation's commitment to the artistic and creative renewal of our region, it also creates unplanned and unexpected pastoral moments.  Yesterday, when this story was created, we met with young musicians before our show and spoke with them about what it means to work together.  We shared personal stories about how to get centered and feel the groove.  And we listened and responded to their questions about music, getting over the jitters and so much more. (check out the story @ http://www.berkshireeagle.com/ci_19101151?IADID=Search-www.berkshireeagle.com-www.berkshireeagle.com)

This morning - we played in a much poorer hill town where the children were so attentive and beautiful it made me weep - and afterwards different classes wanted their pictures taken with the band.  When everyone had gone, the school's principal spoke with Andy and myself about how meaningful it was to bring music into the lives of her students.  They don't have the funds for a band and the community is too small and isolated for much local entertainment - so this was a special event. 

And then, as she was speaking about how much she loved the story of jazz - how it began in New Orleans and moved all over the world - she said that she had been to New Orleans a few times when her son was in law school at Tulane.  They both celebrated that wild and crazy town.

I asked her where her son was now and she paused and then started to softly cry saying, "He died three days before passing the bar exam last year."  We embraced and shared a  gentle word of prayer for both her dear child and herself. Then she said, "Who knows what the music will bring up, right?" 

Damn straight, madame principal, damn straight!  Time and again music evokes joy as well as grieving. It helped us create new friends in the Muslim world this summer - and who knows where it will take us next. I just know that this was a double whammy day for me that underscored how important it is to keep sharing the music for it opens important doors for some ministry in some unexpected places.

The primary symptom of a soul that is sick...

"The primary symptom of a soul that has become sick," writes M. Craig Barnes of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, "is that it become blind to the poetry of life."  That rings true to me - in theology, in church life, in business, politics and music, too.  Barnes continues saying, "... this is true not only because it can no longer see the beauty of the small miracles... but also because the soul has settled into its disappointments which has left it angry."

Know any angry clergy?  I don't mean those pastors and priests who stand up for themselves - or the wounded ones charged to their care - I mean those who are doing public therapy under the guise of ministry? Yesterday, in a conversation with a young woman seminarian, we were discussing the search and call process when I mentioned that a therapist had once said to me," Ok, after 10 years of doing ministry for all the wrong reasons, let's see if we can find the right ones?" My young friend said tentatively, "So what ARE the wrong reasons for doing ministry?" 

I suggested that I had been able to name four - and I've explored them all - and mostly learned something in the process:

+ Doing ministry as therapy and living into your anger or shame or fear in public.  This is perhaps the worst part of Nouwen's expression, "the wounded healer" because it gives clergy permission to confuse their own private shit with ministry.  Congregations don't need to know that your momma beat you, or your uncle abused you or the church - in whatever form - wounded you.  The people in our congregations have enough hurt to deal with - and God didn't call us into ministry to work it all out in public.  Get a counselor!  Work with a spiritual director!  And do it in private, too for the love of Jesus!  Your shit is important - to you - so deal with it - just not in church.

+ Doing ministry as a substitute for theatre or the music business or social work or.. whatever. I know a lot of clergy who had neither the talent nor the stamina to make it as a professional actor, singer, guitar player, artist, etc.  So they fill their ministry with all the stuff they really wanted to do but couldn't quite make happen - and everyone gets bored and tired and frustrated.  What's more, often this misplaced emphasis takes on edgier and more and more inappropriate forms as the minister searches for a buzz.  I knew a minister of music once who created "Christmas Pageants" that had NOTHING to do with Christ and his coming.  They were simply an excuse for bad community theatre and chessy musicals.  Sure, there are times and places for me to make music - and I love doing it - but it really has to be in service of worship or art without  holding a congregation hostage.

+ Doing ministry because you are lonely and need friends and/or approval.  Of course, most of us are people pleasers - we love to build community and encourage love and trust - but ministry is ALWAYS a public commitment.  My friends, those whom I confide in at the deepest levels, are rarely part of my congregation.  And when they are, we talk a lot about "dual relationships" and work hard to keep the boundaries clear.  Church is not where I find solace, it is not where I worship and it is not my core community.  My job is to facilitate and nourish that with and for the congregation; it is not to be cared for by the people of my church.  And, yes some of that happens in a healthy and happy pastoral relationship. But I always know that my ministry is for them and God - not myself.

+ Doing ministry as a career.  I know some clergy chart a trajectory for their lives and see themselves in administration or the Bishop's seat well before they graduate from seminary. I tried that one, too; working towards bigger and more prestigious congregation with every move.  And there is clearly outward support for this perspective.  It is encouraged and rewarded over and over. And while some are clearly gifted to serve the wider church, too often this leads towards workaholism - always striving for something bigger and better - in a sick spiritual consumerism.  And that isn't strengthening or serving the Body of Christ.  For the life of me, I can't see how careerism has a place in the upside down kingdom of God where the first will become last.

It was a sobering conversation - maybe it was helpful - I know it was humbling for me.  It brought me back to the words of Barnes who concluded his observation about soul sickness:

We hurt our souls... when we gorge ourselves on anger - at God or other people - until it makes us sick... And the problem with anger is that it makes us lose interest in the blessing of live because we can only think about the infuriating things. We obsess over it and become intoxicated with the hurt we feel... And once we take on the identity of victims, we are allowing nothing redemptive to occur... so how can we be open to such divine gifts as healing, forgiveness and the gravitas that (might) emerge from our adversity?

I am not saying there is no place for anger in ministry - there IS - but so many times it is displaced or subverted or misdirected because we have allowed it sicken our souls.  Yes, we are all wounded healers in some ways. But for God's sake let's not confuse our anger or pain with ministry, ok?  How did Buechner put it? 

It comes from the Latin vocare, to call, and means the work a man is called to by God. There are all different kinds of voices calling you to all different kinds of work, and the problem is to find out which is the voice of God rather than of Society, say, or the Superego, or Self-Interest. By and large a good rule for finding out is this. The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you need most to do and;(b) that the world most needs to have done.

If you really get a kick out of your work, you've presumably met requirement (a), but if your work is writing TV deodorant commercials, the chances are you've missed requirement (b). On the other hand, if your work is being a doctor in a leper colony, you have probably met requirement (b), but if most of the time you're bored and depressed by it, the chances are you have not only bypassed (a), but probably aren't helping your patients much either.

Neither the hair shirt nor the soft berth will do. The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet."

It really isn't a calling if this order is inverted...

More thoughts about being the pastor...

This may be something like a broken record - or a CD with a scratch on it - because I want to share a few more evolving thoughts about being a pastor in the 21st century.  Like Eugene Peterson has pointed out over and again, the contemporary American church has become enslaved to the market place as both our dominant conceptual metaphor as well as our key for organizing ministry. Gone is the body of Christ in St. Paul's writings - and don't even mention the bride of Christ from St. John! No, we are a group of consumers now looking for spiritual commodities (whatever that really means?!?)

Mostly that translates into a church committed to entertainment - bread and circus the Romans used to call it - where we are distracted for an hour or so with vaguely heavenly music and up-lifting and relevant words (with some drama and humor thrown into the mix, too.)  The current formula for success for pastors throughout the USA is to:  a) abandon all tradition; b) create a positive, soft-rock environment; and c) share self-help strategies that pay lip service to Jesus.  And so the church has become a product to be purchased and consumed rather than a community seeking the sacred presence of God made flesh in Jesus Christ. 

That means pastors had better understand that we are now in competition with all the other local and media driven "religious franchises" for consumers:  the pastor is now both entrepreneur and CEO rather than one who supports the cure of our soul.  This not only isolates pastors from their colleagues, but limits the church to an institution to be managed. Peterson puts it like this:

In "running" the church, I seize the initiative. I take charge. I take responsibility for motivation and recruitment, for showing the way, for getting things started. If I don't, things drift. I am aware of the tendency to apathy, the human susceptibility to indolence so I use my leadership position to counter it.

By contrast, the cure of souls is a cultivated awareness that God has already seized the initiative. The traditional doctrine defining this truth is provenience: God everywhere and always seizing the initiative. God gets things going. The Lord had and continues to have the first word. Provenience is the conviction that God has been working diligently, redemptively and strategically well before I appeared on the scene, before I was aware there was even something her for me to do.

Reclaiming the "cure of the souls" model in our consumerist culture is liberating.  Not only does it allow me to "rest" in the trust that Christ Jesus promised (Matthew 11: 28-30) - for I know that God is in control so I don't have to be - it gives me permission to listen and wait. Peterson says, "Running-the-church questions are: what do we do? How can we get things going again? While cure-of-the-souls questions are: what has God been doing here? What traces of grace can I discern in this life? What history of love can I read in this group? What has God set in motion that I can get in on?"

Do you sense the importance of this distinction?  I first began to see this at work in our church band.  I used to think it was all dependent on me - picking the songs, running the rehearsal, pushing for excellence, getting the equipment right, fighting battles with the old guard, blah, blah, blah - but not so much any more.  Sure, I have to send out reminders and work to coordinate our music with the themes of the year and the biblical texts, but watching and waiting for the right band members to show up - and trusting the Spirit of the Lord within and among us all - has changed everything. 

For example, we're going to play this Saturday night at a CROP Walk Rally to End Hunger. Two other bands will be sharing the bill - and once I found out who among us could be present I asked:  What songs do you sense we should share?  A few of us thought Collective Soul's "Shine" would work - a few others shouted out Tom Waits' "Come On Up to the House" - we played around with a few other until one of the quieter members suggested, "Wouldn't it be fun to do the feminist setting of the 23rd Psalm we did a few weeks back? It would be such a contrast!"

And now we have a GREAT set-list - maybe we'll try another Clapton suggestion tonight, too - all built by listening and trusting.  Such is the approach I've been trying to take with programming and worship themes over the past four years.  I keep praying and preaching and when I think I sense the urging of the Spirit here or there, I bring others together and we listen and test it together.  If it rights true, then we make it happen together - like raising funds for women's education in Afghanistan or bringing songs of peace to Turkey.  If not, then we let an idea rest for another time.

My job as pastor is NOT to solve problems.  It is not to initiate new programs or fix something that is broken.  And it certainly has nothing to do with deepening our addiction as consumers. No, the job of the pastor has to do with listening and waiting for God's Spirit:

Life is not so much a problem to be solves as a mystery to be explored... life is not something we manage to hammer together and keep in repair by our own wits; it is an unfathomable gift. We are immersed in mysteries: incredible love, confounding evil, the creation, the cross, God.... If pastors become accomplices (with the culture) in treating every child as a problem to be figured out, every spouse as a problem to be dealt with, every clash of wills in choir or committee as a problem to be adjudicated, we abdicate our most important work, which is directing worship in the traffic, discovering the presence of the cross in the paradoxes and the chaos between Sundays, 'calling attention to the splendor in the ordinary" and, most of all, teaching a life of prayer to our friends and companion in the pilgrimage.

(For more go to: http://www.churchleaders.com/pastors/pastor-how-to/153576-eugene-peterson-the-jesus-way-vs-the-american-way.html)

And now I'm off to band practice... I can't wait!