The affirmation of foolishness...

This week as part three of my series "Fools for Christ" I am going to take a look at my own call to discipleship born of the encouragement of "Feast of Fools." The gospel text for this week comes from Mark 1:

Jesus went to Galilee preaching the Message of God: “Time’s up! God’s kingdom is here. Change your life and believe the Message.” Passing along the beach of Lake Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew net-fishing. Fishing was their regular work. Jesus said to them, “Come with me. I’ll make a new kind of fisherman out of you. I’ll show you how to catch men and women instead of perch and bass.” They didn’t ask questions. They dropped their nets and followed.

Now I don't know about you, but I can remember feeling something like Simon or Andrew when I first saw "Godspell.," It was as if my take on the JOY of Christ's was REAL. It was not only AUTHENTIC but something that demanded a FOOLISH response And when "Day by Day" became a pop hit, I don't exactly know what to liken this to - I was never a hard core Jesus Freak - but it was such an affirmation that the blessings of grace and the experience of joy were greater than all the sin and shame talk, that I knew I wasn't full of shit. Well, ok, I may still be full of shit, but when I heard that song on the radio, I knew that God's love was a whole lot greater than my brokenness. Later, in my doctoral program, when I reread Feast of Fools by Harvey Cox, and spent time thinking/reading through the foolishness of the gospel, my love for Godspell grew profoundly.

So, this week we'll start worship with Cartlon's brilliant reworking of a Confucian chant, include one more blast of Christmas carols and then affirm our faith by singing "Day by Day" as rendered sacred by my band mates. We'll see how my take on festivity and fantasy shake out  tomorrow when I finally get to writing. Like the Psalm for Sunday says, "I am only at rest and quiet when I am moving toward God." (Psalm 62)

Now that is a song I can sing...

Yesterday, while a "budget hearing" was taking place in one room at church after worship (can you say "how can I suck the air out of a room after a stirring time in worship, children?") I chose to spend my time with our emerging ecu-youth group. About 20 youth and their parents joined an Episcopal colleague and myself to see where we might go together with youth ministry. We had tried at the start of the program year to bring in four other congregations, but it never got off the ground. What's more, while I could see how things were going south programmatically, I was too caught up in my father's illness and death to do anything but watch from the sidelines. So at about Christmas time, the hand-writing was on the wall and we agreed we needed to pause, regroup and try things in a new way.
One of those new ways involves my hands-on participation. Don't get me wrong, we have great parents and lay leaders, but we need to offer more guidance and planning to this effort than any one person can muster. So for the next three months before my sabbatical, I am going to spend time with these kids. And I love it! Youth group is where I received a call to ministry in 1968. Youth group is where I made some of my best friends. And youth group is where I learned how to organize coffee houses, concerts and mission trips let alone my earliest experiments with how so-called "secular" songs fits into Sunday morning worship. It was true formation for me - and it can be so for our youth, too.

I believe in this so much that I am also going to spend time with these kids during a portion of our up-coming annual meeting. Not because I believe that they are the "future of the church." That is both wishful thinking and sentimentalism; there is no evidence that teens organically move from youth group into faithful living as adults. Yes, if they come from a home that insists on practicing one faith tradition or another, then there is some empirical evidence that these children will carry on their formation into the future. But youth group alone is not enough. No, the reason I want to be with these young people has nothing to do with sloppy projections about the future of the church: these young people are hungry for a safe, honest and deep place to explore real life. And THAT is what I think an authentic youth group offers: shelter from the storm of adolescence and a place to wrestle with hard questions. Our youth don't need one more THING to do - they are already too busy - and they don't need the institution to trot them out periodically and show them off in some theological dog and pony show. Rather, what they need is a place beyond their families where they know they are safe and loved. Period.

That means, you see, that there is NO pay off for the church with youth groups. This is a ministry

of pure grace. Ok, if we are lucky, we'll have an impact on a teen's family and then there may be a way to fortify our effort beyond this moment in time. But for the most part, youth ministry is about  simply trusting God and paying it forward without any expectation of results. And that is why I am committed to helping get this off the ground. And that is what I will share with my leadership when I step away from our annual meeting:  annual meetings have their place - they do some good - and each congregation needs time to discuss in a significant way the challenges and blessings facing them in mission and ministry. But my church has been doing this for 250+ years - and they'll do it for another 250+ years after I am gone - but the Spirit invigorates young hearts in an unplanned way only once or twice in a lifetime. So, I am not going to blow it because another meeting has been scheduled. This is the time to stand with our youth. This is the time when two churches (and maybe more) sense that we can get over our parochialism and collaborate. And this is a time in culture when our young people need to know that we have their backs. Period.

All of this was spinning through my head last night as Di and I discussed the events of the day. She noted that it was 35 years ago that she and a few other young people had gone to Cambridge as youth. That got me to thinking about the first theologians I ever read - Bonhoeffer and Harvey Cox - and that happened 45 years ago. How did we get to be so freakin' old? But both of those old white guy's still have something to say about doing ministry even in the 21st century. One quote from  Feast of Fools by Harvey Cox (source of my doctoral work) continues to ring true even if the exclusive language is dated:

Mankind has paid a frightful price for the present opulence of Western industrial society. Part of the price is exacted daily from the poor nations of the world whose fields and forests garnish our tables while we push their people further into poverty. Part is paid by the plundered poor who dwell within the gates of the rich nations without sharing in the plenty. But part of the price has been paid by affluent Western man himself. While gaining the whole world he has been losing his own soul. He has purchased prosperity at the cost of a staggering impoverishment of the vital elements of his life. These elements are festivity -- the capacity for genuine revelry and joyous celebration -- and fantasy -- the faculty for envisioning radically alternate life situations. Festivity and fantasy are not only worthwhile in themselves, they are absolutely vital to human life.

At the core of what Cox wrote is a call to live into the promises and challenges of festivity and fantasy. If such a spirituality resonated in 1969, how much more so in 2015? Festivity is the path of joy - discerning awe and reality in every moment - and Richard Rohr describes it like this:

We did not honor and learn from the first and primary Bible of creation (the beauty and drama of nature), so how would we know how to honor and properly use the second Bible? We largely mangled and manipulated the written word of God for our own ego purposes, instead of receiving it inside of the mystery, awe, silence, and surrender--which the natural world demands of us and teaches us. Many have said that a fundamental attitude of awe is the primal religious experience and the beginning of the search for God. If we start with mere argument we never leave that battlefield. Imagine a religion called "Aweism"! Instead of wasting time trying to disprove miracles, this religion would be inhabited by people who see that everything is a miracle. Only people who can fully surrender to things beyond themselves can experience awe, wonder, or enchantment. Spiritual surrender is not giving up, which is the way we usually understand the term. Surrender is entering the present moment, and what is right in front of you, fully and without resistance or attempts at control. In that sense, surrender is almost the exact opposite of giving up. In fact,it is a being given to!

And fantasy - sweet fantasy - is both the willingness to dream and then envision ways to turn our

dreams into deeds. Clarence Jordan of Koinonia in GA re-translated Hebrews 11 like this: Faith is the turning of dreams into deeds. (The English text many of us use is "faith is the assurance of things hoped for..." but Jordan's work is so much more incarnational and challenging, yes?) In Mako Fujimura's recent posting he wrote about what it means to stay connected to our dreams:

In August 1963, prior to giving his "I Have a Dream" speech at the March on Washington, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. found himself exhausted by a series of setbacks, imprisonments, oppressions, and disappointments. He was so physically spent that he spent many hours simply resting while his followers wrote the speech he was to give to the historic gathering. One of his close aides, Clarence Benjamin Jones, said that "the logistical preparations for the March were so burdensome that the speech was not a priority for us," and that, "on the evening of Tuesday, August 27, [twelve hours before the March] Martin still didn't know what he was going to say." After walking a few miles to the Lincoln Memorial, he stood to read the prepared text, but he knew something was not right.

Mahalia Jackson, the great Gospel singer who sang before he spoke, stood behind Dr. King throughout the prepared speech. As he read the text, she kept on yelling, "tell 'em about the dream, Martin; tell 'em about the dream!" At the end of the prepared speech, Dr. King put down his text and began to speak extemporaneously; the energy of the crowd listening empowered him, and the result was the "I Have a Dream" we know today.

Imagine that-an artist pushing a tired preacher to preach from his heart. Dr. King was an artist of the dream, but it took another artist to recognize the artistry that was being held back by the context of the gathering. Artists need to stand behind the podiums of preachers, teachers, and leaders and remind them to "tell 'em about the Dream!" Part of our calling is to remind leaders of what they are marching toward to begin with, to reach into the deepest recesses of their own visions. Sometimes, we may need to remind them to put down their prepared text. Artists who operate as mearcstapas can exhort in this way, in and out of a prepared tribal language into a visionary, extemporaneous "jazz" language of the heart. That music invites all to become extemporaneous artists of care.

One cold, rainy evening in New York City in 2010, I was invited to serve on a panel for a special screening of Countdown to Zero, a film about nuclear disarmament. The friend who organized the meeting was disappointed by the turnout; only about thirty people came. He apologized to the crowd, and to the panel, which also included civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, for the low turnout. Jackson stopped him: "I remember that day when Martin gave his famous sermon at the Riverside Church," Jackson said. "There were only about thirty people then, too." The panel went on to discuss an initiative by President Ronald Reagan and President Mikhail Gorbachev to eliminate nuclear weapons. At one point, Jackson spoke up again. "It was only when Marvin Gaye started to sing that song ["What's Going On"] that our civil rights movement became a true movement." He looked me straight in the eye: "We need artists because they give us songs to sing to."

Connecting justice with beauty is essential. Any cause we believe in needs a song that everyone can sing, a song to march to or rally around, a song that will draw people in so they can learn to care. Artists are the ones to provide the music. But artists are not present just to entertain the crowd; like Mahalia Jackson, they can play a role to reveal the heart of a movement. This is possible because they, as mearcstapas, must learn not only to speak tribal languages, but also trade languages and creoles that connect people across boundaries. Artists are, in this sense, uniquely prepared to create beauty that is universal or points to the universal. They write songs that everyone can sing.

Tell 'em about the dream - help them cherish and honor those dreams - create a safe place for dreaming and serious conversation and prayer:  today I give thanks to the adults and churches that gave me this gift. And today in the shadow of Dr. King's life I realize that doing this in my generation is a song that I can sing in these later days of ministry.

Awesome and wondrously made...

For most of my life - young and older - I have "known" the love of God from the inside out. Like Richard Rohr suggests, this is less about linear, scientific knowledge and information and more about intimacy. Wisdom in the spiritual realm never overlooks the way the world works; after all we've been counseled to become "wise as serpents and gentle as doves" by Jesus. But as Rohr write: "wisdom...is not the result of mental effort... words can't get you there...only the experience of love can bring this transformation (within.)" Of course, there have been a few times when I did not sense God's presence within - dark nights, to be sure - where all I could do is trust the promises of baptism to be true: I am the Lord's beloved. It was a grim and terrifying time for me to live without inner consolation. Like Barbara Brown Taylor notes, it was a time to learn how to "walk in the dark."

At midday Eucharist this week, we spent some time with Psalm 139 - "Lord, You searched me and You know..." - long a favorite of mine for many reason. Because this is not a Bible study, but a contemplative time of lectio, I had not reviewed the prayer. In fact, I was caught off guard when we spoke of words that don't make any sense to us. What does it mean to be 'hemmed in? I had no idea.

O Lord, you have searched me and known me. 
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
   you discern my thoughts from far away. 
You search out my path and my lying down,
   and are acquainted with all my ways. 
Even before a word is on my tongue,
   O Lord, you know it completely. 
You hem me in, behind and before,
   and lay your hand upon me. 
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
   it is so high that I cannot attain it. 

Where can I go from your spirit?
   Or where can I flee from your presence? 
If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
   if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. 
If I take the wings of the morning
   and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, 
even there your hand shall lead me,
   and your right hand shall hold me fast. 
If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me,
   and the light around me become night’, 
even the darkness is not dark to you;
   the night is as bright as the day,
   for darkness is as light to you. 

For it was you who formed my inward parts;
   you knit me together in my mother’s womb. 
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
   Wonderful are your works;

Peterson renders the fourth line like this: I look behind me and you are there; then up ahead and you’re there, too—your reassuring presence, coming and going.This is too much, too wonderful—I can’t take it all in! That's a little clearer, but what else is going in here in this grand song of trust and inner wisdom? The scholar and poet, Robert Alter, is my go to resource - and he didn't let me down. Let me summarize his insights like this:

+ The poem/prayer begins with the affirmation that because God has searched me, God knows... The searching has taken place and now God grasps the essence of my being. Alter suggests that God's searching is akin to Job's aching lament in chapter 10. Or, at the very least, from a time when the concerns of Job are being explored by Israel. This knowing is deep and complete - not a sentimental or sweet visitation - but more a moral and emotional inventory and confession.

I loathe my life;
   I will give free utterance to my complaint;
   I will speak in the bitterness of my soul. 
I will say to God, Do not condemn me;
   let me know why you contend against me. 
Does it seem good to you to oppress,
   to despise the work of your hands
   and favor the schemes of the wicked? 
Do you have eyes of flesh?
   Do you see as humans see? 
Are your days like the days of mortals,
   or your years like human years, 
that you seek out my iniquity
   and search for my sin, 
although you know that I am not guilty,
   and there is no one to deliver out of your hand? 
Your hands fashioned and made me;
   and now you turn and destroy me.^* 
Remember that you fashioned me like clay;
   and will you turn me to dust again? 
Did you not pour me out like milk
   and curdle me like cheese? 
You clothed me with skin and flesh,
   and knit me together with bones and sinews. 
You have granted me life and steadfast love,
   and your care has preserved my spirit. 
Yet these things you hid in your heart;
   I know that this was your purpose. 
If I sin, you watch me,
   and do not acquit me of my iniquity. 
If I am wicked, woe to me!
   If I am righteous, I cannot lift up my head,
for I am filled with disgrace
   and look upon my affliction. 
Bold as a lion you hunt me;
   you repeat your exploits against me. 
You renew your witnesses against me,
   and increase your vexation towards me;
   you bring fresh troops against me.

+ Alter goes on to note that both the Psalmist's path and lair have been "winnowed" - that is, analyzed and critically assessed. So much so that the ancient poet feels "besieged" - shaped from behind and in front like a potter creating a vessel. Hemmed in, it seems, is less an agricultural term and more a description of formation, not unlike an embryo being formed within the womb. And while such formation is complex and challenging, there is also the comfort known when the Holy "sets Your palm upon me." There is solace as well as winnowing.

+ Two other thoughts from Alter's work seem important. One has to do with the imagination; the Psalmist suggests the he/she could soar to the heavens on the wings of the dawn in the East, rising like the sun in the West before racing towards the sea, and never be separated from the love of God.  Even the terrifying darkness of Sheol - or the dark night of the soul - is not the end of the story because from deep within there is always the "illumination" of God's guidance. We don't always feel it, but the Divine is not limited to our feelings, right? The other is that because the Lord has created "our innermost parts" - literally our kidneys where the ancients believed our conscience resided - we are intimately embraced from the inside out by grace: awesomely set apart. Made holy. Created in the womb by the essence of life itself.

This is a psalm of humbling assurance: it, too, is awesome and wondrously made and I am grateful. Whether I am up or down, aware or ignorant, filled with joy or saturated with fear I am the Lord's beloved with whom God is well-pleased.

Gratitude...

"The trouble with steeling yourself against the harshness of reality is that the same steel that secures your life against being destroyed secures your life also against being opened and transformed by the holy power that life itself comes from. You can survive on your own. You can grow strong on your own. You can even prevail on your own. But you cannot become human on your own." Frederick Buechner

Today is Sabbath time for us: hot tea, slow reading of the NY Times, snippets of conversation about the books we're reading and later taking down the Christmas decorations (we are a week late because my little man, Louie, joined us after Epiphany.) Large, dry, magical snowflakes are starting to fall. It is a good day to be inside to rest and reflect on where we are within the harshness and bounty of life. Buechner is right: we can do much by ourselves, but we cannot become fully human is solitude. 

As I look backwards over the week past, yesterday was a highlight. There were organizing meetings and phone calls for the social justice convention we're launching on January 25th. There were pastoral visits and quiet conversations, too. There was a small group accountability meeting re: finding mission partners within our local businesses and social service agencies. And a late dinner with my small sabbatical planning team (a mini-chapter of the larger working group) to sort through the multitude of great ideas for the congregation's sabbatical experience that we've been considering over the past six months. Five broad touchstones are taking shape and form that will be exciting:

+ First, during my journey into a jazz spirituality in Montreal, it will be summer time in the Berkshires - and that means we must NOT over-schedule the congregation's sabbatical experience. Life slows down. People go away. And we're not going to fight or ignore this truth.  So what we will offer is: a) worship that is creative and faithful; b) pastoral care that is compassionate; c) three broad study encounters with jazz and music; and d) two concerts at First Church to serve as sabbatical bookends. 

+ Second, the first concert of the sabbatical will kick off our engagement with a performance of Paul Winter's "Missa Gaia" on Sunday, April 19th . We will start working on this next week. Our band, Between the Banks, will form the core for the complicated vocal work and we'll bring in the church choir for supplemental work, too (plus a few important friends.) This announces the depth of what the sabbatical means: a radical rethinking of genre-bending music and spirituality within our Christian tradition. If you know Paul Winter's ground-breaking work, he not only incorporates jazz with traditional Western classical and liturgical music, but he has discovered some of the music of God's first word in nature. His "Kyrie" in this mass setting is built on a descending tritone with a flatted fifth - it is literally the song of an Alaskan wolf - a constellation of notes that was also once considered to be the music of the devi  by the Churchl. Winter, however, knows we are moving beyond superstition and fear (sometimes) and so embraces the once feared notes as a new song of unity. He puts it like this:

The Kyrie - prayer for mercy - contains the only Greek words left in the Western Mass and dates from the earliest years of Christianity. Ours is undoubtedly the first Kyrie composed by a wolf... Hers is for me a mystical melody. It includes the interval known as the tritone - three whole steps - which is my favorite as it evokes the mystery of the living earth. The occurrence of the tritone in this wolf-song, and our usage of it in the Earth Mass, are ironic. In the aesthetics of earlier centuries in Western culture, the tritone was regarded as the interval of the Devil. It was used by composers as recently as Wagner and Strauss to express the diabolical. That we can now use this interval without that kind of mind-set shows we are maturing... for just as we are now graduating from our inherited European fears of wolves and wilderness, so with the devils and dragons we conjure with our minds disappear as we re-member, through music and Mother Earth, our sacred connection with the universe.

It is a complex and challenging musical selection that will be taxing - and ecstatic.

+ Third, during June, July and August there will be a time for study and then an experience of transformative music. The popular jazz vocalist, Diana Krall, will be at Tanglewood in June so we'll have a three part encounter with Ms. Krall. One week there will be presentation about what she is doing with popular music as a jazz artist. Then people will attend her concert the next week (with scholarships available so that no one will be excluded because of the cost of tickets.) And for the third week there will be a discussion of what was heard and experienced - and why that matters. We'll do the same thing when Wynton Marsailis brings the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra to Tanglewood in July. And during August, our study will look at: a) why we sing in worship; b) where does this music come from; c) how the old tradition can become new with jazz interpretation; and d) how does that work in our church community.

+ Fourth, after my return to worship in September, we'll start planning to present our second public jazz experience: a Jazz Vespers during the Pittsfield Jazz Festival in October. It is our hope that on the other side of this sabbatical - with lots of experience and conversation and listening - we will be ready to share a new way of being creative with the wider community.

+ And, fifth, just to sweeten the pot and let this sabbatical help us embody our best hopes and dreams, we hope to have a broadly inter-faith team lead worship for the first three weeks of my absence in May. For the core of the sabbatical, a trusted and skilled colleague will be in residence. But we want a rabbi, a priest and an ordained clergy woman from another tradition to be our worship leaders to kick things off. I could never have come up with this on my own. I need those I love and trust to help me do ministry - and they are all essential for this sabbatical. We have been able to synthesize six months of discussion into something focused and exciting. And now we need to bring the whole package back to the wider group both for review and correction - and to add new twists, too.

Buechner closes his reflection like this:  

...You cannot become human on your own. Surely that is why, in Jesus' sad joke, the rich man has as hard a time getting into Paradise as that camel through the needle's eye because with his credit card in his pocket, the rich man is so effective at getting for himself everything he needs that he does not see that what he needs more than anything else in the world can be had only as a gift. He does not see that the one thing a clenched fist cannot do is accept, even from le bon Dieu himself, a helping hand.

Rest well - here's a clip from last week's concert - with our band doing "Both Sides Now."

The disaster of staying the course...

One of the saddest mistakes made by President Obama - and I generally admire and support most of his initiatives - was the decision to follow President Bush's tragic miscalculations in both Afghanistan and Iraq. The rationale for "staying the course" was sensible. The artificial stability born of "the surge" made anything but continuity unlikely. After all, President Obama is a Christian realist born of the ironic wisdom of Niebuhr. I am, too. We do not live in a perfect world nor one where evil can be placated by wishful thinking and prayer. 

Nevertheless, as the cruelty of the Charlie Hebdo massacre makes clear, the American and European foreign policy of the past 15 years has not made the world a safer place. If we had advanced a two-tiered strategy that honored the best of military wisdom while also practicing what I have come to call a "three cups of tea" engagement, threats to our security could have been contained while justice, socio-economic development and trust was strengthened. To paraphrase Malcolm X, what has happened since September 11th, however, is that the "chickens have come home to roost." 

Journalist Chris Hedges recently wrote that when hope is systematically extinguished and bigotry and discrimination institutionalized - as has been the reality for Arab immigrants to Europe as well as young idealists in oppressive Middle Eastern nations - young people find solace in self-medication or radical jihadism.

Becoming a holy warrior, a jihadist, a champion of an absolute and pure ideal, is an intoxicating conversion, a kind of rebirth that brings a sense of power and importance. It is as familiar to an Islamic jihadist as it was to a member of the Red Brigades or the old fascist and communist parties. Converts to any absolute ideal that promises to usher in a utopia adopt a Manichaean view of history rife with bizarre conspiracy theories. Opposing and even benign forces are endowed with hidden malevolence. The converts believe they live in a binary universe divided between good and evil, the pure and the impure. As champions of the good and the pure they sanctify their own victimhood and demonize all nonbelievers. They believe they are anointed to change history. And they embrace a hypermasculine violence that is viewed as a cleansing agent for the world’s contaminants, including those people who belong to other belief systems, races and cultures. This is why France’s far right, organized around Marine Le Pen, the leader of the anti-immigrant Front National, has so much in common with the jihadists whom Le Pen says she wants to annihilate.

When you sink to despair, when you live trapped in Gaza, Israel’s vast open-air prison, sleeping 10 to a floor in a concrete hovel, walking every morning through the muddy streets of your refugee camp to get a bottle of water because the water that flows from your tap is toxic, lining up at a U.N. office to get a little food because there is no work and your family is hungry, suffering the periodic aerial bombardments by Israel that leaves hundreds of dead, your religion is all you have left. Muslim prayer, held five times a day, gives you your only sense of structure and meaning, and, most importantly, self-worth. And when the privileged of the world ridicule the one thing that provides you with dignity, you react with inchoate fury. This fury is exacerbated when you and nearly everyone around you feel powerless to respond.

This analysis neither excuses the violence of the Kouachi brothers nor celebrates it; rather it speaks a clarifying truth within our current chaos. Ours is a culture where a vacuum of integrity has become normative. All of our public actions are suspect and all of our social analysis is compromised. Some claim that we are encountering the inevitable clash of civilizations - our noble 21st century Western values versus their outdated, medieval Muslim sensibilities: but beware for this agenda is born of fear and manipulation. Others seek to minimize the damage by telling us that the brothers Kouachai were simply rogue agents, more criminals than jihadis, but this too misses the mark. Some ask for moderate Muslims to speak out - which they have - others insist that what is really taking place is a battle over freedom of speech; and still others are certain that what is needed is even stronger military action against Al Qaeda, ISIL and all the rest. But all of this "analysis" rings hollow. Dispossessed young Arabs now own both the weaponry and technology to redress their grievances in the only way that our realm seems to understand or acknowledge.

The cartoons of the Prophet in the Paris-based satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo are offensive and juvenile. None of them are funny. And they expose a grotesque double standard when it comes to Muslims. In France a Holocaust denier, or someone who denies the Armenian genocide, can be imprisoned for a year and forced to pay a $60,000 fine. It is a criminal act in France to mock the Holocaust the way Charlie Hebdo mocked Islam. French high school students must be taught about the Nazi persecution of the Jews, but these same students read almost nothing in their textbooks about the widespread French atrocities, including a death toll among Algerians that some sources set at more than 1 million, in the Algerian war for independence against colonial France. French law bans the public wearing of the burqa, a body covering for women that includes a mesh over the face, as well as the niqab, a full veil that has a small slit for the eyes. Women who wear these in public can be arrested, fined the equivalent of about $200 and forced to carry out community service. France banned rallies in support of the Palestinians last summer when Israel was carrying out daily airstrikes in Gaza that resulted in hundreds of civilian deaths. The message to Muslims is clear: Your traditions, history and suffering do not matter. Your story will not be heard. Joe Sacco had the courage to make this point in panels he drew for the Guardian newspaper. And as Sacco pointed out, if we cannot hear these stories we will endlessly trade state terror for terror.

“It is a sad state of affairs when Liberty means the freedom to insult, demean and mock people’s most sacred concepts,” the Islamic scholar Hamza Yusuf, an American who lives in California, told me in an email. “In some Latin countries people are acquitted for murders where the defendant’s mother was slandered by the one he murdered. I saw this in Spain many years ago. It’s no excuse for murder, but it explains things in terms of honor, which no longer means anything in the West. Ireland is a western country that still retains some of that, and it was the Irish dueling laws that were used in Kentucky, the last State in the Union to make dueling outlawed. Dueling was once very prominent in the West when honor meant something deep in the soul of men. Now we are not allowed to feel insulted by anything other than a racial slur, which means less to a deeply religious person than an attack on his or her religion. Muslim countries are still governed, as you well know, by shame and honor codes. Religion is the big one. I was saddened by the ‘I’m Charlie’ tweets and posters, because while I’m definitely not in sympathy with those misguided fools [the gunmen who invaded the newspaper], I have no feeling of solidarity with mockers.”

All of which leads me back to Three Cups of Tea. Yesterday I received our annual update of the Central Asia Institute. In 2011 there were allegations of corruption, deceit and mismanagement. These were widely shared throughout the media and Greg Mortenson and his work was sullied and disgraced. When the allegations were refuted, however, and the legal actions against CAI dismissed, no one seemed to pay attention. So they continue to quietly bring education and integrity to a part of the world most of us hate, fear and misunderstand. (For a comprehensive list of their achievements, please see:https://www.ikat.org/wp-includes/documents/  masterprojectlist. pdf)  I give thanks to God that my faith community continues to support this work with resources and prayer.

Nothing will get better by "staying the course." There is a necessary and vital military role to be sure. But there is an equally necessary and even more vital humanitarian role to be nourished. And it won't happen from the top down. It will require people of good will acting to strengthen the efforts of three cups of tea work throughout the region. Without this, Hedge's chilling conclusion will stand:

It is dangerous to ignore this rage. But it is even more dangerous to refuse to examine and understand its origins. It did not arise from the Quran or Islam. It arose from mass despair, from palpable conditions of poverty, along with the West’s imperial violence, capitalist exploitation and hubris. As the resources of the world diminish, especially with the onslaught of climate change, the message we send to the unfortunate of the earth is stark and unequivocal: We have everything and if you try to take anything away from us we will kill you. The message the dispossessed send back is also stark and unequivocal. It was delivered in Paris. 

Can you believe it?

Do you see this little picture?

Last Sunday it apparently caused some guests at our concert a big problem. And it wasn't the guitar or the Buddha that got their goat: it was the gold-platted replica of the Qu'ran written in Arabic. "What is THAT doing here?" one older woman asked my beloved. "What are you asking?" she replied. To which both the older man and woman pointed to the Arabic writing: "THAT!" they spat out. And before Di could reply, one said, "Is it because you respect ALL religions?" To which Dianne quickly nodded before they shook their heads in disbelief: "That's what we thought."

Two things: this representation of the opening of the Qu'ran originally was given to me by my friend upon his return from deployment during the second Gulf War. The original was stolen during our move so I replaced it when we were in London. Not only does it remind me of his sacrifice and courage, but also our shared commitment to building a future where war is no longer necessary. What's more, as my own deep ecumenism has matured, I believe it essential to remind those in the Christian ghetto that we honor the same God as Muslims and Jews (and everyone else for that matter!)

Today at midday Eucharist I shared this encounter with those sharing a common cup and they expressed true shock. We had just prayed that our Muslim sisters and brothers be kept safe from judgment and retribution by ignorant and hateful Christians.. So we're going to KEEP this small multi-faith altar up until Easter now as a small sign of our solidarity.

Oh yes, one more thing, please notice where this little altar sits in the bigger picture: some people really need to get a life and quit looking for the little things that divide us. This is the age of common ground.

And just for the record, in this pictures are Christians, Jews, Muslims, non-believers and Unitarian-Universalists ALL singing for peace. Come on now people, smile on each other, everybody get together try to love one another right now.

A hard and sobering time...

The writer, Chris Hedges, is an iconoclast I respect. Most of his words make me horribly uncomfortable - which is why I know I need to pay attention - for seeing the ugly underside of my world is ugly, painful and illuminating all at once. Today he posted:

The terrorist attack in France that took place at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo was not about free speech. It was not about radical Islam. It did not illustrate the fictitious clash of civilizations. It was a harbinger of an emerging dystopia where the wretched of the earth, deprived of resources to survive, devoid of hope, brutally controlled, belittled and mocked by the privileged who live in the splendor and indolence of the industrial West, lash out in nihilistic fury.

We have engineered the rage of the dispossessed. The evil of predatory global capitalism and empire has spawned the evil of terrorism. And rather than understand the roots of that rage and attempt to ameliorate it, we have built sophisticated mechanisms of security and surveillance, passed laws that permit the targeted assassinations and torture of the weak, and amassed modern armies and the machines of industrial warfare to dominate the world by force. This is not about justice. It is not about the war on terror. It is not about liberty or democracy. It is not about the freedom of expression. It is about the mad scramble by the privileged to survive at the expense of the poor. And the poor know it. 

You can read the whole hard thing @ http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/a_message_ from_the_dispossessed_20150111

I call his article to your attention as we move closer to MLK day in the USA. I love Dr. King. I was moved into activism because of his call to conscience. He has been a spiritual mentor for me (through his writing) for over 45 years. Sadly, his truth-telling legacy has been stolen and rendered sentimental. His biting attack on greed and violence at Riverside Church just one year before his murder has long been bured and forgotten. And his solidarity with the least of these our sisters and brothers, the striking garbage workers in Memphis, is rarely revealed in any of our public celebrations. My hunch is that were he to be still alive, he would sound a lot like Chris Hedges. I hate the terrorist murders of the satirists in Paris. And I hate the clandestine, hidden wars that consume Muslims everyday in Yemen, Gaza, Pakistan and Iraq. Hedges continues:

The cartoons of the Prophet in the Paris-based satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo are offensive and juvenile. None of them are funny. And they expose a grotesque double standard when it comes to Muslims. In France a Holocaust denier, or someone who denies the Armenian genocide, can be imprisoned for a year and forced to pay a $60,000 fine. It is a criminal act in France to mock the Holocaust the way Charlie Hebdo mocked Islam. French high school students must be taught about the Nazi persecution of the Jews, but these same students read almost nothing in their textbooks about the widespread French atrocities, including a death toll among Algerians that some sources set at more than 1 million, in the Algerian war for independence against colonial France. French law bans the public wearing of the burqa, a body covering for women that includes a mesh over the face, as well as the niqab, a full veil that has a small slit for the eyes. Women who wear these in public can be arrested, fined the equivalent of about $200 and forced to carry out community service. France banned rallies in support of the Palestinians last summer when Israel was carrying out daily airstrikes in Gaza that resulted in hundreds of civilian deaths. The message to Muslims is clear: Your traditions, history and suffering do not matter. Your story will not be heard. Joe Sacco had the courage to make this point in panels he drew for the Guardian newspaper. And as Sacco pointed out, if we cannot hear these stories we will endlessly trade state terror for terror.

He concludes his studied and troubling rant with words that sound a great deal like Dr. King explaining the tragic response of rioters in our own urban areas in the mid 60s:

It is dangerous to ignore this rage. But it is even more dangerous to refuse to examine and understand its origins. It did not arise from the Quran or Islam. It arose from mass despair, from palpable conditions of poverty, along with the West’s imperial violence, capitalist exploitation and hubris. As the resources of the world diminish, especially with the onslaught of climate change, the message we send to the unfortunate of the earth is stark and unequivocal: We have everything and if you try to take anything away from us we will kill you. The message the dispossessed send back is also stark and unequivocal. It was delivered in Paris

Thoughts on yesterday's concert...

Yesterday we hosted our 8th Annual Concert for Emergency Fuel Assistance Funds in the Berkshires - and it was stunning! Eclectic, inclusive, inter-faith and filled with such talented and generous artists that I left emotionally exhausted from shedding tears of joy and gratitude. One of the many highlights was our young friend, Olivia, sharing this tune with Dianne.
But this is just ONE of the gifts that came during the 2 hour festival of faith, hope and love. We had a surprise guest, the Berkshire's own David Grover, joined Linda Worster and played with our band throughout. He brings such sensitivity and skill to the music it was pure bliss - and their take on Seals and Croft's "Hummingbird" was ecstatic! There were SO many joys: Rebecca's take on "Stay with Me," David's rocking "Travelin' Band," Brian's "Across the Great Divide," Dianne's smokin' "Black Tambourine" (with the Sun Ra orkestra behind her!), Jon's "Gimme Something Good," Linda's take on "Have a Little Faith" and Eva's "One Voice."

So, first, let me return thanks to all the artists who made this happen: Eva Perri, Elizabeth McCarty, Carlton Maaia II, Rebecca Maaia, Charlie Tokarz, Jon Haddad, Andy Kelly, Sue Kelly, Dianne De Mott, Olivia Kinne, Ethan Wesley, Linda Worster, David Grover, Dave McDermott, Grahm Sturz, Brian Staubach, Omar Enriquez, Jon Grenoble, Win Riddabock and sound man genius Rob Dumais!

Second, let me share a theological/aesthetic note about this gig: if you notice at the bottom of the picture above there is a small collection of religious icons. There is Buddha and the Virgin Mary, a Celtic Cross, a Menorah and a gold plated page from the Qu'ran (along with a guitar.) We had invited another group to share the stage with us - an opening act of sorts - and in time it became clear that our band, Between the Banks, continues to celebrate a unique and challenging charism for many in the church. We're like Alice's Restaurant where "you can get anything you want." We honor and advocate a broad and deep ecumenism - a radical hospitality - that is like Pete Seeger's banjo that used to proclaim: this machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender. Too often church music is boring, disembodied, exclusive and judgmental. That's why we put our religious friends at front stage: there are NO enemies here! That's why at the head of our program we announce our Open and Affirming commitment. We are young and old together, male and female - gay and straight - rich and poor, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist and spiritual but not religious together

And third yesterday's concert clarified something for me: we need to go on a public relations offensive because the media doesn't GET our type of faith community. My friends in government back in Cleveland used to say that more often than not, people report what they know. They tend not to dig deeply nor hang around to experience the whole event (whether that is a concert or a press event or even the State of the Union.) That happened yesterday - again - when members of the press came for a few minutes, spoke with a few people in broad but uncreative strokes, took a few pictures at the start of things and moved on. I am glad they were present. But for whatever reason they got most of the facts wrong:  1) This concert was part of our commitment to care for the common good; 2) This concert was also an act of community building where we worked hard to make sure that everybody had a place at the table; and 3) This wasn't a casual, off-the-cuff jam session on some one's back porch: this was about celebrating and nourishing hope and compassion. 

I think the heart of that came after American folk songs, rock and roll, R and B and some jazz fusion tunes, we offered up our take on Shalom/Salaam - with Hebrew and Arabic prayers - in the midst of an original jazz chart (by Carlton.) It was chanted, it was moaned, it was embodied and it was both lament and assurance of pardon all at once. There was Linda Worster's brilliant "Peace on Earth" with 6 part harmony. There was Andy Kelly's "Primavera" - a sweet and open call for right relations between the US and Cuba. And so much more... but none of that was reported given the pressures to keep moving. Alas...that's why I sense we need to take the initiative and tell the wider community our story.

(You can read the story here: http://www.berkshireeagle.com/local/ci_27300435/annual-fuel-assistance-concerts-moved-mid-winter)

I wept upon seeing the nearly 1.6 million people in the streets of Paris. I wept when 150+ loving souls came to our concert to "fight off the winter cold." More than at any other time in my ministry I am certain that we must "surround hatred and make it surrender" through acts of grace, beauty, hope and radical hospitality. Over the next few months we'll be strategizing about how to do this more effectively. If you have any wisdom, please share it, ok?

The adult table, the children's table and the table of grace...

Yesterday, NY Times columnist David Brooks made the observation that most of us are not

really "Charlie" (Je suis Charlie) - and his point deserves consideration. First, he wrote that the type of humor that is common place in Charlie Hebdo is adolescent, stick a finger in your eye humor. It is often the type of joke that I loved when I was 13 and wanted to offend everyone (except, of course, myself and my allies.) Further, the cartoons have none of the nuance or self-awareness found on either The Simpsons or South Park. (My point, not that of Brooks.)

Second, Brooks went on to note that Americans now exhibit a weirdly moralistic double standard when it comes to satire: it must never offend. Look at who is allowed to speak publicly or in print on our college campuses:

The journalists at Charlie Hebdo are now rightly being celebrated as martyrs on behalf of freedom of expression, but let’s face it: If they had tried to publish their satirical newspaper on any American university campus over the last two decades it wouldn’t have lasted 30 seconds. Student and faculty groups would have accused them of hate speech. The administration would have cut financing and shut them down.

Brooks elaborated on this observation later in the day on the PBS News Hour saying: in our drive to be sensitive, we have also embraced a type of censorship that restricts the way we communicate. If we want to honor and strengthen free speech, we must also toughen our resolve when it comes to tolerating offensive words and images in the public square. We don't have to like them - or buy them - but we can do a better job at making sure that the "jesters" of the world are not shut down. Because as offensive as jesters are, they often tell us things about ourselves we don't want to accept as true.

Most of us do try to show a modicum of respect for people of different creeds and faiths. We do try to open conversations with listening rather than insult.Yet, at the same time, most of us know that provocateurs and other outlandish figures serve useful public roles. Satirists and ridiculers expose our weakness and vanity when we are feeling proud. They puncture the self-puffery of the successful. They level social inequality by bringing the mighty low. When they are effective they help us address our foibles communally, since laughter is one of the ultimate bonding experiences.

Third, and this one is really fascinating to me, is the distinction Brooks makes between those who sit at the adults table and those who eat with the children:  if you want to be taken seriously then you must grow-up. You must learn how to "play well with others" and show as much respect and tolerance as you demand.

In most societies, there’s the adults’ table and there’s the kids’ table. The people who read Le Monde or the establishment organs are at the adults’ table. The jesters, the holy fools and people like Ann Coulter and Bill Maher are at the kids’ table. They’re not granted complete respectability, but they are heard because in their unguided missile manner, they sometimes say necessary things that no one else is saying. Healthy societies, in other words, don’t suppress speech, but they do grant different standing to different sorts of people. Wise and considerate scholars are heard with high respect. Satirists are heard with bemused semirespect. Racists and anti-Semites are heard through a filter of opprobrium and disrespect. People who want to be heard attentively have to earn it through their conduct.

I like his distinctions - and affirm them. Especially because in these later years of ministry I am starting to explore what Brooks might call the role of the "holy fool." St. Paul uses it as a title of distinction for those who follow the radical way of Christ and the Cross. I am aware that when you choose to step away from the adult's table and become playful - child-like but not childish - there is a disconnect that makes some uncomfortable. And this discomfort is a beautiful thing. Not the discomfort of Bill Maher or Ann Coulter, but the gentle, compassionate discomfort of St. Frances. Or Anne LaMott. Or Thomas Merton.

I am grateful for David Brooks - and all who have grown up - as they now occupy the adult table. I often celebrate those at the children's table, too even if I don't find myself comfortable with their more abrasive foolishness. What I am learning, however, is that there is another table - a bigger table - the banquet table of the Lord where there is a seat for all of us - adults, children, fools, sinners, saints and everyone in-between. And at this stage in the journey of life, that bigger table - the table of grace that often looks so foolish to the adults - is where I want to spend most of my time. It is why I insist on making music in the face of abrasive and ugly action. Why I bite my tongue and urge silence when I want to lash out at the crude and violent ones. And why I ask God to break my heart over and over so that I don't become jaded or cynical.