Calling out the violence of sarcasm...

I haven't written about this for some time - besides a passing FB challenge or meme - but today feels right: how about a moratorium on snark, sarcasm and cynicism from those of us committed to peace? You don't have to be a person of one faith or another to grasp that all too often our words do violence to those we know and love. It happens when we try too hard to be funny - or hip - or ironic. It takes place when we're unconscious about our inner motives, or, when we're acting in a passive/aggressive way. And it oozes out like toxic slime when we refuse to let a love and grace greater than ourselves nourish us from the inside out.

Let's go deeper and push the envelope: too many times our humor is a thinly veiled form of cruelty. Sarcasm is the obvious offender. I know some people pride themselves in this form of humor, but consider its roots: "mid 16th century: from French sarcasme, or via late Latin from late Greek sarkasmos, from Greek sarkazein ‘tear flesh,’ in late Greek ‘gnash the teeth, speak bitterly’ (fromsarx, sark- ‘flesh’)." That's what it feels like to be on the receiving end of sarcasm, yes? Like the words shared in bitterness have torn your flesh. It is violence and needs to be called out.

"Oh, I didn't mean any thing by that," some will say and try to laugh or deflect the wound away from themselves. So why then say it? It is an ugly but obscure form of bullying - an act informed more by cowardice and inner confusion - than anything resembling love or friendship. Indeed, this veiled violence is more insidious than other types of destructive humor. Outright rage and the vicious maligning of the vulnerable is obviously odious - think Sam Kinison or the cynicism that drove George Carlon in his later days - whether it comes from the Left or the Right. Same goes for racist and misogynist "humor." Humor that is clearly sick is out in the open and can be challenged. Not so, however, with most sarcasm - primarily because its pain is so quickly denied by the perpetrator and deflected back onto the wounded as "a misunderstanding."

Henri Nouwen, Barbara Brown Taylor and Parker Palmer have all noted that there is a wisdom experienced in our bodies that we need to honor. When we are attacked by the cruelty of another's attempt at humor, we know it. We feel it. It is NOT a misunderstanding no matter how vigorous the denial. So we must defend ourselves - and I think there are three strategies for self-defense against the violence of sarcasm:

+ First, we must name it for what it is: violence. It isn't humor. It isn't hip. And it isn't insightful or ironic. It is cruel and born of cruelty. Lewis Black is funny - biting, to be sure - but funny. Sara Vowel is funny as is Margaret Cho, Sarah Silverman, Amy Poehler, Louis C.K, John Oliver, Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle. Each and all of these comics are not Pollyannas. They are often crude, course and even dangerous. But they understand their calling to be puncturing the self-importance of the powerful and giving voice to those who are hurting. Their goal is not violence but strengthening the common good. Such has been the role of jester and fool since the beginning of time and we need this type of comedy to help us mature.

+ Second, we must not tolerate, encourage or support violent humor in our friends or colleagues. Just as racial bigotry needs to be called into question - or Islamaphobia or misogyny - so too personal violence disguised as humor. If we give a pass to those closest to us, we are part of the problem rather than part of the healing. With kindness and clarity, let's unpack these attacks and name them for what they really are: backhanded acts of cruelty. This is hard to do - it makes us all uncomfortable - but if we always do what we've always done, we'll always get what we've always got. Time has come to call the bullies out and invite them into compassion and responsibility.

+ And third, we must nourish a whole other type of humor in our hearts, souls and minds: self- deprecating jokes, stories and anecdotes. When we are able to laugh at ourselves - and point out our own foibles - we nourish humility and build allies with those we love rather than alienate or shame. Self-deprecating humor also helps another see the splinter - or plank - in their own eye. It is about honesty and trust and is in too short supply. When I was introduced to the poetry of Rumi - and the Sufi stories of Nasrudin - I realized the blessings and insights that could come through a new and tender type of humor. I am still working at it and find it so much more satisfying than the ways of veiled cruelty. One of my favorite Rumi poems gets it completely right.

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

I should be suspicious
of what I want.

A spirituality of tenderness cries out for a sense of humor that builds one another up rather than tears them down or reduces us to tears. Here's a song that has always spoken to me of a real life tenderness; it is simultaneously sassy, sensual and safe in the most vibrant way. Dig it.

Missa Gaia is coming: November 22...

We are currently working on a stellar project that combines caring for the common good with artistic creativity: the Berkshire premiere of Paul Winter's "Missa Gaia/Earth Mass." It was commissioned for St. John the Divine and has been a part of their St. Francis Feast Day celebration since 1982. It is a unique work that combines jazz and chant, contemporary sounds with ancient pipe organ as well as the organic music of wolves and whales. 

As has become our custom, large musical events are never seen as ends unto themselves: they are dedicated to raising funds and consciousness about a key local concern. Sometimes that involves emergency fuel assistance for our brutal winters. At other times we have cast our hearts towards Mother Earth or brothers and sisters who are neighbors in need of food. This show - on Sunday, November 22 @ 3 pm - is in solidarity with BEAT (Berkshire Environmental Action Team.) When I began ministry here, we narrowed our mission/outreach focus to four broad areas:  eco-justice, peace, food security and regional justice issues. We also decided to stop re-inventing the wheel and partner with secular groups already doing vital work in the wider community. 

In this, we have been able to support BEAT and help them deepen their impact on the

Berkshires as well as welcome church folk into their work as partners. How does the Psalmist put it? "How good and pleasant it is when sisters and brothers dwell in unity?" Our goal - and we have to wrestle with staying focused - is to use our time and resources in wise and effective ways. It is very easy to become distracted by the plethora of needs that are presented to us every day. But if we honor our limits - and this is always challenging - we can remain true to our calling of living into the blessed rest and trust of Christ Jesus.

For "Missa Gaia" there will be a 20 person chorus comprised of many First Church members as well as key soloists and guests from the wider artistic community. There will also be a small jazz ensemble:  soprano sax, guitar, upright bass, drums, cello, oboe, pipe organ and piano. And a professional dance troupe will open and close the gig adding visual power and color to the festivities.  

It has become my conviction that whenever we create a work of beauty dedicated to the common good everyone benefits. And while beauty is, indeed, its own reward - one of the truths that can heal and save the world - it helps church people if such creative work is also linked to one of our mission commitments. All too often, religious peple are woefully utilitarian. Richard Rohr and Parker Palmer label this "functional atheism" wherein we act like everything in creation depends upon our endeavors rather than God's presence in and through creation. By linking our mission work with acts of beauty, hope and joy, my hope is that we slowly help others see how important the arts are in strengthening embodied spiritual integrity. I may be deluding myself as you can never please all the people all of the time, but I suspect that we are building bridges concerning the ways acts of creative beauty are socially, spiritually and even politically transformative.

Here is a congregation in Worcester, MA performing the Kyrie from "Missa Gaia" complete with wolf song, improvisation and choral reply. Our performance will be equally stunning so if you are in the area, please join us..

Reflections after two months...

After worship and choir practice on Sunday, Dianne and I will be away for three days of retreat and renewal to reflect on what it means to be back in ministry. As part of our Lilly Foundation grant, we built in three such retreats over the course of the next year. We will have been back for seven weeks. It is time to step back and consider what we are hearing of the Holy Spirit in our experiences so far. Three things have already become clear:

+ One has to do with how east it is to get caught back up in busyness that truly does not require my presence. Not only do I get worn out from such things, but my music practice suffers. I am already applying a corrective. Charles Davis calls giving into these unnecessary demands "a form of self-inflicted violence." A recent meme on FB gave this reality clear shape and form.

+ Another has to do with my growing experience of centering and contemplative prayer. Nouwen and Rohr are right: we cannot sustain compassion and peace-making in the world without a strong and living encounter with God's grace deep within. "Prayer is leading every sorrow to the source of all healing, it is letting the warmth of Jesus’ love melt the cold anger of resentment; it is opening a space where joy replaces sadness, mercy supplants bitterness, love displaces fear, gentleness and care overcome hatred and indifference."

+ And then there is the nourishment of making certain to share dinner each night with Dianne by candle light and music.

Do what you can do and trust God with the rest...

As part of my work on an emerging "spirituality of tenderness" I've been slowly reading a book by Charles Davis: A Spirituality for the Vulnerable. Davis was a former Roman Catholic who left that realm for the Anglican Church, taught theology and religion at Concordia University in Montreal before eventually returning to England and the Roman tradition. This book, originally published with the equally tender title of Soft Bodies in a Hard World, is not an easy read - but it is insightful. 

Last night I read through a short chapter he calls "Weariness in Well Doing," an invitation for people of faith not to get caught up in sadness, and a guide for how to avoid slipping into a "mood of spiritual depression." This is valuable wisdom that is neither taught to contemporary clergy nor congregations - and is vital for staying in ministry over the long haul. Davis suggests that there are three practices essential to maintaining our balance and integrity.

+ First, we must "acknowledge that we are finite... not just in words but in a practical realization of what it means to be limited, fallible creatures." We all have confines when it comes to wisdom, energy, virtue and ability. Writing in 1990, Davis was aware of the ideology of unlimited economic growth as the foundation of contemporary culture. His era marked the "end of ideology" when unfettered capitalism finally defeated communism and "greed became good" according to "Wall Street's" Gordon Gekko. In 2015 we sadly realize that a credo of greed is neither good nor sustainable - and is certainly unhealthy to apply to our real lives. "Inadequate as applied to economic activity itself, the pursuit of unlimited growth is disastrous when transferred to other areas of human living. It replaces the reality of human existence with illusory dreams. It destroys the joy in the reality of what we have and fills the empty space with febrile desires." One of the truths I relearned on sabbatical is to own my abilities and limits, trust that God does not relate to me in a utilitarian way, and cherish that God's grace is not dependent upon what I produce.

+ Second, a "requirement for avoiding a lapse into spiritual weariness is to call a halt to that incessant busyness which is a form of self-inflicted violence." The call is NOT to do more - whatever that more might be - rather it is to love authentically and be focused and tender with that love. I was speaking to a clergy person after Sunday's CROP Walk who expressed to me a staggering weariness and resentment over the way congregations seek to blame their clergy whenever their church isn't "growing." It must be the pastor's fault this soul said with a sorrow that was palpable. We both know it usually isn't the clergy person's fault that our culture and priorities have shifted dramatically from the 1950s. We also know that the self-inflicted violence of our parishioners own busyness is more to "blame" than any one thing we may do or not accomplish.  But still the blame game goes on: "It is violence to allow ourselves to be constantly carried away by a multitude of projects, concerns and activities. We take on too much. We suppose we can help everyone in everything. We think we are doing fine when we haven't a moment to rest or gather our thoughts... but (in this ) we destroy joy, we kill the spirit... We must shake off the false conviction that we are not accomplishing anything unless we are caught up in a tumult of activity." A friend of mine from a clergy consultation service reminded me when I returned from sabbatical: "Some people are going to resent your restful demeanor and others are going to want to get you back into the rat race of their lives. If, however, you are able to resist - and I hope you do - there will be fall out." Davis concludes: "we provoke a spiritual sadness when we drive ourselves forward by frenetic energy. I repeat that such busyness is a form of violence."

+ And third involves our "engagement in redeeming our sins." Sin, notes Davis and many others including Richard Rohr, is a failure to love: it is "a failure to meet the occasion with love or the spiritual energy (the moment) calls for." Our invitation, therefore, is to trust God's grace knowing that God's future can change, transform, heal and redeem both our past and our present. That is to say, it is learning to live trusting that God is God so we don't have to try to be Lord over heaven and earth. We can rest in God's grace. We can trust in God's forgiveness. We can stop the inner chatter. We can, as Buechner urges, "stop trying to protect, to rescue, to judge, to manage the lives around you... they are God's business not yours. Leave it to God.. unclench the fists of your spirit and take it easy." Like the Psalm I read this morning - Psalm 126 - proclaims: "Those who sowed in tears will reap with songs of joy. Those who go out weeping, carrying the seed, will come again with joy, shouldering their sheaves." This is precisely what the prophet Isaiah teaches, too: Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake their way, and the unrighteous their thoughts; let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it. For you shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.

An abiding commitment in these post-sabbatical days, practiced imperfectly to be sure, but affirmed nevertheless, comes from the wisdom of the late Henri Nouwen who wrote:

Prayer is leading every sorrow to the source of all healing; it is letting the warmth of Jesus' love melt the cold anger of resentment; it is opening a space where joy replaces sadness, mercy supplants bitterness, love displaces fear, gentleness and care overcome hatred and indifference. But most of all, prayer is the way to become and remain part of Jesus' mission to draw all people into the intimacy of God's love.

More than anything else I think, say or do, this is the key. I can't do it all, I can't fix it all and I can't know it all. I can just do what I can do and like Abraham Joshua Heschel said: trust God with the rest. Such is the wisdom of Sabbath rest - and it has saved my life!

the mystery of God: tenderness transforms confusion into clarity...

"Ministry," writes Henri Nouwen, "is how we make the world more transparent to the other so that the world speaks of God and people are enlightened by the love of God." Now I am so down with that understanding of ministry that I want to start dancing! Since our return from Montreal, I have been.searching for both a new way of understanding whatever ministry I still am called to share with others, and, a new set of shared commitments within the community. To borrow a brilliant phrase from Diana Butler Bass, these new commitments, however, must be shared commitments born from below because the era of "top down" religion is over (or at least dying a slow and painful death before our very eyes.)

I have known since leaving Montreal that my personal/professional calling has changed significantly. As Nouwen observes, just as Christ invites us never to treat others as characters or "roles to be used," I wanted that for myself, too. I wanted and needed to be understood and loved in community as a full person - just James as I keep saying - rather than fundamentally as "pastor James." So, upon returning from sabbatical, I changed my business cards to show this more grassroots and complete sense of self. At my first council meeting, I also shared with our leadership team that when I was first summoned to serve in Pittsfield, I brought with me a plan for our renewal: it was born of prayer and study, to be sure, but it was a plan inspired by my own critical reflection on our context. It was not, at first, a shared or even cooperative plan. Rather it was a tug of war wherein I labored with love and stubbornness to yank a loving but resistant congregation into the the 21st century. It was a prayerful act of the will to move from fear and nostalgia into new possibilities. Along the way, trust was built and a foundation for cooperation emerged - but not at first.

Nine years later, we are in a very different place. Not only do I no longer have the energy or interest in playing the role of "the man with the plan," but the very community has changed as well.  Now we are simultaneously in a place where we can help one another "open our eyes and ears to make what is cloudy and opaque clear and beautiful. Our work in shared ministry is to proclaim to others what we have experienced in prayer: we are all much more loving people than we realize." (Nouwen)

Yesterday, both during worship and while at the CROP Walk, I glimpsed again the possibilities of our new reality. And as one of my favorite people said, "You can see it in all the pictures taken at the walk. So many smiles. So much love and joy at being with one another in service to others!" In his book re: Spiritual Formation, Nouwen reminds us that "the training and work of spiritual formation requires an articulate not-knowingness and a receptive emptiness through which God can be revealed."

Just as theology asks us to empty our cup so that we can open our min to the incomprehensible things of God, spirituality asks us to empty our mind so that we can open our heart to receive life as a gift to be lived. Even more than our mind, it is our heart that needs to be empty enough for the Spirit to enter and fill it. This process for self-emptying and spirit-filing is called spiritual formation - the gradual development of the heart of God in the life of a human being (and dare I add a congregation?) aided by contemplative prayer, inclusive community and compassionate ministry.

The essence of this work, for those who pray from the heart, is to first encounter a personal transformation where what appears opaque in the world becomes transparent. This is what we are initially called to consider: learning how to taste and see the goodness of the Lord. Our commitment is to become open and empty through contemplative prayer in order that we might "see and make visible that which is hidden from ordinary sight." St. Paul uses the word "mystery" - μυστήριον - mysterion - which often confuses contemporary disciples. It is not a detective story to be solved by intellectual work nor a collection of obscure facts available only to the cognoscenti. Christianity is not a Gnostic religion. It is a grassroots spirituality where all of God's blessings are free, open and available to all. 

+ In I Corinthians 2: 7-8:  we speak of the wisdom of God as a mystery, even a hidden wisdom, that God has ordained before the beginning of time.

+ In Romans 16: 25: the preaching of Jesus Christ reveals to us a mystery that has been obscure throughout time.

+ In Colossians 4: 3: in prayer God reveals to us the mystery of Christ.

+ In Colossians 1: 26-27: We pray to God that which has been obscure since the beginning of time - which is Christ in you - might become your hope.

What Paul is talking about is learning to discern the light in the darkness.  Nouwen calls this

discovering how what is opaque can become transparent. It is a sacramental vision that sees and trusts the eagle in the egg, the presence of the Lord in the bread and wine, the grace and living image of God within each person. It is what Jesus embodied as the Word made Flesh and  is at the core of a grassroots, vibrant ministry in the 21st century.

The practice of contemplative prayer reveals to us the true nature of things; it unmasks the illusion of control, the possessiveness of possessions and the pretense of the false self. For those who practice contemplative prayer, the world no longer is opaque or dark but has become new and transparent - the new earth shining with its inherent character. To live spiritually in the world is to unmask the illusion, dispel the darkness and walk in the light...The Spirit of God shows us (all) how to move continuously from opaqueness to transparency in three central relationships: our relationship with nature, with time and with people.

In another writing, Prayer Embraces the World, Nouwen puts it like this:

Prayer is leading every sorrow to the source of all healing; it is letting the warmth of Jesus' love melt the cold anger of resentment; it is opening a space where joy replaces sadness, mercy supplants bitterness, love displaces fear, gentleness and care overcome hatred and indifference. But most of all, prayer is the way to become and remain part of Jesus' mission to draw all people into the intimacy of God's love.

And in this, there is a NEW ministry and mission within and among us. It is NOT preserving a building or fumbling with a budget. It is not fortifying a burial society for those addicted to the past nor becoming a club of like minded souls in the present. Rather it is cultivating and sharing a heart for God - and living in ways that share God's heart with a hurting world - one person at a time. "I want their hearts to be encouraged and united in love, so that they may have all the riches of assured understanding and have the knowledge of God’s mystery, that is, Christ himself,in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." (Colossians 2:2)

Such is the essence of tenderness - God's mystery revealed in Jesus - and such could become our common call into ministry.

thanks to:+  Rebecca Maaia for the pictures @ https://www.facebook.com/Rebecca-Maaia-Photography-857189930985521/

+ Dianne De Mott

These are the days...

Man am I beat - but blessed! It snowed and poured sunshine three or four times today. We had a good crowd at worship and then raised nearly $7K for the CROP Walk. We sang and prayed, said farewell to a young family heading to North Carolina and met new friends, too. It was the first anniversary of my musical colleague and partner in ministry and his spouse and it was the first anniversary of my father's passing. The music for "Missa Gaia" really came together at our rehearsal after worship and we had a blast walking together throughout Pittsfield with friends from area churches and Berkshire Bank raising funds and consciousness about hunger needs. I crashed completely when the day was done and then awoke to prays for a dear friend in Brooklyn entering the hospital today for stomach surgery. I am finally over the stomach flu and now Di is suffering under its influence.

Today calls to mind not only 10,000 Maniacs by Charles Baudelaire.

You have to be always drunk. That’s all there is to it—it’s the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk.

But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.

And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again, drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is singing, everything that is speaking. . .ask what time it is and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: “It is time to be drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish.”

celebrating the wisdom of the mystical...

Sometime in the 90's I discovered a word for the way I experienced, understood and loved the Lord our God: mystic. Growing up, my desire for the holy, my experience with the sacred and my understanding of divinity was different from than the doctrines articulated by my rational mentors. Not better, of course, but never worse. In time I learned that I was created to explore the wisdom of the heart rather than only the realm of intellectual reason. But my tradition, New England Congregationalism, had long lost touch with its roots in the ecstatic encounters of the early Puritans. 

Some of my spiritual ancestors had found a home in an evolving transcendentalism as heirs of Emerson. Others remained steadfast in the supremacy of a Reformed intellect and its canon of principled dogma. So I stayed silent in worship most days - treasuring the touch of the host during Holy Communion, weeping during a variety of hymns and day dreaming of a deeper intimacy with God - even as I sat in the old, plain white Sanctuary that was simultaneously beautiful and sobering. Like many of my tribe, I quit attending worship after high school but read voraciously. From the New Testament to Herman Hesse - as well as Kerouac, Ginsberg, Merton and Bonhoeffer - my spiritual journey took a decidedly cerebral course. 

My understanding of mysticism was shaped by this typical dictionary definition: Mystic - of or relating to mysteries or esoteric rites and the occult; obscure, enigmatic, inducing feelings of awe and wonder, having magical properties. (Merriam-Webster) Never was a mystic spoken of like this competing description: a person who seeks by contemplation and self-surrender to obtain unity with or absorption into the Deity or the absolute, or who believes in the spiritual apprehension of truths that are beyond the intellect. Once, as a young adult on a church retreat where we were talking about our deepest longings, I blurted out, "I want to see God face to face." Silence and anxiety were the only response. I learned early on to keep my yearning to myself.

Somewhere in the 70's, however, I was turned on to both Fr. Ed Hays of the Shantivanam

Retreat House in rural Kansas (check it out: http://www.americancatholic. org/Messenger /Jun1996/feature2.asp) and also Fr. Matthew Fox and his writing about Hildegard of Bingen. His emerging creation spirituality and articulation of a spirituality called compassion also spoke to my soul. (see http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com /books/reviews/view/2115) From these pilgrims it was just a hop, skip and a jump for me to find Henri Nouwen and then Richard Rohr, Dorothee Soelle, Kathleen Norris and Harvey Cox.  Later still, the pioneers of the mytho-poetic men's movement - Robert Bly, Sam Keen, Marion Woodman and James Hillman - offered new connections between my hunger and thirst for the sacred and the mystical path.

Last night, after reading Robert Alter's commentary on the Hebrew Psalms, I returned to Nouwen's primer on spiritual formation. Both helped me own my hunch that the Psalmists were mystics, too. Nouwen writes:

Both theological reflection and spiritual formation require an articulate not-knowingness and a receptive emptiness through which God can be revealed. Just as theology asks us to empty our cup so that we can open our mind to the incomprehensible things of God, spirituality asks us to empty our mind so we can open our heart to receive life as a gift to be lived. Even more than our mind, it is our heart that needs to become empty enough for the Spirit to enter and fill it. The process of self-emptying and spirit-filling is called spiritual formation - the gradual development of the heart of God in the life of a human being. 

Nouwen then goes on to say that the whole point of practicing contemplative prayer is to learn how to see - specifically, to see and "make visible that which is hidden from ordinary sight." 

The practice of contemplative prayer reveals to us the true nature of things; it unmasks the illusion of control, the possessiveness of possessions, and the pretense of the false self. For those who practice contemplative prayer, the world no longer is opaque and dark but has become new and transparent - the new earth shining with its inherent character. To live spiritually in the world is to unmask the illusion, dispel the darkness and walk in the light... And the Spirit of God shows us how to move continuously from opaqueness to transparency in three central relationships: our relationship with nature,with time and with people.

Clearly that is what St. Paul is doing in Romans 1 where he attempts to articulate his mystical wisdom within the confines of words:

What can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world God's eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things God has made. So they are without excuse.

Such is the confession of the Psalmist in this Sunday's responsive Psalm 104. Alter notes that the very first words are: O my whole being, bless the Lord... for God has donned the grandeur and glory of creation, wrapped in light...stretching out heavens...making chariots of the clouds...inhabiting the thunder and mountains... causing streams to flow in the desert... even giving the wild ass complete freedom to romp in safety.

As we walked in the leaves yesterday, it was ecstatic. It was a body prayer. A holy time. A moment of intimacy with the Creator. Nouwen writes:

When we contemplate nature rather than manipulating it, we are able to see nature as a gift of God to be cherished and cared for... the plants and animals with whom we live teach us about birth, growth, maturation and death, about the need for gentle care, and especially about the importance of patience and hope. This is the sacramental basis of any healthy ecology... and in it all becomes transparent when nature discloses itself to those with eyes to see the loving face of God.

Tomorrow - after formal worship - we will use our bodies to pray again as we walk in the CROP Walk to raise funds and awareness of hunger throughout the world. There will be no words, no doctrines, no reason taking place in this prayer, just our bodies in union with compassion and awakened to the cold, the leaves and the beauty of the day.

credits: Dianne De Mott

grateful for the christian century...

Just when I think, "I'm done with my subscription to the Christian Century..." along come two

articles that knock me on my ass with their clarity, relevance and wisdom. Like Rumi says, "I should be suspicious of what I want!"

The first hails from M. Craig Barnes, current president of Princeton Theological Seminary and author of one of my favorite books: The Pastor as Minor Poet, in CC's "Faith Matters" column. It is a tender reflection on the conversations he now hears among the pastors he visits with during various professional conferences. These table talks over breakfast rarely have anything to do with the event but everything to do with "a common lament."

"I want to get back to being a pastor," said the person across the table... "I'm so tired of trying to navigate our church through the debates about divestment and gay marriage. These issues (and others on a denominational level) are sucking up all the air in the congregation." ... None of the pastors would say that issues such as justice for LGBT people or Palestinians are unimportant. They feel called to speak about these issues as much as they do about racial justice, the environment or economic concerns. The problem is that the pastors cannot engage the conversation on the congregation's own terms. Their denominations have determined the nature of the debates that take up an extraordinary amount of their energy.

I know that I have been wrestling with this challenge since the early days of my ordination. Over half of my denomination left the United Church of Christ between the late 1960's and the early 80's NOT because they were uniquely homophobic, racist or sexist. We ALL are - that wasn't the issue - as St. Paul said: we all have fallen short of the glory of God - everyone of us. No, the issues of the day were not the fundamental reason thousands and thousands of people left our congregations. Part of it had to do with nostalgia and the appeal of both fundamentalism and charismatic renewal. But a far larger part of this exodus had to do with a rejection of an imposed elitism that rarely was able to practice what it preached. Few of the folk in our local churches knew or trusted those in the superstructure and received the sundry social justice pronouncements handed down from on hight with resentment and confusion. Barnes continues:

For a very long time mainline Protestantism has congratulated itself on being prophetic because it is so good at voting for progressive agendas. But what our society really needs from the church are agents of change. And that has never come from a denominational vote. Change comes from congregations that decide to live by the ethics of Jesus Christ... No one in the pews is holding their breath to read the next position paper from their denomination. But if their pastor climbs into the pulpit, wearing a gown tattered by the nibbling of sheep, and says, "hear the word of the Lord," they will follow that shepherd anywhere. So it is time for the denominations to get off the backs of their own pastors.

My seminary mentor, the late Rev. Ray Swartzback,  put it to me simply: "You have to earn your street cred, man. It isn't portable and comes about only by putting in a lot of time, blood, sweat and tears. When the people know you love them - and you deliver - then you can ask them to go to uncomfortable places for the gospel. Until that happens, however, you have not earned the right so don't waste your time." His words of wisdom have been a guideline for me over the past 35 years: if you are there for real people in their times of need, you start to earn trust. As Barnes goes on to say: " It is all too easy (for people at national events) in some distant city to delude themselves into thinking that voting, voting, voting without congregational  accountability will bring about the kingdom of God. It doesn't." This is not to cast aspirations on those working in our various ecclesiastical bureaucracies. Like Barnes, I know them and know that they are good people. "They are not the problem..."

The problem is the inability of a modernist superstructure like a denomination to handle postmodern affections. In the 1950s the church could speak with one voice because people trusted big institutions. Then it made sense to speak about the Presbyterian, Lutheran, Episcopal or Methodist position on the issues. Now we have to humble remind ourselves that there is a myriad of position on every issue within the church. If people trust any religious body (and that is up for debate) it is the local church. They prefer their issues to have names, faces and stories. (read Barnes' whole commentary @ https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2015-06/where-issues-have-faces)

From my perspective, this one article is worth the price of a subscription. But wait, as the TV infomericals say, "there's more!"

The second article was written by Samuel Wells:  "The power of being with" (@ https://www. christiancentury.org/article/2015-06/power-being) As I am discerning in my emerging "spirituality of tenderness," Wells contrasts four ways of being engaged with the wounds of the world and the people who are suffering:  1) working for people; 2) working with them ; 3) being with folk; and 4) being for them.  He writes:

Working for is the default position setting for most engagements with poverty. The homeless person is regarded as a problem and as a symptom of a deeper problem.. so the working for approach seeks to fix that problem with a range of resources... Being for is somewhat similar except that it tends to assume the problem is someone else's to address and adopts a position that's more in solidarity (but) in a general way. Note that working for and being for have a word in common: that little word FOR. Neither working for nor being for requires you to have any significant kind of conversation or interaction with a homeless person.

Such is the typical, professional liberal Christian approach to social issues: let's fix it - and move on. There is abstract compassion in these two approaches and they continue to have their adherents. Wells goes on to suggest that there are two other ways of interacting with the suffering of real people: working with and being with. I like his nuanced thinking when he writes:

Working with seeks to attract a whole range of stakeholders and sees the homeless person as having a crucial contribution alongside service providers and concerned organisations. It is a much more dynamic model that working for - and sensitive to a much wider range of contributions than simply professional expertise. Where working with differs from being with, however, is that working with still sees a problem - even if it is a problem shared by a range of different people... being with, by contrast, doesn't start with a problem... it begins with a real person.

It is clear that the influence of Richard Rohr, Jean Vanier, Barbara Brown Taylor, Henri Nouwen and Frederick Buechner have been at work deep within me because I once lived and breathed in the first two camps. But now I resonate only with the later: being with makes all the difference in the world. It honors the dignity of real people, it is all about relationslhip and it engages the wounds of the world as God did in Christ Jesus. Wells sums it up profoundly like this:

Let's recast this configuration in theological perspective. Does God see the world as a problem to be solved or a gift to be enjoyed? Does Christ become incarnate because there's a job of redemption to be done and only he can do it, or, because the whole point of creation was that God would dwell with us terrestrially in Jesus and eternally in heaven?... The Gospel don't show us a God who in Christ is merely for us. They show us a Christ who is fundamentally with us.

Today is the first day I haven't felt deathly ill with the stomach flu that is making its way around the region. So as I read these old copies of The Christian Century and sipped my morning tea, I found myself saying out loud, "I can't bail on these guys... I need them to much." So sent off my check for yet another year's subscription and rejoice in their work of being with me in ministry.

Be still...

One of the gifts of being sick - even the stomach flu - is time to read, think, rest and pray. For

the past three days I've mostly been down with this beast. And while I hate being sick, I cherish the solitude. (Makes me think of St. Leonard Cohen's "Democracy" - I love the country but hate the scene!) During this down time I've gone deeper into both the wisdom of Henri Nouwen, Parker Palmer and Richard Rohr on the subject of "calming our inner chatter," and, revisited some of their time-tested spiritual practices that have served other generations as allies in this quest.

Nouwen writes that "we must go through the stages where feelings of love and hate, tenderness and pain, forgiveness and greed are separated, strengthened or reformed." This is his gentle reminder that the only way we can live through the suffocating and debilitating inner chatter in our heads involves careful and regular practice. Alcohol and drugs deaden the voices for a few hours - or years - but once the buzz is gone, the chatter returns with a vengeance. Sex and work just push the chatter to the periphery, but once we're alone and quiet: BAM! Distraction, denial and deception do not resolve the deadening of God's presence within us caused by our inner dialogues. They simply delay our exasperation and postpone our commitment to embracing a spiritual practice that works.  
In order for our best intentions to become embodied, however, requires a new and more satisfying relationship to prayer than the ones we learned in middle school and adolescence. Again, Nouwen is insightful: "The invitation to a life of prayer is the invitation to live in the midst of this world without being caught in the net of wounds and needs."

The word "prayer" stands for a radical interruption of the vicious chain of interlocking dependencies leading to violence and war and for an entering into a totally new dwelling place. It points to a new way of speaking, a new way of breathing, a new way of being together, a new way of knowing, yes, and a new way of living. It is not easy to express the radical change that prayer represents, since for many the word "prayer" is associated with piety, talking to God, thinking about God, morning and evening liturgies, Sunday services, grace before meals, sentences from the Bible and many other things. All of these have something to do with prayer, but when I speak about prayer... I speak first of all about moving away from the dwelling place of those who hate peace and entering into the house of God... Prayer is the center of the Christian life. It is the only necessary thing (Luke 10:42) for it is living with God here and now.

It is living, walking, talking, thinking and resting in God's presence that assures and confirms that we are God's beloved. It is a sacred relationship born from above, to be sure, but one that must be tended to and nourished from below. That is why Rohr insists that we cannot live as people of peace in the real world without first experiencing - and then practicing - a regular life of prayer and contemplation. "We do not think our way into a new way of living," he insists "but rather we live our way into a new way of thinking." Our encounter with God's love, when it is cherished and strengthened, is the only source of authentic spiritual power in all creation.

What is the source of your spiritual power? It’s radical union with God, not just doing good things or holding a role or function. Often we make the basis for ministry professionalism, education, and up-to-date-ism, which are all good in themselves. But in the end, the only basis for fruitful Christianity is divine union. Such people change you and change the world... Most of us were taught that God would love us if and when we change. In fact, God loves you so that you can change. What empowers change, what makes you desirous of change is the experience of love. It is that inherent experience of love that becomes the engine of change.

To live otherwise is "functional atheism." I've used this term recently and apparently it has

caused some confusion. Parker Palmer explains it with clarity: It is "the belief that ultimate responsibility for everything rests with us. This is the unconscious, unexamined conviction that if anything decent is going to happen here, we are the ones who must make it happen – a conviction held even by people who talk a good game about God." It is saying - and believing - that God is God and we are not, but acting like the world depends upon me for justice, hope, peace, food and all the rest. It is a way of living not only celebrated by our bottom-line culture, but honored by those unwilling to practice Sabbath rest. Abraham Joshua Heschel was clear: if we learn to rest and trust God for 24 hours, perhaps we can learn to trust the Lord for the rest of the week, too.

Rest, trust, a life of peace and ending the "endless chatter of human thought" that deadens our lives to God's presence within are intimately connected, yes? That is why I give thanks to God for this nasty flu: I've been able to revisit an old friend - a prayer tool born of the practices of Fr. Thomas Keating but adapted for my experience - and reclaim it as an ally in nourishing God's peace from within. Keating is the Benedictine priest who popularized the Western Christian form of meditation we know as Centering Prayer. After Vatican II, Keating was encouraged to share this long forgotten prayer form with the West as a loving resource. It was also a tender reminder that the East does not have a monopoly upon sacred wisdom or practices.  (learn more @ http://www.centeringprayer.com/)

What I have been doing of late is using a short series of sacred words like a mantra in combination with breathing.( I've often taught this way of praying to others for times when they know they will face stress or anxiety and have used it myself during heated public meetings.) What I haven't done before, however, is use my intimacy with God's love to help me shut down the inner chatter that invades my consciousness almost as soon as I awake. I can't tell you how many times my mind is filled with someone else's critique, complaint, judgement or simply my own insecure soul's projection of these things unto the day that has only just begun. The inner dialogue is deafening at times.

So I've claimed a paraphrase of Psalm 46:10 as my liberating mantra: as I breathe in, I hear "be still" and when I breathe out, I hear "know God."  It is an ancient prayer, time-tested for probably 4,000 years. It evokes my experiences with God's gracious love. And it shuts down the inner chatter. Now let me be clear: sometimes I have to pray this mantra 300 before I even get into the shower! But it works. And the more I shut down the inner chatter with an affirmation of God's grace, the more at rest I am. There is much more to be said about other types of prayer and meditation, but that is enough for today. 

photo credits: Dianne De Mott

Tenderness and shutting down the chatter within...

Well, the jury may not yet be in on my exploration of simply "preaching from the heart"on Sundays, but I liked it. Worship felt more honest to me - less contrived - less like a command or paid performance and more like a conversation in faith. For the next two months I'm going to do my best to nourish this experiment - and then see where Advent might lead us.

This week I'm using two of the lectionary texts - Isaiah 53: 1-12 and Mark 10: 35-45 - as part of my emerging spirituality of tenderness series. Both texts make it clear that we must practice resting and trusting in the Lord by faith. It really does not come to most of us automatically. It certainly doesn't to me. Left on my own, I can't tell you how many times before my morning tea and prayers I find myself fretting about the chatter in my head. 

What deadens us most to God's presence within us, I think, is the inner dialogue that we are continuously engaged in with ourselves, the endless chatter of human thought. I suspect that there is nothing more crucial to true spiritual comfort... than being able from time to time to stop that chatter. Frederick Buechner

Stopping the chatter with tenderness is an essential ingredient in becoming people who live, share and embody tenderness towards others. But damn if it doesn't take a lot of practice at first. Maybe always. Thomas Merton cut to the chase when we wrote:

If we strive to be happy by filling the silence of life with sound, productive by turning all life's leisure into work, and real by turning all our being into doing, we will only succeed in producing a hell on earth. If we have no silence, God is not heard in our music. If we have no rest, God does not bless our work. If we twist our lives out of shape in order to fill every corner of them with action and experience, God will seem silently to withdraw from our hearts and leave us empty.

Small wonder Jesus continues to tell us that there are so few workers willing to practice inner tenderness by shutting off the chatter. He urges it and models it, he lays down his life as evidence that real inner peace can transform personal pain into redemptive compassion. But mostly, and I include myself in this, we don't really trust him enough to put it into practice. We are as Richard Rohr says essentially functional atheists who don't trust resting in the Lord. The way we live our lives show that we believe it is necessary for us to solve everything by ourselves. 

On what was almost our last night in Montreal, we went to Taize worship at the monastery on Boulevard Mont Royal. It took a bit of wandering through the massive structure to find the small worship space - in the catacombs - but the quest was well worth it. In addition to the beauty of the simple music and the careful attention to the worship aesthetics, I was moved to tears by the fact that the whole liturgy took place on the floor. I know I've noted this before, but the geography of this worship communicated some important truths to me that went far deeper than some of the French words I couldn't comprehend. Yes, there were provisions for those whose bodies did not allow sitting on the floor. That is what compassionate people do, yes? 

But for those who could, everything - music, prayer, conversation and silence - happened in humility. There was no hierarchy. No division between insiders and outsiders. No unnecessary divisions. Just an encounter with being an equal - we're all in this together - we're all servants to one another as the gospel lesson for this Sunday instructs: "when people get a little power how quickly it goes to their heads. It’s not going to be that way with you. Whoever wants to be great must become a servant. Whoever wants to be first among you must be your slave. That is what the Son of Man has done: He came to serve, not to be served—and then to give away his life in exchange for many who are held hostage."

I've been sick with the stomach flu since after worship on Sunday so I've had a lot of time to think and pray about this. I'm eager to see where it all leads us in worship this week.