some pictures...

Some of my favorite pix from last night and earlier today....

             

you may say i'm a dreamer: three days of non-violent resistance in holy week...

NOTE:  This is a Holy Week letter I sent to the good folk in my faith community. I share it with you too in the hope that you will join me - physically or in spirit - to make the Three Holy Days of this week a time of renewal and non-violent resistance to the growing madness.

Dear friends and members of First Church:

Peace and blessings be upon you during Holy Week. I rarely send out special notes to the whole congregation: your lives (and in-boxes) are already too full – but this week I have made an exception. Like many of you, I experienced a numbing sense of sorrow and exhaustion after the most recent round of bombings in Ankara, Brussels and Istanbul. I found that my tears had run dry – at least momentarily – and that my heart was heavy. After the massacre in Sandy Hook, I couldn’t imagine a deeper encounter with despair but apparently my conclusion was premature.

As our politicians pandered and preened to position themselves as the toughest, most aggressive and terror savvy leaders known to humanity, I found myself tempted to lose myself to the mechanics of Holy Week. There are multiple details to work out, rehearsals and homilies to focus upon, to say nothing of choir practice and worship bulletins. It would be easy to let the rituals of this season fill up my emptiness and grief. But that would be too much like Pontius Pilate choosing to “wash his hands” of Jesus and simply let the system move on its normal, violent way; remaining aloof from the torture and execution of our Christ has a long history. And that is precisely what the status quo counts on: our being too busy, too tired, too sad, too unfocused, too entertained or too confused to say “NO” to the madness.

This morning, however, as I took a short time for quiet reflection, I was drawn to these words from Fr. Richard Rohr. They touched something in my heart that encouraged me to reach out to you with this letter. Rohr notes that the over-arching theme of our Bible portrays “Jesus as an extreme example of God taking sides” in the wounds of the world.

"(Our story) starts with one who empties himself of all divinity (see Philippians 2:6-7), comes as a homeless baby in a poor family, then a refugee in a foreign country, then an invisible carpenter in his own country which is colonized and occupied by an imperial power, ending as a "criminal," accused and tortured by heads of both systems of power, temple and empire, abandoned by most of his inner circle, subjected to the death penalty by a most humiliating and bizarre public ritual, and finally buried quickly in an unmarked grave. If God in any way planned this story line, God surely intended the message to be subversive, clear, and unavoidable. Yet we largely made Jesus into a churchy icon that any priestly or policing establishment could gather around without even blushing."

My deepest hope for us as individuals and as a faith community is that we would consciously choose to use Holy Week to renew in ourselves a commitment to the compassion of Christ Jesus. For while Rohr succinctly summarizes God’s call to radical acts of tenderness, Holy Week exposes what happens whenever choose to opt out and ignore the way of Christ: the innocent are crucified again and again in the most horrific ways.

So let me invite you to come to Maundy Thursday worship as an act of non-violent resistance to the fear and anger gathering steam in America. In community let us listen to the story of how Jesus was betrayed, recognizing our own inclination to abandon our deepest values even as we renew ourselves to lives guided by his sacrificial love. On Good Friday, let this be a gathering devoted to relinquishing our illusions of control so that we might radically trust God in the midst of confusion and sorrow. And let Easter be for us a celebration of the Lord’s love that refuses to accept all of the ways we say NO to God. Let the resurrection of Jesus help us ask: what if…? What if God’s love was more powerful than death? What if God’s grace makes all things new? What if solidarity and compassion are more important than partisan politics or social prestige?

“You may say I’m a dreamer…” was played on a portable piano outside the Paris club bombed in November. And the people kept singing, “…but I’m not the only one: imagine.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran pastor who was eventually martyred for his work against the Nazis, said about Jesus, “It is only because he became like us that we can become like him… but not through hero worship, but intimacy with Christ.”

As the Three Days of Holy Week ripen, my hope and prayer is that you would seek more intimacy with Christ Jesus, trusting that his path offers a healing alternative to the violence and deceit that infects our culture. With so many secular voices pleading that we listen, trust and believe them, I find Bonheoffer’s closing words on the Sermon on the Mount warrants a renewed consideration:

"(God says) discipleship is not limited to what you can comprehend – it must transcend all comprehension. Plunge into the deep waters beyond your own comprehension and I will help you to comprehend even as I do. Bewilderment is the true comprehension. Not to know where you are going is the true knowledge. For my comprehension transcends yours."

The way of the Cross is foolish to those addicted to the status quo: the Three Holy Days of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday offer us an alternative – and a way through the darkness and into the light. I hope you will join me.

Grace and peace,

The Reverend Dr. James Lumsden
Holy Week 2016\

a context for a love supreme on good friday...

NOTE:  For those who would like to know more about our Good Friday experiment, please consider my post based upon my notes for the start of our Good Friday liturgy. I hope they give some context and useful background for what is a truly exciting and beautiful encounter as it unfolds.

Tonight we will be sharing our interpretation of both John Coltrane’s masterwork and the essence of this sacred day in the Christian tradition.  It is my contention that “A Love Supreme” and Good Friday are exquisitely nuanced meditations upon the blessings of the blues in our everyday lives.

For those who appreciate jazz, you know that the very essence of this art form is constructed upon the blues tradition:  experimenting, improvising, honoring as well as pushing the limits of the blues evokes simultaneously mourning and celebration.  Wynton Marsalis, director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, once observed that: Everything in jazz comes out of blues music: joy, pain and struggle for the blues is affirmation with absolute elegance. It's about a lovers and the human condition. So the pain and the struggle in the blues is that universal pain that comes from having your heart broken. That’s why most blues songs are not about social statements… but about that which is intimately personal.

Throughout “A Love Supreme” I hear the artist, John Coltrane – and our musicians – reverently beginning with a blues form and a blues soul, but never resting upon either in a static way.  For this is not a recital – a recreation of a 50 year old composition – but rather a living, breathing, melodic pilgrimage in prayer that invites you to rejoice in your inner journey even as you recognize your wounds.  Guided by the musicians, this is a time to listen carefully to whatever your journey is saying to you and follow wherever it may lead.

That is why we have set this encounter within the wisdom of Good Friday:  of all the holy days in the Christian liturgical calendar, this is the most paradoxical.  There is fear present as we consider the suffering of the Cross, but comfort as well: sorrow alongside celebration, darkness as well as illumination, despair, betrayal and bleak emptiness in addition to human solidarity and divine hope born from above.  Because when the Cross is embraced in its essence, it is not about punishment, penitence or even judgment as we normally imagine. No, the Cross rightly conceived points to the place where the holy intersects our humanity with a love that allows us to live freely as women and men of peace, hope and compassion.  The Cross tenderly announces to those with ears to hear and eyes to see that there is NO place exempt from God’s grace:  not addiction, not abuse, not war, exploitation or even death.  The mystical truth of creation that Coltrane tapped into is that the Holy mercifully meets us in our shame, abandonment and experiences of hell in order to set us free.

You know that Coltrane himself was once a heroin addict, yes?  The junk got him fired from the Miles Davis band back in the day and was about to devour his life. But dig this: after nearly 10 years of shooting smack and drinking to excess, ‘Trane had an inner spiritual awakening that empowered him to get clean.  An apocryphal story says that while playing his saxophone wildly and beyond all traditional sounds and scales, Coltrane was given a gift of love in sound that so nourished his core with beauty that he was liberated from his cravings. The story goes on to say that in response to this grace he gave the rest of his life to sharing beauty with the world in the hope that his music would inspire healing in other wounded souls. No longer a junkie, the artist himself said: 

In 1957, I experienced, by the grace of God, a spiritual awakening which was to lead me to a richer, fuller, more productive life. At that time, in gratitude, I humbly asked to be given the means and privilege to make others happy through music.

Coltrane never named his spirituality as Buddhist or Christian, Muslim, Jewish or earth-

centered; he just played and shared the sounds of a love that would not let him go.  We know from his biography that both of his grand-fathers were Baptist preachers – and that his heart was saturated in the old gospel hymns of the South – but ‘Trane’s message cut deeper than any denomination. One of the wisest spiritual teachers of the Western world, Richard Rohr, once wrote:

All great spirituality teaches about letting go of what you don’t need and who you are not. Only when you can get little enough and naked enough and poor enough will you find that the little place where you really are is ironically more than enough and all that you need. At that place, you will have nothing to prove to anybody and nothing to protect. That place is called freedom. It’s the freedom of the children of God and such people can connect with everybody… because they don’t feel the need to eliminate anybody . . .

Part of what we’re exploring with you tonight is precisely this freedom to love – the power to break down barriers – to trust that when we’re nourished by grace we can challenge tyrants and bullies, embrace those who have been excluded or wounded and feast together in hope rather than fear. Like Coltrane before us, this sacred meditation on discovering God’s love looks beyond what is obvious, beyond what is comfortable, beyond even what is even

comprehensible. Like Jesus on Good Friday it is about trusting that the holy not only saturates all reality – including our pain – but that grace is mystically present with us whether we’re paying attention or not.  Most of the time, we’re too frazzled to grasp this blessing. 

But even our busyness and exhaustion can become for us the still, small voice of the holy whispering:  be still, be free and rest for you are my beloved if we allow ourselves time for thought and prayer in silence.  So tonight with musical meditations mixed with the wisdom and ambiguity of poetry – with finely tuned vocal harmonies placed alongside silence – we hope to point to the concealed mystery of creation. Namely, that even in the blues there is a love that will not let us go.

Coltrane testifies to the efficacy of this love in the midst of the blues throughout “A Love Supreme” in ways that those who aren’t familiar with jazz may not realize.  For me, this sacred composition in four movement is an ode to the blues form but always one or two steps beyond what is obvious.

+  Acknowledgment suggests the wonder of discovering that we are God’s beloved:  it starts with a fanfare announcing that something important is about to happen in the key of E – the quintessential guitar blues key. Then it moves into a blues riff on the bass in F to remind us that this journey of faith is about finding the sacred within the secular, the extraordinary within the ordinary, a sense of hope and love even in a lament.  And please note two musical cues here:  1) The bass notes are a clever reworking of a time-tested Chicago blues riff made popular by Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf (play:  I’m a Man); and 2) listen for the recurring theme that Coltrane opens this movement with that returns later over and over again, but now in every different key possible. He wants to show us through music us God’s love not only transcends every key and race and religion, but that it triumphs in all situations. And just so that we don’t fail to miss his message, the first movement closes with a simple chant.

+ Resolution, the second movement, reminds us that holy love is all about compassion. When our wounds have been touched, when our broken hearts have been honored, when the violence and fear of the world is challenged, healing does not take place through brute force but… through compassion.  All true mystics tell us that the sacred is a lover not a judge – and so does Coltrane.  And he does this by taking an aching melody and letting his players feel it and then improvise with it however their hearts feel inspired.  This shared freedom, you see, is all about listening carefully to one another, helping one another take the music to a new place in real time and celebrating the joy of being creative together.

+ Pursuance, movement three, is about dancing to that love that is greater than our imagination. Its form is pure blues but Coltrane sets it to such a wild be-bop beat that unless you saw the chord changes you wouldn’t know this was a blues: it feels too joyful.  I keep thinking that this is the tune that this is what it felt like when Coltrane got clean and discovered new meaning for his new life.  It is a total gas – much like Easter is to Good Friday.

+ And the closing movement, Psalm, is a saxophone explosion over a love

poem/prayer, ‘Trane wrote this prayer to return thanks to the Lord; and we will actually say it and pray it out loud at the close of this liturgy.  And while it is a celebration of what it means to be in touch with a love supreme, it feels boldly open-ended – more like the start of a new pilgrimage than the close of a journey.

The other music we will share tonight, the vocal selections, have been chosen to give you a firm foundation in the beauty of the blues. They evoke an oasis in the pilgrimage of jazz and lift up the paradox of sacred tenderness in a world of pain.  The first comes from the early American composer, William Billings, born in Boston and raised in the Congregational tradition. It lifts up a traditional Good Friday theme that I’ve come to think of as Boston blues knowing that Billings was not only born physically challenged and blind in one eye but often addicted to various substances throughout his life. The second vocal offering comes from the incomparable American indy artist, Ann Heaton, who lived for years in Cambridge, MA. Her reworking of the Prayer of St. Francis is a love lament if ever one existed – and at the close our singers do what Coltrane did – see where the spirit leads them with their vocal improvisation. And we close with George Harrison’s stinging song of sorrow:  While My Guitar Gently Weeps. For me this is rock and roll blues saturated with sacred sorrow – and the electric guitar takes on the voice of the Lord crying over our brokenness and confusion.

Tonight’s poetry retells the Passion narrative of Jesus using secular stories rather than sacred Scripture.  It is our belief that all faiths are true so even while many of us have entered into the Christian realm, we want to make space for those who do not, too. That is one reason why we will take up an offering tonight to assist our sisters and brothers fleeing the violence and terror of Syria.  When you come forward to light a candle of hope, if you are able to share a gift it will all go to Syrian refugees who are now in Turkey or Jordan awaiting relocation. We are using the interfaith organization, Church World Service, to make certain that more than 95 cents of every dollar provides direct services. So, please share what you can in the spirit of a Love Supreme.

getting ready for good friday 2016...

Today we rehearsed this year's Good Friday experimental liturgy in sound, song and silence - and we took a giant step closer to hitting the mark.  This is the first time the whole band (minus Elizabeth who is grooving in San Francisco with her beloved wife on the occasion of a special birthday) so there was a lot to figure out. Thankfully, everyone has been practicing hard, listening to Coltrane and working on both the Ann Heaton and George Harrison's compositions on their own time. It is always such a privilege for me to not only hear how this music moves into place for the first time when everyone is in the house, but also to experience what each artist brings to the table to share from his/her soul. It is an audible encounter with community "soup-making" for each ingredient and spice adds one more layer of nuance and beauty to the whole feast.

We have been playing together as an ensemble in this configuration for over five years - with a few lovely additions - so we're not worried about being free and open with suggestions about arrangements. Today we tried a few out on "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" and wound up with neither one nor another, but a totally unique blending that aches as a lament and rocks as a closing statement. We also worked out some timing issues for Coltrane's "A Love Supreme" and unearthed a few problems to work on, too. Thankfully, we've found two more rehearsal times for this complex jazz - maybe three - because we want the inner light of the music to shine out through our performance.

If you are in town this coming Friday, March 25, 2016 @ 7 pm, please join us. I don't think you will have ever heard anything like our take on "A Love Supreme" in worship anywhere. Further, I suspect that if you can make it, it will be 90 minutes well spent as we explore in song, poetry and silence the way can  love open us to solidarity, hope and acts of compassion.

credit:Robert Casumbal @ http://www.jazz.com/dozens/lovano-selects-coltrane

cherchez le jazz...

Dianne and I are slowly constructing a new shared project involving my written reviews and her

photographs - perhaps with some interviews, too - of our favorite jazz haunts in the various cities we love. CHERCHEZ LE JAZZ will be a blog site for us to work together promoting the art we love. It will give some focus to our wanderings this year as springs ripens into summer. And, perhaps, may even turn some people on to a new venue or two off the beaten path. I will post the new site's address here when we get the template designed.

Sometime after Easter, we'll take a little personal time away from ministry to experiment with this project in Montrèal, specifically à la dièse onze jazz club (check them out @ http://www.diese onze. com/evenements.php?l=fr) It is a lively Francophone jazz bistro that celebrates excellent jazz without an attitude. In a word, it is a place to hear the best local jazz players in Montrèal in an unpretentious club with good food and drinks.. So, as the idea takes shape, I will keep you posted.

a cool and stark sabbath day...

Today is a cool and stark Sabbath day in the Berkshires hills. The sky is threatening while the promise of Spring is close. The peepers are wildly singing their mating songs in the wetlands behind our home even though they nearly froze to death last night. And the tree buds of Mother Earth are close to popping with beauty but need a little more encouragement from Father Sun. It is a beautifully unsettling in-between time; perfect, I think, for the start of Holy Week.

Last night I read too late - when I last looked at the clock it was 2:15 am - so I wasn't surprised to roll out of bed at 11:30.  After tea and corn muffins with my sweetheart, I discovered three, oddly prescient readings from friends and colleagues on Facebook; words that not only mirror the feel of this Sabbath day, but also speak to the state of our collective American soul. The first comes from the wisdom of Rabbi Rachel Barenblat on her Velveteen Rabbi blog (check it out @ http://velveteenrabbi.blogs.com/blog/2016/03/if-i-forget.html) Her pre-Shabbat poem reads:

How did I convince myself
that distance from you 
didn't hurt?

That I didn't need
your song in my ear, melody
expanding my heart?

Worse: I told myself lies.
That my absence didn't pain you,
that I had nothing to give.

If I forget you, beloved --
let my fingers lose their grasp,
my throat unlearn how to sing.

Disconnecting from you 
would mean shutting off
one of my senses, voluntarily

giving up breathing, 
relinquishing a vitamin I need
in order to thrive.

Not only did her words evoke my own tradition's focus at the start of Palm/Passion Sunday - the

tense paradox of the Prince of Peace entering Jerusalem on his way to the Cross - but also the essence of the ancient prayers some know as "the reproaches" of Good Friday. Historically, Christians have used both Palm Sunday and Good Friday to demonize Judaism theologically and wreak physical and emotional violence upon Jewish communities in real time for the act of "deicide."  Since the earliest days of Christendom this has been the doctrinal position of the Christian Church. And only 50 years ago, in the heady and confessional freedom of Vatican II, was there a change of heart. Still, as Harvey Cox noted in his autobiographical reflection, Common Prayers, a tale of living as a Christian married with a Jew and observing Judaism's liturgical calendar, all too many Christians continue to affirm the anti-Semitism of "the reproaches."

What I discovered in these ancient Christian prayers, however, was a kernel of truth, not about Judaism, but rather about how easy it is for human beings to "disconnect" ourselves from the source of love, hope, joy and life. During one Good Friday liturgical experiment, therefore, we rewrote the old, hate-filled, anti-Semitic prayers for a 21st century, inter-faith context. Stripped of their venom, this lament came to resemble a good deal of Rabbi Rachel's poem:  "How did I convince myself that distance from you didn't hurt?" That is one of this day's awakenings for me.

The second was in David Brooks' column in today's NY Times: "No, Not Trump, Not Ever." (you can read the full article @ http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/18/opinion/no-not-trump-not-ever.html?_r=0) I am never sure why some dislike Brooks. Honestly?!? He is bright, well-spoken, often self-effacingly funny and even more often clear headed. Today he confesses that he has been too long living in America's elite to have grasped the alienation and anger of those who have signed on to the Trump bandwagon. Like many of this crowd, he believed "the Donald" would fizzle out like other blowhards before him. But that has not been true in this season of fear and demagoguery

Many in the media, especially me, did not understand how they would express their alienation. We expected Trump to fizzle because we were not socially intermingled with his supporters and did not listen carefully enough. For me, it’s a lesson that I have to change the way I do my job if I’m going to report accurately on this country.

Since the earliest days of the Tea Party - and their racist "birther" campaign against President Obama (which Mr. Trump helped bankroll and popularize) - it has been clear that lower middle class and white working class angst and anger was starting to bubble to the surface.Since the Civil Rights movement of the 50s and 60s - and the liberation movements of women and the LGBTQ community of the 70s - the fears of this sector of the body politic has been simmering. From time to time it has been manipulated carefully by the elite of both the Republican and Democratic parties, but in a calculated and controlled manner. As an independently wealthy political provocateur, Mr. Trump and his cohorts have now blown the top off any semblance of control so that this smoldering hatred can reign full tilt boogie and damn the consequences. Mr. Brooks synthesizes this precisely when he writes:

Donald Trump is epically unprepared to be president. He has no realistic policies, no advisers, no capacity to learn. His vast narcissism makes him a closed fortress. He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know and he’s uninterested in finding out. He insults the office Abraham Lincoln once occupied by running for it with less preparation than most of us would undertake to buy a sofa… He is a childish man running for a job that requires maturity. He is an insecure boasting little boy whose desires were somehow arrested at age 12. He surrounds himself with sycophants. “You can always tell when the king is here,” Trump’s butler told Jason Horowitz in a recent Times profile. He brags incessantly about his alleged prowess, like how far he can hit a golf ball. “Do I hit it long? Is Trump strong?” he asks.

In the most compelling paragraph of this challenging column, Brooks then articulates what is a

at stake when he declares:

Donald Trump is an affront to basic standards of honesty, virtue and citizenship. He pollutes the atmosphere in which our children are raised. He has already shredded the unspoken rules of political civility that make conversation possible. In his savage regime, public life is just a dog-eat-dog war of all against all. As the founders would have understood, he is a threat to the long and glorious experiment of American self-government. He is precisely the kind of scapegoating, promise-making, fear-driving and deceiving demagogue they feared.

And third there was the reflection on the poet Naomi Shihab Nye written by Parker Palmer. I have long cherished Palmer as one of America's true "points of light" as he speaks of culture care and political renewal. He is not acerbic like some nor is he stunning or sensational like others. Rather, he is a quiet, reasoned voice celebrating civility in the midst of passion and deep thinking in an era of sound bytes. He wrote:

At the 2015 National Book Festival in D.C., Nye joined with poets Jane Hirshfield and Juan Felipe Herrera for a dialogue about the poet’s role in American culture today. Asked, "What...is the poet's civic responsibility?", Nye begins with this gem: “...to continue to encourage a sense of civility among us and a sense of curiosity about one another’s lives.” As I listened to Nye's words—heard the peace in her voice, saw the peace in her face—I got teary. Here's a reminder of how it looks and sounds when people speak from the heart about the real issues of our time.

Palmer has stated that springtime teaches us to look carefully amid the mud and muck of March for "the green stems of possibility."  I see the connections between today's ominous clouds and the buds on the trees. I see the synergy between our fears and deepest hopes, too. And I know by faith that our hopes are never realized except through obedience to the Lord of Love - however we understand or speak of that love. Yes, there is fear. Yes, it may snow later this week. And yes, within the mud and muck there are still green stems of possibility.

Brother Parker writes:  "Looking for something worth fearing? Here's a suggestion: Fear certain people who resemble me in race, ethnicity, religion and gender. The white men I'm talking about tend to wear $15,000 suits, have $1500 haircuts, own several homes, and fly private jets. Their hobbies are buying politicians, manipulating markets and rigging financial instruments in ways that have damaged and ruined millions of lives—and led to the deaths of a lot more than 3.21 or 3.43 U.S. citizens per year since 2001."

This Sunday for Palm Sunday we are presenting a reworking of the Passion Narrative that carefully excises the historic anti-Semitism that infects our Bible. We have done likewise to the Tenebrae liturgy for Maundy Thursday, too. And Good Friday is ALL about "A Love Supreme" whether that comes from God, Ann Heaton's brilliant reworking of the prayer of St. Francis or the musical meditations of John Coltrane. More than at any other time in my adult life I believe it is essential to challenge fear with love and saturate our actions with beauty born of hope.

un désir de Montréal...

Spring is in the air - so I am aching for a gentle stroll down Rue Mont Royal only to wind up at Club DièseOnze for the first set of the evening. We' hope to take a quick trip North some time after Easter: naturellement seulement après une visite avec la famille de Louie n'est pas?  

One of my favorite artists, Marianne Trudel, will be playing the Ottawa Jazz Festival in late June and I so want to check out that soirée! But first... onward to Holy Week.

a love supreme starts to take shape and form...

One of the visceral joys of my life is playing music with Carlton, Charlie and Jon.. It is enhanced one hundred fold when Dianne, Jon, David, Eva, Elizabeth and Brian are part of the party, too. Today, the aforementioned jazz cats got together to run Coltrane's "A Love Supreme" and, for me, it was pure joy. Hard work - intense concentration - but unqualified joy as each distinctive part of this complex work started to fall into place. Layering sax and piano over bass (and drums) creates something magical for me; not only because the music itself is so beautiful, but also because I cherish the musicality of these artists - and love them profoundly as brothers. It is a rare privilege to play with artists who are not only ace performers, but soul men of compassion and humor.

We've worked together two other times since our return from sabbatical:  in November for "Missa Gaia" and in December for our jazz meditation on Christmas Eve. This coming Good Friday, March 25th @ 7 pm, my other favorite musicians (noted above) will be a part of the soiree as we share an evening of music dedicated to the paradox of God's grace. Using poetry by Auden, Shihab Nye and Levertov - music by Coltrane, Harrison and Heaton - as well as silence and a brief section of the St. Luke's Passion Narrative - we hope to evoke the mystery of God's love revealed in the Cross. Denise Levertov puts it like this in her poem "Incarnation."

It's when we face for a moment

the worst our kind can do, and shudder to know

the taint in our own selves, that awe

cracks the mind's shell and enters the heart:

not to a flower, not to a dolphin,

to no innocent form

but to this creature vainly sure

it and no other is god-like, God

(out of compassion for our ugly

failure to evolve) entrusts,

as guest, as brother,

the Word.

Each of my musical colleagues has been working on their respective parts for the past few months - 

but in private. Today we heard what it is going to sound like in collaboration. All I can write is: I CAN'T WAIT!

the green stems of possibility...

The wise Parker Palmer has written:  "When we are obsessed with bottom lines and productivity, with efficiency of time and motion, with the rational relation of means and ends, with projecting reasonable goals and making a beeline toward them, it seems unlikely that our work (or lives) will ever bear fruit - unlikely that we will never know the fullness of spring in our lives." Why?

Because spring teaches me to look more carefully for the green stems of possibility: for the intuitive hunch that may turn into a larger insight, for the glance or touch that may thaw a frozen relationship, for the stranger's act of kindness that makes the world seem hospitable again.

I know that I realized the wisdom of this as I was raking up the leaves left over from last October. Our front yard did not get much attention this past fall mostly because of Dianne's injuries; there simply wasn't time to make the yard look pretty and attend to everything else. So, for six months everything lay buried under tons of debris. With the stunning sun of last weekend, however, I made certain to rake and clean so that our autumn detritus was hauled off to our compost heap. And there were wee daffodils starting to peek through the soil and a few crocuses, too. So as I dragged load after load of wet leaves to the backyard dump, Palmer's words about learning from the "green stems of possibility" and the wisdom of Spring's fullness crept back into my thinking.

"Before spring becomes beautiful," Palmer writes, "it is plug ugly, nothing but mud and muck." How true this is - in some relationships, in much of politics and in lots of what passes for prayer - and how easy to forget! This Sunday is Palm Sunday, the initiation of Holy Week, the most sacred and confusing season of the Christian year. It is filled with highs and lows - and they are always right next to one another - from the exaltation of Christ's entry into Jerusalem to the crowds crying "Crucify!" Up until a few days ago, I was feeling ambivalent about Holy Week. In some ways it was just one more commitment to accomplish.

Then two things took place - and I was awakened to the "green stems of possibility" breaking through the mud and muck.  The first happened during my confirmation class after Sunday worship when the young people and their parents talked with me about how important this small church is to their lives.  One young guy said, "I feel safe in this community." Hmmmm... The next night at Council, when we talked about helping the membership move emotionally, spiritually and physically into the blessings of being a "small church," there was near unanimity that small is beautiful. "In this age of the impersonal and so-called economies of scale" someone said, "I need to be known by my name." Another mentioned the theme song to the old TV program "Cheers" and still another noted that in a small faith community your voice and gifts can be treasured. We were clear that one of the alternatives we can offer to the rush towards greater size and busyness comes simply by being small - and loving it.

Clearly, Spring is right around the corner. Many of us are still moving through the mud and the muck, but we're starting to notice the green stems of possibility, too. And when I saw this clip 
posted on FB I just knew it was true.

new credos for a post-christian age...

We live in a post-Christian realm - certainly a post-creedal season, too - and yet I find myself

drawn to two recent Credos with very different insights.  The first I saw comes from Pat Bennett (I think from the Iona Community.)

We believe in God
The make and shaper of our pathways;
Who sent Jesus to show us the narrow way, and who is the beginning and end of our traveling.

We believe in Jesus Christ, the sharer of our flesh; who entered and experienced the human journey, and who walks beside us on the road of life.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, midwife and nurturer of our potential; who drove Jesus into the desert and calls us now to cast off from the shore.

We believe in Father, Son and Spirit,
The Shaper, Sharer and Stirrer of our journeys;
And we recommit ourselves to following their Way.

As a mystical Trinitarian I like the reworking of the tradition. I would likely replace the masculine language with functional synonyms - Creator, Christ and Holy Spirit - all the while knowing that this is as incomplete as is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Perhaps that's why I like this second Credo from James Carroll in his Christ Actually: the Son of God for the Secular Age.

Jesus, the Jew from Nazareth, is a living expression of the inexpressible God. He is the Christ, Son of Man, according to the Scriptures. He is present to the world the way meaning is present in the word. Just as a word points not to itself, but to its meaning, so Jesus Christ, Son of God, points to One whom he calls Father. In that way, as one of us, he is the Word of God, whose Meaning comes clear. The Unknowable One, therefore, can be known. Because God is not an enemy, but a friend, we need not be afraid. Because God completes what God begins, death is not the end, but a beginning, wholly undefined. Because God is faithful, creation has a purpose, and its name is history. Imitators of Jesus Christ, we want mainly to be kind and true, taking heart from our dear companions on the way. And we say, with those who go before, and who come after, Amen. So may it be.

I wonder what words help you share what you trust? What do you like about these? What causes you distress? Or concern? Are there others that have become your favorites? Please share whatever you think would add to this exploration.

taking time to savor the blessings of the day...

Today I want to celebrate the small, often overlooked acts of kindness and beauty that

saturate my life. We have a small, lovely home that is safe and warm. We have ample food and time for rest, reflection and engagement with the world. We have high speed Internet and a television. We even have a $4 per month subscription to a British TV network.

We have loving children and wonderful sons-in-law. We have a grandson who is the light of our lives. We have one another as spouses, friends and lovers We have friends who care. This morning, as I was pulling out of our driveway to go to worship, we had another tire was flat. So we called a friend - because we have both cell phones and a land line - who said she would gladly pick us up. And did!  We have a number of loving friends who help us live faithfully and fully every week. They even brought us home from church!

We have a church community that is compassionate, honest, engaged and humble. We have musical partners who are talented and generous beyond imagination. We have books galore and tons of music from all over the world. We have a piano, a keyboard, three guitars, an electric bass, a few recorders, six harmonicas, percussion instruments of a wide variety as well as two upright basses. We have cameras and CD players.  And, of course, we have Lucie who most often resembles Snoopy in the Charles Schultz "Peanuts" series, but who also acts like "Seinfeld's" Krammer from time to time, too.

We have eyes that see, hearts that beat, souls that grieve as well as rejoice, ears that hear (mostly), mouths that taste, noses that smell, hands and feet that work and minds that are still tickled by the intricacies of simple blessings. 

Today, when I asked the young men in our confirmation class, "If someone asked you to tell them about our church, what would you say?" they replied:  at our church we don't just come and sit - we come and listen... and serve... and think... and care. Today our choir, smaller in numbers for some reason, sang a complex composition with verve and skill. We have a music director who not only challenges us but nourishes us, too. We have Sunday school teachers with lots of love and knowledge. We have a church sexton who cherishes our ancient building and a church secretary who shares love and skill generously every day of the week. We have gay and straight, young and old, new and well-seasoned all together, too.

Today is the birthday of one of my daughters and my list of significant blessings would not be

complete without returning thanks to God for her. She is wise and beautiful, sensitive and drop dead funny, kind-hearted and compassionate, a generous wife, a skilled writer, a tender aunt and a person I am blessed to know as a friend. She's turned me on to a ton of great tunes over the years and shared some important books with me, too. I hope that I have given back half as well as I have received.

I remember taking her to a Springsteen concert for her 9th birthday like it was yesterday. Or wearing one of the first sweaters she ever knit. It is HUGE - and I still have it. Or going to Cleveland Indian's games with her on a Tuesday night when only about 2,000 other people would show up. Or eating macaroni and cheese for dinner after her softball games. Or drinking wicked strong beer with her at the People's Pint. We've cried and laughed, fought and made up, wrestled with our respective broken hearts and so much more. (And, of course, it isn't hard to remember all the times I misunderstood or let her down, too.) The whole of it all, however, has been and is a blessing. So like many dads, I find myself listening to this song on her birthday.

Today as the spring sun shines, the daffodils and crocuses peek through the top soil and I rake up the leaves from last fall: I give to God for each and all of these small but extraordinary blessings. My point in listing all the "haves" in this post is simply to note how many wonderful things enrich our lives - we clearly have too much - but the richest and most important blessings come from the love and time we share with those who are a part of our hearts.