sunday morning thoughts on our l'arche ottawa retreat...

Driving six hours to and from my community in L'Arche Ottawa affords me a lot of time to listen to what is swirling inside my head and heart. I need a lot of time. Too often I distract myself from what is genuinely life-giving only to have those truths pop into consciousness just when I'd rather be asleep. The long drive back to Pittsfield last night once again became for me an extended meditation on our community retreat. Imagine my delight when I pulled into the driveway at midnight to find this musical meditation in my electronic mailbox.



A few thoughts have already bubbled to the surface and more will come. The most jarring came while crossing the border back into the USA from Canada. The o so young guard could not comprehend why I would regularly make the trek from Massachusetts to Ontario. We clearly spoke different languages. And he was even more bewildered that I would make this drive to volunteer in a community dedicated to love. Not that I used that expression, mind you. That would have certainly suggested cults to him and I didn't want an unnecessary search in the darkness. Still, he looked at me like I was crazy when I explained that L'Arche is an extended family of adults caring for women and men with physical and  intellectual disabilities. "What do you DO there?" he demanded a few times. "Often," I said quietly, "I play music. Sometimes I help out with everyday chores." After about five minutes of being grilled by this tender tough guy, he waved me through with a dismissive smirk.

Earlier that day, Fr. Kevin spoke of how a L'Arche community bumped into a similar experience with a governmental authority. The state officials could not comprehend the charism of community life. They, too, spoke a different language than L'Arche. They were comfortable with rules, regulations and codes to care for individuals with various challenges. Consequently, a request for a community house was denied. "You could have separate apartments, however, so that everyone would have personal rooms, locks and keys" they said. So, L'Arche worked within this framework to create common space - as well as individual rooms - that helped the well-intentioned bureaucrats sign-off on the home. It was up to the community to realize the competing world views and find a way to move through the conflict into compassion. By listening with love, by trusting that God will make a way when there is no way, and by freely entering into the conflict with grace rather than fear or defensiveness, L'Arche was able to deepen their mission in the real world.

All the while I was speaking to the border guard I kept thinking, "We are speaking totally different languages." As an old prayer and praise song put it: "We have another world in view." A ton of snarky thoughts, outright challenges, and sarcastic rejoinders to his bullying tone made their appearances in my mind; however, they would not advance the cause. Nor would arguing. Or trying to explain the mission and experience of L'Arche. When asked again, "Why do you drive all the way to Canada to do this volunteering?" I wanted to say: "Because it is of the Lord. I don't know why God called me to Ottawa. I don't know why I find my heart meeting the presence of Jesus in our encounters. And I don't know the end of this story. Ever hear about St. Paul and the crazy things he did for God? Or how about the story of Easter? It was, after all, the liturgical feast of the Ascension! I don't know why God does what God does, I simply know it is of the Lord... and that's good enough for me." 

But, of course, that wouldn't advance the cause either. Clearly, there is a time and a season for all things under the sun - and this one called for silence. And trust. And a measure of patience, too. I can still see his complete confusion - and disdain - when I told him the only thing I was bringing back from Canada was a small painting by a community member, Harry Laroque, given to me as a gift. "Go on," we waved at me with his hand, "time to go home." He was just doing his job. He takes protecting the border of the USA very seriously. And like many young, white men with a gun and a bit of authority in America, he was feeling his oats. It made me mildly uncomfortable. A little angry and sad, as well. But, as they pray in AA: "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference."

There's more to share about the actual retreat - and I will as next week unfolds - just know that for the rest of the ride home I was reminded of my spiritual discipline for this year:  behold. Look deeply and lovingly at what God is doing in the moment - and trust it. Like Mary, who beheld the promise of the Lord by holding all the mysteries of Jesus in her heart even without always understanding, so too shall this year be for me. I am so grateful for the long, dark night.

a year of beholding - theological roots - part three...

In this unfolding reflection on living into an intentional year of beholding let me offer a few theological nuances that I am fining helpful. As I have noted for the past decade, I tend to fret. Like St. Paul wrote in Romans 7: I do what I do not want, and that which I do not want to do - I do. Eugene Peterson reworks this conundrum insightfully in The Message:

I’m full of myself — after all, I've spent a long time in sin’s prison. What I don’t understand about myself is that I decide one way, but then I act another, doing things I absolutely despise. So if I can’t be trusted to figure out what is best for myself and then do it, it becomes obvious that God’s command is necessary. But I need something more! For if I know the law but still can’t keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I realize that I don’t have what it takes. I can will it, but I can’t do it. I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don’t result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time. It happens so regularly that it’s predictable.

I don't stay locked in the prison of fretting, mind you. I pray, practice centering prayer, and have a well-developed ability to compartmentalize when necessary. And yet fretting is clearly my default setting. Fr. Thomas Keating and The Rev. Dr. Cynthia Bourgeault are clear, however, that the practice of centering prayer over time tenderly rewires the brain. God's grace works within to help us rest when we want to be anxious, breathe when we are overwhelmed, stay when we want to run, and trust when every instinct tells us to fight. Enter a year of beholding: trusting, studying, practicing, staying, praying, resting, and experiencing the next year as my season to pay closer attention to God's gracious presence in reality. 

To strengthen the deepening, I have been exploring both the Hebrew and Greek texts of the Bible for clues. Here are some of my preliminary
realizations.

Hebrew scholars agree that there are four nuanced aspects to the Hebrew word hinneh that is "traditionally translated as either 'behold' or 'lo' in standard English Bibles: a central application as well as universal, diagnostic, and supplementary components." Simplicity, therefore, "may be deceptive for translators... since the meaning of the word can vary from one context to another... the variations really require using a wider range of terms in translation." (The Bible Translator, April 2001, Vol. 52, No. 2) More directly, this is the "Sorcerer's Apprentice" principle wherein a little knowledge can be dangerous.

These same scholars note that "behold" is an imperative verb in English, but
hinneh is a demonstrative particle in Hebrew.  More akin to "this" or "that - a marker of something important - a pointer telling the reader that "what follows is worthy of attention." (Bible Translator, ibid) Consider Isaiah 6:8: "I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I: Here am I; send me." Hineni - literally "behold me" but rendered "here I am" in English - is a response to God's call. The point, which is obscured in English, is that the prophet is asking God to notice/pay attention to him because the prophet's whole being has responded to the holy.

At other times hinneh serves "to introduce a solemn or important declaration" as in Genesis 1: 29-30. "God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so."

There are also instances when the English translation of hinneh is omitted. This diminishes the intensity of the Hebrew in favor of simplicity. Small wonder so many find the Scriptures boring! Clearly, such passages exist, but there is nothing droopy-eyed about saying: Note well - or Now hear this - or Please take notice - or simply Look! Pay attention! Hinneh as behold is used 17 times in the Hebrew text, and 178 times (but only 8 times in Torah) "as hineni - a first person singular suffix." A quick look at Genesis shows the potency of this small word: a) God announcing that creation has been formed to feed humanity with abundance (1:29); b) God announcing the flood as punishment for sin (6: 17); c)  God's assurance to Sarai that she will have a child (12: 11); d) God's declaration to Hagar that she will birth Ishmael (16: 11); e) God's promise to Abraham to protect Sodom during an argument (19:21); f) Joseph's  word to the brothers who had betrayed him (42:28); g) Joseph's grief at the death of his father (50:5).

Linda Hirschorn's blog re: hineni is even more dramatic: each time it is used a key Biblical figure experiences the "defining moment" of their life. (Read her wisdom @ http://www.lindahirschhorn.com/writings/hineni.html) For my journey by faith, I am struck by the love, awe, agony and trust expressed in hineni/behold in Torah. When God calls out to Adam and Eve, when Abram hears God's invitation to leave his home for a new vocation, when the prophet Isaiah senses his heart open to live as God's word in a broken world: the word used is hineni. The spirit and words of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel give shape and form to the significance of hineni in an article from a Jewish ecological blog: 

"When Adam and Eve hid from His presence, the Lord called: Where art Thou (Genesis 3:9). It is a call that goes out again and again. It is a still small echo of a still small voice, not uttered in words, not conveyed in categories of the mind, but ineffable and mysterious, as ineffable and mysterious as the glory that fills whole world. It is wrapped in silence; concealed and subdued; yet it is as if all things were the frozen echo of the question: Where art thou?" (God in Search of Man p. 137)

In other words, the divine “Where are you?” calls out every moment of our lives and most of the time, we refuse to hear it, we offer an excuse for not responding, we refuse to answer, “Here I am!” The voice is there but we do not listen. Heschel said: 

"When living true to the wonder of the steadily unfolding wisdom, we feel at times as if the echo of an echo of a voice were piercing the silence, trying in vain to reach our attention. We feel at times called upon, not knowing by whom, against our will, terrified at the power invested in our words, in our deeds, in our thoughts. In our own lives, the voice of God speaks slowly, a syllable at a time. Reaching the peak of years, dispelling some of our intimate illusions and learning how to spell the meaning of life-experiences backwards, some of us discover how the scattered syllables form a single phrase. Those who know that this life of ours takes place in a world that is not all to be explained in human terms; that every moment is a carefully concealed act of His creation, cannot but ask: is there anything wherein His voice is not suppressed? Is there anything wherein His creation is not concealed?" (God in Search of Man, p. 174)

Heschel was clear: "in all of Creation God is calling out to us even if we can only hear a fragment, a syllable at a time. But if we really listen we hear over the course of time a few syllables that eventually we may realize form a single phrase: “Ayyekkah?” “Where are you?” (Lawrence Troester, http://jewcology. org/2011/11/here-i-am-responding-to-the-call-in-creation/) Troester also celebrates "one more interesting use of the word Hineni in the Hebrew Bible."

In the texts of the exilic prophet scholars call Second Isaiah, there are several passages where God says that there will come a time if we act ethically that we will call out and God will respond “Here I am!” (Isaiah 52:6; 58:6-9; 65:1). If we answer the call of God in Creation, then God will be with us as a partner in Tikkun ‘Olam.

In my spiritual lexicon, honoring and entering life in the spirit of beholding is sacramental wherein every moment is holy and filled with awe. Lord, may it be so.

paying careful attention to what is genuinely of the Lord - behold: part two...

Yesterday my reflection centered upon the importance of looking at my life - and all of creation - through the lens of Scripture. Since 1968 I have regularly found different stories, words, poems, prayers, and phrases in the Bible that ground me within the grace of God. 

+ For most of the 90s, it was Psalm 37: "do not fret... trust in the Lord... be still and wait for God patiently." 

+ When I was ordained into Christian ministry it was Matthew 6:33: "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and all its righteousness; then all these things shall be added unto you." 

+ In a dark night of the soul, it became: "Now we see as through a glass darkly, later we shall see face to face." (I Corinthians 13:12) On the other side of that darkness I heard: "Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” (Matthew 11: 28-30 The Message)

+ And for most of the past decade, Psalm 131: "O Lord, my heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul like a weaned child with its mother; my soul is like the weaned child that is with me. O Israel, hope in the Lord from this time on and forevermore."

For the past three years the metaphor of "wandering in the wilderness" has given shape and form to my life. There are a host of insights and images that are available to those encountering the desert - and none of them are easy. The wilderness for Israel was a time of trust and uncertainty, cleansing and waiting, the foretaste of freedom alongside the bitterness of slavery. Henri Nouwen speaks of desert spirituality in a distinctive way that rings true to me. In The Way of the Heart: the Spirituality of the Desert Fathers and Mothers, he writes of Christ's fasting in the desert as our paradigm:

Solitude is the furnace of transformation. Without solitude we remain victims of our society and continue to be entangled in the illusions of the false self. Jesus himself entered into this furnace. There he was tempted with the three compulsions of the world: to be relevant ('turn stones into loaves'), to be spectacular ('throw yourself down'), and to be powerful ('I will give you all these kingdoms'). There he affirmed God as the only source of his identity ('You must worship the Lord your God and serve him alone'). Solitude is the place of the great struggle and the great encounter - the struggle against the compulsions of the false self, and the encounter with the loving God who offers himself as the substance of the new self.

His words speak to my soul. Wilderness for me has been about leaving the life I knew  and once loved for a season without clarity. It has been an anxious waiting to see where God might lead me next. There was more darkness than light, more fear than trust, more anger than peace, and more fretting than stillness. Jean Vanier hit the nail on the head when he said, "What I am discovering is that all of us must learn how to live with anguish and loneliness in a constructive and a good way. If we fill ourselves up with work, with projects, with alcohol, with drugs, with television, we may never find the real meaning of loneliness." (http://www.larchefoundation.ca/en/jean vanier/daily_thoughts) What I sense now is what my friends in the 12 Step Movement have taught for years: I had to become sick and tired of being sick and tired before I was ready, willing and able to welcome God's love for me in a new way. Only in that love am I able to rest upon the Lord's breast calmly.

Over the past week, as I walked quietly in the woods after reading parts of Vanier's commentary on the Gospel of St. John carefully, a new word has taken root in my heart: behold. It started to take on meaning for me as I realized that while I have read and reread St. John countess times, I only know the broad story. I haven't paid careful attention to the details. (And not just with John's gospel!) I didn't know that in the very first chapter, the Prologue, John offers a fascinating metaphor: "No one has ever seen God except the only begotten Child who is in the womb of the Father." (1: 16-18) Vanier writes, "Luc de Villers, a professor at L'Ecole Biblique de Jersualem, translates this as: 'Jesus is the only Child of God who came to lead us into the womb of the Father.'...  When John speaks of the Father, he is speaking of the Infinite. The Source of Life... that is why John speaks of the womb or innerness (in Greek kolpos) of the Father in which Jesus lives and abides." (Drawn into the Mystery of Jesus, p. 21-22) I saw the forest, but none of the beautiful trees.

Nor have I appreciated that after Jesus asks his friends,"What are you searching for?" not only does he tell them to, "Come and follow," but he leads them to a wedding feast. "One could imagine that Jesus will lead his disciples into the desert, somewhere to meditate on the Torah and the Prophets, or to pray together. But, in fact, he takes them to a celebration and feast." (The Gospel of John, p. 13) Indeed, after I read that, I wrote in the margins of my book: pay freakin attention to these details! And that's when the word behold started popping up all over the place: Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Or, Behold I bring you good tidings of a great joy which shall be to all people. For unto you this day is born in the city of David a Savior which is Christ the Lord. Or as Mary said: Behold I am the handmaid of the Lord; let be unto me according to your word. Or in Revelation: Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will to and sup with them and they with me. When Di called out later that day from her afternoon nap, "How about the word 'behold" for a way to understand this new season in your heart?" I finally had eyes to see and ears to hear.

So I've been doing some word study and meditation on behold in both the Hebrew and Greek texts. I'll share a few insights about this later this week before I head off to be with my L'Arche Ottawa community for our spring retreat. But here's one clue that is taking me deeper: In the King James Version of the Bible the word behold (in Hebrew or Greek) appears 1,298 times. In modern translations like the New Revised Standard Version, however, it shows up only 27 times - and none at all in The Message. If the heart of beholding is to notice and pay careful attention to what is truly important, and it is, what have we lost in contemporary culture?  One writer, Leah Zuldema, put it like this:

Do we know how to behold any longer? How to stop still, to cease all else, to give our full attention and searching gaze to what is before us? In our multi-tasking, fast-paced world, we are in the habit of looking everywhere at once - with the result that nothing and no one truly has our deep and undivided attention. We are so captivated - that is, held captive - by new ideas, activities, and social connections that we forget to stop and behold... we are in the habit of looking everywhere at once. ... and unable to see what is vital. (https://inallthings.org/lent-behold-behold-behold/)

Thus, my attraction to a year of beholding becomes clearer: in this first year after the wilderness - in my first year or retirement - rather than rush around in search of yet a new project or task, let this be a season of savoring. Of giving my new life my full attention. Of trusting that God is already making all things new in the desert if I pay attention to the details. Of quietness, rest and attending to the feast. Small wonder these words from T.S. Elliot have haunted me during my wandering in the wilderness:

O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying
The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to GOD.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Bring us farther from GOD and nearer to the Dust.

Poet and pastor of this era, Maren Tirabassi, put it like this in a prayer for this day: 

A prayer when there are too many distractions

God, who notices the mustardseed,
a woman’s touch on the fringe of a garment,
a kid holding out a lunch bag to share,
keep me present to this day.

Invite natural beauty
to surprise me with the smell of wind --
is that rain coming, neighbor cooking,
pollen to wake the bees
and make me sneeze?

Invite natural beauty
to my skin and my tongue
in the touch of a leaf or dog fur,
the taste of pure water.

Remind me to notice people
behind laptops in a coffee shop,
behind a bakery counter,
sitting on the curb,
at a bus stop,
behind the wheel in a stopped car,
and wonder about them
and pray for them.

Let me read the one email that matters,
give money to someone on the street,
(without congratulating myself)
tell someone leaving the house
that I love them,
stop, wake up,
and then say it again and mean it.

Strip off the veneer of my distraction
and let me enjoy food,
read a few pages of a book,
watch a tv show, listen to a song,
take the bridge across the stream,
smile at a stranger,
open my heart to the news

remember again to pray --
the old prayer that shut up the disciples,
and something unexpected
that banks the fire for pentecost. Amen

More soon...

behold I make all things new...

One of the things that has been true for me for most of my life is that I seek to see my life through the lens of Scripture. It is not the only way to organize time. And it may not even be the best way to do so, but it is what I have used since 1968. The stories, themes, and insights of the Christian Scriptures are both my connection to the stories of the larger human family as well as a way for me to explore my own maturation over time. "When I was a child," wrote St. Paul, "i thought like a child and spoke like a child, but now that I have aged, I have put childish things away." Over the years, different stories, poems, songs, prayers, and understandings have helped me to make some sense of my journey in time and space.

For almost three years I have been "wandering in the wilderness." A spirituality of the desert has long been an intermittent theme in my adult life and I have been deeply informed by Henri Nouwen's writing on the desert fathers and mothers as well as Walter Brueggemann's works on wilderness, exile and renewal. After being called out of pastoral ministry in the local church as clearly as I was once called into it - and having this confirmed by experience - there were almost three years of desert uncertainty where I hoped that I was attuned to the voice of the sacred, but didn't know for sure. Like Moses after the Exodus, I looked for signs of God's presence amidst the wilderness terrain. In leaving pastoral ministry, I thought I was finished with the Church. Not that I would forsake the way of Jesus, but like St. Lou Reed once said about an oil addicted USA: "Stick a fork in it, its done!" That was too hasty. That was hurt feelings talking when a longer obedience knew better. 

On the last night of our Montreal sabbatical, we went to Taize worship - and I was energized. Di said, "Apparently God isn't finished with you yet." True enough. My growing connection with the L'Arche Ottawa community confirmed this truth and continues to deepen. After three years, however, I have wanted more clarity about where the wilderness might be leading me. And during our recent trip to Quebec's Eastern Townships for our anniversary, I got another clue. Let's call it a quiet epiphany inviting us to let this year be one of "beholding." 

I knew the call had to be about a ripening trust. And a spirituality of tenderness. But discernment was not the right word nor was waiting or sorting. After our afternoon nap, my brilliant life-mate said, "What about "beholding." She was right. "Behold, I make all things new" says both Isaiah and the book of Revelation. As I did some word study in Hebrew and Greek I found that "behold" fits in spades. It is exactly what my heart senses as we leave the desert for a new way of being. This is a time to let go of old ways and pay attention to what God is revealing in quiet ways all around me. This is not a time to rush or create, but to savor, watch and nurture: Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. (Isaiah 43: 19)

the ever-changing but always important calling of the jester...

There has been quite a fluster throughout the US concerning the recent White House correspondent's roast - and Michelle Wolf's searing routine in particular. Both political pundits as well as elected/appointed officials regularly and/or conveniently forget that this dinner is a roast - not a tribute - allowing them to express self-righteous outrage when skewered by a jester's barb. And impaled they were as Ms. Wolf "blasted open the fictions of journalism in the age of Trump." (For an intense and insightful commentary, please see The New Yorker column by Masha Gessen of the same name @ https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/how-michelle-wolf-blasted-open-the-fictions-of-journalism-in-the-age-of-trump) 

Ms. Gessen's analysis - as well as that of fellow New Yorker columnist Troy Patterson's - cuts to the chase in two important ways. First, it reminds us of the role of humor in a political context"  "Wolf’s monologue—sharp, unflinching, and pointedly unfunny in places—called bullshit on the role laughter has been performing in Trump’s America."

Over the last year and a half, much of the culture has sought relief in humor in much the same way as citizens of extremely repressive countries. Back in the early nineties, in her book “How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed,” the Croatian writer Slavenka Drakulić described laughter as the ultimate personal triumph over the daily humiliations of life under Communist rule. In today’s Russia, people make jokes about the fear Vladimir Putin inspires (he opens the fridge and the jellied meat begins to quake, but he reassures it by saying he is getting the yogurt) or the suicidal nature of Russian foreign policy (we’ll retaliate against American sanctions by bombing the Russian city of Voronezh), the same way that they used to joke about Leonid Brezhnev’s inability to talk or stay awake during official functions. Jokes serve a transparent purpose: they reclaim the power to define—and inhabit—reality. They also reclaim the goodness of laughter, for regimes weaponize laughter to mock their opponents, creating what the cultural theorist Svetlana Boym called “totalitarian laughter.” Its opposite is anti-totalitarian laughter... 

Laughter in the age of Trump is first a defensive reaction. We laugh to maintain

our humanity. To keep the ugly truths in check. To hold back the collective tidal wave of anguish, fear and shame we feel for having elected such a brute to the highest office of our land. What Ms. Wolf did with startling clarity was call us out for confusing the way we've used humor to merely deflect or deny the reality of this regime. "Don't pretend this isn't real" she sneered, "or that it doesn't matter." 

She called the President a racist, a truth as self-evident as it has proved difficult for mainstream journalists to state. Her humor was obscene: she joked about the President’s affair with a porn star; about his “pulling out,” as promised (of the Paris agreement); and about the G.O.P.’s former deputy finance chair Elliott Broidy’s $1.6 million payoff to a former mistress. She also made mincemeat of White House staff, House and Senate Republican leaders, the Democrats, and journalists on the right and left, in their presence or in that of their colleagues.

First, Michelle Wolf rubbed our noses in the truth of our own actions as we substitute humor for resistance and outrage. Her routine also embraced another role that humor often plays in contexts like our own: speaking truth to power. This is not only the work of the prophet; historically this assignment has been awarded to the Trickster. The Jester. The Fool. Comedian Dave Chappelle put it like this on PBS: "“I really respected what I saw. I don’t know who those people are that she—she can’t say that to them, ‘cause they offend people all the time. And I think that for many people, not everybody who watched it, but for many people, it’s cathartic to watch that woman speak truth to power like that.” What he was describing was the archetype of the Jester in Jungian psychology:

Also known as the clown, trickster, comedian, practical joker or the fool, the Jester is an archetype that is at peace with the paradoxes of the world. He uses humor to illuminate hypocrisy, and also level the playing field between those of power and those without. The Jester is a fun-loving character who seeks the now, inviting others to partake in creating a self-depreciating form of satire. The Jester is also almost always male, though this may be more from the cultural gendering of humor more than a limitation on the archetype itself... The Jester does not seek to solve the story’s problem. His main purpose on the journey is the journey itself. The outcome rarely matters to him, and in some cases, he may even be a bit of a devil’s advocate in the interest of spicing things up. The Jester does not reminisce, or plan for the future (For more see The Archetypes: Jester @ https://arielhudnall.com/2015/ 09/06/archetypes-jester/_

The Jester self-consciously speaks aloud what everyone else in the room knows to be true, but is afraid to articulate: the Emperor has no clothes. And Ms. Wolf played her part to perfection! As others have observed: she was not hired to impersonate Rich Little. If you have watched her work on Saturday Night Live you know she takes no prisoners. Small wonder that she took on Mr. Trump and his surrogates. What was shocking to many is that Wolf also nailed the anemic  Democratic leadership as well as the hand that paid for her acerbic "comedic" performance. Cut to Gessen's analysis again:

What makes these dinners possible are fictions about civility and performance. There is a fiction that holds that journalists and their subjects can eat and socialize together and yet maintain the distance necessary to continue performing their professional roles. There is a fiction that they can laugh at one another and themselves and not take offense, that the divisions among guests are ultimately bridgeable, that all of them inhabit the same reality, and that both the humor and the objects of the humor are innocuous. The same fiction continues to dominate our public sphere. In this story, Trump performs the role of President, albeit poorly, and those in the media maintain a strained civility in their coverage of him. In this story, the statement that the President is a racist is still controversial. In this story, the media can discuss his affair with a porn star, and even the question of whether he used a condom, without undermining respect for the office. This is an essential pretense, because respect for the office of the President is indeed a value that should transcend the current Presidency. But it is this pretense, and these fictions, that cast a pall of unreality over most media coverage and make late-night comedy shows the better news outlets. And then there is the pretense that the late-night comedians exist in a parallel universe, separate even from the television channels that broadcast them.

The Trickster calls bullshit on our lies. Some spiritual traditions even honor

him/her as one of the ways the Holy breaks through human deceit and sin. St. Paul goes so far as to call God's upside-down love experienced in Christ's resurrection the path of the Holy Fool. Trusting our failures to bring us into deeper truths, honoring our wounds as the way into redemptive wisdom, such revolutionary love punctures our fears and humbly awakens us to the possibility of life-giving solidarity. Harvey Cox celebrated Christianity's minority report when he wrote his 1969 book, Feast of Fools. And his closing chapter describing Jesus as a Holy Fool became the inspiration for the musical, Godspell. Jesters risk their lives by speaking truth to power and Michelle Wolf did so with aplomb. The final words of her roast make this clear: "Flint still doesn't have clean water."

Through her obscene humor, Wolf exposed the obscenity of the fictions

—and the fundamental unfunniness of it all. Her last line, the most shocking of her entire monologue, bears repeating: Flint still doesn’t have clean water.

Her style is not my own. I celebrate tenderness as the path to healing. But I recognize the hand of the Lord in the unsettling words of prophets as well as jesters. When I was a child Frank Zappa, Lou Reed, Bob Dylan, Grace Slick, the Beatles, late 60s Stones, Janis Joplin and Gil Scott-Heron played the roll of the jester alongside prophets like Marvin Gaye, Nina Simone, and the Last Prophets. I still listen to them, but now they are mixed with the sounds of The Roots, Carrie Newcomer, John Coltrane, Pink, John Legend and Herbie Hancock. As the music swells, I also hear St. Paul's challenge more clearly than ever:  "Remember that the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”

Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? Some demand signs and others desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to some traditions and foolishness to others... For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.... God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God.  (I Corinthians 1)

dancing with the mummers on the eve of beltane...

It should come as no surprise that I love the bold earthiness of the Celtic Wheel of Life. From its creation-centered roots to its appropriation by Christian people of faith, the Wheel of Life celebrates an incarnational spirituality that keeps me grounded. It honors the ebb and flow of life, death, birth, maturation, light, dark and all of life's shades of gray. There is feasting and fasting, dancing and mourning, times to be bold as well as times for silence. As the prioress at The Abbey of the Arts, Christine Valters Painters, writes:

The Celtic Wheel of the Year is an ancient way of understanding the unfolding seasons and slow turning of the earth... a closer intimacy with the rhythms of creation offers us a wisdom about the patterns of rise and fall, fullness and emptiness... Further, the Celtic framework is an indigenous tradition for (some) of us and our ancestors. So even if we don't live in Ireland, Scotland, England or Wales, we may still feels a kinship and connection to this understand of the year's rhythms.

This is certainly true for me: even as I dig deeper into the wisdom of Christian liturgy - honoring its Circle of Life with Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, feast days, Lent, Holy Week, Easter, Ascension and Pentecost - I also visit the Celtic Wheel to stay firmly planted in Mother Earth. In my neck of the woods, we are just about to enter the feast of fertility, flowers and fire the Celts called Beltane. In the church this falls close to the festival of Holy Fire we know as Pentecost. It is a "cross quarter day, halfway between the vernal equinox and the summer solstice... (it is) experienced at the height of spring. In Ireland it is considered to be the beginning of summer and the beginning of the light half of the year. We can feel the significant shift in light at this latitude and the days are becoming significantly longer. Temperatures are warmer. Flowering has come to its fullness. Birds are singing in full chorus." (Abbey of the Arts, The World Begins to Flower.)

This morning's local paper carried a front page story on sheep shearing - one of the ancient rituals of this season - and I noticed that the daffodils are just about to bloom in our yard, too. Fecundity fills the air in these hills so I smiled as the 
"old" religion of my people once again popped into view just at the edge of our consciousness. Once upon a time bonfires were lit on this night: cattle were driven between the flames as prayers were intoned to keep the herd safe from disease. In the morning, maypoles were erected adorned with flower wreaths. The birch phallus evoked the Green Man, the bouquets the Goddess Flora, and the intertwining ribbon dance pointed to the passionate embrace of male and female that brings to birth God's promise of new life. It is not hard to grasp why Pentecost became our festival of being filled with the fire of the Holy Spirit in order to give birth to Christ in a new way. Remember: while talking about both archetypes and mythology J.R.R. Tolkien said to C.S. Lewis, "The Jesus was the true myth that really happened." Lewis put it like this in his journal:

Now what Dyson and Tolkien showed me was this: that if I met the idea of sacrifice in a Pagan story I didn’t mind it at all: again, that if I met the idea of a god sacrificing himself to himself . . . I liked it very much and was mysteriously moved by it: again, that the idea of the dying and reviving god (Balder, Adonis, Bacchus) similarly moved me provided I met it anywhere except in the Gospels. The reason was that in Pagan stories I was prepared to feel the myth as profound and suggestive of meanings beyond my grasp even tho’ I could not say in cold prose ‘what it meant’. Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened.

It is cold, gray and damp in the Berkshire hills this day. But I have seen clues of crocuses peeking through the muck. And daffodils ready to burst into beauty as well. Change is in the air - and I am ready - do a wee dance with Loreena who always keeps it real.




icon: Lord of the Dance by Robert Lentz

revolutionary love...

The rain keeps coming down in our parts - and soon there will be more snow! At least that is the prediction for the Berkshires and it is probably right. So as I sit in the dry warmth of my desert-colored study, sipping hot tea while listening for the lure of God's Spirit in the appointed scriptures for the Fifth Sunday of Easter, I am struck by St. John's insistence upon the primacy of loving relationships as the heart of faith. In both the Epistle and Gospel (https://lectionary.library. vanderbilt.edu/texts.php?id=90) Christ's message is clear: let us love one another as God has loved us from before the beginning. 

"Abide in me as I abide in you." That is, rest in my grace as I have tenderly filled your hearts with my revolutionary love. It has been said that the message of Jesus in St. John's gospel is a celebration of compassionate relationships: from start to finish John tells us about communion with God and solidarity with one another. St. John is known as the "Beloved Disciple," not because he is elevated spiritually over the others, but because "this name reveals to us this disciple's deepest identity: one who rests in Christ's love." (Vanier, The Gospel of John, p. ix) Throughout this gospel we see Jesus living in complete communion with God, creating ways for friends as well as enemies to come into a grace-filled relationship with himself, and then to learn how to live with one another in a loving community. There is depth and discipline, fruit-bearing alongside barrenness, joy in the midst of sorrow, light within the darkness, action and reflection, and the birthing of a new way of living together guided by the Way of the Cross. In a reading from Jean Vanier, the charism of L'Arche is described as a contemporary embodiment of Christ's invitation:

God wanted L'Arche to be a new form of family: a family of the poor that rises above prejudice and fear of difference, a family witnessing that the only way to build peace and unity is to recognize our own poverty and our need for others.

This morning Di and I went to church for the first time in three months. Well, we participated in church by watching Middle Collegiate Church's on-line streaming of their worship. It was right on the money. I found tears of joy and sorrow spontaneously welling up and flowing as I owned how much I miss being in community for worship. Not leadership, mind you, but the experience of being a part of a fellowship of love. Middle Collegiate Church is where the Revolutionary Love conference was held. It is where Valerie Kaur and Parker Palmer met to discuss moving from disillusionment and death to birth a community of tender and strong people of love. And, I must confess, it was grand to be back in the fold today singing the hymns, praying the prayers, listening carefully to preacher Jackie Lewis unpack St. John's words "God is love and love is God." There was even a piano rendition of Tina Turner's "What's Love Got to Do with It?" so I really felt like I was going home! (check it out here: http://www. middlechurch.org)

Being "in" church again also solidified for me how deeply I have been missing my friends at L'Arche Ottawa. I'll be heading north again next week (for a time in the Townships with Di for our anniversary) and the following week in Ottawa (for a community retreat and Mass.) As we've joked about before: one worship home has ended and a new one has begin - it is just six hours away -at least for the time being!

Before worship I was reading Vanier who suggests that our model for living into this new way of revolutionary love and tenderness is implied in the witness of the Blessed Virgin Mary in St. John's gospel. Not only is she the standard for our personal commitment to contemplation, but she embodies the wisdom and practice of Christ's holy relationships. Within the Christian tradition some have posited that the "beloved disciple" experienced Christ's mystical heart through his encounters with Mary. At the foot of the Cross, Jesus said to Mary, "Woman behold thy son." (John 19: 27) Clarence Jordan, founder of Koinonia Farms in Americus, GA and progenitor of Habitat for Humanity, taught that when Mary saw Jesus upon the Cross, all the pondering within her heart became clear. "This is what my love looks like in the real world; for I was born to embody how we become whole through our vulnerability."

Vanier writes that Mary then teaches this truth to John: "The last words of Jesus on the Cross are: "Woman, here is your son.... and (to John) here is your mother."

It is said that from that moment, John took Mary as his own, as his treasure... and John lived with Mary. As the mother of Jesus, Mary naturally had an intimate relationship with him. Jesus lived nine months in her womb, had suckled at her breast, and was nourished by her milk. Mary thus had a knowledge and experience of Jesus that nobody else did. For about thirty years, she and Jesus lived together with Joseph... (That is why tradition teaches that) the story told by John about who Jesus is and who God is will be uniquely influenced by John's relationship with Mary. Jesus said, "Here is your mother." He did not say, "Welcome my mother." He said, "Here is your mother." In this we can conclude that John carefully chose events to tell us about Jesus in the light of the gentle understanding John received concerning Jesus through his own special relations with Mary. (ibid, xvi)

Small wonder that revolutionary love and tender relationship born of fragility

and vulnerability become the heart of St. John's gospel, yes? Today I was shown yet again how important it is for me to worship in community. It is where I am fed, taught, trained, corrected and embraced. It is where the Word of scripture comes alive in the flesh of sisters and brothers. My heart has been filled. My soul has been nourished. Like Mary once sang, "My spirit rejoices in God my Savior." My calling in these later days is to practice revolutionary love from the inside out. Maybe that resonates with you, too? (check it out: http://www.revolutionarylove.net/about-the-revolutionary-love-project/)

sharing about inter-faith organizing for justice, compassion and contemplation...

Today began early: I joined a colleague leading a workshop on: "Organizing from the Heart: Justice, Compassion and Contemplation in a Confusing Time." It was a joy to do - and the 13 people in our workshop were wise and open-hearted. We listened to shared stories at the start of this event asking: when have you experienced the intersection of your faith and the work of justice and peace? In anticipation of that question, I wrote out a summary of my own history in this realm.

I am a happily married, straight, old middle class, white guy with too much education – the proud father of two powerful and creative daughters – and two life-changing grandchildren. Professionally I just retired after 40 years of ordination as a clergy person – serving 4 different congregations – in Saginaw, MI; Cleveland, OH; Tucson, AZ and Pittsfield, MA. Educationally I took my BA in Political Science at San Francisco State University, my Master of Divinity from Union Theological Seminary in NYC and my Doctor of Ministry from San Francisco Theological Seminary in San Anselmo, CA. I have organized with Cesar Chavez and his farm workers union in their boycott movement as well as in contract administration in CA. I also organized in rural Mississippi with the Mississippi Woodcutters Union in the 80s. I’ve been trained in faith based community organizing by both the IAF – Industrial Areas Foundation of Saul Alinsky fame – and the Gamaliel Foundation in Chicago, IL. Each of my congregations have participated in faith based organizing networks. And, I was twice elected to the Cleveland Board of Education as part of an inter-racial reform team in the 90s working closely with then Mayor, Michael R. White. These days, however, I mostly play upright and electric bass in a small local band – serve on the 4 Freedoms Executive Committee – and volunteer in the L’Arche community of Ottawa, CA.

Next, we noted that three broad theological assumptions shape our commitment to interfaith community organizing.

+ Justice means listening before acting as well as discerning what belongs to another and returning it. We are called and inspired to hear one another's stories in our search for right relations between people and all of God's creation. Interfaith justice work, therefore, is about the restoration of land, dignity, hope, power, etc. 

+ Compassion is all about solidarity: sharing one another's suffering as well as our celebrations is at the core of life. It is living as those who choose to be nourished in community from a common loaf rather than isolated and alienated individuals.

+ And contemplation is consciously taking a long, loving look at reality and holding competing truths together. Non-dual consciousness trusts that we have more in common than we realize. But it takes work to be silent and still enough to let these deeper truths fill our hearts.

Finally we offered the nitty-gritty essentials of building a local inter-faith network based upon the experience of Saul Alinsky, Fred Ross and Marshall Ganz. The bullet points include:

+  Identifying local leaders and listening to their stories and concerns about what matters most in their lives. Leaders are not just titular officials, but also those whom others turn to for insight and assistance formally and informally. As Cesar Chavez used to say: a leader is someone who gets things done. This is called a power analysis and a one-on-one campaign.

+ After a significant number of 1 on 1 conversations take place, it is time for a house meeting campaign: bringing friends and neighbors together in a safe place.  Three things must take place at a house meeting:  a) the concerns of the one-on-one conversations are shared in a summary way; b) the group talks together to discover resonance; and c) the host or organizer asks for a decision of support. This might include time, money or hosting another house meeting, but the "ask" is always non-negotiable. A decision to be engaged is how ordinary people challenge organized money on behalf of restoration and solidarity.

+ Usually house meeting campaigns are for a discrete period - 30 days is common - after which an issue or goal is "cut" and an action planned. Cutting an issue includes: a) summarizing the essence of the house meetings; b) doing research on who are the key players shaping this issue; and c) crafting an action that is clear and win-able. 

+ A date for the action is then set, planning and preparation take place, and the action is embodied: it might be a demonstration, a confrontation, or a public gathering seeking political support for solving a problem. Actions are public. They have a clearly defined goal that can be measured. And they are highly structured. At the close of any action, everyone involved must be able to see what was accomplished: public officials are put on record and held accountable to the grassroots, religious leaders are compelled to stand for or against the common good, etc.

+ Then an internal evaluation takes place: did each of the participants in the interfaith group deliver?  If you committed to bring 7 people, did they show up? Organizers and members of justice and compassion groups have to learn that "maybe" always means no. Internal accountability and leadership development is a learning process. Not only do we learn to be realistic in our responsibilities, but we learn the difference between selflessness, selfishness and self-interest.

To be sure, this was a stream-lined introduction to organizing. There was no training, rather just the whetting of an appetite for more. It was also a chance to share an alternative vision of how faith communities can engage the world of politics: we are never narrowly partisan but always advocating for healing, hope, restoration and right relationships. It was important for me to do this one more time as it is likely my last public act of this type in the Berkshires. I love having a chance to work with Mark. And celebrate the work of the Four Freedoms Coalition. But it is now time for me to deepen my life with L'Arche. It is also time to find new forums to explore music-making, story-telling and feeding the heart. I give thanks for a great day knowing I am ready to fully shift gears. 

the ideal is an illusion...

"The ideal doesn't exist," writes Jean Vanier. "The personal equilibrium and the harmony people dream of come only after years and years of struggle, and then only as flashes of grace and peace." Sounding much like Stephen Mitchell in his books, The Gospel According to Jesus and The Book of Job, Vanier insists that idealistic and/or sentimental yearnings for peace keep us from doing the hard work of being fully alive in our flesh in this moment. As others have said, "The perfect is the enemy of the good" and keeps us from being engaged and real in the present.

Peace is the fruit of love and service to others. I'd like to tell the people in communities:  Stop looking for peace. Give yourselves where you are. Stop looking at yourselves, look instead at your brothers and sisters in need. Ask how you can better love your brothers and sisters. Then you will find peace. (Vanier)

Mitchell offers a clarifying insight: human beings often have a nostalgia for the future. Like my own critique of John Lennon's self-absorbed utopianism from earlier this week, the Jewish/Zen Buddhist poet, Mitchell, notes that:

There is such a thing as nostalgia for the future. Both Judaism and Christianity ache with it. It is a vision of the Golden Age, the days of perpetual summer in a world of straw-eating lions and roses without thorns, when human life will be foolproof, and fulfilled in an endlessly prolonged finale of delight. I don’t mean to make fun of the messianic vision. In many ways it is admirable, and it has inspired political and religious leaders from Isaiah to Martin Luther King. But it is a kind of benign insanity. And if we take it seriously enough, if we live it twenty-four hours a day, we will spend all our time working in anticipation, and will never enter the Sabbath of the heart. How moving and at the same time how ridiculous is the story of the Hasidic rabbi who, every morning, as soon as he woke up, would rush out his front door to see if the Messiah had arrived.(Another Hasidic story, about a more mature stage of this consciousness, takes place at the Passover seder. The rabbi tells his chief disciple to go outside and see if the Messiah has come. “But Rabbi, if the Messiah came, wouldn’t you know it in here?” the disciple says, pointing to his heart. “Ah,” says the rabbi, pointing to his own heart, “but in here, the Messiah has already come.”) Who among the now-middle-aged doesn’t remember the fervor of the Sixties, when young people believed that love could transform the world? “You may say I’m a dreamer,” John Lennon sang, “but I’m not the only one.” The messianic dream of the future may be humanity’s sweetest dream. But it is a dream nevertheless, as long as there is a separation between inside and outside, as long as we don’t transform ourselves. And Jesus, like the Buddha, was a man who had awakened from all dreams.

(see: https://stephenmitchellbooks.com/non-fiction/the-gospel-according-to-jesus/)

Mitchell makes the same case in his commentary on Job, too. After a careful

analysis of the story of an upright and moral man who is brought low by brokenness and suffering, Mitchell offers two truths that resonate with Vanier's wisdom. First, as Job's suffering becomes intolerable, he cannot remain faithful and sane without crying out against the pain.  Second, it is only after his anger embraces his sorrow that Job experiences a new intimacy with the holy. It is no longer a faith of binary morality or childlike trust. Now Job knows an integration of flesh and spirit beyond easy comprehension.

What does it mean to answer someone about human suffering? For there are answers beyond the one-size-fits-all propositions of the theologians. But these answers can’t be imposed from the outside. They will resonate only where the questioner lets them enter. Above all, they require a willingness to accept what can be excruciating to the ego. Often we find such reality unbearable. The light is so brilliant that it hurts, as in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and we retreat to the softer glow of a familiar, comfortable grief. There is never an answer to the great question of life and death, unless it is my answer or yours. Because ultimately it isn’t a question that is addressed, but a person. Our whole being has to be answered. At that point, both question and answer disappear, like hunger after a good meal.

“God is subtle, but not malicious,” Einstein said in a different context. We have to listen to the Voice from the Whirlwind in a more oblique mode, as if its true meaning lay inside the logical framework of its words. First, we should notice how the answer consists mostly of questions (a good Jewish trait). In their volume and insistence, these questions acquire a peculiar quality. They sound in our ears as a ground bass to the melody of their content, and eventually function as a kind of benign subliminal message, asking a fundamental question that will dissolve everything Job thought he knew.

The closest we can get to that question is: What do you know? During their dialogue, Job and the friends agree about the limits of human understanding, but none of them suspects how absolute those limits are. In order to approach God, Job has to let go of all ideas about God: he must put a cloud of unknowing (as a medieval Christian author expressed it) between himself and God, or have the Voice do this for him.

Job's anger and sorrow evoke an encounter with the holy wherein the suffering servant is swept into a whirlwind. Mitchell is precise in illuminating why this matters:

Job is taken up into a state of vision, and enters a world of primal energy, independent of human beings, which includes what humans might experience as terrifying or evil: lightning, the primordial sea, hungry lions on the prowl, the ferocious war-horse, the vulture feeding his young with the rotting flesh of the slain. Violence, deprivation, or death form the context for many of these pictures, and the animals are to them as figure is to ground. The horse exults because of the battle; without the corpses, the vulture couldn’t exist in his grisly solicitude. We are among the most elemental realities, at the center of which there is an indestructible power, an indestructible joy.

This worldview stands, of course, in direct opposition to the Genesis myth in which man is given dominion over all creatures. It is a God’s-eye view of creation before man, beyond good and evil, marked by the innocence of a mind that has stepped outside the circle of human values. (When I was a very young Zen student, caught up in the problem of evil, I once asked my teacher, “Why does shit smell so bad?” He said, “If you were a fly, it would taste like candy.”)

There is another text that can be contrasted: the peaceable kingdom of First Isaiah, where the wolf lies down with the lamb. Beside Job’s vision, this seems a naive version of paradise, and as elusive as its direct descendent, the Marxist End-of-Days. Since Isaiah still equates the humane with the human, his desire turns wilderness into a zoo, stocked with nonviolent and vegetarian lions. The Voice, however, doesn’t moralize. It has the clarity, the pitilessness, of nature and of all great art. Is the world of flesh-eaters a demonic parody of God’s intent? And what about our compassion for the prey? Projecting our civilized feelings onto the antelope torn apart by lions, we see mere horror: nature red in tooth and claw. But animals aren’t victims, and don’t feel sorry for themselves. The lioness springs without malice; the torn antelope suffers and lets go; each plays its role in the sacred game. When we watch from the periphery, as in a television film, we can sense the dignity this relationship confers on both hunter and hunted, even in the midst of great pain.

What the Voice means is that paradise isn’t situated in the past or future, and doesn’t require a world tamed or edited by the moral sense. It is our world, when we perceive it clearly, without eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. It is an experience of the Sabbath vision: looking at reality, the world of starving children and nuclear menace, and recognizing that it is very good.
(see: https://stephenmitchellbooks.com/translations-adaptations/the-book-of-job/)

And when the time is right - when the whirlwind has ended temporarily - Job is

filled with awe. He is bewildered, but silent. Into this staggering stillness the Holy One takes on every anthropomorphic projection sentimental and/or moralistic humanity has ever articulated about the Divine - and devours them. Job's former theology is shredded. Job's intellectual diversions are destroyed. Into the mystery of such sacred emptiness, Job confesses: Once I uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me... Once I had heard of Thee by the ear, but now my eye sees... and I repent. (Job 42) He does not speak of this illumination as one shamed by the power of the Holy, but as one awed by the magnitude of the Lord. Job is now at peace with reality. With God's abiding justice that is incomprehensible and reassuring at the same time. Once, he attests, I knew the words of my tradition. Once I parroted the platitudes of my faith. But I never experienced them: but now that I have, everything is different.

After more than 50 years of living in community - learning how God brings wisdom and healing to us all through our brokenness and fragility rather than our strength - Vanier gently invites us to get real. Ideals are a distraction. Be loving and engaged right where you are. Then, with practice and lots of forgiveness, you too will know moments of assurance. Vanier writes in his commentary on the Gospel of St. John:

(John's) prologue ends: "The Word became flesh." The word that is in communion with God, this word that is at the heart of all things and at the source of creation, became flesh. John does not write that the Word became a human being, but that the Word became flesh - and flesh is a fragile reality. Flesh and blood are fragile, vulnerable, and dependent. The Word became flesh... the infinite became little. (Vanier, The Gospel of John, pp. 1-2)

Our growth, maturation, peace "comes through the gradual discovery of the vulnerability of Jesus, the Word who became flesh. It will be this emerging understanding that in his fragility, Jesus is giving us life... in this we will better understand who we are, with our own fragility, our vulnerability, our fears, and our prejudices. We will come to understand that our own need to be transformed" is revealed in our flesh.  The peace that passes understand is passed to us through our flesh - broken, fragile and tender. 

credits
+ St. John's Bible https://sites.up.edu/library/the-word-made-flesh/
+ Job http://www.oldstilepress.com/osp_book/the-book-of-job/
+ Enlightenment https://www.saatchiart.com/art/Painting-Enlightenment/887611/3007432/view
+ Serenity Prayer https://www.keckfineart.com/products/scripture-art-canvas-print-of-serenity-prayer-111504