Settling into the rhythm and wisdom of a place takes time - or, at least for me, it takes time. I am a slow learner, often "late to the party" in a host of ways as quicker spirits like to quip. In owning this as fundamental to my soul, I find myself regularly on the look-out for allies. One who stands on common ground with me is T.S. Eliot in his Four Quartets: To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not, You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy. In order to arrive at what you do not know You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance. In order to possess what you do not possess You must go by the way of dispossession. In order to arrive at what you are not You must go through the way in which you are not. And what you do not know is the only thing you know And what you own is what you do not own And where you are is where you are not.
As I slowly read and research how the land, trees, flowers, grasses, and animals of my home are gentle wisdom-keepers in the Berkshires - guardians of the tender path of knowledge concerning how to live in balance here - the history and culture of the Mohican people takes on new importance. Not, I pray, in some New Agey, romantic fascination that reeks of privilege and cultural appropriation. But rather as one voice singing in the chorus of experiential creation spirituality for this region. As I try to say often, I am a novice to these hills. I need to listen to all the elders and sages when they talk about living in harmony and sustainability. Some partners are contemporary - like the New England Native Plant/Seed Share and Trade group - others speak from history. My hermeneutic of suspicion tells me this is especially true when it comes to the voices of our invisible, abandoned, and discarded past. So, in the spirit of the Algonquin people who told their children stories of the community during the winter, I am using the cold to read their histories. And research how they farmed for squash, corn, beans, and sunflower seeds. Later today we will walk with Lucie in the wetlands and then explore some seed catalogs and order a few more native plants for the garden.
There are other voices to take in, too as I settle in slowly to this small place of ordinary wonder: the poets, the authors, the preachers, the English and Dutch colonizers. It is time to take in the mystical encounters of Jonathan Edwards with nature as well. He was not just a one dimensional, New England revivalist. He was a mystic. A man of magnificent intellect who was banished from the cream of the Anglo crop by his kin to society's periphery in the Mohican settlement of Stockbridge. His Stockbridge sermons are saturated with stories of how the holy can be seen and experienced in the roses. Or the silkworm. Or the dance of the spiders in the sunlight. His heart was changed, too both by his exile and the beauty of nature. Wise, old Wendell Berry, who has devoted his life to learning the wisdom of the holy through intimacy with the land of his Kentucky farm, is another comrade I like to listen to as in this slow settling-in:
It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.
One of my best mentors has been failure. Missing the mark and spending time with my defeats connects me to the possibility of transformation as well as a bit of humility. This is the time-tested tradition of the hero/heroine's journey. The late Joseph Campbell captured it with clarity when he wrote:
We have not even to risk the adventure alone; for the heroes of all time have gone before us; the labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero-path.” Here it is. “And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.
My spiritual tradition speaks of this as the folly of the Cross: trusting that out of suffering not only will wisdom and patience be experienced, but intimacy with new life in God, too. Other traditions point to this truth with words like karma, exodus or Tao. Richard Rohr playfully says that "the Buddha is even supposed to have said that suffering 'is part of the deal!'" I have long meditated on St. Paul's description in Romans 5:
Therefore, since we are justified by faith (that is made whole and experiencing intimacy with God by trust) we are at peace in our Lord Jesus Christ and rest in his grace... From this encounter we know that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because hope is God’s love being poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.
The text tells us that when we know - οἶδα/eidó to perceive and experience awareness and insight as if seeing with our eyes in the Greek rather than the more abstract knowledge of ideas - then we are able to trust God's love through even the most trying circumstances. Like the Cross. This real life way of learning is sometimes called the spirituality of imperfection - and it has been a beautiful albeit demanding teacher in my life.
But there is another way into knowledge and wisdom, too - a guide that is softer and more tender - involving what some call God's first word: creation. Mother Nature. A spirituality of the seasons. This tutor is no less true than the other - and no less demanding - yet wisdom is still shared, compassion strengthened, and maturity ripened in a more gentle and incremental manner. In Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants she compares the story of two women: Skywoman from her First Nations' stories concerning the origins of Turtle Island, and, Eve of the Hebrew Bible who was expelled from the garden for eating from the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
Look at the legacy of poor Eve's exile from Eden: the land shows the bruises of an abusive relationship. It's not just land that is broken, but more importantly, our relationship to land. As Gary Nabhan (of Tucson fame) has writer, we can't meaningfully proceed with healing, with restoration, without "re-story-ation." In other words, our relationship with land cannot heal until we hear its stories... In the Western tradition there is a recognized hierarchy of beings, with, of course, the human being on top - the pinnacle of evolution, the darling of Creation - and the plants at the bottom. But in Native ways of knowing, human people are often referred to as 'the young brothers of Creation.' We say that humans have the least experience with how to live and thus the most to learn - and we must look to our teachers among the other species for guidance. Their wisdom is apparent in the way that they live. They teach us by example. They've been on the earth far longer than we have been, and have had time to figure things out. They live both above and below the ground, joining Skyworld to the earth. Plants know how to make food and medicine from light and water - and then give it away.(pp. 9-10)
It has taken me decades to hear - and then trust - this other way of knowing. It began when we had to engage Lucie's anxiety with patience and tenderness rather than exasperation. It continued as I relearned (with a lot more to know) how to bake bread. Being a part of L'Arche Ottawa has been part of my journey into this path. And now it continues with the trees, the grasses, and our small garden. I am such a novice. I am grateful to have been opened to the holy upon the road of suffering, but walking along the tender path of creation is equally holy and true, too. Today I give thanks to God for bringing me closer to the beauty of this sacred balance.
Our indigenous herbalists say to pay attention when plants come to you; they’re bringing you something you need to learn... Know the ways of the ones who take care of you, so that you may take care of them. Introduce yourself. Be accountable as the one who comes asking for life. Ask permission before taking. Abide by the answer. Never take the first. Never take the last. Take only what you need. Take only that which is given. Never take more than half. Leave some for others. Harvest in a way that minimizes harm. Use it respectfully. Never waste what you have taken. Share. Give thanks for what you have been given. Give a gift, in reciprocity for what you have taken. Sustain the ones who sustain you and the earth will last forever.
It is a clear, frigid, and sunny day in the old hills of western Massachusetts - a perfect one for staying inside with hot tea and piñon incense. When I put Lucie our dog out this morning, the wooden deck warned me not to linger as it snapped and groaned under my feet: "Get your ass back inside, man, and stay there if you can" it crackled. I have come to believe it is wise to heed the words of the wood - its been around these parts much longer than I - so I did. Maria Popova's eloquent blog post, BrainPickings, notes that: In the years following his stroke, Whitman ventured frequently into the woods — “the best places for composition.” One late-summer day in 1876, he finds himself before one of his favorite arboreal wonders — “a fine yellow poplar,” rising ninety feet into the sky. Standing at its mighty four-foot trunk, he contemplates the unassailable authenticity of trees as a counterpoint to what Hannah Arendt would lament a century later as the human propensity for appearing rather than being. (https://www.brainpickings.org/2017/11/06/walt-whitman-specimen-days-trees/)
Driving to and from Canada this week gave me the chance to gaze upon a host of stark, winter trees. Some were barren, others cloaked in snow, each and all were fully present to this season inviting me to join them n simply being here now. As Whitman wrote: "Go and sit in a grove or woods, with one or more of those voiceless companions, and read the foregoing, and think. One lesson from affiliating a tree — perhaps the greatest moral lesson anyhow from earth, rocks, animals, is that same lesson of inherency, of what is, without the least regard to what the looker on (the critic) supposes or says, or whether he/she likes or dislikes." Fr. Richard Rohr calls this living into non-dual thinking: greeting every experience without judgement and receiving it as just what it is, what it is, what it is. When I wasn't watching and listening to the trees, I was taking in similar insights on Krista Tippett's brilliant podcasts: OnBeing. One opened with this poem/prayer from Pádraig Ó Tuama: So let us pick up the stones over which we stumble, friends, and build altars. Let us listen to the sound of breath in our bodies. Let us listen to the sounds of our own voices, of our own names, of our own fears. Let’s claw ourselves out from the graves we’ve dug. Let’s lick the earth from our fingers. Let us look up and out and around. The world is big and wide and wild and wonderful and wicked, and our lives are murky, magnificent, malleable, and full of meaning. Oremus: let us pray. (https://onbeing.org/programs/padraig-o-tuama-and-marilyn-nelson-a-new-imagination-of-prayer/#transcript)
These invitations to be fully present now without judgment, fear, exhalation, shame, anxiety, or anticipation point to the significance of nourishing the soul of a counter-cultural contemplative. What a gift it is for women and men to move through time as a non-anxious presence even within the current whirlwind of 21st century culture. That was once the point of religion Rohr observes - to help us grow-up into God's grace - but our various traditions have clearly failed us. No wonder many have abandoned the ship of faith. For at least the past 300 hundred years, religion has trained us to remain as infants lost to our emotions as well as the ruthless manipulation of the masters of culture and commerce. The late, great Frank Zappa once quipped presciently that,"politics is the entertainment branch of industry" - and 2020 confirms it in spades.
So what are we to do? Our current experience throughout much of Western society feels "like an earthquake underneath us" says the Rev. Dr. Serene Jones, president of Union Theological Seminary in NYC. It is like everything is breaking apart and dying. Much like Valarie Kaur, Jones believes that even the collapse points to an emerging new world. The operative metaphor is birth rather than death. She suggests that contemplatives have been called to live as "midwives to the world that wants to be born."
Today feels to me like we’re in the middle of the Reformation. But people in the middle of the Reformation didn’t know it. It was only afterwards. And they couldn’t have imagined what was going to come. We’re in the middle of that. There is the crumbling and — and the new can’t emerge without the old breaking down. But (we can) turn a moment of fear and terror into a moment of exuberant hopefulness (because) something is coming that completely rewrites the story of who we are...
All of the trauma of American history - racism, sexism, genocide, greed, shame, oppression, fear, misogyny, anthropocentrism, violence, and ethnocentrism - is now rising to the surface of consciousness. Our masks and illusions are falling in public and none of the traditional ways of the dominate culture know how to guide through this trauma. We've been cloaked and addicted in denial for too long. Left to ourselves, the magnitude of this grief terrifies us. Further, even our religious traditions have forgotten how lead us honestly from grief into mourning. "To move from grief (into) mourning," Jones says, "is to move from a place of sheer loss to a place of acknowledging the loss, for in mourning the permanence of the loss (remains), it can’t be fixed, but it also creates a space... for you to make sacred the pain so that the rest of your life is transformed by it." (https://onbeing.org/programs/serene-jones-on-grace/#transcript)
Rohr reminds us that if we do not transform our pain and grief, we will transmit it. Think the sins of the mothers and fathers being passed down to the third and fourth generations - and more!. To which Ms. Tippett sagely suggests that some of us are being called by this moment to be "calmers of fear." Cut back to those trees: I believe that the cultivation of inner silence and outward trust in a love greater than ourselves is salvific both personally and socially. As we practice grieving this moment fully, holding the joys and sorrows together in our flesh as well as hearts, we give our pain the sacred meaning it deserves. We also create the space for the Spirit to touch our hearts in new and as yet un-imagined ways. As we choose the quiet and tender path where grace abides, a love that is stronger than violence, history and shame takes shape. It invites us to own and then relinquish our past. Ó Tuama puts it like this: "There’s a beautiful phrase from West Kerry where you say, “mo sheasamh ort lá na choise tinne” — You are the place where I stand on the day when my feet are sore.” That is soft and kind language, but it is so robust. That is what we can have with each other." We can be like the trees, standing starkly in the winter, receiving what is real and responding with quiet strength and presence and healing. I cannot help but reclaim the words of ancient Israel's royal prophet, Isaiah, who in his closing revelations sang: Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live... Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake their way, and the unrighteous their thoughts; let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it. Then you shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands!
As part of the Revolutionary Love movement: Today I rise up with thousands of artists, activists, and thought leaders to reclaim love as a force for justice! On Valentine's Day, we reclaim the words of James Baldwin:
Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word ‘love’ here not merely in the personal sense, but as a state of being, a state of grace, not in the infantile American sense of being made happy, but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.
There is something healing and refreshing about driving for a long distance in the safety and warmth of a well-tuned vehicle. In so many ways, the enforced solitude of my journey north to L'Arche Ottawa is a blessing: six hours one way through long stretches of wide open North Country landscape. Sometimes I head north through Vermont and cut across Quebec and Ontario; other times I go through Albany, NY and take the State Thruway to Utica before heading up to Watertown and then the border. In the winter, it is this second route that I enjoy best both because it takes me through farmland and along river beds, but also because it presents so much "big sky." There are convenient rest stops, gas stations and eateries, too! So please don't think me a hearty explorer: I relish my modest comforts along the way and often give thanks to God for them. This trip I had the added delight of finally entering the world of the podcast. Ok, ok, I know this marks me as a techno-dinosaur - and so be it! I also brought the new Leonard Cohen and Gil Scott-Heron CDs along as well. This trip was like a mini-seminar on wheels hurtling threw New York State at 70 mph. I listened to the On Being interviews with Fr. Gregory Boyle and then Pádraig Ó Tuama. Both were a bit of the holy speaking to me through technology about prayer concerns I have been lifting up for the past few weeks. Boyle solved a problem for me about communion; and Ó Tuama gave me some clues about suffering. You may recall that I have lamented not being present for Eucharist on a regular basis. I love liturgy and smells and bells and the whole high church thing. But I am not in that groove any more and there really aren't any viable alternatives for me save our participation in the the Brooklyn family's congregation. So I have been wondering where to go with this hunger - and Boyle tells me in this story:
(Relationships and incarnation are where we find God...) I think we’re
afraid of the incarnation. And part of it, the fear that drives us is that we have to have our sacred in a certain way. It has to be gold-plated, and cost of millions and cast of thousands or something, I don’t know. And so we’ve wrestled the cup out of Jesus’s hand, and we’ve replaced it with a chalice, because who doesn’t know that a chalice is more sacred than a cup, never mind that Jesus didn’t use a chalice? And a story I tell in the book about a homie who was — on Christmas Day, I said, “What’d you do on Christmas?” And he was an orphan, and abandoned and abused by his parents, and worked for me in our graffiti crew. And I said, “What’d you do for Christmas?” “Oh, just right here.” I said, “Alone?” And he said, “No, I invited six other guys from the graffiti crew who didn’t had no place to go,” he said. “And they were all…” He named them, and they were enemies with each other. I said, “What’d you do?” He goes, “You’re not gonna believe it. I cooked a turkey.”I said, “Well, how’d you prepare the turkey?” He says, “Well, you know, ghetto-style.” And I said, “No, I don’t think I’m familiar with that recipe.” And he said, “Well, you rub it with a gang of butter, and you squeeze two limones on it, and you put salt and pepper, put it in the oven. Tasted proper,” he said. I said, “Wow. Well, what else did you have besides turkey?” “Well, that’s it, just turkey.”
“Yeah, the seven of us, we just sat in the kitchen, staring at the oven, waiting for the turkey to be done. Did I mention it tasted proper?” I said, “Yeah, you did.” So what could be more sacred than seven orphans, enemies, rivals, sitting in a kitchen, waiting for a turkey to be done? Jesus doesn’t lose any sleep that we will forget that the Eucharist is sacred. He is anxious that we might forget that it’s ordinary, that it’s a meal shared among friends, and that’s the incarnation, I think.
(check it out here: @ https://onbeing.org/programs/greg-boyle-the-calling-of-delight-gangs-service-and-kinship)
My first night in Ottawa I shared supper in the new home of two dear friends who were married in October: truly wherever two or three gather in Christ's name there he is in the midst of us. And that feast was communion. Same tonight when I ate with my buddies at the Wabana home: there was a quick prayer of thanks before the meal and then the rest was a feast of humble thanksgiving. I really don't need the smells and bells if I open my heart to Jesus as he sits next to me at supper. Then there's Pádraig Ó Tuama story of praying the Stations of the Cross every day for 10 years:
In Catholic and Episcopal churches, you’ll find 14 images from the time that Jesus of Nazareth was condemned to death to the time that his corpse was laid in the tomb. They’re just 14 stopping points. For ten years, I did the stations every day. And what I like about the Stations of the Cross is that they don’t say, “Oh, but then, there’s the fifteenth one, where it’s all lovely, fantastic.” In the traditional understanding, there isn’t a fifteenth station. The idea is to find hope in the practice of what seemed to be the worst. And it is the worst — there’s no pretense that abduction and torture and murder are anything other than abduction, torture, and murder; however, there is the understanding that within it, we can discover some kind of hope — the hope of protest, the hope of truth-telling, the hope of generosity, the hope of gesture — even in those places.
There’s a word in Irish, scáth, “shelter.” That word can also be
translated as “shadow.” And so I think there’s great wisdom in that, in that when we look at any practice — like the Stations of the Cross — for me, I found great shelter in it. I dragged myself around the Stations of the Cross. I was part of a charismatic prayer group, and you’re always praying for each other. Like Marilyn was saying, there’s lots of words in those contexts. At one time, into a small, sacred, silent moment, the idea occurred to me — I was 19 — “You should start to do the Stations of the Cross.” And so I did; I just thought, well, OK. And I did them every day, then, for the next ten years. And I was closeted, full of shame at that stage, being put through exorcisms and then, subsequently, reparative therapy, for being gay. These were hellish experiences. And in seeing a character of Jesus of Nazareth — who, at the hands of Roman Empire, was out on the edges of that empire, being tortured because of a possibility of speaking about love in an imaginative way — I began to imagine, for a small second, that that kind of dignity might be available to me. The Stations of the Cross saved me.
There is so much pain, in so many lives - and sometimes it feels like it is too much. But, by going in to it over and over and over, trusting that in God's time the grace and dignity of love will be available to us in our flesh, I can return at least one more time. I find that being with the women and men at L'Arche who have known suffering, anguish and trauma that I can never imagine - feasting and laughing with them, weeping and praying with them, washing pots and pans with them, too - is healing for me. Whatever I might bring to the table, I clearly need to be here because when I am,I see Jesus sitting right there with us in the midst of it all. As I was heading out after a long meeting, my friends CeCe and Terry were waiting for their ride: there were hugs and laughs and looks of deep affection. What a blessing.
To close his interview, On Being host, Krista Tippett, asked Boyle to read a poem from Hafiz he includes at the close of his book. It is so good...
Admit something: Everyone you see, you say to them, ‘Love me.’ / Of course you do not do this out loud, otherwise someone would call the cops. / Still, though, think about this, this great pull in us to connect. / Why not become the one who lives with a full moon in each eye that is always saying, / with that sweet moon language, what every other eye in this world is dying to hear?
One of the peculiar blessings of this season of my life is discovering and then claiming permission to go slowly through the day. At its best, it feels like this... The moment I heard "Falling Slowly" I knew it was a song of the heart. Fr. Richard Rohr sometimes speaks of falling as an essential ingredient on the way to spiritual wholeness. Falling upwards is how he puts it, conjuring the paradox of failing and surrender as the doorway to serenity and gravitas. He sometimes uses the phrase "breathing under water" too to mean much the same thing. It’s a gift to joyfully recognize and accept our own smallness and ordinariness. Then you are free with nothing to live up to, nothing to prove, and nothing to protect. Such freedom is my best description of Christian maturity, because once you know that your “I” is great and one with God, you can ironically be quite content with a small and ordinary “I.” No grandstanding is necessary. Any question of your own importance or dignity has already been resolved once and for all and forever.
To live and move and have our being slowly is an acquired blessing. Some are gifts that accompany aging, while others require a different intentionality. The three components that help me cherish each day include emptiness, order, and softness. Your practices may differ but all of them help us to consciously become smaller within a culture that is addicted to grandiosity. + Emptiness: In my world living into a balanced day requires that I befriend emptiness. This may be different where you live, but here there are always too many options to fill up my time. In the supermarket, there are too many types of pasta, too many brands of tooth paste, too many packages of light bulbs and soap and deodorant. On TV there are too many channels - and as Springsteen used to sing: "there's 57 channels but nothing's on!" On any given day, I find that there are too many choices of things to do, too. We call it being busy - and most of us have a love/hate relationship with busyness. Many feel as if our lives are too busy. At the same time, however, we know that our busyness gives us a sense of importance in ourselves and with others. Deep down, we like it when somebody says, "I know how busy you are, but could we just find time for...?" This busyness we impose upon ourselves. Other busyness comes from our places of work, our families, or our volunteer commitments. As one who has wrestled with busyness as an addiction, I know how hard it is to unplug from the buzz. I once found great satisfaction in making long, detailed lists of everything I had to accomplish, and then scrupulously checking things off as the day ripened. The more I crossed off, the more value I had for myself and those I was serving. "Look how incredibly productive I have been!?!" Employers love it when we become obsessed with proving our worth through tasks and grind ourselves to the bone. Work-a-holism is one of our socially acceptable addictions - and the modern economy demands it. Incrementally I have been experimenting with honoring emptiness rather than busyness as part of each day. I started this practice 25+ years ago and am still learning the beauty of "no." Saying "no" and building-in emptiness gives shape to my calendar, my music, my prayers, and my priorities. I am still a novice but find help through a wonderful little song Donovan wrote for Zeffirelli's Francis and Clare film, "Brother Sun, Sister Moon."
If you want your dream to be
Take your time, go slowly
Do few things but do them well
Heartfelt work grows purely
If you want to live life free
Take your time, go slowly
Do few things but do them well
Heartfelt work grows purely
Day by day, stone by stone
Build your secret slowly
Day by day, you'll grow too
You'll know heaven's glory
These days I strive to do "few things, but do them well." I walk with a sense of emptiness. It is a spiritual practice NOT to rush. Some of this is organic because I'm older and sometimes have a grandchild beside me. Or my sweetheart and the infirmities she manages so well. But even by myself, emptiness shapes my quest to move slowly and notice what's going on all around me. Same goes for the TV I watch, the books I read, the music I play, the meetings I attend, the news I listen to, the purchases I make, and the food I eat. Less continues to become more, quality over quantity is essential, and each commitment deserves to be wrapped with a measure of emptiness or silence before and afterwards so that I might appreciate the beauty and value of each event.
+ Order: My mentor here is Sister Sabbath. If we can learn to honor the Sabbath and keep it holy, we can learn to craft a healing order to each day. Without this commitment, every act and hour becomes equal and tends to enslave rather than liberate us. My roots in Reformed Christianity once honored the Sabbath - the few remaining "blue laws" in New England are the outdated remembrances of a time lost forever - but I learned about Sabbath keeping from Abraham Joshua Heschel. He writes:
To gain control of the world of space is certainly one of our tasks. The danger begins when in gaining power in the realm of space we forfeit all aspirations in the realm of time. There is a realm of time where the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share, not to subdue but to be in accord. Life goes wrong when the control of space, the acquisition of things of space, becomes our sole concern.
Some 30 years ago our small family started to practice Sabbath keeping while I was pastor of an inner city congregation in Cleveland. I quickly learned that religious people like the idea of the Sabbath more than the practice - especially if it limits the pastor's availability. Stanley Hauerwas has described the modern pastor as "a quivering mass of trembling availability." And he is right. Some of those in the congregation became indignant and harsh when I made it known that I wouldn't be answering the phone or making unnecessary pastoral visits on my Sabbath. It was a constant source of tension that was not resolved. In subsequent pastorates I was up front from the beginning that not only would I honor the Sabbath and keep it holy, but I would devote a full day to prayer and writing in anticipation of Sunday worship. That was my second lesson in taking control of my schedule and discovering the blessing of order. As the late Eugene Peterson advised in Working the Angles (a book written to help pastors reclaim order): "If you need to spend an hour each week with Dostoevsky, then make sure it is in you calendar! Same with prayer and family time, too." Peterson practiced what he preached: he took every Friday away from the fray to walk with his wife in the wilderness, pray in the quiet of his study, and feast with loved ones at day's end. His witness gave me courage and clarity for the final 20 years of ministry.
These days, in retirement, I now have three full hours of silence and solitude each morning. What a gift. Di is teaching, so after we get up and I get us a light breakfast, I am free to go inward between 8:30 AM to Noon - and I do so with gusto. This quiet time shapes the spirit of each day. It also helps me be fully present with others as the day unfolds. I can see in hindsight how I missed being present with others back in my harried working days because I was overwhelmed with tasks and unmoored by chaos. Again, Heschel is instructive:
There is a realm of time where the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share, not to subdue but to be in accord. Life goes wrong when the control of space, the acquisition of things of space, becomes our sole concern. + Softness:The blessing of living slowly includes cultivating an inward/outward softness. I know of no better description than Cynthia Bourgeault's clarity in her brilliant book on Wisdom. Considering the practice of surrendering self in real life, she writes: When the attitude of prompt surrender has become permanently engrained in a person while still in bodily life, that person becomes a powerful servant of humanity - a saint, in the language of the Christian West - whose very being radiates blessing and spiritual strength... Surrender means to "hand oneself over" or "entrust oneself." It is not about outer capitulation, but about inner opening. It is always voluntary, and rather than an act of weakness, it is always an act of strength... Maintaining an open, inner gentleness, even in in the face of perceived threat and reversal, immediately connects you with the whole multispectrum knowingness of your heart... (So) the most direct and effective (way to practice this is) in any situation in life, confronted by an outer threat or opportunity, you can notice yourself responding inwardly in one of two ways. Either you will brace, harden, and resist; or, you will soften, ripen, and yield. If you go with the former gesture, you will be catapulted immediately into your smaller self, with its animal instincts and survival responses. If you stay with the later regardless of outer conditions, you will remain in alignment with your innermost beings, and through it, divine being can reach you. Spiritual practice at its no-frills simplest is a moment-by-moment learning not to do anything in a state of internal brace. Bracing is never worth the cost. (The Wisdom Way of Knowing, pp. 74-75) Emptiness, order, and softness help me slow down. The more I slow down, the better rested I become. The more at rest I am, the better I can notice what is going on all around (and within) me. In a quiet and slow state, I am able to listen and be fully present with others. Rather than frantically rushing to accomplish my tasks, I have both the time and desire for connections. Henri Nouwen insists that solitude is the key to community and I believe he is right. When I am empty, ordered and soft the challenges around me become living opportunities to love God in creation instead of resenting the noise and reacting with anxiety. This poem by Julie Cadwallader Staub, "Blackbirds," expresses some of the gratitude I feel whenever I live within this blessing.
I am 52 years old, and have spenttruly the better part of my life out-of-doors but yesterday I heard a new sound above my head a rustling, ruffling quietness in the spring air
and when I turned my face upward I saw a flock of blackbirds rounding a curve I didn't know was there and the sound was simply all those wings, all those feathers against air, against gravity and such a beautiful winning: the whole flock taking a long, wide turn as if of one body and one mind.
How do they do that?
If we lived only in human society what a puny existence that would be
but instead we live and move and have our being here, in this curving and soaring world that is not our own so when mercy and tenderness triumph in our lives and when, even more rarely, we unite and move together toward a common good,
This weekend, in anticipation of traveling to L'Arche Ottawa on Monday for a few days in community, I am gathering up a few resources for the journey: some podcasts by Krista Tippett for the car; my tea pot, canister of loose Scottish breakfast tea, and the portable kettle; some CDs for the ride; and a few books of prayers and poems. Having started Richard Rohr's online course in Franciscan spirituality earlier in the week, I have been musing over the paradox of my profound love of sacred liturgy and Eucharist alongside my deep commitment to orthopraxy rather than orthodoxy. Rohr summarizes one of the reasons I find myself drawn to L'Arche. Franciscan alternative orthodoxy has never bothered fighting popes, bishops, Scriptures, or dogmas. It just quietly but firmly pays attention to different things—like simplicity, humility, non-violence, contemplation, solitude and silence, earth care, nature and other creatures, and the “least of the brothers and sisters." The Franciscan tradition teaches that love and action are more important than intellect or speculative truth: Love is the highest category for the Franciscan School.
Following the wandering nature of these musings, a returning thought popped up yet again: I often feel like I could be so at home attending Mass nearly every morning if it weren't for the limitations of both my Reformed pension and the constraints of Roman Catholic ecclesiology. I love the experience of feasting on the love of Jesus during communion. I revel in the smells and bells and candles of good liturgy. And cherish both the silence and the chanting. Lost in this revelry, my heart suddenly called up the creative pyrotheology of Peter Rollins of Belfast.
Challenging the idea that faith concerns questions relating to belief, Peter’s incendiary and religionless reading of Christianity attacks the distinction between the sacred and the secular. It critiques theism and it sets aside questions regarding life after death to explore the possibility of life before death ... designed to help us embrace the difficulties of existence and face the challenges of being human. It involves a deep critique of any religious/ideological system that promises an escape from doubt and anxiety. Exposing the true tyranny that the pursuit of certainty and satisfaction creates (by feeding the very problems the pursuit promises to fix). Pyrotheology helps to transform the doubts and difficulties of daily life into a fuel that ignites a journey into the depth and density of life. (It) offers an understanding
of faith that has nothing to do with the tired debates between theists and atheists. It uncovers how faith helps us resolutely confront our brokenness, joyfully embrace unknowing, and courageously face the difficulties of life. (See: https://peterrollins.com)
Now this really speaks to the soul of my inward/outward journey: learning to trust the darkness, living faith as a commitment to compassion rather than doctrine, and accepting that my brokenness is also the way into courage, joy, and transformation. And still I yearn for regular liturgical nourishment. A poem and proclamation that Pádraig Ó Tuama calls "Creed" captures this dilema:
I once was blind but now I can see I once was him, but now I’m me I once was cold, but now I’m not I used to fear hell, where the fire is hot I wanted to be straight, but the thing is I’m queer I-thought-I belonged there, but I belong here
I once was wrong, because I thought I was right I thought that the darkness was the same as the night and thought that the light was consoling and beautiful all it asked was ‘be pure, and be right and be dutiful’ but light can be insipid and daytime can be vacuous and no cult is so crude as the cult of the miraculous I thought that walking on the water would be the end of it all and addiction to articulation was the start of my fall
I fell into meaninglessness, I fell into sin I fell into darkness, and I felt caged in and I fell into the arms of something that was lurking in the corner, in the shadows, and it’s been slowly converting my methods and madness, into myth and new meaning my sagas and sadness given girth and given grieving.
and now I believe in the god of the human the good and the glorious, the generous and moving.
I once was blind, now I’m blinder still and inside my own nighttime, I am silent and still.
There may be a chance to slip into Eucharist while I am away in Canada. We shall see. There will certainly be a common table each evening at supper where bread will be broken, laughter and stories shared, and hearts opened in love and trust. And this is certainly bread for the journey...
There was a half inch of ice coating everything earlier this morning - and now it is pouring rain. The prediction is that this storm will later morph into snow so at some point today I'm going out in foul weather gear to shovel slush off the drive way. Life could be much, much worse so I rejoice in today's challenge: it will be freezing cold and taxing, but I can return to a hot shower and a warm house. It is on days like this that I really want to count my blessings. Soon I am going to make chicken soup. It is my maiden voyage. Back in the day when I was a hardcore vegetarian, I made a wonderful split pea soup. Some reasonably tasty dahl, too. But those times have come and gone and I haven't tried my hand at soup making in over 25 years! Pádraig Ó Tuama writes in the wee book of prayers for the Corrymeela Community that praying is much like making soup. In the section entitled, "How to use this book," he says: I have always wanted to write a book of recipes. Soups, probably; something to warm the heart. My recipes are vague about amounts but come with poetry suggestions. When cooking stew, for instance, it is best to read Patrick Kavanagh's In Memory of My Mother... when making roast pear, chicken and garlic soup (topped with blue cheese)it is always wise to read Marie Howe's Magdalene - the Seven Devils... My friend Devin phoned me from California once wanting to know whether a recipe I'd written required one clove of garlic or two. He was asking the wrong person, but he was a man in need of detail and he believed that I loved him enough to give him detail even if I didn't have detail to give... Use your imagination, I said, but he wanted to use mine. I love him dearly, so I made an answer up. It worked, I think, but I forget how many cloves... Most of us are in a dialogue when we read a book. I know I am. That's the point, I think; to listen to the writer, to listen to yourself and to listen to the space between where things said by neither are nonetheless said. The things we take away are the things were already looking for: "what you seek is seeking you," said Rumi. And while this is a frightening concept, it can a consoling one be if we listen to the desires that will feed us, not destroy us. Rumi asks to trust that wisdom waits - and might be found in unlikely corners... All of that goes to say: you'll need to make your own damned soup, because only you can make it. You know your own needs. Or you will. Take bones and flesh and blood and fruits of the dark earth, put in water, put in salt and put a fire to it. Let it boil, let it cool a little. Season with what your season needs. Eat it, drink it, survive and look around. Be a little bit glorious. Be warm and open. Share. Keep some for tomorrow and give plenty away. Amen.
This approach to soup and prayer makes sense to me. I think I'll need to make a batch of Irish soda bread, too. In so many ways, these are days for comfort food. Or, at the very least, soup and bread for the journey. So many of us feel battered. Abused. Used hard and hung up wet to dry as they say in Tucson. As I listen to the evening news summary on PBS (all I can muster) I am beyond tears. With each new assault from the regime I can only make the sign of the Cross and say: Lord, have mercy. It goes from bad to worse. Who could have predicted three years ago the new lows we would experience, right? And still they come. Relentlessly. Unashamedly. With vulgarity and venom. Historian Heather Cox Richardson listed just a partial posting of the retribution the regime initiated after the Senate's traitorous voite:
Republican Senators Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chair Ron Johnson (R-WI) began an investigation into Hunter Biden... the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security suspended the ability for residents of New York to enroll or renew their status in the Global Entry or Trusted Traveler programs, (in retaliation for the fact that New York has refused to turn DMV records over to ICE) which will hobble New Yorkers who often travel internationally. Attorney General William Barr gave the Trump campaign cover for 2020. He issued an order that the FBI cannot investigate any political candidate or that candidate’s senior advisors before the 2020 election without him signing off on it. So, if Trump does receive help from a foreign country as he did in 2016 and tried to do in 2020, the FBI cannot investigate it unless Barr says it’s okay. Barr, you will remember, is deeply implicated in the Ukraine Scandal.
Today I rejoice that Ambassador Marie Yovonavitch once again stepped into the fray and put it like this in her Washington Post op-ed essay: I have seen dictatorships around the world, where blind obedience is the norm and truth-tellers are threatened with punishment or death. We must not allow the United States to become a country where standing up to our government is a dangerous act... It has been shocking to experience the storm of criticism, lies and malicious conspiracies that have preceded and followed my public testimony, but I have no regrets. I did — we did — what our conscience called us to do. We did what the gift of U.S. citizenship requires us to do. These are turbulent times, perhaps the most challenging that I have witnessed. But... like my parents before me, I remain optimistic about our future. The events of the past year, while deeply disturbing, show that even though our institutions and our fellow citizens are being challenged in ways that few of us ever expected, we will endure, we will persist and we will prevail.
To her witness, let me add Ó Tuama's prayer for courage: more than anything else, we need courage and a trust in God's steadfast love that endures forever to meet the blistering challenges of this season. Courage - and probably lots of soup.
Courage comes from the heart and we are always welcomed by God, the heart of all being. Today we bear witness to our faith, knowing that we are called to live lives of courage, love and reconciliation in the ordinary and extraordinary moments of each day. We bear witness, too, to our failures and our complicity n the fractures of our world. May we be courageous today. May we learn today. May we love today. Amen and amen.
"For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." (St. Matthew 6:21) Those North Americans who know or at least vaguely remember a line or two from the Bible usually invert this quote from the Sermon on the Mount. In doing so, they change the whole meaning of the passage and reveal something confusing about popular culture. In context, Jesus is teaching his closest friends about what it means to live within the rhythms of holy wisdom. Like other time tested sages, Jesus distills the insights of the ages so that his followers might know how to navigate the polarities of trust and anxiety, balance and busyness, contemplation and action, compassion and justice, spirit and flesh. The whole point of sacred wisdom is to empower men and women to live as low maintenance, gentle souls in a harsh and bewildering world. This requires a commitment to the spiritual practices of surrender, silence and a settled mind. To surrender - or relinquish control - is to become tender rather than brittle. To nourish silence is to honor both emptiness and insight in their own seasons. And to cultivate a settled mind is to make peace with paradox and trust a love that is greater than self. In a small volume saturated with insight, The Wisdom Way of Knowing, the Rev. Dr. Cynthia Bourgeault writes: Where there is surrender, synchronicity tends to follow, which is one of the most delightful side effects of a surrender practice... (But) the most direct and effective (way to practice this commitment) is simply this: in any situation in life, confronted by an outer threat or opportunity, you can notice yourself responding inwardly in one of two ways. Either you will brace, harden, and resist; or, you will soften, open and yield. If you go with the former gesture, you will be catapulted immediately into your smaller self, with its animal instincts and survival responses. If you stay with the latter regardless of the outer conditions, you will remain in alignment with your innermost being, and through it, divine being can reach you. Spiritual practice at its no-frills simplest is a moment-by-moment learning not to do anything in a state of internal brace. Bracing is never worth the cost.(p. 75) What Jesus was teaching is how to live in a balanced and awakened state that is deeply aligned with the present moment as well as the fullness of time. Mystics in most traditions speak of this as "seeing with the heart." The heart in the wisdom tradition has nothing to do with being caught up in feelings or emotions, nor is it choosing sentiment over linear, rational thought. "The instrument given to us to participate in the dance (of creative and compassionate living)" writes Bourgeault, "is our heart." The heart synthesizes our thinking and feeling even as it transcends them in the quest for wholeness. It is a way of seeing that goes beyond culture and fads to focus upon our origins. And in doing so, our heart connects us to the essence of creation: to live in the image of God as "artisans of energy."
We are not here to build nests. The birds can do that. Rather, we are here to take our nests and make of them homes, vibrant with the qualities of kindness, order, and stability. We are not here to amass hoards. The ants can do that. Rather, we are here to take those stockpiles and release them into the energy of generosity and compassion. And we are not here to live forever, but to die well, releasing to the atmosphere courage, dignity and trust. (p.35) When we recognize what is authentically loving, creative, and peaceful in our lives - our treasures - we are seeing from the heart. To invert this, however, and claim that whatever we're feeling that makes us happy is our treasure keep us locked within the realm of sentimentality and fickleness. Our feelings are clues, not our hearts, and they never tell us the whole truth. Fr. Ed Hays made this clear: feelings connect us to the wisdom of our wounds - and they usually need us to do the polar opposite of what we feel - in order to become healthy. (See his wonderful novel, St. George and the Dragon, @ https://www.edwardhays.com/st-george-and-the-dragon.html) As I moved through this quiet day, doing nothing extraordinary, three treasures were revealed. Each encouraged me to trust that this moment and this place is exactly where God wants me to be - and if I yield to this wisdom I will know it from the inside out. The first showed up in the on-line course in Franciscan spirituality that Richard Rohr is leading. In his opening welcoming video Rohr tells the story of a Roman Catholic priest teaching the men of an African tribe about the seven sacraments of the Church. It was clear that the men were increasingly uncomfortable as the lecture ripened. So at the break, the priest asked if there were any questions, to which one soul replied: "Father, I am confused. You speak of the abundant generosity of God yet you tell us there are only seven sacraments. I would have thought your God celebrated 70 thousand!" The wisdom of our experience rather than doctrine, Rohr noted, is at the heart of the alternative orthodoxy of the Franciscan tradition. I thought to myself: at least 70,000! The second happened while sharing tea with a colleague later in the morning. Not only did I hear, "I LOVE you man" proclaimed as my favorite local jazz drummer entered the cafe, but in the subsequent conversations an idea dear to my soul was suggested. It was completely spontaneous: "What would you think about trying to put together a small jazz ensemble to be a part of a poetry improv during the August poetry festival?" As my eyes widened, my friend added, "I just saw and heard your favorite drummer show up... know any sax players?" We shall see how that takes shape and form over the next few months but it resonates deep within with what I have been sensing for the past year. And third, while flipping through various resources about seeds and plants that are native to New England, I came across some web sites dedicated to this quest. Di and I have been slowly developing plans to go deeper with this in our own small garden. And have amassed a few books to help us sort out what might come next. Last fall our grandson, Louie, helped us kick things off as we planted, "Louie's Milkweed and Butterfly Garden" in our backyard. One of the websites included this quote that stroke a chord: "A garden depicts an enclosed parcel of land which may also symbolize belief systems, the cosmos, and our social status and lifestyle." As I researched the author, Kenneth I. Helphand from the University of Oregon, I found that his book, Defiant Gardens: Making Gardens in Wartime, documents why "people caught up in the horrors of war plant gardens." His conclusion? "The reasons have less to do with raising food (though that is a factor) than with the need for spiritual sustenance-to enjoy the beauty and hope for the future that a garden provides." This is just where we've been going with our garden as a Sanctuary from the madness and a place of renewal for compassionate living. To be sure, when our hearts are aligned with God's original intent for creation... how did St. Annie Lennox put it? There are a thousand beautiful things and treasures all over the place. Yes, the inmates are now running the asylum and the barbarians are breaking down the barriers of civil society. Did you see the Barbarian in Chief cynically ridicule the testimony of Jesus at this morning's National Prayer Breakfast? He and his minions have unleashed just the first wave of retribution against those who called him out for his high crimes and misdemeanors. These will become much worse before they get better. I know, too that there is famine and disease taking place to say nothing of Australia's literally scorched earth. There is fear and trembling everywhere. As well there should be and...
... as has been God's original intent since before the beginning of time: there are also at least 70,000 sacraments to be encountered every day as well as a thousand beautiful things for those who kneel and kiss the earth. It is clear our nation and our culture are wildly out of balance. That is why you are here - to restore a little sanity and share a little love. Yesterday, my Daily Prayer with the Corrymeela Community came in the mail. It is simple, clarifying and real. I share the morning prayer with you as an invitation to solidarity. We are in this together. We being our day alone: honoring this life with all its potentials and possibilities. We begin our day with trust: knowing we are created for loving encounter. We begin our day with hope: knowing the day can hold love, kindness, forgiveness and justice. a reading followed by a time of silence We recall our day yesterday: may we learn, may we love, mat we live on. We make room for the unexpected: may we find wisdom and life in the unexpected. Help us to embrace possibility, respond graciously to disappointment, and hold tenderly those we encounter: help us be fully present to this day... silence May we find the wisdom we need: God be with us. May we hear the needs of those we meet: God be with us. May we love the life we have been given: God be with us.
Settling into the rhythm and wisdom of a place takes time - or, at least for me, it takes time. I am a slow learner, often "late to the party" in a host of ways as quicker spirits like to quip. In owning this as fundamental to my soul, I find myself regularly on the look-out for allies. One who stands on common ground with me is T.S. Eliot in his Four Quartets:
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