small is holy at the close of our first year...

Today, on the Third Sunday of Lent, we light candles, share some original music, pray, pause, and ponder what the holy might be whispering to us through the story of Jesus cleansing the Temple in Jerusalem. Today mark's the close of the first year of "Small Is Holy." With poetry and prose we'll poke around for what the prophetic inspiration is whispering to us about living simply, quietly and tenderly as allies of creation in these still chaotic time.

 

small is holy turns one...

Tomorrow, March 7, brings to a close a full year of "Small Is Holy" live streaming. What started as a modest experiment in helping a local congregation during the early chaos of the lockdown has grown into a small weekly ministry of prayer, reflection, and solidarity. I will reclaim an old, original song reworked for these new times at the opening (9:55 am) and then go deeper with a Lenten liturgy informed by the call to live as "God's holy fools and sacred clowns." If you would like a person or concern lifted up in prayer, please send them during the opening song at the top of the gathering. I am grateful for the technology that allows us to connect, for the love of God, that lasts beyond my imagination, and for each of you. Check it out @

https://www.facebook.com/Be-Still-and-Know-913217865701531/

trusting that small is holy takes a TON of time...

Inadvertently practicing what I try to preach led me to rewrite the words to a song I started three years ago: Small Is Holy. It began while riding home from L'Arche Ottawa. It's about a six hour drive so there's a ton of time to think, pray, listen to podcasts, and savor some silence. I was playing in a new band at the time, too and wanted to bring a bit of my perspective to the table. To say I hit a three year dry spell would be an understatement. Oh, I loved to make music with those bandmates and our groove was righteous. I just needed a long time for anything beyond the first verse to show up. Like most of the rest of my life, it takes awhile for things to ruminate within lest they come out preachy or trite.

That's something I came to recognize after about 15 years of doing pastoral ministry. That is, whenever I showed up was the right time. If you know anything about being present for people in their pain, two things are constants. First, it's the rare and spiritually mature soul who can see beyond their own suffering; in times of anguish, most of us feel like we are all that matters. No judgment, ok? It's just that our wounds can blind us to the bigger reality. Second, living into compassion for another is an emotional roller coaster. Some days you're up, others you're down - and this can happen two or three times in the same day. So, while I often tried to make a clearly defined date to connect with those in my community, there were times when other surprises popped up and before I knew it the day had evaporated. 

I used to grieve and fret about this - I'm a people pleasing addict,

you see - and I hated to disappoint. What slowly became clear to me, however, is that if you live from your heart, whenever you can show up becomes the right time. Yes, some appointments were missed. Of course, that was frustrating to us all. But I can't tell you how many times I walked into a hospital room two days after I hoped to get there only to find a friend or a family finally ready to go deeper. Same for home or office visits: whenever we can show up with an open heart and loving spirit becomes the right time. This liberated me from the bondage of expectations and the constraints of my calendar.

And now it seems that this is true when it comes to making new music, too. For the last 20 years I've been living into this wisdom concerning my inner soul work and meditation, so why am I surprised that it's true for music as well? Another thing I've come to own is that I am often late to most parties. That is actually a gift, not a curse, although it's long felt like a burden given the fast paced demands of our market-obsessed culture. The more I pay attention to the contemplative words of guides like Merton, the more I trust that small is holy.

You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment and embrace them with courage, faith, and hope.

I would add trust to Brother Merton's insight: trust that the timing of the holy is precise. It is often not my timing, but I am not God and I (mostly) rejoice in this. I'll spend the rest of this day dusting, cleaning, and washing the kitchen floor both because it needs to be done and because I want the new lyrics to swim around inside of me for a spell. My hope is that I can share them on this Sunday's live streaming gig.

the challenge of our emerging spring...

Help us to be ever faithful gardeners of spirit, who know that without darkness nothing comes to birth, and without light nothing flowers.
~ May Sarton. Read more in SELECTED POEMS OF MAY SARTON

Today is drizzling, gray, and covered in mist. On a "sanity drive" through the hills, woods, and backroads this weekend, Di spoke of March as a liminal time: it is a clear portal of hope where we transition from the darkness of winter into the light of spring. It is like November - just going in the opposite direction. Intuitively, she hates the journey into darkness - and November - while I am enraptured by it. Those days between All Hollow's Eve and the start of Advent unlock something within me and I come alive. Conversely, I'm ambivalent about March and have been wondering why?

Gazing upon the wetlands right now I think it has to do with the messiness of this month: as the snow retreats into the drizzle, the detritus of winter is revealed. All that mud. And dog poop. All that decaying clutter on the ground that must be allowed to remain so that insects and soil can prosper from its demise. I enjoy the lengthening of the days, don't get me wrong, and look forward to getting back into the soil, plants, and garden, too. But aesthetically and emotionally, I tend towards dusk rather than dawn. I come alive at night and revel in it's mystery. Most days, I could sleep till noon, work through the afternoon, and explore the realm of music and art after the sun goes down. I do enjoy a good sunrise. I appreciate the revelations that take place in the light, too. But by nature my soul is nocturnal. 

I can't find the source at the moment, but earlier today I read someone's opine that sunsets look more graceful than a sunrise. More measured. Mystical. More nuanced. That feels true to me even in it's subjectivity. But as another said about the snow: it's going to be here whether I love it or not so why not learn to go with the flow? March is calling me towards rapproachement with reality. I will never be as jolly as St. Mary Oliver in her poem, "Why I Wake Early."

Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who make the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and crotchety-

best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light-
good morning, good morning, good morning.
Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.

But I need not be a grumblestiltskin either: there is mystery in the movement into daylight if I am willing to see it. A prayer poem Padraig O'Tuama crafted for the Corrymela Community puts it like this:

God said, 'There will be dreams from the night that will need the light of the morning.' And so God put wisdom in the early hours... God said: 'Let there be a certain kind of light that can only be seen in the morning.' And God created gold, and dew, and horizons, and hills in the distance, and faces that look different in the light of the morning, and things that look different in the light of the morning... And God said that it was Good.

I am thinking, too of Rumi's wisdom when he wrote "Who Makes These Changes?

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

I should be suspicious
Of what I want.

Already, beyond the dog poop and mud, there is a hint of reds and purples popping up within the drizzle. It seems that the all encompassing gray highlights rather than hides this subtle beauty too easily lost in the frost. And now I have two native seed gardening catalogs to peruse and make some choices about this year's bounty. "And God said that it was good!" The wise Celtic theologian, Eriugena, wrote: "For the end of every movement is its beginning: that from which it was first moved, and to which it always longs to return, so there it may rest and be at peace." 

Rumi also puts it like this:    

I died as mineral and became a plant,
I died as plant and rose to animal,
I died as animal and I was human,
Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?
Yet once more I shall die human,
To soar with angels blessed above.
And when I sacrifice my angel soul
I shall become what no mind ever conceived.
As a human, I will die once more,
Reborn, I will with the angels soar.
And when I let my angel body go,
I shall be more than mortal mind can know.

everything is broken... and held in God's love

Today's musical meditation and biblical reflection for Lent...

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Let me say out loud at the start of this reflection that I process life – and learn best – through music. If you know Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, he posits eight different ways people make sense of the world: some of us are body-smart and prefer kinesthetic education while people-smart learners gravitate towards interpersonal encounters. There are word-smart folk who thrive verbally, rational-people with follow the path of logic, nature-smart people who learn best in creation, self-smart souls who use intrapersonal and intuitive educational tools, picture-smart people who prefer visual/spatial resources, and music-smart people who make sense of the world through song. Over the years I’ve discovered that when it comes to theology, spirituality, and most other intellectual pursuits I take my first clues from music as well as nature, silence, and poetry: the mystic’s path of learning is how insights, facts, and wisdom are clarified within me.

That’s why I insist that my education into the foolishness of God’s love began with Bob Dylan – well, Bob Dylan and John Lennon. Neither would have considered themselves evangelists back in the day, but that’s how I heard their music. I was literally stunned into consciousness and enraptured by the energy, creativity, and sex appeal of the Beatles. On Sunday, February 9, 1964 I had a personal Pentecost when I heard those cats singing and playing on the stage of the Ed Sullivan show. It was as if a veil had been lifted and for the first time, I saw that life had meaning. I was enthralled by the Beatles and still consider them salvific.

Just a year before, during the first March on Washington, I became a Bob Dylan fan: songs like “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “The Times They Are A’Changing” spoke to my heart when I heard Peter, Paul and Mary sing them. And when that snare drum crack that opens “Just Like a Rolling Stone” jumped out of the radio at me while sitting in a car in July 1965 waiting for my mother to come out of the Zayre’s department store I knew that the gates of heaven opening for me.

But there were two songs in particular that introduced me to the sacred clown who sees the promise of the spirit beyond the sorrow without ever diminishing the pain of real life. The first was Dylan’s break away from folk music anthem, “My Back Pages,” that came out four months after the Beatles hit the stage on Ed Sullivan’s show. It goes something like this…

Crimson flames tied through my ears 

Rolling high and mighty traps

Pounced with fire on flaming roads using ideas as my maps

"We'll meet on edges, soon, " said I 

Proud 'neath heated brow

Ah, but I was so much older then

I'm younger than that now 

Oh, that great refrain: I was SO much older then, I’m younger than that now. I didn’t know it then, but it was written during a time when a young Bob Dylan felt like quitting the music making world.  He’d written a ton of stunning protest songs – beautifully poetic musical masterpieces celebrating confrontation with the status quo, civil rights for people of color, and the sacredness of the anti-war movement – and he cherished those songs. They came from his heart.

But as so often happens, Dylan’s most ardent supporters, in this case those on the political Left, wanted him to keep on churning out more and more social justice anthems. And, truth be told, young Bob Dylan wanted to do more with his music that be a social justice Tin Pan Alley. He wanted to make more poetry, evoke more creativity, invite more introspection. He, too, had been knocked out by the Beatles and yearned to explore what rock’n’roll and electric guitars might add to his repertoire. But to the doctrinaire commissars of politically correct culture in NYC at the time, this was forbidden as rock’n’roll was considered collaboration with the idolatry of popular culture. For a time, he gave-in to this pressure releasing yet another acoustic album in August of 1964 – but nobody knew what to do with this one: yes it was acoustic and didn’t exactly sound like rock’n’roll, but its vibe was wild and restless. It was weirdly esoteric, too – much more about the inward journey than the outward work of social change.

It opens with the totally goofy: “All I really want to do… is baby be friends with you.” Includes “Chimes of Freedom,” “Motorphycho Nitemare,” and “It Ain’t Me, Babe” and that great refrain: “I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.” My favorite verses close the song:

In a soldier's stance, I aimed my hand 

At the mongrel dogs who teach

Fearing not I'd become my enemy 

In the instant that I preach

My existence led by confusion boats 

Mutiny from stern to bow

Ah, but I was so much older then

I'm younger than that now

Yes, my guard stood hard when abstract threats 

Too noble to neglect

Deceived me into thinking I had something to protect

Good and bad, I define these terms

Quite clear, no doubt, somehow

Ah, but I was so much older then

I'm younger than that now 

The story goes that when his Left-wing critics heard this album, and thrashed his creativity, Dylan was ready to throw-in the towel. But before doing so, he did what all sacred clowns and tricksters do: he took a road trip. A vision quest. The North American equivalent of Christ’s time in the desert – where along the way to Mardi Gras in New Orleans, he heard the Beatles. AGAIN! And he, too had a revelation: I could be making the same kind of joyful, rebellious music as the Beatles, but from a creative and eclectic American perspective. That’s when the Master went electric with tunes like “Subterranean Homesick Blues, “Just Like a Rolling Stone” and “Maggie’s Farm.” In essence, Dylan started to reinvent American popular music by bringing the blues together with his ginned-up, psychedelic poetry – a combination of Rimbaud meets Chuck Berry while cruising a party at Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Bookstore. These were experiments in genre-bending driven by lament and abstract social commentary. My favorite saturates a blues form with a kaleidoscope of hallucinatory lyrics Dylan called “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” for only God knows why. It starts off like this:

When you're lost in the rain in Juarez

When it's Easter time, too

And your gravity fails and 

Negativity don't pull you through

Don't put on any airs 

When you're down on Rue Morgue Avenue

They got some hungry women there 

They really make a mess outta you

Now, if you see Saint Annie, please, 

Tell her, "Thanks a lot" 

I cannot move and my fingers are all in a knot

I don't have the strength to get up and take another shot

And my best friend, my doctor 

Won't even say what it is I've got 

He’s singing about the personal and political apocalypse brewing in America in the 60’s albeit with a trickster’s sense of humor. It was radical social commentary for those educated in the parlance of Allen Ginsberg and T.S. Eliot. At the same time Brother Dylan is making THIS type of magic, John Lennon is coming to terms with his shadow which lets him know that he cannot keep on keeping on without confronting HIS inner demons. He’s got all the money, booze, sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll notoriety that anyone might crave – he’s at the top of his game– but he keeps crashing into a relentless and self-destructive inner angst that tears him apart. He tries to mask his suffering with upbeat rhythms and jangling guitars, but lyrics like” “Help – I need somebody. Help – not just anybody. Help – you know I need someone. HELP!” tell a deeper story – and even as a goofy 9th grade adolescent guy I could hear the despair underneath all those happy sounding country’n’ western guitar riffs. If you strip “I’m a Loser” down to its essence, you’ll hear something like this:

Although I laugh and I act like a clown 

Beneath this mask I am wearing a frown

My tears are falling like rain from the sky

Is it for her or myself that I cry? 

I'm a loser - and I lost someone who's near to me

I'm a loser - and I'm not what I appear to be 

These are the songs that connected me as a young, spiritual mystic to the path of Christ’s descent and the journey of self-emptying I was learning about in church. In a way I could not explain then, these songs sounded and felt like Lent to me. The more I listened, the more I heard a link between the spiritual practices of prayer and fasting, the stories of Jesus in this liturgical season, and what I would eventually come to know as the archetype of Jesus as the sacred clown.

These songs convinced me that it was not coincidence that a Holy Lent mirrors the spiritual formation of Jesus in the desert: just as he was called into a season of solitude, silence, and searching, so are we. Lent isn’t about giving up chocolate, it’s a letting go of illusions so that our spiritual maturation might take on the same gravitas as Christ’s. During Lent, Jesus is shown to be simultaneously fully human – fragile, anxious, broken, hungry, and alienated from both God and other human beings – and thoroughly committed to the downward mobility of the sacred clown who trusts the folly of God’s love more than everything else. Fr. Thomas Keating of blessed memory, an early leader in the Centering Prayer movement, writes: “Jesus appears in the desert as the representative of the human race.”

He bears within himself the experience of the human predicament in its raw intensity. Hence, he is vulnerable to the temptations of Satan. In the New Testaments, Satan means the Enemy, the Confuser, the Adversary, that mysterious and malicious spirt that seems to more than a mere personification of our unconscious evil tendencies. The temptations of Satan are allowed by God to help us confront our own wounds. If relatives and friends fail to bring out the worst in us, Satan is always around to finish the job. Self-knowledge (you see) is experiential: it tastes the full depths of human weakness. (And) in the desert Jesus (experiences) all the primitive instincts of human nature (and our wounds.) (Keating, The Mystery of Christ, Liturgy as Spiritual Experience, pp. 40-41)

The gospel text for this day in St. Mark tells of a time when Jesus explained the rhythm and upside-down logic of his ministry to those he loved. It reads: Jesus began to teach (his friends) that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. So, Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, Jesus rebuked Peter saying, ‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on things above, but on things below.’ The story continues with:

And calling a crowd together along with his disciples, he told them: ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their soul? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.’ (Mark 8: 31-38)

In an intentionally visual manner Jesus points out the rhythm or cycle of spiritual maturation – integrating things above with those below so that our vision is not dualistic but unified in one, organic whole – and then goes on to describe what growing up in the Spirit includes: Rejection by those with power and status, physical and spiritual suffering, various types of dying before our physical death and then the blessings of consolation and renewal.

He is describing the path of spiritual descent where you let go of control, give your heart, mind, body, and strength to God lest you forfeit your soul, and incrementally learn how to become empty so that you might be filled with God’s grace. Or, as I heard St. Bob saying, we practice letting go of being so old and controlling that we become younger, freer, and more fun to be with than we ever were before now.

We go out into the desert as Jesus did, confront our fears, anxieties, obsessions, wounds, and ego, practice emptying ourselves by trust, and wait upon the Lord to renew our strong. Without the desert, or the road trip, we remain spiritual children. That’s why every year Lent begins with Jesus inviting us out into the desert. Join me. Follow me. See how I do it: 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 and you will 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. Ok? Those songs carried me to Lent – they led me to the path of Jesus – and they still do. Given the multiplicity of musical styles I’ve learned over the years, I’ve also come to trust that there’s more than one way to make sense of Christ’s call to a wilderness vision quest road trip, too.

· Fr. Keating believes that the three temptations of Christ involved saving himself, seeking the affection of others, and giving up control over his own destiny. Each challenge from the Confuser called for a choice: hold on to the illusion and idolatry of power, or, relinquish control and trust God without qualification.

· Fr. Henri Nouwen came to trust that the desert was where Jesus had to decide between the way of upward or downward mobility. The diabolical one, Nouwen said, told Jesus he could be relevant by doing something the world wanted like making bread out of stones for hungry people. Or he could be important by doing stunning and impressing the world by jumping from the temple tower and surviving. Or Jesus could become powerful by turning his back on God and pledging his allegiance to idols that captured the world’s imagination and attention. “Do this and I will give you dominion over everyone and everything. To each challenge and every temptation Jesus responds with humility, choosing greater trust and the promise of serenity by accepting what truly cannot be changed.

The contemporary musical artist, Alanis Morissette, offers a slightly different take on the descent of the desert in her song, “Thank You” – and that’s the one that feels MOST like Lent to me. It sounds like Keating and Nouwen embracing with encourage-ment from Richard Rohr, Cynthia Bourgeault and Thomas Merton. It is ALL about releasing resentment and fear into a sacred silence that moves the journey along with a funky, New Jack City groove:

How bout me not blaming you for everything 

how bout me enjoying the moment for once 

how bout how good it feels to finally forgive you 

how bout grieving it all one at a time 

thank you India - thank you terror 

thank you disillusionment 

thank you frailty - thank you consequence 

thank you thank you silence 

the moment I let go I got more than I could handle 

the moment I jumped off of was when I touched down 

how bout no longer being masochistic 

how bout remembering your divinity 

how bout unabashedly bawling your eyes out 

how bout not equating death with stopping 

Thank you India - thank you providence 

thank you disillusionment 

Thank you nothingness - thank you clarity 

thank you thank you silence 

This is the archetype of the sacred clown singing about God’s upside-down realm to popular culture through music. Artists like Warren Zevon and Patty Smith are masters. So, too, Madonna, Lady Gaga, Joni Mitchell, Joan Osborne as well as Leonard Cohen, Fiona Apple, and Gil Scott-Heron. These are the songs of Lent coming from the heart of a still speaking God who calls to us in love even as our culture tries to keep us stone-cold tone deaf and rhythmically challenged. They’re telling us that desert time, the path of descent, the serenity of letting go, and downward mobility is a great way to practice dying before we die. And for Christians this is the heart of the way of Jesus during Lent. And if you’re really into the groove, you start noticing, feeling, hearing, and sensing that the journey into the desert is intimately intertwined with our baptism.

We aren’t baptized just to get ourselves – or our babies – right with the holy or cleansed from sin. Ours is a tradition of original blessing not original sin no matter how mixed up the patriarchal church of the Empire got it. So, just as Jesus set out for the wilderness and his spiritual formation in the desert after his baptism, so, too, do we because baptism and the desert are for the healing of the world. It’s not only a personal, inward journey: it is how we bring healing to the world

First, baptism – like Eucharist - is grounded in community. St. Paul explains that when he was baptized, Jesus was immersing himself into a life of radical solidarity with the human condition not merely water. He wasn’t baptized for selfish reasons, but to show us how much he loved us. I think Philippians 2 got it right: Though he was in the form of God, he did not deem equality with God to be something grasped at or held on to. Rather, Jesus emptied himself and took the form of a servant – some texts say a slave – and entered into the fullness of the human experience. First of all, baptism is ALL about solidarity and communion with those Christ loves.

Second, this solidarity is born of humility: Elizabeth-Anne Stewart defines New Testament humility as a great tenderness for others not an individual act of sacrifice or debasement. It is compassion and mercy made flesh so that other flesh might be healed, cherished, honored, cleansed, and renewed. This is how the early faith community understood spiritual formation before and after baptism: baptism must lead to a tender heart – for without tenderness, it is not sacramental. It is an empty ritual. St. Mark’s gospel tells a story where after his baptism Jesus looks out upon his people with compassion for he saw that they were like sheep without a shepherd. Those who have known anything of Christ’s mercy are called to look upon one another and do likewise. Again, Philippians 2 is useful: if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if you have known any comfort from his love, any intimacy with the sharing of his Spirit, if you have known the tenderness and compassion of Christ Jesus, then make his joy complete by being of the same mind and sharing compassion with the sisters and brothers. Tenderness and compassion define humility – and humility is the second truth about baptism.

And the third is that baptism demands intentionality. Sometime back in the 90’s a well-intentioned Oprah Winfrey started talking about random acts of kindness – it became a fad. Remember? I had a youth leader who got caught up in this fad who set aside periodic Sunday night gatherings for “adventures in random acts of kindness.” And I thought WTF? Jesus didn’t call us to be RANDOM with our kindness. Capricious with our compassion? Temporary with our tenderness. His commit-ment like ours is to an intentional life of mercy. Even the most selfish soul can blunder her or his way into a random act of kindness every now and again; but those who are followers of Jesus know it takes discipline and commitment to construct your life on it.

No wonder baptism drove Jesus – or led him – into the desert to follow the inspiration of the Holy Spirit: making a commitment to radical hospitality and living as God’s sacred clown takes training. Practice. Prayer and a ton of letting go. Jesus went to the desert to let go of what got in the way of love. And so do we: our commitment to community calls us to keep practicing dying before we die in all the ways we can so that we incarnate the grace of God as best we’re able.

Thomas Merton once said that the deepest connection we have with one another is not communication. It is communion. An intimacy beyond words where we recognize and then reclaim our old-est, deepest, original unity. Our time in the desert of Lent encourages us to reconnect to this unity. Merton added: “there is a point of nothingness at the center of our being," a point of absolute poverty, the small thing within us that Rilke said is always being pulled by "gravity’s law" toward the heart of the world. When we surrender to gravity's law – when we seek to be filled with God’s grace and empty of our own fears – we befriend our own poverty of being and start to rise up rooted, like trees." The knots of our own making are untangled.

Letting go isn’t easy. It doesn’t come naturally to me – maybe to no one. So, in addition to the Centering Prayer I am practicing imperfectly this Lent, I find that I need to go back to the oldest songs of our faith: the Psalms. And at the risk of sounding like a broken record to you, the Psalm that continually gives me the greatest guidance and clarity, it that little Psalm 131: 

O Lord, my heart is not lifted up, 

my eyes are not raised too high; 

I am not proud nor do I have haughty looks 

so I do not occupy myself with things

too great and too marvelous for me. 

No, I have calmed and quieted my soul,

like a child upon her mother’s breast 

my soul is quieted within me. 

Hope and trust in the Lord from this time on and forevermore. 

Not long ago, a former colleague – a wonderful musician with whom I once collaborated with on works of the heart – decided to troll and trash me on FB. It is NOT the end of the world, right? And it won’t be the last time it happens either. But if you’ve ever gotten into a spitting contest with the wind you know you can’t win, right? Logic doesn’t make any difference, nor do facts or appeals to God’s grace. And this is as true of those on the Left as it is on the Right. So, mostly these days I just remain silent and choose to use my extremely limited energy and wisdom in other ways. But this time I thought a reply was in order because the attack was so ugly. And untrue.

And almost without thinking – automatically – what popped into my head and heart but Psalm 131 – so my reply said something like: At this stage of my life, most days I’ve given up trying to be a moral arbiter: most things, as the Psalmist says, are just too grand and lofty for me. So, I choose to celebrate the small and good things I can grasp... and trust God to sort out the rest.

So, let me close with one more wee song that I use as a prayer a lot. I sang part of it not long ago at a Zoom birthday party for a beloved friend – and on and off for nearly 50 years I’ve been singing it for myself, too. First because it touched my heart, later because it spoke to me of God’s call to my life. And now as a Lenten invitation to the desert. It’s Leslie Duncan of the UK’s tune: Love Song.

The words I have to say 

may well be simple but they're true 

Until you give your love 

there's nothing more that we can do 

Love is the opening door, 

love is what we came here for 

No one could offer you more

Do you know what I mean

have your eyes really seen 

You say it's very hard 

To leave behind the life we knew 

But there's no other way 

And now it's really up to you 

Love is the key we must turn

Truth is the flame we must burn 

Freedom the lesson we must learn

Do you know what I mean

have your eyes really seen

so... ash wednesday 2021

Like so many of you, I've wondered how we might mark Ash Wednesday 2021 this year. Some, obviously, will not mark it at all. Ignoring the intentional call to "die before our death" is not something popular culture has much of a stomach for, right? We are a youth obsessed people who deny, hide, and obfuscate death as much as possible. And when, like this full year of pandemic, we cannot run away from the inevitable, we distract and/or self-medicate ourselves only to become resentful when the contagion still triumphs. 

Others, like one of my favorite writers, Diana Butler Bass, simply acknowledge their weariness. "The pandemic has made the traditional practice unworkable, as it involves close contact and in-person gathering."

Thus, some churches have developed alternatives including drive-thru ashes and handing out baggies of ashes for self-imposition or sprinkling on one’s head. But, I confess: the whole thing is wearying. How is Ash Wednesday really all that different from any other day in this interminable pandemic? The entire year has felt like Lent, so today is just another ashy day.

It is not up to me to say what another feels. In some ways, I get what Dr. Bass is feeling, and it rings true. The older I get, the more space I have for letting others feel what they feel without any interference, commentary, or judgement from me. I recall a conversation guideline someone insisted upon when we were building a coalition to oppose a state-wide ban on same sex marriage. The word was simple: NO comparisons of our various degrees of suffering, ok? No one would be allowed to suggest that they have been hurt more than anyone else. I thought back to my political sociology classes in the 70's where academics spoke of the "relative depravity" factor. However you want to measure it, life is hard for us all in varying degrees, and if we are going to live and work together I've realized that it is not my job to evaluate your feelings or experiences. Period.

For me, I am missing my loved ones this Ash Wednesday. And singing the songs of faith with others in full throated abandon, too. I'll join with my L'Arche community in Ottawa via ZOOM of Friday - and that will be holy ground. I shared some songs, poems, thoughts, and prayers with our tiny FB streaming community today, too - and that was a blessing. (check it out here on Be Still and Know: "Small is Holy." Here is the link:

https://fb.watch/3JmAgH6XaH/)

Where I've come out as Lent 2021 begins is this: with so little practice transforming our own pain, it seems like we mostly transmit it to those who are most vulnerable. Without a chance to learn and practice how to "did before our death," we keep doing the same old things while expecting different results. I know that I personally need to break that death spiral. I also know that to choose to "die" to self in this self-centered culture is foolishness writ large. So I am honoring the way St. Paul put it: a life guided by the foolishness of Christ and his Cross. 

This Lent I want to go deeper into a life that lets my false self die so that I might revel more in joy, trust, integrity, and compassion. I have a LOT of work to do in this dying so I give thanks for one more season of Lent to do some of it. For those who would like to join me in this pilgrimage, I'll be sharing my reflections and my experiences in prayer, word, poetry, and song on my Sunday live streaming: "Small Is Holy." (go to: https://www.facebook

.com/Be-Still-and-Know-913217865701531/)

Lent will mostly be spent alone. Such is the reality of this moment and no amount of Zooming will change this. I might be able to get my first vaccination in early March, with does number two ight before Holy Week. Perhaps there's the change we might be able to some time with our wee family after all of this. But probably not as Di has to wait even longer than I for a vaccina-tion. No matter how this Lent shakes out, however, I am ready to let go of a little more of myself and move towards the foolishness of the Cross.

learning to live together...

This time last year I was still going to cafes for artistic planning meetings. I was
still going to L'Arche Ottawa for retreats, conversations, and encounters in community. And we were still travelling to Brooklyn to visit with children and grandchildren. The very day before Massachusetts locked-down, we celebrated our daughter's birthday at a great local Mexican eatery, too. We had worshipped with our loved ones at Trinity Church in NYC, feasted with other loved ones in thanksgiving for her birth, and made St. Brigid's crosses for our thresholds just because.  And then... it was apocalypse now!

So much has shifted in nearly a year: so much time in solitude, so much longing and heartache, so much death and grief, so much time in nature, so much political drama, and so many prayers. Oh my Lord, so many prayers. A year ago today (oh, does that ever sound like the start of an old Mothers of Invention song?)

... I had never Zoomed. Or shared anything live-streaming on FB. And now it is SOP. I am still woefully low tech (as you'll see below) but I prefer to call it "old school." I suppose it is time to up my game with technology although I prefer to give my time to writing, revision, and content. Here's my latest "Small Is Holy" live-streaming that rings in a new cycle after my first nearly 52 week streak of reflections, poems, prayers, and songs.

Candidly, who knew this would still be on-going? Not I for certain! And yet it has become a place of connection for some of us even as we commit to more solitude in solidarity. Last year at this time, when the silence and isolation of the contagion was novel, I found myself encouraging friends to take in the beauty and serenity of Mother Nature. Not only is there solace in the woods and streams, there is a quiet sacred witness, too: winter is not forever. Spring is just around the corner.

During that year, I refashioned our kitchen, repainted two bathrooms, built and rebuilt raised bed platforms for a terraced garden, chopped and hauled wood, rebuilt much of the back deck - and now the front deck, too - shared spiritual reflections with my community of L'Arche Ottawa on Zoom, celebrated prayers and Eucharist on my FB live-streaming gig "Small is Holy," collaborated with a local poet on an experiment in voice, music, and photography, visited with loved ones virtually and eventually in public, worked my way through most of Michael Connelly's "Bosch" detective novels, studied a variety of scholars re: Celtic spirituality, and grown closer to both Di and Lucie.

We are now two weeks into the ancient Celtic season of Imbolc that honors the Rowan Moon. Wise Meg Llewellyn writes that "imbolc means 'in the belly of the mother.'" (The Celtic Wheel of the Year.)

This is the time of pregnancy and the stirring of new life in seeds and creatures. Another name for the feast day of Imbolc on February 1-2 is Oimelc which means "milk of the ewes," for this was the lambing season in the Celtic world.

A prayer from the former days dedicated to St. Brigid at the End of Winter hints at what is to come as north country slowly shifts into spring.

Radiant flame of gold,

Sweet foster-mother of Christ,

I call you name:

   Let not death come to my house at winter's end.

   
Let us not be harried and hungry.

You will not let me be put into a cell.

You will not let me be wounded.

You will not let me fall into forgetfulness of Christ.

You are my gentle foster-mother.

You bring new life at winter's end.

   I am sick in my heart;

   Winter lingers in my bones.

As you did help bring Jesus from Mary's womb,

Bring new life from me.

I am winter-bare, without gold or corn or cows.

Aid me, O Brigid! Great is my winter need.

   Bring springtime to the land.

   Bring springtime to my heart.

As a bit of a joke, at first, and then as an act of defiance as the contagion deepened into summer and then fall last year, I steadfastly chose NOT to cut my hair. With, perhaps, another nine months of waiting in various degrees of solitude to go I shall rival the mane of the late Leon Russell by the time its over.

So here's to the next nine months of ripening, loving, maturing inwardly, caring for those we can outwardly, gestating in spirit and flesh, and trusting that God's grace is stronger than all the forces of chaos. Play on brother Leon, play on.

february blues...

For my birthday in 2020 my Brooklyn family gave me a beautiful bracelet of wooden beads. The brass clasp adds a unique flair as it is hollow in order to hold a small paper wish. For about 20 years I have been enamored with bracelets: colorful cloth friendship bracelets, wooden beads, metal jewelry as well as strands of woven leather. At one point I wore about 25 from all over the world. Right now it's down to 13. Last fall I shared my wish out loud with my daughter: I wished we might be together at Christmas. There was a moment in September when it looked like it might come true. But then reality set in and the contagion spiked everywhere. This morning I read that Dr. Fauci thinks that maybe we can start to ease up on PPE in late autumn. Late autumn. I know it is a moving target, but that's truth is staggering to me: late autumn before we'll be able to visit loved ones and friends again in anything approaching normalcy.

Speaking with friends in Ottawa over the weekend I learned that they are facing a time table even more grim than our own. Given the fact that the US holds a near monopoly on the production of vaccinations - and has been unusually stingy to our neighbor which must import their meds from Europe - it will be early summer before many of their most vulnerable folk are inoculated. Later still for the wider population. Once upon a time, Di and I thought that our 25th anniversary magical mystery tour to Nova Scotia might take place a mere year after our original plan: May 2020. Not likely any more - perhaps May 2022 - and it will certainly be Christmas 2021 before we get back to celebrating live jazz at Diese Onze in Montreal. We fantasize about doing a slow car trip to see our loved ones this fall, moving across country to see other friends, too before winding up in Tucson.

Obviously, my thoughts are turned to travel today - and longing - while I watch yet another snow storm fall vigorously all around us. We may pick up another 6" before it quits. From the warmth of my study window, it looks calming and serene. I've noted before that these types of storms not only encase the Berkshires in silence, but enshroud us in beauty. The contrast of greys and browns against the white ground and hills highlights the hints of red that still linger in the wetlands behind our home. Last week I trekked out to my favorite tree in knee high drifts just to take in its majesty. Even while naked, it is a wonder to behold that brings a measure of comfort when so much of the rest of the world looks bleak. I think the poet, Bill Christopherson, grasped some of this season's dilemma when he crafted "February." 

The cold grows colder, even as the days
grow longer, February's mercury vapor light
buffing but not defrosting the bone-white
ground, crusty and treacherous underfoot.
This is the time of year that's apt to put
a hammerlock on a healthy appetite,
old anxieties back into the night,
insomnia and nightmares into play;
when things in need of doing go undone
and things that can't be undone come to call,
muttering recriminations at the door,
and buried ambitions rise up through the floor
and pin your wriggling shoulders to the wall;
and hope's a reptile waiting for the sun.

In 15 minutes the second impeachment trial of Donald J. Trump will begin a mere month after his attempted coup. Indeed, "the cold grows colder, even as the days grow longer..." I am hearing Langston Hughes in my heart: "hold fast to dreams, for when dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly." 

An old friend, Don Wooten, long gone to his eternal resting place, wrote a musical interpretation of the Hughes poem back in our Cleveland days. Don was a white public school teacher in a majority Black system: he taught music, coached girls' sports and held an all-city youth orchestra in the church basement on Saturday mornings. He turned me on to the Christmas jazz standard, "A Child Is Born" by Thad Jones, that still haunts my memory on Christmas Eve. We used to play it at the late Christmas Eve  liturgy with me on bass while he sang. And then he, for as long as felt right, Don would play the sweetest, most soulful violin improvisations over the top.

It is just one of those days...

clowning and communion: ways of discerning the blessings of each day

One of the truths that I ache to share - and celebrate myself - is an experiential
intimacy with God. Whether we feel it, know it, trust it, or even believe it, my life seems to be built upon a yearning to awaken an awareness of this intimacy in myself and others. Not to manipulate another nor demand any dogmatic uniformity. That kills the Spirit - and Jesus said in St. John's gospel that the Spirit blows where it will. We have no control to which is say: Thanks be to God!

Truth be told, the further I move away from my institutional loyalties, the closer I sense the possibilities for discerning and then living into the presence of the divine in my ordinary life. Talk about paradox! And yet, without the constraints and demands of living as a public clergy person, I have felt free to be fully alive in each moment: listening for and honoring the holy wherever it shows up gives me the chance to give voice to a shared blessing - and this often happens in the most unlikely and unexpected places. In this, it becomes clear, that the whole of creation cries glory. 

It seems I was letting this truth drift through my thoughts last night before I went to sleep. They showed up a few hours later when, as has become a regular event, I awoke 90 minutes later. Most of the time when this happens I smile inwardly. Sure I get annoyed at other times, too, but mostly it has become 45 minutes of reading and thinking - and sometimes prayer. Last night, what kept going through my head is how valuable it is for me to name the encounter with the sacred. Those experiences are soul food for me - and I think for others, too - for when we know we are being blessed, a deeper sense of awe takes root within us. Little things take on greater significance. Passing insights hold the potential for deeper wisdom. And the presence of joy or sorrow - strength or fragility - asks us to take nothing for granted. Not a blue sky, a snow storm, a heartbreak, a smile, a tear, or a dog who wants to sit on your lap. The whole of creation cries glory. 

Imagine my delight when I watched the following video: it comes from the Henri Nouwen Society's celebration of Henri's birthday 25 years after his death. My friends at L'Arche Ottawa told me I would love it - and they were right. Especially the part where Henri is reborn as a clown on his 60th birthday. And the closing clip about the importance of celebrating Eucharist. Clowning and communion are vital to me, too - not only as discrete spiritual encounters - but more as ways of seeing reality and God's presence therein. 

Today looks like it will be given over to some ordinary tasks: minor shopping errands, a bit of house cleaning, closing the day with a light supper and a gentle TV program or two. This quote from one of Nouwen's reflection rings true to me today. 

To live a spiritual life we must first find the courage to enter into the desert of our loneliness and to change it by gentle and persistent efforts into a garden of solitude. This requires not only courage but also a strong faith. As hard as it is to believe that the dry desolate desert can yield endless varieties of flowers, it is equally hard to imagine that our loneliness is hiding unknown beauty. The movement from loneliness to solitude, however, is the beginning of any spiritual life because it is a movement from the restless senses to the restful spirit, from the outward-reaching cravings to the inward-reaching search, from the fearful clinging to the fearless play.

singing the Lord's new song as a holy fool: Isaiah 56

In my ongoing series re: sacred clowns and holy fools who make flesh the often counter-cultural values of Jesus, I spent a LOT of time today on Isaiah 56. With a lasting debt to Walter Brueggemann I made the case that if ancient Israel could realize the err of their ways after exile - and become increasingly more inclusive - so can we. Check out this morning's reflection from "Small is Holy" here:

https://fb.watch/3w8HY2QqzF/

st. brigid's day 2021

Last year at this time I had a deep but inexplicable desire to make a Brigid's cross for our house. I w
as still learning about her (and still am). I went out into the frozen wetlands in search of dried foliage to use for my cross, but found none. And none to be had at either local craft store. So we improvised and made three including one out of Kelly green pipe cleaners. How were we to know that the world would be turned upside just a month later? Or that we would still be in self-isolation for the most part a full year later?

This old cross looks a bit worn out, yes? Same here. But it is still a symbol of God's loving presence in the midst of strife and of the slow, often mysterious movement from what is frozen and dark to what is fecund and vibrant. It is too funny to me that we had a blizzard with 9" inches of snow to the 4" already on the ground for the start of Imbolc and Brigid's feast day. Talk about living by faith not sight! But that is how it should be, yes? 

This link to a modest article on Brigid might be a good place to start for those who are just beginning. It comes from the respected and creative Celtic Christian Spirituality site on FB @ https://newedenministry.com/2020/10/08/brigid/?. I liked it a lot.

This graphic was on my phone from last year on this date - and it seems right to share, too. Stay safe.