living into the slower charism of summer...

After five months back at leading worship - and sharing pastoral care and support - it feels a bit off to be at home this morning. Not bad, mind you, as I've been resting profoundly. Just off a bit. One of the lovely traditions in Palmer is to truly take a break during the summer and share worship with two other congregations: the Universalists and Baptists. This gives me six Sunday's off before I take over the shared worship commitments during the later part of August. I will still do some pastoral care throughout the summer - some planning and meetings, too - but no Sunday morning commitments for 42 days!

The next three weeks will be full: some solitude and quiet in North Country for a week, a quick trip to Tucson for an important memorial service, a weekend in MD for our nephew's wedding, then almost a week with my brother and sister-in-law from San Francisco. This week is chock full of engagements: pastoral work tomorrow, rehearsal and playing Methuselah on Tuesday, packing the car to bring Lucie with us on vacation, and departure on Wednesday. We celebrated Di's birthday yesterday. We had hoped to pick strawberries together but the weather did not cooperate so we did the next best thing: hung out at Matt's Bookstore in Lenox. Later we feasted together and shared a killer chocolate fudge cake. 

I quickly forget both how much a cherish worship, and, how easy it is to get out of
the habit. I delight in this time off even as I miss being with the faith community. I had the same experience last year at this time when my "bridge ministry" in Williamstown came to a close. So, from the solitude of my garden, I offer up these words from the SALT Project and Mary Oliver as we all enter the mystery of this season.

Sweet Jesus, talking
his melancholy madness,
stood up in the boat
and the sea lay down,

silky and sorry.
So everybody was saved
that night.
But you know how it is

when something
different crosses
the threshold — the uncles
mutter together,

the women walk away,
the young brother begins
to sharpen his knife.
Nobody knows what the soul is.

It comes and goes
like the wind over the water —
sometimes, for days,
you don’t think of it.

Maybe, after the sermon,
after the multitude was fed,
one or two of them felt
the soul slip forth

like a tremor of pure sunlight
before exhaustion,
that wants to swallow everything,
gripped their bones and left them

miserable and sleepy,
as they are now, forgetting
how the wind tore at the sails
before he rose and talked to it —

tender and luminous and demanding
as he always was —
a thousand times more frightening
than the killer sea.

”Maybe” is one of Mary Oliver’s theological classics, just in time for this coming Sunday’s lectionary readings, which include Mark’s story of Jesus calming the storm (Mark 4:35-41; check out SALT’s commentary here). In a sense, Oliver picks up where the story leaves off: the sea is silky and sorry, but soon enough, the people get restless. Something different has crossed the threshold. We may plead for deliverance, but the truth is we’re often attached — more than attached — to the way things are, the devil we know, and wary when things threaten to change.

In this way, Oliver helps us understand Mark’s story, and its aftermath, on a deeper level. “Everybody was saved that night,” yes, the disciples and also the “other boats” Mark says were with them — but at its core, the episode is more unsettling than settling. The disciples are astonished, and also unnerved. “Who then is this?” they ask. Even they, who’ve left everything to follow him, who presumably believe him to be someone extraordinary, the Messiah, the deliverer — even they are perplexed, eyes widening. Who then is this?

The storm has gone silent. But now they’re left with him, and with his tender, luminous demands.

A thousand times more frightening / than the killer sea.

living into our existential anxiety takes practice...

Yesterday I saw a post from a long ago and far away colleague that spoke to my
heart: "Not sure which bothers me the most: the lousy performance by Biden or the hysteria taking over the Dems." And I would add: not just the Dems but a host of other good souls with tissue paper feelings who have grown accustomed to living in our bubble of privilege over the past 50 years. Those on the so-called Left (whatever that really means in the United States right now) have become isolated, arrogant, and afraid. And while these very real fears might impel us toward solidarity, like others of us dealing with our various addictions, more than likely we're going to need to hit bottom before we will accept reality - and Thursday's presidential debate gave shape and form to what that bottom looks like at this moment in time. Life under a MAGA régime driven by Project 2025 would be the contemporary  incarnation of A Hand Maid's Tale.

The knee-jerk, no context editorial the NY Times posted yesterday urging Biden to withdraw is an excellent example of liberal hysteria. In this era of digital magic where I can log on to the Times editorials in less that 5 seconds and still carp about how slow my high speed internet works, all perspective has been abandoned. The late Jim Morrison wailed prophetically in 1968: we want the world and we want it... NOW! I, too, would have preferred that Mr. Biden step aside before the primary season so that other candidates would have to tough-it-out in pursuit of the nomination, but that didn't happen. Had it been true then our Vice-President, Ms. Kamala Harris, would have had to complete as an equal even if considered the heir apparent. She's no shoe-in either in my analysis and carries her own inconsistent baggage. But again, competition did not happen. So, like the Serenity Prayer teaches, I need the courage to accept what I cannot change while changing the things I can. And politically, ethically, and spiritually there are a two insights that ring true to me:

First, we need to nourish both a long obedience and a commitment to reality. The church historian, Diana Butler Bass, framed this well when she quoted Teilhard de Chardin: Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability — and that it may take a very long time.

Our arrogant politics and social isolation didn't occur overnight and it's redemption won't happen any time soon either. Thomas Merton told us back in 1948: It is true that the materialistic society, the so-called culture that has evolved under the tender mercies of capitalism, has produced what seems to be the ultimate limit of this worldliness. And nowhere, except perhaps in the analogous society of pagan Rome, has there ever been such a flowering of cheap and petty and disgusting lusts and vanities as in the world of capitalism, where there is no evil that is not fostered and encouraged for the sake of making money. We live in a society whose whole policy is to excite every nerve in the human body and keep it at the highest pitch of artificial tension, to strain every human desire to the limit and to create as many new desires and synthetic passions as possible, in order to cater to them with the products of our factories and printing presses and movie studios and all the rest.

And don't forget the critique Eliot crafted in 1934: All our knowledge brings us near to our ignorance, All our ignorance brings us nearer to death, But nearness to death, no nearer to God. Where the the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries Bring us farther from God and nearer to the Dust.

We no longer know how to wait - or relinquish - and I dare say we're living into the consequences of this arrogance. It is a corrective - harsh and ugly, to be sure - but as the Dominican mystic, Meister Eckhardt, insisted: "Reality is the will of God... it can always be better, but we must start with what is real." What is real in 2024 is that millions of our fellow citizens have been shut out of hope let alone security and they, like Jim Morrison, want a cataclysmic change NOW. More than any other moment in my life time, 2024 has become the year when the Serenity Prayer reclaimed its political wisdom in much the same way it did before WWII when Niebuhr wrote it. We, too face the threat of a home-grown fascism that is not fantasy but fact. And while it will not endure forever, it will be harsh, ugly, punitive, and tragic for many of us and the entire world community, too.

Second, practicing a contemplative discipline that reminds us that our feelings are not the whole truth is a vital antidote to our culture's chaos and doing so in community is salvific.  Look, I'm worried about this era - sometimes terrified, too - but my feelings are not the totality of reality. They are clues about how to respond. Fr. Ed Hays calls this the wisdom of our wounds - and they are counter-cultural. The Anointed Jesus told us in the Sermon on the Mount that we are blessed when we're not so full of ourselves. When we feel filled with fear and want to run away or strike out, that's a sacred clue to do the exact opposite and stay connected and engaged. When we want to scream, its time to be still and reconnect to the unforced rhythms of grace. Unlike Jon Stewart who recently said it's time to contact a real estate agent in New Zealand, now is the time to be still, listen to what's going on all around us, and respond with a tender compassion that is reasonably consistent. To do so from within a spiritual community insures both a measure of accountability and periodic encouragement. The virulent anxiety that has become dominant today need not be normative for ever. The Talmud teaches:

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.

All of the spiritual masters of my Judeo-Christian tradition insist that until we can unplug from the chaos, we'll be a part of the problem, not the solution. This does NOT mean isolationism or abstract navel gazing. It does mean learning how to let go of all expectations so that we can rest for a spell within God's presence and come to trust grace. If we do not know at our core that the universe is a friendly place despite the set backs and pain, we'll either retreat into privilege, try to self-medicate our fears (which never works), or become what we hate. Merton once again cuts to the chase:

Without reverting to sentimentality or cynicism, Richard Rohr reminds us:

What empowers change, what makes you desirous of change is the experience of love. It is that inherent experience of love that becomes the engine of change. Faith does not need to push the river because faith is able to trust that there is a river.

In another, longer post he speaks truth to the challenges of this moment: "I think there are three basic levels of social ministry, and none is better than the other. I believe all are the movement of the Holy Spirit within us for the sake of others. I like to imagine a river flooding out of control—symbolizing the circumstances and injustices that bring about suffering—overflowing its banks and sweeping those in its path off their feet."

At the first level, we rescue drowning people from the swollen river, dealing with the immediate social problem right in front of us: someone hungry comes to our door and we offer them some food, or invite them inside. These are hands-on, social service ministries, like the familiar soup kitchen or food pantry. Such works will always look rather generous, Christian, charitable, and they tend to be admired, if not always imitated.

At the second level, there are ministries that help people not to fall into the swollen river in the first place, or show them how to survive despite falling in. In general, these are the ministries of education and healing ... that fill the world with schools, hospitals, and social service ministries that empowered people and gave them new visions and possibilities for their lives.

Finally, on the third level, some ministries build and maintain a dam to stop the river from flooding in the first place. This is the work of social activism and advocacy, critique of systems, organizing, speeches, boycotts, protests, and resistance against all forms of systemic injustice and deceit. It is the gift of a few, but a much-needed gift that we only recently began to learn and practice. It seeks systemic change and not just individual conversion.

I don’t think most people feel called to this third level of activism; I my-self don’t. It was initially humiliating to admit this, and I lost the trust and admiration of some friends and supporters. Yet as we come to know our own soul gift more clearly, we almost always have to let go of certain “gifts” so we can do our one or two things well and with integrity. I believe that if we can do one or two things wholeheartedly in our life, that is all God expects.

The important thing is that we all should be doing something for the rest of the world! We have to pay back, particularly those of us born into privilege and comfort. We also must respect and support the other two levels, even if we cannot do them. Avoid all comparisons about better or lesser, more committed or less committed; those are all ego games. Let’s just use our different gifts to create a unity in the work of service (Ephesians 4:12–13), and back one another up, without criticism or competition. Only in our peaceful, mutual honoring do we show forth the glory of God.

Ours is a moment of profound consequences and we all have a role to play in creating an alternative to the brokenness. The best contemplative wisdom invites us to: 1) take a LONG and LOVING look at reality; 2) Cultivate an inward practice of acceptance; 3) Nourish our practice with discipline and community so that we discern which of the three steps of social change are most important to us; and 4) Trust that God is a loving and just God. We are in for a long and agonizing journey but this moment is NOT the end of the story - only a part.

it ain't over til it's over: an inner debate between my head and my heart after presidential debate...

Well, last night's Presidential debate was NOT for the feint of heart: Mr. Biden not only looked lost in the beginning, but sounded... what? Disoriented? Drugged? At odds as to the consequences of a poor performance? All of the above? And Mr. Trump - our once Liar-and-Groper-in-Chief? He was certainly the more commanding presence even as he lied in the most outrageous manner. Accusing the Democrats of infanticide? Projecting his failures on to the Biden Administration? Dodging bullet after bullet with belligerence and obfuscation? All of the above and more? Without a doubt. 

Today I am experiencing an inner debate within myself concerning my head and my heart. No sooner did the President walk on the stage, shuffling and looking oddly pale as befits an 81 year old person fighting off a cold, than my heart sank: this is all over before it begins I felt wondering why someone on his team didn't consult Sir Paul McCartney who is also 81? When the former President took the stage a moment later, his orange hue had been toned down, his faux-Mussolini scowl was still intact, and he showed up exuding bravado - false or not - making Biden's pallor even more troubling. And for the next 30+ minutes, I found myself wondering: where IS the President and why is he so incoherent? Trump was bombastic in his lies, over powering the foggy insights Biden tried to articulate. 

Suddenly, about 25 minutes into the fray, the light inside Biden seemed to come on as he literally looked like he had risen from the dead. There was a sharp focus absent at the start. He spoke in complete sentences and had command of the values being contested by his opponent. He avoided the "cute stories about his dad" that have outlived their usefulness. And he was fully engaged. Trump simply ratcheted up his revilement - as is his want - without any relationship to the truth. Fact checkers afterwards (see https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/06/ 28/us/trump-biden-debate) noted 45's increasingly fraudulent hyperbole which was intended to appeal to our deepest fears. And from my perspective, Trump succeeded. He diminished Biden, he evoked emotion, and he continued to amplify the "strong man" persona celebrated by the current crop of fascists. Sadly, the President's resurrection came too late in the debate so the former President's grandiosity captured the moment. 

Given that most of my fellow Americans don't pay much attention to politics - for both good and bad reasons - this debate was clearly a win for Mr. Trump. And while Mr. Biden looked alive today in North Carolina - and sounded engaged, too - for the time being, angst will rule the day amongst those who oppose 45. Yes, it is still early in the struggle; and yes, President Obama failed to rise to the occasion during his first debate as President, too; so as Yogi Berra wisely told us: it ain't over til it's over! But my heart aches for another candidate - not RFK or any of the other pretenders - just someone more vibrant, articulate, and focused. I get why the Dems are wringing their hands, trying to clean up the President's mess, and doing spin control 24/7. But I think Nancy Pelosi had the most thoughtful response - and it is what my head is trying to hold on to right now. When asked if the Democratic Party needed a new nominee, she said: "NO. From a performance standpoint it wasn’t great, but from a values standpoint it far outshone the other guy,”

As a committed follower of Jesus, values matter - and no matter how you slice it - Joe beats Donald in this realm hands down. Biden has delivered working people a practical populism that remained only rhetoric during Trump's term. The President cares about those who are vulnerable and afraid; the former President only cares about himself. So, as one who trusts the Anointed and Resurrected Jesus over any and all politicians, my head impels me to stay the course with Biden. Calls for a new nominee, if truly useful, have time to ripen. My hunch, however, is that they will likely shrivel on the vine because it ain't over til it's over, right? And politics as life is filled with surprises. I lament last night. Even grieve it. But know that a poor performance in a debates is not the end of the story. I trust and serve a God whose love is greater than all of that - and that remains even should the Orange won win.

image credit: Avasna Pandey https://kathmandupost.com/miscellaneous/2017/06/10/head-over-heart

the embrace of june's feast days and our rock'n'soul music...

June is saturated in feast days - Pentecost, Sacred Heart, the Immaculate Heart of Mary, the Nativity of John the Baptist, and Saints Peter and Paul Day being the most significant - and I find myself reveling in the bounty. I didn't grow up with feast days. The Congregational Way threw that baby out with the bath water of the Reformation along with contemplative prayer, liturgy, chant, and the importance of discerning tradition. Our "solo scriptura" was both an earnest and arrogant attempt to reclaim primitive Christianity from institutionalization and empire. The mentors of my first nascent spirituality were cock sure they had a monopoly on the truth and soon joined the ranks of our earlier religious despots who somehow made peace in their souls with the misogyny and violence of the witch hunts, burning so-called heretics at the stake, torture, and genocide. 

I was duly indoctrinated and bought the sanitized mythology of the Pilgrims as celebrants of religious freedom without once wondering what happened to the first inhabitants of New England. Through prayer, study, resentment, and a degree of acceptance I've come to see my Puritan ancestors as haughty, adolescent bullies who convinced themselves of their own righteousness while wounding, abusing, and violating the land, its first caretakers, and all who couldn't stomach their religious zeal. There are aspects of my tradition that I cherish, it's rugged non-conformist tendencies being paramount, but this has included incarnating Merton's insight about learning to "grow where we're planted." I have had to reclaim so many spiritual babies from their discarded bathwater over the years including the sanctity of Eucharist, feast and fast days, mystical wisdom, and liturgical prayer being the most important. Thank God for communities like Taize, Celebration, and Iona who have been allies in reclaiming our lost treasures with a measure of humility.

I suppose its no wonder that ALL of my spiritual directors have been Roman Catholic - some priests some renegades - but all grounded in prayer, study, and the challenge of sorting out what is sacred and what is dross from tradition. Same holds true for many of my intellectual mentors including Thomas Merton, Richard Rohr, Joan Chittister, and Henri Nouwen. As Sr. Joan puts it: we must learn how to see the eagle within the egg if we're to renew what is holy in our traditions. A few brilliant and non-conformist women scholars from the Reformed tradition have been blessings, too: Cynthia Bourgeault, Barbara Brown Taylor, Margaret Guenther, Gertrud Mueller-Nelson, Diana Butler Bass, Phyllis Tribble, and Kathleen Norris being the most important. Add into the mix Walter Wink, Gustavo Gutierrez, Clarence Jordan, Thomas Keating, Mary Oliver, MLK, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Bono, Springsteen, Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Zappa, and Robert Bly and you have the faculty that has guided me through the haze into clarity over the past 60 years.

All of this is prelude to this moment when I've been reconnected to my earliest calling of sharing both rock'n'soul music for the body and mind (to paraphrase Country Joe and the Fish) and the spiritual renewal of individuals and congregations. Back in 1968, shortly after Dr. King's assassination, I was in the Potter's House in Washington, DC with my church youth group when I sensed a "call to ministry." As the artists of the Church of the Savior did experimental liturgy in their coffee house ministry, I "heard" the Spirit whisper: "You could do this, too!" Fifty seven years later this journey keeps on truckin' in ways that delight and astound me. Like the Dead still sing: What a LONG strange trip it's been! I feel that way weeding the garden, preaching in Palmer, playing music at the Sideline Saloon and Methuselah in Pittsfield, being grandad to my precious Lou and Anna, and loving my life partner. 

Last night at the Sideline, my heart was full to overflowing when the crowd started to get up and dance to our music. And clap. And singalong: whoa-wo listen to the music! When Dave played his extended lead guitar breaks during "Can't You See" I was in the zone of solidarity and ecstasy. In many ways, our wee band, ALL of Us, is a throwback playing with and reforming our rock'n'soul tradition. We're kin to the Allman Brothers, Gov't Mule, Joan Osborne, Dylan, Springsteen, Beatles, and ZZ Top: let's boogie while we can and care for one another tenderly in the process.  When this happens the blessings of our feast days becomes real for me in ways that transcend words. 

       

anti-zionism is NOT the same as anti-semitism

Let me start off by acknowledging that OFTEN I am late to the party practically, politically, theologically, sometimes spiritually but RARELY emotionally. My soul grasps the wounds and blessings of creation long before my head catches up to my heart. That's part of the legacy of being an adult child of alcoholics where rage was mixed with affection and safety came and went without warning. Being outwardly cautious, therefore, not only became my default position during times of conflict, but became a discipline I cultivated as I matured. My hesitations are a natural part of a childhood legacy - I KNOW I am terrified of conflict and physical violence - as well as part of my quest for wisdom and humility. In many situations, I find its best to go slowly rather than spontaneously both to sort out what is authentic and true when feelings are swirling and because no one can see their own shadow. Watching and waiting, observing and testing the waters of life have proven to be healthier and safer for me than all the alternatives. 

Which isn't to say I haven't rushed to judgment. Clearly, I have in matters of the heart, politics, the buzz of a party, the heat of an argument and so much more. But as St. Irenaeus of Lyons insisted during the second century CE: we were made to grow into the image of God by learning from our mistakes. There is NO original sin, just humans growing in faith and becoming incrementally more Christlike in the process. The Eastern Orthodox celebrate this as "divinization" and I affirm it in spades. As life has ripened, my mantra has become: be still and know! As well as: follow me and learn the unforced rhythms of grace.

Consequently, most of the time, it takes forever for me to share my take on the events of the day: not only are they transitory - and often a distraction from living into Christ's compassion - but shifting sands that are rarely clear at the outset. I am not one who will jump on today's cause celebre: intellectually, morally, politically, and ethically I can't do it. And that brings me to the agony of owning that Israel's war against Hamas is genocide. Today's horrors are the most naked example of Israel's historic hatred of Palestine. At times over the past 78 years their violence has been clandestine, at other times blatantly vulgar, and always a violation of the spirit of hope that emerged out of the ashes of  the Holocaust. 

I know such a conclusion is generational, ok? Like many of my peace-making peers, for decades I only heard part of the story. I was morally blinded by the incomprehensible horrors of Auschwitz. I knew nothing of the Nakba. I only read what the NY Times wanted me to read. Until the 90's I believed that Israel truly acted only defensively against aggressors hell-bent on its destruction. And while that's part of the truth, it's not the whole truth so help me God as the nearly 40,000 and counting Palestinian deaths document. The terrorist slaughter of October 7th can never be excused or rationalized as a righteous consequence of oppression. But let's be clear: the wildly disproportionate violence the IDF has rained down upon women and children as well as the innocent sick and elderly - to say nothing of the campaign of starvation currently in place throughout Gaza - stands as proof of Israel's commitment to genocide. I hate that this is true. But I hate the brutality and death that innocent Palestinians are enduring more than my own broken heart. 

So, what I have long known within - and been hesitant to say out loud - is now all too obvious . As Chris Hedges presciently wrote in February: 

There was never any possibility that the Israeli government would agree to a pause in the fighting proposed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, much less a ceasefire. Israel is on the verge of delivering the coup de grâce in its war on Palestinians in Gaza – mass starvation. When Israeli leaders use the term “absolute victory,” they mean total decimation, total elimination. The Nazis in 1942 systematically starved the 500,000 men, women and children in the Warsaw Ghetto. This is a number Israel intends to exceed. Israel, and its chief patron the United States, by attempting to shut down the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which provides food and aid to Gaza, is not only committing a war crime, but is in flagrant defiance of the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The court found the charges of genocide brought by South Africa, which included statements and facts gathered by UNWRA, plausible. It ordered Israel to abide by six provisional measures to prevent genocide and alleviate the humanitarian catastrophe. The fourth provisional measure calls on Israel to secure immediate and effective steps to provide humanitarian assistance and essential services in Gaza. https://scheerpost.com/2024/02/08/chris-hedges-let-them-eat-dirt/

Pope Francis has noted us that: we are living in an era overcome by the magnitude of the violence and the acute hopelessness that surfaces when the scale of destruction, violence and injustice comes to the surface... this sense of apathy and willful ignorance arises in the face of global violence. In today's world, the sense of belonging to a single human family is fading, and the dream of working together for justice and peace seems an outdated utopia. What reigns instead is a cool, comfortable and globalized indifference, born of deep disillusionment concealed behind a deceptive illusion: thinking that we are all-powerful, while failing to realize that we are all in the same boat. Or as Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel put it: few of us are guilty, but all of us are responsible. 

My caution has its place - I will always trust it - but now it has run its course and can serve only to excuse and deny the genocide born of blind and arrogant Zionism.

earth day reflection...

 EARTH DAY REFLECTION: Palmer, MA – April 21, 2024

Tomorrow marks the 54th anniversary of observing Earth Day in the United States: after our Out-reach Ministry suggested we pause our Eastertide contemplations for a day to reflect on what people of faith might bring to and learn from this conversation and observance, I was eager to comply. Some will recall that first Earth Day in April where more than 20 million Americans at tens of thousands of sites set aside time to discern and act in ways that cherished Mother Earth. Today it’s estimated that more than one billion residents across planet Earth will do likewise as we practice compassion, cooperation, and camaraderie with the land, sky, water, flora and fauna, and the diverse human cultures that comprise our 21st century reality.

· So, in the spirit of partnership with the cosmos I want to shift gears during my reflection to-day and tell you about an alternative Christian orthodoxy that starts with the affirmation that homo sapiens are not the only living beings that matter to the Lord. It’s a confession of solid-arity with reality rather than the traditionally anthropocentric celebration of humanity as the crown of creation.

· It’s a spiritual perspective brought to birth in the West first by our ancient Celtic ancestors in Scotland, Ireland, and Wales; embraced and embellished later by St. Francis of Assisi in the 13th century CE; reclaimed and revived after WWII by the Rev. George MacLeod and the ecumenical monastic community of Iona; deepened by the French Jesuit botanist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin; and popularized by the Franciscan scientist Illia Delio, Pope Francis, young evangelicals like Shane Claiborne as well as the late Rachel Held Evans.

This generous orthodoxy affirms a nonpartisan spirituality with room at the table for hunters, NRA members, and tree huggers alike: farmers and casual gardeners are involved along with city folk and suburbanites; intellectuals and utilitarian pragmatists; those who thrive in the countryside as well as those who dwell in apartments or assisted living communities. It’s a big tent spirituality that rec-ognizes climate change and other social problems without resorting to doomsday hyperbole. So, to open the door and help us center our hearts as well as our minds, I’m going to share a poem and a song that have become mentors for me. The poem is by the American poet William Safford called: “What the Earth Says.”

The earth says have a place, be what that place requires; hear the sound the birds imply and see as deep as ridges go behind each other. (Some people call their scenery flat, their only pictures framed by what they know: I think around them rise a riches and a loss too equal for their chart — but absolutely tall.)

The earth says every summer have a ranch that’s minimum: one tree, one well, a landscape that proclaims a universe — sermon of the hills, hallelujah mountain, highway guided by the way the world is tilted, reduplication of mirage, flat evening: a kind of ritual for the wavering. The earth says where you live wear the kind of color that your life is (grey shirt for me) and by listening with the same bowed head that sings draw all things into one song, join the sparrow on the lawn, and row that easy way, the rage without met by the wings within that guide you anywhere the wind blows.

Listening, I think that’s what the earth says.

And the song… well, some of you will know it right away…

Blackbird singing in the dead of night: take these broken wings and learn to fly all your life – you were only waiting for this moment to arise

Blackbird singing in the dead of night: take these sunken eyes and learn to see all your life – you were only waiting for this moment to be
Blackbird fly – blackbird fly – into the light of a dark, black night
Blackbird fly – blackbird fly – into the light of a dark black night.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night: take these broken eyes and learn to see all your life you were only waiting for this moment to be free
You were only waiting for this moment to be free
You were only waiting for this moment to be free

Often when I choose a popular secular poem or song to serve as a spiritual guide someone always asks: why not a traditional hymn or psalm? And that’s a good question – it tells me they’re listening and feel safe enough to take a risk - so my answer, respectfully born of decades of refinement, is this: artists have historically been a few generations ahead of theologians in naming and claiming the movement of the Holy Spirit in the world. Religion rightfully changes slowly: G.K. Chesterton said that tradition is the democracy of the dead that helps us pause and search for the big picture. Huston Smith, the granddaddy of contemporary interfaith dialogue, said: “The world’s enduring religions at their best reveal the distilled wisdom of the human race in history.” Traditional wisdom has been dragged through the cleansing sands of time and stripped of unnecessary distractions.

Artists and scientists, on the other hand, have been ordained to push the contours of culture, to point out as James Russell Lowell’s hymn proclaims: new occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient truth uncouth. They are the canaries in the mine shafts of reality who reveal both the blessings and the dangers of any given moment in time. Think of the abstract expressionists after WWI who gave shape and form to the chaos and angst of their generation with their paintings; or com-posers like Messiaen and Mahler after WWII who expressed audibly what a world on fire sounds like. Same for Black bebop jazz artists in the 40s and 50s who conveyed the soul of the Civil Rights freedom movement. One important reason I’ve been drawn to all types of non-traditional spiritual poetry and music is that they express this moment in time while religion rightfully evokes the time-less.

· The other is that celebrating songs from OUTSIDE the canon reminds us that in the eyes of the Lord there’s NO such thing as secular and sacred: God’s presence fills the world. If you know the work of Martin Luther, father of the Protestant Reformation, you know he insisted that everything we do is for the glory of God – and just to make his point he stole the melody of a German drinking song to be the foundation of his most famous hymn: A Mighty Fortress is Our God.

· Evangelicals, liberals, Protestants, Catholics, Anglicans and Orthodox have ALL affirmed this in their own unique way as Baptist preacher, Dallas Willard, said so well: “There is truly no division between sacred and secular except what we have created.”

That’s why the division of the legitimate roles and functions of human life into the sacred and secular does incalculable damage to our individual lives and to the cause of Christ. Holy people must stop going into “church work” as their natural course of action and take up holy orders in farming, industry, law, education, banking, and journalism with the same zeal previously given to evangelism, pastoral ministry, and missionary work.

And that’s why I chose “Blackbird” by the Beatles as my compass for Earth Day: it not only looks to nature as a time-tested guide into the heart and soul of the Lord’s creation; it does so by celebrating a humble and ordinary blackbird. This alternative and generous orthodoxy, you see, takes the first creation story in the Old Testament book of Genesis as its foundation – and posits original blessing instead of original sin. In the beginning, tradition teaches, God created: created the heavens and the earth, the water and the land, the sun, the moon, the animals, the insects, the birds as well as order out of the chaos. And when the cosmos was almost complete, God then created hum-an beings and called ALL of this creation good. Very, very good – hence original blessing rather than original sin.

· Not that sin is to be ignored or denied; not at all, just that sin does not define our essence eternally. This spirituality trusts that when the Lord God said, “Let us make human beings in our own image, according to our likeness” God wasn’t kidding which is a very different starting point than the second creation account in Genesis 2 that we know as the story of Adam and Eve, right?

· Their fall from grace has dominated Western Christianity since the 4th century of the CE when St. Augustine, brilliant African bishop of Hippo in what is now Algeria, tried to understand the incarnation of Jesus as the sinless Son of God. Given his literal reading of Scripture, Augustine concluded that the one reality that set the birth of Jesus apart from the rest of us is that Jesus was not born of concupiscence – lustful fornication – from the Latin con meaning with and cu-pere meaning ardent sensual obsession. All the rest of us, concluded Augustine, are descend-ants of Adam and Eve and poisoned by their rebellion against God.

To make matters worse, given the limitations of his era’s science – and his own misogyny – August-ne mistakenly concluded that the only way sin could be passed on from one generation to the next was through a woman’s birth canal – essentially naming women to be the source of original sin.

Now it’s critical to note that neither our spiritual cousins in Judaism nor our sisters and brothers in Eastern Orthodoxy accept this interpretation of the Adam and Eve story. They see it as a mythological description of humans entering the world pure and created in God’s image with the ability to choose either good or evil via free will.

· These traditions teach that a person always has the power to avoid sin and its negative effects IF we’re willing to own our failures, accept them are real, and then learn from our mistakes as the Serenity Prayer teaches, ok?

· God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference: one spirituality starts with creativity, humility, and trust, the other celebrates sin and shame.

And I don’t think it was accidental that the author of the Serenity Prayer, Reinhold Niebuhr, not only hails from OUR spiritual tradition, but crafted this life-changing prayer in the dark days before WWII when, at our church in Lee, he was asked for a prayer to kick off Vacation Bible School. Despite the dangers of that era and the suffering that followed, Niebuhr proclaimed that the heart and soul of Christianity always starts with Jesus and God’s grace NOT judgment. “Nothing worth doing,” he wrote, “is completed in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we must be saved by faith. And nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love.”

· And that’s what I hear happening in the New Testament reading from St. Matthew today where the disciples ask: “Who is the greatest in the kingdom?” That is, who shows us what kingdom living looks like? Who models God’s soul for us in real life?

· So, what does Jesus do and say to answer them but bring a small child forward saying that unless you become childlike, you just won’t get what kingdom living is all about.

He’s not advocating childishness ok? There’s already too much childishness in our politics, fears, bigotries, and all the rest. Rather, Jesus calls us to reclaim being childlike: open, curious, trusting, and dependent upon powers greater than our themselves for safety and sustenance. Walter Wangerin, a brilliant pastor and teacher, used to say that children under the age of 10 are organically mystics who experienced God’s presence everywhere.

And by mystic he means one who has experienced something of the holy within. Fr. Richard Rohr writes analytically that: “A mystic has the power of receptivity and sympathy; their souls are porous and have the ability to be so open as to stretch beyond the usual small and protective ego to something salvific.” Marcus Borg evoked the innate mysticism of children in a way that still rings true to me:

Once a three-year-old girl who was the only child in her family when her mom became pregnant. The young girls was wildly excited about having a baby in the house. So, on the day the mother-to-be delivers, this soon to be sister is ecstatic. Mom and dad go off to the hospital while she stays with her grandparents. A few days later, they come home with a new baby brother and she is just delighted. After they’ve been home for a couple of hours, the little girl tells her parents that she wants to be with the baby in the baby’s room, alone, with the door shut. She’s absolutely insist-ent about the door being shut. Which creeps her parents out: they know she’s a good child but they’ve heard about sibling rivalry and aren’t sure what they should do. They remind one another that they’ve recently installed an intercom system in preparation for the arrival of the new baby and conclude and if they hear even the slightest weird thing happening, they can be in there in a flash. So, they let their little girl go into the room and close the door behind her. They race to the listening post at the intercom, hearing her footsteps move across the room. They imagine her now standing over the baby’s crib and then hear her say to her two-day-old baby brother: “Can you tell me about God. I’ve almost forgotten.”

· I LOVE that story! It captures the essence of what Jesus was teaching about childlike humility and awe. It reminds me of our own two daughters who, as PKs – preachers’ kids – used to play giving birth to Jesus every year during Christmas.

· They were both born at home so one daughter would don a blue head scarf in the manner of the Blessed Virgin Mary while the other girl covered her sister’s lower body with a blanket like a midwife. They would hold one another’s hands until Mother Mary said: I feel the urge to push. So, her sister would kneel on the floor, put her hands under the blanket, say: count to three and then push momma before pulling a baby doll out from under the blanket saying: LOOK baby Jesus has just been born. Then they’d swap places so that both sisters could bring Jesus to birth. Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven and whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me. Indeed.

The alternative orthodoxy that resonates with me on Earth Day starts with a generous creativity rather than sin and judgment. By grace awe supplants cynicism, trust switches places with fear, and the rhythms of God’s FIRST word – not the bible but creation itself – teaches us how-to live-in harmony with the holy, with the human, and with the whole world. Small wonder that St. Paul began his letter to the church in Rome with this affirmation:

What can be known about God is plain to us all because God has made it plain: ever since the creation of the world God’s eternal power and divine nature have been seen and understood through the things God has created in nature.

The prophet Isaiah was equally effusive about nature guiding us into a harmonious life:

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. Trust this and 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. Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress; instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle, and it shall be to the Lord as an ever-lasting sign that shall not be cut off.

On Earth Day we’re invited to reconnect to God’s creation, cultivate a childlike trust and awe of the Lord as a way of grounding ourselves in the divine community of the cosmos, and dare I say to do it playfully? We’re in this together, beloved, our humanity thrives in concert with creation’s totality – and not just kith and kin, but flora and fauna as well as earth, sky, and sea. In the early days of the pandemic, I was helping our church in Williamstown wrestle through our collective angst and un-certainty when nothing seemed to make sense. 

A poem by Wendell Berry kept popping up that became a guide for us we re-learned how to stay grounded in grace even when life felt like it was go-ing to hell. It’s a practice – a spiritual discipline – and a taste of grace that I share with you now in the hopes it will help you get grounded in the community of creation and the blessings therein, too:

When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light.

For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

trusting that the season of new life is calming creeping into its fullness...

Earlier this week, when the temperature was a balmy 65F and the skies sunny and blue, I began my annual outdoor spring cleaning: piles and piles of decaying leaves and assorted tree branches and twigs were gathered from the front of the house and hauled to the edge of our wetlands. There's more landscaping to do over the next few days, but a semblance of visual order has been restored to what had become a pale reminder of last year's winter, wonder land. Today beckons me to the far side of our property where another two days of effort will be required as I reintroduce my chainsaw to a new crop of bracken. There's another few tons of leaf detritus destined for the wetlands, too along with maybe a hundred pine cones crying out to be collected. 

It's a small but satisfying way to embrace Earth Day 2024: a time to touch the earth and listen to the silent wisdom of creation; an embodied prayer, if you will, that "restoreth my soul." (Psalm 23 KJV) At about the same time as I was in the garden, I came across this blessing from the pen of William Safford who calls it: "What the Earth Says."

The earth says have a place, be what that place requires; hear the sound the birds imply and see as deep as ridges go behind each other. (Some people call their scenery flat, their only pictures framed by what they know: I think around them rise a riches and a loss
too equal for their chart — but absolutely tall.)

The earth says every summer have a ranch that’s minimum: one tree, one well, a landscape that proclaims a universe — sermon of the hills, hallelujah mountain, highway guided by the way the world is tilted, reduplication of mirage, flat evening: a kind of ritual for the wavering. The earth says where you live wear the kind of color

that your life is (grey shirt for me) and by listening with the same bowed head that sings draw all things into one song, join the sparrow on the lawn, and row that easy way,

the rage without met by the wings within that guide you anywhere the wind blows.

Listening, I think that’s what the earth says.

It's torn jeans, mud-crusted railroad boots, and a black sweatshirt for me as the earth invites me to wear the colors of my life. To be sure, I also have a brilliant new white Irish grandfather's shirt for worship. And a host of vintage rock'n'roll t-shirts for our upcoming gigs. But for the most part, its ragged denim and flannel for me until it is too hot to bother. Right now, this will suffice say the pale green and reddish brown buds of the trees in the wetlands and the nearly white-brown straw and weather-beaten greys nod in agreement. 

Over the nearly two decades that we've lived at the foot of the Berkshires, I have come to cherish the early days of spring. What some call "mud season" feels to me like a thin place where the sacred is palpable. Not in the extravagant abundance of summer nor the expanding melancholia of autumn. No, this is a quiet season in spite of the chorus of peepers singing mating songs from the marsh. The colors are tentative. The transformation of the woodlands from barren to fecund incremental. The return of the birds and the sunshine itself measured. My soul hungers for this season. It's wisdom and solace are simultaneously spiritual nourishment and antidote to the poisoned madness of our politics. 

I need both comfort and cure in order to be engaged "in the world but not part of it." For that's the invitation, yes? It is always both/and - refreshment as well as challenge - not the privileged illusion of either/or living where the hard and broken realities are left to others while I revel in peace. Even while my psyche yearns for solitude, my conscience calls me towards embodied solidarity. Wendell Berry gets it right when he writes:

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world,

and am free.

It's about a rhythm: entering and leaving, action and contemplation, acceptance and challenge. Not one only - or the other. That's what I sense from Mary Oliver's "Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches." It is brilliant.

Have you ever tried to enter the long black branches

​​​​​​​ ​​​​​​​ of other lives— 

​​​​​​​ tried to imagine what the crisp fringes, full of honey,

​​​​​​​ ​​​​​​​ hanging 

​​​​​​​ from the branches of the young locust trees, in early summer,

​​​​​​​ ​​​​​​​ feel like? ...

​​​​Who can open the door who does not reach for the latch? 

​​​​​​​ Who can travel the miles who does not put one foot 

​​​​​​​ ​​​​​​​ in front of the other, all attentive to what presents itself 

​​​​​​​ ​​​​​​​ continually? 

​​​​​​​ Who will behold the inner chamber who has not observed 

​​​​​​​ with admiration, even with rapture, the outer stone? 

​​​​​​​ Well, there is time left—

​​​​​​​ fields everywhere invite you into them

I still am not very good at both/and so I keep practicing. Mostly I don't grieve over my limitations and lack of nondual vision - that's part of balance, I think. All we can do is simply use what and who we are at this moment, keep at it, and trust God with the rest as the season of new life calmly creeps into its fullness.

reflections on the third sunday of eastertide...

What a fascinating, illuminating, humbling, and awesome week it was for those
who took the time to experience the eclipse. For most of our lives, we proceed as if we are in total control: we turn on a switch – and there’s light; we push a button – and there’s sound, heat, air conditioning, even digital entertainment or facetime communication with loved ones across the world. I value and utilize all of these conveniences and more, but know they can all too easily lull me into believing that I am the crown of creation and the center of the universe. And while I don’t say this to shame any of us, advance one political perspective over another, or deny my own complicity within a culture of arro-gance: the astonishing reverence evoked by the eclipse brought to mind a timeless spiritual critique that consistently calls us to accountability.

· In St. Mark’s gospel, for example, Jesus asks us: What does it profit a person to gain the whole world but lose their soul?

· More than a millennia later, 19th century spiritual wisdom-keeper and warrior of the indigenous Lakota nation, Sitting Bull, lamented that: “the love of possession is like a disease with them: they take tithes from the poor and weak to support the rich who rule. They claim this Mother of ours, the Earth, for their own and fence their neighbors away. If America had been twice the size it is, there still would not have been enough for them.”

And from within our own Western intellectual tradition, the French poet, Cyrano de Bergerac, quip-ped: The insufferable arrogance of human beings to think that Nature was made solely for their benefit, as if it was conceivable that the sun had been set afire merely to ripen men's apples and head their cabbages.

Two details from eclipse continue to touch me deeply. First was an awareness of a power beyond my comprehension and control. I like the way singer-songwriter, Carrie Newcomer, put it from her home in rural Indiana:

The temperature dropped precipitously… then the wind came up dramatically blowing across the new grasses in the springtime field… colors began to glow and birds began to quiet until finally there was only the barest sliver of the sun showing. Then, in a moment, we were in full totality. What hit me immediately was that I had no reference point for the light around me. We know in our minds and bodies what morning light is, how it feels, what time of year. We know when we walk outside that it is twilight or that the sun must be slipping below the horizon. Our hearts and minds have filed away so many kinds of light and something inside us says,” Oh, this is evening in winter, or morning in summer.” But my mind and body had absolutely no reference point for this kind of light. As the cold increased and the winds came up further, we were surrounded by an im-possibly unfamiliar light as the world had dimmed beyond twilight or dawn: this was something completely rarified..

Second, for at least a short time – maybe just four minutes and 27 seconds – we were one. In the anticipation and the encounter, we were no longer antagonistic or judgmental: we were in this to-gether. I thought of St. Paul reminding us that after experiencing God’s grace in the love of Jesus: we’re no longer just male and female, rich and poor, male and female, or Christian and Jew…and I would add Republican or Democrat, capitalist or communist, gay, straight, or bi, believer or agnostic, Muslim, Buddhist, none or done: regardless of our very real differences we were united in heart, mind, body, soul, and spirit. 

Seeing ALL those faces turned upward inspired by the mysterium tremendum et fascinans — the mystery of creation before which humanity both trembles and is fascinated, is simultaneously repelled and attracted – in that moment, when the wonderous power of the Creator embraced us all – our place in the cosmos was revealed and the blessing of wonder trumped both our cynicism and anxiety – at least for a moment.

· Which brings us to the third Sunday of Eastertide – our series of seven Sabbaths set aside to cultivate sacramental vision – the acquisition, cultivation, training, and trust of eyes that can see and recognize the presence of our Risen Lord within our ordinary existence.

· Starting with Easter, our gospel readings have all been about the Risen Christ returning to those he cared for after his resurrection and their inability to recognize the Lord because… they do not yet have eyes to see. Resurrection eyes and sacramental vision are not automatic: they take time, patience, practice, intentionality, doubt as well as a willingness to relinquish some control in order to see by faith and live by grace.

The Biblical story is clear: on Easter Sunday, Mary Magdalene – perhaps the most insightful of all of Jesus’ disciples – acts with tender solidarity by returning to the tomb to dress his cadaver for burial. In spite of her profound commitment, however, Magdalene is initially unable to recognize the Risen Christ and mistakes him for the gardener.

Same for the other disciples including our icon of skepticism, Doubting Thomas, and the two unnamed disciples who encounter Jesus on the road to Emmaus but only recognize him in the breaking of bread. The remaining faith community back in Jerusalem was equally bewildered when Jesus suddenly appears to them again in the Upper Room. Today’s text from St. Luke says: they were startled and frightened, thinking they’d seen a ghost. Even AFTER Jesus blesses them with peace and carefully shows them his torn flesh, the disciples experience both joy and disbelief wondering what in the world was happening. Resurrection eyes and sacramental vision, it would seem, are gifts from God’s Holy Spirit that we’re asked to receive, trust, practice, and refine.

· First, Jesus blesses us with God’s peace – shalom in Hebrew, charis in Greek meaning peace and grace – a peace that passes human understanding yet restores us to wholeness. All the post resurrection stories in the New Testa-ment are about healing and renewal rather than judgment and condemnation.

· Over the centuries we have constructed theologies built upon fear and confusion about sin, but if we keep our eyes on Jesus in his life, death, and resurrection we see a deeper truth be-yond all superstitious notions of God’s wrath. Jesus brings us peace born of grace. Period. End of story. Mic drop and all the rest. And just so that we don’t miss this truth, after teaching the disciples on the road to Emmaus about Moses and the prophets and being revealed in the breaking of bread, Jesus shows up back in Jerusalem offering peace again before immediately asking for something to eat. There’s NO condemnation here whatsoever: just tenderness and food for the journey. That’s the first insight.

The second is how Jesus closes this passage with a promise: I am sending upon you the gift my Father promised: so stay put until you are clothed in power from on high. So, we need to know what IS this promised gift of power from on high? The short answer is the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The presence of grace in our hearts that gives us resurrection eyes and sacramental vision. Sr. Joan Chittister, a wise Benedictine nun who consistently advocates for equal rights for women in her Roman Catholic context, explains resurrection eyes like this: “In order to continue working for justice and integrity in the world – or the church – without becoming cynical necessitates the wisdom and presence of the Holy Spirit. The gift of sacramental vision is our ability to recognize the butterfly in a caterpillar, the eagle within the egg, and the saint within the sinner.” That’s why the Risen Christ teaches his disciples about Moses and the Prophets – the LONG answer:

· Torah was given to Moses with the promise that honoring the spirit of the commandments would link God’s people to the steadfast love of the Lord that endures forever. King David celebrated this in Psalm 51: Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness; create in me, O God, a clean heart that will blot out my offenses with thy ceaseless tender mercies. Part of the promised power from on high is the steadfast grace of God that never ends.

· The prophet Joel added that when God pours out the Spirit upon us we will be so bathed in grace that our sons and daughters will prophesy, our elders will dream dreams, and our youth will see visions of healing and peace. Isaiah amplified this in chapter 65 saying:

Chaos and pain can be things of the past to be forgotten. Look ahead with joy. Anticipate what I’m creating as I pour out my spirit upon you: No more sounds of weeping in the city, no more cries of anguish; No more babies dying in the cradle, or old people who don’t enjoy a full lifetime; You will build houses and move in, plant fields and eat what is grown… my people will be as long-lived as trees, my chosen ones will have satisfaction in their work… for before they call out, I’ll an-swer. Before they’ve finished speaking, I’ll have heard. The wolf and lamb will graze the same meadow, the lion and ox will eat straw from the same trough…and NO harm will take place any- where on my Holy Mountain,” says the Lord our God.

God’s promise for those who receive the gift of power from on high is the resolution of paradox – eyes to see as the Lord does – and today’s text from St. Luke offers three clues about nourishing the gift of grace within and among us. Resurrection living and seeing with sacramental vision, you see, is not JUST for Jesus but “includes a greater intimacy with the Lord our God so that we have eyes to see the sacred beyond the chaos and confusion.”

· None of us organically have resurrection eyes that can recognize the Risen Christ in our midst or see the eagle within the egg. It takes training and trust and the willingness and ability to get out of God’s way.

· Fr. Richard Rohr has been helpful to me when he says: “Practice is an essential reset but-ton that we must push many times before we can experience any genuine newness. Whether we’re aware of it or not, we are practicing all the time .When we operate by our habituated patterns, we strengthen certain neural pathways, which makes us, as the saying goes, “set in our ways.” But when we stop using old neural grooves, these pathways actually die off! Practice can literally create new responses and allow rigid ones to show themselves. It’s strange that we’ve come to understand the importance of practice in sports, in most therapies, in any successful business, and in creative endeavors, but for some reason most of us do not see the need for it in the world of spirituality. Yet it’s probably more important there than in any other area. “New wine demands fresh skins or otherwise we lose both the wine and the container.” Practices, more than anything else, create a new container for us, one that will protect the new wine we wish to take in (and strengthen the promised power from above born of the Spirit AND our receptivity.)

· For some of us the eclipse awakened us to this truth – at least for a few moments – when everything felt new and genuinely beyond our ability to control or even comprehend. Two days after the eclipse I had a more prosaic encounter with the Lord’s quiet invitation to get out of my limited vision when I rented a car in order to make a quick trip to Brooklyn. My precious grandson was going to step up from his beginner’s guitar and get a new instrument and both he as well and his momma, our daughter Jesse, wanted my help.

· Now, because my wife has some physical limitations and health issues, I didn’t feel comfort-able taking our only car 150 miles away, so I made arrangements and found myself driving a brand-new Chevy Trax to Brooklyn. Apparently, I hadn’t rented a car for a while, nor have I been the driver of a NEW vehicle since well before the pandemic lockdown. It was great – at first - but then frustrating before it eventually became humbling. You see, I couldn’t figure out how to open the trunk. When I stopped for gas, it took at least 10 minutes to find and then open the hidden little door to the gas tank. And as I sat before the massive instrumental panel that resembled something out of Star Trek, I had NO idea how to get the AC or the radio on.

The piece de resistance, however, was my slow realization that there was NO CD player in this car and I had 25 discs I was ready to listen to on the ride. It seems that contemporary folk no longer play CDs in their cars anymore – it’s all blue tooth and streaming apps – which totally confuse me. So, as I sat at a Stewart’s Convenience Store trying to figure out what the devil the owner’s manual was trying to tell me, it began to dawn on me how much of a techno-dinosaur I am: not only was I caught in my limited experience with this brave new world – I really do live a quiet, slow-pa-ed con-templative and quasi- monastic life that’s wildly out of touch with parts of the modern realm – but in that car all my beautiful musical CDs were worthless.

· I had to sit with this for a few minutes – take it all in – before bursting out in laughter at myself for being such a techno-relic. It seems that even in this all too ordinary encounter, God’s Spirit wanted me to remember that I can be all too set in my ways. That I still don’t con-sistently have eyes to see what’s going on. And that I regularly forget to practice sacramental vision, ok?

· Sometimes it’s an eclipse, other times a rental car, but I believe that the sacred comes to us over and over to help us practice seeing beyond the obvious, to show us how get out of our own way and trust a wisdom greater than ourselves. Scripture calls this the Spirit empowering us from above – and one of my mentors, the late Bard of Vermont, Frederick Buechner, adds:

I discovered that if you really keep your eye peeled and your ears open, if you really pay attention to it, even such a limited and limiting life as the one I live can open up into extraordinary vistas… that’s why I believe that there is no event so commonplace but that God is present within it, always hiddenly, always leaving you room to recognize him or not, but all the more fascinatingly because of that, all the more compellingly and hauntingly… So, please: listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell you way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis ALL moments are key moments and life itself is grace.

· And just so that I wouldn’t miss the blessing of laughing at myself yet again and opening-up rather than shutting down, when I FINALLY figured out how to operate this newfangled radio, who was speaking in an interview but one of my favorite writers, Anne Lamott. I thought I’d stumbled onto a radio evangelist’s program at first and I usually find them too smarmy or in- complete for my taste.

· But after a moment, Anne’s wise, humble, and humorous voice said: I do not at all under-stand the mystery of grace - only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us. That’s why I believe the opposite of faith is not doubt: It’s certainty and madness. You can always tell that you have created God in your own image when it turns out that he or she hates all the same people you do. That’s when I realized I had tears in my eyes – and brother Buechner taught me something about my tears, too when he wrote:

YOU NEVER KNOW what may cause them. The sight of the Atlantic Ocean can do it, or a piece of music, or a face you've never seen before. A pair of somebody's old shoes can do it. Almost any movie made before the great sadness that came over the world after the Second World War, a horse cantering across a meadow, the high school basketball team running out onto the gym floor at the start of a game. You can never be sure. But of this you can be sure. Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears, it is well to pay the closest attention. They are not only telling you something about the secret of who you are, but more often than not God s speaking to you through them of the mystery of where you have come from and is summoning you to where, if your soul is to be saved, you should go to next.

The wisdom of Eastertide – the path of sacramental vision that shows us how to see beyond the obvious and discover resurrection eyes that celebrate the presence of the Risen Christ – is a par-adox. God’s gift of grace and promise of power and inspiration from above are totally free and un-earned, “yet God does not give them except to people who really want them, who choose them, and say “yes” to them. This is the fully symbiotic nature of grace. Divine Loving is so pure that it never manipulates, shames, or forces itself on anyone. Love waits to be invited and desired, and only then rushes in.”

· This next week won’t bring an eclipse, but it MIGHT bring a new car rental. Or an embrace by a loved one. Or a crocus or daffodil peeking through the detritus of winter with a hint of spring. Or who knows what.

· Your homework – your practice for the third week of Eastertide if you’re ready – is first to move through the week a bit more slowly so that you might notice what the Lord is bringing your way. And second, whenever and however it occurs, to bring a symbol of what you saw with you to worship next week and we’ll place them on a table as a thank offering to God, ok?

What Jesus said after the FIRST Easter, is what he says now: stay where you are – slow down and be awaken – as you wait for the promise of power from on high. It’s everywhere for those with eyes to see and ears to hear. And THAT, beloved, is the good news for today.

easter reflection at palmer 2024...

Recently, Fr. Richard Rohr wrote that Easter: "is the feast that says God will have the last word and that God’s final judgment is resurrection. God will turn all that we maim and destroy and hurt and punish into life and beauty."

What the resurrection reveals more than anything else is that love is stronger than death. Jesus walks the way of death with love, and what it becomes is not death but life. Surprise of surprises! It doesn’t fit any logical explanation. Yet this is the mystery: that nothing dies forever, and that all that has died will be reborn in love.  

That's ONE of the reasons I LOVE Easter Sunday: I love its music, I love its flowers, I love its promise that God’s love is ALWAYS with us no matter what. AND I love the courage it gives me to live into the Spirit of Jesus like the women in today’s Bible story: on that first Easter morning, no one knew exactly what it all meant except that while he lived Jesus showed us God’s tenderness, creativity, patience, compassion, and grace; and as he died, weeping “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do,” he showed us God’s incomprehensible commitment to forgiveness. Easter was all about REAL shock and awe – and that’s my starting point. Preacher Brian McClaren tells us that:

In his living: Jesus showed us that God is pure love, so overflowing in goodness that God pours out compassion on the pure and impure alike. He not only spoke of God’s unbounded compassion – he embodied it every day – In the way he sat at table with everyone, in the way he was never afraid to be called a “friend of sinners,” in the way he touched untouchables and refused to condemn even the most notorious of sinners. In his living, Jesus embodied a very different vision of what God is like…. 

So, too, in his dying where he showed us that: God is not revealed in killing and conquest or violence and hatred. No, God is revealed in the crucified one — giving of himself to the very last breath – giving and forgiving. God is like Mary Magdalene, standing witness in a vulnerable solidarity; or his beloved mother Mary who held him close to her heart in prayer when that was all that was possible. And now it’s Easter – the first morning of a new age saturated in grace – and NO one knows exactly what to do. The men are in hiding, the women are bewildered by the rolled away stone and the appearance of angels, and it looks as if Jesus has somehow gone AWOL – which, I must confess, strikes me as GOOD news in a truly upside-down kingdom kind of way. Here’s what I mean…

· I don’t always get living by faith not sight, ok? Like some of you, I get cranky and worn-out. Sometimes I want to rush to get the job done or control events so much that I miss being with a loved one when they need my attention; or, worse, overlook them when they cry out for love.

· And THAT’S why I find the initial confusion of Easter morning to be such GOOD news. It says to me – and ALL of us - that even when we make a mess of things – or can’t see the forest of God’s grace for the trees – this NEVER inhibits the Lord from unleashing a mystical blessing on Easter morning that promises the spiritual presence of Jesus will be with us forever! In good times and bad, when we’re grounded or unhinged, faithful or even lost in sin: God is WITH us whether we grasp, comprehend, or believe this or not.

And that’s what today’s Bible story asks us to celebrate: the Easter promise that God’s love and forgiveness is ALWAYS available to us through the spirit of Jesus. Now, let’s be clear, such radical grace is bewildering. Incomprehensible and seemingly beyond reason. So, tradition asks us to practice trusting this love that we can’t explain or comprehend – it’s truth but we can only experience and acc-ept – or as our 12 Step buddies put it: we have to fake it till we make it.

And to assist you in doing this on Easter Sunday, I’ve asked Donna Lee to help me with two new songs for our community. Easter, you see, is really a festival of faith not an intellectual exercise in linear thinking. It’s experiential. Soul satisfying. More a matter of the heart than the head. Which is one of the charisms of singing together: when we really get INto it, scientists have found that our hearts start to beat together in unison as if we were one body. St. Paul calls this the body of Christ re-membered. Over the years two songs have become foundational in my quest to practice trusting God’s grace so I want to share them with you. The words are on the communion insert in your bulletin, so let’s try this together. Donna Lee and I will sing the first verse and chorus through once and then we can we sing all 4 verses together, ok?

Now, there are four parts to this song and each verse invites us to experience the mystical love of the Lord a little deeper. To begin, we’re reminded that God comes to us in our ordinary, everyday, working, and walking around lives – not JUST holidays or holy times – but every day: I looked up and I saw my Lord’s a’comin’ down the road. Can you think of an ordinary time when you became aware of God’s love?

What about the wisdom in the second verse: I looked up and I saw my Lord a’ weeping? Anyone here ever wept? Maybe cried because you were hurt, or you realized you had hurt someone else? This verse recognizes that we’re going to get it wrong SOMETIME in our lives; and Jesus not only KNOWS this – knows it so well, in fact, that he weeps for us in love - but comes to us spiritually when we’re lost and hurting. Did you catch that? Being with us is about grace, not judgment so that we never need be afraid or ashamed to call out for help. NEVER!

That’s the heart of the third verse concerning the Cross: I looked up and I saw my Lord a’dying on the Cross. Part of the Easter story is that Jesus came into the world to show us that when we hurt another, neglect them, take someone for granted, or abuse their love… something dies. Trust is broken. God’s heart is wounded. The Cross shows us graphically what it looks and feels like when love is killed – but it also shows us God’s way to deal with that loss. Someone far smarter than I put it like this: Jesus didn’t die so that you don’t have to; rather Jesus died so that you would know HOW to. He didn’t die instead of you; he died ahead of you – and he didn’t rise so that you don’t have to but so that you would be able to rise with him! Are you still with me?

The Cross is not so much about substitution, as about participation. Do you recall what Jesus kept telling those he loved: Follow me – follow me into life, into death, and into life beyond death. Which is what verse four tells us: I looked up and saw my Lord… what? Rising from the grave. Easter is the assurance s that our sins and mistakes, our selfishness and pain, are not the end of the story. They CAN bring us new life, new love, new possibilities. In Jesus, God comes to us where we live, loves and cares for us when we hurt, weeps and dies for us when we are selfish or cruel, and KEEPS coming back to us with new life and forgiveness so that we can get back to loving others again as was the plan in the beginning.

That’s why Mary Magdalene, a trusted friend of Jesus who became the apostle to the apostles, accompanied Jesus even to the tomb. When Magdalene first met him, SHE was hurting. She was broken and not in her right mind; but her confusion and pain didn’t stop Jesus from befriending her with healing because God’s love meets us where we are. We don’t have to be good enough, holy enough, or pure enough to taste grace. Mary’ story insists that Jesus met her where she was and shared God’s love with her: he wept for her pain, he helped her become healthy and whole again, and then he asked her to give to others what he had given to her.

And that’s what he asks of us on Easter: that WE, too share God’s love with the world. And, when Jesus went to the Cross, not only did Mary WEEP for him, she kept him company so that he wasn’t alone during his suffering. She didn’t know what would come next, but she HAD learned the importance of staying connected in love during her hard time, so when her time came to stand and de-liver for Jesus, she was ready to give back as good as she was given. She couldn’t fix things – Jesus was still going to die on the Cross – but she could bear witness in love. And when WE do THAT, as impotent as it can feel, we’re not only RE-membering Jesus, we’re sharing God’s love like we’ve received it – and God’s love carries with it the courage to face hard times.

Easter asks us to trust God’s grace even when we don’t know exactly what that means. Or what’s going to happen next. Today we’re told that the women fled the tomb in uncertainty and fear. A writer in The Christian Century recently put it like this:

The resurrection is unknowable in the way we like to know things, the journalistic who-what-when-where-how that we grandchildren of the Enlightenment think comprises truth. But St. Mark was different: he was willing to have his life changed before he understood fully what was changing it. Actually, this is the only way life ever really changes. You won’t understand marriage until you’ve been hitched for a while—maybe not even then. You’re not going to know what it’s like to have a baby until you have one. You don’t even know your profession until you’ve been in it a while. Nothing in life is obvious immediately. It all grows on us. And this is how we approach the resurrection of Jesus at Easter: we can’t and won’t understand it until we let it grow on us.

That’s why our song closes with the assurance that God’s loving presence changes everything even if we don’t fully grasp that now. Nowhere in this song or in the Bible is Easter explained, ok? It is experienced – it grows on the disciples and us as we practice trusting and sharing it. And that’s really why we’re here today: not to explain Easter or Resurrection or grace. We’re here to celebrate it, to trust it, and then share it. Like Clarence Jordan, great grandfather of Habitat for Humanity, used to say: the proof of Easter is NOT the rolled away stone but the carried away community that keeps on sharing love no matter what happens. But, as Diana Butler Bass notes: more often than not it takes some sorting out and time before we can celebrate God's presence in our lives and our world. Like the abrupt and startling end to St. Mark's gospel, today's story closes with NO clarity:

The passage for Easter this year is the original ending of Mark. In many ways, this short reading is puzzling. There’s no actual risen Jesus (just a “young man in a white robe” saying he has risen); there’s no triumph or joy. There are only women who have seen an empty tomb with its phantasmic herald: So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. That’s it. That’s the ending of Mark’s gospel and his entire story of resurrection. Verses 9 - 20 were added much later, no doubt because of this abrupt and unsatisfactory finale. I wish they hadn’t been added. For, without them, the story of that first Easter Sunday is the most human of all the accounts. It is simple, straightforward: mourners, an empty tomb, an otherworldly being, and a directive to tell everybody what happened that the frightened women promptly disobey.

Being afraid is a much more normal than shouting alleluia. Empty tombs and discarded burial cloths, spiritual visitations and conversations with the dead — these should make us tremble with wonder and fear. What do you say when you’ve seen such things? Nothing makes perfect sense. Mark is the most believable resurrection story ever told. But Mark didn’t let terror lead to denial. And fear doesn’t mean the women remained frightened forever. Instead, his account holds out an invitation, one the women surely remembered and eventually followed. The angel-ghost-whoever tells the women to go to Galilee — go back to the place where it all started — and “there you will see him.” Go back to the beginning. Go back to where the story began. And then, you will understand. You will see him.

So, I want to share with you another song: a prayer song that you can sing whenever you feel like the women confronting the empty tomb. Whenever you need encouragement. It’s a round to remind us how much we NEED one another. Donna Lee and I will sing it first two times and then we’ll break into a round. I will be part one over here – and she will be part two over there. And I’d like to have the choir join Donna in part two, ok?

The words are also in the bulletin insert so… is that clear? She and I will sing it through twice, we’ll ALL sing it through twice in unison, then we’ll do it as a round three times. And be certain to listen to one another during the round, ok? Listen to the beauty our Easter prayer offers. Listen for the love we’re sharing right now with one another and the Lord. And listen for the presence of Jesus in what we’re doing, too…here we go.

Jesus, Jesus, let me tell you what I know:

You have given us your Spirit: we love you.

This Easter, I'm with Dr. Bass - and St. Mark - and Jesus: 

We are invited to go back to the place where it all began. You need to know the whole story before it makes sense. You’ll see him as you follow him. Don’t get stuck in fear, even when people may think you’re nuts or don’t understand what you’ve seen. When nothing seems right. When the tomb is empty. When you’ve encountered the Unexpected One. He lives. You will see him. It may well be a miracle, but it is most surely a journey.