On silence, ritual and peace...

One of my abiding rituals is writing this blog most mornings come rain or shine. Sometimes what I have to post is banal, I know. From time to time I catch hold of a thought that takes me deeper and, at least for me, things become interesting. And more often than not, this page acts as a spiritual diary of sorts giving me time to reflect on what is swirling around inside and out from my limited perspective. This morning I read a wise column on Krista Tippet's blog, On Being, about Rabbi Chaim Stern's insight that "ritual is poetry in action. (check it out here: http://www.onbeing.org/ blog/ritual-is-poetry-in-action/7487?] utm_ source= On+Being +Newsletter&utm_campaign=8e3dc30217-20150509
_Jane_Gross_Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0
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Two inter-related ideas spoke to me, notions that have been in my head and heart a lot this past week (and probably much longer), having to do with the rituals that bring meaning to my life and my current concerns about Christian antisemitism. James Carroll noted in his book, Constantine's Sword, that Judaism escaped becoming a religion of rigid fundamentalism by nurturing a commitment to conversation rather than conversion. To be sure, there are rabid fundamentalists all too alive and well in contemporary Judaism (as well as every other faith tradition.) And while these souls are vocal and violent, they are the minority report in a 4000 year tradition. What continues to shape and inform the practice is silence and stories guided by conversation and ritual.

“Ritual is poetry in action” means that ritual does for behavior what poetry does for words; religious deeds grace ordinary activities the way poetic language elevates commonplace communication. When it comes to ritual, Chaim might sit down at the kitchen table for a workday solo lunch, typically the banana and low fat cottage cheese he’d pick up at the Grand Union on the way home from the Temple. Nothing special here. But when he prefaced his simple meal with a ritual prayer, he’d locate the contents and consumption of a routine lunch within a spiritual framework. Thus a ritual contributes spiritual elevation to an ordinary deed as a poem ennobles casual language. Ritual allows for a broadened perspective on life. “Ritual is poetry in action” when a wedding ceremony provides a spiritual context for looking back on years of day-in, day-out parenting, a culmination and tallying of hours devoted to car pools and after school activities, the challenge, commitment, patience and love. Ritual calls for taking pause, for reflection on the labors and wonders of providing for and witnessing an emerging adult. A wedding ritual gives the big picture — and thus is a portal to spirituality — to a parent.

This makes profound sense to me.  Most mornings I take a LONG time to get rolling. I am not a morning person by design.  I like to ease into the day with tea, prayer, silence, reading and then some written reflection. Not only does this open my soul tenderly, it helps me get my bearings. On this first part of the sabbatical trip I have been aware that on those days when I can't practice my morning ritual - on the days when we have to hurry up and get on the road - I not only feel out of sorts, but cranky and resentful.  It would seem that my presence in the world as a person of peace requires my careful practice of entering the day with grace. It is not a luxury - a privilege, yes - but not a luxury. Otherwise, I become what I hate and pass it along to others who deserve much better from me.

Parker Palmer speaks to this in a column he recently wrote called, "Laughter and Silence." It is his sense that both laughter and silence often draw us close to the sacred. I have long held the belief that both are spiritual disciplines worthy of rigorous practice. One story Palmer tells deserves a lengthy quote:

I heard a story from my friend Rachel Remen, a physician of body and soul, that reveals the power of silence to honor our shared humanity in the face of genuine evil—a story she retells in her book, My Grandfather’s Blessings. One of Rachel’s colleagues attended a conference on Jungian dream analysis. At a special session, participants were asked to take a card and write about a dream. The cards were then handed on to a panel of analysts, among whom was the grandson of Carl Jung:

"One of these cards told the story of a horrific recurring dream, in which the dreamer was stripped of all human dignity and worth through Nazi atrocities. A member of the panel read the dream out loud. As she listened, my colleague began to formulate a dream interpretation in her head, in anticipation of the panel's response. It was really a 'no-brainer,' she thought, as her mind busily offered her symbolic explanations for the torture and atrocities described in the dream.

But this was not how the panel responded at all. When the reading of the dream was complete, Jung's grandson looked out over the large audience. 'Would you all please rise?' he asked. 'We will stand together in a moment of silence in response to this dream.' The audience stood for a minute, my colleague impatiently waiting for the discussion she was certain would follow. But when they sat again, the panel went on to the next question.

My colleague simply did not understand this at all, and a few days later she asked one of her teachers, himself a Jungian analyst, about it. 'Ah, Lois,' he had said, 'there is in life a suffering so unspeakable, a vulnerability so extreme that it goes far beyond words, beyond explanations and even beyond healing. In the face of such suffering all we can do is bear witness so no one need suffer alone.'"

In silence, there is a depth of communion that trumps what we can achieve with words. In laughter, there is a depth of communion that trumps what we can achieve with solemnity. If personal and communal wholeness is what we seek — a wholeness that embraces the tragic and the comic, the darkness and the light — the odd couple of laughter and silence can help take us there.

One of the things I have been trying to embrace over the past year is holding the suffering and anguish of others in silent reverence in my heart.  Personally I can never know the brokenness of another. Politically I cannot comprehend the grief born of genocide. Prayerfully there are no words for the pain that wounds so many of those I love.  So, I have been trying to embrace the historic pain of both my cousins in Judaism and Islam - Israel and Palestine - in my heart in silence. It is too early for me to share words. It is too easy to offer my suggestions. Rather, what I feel is necessary is sitting in the discomfort of this silence and listening... to stories, to the news, to conversations and emails, to the scriptures and to histories. Indeed, there is a "depth of communion that trumps what we can achieve with words."

By this wrestling with silence, however, I don't mean ignoring reality or keeping my mouth shut about abuses and injustices.  For example, in the new coalition government formed by Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu, the fundamentalist, anti-Palestinian agenda of the settler parties will become strengthened and codified.  More illegal property seizures will take place and the status quo will become saturated with settler racism.  See, for example, how Churches form Middle East Peace reports on some of the new Israeli government appointments.With civil leadership ceded to the likes of Rabbi Eli Ben Dahan - a man who speaks of Palestinians as not human - people of good will must raise our voices in protest and solidarity with the forces of hope, compassion and justice in Palestine.  And let me be clear: calling out ugly, racist and mean-spirited thinking and action is NOT antisemitic. It is an act of conscience that all people of goodwill must recognize and act upon. (check it out here:http://972mag.com/next-head-of-civil-administration-said-palestinians-are-sub-human/106533/) I condemn the same ugly, racist and mean-spirit that infects far too much of the Palestinian political and military leadership, too. For a clear analysis on what could happen at this moment in time - a moment that could not only strengthen Israel and build real peace with Palestine - take a look at what  Fareed Zakaria has to say in tomorrow's Washington Post. (read it here @ http://www.washingtonpost.

com/opinions/will-israel-miss-its-moment/2015/05/07/624a582e-f4f1-11e4-bcc4-e8141e5eb0c9_story.html?hpid=z7

The armies from Israel’s main strategic adversaries — Iraq, Syria, Egypt — are in disarray, while the Israeli armed forces have become the region’s superpower, in a league ahead of the rest. More important, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the smaller Gulf states find themselves in a tacit alliance with Israel against Iran. In Gen. Abdel Fatah al-Sissi, Israel is dealing with perhaps the most anti-Hamas (and tacitly pro-Israeli) president in Egypt’s history.To understand the depth of this strategic shift, consider this: It has been reported that Arabs are thinking about creating a combined armed force. The last two times that happened, in 1948 and 1967, the purpose was to wipe Israel off the map. Today, the aim is to fight Israel’s main foe, Iran, which is why,one Haaretz commentator notes, “Not only is Israel not alarmed, it is actually ecstatic.”

He then offers what I think is a wise conclusion:

So while it faces real dangers, Israel has policies to fight them with force and effectiveness. The danger for which it has no defense is that it continues to have control over Gaza and the West Bank, lands with 4.5 million people who have neither a country nor a vote. The feeling on the Israeli right, which now rules the country, seems to be that if the Palestinian problem is ignored, it will somehow solve itself. But it won’t, and the tragedy is that this is the moment, with so many stars aligned in Israel’s favor, when enlightened leadership could secure Israel permanently as a Jewish democratic state and make peace with its neighbors. It is a golden opportunity, and it is staring Netanyahu in the face. 

Silence does not mean neglect. Nor does it mean an unwillingness to act. It does, however, invite a deeper patience than I often comprehend as well as a trust that God will bring a measure of clarity to my head and heart if I wait in trust. This growing call into silence is potent. Last week in NYC, we slept late on Sunday morning and missed worship.  We attended a jazz vespers liturgy later in the day, but we both realized that we had missed our time for sitting in the quiet with our community and listening for the wisdom of the day.  On Tuesday, we slipped into an Anglican church in the East Village and listened as the choir master practiced the organ. We were bathed in the beauty of stained glass and solitude. It was soul food. I hope we find a place for worship tomorrow.

So now I am ready to enter this day in a public way: I wonder what it will bring?

Christ be with me...

Today - Friday - we finally arrived in Nashville - and now it feels like the sabbatical has started. In NYC it felt like a vacation, and that was part of the planned transition: I love the frenetic vibrancy of that great town. But it didn't feel "grounded" or restful.  And, in reality, I needed a bit of crazy time as part of the shifting gears.  When we ran into nasty rain, hail, fog and winds on the road to Roanoke, the mood shifted and there were flashes of pure terror when I was certain life was over.  It would have been all too easy for one of those massive 16-wheelers to rear-end us in the blinding rain.

Yesterday, therefore, was chill time - and that is all we did.  We slept, walked, rested and feasted. Today it was a grind to get to Nashville. But as soon as we got out of the car and slipped inside the quite Scarritt-Bennett Center campus, another alignment happened and both Di and I sensed, "Ah, NOW the sabbatical has started."  We are in adjoining "monk's" cells on a neo-gothic campus close to Vanderbilt University. There are students everywhere, a host of United Methodist worship leaders at the General Board of Discipleship, too; the dogwoods are in bloom and, at least for today, it was sunny and stunning outside.

Tomorrow we'll connect with Joyce Sohl, the Vespers and All That Jazz coordinator and see when we might visit for a time.  She has asked me to sit in with the jazz vespers band on Sunday evening so I'll play through the charts a few times as the day unfolds. I hope we'll hit a jazz club or two while we're in town. And walk the labyrinth (weather permitting) as we embrace the winding down phase of this transition. While in the car today we listened to Pico Iyer speak about our culture's thirst for stillness. He noted that more and more folk - religious or otherwise - are searching for ways of reclaiming Sabbath rest. Some unplug at least one day a week. Others make certain that part of their vacation time is spent on retreat. In a time that is so full of busyness, our souls ache for the essence of life.

Richard Rohr recently wrote about the challenge of stillness and solitude and both Dianne and I know we will be bumping up against his insight as this magical, mystery tour unfolds. He wrote:

The trouble--and the opportunity--in solitude is that there is no one around to blame for our moods and our difficulties. We are stuck with ourselves. Belden Lane helps clear away any romanticism we might associate with desert spirituality: "[The] desert is, preeminently, a place to die. Anyone retreating to an Egyptian or Judean monastery, hoping to escape the tensions of city life, found little comfort among the likes of an Anthony or a Sabas. The desert offered no private therapeutic place for solace and rejuvenation. One was more likely to be carried out feet first than to be restored unchanged to the life one had left."

I know I sense my fears and restlessness - my powerlessness, too - now that the quiet has started. When I read about the recently formed government in Israel, I ache for the continued suffering of Palestine - and Israel, too - as settlements are violated and fears and hatred inflamed. When I catch a snippet of news about the Iran nuclear negotiations, I gag at the stupidity and posturing so many engage in as if negotiations and peace is inferior to war-making and belligerence. When I look at the growing list of bizarre presidential candidates in the US or the ever-growing sorrow of Nepal in the aftermath of the earthquake, part of me chafes at being on sabbatical. Yet such is part of this discipline, yes?  I really am mostly powerless.  I really am mostly irrelevant. I really only have this day to share with those whose lives I can touch - so why waste it on things I cannot change?

Tonight as we get ready to call it a day, I am grateful for the slowly down. I am grateful, too for the reminder of my truly small place in the midst of all creation. And I am grateful to do what I can for peace, beauty and hope. This prayer has been running around my head today:

Christ be with me, Christ within me,

Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me.
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,

Christ in hearts of all that love me

Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

The old Fillmore East...

One more quick one:  on our last day in NYC we went by the old Fillmore East for old times sake.  I saw countless concerts there with my brother as well as various girlfriends and band mates Ross and Ken. It was a gas to be back but sad that it has become, like everything else, a freakin' bank. Here's what is posted outside...

Of biblical proportions..

We are moving very slowly today.  It took us much longer yesterday to get to Roanoke, VA than we planned - mostly because of a wicked harsh thunder storm.  We ran into it twice! There was hail, there was fog, there was gnashing of teeth and fear of destruction in biblical proportions.

so... in the spurt of chill we decided to stay another night in Roanoke and slip into Nashville on Friday.  Good call - we found a hip section of town in the SW with coffee shops and bookstores. Now, after a deep nap, we'll take it slow, wander into the downtown for dinner and live music with a gentle Southern groove. I

Celebrating our 20th anniversary...

We had a great day celebrating our 20th anniversary. These pictures were taken during dinner at Jules - a French bistro on St.Mark's Place - and it was grand.

The genius of Van Ronk...

I have been reading Dave Van Ronk's memoir, The Mayor of MacDougal Street, while staying in the East Village. If the Beatles were the catalyst for my learning the guitar - and they were - then Van Ronk's finger picking, blues guitar work was my inspiration in the folkie realm. At the tender age of 15 I practiced his "Cocaine Blues" over and over until I could play that riff in my sleep. He was tougher than all the rest of the pretty players and had a smart-ass mouth and wicked sense of humor to boot.  Forty years later I even named my local TV show after his song, "Sunday Street."

One of the early memories Van Ronk brings up has to do with the internecine battles over ideology and art that dominated the political and cultural Left in Greenwich Village back in the 50s and 60s. His recollection bears none of the romance or idealism perpetuated by other accounts of this era. Rather the way he tells it, there were the dominate commissars of culture - the Communist Party Stalinists - and everyone else from anarchists to social democrats. This fits with the reflections Michael Harrington made thirty years ago in his recollection of his days in Greenwich Village. Given the cultural hegemony of these commissars, the emphasis was rarely on the beauty of the music or the artistry of the performer. No, the goal was to foment dissent and energize participation in the emerging civil rights and union movements. Politics and ideology were more important than creativity.

In various accounts, Bob Dylan notes that this obsession with ideology nearly drove him out of music-making. If he hadn't heard the Beatles on a car radio while en route to New Orleans, he might have chucked the whole thing. You can hear this shift on his third album, Another Side of Bob Dylan, and then full blown on Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde. You can hear the tension of the times in the way Dylan is introduced at Newport - earnest and dedicated young troubadour for justice - and the ultra-personal, goofy song he opens with:  All I Really Want To Do.

A decade earlier, ideological purity was even more oppressive in the Village folk scene.  So Van Ronk cites commentaries from men and women who once worked with the CP during the civil war in Spain or the rise of Hitler in Germany to emphasize his point. To a person these former CP warriors spoke of the viciousness of their Party bosses. They recounted how many of their free thinking buddies had been slaughtered or sacrificed by comrades in pursuit of a higher good. The now deceased folk singer concludes that their testimony - plus his own rebellious spirit - made him a bold anti-Communist from a young age.

No wonder I was attracted to Van Ronk - and the "other side" of Bob Dylan - and let's not forget Frank Zappa. Each of these artists celebrated creativity rather that ideology and honored real human beings over abstract political goals. They were poets and artists who. like T.S. Elliot before them, asked: "Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge> Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? What life have you in you have not life together?"

Van Ronk was an early champion and interpreter of Joni Mitchell, another artist who valued both art and the creative spirit within real people. Even before I understood ideology, I was drawn to the art not the politics. I still am. Perhaps that is why I find such satisfaction in the current writing that David Brooks is exploring. I know that this quest shapes much of this sabbatical.  This morning's column found Brooks asking, "What is your purpose?"

Every reflective person sooner or later faces certain questions: What is the purpose of

my life? How do I find a moral compass so I can tell right from wrong? What should I do day by day to feel fulfillment and deep joy? As late as 50 years ago, Americans could consult lofty authority figures to help them answer these questions. Some of these authority figures were public theologians. Reinhold Niebuhr was on the cover of Time magazine. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote about everything from wonder to sin to civil rights. Harry Emerson Fosdick wrote a book called “On Being a Real Person” on how to live with integrity…

All of that went away over the past generation or two. It is hard to think of any theologian with the same public influence that Niebuhr and Heschel had. Intellectuals are given less authority and are more specialized. They write more for each other and are less likely to volley moral systems onto the public stage. These days we live in a culture that is more diverse, decentralized, interactive and democratized. The old days when gray-haired sages had all the answers about the ultimate issues of life are over. But new ways of having conversations about the core questions haven’t yet come into being. Public debate is now undermoralized and overpoliticized. We have many shows where people argue about fiscal policy but not so many on how to find a vocation or how to measure the worth of your life. In fact, we now hash out our moral disagreement indirectly, under the pretense that we’re talking about politics, which is why arguments about things like tax policy come to resemble holy wars.

As I pray this morning about Palestine and Israel, the truthful and dishonest expressions in the media of Islamaphobia, the recent shootings in Texas, the President's words of love about forgotten children of color I am convinced of two things:  the spirit of Van Ronk continues to make sense to me. Ideology restricts and wounds while art expands and heals.  

Today is our 20th anniversary: we'll spend the better part of it at The Strand - a massive bookstore at E 12th and Broadway - and then share dinner at a French bistro. Tomorrow we head for Roanoke, VA en route to Nashville. Not long ago some one asked me why we decided to get married on May 5th? "Did it have something to do with Cinco de Mayo?" No, I smiled, it was because of a Bob Dylan song...

When we are lost, then we are shapeable...

The world continues spinning on without me as our sabbatical journey ripens. As Rabbi Heschel said something like: Practicing Sabbath is a holy act of humility that helps us know that if God can get by without us for 24 hours, maybe we can live into trusting God for the rest of our time, too.  Today we're off to the Museum of Modern Art and then... who knows what?

My reflections on Jazz Vespers can be found over on Jazz for the Journey @ https://jazzforthejourney. wordpress. com/events-list/.  And this reflection from the rabbis over at Marking the Omer, a short passage by Mark Nepo, speaks to me as the journey continues.  Blessings.

Being lost can be a prelude to a deeper way, because once we admit that we’re not sure where life is taking us, then we are ripe for transformation. Then we are shapeable. When losing our way, we frequently retreat and withhold or take what we think is a safer path. This often complicates our confusion. An old woodsman told me that the reason most people get lost is because they don’t go far enough. They doubt where they are and change direction too soon. Somehow we are called to lean forward by what little light we are given.**  Mark Nepo

Let me also call your attention to a post by Parker Palmer over at Krista Tippett's most excellent site: ON BEING.  Palmer is one of my favorites and I was deeply moved by his words this weekend.  Chec it out @ http://www.onbeing.org/blog/laughter-silence-the-spiritual-odd-couple/7515?utm_source=On+Being+Newsletter&utm_campaign=9aa47b0363-20150502_Mohammed_Fairouz_Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1c66543c2f-9aa47b0363-69812713

The simmering time of soul repair...

Ok, so it takes some time for a new groove to emerge, yes? Last week was my last Sunday in

worship for four months; today is the first Sunday of our sabbatical. I worked a few days last week - mostly checking in with my staff and following up a few details - but then we headed out of town one day early, too. "Why wait around when we're all packed?" we  said to one another. So we didn't.

The Lilly Foundation folk recommend that the front end of a sabbatical include a transition time for slowing down. Born of experience, this practice not only creates space to let your old work habits slip away into temporary irrelevance, but also gives you time to think about and feel what this departure means.  It is part of refreshing an integrated body/mind - and I am beginning to sense why such a reprieve must be done slowly. First, new disciplines of the soul never take root on the cheap. In asking my spiritual director in Cleveland about how I might partake of a smorgasbord of Lenten deprivations, he smiled and said, "Man, see if you can just light one candle each day and sit quietly for 20 minutes. Go slowly because nobody changes when they are in a hurry."

Yesterday, after walking and getting caught up in the buzz of Gotham, we came back to the apartment for a nap. I crashed soundly for 30 minutes but then felt slightly agitated at the thought of simply sitting quietly for the rest of the evening. No TV, no CD player, no movement while the heart of Saturday night raced on in the East Village all around me. It was a little unnerving to realize how uncomfortable I felt just being. And so the wise ones say: give yourself a few weeks of transition time.

Second, after being on the go for the past eight years doing the work of church renewal, I am not very good with connecting my inner restlessness with any of the time-tested contemplative practices designed to help me go into the darkness. Vacations are one thing - and mini-get-aways are sweet - but they do not nurture introspection. Rather, they work to distract or diminish my frenetic interior, not bring it healing. Such soul repair is something this type of sabbatical is supposed to support.  There is no product to this time away - I don't have to write a book or come back with a presentation - rather I have been given the privilege of resting and reflecting. 

As the foundation's promotional material puts it:  time, space, resources and ministry have been set aside so that I might rediscover what makes my soul sing? Yes, I've paid my dues in my current ministry - and my life-long commitment to the church - and this sabbatical honors that with care and respect. But this encounter is NOT about looking backwards; it is grace to go into the future with refreshment, faith, hope and love. This is about cultivating gravitas in concert with renewed contemplative practices. As Gertrud Mueller-Nelson wrote: nothing of value comes into being quickly - not a birth, not a living plant, not wisdom or good soup -- it all takes simmering time before it is ready.

Today, for example, my first Sunday away from my faith community, we are simply drinking tea,

eating biscotti and reading the NY Times.  I am taking time to think and write; Di is taking time to learn about her new camera.  Later this afternoon we'll take a cab uptown to St. Peter's Church for 5 pm Jazz Vespers. This is one of the birthing centers of jazz liturgy in America and I want to check out how they do it. Then, we'll take another cab over to have dinner with the kids in Brooklyn. Mike is cooking a spaghetti sauce with ground lamb and we'll get to play with Louie one more time.

For years I have said that one of my favorite Psalms is 131:

LORD, I am not high-minded : I have no proud  looks.

I do not exercise myself in great matters : which are too high for me.

But I refrain my soul, and keep it low, like as a child that is weaned from his mother : yea, my soul is even as a weaned child.

O Israel, trust in the Lord : from this time forth for evermore.

Now I get the chance to live into it slowly.  Thanks be to God.

     

Jazz for the journey continues...

Another sweet day in the Village. Check it out @ hhttps://jazzforthejourney.
wordpress.com/events-list/
. And don't forget to click on Di's pictures there, too.

Trouble comin' every day... still!

Last night I got a quick note from one of my dearest, long-time friends, RR. He taught me the first guitar chords I ever played, we formed a rock'n'roll garage band back in the day, went to the same church, sang in the same choirs and shared a love for Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. One of the first songs we ever played in church was Zappa's reflection on the riots in Watts, a song that continues to be prophetic 50 years later, "Trouble Comin' Every Day." 

Zappa was an iconoclast with a prescient wisdom concerning America politics, economics, popular culture and absurdity. He was a master of marketing - albeit with a barbed wit and wicked eye for detail.  Oddly enough, while in Woodstock just two days ago, I bought this little memento of a former Zappa poster that used to proclaim  Phi Zappa Krappa.

And now we're back in the East Village on sabbatical 50 years later - we'll stroll past both the former Garrick Theatre - where we first saw FZ - and then the Fillmore East - now a freakin' bank - where we saw the Mothers countless times. Sadly, not only are America's streets going to burn yet again, the racial/economic divide is greater than ever. I was encouraged to read this morning that police violence was being faced head-on by Baltimore's prosecutor all the while knowing what an impossible and polarized job it is in law enforcement. Bad, brutal and vicious
behavior must be challenged. So too the agonizing paradox facing police officers on our mean streets.  Some young newscaster said "I never thought I would see such a militarization on the streets of America."  And all I could think was "How old are you son?" It is a sad, hard time that will get much worse...

Well, I seen the fires burnin'
And the local people turnin'
On the merchants and the shops
Who used to sell their brooms and mops
And every other household item
Watched the mob  on tt turn and bite 'em
And they say it served 'em right
Because a few of them are white,
And it's the same across the nation
Black and white discrimination
Yellin' "You can't understand me!"
'N all that other jazz they hand me
In the papers and TV and
All that mass stupidity
That seems to grow more every day
Each time you hear some nitwit say
He wants to go and do you in
Because the color of your skin
Just don't appeal to him
(No matter if it's black or white)
Because he's out for blood tonight

I love the country but I can't stand the scene...

We are now hanging in the East Village until Wednesday.  We have a small, very Zen 6 floor walk up on E. 12th just a few blocks from Tompkins Square Park.  We are getting a work out both coming and going to say nothing of the fun of exploring this great neighborhood.  For an overview of this day, please go to Jazz for the Journey @ https://jazzforthejourney.wordpress. com/events-list/ Di is posting some great pictures of each day at that site too, so please check it out.

(our temporary residence)

Two odd thoughts have been swimming around in my head since we left yesterday.  First, watching the demonstrations in both Baltimore and Philadelphia on TV - and then switching channels to see all the hawking BS that fills the airwaves most of the time - I was reminded once again of the HUGE gap that has been growing between rich and poor. I am not saying anything new or wise, but this has been brewing for a long time.  I can remember being in seminary riding to a pastoral visit with mentor Swartzy. As we drove by small clusters of young African-American men standing around various corners and shops he said BACK IN THE EARLY 80's:  Almost nothing we do seems to help - and it is going to get much worse before it gets better.  As everyone wrestles with how to make things better, it feels as if we are getting closer to hitting bottom than ever before. I pray for our cities and our people - those who are pushing the envelope of racial and economic justice along with city administrators and law enforcement staff - as summer grows closer.

The other thought comes from Leonard Cohen who once said:  I love the country but I can't stand the scene.  I get that. It rings true to me, too. I love the promise and possibility of my homeland, but Jesus there is so much that is broken, decadent and violent within and among us. I've decided that in all the places we stop during this first phase of the trip I'm going to ask the people I meet along the way to "tell me some of their story." I want to hear how our people talk about their lives. Yesterday, a clerk at the hotel said that he had moved away from Kingston, NY for work five years ago. "I learned a lot - I worked for a consulting firm - and I wouldn't trade a day for it. But after a while living out of a suitcase in a hotel got old. And having no social life outside of work got real old, too. But mostly I missed the beauty of the country and being close to my family. So now when I get done for the day, I drive out past the reservoir and just smile as the sun goes down. Life it too short to waste, man..."

I will share more stories as I hear them - and hold them all close in prayer - maybe you can, too?