seek ye the welfare of the city...

Yesterday our small city received a "body blow" when Sabic Innovative Plastics announced the

closure of its Pittsfield manufacturing base. Not only does this eliminate 300 high paying, high-tech jobs from the region, with the corresponding economic distress created when families and individuals relocate to Houston or elsewhere, but it also re-opens an ugly and as yet unresolved psychological wound in the body politic. Since the mid 80's our town - and the entire Western Massachusetts region - has been struggling to overcome the loss of manufacturing jobs - including the massive trauma caused in 1986 when General Electric closed its power transformer division. In addition to poisoning our waters for generations to come with PCB's, the exodus GE solidified a type of social anxiety and despair. Sabic's absence - while logical and even understandable within a larger context - adds insult to the soul of an already injured city.

The signs of our community's suffering are real: increased street violence and gang activity, a widening gap between the affluent and the working poor, a mass transportation system that struggles to meet the needs of a 24/7 economy, political bickering and stagnation and a regular loss of young people to more vibrant and financially rewarding places. The median age in Pittsfield is currently 49 years in comparison to the 37 years of the rest of Massachusetts. Most of our citizens earn less than $40K per year (the median income is $45K vs. the $66K of the rest of the state.) And despite a cadre of committed and creative ecumenical and inter-faith leaders, more and more folk find organized religion irrelevant to their lives. We. like the Pacific North West, have truly become not just a post-Christian community, but a post-religion realm. The objective reasons for our collective gloom are real and not likely to change in the near future.

And herein lies the unique challenge of this moment for faith-based organizations: a radical ministry of presence.  The Hebrew prophet, Jeremiah, was advised by the Lord not to sink into melancholia nor deny the suffering of those he loved. Rather, he was to "seek the welfare of the city."

Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.

My experience in other post-industrial ministries - and contemplative hunch born of taking a long, loving look at what is real -- suggests that there are three components to such a ministry of presence:

+ First, a worship encounter that nourishes, comforts and challenges us to become our best selves. There must be refreshment rather than judgment. There must be space and quiet and beauty in this maelstrom of uncertainty. And there must be solid and clear teaching about how to nourish the peace that passes understanding both within ourselves and throughout the wider community.

+ Second, a compassionate alternative to the status quo.  A ministry of presence can quietly change the beauty and safety of a blighted region if there is the will and sufficient prayer. When I lived in Cleveland, Fr. Jim O'Donnell and the small Caritas community systematically planted community gardens throughout the East Side ghetto. They worked with Habitat for Humanity and others to reclaim entire city blocks house by house. They ministered to those most in need of food and created a retreat/prayer center in the heart of the chaos.

+ Third, an organized, focus faith-based challenge to the political and economic

leadership of our town. There are a variety of no-brainers that would make a huge difference for our community right now including relocating the Police Department from its current address so that downtown parking might flourish. But there isn't the political will - nor the organized power - to move key players off the dime of maintaining a dysfunctional status quo. Berkshire Interfaith Organizing has the potential to be this catalyst but it is still in its birthing phase.

People of faith understand that despair is not the end of the story. It is part of our reality, without a doubt, but not the conclusion. Nature, the first book of Scripture, teaches us a similar truth: autumn arrives with signs of death but also scatters the seeds of new life. We are moving into a profound season of autumnal truth. This moment needs those who, like Thomas Merton, could see the "hidden wholeness within the broken moment." Like countless others, I am saddened by yet another economic burden to this beautiful community. So let it be unto us like the words of Jesus to the leaders of his day:  you can read the signs of the sky but cannot discern the signs of the time.

Our time requires a radical ministry of presence: an energized and organized coalition of compassion, spiritual renewal and social action. There are no magic bullets. No new manufacturing enterprises to come to the rescue. There is just faith and our God-given creatitity.  Lord, may it be so among us.

     

The play/prayer imperative...

It is fascinating (to me) that 47 years after writing Feast of Fools, Harvey Cox's little book still

rings true - and vital. In a chapter entitled, "Christ as Harlequin," Cox writes: "Not only are prayer and play analogous, but their kinship provides us with a sound contemporary access to both our religious tradition and the future." He adds that Hugo Rahner, the Roman Catholic philosopher and author of Man (sic) at Play, describes play in words that could be used almost verbatim to describe prayer.

To play is to yield oneself to a kind of magic, to enact to oneself the absolutely other, to pre-empt the future, to give the lie to the inconvenient world of fact. In play earthly realities become, of a sudden, things of the transient moment, presently left behind, then disposed of and buried in the past; the mind is prepared to accept the unimagined and incredible, to enter a world where different laws apply, to be relieved of all the weights that bear it down, to be free, kingly (sic ?), unfettered and divine.

What greater insight into the importance of learning/relearning the transformative power of imagination, play and prayer? In a realm that continues to be addicted to the bottom line - the results obsessed world of Donald Trump et al - the world of play and prayer becomes imperative: how else can we trust God's grace and claim a foretaste of the eternal within the present moment?  If my sabbatical gave me no other gift (and it did) it would be what it feels like to rest and trust without fretting for four months. Now I am hungry to reclaim not the abandon of that time (completely) but the blessing within the core of my return to ministry. 

Jesus looked him hard in the eye - and loved him...

So today I started a whole new way - for me - of preparing my message for Sunday. After a few

hours of serious Bible/word study, I zeroed-in on a three questions. My hope is that while sharing some of the Biblical context, we might have a modest conversation about:

1) Do you know the fundamentals of holy intimacy? My take on the assigned gospel text in Mark 10 is that the person who meets Jesus on the road aches for more meaning in his life. He is serious. He has learned the essentials and fundamentals. He keeps the commandments. The text literally says that he falls to his knees in reverence and implores Jesus: What must I do? He is on a quest for more vitality, more intimacy, more meaning and his searching is not contrived. He wants to know how to go deeper.  So I want to hear from my folk about where they learned to pray - or if they learned to pray - and where they learned about serving one another in humility - and how they learned to trust God's grace?  My sense is that you can't go deeper without learning the basics. You can FEEL the aching, of course, but without a context it is all too easy to go "looking for love in all the wrong places." So, first we start with the basics. Additionally,, sometimes we've only learned a part of the sacred Trinity in Micah 6:8 concerning what does the Lord require? Justice, compassion and humbled awe. I am eager to see what shakes out with this first question.

2) What is saving your life right now? This, of course comes from Barbara Brown Taylor, and I think it is at the heart of the dialogue Jesus has with the rich young man. I believe that there are clues in our ordinary lives where God's grace, hope, love and truth are breaking through if we but take the time to name and claim them. When we do, my experience has been that they will point us towards the next step in going deeper into "eternal life." And let's be clear that eternal life is not so much about heaven, but more about living into experiences and truths that are... eternal. Essential. Sacred and human at the same time. I don't think we can go deeper into the heart of God without finding tastes of the eternal in our every day experiences. How does the Psalmist put it? Taste - and see? So I'm eager to hear where my community is finding salvation in their lives right now.

3) Do you trust God's love more than your fears?  After discerning that this soul is the real deal - not some user or poser - Jesus looks at this man hard in the eye and loves him. He not only authenticates this seeker's searching, but wants to help him take the next step. And that only comes from love. You can't scold, shame, educate or lecture a person into trusting love. They have to experience it. Last week's gospel told of Jesus speaking tenderly to the people. This week the emphasis is on loving. In both cases, the love empowers the trust; and trust leads to following in ways we could never imagine if left to our own thoughts or fears. The rich young man is loved by Jesus so that he might come to love God even more. Peterson's translation is potent: 

Jesus looked him hard in the eye—and loved him! "There’s one thing left: Go sell whatever you own and give it to the poor. All your wealth will then be heavenly wealth. And come follow me.” Sadly, the Bible continues:  The man’s face clouded over.This was the last thing he expected to hear, and he walked off with a heavy heart. He was holding on tight to a lot of things, and not about to let go.

This is a heart-breaking conclusion - one that rings true to my experience. The young man left because "he was holding on tight to a lot of things and not about to let go." Who has NOT been in this boat?  My hunch is that this is true for all of us at different stages in our lives. And the good news is that the invitation to trust is never rescinded.  Now we may see as through a glass darkly, but later we shall see face to face. Now we may only trust a little bit, but that isn't the end of the story. 

My experience of grace and God's love is that God is always waiting for me to reconsider. To repent. To turn around and return to the love that has always been waiting for me since before the start of creation. That's where I think we're going with all of this on Sunday - plus a wonderful folk song with my musical colleagues as well as a Horace Silver jazz duet on piano and bass. I'll keep you posted...

credits:

1) art and music @ www.yorkartgallery.org.uk

2) state of love and trust @ www.pinterest.com

I'm going home...

One of my musical colleagues asked me tonight: "How does this song work - fit - into Sunday's worship?" It was a good question because, as is periodically true for me, the gentle folk song I asked them to rehearse has no obvious religious connotations. The song in question is Lisa Null's haunting and tender, "I'm Going Home to Georgia." The lyrics are:

My body is tired, my spirit is burned

I'm going home to Georgia
My poor heart is aching with all that I've learned
I'm going home to Georgia

Pour me a drink; it'll settle my thirst
You always knew what I loved best
Maybe it'll dampen this pain in my chest
I'm going home to Georgia

After all that I've traveled and all that I've seen
I'm going home to Georgia
It's none of your business just where I've been
I'm going home to Georgia

Sing me song; set my spirit at rest
You know all the tunes I love best
Maybe it'll lighten this weight on my chest
I'm going home to Georgia

I've brought you a secret as true as a rose
I'm going home to Georgia
The more tarnished it gets the brighter it glows
I'm going home to Georgia

In all of my wanderings I could never forget
You were the one I loved best
Lay yourself down, put your head on my breast
I'm going home to Georgia

Each of my musical partners had a distinctive perspective on this tune. One connected with the world weary nature of some of the words while another felt that it was a song of recognition - not resignation - where the singer sensed that now was a time for rest. Another heard the essence of a Psalm in this song without any explicit religious language. I discerned the Psalter too and sensed this to be a tender and mature confession: after trying everything else in life and finding no lasting satisfaction, the poet chooses to return to a sacred and safe place that feels like home. As we talked - and they layered in sweet harmonies - it struck me that this might actually be an amplification or corollary to Psalm 131:

O LORD, I am not proud;
    I have no haughty looks.

I do not occupy myself with great matters,
    or with things that are too hard for me.

But I still my soul and make it quiet,
like a child upon its mother's breast; 
    my soul is quieted within me.

I am using it in connection with Sunday's gospel where a genuinely religious person asks Jesus what is necessary for a life of integrity and value? This man is a true seeker - one who prays and observes the commandments - but believes there is still something deeper to discover. But when Jesus tells him he must give up his wealth and follow as a disciple, this young man's face "clouded over for this was the last thing he expected to hear. So he walked off with a heavy heart because he was holding on tight to a lot of things and was not about to let go." (Mark 10, The Message.)

I've been there - holding on to a lot of things and not yet about to let go - maybe you have, too? Maybe I still am in some ways?  But I have also experienced - and who knows why or how - that sometimes a moment comes to us like a song and helps us realize that we need to "go home." To rest. To lay our heads down on the breast of the one who loves us better than ourselves and simply let grace lift our souls and spirits from their weariness. Last week I read the scripture: come unto me all ye who are tired and heavy-laden and I will give you rest. Learning to own and name our weariness - and lay our heads down upon the breast of grace - is something so many of us ache for. 

And one of the best ways to recognize our aching is to encounter it obliquely - on the slant, if you will - through music (or art or poetry or film.) My hope is that this song will help us sense the aching in our hearts so that we, too can let ourselves rest and be refreshed by the blessings and safety of God's home we know as grace. Serendipitously, the other music for this week's Sunday feast includes Horace Silver's compositon "Peace" and Brahms' take on Psalm 51: create in my a clean heart O God and renew a right spirit within me. Classical hymns, jazz, American folk music and Brahams shared in community: what a GREAT way to honor the Lord.

Speaking tenderly from my heart...

The time has finally come for me just to speak to my faith community from my heart. Writing

sermons - even in my old style that allowed for lots of spontaneity - is done. In whatever time I have left in this realm, I really need to reflect from my heart about how the gospel can change our lives if we are open to the Spirit. I sensed I should go there after returning from sabbatical but wimped-out last week. Oh well, no more.  People - my congregation included - don't need more ideas. Or fancy words. Or exciting religious rhetoric.

Peterson's reworking of Romans 14 in The Message is brilliant - and oh so clear:

Welcome with open arms fellow believers who don’t see things the way you do. And don’t jump all over them every time they do or say something you don’t agree with—even when it seems that they are strong on opinions but weak in the faith department. Remember, they have their own history to deal with. Treat them gently....What’s important in all this is that if you keep a holy day, keep it for God’ssake; if you eat meat, eat it to the glory of God and thank God for prime rib; if you’re a vegetarian, eat vegetables to the glory of God and thank God for broccoli. None of us are permitted to insist on our own way in these matters. It’s God we are answerable to—all the way from life to death and everything in between—not each other. That’s why Jesus lived and died and then lived again: so that he could be our Master across the entire range of life and death, and free us from the petty tyrannies of each other.

So where does that leave you when you criticize a brother? And where does that leave you when you condescend to a sister? I’d say it leaves you looking pretty silly—or worse. Eventually, we’re all going to end up kneeling side by side in the place of judgment, facing God. Your critical and condescending ways aren’t going to improve your position there one bit. Read it for yourself in Scripture:

“As I live and breathe,” God says,
    “every knee will bow before me;
Every tongue will tell the honest truth
    that I and only I am God.”

So tend to your knitting. You’ve got your hands full just taking care of your own life before God.

In conversation with my staff today - and key lay leaders, too - they affirmed the call to simply speak to them clearly on Sunday mornings. I feel like a weight has been lifted from my soul.

Frère Jacques...

No matter how hard I tried, I could not get on top of today:  we were late arriving for

worship, I never picked-up the final draft of the liturgy, by the time we did a sound check it was time to start playing the "gathering music" and I still had to pee. What's more, no matter how hard we have tried to help Lucie (our dog) become more socialized, she just can't pick up the natural cues from other people or animals and continues to get freaked-out. And on a Sunday given over to the blessing of the animals - and we had a number of beautiful dogs plus two guinea pigs - her insecurity didn't help things go any smoother.

I discovered (after the fact) that the Psalm text I had was different from what was printed in the bulletin - which threw off our meditative music. So by the time I got to my message I felt rushed and incomplete - not a train wreck nor without value - but not the gentle conversation I had intended. Rumi's admonition about being careful about what we hope for comes to mind:

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

I should be suspicious
of what I want.

It was one of the days when no matter how I tried or felt, there was nothing I could do to make things turn out better. A wise person would have accepted this, owned her frustration as a simple fact and let it go. Like a fellow musician told me: "When you are practicing you really see what type of day you are having, right? Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, it all falls apart; other times things are popping and moving so smoothly all you can do is give thanks." But I didn't really pay attention to what is wise. So, once again today I had to learn that when events start to go South, I often try too hard to correct them - and it mostly never helps. I wind up frustrated and exhausted and my interaction with those I love becomes frayed.

Now here's the fascinating take away: several people spoke to me after worship today and told me how insightful they experienced my message and how comforting they found our meditative jazz. I am fretting - and they are grooving. Damn, if Rumi isn't right: I SHOULD be suspicious of what I want - and also what I think and feel, too. But besides our closing number "All God's Creatures (Children) Got Rhythm," the part of today's worship that spoke to my heart was a riff on "Frère Jacques." After talking about salvation as God's presence in our ordinary lives that brings us freedom, healing and hope - and asking people Barbara Brown Taylor's question "Where is your life being saved right now?" - I continued:

While in Montréal I rediscovered a children's song that began to save my life:Frère Jacques. Maybe, like me, you've known it all your life and learned to sing it phonetically. I really didn't know what the simple words meant until this summer.  It starts with a call to Frère Jacques - a friar - a brother by the name of James. Now a friar is one who cares for the whole community - he shares love, brings food and finds shelter for those in need, and encourages God's people to live lives of worship. But not as a priest - or as a pastor - or even as the abbot of a monastery. No, as a brother - an equal - one who loves the Lord without rank, authority or hierarchy. And here's the delightful thing I learned about this song this summer: it asks if the brother is resting - sleeping - because the bells of Matins are ringing. Sonnez les matines - the music of the morning's first office is sounding with the bells - so will you come join the community in prayer, please?

And then we sang Frère Jacques - first in unison and then as a round - and as often happens, when we sing in community spontaneously it is... heavenly. Later, Carlton masterfully incorporated it into his piano meditation during Eucharist, too. THAT felt right to me - like the unforced rhythms of grace Jesus mentioned in the reading from Matthew - which, of course, was the other take away: even when I am frustrated, fretting and frayed God still sends me something of the unforced rhythms of grace so that I might trust and rest. I know I am a slow, thick learner. So I give thanks for this day (in spite of myself!) Sonnez les matines, sonnez les matines, ding, dang, dong.

questions on the pilgrimage of vocation...

Today and tomorrow look to be days filled with sweet church commitments:  collecting funds for our October 18th CROP Walk to Fight World Hunger, an all-church potluck to share stories about our Montreal sabbatical, Sunday worship (and choir practice) followed by a rehearsal for our November 22 performance of Paul Winter's Missa Gaia. I LOVE these experiences of church: they are real, tender, dedicated to God and others and are saturated in prayer and beauty.

My love of these (and many other) aspects of church life often baffles those who have heard or

read about how deeply I feel constricted by the public role as pastor. Apparently shades of grey - or at least nuanced reflection - are in short supply these days. Certainly that is true within the body politic where quotes and deeds are taken out of context and used in the most simplistic but vicious forms of character assassination. I know that embracing paradox - what Richard Rohr calls non-dualistic thought - remains a minority report throughout the Body of Christ. So I shouldn't be surprised when my love of service, worship, liturgy, hymns, prayer, beauty and mission evokes a puzzled reaction. With the risk of oversimplifying, let me put it like this: just because I don't want to be squeezed into someone else's mold of what they think a pastor should look like, say or do, doesn't mean I have forsaken the discrete tasks of caring for the church. 

This takes a bit of sensitivity and creativity, I grant you, for it is not a sound bite.  Rather, I am wrestling with the complex notion of call and vocation.  Mostly it is an inward journey, but I also regularly write about aspects of this pilgrimage towards clarity, too. Parker Palmer in his little gem of a book, Listening to Your Life, makes this valuable insight:

The (old) concept of vocation is rooted in a deep distrust of selfhood, in the belief that the sinful self will always be "selfish" unless corrected by external forces of virtue. It is a notion that made me feel inadequate to the task of living my own life, creating guilt about the distance between who I was and who I was supposed to be, leaving me exhausted as I labored to close the gap. Today I understand vocation (and call) quite differently -- not as a goal to be achieved but as a gift to be received. Discovering vocation does not mean scrambling toward some prize just beyond my reach, but accepting the treasure of true self I already posses. Vocation does not come for a voice "out there" calling me to become something I am not. It comes from a voice "in here" calling me to be the person I was born to be, to fulfill the original selfhood given me at birth by God.

That rings true to me today - and has been true for me since I was 15 years old and "heard" the voice of Christ whispering to me during a creative arts liturgy at the Potter's House in DC: "You could do this, too."  What could I do? I could be connected to Christian community and blend the care of the soul with artistic creativity. I could help minimize the false dichotomy between the sacred and the so-called secular. I could live into a life of prayer, service, worship and acts of compassion in the Spirit of Christ without compromising my God-given identity. I could, if I was willing, take St. Paul up on his challenge in Romans 12 and NOT be squeezed into the conformity of my culture but live into the renewal of my mind.

I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters,by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual  worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect (mature.)

From the confines of his prison cell, Dietrich Bonhoeffer asked this question about the intersection of his faith, his soul and his calling in a poem that was published posthumously:

Who am I? They often tell me
I stepped from my cell’s confinement
Calmly, cheerfully, firmly,
Like a Squire from his country house.

Who am I? They often tell me
I used to speak to my warders
Freely and friendly and clearly,
As thought it were mine to command.

Who am I? They also tell me
I bore the days of misfortune
Equably, smilingly, proudly,
like one accustomed to win.

Am I then really that which other men tell of?
Or am I only what I myself know of myself?
Restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage,
Struggling for breath, as though hands were compressing my throat,
Yearning for colors, for flowers, for the voices of birds,
Thirsting for words of kindness, for neighborliness,
Tossing in expectations of great events,
Powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance,
Weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making,
Faint, and ready to say farewell to it all.

the Other?
Am I one person today and tomorrow another?
Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,
And before myself a contemptible woebegone weakling?
Or is something within me still like a beaten army
Fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?

Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am thine!

Palmer continues saying: "Sometimes I have responded to the demand (of my vocation) by ignoring the gift, or hiding it, or fleeing from it, or squandering it - and I think I am not alone. There is a Hasidic tale that reveals, with amazing brevity, both the universal tendency to want to be someone else and the ultimate importance of becoming one's self: Rabbi Zusya, when he was an old man, said, "In the coming world, they will not ask me: 'Why were you not Moses?' They will ask me: 'Why were you not Zusya?'" 

At this juncture in my journey, the accumulated cultural, theological and practical baggage associated with the word "pastor" strikes me as both worn-out and burdensome. Now please notice that I said "in MY journey." Not yours. Not all pastors.  Not even most. Just mine, ok? To borrow a phrase from Barbara Brown Taylor  that has helped me during my sabbatical: I can no longer live under the weight of being treated like the holiest person in the room. It is suffocating. Stifling. Boring. And fundamentally untrue. Does that make me any less a servant of God who lives within community and shares the grace of our Lord as best as I am able? I think not. It simply means I continue to become my full self: writer, musician, father, lover, grandfather, friend, almost senior citizen, dog owner, straight white male as well as clergy person.

Both Richard Rohr and Parker Palmer has written about an important lesson those of us in the second half of our lives discover:

We are disabused of our original gifts (from God) in the first half of our lives. Then - if we are awake, aware and able to admit our loss - we spend the second half trying to recover and reclaim the gifts we once possessed.

And so the day - and life - unfolds, yes? There is darkness and there is light. There is joy and sorrow alongside both celebration and despair. Holding the paradox of becoming fully alive while living in community is a challenge. It is one I continue to explore - and honor - and question, too. But that is who I have been since my first call 48 years ago and I pray that is who I shall continue to be until my last breath. When I was young I used to listen to this song over and over. It is a young man's song - and these day's I find myself resonating more with St. Dietrich than St. Country Joe.

Being conscious and loving...not stupid and cruel

"Whenever we do anything stupid, cruel, evil or destructive to ourselves or others," notes Fr. Richard Rohr, "we are at that moment unconscious - and unconscious of our identity If we were fully conscious, we would never do it. Loving people are always highly conscious people" (from Breathing Under Water, p. 91). He goes on to say:

To be fully conscious would be to love everything on some level and in some way - even our mistakes. To love is to fall into full consciousness, which is contemplative, non-dualistic and includes everything - even "the last enemy to be destroyed, which is death itself (I Corinthians 15: 26)

Last night was another long fit of sitting alone in the darkness fretting. I am, apparently, a world class, master-fretter even if I would rather give it up for good. So the question that begs asking is how might I come to love my fretting? I am unable to let it go, it seems to have a life of its own and it has been such a regular companion to my soul that I would probably feel lonely without its annoying presence. How, then, do I become fully conscious of love and the presence of the Lord even while bound by the contours of fretting? 

Three different wounded healers - who have served as life-long sages - offer some clues about discovering the blessing within the fretting. Jean Vanier writes that he has come to trust the insights of his body. Knowing that God's loving Word became flesh within and among us is an invitation to trust the wisdom of our bodies. What is at the heart of this fit of fretting? Where do I feel it in my flesh? And what message of love and freedom does it hold for me? "Spirituality," he writes in Becoming Human, "is being fully human... (and all too often) we are not clear about what it means to be human. We tend to reduce being human to acquiring knowledge, power and social status."  And yet so much of our true humanity is broken, weak and more accustomed to the lonely darkness than the light. So how do we love what is afraid, fearful and unattractive? Feeling this question in my body is the first clue towards acceptance: it is real, it hurts, my arms ache and I feel out of balance.

Vanier goes on to say that once we start to trust the wisdom of our bodies, we must carry this forward beyond solitude into community. Left to ourselves we will idealize the powerful and successful, fail to honor our senses and succumb to shame and loneliness. Parker Palmer, another of my spiritual mentors, writes about viewing the various stages of our humanity through the lens of a metaphor: the seasons of nature. "This is a wise metaphor for the movement of life... far richer and more promising and real than life as battlefield or a game of chance. The notion that our lives are like the eternal cycle of the seasons does not deny the struggle or the joy, the loss or the gain, the darkness or the light, but encourages us to embrace it all - and to find in all of it opportunities for growth."

Autumn, for example, is fundamentally about discovering in what is visible "the hidden wholeness" of all creation. The fall leaves are beautiful but they point to death; within that death, however, is also nature's scattering of seeds so that new life will take place. Winter brings us face to face with death, but in a way that carries "the gift of utter clarity." There are no illusions or clutter in the "winter landscape... so we have a chance to see ourselves and each other with utter clarity."  He continues: "Until we enter boldly into the fears we most want to avoid, they will dominate our lives. But when we walk directly into them... we can learn what they have to teach us." Spring is not just about the wild abundance of new life, but how that new life emerges from the humus - the mud - to bring humility to birth. Spring teaches that:

If we want to save our lives, we cannot cling to them but must spend them with abandon. When we are obsessed with bottom lines and productivity, with efficiency of time and motion, with the rational relation of means and ends, with projecting reasonable goals and making a beeline toward them, it seems unlikely that our work will ever bear full fruit, unlikely that we will ever know the fullness of spring in our lives.

And summer, filled with flowers, corn, fruit and greenery, shows us that "nature normally takes us through a reliable cycle of scarcity and abundance...summer is a communal act, the joint creation of an incredibly complex ecology in which each part functions on behalf of the whole, and in return, is sustained by the whole." It is, you see, the essence of community made real in the seasons and our senses. Palmer joins Vanier on the counter-cultural value of community. All by ourselves, we run "headlong into a culture that insists, against all evidence, that we can make whatever kind of life we want, whenever we want it." It is the same culture that hides and denies the presence of sickness, old age, wounds and shadows. Only in an alternative culture - one that honors weakness, fretting, fear and all the rest - can we begin to "see that our own weakness is not something to be judged, something negative, but something to be appreciated" just as we ourselves are appreciated in community. Only when "we belong and have a place," Vanier concludes, will we start to love all the weak and unattractive parts of our lives that we try to disguise

Rohr's work with AA has led him to a similar conclusion:  community is essential for living into

our shadows and failures. When we are held up by trust and compassion, we learn to accept and celebrate vulnerability. We no longer have to fake being successful. We no longer have to submit ourselves to the shame and lies that lock us out of love. As we share our pain, addiction, shame and fear with others who have lived these things just as vividly as ourselves and own them albeit imperfectly, we discover a common humanity. We find hope in the middle of our despair and light within the darkness. 

Feeling the essence of fretting (or anxiety or fear or shame) in my body - learning from the cycle of the seasons - and risking vulnerability in a safe and trustworthy community helps me not only make sense of my fretting, but also to honor its wisdom. To love it. Like autumn, I am learning to wait for the hidden wholeness. And while I am a LONG way from doing this consistently, every time I practice these three steps, I find that they are liberating. Not in changing the facts on the ground, but in helping me live fully as a human being in the midst of them.

At the close of today's posting, Richard Rohr included this stunning poem from the works of Ranier Maria Rilke. It, too, brought me to sacred ground and grounded my fretting in humble love. 

I'm too alone in the world, yet not alone enough
            to make each hour holy.
            I'm too small in the world, yet not small enough
            to be simply in your presence, like a thing--

            just as it is.

            I want to know my own will
            and to move with it.
            And I want, in the hushed moments
            when the nameless draws near,
            to be among the wise ones--
            or alone.

           

            I want to mirror your immensity.
            I want never to be too weak or too old
            to bear the heavy, lurching image of you.
 

            I want to unfold.
            Let no place in me hold itself closed,
            for where I am closed, I am false.
            I want to stay clear in your sight.

            I would describe myself
            like a landscape I've studied
            at length, in detail;
            like a word I'm coming to understand;
            like a pitcher I pour from at mealtime;
            like my mother's face;
            like a ship that carried me
            when the waters raged. 

Abruptly Jesus broke into prayer... and then returned to the people with tenderness.

Yesterday at Eucharist I heard anew one of my favorite chapters in all of Scripture:  Matthew 11. Like most preachers and teachers, I have cherry-picked parts of this text to both illuminate my take on the call of Christ, and,to  fortify my prejudices. There is, of course, an upside and a downside to this practice. Positively, I have been able to emphasize the radical nature of God's grace - especially as articulated in 11: 28-30 - where Jesus says:  Are you tired? Burdened? Come to me I shall give ye rest. Negatively, I have not always done justice to the the context of this passage - and that's what was broken open for me yesterday as we discussed the fascinating wisdom and challenge of the story in Matthew 11.

+ First, John the Baptist wonders whether Jesus really IS the real deal.  In essence, the student takes on his mentor and replies to John's worries:  go and tell John what you see, ok? The blind see, the lame walk... the dead are raised and the wretched of the earth learn that God is on their side. There's no arguing with the facts on the ground and with this John recedes from the gospel story. 

+ Second, Jesus starts to rant - I'm not kidding - rant. First it is  about the dimness of his disciples but then he goes on about a number of other so-called faithful souls - who "are like spoiled children!" How can I account for this generation... they whine like spoiled children...they complain about John the Baptist being too ascetic and then carp about me being a party-boy lush. It is fascinating to me to see this in the Bible because it happens at clergy gatherings all the time.

+ Third, in Peterson's translation, "Jesus let fly on the cities where he had worked the hardest but whose people had responded the least." This is a rant beyond convention boundaries: Woe and doom to you all... just wait 'til Judgment Day comes. And then, out of the blue, we read rather "abruptly Jesus broke into prayer." It is  like the Holy Spirit grabbed him and shook some sense into him  because when the text resumes we're told "that Jesus returned to speaking to the people, but now tenderly." I guess he got it out of his system because after his prayer he said:

The Father has given me all these things to do and say. This is a unique Father-Son operation, coming out of Father and Son intimacies and knowledge. No one knows the Son the way the Father does, nor the Father the way the Son does. But I’m not keeping it to myself; I’m ready to go over it line by line with anyone willing to listen. Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.

Two quick thoughts about all of this:  1) It shows us something of the Lord's humanity for even Jesus can become blunt, exasperated and harsh while trying to figure out how to do ministry; and 2) the Holy Spirit works on Christ as she also works upon us: nourishing the very gifts of the Spirit that evoke and share tenderness in the flesh.  I am so glad the people at Eucharist asked me to explore the context of the story: it makes it even more wonderful. There is a humor and a humanity to Jesus that only becomes clear when real people gather to tease out the deeper truths. Thanks be to God.