celebrating the wisdom of the mystical...

Sometime in the 90's I discovered a word for the way I experienced, understood and loved the Lord our God: mystic. Growing up, my desire for the holy, my experience with the sacred and my understanding of divinity was different from than the doctrines articulated by my rational mentors. Not better, of course, but never worse. In time I learned that I was created to explore the wisdom of the heart rather than only the realm of intellectual reason. But my tradition, New England Congregationalism, had long lost touch with its roots in the ecstatic encounters of the early Puritans. 

Some of my spiritual ancestors had found a home in an evolving transcendentalism as heirs of Emerson. Others remained steadfast in the supremacy of a Reformed intellect and its canon of principled dogma. So I stayed silent in worship most days - treasuring the touch of the host during Holy Communion, weeping during a variety of hymns and day dreaming of a deeper intimacy with God - even as I sat in the old, plain white Sanctuary that was simultaneously beautiful and sobering. Like many of my tribe, I quit attending worship after high school but read voraciously. From the New Testament to Herman Hesse - as well as Kerouac, Ginsberg, Merton and Bonhoeffer - my spiritual journey took a decidedly cerebral course. 

My understanding of mysticism was shaped by this typical dictionary definition: Mystic - of or relating to mysteries or esoteric rites and the occult; obscure, enigmatic, inducing feelings of awe and wonder, having magical properties. (Merriam-Webster) Never was a mystic spoken of like this competing description: a person who seeks by contemplation and self-surrender to obtain unity with or absorption into the Deity or the absolute, or who believes in the spiritual apprehension of truths that are beyond the intellect. Once, as a young adult on a church retreat where we were talking about our deepest longings, I blurted out, "I want to see God face to face." Silence and anxiety were the only response. I learned early on to keep my yearning to myself.

Somewhere in the 70's, however, I was turned on to both Fr. Ed Hays of the Shantivanam

Retreat House in rural Kansas (check it out: http://www.americancatholic. org/Messenger /Jun1996/feature2.asp) and also Fr. Matthew Fox and his writing about Hildegard of Bingen. His emerging creation spirituality and articulation of a spirituality called compassion also spoke to my soul. (see http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com /books/reviews/view/2115) From these pilgrims it was just a hop, skip and a jump for me to find Henri Nouwen and then Richard Rohr, Dorothee Soelle, Kathleen Norris and Harvey Cox.  Later still, the pioneers of the mytho-poetic men's movement - Robert Bly, Sam Keen, Marion Woodman and James Hillman - offered new connections between my hunger and thirst for the sacred and the mystical path.

Last night, after reading Robert Alter's commentary on the Hebrew Psalms, I returned to Nouwen's primer on spiritual formation. Both helped me own my hunch that the Psalmists were mystics, too. Nouwen writes:

Both theological reflection and spiritual formation require an articulate not-knowingness and a receptive emptiness through which God can be revealed. Just as theology asks us to empty our cup so that we can open our mind to the incomprehensible things of God, spirituality asks us to empty our mind so we can open our heart to receive life as a gift to be lived. Even more than our mind, it is our heart that needs to become empty enough for the Spirit to enter and fill it. The process of self-emptying and spirit-filling is called spiritual formation - the gradual development of the heart of God in the life of a human being. 

Nouwen then goes on to say that the whole point of practicing contemplative prayer is to learn how to see - specifically, to see and "make visible that which is hidden from ordinary sight." 

The practice of contemplative prayer reveals to us the true nature of things; it unmasks the illusion of control, the possessiveness of possessions, and the pretense of the false self. For those who practice contemplative prayer, the world no longer is opaque and dark but has become new and transparent - the new earth shining with its inherent character. To live spiritually in the world is to unmask the illusion, dispel the darkness and walk in the light... And the Spirit of God shows us how to move continuously from opaqueness to transparency in three central relationships: our relationship with nature,with time and with people.

Clearly that is what St. Paul is doing in Romans 1 where he attempts to articulate his mystical wisdom within the confines of words:

What can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world God's eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things God has made. So they are without excuse.

Such is the confession of the Psalmist in this Sunday's responsive Psalm 104. Alter notes that the very first words are: O my whole being, bless the Lord... for God has donned the grandeur and glory of creation, wrapped in light...stretching out heavens...making chariots of the clouds...inhabiting the thunder and mountains... causing streams to flow in the desert... even giving the wild ass complete freedom to romp in safety.

As we walked in the leaves yesterday, it was ecstatic. It was a body prayer. A holy time. A moment of intimacy with the Creator. Nouwen writes:

When we contemplate nature rather than manipulating it, we are able to see nature as a gift of God to be cherished and cared for... the plants and animals with whom we live teach us about birth, growth, maturation and death, about the need for gentle care, and especially about the importance of patience and hope. This is the sacramental basis of any healthy ecology... and in it all becomes transparent when nature discloses itself to those with eyes to see the loving face of God.

Tomorrow - after formal worship - we will use our bodies to pray again as we walk in the CROP Walk to raise funds and awareness of hunger throughout the world. There will be no words, no doctrines, no reason taking place in this prayer, just our bodies in union with compassion and awakened to the cold, the leaves and the beauty of the day.

credits: Dianne De Mott

grateful for the christian century...

Just when I think, "I'm done with my subscription to the Christian Century..." along come two

articles that knock me on my ass with their clarity, relevance and wisdom. Like Rumi says, "I should be suspicious of what I want!"

The first hails from M. Craig Barnes, current president of Princeton Theological Seminary and author of one of my favorite books: The Pastor as Minor Poet, in CC's "Faith Matters" column. It is a tender reflection on the conversations he now hears among the pastors he visits with during various professional conferences. These table talks over breakfast rarely have anything to do with the event but everything to do with "a common lament."

"I want to get back to being a pastor," said the person across the table... "I'm so tired of trying to navigate our church through the debates about divestment and gay marriage. These issues (and others on a denominational level) are sucking up all the air in the congregation." ... None of the pastors would say that issues such as justice for LGBT people or Palestinians are unimportant. They feel called to speak about these issues as much as they do about racial justice, the environment or economic concerns. The problem is that the pastors cannot engage the conversation on the congregation's own terms. Their denominations have determined the nature of the debates that take up an extraordinary amount of their energy.

I know that I have been wrestling with this challenge since the early days of my ordination. Over half of my denomination left the United Church of Christ between the late 1960's and the early 80's NOT because they were uniquely homophobic, racist or sexist. We ALL are - that wasn't the issue - as St. Paul said: we all have fallen short of the glory of God - everyone of us. No, the issues of the day were not the fundamental reason thousands and thousands of people left our congregations. Part of it had to do with nostalgia and the appeal of both fundamentalism and charismatic renewal. But a far larger part of this exodus had to do with a rejection of an imposed elitism that rarely was able to practice what it preached. Few of the folk in our local churches knew or trusted those in the superstructure and received the sundry social justice pronouncements handed down from on hight with resentment and confusion. Barnes continues:

For a very long time mainline Protestantism has congratulated itself on being prophetic because it is so good at voting for progressive agendas. But what our society really needs from the church are agents of change. And that has never come from a denominational vote. Change comes from congregations that decide to live by the ethics of Jesus Christ... No one in the pews is holding their breath to read the next position paper from their denomination. But if their pastor climbs into the pulpit, wearing a gown tattered by the nibbling of sheep, and says, "hear the word of the Lord," they will follow that shepherd anywhere. So it is time for the denominations to get off the backs of their own pastors.

My seminary mentor, the late Rev. Ray Swartzback,  put it to me simply: "You have to earn your street cred, man. It isn't portable and comes about only by putting in a lot of time, blood, sweat and tears. When the people know you love them - and you deliver - then you can ask them to go to uncomfortable places for the gospel. Until that happens, however, you have not earned the right so don't waste your time." His words of wisdom have been a guideline for me over the past 35 years: if you are there for real people in their times of need, you start to earn trust. As Barnes goes on to say: " It is all too easy (for people at national events) in some distant city to delude themselves into thinking that voting, voting, voting without congregational  accountability will bring about the kingdom of God. It doesn't." This is not to cast aspirations on those working in our various ecclesiastical bureaucracies. Like Barnes, I know them and know that they are good people. "They are not the problem..."

The problem is the inability of a modernist superstructure like a denomination to handle postmodern affections. In the 1950s the church could speak with one voice because people trusted big institutions. Then it made sense to speak about the Presbyterian, Lutheran, Episcopal or Methodist position on the issues. Now we have to humble remind ourselves that there is a myriad of position on every issue within the church. If people trust any religious body (and that is up for debate) it is the local church. They prefer their issues to have names, faces and stories. (read Barnes' whole commentary @ https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2015-06/where-issues-have-faces)

From my perspective, this one article is worth the price of a subscription. But wait, as the TV infomericals say, "there's more!"

The second article was written by Samuel Wells:  "The power of being with" (@ https://www. christiancentury.org/article/2015-06/power-being) As I am discerning in my emerging "spirituality of tenderness," Wells contrasts four ways of being engaged with the wounds of the world and the people who are suffering:  1) working for people; 2) working with them ; 3) being with folk; and 4) being for them.  He writes:

Working for is the default position setting for most engagements with poverty. The homeless person is regarded as a problem and as a symptom of a deeper problem.. so the working for approach seeks to fix that problem with a range of resources... Being for is somewhat similar except that it tends to assume the problem is someone else's to address and adopts a position that's more in solidarity (but) in a general way. Note that working for and being for have a word in common: that little word FOR. Neither working for nor being for requires you to have any significant kind of conversation or interaction with a homeless person.

Such is the typical, professional liberal Christian approach to social issues: let's fix it - and move on. There is abstract compassion in these two approaches and they continue to have their adherents. Wells goes on to suggest that there are two other ways of interacting with the suffering of real people: working with and being with. I like his nuanced thinking when he writes:

Working with seeks to attract a whole range of stakeholders and sees the homeless person as having a crucial contribution alongside service providers and concerned organisations. It is a much more dynamic model that working for - and sensitive to a much wider range of contributions than simply professional expertise. Where working with differs from being with, however, is that working with still sees a problem - even if it is a problem shared by a range of different people... being with, by contrast, doesn't start with a problem... it begins with a real person.

It is clear that the influence of Richard Rohr, Jean Vanier, Barbara Brown Taylor, Henri Nouwen and Frederick Buechner have been at work deep within me because I once lived and breathed in the first two camps. But now I resonate only with the later: being with makes all the difference in the world. It honors the dignity of real people, it is all about relationslhip and it engages the wounds of the world as God did in Christ Jesus. Wells sums it up profoundly like this:

Let's recast this configuration in theological perspective. Does God see the world as a problem to be solved or a gift to be enjoyed? Does Christ become incarnate because there's a job of redemption to be done and only he can do it, or, because the whole point of creation was that God would dwell with us terrestrially in Jesus and eternally in heaven?... The Gospel don't show us a God who in Christ is merely for us. They show us a Christ who is fundamentally with us.

Today is the first day I haven't felt deathly ill with the stomach flu that is making its way around the region. So as I read these old copies of The Christian Century and sipped my morning tea, I found myself saying out loud, "I can't bail on these guys... I need them to much." So sent off my check for yet another year's subscription and rejoice in their work of being with me in ministry.

Be still...

One of the gifts of being sick - even the stomach flu - is time to read, think, rest and pray. For

the past three days I've mostly been down with this beast. And while I hate being sick, I cherish the solitude. (Makes me think of St. Leonard Cohen's "Democracy" - I love the country but hate the scene!) During this down time I've gone deeper into both the wisdom of Henri Nouwen, Parker Palmer and Richard Rohr on the subject of "calming our inner chatter," and, revisited some of their time-tested spiritual practices that have served other generations as allies in this quest.

Nouwen writes that "we must go through the stages where feelings of love and hate, tenderness and pain, forgiveness and greed are separated, strengthened or reformed." This is his gentle reminder that the only way we can live through the suffocating and debilitating inner chatter in our heads involves careful and regular practice. Alcohol and drugs deaden the voices for a few hours - or years - but once the buzz is gone, the chatter returns with a vengeance. Sex and work just push the chatter to the periphery, but once we're alone and quiet: BAM! Distraction, denial and deception do not resolve the deadening of God's presence within us caused by our inner dialogues. They simply delay our exasperation and postpone our commitment to embracing a spiritual practice that works.  
In order for our best intentions to become embodied, however, requires a new and more satisfying relationship to prayer than the ones we learned in middle school and adolescence. Again, Nouwen is insightful: "The invitation to a life of prayer is the invitation to live in the midst of this world without being caught in the net of wounds and needs."

The word "prayer" stands for a radical interruption of the vicious chain of interlocking dependencies leading to violence and war and for an entering into a totally new dwelling place. It points to a new way of speaking, a new way of breathing, a new way of being together, a new way of knowing, yes, and a new way of living. It is not easy to express the radical change that prayer represents, since for many the word "prayer" is associated with piety, talking to God, thinking about God, morning and evening liturgies, Sunday services, grace before meals, sentences from the Bible and many other things. All of these have something to do with prayer, but when I speak about prayer... I speak first of all about moving away from the dwelling place of those who hate peace and entering into the house of God... Prayer is the center of the Christian life. It is the only necessary thing (Luke 10:42) for it is living with God here and now.

It is living, walking, talking, thinking and resting in God's presence that assures and confirms that we are God's beloved. It is a sacred relationship born from above, to be sure, but one that must be tended to and nourished from below. That is why Rohr insists that we cannot live as people of peace in the real world without first experiencing - and then practicing - a regular life of prayer and contemplation. "We do not think our way into a new way of living," he insists "but rather we live our way into a new way of thinking." Our encounter with God's love, when it is cherished and strengthened, is the only source of authentic spiritual power in all creation.

What is the source of your spiritual power? It’s radical union with God, not just doing good things or holding a role or function. Often we make the basis for ministry professionalism, education, and up-to-date-ism, which are all good in themselves. But in the end, the only basis for fruitful Christianity is divine union. Such people change you and change the world... Most of us were taught that God would love us if and when we change. In fact, God loves you so that you can change. 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.

To live otherwise is "functional atheism." I've used this term recently and apparently it has

caused some confusion. Parker Palmer explains it with clarity: It is "the belief that ultimate responsibility for everything rests with us. This is the unconscious, unexamined conviction that if anything decent is going to happen here, we are the ones who must make it happen – a conviction held even by people who talk a good game about God." It is saying - and believing - that God is God and we are not, but acting like the world depends upon me for justice, hope, peace, food and all the rest. It is a way of living not only celebrated by our bottom-line culture, but honored by those unwilling to practice Sabbath rest. Abraham Joshua Heschel was clear: if we learn to rest and trust God for 24 hours, perhaps we can learn to trust the Lord for the rest of the week, too.

Rest, trust, a life of peace and ending the "endless chatter of human thought" that deadens our lives to God's presence within are intimately connected, yes? That is why I give thanks to God for this nasty flu: I've been able to revisit an old friend - a prayer tool born of the practices of Fr. Thomas Keating but adapted for my experience - and reclaim it as an ally in nourishing God's peace from within. Keating is the Benedictine priest who popularized the Western Christian form of meditation we know as Centering Prayer. After Vatican II, Keating was encouraged to share this long forgotten prayer form with the West as a loving resource. It was also a tender reminder that the East does not have a monopoly upon sacred wisdom or practices.  (learn more @ http://www.centeringprayer.com/)

What I have been doing of late is using a short series of sacred words like a mantra in combination with breathing.( I've often taught this way of praying to others for times when they know they will face stress or anxiety and have used it myself during heated public meetings.) What I haven't done before, however, is use my intimacy with God's love to help me shut down the inner chatter that invades my consciousness almost as soon as I awake. I can't tell you how many times my mind is filled with someone else's critique, complaint, judgement or simply my own insecure soul's projection of these things unto the day that has only just begun. The inner dialogue is deafening at times.

So I've claimed a paraphrase of Psalm 46:10 as my liberating mantra: as I breathe in, I hear "be still" and when I breathe out, I hear "know God."  It is an ancient prayer, time-tested for probably 4,000 years. It evokes my experiences with God's gracious love. And it shuts down the inner chatter. Now let me be clear: sometimes I have to pray this mantra 300 before I even get into the shower! But it works. And the more I shut down the inner chatter with an affirmation of God's grace, the more at rest I am. There is much more to be said about other types of prayer and meditation, but that is enough for today. 

photo credits: Dianne De Mott

Tenderness and shutting down the chatter within...

Well, the jury may not yet be in on my exploration of simply "preaching from the heart"on Sundays, but I liked it. Worship felt more honest to me - less contrived - less like a command or paid performance and more like a conversation in faith. For the next two months I'm going to do my best to nourish this experiment - and then see where Advent might lead us.

This week I'm using two of the lectionary texts - Isaiah 53: 1-12 and Mark 10: 35-45 - as part of my emerging spirituality of tenderness series. Both texts make it clear that we must practice resting and trusting in the Lord by faith. It really does not come to most of us automatically. It certainly doesn't to me. Left on my own, I can't tell you how many times before my morning tea and prayers I find myself fretting about the chatter in my head. 

What deadens us most to God's presence within us, I think, is the inner dialogue that we are continuously engaged in with ourselves, the endless chatter of human thought. I suspect that there is nothing more crucial to true spiritual comfort... than being able from time to time to stop that chatter. Frederick Buechner

Stopping the chatter with tenderness is an essential ingredient in becoming people who live, share and embody tenderness towards others. But damn if it doesn't take a lot of practice at first. Maybe always. Thomas Merton cut to the chase when we wrote:

If we strive to be happy by filling the silence of life with sound, productive by turning all life's leisure into work, and real by turning all our being into doing, we will only succeed in producing a hell on earth. If we have no silence, God is not heard in our music. If we have no rest, God does not bless our work. If we twist our lives out of shape in order to fill every corner of them with action and experience, God will seem silently to withdraw from our hearts and leave us empty.

Small wonder Jesus continues to tell us that there are so few workers willing to practice inner tenderness by shutting off the chatter. He urges it and models it, he lays down his life as evidence that real inner peace can transform personal pain into redemptive compassion. But mostly, and I include myself in this, we don't really trust him enough to put it into practice. We are as Richard Rohr says essentially functional atheists who don't trust resting in the Lord. The way we live our lives show that we believe it is necessary for us to solve everything by ourselves. 

On what was almost our last night in Montreal, we went to Taize worship at the monastery on Boulevard Mont Royal. It took a bit of wandering through the massive structure to find the small worship space - in the catacombs - but the quest was well worth it. In addition to the beauty of the simple music and the careful attention to the worship aesthetics, I was moved to tears by the fact that the whole liturgy took place on the floor. I know I've noted this before, but the geography of this worship communicated some important truths to me that went far deeper than some of the French words I couldn't comprehend. Yes, there were provisions for those whose bodies did not allow sitting on the floor. That is what compassionate people do, yes? 

But for those who could, everything - music, prayer, conversation and silence - happened in humility. There was no hierarchy. No division between insiders and outsiders. No unnecessary divisions. Just an encounter with being an equal - we're all in this together - we're all servants to one another as the gospel lesson for this Sunday instructs: "when people get a little power how quickly it goes to their heads. It’s not going to be that way with you. Whoever wants to be great must become a servant. Whoever wants to be first among you must be your slave. That is what the Son of Man has done: He came to serve, not to be served—and then to give away his life in exchange for many who are held hostage."

I've been sick with the stomach flu since after worship on Sunday so I've had a lot of time to think and pray about this. I'm eager to see where it all leads us in worship this week.

Oh how we hate to consider true powerlessness! Not when we live like doormats for

bullies or forsake our essence in false humility. That isn't the foolishness of the Gospel wherein we own and accept our powerlessness as the path to serenity. Being a fool for Christ allows God's strength to fill and work through us. “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” I will, therefore, boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me." (II Corinthians 12:9) This is the path of wisdom while the other is pure stupidity. 

St. Paul was unambiguous in his advice to the early community in Corinth:

We are fools for the sake of Christ… When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we speak kindly. We have become like the rubbish of the world, the dregs of all things, to this very day… God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength. Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one, might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption... (I Corinthians 4:10/12-13 and 1:25-30)

I couldn't help but think of this today as a small group gathered to pray for one of our faith community's salty saints who passed from life to life everlasting this past summer.Today friends and family met to celebrate the unique and sacred love made flesh in and through her being by God's grace. It was a tender time - especially for those who knew her as a dynamic athlete and community advocate/volunteer - tender and humbling. Funerals or memorial services are humbling for all of us. They are also frightening for some, however, for these ceremonies confront us with the inevitable weakness we all encounter when our race is run. Perhaps it is our discomfort and fear that encourages me try to speak two Gospel truths in every such liturgy: 1) that God's peace is available to us now and not just when we leave this realm; and 2) the only entrance fee required into this peace that passes understanding is a broken and humble heart. 

Create in me a clean heart, O God,
    and put a new and right spirit within me.
Do not cast me away from your presence,
    and do not take your holy spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
    and sustain in me a willing spirit.

You can't fake humility and the soul smells a phony broken heart a million miles away and won't have any of it. This is the necessary suffering required for wisdom according to Jung, the brilliant sadness Richard Rohr reminds us that is available to all if we embrace our brokenness. Now who knows why this is so, but every spiritual tradition teaches that the way up demands our going down: our desire for ascent always requires a crashing descent. In this all people and religions are the same.  A blog posting at A-MUSED paraphrases Ken Wilber like this:,.  

In our later stages of life we realize that the classic spiritual journey always begins elitist and ends egalitarian. Always! We see it in Judaism, starting with the Jews’ early elite chosenness and ending in prophets without borders, in the heady new sect of Christianity that soon calls itself “catholic” or universal. We see it in Sufi Islam and Hindu Krishna consciousness, which sees God’s joy everywhere. We see it in mystics like William Blake or Lady Julian, who start with a grain of sand or a hazelnut and soon find themselves swimming in infinity. We see it in the Native American sweat lodge, where the participant ends by touching his sweaty body to the earth and saying: all my relations! (http://www.philipchircop.com/post/5972247752/from-elitist-to-egalitarian-ken-wilber-described)

The late David Foster Wallace put it like this:

If you worship money and things — if they are where you tap real meaning in life — then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already — it’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness. Worship power — you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart — you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. 

And still, despite the blessings and the peace, we HATE to own and accept our powerlessness.

living into the afternoon of life...

As I've noted a variety of times since my return from Montreal last month, this has already beome a year of discovery, ambiguity, testing, trial, joy, sorrow and discernment. In one way, it is not any different from any other year in ministry. In another, however, this year is massively different - fundamentally because of a shift in my soul - and our shared sabbaticals. It was already emerging for me before we departed, but during our four months of rest and music - refreshment and quiet - it became clear that I needed to live into the truths Jung described as "the second half of life's" journey.

One cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life's morning; for what was great in the morning will be of little importance in the evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening become a lie. --C. G. Jung 

This is true in my prayer life, my professional work, my music as well as how I connect with those with whom I am most intimate. Rohr observes:

In the second half of life we discover that it is no longer sufficient to find meaning in being successful or healthy. We need a deeper source of purpose. According to Jung, "Meaning makes a great many things endurable--perhaps everything. No science will ever replace myth [the communicator of meaning], and a myth cannot be made out of any science. . . . [Myth] is the revelation of a divine life in man. It is not we who invent myth, rather it speaks to us as a Word of God." Science gives us explanations, and that is a good start, but myth and religion give us meaning which alone satisfies the soul.

My "coming out" into the second half of life's truths clearly makes some uncomfortable. It is hard for those still building their professional and instutitional identiies. It is equally hard  for those who would like our church to be "successful" once again. One of the unspoken hopes when I was called is that we might stop the loss of money and bodies from our faith community. In one form or another during my watch as pastor, some wanted not only inner renewal but nummerical growth, too. I think I can say with honesty that in a quiet and modest way, we have been able to cast off some of the constraits of our past. After almost 8 years we have mostly shed the mantle of once being the church of the wealthy, powerful and well-connected in town. We are engaged in focused acts of social transformation. We continue to create musical encounters for the wider community that go beyond the obvious choices for churches albeit now in jazz, blues, rock and folk stylings rather than just the classical compositions of our tradition. And we have a given rise to a small but lively presence in the community through a variety of media outlets. But, "successful?" Not really... those days are gone for us as an institution - and well they should be.

My tenure in this office, you see, is much more about a ministry of presence rather than a

ministry of power.. A colleague from California included this potent quote from Henri Nouwen in a recent sermon. I think it gets everything right for me.

Are we ready to really experience our powerlessness in the face of death and say, ‘I do not understand. I do not know what to do, but I am here with you.’ Are we willing to not run away from the pain, to not get busy when there is nothing to do and instead stand rather in the face of death together with those who grieve? When we honestly ask ourselves which persons in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand.  The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not-knowing, not-curing, not-healing and face with us the real issues of our lives.

So much of contemporary church culture has been constructed either on the shifting sands of a phony optimism - or - an anxious workaholism that incarnates a functional atheism where we live and act like everything depends on what we create, do, think and believe. After finally stepping aside and resting, however, both strike me as shallow and destructive. Not all of life is fun - or joyful - or even good. There is pain and sorrow and suffering that our phony optism violates. In Out of Solitude, Nouwen puts it like this:

You might remember moments in which you were called to be with a friend who had lost a wife or husband, child or parent.  What can you say, do or propose at such a moment? There is a strong inclination to say, “Don’t cry; the one you loved is in the hands of God.” Or “Don’t be sad because there are so many good things left worth living for.” ...”Our tendency is to run away from the painful realities or to try to change them as soon as possible. But cure without care makes us into rulers, controllers, manipulators, and prevents a real community from taking shape. Cure without care makes us preoccupied with quick changes, impatient and unwilling to share each other’s burden.  And so cure can often become offending instead of liberating. It is therefore not so strange than cure is (often) refused by people in need...it is better to suffer than to lose self-respect by accepting a gift out of a non-caring hand.

Same goes for the anxious busyness of our functional atheism. If you have ever sat quietly with another as they move from this life into life every lasting - if you have ever befriended an addict or junkie - if you have ever been abused in any way, shape or form: you know in your soul that there are somethings you can never fix or cure. These require a love creater than our own wisdom and strength - a grace and power from above as St. John puts it - whose love helps us endure and reclaim a sober sense of hope. I have a print out of a Buechner quote sitting on my desk that I use in prayer 6-8 times a day.

Stop trying to protect, to rescue, to judge, to manage the lives around you; remember that the lives of others are not your business. They are their business. They are God's business... even your own life is not your business. It also is God's business. Leave it to God. It is an astonishing thought. It can become a life-transforming though... unclench the fists of your spirit and take it easy...What deadens us most to God's presence within us, I think, is the inner dialogue that we are continuously engaged in with ourselves, the endless chatter of human thought. I suspect that there is nothing more crucial to true spiritual comfort... than being able from time to time to stop that chatter.

I need to refer to it that many times because of the constant chatter in my head that tells me to take on issues, problems and people I cannot fix or help. Hell, sometimes I can't even love them. And still the endless dialogue multiplies in an almost deafening manner. It is worth writing that NONE of this was at work while we were in Montreal. None. Zip. Nada. Buechner is right - this functional aethesim is killilng us - and I have to tap into God's grace over and over to trust it.

So, as I wander into the uncertainty of this year, three things are becoming clear: 1) I have to keep playing music; 2) I must saturate myself in contemplation and prayer; and 3) I need to share with my faith community the upside-down practical wisdom and disciplines of a spirituality of tenderness. We are working on jazz meditations for each week in worship - and making some sweet progress on our November 22nd presentation of Paul Winter's "Missa Gaia - an Earth Mass." - and now I think I'm ready to roll this out.

Autumn 2015 Worship Series @ 10:30 am

A Spirituality of Tenderness

October 4^th

Blessing of Our Pets

October 11^th

An antidote to our anxiety

October 18^th

What does tenderness mean?

October 25^th 

Tenderness in the Jewish and Christian traditions

November 1^st

7 ingredients of tenderness in action

November 8^th

Polarities and spiritual balance

November 15^th

Birth and death/sound and silence/giving and receiving

November 22^nd

Contemplation and action/rest and play/community and solitude/ sorrow and joy

the song remains the same...

A few weeks back, Richard Rohr wrote the following:

Robert Frost wrote that great poetry "begins as a lump in the throat . . . a homesickness, a lovesickness." Poetry stirs something you can't explain. When it comes, you just know that it is given out of nowhere. That's when you experience radical grace. Poets try to find the perfect word to name the inner experience. The goal of great poetry is to get right to the heart of the experience so that it resonates with your own inner knowing and you can say, "Yes! That is true!"

Before 500 BCE, religion and poetry were largely the same thing. People did not presume to be able to define the Mystery. They looked for words that could describe the mystery. Poetry doesn't claim to be a perfect description as dogma foolishly does. It's a "hint half guessed," to use T. S. Eliot's phrase. That's why poetry seduces you and entices you into being a searcher for the Mystery yourself. It creates the heart leap, the gasp of breath, inspiring you to go further and deeper; you want to fill in the blanks for yourself.

I'm convinced this is the present impasse with so much of institutional religion: that we have for centuries "perfectly" defined, delineated, and described the Mystery. And all you have to do is believe your denomination's dogmatic definitions and you are a member in good standing. This is not working. It is not transforming people

Earlier this summer, I vowed to God that I would not succumb  to those who cannot - or will not - grasp that music, art and poetry are portals to contemplation. These sacred gifts are ways of encountering truths and sighs too deep for human words. So no matter how opaque or stubborn, I will honor the song. Dostoevsky said, "Beauty can save the world" and I affirm his insight with my whole being. Too many of our Christian institutions don't grasp this - they treat music (and art and poetry) as gimmicks to solve attendance problems - rather than ways of being at prayer. In a culture devoid of silence - and afraid of contemplation - I have found music to be an in-between language. It is a tender midpoint between the spoken word and total silence. It is a "hint of what is half guessed." and helps us all go to those places most likely to be inspired.

Often, various forms of wordless art and music precede the mythic story. We often know things imaginally, aesthetically, or harmoniously before we know them rationally or conceptually… Art and music are not simply objects, but an experience of opening to mystical awareness. In David Loy's words, ". . . perhaps the profound pleasure we sometimes experience from listening to a Bach fugue or a Mozart piano concerto is not a distraction from that process of attuning, nor even a side-effect of it, but is that attuning... Mary Oliver, one of my favorite poets, says, "Poetry is a life-cherishing force, for poems are not words, after all, but fires for the coal, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread for the hungry."

Like the masters of Zep said:  "...  the song remains. the same" and thank God for it!

the intoned prayer always just below the surface of things...

Two quotes that will shape the core of tomorrow's message. The first is from the American

writer David Foster Wallace speaking of faith:

If you worship money and things — if they are where you tap real meaning in life — then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already — it’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness. Worship power — you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart — you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on...    

The second from the Quaker singer-songwriter Carrie Newcomer in a new poem that illuminates the heart of Psalm 131(like a child at rest on her mother's breast):

Have you ever noticed that on busy days,

The streets and workplaces, 
Elevators and escalators,
Crackle with current
All that passion and propulsion 
Charging the top layer of the world
Like the static skin of a ballon being rubbed 
Across the top of a head.

But today, 
In a bustling airport
in a moving stream of here to there,
I stood next to a dark eyed young woman
Who was swaying back and forth
Her sleepy little boy hitched up 
On the natural shelf of her right hip.
She was humming a tune 
That all mothers know
That all mothers sing
That makes all children sigh 
As then lay down their heads,
A song that is as old 
As the oldest thing we know.

And I thought 
There it is,
The true sound
The contented purr 
The intoned prayer
Always 
Always 
Just below
The surface of things.

Fr. Richard Rohr tells us time and again that the only way to become agents of compassionate social action and live meaningful lives embracing the eternal is through contemplation. We must be changed from the inside out. Anything less is delusional.    

So, after a lovely morning collecting funds for Church World Service's CROP Walk to Fight hunger with five members of my faith community - and taking a wee afternoon nap - I think it is time to talk Lucie on a walk before shopping and cooking dinner for my honey.