living like Mary of Bethany in times of mounting fear...

NOTE;  As Lent marches forward - this is Lent V - and our small ensemble prepares for Holy

Week and our interpretation of "A Love Supreme" - here are my written reflections for this coming Sunday. As a rule, I have been not sharing these as I need to "do something new for the Lord" with my writing. And yet, I sense that the times warrant this type of critical reflection in faith. As I wrote to a 92 year old colleague and friend: "The presence of Bonhoeffer and Niebuhr hover just above my shoulders these days as I prepare my message for Sunday." These are grave and challenging times, indeed.  Bonne chance mes amis et les bénédictions de Dieu!

+

On the fifth Sunday in Lent – in anticipation of our pilgrimage to the Cross of our Lord before the start of Holy Week – I am struck by the way  Holy Scripture stands in such stark contrast to so much of our contemporary reality: 

+ Jesus experiences the overwhelming aroma of perfumed oil poured out upon his feet in excessive abundance:  he may be nearing his death, but in the company of the beloved, he rejoices and opens himself to the extravagant grace of love and beauty.

+ The Psalmist, aching for relief, suddenly finds herself singing a song of laughter that is actually hope being poured into her soul from the Lord:  so stunning, in fact, is this sacred gift of grace that she exchanges her tears for a smile and trusts that God will make all things new.

+ And the poet Isaiah? He is enraptured with a sense of God’s splendor, announcing that all those who rely upon force, violence, manipulation and control will be extinguished:  do not even attempt to recall those former things, he advises his broken-hearted colleagues; for the Lord our God is about to do a new thing.  A blessed thing. A beautiful thing.

These readings make clear to those who have eyes to see that “all the contemporary crises of our culture can be reduced to a single crisis called the repression of beauty.” The late John O’Donohue cut to the chase in The Invisible Embrace:

Perhaps for the first time (in decades) we can gain a clear view of how much ugliness we endure and allow.  The media generate relentless images of mediocrity and shallowness in their talk-shows, tapestries of smothered language and frenetic gratification. They are becoming the global mirror of our lived experiences… enshrining the ugly as the normal standard and treating the presence of beauty as (either) forgotten or naïve or romantic.

And not just the media: Our fundamental institutions and work habits have become equally coarse, obsessed with the idolatry of the bottom line.Winning at all costs, O’Donohue observes, has become our standard for evaluating worth in this era of arrogance and brutality: “Coarseness,” he writes, “always creates the same relentless chaffing.

It makes every texture it touches raw and rough.  And there is an unseemly coarseness to our times which robs grace from the textures of our language, feeling and presence. Such coarseness falsifies and anesthetizes our desire (for that which is good and true.) This is particularly evident in the spread of greed, which to paraphrase Shakespeare “makes hungry where most she satisfies.” Greed is unable to envisage any form of relationship other than absorption or possession.

Small wonder that the appointed lessons sound revolutionary, saturated as they are with an abundance of splendor:  they stand in clarifying opposition to the ugliness of contemporary culture and invite us beyond the status quo into the concealed order of creation.  The German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer articulates this skillfully when he writes: “the experience of the beautiful…is the invocation of a potentially whole and holy order of all things.”

+ “We shall rejoice,” sings the Psalmist in accord with the philosopher. “Rejoice so vigorously that those who sow in tears in glad song shall reap. And the one who walks along and weeps shall become the bearer of glad tidings, bringing renewal and healing to the soil and the soul.”

+ For by the grace and gift of God, all things shall become… what?  What does Isaiah say?  God shall make all things new! Whole and holy – drenched with beauty – revealing in reality what was once only the concealed order of creation.  Now, by faith, the Word shall become… flesh.

Today’s gospel involving Jesus, Mary of Bethany and the perfumed oil poured upon his feet is the essential counter-cultural lens through which we have been called to examine and challenge the politics, economics and ethics of this moment in time.  This story – in modestly different ways – was deemed so vital by the early church that it was incorporated into each of the four gospels. The differences between how Matthew, Mark and Luke tell it are less useful than the fact that in all of the gospels we’re told that it was a sensual woman who anointed Christ’s feet with the perfumed oil and caressed them with her hair.

Without shame or inhibition, Mary incarnates extravagant love, exposing not only the fears, biases and brutality that were gathering around Jesus and would soon erupt in a downpour of violence; but offering us an alternative to the cruel coarseness that has captured our culture.  Mary shows us what authentic discipleship looks like with her embodied creativity and compassion – and we can only reply:  beautiful. Mary of Bethany gives shape and form to Christ’s nonviolent alternative to oppression – and does so by relinquishing fear and control so that God’s loving-kindness might be poured into her very flesh.

To my mind, St. Paul must have been thinking of her when he told the early church in Romans 5: by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ and live in grace… that is why we boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope and hope does not disappoint us, because hope is God’s love being poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. With courage and humility, Mary demonstrates what it looks like to live the love of Jesus in our world.

And no sooner does she pour out the expensive perfumed oil upon the Christ’s feet just like the Spirit has been poured into her heart than Judas explodes in anger and judgment:  “Why wasn't this perfume sold and the money given to the poor?" According to the gospel of Mark, Mary’s extravagance was the straw that broke the camel's back for Judas because after her anointing, Judas goes out and betrays his master. My hunch is that Judas mostly only wanted to slow down the Jesus movement from gaining steam because it was such a challenge to the status quo. I don’t believe that he hated Jesus. He just wanted more control. After all, he was a gradualist not a revolutionary.  And the passion of Mary’s generosity pushed him over the edge. So before you could count the 10 Commandments, Judas was involved in an “equally opposite, and ugly, emotional reaction to Mary’s love: as one disciple devoted herself to the master, the other betrayed him.” (Mako Fujimura)

Now let’s be clear why Mary’s act was so troubling.  Scholars of ancient Israel tell us that “a pint of pure nard was worth about one person's wages for a year. In today's terms, it would therefore be at least $30,000.”  Judas’ objection to the anointing was not capricious: he believed it to be an incredible waste. Mako Fujimura, the brilliant visual artist, once put it like this: “if you saw someone pouring expensive perfume on another person, the natural reaction would be to question "why?" Was the object of adoration worth this amount of devotion?

Was the woman crazy, deceived by a charismatic figure or merely foolish?”  And if you found out the anointing cost 30 grand…?  See where this is going?  I submit to you that the ruling wisdom of our generation – our market place ideology, our insistence on bowing down to the bottom line and our fear of being out of control – is not all that far away from the reaction and conclusion of Judas.  As a nation, we don’t invest in the education of our children or the nurture of our teachers. For the past 40 years, more and more arts and sports programs have been hacked away from our public school budgets without any significant progress in how we perform in the hard sciences of math and science.  We claim we’re doing this to cut costs and get more bang for our buck. But according to the most recent analysis of standardized testing, after all these years of sacrifice and testing, the US still ranks only 35th out of 64 countries in math skills and 27^th in science. 

We don’t get what it means to use our resources for extravagant, life-giving love. Think how much cash we dump into Super Bowl commercials every year:  do you know that each 30 second ad cost $5 million? According to Fortune Magazine that means that beer, car and chip commercials alone cost over $4.5 billion dollars for one football game. No salaries or bonuses for the players – just the ads.  Last year, on any given night, there were 47, 725 homeless vets sleeping rough in the United States with another 45 million Americans living under the poverty line.

+ There is NOTHING beautiful, gracious or loving about these facts.  And most of the time we don’t even notice because we have repressed beauty for so long that our imaginations have atrophied and our ethics have shriveled.

+ And if you think I exaggerate hearken back to the absurdity and border line obscenity of a recent debate between the Republican front runners for the office of President of the United States. It was an ugly, stupid festival of lies, slander and hatred.  And the only thing that made the Democratic debate in Michigan any better given one candidate’s slippery ethics and the other’s shallow shrillness, is that at least important issues were discussed there, but I’m not sure the public good was advanced in any of it. 

And so my soul wants to share with you what the British poet, Kathleen Raine, wrote:  “When our vision is lost, our consciousness contracts: we forget (our true calling) over and over again until recollection is stirred by some icon of beauty. Then we remember and wonder why we ever forgot.”

It is as if she were channeling the Psalmist who sang that healing and hope came to her as if in a dream: in a vision from beyond, our mouths were filled with laughter and our tongues with glad song. Professor Walter Brueggemann writes that this is always how human beings reconnect with the holy: it comes to us as if we were in a dream.  We hear a song on the car radio – and we’re transported to another place – remembering a love greater than ourselves.  We’re out walking in the woods and have our breath taken away by the silence as the sun streams through the trees and we recall that we are a part of God’s creation. We go to the movies – or a symphony – or a play or even a museum and all of a sudden we find ourselves weeping for joy or gratitude – or sorrow and remorse – because we have been touched by an icon of beauty and something of the concealed order of creation has been revealed.

Hope breaks through our normal consciousness when we least expect it. That is one of the mysterious ways God comes into our lives. Do you remember how the Bible begins? In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, the sky, the water, the stars above, the waters below, the animals, the plants and human beings and before the Lord rested, all of this creativity was called… what?  GOOD!  BEAUTIFUL!  THE VERY IMAGE OF THE LORD IN THE WORLD!  THE ESSENCE OF GOD MADE FLESH IN FACT!  Repeatedly, in Scripture and our lived experiences, God comes to us in unexpected beauty and reminds us: I make all things new, your sins are forgiven, what was lost has been found, pick up your lives and walk.

That is why I have been persuaded that Mary’s act of anointing the Christ’s feet with perfumed oil and swaddling them with her hair is a model for our nonviolent resistance to the ugly, vicious, dumbed-down and brutal culture we have been called to cure. Look, Judas wasn’t a bad man.  In a moving reflection on this text, one artist (Mako Fujimura) wrote: 

Judas was an extraordinary man with extraordinary gifts; he, along with the other disciples, healed the sick, delivered people from demons, and preached the good news of the Messiah. He gave up everything to follow the Master. And yet, because he confused his limited imagination with the reign of Christ and God’s grace, thinking Jesus had come to give him earthly powers and privileges, his heart ultimately deceived him.  When Jesus stepped closer to the cross, Judas realized the way of Jesus was about more than personal power and winning: the cross stripped Jesus, and his disciples, of all earthly privileges and power. And the only earthly possession Christ wore on the cross was the very aroma of the perfume Mary had poured upon him. Judas, you may recall, betrayed the one he loved for 30 pieces of silver; notably less than the worth of Mary's perfume.

In times such as our own, we need MORE creative acts of compassionate extravagance and beauty like Mary’s – not less. And here is one of the reasons why I believe this to be true:  earlier this week I was reading the Jewish Forward, an on-line news daily about what’s important in the world of contemporary Judaism, and there was an article about how Jewish historians and holocaust survivors interpret our current state of affairs in the United States. The academics, as you might imagine, were circumspect, making clear distinctions between the rise of fascism in Europe and the enduring potency of American democratic values even in this era of increasing intolerance and vulgarity.

But those who lived through the terror of Kristallnacht – those who survived Treblinka, Auschwitz and Birkenau – those who pledged NEVER AGAIN on their watch – those sober souls sensed in their bones that something diabolic was brewing in the home of the brave and land of the free – and without a bold challenge it would wound us all. After making pilgrimage to Auschwitz back in the early 80s, I vowed to listen carefully to what these sisters and brothers know in the core of their being. After spending time in the backwoods of Mississippi and visiting the shrine to Civil Rights workers murdered by white supremacists, I came to the same conclusion about what we now call the Black Lives Matter movement, too: their hard won wisdom warrants our careful consideration.

It also demands our conscious resistance to the hatred currently being cultivated: our non-violent resistance – our creative and beautiful, intentional, disciplined and compassionate resistance – is like Mary’s anointing the feet of Jesus. You see, we face a choice of being beacons of solidarity – a living, embodied, clear, creative and compassionate community of resistance to the ignorance, rage, ugliness and bigotry – or collaborators with hatred. If we do not celebrate and strengthen beauty, joy and grace with abandon every single week of the year – we join ranks with Judas not Mary.  If we give the religious and political barbarians a pass at this moment in history, we wash our hands like Pontius Pilate. That’s what Mary’s legacy says to me:  what she did in her extravagance to Jesus is what God has done for us: God brings us forgiveness of sins – God pours hope into our broken hearts – God shares with us the spirit of truth and beauty and empowers us to do likewise in the real world.

Do you know what Jesus said after Mary anointed his feet? The gospel of Mark records it like

this: “After Mary's act of adoration, Jesus said: "Leave her alone. Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me...so I tell you the truth, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her" (Mark 14:6-9). What a commendation!” (Fujimura)

Those words were recorded to give hope to you and me: they tell us that Mary is like us – and we can be like her. Count on this, dear friends, our generosity to the broken, our solidarity with the refugee, our commitment to non-violent resistance through extravagant beauty and disciplined compassion, our culture care, our songs, our Sanctuary, our way of being together in community, our advocacy for the hungry, our camaraderie with our sisters and brothers in the gay/lesbian/trans community and our consistent cleaning of our rivers is going to be misunderstood. And judged – and some will fall away.  Every few weeks I get a letter or email telling me God is going to send me to hell because I am leading you astray with Christ’s call to solidarity.  Truth!

But we take heart, for Mary’s story is unequivocal:  God is for you and for your acts of adoration, resistance and creativity in these broken times.  Even when the world does not understand, God rejoices. And that is why what we do here every week is so important: it is small, it is humble, it is often rests on precarious financial grounds that we don’t know how it will survive. But it is so, so beautiful. Tender. Vibrant.

God calls us to live like Mary, not Judas, but the choice is ours. So as you walk about the Sanctuary today and pray on your Lenten pilgrimage to the Cross, hold Christ’s words to Mary in your heart: “she has done a beautiful thing for the Lord… and wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she had one will be told in memory of her.”

credits:

1) emotion2007g.xpg.uol.com.br

2) rustyrev.wordpress.com

3) empireart.pl

4) pastorfergus.wordpress.com

5) thedailyfeast.org

the death throes of white privilege?

Since Sunday's message (summarized in my posts from Saturday and Sunday) I have had four conversations about this moment in American society - and how bewilderingly terrifying it is. Not because the economy has gone south: over the past 7+ years of the Obama administration we have slowly crept back from the abyss and many - but not all - feel like there is some stability again. And not because the US is any more or less vulnerable to terrorism; the West has now entered the reality of most of the rest of the world and we live with our vulnerability just below our consciousness. No, what is inspiring real fear is the hatred, arrogance and fury embodied in both the candidates running for President and their respective camps in the electorate.

There is a true mob mentality taking hold of our politics, the likes of which many of us have not known in 50 years.  And then, during the white backlash against the Civil Rights movement, it was largely regional. To be sure, Barry Goldwater tapped into white, working class resentment and racism when he ran against Lyndon Johnson. And George Wallace mobilized this portion of the populace a few years later, too. Since 1968, the Republicans - and to a much lesser degree, the Democrats - have skillfully manipulated the racial and economic fears of the working poor and modest middle class voters of white America in what used to be called the "Southern strategy" and "Reagan coalition." Their lesser angels were periodically thrown red meat to keep them engaged - think Willie Horton, the culture wars or gay marriage ballot initiatives - but the full impact of their rage, fear and alienation was never allowed to overshadow the economic pragmatism of those in charge of our mainstream political parties.

Not so any longer:  now that middle class white folk see the daily violence perpetrated upon black lives routinely in America - and have been called to account by strong, disciplined public actions like Black Lives Matter - two things have taken root. First, economically insecure white folk are actively trying to "take back America" by whatever means necessary. Gun violence, intimidation, mob speak and public belligerence have become common place. Second, there is now evidence that this same population - economically insecure and racially threatened white folk - is dying by their own hand at a staggering rate. It is no coincidence, therefore, that given this much pain - real, imagined or manufactured - there would be a vicious political response. And Mr. Trump is a master of massaging the zeitgeist: he is not the cause, of course, he is simply the most talented, media savvy, well-financed and courageous authoritarian demagogue on the scene. Glennon Doyle Melton put it so well today:

The harassment, hate, fear, racism, sexism and xenophobia we are seeing at the Trump rallies is not something that began “lately” either. These have been realities in America forever. Minority communities and women have always known these were realities. Everyone else got to pretend they weren’t. But now cell phones and the Trump campaign are making it difficult for all but the most unconscious to stay asleep. 

Parker Palmer's blog post was equally insightful with a bold confession:  Trump is manipulating the rise of a new American fascism:  

 I don’t speak of “fascism” lightly. One of democracy’s values is open, honest, and civil conversation across lines of political conflict. Calling something or someone “fascist” sounds uncivil, to say the least, and tends to be a conversation-stopper. And yet there are times when no other word will do to name a political phenomenon that can be rationally defined and factually identified, and must be stopped in its tracks. The ultimate conversation-stopper is not the word “fascism” but fascism itself, which aims at shutting down the dialogue of differences that characterizes democracy at its creative best. (read the whole article here: http://www.onbeing.org/blog/parker-palmer-will-fascism-trump-democracy/8497#comment-1657399)

Since returning to the United States from Montreal seven months ago, I have witnessed the steady escalation of Mr. Trump's rhetoric: he has no plans but knows how to enflame our fears and resentments. He has continued to strong arm, bully, abuse and insult those who disagree with a mean-spirited anger that silences his opponents. And as he was on his reality TV show, he continues to turn potential allies against one another with such skill that he is now the most viable candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. For six months many in the mainstream believed that the best way to handle this nuisance was to ridicule Mr. Trump's bravado. When that didn't work,they tried to ignore and dismiss him as a loud mouthed, political cretin. And when his juggernaut simply picked up more momentum, they tried to pull in the old guard of the Republican party to shut him down with shame. None of it worked.  At least 40% of the Republican electorate - and millions of others who have been so alienated by mainstream politics for the past 30 years that they have been on the fringes to say nothing of those who resent sharing opportunity with women and people of color - are now energized and on the move.  Sadly the "Donald" is not kidding when he brags about bringing people together who have not been engaged in politics for decades.

Finally, there are those who are claiming the courage to call a spade a spade - or in this case

a fascist a fascist.. What we are experiencing in the US is happening all across Europe , too. When these vile forces coalesced for the first time back in the 30s, Reinhold Niebuhr wrote:

There are historic situations in which refusal to defend the inheritance of a civilization, however imperfect, against tyranny and aggression may result in consequences even worse than war. The tendency to claim God as an ally for our partisan value and ends is the source of all religious fanaticism.

His compatriot in resistance in Nazi Germany, Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, put it like this:

Jesus Christ lived in the midst of his enemies. At the end all his disciples deserted him. On the Cross he was utterly alone, surrounded by evildoers and mockers. For this cause he had come, to bring peace to the enemies of God. So the Christian, too, belongs not in the seclusion of a cloistered life but in the thick of foes. There is his commission, his work. 'The kingdom is to be in the midst of your enemies. And he who will not suffer this does not want to be of the Kingdom of Christ; he wants to be among friends, to sit among roses and lilies, not with the bad people but the devout people. O you blasphemers and betrayers of Christ! If Christ had done what you are doing who would ever have been spared' (Luther). Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community

Bonhoeffer and Niebuhr called  their respective constituents into resistance against fascism in the name of faith, justice and humility. We in the Church today can do no less. Ours must be a non-violent resistance that carefully and honestly challenges not only the lies, but the violence, racism, sexism and stupidity as well.  We may not be successful in the short run. We may face a more terrifying time yet to come. But such is the cost of discipleship. I would much prefer to slip over the border again into my beloved Canada, but that would be an act of privilege not solidarity. And now is the time to dismantle white privilege even in the face of determined opposition..

please do NOT give Trump a pass...

If the Trump/Mussolini parallels are not obvious by now, you are not paying attention. Or it could be you don't know "Il Duce" and his calculated bravado, exaggerated macho poses in public and narcissism. I am not one to honor simplification when it comes to matters concerning the common good. But, we must be clear:  Trump is NOT simply a political aberration or a joke. He is a talented marketing genius who has tapped into a festering wound in the American body politic.

Say what you like about Robert Reich, he has identified the "base" of Trump supporters:  1) white working class folk without a college education who have been hit the hardest by the economic depression of the past nine years; 2) white evangelicals who have conflated America's strength with Christianity; 3) political independents who are sick unto death of the way the professional political class of both parties has the nation in gridlock; and 4) women and men who value "speaking his mind" more than the policy implications of his words. There are not solid parallels between post WWI Italy and post Financial Melt Down USA, with two exceptions:

+ First, both working class and lower middle class populations experienced social and economic privation before the rise of Fascism. This group of citizens - then and now - want a life with a brighter economic future than the status quo offers. They have seen personal wealth shrink and social status diminished. And while they are utilitarian but not ideological, they trust that the business manager command model is both the most efficient and most fair way to "get the country back on track."  As Mussolini promised:  I will make certain that the trains run on time!   

+ Second, both populations have fears that have historically been easy to exploit.  In Italy, it was the political left and the Jews; in the United States, it is the technocrats and the Muslims (and just to be fair let's include immigrants, Mexicans and the Chinese, too.) As Sam Keen pointed out all so long ago, when hurting people become angry and afraid, it is not hard to dehumanize a minority who looks, acts and worships differently than those of the dominant society.  Mussolini could use nearly 2000 years of Roman Catholic anti-Semitism to fuel the fires of discrimination and hatred. .Trump can rely upon both our prejudice and fear of Muslims given the various Al Qaeda and ISIL attacks; and the simple fact that our global economy moves jobs and capital around without regard to what happens to those left behind. This weekend, Trump exploited the anger of former autoworkers in Michigan. Then he flew to Florida and did likewise using nativist bigotry of immigrants.

What? You think the gentleman doth protest too much? What does this look like to you?

Again, the parallels are not complete, but this is fascism in the making and people of faith must not give Trump a pass. His actions are not accidents of history: they are intentional and manipulative. Erich Fromm, in his chilling analysis of those who gave support to a young Adolf Hitler in the years following Germany's defeat after WWI, (Escape from Freedom) made it clear that is was not the poor nor the  intellectuals that supported the Nazis, it was the petty bourgeoisie - the small shop keepers, merchants and unskilled tradespeople - who flocked to the Fuhrer's promise of a new and brighter future.  And, with obvious exceptions, I see history repeating itself on American soil. As we've heard before: those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it.

Not that we don't already have a long history of scapegoating and bigotry, but there hasn't been anything like this in America since the early days of desegregation. In 2016, it has become acceptable to be openly racist, angry, degrading, misogynist, mean-spirited, historically stupid and unaccountable for the violence and hatred your words unleash into an already wounded body politic. There have been some brilliant and biting satires of Trump shared on Face Book - and that is one avenue that I pray will increase - because tyrants are unhinged when their shadow side is exposed.

But please, the time has come when we can no longer laugh or ignore this problem away: now is the time to organize, pray, vote, challenge, speak up and be informed so that we do not give Trump a pass on his dangerous and ugly words, thoughts and policies.

a non-violent resistance born of worship and the arts...

Sometimes friends, colleagues or even members of the church ask  me:  "How can you be so

assertive about the importance of the arts and the importance of beauty - to say nothing of your relentless commitment to contemplation - in a political environment like our own?" That's my sanitized rendering of this critique - it is usually much more crude and sometimes even cruel. Such is one of the problems with our culture's addiction to binary thinking:  we are aghast at paradox, uncomfortable with ambiguity and unfamiliar with nuance. We tend to demand either/or solutions to all our problems. And insist that our leaders act in strong, declarative ways whether they are facing real, exaggerated or even imagined enemies. We are afraid of the darkness, denying its wisdom and value to all types of regeneration, even as our arrogance shrivels our souls. In a word, our imaginations atrophy when we practice idolatry:  the more we bow down and worship the false gods of certainty, utilitarianism and the bottom line, the more we repress the sacred healing born of beauty and contemplation.

In 1934, T.S. Elliot articulated this sickness:

O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying, 

the endless cycle of idea and action, 

Endless invention, endless experiment, 

brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness; 

Knowledge of speech, but not of silence; 

knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word. 

All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,

all our ignorance brings us nearer to death, 

Nearness to death no nearer to GOD. 

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? 

The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries bring us 

farther from GOD and nearer to the Dust.

Ginsberg echoed this same lament twenty years later in "Howl" when he wept:

 I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night…

And so it continues:  the arts implore us to pause and honor the deep rhythm and wisdom of true life while our addiction to the market place squeezes awe and compassion out of our hearts. There was a time when public schools not only taught poetry, but required engagement with song, dance, physical education and philosophy. There is a minor resurgence of the value of the arts taking place in some educational circles today, but after three generations of stripping our schools of everything except science and math, we have succeeded in fulfilling the prophecy Aldous Huxley envisioned in Brave New World.  Neil Postman said it best in Amusing Ourselves to Death in 1985: our world has become not what Orwell feared in 1984, but rather the doped-out pseudo-utopia that Huxley prophesied.  

But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another - slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling:Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

Watching the recent Republican debates brought this additional quote to mind:

When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience, and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility... We do not measure a culture by its output of undisguised trivialities, but by what it claims as significant.

Now cut back to my opening query:  why am I so assertive about the reclamation of the arts in worship and everyday existence; why do I insist we relearn the ways of contemplation for our generation?  One of my mentors in the work of culture care, the visual artist Makoto Fujimura, is unequivocal. In a March 3, 2016 address in Pasadena, Mako stated:

To ask “what if?” is not just idealism or false hope or fantasy. “What if” questions are filled with hope and faith while acknowledging our struggle for that quest. To ask “what if?” today is to say, “I have a dream.” What I call “culture care” is a non-violent resistance to culture war; culture care is not to wage war over territories of culture which only leads to polarization, but it is to lay down the weapons of ideology, and instead to sow seeds of goodness, truth, and beauty into the ecosystem of culture—into the cultural soil of our cities, including Los Angeles.

To say "I have a dream today" is to plant seeds of hope in the arid soil of

disappointment and despair; to say “I have a dream” today is to raise seedlings of joy and peace in the midst of the bitter taste of suffering and injustice; to say “I have a dream” today is to water the “oaks of righteousness” (Isaiah 61:3) in a land full of fissures of division and polarization. To say “I have a dream today” is to—even in tainted ground such as Japanese soil poisoned by the fallout of nuclear attacks—plant sunflower seeds, as one Japanese farmer did soon after the 3/11 tsunami catastrophe. He planted them because sunflowers remove the radioactive isotopes out of the soil. To say “I have a dream” today is to create beauty as the pursuit of the “substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen.” (Hebrews 11:1)

Why, then, do I insist on quiet time for contemplation each Sunday? Because we are surrounded by an ocean of ugly noise that steals our ability to rest and reflect. Why is it essential to move and interact with our bodies and our buildings during our time of prayer? Because most of our experience is divorced from human encounters with other beings rendering us isolated and awkward.  Why is there jazz, folk, high church chant, pietistic hymnody, organ, guitar, bass and drums played within nearly every liturgy? Because we exist in a multi-cultural, multi-generational, multi-faith world that is filled with beauty if only we had ears to hear. Liturgy - from the Greek meaning "the work of the people" - cannot advance segregation. Rather, worship must help us integrate the bold love of the Lord into our ordinary, walking around lives.  Anything less strikes me as idolatry or vulgar sentimentalism. Mako concludes his address a prophetic warning:

What we are experiencing this election cycle is but a disfigurement of democracy. Instead of aspiring to the “better angels of our nature,” we have become dark, mutated angels fallen to the temptations of culture war. Mr Trump, I suggest, is fallout from those wars, a gusher erupting from the fissures of culture wars. He successfully took advantage of culture war polarity to focus the media on himself and his own ideas of “winning.”  He gained this dominance first by intentionally firing incendiary remarks to pressure the fault lines of culture wars, recasting everyone other than himself “losers” from the starting line. We may yet be able to elect the culture wars candidates of our choice, but we all lose in that process, degrading the integrity of our culture in the process. No matter who wins this election, an age of disillusionment will be ushered in with the new occupant of the White House.

After relearning to "see with the eyes of my heart" on sabbatical, I am more certain than before that our worship - and our community building and justice work - are an integrated whole. Like a Celtic monastery in the Dark Ages of Europe, our worship must keep beauty, truth and goodness alive. We must actively strive to be a center where the head and heart, body and soul, dwell together in unity. We must consciously celebrate a ministry of culture for this is an integrated, albeit paradoxical, expression of non-violent resistance to the ugly barbarism that has become the status quo in 21st century America. 

something bad's about to happen...

Truth be told, I've always loved me some twangy rock'n'roll - and there are parts of "today's country music" that knock me out! It started (again) back in 2003 when Montgomery Gentry released "Hell Yeah." Not only did I LOVE that groove, but the lyrics and video spoke to me of what the church I wanted to serve should be all about. Back in Tucson, we started to call it living like a "Johnny Cash" Christian. 

There were a couple of other killer songs by country artists that blew me away at that time, too. But remember, my daddy turned me on to rock'a'billy at an early age and I was an early Eagles fan back when they were doing Linda Ronstadt back-up work.  And I still revel in the sound of that whole LA/Country/Hippie thing that Buffalo Springfield, CSNY, The Byrds, CCR and Poco honed to a thing of beauty. 

And let's not forget the incredible work Garth Brooks did for the genre: not only was he a show man beyond compare - and an insightful song writer - but this dude had gravitas alongside a wicked sense of humor.  Ad to all of this a big heart and a killer band and there was no stopping him.

There's Willie Nelson - a total genius - my man Kris Kristofferson who makes me laugh and cry, Jason Aldean who kicks country ass like nobody's business and a whole gaggle of great women country artists like Carrie Underwood, Trisha Yearwood, Taylor Swift, Faith Hill, Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn, Patsy Cline, Tammy Wynette, Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt, Allison Krauss, the Judds, Rosanne Cash, Kathy Mattea and Maybelle Carter. These women rocked my world.

So today after a bit of sabbath rest and exploration, what should come pounding out of the car radio up in the hills of Western Massachusetts but this freakin' crazy ass country song that sounds like the boys of Def Leppard  got hitched to some babes in Nashville and decided to stay for a season. Two of the current country rockers, Trisha Yearwood and Miranda Lambert, just smoke it on,"Something Bad's Gonna Happen" and damn if they aren't telling the truth!

And then, after we rocked out in the Subaru, the DJ just couldn't help himself because his "twofer" was from another rascal: Trace Adkins. They played "Honky Tonk Badonkadonk" which is drop dead funny, sexy, sexist and rockin' with all of its badass double entendres. But my favorite is still his ode to lovin' his wife who may no longer look like she did at 17 but she's still his one hot momma...

I have to say: these guys are too much fun and I give thanks to God for them all!

speaking of the repression of beauty...

The wise neo-Jungian, James Hillman, observed that once  "the arts, whose task once was

considered to be that of manifesting the beautiful," has been so commodified, trivialized and rendered a tool of propaganda by our bottom-line culture that now:

... those in the arts will discuss the idea (of beauty) only to dismiss it, regarding beauty only as the pretty, the simple, the pleasing, the mindless and the easy. Because beauty is conceived so naively, it appears as merely naive, and can be tolerated only if complicated by discord, shock, violence, and harsh terrestrial realities. I therefore feel justified in speaking of the repression of beauty.

Beauty is exploited to sell products. Beauty is manipulated to evoke sensuality and shame. Beauty is used to "stage" a home or advance a cause. But rarely is beauty embraced as "the highest integrative level of understanding and the most comprehensive capacity for effective action."  As Frederick Turner writes, "Beauty enables us to go with, rather than against, the deepest tendency or theme of the universe." John O'Donohue pushes this truth further when he notes: "Because our present habit of mind is governed by the calculus of consumerism and busyness, we are less and less frequently available to the exuberance of beauty. Indeed, we have brought calculation to such a level that it now seems unsophisticated to admit surprise!"

This is, in my realm, part of what the Scottish psychiatrist, R.D. Laing, meant when he echoed the warning of the ancient poet of Israel, Amos, who prophesied:  "Behold, the days are coming," declares the Lord our God, "when I will send a famine upon the land - but not a famine of bread or water - but of hearing the word of the Lord." (Amos 8: 11) In one of many brilliant insights in his guide for pastors, Working the Angles, Eugene Peterson writes about Psalm 40:

A brilliantly conceived metaphor  in Psalm 40:6   provides a pivot on which to turn the corner; literally it reads: "ears thou hast dug for me" (azenayim karîtha lî). It is puzzling that  no translator renders the sentence into English just that way They all prefer to paraphrase at this point, presenting the meaning adequately but losing the metaphor: "thou hast given me an open ear" (RSV) . But to lose the metaphor in this instance is not to be countenanced; the Hebrew verb is "dug." 

Imagine a human head with no ears. Where ears are usually found there is only a smooth, impenetrable surface, granitic bone. God speaks. No response. The metaphor occurs in the context of a bustling religious activity deaf to the  voice of God: "sacrifice and offering thou dost not desire . . . burnt offering and sin offering" (40:6). How did   these people know about these offerings and how to make them? They had read the prescriptions in Exodus and Leviticus and followed instructions.  They had become religious. Their eyes read the words on the Torah page and rituals were formed. They had read the Scripture words accurately and gotten the ritual right. How did it happen that they had missed the message "not required"?  There must be something more involved than following directions for unblemished animals, a stone altar, and a sacrificial fire.  

There is God speaking and must be listened to.But what good is a speaking God without listening human ears? So God gets a pick and shovel and digs through the cranial granite, opening a passage that will give access to the  interior depths, into the mind and heart.  Or–maybe we are not to imagine a smooth expanse of skull but something like wells that have been stopped up with refuse: culture noise, throw-away gossip, garbage chatter. Our ears are so clogged that we cannot hear God speak.  God, like Isaac who dug again the wells that the Philistines had filled, redigs the ears trashed with audio junk.

Such clogged heads, satiated senses and malnourished imaginations suggest to me that one

of the essential callings of "doing church" in this generation requires a return to beauty, silence and guided meditation. Without reclaiming the tools of contemplation - without teaching a people long conditioned to ignore and dismiss the ways of the heart how to rest into the "unforced rhythms of grace" - our ethical downward spiral will continue to pick up speed. And our awareness of God's still, small voice embedded in beauty, truth and goodness will sink further into misunderstanding.

Our collective "famine" from hearing the voice of compassion and hope is part of what I sense is driving America's obsession with nativist, know-nothing populists like Donald Trump. His appeal, beyond fear of the other, resonates with the overworked women and men of the middle class. These are not amoral people, but they are exhausted  There is almost no room in their world for quiet reflection or gentle and nuanced aesthetics. Yes,to perpetual exercise - life is already a treadmill; certainly to all forms of competition for such is the air we breathe in this culture. But contemplation? Extended times for thought? Hurry up and do... nothing for a change? Don't be reactionary - or naive - or sentimental: we have to get on with winning in America. And if it takes a boorish, arrogant "manager in chief" to kick our collectives asses so that we break free from political gridlock and social disintegration, so be it! We'll turn a deaf ear to his racism and look the other way when he scapegoats "outsiders." Hell, we'll even ignore his violation of our deepest Christian values like hospitality for the stranger and compassion for the least of our sisters and brothers; because god damn it: he's a winner!

There was a time in my life - and I still feel it periodically - when I wanted to aggressively challenge such madness. Now i know, however, that such feelings are part of the soul's addiction to control in times such as these. I cannot fix our sickness. I can offer an alternative. But I can barely discern God's mercy in my own life. So all I can really do is offer tenderness to the lost alongside small acts of beauty in worship and vigorous prayer.. Really. That is all I can do. Everything else is self-inflated delusion. Please know that I see in the eyes of some who worship on Sundays that they would like me to do more: " help me make sense of this agony" is the silent chant just below the surface many days. But without extended times of personal silence and reflection, without an active commitment to contemplation and compassion, nothing changes. Henri Nouwen framed this humble fact of life for me like this when he wrote about what it means to face God's love at the close of our lives:

The Lord who becomes one of us in humility does not really judge us, but reveals to us what we have become to one another. The day of judgment, therefore, is in fact the day of recognition, the day on which we see for ourselves what we have done to our brothers and sisters, and how we have treated the divine body of which we are part. Thus the question 'What have you done for the least of mine?' is not only the question of injustice and the question of peace, it also is the question by which we judge ourselves. The answer to that question will determine the existence or nonexistence of our human family.

In a time of famine from stillness, beauty and community like our own, how can we hear anything but ourselves?  Small wonder so many Christians give Trump a pass: we're too worn out to notice anything except his bravado..And because most of our days are filled with the rhetoric and disease of winning, we don't notice that anything is out of balance. Good thing God's grace is relentless. The gospel readings from Luke 15 for this fourth Sunday in Lent are clear: God keeps coming to us even when we are lost, confused, too busy or even arrogantly trying to make our own path.  God's grace is not only unforced, it is relentless - and that truth is what pushes me back into the music and liturgy on the path towards beauty.

beauty does not linger, it only visits...

As you can see, with Spring rounding the corner in these parts, some seasonal cleaning was

in order for my blog. Like a great deal in my life these days, it was time to toss out a lot that was weighing me down and simplify and clarify. As Parker Palmer writes: "Spring teaches me to look more carefully for the green stems of possibility: for the intuitive hunch that may turn into a larger insight, for the glance or touch that may thaw a frozen relationship, for the stranger's act of kindness that makes the world seem hospitable again." (Let Your Life Speak)

So just as I am shifting gears with my writing, so too the look of this page. This morning, while waiting for Dianne to have her second epidural to address the two herniated discs she has been enduring for the past six months, I was awakened (again) to how fast this past year has rushed by us.  At this time last year we were madly cleaning our house and making last minute arrangements for our impending sabbatical.  Our son-in-law only half jokingly referred to it as our "magical mystery tour" - and indeed it was all of that and more. And now, a year later, we are still sorting out the blessings of all that beauty, rest and solitude.

John O'Donohue writes that "beauty does not linger, it only visits." Since our return, I know this truth in new ways and still long to walk through Parc Baldwin with my sweetheart at the start of a new day. "Beauty's visitation affects us and invites us into its rhythm, " O'Donohue continues. "it calls us to feel, think and act Beautiful for a life without delight is only half a life." Not as an invitation to selfishness, hedonism or quietude, but rather as a way of savoring what is real: "Beauty does not restrict its visitation only to those whom fortune or circumstances favor. Indeed, it is often the whisper and glimpses of beauty which enable people to endure on desperate frontiers. Even, and especially, in the bleakest times, we can still discover and awaken beauty; these are precisely the times when we need it most." (The Invisible Embrace: Beauty)

And so the sorting, pruning, discarding and savoring continues.