in the end, only kindness matters...

"In the end," we used to sing, "only kindness matters." It is time to resurrect that small, haunting song - and make it a shared anthem for all of us who are full to overflowing with grief yet still choose to trust that love is greater than death. 

Those who sense that tenderness and tears have become the new public agenda, born of broken hearts and the resolve to live beyond cynicism and emotional manipulation, know we must change our direction. This is now the dawning of the age solidarity, not Aquarius - an era of embodied compassion not sentimentality - our season for sacrificial love rather than politics as usual. The old ways have completely outlived their usefulness. As my mentors in the 12 Step movement confess: insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results. 

Frida Ghitis, a former CNN producer and correspondent, who now serves as a world affairs columnist, wrote some clarifying words yesterday as the embers were dying at Notre Dame: "This conflagration brought a feeling of helplessness and foreboding - reminiscent of the devastation on 9/11, in some ways, and perhaps that was part of the effect for some people: the sense, real or imagined, that we were watching a metaphor, a prelude, a warning." The implied warning is not explicit in most of her essay, nor is the tragic metaphor unpacked until the very close. So let me be a spoiler: we of the post-industrial West are addicted to the lie that we are control. Since September 11, 2001, we have known this to be untrue, but we have chosen denial over hard truths. Addicts always do, not forever, of course; but for as long as we can get away with it. Ms. Ghitis carefully builds the case that our unnamed and unwanted addiction is causing our world to unravel:

The spire tumbling down in a blaze, the flames shooting out behind the familiar façade of Notre Dame Cathedral in the heart of Paris, made our throats close in anguish. French President Emmanuel Macron said his thoughts were with "all Catholics and all French people," but in fact, it felt like the entire world was in pain watching the 800-year-old building turn into a blazing inferno, on its way to becoming ashes and stones. When the Notre Dame spokesman said "everything is burning, nothing will remain from the frame," it felt like a stab in our collective soul. In a time of inflamed political, religious and sectarian divisions, somehow, a fire in a Catholic church, a cathedral in France, managed to melt away the animosity -- if only for a moment -- and bring people together in shared sorrow. Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Jew, or atheist; in France, India, Argentina, everywhere, Notre Dame's doom brought personal pain. How can the demise of a building, technically a religious structure, pack such a powerful impact?The massive, majestic cathedral looked like it had been there forever, and would remain until the end of time. If only for a moment, Notre Dame ablaze reminded us that we all share this world; that human history means everyone's past. If only for a moment, the notion of a "World Heritage," which UNESCO formally bestows on places that we, as humanity, ought to care for and cherish so that we can pass them to future generations, seemed exactly right. 

The close of this lament cuts too close for many - especially those in denial re: the collapse of the status quo: "Our times feel so fraught," she writes, "as if through our animosity and divisions we are destroying the foundations of civilization." But that is precisely what we are doing: destroying the foundations of civilization.

We all hurt over the loss of Notre Dame:  the pangs we felt watching the flames consume the ancient beams, threaten the mystical rose windows, destroy the irreplaceable pipe organ, brought to mind recent man-made tragedies on French soil: the truck attack in Nice, the Bataclan massacre; not because this might have been another terrorist attack, but because our times feel so fraught, as if through our animosity and divisions we are destroying the foundations of civilization. France has become the site of a series of church desecration and arson attacks, and of a terrifying spike in antisemitic attacks, including desecration of Jewish sites, harassment, and murder of Jews.

I am a man of faith. For me and for millions of others who seek to follow Jesus as Messiah, we call this week Holy: it is our annual remembrance of the passion of Jesus. This week will also bring us the festival of Passover on the Jewish Sabbath wherein the One who is Holy hears the cries of the oppressed and acts in history to set the enslaved free. In this context, I was moved to complicated tears of assurance and renewal upon seeing the first interior photographs of Notre Dame as shared by Reuters: in the midst of our rubble and ashes, in the presence of our sorrow and confusion, the Cross remains with a penetrating clarity. I have read the sophisticated explanations about wood burning faster than gold. I get that. And, by faith, I choose to see hints of grace in the midst of tragedy. Sister Joan Chittister once said: Faith is learning to see the eagle within the egg. I think she was right.

And upon seeing this picture, and the Rose Window intact, my heart went back to the words of Fr. Mychal Judge, the Franciscan chaplain to New York City's firefighters, who was the first martyr at the Twin Towers. It is a small prayer for a hard time, but small is holy: Lord, take me where You want me to go; Let me meet who You want me to meet; Tell me what You want me to say; And keep me out of Your way. Amen. In the end, dear friends, only kindness matters. Christian kindness. Jewish kindness. Islamic kindness. Buddhist kindness. Zen kindness. Sikh kindness. Atheist kindness. Only kindness. May you multiply some kindness today and strengthen the emerging revolution of compassion.

baking bread as part of my holy week prayers...

Entering the wisdom of Holy Week requires a significant measure of quiet: it must not be hurried. Church professionals, of course, rarely have a chance to let the small mercies of this week wash over them with cleansing and refreshment. Back in the day, I took a mini-retreat between Palm Sunday and Wednesday of Holy Week. The solitude was essential if I was going to listen to the story. And feel the bounty of its hidden generosity. And reconnect with its sorrow wrapped in love. Without sufficient walking around stillness, as the late Johanine scholar Ray Brown used to say, the climax of Lent would feel flat and obligatory rather than renewing.

Now, in this unchurched era of living as a mostly undercover monk - my version of Frere Jacques, if you will - I find there is sufficient stillness for my soul to be open to Holy Week. Yesterday, Palm Sunday, was given to listening to the songs and prayers of Christ's Passion. They called me to weep freely as the only fitting response. A hymn by the 12th century monk, Bernard of Clarivaux, put it like this in"O Sacred Head Now Wounded." 

Be Thou my consolation, my shield when I must die;
Remind me of Thy passion when my last hour draws nigh.
Mine eyes shall then behold Thee, upon Thy cross shall dwell,
My heart by faith enfolds Thee. Who dieth thus dies well.

Today I find a few insights from Henri Nouwen give shape and form to my prayers. The first speaks of the downward trajectory of Christ's ministry - the upside down kingdom - where the last shall become first and those who know emptiness shall be made full. In this, Jesus embodies his mother's early song that we know as Mary's Magnificat: "My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior; because He has regarded the lowliness of His handmaid... God has scattered the proud in the conceit of their heart, put down the mighty from their thrones and has exalted the lowly. God has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty." (Luke 1: 46-55)

The late Henri Nouwen wrestled with "downward mobility" for most of his life. He knew the movement of his savior called him into a life of hidden acts of tender love, but his ego ached for recognition. Success. Importance. Thanks be to God that brother Henri shared his conflicts with us. In this we see that our own desires to be honored are natural albeit upside down to the world of Jesus. And thanks be to God that brother Henri experienced the grace of God's redemption towards the close of his life. Encountering both the mysterious love of God when he was at his lowest - as well as the constant presence of key friends who gave made God's presence during those desert days - empowered him to write: 

Indeed, the one who was from the beginning with God and who was god revealed himself as a small, helpless child; as a refugee in Egypt; as an obedient adolescent and inconspicuous adult: as a penitent disciple of the Baptizer; as a preacher from Galilee, followed by some simple fishermen; as a man who ate with sinners and talked with strangers; as an outcast, a criminal, a threat to his people. He moved from power to powerlessness, from greatness to smallness, from success to failure, from strength to weakness, from glory to ignominy. The whole life of Jesus of Nazareth was a life in which all upward mobility was resisted…The divine way is indeed the downward way."

Paradoxically, it was when Nouwen truly hit bottom professionally, personally, spiritually and emotionally that he was able to confess:

Our salvation comes from something small, tender, and vulnerable, something hardly noticeable. God, who is the Creator of the Universe, comes to us in smallness, weakness, and hiddenness. I find this a hopeful message. Somehow, I keep expecting loud and impressive events to convince me and others of God’s saving power; but over and over again I am reminded that spectacles, power plays, and big events are the ways of the world. Our temptation is to be distracted by them and made blind to the “shoot that shall sprout from the stump.”

When I have no eyes for the small signs of God’s presence – the smile

of a baby, the carefree play of children, the words of encouragement and gestures of love offered by friends – I will always remain tempted to despair. The small child of Bethlehem, the unknown young man of Nazareth, the rejected preacher, the naked man on the cross, he asks for my full attention. The work of our salvation takes place in the midst of a world that continues to shout, scream, and overwhelm us with its claims and promises. But the promise is hidden in the shoot that sprouts from the stump, a shoot that hardly anyone notices.

Liberating, yes? Redemptive, too. Yet the invitation into a downward mobility is in constant battle with my false self, that broken part of me that wants to be celebrated and recognized as valuable, that very real part of me that tends to resist silence. And that's why living into a spirituality of Holy Week requires stepping away for a time. Going to a quiet place to listen to the war within and recommit myself to trusting God's hidden presence. In an oblique way, the poet Billy Collins says something similar in this poem. 

Solvitur Ambulando
"It is solved by walking."

I sometimes wonder about the thoughtful Roman
who came up with the notion
that any problem can be solved by walking.

Maybe his worries were minor enough
to be banished by a little amble
along the paths of his gardens,
or, if he faced a tough one––
whether to invite Lavinia or Pomponia to the feast––
walking to the Coliseum would show him the one to pick.

The maxim makes it sound so simple:
go for a walk until you find a solution
then walk back home with a clear head.
No problem, as they used to say in ancient Rome.

But one night, a sticky one might take you
for a walk past the limits of a city,
beyond the streetlights of its suburbs,
and there you are, knocking on the door of a farmer,
who keeps you company on the porch

until your wife comes to fetch you
and drive you and your problem back home,
your problem taking up most of the back seat
and staring at your wife in the rear-view mirror.

And what about the mathematician
who tried to figure out some devilish
mind-crusher like Goldbach’s conjecture
and taking the Latin to heart,
walked to the very bottom of Patagonia?

There he stood on a promontory,
so the locals like to tell you,
staring beyond the end of the hemisphere,

with nothing but the cries of seabirds,
waves exploding on the rocks,
clouds rushing down the sky,
and him having figured the whole thing out.

It is time for me to bake some bread. For one who loves walking, bread baking is a good indoor, rainy day substitute. It affords me about four hours of being still. I must pay attention to the water and yeast if I am going to get a dough that will rise. I have to give myself over to living in another time zone that is not at all rushed, but built upon waiting - and waiting - and waiting. These closing words from Nouwen cut to the chase of what this week means to me.

The resurrection of Jesus was a hidden event. Jesus didn’t rise from the grave to baffle his opponents, to make a victory statement, or to prove to those who crucified him that he was right after all. Jesus rose as a sign to those who had loved him and followed him that God’s divine love is stronger than death. To the women and men who had committed themselves to him, he revealed that his mission had been fulfilled. To those who shared in his ministry, he gave the sacred task to call all people into the new life with him. The world didn’t take notice. Only those whom he called by name, with whom he broke bread, and to whom he spoke words of peace were aware of what happened. Still, it was this hidden event that freed humanity from the shackles of death.

credits: these pictures were taken today as the rain brought a type of waiting color to the early spring.

palm sunday spirituality takes a life time...

Palm Sunday spirituality takes time - a life time of participation, reflection and quiet relinquishment, I suspect. It is not immediately obvious how to extract meaning from this complex and challenging story. It takes time. So this morning as we took in the Procession of Palms and the Passion Narrative at St. Paul's Chapel in NYC via the technology of the Internet, I became profoundly aware that it has been my privilege to sit with this liturgy and story for over 40 years. And it always evokes unexpected tears. Sometimes I weep in gratitude, other times in shame. I have known tears of aching sorrow on Palm Sunday as well as tears of anger, impotence and relinquishment. I am never able to fully complete singing "O Sacred Head Now Wounded" without a hearty cry. Nor can I get through the Passion Narrative without weeping.

What language shall I borrow 

to thank thee, dearest friend, 

for this thy dying sorrow, 

thy pity without end? 

O make me thine forever; 

and should I fainting be, 

Lord, let me never, never 

outlive my love for thee.

Today I returned thanks to the Lord for my tears. They are tiny gifts that I can never take for granted. They link my heart and life to Jesus. The wisdom of the Palm Sunday liturgy reminds me how fickle I can be. To use Fr. Richard Rohr's words, it exposes me to my false self and convicts me with the beauty and promise of my truest self. But there's no rushing this story nor short cuts to the end. To paraphrase The Supremes, "You can't hurry love - especially during Holy Week." Before God's blessings arrive, I must endure the truth of my false self. I must pass through Palm Sunday to Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday before the Feast of the Resurrection is mine.  For while it is never God's intention to cause me - or anyone else - pain, the good news of grace has a sting before it becomes salvific.

After worship, it was time to return to the task of clearing our land of winter's debris. We are halfway there. Dianne is discovering that during the decade when we were too busy to notice, the ground cover spread to mask beautiful rocks. A host of lilies and tulips have been hidden, too. And while raking up the remnants of autumn's leaves, the first crocus of spring made an appearance. To uncover the beauty of this place, takes time, too. That's another reason we're not planning on moving any time soon: we need to enter, experience and honor the promise of this place. My old back can only take 45 minutes at a time, so it is a very slow process indeed, but now is clearly the time for taking it slow.

The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, put it like this in a conversation with one of my favorite authors, Marrilynne Robinson. When asked about how to reclaim the gift of going slowly, he replied:

We need a range of disciplines of time taking. We need to encourage one another—encourage the rising generation—probably to do more gardening and more cooking. And then maybe you’ll save the world by gardening and cooking, in the sense that there are some things which are good only if you take time with them. Because we tend to assume, “Well, the quicker the better,” we don’t understand that the good of this activity is the time taken. (The Christian Century)

Today we have worshiped, prayed, shared Eucharist and sung the hymns. We have gardened, raked, gathered dog poop and discovered a crocus. Soon we will shower and rest, rework the guest room to better serve Dianne's on-line teaching gig, and then I will prayerfully prepare Shepherd's Pie. It only seemed fitting to cook a shepherd peasant's meal on the feast day of the servant shepherd king. 

spirituality and survival: love of theotokos and mother earth...

This week was an emotional roller coaster: in addition to the news of Wiki-Leaks founder, Julian Assange, being arrested; Steve Bannon's mentoring the neo-fascists of Europe; the never-ending saga of Brexit; the emerging Constitutional crisis between the Democratic House of Representatives and the Trump regime over undisclosed tax returns; the re-election of Bibi Netanyahu in Israel; and the smear campaign being waged against Ilhan Omar; I spent time with my friends in L'Arche Ottawa, did yard work, discussed ways to deepen connections with the area's creative poetry experiments, and began writing a new song about the Blessed Virgin Mary and Mother Earth. 

What intensified my reactions to all of this came from an interview I heard on CBC Radio at the start of my six hour trek home from Canada. RANT ALERT: Without any reservation, Canadian talk-radio surpasses everything we attempt in the USA. Our pale excuse for serious radio reporting, NPR, is only somewhat better than the rest of the noise pollution on American air waves. Instead of rigorous analysis and a commitment to insightful conversation that is both eclectic and meaningful, public radio in our realm has become a chatty, anemic, dumbed-down exercise in news-lite. QUALIFICATION: there are a few US alternatives like WBAI in NYC or KXCI in Tucson. Amy Goodman's "Democracy Now" is always informative if sometimes heavy-handed. And the Pacifica Network (https://www.pacifica.org) has a long history of cutting through the fluff to report the truth. RANT CONCLUDES. The program that grabbed my attention, Tapestry (https://www.cbc.ca/
radio/tapestry/spirituality-and-survival-1.5086414) devoted a full hour to "Spirituality and Survival." 

In addition to a moving, in-depth conversation with a survivor of the Rwandan genocide, there was another interview with Philip Clayton of Claremont School of Theology. Clayton is passionately committed to linking spirituality and religion to our quest for sustainability. The show began like this:

It was while taking in a university lecture, that Philip Clayton was suddenly struck with a need to overhaul his priorities and to devote himself to fighting climate change. "I was sitting in a classroom with this famous professor named John Cobb and we were doing a session on faith and the future of the planet," said Clayton, a philosopher at the Claremont School of Theology, a graduate school in southern California.

"He was probably 85 at the time and this brilliant professor said, 'Well the following kinds of systems will collapse' and I said, 'So how many people do you think will die?' Cobb, a prominent theologian at the Claremont School who focuses on environmental activism, told him that the number could be in the hundreds of millions, if not more.

"I remember walking out into the night and thinking that changes my world," said Clayton. In 2015, Clayton helped lead a group that became the Institute for an Ecological Civilization, which tries to use theology to fight against an environmental crisis. 

I am not one who usually responds to hyperbole. My BS detector is well-honed. Neither am I persuaded by doomsday prophets. Like Clayton, I not only trust that the rhythm of God's creation includes darkness and light, but that new life was built into the reality of death.  The Paschal Mystery informs and guides my ethics. But I had never before heard anyone quantify the magnitude of death and loss that is likely to become ours given climate change. "(Most of our) systems will collapse' ... how many people do you think will die?' The number could be in the hundreds of millions, if not more." (Listen to the whole show @ https:// www.cbc.ca/radio/tapestry/spirituality-and-survival-1.5086414/climate-change-is-a-test-for-humanity-that-we-may-not-pass-says-philosopher-1.5087025)

Towards the close of Tapestry, Clayton framed the current challenge of climate change in a way that touched my heart - and appealed to my gifts:

"Science says that (our current actions are) too little too late. We actually need to sequester huge amounts of carbon back in the earth by 2028 and be zero emissions by 2042... And we don't have that technology yet. If we're unable to address climate change either individually or collectively, Clayton said that this crisis will reveal a lot about human nature: "We're in a battle to see whether we're fundamentally an altruistic species who will act for the good of the species or fundamentally a selfish species that will that is so irrational that we'll be driving a car toward a wall... I'm optimistic about human nature. That's the fundamental philosophical or spiritual commitment that I think we have to make."

I began to sense a new song/poem simmering within me that links the devotion many people of faith have towards the Blessed Virgin Mary with a comparable love of Mother Earth. It is Clayton's conviction that when loving the earth is embraced as part of our spirituality, then sustainability will become an act of trust. An embodied prayer. A way of being in the world much like St. Francis and St. Clare incarnated. Further, given the well-developed commitment to Mary as Theotokos - Mother of God - Dei Genetrix - that has matured in Eastern Orthodox prayer, I am listening for a simple musical expression that can celebrate the transformative feminine spirituality of Mary by embracing a bold caring for Mother Earth. Perhaps because some of us are about to enter Holy Week, I hear a connection between the words of Jesus on the Cross in St. John's gospel and a new charism for the 21st century: 

When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold your son.” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.

To follow Jesus, to love creation as he showed, is to take Mary into our homes and hearts and care for her as she cared for Christ. It is to cultivate a new respect and even adoration of the sacred feminine that moves beyond any sanitized and sentimental Marian piety. It is to reclaim for the Reformed world a living relationship with the Blessed Virgin whose trust and commitment brings Christ to birth within and among us. It is to join with the broken of the world who cherish the Black Madonna, who find solace and strength in Guadalupe, and who embody Mary's life-giving compassion in our ordinary lives. 

Do you know of any poems, prayers, chants or songs that make this type of linkage intentional? Any clues in scripture (beyond the Magnificat) that might help? I am not rushing to force this song - or this connection - but rather, like Mary, I want to behold these things and ponder them in my heart as I slowly collect hints of lyrics, insights and melodies. Fr. Richard Rohr's column from earlier this week was encouraging when he wrote::

The human need for physical, embodied practices seems universal. Across Christian history, the “Sacraments,” as Orthodox and Catholics call them, have always been with us. Before the age of literacy started to spread in Europe in the sixteenth century, things like pilgrimage, prayer beads, body prostrations, bows and genuflections, “blessing oneself” with the sign of the cross, statues, sprinkling things with holy water, theatrical plays and liturgies, incense and candles all allowed the soul to know itself through the outer world—which we are daring to call “Christ.” These outer images serve as mirrors of the Absolute, which can often bypass the mind. Anything is a sacrament if it serves as a Shortcut to the Infinite, hidden in something that is very finite.

(https://cac.org/the-sacrament-of-anointing-2019-04-09/?utm_medium= email&utm_campaign=2019-04-13%20DM%20Weekly&utm_content=20190413%20DM%20Weekly+CID_893c6981eea4a211f27d6260a5a6034d&utm_source=Campaign%20Monitor%20Google%20Analytics&utm_term=Tuesday)

As this week of Christ's passion unfolds, one of my prayers will be to sit with the beauty and power of Rachmaninoff's "Rejoice, O Virgin, Theotokos"  for it is sublime.

making a sacrament of time: l'arche ottawa during lent 2019

One of my deepest joys takes place every time I visit my community at L'Arche Ottawa: I get to know a friend a little deeper. Some of these friends are people with intellectual disabilities, others are part of the family of core members, a few are assistants within the community, and still others are community servant leaders and/or those who have remained connected with L'Arche as volunteers for decades. It is a rich cadre of colleagues all of whom are learning how to live more tender and authentic lives. In so many ways, the L'Arche community helps me become my best self - and share my gifts without reservation.

Do not think for a moment that I romanticize or idealize this community. There are problems. There are challenges. There are disagreements and hurts. L'Arche is human and all humanity is beautiful and flawed, creative and confused, holy and wounded, vibrant and exhausted all at the same time. L'Arche often reminds me of the words Phillips Brooks, Episcopal clergy person at Boston's Trinity Church, wrote in 1868 after visiting Palestine: "The hopes and fears of all the years are met in Thee tonight." ("O Little Town of Bethlehem") Hopes and fears, as well as joys and sorrows and serenity and struggle, are alive and well here. What makes this community sacred for me is their commitment to live into the promise of each moment - not perfectly, not consistently, but honestly and tenaciously - so that time itself becomes a sacrament. That is key: time itself becomes a sacrament.

Paradoxically, the sacramental nature of practicing this spirituality takes time to absorb and honor. Like trust, it requires patience and presence and cannot be rushed or manufactured. In unhurried moments around the dinner table - or in passing a candle around a circle and speaking what is in our hearts - we slowly reveal ourselves to one another. We laugh. We weep. We hold another in silent respect. And over time we find ourselves loving one another. Not all at once, but incrementally. This has been my experience and I am not unique: as I have come to love my friends at L'Arche, I have experienced their love for me and a willingness to love those parts of me that I rarely consider lovable. Love begets love. Jean Vanier describes this in one of his most insightful texts, Community and Growth:

Those who come close to people in need do so first of all in a generous desire to help them and bring them relief; they often feel like saviors and put themselves on a pedestal. But once in contact with them, once touching them, establishing a loving and trusting relationship with them, the mystery unveils itself. At the heart of the insecurity of people in distress there is a presence of Jesus. And so they discover the sacrament of the poor and enter the mystery of compassion. People who are poor seem to break down the barriers of power, of wealth, of ability, and of pride: they pierce the armor of the human heart builds to protect itself.

L'Arche communities have discerned that God's grace is both hidden and revealed in the small, ordinary moments of our lives. That means we must claim a new relationship to time. What is considered ordinary - events like setting the table, cooking a meal, cleaning the house, doing the laundry, sharing a birthday party, gong to a funeral, being angry and having an argument - become places where Christ can be born within and among us. You see, this is a spirituality that is incarnational, embodied encounters and experience, rather than a collection of abstractions or dogma. Sometimes our encounters are painful. Often they are unplanned and unexpected. Frequently they are joyfully and humorously humbling. And always, the revelation of the holy within our humanity invites us to trust God's love more deeply and let this love increase our capacity for compassion. 

It is slow going. The poison of our culture's addiction to various bottom lines - pristinely balanced budgets, multi-tasking, sanitized beauty, professional success, wealth, power, prestige - is insidious. It egularly threatens to seep into the slow pace of living that L'Arche communities require. How could it be otherwise, right? We are surrounded and saturated with pressure to succeed. To become big. Important. Powerful and useful. To which L'Arche says: there is another way to live. It is counter-cultural. It is slow. It is small. I think of it as the embodied spirituality of tenderness. St. Paul spoke of it as the foolishness of the Cross where we choose to die to darkness and selfishness so that we might be renewed in compassion.

The message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are become whole, it is the power of God. For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.” Where is (there authentic, life-giving wisdom?) Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? Look, since... the world did not know (and trust) God through knowledge, God decided, through the foolishness of the Cross, to bring true health those who believe. (Some) demand signs and (others) desire intellectual power, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to some and foolishness to others, but to those who are the called, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. And God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength. Just look at yourselves, 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...

In traditional theological terms, this is the Paschal Mystery. Fr. Richard Rohr has recently been calling it the rhythm of creation wherein death brings about new and resurrected life. The 12 Step movement speaks of it as a serenity born of knowing how to accept what cannot be changed in our lives and changing what is possible. Jean Vanier put it like this:

Little did I know that I was on the road to an amazing discovery, a gold mine of truth, where the weak and the strong, the rich and the poor would be brought together in community to find peace, where those who were rejected could heal and transform those who rejected them.

Unplugging from the late, great American Dream machine is essential. Turning off the insistent advertising and noise of the consumer culture is crucial, too. And making peace with silence and tension helps. Vanier noted: "There is nothing more prejudicial to community life than to mask tensions and pretend they do not exist or to hide them behind a polite façade and flee from reality and dialogue. A tension or difficulty can signal a new grace. But it has to be looked at wisely and humanly. It must be talked about with a third person or an external authority." This takes practice. And self-awareness. Too easily we project our fears and angers onto others when we need to clean up our own mess. How did Jesus put it in Luke 6: 42? "How can you say to your neighbor, ‘Friend, let me take out the speck in your eye,’ when you yourself do not see the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye." Writing about his own transformation at L'Arche Daybreak, Fr. Henri Nouwen said:

Why all (of my inner) resistance? Why the powerful attraction to the

darkness? Jesus says, “Everybody who does wrong hates the light and avoids it, to prevent his actions from being shown up; but whoever does the truth comes out into the light, so that what he is doing may plainly appear as done in God” (John 3:20–21). That is an answer to my own question. I do often prefer my darkness to God’s light. I prefer to hang on to my sinful ways because they give me some satisfaction, some sense of self, some feeling of importance. I know quite well that moving into God’s light requires me to let go of all these limited pleasures and no longer to see my life as made by me, but as given by God. Living in the light means acknowledging joyfully the truth that all that is good, beautiful, and worthy of praise belongs to God. It is only a truly God-centered life that will pull me out of my depressions and give me hope. It is a clear path, but a very hard path as well.

Over the past few years of being connected in loving friendship with a few dear souls at L'Arche Ottawa, I have been able to name some of my own inner darknesses. I have experienced being loved beyond those wounds, too and given the chance to share my love as well. I know it would be 100 times more challenging if I could be in community more than a few days each month. But, as the Serenity Prayer has taught me, I must accept what cannot be changed. And certainly for the time being, my rhythm of life is just as it should be. When I am at L'Arche, it often seems as if St. Paul were speaking directly to me:

Love never ends... prophecies, they will come to an end; speaking in tongues, they will cease; knowledge (and what you think of as wisdom), it will come to an end, too. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. Now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

As I move reluctantly and with hesitation towards Holy Week and Easter, having sensed that I wasted a lot of time during Lent rather than resting in silence, my time at L'Arche gave me a new perspective. This year's Lent was not very prayerful. But it was filled with love - and what's better than love? Love never ends. Love is the alpha and the omega. Love is what Lent is all about. Driving home after three days that became clear - and I am so grateful. Next week we will head to Brooklyn to celebrate the Trisagion with our family. And that is the right way to be, too. 

thank god for the poets, misfits, writers, artists and musicians...

I love poetry. For years I didn't know that I did. I was knocked over, moved to tears and consumed with an inexplicable joy from time to time by certain songs. The combination of sound, rhythm and lyrics often lifted me into a state of awe. Or grief. Or pure, giddy delight. But it wasn't until one cold, rainy late spring night at a Borders Bookstore in Westlake, Ohio that I grasped how much poetry mattered to me. In an anthology used by Robert Bly in his retreats for men, The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart, I stood weeping while reading "Sometimes a Man Stands Up During Supper" by Rainer Maria Rilke:

Sometimes a man stands up during supper
and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking,
because of a church that stands somewhere in the East.

And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead.

And another man, who remains inside his own house,
dies there, inside the dishes and in the glasses,
so that his children have to go far out into the world
toward that same church, which he forgot.

After 15 years of marriage I had separated from the mother of my beloved daughters. It was a frightening and lonely journey of trust to say good-bye. I knew it was a matter of life or death for me, but hated leaving my children behind. (In a very short time they came to live with me.) I was wracked with guilt and shame. And, at the same time, I was convinced that I had to move through the anguish towards something resembling new life. Reading Rilke in that store felt like someone had stripped me naked and left me to fend for myself alone. There was the hint of healing in his words - walking in the dark towards a church in the East - but no guarantees. All that was certain was that the alternative was death within the dishes of familiarity. So I stood by myself and wept in that now defunct Borders - giving thanks to God that someone else grasped my anguish -  even a dead German poet I knew nothing about.

In that same volume, Bly wrote in the introduction: "How does the work of men connect to poetry? To this day in Kazakhstan roomfuls of men sit listening to a poet chant long narratives. We recall the importance of poetry in the lives of Norse farmers, Icelandic shepherds, Greek olive growers and fishermen... the question becomes how do the life of men and the life of a culture connect to poetry?" 

While our European-American tradition questions and argues, and has to teach poetry to sullen students in English classes, other cultures - speaking Spanish, Russian, Arabic to say nothing of the many tongues of African and the Indian subcontinent - grow up inside poems, drenched through with poetic metaphors and rhythms. As we learn to criticize, to take a poem apart, to get its meaning, they learn to listen and to recite. By drawing this sharp distinction with other cultures, we are pointing to a defect in ours. We live in a poetically underdeveloped
nation. Men blame their own lives for a deficiency in the culture. For, without the fanciful delicacy and the powerful truths that poems convey, emotions and imagination flatten out. There's a lack of spirit, of vision. The loss in the heart appears as a loss of heart to take up the great cultural challenges that are a part of every man's citizenship. It is in this sense that we have come to think that working in poetry and myth with men is a therapy of the culture at its psychic roots.

Some ten years before my meltdown in Borders, I was walking in the sunshine down Nevsky Prospekt in what was then Soviet Leningrad. It was in the heady early days of "glasnost" when a young man approached me outside of a hard currency bookstore. Once he had determined I was a tourist, he asked if I might purchase for him a volume of poems by Anna Ahkmatova, a small book that was available to everyone except Soviet citizens. He was forbidden to shop in this store. I was moved by his intensity and willingness to approach me, even in this more open culture, for a book of poems. I was cautious, but glad to oblige, and bought two copies. Both in Russian. One for him and one for me - even though I had no knowledge at the time of why Ahkmatova mattered. 

In time I learned that Anna Ahkmatova was one of Russia's brilliant poets who kept writing through the reign of Soviet terror. Every night she was compelled by Soviet secret police to sit in her well lit apartment window while her son was held in a gulag so the commissars of culture could be certain she had not committed suicide. Stalin and his devils were afraid that should she give into despair and take her life, the common people would revolt. An excerpt from her "Requiem" cuts to the chase.

…I spent seventeen months waiting in line outside the prison in Leningrad. One day somebody in the crowd identified me. Standing behind me was a woman, with lips blue from the cold, who had, of course, never heard me called by name before. Now she started out of the torpor common to us all and asked me in a whisper (everyone whispered there):

“Can you describe this?”

And I said: “I can.”

Then something like a smile passed fleetingly over what had once been her face.”

There are other stories of poems to tell, too: meeting Bly in Tucson at a reading where he shared without a break for 90 minutes yet it only felt like five, hearing Billy Collins read "Lanyard" for the first time one night in NYC, being enthralled by a volume of my lover's poems - new and old - that spoke to me of a burden I could never have imagined, falling in love with the poems of ancient Israel's King David, stumbling upon Mary Oliver, hearing Jane Hirshfield, rediscovering Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, Scot Cairns and Lou Reed. And I must be clear not to forget Carrie Newcomer. Just yesterday, while prayerfully exploring ways to celebrate the wedding of my oldest friend in creation who will marry a beloved friend from our time in high school next month in California, I came upon "Why We Are Here" in Newcomer's little book, A Permeable Life.

She stood looking out the doorway
Poised to step out into whatever comes next.
Although I knew that I could not go with her
I could keep her company while waiting,
Bear witness to the preparing,
And maybe rub her tired shoulders
Which I know is absolutely nothing
And absolutely everything.

Maybe that is why we are here:
To rub shoulders and play cards,
To be a place to launch,
And a place to land,
To murmur on the pone late at night,
And to say,
"This I love"
And
"This I saw."

For years I have cherished this "poem" by Paul of Tarsus although for most of my life I never knew it as poetry. But now I do - and it rings true. 

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. 

But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.  And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

Thank God for the poets and the way through the darkness they have offered to me. Maybe to you, too?

St. Paul by Gracie Morbitzer @ https://www.etsy.com/sg-en/listing/551279935/st-paul-modern-icon-5x7-print

a very small lent...

As I take stock of my Lenten journey with Jesus on the way to the Cross and the Resurrection, I must confess that it has been an uneven sojourn for me so far. I keep returning to the invitation, but seem to have little passion for the traditional practices this year. I very much like the way the Taize community set the stage for this season:

The season of Lent is a time of retreat for the whole community. In the spirit of Jesus in the desert, we take 40 days to practice the essentials of our spiritual lives. 

Sadly, while my spirit is willing, both my flesh and imagination are weak. Usually the three Lenten disciplines -  quiet time for contemplation; letting go of selfish thoughts, words and actions; and sharing simple acts of kindness with those in need - resonate with me. Traditionally we speak of them as prayer, fasting and alms giving. But I can't use the old words any more nor can I muster much juice for practicing them. It is my hunch that people inside the community of faith are too worn out by the old expectations to care about Lent this year, and those beyond our sanctuaries are clueless about why it might matter. Not ignorant, mind you, for God has placed within each of us something of the divine image that we all yearn to strengthen. In this, I fully renounce my Reformed heritage that teaches we are miserable sinners cut off forever from grace without Christ. If Jesus means anything it is that we are all God's beloved - often wounded, to be sure - and regularly confused, but still souls filled with a sacred capacity to live our lives with integrity as the beloved of the Lord.

Imagine my surprise at feeling energized upon reading the gospel text for the Fifth Sunday of Lent: John 12: 1-8.

Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus' feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, "Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?" Jesus said, "Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me."

It is an invitation - and encouragement - to do something beautiful. For God. For another. For creation. For ourself. "Doing something beautiful for God is one of the ways we show the world gratitude," I once wrote. And that still makes sense. Some of us may do it with visual art. Others with music. Some with poetry. Or movies. Or cooking. Still others will feed the hungry or visit the lonely. Some will patiently care for their children. Or their parents. Or even a stranger. Whatever our calling we can each do something beautiful for the Lord. Usually this will be small. It may not change the world in obvious ways. But it will bring refreshment to at least one other being. And Jesus was explicit that whenever we help one person, we are helping him. I think this is how I have come to live into Lent this year.

learning the 21st century language of awe and reverence...

One of the reasons I continue to tell time according to the Christian calendar has to do with its circular nature: the liturgical year, like the celebration of the Eucharist itself, is not linear. The liturgical year never rushes towards the bottom line. Nor does it demand traditional progress or results. Rather, it asks us to go deeper over a life time, offering each of us the chance to practice living into the life, death and resurrection again and again. It is a counter-cultural alternative to the status quo of business productivity.

In this there is an assumption of failure. Wisdom is born of experience. Holiness ripens slowly. Necessity is the mother of invention. For the way of the Lord requires time to fall down (sin), take stock (confession), make changes (repentance) and get back up again and again (resurrection). Sometimes our rising is of our own volition; more often than not, however, it is of the Lord. Each year that we are conscious of God's grace carefully leads us into a time of feasting and fasting, celebration and solitude, traveling through the light as well as the darkness, understanding and mystery, knowing and unknowing all within the eternal embrace of God's love. St. Paul got it right when he wrote in Romans 8:

All things work for good with those who love the Lord..that is why I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

I intentionally absented myself from the rigors of public worship for a full year, however, in order to deconstruct and perhaps reclaim the sacred rhythm of living according to God's time. We returned to worship on Christmas Eve 2018, joining our family in Brooklyn at a puppet pageant at St. Paul's Chapel in NYC. It was a beautiful home-coming. But I wouldn't have been able to celebrate this return without those 12 months outside my tradition. They were like an extended silent retreat for me: no pressure, no expectations, and no formal structures to shape my journey. It was a pilgrimage of discovery that first led me out of my comfort zone only to lead me into a deeper reverence. 

After observing the liturgical calendar faithfully for 40 years, you see, too much of it felt like mechanical. And given the gravitas of the number 40 - so pregnant with scriptural significance - I wanted to claim this as an opportunity. Think of the forty days and nights on the ark after the flood, the forty years in the wilderness after the Exodus, and the forty days and nights Jesus fasted in the desert before moving into his public ministry. My forty years of pastoral ministry demanded a comparable season of stillness. So trusting a grace greater than my anxiety, I stepped into a quietude that would lead me towards a renewed rhythm of fidelity. Psalm 46 was my clue: Be still and know... 

One year later, two inner truths have risen to the top: 

+ First, there can be no doubt that my organic spirituality is saturated in sacramental vision: I sense the holy in all things and feel God's presence everywhere.

+ Second, my spiritual vocabulary had become woefully limited. I was mystically experiencing the radical unity of heaven and earth in my ordinary world, but my old school religious words were no longer able to describe this blessing. I might as well be talking to myself as nobody uses such words any more. 

Stepping outside of my comfort bubble taught me that I needed new words to celebrate the healing presence of the holy so often present in the midst of our brokenness. In my old school tongue, I needed another personal Pentecost. My first Pentecostal experience came when the Beatles took the stage on Ed Sullivan's show in February 1964. When John Lennon sang "Twist and Shout," everything changed: the spirit of love washed over me and I was convinced that the gospel of rock and roll (and later jazz) could build bridges between very different people. For 50 years that was my frame of reference, but in 2018 I needed more than just a reissue of the White Album. Now I needed up to date and inclusive images, sounds, visions and experiences from poets like Naomi Shihab Nye and Mary Oliver, Billy Collins and Margret Atwood, Geraldine Connolly and Gary Whitehead, Tupac, Grace R, Carrie Newcomer, Pam McAlister and so many others. This poem by Grace at one of my last official church events made it all clear...


You see, while I knew the poems of the Scriptures reasonably well - and they still rang true to me - to connect beyond a small circle of friends required learning to speak beyond my tradition. The Canadian theologian, Ralph Heinzman, was insightful in Rediscovering Reverence:

Reverence conveys a human attitude of respect and deference for something larger or higher in priority than our own individual selves; something that commands our admiration and our loyalty, and may imply obligations and duties on our part. In a gesture of reverence, either physical on mental, we acknowledge superior worth, our relationship with it, and our potential obligations towards it. Reverence results from humility as a Jewish text puts it... (It seems to me that reverence) flows from awe - the emotion we feel when we encounter someone or something that transcends our normal life, and embodies qualities of excellence or beauty... it is a natural component or source of reverence... and provides the drive that causes people to act: to devote themselves to something, to stand up for something, or to take a stand against something - even to just go on living. Awe can overwhelm us, but it also motivates and empowers us. (pp. 18-19)

So was the work of Bill Yehele and his promotion of local poetry slams and readings throughout our region. Bringing together young poets as well as senior citizens and everyone in-between, he creates 21st century "happenings." Last night I played upright bass in between the poems of 17 local artists. About 30 of us gathered in the local library to see what might happen - and it was engaging, sometimes raw and very real. Check them out @ https://www.facebook.com/wordx wordfestival/. My experience last night brought to mind this poem by Geraldine Connoly called, "The Right Words."

I need to find them,
certain words,
particular syllables.
But everywhere I look,
in yellowed newspapers

and the blue-black dictionary,
under the glossy magazine photos
and tattered envelopes,
they evade me.
I peek under my old stove
and inside my new gloves.

I want to twirl them, swallow them,
send them on errands.
I want to get as close
as I can to the right words,

I want to gulp their wisdom
and eat their sadness,
want to forget the thorny bushes
and dreary blizzards,
to escape
from the mute times.

In this era of Trumpian 1984isms - where the Google and Facebook thought police monitor and manipulate our words and preferences to say nothing of our elections - small gatherings of poets and musicians offer an alternative that is immediate, honest, creative and earthy. These mini-communities give us a chance to cut through the lies, noise and confusion with intimacy and respect. When I got home last night, Laura Grace Weldon's poem, "How to Soothe," came to mind. She evokes what has been lost in this age even as she offers a tender corrective.

When babies cried
my father picked them up,
politely, as if to apologize
for their locomotion issues,
then stepped outside.
He named trees, birds, rain.
"This is grass," he'd say.
"In no time at all
you'll be running on it."
Babies calmed at once,
eyes wide, awake
to the planet's glories.

I learned from my father
it's a matter of walking
inside to out
with someone capable
of truly seeing.

The poet/theologian Christine Valters Paintner of Abbey of the Arts recently has been exploring this theme too: 

When we rush from thing to thing, never pausing, never allowing space, we see only what we expect to find. We see to grasp at the information we need. We see the stereotypes embedded in our minds. We miss the opportunity to see beyond what we want. We walk by a thousand ordinary revelations every day in our busyness and preoccupation. We move through our lives, often at such speed, that our perception of time becomes contorted. We begin to believe that life is about rushing as fast as we can, about getting as much done as possible. We are essentially skating across life’s surface, exhausted, and disoriented.

(Abbey of the Arts: dancingmonk@abbeyofthearts.co)

We were created in the image of a loving God, not an assembly line horror show or a computer bot. We know this deep within. We yearn for something more beyond filling in the slots, buying more trinkets, and punching the time clock. Religious language rarely communicates this longing in 2019. For a time, the institutional church has disqualified itself as a place of trust, too. What seems to cut through the din, however, is the meeting of beautiful words and music shared in small settings by those with open hearts and minds. This is where the calendar of the holy is being revealed in my experience. This is where Pentecost is happening again. This is where kairos time is encountered and treated with reverence.


credits:
+ https://www.aquinasandmore.com/buy/year-grace-liturgical-calendar-20858/