owning and challenging the legacy of anti-Jewish stereotypes in liberal theology...

This may come off as a rant -  the last thing I desire - as I hope to write a critical reflection on a well-intended survey of the role Mary and other women play in the gospel according to St. Luke for Advent. The article that caught my eye appears in Sojourners Magazine under the heading: "Advent: Hearing God in a Female Voice." The author, Joe Kay, suggests that in the time of Jesus as in our own era, "Female voices are widely ignored, marginalized, and muted by those who think that only males should be heard. The Jesus story turns all that upside-down. It places women front and center, right from the start." (See the full article here @ https://sojo.net/articles/advent-hearing-god-female-voice?sfns=mo&fbclid= IwAR0lecqbe2cruUcIbAsh WEB3ch8Z1O9PEUzvW7IwzqZfhgJY4Xjt33YOY2c) 

There is no question that the voices of women are denigrated, ignored, mocked, and vilified in our culture. Just this morning, the US President once again tweeted his attack on the young climate activist, Greta Thunberg, after she was named TIME Magazine's person of the year.

Violence against women continues to be a public health epidemic. Ugly and unfair double standards in demeanor, dress, vocabulary, attitude, morality, opportunity, and income are so blatant between men and women that the Republican majority in the Senate could easily confirm the appointment of Brent Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court without so much as a second thought. And while the "Me Too" movement has accelerated our slow march towards changing culture - and holding men accountable for their actions and attitudes - the gap between the realm of justice and our current dysfunction is incomprehensible.

So please don't mistake my concern: it is not with the author's solidarity with the cause of equal rights for contemporary women. Rather, I am distressed that in 2019 liberal theology still advances the false dichotomy between the so-called liberating practices of Jesus and the oppressive actions of First Century Judaism. It is one of the most egregious blind spots within our tradition. Not only is this fallacy a product of incomplete scholarship, it is also one of the ways the sins of our mothers and fathers unquestioned anti-Jewish stereotypes are passed down to the third and fourth generation. In the ground-breaking, Jewish Annotated New Testament, eds. Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi-Brettler cut to the chase:

Out of ignorance many pastors and religious educators strip Jesus from his Jewish context and depict that context in false and noxious stereotypes... There are five major reasons for this problem. First, most Christian seminaries and divinity schools do not offer detailed educations about Judaism, whether at the time of Jesus or subsequently... Second, whereas a number of churches have guidelines on the presentation of Jews and Judaism, not all clergy know of the guidelines... Third, as church demographics shift increasingly to Asia and Africa, new forms of anti-Jewish biblical interpretations
develop. Christians from these areas lack direct memory of the Shoah, the Holocaust, and so may be less sensitized to the dangers of detaching Jesus from his Jewish tradition...Fourth, biblical studies does, appropriately, speak to contemporary issues. In this effort to deploy the biblical text for purposes of liberation, interpreters insensitive to the issue of anti-Jewish teaching sometimes present Jesus as the liberator from his social context, namely Judaism, which they depict as analogous to present day social ills... And fifth, and perhaps most pernicious, the problem of ahistorical, anti-Jewish interpretation in not always acknowledged. (Bearing False Witness: Common Errors Made About Early Judaism, p. 501)

Dr. Levine then carefully offers ten areas where anti-Jewish stereotypes remain in much of contemporary Christian preaching, teaching and writing. She has written extensively about these concerns throughout her career including in The Misunderstood Jew (2006), in conversation with Ben Witherington in their New Cambridge Bible Commentary on the Gospel of Luke (2018) as well as in Light of the World (2019.) Her fourth and sixth concerns in this summary offer places where balance could amplify the omissions of the Sojourners article:

+ The broad theological view that contrasts Jewish law with Christian grace.

+ The misconception that Jews follow Torah in order to earn God's love and a place in heaven. This equates Judaism with a religion of "works righteousness" rather than grace.

+ The misconception that views purity law as burdensome and unjust.

+ The belief that early Judaism "was so misogynistic that it made the Taliban look progressive by comparison, and that Jesus liberated women from this oppressive system."

+ Confusion over Jewish practices and teaching concerning divorce.

+ The "substantially vague rhetoric that claims Jesus ministered to the outcasts and marginals" of his day while the Jewish community did not.

+ The incorrect notion that all Jews wanted a militant messiah and rejected Jesus because he proclaimed a love for our enemies.

+ The inaccurate belief that early Judaism celebrated a distant and remote God while Jesus uniquely spoke of the Lord as his intimate "abba."

+ The insistence that Jesus objected to the "temple domination system" that overtaxed the popularization.

+ And finally the lie that Judaism was narrow and exclusive while the way of Jesus was broadly inclusive.

Clearly the Sojourners piece speaks in broad strokes to a general audience. It is certain that the author seeks in solidarity to link the challenges of contemporary women with the perceived problems Jesus addressed in his era. In our tradition, it is popular to do so to document our continued relevance and the deep wisdom of a biblical faith. The late Marcus Borg, those in the Jesus Seminar and Bishop John Shelby Spong worked hard at reinterpreting Jesus for a new world. In their writing Jesus became a mystical, social revolutionary who called out the oppression of his generation with a radical gospel of love. In this, Jesus offered modern people a way back into a broken and patriarchal Christianity. I resonate with their intent. The fundamental problem with it, however, is as Levine and Zvi-Brettler state: there is no historically accurate or theologically honest way to talk about "a feminist Jesus and a retrograde Judaism."

The New Testament, as well as other Jewish literature of the time, from the deutero-canoncial texts to Josephus and Philo to inscriptional evidence to early rabbinic sources, tells us the Jewish women owned their own homes (see Luke 10: 38, Acts 12: 12), served as patrons (Luke 8:1-3), appeared in the Temple (which had a dedicated "Court of the Women") and in synagogues; had use of their own property... had freedom of travel. Clearly it was not because of Jewish oppression that women joined Jesus. Perhaps some women outside of marital situations
were particularly attracted Jesus' movement given its possible focus on celibacy (Mt 19:22), non-privileging of child-bearing (Luke 11: 27-28) and alternative family structures ( Mk. 3: 35.)

It is simply false to state: "Then and now, those female voices are widely ignored, marginalized, and muted by those who think that only males should be heard." It is untrue that "the Jesus story turns all that upside-down (and) places women front and center, right from the start." And Mary's role is not a shocking alternative to a culture where "only men made the big decisions and women were treated more like property than persons." Rather, Mary joins a long cast of Jewish women liberators that include Sarah, Deborah, Rachel, Esther, Leah, Miriam, Hannah, Abigail, and Rahab. Indeed, Mary's song - The Magnificat - is a reworking of Hannah's ode of thanks to God in anticipation of Samuel's birth with echoes from Judith, Miriam and Deborah woven throughout. (See 1 Samuel 2: 1-10, Exodus 15: 19-20, and Judges 5: 1-31.

The article closes with an important insight that still needs amplification: over the years the Christian male hierarchy has not only erased and silenced the role of women in the Jesus movement, but continues to do so in the 21st century. An excellent corrective can be found in Cynthia Bourgeault's seriously documented study: The Meaning Of Mary Magdalene. My hope and prayer this Advent is that the feminine voices of God are given a new and honest hearing within the Christian community. To do requires owning the legacy of anti-Jewish stereotypes in our theology, liturgy, and worldview and reclaiming the beauty of the Jewish roots of Mary, Elizabeth, John the Baptist and Jesus himself.

credits:
+ Madonna: https://www.etsy.com/listing/675718261/madonna-and-child-reclining
+ Jesus of the Desert: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/173670129351462898/?lp=true
+ Christ Sophia: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/346003183845537302/?lp=true

grateful for what is...

A meme from the incomparable Carrie Newcomer gets it all so right: "A dog is grateful for what is, which I am finding to be the soundest kind of wisdom and very good theology."

As I posted yesterday, confessing this wisdom and embracing it in real life are, however, two different matters. And the gap between the two is, it seems to me, the place of spiritual practice and discipline. The locus of embodied faith. Our journey into joining the holy in the transformation of sacred words into human flesh. 

The late Clarence Jordan of Koinonia Farms - birthplace of Habitat for Humanity - once put it like this in his Cotton Patch Gospels (a translation of the Biblical Greek into the colloquial phrases of the Deep South.) "Faith is the turning of our dreams into deeds." Note that this come from Hebrews 11:1 - "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen" - in an active voice instead of lofty theological abstractions. Authentic Christian faith is a verb that guides every stage of our living - even our dying from one life into the next. (NOTE: Di's vertigo is profoundly better today so I am back into my contemplative writing groove!)

For me this means cultivating and practicing a willingness to let go of control and authority. Some speak of it as surrender. Or training in dying before death. Others describe it as an embodied downward mobility, a spiritual descent into trusting a love greater than ourselves that helps us relinquish every distraction from grace. My ups and downs suggest it is a membership in the life-long learning school of the Cross. "The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are lost, but to us who are being made whole it is the power of God." (I Corinthians 1)

Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? Some demand physical proof, others ask for intellectual insights, even as we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to some and foolishness to others. But to those who have been called regardless of race, tradition or status in life, Christ becomes both the power and wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.

This morning Richard Rohr's reflection on the spirituality of the 12 Steps of AA put it like this:

We each have our inner program for happiness, our plans by which we can be secure, esteemed, and in control, and we are blissfully unaware that these cannot work for us for the long haul—without becoming more and more controlling ourselves. Something has to break our primary addiction, which is to our own power and unworkable programs for happiness and security. When Jesus taught, “If anyone wants to follow me, let them renounce themselves!” (Mark 8:34; Luke 9:23), I am pretty sure that Jesus meant exactly what Bill W. means in Step Three: a radical surrendering of our will to Another whom we trust more than ourselves.

There are three truly radical and beautiful things about AA spirituality: 1) It is built upon grace not shame; 2) It refuses to punish our "weakness and failures"; and 3) It strips religion of every vestige of elitism. "The absolute genius of the Twelve Steps is that it refuses to bless and reward what looks like any moral worthiness game, and it refuses to punish weakness and failure." 

With Gospel brilliance and insight, AA says that the starting point and, in fact, the continuing point, is not any kind of worthiness at all but in fact unworthiness! (“I am an alcoholic!”) Suddenly religion loses all capacity for elitism. This is what Jesus affirmed in prostitutes and tax collectors and what Paul praised when he said, “It is when I am weak that I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10). When the churches forget their own Gospel message, the Holy Spirit sneaks in through the ducts and the air vents, which is what it has done in the Twelve-Step Program and other therapies. (For more see the current series on 12 Step Spirituality @ 
https://cac.org/a-radical-surrendering-2019-12-11/)

It is a way to incarnate faith from the bottom up. Or a nuts and bolts spirituality guided by God's tenderness. Henri Nouwen used to speak of the way of Jesus as the "hidden and mysterious" path of the Lord: "It is hard to believe that God would reveal (God's) divine presence to us in the self-emptying, humble way of the man from Nazareth. So much in me seeks influence, power, success, and popularity."

But the way of Jesus is the way of hiddenness, powerlessness, and littleness. It does not seem a very appealing way. Yet when I enter into true, deep communion with Jesus, I will find that it is this small way that leads to real peace and joy... Where is God? God is where we are weak, vulnerable, small, and dependent. God is where the poor are, the hungry, the handicapped, the mentally ill, the elderly, the powerless. How can we come to know God when our focus is elsewhere, on success, influence, and power? I increasingly believe that our faithfulness will depend on our willingness to go where there is brokenness, loneliness, and human need... I realize that the only way for us to stay well in the midst of the many “worlds” is to stay close to the small, vulnerable child that lives in our hearts and in every other human being. (For more, go to https://henrinouwen.org)

Isn't that precisely IT? "The only way to stay well in the midst of the many "worlds" - distractions, addictions, fears, anxieties, competing kingdoms and all the rest - "is to stay close to the small, vulnerable child that lives in our hearts and in every other human being." I remember weeping in gratitude the first time I stumbled upon Psalm 131 after decades of reading the Psalter:

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

I do not occupy myself with great matters, 

or with things that are too hard for me.

But I still my soul and make it quiet,

like a child upon its mother's breast; 

my soul is quieted within me.

O Israel, wait upon the LORD, 

from this time forth for evermore.

This seems to be the way my brokenness and blessing manifest themselves in real time: I come home to resting in the small, hidden comfort of God's grace and then gradually wander away, trusting myself again until that runs out of gas and I crash back into the holy embrace "like a child upon its mother's breast." Would that I stayed in repose longer! It feels something like this poem from Rio Cortez, child of Salt Lake City who now resides in Harlem:

Everything is a ring. I am working on a belief that starts like that: everything
is a ring, not symmetrical, it has
the illusion of progress

*
I woke up sad so all day long I tried
to make the world sad around me

*
I heard in a movie once that hurt people
hurt people. Now I always say that
when I comforting sad friends.
I curve the ring so not even I can see it
how it winds right back to itself, loops
right around me when I think
it must be going

I say to myself: look at this sad fool

*
I am always explaining to my lover
I say to him: there are two kinds
of knowing. Some knowing is as close
as my own palm, I don’t even know
I know it. I love my mother & my mother
loves me. Other knowing gets pushed
beneath

*
Beauty always strikes me when I consider it’s going & am hurt by it
how now light enters through the curtains at dusk & I find it beautiful
because it is about to change

*
One layer of that knowing I mentioned, is of the self.
Isn’t it like that for everyone. Sometimes
the ring comes round & I feel I don’t deserve a thing.
Then I do the work of knowing. I see myself
reflected in the bathroom mirror, it’s been a long
day & I am alone, my hair pulled into a tight chignon
& I know better by looking at me next to nothing, compared
to nothing & I say thanks to someone out there

At this late stage in the game, I mostly trust and revel in the small, hidden, and tender way of Jesus: it refuses to punish my weaknesses and failures and steadfastly searches for gratitude for what is. And I need that safe return because I am not so good at living into this. I trust it with my heart and still cry out: believe, I believe, Lord help my disbelief!

credits:
+ https://www.michellepaine.com/contemporary-icons/
+ http://melizabethchapman.blogspot.com/2010/11/faith-contemporary-abstract-painting.html
+ https://www.pinterest.com/pin/394205773603766107/
+ https://culture.pl/en/work/the-black-madonna-of-c

vertigo, confusion, and living into the gift

The best laid plans - and all of that! I slept poorly last night for some reason so I was not ready to be awakened early to the sound of Dianne whispering: "I have vertigo so badly right now I can't even stand up!" Prying my eyes open in a confused act of self-will, I stumbled towards the medicine cabinet for the Dramamine. Our doc confirmed taking it every six hours as needed. Nearly 12 hours later some of the nausea is now under control, but the spinning room is still in full force whenever she sits upright.

I had planned on a day of quiet contemplation and writing. Clearly that was not to be: there were groceries to be purchased, library books to be returned, meds to be sorted out, vet appointments to be made, to say nothing of just helping my loved one up and down from our bed as the day required. As should be clear to me by now, some days simply cry out for us to hang loose in the saddle no matter what other plans might have been conjured. I appreciate the way the poet, James Crews, speaks to this reality in his "Winter Morning."

When I can no longer say thank you
for this new day and the waking into it,
for the cold scrape of the kitchen chair
and the ticking of the space heater glowing
orange as it warms the floor near my feet,
I know it is because I've been fooled again
by the selfish, unruly man who lives in me
and believes he deserves only safety
and comfort. But if I pause as I do now,
and watch the streetlights outside winking
off one by one like old men closing their
cloudy eyes, if I listen to my tired neighbors
slamming car doors hard against the morning
and see the steaming coffee in their mugs
kissing their chapped lips as they sip and
exhale each of their worries white into
the icy air around their faces—then I can
remember this one life is a gift each of us
was handed and told to open: Untie the bow
and tear off the paper, look inside
and be grateful for whatever you find
even if it is only the scent of a tangerine
that lingers on the fingers long after
you've finished eating it.

As I try to simply "come and see" wherever Jesus leads me this Advent, I am realizing yet again that being faithful is more about being willing and able to let go of my best laid plans and accept what is real than anything else. Faith is not so much about doctrine and ideas as it is taking stock of what is happening in real time right now and embracing it with love no matter whether I like it or not. This Advent seems to be yet another encounter with staying connected to reality no matter if it is hard,demanding, surprising, upsetting, or just boring. 

When I went flying on the back deck three weeks ago, legs up above my head for a few seconds before my backside crashed down against the wooden stairs, I thought: "Shit! I wasn't paying attention." I was hurrying through the motions of putting Lucie outside in the cold and rain rather than engaging the moment. And as I was sailing through the air, I thought: "Damn, whatever happens next is going to ugly and painful." And I was right. My prayer was simple. "O Lord, let me live through this." And I have to confess for a few seconds after the crash, I was not certain what state I was in. Looking up to see Lucie's face in mine did not help matters: was I here or somewhere beyond? I didn't know if I could move. Or if I was really hurt. Or if any one could hear me cry out for help. That is a sobering moment when you realize that you are flat on your back in the November darkness with only your neurotic dog looking back at you for comfort. Nobody else knows what has happened. Oh, in the blink of an eye...

So today, when our world was turned upside down by vertigo, I rejoiced as my mind flashed back to Crew's poem: this was a gift - a time to untie the bow and tear off the paper - in whatever way Di needed. Such is how I learn to live as a peace-maker in the spirit of Jesus.

advent II: practicing patience

Besides mid-autumn, the liturgical season of Advent is my favorite: I am partial to the mysterious darkness and unexpected mists that arise on the wetlands behind our house. I revel in the candles within our home and the lights that appear spontaneously overnight throughout the wider community. And it feels as if my soul is slowly stretching out within me to make space for the small surprises of the season - call them signs of the incarnation - like finding a Savior in the straw or celebrating a God who chooses to join us as a powerless infant.

Beyond the shadow of a doubt, my Advent spirituality has been shaped and guided by Gertrude Mueller-Nelson - especially her masterwork, To Dance with God. Take her commitment to reclaiming the blessing of St. Nicholas during this season. She rejects our popular culture's obsession with conspicuous consumption in favor of the older wisdom of sharing a gift in secret with another simply to evoke joy.

I’ve never done a St. Nicholas ritual that hasn’t fed me back, because somehow or another you enter into that place of holy play. You prepare something, you bake some cookies, you emboss them with an image of a holy man, and you sneak around, in my case, here at the church where I work, you put one in everybody’s box, and you say nothing. And everybody’s going around grinning and munching on their cookie knowing very well that they must not ask where it came from. There’s a child in us all, and if that childlike thing isn’t nourished and taken care of, we won’t become as little children, we won’t enter the kingdom of heaven. (http://www.catholicdigest.com/faith/200611-01gertrud-mueller-nelson-writer-artist-mother/)

She says that the charism of Advent is learning to wait with expectation. "There isn’t anything of value that we don’t have a certain period of waiting for: a good wine, for bread to rise, for our compost to work. This kind of waiting is about transformation. It’s about going from this state of heart and mind to that state of heart and mind." These words have guided my Advent prayers for over 30 years - not always successfully, mind you - but still at my core. And what I have gleaned over the years is that this takes practice. Grace-filled patience is not automatic for any of us. Nor is it a spiritual gift poured down upon us from above. Rather, it is a spiritual discipline that must be nurtured and refined with intentionality throughout out whole lives. 

Not surprisingly, this foundational truth has evaporated from contemporary Christian culture. As I look backwards, there has been a steady devolution of trust and hope in the American church that has been replaced by cynical materialism. Not only do we whine for immediate physical gratification - Uber now delivers fast food Christmas treats to your home address so you don't even have to get inside your car - but we act like our whims should be treated like human rights. The lowest common denominator in popular culture has now fully replaced the counter cultural vision of Advent in Christianity. Over the Thanksgiving weekend this struck me when the troops from Brooklyn joined us for a feast. After supper, we watched the old stand-by: "A Charlie Brown Christmas" that first aired on CBS 54 years ago. Seeing it in 2019 brought three reactions to the surface.

+ First, Schultz et al were already lamenting the commercialization of Christmas in 1965 - our crass materialism and rampant greed were becoming normative - a trend that has only grown more virulent over time. Indeed, the show's critique feels innocent and naive in this era of Trumpian glitz and sleaze. 

+ Second, the jazz score by Vince Guaraldi and his band mates continues to set the standard for interpreting Christmas music in popular music. His original compositions have stood the test of time - "Skating" and "Linus and Lucy" are true winners - and his reworking of standards like, "O Tannebaum," evoke the Advent spirituality of waiting better than most sermons.  

+ And third, the show's closing with its explicitly Christian message is wildly inappropriate for 21st century mass media even as it remains touching for believers. I am not one to advocate erasing the Christian story from popular culture. It can be shared in a broadly inclusive manner that is culturally sensitive to other spiritual and cultural traditions. I think of "Amahl and the Night Visitors" as one early example. So let's be real and call out the manufactured "war on Xmas" by FOX News as total bullshit. 

Nevertheless, as I watched the close of "A Charlie Brown Christmas" again this year, its working assumption that the Christian story is culturally normative was unsettling. Its arrogance did not honor reality 50 years ago and can no longer masquerade as such in 2019. At the same time, I am still moved to tears when Linus answers Charlie Brown's lament: "Doesn't anyone know what Christmas is all about?" 

This paradox I feel is puzzling. I support restricting the broadcast of pop culture programs that assumes hegemony. The Disney Channel's decision to keep "Song of the South" from circulation is spot on. At the same time I wonder if there is a way to show some of the best depictions of our respective spiritual traditions in pop culture? It would be a challenge, I understand, but what would it take for a network or cable station to run a mini-series during December that not only included modest intros and post scripts to shows like Charlie Brown, but also programs like the "Brothers and Sisters" Hanukkah show? What would it take to offer a week called a Festival of Faiths? (See the Forward's helpful summary here: https://forward.com/schmooze/357522/8-tv-shows-that-get-hanukkah-just-right/. This list offers some thoughts about breaking down Muslim stereotypes, too: https://thewhisp.mommyish.com/entertainment

/muslim-characters-movies-tv-flipped-stereotypes/12/) 

Which brings me back to Advent and Gertrud Mueller-Nelson. Within a Christian context, I like the way she has nourished an alternative to the cultural dominance of avarice in her reinterpretation of Santa Claus.

I just couldn’t cozy up to America’s Santa Claus where you go with your I WANT list and beg for and expect everything you want. I needed to clean that image up and go back to the original archetype of a benevolent Father figure who teaches us how to GIVE as well as receive. He frames Advent for us and points to THE GIFT who is coming. He teaches us how to step over our hungry egos and give gifts without an ego attached. To give, as he did, in secret. To give as God gives. I love the sacramentality of ordinary things—things we use or see or find in our every-day lives. It’s just not that fancy! It’s simple things given in ceremony….

What does your own ancestry have to offer you that echoes your history and identity? Foods? Drinks? Stories? Songs? Decorations? What about the neighborhood you live in? Does it have an ethnic identity? Does what you do, lift up the family? Does it bear repeating year after year? Does it underscore the mystery that lies deep in what you are celebrating? Or is it tinny? Is it a commercial trick that is awkwardly pasted into your household? That Elf on the Shelf? You want to teach your children that life is a police state? Or that God’s omniscience is like that elf’s? We modern folk replaced the pointed mitre of the noble Bishop Nicholas with a pointed elf’s cap! We took away his noble and ancient robes and gave him a snow suit? We don’t know where heaven is so we lodge him in the North Pole. He is not attended by the intuitive angels we cannot see—but by elves?

Onward we move in Advent Two practicing patience intentionally:

Merciful God, who sent your messengers the prophets to preach a change of heart and the way of healing and hope: Give us grace to heed their warning and turn away from our brokenness, that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer; who lives and reigns with you you and the Holy Spirit, united in love, now and forever. Amen.

(Book of Common Prayer revised)

come and see: waiting with Jesus...

There is something liberating and humbling about beginning again. This Advent I am starting to pray in the presence of Jesus. Again. How many times have I been here? Starting again? Taking baby steps now as an old man? Too many times to count or recall, that much is clear... 

Dear Lord,

Be with me today. Listen to my confusion

And help me know how to live it.

I don't know the words. 

I don't know the way.

Show me the way.

You are a quiet God.

Help me to listen to your voice in a noisy world.

I want to be with you.

I know you are peace.

I know you are joy.

Help me to be a peaceful and joyful person.

These are the fruits of living close to you.

Bring me close.

Amen.

The late Henri Nouwen wrote this simple prayer shortly before he left his post at Harvard Divinity School. A few months after his resignation, Nouwen spent a year with Jean Vanier at L'Arche Trosly and then took up residence at L'Arche Daybreak outside of Toronto. Brother Henri hated Harvard: he hated the elitism of his colleagues, he hated the privilege embodied in many of his students, he hated the intellectual disdain cast upon him for being a practical theologian rather than an academic with a Ph. D. And he hated the isolation he experienced in that rarefied appointment. Once again, his insecurities and ego had tricked him into accepting a position of power even as his heart called him into a life of downward mobility. Time and again, Nouwen convinced himself that his wounds and emptiness could be filled by external distractions or tasks. Small wonder that he was miserable after the buzz wore off. Jean Vanier once put it like this:

The heart is never ‘successful.’ It does not want power, honors, privilege, or efficiency; it seeks a personal relationship with another, a communion of hearts, which is the to-and-fro of love. This opening of the heart implies vulnerability and the offering of our needs and weaknesses. The heart gives and receives but above all, it gives.

Like all the rest of us - myself included - Nouwen had to learn to rest in the quiet love of Jesus the hard way. Seems like this is the way most of us learn wisdom, a measure of humility, trust, and the upside down blessing of being small in a world that celebrates greatness. In a lecture Nouwen gave a few months before he threw in the towel at Harvard, he spoke about the contrasting ministries of John the Baptist and Jesus. John was demanding - brusque - and even brutal: "Repent! Repent! Repent!" he shouted, "You are a sinful people." John was relentless.  Jesus, on the other hand, simply said: "Come with me and see..." 

He doesn't say, "Come into my world." He doesn't say, "Come and I will change you." He doesn't say, "Become my disciples." Or "Listen to me." "Do what I tell you." "Take up your cross." No. He says, "Come and see. Look around. Get to know me." Jesus offers an invitation.

(Nouwen, Following Jesus, p. 19)

As I understand it, the gentleness of Jesus represented a significant break with his training. In one of her most engaging and intellectually satisfying works, The Meaning of Mary Magdalene, the Rev. Dr. Cynthia Bourgeault suggests that Jesus began his public ministry under the influence of the asceticism advocated by his cousin, John, the practices of the Nazirite sect as well as the rigors of the Essene community. The earliest written New Testament gospel, St. Mark, tells us that after learning from John, accepting his baptism in the Jordan River, being driven by the Spirit into the wilderness to wander for 40 day, Jesus entered Galilee saying: "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe!" (Mark 1: 15)

In short order, however, Jesus leaves this perspective behind for a spirituality of tenderness. "From an interior stance based initially on judgment and renunciation, [Jesus] threw himself headlong in the direction of inclusivity and wholeness: toward a purity of heart that comes not from withholding, but from letting everything flow." (p. 184) He no longer rejects, but embraces. Welcomes rather than excludes. Accepts instead of separates. Bourgeault notes that as Jesus experienced the power of love, he began to "let it be" and move within the flow of acceptance and grace. 

Please note this this shift is NOT a reversal or rejection of his tradition as a Jew. Such claims by Christian authors reflects our embedded Antisemitism. It is dangerous and untrue. Rather, what the witness of Scripture shows is that Jesus experienced a change of heart. It led him away from the asceticism of his youth into the more open-hearted tenderness of some of ancient Israel's prophets. "Learn what this means," said the prophet Hosea, "I desire mercy not sacrifice, and intimacy with the Lord rather than burnt offerings." (Hosea 6:6) As this ministry of tenderness ripened, his critics skewered both his generosity as well as his cousin's rigor: "John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and you say, ‘He has a demon.’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ But look: wisdom is proved right by all her children.” (Luke 7: 33-35) The contrast between John and Jesus is saturated with implications. Right now, during Advent, my heart is drawn to the tenderness and mercy of Jesus.

There is a softness. There is a gentleness. There is a humility...(In this, Jesus is telling us that God wants to become our home.) God wants to be anything that makes us feel at home. She is like a bird hugging us under her wings. She is like a woman holding us in her womb. She is Infinite Mother, Loving Hose, Caring Father, the Good Provider who invites us all inside. (p. 21)

The late Jean Vanier, founder of L'Arche and beloved friend of Henri Nouwen, put it like this in his commentary on the gospel of St. John: Drawn into the Mystery of Jesus.

Jesus was not spectacular. He dressed simply. He did not live in the desert, but in an obscure village with ordinary people like us. He loved to be with those who were poor or sick, people who felt rejected and excluded from their society. He became their friend. He went to the synagogue, to celebrations and wedding feasts, like ordinary people of his time. He drank wine and ate - like us... Jesus is the one who leads us all in and through the dailiness of life and the darkness of the world into something new: a simple, loving friendship with God... His coming was prepared for not only by John the Baptizer, but also by his mother. To become flesh, there was the womb of a woman, Mary, married to Joseph. The Word did not appear out of the skies as a powerful superman. The Ward became flesh, conceived by the Holy Spirit, as a tiny human being, invisible, hardly formed, yet totally prepared for growth. He came out of the womb of a woman and lived in a deep relationship with her. (Vanier, pp. 28-29)

My heart is also drawn to the hiddeness, the quiet and smallness, of Jesus. He asks us just to "come and see." So that's what I am attempting this Advent as I begin yet again to sit in the presence of Jesus. Much of what I had expected to become real is now over. Complete. Much of what I had planned and hoped for is not currently possible. In the past I have tended to become agitated and annoyed when my expectations are shut down. Like many, I resent not being in control. And I can feel that inner frenzy still. But it never leads to life. Or peace. Or being present with those I love in ways that are open-hearted. It would seem that right now Jesus is saying to me: Draw close. Let go of what is over. Don't worry about what is to come. Just be with me for a season. Speaking to himself - and those like him - Nouwen writes that the time has come to:

We have to trust a direction for which we don't yet have a language. Jesus uses words like "breath," "life," "death," and "truth," but he imbues them with new meaning. The disciples - like us - don't understand and get confused. Only much later when the Spirit comes do the real meanings of these words become visible. (p. 38)

For now it is enough to come and see.

the embodied prayers of trimming the tree...

Monday evening, after fifteen inches of snow had fallen with more coming down, we put on a Christmas CD from the library and unpacked our decorations. It is always one of my favorite times of the year. At some point in the past I quit using the correct liturgical colors for the Advent wreath candles, swapping them out instead for whatever tapers might still be intact at year's end. This year it is pale yellow and grey - a mix and match set from Lourdes and Pittsfield -  that create an oddly soothing combination suggesting the naked Aspens that grace the edge of the wetlands behind our house. 

As Chanticleer sang, "O How a Rose E're Blooming," we took out the trimming for our tree: some gems harken back to our childhood; others from shared or solitary trips to Europe, Canada, and Central America; and more than a few celebrate the lives of our children and grandchildren. Bedazzling our home at Advent has become an embodied prayer for me. I think that is true for many whether we name it as prayer or not. Each sacred spangle rekindles a story or memory. Every Advent/Christmas song conjures encounters with glory as well as times of aching emptiness. Like Linus in "A Charlie Brown Christmas," I am suddenly with a multitude of the heavenly host praising God with tears of joy. For a moment I feel lifted into that great cloud of witnesses who have gone before singing: "Gloria in excelsis Deo." At the same time, I am awakened to the relentless rolling stream of time that "bears all our loves away." Who could have imagined that putting ornaments on a tree - and sitting in a darkened room lit only by the faerie lights on its branches - could melt past, present, and future into a paradoxically holy night?

Afterwards, basking in the beauty and stillness, we spoke of the decorations that are most meaningful: a delicate, hand-painted Inuit bulb from Canada, a velvet shamrock and thistle from London, the glass icicles from Cleveland, the wooden triangle Christmas tree from El Salvador, the bear claw from Tucson. We made plans to slip away this weekend for a quiet Christmas gift shopping trip, too. I found my heart returning thanks to God for my friends at L'Arche Ottawa who were decorating their tree at roughly the same time as ourselves. "Why does it takes a tree in our front room to bring us together on the sofa at the end of the day for a bit of reflection?" Why indeed - I am simply glad it does.

My heart has been fragile this Advent. I am searching for new/old ways to watch and wait for the birth of the Christ Child. One that is simmering this season is found in Cynthia Bourgeault's fascinating and challenging book, The Meaning of Mary Magdalene: Discovering the Woman at the Heart of Christianity. She clarifies what it means to "let it be" in the spirit of Jesus. Kenosis - or self-emptying - is at the heart of the spirituality of both Jesus and Magdalene. They show us how to live into the embrace of God's love by trust. 

Kenosis is not the same as renunciation. Renunciation implies a subtle pushing away; kenosis is simply the willingness to let things come and go without grabbing on. For all intents and purposes it is synonymous with non-clinging or non-attachment. But unlike a more Buddhist version of this spiritual motion, kenosis has a certain warm spaciousness to it; to the degree one does not assert one's own agenda, something else has the space to be. The letting go of kenosis is actually closer to letting it be than it is to any of the "non" equivalents... its flow is positive and fundamentally creative. Between the let it be of kenosis and the let it be by which biblical tradition envisions Creations itself as coming into existence, there is a profound resonance. (p. 104)

From his mother Mary's willingness to trust the holy beyond the obvious that brought Jesus to birth to his wandering in the wilderness for 40 days, baptism in the Jordan, fasting and feasting as well as his acceptance of the fear and hatred of the Cross: Jesus practiced letting it be. Bourgeault's  small but significant book, The Wisdom Way of Knowing, puts it like this:

So far I have talked about the gesture of surrender in terms of actual physical dying - and certainly that is the moment when the secret of one's life is most decisively released. But spiritual practice does not ordinarily start on one's deathbed. The real dying is much more an inner attitude, more of a "just let the fear come up and fall through it to the other side." This gesture can be learned in life as well - in fact, that's the shortest description of what spiritual practice is all about. And once it's been learned, our actual physical death is no longer the huge watershed it formerly appeared to be but is seen as merely a continuation of this same inner gesture we have already become intimately familiar with... The code word for this inner gestures is surrender - it means to "hand oneself over " or "entrust oneself." It is not about outer capitulation, but about inner opening. It is always voluntary and rather than an act of weakness, it is always an act of strength. (p. 72)

So much of my Christian tradition has ignored and avoided sharing this simple truth. Our liturgies and theologies teach that the Cross of the Lord is a unique act of suffering born of human sin. Rather than helping us grasp that the Cross was the closing act of a life-time of letting go freely embraced by Jesus on the human side of death, our official obsessions focus on fear and penitence. As the dawn of Advent began, I found myself pondering these words in my heart like Mary: 

The meaning of the Paschal Mystery lies in something far deeper than merely the resuscitation of a corpse. Jesus' real purpose in this sacrifice was to wager his own life against his core conviction that love is stronger than death, and that he laying down of self which is the essence of this love leads not to death, but to life. He was not about proving that a body lives forever, but rather that the spiritual identity forged through kenotic self-surrender survives the grave and can never be taken away. Thus, the real domain of the Paschal Mystery is not dying, but dying-to-self. It serves as the archetype for all our personal experiences of dying and rising to new life along the pathways of kenotic transformation, reminding us that it is not only possible but imperative to fall through fear into love because that is the only way we will ever truly know what it means to be alive. (Magdalene, p. 186)

The inner darkness that I have lately been experiencing - a listless sense of irrelevance and boredom - is ripening into an upside-down gift. It encourages me to choose the way of surrender and dying-to-self rather than staying lost in my regular distractions. Richard Rohr recently wrote: "Periods of seemingly fruitless darkness may in fact highlight all the ways we rob ourselves of wisdom by clinging to the light. Who grows by only looking on the bright side of things? It is only when we lose our certainties that will we be able to deconstruct our false images of God to discover the Absolute Reality beneath all our egoic fantasies and fears." My Advent discipline this year is to walk with Henri Nouwen who offers much the same insight:

When Jesus says, "Follow me," something different is happening. We enter into a a different way of following because it is a call away from "me" and toward God... It is not a way of searching for the self, but a way of emptying, of leaving the self to create space for a whole new way of being that is of God. Jesus' life was an increasing giving up of himself so that God could be totally at the center. This is what the crucifixion is all about. When Jesus says, "Follow me," he is saying: "Leave that place of the self. Leave mother, father, brother, sister, home, familiar possessions. Leave your "me" world - my mother, my brother, my sister, my possessions, my world - and follow me." Leave it so that God can enter into the center.

As you might expect, it takes practice to follow Jesus. So I am practicing dying-to-self and letting it be. Bourgeault's simple summary of how to practice this death before death, kenosis, is precisely the way to follow Jesus. Incarnationally
the gift of flesh is helping me draw closer to God in spirit and truth.

In any situation in life, confronted by an outer threat or opportunity, you can notice yourself responding inwardly in one of two ways. Either you will brace, harden, and resist; or you will soften, open, and yield. If you go with the former gesture, you will be catapulted immediately into your smaller self with its animal instincts and survival responses. If you stay with the later regardless of the out conditions, you will remain in alignment with your innermost being, and through it, diving being can reach you. Spiritual practice at its no-frills simplest is a moment-by-moment learning not to do anything in a state of internal brace. Bracing is never worth the cost. (Way of Wisdom, pp. 74-75)

I am so very grateful...

follow me...

Doing pastoral care and spiritual direction over the past 30 years has shown me the paradoxical challenge of sharing stories of my own shadow out loud. Within well-defined and appropriate boundaries, I discovered that in private chats, a little bit of shadow went a long way: it confirmed my all-too-human nature, created islands of trust in a sea of anxiety, opened hearts and minds to time-tested practices for creatively engaging the shadow, highlighted the vitality of vulnerability in our shared spiritualities, and clarified the role of a wounded healer. Discretely and humbly, short stories about my spiritual descent and renewal often corroborated the ambiguities of the spiritual life and deepened our work together. Two caveats were sacrosanct: 

+ First, intimate details of my encounters with the sacred light and darkness could never be exercised to evoke emotional or spiritual manipulation. These conversations, while confidential, were constructed upon a public relationship of my careful listening to the still small voice of the holy within the humanity of the other. Any deviation from this dynamic was forbidden.  

+ Second, the time we shared was NEVER about my personal therapeutic work. On my own time and on my own dime, I went to my own therapist to do my own work. That may seem obvious, but I have experienced in worship as well as spiritual direction times when clergy have used the encounter to address their own issues. Worship, spiritual direction, and pastoral care as personal therapy is always selfish, inappropriate, and destructive.

Two other insights are worth noting, too: sermons can be strengthened when a personal experience is articulated, but they are best kept short, more broad then intimate, and they can never be stories where we symbolically assume the role of God or Jesus. My mentor in ministry, the late Ray Swartzback, used to tell me: "I love it when you share examples from your life - just make sure not to portray yourself as Jesus - all wise and all loving, ok?" He hit a home run with that advice. The other is that writing in a confessional style is a better place to express our shadow dancing than in public worship. Suffice it to say, that the intended audience for our written reflections needs to know this in advance. No sneak attacks.

The late Henri Nouwen is a case in point. I have always been blessed by his writing. Nouwen and his editors were masters at crafting sentences that sang: some were of light, others of darkness; poetry, wisdom, and musicality were woven throughout them all. At the same time, for years Nouwen maintained a certain emotional aloofness in his writing. His guarded vulnerability suggested a soul in search of a sustaining intimacy. Yet his well-rehearsed public and professional persona told a different story wherein he spoke as a spiritual master. Richard Rohr described this contradiction in his old friend in the introduction to Following Jesus: Finding Our Way Home in an Age of Anxiety: 

Starting in the mid-1970s, we were often speakers at the same conferences. Soon he visited me several times at the New Jerusalem Community in Cincinnati, where he told me how he longed for community and intimate relationships. I could tell it was a passionate need. We would go for walks from time to time in the working class neighborhood where the community settled. He would invariably entertain me (I do not know what other word to use) with his endless spiritual curiosity, his extreme vulnerability, and his humble concern for people. Henri longed for in-depth relationship, and I think relationship was, in fact, his real genius. He could spot the authentic from the inauthentic, and longed to be a healer... which is exactly how he served us so well. (p. 8)

This tension inevitably led to Nouwen's emotional collapse while living at L'Arche Daybreak: his aching for intimacy combined with his studied public reserve could not be sustained. For almost two years he was separated from community under the care of a therapist and spiritual director. During that time, as was his regular practice, Nouwen maintained a journal. Eight years after his break-down, those closest to him succeeded in helping Henri publish this journal. He had resisted, believing it was too raw. There were no distinctions between master and subject. They had been demolished. The book that became The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom erased all false notions between Nouwen the priest and Henri the broken hearted man of middle age. In this, he allowed his true self to be shared as a tender, hurting man of faith who found a new/old way to follow Jesus late in life. (NOTE: I remember my own spiritual director at the time, Fr. Jim O'Donnell in Cleveland, telling me at breakfast that Nouwen's new book was his best. "He's speaking the truth from his shattered heart," he said, "and all aloofness is gone.")

When I was active in parish ministry, I practiced Nouwen's divided loyalties: both discretion and self-care required that I subdue most of my sacred ups and downs as a matter of healthy boundaries. Now that I am no longer serving God in that context, while discretion is still wise, my writing can be more candid. I am currently reading devotionally Nouwen's recently published lecture notes, Following Jesus, as my Advent prayer. Like him I have known ecstatic highs and exasperating lows. In fact, much like brother Henri, I have been more of a wanderer than a follower. He writes:

Often, we are more wanderers than followers. I am speaking of myself as much as of you. We are people who run around a lot, do many things, meet many people, attend many events, read many books. We are very involved. We experience life as many, many things. We go here, we go there, we do this, we do that, we speak to him, we speak to her, we have this to do and that to do. Sometimes we wonder how we can do it all. If we sit down and think about it, we are often running from one emergency to another. We are so busy and so involved. Yet, if we are asked what we are so busy we, we don't really know. People who wander from one thing to another, feeling that they are lived more than they live, are very tired. Deeply tired.

Since the start of autumn, after most of my outdoor work ended, that's how I have been feeling. Tired. Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketchum have noted that in the beginning religion and spirituality was all about awe and wonder rather than ritual and shame. Looking backwards, being inside more than out, cut off one of my connections to holy awe in nature. Without the wind in my face, the dirt of the garden on my hands, and the sweat of hauling wood on my back, I felt something start to shut down. I felt tired. Disconnected. Uncertain and bored. To which Jesus whispered: "Are you tired? Worn-out? Burned out yet again? Come unto me, follow me, and I shall give you rest." Or, to use the great poem from Eugene Peterson's The Message: "Stay with me and walk with me and I will show you the unforced rhythms of grace." (Matthew 11) Being sick these past few weeks - and then hurting my back - gave me time to feel the tiredness. It also created the space where I couldn't avoid feeling what it has meant to hide and fill my time with distractions rather than silence. My heart was warmed this morning when I read another favorite passage of Scripture that Nouwen used in his simple introduction:

There is a beautiful story in the Old Testament where the prophet stands at the mouth of a cave and the Lord is passing. There is thunder, and the Lord is not in the thunder. There is an earthquake, and the Lord is not in the earthquake. There is fire, and the Lord is not in the fire. Then there is a still, small voice, and the Lord is there, in that voice... That voice is very sensitive. It can be very quiet. It is sometimes hard to hear. But the voice of love is already in you. You may have already heard it. Start trying to hear that voice: get quiet and spend some time trying to hear it.

And so I shall as Advent ripens.
(pictures from my IPhone this morning)

advent one: following jesus...

Advent One - the close of this year's Thanksgiving weekend - and the heart of early winter spirituality has dawned - and I am ready. Currently these fair hills are being bombarded with snow that will likely keep us home-bound for another 36 hours. The crew from Brooklyn got home safely earlier this afternoon, we got out to do our "snowmagedeon" shopping, and Lucie has been reunited with the pack after a brief vacation at the kennel. (It is better for everyone involved when there are little ones loping about to have Loopy Lucie off premises.) The Christmas tree is up and strung with lights. The Advent wreath is in place. And naps have been today's embodied prayer.

This Advent I am limping around with bruises and swelling, sitting on extra soft cushions, and generally moaning and groaning due to a nasty fall I took earlier in the week. On Friday the cumulative external pain mixed with my predilection
to inner laziness got the best of me and I was knocked on my ass yet again - this time with a case of the blues like nobody's business. I am not prone to depression as a rule, you see. Maybe two or three seasonal encounters with melancholia when the days of winter appear to be frozen in place. But, as a rule, I am at peace with my station in life. But not so on Friday. I desperately despised everything that day. Bored with TV, music, literature, poetry, food, drink, faith, hope, love, and myself, I was simultaneously sorry for my miserable soul and disgusted with reality. Not depressed or suicidal, mind you. Such has never been my curse. But rather, I was wrestling yet again with the noonday devil -  acedia as the Desert Fathers and Mothers have taught me over the decades - an ugly and dark place for any one but especially so for one who revels in the sacramental beauty and wisdom of the sacred revealed in the ordinary.

Acedia is "a state of restlessness and the inability to either work or pray" that serves as prelude to the deadly sin of sloth. Precisely. I have been avoiding, then neglecting, and even intentionally disregarding focused quiet time with the Lord. Glimpses of grace broke through the haze for me over the past few months. And I know them to be signs of the love God has for even the most indolent. And still I studiously avoided the silence. Distracted myself from deep prayer. And avoided what I knew to be deep calling to deep because... I don't really know why. I just did. 

Isn't that the way we become our worst enemy? Filled with an unwarranted arrogance, I just quit going to the well of forgiveness and presence. St. Paul taught that we all do this from time to time - and I can say without any joy that I've been there and done that more than once - in fact, one of my favorite texts from the Scriptures is Romans 1 where the apostle writes:

The absence of God in our lives (wrath) is revealed... for what can be known about God is plain to us, because God has shown it to us. Ever since the creation of the world God's eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things God has made. So we are without excuse... but trusting that we know better than God, we become futile in our thinking... Claiming to be wise, we became fools, exchanging the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles. (We become bestial!) Therefore God gives us up to the lusts of our hearts... so that we might feel our emptiness and return to the One who is Holy.

I know that God rarely runs away from us. We do it - and then blame the sacred for our sloth. Or lust. Or fear. Or whatever. As Friday unfolded, I felt more and more resentful and lethargic until it slowly started to dawn on me that I needed to feel this bleakness. I needed to sense in my flesh and heart both my own lies and the aching absence for God's grace that was growing within me. As one of my mentors, the wise and humble Kathleen Norris, put it:

Acedia is not a relic of the fourth century or a hang-up of some weird Christian monks, but a force we ignore at our peril. Whenever we focus on the foibles of celebrities to the detriment of learning more about the real world - the emergence of fundamentalist religious and nationalist movements, the economic factors endangering our reefs and rain forests, the social and ecological damage caused by factory farming - acedia is at work. Wherever we run to escape it, acedia is there, propelling us to 'the next best thing,' another paradise to revel in and wantonly destroy. It also sends us backward, prettying the past with the gloss of nostalgia. Acedia has come so far with us that it easily attached to our hectic and overburdened schedules. We appear to be anything but slothful, yet that is exactly what we are, as we do more and care less, and feel pressured to do still more.

My shiftless feelings, my distraction from regular silence and reflection, gave voice to what I believe to be God's gentle song: come home, come home, ye who are weary come home, softly and tenderly Jesus is calling, calling o sinner, come home. Some may recoil at the word sinner. Not me. Sin is not only when we miss the mark in loving, it is also choosing to follow the distractions that lead to a malnourished heart. "Might we consider boredom as not only necessary for our life," asks Norris, "but also as one of its greatest blessings? A gift, pure and simple, a precious chance to be alone with our thoughts and alone with God?” As I began to own this I happened upon an invitation to a reading project for Advent. Based upon a lecture Henri Nouwen gave during one of his most broken-hearted and confused times, the invitation was to simply "return to following Jesus." "What could be better for Advent?" I thought. Nouwen said out loud to others what he himself ached to believe:

God invites us to come home. Throughout the Scriptures home is what incarnation is all about. When we realize that we are God’s home and that we are invited to make our home where God has made God’s home. We (begin to) realize that . . . we are the place where God can dwell. (Following Jesus, p. 22)

So that's where I am - and where I am going - this Advent. Quietly, regularly, silently, and with very small steps, its time for me to follow Jesus - yet again. "Into this deeply tired world of ours that God sends Jesus to speak the voice of love. Jesus says, “Follow me. Don’t keep running around. Follow me. Don’t just sit there. Follow me.”