from howling into silence...

“We cannot become so impatient for the destination that we arrive before we are ready.” Christine Valters Paintner

This weekend I tapped into my deep longing for human connection during this season of contagion. I wrote about it, I felt it while speaking with my brother by phone on his birthday (he lives in SF), I sensed it swelling up within as we Zoomed with our sweet Brooklyn kin, and I listened to its empty aching last night before going to sleep. Looking out upon the now golden mantle of the wetlands this morning as her deep reds disappear and bright oranges fade, I caught a foretaste of the grays that await us in November. They will shimmer whenever the sun shows up and swirl across the field in nuanced silvers should the shadows prevail. Cumulatively, these sights and sensitivities send me back to words Dr. Valters-Paintner shared in The Soul's Slow Ripening: 12 Celtic Practices for Seeking the Sacred. 

One way to practice peregrinatio (pilgrimage) in our lives is to follow the thread which for me means to listen to the synchronicities and patterns being revealed daily. When we are discernment... and pay attention to the other moments that shimmer, we may begin to notice symbols showing up to call us forward.

And maybe not always forward, but also deeper, too. The late James Hillman used to insist that the dominant metaphor of our culture is growth. Accumulation is one-dimensional, however, a construct of economics and adolescent ideology. It is rooted in the mistaken belief that if to have is good then to have more is better. But unrestrained growth becomes cancerous and crowds out the maturation of our soul. To become wise - and authentic - requires going deeper, beyond the obvious, into insights, stories, experiences, needs, desires, and feelings that take time to comprehend. To paraphrase Gertrud Mueller-Nelson, they must simmer and percolate before they achieve significance. Going deeper is how we grasp our purpose, our calling, our essence within our community and our role in any given season of our life. Accumulation merely gives us more of the same old shit. (I am reminded of the Different Drummer ad that prophetically graced NYC subways in the 60's in a manner beyond its creator's imagination...)

This yearning for community, my ravenous appetite for engaging others in words and songs of the soul, has clearly been heightened during the pandemic. But I know it to be a lifetime in the making as well. "The soul's ripening is never to be rushed," Dr. Paintner writes, "it takes a lifetime of work" to realize. "The gift of the contemplative path is a profound honoring of the grace of slowness." My feelings are clues: Hillman speaks of a clue as a symptom, "a compromise between an appropriate relation/action and a sick or wounded one." And like Fr. Ed Hays has taught, our feelings/clues/ symptoms carry meanings. They are the wisdom of our wounds wherein the feeling gets our attention, but our response must almost always be inverted. "When we feel like running away, we would be better served by staying put. When we ache to shout, we should be silent." Call it a revelaltion from the upside-down kingdom, the Paschal Mystery, or the spiritual wisdom of autumn, another invitation to go deeper is brewing.  

We can grow impatient when life does not offer us instant insights or gratification. We call on the wisdom of the Celtic monks to accompany us (in these times) to teach us what it means to honor the beauty of wating and attending and witnessing what it is that wants to emerge rather than what our rational minds want to make happen. The soul always offers us more richness that we can imagine, if we only make space and listen. (The Soul's Slow Ripening, p. XV)

So, as best and as imperfectly as I am able, I seek to celebrate this season's call to enter yet again the acumen of silence. Not only will the stillness guide my Sunday reflections, but it will shape my personal contemplative practices, too. This coming Sunday will be an anticipation of All Hallow's Eve en route to All Saints and All Souls days. And then it is on to the quiet of the ancient Celtic Advent that begins on November 15 and runs a full 40 days. Last week I was mostly filled with Ginsberg's "Howl." And rightly so - but now it is time for emptying of T.S. Eliot's "The Rock."

The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven,
The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit.

O perpetual revolution of configured stars,

O perpetual recurrence of determined seasons,

O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying

The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to GOD.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Bring us farther from GOD and nearer to the Dust.

silence, presence and longing for connections...

One of the hardest and most humbling truths I've encountered involves presence:

being a presence for others, welcoming the presence of others when I hurt or know fear, and receiving the presence of the holy who is always present even when I am unperceptive. I'm not sure when I realized why it was hard - at least 30 years ago or more - but I still recall the paradox of experiencing powerlessness and value at the same time. Physically sitting with another as they suffer and/or grieve feels impotent to me for I know that there is nothing I can do to take away their pain. Any attempt to be active in those settings mostly makes matters worse. Simultaneously, sharing my vulnerability and emptiness without illusions often evokes a love and solidarity that is palpable. At least for a moment, while the anguish remains, the agony becomes incrementally lighter to bear. Having been on the receiving end of his miracle, I trust its salvific gift even if I cannot comprehend it. 

The constant in experiencing, witnessing, and sharing this blessing is silence. As the moderator of the Contemplative Outreach FB group noted: "When going through a storm, your silent presence is more powerful than a million words." Silence becomes sacramental in its healing mode - and that is yet another reason why presence feels so hard - to enter, trust, and nourish silence when surrounded by pain takes practice and faith. By nature we want to help. To fix. To resolve. Deep within I suspect we know there is nothing we can do, yet "doing" gives us meaning and validation. It is the way of the world. To resist doing, therefore, is so very counter-cultural. Not only does it look as useless as Sabbath, it can feel that way in our hearts - at least for a time. Only those willing to walk through the valley of the shadow of death in silence, however, get to taste and see the goodness of the Lord. Those who pray, "How long, O Lord?" silently in their souls while sitting still in the aching quiet get to join Mary Magdalene in greeting the risen presence of the holy in our humanity. Malcolm Guite puts it like this in his sonnet to Mary Magdalene:

Men called you light so as to load you down,
And burden you with their own weight of sin,
A woman forced to cover and contain
Those seven devils sent by Everyman.
But one man set you free and took your part
One man knew and loved you to the core
The broken alabaster of your heart
Revealed to Him alone a hidden door,
Into a garden where the fountain sealed,
Could flow at last for him in healing tears,
Till, in another garden, he revealed
The perfect Love that cast out all your fears,
And quickened you with love’s own sway and swing,
As light and lovely as the news you bring.

(Sounding the Seasons, Malcolm Guite https://canterburypress.hymnsam.co.uk//product-display?isbn=9781848252745)

For the last few days I have been aching for the sounds and solace of being with others in community. I've even flirted with violating my own sanity and inviting a few local people to join me on Sunday morning when I try to hold my FB live stream outside in our wee chapel. I know better. It is covid exhaustion speaking to me like the serpent in the garden. And I won't go there. What do they say about coincidence? It is God's way of remaining anonymous? Yesterday, while Zooming with our loved ones in Brooklyn, we spoke of possible Christmas visits. I am slowly working on our basement to become decent living quarters for family visits. It is a great space but will take lots of work and is a winter project. During this chat, my wise daughter said something like, "We could even put off celebrating Christmas by a few weeks so that we all are certain about the safety of our bubble. I want to be extra, extra careful about this for you, ok?" Her words echoed in my heart last night as I put to rest - at least for now - any other thoughts of sharing Sunday's Eucharist in community. On a whole other level, its time for me to befriend the silence yet again. The wise and wounded Jan Richardson wrote this Blessing for the Chaos that I am going to print out and post on my prayer wall:

To all that is chaotic in you,
let there come silence.

Let there be a calming of the clamoring,
a stilling of the voices
that have laid their claim on you,
that have made their home in you

that go with you even to the holy places
but will not let you rest,
will not let you hear your life with wholeness.

For the foreseeable future - at least the next nine months and probably longer - I am being called (WE are being called!) to be at peace with a lot more silence. This will come to pass. This is not the end. And within the silence are moments of conversation and presence I can learn to savor like going to vote at City Hall (momentarily) or visiting the library in full PPE regalia. And then, as I've seen posted so often recently, with the season of shared solitude is over, THEN we can embrace and rejoice and experience another layer of presence. But now is not that time...

reflections from the chapel?

Next Sunday, if the weather cooperates, I am going to try doing my live-streaming reflection outside in our emerging chapel. It will be the last weekend of October. I want to ready our hearts and minds for All Saints and All Souls Days and open the door for others to join me in observing the ancient Celtic Advent that begins on Sunday, November 15. (More on this as it is mirrored by the Eastern Orthodox tradition.) I will be experimenting with equipment, extension chords, microphones, etc. this week. And while it may all come to naught if it rains, I think it could be fun. Here are a few teasers I took after today's yard work.  A friend posted a poem by John O'Donohue that speaks to this transitional time in the seasons and the liturgy.

This is the time to be slow

Lie low to the wall

Until the bitter weather passes

Try, as best you can, not to let

The wire brush of doubt

Scrape from your heart

All sense of yourself

And your hesitant light.

If you remain generous,

Time will come good;

And you will find your feet

Again on fresh pastures of promise,

Where the air will be kind

And blushed with beginning.

getting ready to lean into my darkness...

Today is all reds, browns, and yellows in the wetland. The sky is gray, filled with

an insistent rain pulsating with the promises of autumn. This is the season we learn about letting go: letting go of the sun and its warmth, letting go of the garden and its bounty, letting go of simple walks without serious preparation, letting go of the leaves, the flowers, and so much of our outward lives. For those in New England, and even more so in Canada, daylight will come to a crashing close in a few weeks when 4 pm becomes nightfall. This takes some getting used to and even the natives find themselves in the throes of periodic depression as we move towards All Saints Day in November. Doctors have documented a Vitamin D deficiency among many of us as well.

In two weeks time, all the colors of the field will vanish except nuanced browns and grays as a stern starkness seizes the day. The obvious complaint with this shift is its severity. The exuberance of summer must give way to introspection as

externals are put on hold and we start to hunker down. Nature invites us to prepare for this transformation, but our eyes must stay open as this turning point moves quickly. A wise colleague captured the challenge of this upheaval well stating that when our only seasonal produce has been reduced to maple syrup, no matter how delicious, something new is coming. The autumnal equinox kicks it off. Christopher Hill writes in Holidays and Holy Nights that "autumn is poignant... piercing our hearts and waking us from drowsy summer... with a sharp longing for something else." 

We humans see the spiritual beauty of a thing most clearly when its time is passing or passed. Nothing becomes legendary or sacred until it dies. In autumn, natures time is passing. The world is at its most beautiful and poetic because it is passing away. The natural world lingers for a moment on the bring of this transformation... with a bitter sweet beauty that we are about lose. The light turns from the clear, practical white light of summer into the mellow gold that we call antique - like the yellowed pages of an old boo, the sepia of old photographs, or tarnished brass. Old light, legends of the fall, Indian summer. Nature (already) has one foot over the threshold of eternity and glows with a slant of light

from the other side of the door.

 

I rarely grasp this at first. Being distracted by pumpkins and gourds, apple cider and a limited run of pumpkin chai from David's Teas, I'm consumed with the cornucopia of colors among the trees, wild grass, golden rod,  asters, grape vines, and sumac. Something in my soul is dazzled by the deep, root-like hues of the countryside this time of year and I lose track of time. Only when the upper leaves of the massive wetland's oak turns red can I confess that fall is upon us. It doesn't matter how long I've been raking leaves or fertilizing garden beds, that tree is what I need to know that now it is leave-taking time. Soon there will be a chill in the air, a stripping of color from the hills, and a shroud of darkness that won't give up the ghost until late February.

Parker Palmer believes that during this time of transition nature is engaged in a paradox of dying and seeding." Faced with (the departure of summer and the inevitability of) winter, what does nature do in autumn? She scatters the seeds that will bring new growth in the spring—and she scatters them with amazing abandon." (The Paradox of Fall, Fetzer Institute) Christopher Hill adds another layer of depth to this tension:

In summer we celebrate our at-homeness in the world. Michalemas (the

Feast Day of the Archangel Michael on September 29) balances that feeling. In autumn we feel our not-at-homeness, the sense of wanting something else, something we can't name... Summer is static - in Latin, solstice means 'the stationary sun." (That makes) summer a sacrament of natural harmony with God, when we can see that 'fallen nature' is really only nature seen with fallen eyes, and that all around us paradise is still going on... Autumn is not dreaming time... and the flaming trees say it all: they are a last flare of gorgeousness before death  as well as a signal fire, a wake-up call to the soul... as we encounter the conflict between light and dark. (Hill, pp. 36-37)

First, there is the robust beauty; then, the austerity arrives. September and October ask us to bask in the abundance of creation's bounty as preparation for the emptiness to come physically, emotionally, and spiritually. We not only bring in the harvest and care for the hearth, we intentionally let go of what is over, what is old, what is no longer real. For this, it seems to me, is how to embrace the blessings and wisdom of God's first word in creation. We read the signs of the time. Early autumn shows us what it looks like to release what no longer serves us. As leaves fall and blow away, so too with some "possessions, relationships, old habits of thought and behavior." (Hill, p. 42) Recognizing and naming what is complete, helps ready me for the rigors of November and the anticipations of Advent. The ancient Celtic Church, like contemporary Eastern Orthodoxy, observed Advent from November 15 - December 24. Restoring two weeks to Advent feels right to me after honoring the Vigil of All Hallows Eve (Halloween) as well as both All Saints Day and the Feast of the Faithful Departed on All Souls Day.

Perhaps it is an awareness wrought by the pandemic. It could be the damp chill in the air. Or even the slow connections I discern as I ripen into retirement. What ever the origins, I want to be ready - and still like James Wright in his poem, Beginning - to lean into my darkness.

The moon drops one or two feathers into the field.
The dark wheat listens.
Be still.
Now.
There they are, the moon's young, trying
Their wings.
Between trees, a slender woman lifts up the lovely shadow
Of her face, and now she steps into the air, now she is gone
Wholly, into the air.
I stand alone by an elder tree, I do not dare breathe
Or move.
I listen.
The wheat leans back toward its own darkness,
And I lean toward mine.

    

a work in progress...

So my attempts at staying grounded in community during this season of

solitude are... a work in progress, ok? Today's live-streaming reflection felt good while I was sharing it, only to find out afterwards there was a glitch and hiccup in the vocal track. It wasn't a terrible problem, but a bit of a hassle. Who know's why? I will search for solutions and try to rectify them this week.

That said, two other ideas have floated to the surface: intercessory prayer and questions. When I started this over the weekend of March 13th who knew it would still be going on? Morphing and evolving, too? A few of you have sent me notes from time to time, or left messages on the Small is Holy FB page, with encouragement and suggestions. Let me now take this one step farther because not much is going to change for most of us over the next nine months. That is, we are going to remain in some form of self-imposed or mandated solitude for health reasons well through the first half of 2021. That is according to our best medical folk and, of course, not the Virus-in-Chief.

So, what are your thoughts and needs re: intercessory prayer? Some folk call this joys and concerns - other prayer requests - but by whatever title you use, what I'm talking about is making your prayer known so that during our live-streaming time we can pray for you together by name. Thoughts? Prayers? Concerns? What I was thinking of was:  1) At the start of each gathering, you might type a word or a sentence that you would like held in prayer, either during the opening music or the introduction and Scripture. That way, when we get to the time of Eucharist at the close we can add your prayers. And/or 2) send me a note by email or FB sometime throughout the week. 

And, what about follow-up questions? Given the live-streaming format, while I am keenly aware of your presence, the medium is still one-directional: from me to you. (And as you know from dropping microphones and all the rest, I am not wildly tech savvy and have no real interest in the whole Zoom phenomena (we use it with the grandchildren and at L'Arche but that's different.) What do you think? Would you ever want clarifications or sources?  Are there themes you might value a series on? Or something you would like to explore more profoundly? Let me know if any of that appeals to you, ok? 

Let me know, please? Drop me a note on FB or send me an email. I would be grateful to take this deeper even as I try to work out the techno bumps in the road. It is, indeed, a work in progress. Here is a recap of today's video.

a thousand beautiful things...

Oh, my Lord, what a morning! Sweet sunlight, cool breezes, burning bushes

ablaze and breakfast on the deck in the autumn stillness. I am trying to practice what I preach - and will share tomorrow morning on the live-streaming gathering - about treasuring gratitude. And then, as if the cosmos thought I needed a gentle but real kick in the pants, I came upon this poem: "Wishing Well" by Gregory Pardlo (You can hear Pádraig Ó Tuama read it @ https://onbeing.

org/poetry/wishing-well/ and it is well worth the effort.)

“Outside the Met a man walks up sun 

tweaking the brim sticker on his Starter cap 

and he says pardon me Old School he 

says you know is this a wishing well? 

Yeah Son I say sideways over my shrug. 

     Throw your bread on the water. 

I tighten my chest wheezy as Rockaway beach 

sand with a pull of faux smoke on my e-cig 

to cozy the truculence I hotbox alone 

and I am at the museum because it is not a bar. 

Because he appears not to have changed 

them in days I eye the heel-chewed hems 

of his pants and think probably he will 

ask me for fifty cents any minute now wait 

for it. A smoke or something. Central Park displays 

the frisking transparency of autumn. Tracing 

paper sky, leaves like eraser crumbs gum 

the pavement. As if deciphering celestial 

script I squint and purse off toward the roof 

line of the museum aloof as he fists two 

pennies from his pockets mumbling and then 

aloud my man he says hey my man I’m going 

to make a wish for you too. 

     I am laughing now so what you want 

me to sign a waiver? He laughs along ain’t 

say all that he says but you do have to 

hold my hand. And close your eyes. 

I make a starless night of my face before 

he asks are you ready. Yeah dawg I’m ready. 

Sure? Sure let’s do this his rough hand 

in mine inflates like a blood pressure cuff and I 

squeeze back as if we are about to step together 

from the sill of all resentment and timeless 

toward the dreamsource of un-needing the two 

of us hurtle sharing the cosmic breast 

of plenitude when I hear the coins blink against

the surface and I cough up daylight like I’ve just 

been dragged ashore. See now 

you’ll never walk alone he jokes and is about 

to hand me back to the day he found me in 

like I was a rubber duck and he says you got to let 

go but I feel bottomless and I know he means 

well though I don’t believe 

     and I feel myself shaking 

my head no when he means let go his hand.”

Annie Lennox and Rumi insist that there are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the earth with a heart of gratitude. The more I listen - and practice - and honor this truth, the less fear and cynicism I know. And the more I find to be grateful for. Nothing has changed objectively in the body politic, of course, that remains a mess. But now I am living into its fullness rather than just being carried away on the surface of my feelings.

background and context for my debate critique...

In a recent FB post, I suggested that those who choose not to watch the ethically

and emotionally complicated political debates - for whatever reasons - do so. In an earlier post I encouraged practicing self-care in this highly charged and life-threatening political season - a practice that must respect our mental and spiritual health. Others far wiser than I, have recommended only one hour a day of political "news" with lots of time for silence, nature, and beauty. That continues to be my default position.

At the same time, however, I've expressed my frustration with FB opinions that seem to conflate an individual's emotional distress with broken politics. In my experience, the two are unrelated. To be sure, those of us who hail from privileged backgrounds (myself included) and came of age after years of respectable public conversations, debate societies, dance lessons, decades of social etiquette cues, suburban religious congregations, well-manicured lawns, and all the other public advantages afforded to children of corporate America: we detest disorder. With modest variations, we shrink from shrill and boisterous arguments. We resist being caught up in aggressive altercations of any type. And we tend to believe that the world should work in a decent and well-ordered way. This is not to say that there was no stress, pain, or heartbreak in our formation. All human beings know suffering of one type or another. Nevertheless, those of us from a discrete social class despise chaos.

For the first 35 years of my life, my political engagement was fundamentally well ordered: I applied for Conscientious Objector status when I registered with the local draft board at age 18, I worked that process with the assistance of professionals at the American Friends Service Committee, my local church not only had a carefully organized way for me to declare my intentions re: ministry but also for noting my moral opposition to war, the draft board hearing in Norwalk, CT was well run by well-trained managers, my subsequent years organizing with Cesar Chavez and the Farm Workers Union included carefully planned social protest with the help of well-trained lawyers, etc. My participation in public demonstrations against the Vietnam War and Richard Nixon came with clear guidelines and expert organization. You get the picture: social engagement, even in opposition to the status quo, was conducted in a reasonable and decent way as is befitting my bourgeois background.

That bubble burst when I became involved in the rough and tumble politics of urban Cleveland. There was nothing bourgeois about winning an election in that town - or I might note in most of the rest of America. It did not work like my civics textbooks suggested. It was not well-ordered and rarely civil. Peoples' lives were at stake. So, too, their livelihoods and neighborhoods. I still recall with awe my first "debate" at the Polish Hall in Slavic Village. I was running for school board as part of Mayor Michael R. White's inter-racial reform team. We were challenging the entrenched political hacks and union bosses who had perpetuated decades of nepotism, cronyism, and bleeding the public trough for personal gain without ever advancing educational opportunity for the mostly poor, Black children of Cleveland. The budget of the Cleveland Board of Education was greater than that of the city of Cleveland so a ton of money was at risk.

I lived on the West Side of Cleveland, the mostly white, working class neighborhoods in an aggressively segregated city. There were pockets of wealth on the West Side as well as middle class neighborhoods that looked and acted like the suburbs of my youth. The East Side was mostly black, fundamentally poor, but with middle class pockets spread around that periphery, too. And in the center of town, in the old Eastern European neighborhoods was Slavic Village - a bastion of old-world culture - with all the blessings and curses of that reality. Our team was scheduled to debate their team - a cadre of old school, white ethnic pols with well-known names - and as soon as I stepped into the debate hall it was like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz: "We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto." This was NOT the Citizens League endorsement committee. The beer was flowing, the tough white crowd was pumped up and angry, and I was certain I was going to get my then skinny white ass kicked multiple times that night. The short version is we made our pitch to cat calls, yells, racial slurs, and a host of other vulgar and ugly epithets. And thanks be to God the Mayor's team was there to make sure that after the ruckus we all got to our cars safely. For me, it was trial by fire.

THIS was how politics was done outside of my bubble. THIS was how it worked when political choices mattered, not as abstract preferences, but in life and death ways. I can't say I ever learned to be at home in that world. I still preferred the bourgeois cocktail parties in the middle-class neighborhoods of Black and White Cleveland. There I could speak without interruption, make the good government case with clarity, and answer well-formed questions  But I learned. I got better at dealing with the verbal sparring and the potential for violence. And I listened to the pros about how to take care of myself in the fray. Four years ago, driving through Kentucky and Pennsylvania on the way to the wedding of two friends, I felt I was back in Slavic Village. The anger in the air was palpable. The rabid support for Trump was visceral and omnipresent. And, once again, I had to hurry through most places for fear of getting my ass kicked again. There was anger, heartbreak, and fear pulsating there in ways I had forgotten about in my Western Massachusetts middle class bubble.

All of which is to say: it is OK to be emotionally uncomfortable with the rage of this era. It is unsettling and sometimes terrifying. So, too, with the political debates: if they make you upset, please don't watch them. Take care of yourself. But let's not condemn what takes place at the debates from the limited perspective of our comfortable bubbles. It is not useful to confuse our dis-ease with exaggerated moral judgment. That's been my biggest concern and critique. And, yes, I still find carping about the impotence of the moderators disingenuous. They are operating from within a bubble, too and are only now getting up to speed about how to respond to the political chaos that is normative. Have you ever watched British Parliament? It is boorish and cruel, loud, and mean-spirited as well. From my limited perspective, however, their shouting is more like what politics looks, feels, and sounds like in most of the world than what I grew up with.

So, that's where I'm coming from. The medieval monk, Meister Eckhart, once said something like: Reality is the will of God. It can always be better, but you must start with what is real. And while what I see in our politics and debates is not pretty, it is real. The debate moderators are striving for the best they can do with what is real. My hope is that we do likewise with a minimum of judgment.

four encouraging words for the final three weeks before the US election...

Four words of encouragement for the next three weeks before the election in the USA:

1) Sit with some beauty so that you can balance the bullshit. I recommend Padraig O Tuama`s poetic reflections @ Poetry Unbound (https://onbeing.

org/series/poetry-unbound/). But do whatever nourishes your soul.

2) Make certain to get outside and breathe in some fresh air because Mother Nature is a time-tested healer. Autumn is a season of spiritual transition and we are being asked to learn to let go: so be like the leaves in the NE and recognize that the old order is dying and something new is about to be born that is beyond our control. But, please, take time to be still - and breathe. 

3) Stay in touch with those you love - and make the effort to go the extra mile. Love heals all wounds. All fears. All anxieties. Not perfectly. And not always the way we want. But, in the long run, in the ways we need. (Oh yes, and BLOCK all trolls as they will eat your heart and wear out your soul.)

4) Try to limit your time with so-called news to one hour every day. Total. Don't cheat. Take in what is happening. Hold it close in prayer. And then let it go - any more time with the craziness is like worry which some have called praying for something bad to happen.

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a radical unity...

Now that the Season of Creation has come to a close - the new liturgical season

celebrated ecumenically as a way to deepen human solidarity with the holy throughout the cosmos - those who join me for our Sunday morning reflections on FB live will return to readings from the Common Lectionary of the Ecumenical Church. This practice not only grounds us the shared Bible texts being used for worship throughout the world, but also invites us into a vision and rhythm of life greater than our own. Without this window into the bigger picture, it is too easy for me to become self-absorbed and/or overwhelmed by the events surrounding me. Being connected to sisters and brothers throughout the world in prayer, study, and the practice of sharing common readings in worship helps nurture a measure of stillness and solidarity within.

Two Celtic songs from the Wild Goose Collective affiliated with the Community of Iona spoke to me this morning in prayer. Textually and melodically these songs reunited my being with the wider creation. The first, an interpretation of Psalm 138 for the opening of Morning Prayer, starts with these words:

I shall praise you, O God, from my soul

Though my song be at odds with the will of earthly gods:

I shall praise you, O God, from my soul.

The second, a contemporary hymn set to a traditional Celtic melody, was equally counter cultural:

Don't tell me of a faith that fears to face the world around;

Don't dull my mind with fickle thoughts of grace without a ground.

I need to know that God is real, I need to know that Christ can feel the need to touch and love and heal the world - including me!

Don't speak of piety and prayers divorced from human need;

Don't talk of spirit without flesh like harvest without seed.

Last night I read in Steven Chase's fascinating and dense work, Nature as Spiritual Practice, of the subtle but real distinctions between the words earth, nature, and creation. Each celebrates connections, yet each also focuses attention on discrete specialties as well. What I am learning to see is how layer upon layer of creation shares a living inter-connection between things seen and those experienced by faith. Between flora and fauna in nature and humankind on earth. Between we who dwell on earth and the sacred throughout the cosmos. I suspect my growing appreciation for the intricate ways all of life is united will inform Sunday's meditation. I am going to walk around with this notion for another day before beginning my Scripture study and intentional writing. Besides, today there's outdoor work to be done in the sun before the anticipated rains of tomorrow.

the feast day of st. francis...

The Feast Day of St. Francis:  October 4, 2020

Today, like many of you, my soul is troubled: my heart is at war with itself, my

head is filled with questions and fears, my flesh feels unsettled – angry and exhausted – at the same time. To be a person of faith at this moment in the United States is to stand in solidarity with the wounded, the poor, the forgotten, discarded, abused, and powerless people of our nation and present our bodies as a living sacrifice – a humble, sacred alternative to the calculated attacks of 21st century fascism, the desperate violence of white supremacists, and the spiritual and emotional abuse the President and his ilk use to break our spirits. It is a demanding and sacred summons in the simplest season – and has become exponentially more complicated now that the current residents of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue have been stricken with the plague.

Church historian, Diana Butler Bass, recently wrote that what we experienced on national television in the behavior and rhetoric of Donald Trump is the distilled essence of a cruel, dangerous, and evil person. He not only assaulted us all, he turned us into his victims. “Words are powerful,” Bass writes:

They cut the heart. They silence opponents. They force others to submit. The biblical wisdom tradition insists that words can nurture or destroy… and Donald Trump weaponized words, intending to “break the spirit” of Joe Biden, of Chris Wallace, of those watching, and even America’s democratic traditions. Not only was it mean and rude and unfair and cruel, but most of us intuited that the verbal violence was sinful. It was a purposeful exercise in evil.

No wonder so many of us could not sleep that night – or even still – we had been assaulted. Bass adds:

These kinds of attacks wound on several levels, leaving immediate bruises and long-term trauma. In the short-term, they are like gut punches, taking our breath away. We are knocked off our feet; we feel confused and disoriented. Longer term trauma — sleeplessness, panic attacks, depression — can set in, too. On a spiritual level, these attacks unmoor us, undermining our capacity to love our neighbors, causing us to doubt ourselves and God. And that’s why) it is necessary to name what happened on Tuesday night honestly — an act of verbal evil on the part of the President – against his opponent, the process, and the American people.

When I try to grasp what it means for me to embody Christ’s love within this maelstrom of disorder and deceit, I’m drawn again to the witness of that wounded healer some of us know as Henri Nouwen. He was a gentle, broken man, often overcome with anxiety and shame, who yearned to be at peace with God and his neighbors. And if I might summarize his tumultuous journey of faith in one sentence, Nouwen came to see that people of faith are “constantly invited to overcome their neighbor’s fear by entering into it with them, and to find within the fellowship of suffering our own way to freedom.” In relationship. In compassion. In tenderness together. 

Alone we feel immobilized – frozen in feelings beyond our comprehension – but when they can be shared in love and trust, they thaw out and become our way into peace. Part of the foolishness of God – the wisdom of the Cross – is that the fears and wounds of another are paradoxically the way into our own healing as well as theirs. Nouwen called this the charism of a wounded healer, where “the loneliness and despair of another awakens in ourselves similar pains within our own hearts” and we begin to see that the suffering of another cannot be healed or taken away without entering into it. As Dr. King told us: We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny and whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

Pointing to Jesus, a revolutionary for compassion, who never offered the world an ideology – only himself – Nouwen says that when Christ’s friends were distraught after the Cross, hiding in an upper room in Jerusalem from both the soldiers of the empire and the religious zealots of his culture, Jesus appeared to them saying: “Peace I leave you, my peace I give unto you.” His presence – his solidarity with their trauma – was essential in that moment.

They were alone and afraid, so he adds, “I leave you peace not as the world gives, but as I embody it, so that your hearts need not be troubled or afraid.” In their time of need Jesus offered himself, his companionship, make it clear that sharing our humanity in solidarity is God’s sacred antidote to isolation, anxiety, and the trauma of abuse. The prayer of St. Francis renders poetically the paradox of the wounded healer who discovers that consoling another creates solace for all, that giving to others is how we receive, that pardoning becomes our entry into forgiveness, that listening without judgment reveals the essence of the holy, and that dying to self becomes the way of new life within God’s peace.

Make me an instrument of your peace, O Lord: 

where there is hatred, let me sow love.

Where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith. 

Where there is despair, hope;

Where there is darkness, light and where there is sadness, joy.

By myself I cannot overcome my alienation. That’s why the song says WE shall overcome. We need each other. When I started these live cast reflections 29 weeks ago, it was to help another local congregation during their transition. But after a few weeks it dawned on me that in this era of self-quarantine and solitude, I needed to be in relationship and conversation about what was taking place as much as anyone else. I needed to reach out to you and those I love both to be consoled as well as to consolation. Even virtually, I’ve experienced how the paradox of presence brings me a measure of peace as I experience Christ with you. Until the lockdown, I never took Jesus seriously when he claimed that he would be among us whenever two or three gathered in his love. Well, sometimes, that’s all there is on a Sunday morning, right – two or three gathered in his name – and that’s just fine! Over these past seven months I’ve learned that the charism of the wounded healer trusts our fragility to be one of the ways we experience God’s strength. St. Paul used to say to the first faith communities in your weakness and emptiness, God offers a fullness beyond human comprehension.

The more you accept your need for companionship, the more your heart opens to the living spiritual presence of Jesus made flesh through other people. But if you act like you’re the self-sufficient center of the universe, the promised peace of Jesus simply seems absurd. Especially if your identity is indebted, embedded, or addicted to Empire where you become a human do-ing instead of a human be-ing.
St. Paul’s first letter to the struggling community in Corinth put it like this: 

The message of the cross is foolishness to those enmeshed in the status quo of Empire, but to us who are being made whole by grace, the Cross is the power of God. In the upside-down ways of the Lord, when the world did not grasp God’s love in nature or reason, God decided, through the Cross, to reveal a sacred mystery to the world. Those who would only trust tradition continued to demand signs that they could control while those with sophisticated training desired rational explanations and all we proclaimed was Christ crucified and risen, a stumbling block to tradition and foolishness to conventional thinking.

It is my growing conviction that right now God is once again whispering to us: let Christ’s peace fill your hearts beyond trouble and fear. Take up the invitation to be a wounded healer who honors both the promise and the pain of each day. For in this vulnerability, I will bring you the strength and peace to make it through yet another day by faith.

Do you recall how Mary Oliver put it in “Wild Geese?” Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine? Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains, and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

The apostle Paul’s insights, Henri Nouwen’s charism, the poetry of both St. Franci

s and St. Mary Oliver all insist that the peace that passes all understanding becomes flesh whenever we reach out beyond ourselves to another in trust and tenderness. The early church used to speak of this as “learning to live and walk by faith not by sight.”

That means practicing trust by resting our fears within God’s strength not our own efforts. When the weakness of our flesh, the foolishness of our faith, the limitations of our power, even the dread of our hearts are placed into God’s love, then we discover the solace of the Holy Spirit taking up residence within. When we risk being empty, then we can be filled. I think that’s what Jesus was trying to tell us in the Sermon on the Mount – and this becomes clear in Eugene Peterson’s reworking of St. Matthew: You are blessed when you’re at the end of your rope - for with less of you there is more room for God. You’re blessed, too when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you: only then are you ready to let the one MOST dear to you embrace you with grace.

The Christian educator, Gertrud Mueller-Nelson, observes something similar when she notes that “whenever we become ‘bankrupt’ or have no defenses left to shield us from reality, the possibility of transformation becomes possible… Too much money, too much comfort, power, good looks, charm and outward success all mask our inner poverty of spirit. That’s why Jesus says losing one defense after another, bit by bit, is a blessing.” (Here We All Dwell Free, p.32)

Think of St. Paul: in his certainty, he became a spiritual terrorist; but when he was strike blind and vulnerable became a servant of grace and peace. He’s speaking from experience in Romans 8 when he says: God searches our hearts and knows what is the mind of the Spirit; so when the Spirit intercedes for us with sighs to deep for human words, we’re being filled with God’s love. That’s why we can trust that all things work together for good for those who love God. Not that all things ARE good – just that God can transform even death into new life for the sake of love. Knowing this, experiencing it myself within my own flesh, I must tell you if God is for us like this, who can be against us? No wonder I am convinced that neither death nor life, angels nor rulers, things present nor things to come, not powers, height, depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Now this didn’t happen in a vacuum – Paul wasn’t left by himself to figure out how God’s love was transforming him from hatred into peace-making – that would’ve been cruel. No, when Paul’s hard heart was broken open by the presence of Christ’s tenderness on the road to Damascus, God sent a servant by the name of Ananias to care for him, to nourish him physically and spiritually in his own home as Paul’s blindness was being healed. To pray with and for him during this convalescence and then to baptize him into a new way of living into God’s love. And while we don’t know the details of what happened next, we DO know that for the next three years Paul was nurtured by others in the way of Jesus. He was NOT left alone. Companions, who became for Paul the living presence of Jesus, renewed him inside and out and trained him to become yet another wounded healer.

This is much like what happened to St. Francis some eleven hundred years later. Francis entered the world as the privileged son of an Italian merchant who lived the life of a self-centered playboy. But when he was wounded during one of the crusades and spent the next year in prison before his father bailed him out, he sensed the presence of Christ visiting him in his lonely despair. And when this young hotshot regained his strength, he announced that Jesus had asked him to rebuild his church – and that’s what Francis literally did – stone by stone, step by step, he rebuilt the ruins of San Damiano into a chapel for the poor. Once again, it was the living, loving presence of Jesus, then a cadre of followers who became Franciscans, and eventually all of creation itself – think Brother Sun, Sister Moon and his kinship with animals and nature – that healed Francis. For such is the foolish, transformational, mystical grace of deep incarnation that reveals God’s strength to us in our weakness and empowers us by the Spirit to become wounded healers for the glory of God.

For a whole month we’ve been listening to foolish wisdom of the Lord through the non-linear insights of trees and rivers, wilderness and soil. Softly and tenderly the season of creation asks us to trust the charism of the wounded healer more than the power of Empire and rules that govern the status quo. Eco-theologian and spiritual director at the Collegeville Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research in Minnesota, Steven Chase, suggests that if we’re paying attention the cosmos reveals God’s foolish, paradoxical, healing to us over and over. He writes, “creation rejoices and mourns - it trains our souls through silence - opens our eyes to awe – and overwhelms our senses with the sensuality of the sacred. Creation is inebriated with love, intoxicated with longing and joy, and in constant praise for its Creator.” For five weeks the presence of God in nature has been luring us into giving up the ways we ordinarily measure value, worth, and meaning to simply receive the glory of God as it has been given to us in creation and community.

A beloved Zen teacher in my life, the late Michael Daniels of blessed memory, was reborn from above when he got clean and sober. After years of losing a debilitating battle with a grisly addiction to alcohol, Michael was transformed from the inside out by accepting his weakness and trusting God’s love. And when he had some sobriety under his belt, he often told me, “James, you are too damned smart for your own good.” And when I challenged him his reply was: “You freakin’ intellectuals all believe you can think your way into grace and study your way into the peace that passes understanding.” He knew that was true for me because my study at church and home was filled with bookcases and stacks of magazines and newspapers.

So, he loved to slowly look at all those books before turning to silently smile at me

before saying, something like: “The truth of the Spirit is that you only get God’s peace by letting go. If there’s too much YOU inside, you squeeze the Lord outta business. To be filled by God, you gotta be empty – and none of these books are gonna save your over-educated and sorry ass.” What a guy – what chutzpah – I was the one who got him into treat for God’s sake. But Michael was right.

He never used the word paradox – he didn’t know the Paschal Mystery or the foolish wisdom of the Cross from a whole in the ground – he just knew that after he hit rock bottom and became so sick and tired of being sick and tired that it was either death or trust that God was stronger than he was that he chose to let God be God so that he didn’t have to be. And he became a new and loving creation as a wounded healer.

Of course, he still had his demons and troubles. I had the privilege of receiving several of what AA calls the fourth and fifth steps in the 12 Step Process. Essentially they are confession and absolution. So I know the ups and downs. But when Michael worked the program – and he did – when he reached out to others when he was afraid or in trouble and together they both reached out to God however they under-stood the One who is Holy – one more day became clean and sober and manageable and even sacred to this scrappy little saint. And he was one happy dude. I miss him a lot and give thanks that God brought St. Michael into my life.

And what was true for Michael – and the first disciples and St. Paul and St. Francis and so many others – is true for us right now in the morass of the pandemic, an ecological catastrophe and America’s most serious racial reckoning in 50 years. We, too, can live in the paradoxical tension of our pain and God’s peace as reasonably happy dudes and dudesses if we’re open to becoming wounded healers. More than ever before it’s got to be just ONE day at a time right now – anything more is just overwhelming. So let me ask you to sing this little tune called One Day at a Time with me as we get ready for Holy Communion and the blessing of our pets. Another wounded healer by the name of Willie Nelson wrote it a long time ago. I first heard Joan Baez sing is and I think it’s the perfect prayer for us right now…