practicing joy: advent III

SMALL IS HOLY TEXT
This week we’re asked to light a candle of joy even as we’re surrounded by shadows of sorrow, heartbreak, and despair. Talk about a spirituality of paradox! Intuitively, it seems simpler to me to grasp hold of just one end of life’s polarity or the other – joy or sorrow, hope or despair, light or darkness – but not both/ and at the same time. Yet this is precisely the conundrum at the core of Christian spirituality for adults: can we learn to trust both/and more than either/or? Theologians have tried to describe this paradox in a variety of ways:

· Some speak of the mystery of the incarnation, others say the marriage of the human with the holy, some call it the sacred circle dance of spirit embracing matter, and Christina Rossetti sang it was love coming down at Christmas in her hymn.

· Whatever name we give to this puzzle, the Bible is filled with examples like: the Word of God became human flesh and dwelt among us; or we see by faith not by sight; or now we see as through a glass darkly but later face to face; or the living presence of Jesus is with us when-ever two or more are gathered in his name; or, even we are nourished by the Risen Christ who meets us mystically in ordinary bread and wine.

This spirituality of paradox has long been a part of our faith tradition although in the West it’s been treated more as a minority report. So, consider Psalm 85: after their exile in Babylon, perhaps 500 years before Jesus was born while the second temple in Jerusalem was being rebuilt, ancient Israel proclaimed this paradox in worship confessing that whenever we turn away from selfishness by opening our hearts to sisters and brothers in need the holy is honored: God’s kindness and truth will embrace (in our presence) as sacred justice and peace intimately kiss. Truth shall spring up from Mother Earth as healing generosity falls down from the heavens and the Lord grants bounty to the land by increasing its yield.

The same song was sung by the prophetic poet, Isaiah, in chapter 11 of his vision: In God’s shalom: the wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the lion and the fatling calf shall be together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze together as their young lie down to rest in the same field… a nursing child shall play over the hole of the as yet none shall be hurt or destroyed on all my holy mountain for the earth will be full of the know-ledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

The Bible closes with Revelation telling us that: God’s voice assures us that the Lord’s home is among humanity. God dwells with us and within us and this makes us God’s people. The fullness of the holy will wipe every tear from our eyes for death will be no more; neither mourning, crying nor pain will remain for these first things will have passed away. And Jesus himself said: Those with eyes to see know that God’s kingdom – the promises and presence of the holy – is within and among us always. Therefore, we the light the candle of joy on the third Sunday of Advent even as we experience being surrounded by shadows of sorrow, darkness, heartbreak, fear, and despair.

This suggests that Advent is for adults: paradox is NOT something children can consciously com-prehend. That’s why every culture creates fairy tales, nursery rhymes, and simple visual rituals to open and close the day, mark personal and social milestones, or greet and dismiss the seasons. These rites express the challenges and contradictions of reality in overstated and fantastic ways so that our little ones discover healthy tools to deal with conflict, fear, desire, and human relation-ships. On one level, our Advent candles introduce paradox to us like small spiritual night lights gently illuminating the darkness with God’s loving presence. 

On a whole other level, though, the candles of Advent ask the adults in the room to grow up. St. Paul wrote I Corinthians 13 that when I was a child, I thought like a child, spoke like a child, and acted like a child. Over time, I matured – went deeper beyond the obvious, learned from my mistakes – and put childish things away. Now I know that what I see is only gazing upon a mirror darkly.Later I trust by faith that I shall see face to face beyond the darkness. As an adult, Paul concludes, we choose to trust faith, hope, and love by practicing them in specific ways repeatedly. THAT is what the adult Advent teaches: learning to trust that God’s love is greater than all the shadows of darkness that surround us. Love doesn’t banish the shadows; rather, it accompanies us as we practice moving through them towards the light step by step.

As a child, you know, I heard the promises of this season as one dimensional either/or assurances for such is the organic innocence of our first naivete. I literally believed that one day ALL contradict-ions would perish and there would be a resolution to war and suffering. That’s how I heard the promise of SHALOM, ok? I should probably tell you that for a while I also literally believed in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, too. As a child, I trusted it all completely…

· … for that’s what sacred stories, poetry, songs, and rituals are supposed to do for children: evoke trust and awe. Childhood resources have been dragged through the sand of time so that distractions and dross are scraped off and left in the dust. They’re calculated to captured us by their light and awaken our hearts to a loving awe of the Lord through time-tested arche-types

· I danced with delight the first five or six times I saw “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens on TV. When Ebenezer Scrooge finally gets religion and brings a feast to the Cratchit home on Christmas morning? I was ecstatic! I was equally enthralled reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. And I’m not ashamed to say that I still weep tears of joy like a child whenever we sing “Silent Night” in community at the close of candlelight worship on Christmas Eve. We’re supposed to be lifted-up, carried away by joy, drawn out of the darkness and towards the light as children. It is the work, Paul Ricouer tells us, of our first naivete.

As adults we’re asked to practice a second naivete by exploring the light and darkness of Advent at a deeper level. Just as there is a time to be entranced by innocent naivete, so is there also a time to mature in faith, hope, love, and wisdom. James Fowler, Erik Erikson, Gertrud Mueller-Nelson, Carl Jung as well as Alfred North Whitehead and John Cobb describe this as a fluid, non-linear descent into the stages of faith. Some scholars use prayer language to suggest three stages of faith – purgative, illuminative, and unitive – that is, prayer as thought, practice, and wisdom.

Others have borrowed from the social sciences and speak of seven stages of faith:

A primal faith grounded in trust, an intuitive faith inherited from family and culture, a literal and naïve faith shaped by innocence and institutions, a conflicted and adolescent faith that is oppositional and questioning, a reflective faith that is driven by adult personal responsibility, a conjunctive or mid-life crisis faith that either sorts out paradox or falls backwards into a stagnant literalism, and a universal or enlightened faith that makes peace with the ebb and flow of insights and strives for lives grounded in patience and acceptance.

Now, I chose to tell you all of this before even starting to engage our poetry and scripture because if you’re anything like me these days feel darker and more troubling than at any other time in recent memory. Diana Butler Bass, church historian and popular author, said it as well as any: It may be Advent (and the Advent calendar continues daily), she observed, but there’s still news — and sadly, a lot of that news isn’t very good. In recent days, several stories have appeared about Christian nationalism, the power of authoritarianism, the threat of democratic collapse, and the role of some religious groups in the January 6 insurrection. I’m deeply concerned about all of this. Well, more than concerned. Worried. Really worried. Add to this list from Dr. Bass our own fears about the covid variants and the personal wounds and loss we all carry and right now does not feel very joyful to me. My fears and feelings, in fact, take me right back to that adolescent stage of faith where I wonder if any of this spiritual stuff really matters.

Oh, intellectually I know that there have been times much bleaker than our own and other cultures and individuals who have suffered WAY more than myself. Somewhere deep in my heart I continue to believe that the arch of the moral universe does tilt ever so slightly towards what is right, true, noble, and just. But not always. Like Fr. Henri Nouwen once confessed, sometimes I forget it all and ignore the paradox that more often than not in the heart of our pain lays a kernel of blessing where there is joy hidden within our sorrow:

I know it from my own times of depression (he said.) I know it from living with people with intellectual handicaps. I know it from looking into the eyes of patients, and from being with the poorest of the poor. We keep forgetting this truth and become over-whelmed by our own darkness. We so easily lose sight of our joys and speak only of our sorrows as the only reality there is. And that’s why we need to remind each other that the cup of sorrow can also be the cup of joy, that precisely what causes us sadness can become the fertile ground for gladness. Indeed, we need to be angels for one another, giving each other strength and consolation. Because only when we fully realize that the cup of life is not only a cup of sorrow but also a cup of joy will we be able to drink it.

Which is why I give thanks to God today that we’re asked to light the candle of joy one more time. It reminds me that I don’t have to rely on and live only in my feelings. Or that Advent is just about my darkness. Rather, I can choose to practice the disciplines of Advent, to listen to the testimony and poetry of those who have gone before me and remember that the journey of faith is a continuum not a predictable, straight line. Over and over again – and probably over and over still some more, too – it is not only OK to re-commit one more time to the adult way of Jesus, but like Mary Oliver says, it’s part of God’s design in acquiring an adult faith. Her poem, “Thirst,” sounds exactly like what I’ve been feeling of late: a testimony to the ups and downs of trusting God’s paradoxical love beyond the obvious darkness in the most ordinary language.

Faith, she tells us, is not only connected to thirst, but because we’re naturally born slow learners, God has created a world filled with beautiful lessons for us to discover in joy every day that are hidden but every bit as real as the shadows. Oliver writes:

Another morning and I wake with thirst for the goodness I do not have.
I walk out to the pond and all the way God has given us such beautiful lessons. Oh Lord, I was never a quick scholar but sulked and hunched over my books past the hour and the bell; grant me, in your mercy, a little more time. Love for the earth and love for you are having such a long conversation in my heart. Who knows what will finally happen or where I will be sent, yet already I have given a great many things away, expecting to be told to pack nothing, except the prayers which, with this thirst, I am slowly learning.

Practicing joy makes our wounded flesh holy, encouraging a human generosity and justice that we can share in simple ways. Too often I make this complicated by over-thinking and get lost in the mystery. But the candle of joy points me back to John the Baptist who, like Mary Oliver, speaks of sharing joy simply and practically. “Got two coats? Give one away. No need to get fancy Oliver insists. Just be generous with what is ordinary.” In her poem, “Mindful” says that:

Every day I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight – that leaves me like a needle in a haystack of light. It is what I was born for: to look, to listen, to lose myself inside this soft world – To instruct myself – over and over – in joy – and acclamation. And I am not talking about the exceptional, the fearful, the dreadful – the very extravagant – but the ordinary, the common, the very drab – the daily presentations. Oh, good scholar, I say to myself, how can you help but grow wise with such teachings as these: The untrimmable light of the world, the ocean’s shine, the prayers that are made… out of grass?

The Advent texts tell us that the spiritual practice of joy starts with simple

generosity and justice shared within our ordinary lives. My friends in L’Arche say: Joy ripens one heart at a time. if you only look at the massive brokenness overseas or pay attention only to the tragic headlines on the Internet, you’ll trap yourself in despair. But if you practice the 10-foot rule, loving and sharing generously with those you can actually touch, the joy of the Lord will ripen in your heart as you cherish another one heart at a time.

Simple acts of generosity eliminate all distinctions between gift-giver and recipient in what looks like the polarities of grace. You give and I receive, then I do likewise in the ebb and flow of reality that moves not in a straight line but more like a circle dance. Joy takes us deeper into a continuum of alphas on the way of becoming omegas until there is no beginning or end. Just now, right here and right now. How does the Servant Hymn put it: I will weep when you are weeping, when you laugh, I’ll laugh with you; I will share your joys and sorrows till we’ve seen this journey through. I do this for you trusting that you will do it for me. This is putting childish things away and practicing Advent.

And that’s another reason I am grateful for today: I once thought I understood Advent. I suppose I got some of its wisdom. But this year, thinking paradoxically about so much of what I used to take for granted – even the Advent candle lighting ceremonies – I’m realizing Advent is something I must practice rather than simply observe. “Practices shape us to be better, wiser, more gracious people now,” Dr. Bass insists, “even as these very practices anticipate in our lives and communities the reality of God’s kingdom that has entered into the world and will one day be experienced in its fullness.” She goes on to say take the practice of hospitality: “It opens our hearts to those who are strangers and anticipates that, in God’s Kingdom, there will one day be no strangers. The practice of forgiveness cleanses our souls from guilt and shame and anticipates that, in God’s Kingdom, all will be forgiven.” So, what do the practices of the Advent wreath anticipate?

The first candle of hope asks us to practice mindfulness: being awake and empty enough that God can show us what to embrace in our ordinary lives. Hope in an adult Advent is NOT about being filled-up. Like John the Baptist says elsewhere: I must decrease so that Christ may increase. Fr. Richard Rohr notes that: “when we desire satisfaction for our hopes, we’re demanding to complete history on our terms. It’s wanting to be in control. Same goes for demanding that our anxieties or disappointments be taken away; saying as it were: Why aren’t you this or that for me? Why didn’t you do want I wanted.” Hope as the practice of mindfulness helps us to let go, become emptier, awake and trusting that God will be God. It is the practice of letting the holy finish the picture – complete the poem – write the last verse of the song. It is incarnating the wisdom of the Serenity Prayer.

The second candle of peace asks us to practice shalom. Peace is so more than the end of conflict or a cessation of fighting. In an adult spirituality of Advent, shalom is about right relations between people, nations, religions, and creation. Sometimes that means finding out what has been TAKEN AWAY from someone and returning it. You may recall that repentance, metanoia, is changing our minds and actions by turning back to God’s love. And sometimes that looks like returning land to those whose ancestral homes have been stolen, or returning dignity and safety to people who’ve been ignored or wounded including ALL the creatures of earth who were created to be our partners in creation. Shalom is living into the rhythm of the seasons, honoring the prayers made out of grass and anticipating that time when sharing by all means scarcity for none.

And the third candle of joy asks us to practice generosity from a heart of
delight. What some-times passes as gift-giving can be driven by obligation or manipulation – and there’s no joy in that. Mark Twain use to say about the Pharisees in the time of Jesus that “they were good men in the worst sense of the word.” Mary Oliver tells us this is the wrong motivation for generosity; it should come from that “something that more or less kills you with delight.” Or, like Frederick Buechner says: it is sharing your greatest joy with the world’s greatest need. 

To light the candle of joy today – and all this week – encourages us to ask like the Baptist: what can you give away to bring joy to the world? What “chaff” could be cleared away from your heart to be more kind, more just, more luminous in your everyday, walking around lives? What are the prayers of the grass saying to you – and God? The prayers of the trees? The prayers of the stones? As you listen for these prayers: let your heart and mind be open. Empty. So that you can react to them without hesitation. Wise Advent wisdom keeper, Mary Oliver, tells us that:

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it.
There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be.
We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty: Joy is not made to be a crumb.

So I want to practice giving in to joy right now: I was going to ask you to sing “Angels We Have Heard on High” to get ready for Eucharist, but after reading my friend Pam’s blog I realized that today we need to sing “In the Bleak Mid-Winter.”

my eyes are not raised too high...

Yesterday I finished cleaning the house after our time away: it always sets my heart to rest to do this work. Like baking bread, the quotidian mysteries of cleaning, cooking, and laundry bring a measure of order to my world. And in times like our own even the illusion of order is a welcome friend. Outside it is freezing cold with a multitude of uncertainties swirling about like dried leaves caught in the wind. The wetlands are grey and barren. Our politics continue to veer towards chaos. And the new covid variant carries more questions than answers, more fear than solutions. Is it any wonder I take solace in scrubbing the wood floors?

Sr. Joan Chittister has written in her guide to contemporary monastic insight, Wisdom Distilled from the Daily, that the practice of "an ordered life" slowly trains our hearts, minds, bodies, and souls in the ways of peace. "Just about every person I have ever met who was serious about spiritual things," she tells us, "thinks that... daily life is the stuff of which high sanctity can be made. But just about nobody I have ever met... really thinks this is possible."

The idea that sanctity is as much a part of a married life or the single life as it is of the religious life or the clerical life is an idea dearly loved but seldom deeply believed...Over and over again, cures and cults and psychological exercises are regularly tried and regularly discarded while people look for something that will make them feel good, steady their perspective, and bring meaning and direct to their lives...But if we are not spiritual where we are and as we are, we are not spiritual at all. We are simply consumers of the latest in spiritual gadgetry that numbs our confusions but never fills our spirits or frees our hearts... (That is why) Benedictine spirituality seeks to fill up the emptiness and heal the brokenness in which most of us live in ways that are sensible, humane, whole, and accessible to an overworked, overstimulated, overscheduled human race. (Wisdom, pp. 2-3)

The quotidian mysteries, as Kathleen Norris discovered, are pathways into serenity. "The ordinary activities I find most compatible with contemplation are walking, baking bread, and doing laundry.” Me, too - except I would add vacuuming, dusting, and scrubbing floors. I continue to be drawn to both the 16th century kitchen monk, Brother Lawrence, and the 17th century Carmelite nun, Sr. Teresa of Lisieux, the Little Flower. Their focus on small acts of love make sense to me. So, too, Psalm 131: 

O Lord, my heart is not lifted up; my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me.
But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a child with her mother's breast; like a child at rest is my soul within me.

I don't understand most of the science shared every evening in the NY Times. I read it and applaud their commitment to keeping us connected to the best wisdom available during this phase of the pandemic. But the truth is I don't get most of what I read at all. I am at a loss when otherwise smart people choose to dwell in ignorance and actively encourage others to resist vaccinations. And God knows our media's obsession with labeling the negotiations of politics as life and death conflicts when this used to simply be part and parcel of striking a compromise bewilders me, too. Our addiction to bottom lines is in play, I know. So, too the spiritual darkness born of frustration, anger, economic loss, and despair that sporadically encourages witch hunts, pogroms, and lynchings. But when I am thoroughly honest with myself, I really only understand hospitality, tenderness, and being present in the moment. 

And so I clean. And do laundry. I prepare simple suppers every night and strive to shape our home with beauty and a modicum of order. Sr. Joan teaches that "the spirituality we develop affects the way we image God, the way we pray, the types of ascetism we practice, the place we give to ministry and community in our definition of the spiritual life." She goes on to say:

Spirituality draws us beyond ourselves to find significance and meaning in life. It is our spirituality that defines our life values: self-abnegation or self-development; community or solitude; contemplation or action; personal transformation or social justice; hierarchy or equality. The spirituality we develop, in other words, is the filter through which we view our worlds and the limits within which we operate. (Wisdom, pp. 5-6)

What I have found over the years for myself is a "spirituality of living an ordinary life extraordinarily well... transforming life rather than transcending it" in order that I may live: "Calmly in the middle of chaos, productively in an arena of waste, lovingly in a maelstrom of individualism, and gently in a world full of violence." A prayerful practice, if you will, that finds beauty in a clean floor, joy in a satisfying meal, sacramental trust in clean sheets, commitment in a well-scrubbed toilet bowl. These things I understand. Even cherish. I suspect that same is true for making music: rarely are my songs or arrangements complicated; often, I pray, they are refreshing and loving. Simple and real. That is why I am drawn to the creations of Canada's Alana Levandowski.  

This Advent I have quit trying to understand politics, science, even religion in order that I might be present, grounded, and open to tenderness with those nearest to me. I still read the NY Times each morning and watch part of the PBS Newshour in the evening. I take-in a few important newsletters by Times authors, too so that I'm not totally left in the dust of this era. But mostly I am walking with the poems of Mary Oliver (and a few others) along with the appointed gospel texts of the season as I work to keep a measure of order in my small corner of creation. Today the sun is out but the wind is howling. When I got up to put Lucie out this morning, for some reason she had peed on our new rug. Later, I received a touching email from an old friend seeking forgiveness and reconnection. And I have prayers and songs to share via Zoom with my community in L'Arche Ottawa. So, I prepared our breakfast, cleaned the pee, practiced a simple song of peace, and reread this Hanukah poem by Brad Aaron Modlin called "One Candle Now, Then Seven More."

I grew up in a family that did not tell
the story. I am listening to it now:

Even the morning you see a robin
flattened on the street, you hear

another in a tree, the notes
they’ve taught each other, bird

before bird before we were born.
And elsewhere, the rusty bicycle

carries the doctor all the way
across an island. He arrives in time.

Somewhere his sister adds water
to the soup until payday. And

over the final hill in a Southwestern
desert, a gas station appears. No,

the grief has not forgotten my name,
but this morning I tied

my shoelaces. Outside I can force
a wave at every face who might

need it. We might
spin till we collapse, but we still

have a hub: Even at dusk,
the sun isn’t going anywhere.

We have lamps. The story insists
it just looks like there’s only

enough oil to last one night.

receiving the gift with open hands...

"Gratitude" suggests Kisha James, a member of the Aquinnah Wampanoag tribe in New England, "is how we embrace beauty without clutching it so tightly that we strangle it."

To receive life as a gift is to acknowledge that we do not — and indeed cannot — hold our world together out of our sheer effort, will and strength. Most of the best things in life can only be received and held with open hands. (NYTimes)

About three inches of fresh, powdery snow fell on our retreat home today: the wind is blowing vigorously, the fire is now blazing, and the sky is a uniform gray preventing any sense of direction. Setting off for an artisan Christmas fair, we chose not to go up the mountain given road conditions and the possibility of freezing. Instead, we wandered the back roads for a spell before winding up at one of our favorite Benedictine monasteries. "Apparently," Di noted, "we needed to make pilgrimage." That felt right to me, too. In addition to an Advent candle for my evening prayer live-streaming tomorrow at 4 pm and some monk-made fresh cheese, we found a children's interfaith book that will become part of our grandchildren's Massachusetts library.

There is something meditative about watching the snow fall against pine trees, expansive dairy farms, and an opaque horizon. It is a gift that can only be recognized and then received with open hands. Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer puts it like this in her poem: "Belonging."

And if it’s true we are alone,
we are alone together,
the way blades of grass
are alone, but exist as a field.
Sometimes I feel it,
the green fuse that ignites us,
the wild thrum that unites us,
an inner hum that reminds us
of our shared humanity.
Just as thirty-five trillion
red blood cells join in one body
to become one blood.
Just as one hundred thirty-six thousand
notes make up one symphony.
Alone as we are, our small voices
weave into the one big conversation.
Our actions are essential
to the one infinite story of what it is
to be alive. When we feel alone,
we belong to the grand communion
of those who sometimes feel alone—
we are the dust, the dust that hopes,
a rising of dust, a thrill of dust,
the dust that dances in the light
with all other dust, the dust
that makes the world.

from naivete to grief into solidarity: decolonizing thanksgiving

For some of us from the USA, this "Thanksgiving weekend" has been a time of quiet gratitude mixed with introspection, moments of grief, gratitude, and questions re: how to "decolonize" this holiday. For Di and myself, we chose to slip away from both the Black Friday madness and the cacophonous choruses of competing feast day narratives for a quiet time of solitude in a small country town surrounded by hills, trees, and rivers. Like the Celtic heretic, Pelagius, advised: if you want to know the Creator, spend time with Creation. Our banquet was modest - tourtière (meat pie), fresh veggies, and a crusty baguette - but our gratitude knew no bounds. 

Thanksgiving has been a holiday in transition for me. As a child coming of age in Congregational New England, the myth of noble Native Americans feasting with my Pilgrim ancestors - and saving these colonizing settlers from starvation - was normative: we made paper headdresses and Pilgrim hats for the annual Pilgrim Pageants, the story was told and retold in church, and the media informed how my parents explained the "why" of this feast day. For years I considered it to be an American Eucharist, the origins of the sacred melting pot where all types of people could find a resting place free from discrimination and fear. It was the driving reason for memorizing Hawthorne's 1855 epic poem, "The Song of Hiawatha" in first grade. I was genuinely grateful to the Indians and wanted to know more about the people who literally made my America possible.

I didn't know otherwise for a full decade because in bourgeois white Connecticut and Massachusetts alternatives were not discussed. I grew-up water-skiing on Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg, the sacred fishing center and unceded ancestral home of the Nipmuck Indians. I watched countless Westerns with my dad on our black and white TV and came to respect Tonto as much as the Lone Ranger. The trust built between Indian agent, Tom Jeffords, and Apache Chief, Cochise, on Broken Arrow showed me it was possible for an Anglo and an Indian to become blood brothers. Even my hippie inclinations romanticized First Nations realities by the counter culture's rip off of faux Native fashion. I still failed to grasp the lies of the dominant culture concerning indigenous people even after devouring Dee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee in 1970. I simply could not connect the dots linking the genocide of the American Plains Indians to what had occurred n my own backyard.

My hunch is it took Tom Hayden's 1972 book, The Love of Possession is Like a Disease with Them, to awaken me. The title was taken from "an 1877 speech by Sitting Bull (where) Hayden masterfully draws compelling parallels between the Vietnam War and the genocide of Native Americans." (Good Reads) As a conscientious objector to Vietnam (who was granted noncombatant status but was never called to serve) I was leaving the safe and sheltered world of white, middle class New England behind. I read feminist analysis alongside civil rights histories, the polemics of 20th century pacifists with the same gusto as the anti-racist jeremiads of MLK, Malcolm X, and Angela Davis, In time, I gave a number of years to the crusades of Cesar Chavez and finally completed my undergraduate degree in political science, writing my thesis on non-violent social change. And still I did not know the true story of Thanksgiving.

Langston Hughes took me to a new awareness with his poem: Let America be America again - it's never been America to me. Studying with Cornel West, Dorothee Soelle, James Washington, James Cone, and Walter Wink at Union Theological Seminary continued my awakening. But it wasn't until TV's Northern Exposure aired a Thanksgiving episode deconstructing the lies of our white dominant culture that I grasped why decolonizing Thanksgiving had to become a priority for me. 

An open-hearted and clear-headed dialogue between Edgar Villanueva and Hilary Giovale in YES Magazine is the single best articulation of what is at stake in decolonizing Thanksgiving. And I am of the opinion that this matters whether or not you have been shaped by the romantic mythology of dominant culture or not. Mr. Villanueva notes:

As a Native American, I’m often troubled by the way that (many) Americans approach Thanksgiving. By holding onto an idealized image of a harmonious feast between the Pilgrims and Wampanoag, we’ve overlooked the brutality that Native people have faced since the arrival of Europeans. For many Native Americans, Thanksgiving is a day of mourning and remembrance—a reminder of the genocide of our people, the loss of our way of life, and the theft of our ancestral lands. We cannot change the past––but by changing how we tell the story of the past, we can avoid repeating a history that erases the trauma Indigenous peoples have experienced. While traditional decolonization hinges on returning stolen land and autonomy to Indigenous peoples, today our lives as Indigenous peoples and settlers are so intertwined that decolonization is more complex.

Ms. Giovale builds on this stating:

European-descended settlers have unique opportunities to bridge the colonial gap. It can begin by simply changing how we introduce ourselves. The first time I said out loud, “I am a ninth-generation American settler. All my life, and ever since 1739, our family has been living on stolen Indigenous land,” my worldview started changing dramatically. Within White settler culture, our identities as settlers tend to be invisible to ourselves. We are entangled with systemic White supremacy and national mythologies designed to keep us comfortable and complicit. Many of us have developed multi-generational bubbles of denial and amnesia about the genocide, broken treaties, and stolen land that enabled us to stay. Our opportunity is to willingly pop those bubbles so we can collectively decolonize and make repairs.

Their dialogue goes on to suggest seven life-changing ways that settlers and indigenous peoples can live together as allies in healing: grieve, apologize, listen, relate, represent, invest, and repair. (You can read the full article here and I encourage you to do so: https://www.yesmagazine.org/opinion/ 2019/11/27/thanksgiving-colonial-gap-heal) In The Gatherings: Reimagining Indigenous-Settler Relations a Wabanaki wisdom keeper suggests that one of the ways a person from an Irish settler background might begin to make peace with her family's legacy in real time is to first become grounded in her own roots. As she grew more and more comfortable in her own skin, she was able to move into solidarity with the still thriving resistant Wampanoag nation of Cape Cod. I find solace and hope in this story.  (Read more here: https://utorontopress.com/blog/2021/06/17/excerpt-the-gatherings/) If you're able, take some time with this You Tube overview, too.

This Thanksgiving, I find myself resonating with Kaitlin Curtice, a Potawatomie woman who finds the grace of God revealed in the universal Christ, when she confesses:

This, the universal Christ who, in grace and love, holds all things and all people and all creatures in that grace, is what gives me hope in this world. The universal Christ, who is not a colonizer, who does not seek after profit or create empires to rule over the poor or to oppress people, is constantly asking us to see ourselves as we fit in this sacredly created world. It is what my Potawatomi ancestors saw when they prayed to Kche Mnedo, to Mamogosnan, and is what our relatives still see when they pray today, a sacred belonging that spans time and generations and is called by many names. Today, it is what I continue to see in my own faith—not a Christianity bound by a sinner’s prayer and an everyday existence ruled by gender-divided Bible studies and accountability meetings but a story of faith that’s always bigger, always more inclusive, always making room at a bigger and better table full of lavish food that has already been prepared for everyone and for every created thing.

befriending uncertainty: praying "I really don't know..."

NOTE: Reflection notes from Sunday, November 14 @ "Small is Holy."
While talking recently with a former colleague about the ever-changing challenge of "doing" church in the 21st century, the words "I really don't know..." kept popping up from both of us. When I went home to rake leaves that afternoon, I kept thinking that THIS has become the refrain for our moment in time: I really don’t know. It rings so true with so much of our reality!

+ You may be aware that more and more objective data is being gathered concerning the dramatic departure from all types of public worship that continues to take place 20 months into our COVID pandemic. The Barna Research Group has quantified that nearly 22% of adults who once regularly participated in the life of a faith community quit doing so in 2020. That means one in five among us has given up connecting with their spiritual community virtually, physically, or in a reopened worship context for one reason or another.

+ Something similar has been documented in the staggering social fragmentation that’s now normative in our nation. A recent report from the Pew Research Center shows that what once was a fluid middle ground in our politics – the union of the ambivalent Right, the stressed-out side liners, and the non-ideological Left who combined make up 37% of the electorate – is now so disillusioned that they no longer vote let alone search for common ground.

+ And I can’t help but hear the words, “I really don’t know” in the confusion we experience try-ing to navigate the still unchartered waters of COVID some 20+ months into this mess; in the grief-filled divisions exposed at the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow where young and old citizens clash in their commitments and the gulf between developing and developed nation states on our one shared home seems greater than ever.

Even Jesus seems to be saying: “Hmmmm… I really don’t know either!” in the appointed gospel text for today where some in the early Jesus movement are leaving the Temple. In what Bible scholars now call the last extended discourse before the Cross, Jesus tells his friends that the change and healing they’re hoping for is coming – it is built into God’s grace – but nobody, including himself, knows when it will occur. Chapter 13 of St. Mark’s gospel, known as the Little Apocalypse, proclaims: The exact day and hour? No one knows that, not even heaven’s angels, nor even the Son. Only the Father. So, keep a sharp look-out, for we don’t know the timetable… and stay at your post and keep watching.

+ These days I want summarize this saying: I don’t really know. I don’t really know what’s taking place except wars and rumors of wars. I don’t really know when things will get sorted out. I have no idea how to fix the mess we’re in. And almost all the advice from the experts of our tradition is, at best, ambiguous. So, for the time being let’s say: I really don’t know.

+ Chapter 13 opens with this uncertainty, too: as Christ’s entourage departs the Temple, one of the disciples comments on the grand masonry work. “Master, LOOK at these stones – these buildings – aren’t they incredible?” To which Jesus replies: So now you’re impressed by grandiosity? There is not a stone in the whole works that is not going to end up in a heap of rubble.”

That puts an end to the conversation momentarily, but later Peter, James, and John pull Jesus aside while resting on the Mount of Olives and ask: Can you tell us when this collapse is going to take place? We want to know how and when it will happen so we can prepare? To which Jesus says: Watch out for doomsday deceivers who pretend to know God’s plan but are either confused or liars; it’s going to get worse here before it gets better. Eugene Peterson renders this verse in The Message as: Life will go from bad to worse, dog-eat-dog, with everyone at your throat because you carry my name. So, remember that you’ve been placed here as sentinels to truth. But more than that? I really don’t know.

This lack of a coherent action plan is why I interpret the Messiah confessions as: I

really don’t know. And his apparent comfort with this paradox can be unsettling because most of us prefer clarity to ambiguity. Certainty and order rather than the messy darkness of a compost heap that mixes both death and life into the renewal of Mother Earth. But Christ’s confusion is a reminder to me that I’m not in charge – nor are any of us – and that’s what apocalyptic literature strives to let us know. It is NOT about end of the world prophesies as popular culture would have us believe. Not at all. The term apocalypse is a compound Greek word joining apo – meaning un – with kalepsis – to cover – creating a word about a disclosure or revelation of great import that requires careful discernment. In this case, it’s a revelation about the loving but paradoxical and hidden nature of God’s presence in our lives especially in times of tumult.

Apocalypse asks us to make peace with paradox so that we can chill-out while saying: I really don’t know. It encourages us to slow down to watch, wait, and listen, cultivating a little more tenderness – and a little less judgment – towards ourselves and others. Try some more silence instead of sound it slyly whispers. Perhaps that’s why this poem by Andrea Potos felt like an epiphany.

When beginning the poem may there be a listening rather than a making
curiosity over expectation, lightness and ease,
no straining toward some glut of air.
May you step aside like a watcher at the meadow’s edge
as the doe finds her way to the center.

When I started to craft today’s reflection, it quickly became overly academic, wordy, and ponderous. I knew it was a limp biscuit right away but didn’t know how to fix it – and that’s when I stumbled upon her poem. It invited me to watch, wait, and trust that the doe shall find her way to the center of the meadow because the timing is hers and totally beyond my comprehension. Through the lens of this poem, I started to hear that Christ’s uncertainty was not just a mystery, but also an invitation to live each day with more curiosity than expectation. In this, the words, I really don’t know, become a mantra, a prayer, and even a spiritual practice because If Jesus didn’t know… well, that’s good enough for me.

Some of you know that I volunteer as part of the community of L’Arche Ottawa: a gathering of women and men with and without intellectual and physical disabilities. If these past 20+ months of COVID have been hard for you and me – and they have – imagine what the various lock-downs, social distancing, and medical costumes like masking, hospital gowns, and all the rest have meant to the core members – those with various disabilities – or the young people who have been locked down in community 24/7 as assistants. Sometimes it’s been agonizing. Exhausting and depressing, too. And while we gather virtually every Friday to pray and sing and tell stories, Zoom and Skype are NOT the same as physical presence and intimacy. I am grateful for the technology – and love seeing my friends – but two weeks ago when I was finally able to spend a week in Ottawa now that the border has been opened my heart was full to overflowing in ways that have been buried during this ordeal.

On the five plus hour journey northward, I wondered what I might do while in community again. I wanted to help and be useful. But you know what the core members wanted more than anything else from me? They wanted me to visit with them in person, with no specific agenda except to share a simple meal, sing a few songs live and up close and personal, and laugh together. Nothing grandiose. Nothing dramatic. Just the simple gift of being together. And I was able to make that happen in four of the six homes where we sang – and laughed – and prayed – and even wept a little bit as well. Being present without a plan spontaneously became holy ground and I felt the presence of Jesus within and among us. He showed up in small and hidden ways, but real nonetheless.

Terry, who is normally gregarious by nature, has long been frustrated by having to stay at home in various modes of solitude for nearly two years, so he reveled in the chance to do his Johnny Cash impressions with me and play some air guitar. Cecile danced and sang with delight when we sang “Felice Navidad.” Mark kept a killer backbeat with both hands and feet when I played Roy Orbison’s “Pretty Woman.” And silent Eric smiled serenely and encouraged me to play a few of his favorite gentle songs. It was holy ground – I left each home feeling fortified and blessed – mostly because I waited and listened and trusted my heart that said: I don’t really know what to do right now so just show up. On the way home it was clear that my visits didn’t bring the pandemic to an end. It didn’t heal any of our political divides nor ease the mess in the environment. It was, in fact, a very small blessing – but a blessing nonetheless– that gave us all a little more strength to do it one more time, one day at a time.

When I got home from Ottawa a FB memory reminded me that last Christmas Eve I shared a homily on Zoom with the community while we were still struggling to get our heads around sheltering in place and what the solitude it enforced might mean for us. I said in part:

As I join you all in praying, wishing, hoping, social distancing, masking,
and hand-washing that this dark time of disease will be over soon, I am aware that in ways that are mysterious and far greater than my understanding, the contagion is showing me just how much we are like the vul-nerable Christ Child born this night in the city of David as our Savior. What I mean is that God came into the world for us as a baby – a small, helpless child born into a cold night to humble parents who were trying to make sense of life in a nation occupied by a cruel and demanding invading army – and this wasn’t an accident. For this infant to thrive, it was essential that some-one held and caressed him, loved and clothed him, changed his messy diapers, sang to him, fed and nurtured him because he couldn’t do it himself. The smallness of the one we call Messiah was not an accident…

God is telling us a surprising truth about the blessings and responsibilities of being real. You see, the Christ Child makes clear that God is found in what is small, what is weak, what is hidden. Fr. Henri Nouwen, who spent his last years in community at L’Arche Daybreak in Toronto used to say that most of us look for the Lord in big, impressive, and loud happenings that document power. We expect God to show up in “spectacles, power plays, significant and extraordinary events” that will change the course of history in their grandiosity. We, ourselves, are often taken-in by wealth, prestige, and sparkling things that glitter and shine. We can be so easily distracted. Perhaps that is why God chose to come to us as a small child of Palestinian peasants in an insignificant stable surrounded by animals and shepherds. This way we see that God’s kingdom is humble, simple, small, and very vulnerable. One of the gifts and surprises from Jesus is that he shows up for us in the most unlikely little places – and if we refuse to look for holy in what is small, Fr. Nouwen adds, we will likely give-in to despair.

Almost a year later it dawned on me that even back then I was hearing something of Christ’s blessing in the uncertainty of our confusion and anxiety. “I really don’t know” can be a liberating prayer – and here’s why. Do you recall what Jesus asked of his friends whenever he was confronted with uncertainty? Consistently he told them: abide with me. Stay close to me in prayer, stay connected to one another in tenderness, and trust that God is in charge so you don’t have to be. This became one of the Jesus movement’s charism after the Cross when one calamity that could not be changed followed another. Abide in me. Rest and trust in my love. Nothing grandiose. Just a humble call to hold one another in the moment and do so with love.

That’s what Jesus asked of his friends as he headed towards the Cross. That’s what St. John of Patmos wrote in the final book of the Bible that promises a new heaven and a new earth as we abide. That’s what Mary Magdalene taught the disciples in her extra-canonical gospel. And it is what I have heard from pastors in Syria during the bombing, from those who resisted the Nazis in WWII, the liberation theology Christians communities facing persecution and danger throughout Latin America, indigenous men and women confronting the genocide of our founders, coal miners and farm workers fighting to build a union, suffragettes struggling to win the vote, civil rights activists helping us all live into a more perfect union, peace-makers the world over, as well as my friends at L’Arche Ottawa: hold on to one another. Show up. Sing. Pray. Feast. Weep. Celebrate. And dance in THIS moment. Jesus said in his Sermon on the Mount: Do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Stay grounded in today – and that’s enough.

That’s all we can really do anyhow, right? Especially when uncertainty prevails. Jesus asks us to abide in him and hold one another in love.. St. Mary Oliver condensed Christ’s teaching like this:

you must be able to do three things to live in this world:
to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go

I’m thinking that one way we could hold on and abide as we enter Advent together would be to use a study guide based on the Advent texts and some of St. Mary Oliver’s poems? Last year, we did a Celtic series, and I would love to do another with you. Let me know if you like that idea. Send me a note because there is so much to love – and so much to relinquish, too. As I was finally finishing up these words yesterday, I saw that a rabbi colleague and friend wrapped up her Sabbath reflection like this:

I wonder whether we will look back on these years as the end of something, or the end of many things. The end of when we could have stopped the global warming juggernaut, the end of the myth that "red" and "blue" America actually understand each other – or even want to try. I think about climate grief and rising authoritarianism and mistrust. And I'm so ready for Shabbat, for 25 hours of setting worries aside. All I can do is trust that when I make Havdalah – (the ritual that closes Shabbat and marks the end of our intentional separation from work and worry) – I'll be ready to pick up the work again – and that the fallen leaves in these hills will sustain growth I can't yet know.

Right now I want to trust this spirituality of uncertainty, saying simply: “I really don’t know” as a prayer. It feels real and honest. Clearly, there will always be wars and rumors of war. There’s still work to be done so that our home on Mother Earth can be healed and respected, too. And God knows chaos and darkness continues to swirl within and among us. So, as the rabbi, the earth, our hearts, the autumn leaves, and Jesus tell us: it’s time to abide – to trust that for this day and this day alone – it is sufficient.

So, take off your thirsty boots and stay for a while
Your feet are hot and wary from a dusty mile
And maybe I can make you laugh, maybe I can try
I’m just lookin’ for the evening, the morning, in your eyes.

building an all hallows memory box...

The wise and prolific spiritual guide, Christine Valters Paintner, has led a variety of workshops on fresh and time-tested ways to renew the inward/outward journey. I have participated in two online courses with deep satisfaction. In one, the insights and presence of my ancestors as wisdom keepers was our focus in anticipation of the Celtic Triduum of All Hallows: the All Hallows Eve vigil as well as the feasts of All Saints and All Souls days. Her invitation was simple: prayerfully consider those who have gone from this life to life everlasting from that great cloud of witnesses of family and friends. Then find pictures or mementoes of these sacred souls and create a "memory box" as an altar.

This invitation came at the right time for me - a year before the pandemic lock down - and, after creating a list of my "saints," I eagerly explored boxes of old photographs. When I discovered I didn't posses a picture of a loved one, it was time to go online to consult obituaries, blogs, and FB pages. What a great search! A visual pilgrimage of sorts filled with memories, stories, and songs from those who have shaped my heart. I took a used-up wooden planter box, draping it with cloth and added candles and symbols of my journey: a jar of sacred soil from Chimayo in Northern New Mexico, a copper candelabra, and an interfaith decal.

Next came pictures: my siblings - two of whom are gone, and my mother and paternal grandparents - who likewise have crossed over. Our faithful old dog, Casey, who once annoyed me greatly but taught me something of patience. Four generations of Lumsdens including my great grandmother. The chapel of Chimayo where Di and I have prayed for one another and our families often. Dear Michael Daniels of precious memory who introduced me to AA. Mentors Sam Fogal from my home church and Ray and Jane Swartzback of my internship in Jamaica, Queens, NY. Dianne's mom and dad, my sisters, and maternal grandparents. Below, and not seen in this photo, were pictures of my Aunt Donna who was like an older sister to me. Candles graced both levels of memories.

This became my All Hallows altar of personal icons. As I sat quietly before it, memories and songs swelled up within the silence. There were times when I could feel some of these saints with me. And other times when there was just a holy quiet. It's a grand and simple way to reclaim this holiday - and who knows where it will lead.

preparing for the Celtic triduum: All Hallows Eve

Sunday, October 24: Preparing for the Celtic Triduum

In ways I’ve rarely understood, my soul reverberates with the rhythms of the ancient Celtic year – especially their sense that these are holy in-between days. My Scots Irish ancestors believed that “the transitions between the seasons” were liminal spaces akin to “the shores between land and water, the boundaries between political territories, bridges that cross streams of water, and the twilight between day and night.” (Llewellyn) They sensed that these realities “were neither one thing or another” – mystery more than certainty or both/and as I’m want to say – where physical-ity hugs spirituality in a sacramental way. The poet, Angela Bailey, sings:

Every moment is born from the death of the last moment:
Every spring is born from last year’s autumn, 

every leaf that falls nourishes new life
That will sprout when the earth is warmed again: 

So why do we insist on clinging?
Why do we not let go as easily as a tree 

Lets go of both its leaves and its seeds,
Letting one die so that another will grow? 

Why indeed? Fr. Richard Rohr suggests that part of the answer has to do with the way our spiritualities have been shaped more by ideas and concepts than God’s first incarnated word in nature. Most clergy “were trained for years by going away not into a world of nature and silence and primal relationships, but into a world of books. “

But that’s not biblical spirituality and that’s not where religion begins. St. Paul insists that spiritual formation starts with an encounter with nature: “Ever since the creation of the world,” he writes in the first chapter of Romans, “the invisible essence of God and God’s everlasting power have been clearly seen by the mind’s understanding of created things in nature.” We know God through the things that God has made. The first foundation of any true religious seeing is, quite simply, learning how to see and love what is. Contemplation is meeting this reality in its most simple and direct form unjudged, unexplained, and uncontrolled!

The inward journey, as the mystics like to say, is taking a LONG, loving look at what is real. Not the words of Scripture, the study of doctrine and dogma, or even the recitation of liturgical prayer: it is gazing upon what is right in front of us with love. Christine Valters-Paintner, on of my favorite wisdom keepers, suggests that when Jesus sensed his call to an outward and public ministry of sharing love, renewing the prophetic tradition of Judaism, showing people a way to opt out of the status quo, and incarnating the love of God in human flesh: he went into the wilderness.

Why, after thirty years – a span of time when life expectancy in his era was about the same age – did Jesus wait another forty days to begin his public ministry? Where did he go and what was he doing for so long that was so important? NOTHING. Jesus wasn’t even eating… he was not doing a thing except being. He sought out the wilderness so that he could make time to read God’s first “book” of creation… One of the lessons Jesus gives by his example is that before action, contemplation must take place… outside the noise, confusion, and chaos that so often surrounds us… Spending time reading the original scriptures of nature shows us how to step back, truly rest in contemplation before rushing into action. (Earth: Our Original Monastery, pp. 24-25)

This is what I have been stumbling towards over the past 25 years – learning to read God’s first word in nature – and letting that word shape and inform my heart, my being, and my activity. Living consciously into a nature-based Celtic Christian spirituality, however imperfectly, reminds me that since I was a small child I’ve been enraptured with this time of year: mid-October through mid-November and into Advent. I cherish EVERYTHING about it – the sights, sounds, smells, feelings, and activities – even the oblique melancholia that creeps inside of me as the days suddenly shrink after Day Light Savings Time ends evokes a bit of quiet gratitude and has done so for decades.

Intuitively and sensually, autumn is about endings: “the harvest has been gathered indoors,” writes Gertrud Mueller-Nelson. “The garden’s excess has been turned under the earth one last time. And while we return to the earth the riches she shared with us and allow the rotting melons or the bright leaves to be turned back into the soil, we sense something of the interdependence” of creation built into this in-between time. How does the written word of God we often say in our funeral liturgies put it: from dust we came and to dust we shall return? In the beginning, we emerge from the earth and into the hummus we finally return to rest. Whether you garden or not, if you’re awake and watching nature – even in the city – the circle of life dances before us, inviting us to let go and be-come empty so that we might be filled by God’s grace. Creation, the ancient Celts, Christian liturgy as well as the Beatles are clear: let it be, let it be, whispered words of wisdom, let it be.

· This is what the autumnal triduum of All Hallows Eve, All Saints and All Souls Day asks us to practice: letting go in trust that the threshold of darkness will bring new life and light to us in God’s own time. It is a hallowing of our fears and anxieties, an inverted spiritual adventure that seeks to assure us that out of the darkness will come new light in the love of Christ. It is a counter-intuitive faithfulness of the highest order.

· “These three feasts,” writes historian Christopher Hill, “remind us that the roots and branches of Christianity are in the unseen, and that the trunk passes for only the littlest while through this daylight world of time and the five senses. These feasts are intended to be a remedy for our unease with the unseen, to teach us to get along with mystery” and be gentle with our-selves. Sadly, our culture has buried these feasts giving them little attention or significance – leaving only the “popular folk holiday, Halloween,” to do the heavy lifting. (Holidays and Holy Nights, p. 46) Hill adds that now our secularized vigil of All Saints at Halloween acts like “an impish little brother to the former great vigils, offering a small echo of their world-transforming mysteries.”

Once upon a time, however, in both Christian and pre-Christian Celtic practices, these three days of All Hallows Eve nee Samhain practiced living into all types of darkness and anxiety with far more trust than fear. The ancient Celts paid attention to the cross-quarter day of November 1st that arrives halfway between the Autumnal Equinox and the Winter Solstice. These moments looked and felt like in-between time as one season died and another struggled to be born. Meg Llewellyn notes that this experience was “neither one thing nor another, letting human beings step outside their rigid mental boxes to catch a glimpse of mystery… in the old days THIS was the most potent in-between time of all.” (The Celtic Wheel of the Year, p. 19) November 1st was celebrated as the start of the Celtic New Year she adds because:

It was a ‘hinge’ time, marking the transition between summer’s light and winter’s darkness. It was believed that during this “thin time” between the seen and unseen realms, the gate between these worlds swung open and remained so until the gate closed about November 16th… from late October to early November… the past, present, and future became intertwined as the dead walked among the living, the faerie folk danced visibly and solemnity and celebration embraced in festivals of bonfire light to drive back evil spirit while families communed with relatives who had already crossed… Samhain became a time to honor the ancestors, not as the dead and departed, but as the living spirits of loved ones who guarded the root wisdom of the tribe.

I like Christopher Hill’s insight when he writes: “In the more sensuous awareness of time that people had in the absence of precise measuring systems, it was apparent that at these moments, one time had ended. Time would start again, of course, but between the end of one cycle and the beginning of the next there was a gap – and in these gaps it was believed that the world reverted to the way it was before time began – at the creation – dreamtime – much like each day shows us the year in miniature at both noon and midnight suggest a smaller crack in time… where anything is possible. (p. 51) Hill amplifies this saying:

Such occasions are perilous, undetermined, turning points and even crises, where things can go one way or another. This human sense of time is so deep and apparently universal that it has found its way into al-most every religious tradition. It is the root of most holy days and the source of sacred time. The timeless, of course, can break through at any moment; holy days are simply our celebrations and sacraments of that fact.

That is why, in both the Christian and pagan manifestation of these celebrations, these vigils begin at night. Our modern addiction to efficiency has erased much of this practice except at Christmas in the West and Easter in the East. But organic spirituality that is not tamed, homogenized, or sanitized by practicality recognizes that “sacred work takes place in the middle of the night, when the way is open between eternity and this world.” Our Jewish ancestors still mark the start of a “day” when evening falls. And our written Bible tells us that Jesus was born at night, was transformed and resurrected in the darkness, and once told his friends that “what I say to you now in the dark you must share with the world in the light.” Small wonder Jesus taught the skeptic, Nicodemus, about the “mysteries of rebirth and the holy spirit… in that famous nighttime dialogue” in St. John’s third chapter.

It was only about 500 years ago that we in the West gave up night vigils. Those of us from the Reformed tradition know our obsession with rationality and order. Our theological ancestors mistrusted the darkness – metaphorically and literally – both because some post-vigil events became rowdy, but also because intuitively they were excursions into the imagination. And those stolid old Protestants sensed that the imagination was fundamentally pagan. The old vigils that started with All Hallows Eve, however, insisted that the sacred and the human MEET in the imagination in yet another in-between time and place where what was out there – on the border – came close: now we see as through a glass darkly, said St. Paul, only later shall we see face to face. Let’s also note that our Protestant elders were not much for sacramental spirituality either.

They were literalists not poets, shaped by an era which rejected the belief that what could be seen pointed towards holy mysteries that were unseen. That’s one of the reasons I continue to let go of more and more of my Reformed heritage: the baggage is just too heavy to carry. It’s stultifying, wordy, and fearful – heady and abstract without much grounding in the senses – so I find the way of the ancient Celts who reveled in this glorious in-between season much more satisfying. Indeed, in our recent review of St. Mark’s gospel from the Common Lectionary over these past few weeks, I’ve found the Celtic lens and wisdom of Mother Nature to be liberating as it offers us upside-down and in-between stories of Jesus sharing God’s grace with his friends along the way.

Perhaps you know this but each of the four gospels in our canon – and some beyond it, too – not only tell a spiritual story, but organize their tales in such a way as to help us grasp their unique spirituality. St. John collects seven wisdom stories using the I AM formula to link Jesus the restorative powers of the sabbath. St. Matthew describes Jesus as the new Moses utilizing ancient Jewish practices to show Jesus as the fulfillment of the prophetic liberation. And St. Mark shares a three-pronged spirituality that starts close to home with Jesus and the disciples in Galilee, expands along the road where insights and events ripen incrementally, and concludes with a journey to the Cross in Jerusalem where self-emptying and letting go result in resurrection.

Today’s text not only closes part two of St. Mark’s stories of Jesus on the road outside of Galilee, but it also dramatically contrasts two other stories we’ve considered. Two weeks ago, we heard about a wealthy man who kept all of the commandments from his youth -- an obvious sign of God’s blessings in first century Palestine – yet he was unable to let it go and follow Jesus. Today we meet a blind beggar – an outward symbol of sin and the absence of God’s blessings in first century religiosity – but he is able to throw off his cloak, perhaps his only possession, let it go, get up, and follow Jesus on the way to the Cross. Last week James and John, the Sons of thunder, showed up wanting Jesus to give them places of honor and power when he entered his glory.

Today we come upon one sitting in the gutter along the way – hodos – who cries out for mercy. You see the contrasts, right? What’s more, as Bible scholars point out, there are two healing stories about blindness that act as bookends to this second section of St. Mark’s text. The first finds Jesus touching a blind man twice so that he might see and then see more clearly in chapter 8; the second the healing of blind Bartimaeus in chapter 10. Two stories of Jesus healing the blind – one to open, one to close part two of this gospel – with both serving as transitions to the bigger story of what has happened and what is still to occur.

· Looking backwards these stories symbolically emphasize the multiple meanings of darkness: ignorance, fear, physical as well as spiritual blindness where Jesus asks: "Do you have eyes and fail to see? Do you have ears, and fail to hear? Do you not remember?" (8:18).

· They also point to a spirituality of being on the way – hodos – an incremental unfolding of God’s grace and presence. St. Mark wants us to know that rarely do we have just one Damascus Road experience that changes everything. More likely is a lifetime along the way where epiphanies and connecting the small threads of synchronicity add up to a new way of being. Over and over, section two of this gospel shows Jesus and his friends on a journey through the darkness into the light.

Pastor Brian Stoffregen wisely adds that the contrast between Blind Bartimaeus and the disciples: two of the closest allies along the way ask Jesus for positions of power and honor while the blind beggar cries out for mercy and illumination. “Those who want to save their life will lose it,” Jesus tells both, “While those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” Looking ahead, today’s story solidifies its in-between status as Bartimaeus prophetically links Jesus with King David – the Messiah – whom the crowd will celebrate on what we know as Palm Sunday to cries of “Hosanna, hosanna, blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.”

Reading these texts through the lens of both the ancient Celts and the wisdom made visible by God’s first word in nature have helped me reclaim the new/old vigils of All Hallows Eve, All Saints Day, and All Souls Day. I’ll use one of the oldest All Hallows Eve liturgies next week on October 31st to help get us in the groove and then emphasize a few simple ways to reclaim these forgotten treasures.

It’s been said that All Hallows Eve is like an autumn Carnival or Mardi Gras: playful about mystery, using wild costumes to give shape and form to our dreams and imagination; and like the ancient mummers who went door to door singing and begging treats in the dark, All Hallows Eve invites us to own rather than suppress our fears. Christopher Hill rightly notes that “when we fear and suppress the night, fear and destruction is what we get. When religion, old or new, suppresses the creatures of the night, it ends up chasing witches with horrible literalness – or hunting down perceived enemies – or searching for diabolical mess-ages in children’s books or pop music.”

And this isn’t merely an abstract, intellectual theory: in this weeks’ TIME Magazine there’s an article entitled: Why Everyone Is So RUDE Right Now. It’s a sobering story of Americans snapping and acting out in the worst possible ways towards restaurant workers, flight attendants, and others in the lower echelons of the service industry. 

“The combination of a contagious, life-threatening disease and a series of unprecedented, life-altering changes in the rules of human engagement” numerous studies have found, “have left people anxious, confused and, especially if they do not believe the restrictions were necessary, deeply resentful.” TIME goes on to document that this: “period of threat has been so long that it has had a damaging effect on people’s mental health, which for many has then been further debilitated by isolation, loss of resources, the death of loved ones and reduced social support. “During COVID there has been a marked increase in anxiety, a reported increase in depression, and an increased demand for mental health services. Lots of people, in other words, are on their very last nerve. This is true whether they believe the virus is an existential threat or not. “Half the people fear COVID – and half the people fear being controlled.” We are not a people accustomed to such staggering challenges. What’s more, our culture often refuses to name its fears and is far more practiced in denial than honesty. And lest you think this is an exaggeration, our trauma cuts deeper than manners for: “Impolite interactions are not the only thing that’s on the rise; crimes are too.”

“We’re seeing measurable increases in all kinds of crimes that suggests to that there is something changing,” says Jay Van Bavel, associate professor of psychology and neural science, and co-author of a book on social harmony: The Power of Us. He suggests the reasons for the rise in both are structural and profound; America has lost sense of social cohesion, as a result of the widening gaps between the wealthy and working class. “The more inequality you get—which has gotten worse in the last few decades—the less of a sense of cohesion there are across socioeconomic classes. That’s something that if that’s not addressed is going to continue to cause turmoil.”

Culturally we have a lot of work to do in the spirit of healing – so why not reclaim the liturgically safe space the vigil offers us and start to name what truly terrifies us personally, socially, politically, and spiritually? No one knows exactly what the ancient Celts did at Samhain, but we do know that bonfires played a part – as did feasting and mumming – going house to house in a costume with songs and sometimes a simple drama. So, how might we name our fears, enter the darkness with the new light of illumination, and incarnate this vigil for our era?

I don’t know if children will be trick or treating this year: but if they are in your world, why not meet them in costume and playfully engage them in the night? Or maybe just illumine your home – I’ll use candles but that won’t work every-where – so you might try little fairy lights. And jack-o-lanterns? They can become illuminated gargoyles playfully lighting up the night. So, in this time of fear and uncertainty, let’s incarnate a bit of sacred creativity, yes?

You see, part of the charism of All Hallows Eve is radical hospitality: meeting our darkest fears with trust and light. If we welcome children as they reclaim their role as ancient mummers, why not playfully practice reaching out to them in the darkness as a sacramental act of sharing God’s love and light in a trying time? The two days following vigil, All Saints and All Souls Day, have their own charism. Maybe you could read about them before we regroup next Sunday for Small is Holy. But in anticipation, let me offer a simple sacramental act in making a picture box of your communion of saints – those who are public and important to you – as well as those who are private and a part of your family. It is a way to give shape and form to our prayers – and it can be a whole lot of fun, too.

· Two years ago, I did it: searching for pictures of grandparents, mentors, my mom and dad and two sisters who have gone before me; I also unearthed the secular icons Di made for me when I completed my post-graduate studies – pictures with a gold nimbus behind the head of Rumi, Joni Mitchell, Aretha Franklyn, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Dr. King, Bruce Springsteen, George Harrison, Marvin Gaye and many, many more.

· Both gathering the pictures and then setting them in a small box was a grand time of remembering those who have shaped and carried me on my journey of faith. As that old TV commercial said: Try it – you’ll like it! I want to close this reflection with an All Hallows Eve prayer shaped by the Celts as preparation for our Eucharist: 

Holy and gracious One, as we move from autumn towards winter, we know that the darkness can be sill and calm, or tempestuous and wild; it can be beautiful to behold, or harsh and frightening. In whatever may meet us on the journey, may we be drawn into your Divine Presence more fully. We pause to go deeper silently…

O God of stillness, ruler over the darkness, we pray for those places within our world which are dark and hurting whether through human actions or natural means. (Take a moment and call those places into your heart.) Now let us say: Lord, have mercy.

· O God of stillness, ruler over the darkness, we pray now for those places within our local communities which are in darkness in one form or another, whether through the actions of local people or broader governmental decisions. (Stillness…) And so we pray: Christ, have mercy.

· O God of stillness, ruler over the darkness, we pray for those places within your church which are in darkness in some way, whether through selfish stubbornness or the political decisions of hierarchy. (Stillness…) And now we pray: Lord, have mercy.

As the darkness of this season ripens and surrounds us, may we know your Divine Presence, O God of the day and the night, trusting that you will bring comfort near to us and sustains us for the journey. O Ground of our Being, may we also find ways to enjoy the rest of this season and enter into it fully. In your precious presence we pray: Creator + Christ, and Holy Spirit. Amen. (David Hill, The Celtic Year)

CHECK OUT THE LIVE STREAMING HERE: https://fb.watch/8RwRyk5vYM/

 

 

 

 

a day of digging, poetry, CRT, and prayer...

On what appears to be the last genuinely warm day of autumn - a high of 71F - I: dug two more garden beds, read a collection of poetry by Scott Cairns, prayed for my brother's surgery, and wrote an honest and respectful critique of a colleague's concerns about critical race theory. By my modest standards, it's been a satisfying day.

+ I wanted to get the two additional beds started before the ground froze. We had such great luck with potatoes this year that one 4 x 8 bed will be devoted to spuds as befits this Scots-Irish gardener. Truth be told, however, it was my beloved Anglo-German-Huguenot partner who brought those tasty little suckers to life. The other bed will try to build on this years pumpkin and bean crop; at least two of the original three sisters will be returned to this once Algonquin/Mahican land. The existing three beds will be given to tomatoes, peas, wild flowers, and probably green leafy vegetables.

+ I wanted to reread Cairns to expand my "Small is Holy" poetry connection. While watching one of the countless European mystery shows we take-in after Di is finished teaching and I've prepared an evening meal, a very secular family found themselves confronted with having to hold a memorial service for a complicated relative. With no clergy available, and no defined spirituality, they turned to poetry and let deep speak to deep. It reminded me of what Solzhenitsyn said in his Nobel lecture re: Dostoevsky's assertion that it is beauty that will save the world:

So perhaps that ancient trinity of Truth, Goodness and Beauty is not simply an empty, faded formula as we thought in the days of our self-confident, materialistic youth? If the tops of these three trees converge, as the scholars maintained, but the too blatant, too direct stems of Truth and Goodness are crushed, cut down, not allowed through – then perhaps the fantastic, unpredictable, unexpected stems of Beauty will push through and soar TO THAT VERY SAME PLACE, and in so doing will fulfil the work of all three?

+ I prayed for my brother simply because I love him. He's been hurting for some time and needs a break. So does his dear wife. My prayer is both for his healing short term and over the long haul.

+ And I wrote my reflection on a critique of Critical Race Theory because I am committed to civil discourse. It is possible to disagree without being disagreeable. It is important to live tenderly and passionately into the truth even when that is uncomfortable. And in this fantastically frantic time of polarization, where opinion is treated like fact and incendiary words are always in search of an argument or fight, I have chosen the road less traveled. Not that I am always right. Far from it. But I want to advance my concerns with love and respect as well as reason an evidence. Here's what I came up with...

REFLECTIONS ON CRITICAL RACE THEORY AND ITS CRITICS
Once again in the United States, a social corrective is being portrayed as a force of national disintegration and mind control. Critical Race Theory (CRT) is an analysis of America that highlights the empirical effects race hatred has built into our institutions and worldview since before the founding of our nation. It strives to balance the dominant “color blind” approach to political, economic, social, and spiritual realities that have defined US historiography.

+ CRT focuses on what is often overlooked, misunderstood, or intentionally excluded from traditional American histories: the pain, obstacles, policies, and injustices created by foundational racial discrimination. At its best, CRT avoids demonizing individuals while documenting the staggering costs that white privilege has inflicted upon people of color.

+ To be sure, some advocates paint with a broad brush and create ugly and untrue caricatures along with a shallow and divisive analysis. This is, per-haps, a natural consequence of leveling the playing field, but still deplorable and dangerous. History and social analysis are complicated, nuanced, endeavors as the best scholars – mainstream and alternative – affirm. Mainstream scholars like Arthur Schlessinger, Richard Hofstadter, David Halberstam, Perry Miller, and David Garrow know this as do intellectuals documenting the forgotten or shadow side of our history including Eric Foner, Dee Brown, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Isabelle Wilkerson, William Appleton William, and Howard Zinn. NOTE: I choose not to use the terms “revisionist” historians because it is divisive, inflammatory, and smacks of an implied communist agenda.

+ Demonizing white people, however, is neither the goal nor the desire of CRT and its proponents. Rather, like the young activists who gave birth to the Black Lives Matter movement, it is to accurately document human truths that have long been denied and intentionally omitted from our self-understanding. It is to redress what is broken in America and form a more perfect union where equality is normative.

My daughter teaches in the NYC school system where a careful approach to inclusion rules the day: theirs is not the inflated charges of mind-control suggested by the City Journal article, “The Miseducation of America’s Elites.” (Please read it here 2 https://www.city-journal.org/the-miseducation-of-americas-elites?) But an age-appropriate introduction to the study of First Nations history and culture before 1492. Or the legacy of Jim Crow laws after Reconstruction. It is a corrective to the sanitized histories I grew up and incorporates the wisdom but not the style of James Loewen’s, Lies My History Teacher Told Me. My takeaway from the City Journal article is not positive. It is well-written albeit with a subtle snark that I find deceitful. Specifically, three things trouble me. 

+ First, it is shaped by the conservative ideology of the foundation who publishes it: The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. They are clearly bright and creative; they are entitled to their own analysis, too. I fundamentally disagree, however, and want to state that from the outset. 

+ Second, the author implies communist motives to CRT advocates which is not only untrue, but a manipulative red herring often used by social conservatives to discredit those they oppose. 

+ And third, the article is only mildly empirical while caustically anecdotal. I was reminded of how Ronald Reagan used this ploy to great advantage when facts did not support his narrative. To be sure, I grasp the discomfort that can be evoked among white elites when learning about what is at stake in repairing the historic wounds of American racism. But I trust the analytical integrity of these articles from mainstream sources more:

· Why Are States Banning Critical Race Theory? https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2021/07/02/why-are-states-banning-critical-race-theory/

· Why Conservatives Really Fear Critical Race Theory
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/05/26/why-conservatives-really-fear-critical-race-theory/

· The Conservative Case Against Banning Critical Race Theory
https://time.com/6079716/conservative-case-against-banning-critical-race-theory/

One last point re: spirituality: St. Paul said it best in Romans when he observed “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” He, of course, included himself in this judgment. He also celebrated the superiority of grace over judg-ment – or as Bono put it: “Grace trumps karma.” I cannot see how CRT denies grace nor am I able to grasp how shining the light on social and institutional sin prohibits change. To be sure, I comprehend the discomfort and even the grief. But such is a part of becoming a new being by God’s love: we must all repent – change direction – let go of self so that we might be filled with God’s healing presence. So, that is my take on this thus far. Like St. Paul notes elsewhere: “now I see as through a glass darkly, later I shall see face to face… Three things endure: faith, hope, and love – and the greatest of these is love.” Thank you for sharing with me your insights with care, intellectual honesty, and love.