the invitation of fattoush...

Over and again, I find new evidence every time we're in Montréal that ordinary people can change the world. Well, ok, not the WORLD, but at least a significant number of real lives. (That is my experience with L'Arche, too but that's a story for another post.) Let me confess from the outset that this is probably true any and almost anywhere. I simply find that my eyes see more examples of people acting upon issues that matter the most to me more here than many other places. Yesterday, for example, we met a young woman from Les Filles Fattoush. (Check them out @

https://lesfillesfattoush.com/en )Three things immediately caught my eye:

+ First, fattoush: I LOVE fattoush. For the non-cognescenti, fattoush is a Middle

Eastern salad made with with lettuce, cilantro, cucumbers, tomatoes, summac, and pita chips all coated in a tangy usually oil and vinegar, dressing. To be sure, I didn't grow up eating it. As a New England boy of the 50's and 60's, it was frozen fish sticks and potatoes all the way for my family. I never had pizza until junior high! But seminary in NYC opened my eyes and taste buds to street food. So when we moved to Saginaw, MI, I quickly made friends with a Lebanese shop owner who ran a small falafel eatery. His hummus - with LOTS of tahini - became my prefered lunch and the gold standard for evaluating the effort of others. In time, he turned me on to other Middle Eastern specialties made to order for a hard core vegetarian. Just as I made a commitment to try out both carne asada (after I'd left the veggie world after 25 years) and/or cheese chilie rellenoes whenever visiting a new Mexican resturant, so, too hummus and fattoush. Some of the vendors in Istanbul did it up right for me; and Sahadi's in Brooklyn always satisfies. Not so much the mass produced versions found in most Anglo supermarkets. So, upon retirement, I learned to make a killer fattoush that brings a smile to my face. Any place celebrating this working class delicacy warrants my time - and we brought home some fattoush pommegrant dressing and hummus.

+ Second, les Filles: The sisters in French. Whose sisters? Was this a feminist cabal of Middle Eastern salad devotees? What was their story? Well, it seems they are a creative collective of refugee women transplants from Syria collaborating with their Quebecois sisters in a celebration of the cuisine of Syria. Together these women are creating a cultural and economic gift to the region that simultaneously integrates these new citizens into the fabric of society, gives them essential skills in a competitive marketplace, and shares the sensual wonder of Syrian cooking with a wider audience. They write on their website:

Syrian women face the same difficult social, cultural, and economic obstacles that every refugee confronts upon arrival in Canada. Les Filles Fattoush gives these newly arrived women a significant opportunity to integrate into Quebec society: a job that puts their culinary talents to use, at the same time allowing them to earn a living and build a social network. This job is not only a first step towards reestablishing their dignity, but it also creates exchanges, both between these women and with their clients. The result is mutually beneficial: everyone gives and everyone receives. In the global diaspora, refugee communities risk losing their cultural heritage. Les Filles Fattoush addresses this issue constructively: with a collective work effort that creates relationships, builds self-esteem, and profits women, their families, and the community. New opportunities are discovered by word of mouth, but also by meetings and conversations between Syrian women and Canadians: this helps them to showcase their skills besides those in the kitchen. Among the first Filles Fattoush employees, we have fitness instructors, lawyers, journalists -- women from diverse, professional backgrounds. This unique workplace gives women a chance to integrate into life in a new society. There is no universal solution. Social and economic obstacles will always be present, but Les Filles Fattoush is a creative, innovative project that helps to overcome these obstacles.

+ And third Syria: We were preparing to assist Syrian refugees in our small Massachusetss community when the Trump regime pulled the plug on that act of human compassion. Di had already committed time and resources to train and be certified in a top notch English as Another Language program and yearned to take the next step. She loves - and I value - small, grassroots women's collectives that welcome, support, encourage, and resource immigrant women into the realities of contemporary North American life. Les Filles Fattoush does this with aplumb and has piqued our interest. We will stop by their stand later this week and see how we might go deeper with them as a part of this journey.

Living in our small, semi-rural community has a host of blessings including good friends, natural beauty, an excellent health care network, and reasonable shops. There's also a downside to living outside of a progressive metropolitan area that includes limitted resources, diversity, and even political creativity. Our visits to Montréal makes what's missing clear to both of us as does stepping outside the USA for a spell. That's why today we'll hit a street food fair before joining the closing of this year's Jazz Fest with The Roots - as wel let the adventure continue!

Montréal, travel, vulnerability, and practicing interconnectedness...

This may seem too self-referential for some but here goes: one of the reasons I LOVE spending time in our beloved Montréal - besides the culture, arts, beauty, great food, jazz, and chill vibe is the disadvantage I experience as an old dude with only a minimalist ability in the French language. Put positiviely, I marvel and honor the radical bi-lingualism of the city's Francophone majority (same, too, for the bilingual Anglophones.) I grieve that I don't have that ability but revel in their incredible linguistic flexability. Intellectually and emotionally I know that facility in more than one language creates a way of being in the world that sees/comprehends possibilities. One size does NOT fit all. There is more fluidity between the right and left side of the brain and creativity abounds. Once upon a time I had some of this happening with Spanish, but that is mostly gone now, too. What I am trying to say is that wandering the streets of Montréal, trying to engage the citizens in questions and sometimes even a conversation in French, is not only humbling but evokes a measure of vulnerability within, too. And vulnerability is holy ground - especially for a white, cisgendered, bourgois American male. To date, my Francophone sisters and brothers have helped me ripen into old age in a few unexpected ways:

+ First, they remind me that I am not the center of the universe. As a man of modest privilege raised in the USA, it is second nature to act like the proverbial "Ugly American." I am used to getting what I want (most of the time), when I want it. And when that doesn't happen I can easily feel deprived or even oppressed. (Read the wise op ed in today's NY Times by David Brooks about what motivates mass shooters @ https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/07/opinion/mass-shooters-motive.html ) Choosing to be vulnerable, however, opens my heart and eyes to the reality of others. I'm not saying it is simple or easy to walk the path of downward mobility. It isn't. It's just transformative. It creates space to change and go deeper. And make room for others, too. As a recent FB meme put it:

May we release the myth of independence and make a declaration to embrace and nourish our interdependence. May we pledge allegiance to the land, to the waters, to our human and nonhuman kin, to the earth-body we call home. May we find our house of worship in the trees, the sky, the dirt, the mountains, in our own bodies. May we find new places of power, shimmering along the edges of what we think is the only way forward. May we love each other and honor life more than we love guns, oil, money, power, control, or the written word of hungry ghosts. May we midwife systems of harm to die with grace, and compost them into new ways of caring for each other. May we honor our grief, make space for deep rest, find pleasure in our pursuit for justice, and ignite transformation with our holy rage.

 

+ Second, their willingness to help me learn new words is all about compassion and our interconnectedness as living beings rather than dominance. Last night, after a long day of travel, Di and I walked through the fecund beauty of le marché Jean-Talon, the fresh food farmer's market in Little Italy (our current neighborhood.) After any measure of travel, I find it grounding to simply walk around the area both to get my bearings but also take in the vibe. This is a wildly diverse community populated by every stripe of humanity you might imagine. After a simple supper of Mexican street food, we went in search of some libation and breakfast supplies. The local depaneur (convenience store) gave up the ghost during Covid, so we wound up a few blocks away on Boulevard St. Laurent. Di was wiped out and sat out my quest along one of the many traffic free pedestrian walkways that are family/handicap friendly. I found a new (to me) upscale market, gathered my goodies, and stepped up to the counter only to be gently reminded en français that the line formed behind me where five other shoppers were patiently waiting. I apologized, took my place sheepishly, and waited my turn. When my turn arrived, the young female clerk told me (first in French and then in English): "Don't sweat it. That happens all the time." She smiled knowingly and made space for an old, tired Anglophone in a French neighborood. Over and over this happens to me: there is space for us all when we take one another into account. Ever try this in the US? As a non-native speaker? Believe me, it is NOT something you want to experience. Hell, you could get yourself shot! A quote from jazz pianast, McCoy Tyner, gets it right as he describes his approach to making music together:

I like people to be comfortable. That’s the first thing I think about. Will people playing with me be comfortable and compatible? That’s very important. It’s a good place to start. I also like to provide enough room so the person is comfortable to do what they do. I don’t like to handcuff people. But at the same time, he’s got to understand that when he’s playing with me, he also has to listen. Listening and responding are very important.

+ And third, their respectful interactions push me towards greater generousity. When I was very young - and all through high school - I had some anger management issues. Over time I've learned to let go of a lot, but I still need encouragement to be my best self. Living, breathing, shopping, walking around, and watching others helps me practice waiting which is, in my worldview, the foundation of generousity. It's why we practice contemplation. It's at the heart of true religion. And it's built into the rhythms of Mother Nature, music, authentic conversations, and loving relationships. Maya Angelou told us: "I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." I believe that grace ALWAYS trumps karma, but that doesn't mean karma isn't real. St. Paul hit a home run in Romans 12 when he defined spiritual worship as embodied waiting:

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for God. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what the holy wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

Like travel guru, Rick Steves, tells us: “I would like travelers, especially American travelers, to travel in a way that broadens their perspective, because I think Americans tend to be some of the most ethnocentric people on the planet." In addition to my time as an Anglo organizer with the farm workers union founded by Cesar Chavez, my first trip to then Soviet Russian and Eastern Europe opened me to the challenges Steves described. We were 50 so-called peace activists. While in Poland during Marshall Law, however, I saw my gentle colleagues explode with rage when told that given food rationing and shortages there would only be one cup of coffee each morning - and no sugar. The words, complaints, and attitudes would have led you to believe we'd just been stripped of our right to vote! Ugly Americans, indeed.  So, thank you now, and thank you always, Montréal: as long as I can travel I'll return.

singing the blues on the fourth...

Life and time are such precious and fleeting gifts, yes? I discovered this truth yet again on my 70th birthday. It started out sweet, filled with a French toast breakfast on our deck, some gardening and planning for a few additions, and a wee trip to the grocery store for our evening feast. I've had a "jones" to join the entourage of Dead fans for the past month, so I subscribed to a Zoom concert of the gig in Boston. At 7 pm we settled in for a sunroom birthday party as I sat in the comfort of our home near my sweetheart but in the company of some 10,000 die hard "Mass-hole" Deadheads. 

It all started to go South, however, when Mother Nature interupted the concert with 60 minutes of rain, wind (but no snow) that shut down the performance after a mere two songs. I cooked up that evening's repast of baked potato, broiled steak, and salad only to be interupted five minutes into the feast with a choking attack. Some 20 years ago I had my first encounter with the malady once called "Steakhouse syndrome" now named "Schatkski's Ring." It's the result of prolongued GERD - a genetic demon shared by many of the Irish side of our clan - resulting in a small "scar" ring forming at the top of the esophagus. My docs tell me that when "the acidic contents of the stomach enter the esophagus it causes an irritation resulting in heartburn. Prolonged irritation of the esophagus due to acid reflux often results in Schatzki ring formation." Fiften years ago it was diagnosed - treated with diet, proton pump inhibitors, and dialation of the esophagus along with SMALL bites of food - and periodic review. This combination has inhibited problems and life has been full - except during this year's birthday feast! I will spare the gory details of angony, fear, and pain except to say that after about an hour some of the blockage had been eliminated. But, sadly, not all. So, for the next 17 hours swallowing became impossible. I toughed it out all night because I didn't want to go endure the madness of the ER at midnight on a Saturday during the 4th of July weekend. What discrete circle of Hell would that be? Certainly far worse than my troubles.

Sunday morning, at 8:30 am, however, we made the trek and some six hours later I was free, healthy, sore, and worn out. Tasting that first vanilla malt was heavenly - and made my ragged throat smile, too given the fact that I needed a breathing tube this time during the surgery. Let me state again (and will do so in an upcoming letter to the editor of our local paper) how INCREDIBLY sweet, helpful, compassionate, engaging, honest, funny, professional, and tender the entire staff at Berkshire Medical Center was to both Di and myself. Everyone made the time to listen carefully, answer all our question, joke about the situation, reveal some of their own stories, and generally treat us with the tenderness and respect all human being ache to know when we're hurting. I cannot thank them enough. 

After twelve uninterrupted hours of sweet sleep, we sat out on the deck for a Fourth of July bowl of Irish oatmeal with maple syrup. We laughed, watched the gold finches partake of the sunflowers, and watered the herbs. Later we'll weed the "lower 40" vegetable garden and probably chill some more. It's amazing how wearying it is to endure even such minor trauma. Well, enough of this prelude: it is Independence Day in the once (and maybe future) land of the brave and home of the free. Langston Hughes got it right in his 1936 poem, "America Never Was Amercia to Me." I discovered it (never having been taught it existed) during my last year of seminary in 1980.) He captures powerfully the promise, paradox, and problem of our nation with both love and anger.

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

(Read it all @ https://poets.org/poem/let-america-be-america-again)

I remember reading in his autobiography of Pete Seeger's broken-hearted realization that his all time favorite Woody Gutherie song, "This Land is Your Land" was not as universally revered by all Americans as he once believed. It was during the Kent State deomonstration of 1970. After leaving a public rally where he sang this anti-elitist anthem - Woody's protest against the sentimentallity of Irving Berlin's (aka his original Russian name: Israel Baline) song we know as "God Bless America" - as the campus ROTC building was set aflame, some First Nations people confessed to Seeger that his old, sing-a-long favorite was NOT cherished among indigenous people - and was probably hated as well by many non-white people of every state of life. Seeger wrote that he was genuinely humbled and devasted and wept over his cultural blindness. He quit singing this song for a few years until he (and probably Arlo) figured out a way to expand the anthem to become more inclusive.

So as I mark the national birthday of my homeland, there is much more sorrow and anger in my heart than ever before. The stability that once seemed timeless to me is unravelling - and it should. Injustice must be dismantled befire a more perfect union is brought to birth. But, as in nature, before the birthing must come the grief, decay, and dying. The promise God set in motion for those with eyes to see happens every seaon in the wisdom, intimacy, and affection Mother Nature shares with us: new life is part of this sacred cycle. But it never comes without a cost and we are living into the reckoning. As noted elsewhere, it is going to worse - much, much worse for us all - before it gets better. At the same time, there are souls wiser than myself who are prefiguratively living into this new world with strength, vulnerability, a measure of humility, and courage. Jade Begay, Diné and Tesuque Pueblo of New Mexico filmmaker, communications and narrative strategist and Indigenous rights and climate activist, sets the stage insighfully writing:

Today is Independence Day—an acknowledgement of White settlers gaining their freedom from British colonizers in 1776. Many people now recognize the hypocrisy of July 4, after learning about the enslavement, exploitive labor, theft, and genocide of countless Black, Brown, and Indigenous people who have not reaped—and still do not reap—the benefits of this same freedom. Still, many Americans will put aside their conflicting feelings to enjoy the paid day off from work with parades and cookouts. This fraught holiday is a time to reflect on the lessons we’ve collectively learned over the past year, holding close the truth that we need each other to survive and to thrive. Today, we need to decry the continued colonization of the United States, reject the American ideal of individualism, and continue building systems that strengthen our relationships with each other and with the planet.

The past year and a half has shown us the real priorities of our federal government, when it failed miserably to protect people during a pandemic and the subsequent economic fallout, but was swift to mobilize military troops against people demanding accountability for horrific police killings. Because of these compounding layers of crisis and violence, people had to work quickly to protect one another.This culmination of events has led to a broader wave of consciousness around how White supremacy and capitalism work in tandem. And it has led to a greater willingness for different communities to come together to keep people safe. We need to recognize that interdependence is essential.

(check it out here: https://www.yesmagazine.org/opinion/2021/07/04/fourth-of-july-indigenous-rights?)

Having studied - and honored - the transformative spirituality of the prophets of ancient Israel(especially as unpacked by Brother Walter Brueggemann) I know that before there is space for new life both the old ways must be rendered dead and then grieved. Without grieving - personal and public lament - the emotional baggage and scars retain their presence and power. So, for me and those I love, the Fourth of July is more about tears than fire works. I'm listening to my kin sing reels and ballads from the old country as part of my lament. I am also now giving myself to singing and sharing more songs of beauty and the blues. It is my small gift of joy to the world Like Begay observes: Sometimes crisis can bring about opportunities for transformative action. "The past (two+) years have proven we are capable of meeting great challenges with humility and innovation. If we continue to strengthen the systems we’ve built, we can expand them even further. Let’s take this time to reflect on the lessons we’ve learned and encourage even more people to join us in building sustainable systems that actually work, instead of trying to reform broken systems that continually fail us."

Smacking up against my own mortality as I did this weekend (one more time!) was a timely kick in the pants to stay the course. I am off to do some weeding, physically in my garden and inwardly in my heart, on this broken/ugly/and holy day. I'm not singing either "God Bless American" or "This Land is Your Land" today. More like this lament and prayer from the Boss..

celebrating 70 with di, lucie, and dead and company...

For the past few weeks THIS song has been swimming in and out of my head: it shows up in my dreams, when I am working in the yard, and while trying to stay focused on the PBS Newshour.

The lyrics, by the late Robert Hunter, were originally his hommage to Janis Joplin. Brother Jerry Garcia of blessed memory crafted the trippy and dream-like music. In the new Dead and Company fronted by Bobby Weir and John Mayer, it is performed in an even slower groove than the original. 

All I know is something like a bird
Within her sang
All I know she sang a little while
And then flew on
Tell me all that you know
I'll show you snow and rain

If you hear that same sweet song again
Will you know why?
Anyone who sings a tune so sweet
Is passin' by
Laugh in the sunshine, sing
Cry in the dark, fly through the night
Don't cry now, don't you cry
Don't you cry anymore, la, la, la, la
Sleep in the stars, don't you cry
Dry your eyes on the wind, la, la, la, la

If you hear that same sweet song again
Will you know why?
Anyone who sings a tune so sweet
Is passin' by
Laugh in the sunshine, sing
Cry in the dark, fly through the night

Don't cry now, don't you cry
Don't you cry anymore, la, la, la, la
Sleep in the stars, don't you cry
Dry your eyes on the wind, la, la, la, la

All I know is something like a bird
Within her sang
All I know she sang a little while
And then flew off
Tell me all that you know
I'll show you snow and rain

This summer - and especially in the days leading up to today's 70th birthday - the song AND the Dead have awakened a mystical, musical urgency within me. Not an obsession, mind you. I've done obsession before and know the difference. No, this is more like stumbling upon an unoffiliated Celtic monk, a vagaran, heeding the call of the road to wander in search of her/his place of resurrection. The song's musical changes - as well as its poignant lyrics and improvisational intensity - speak to my heart in a new/old way. I hear order and chaos, wandering and focus, beauty and dissonance, sorrow and celebration, freedom and structure in pursuit of the spirit all going on at once. It's like an audible Hopi or Tibetan sand mandala: here for a moment of delicate elegance and then gone forever. In a word, "Bird Song" sounds like how I want to live: open to the possibilities of the moment, grounded in the alternative wisdom of compassion rather than the market, all in pursuit of tender solidarity. It's what I've started to practice and call embodied prayer.

Once upon a time, theologian Tex Sample wrote that the world often becomes more livable for those taking-in a Dead concert: anything goes and people are more open with one another (in part because they're high but also because they're consciously seeking the fullness of life in this moment.) That's been my experience over the years. And moving back into this alternative groove feels a bit like a blessing and a type of prefigurative resistance designed to fortify my heart against the cruelty of our contemporary brokedown palace. I said to Di this morning at breakfast, "The Dead create an alternative universe when they play - a bold and creative encounter that is so different from the one we're living in right now - it's like going on a retreat that feeds all your senses." Some look at these events as escapist. No doubt that's true in part, but it's never the whole enchilada for this is a sacramental groove that incarnates a kinder, gentler way of being if only for a few hours. It is a way of being that I want to celebrate more fully as this new year around the sun unfolds for me. Like St. Paul said in Romans 12: "Here's what I want you to do, with God's help, present your whole body to the world as a living sacrifice." 

Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you. (Peterson's The Message version)

I think the new version of "Sugaree" captures the spiritual nuances that I want to reclaim in my soul this year:  shake it, shake it, Sugaree.  There's a quiet ecstasy to this song that transcends my wounds. I heard it the first time inside a small tent at Watkins Glenn in the summer of '72. After a torrential rain storm drove the gathering tribes into our tents for a few hours, the Dead came out at the end of the deluge for a sound check. The combination of the sun peeking through the darkness to the early strains of "Sugaree" lit a fire within me that continues to burn. To be sure, there've been times when I felt disconnected or lost. But as St. John like to say: 

What came into existence was Life, and the Life was Light to live by.
The Life-Light blazed out of the darkness; and the darkness couldn’t put it out.

 

This lazy and playfully ragged version just oozes attitude - not in a crass, cranky, or snarky way - just pure funky joy. I can't help but smile when I hear "Sugaree." It starts with that bluesy rock shuffle, adds some Garcia/Mayer guitar licks that meander around the melody before heading for outer space, softly slides into the verse before welcoming us all into the chorus: shake it, shake it, Sugaree. It gets downright inspirational, too when the last verse invites us into the Jubilee. It may only last as long as the concert, but Jubilee is the restoration of creation and human relations based upon compassion and justice. Isaiah 63 and Luke 4 cut to the chase:

Jesus stood up to read from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah that was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. God has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed and proclaim the year (Jubilee) and the Lord’s favor.” When he was finished, he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him so he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.

Like I said, it's prefigurative embodied prayer in all the right ways and I can't help but shake my booty EVERY time I hear it. One last thought: Bobby Weir has now refigured this band as Dead AND Company. When brother Jerry od'd on heroin while in rehab back in 1995, it looked like shakedown street was cooked and over for the Grateful Dead. Twenty years later, however, Weir pulled together some of the original band (both drummers), found two new groove masters (on keyboards and bass) and welcomed in the NEW gun in town on lead guitar: John Mayer. As I take in the way these cats remake the old tunes, turning them inside out and upside down before reframing them with precise abandon, I experience creativity in a genuinely intergenerational key. Take a look the crowds who gather for these Dead happernings. They are equally intergenerational. And watching old man Weir (who used to be the young pretty boy of the band) hold down center stage in all his white-haired, Zen bodisatva glory as he stands alongside the new pretty, bad boy Mayer, is a vision of today that I need to see more often. It looks and sounds like trust to me - and that's something I need to see more of as this year unfolds. Take a listen as the boys sing: God DAMN but I declare: have you seen the light? Yes, yes, yes, and it makes me want to SHAKE it, Sugaree!

exploring the possibilities...

Back at the beginning of the Trump regime, many of us said: it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better. Little did we know HOW bad - and the worse is still coming! The singer/songwriter, Carrie Newcomer, recently put it like this:

We are weathering a terrible storm, and so we find shelter, create sanctuary, and share hope and courage. Now is when we feel what we feel, find community and ground ourselves in our deepest most beautiful values and practices. Remember working for positive social change is daily and personal, but needs to be sustainable. What brings you hope and keeps you centered? I just got back from traveling in CO where I cycled and hiked, went to an uplifting concert, took photos of amazing wildflowers. Today I took time to meditate, ruffle my dog’s ears, ate a really good apple for lunch and put my feet in the pond and listened to the birds. I started a new poem. I am finding that staying in touch with beauty in this broken time is essential for centering myself in what I love - and our best work for the better kinder world will always rise up from what we love. When so much feels wrong and broken, what is still whole and beautiful? What still makes sense in senseless times? Spend time there…where ever that is for you.

I resonate with Ms. Newcomer's music, poetry, and prose often but now with one exception - and it's a biggie: hope! Over the past few years a beloved friend has helped me realize that this is not the time to speak about hope. Possibilities? Choices and options? Of course. But not hope as I have traditionally understood it, because as the marine biologist, Avana Elizabeth Johnson, told Krista Tippett of ON BEING:

Facing climate change, with the effect on seas and melting ice caps, has led me to be a realist who is not a fan of hope as a guiding principle, because it by definition assumes that the outcome will be good, which I know is not a given, I am completely enamored with the amount of possibility that’s available to us. So that’s the word that I try to embrace when I think about what if we get it right, is how much possibility remains.

For ages I've affirmed this distinction intellectually with either Meister Eckhart's confession that "reality is the will of God - it can always be better- but we must start with what is real" or Reinhold Niebhur's "Serenity Prayer" which says: "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." Embracing this shift in my heart, soul, mind, vocabulary, and flesh, however, is still a work in progress. But living into our age of modern plague and political dysfunction has pushed me beyond the confines of abstractions towards embodied prayer. This feels like a season to leave magical thinking, bromides, platitudes, and sentimentality behind so that the sacred can become flesh within our ordinary lives. Jan Richardson is one of my quiet guides who helps me practice letting go again at a more profound level. Her poem "Plentitude" is instructive:

At lunch today
it was the purple
of the olive pits
against my cobalt plate
that stunned me.

At tea,
the gold of peach
bloodstained by its stone.

I do not know
where the greater part
of the miracle lies:
that I should pause
to notice this,

or that I,
a woman of
such great hungers,
should be so well satisfied
by such small things.

It's my hunch that this is something like what St. Paul was telling us in his letter to the emerging church in Rome. He put it like this in Romans 5: "We celebrate our suffering because living openly with our wounds strengthens us with endurance, and endurance can ead to a balanced and wise character which evokes hope within and among us because hope (or trust) is God's love being poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit." (my paraphrase) That is to say, the wisdom of our wounds have the potential to awaken us to new ways of living in balance with the sacred rhytmn of creation. It isn't automatic nor is it inevitable. It is simply a sacred possibility. Carrie Newcomer's poem,"Making Sense," strikes me as another way to imagine the wisdom of the ancient apostle.

Finding what makes sense
In senseless times
Takes grounding
Sometimes quite literally
In the two inches of humus
Faithfully recreating itself
Every hundred years.
It takes steadying oneself
Upon shale and clay and solid rock
Swearing allegiance to an ageless aquifer
Betting on all the still hidden springs.

You can believe in a tree,
With its broad-leafed perspective,
Dedicated to breathing in, and then out,
Reaching down, and then up,
Drinking in a goodness above and below
It’s splayed and mossy feet.
You can trust a tree’s careful
and drawn out way
of speaking.
One thoughtful sentence, covering the span of many seasons.

A tree doesn’t hurry, it doesn’t lie,
It knows how to stand true to itself
Unselfconscious of its beauty and scars,
And all the physical signs of where
and when It needed to bend,
Rather than break.
A tree stands solitary and yet in deepest communion,
For in the gathering of the many,
There is comfort and courage,
Perseverance and protection,
From the storms that howl down from predictable
Or unexplainable directions.

In a senseless time
Hold close to what never stopped
Making sense.
Like love
Like trees
Like how a seed becomes a branch
And compost becomes seedlings again.
Like the scent at the very top of an infant’s head
Because there is nothing more right than that. Nothing.It is all still happening

Even now.
Even now

In so many ways, this IS a senseless time: a season of confusion, despair, anger, and alienation. The world as we have known it is unraveling before our eyes and most of the time our response is unclear. To which the wisdom-keepers reply: "Hold close that which has never stopped making sense..." The late Langston Hughes was clear that we are to:

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

My first inclination, shaped by a broken heart and broken trust, is to become angry. Like many other men confronting our powerlessness to bring healing to this mess, I want to lash out, blame, punish, and overcome my impotence. But that only makes reality worse. To patiently and faithfully explore the possibilities... now there's a healthy alternative. To fortify love. To trust the sacred wisdom of creation so that I live like the trees who know that

A seed becomes a branch
And compost becomes seedlings again.
Like the scent at the very top of an infant’s head because there is nothing more right than that. Nothing.It is all still happening

Even now. Even now.

let's work together...

This may seem upside down, but here goes: NOW is the time for all people of good will to fortify ourselves with love, focus our attention on creative ways to circumvent the backwards SCOTUS decisions re: reproductive rights and gun control, follow the witness of Indigenous communities and African-American allies into new expressions of grief as well as solidarity (not appropriate their rituals and traditions but rather learn from them), fund alternative strategies so that NO woman lacks realistic and affordable options, face the fact that life in these United States is going to get worse before it gets better, and faithfully live into new expressions of community, trust, vulnerability, and resistance. There are options even as the religious and political right feverishly tries to impose their harsh theocracy upon us all. Our response to this brave new world will be costly on many levels. But, the alternative to accepting the status quo would be worse.

Over the past 50 years, I have witnessed an incremental loss of inclusive, safe, and creative places for progressive people to celebrate in solidarity, lament our shared pain, and renew our souls through relationships of trust and compassion. This is not true for the right wing of the Western world. They consistently find ways to strengthen one another in their mass gatherings. As was reported during the truckers blockade that spread like wild fire throughout Canada, many of those who participated confessed to being surprised at the loving welcome they experienced in these new societies of protest: there were rituals and songs, there were dances and feasts, too, so much so that a festival atmosphere of inclusion ruled the day. On the left, we tend to come together more like a circular firing squad than the Beloved Community. (Thank God Bobby Weir and others have taken Dead and Company on tour this summer! At least for a few hours everyone who shows up will be an equal in pursuit of peace and love.)

Don't misunderstand: I know there are hundreds, if not thousands, of small grassroots associations striving for solidarity and struggling to be heard over the bullhorns of our emerging fascism. But reality in the so-called progressive realm tends to favor ideological purity over strategic coalitions. With the exception of BLM and the Poor Peoples Movemnt, 2022 feels like it's WE (fill in the blank re: your discrete concern) against EVERYONE else. But as the semi-spontaneous protest currently taking place in front of the Supreme Court at this moment makes clear: we can no longer accept the MY way of the HIGH way approach to social change. How did Canned Heat put it right after Woodstock? "Let's work together..."

I genuinely don't understand why or how the forces of progressive engagement in the USA chose to abandon culture and spirituality; but for the most part the animating energy of creativity and the arts has died on the vine. Twenty years ago, Mako Fujimura, a theologically conservative visual artist, urged us to reclaim beauty again in the arts rather than naked self-expression. Not that our distinct charisms are to be buried, hidden, or censored, but that they come into birth in ways that bind us together rather than polarize in crude and/or sensationalistic ways. Another conservative religious and cultural warrior, the late Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn, proclaimed to the world in his Nobel Prize speech that Dostoevsky was right: beauty CAN save the world. 

Dostoyevsky once let drop an enigmatic remark: “Beauty will save the world.” What is this? For a long time it seemed to me simply a phrase. How could this be possible? When in the bloodthirsty process of history did beauty ever save anyone, and from what? Granted, it ennobled, it elevated—but whom did it ever save?There is, however, a particular feature in the very essence of beauty—a characteristic trait of art itself: The persuasiveness of a true work of art is completely irrefutable; it prevails even over a resisting heart. 

A political speech, an aggressive piece of journalism, a program for the organization of society, a philosophical system, can all be constructed—with apparent smoothness and harmony—on an error or on a lie. What is hidden and what is distorted will not be discerned right away. But then a contrary speech, journalistic piece, or program, or a differently structured philosophy, comes forth to join the argument, and everything is again just as smooth and harmonious, and again everything fits. And so they inspire trust—and distrust.

(read the speech in its entirety here: https://isi.org/intercollegiate-review/solzhenitsyn-explains-ldquobeauty-will-savetheworldrdquo/#:~:text=It%20shall%20be%

20we%20who,the%20entirety%20of%20its%20purposes%3F&text=It%20is%20like%

20that%20small,a%20realm%20forever%20beyond%20reach.)

Like other artists concerned with cultural renewal in pursuit of a safe, sustainable society, I trust that this is more of a birthing moment than just a chaotic death sentence - but make no mistake there IS death happening all around us, too. That's a piece of what is driving our stagnant and retrograde politics: fear of living through the end of one way of being where mostly wealthy, white men call the shots for everyone else. You can see evidence of the new world struggling to be born. But it appears it's going to be a complicated and extended birth so we need to equip ourselves with resources that will allow us to hang tough during the long haul. 

Part of our small musical ensemble's raison d'etre is cultural and civic renewal of beauty as bread for the journey. If you want to join our small get together this Sunday @ 4 pm, there's still room for a few more. Drop me an email and I'll give you the details.

hearing and trusting the sacred with our ears NOT our minds...

The guitar became my friend, companion, mentor, source of solace, and prayer partner almost 55 years ago. My confirmation class ally and long-time friend, Ross, taught me five basic chords each Wednesday after school before we went to the "Pastor's Class" at First Congregational Church. His family had recently returned from living in the UK - and we were both obsessed with the Beatles. He had an electric guitar. So, when Sergeant Pepper came out in June 1967, Ross and I would listen with wonder and awe as we sat religiously before the family stere0. When his family vacationed on Martha's Vineyard later that summer, I practiced my ass off on those five chords so that when he returned we could start a band. Like most "garage bands" of that era, our repertoir was limitted to "Stepping Stone," "Louie, Louie," "Twist and Shout," "Midnight Hour," and "Heart Full of Soul" which we played over and over and over again. In August, we added another guitar player, a drummer - and a few months later a "lead" singer - and gave our first music house party performance in the basement of Ross's home in the company of our girlfriends and one or two others.

This coming Sunday, June 26th on what is the liturgical feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, we'll be doing another music house party. We hope to raise some funds for the Ukranian refugee resettlement work being done by the UN as well as raise the spirits of some friends during this third summer of covid. I continue to know in my soul that being together physically in the same place so sing and make music is one of the best ways to fortify ourselves for life in general and especially so in times of stress and trauma. As William Congreve wrote in 1697: "Music has charms to soothe a savage beast." 

Covid precautions have only accelerated our social isolation as Western culture has long been neglecting the spirituality of shared music. For the past 40 years, fewer and fewer people have attended public worship of any type, funding for school music programs has been slashed and trashed, the once fighting and singing union movement has been in radical decline (with a few hints of revival), and social movements - with the exception of the Poor Peoples Movement - have simply given up on public singing. A few notable exceptions during the first year of covid would include the musical doctors and nurses of Iran and the balcony singing in Italy - but they were the beautiful exceptions to the rule.

When Andy and I recently took up the challenge of teaching a diverse group of elementary school children how to play the ukulele, my own isolation bubble was exposed. "Ok, let's sing "Bingo" I suggested to which the teacher said, "Nobody knows that any more." "Old MacDonald Had a Farm?" I queried. "Nope, that's totally forgien territory, too" I was told. Each young player knew Michael Jackson. Justin Bierber and a ton of hip hop. They could all mimic the synchronized dancing so popular on Tic Toc as well. But carry a tune? Recognize a golden oldie? Or belt out what was once a standard like "Amazing Grace?" Not a chance. We ended up with "You Are My Sunshine" and returned thanks that it worked.

In John Philip Newell's most recent book, Sacred Earth/Sacred Soul, he recounts
the work of Alexander Carmichael who devoted himself to gathering, transcribing, and then translating the music and public prayers of the Hebrides in Scotland. He discovered that despite his homeland's radically rigid shift to Calvinism in the 16th century - a social and religious movement that despised and feared the arts as the work of the Devil - the old pre-Christian melodies and images continued to linger in these remote places of the land. In the Hebredes, the songs of resistance to the Clearance Movement were also alive and well although without Carmichal's collection, they were one generation from extinction. That rendered the Carminia Gadelica a monumental work of cultural preservation. Newell calls it an "icon for us today which shows the power of poetry and song in keeping alive a vision of the sacredness of the earth and every living being." He notes:

For hundreds of years in the western islands of Scotland it was song that helped the people remember that the physical and the spiritual are interwoven. It was song that was used in the cycle of the seasons and in the journey of human life to keep them connected to the heart of their being made of God. And it was song that sustained them in their times of loss, suffering, and exile. For the people of the Hebrides this was passed down in oral form. The songs, prayers, and poems were intoned by one generation to the next over many centures. Most of us today, however, do not belong to an oral tradition. We depend instead on the written world of our literary culture and the world on online communications and recordings. So, perhaps for us today, it is a matter of accenssing written prayer,s printed poetry, and recorded music to help awaken us on a daily basis to the sacred rhythm within and around us. (p. 119)    

That's not a good idea, but only as astarting place because I believe that our soul sickness requires stronger medicine including experiential encounters with shared songs. That's the foundational reason we're starting our small summer experiemtn in music house parties. We'll play a variety of tunes, from a host of sources, that evoke joy, sorrow, resistance, and lament. We'll take some time to talk about what songs stir our spirits - and try out a little group singing, too. Add our outdoor venue plus some snacks and libation... and we shall see.

If you are in the area and would like to join us, please drop me a note and I will forward to you the specifics. My prayer is that we do this one or two more times this summer - and then find other small venues to keep the groove going when the weather starts to shift.

relearning what our souls already know...

There is a profoundly wise statement John Phillip Newell makes in his most recent book, Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul, that has been swimming around inside me for a few months. Newell's wisdom percolated up inside me again this week urging me to give it my full attention: he writes that this moment in time must be about "relearning what our souls already know."

We know things in the core of our being that we have not necessarily been taught, and some of this deep knowing may actually be at oddes with what our society or religion has tried to teach us... In the Celtic tradition it was said that we (often) suffer from soul-forgetfulness. We have forgotten who we are and have fallen out of true relationship with the earth and with one another.

I can't say exactly why this moment is any different from all the others, nor do I know why my soul grabbed me by the scruff of the neck a few nights ago and literally awoke me from a sound sleep with this recollection. I do trust, however, that when the student is ready, the Buddha will appear. 

St. Paul noted that "now we see as through a glass darkly, later we shall face to face." My hunch is that this type of "seeing" is both a part of creation's cyclical pattern of helping us process life's wisdom from: 1) a series of encounters; into 2) contemplation and reflection; so that 3) in time we can embrace and incorporate our experiences in a healthy way. It also seems likely that such vision is a mirror of the deeper manner of how truth is embedded and revealed to us at the end of our journey. Like Henri Nouwen confessed: "If God is love, and we come from God, then we shall return to love when this journey is complete." Integrating life's lessons leads us into an organic wisdom that simultaneously enriches our existence even as it trains us to rest into our demise. (Talk about the paradox of the Alpha and the Omega!)

Before turning off my reading light last night, I had to jot down a short list of "spiritual" truths I've long known in my soul but had either forgotten or hadn't yet discovered words to describe. This list looks a lot like a mystical "rule of life" that has been taking shape incrementally within me for five or six decades. 

1.  All spirituality comes down to noticing when we tense-up in life and when we let it all go in trust. As Cynthia Bourgeault teaches in The Wisdom Way of Knowing: holding on and becoming rigid causes our heart to atrophy and our soul to shrink; while releasing our feelings into trust opens us to compassion and strengthens our intimacy with all that is human and holy. In this, all prayer and spiritual discipline becomes an incarnational and experiential encounter as the Word communicates grace to us through our Flesh. This does not discount other ways to practice resting into the presence of the holy, it simply clarifies how each discipline actually works.

2. We are the midwives of creativity and love, NOT their source. We cannot control most of what takes place in our lives. But we can choose to assist the birth of beauty, truth, solidarity, and trust. These blessings can be twarted, too through arrogance, selfishness, or ignorance. The symbolism of midwifery, therefore, is all about where and how we give our attention to others. Having assisted the two different sets of midwives who guided the delivery of our two daughters led me to trust that our calling as human beings is to tenderly partner with others in their celebrations and sorrows. We are not in charge. We are allies whose humble presence can help or hinder those we cherish.

3. The trajectory of authentic Christian spirituality is not one of ascent, but descent. This is not always honored in Christian orthodoxy as it was taken hostage by the promises of neo-Platonic binary thinking. Still, at its best, we love the God who "comes down at Christmas" like Christina Rossetti sang. We worship the "marriage of heaven and earth, where justice and peace kiss one another and compassion and humility embrace." (Psalm 85) We seek to follow the path and presence of the Word becoming Flesh. (John 1) And we look for the holy within the human and material rather than etherial abstractions. St. Luke tells us in chapter four of his gospel that at the inauguration of his public ministry, Jesus proclaimed:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. God has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

Historically, spiritual wisdom in both the East and West has been shaped by the confines of ascent: our goal and destination supossedly points upward to the top of the mountain, to the heights of heaven, to a release from human suffering into the blissful anticipation of noncorporeal eternity. Jesus articulated and embodied a whole new way of exploring intimacy with the sacred with his spirituality of "small is holy." Ours is not a journey of escape, but solidarity. Phillipians 2 summarizes this downward mobility well:

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, assuming human likeness. And being found in appearance as a human, he humbled himsel and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross.

Therefore God exalted him even more highly and gave him the name that is above every other name, so that at the name given to Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

4. The Holy Trinity shows us how to search, wait, and then enflesh the integation of competing truths rather than fight them into a synthesis of inadequate compromise.  Most deep thinking about conflict resolution in our culture is guided by Hegelian patterns wherein one truth bumps into a competing truth as they battle it out until a compromise can be achieved. (i.e. thesis - antithesis = synthesis) The presence of the sacred Three in One and One in Three, however, celebrates a different process where progress and resolution are realized as opposing realities are embraced equally into the presence of love, trust, and surrender. Professor Brueggemann is clear that the prophets of ancient Israel tell us that injustice, suffering, and oppression require grieving until our hearts are broken open by reality. When this takes place, and we are finally empty and beyond all illlusion of control, then in God's time but not our own, we are able to be surprised by new truths born in love that most often arrive from the periphery of the status quo through our creative artists. Relinquishing our long romance - dare I claim addiction - to binary thinking is essential in cultivating a commitment to the sacred deep healing and transformation promised by God.

5. In an age filled with noise and chaos, many intuitively hear God with their ears in music even if we don't believe in God with our minds. For most of my life I have listened to creativity's call as the presence of the sacred. I have lived this, trusted it, and encouraged it without having the words to describe it. Upon reading American philosopher and eco-theologian Jay McDaniel, however, his words resonated with my history of "hearing God" with my ears even in my intellectual questioning and/or disbelief. He cuts to the chase saying:

Three voices singing in harmony are an invitation to imagine that we
humans can dwell in creative community with one another, keeping our differences while holding on to each other in caring, non-suffocating ways. When we sing together our singing (becomes) a coordinated act of kindness and creativity, courage and compassion, delight and sharing. Jews call this shalom; Muslims call it salam; and Christians call it peace. Whatever words we use, the spirit of this peace is fluid and changing (filled with possibilities) which means that you can never fix it in a single frame and say gotcha.

Increasingly, I trust that singing and sharing beauty is essential.

6. Laughter that is guided by self-deprecating humor is an incarnational way of nourishing sacred humility. Some humor is cruel. Some is shallow and even stupid. But it is not coincidental that the word humor and humility are etymologically linked to the word humus which the Oxford Dictionary defines as: the organic component of soil, formed by the decomposition of leaves and other plant material by soil microorganisms. That is, to paraphrase Ernest Kurtz, its the shit out of which new life emerges. When we can laugh at ourselves, living as part of the whole rather than the center of the universe, when we've learned NOT to take ourselves too seriously, there is room for others to thrive. There's space for us to ripen and grow deeper. There are possibilities for all of us. Our culture is one of hierarchy that tends to use humor as a weapon or else a defense mechanism. But that is sadly stagnate and does nothing to welcome change or progress. 

7. Given enough space, safety, encouragement, and time most people are able to ripen into their best selves. Not always, of course. And some wounds are too deep to be healed in this realm. But rather than nag, cajole, push, shove, judge, or make ultimatums, I have come to see that waiting and trusting God's love is always the best course. This requires a deep comfort with silence. And holding one's tongue. It also necessitates a deep self-awareness, too because if what I want for myself is any indication of what is useful for another, then I need to shut up more than sound off, right?

I owe a world of debt to Cynthia Bourgeault and Richard Rohr (as you might have gathered.) Same goes for the faith communities I participate in: L'Arche Ottawa, Iona, and the Dancing Monks of the Abbey of the Arts. What do you think? I would love to know your thoughts and reactions, ok?