when love comes to town

finally...

2026-06-02T17:56:39.496-04:00

These past three months have taken their toll. Grief and anxiety will do that even if you don't fully recognize the signs. I certainly didn't after Di was first diagnosed with CAD and chronic hemolytic leukemia. That news did not come to us gently, but rather in an anonymous announcement on her patient portal. To say that a wave of terror washed over us both, albeit in different ways, would be a gross understatement. It was more like an emotional tsunami of bleak and relentless despair. I'm a person of prayer - and immediately called upon the Lord - but still awoke at 3 pm every night for nearly a month, totally disoriented, and close to a panic attack. It wasn't a crisis of faith. St. Paul notes that "we do not grieve as others do who have no hope," but that doesn't mean we don't grieve. Or weep. Or feel as if the ground beneath our feet has shifted. (For those unfamiliar with CAD, see the chart below.)

I've only recently regained my inner equilibrium - and a bit of my energy, too. I wasn't really aware of how unsettled and periodically unfocused I'd become. But grief and anxiety are exhausting - for the one physically afflicted, for sure - but also for their loved ones and caregivers, too. Thank God for my church community! They have been patient, tender, supportive, and oh so loving. My bandmates, too. And our children and grandchildren! All down-to-earth angels of compassion and encouragement.

Earlier in May, after about one week of physical pain and loss of hearing in my right ear due to a double ear infection and another two weeks of slow recovery, Di and I took our bi-annual retreat around the time of our anniversary. I immediately came down with a wicked head cold (which I lovingly shared) and found myself sleeping for 10 or 12 hours all week. Then, maybe five days ago, I woke up, and I felt focused. Not energized, mind you, but without the fog of weariness dragging me down. I had a measure of perspective on work, life, family, church, music, and love again that I hadn't realized had been buried for three months. I had energy for more than just going to church, doing music rehearsal, and then collapsing into bed for an all-too-short night's sleep. We're not out of the woods yet; there's a follow-up visit to the hematologist on Friday, but finally, there is perspective. Dare I even say hope that we have more life and love to share together? More time to care for those most dear to our hearts? More songs to sing? More prayers to craft? More compassion, too?

As I looked around my study, where about 75 books sit on the floor awaiting shelving, my eyes went to this, and I laughed out loud.

It's one of my interfaith home altars made up of a few of my late father's Buddhas, my favorite menorah and kippa, Shiva, a few dozen crosses from around the world, the Virgin of Guadalupe, an Islamic prayer I bought in London, an Eastern Orthodox icon of Jesus, some "healing soil" from the shrine at Chimayo, NM, stones from my granddaughter Anna, and some dried cactus from Tucson. My laughter - and energy - impelled me back to our deck for this photo of our garden and the surrounding wetlands.

Today, I rejoice that we got this year's crop of herbs planted on the deck. We finally eradicated the sickening smell of some dead animal that had died somewhere in the house, too. The sun was out. My hands and heart felt alive after digging in the dirt. My back ached from digging and planting. And after finishing this Sunday's homily, I had the chance to get our outdoor lights lit. Lots more to be done in the time we've been given - and I am so grateful.

it's been a long, time comin'

2026-05-15T14:41:43.831-04:00

Once upon a time, a wise soul suggested to me that one way to discern God's will l involved the witness of Scripture, the confluence of insights from time-tested mentors, encounters with synchronicity, and the possibility of actually accomplishing something. The overarching metaphor was nautical, in which a sailor aligns markers on the horizon to guide the boat safely to shore. And while I am a land lover par excellence who gets seasick with the mere mention of boating, this notion has been useful for decades. Not only does it offer a corrective to my inclination towards spontaneity, but it also broadens the lens through which I conduct my evaluations. In an era defined by chaos, the abandonment of ethical norms, and the quest for individual freedom, G.K. Chesterton's quote about tradition rings true:

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. (Orthodoxy)

So, color me surprised but attentive when last week I came across a meme on Facebook quoting a comparable insight from C.S. Lewis in The Abolition of Man that not only mirrors Chesterton's sagacity but resonates with a portion of Charles Taylor's masterwork, A Secular Age, and echoes the acuity of Robert Pirsig's second novel, Lilia: An Inquiry into Morals. Lewis states that as contemporary society continues to confuse ethics and morality with being "nice," culture does not become more tolerant:

It becomes manipulable... (or what Lewis poetically describes) as men without chests. People with appetites and intellects, but no courage, no honor, no trained moral instincts. They can calculate everything and defend nothing... for once we reject inherited moral law, we don’t become free. We become raw material… easily shaped by propaganda, pleasure, and fear. Modern man prides himself on compassion while quietly surrendering every standard that once gave compassion meaning... a civilization that educates clever cowards who will eventually be ruled by tyrants or technicians. Because when nothing is worth dying for, every-thing becomes negotiable… including human dignity. (The Abolition of Man)

How did St. Bob Dylan put it in "Ballad of a Thin Man?" Something's going on all around you, and you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones? (Take a listen to one of the most scalding screeds of the bard's life works here:

https://youtu.be/63ucJmVonAc?si=t50IEgkj13V-vgIk) Well, something is starting to line up for me from these varied yet time-trusted mentors. And while our current moral confusion is different from the decadence of the Weimar Republic and its later descent into the evils of Nazi Germany, there are cautionary parallels. Currently, the United States is flirting dangerously with a pseudo-theocracy that looks backward to the good old days of a sanitized Christianity, much as the Nazis harkened back romantically to a restored Aryan paganism. Both are nostalgic for purity, both consciously and creatively seek to ignore and deny our shadows, and both promise a restoration to stability and grandeur.

Taylor writes that in the US, this has incrementally taken place by elevating science as our new god, viewing nature as autonomous, "thing that doesn’t just exist as a means for God to act in this world, as a tool in God’s toolbelt. Nor was nature to be understood as occupied by, acted upon, or the playground of various extra-human powers. So, nature could be spoken of without reference to God, or any of the other powers previously imagined." He adds that the triumph of individualism as the goal of life, and the rejection of stories of morality rooted in faith, are married.
In the days when the entire culture was viewed as being informed by God, when all of life was ordered in line with divine revelation, the task was to align ourselves with those externally provided moral sources. But new ways of knowing developed as we began to understand we could know things by the application of thought, independent of external revelation from God, gods, or the cosmological order. From Christianity, our Western ancestors had been deeply formed by the concept of benevolence and justice. When, though, the old religious, meta-physical beliefs are discarded, when God’s role in the social order is diminished, new explanations must be produced to account for those values of benevolence and justice, and the motivation to act in those ways. The way to do that was to explain them as inherent characteristics of human beings; there all along, not dependent on the old religious mythologies for their justification.

And therein is the linkage: without an objective, shared moral compass, we each become our own deity. A slippery slope, as Niebuhr would put it, where we not only fail to recognize our own selfishness but also refuse to anticipate the unintended consequences of even our most noble activities. Pirsig spoke to this in Lilia when he observed that early-20th-century free-thinkers like Bertrand Russell were schooled, trained, and conscientized by traditional morality. Their rebellion was guided by time-tested ethics. When the next generation rebelled, however, there was no moral consensus to oppose - and all hell broke loose. This continued same in the 50s and 60s where free thinkers like Ginsberg could write: I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness. Wikipedia correctly observes that Pirsig concluded:

That until the end of the Victorian era, social patterns dominated the conduct of members of American culture. In the aftermath of World War I, intellectual patterns and the scientific method acceded to that position, becoming responsible for directing the nation's goals and actions. The later occurrences of fascism are seen as an anti-intellectual struggle to return social patterns to the dominant position. The hippie movement, having perceived the flaws inherent in both social and intellectual patterns, sought to transcend them, but failed to provide a stable replacement, degenerating instead into lower level biological patterns as noted in its calls for free love.

So here we are: longing for a non-existent past, afraid and righteously angry with the limitations and defects of organized religion and government, uncertain about the spiritual emptiness of our souls and culture, and addicted to distractions. Neil Postman's prescient Amusing Ourselves to Death continues to cry out for a wider audience. Nevertheless, I refuse to see this moment only as a time of despair, but rather as one where small and tender acts of compassion, born of Christ's love and God's grace, hold an alternative to the status quo. Not in any obviously heroic way, but softly, quietly, and humbly. Small wonder that I've found solace and support in the words of Fr. Jon Swales:

I don’t want to be a Christian who forgets how to feel—
who hides behind answers, quotes verses like shields,
and silences sorrow with a song.
I don’t want a faith of romanticized abstraction,
where resurrection is polished and the cross is theory.
Give me something real—flesh and blood, grief and grace.
I want to weep with eyes wide open. Tears that speak truth.
Tears that rise from the ground of compassion,
from the jagged knowledge that the world is not
as it was meant to be.
I have seen it—the wounded souls, the haunted eyes,
the bruises beneath the surface.
I have felt the weight of injustice that crushes and isolates,
while the world looks away.
These are not tears of despair—but of resistance, of aching love,
of holding the pain when no one else will.
I want a hope that isn’t saccharine. Not hopium.
Not denial in disguise. But a defiant, dirt-under-the-fingernails
kind of hope—the kind that walks through the valley, sits in the ashes,
and still whispers, “Even here… God.”
I want a gospel that holds the wound.
A Christ who draws close, a Spirit who groans,
a God who gathers every tear in a bottle,
holds every sorrow like a fragile flame,
and knows what it is to break.
I want to believe—not cheaply, not loudly—
but with trembling trust, that one day, every tear
will be wiped away. Not erased, but remembered,
redeemed, and transfigured.
Until then, let me be the kind who weeps.
Who walks in holy realism.
Who holds vigil in the shadow of the cross
and waits, with aching hope,
for the dawn.

when the student is ready...

2026-05-13T19:21:53.826-04:00

One of the resets that has become vital to me during our bi-annual quiet retreats involves daily prayer. For decades, I practiced regular centering prayer (https:// centeringprayer.com/) and then one day I quit. There wasn't any clear reason for this, except that it prefigured a midlife meltdown of sorts, in which I questioned most of my longstanding commitments. The late Robert Bly, channeling C.G. Jung, regularly told his men's mythopoetic gatherings that if men didn't address our puer aeternus archetype (https://www.jungian-confrerie.com/ phdi/p1.nsf/supppages/8209?opendocument&part=17) by about age 50, facing and owning our shadow side honestly and abandoning our desire to live as an Icarus for the 21st century, we would either reach old age as cranky, old cynics or else embarrassing fools buying red convertible cars, chasing young lovers, and dressing as if we were still 22. His book with Marion Woodman, The Sibling Society, described generations of contemporary sisters and brothers without many competent mothers, father, and wisdom-keeping elders anywhere on the horizon. So, while my crash was ugly, and took a ton of counseling, tears, and contemplation, in retrospect, I give thanks to God for it.

Part of the collateral damage of this journey for me, however, was my disconnect from the discipline of daily contemplation and lectio divina. As some of my Zen friends say: only when the student is ready will the Buddha appear - and I sense that this student is once again ready. Currently, I'm using Prayers for the Domestic Church by Fr. Ed Hays. Today's liturgy struck a deep chord within:

The redemption of the world, the removal of injustice, and the spread of unity among all peoples is beyond my limited abilities. Lord, help me to examine how I have failed to redeem that small part of the world that did touch my life today. (pause for silent reflection and sacred gesture) In holy unity, with my heart at peace and surrounded with gratitude, I now enter into a sacred stillness.

After nearly a decade of avoiding the practice of deep contemplation, I pray that I am ready again to be still and know... Walking quietly by a Vermont waterfall in the cool sunshine yesterday provided another gentle affirmation - as did today's rain - and St. Jon's gospel for the Feast of the Ascension. Lord, may it be so within.

no accounting for happiness...

2026-05-12T12:26:00.000-04:00

During our bi-annual retreats, I find myself peculiarly open to poems old and new. This morning, after a cold snap last night, this gem from Jane Kenyon called to me. As someone far wiser than I noted: "Kenyon was a master at exploring the heights and depths of everyday life, focusing on what she called 'the luminous particular.'"

There’s just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.

And how can you not forgive?
You make a feast in honor of what
was lost, and take from its place the finest
garment, which you saved for an occasion
you could not imagine, and you weep night and day
to know that you were not abandoned,
that happiness saved its most extreme form
for you alone.

No, happiness is the uncle you never
knew about, who flies a single-engine plane
onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes
into town, and inquires at every door
until he finds you asleep midafternoon,
as you so often are during the unmerciful
hours of your despair.

It comes to the monk in his cell.
It comes to the woman sweeping the street
with a birch broom, to the child
whose mother has passed out from drink.
It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing
a sock, to the pusher, to the basket maker,
and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots
in the night.

It even comes to the boulder
in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,
to rain falling on the open sea,
to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.

After last night's near frost, this morning's sunshine feels like a gift. It's not quite warm outside, barely 45F, but clear, crisp, and delicious. Soon we'll hike by a local waterfall so I can soak up my second-favorite sound in all creation (the first being my grandchildren's laughter). Perhaps I'll get to practice a few guitar changes before cogitating on this Sunday's gospel text. Or take another nap. Nothing too challenging for either of us this week. Serendipitously, while reflecting quietly this morning, I stumbled upon these words from the late John O'Donaghue:

When the rhythm of the heart becomes hectic,
time takes on the strain until it breaks;
all the unattended stress falls in on the mind like an endless,

increasing weight.
Weariness invades your spirit.
Gravity begins falling inside you,
dragging down every bone.
The tide you never valued has gone out...
you are marooned on unsure ground.
Something within you has closed down;
and you cannot push yourself back to life.

You have been forced to enter empty time.
There is nothing else to do now but rest
and patiently learn to receive the self
you have forsaken for the race of days..
The flow of unwept tears will frighten you.
You have travelled too fast over false ground.

Stay clear of those vexed in spirit.
Learn to linger around someone at ease
who feels they have all the time in the world.
Gradually, you will return to yourself,
having learned a new respect for your heart
and the joy that dwells far within slow time.

Now your soul has come to take you back.
Take refuge in your senses, open up
to all the small miracles you rushed through.
Become inclined to watch the way of rain
when it falls slow and free.
Imitate the habit of twilight,
taking time to open the well of colour
that fostered the brightness of day.
Draw alongside the silence of stone
until its calmness can claim you.
Be excessively gentle with yourself.

And so we will...

hallelujah any way...

2026-05-11T19:14:00.005-04:00

It is so incredibly quiet here. We are on our bi-annual get-away-and-reclaim-our-sanity retreat that corresponds with our wedding anniversary. For decades, we have made time and space to step back from our routines, work, and commitments for a time of reflection and reconnection. Sometimes it's only for a few days; last year it was for three plus weeks. This year, we've set aside six days to savor the solitude of rural Vermont. Nothing special happens on these sojourns except we avoid crowds as much as possible, find time to walk in the woods, sit by a wood fire, watch a few European mysteries, talk about what's been going on since our last retreat - and rest. We slept for 12+ hours last night and later took an extended late afternoon nap.

To say that 2026 has been full would be a wild understatement. Di's health concerns became more complicated. I've been working vigorously at the beloved Palmer congregational church and playing a lot of music gigs in both All of Us ( https://www.facebook.com/james.lumsden/) and Wednesday)'s Child (https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61575902260523) all of which has been rewarding and creative - but demanding. And then, just when one health problem plateaued, another arrived for such is the joy of aging, n'est pas? The Queen of Provincetown, the late Mary Oliver, wrote:

Everyone should be born into this world happy
and loving everything.
But in truth it rarely works that way.
For myself, I have spent my life clamoring toward it.
Halleluiah, anyway I'm not where I started!

And have you too been trudging like that, sometimes
almost forgetting how wondrous the world is
and how miraculously kind some people can be?
And have you too decided that probably nothing important
is ever easy?
Not, say, for the first sixty years.

Halleluiah, I'm sixty now, and even a little more,
and some days I feel I have wings.

I concur, albeit with a few qualifications: these days, I am more fragile than before; my diminished hearing is a pain in the ass; and my heart becomes weary as loved ones cross over into eternal life, and my country goes through yet another spell of cruelty and crudity. This, too, shall pass, I know, and I look to Mother Nature for reminders. But like George Harrison sang 57 years ago: "Isn't it a pity, isn't it a shame, how we break each other's hearts and cause each other pain." In his masterwork, "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," he adds: "I look at you all see the love there that's sleeping... while my guitar gently weeps." Some days that's all I can do: weep. Mostly, however, I give thanks for the beauty and joy that remains for that is what shall endure. Again, our beloved Mary Oliver, got it right when she wrote:

I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers
flow in the right direction, will the earth turn
as it was taught, and if not how shall
I correct it?

Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,
can I do better?

Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows
can do it and I am, well,
hopeless.

Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,
am I going to get rheumatism,
lockjaw, dementia?

Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing.
And gave it up. And took my old body
and went out into the morning,
and sang.

My prayer for myself and all of you during this retreat is simple: may we incrementally relinquish our worries, take our old bodies out into the morning sunshine, and sing.

(di's picture from the balcony of our retreat cottage)

reflections on doubt, trust, and getting out of our own way...

2026-04-12T18:19:00.001-04:00

EASTER 2 Worship Message: Learning to See by Faith NOT Sight

(with gratitude to the SALT Project and Richard Rohr for their wisdom)

One of the truths about living into faith is that it is more of a journey than a destination – and no matter how well we plan, there are always surprises, problems, interruptions, and sometimes unexpected blessings. Some of you know I have an OLD car – almost 16 years old to the day – and, outwardly, it’s in pretty good shape, with minimal rust and a strong disposition. That said, making my commute from Pittsfield on a regular basis has awakened me anew to the very real challenges of making this journey by faith. I TRUST that God has called me to be with you – and I give thanks to the Lord that I am here – and yet there have been times when the trip has been trying.

· After worship and meetings one Sunday during my first year, I discovered that the new brake job I had done on Friday was defective when, no sooner did I get ON the Pike, than I had no brakes. That was a wild time in prayer, and I rejoiced that I was carried home safely that evening.

· Another time, about two months ago, I couldn’t figure out where a weird rumbling sound was coming from until, after getting home, I saw that my left rear tire was barely hanging on by two out of five lug nuts.

· And no sooner did I get home from Maundy Thursday this year than the power steering, AC, and muffler gave up the ghost as soon as I pulled in the driveway. Now, I’m NOT saying that God caused these problems to test me. That would be superstitious. What I AM saying is that each of these – and a variety of other challenges of my journey – prompted me to pray, act with extreme caution, and then return thanks to the Lord each time I got home safely. Please, do not worry about the Beast or ME – a new vehicle is in the works relatively soon!

I recall this simply to note that I have some experience with the uncertainties of a journey, whether physical, emotional, mechanical, international, or spiritual. So did St. Paul, who likened living into Christ’s resurrection as a pilgrimage – not something that happens all at once – but through practicing seeing by FAITH, not sight. TRUSTING God rather than just what is obvious. Honoring the Spirit’s grace and guidance deep within

· That’s what the Scriptures of Eastertide are all about: learning to see and trust God’s loving presence by faith, not just by sight – and doing our part to honor this mystery. During the seven weeks of Eastertide, poetically one week longer than Lent, we read stories of the risen Jesus appearing to his followers in order that we, too, might embrace the teachings of Jesus and share intimacy with God as they once did.

· And a recurring theme in these post-resurrection stories is how, from the very outset, Christian communities struggled to perceive and believe that God had truly raised Jesus from the dead. For starters, the risen Jesus isn’t recognized at first. Magdalene thought he was the local gardener.

Later in John, the disciples don’t recognize him on the beach. Next week, in Luke, two of Jesus’ followers have an extended conversation with and about Jesus without realizing who he is! Both John and Luke go out of their way to suggest that the resurrection means something more mysterious than simple resuscitation: Jesus has risen and, at the same time, is somehow different. Part of what’s going on is the early Christian community wrestling with the fact that great numbers of people didn’t notice Jesus' return because “resurrection” defies conventional categories. Jesus was clearly back, but only a few had eyes to see that it was really him, his closest followers needed help, and we, too, are asked to learn to see by faith, not merely by sight. (SALT Project)

Today’s story begins by telling us it’s the evening of “the first day of the week,” a day of fresh starts. Mary Magdalene has just declared to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord!” and Peter and John have gone to the empty tomb in confusion. But as night falls, the disciples are perplexed, huddling in a locked house for fear of the religious authorities. (NOTE: these words ought to warn us about ANY talk of creating a theocracy in the USA, Israel, Iran, or anywhere else! Forcing religion on another is always trouble and thwarts rather than supports the cause of Christ.) So, to start, this is a story of one type of Easter doubt: the fear that all is lost – a very human reaction.

· Suddenly, Jesus arrives and stands among his frightened friends unhindered by the locked doors, saying, “Peace be with you,” which is an astonishing greeting — these are the same men who denied and deserted Jesus just a few days ago, when it mattered most! (SALT Project) And now he brings them a holy blessing because HE sees each of us by faith rather than sight.

· And immediately after this blessing, Jesus shows the disciples his wounds. “Does he look so different that the wounds act as identifying marks? Does he look more or less the same, but the wounds prove he is the person they saw crucified, rather than a doppelganger? Or is he trying to assure them that torture and death have indeed been overcome — that he has somehow, like Lazarus, come out of the other side of the tomb alive? Whatever the details, Jesus addresses another kind of Easter doubt: suspicion that death still has dominion, that physical resurrection is impossible, and that no one can die and rise again.” (SALT Project)

According to St. John, sometimes our journey LOOKS and FEELS as if all is lost. At other times, it floods our minds with the fear that God’s loving power is NOT greater than death. Some Bible scholars also suggest that there’s a third type of Easter doubt. “This one isn’t so much focused on confirming that it’s really Jesus or the plausibility of the resurrection — after all, according to St. John, the disciples have only recently witnessed Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead (the very reason the powers-that-be mobilized to have Jesus killed.) No, this third kind of doubt focuses on whether Jesus is truly the Messiah, for to some, the genuine Messiah would not arise from death in triumphant, invulnerable splendor, but rather as a suffering servant still marked by vulnerability, by fragility, by wounds.” (SALT Project)

· You may recall that the prophet Isaiah spoke of a suffering servant, a Messiah who will make intercession for transgressors. This would be the true Messiah, acting on behalf of a wounded world and showing up as a wounded savior.

· From this perspective, it would make sense that Jesus immediately displays “his hands and his side” to show his friends that God’s Beloved comes not as a military conqueror without blemish, but rather as a strong and peaceful shepherd bearing the wounds of the world, a child of God and a child of Humanity. Jesus is the Word made flesh — and “flesh” means vulnerability, wounds, struggle, and challenge. (SALT Project) Womanist theologian Yolanda Pierce writes that:

By sharing his wounds, Jesus reveals that our wounds are places for God’s healing presence and love, too. This is a blessing for the wounded, for those who are still healing, and even for those who aren’t quite ready for healing. The risen Savior insistently welcomes the doubting, the uncertain, and the grieving to touch and see that he is real and present and here with us. (CAC)

The risen Savior, who had been abandoned, denied, betrayed, and crucified, doesn’t hide his wounds or rush their healing (so that our wounded souls) encased in the frailties of human flesh might also summon enough grace and kindness to acknowledge that our own very human wounds need time to heal? Seeing by faith is living INTO Christ’s resurrection – striving to incarnate our better angels – getting out of our own way so that God’s grace might triumph, albeit imperfectly or haltingly. Practically speaking, that often boils down to learning NEW habits, acquiring NEW inner tools, and interrupting our emotional reactivity for more silence, patience, and compassion. Again, St. Paul is at his best when he articulates what it looks like to be born from above, or servants of the Lord Jesus who seek ye FIRST the kingdom of God, or simply disciples of faith, hope, and love. This contemporary restatement of Romans 12 is spot-on!

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 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. (The Message)

Did you know that before he became the Apostle to the Gentiles, welcoming non-Jews and Jews alike into the community of Christ, St. Paul spent three years in TRAINING in the Arabian desert? The opening of Galatians chapter one states:

When God, who set me apart from my mother’s womb and called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son in me so that I might celebrate his way among the Gentiles, I did NOT consult with many. I did not go up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before I was but instead went to the Arabian desert. After three years, I returned to Damascus and later went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Cephas – whom you know as Peter - and stayed with him for conversation and prayer for fifteen days.

No one is precisely sure who taught Paul the spirituality of the desert, but a few clues are embedded in this short text.

· First, the desert as metaphor: in Judaism at the time of Jesus – and many other spiritual traditions as well- the desert is either a place or a period of time set aside for discernment, silence, testing, isolation, and preparation for serving the Lord. It is NEVER a place of punishment, but rather a place to grow in trust, clarify and cleanse both heart and mind, and let go of all the extraneous distractions of life to grasp what is truly important. In the desert, the prophet Isaiah spiritually heard the Lord proclaim:

Seek my love wherever it may be found; and call upon me while I am near; return to the Lord, that I may have mercy on you. But know this: my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but shall accomplish that which I purpose and succeed in the thing for which I sent it. (Isaiah 55) First, the desert tells us St. Paul withdrew to do some inner work.

· Second, the desert reminds us of where Jesus fasted for 40 days and 40 nights: before beginning his public ministry, Jesus learned the wisdom of the Lord incarnated in nature from his Wildman cousin, John the Baptist. Paul also went to the wilderness in the spirit of the Chosen who had wandered for 40 years after being liberated from Egyptian slavery by Moses.

· And third, we’re talking about the Arabian desert, where Mt. Sinai stood in all her majestic splendor. It’s the mystical place of uncertainty where the prophet Elijah fled to listen more closely to the still, small voice of the Lord. Mt. Sinai, you may recall, was also where Moses received the 10 Commandments from the Lord and celebrated the first covenant between God and his people. Some have been so bold as to suggest that one of the reasons Paul went to the mountain was to clarify and comprehend God’s new covenant in Jesus.

All of which serves to remind us that if study, preparation, testing, and discernment were essential for God’s first followers, so, too, then in our era of confusion, challenge, and change. Inwardly, we may have experienced grace, forgiveness, renewal, and love, but to make that feeling and those words flesh takes training, practice, making mistakes, and lots of time. We don’t mature in faith all at once, but incrementally; falling down is just as important as getting back up again. And let me say out loud that just this weekend, I had yet another in a lifelong series of learning experiences involving getting out of my own way so that God’s love might flow through me.

· Some of you know that my wife, Di, was recently diagnosed with a rare blood disease that requires immunotherapy. Her first session was on Friday, and during round one, she had an episode where her breathing became labored – one of the normal side effects of this particular drug.

· Her attending medical helpers were excellent and at the top of their game, and got it resolved quickly. Unfortunately, the spasms returned at about 6 pm, didn’t respond to any of our meds, and necessitated a LENGTHY trip to the ER. Thanks be to God, things worked out, and by early morning, we were back home again, safe and mostly sound.

During the first few hours of this episode, my tendency to freak out was on steroids. I’ve long reacted to threats to my loved ones with a fight-or-flight response – I can be chill and focused with most others – but bring a hurt to those I love best, and I become outwardly ferocious and inwardly terrified. And that old reaction was popping around inside of me that night, which was the LAST thing Di needed from me. She needed comfort and clarity, support and presence – which I knew – but really had to struggle to manifest in the moment. As I was heading out the door, I saw these hanging from a stand by my bedside – prayer beads – a Protestant version of rosary beads I used to make for folk. So, I grabbed them, stuffed them in my pocket, and headed off. And while she was having X-rays & EKGs, I sat and prayed with my beads.

· A lot in our tradition really don’t “get” prayer beads – we’ve been taught that only CATHOLICS use them – and often superstitiously. But that’s hooey and judgmental. What one of my mentors taught me is that praying with these beads not only helps refocus my heart on God’s love but also distracts my habits and brain from simply reacting. They help me get out of my own way so there’s more room for God.

· So, that’s what I did: I prayed a cycle of prayers over 15 minutes, and by the time I was done, she was finished with her tests, and we settled in for a LONG wait for her doc.

I need all the help I can get to get over my unhelpful and inwardly wounded places so that I can partner with the Lord. Maybe you do, too, so that we can see by faith, not just by sight. So that we can serve the Lord rather than deepen the angst. You see, if I simply let my emotions remain in charge, if I relied only on my immediate reaction… well, it wouldn’t be pretty and certainly wouldn’t help the one I love most. Part of being born again, growing deeper in faith, and seeing reality by faith rather than just sight, is practicing letting go and letting God. Going deeper into trust rather than our assumptions, reactions, or limited perspective. Do you know the story of Jesus wandering the desert until he meets an old man?

"What brings you to the desert?" Jesus asked. To which the man replied: “Well, I’m looking for my son. I lost him many years ago.” "How did you lose him?” Jesus wondered. “Can you tell me what happened?" "I had one son – not by birth – but by a heavenly miracle. He had tremendous struggles with temptation. And at one point, he even died and came back to life!" Jesus couldn't believe it. Could this really be his father? So, he asked one last question: "Are you by any chance a carpenter?" To which the old man answered: "Yes, yes, I am!" At which point, Jesus rushed forward, embraced the old man, and cried: "Father, it is I! Oh, how I’ve missed you!" Overwhelmed with feeling, the old man smiled and said, “I’ve missed you, too, Pinocchio!”

Today’s story about Jesus, his disciples, and Thomas's doubts gives shape and form to some of the doubts we all have about God’s loving presence. Thomas personifies what our doubts and fears might look like and shows us that we ALL need time to cultivate and incarnate the love of God in our ordinary lives, habits, thoughts, and prayers. Which brings me back to the idea that following the Resurrected Jesus must include learning to see by faith as a journey – and journeys are always hard. Learning NOT to react but discern can be hard. Knowing that we won’t always get it right can be hard, too. That’s probably why I like the way Kate Bowler put it:

Living into Easter is not a feeling – especially one that tells us everything has been fixed or healed – nor is it a resolution to our wounds or an emotional closure. No, a living Easter is the practice of patient and imperfect trust that empowers us to live alongside sadness, boredom, fear, or despair. Easter expands our capacity to hold paradoxical truths together at the same time. For that’s the testimony of Scripture. Jesus wept at the grave of Lazarus even knowing the resurrection is coming. St. Paul wrote that we are sorrowful yet rejoicing, grieving NOT as those who have no hope, but grieving nonetheless. And Revelation 21 promises a future where God will at some point wipe away every tear from our eyes, not a promise that we won’t cry now.

Easter is a reality AND a journey – and it is hard. So, let me teach you a prayer song from South Africa that you can use to step back from reacting, interrupt your default position, and open your heart to the blessings of the resurrection. It’s simple… and I use it a LOT while driving and I can’t access my prayer beads…

Come with me for the journey is long (4x)

The journey, the journey, the journey is long (4x)

alas, I wish I'd never read Niebuhur...

2026-04-09T17:23:00.002-04:00

I wrote the following paragraph a month ago - and today it rings more true than before:

After playing a truly uplifting gig with All of Us last night at Pittsfield's best live music venue, Methuselah Bar and Lounge (http://www.methbar .com/), I wearily sighed, "Damn, I wish I'd never read Niebuhr..." My sweetheart smiled knowingly and replied, "Now THAT'S an overheard!" But alas, it is all too true: no matter how hard I try, his paradoxical Christian Realism continues to shape my thinking, ethics, and my all-too-modest activism. Would that pure simplicity and/or ideology were options!

That said, my hope today is NOT to rant. There's already too much of that swirling all around us. Some consider Niebuhr a cynic. Others, an elitist. And still others an ally be they conservative or liberal. My take is that he is none of the above, just a public intellectual who recognizes the challenge of following Jesus and the necessity of compromise in our public commitments. One of his most famous quotes restates the words of St. Paul:

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope. Nothing that is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we must be saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore, we must be saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness. (The Irony of American History)

Here's my challenge: my world, heart, mind, life, and soul are no longer defined only by politics. That's almost ALL many of my progressive and conservative friends seem capable of discussing. Politics. Spin. Despair. Disdain. Who is winning and who is losing. Those who have accepted the heresy of Christian Nationalism celebrate the overt cruelty of their leaders and work overtime trying to separate the Jesus of Scripture from their warped MAGA ideology. My liberation colleagues spout a variety of radical critiques and concerns about the current regime that cost them nothing and are essentially irrelevant to the challenges of 21st-century men, women, and children. The vast majority, defamed by some as the Silent Majority and others as closet supporters, reject both extremes and see no point in arguing against reality. They are working too hard to love their children, earn a decent living, pay for unaffordable health care, and maybe have a beer at the end of the day.

To which Niebuhr would say: where's the hard-to-find middle ground? At the moment, it appears elusive - and that's a reality we have to endure. But, as Little Steven of Springsteen's E Street band used to sing: EVERYBODY wants the same things, don't they?

If you opt out of empty arguments, liberals say you're part of the problem. If you engage with any degree of sophistication and/or compassion, conservatives call you a victim of woke disease. And so it goes. Often, I want to join Lou Reed and say: Stick a fork in ALL of them. They're DONE! And then I hear that still, small voice of the Resurrected yet Wounded Messiah: whatsoever you do unto one of the least of these, my sisters and brothers, you do unto me.

Today, and most days, I trust that small acts of tenderness matter. I believe, Lord help my unbelief, that community and conversation matter. And I have seen how practicing seeing by faith, not sight, can be a game-changer. I trust that God's love is greater than death. I look for where to go next by contemplating God's first word: Mother Nature. I play music with my mates to advance the cause of joy and solidarity. And I wait in the challenging company of Brother Niebuhr who keeps telling me:

the triduum has quietly arrived...

2026-04-02T16:43:00.001-04:00

Today marks the start of the Christian Triduum - the three holy days before Easter Sunday - that give shape and form to the blessings of God experienced in Jesus. The journey begins tonight with Holy Thursday - or what the Reformed tradition calls Maundy Thursday, from the Latin maundaaum for commandment. My high-church siblings in the Spirit get it right, starting with washing one another's feet, celebrating Eucharist, and then stripping the altar until the Feast of the Resurrection on Easter Sunday. This is followed on Friday with a service venerating the Cross and Saturday with the earliest night liturgy: the Easter Vigil.

My low-church friends tend to avoid footwashing like the plague, but have now added an ancient monastic set of readings and actions from the 9th CE called Tenebrae. This was only added to the Reformed realm in the early 20th century, but has become wildly beloved even as the most scripted liturgical act in our repertoire. Initially, Tenebrae took place in monastic communities during matins and lauds - the first two community prayer cycles after midnight at the start of the Triduum. It began with 15 candles but has now been simplified in contemporary Protestant churches to between 8 and 12. The readings in the Reformed version have also changed to foreshadow Christ's crucifixion on Friday. There is drama and grit to this service, and I would hate to lose it, even though I much prefer the order of my liturgical sisters and brothers. As Carl Jung put it: "The symbols of the Catholic liturgy offer the unconscious such a wealth of possibilities that they act as an incomparable diet for the psyche."

No matter how one observes the Triduum, however, it is a time for deep and sober reflection. I look forward to doing this in community - a genuinely counter-cultural commitment - in this age of hyper-individualized bottom lines and obsessive multitasking. What a shallow culture we've created with neither time nor encouragement to ponder and discern. We rush off to war without counting the cost; we speed-dial and date; we relentlessly binge-watch our favorite video distractions; and forsake the dinner table for a bag of burgers and fries in the car. Nevertheless, the Triduum quietly creeps into being and patiently invites us into alternative ways of thinking, speaking, and living. The poet, Jane Kenyon, put it like this:

I am the blossom pressed in a book,
found again after two hundred years. . . .

I am the maker, the lover, and the keeper....

When the young girl who starves
sits down to a table
she will sit beside me. . . .

I am food on the prisoner's plate. . . .

I am water rushing to the wellhead,
filling the pitcher until it spills. . . .

I am the patient gardener
of the dry and weedy garden. . . .

I am the stone step,
the latch, and the working hinge. . . .

I am the heart contracted by joy. . . .
the longest hair, white
before the rest. . . .

I am there in the basket of fruit
presented to the widow. . . .

I am the musk rose opening
unattended, the fern on the boggy summit. . . .

I am the one whose love
overcomes you, already with you
when you think to call my name... .

Tonight, whether Catholic or Reformed, in a high-church haze of incense or a low-church encounter with Tenebrae, I give thanks that some will pause to call your name,

darkness cannot drive out darkness...

2026-02-27T15:23:00.003-05:00

One of the daily disappointments I experience on FB is how some of my friends, colleagues, and professional contacts regularly belittle, defame, and slander one another with an unholy zeal and abandon. The viciousness of these attacks is staggering and cuts across ideological/political lines. So, too, the ugly aftertaste these barbs leave in my consciousness that requires a physical, spiritual, and emotional catharsis bathed in silence. To be sure, I mostly enjoy the brilliant memes on Facebook that make me laugh out loud. I savor seeing photos of children, grandchildren, pets, and vacations that loved ones share. And periodically, I find visuals and graphics that are both inventive and instructive. What kills my soul, however, and poisons my day are the cruel and noxious ad hominem attacks we make against one another.

Let me be clear: I am NO fan of the current regime. Even when it advances a good idea - which is rare but nevertheless true - their rollout is almost always so mean-spirited, chaotic, and saturated in hyperbole that it takes me weeks to figure out WTF is really going on. That said, not everyone who voted for or even continues to support certain policies is a Nazi, fascist, pedo, or insurrectionist. Yes, Christian Nationalism is a heresy that diminishes Christ's call to heal and love. Without a doubt, racial and gender bigotry in this administration has gone way beyond traditional dog whistles to openly celebrate race and gender hatred. The hubris of the President and his closest advisors defies comprehension, not just because their PR is so manipulative and sloppy, but more importantly, because it destroys our ability to know what is true and what is a lie. Thank God an independent media can still fact-check.

Suffice it to say that I have come to see the current resident of the Oval Office as a tragic, pathetic, dangerous, and ruinous embodiment of everything that has historically been wrong in these United States. Other administrations have been racist. Just below the surface, many have also pandered to the rich and famous. And there have been equally incompetent and incoherent Commanders in Chief. Just not all at once - and that may be the paradoxical charism of what is taking place these days. Without illusion, diversion, or apology, many of us now get to witness and experience the shadow side of our nation that has long been known by people of color, the LGBTQIA community, countless creative and courageous women, and those who exist on the periphery of power. Today, we can see that the emperor has no clothes, that the man behind the curtain is a hard-hearted grifter, and that some of his supporters actually want to destroy all that is good, true, and noble about the land of the free and home of the brave.

But not everyone - and that is a vital distinction. Not everyone buys into the fear, nor wants to see it spread. Not everyone who voted for lower grocery prices, an affordable mortgage, safe and effective schools, or an immigration policy that works is the enemy, nor are they all corrupt or dangerous. Nor are all those who experience confusion about gender and the breadth and depth of human sexuality people of hate. To be sure, not everyone grasps the magnitude of our current morass. Still, it is my experience that many, if not most, of my fellow Americans genuinely want a more perfect union. They weep when their neighbors hurt, they rejoice when our local sports teams triumph, they volunteer in food banks, schools, and social clubs, they bring a hot meal to those who are sick. They send cards when they don't have words to express their concern. They pay their taxes on time. (Not always happily, but most still know that taxes and civil engagement are part of the bargain necessary to maintain a democratic society.) They may not all vote. I get that. How did Pete Townsend put it more than 50 years ago? "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss!" But they still care and seek to redress our shared grievances, even as our failing state flounders.

So, please, please, please: do not be so simple-minded as to confuse my concerns here with the President's willful obfuscations after the neo-Nazi violence in Charlottesville in 2017 or the 1984-esque propaganda offered after the attempted insurrection of January 6, 2021. I am not giving a pass to the Gestapo-like destruction perpetrated by ICE and their minions in Minneapolis. Rather, I write, live, analyze, pray, and share my resources from a distinctly traditional Western Christian perspective. I understand that not everyone is committed to this way of following Jesus. I get that our multicultural society is harder to govern than a homogeneous tribe: competing needs clash, complicated incentives like carrots and sticks are paradoxically essential to maintain peace and stability, the doctrine of unintended consequences regularly subverts our better angels, and there are always winners and losers. One of our nation's finest theologians (not perfect, but powerfully insightful), Reinhold Niebuhr, put it succinctly: "Man's (sic) capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary". He argued that while humans have the capacity for goodness, their inherent selfishness and tendency toward corruption require a system that checks power. A few quotes will clarify:

Democracy is finding proximate solutions to insoluble problems... Original sin is that thing about man which makes him capable of conceiving of his own perfection and incapable of achieving it... One of the most pathetic aspects of human history is that every civilization expresses itself most pretentiously, compounds its partial and universal values most convincingly, and claims immortality for its finite existence at the very moment when the decay which leads to death has already begun.

Niebuhr's abiding advice, beyond the brilliance of his Serenity Prayer, is found in his Irony of American History:

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore, we must be saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness.

And so the search for common ground continues. The current degeneracy will not abate any time soon. The forces unleashed by a variety of religious, political, and social zealots since the 70's must run their course. You see, once Pandora's box is opened... But this current darkness is not the end of the story - and that is the light within the darkness that I strive to trust. Dr. King's words from 1962 continue to be right:

random thoughts on ash wednesday 2026...

2026-02-21T16:26:00.000-05:00

I did not grow up observing Ash Wednesday. As a middle-class, white Protestant child of New England in the 50s and 60s, it was just my Roman Catholic friends who wore the ashen sign of the Cross on this strange day. If memory serves, my uber-Congregational church in both Connecticut and Massachusetts barely mentioned Lent, let alone practiced a sacramental spirituality grounded in liturgy and the seasonal cycles of life. It was well after seminary and ordination that my tradition published the 1986 United Church of Christ Book of Worship, which included an order of worship for... ASH WEDNESDAY!

By then, however, I'd been smitten by both Gertrud Mueller-Nelson's liturgical masterpiece, To Dance with God, and the folk-music innovations being crafted by the Community of Celebration in Aliquippa, PA, who linked the poetry of the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer with a tender-hearted, charismatic creativity. I made a host of pilgrimages to that sacred co-ed monastery just outside of Pittsburgh and beat cheeks to the high church, smells-and-bells observances of Lent celebrated at the Anglican Cathedral in Cleveland, OH, too. By the late 1980s, I'd drawn on the insights Kathleen Norris shared in Dakota and The Cloister Walk, along with my encounters with Eastern Orthodox chant and iconography, and had become a born-again sacramentalist serving low-church congregations. Beauty, ritual, well-written liturgy, poetry, silence, and a deep reverence for new/old ways of praying with all our senses became foundational for me. I chaffed at the studied sloppiness of most Protestant worship. I came to despise the wordy pseudo-intellectualism of so many so-called social justice sermons. And found myself fleeing from the clutter and trinkets that too often adorned so many chancels in their sad attempt at religious art.

Forty years later, I still honor the texts that friends and colleagues created for The UCC Book of Worship. And I am still trusting it to guide our small circle of friends as we gather for Ash Wednesday this year. The Community of Celebration used to sing, "We have another world in view," and now, more than ever, as a pastor and a believer, I find myself clinging to that upside-down, counter-cultural alternative vision of life that Jesus proclaims. Our current culture of anxiety, chaos, cruelty, and greed idolizes our obsessions, sanctifies our addictions, denigrates every pursuit except short-term material conquests, and shames and/or defames those who pursue solidarity and compassion. Thank God for Ash Wednesday! It reminds me that we all lack something. It shows me how to relinquish what is broken by trusting a love that not only leads me through the wilderness but also incrementally and quietly fills me with a gratitude that evokes space for everyone who wants to join the party.

A Franciscan teacher recently wrote that Ash Wednesday invites us to practice giving up, giving in, and giving to. Giving up is about fasting - letting go in a conscious act of relinquishment - a practice that illuminates what is truly essential while helping us let go of our ego, our habits, and our oh so inflated and self-important opinions. Fasting is a physical and spiritual discipline that helps me listen more, speak less, and hold on to only that which is a foundation. It is an embodied prayer that nourishes both vulnerability and patience. And patience, I am learning, is essential for my faith and any act of ministry. Giving to, as the Franciscans tell us, is sharing resources and love, while giving in is what we might all prayer. I know that as I strive to be grounded in these unsettling times, the tender initiation to give up, to, and in redirects my anxieties towards trust and shows me why patience is salvific.

sometimes it's a bitch to practice what I preach...

2026-02-06T18:28:00.004-05:00

"There are times when I hate having to practice what I preach!" That's what I said to my loved one over breakfast as I shared the news that David Brooks is leaving the New York Times. I have come to celebrate the sacred wisdom embodied in seasons, trusting that nature has always been the first Word of the Lord. I strive as well to honor the long obedience embedded in Ecclesiastes 3: to everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven. And as a clergy person well-acquainted and practiced in presiding at funerals and memorial services, I understand that nothing - and no one - lasts forever. Still, I felt sad to hear about David's transition. As a septuagenarian, I've had to let go of long-standing comforts, resources, habits, foods, ways of traveling, children becoming adults with children of their own, and all the aches and pains that come with being an old, bourgeois white guy with too much education. Such is one of the paradoxes of the journey, yes? It is not only a lengthy series of good-byes and not-so-voluntary relinquishments but, as the late Pete Seeger used to say about learning a new song, "Just about the time you've mastered it, it's over!"

It's not like Brooks will disappear, mind you: he'll still join Jonathan Capehart on the Friday evening PBS Newshour. He'll also serve as a staff writer at The Atlantic and share insights in a part-time teaching gig at Yale. It's simply another sign that life goes on beyond my control. One more nudge to practice what I preach and accept my powerlessness and mortality. Deep in my heart, I yearn to be more like Francis of Assisi than John Calvin, more like Carrie Newcomer than Bob Dylan, more like Mary Oliver than Mr. Magoo. I cherish the charisms of her poem: The World I Live In.

I have refused to live

locked in the orderly house

of reasons and proofs.

The world I live in and believe in

is wider than that. And anyway,

what’s wrong with Maybe?

You wouldn’t believe what once or

twice I have seen. I’ll just

tell you this:

only if there are angels in your head

will you ever, possibly, see one.

Most mornings start off that way - content with the maybes and in love with the angels in my head - until some jackass cuts me off in the parking lot of the grocery store and ALL my serenity goes out the window. Or no matter HOW loud I turn up my new hearing aids, it's still impossible for me to understand what some call-center techie is trying to tell me about my so-called smartphone. Or before the damned gas pump will allow me to fill my tank, I have to answer 3 or 4 dumb ass and irrelevant computerized questions when the windchill feels like -35 below zero. First world problems, to be sure. And often I can choose not to react and maybe even laugh at myself afterwards. But these encounters with my inner tyrant are clear reminders that I am not as serene within myself as I would like. There are times that I truly hate the wisdom of the Serenity Prayer! How did Beck put it?

Also beyond my control, I sometimes meet one of the salty saints of the church I currently serve - men and women who have been to hell and back more than a dozen times - and THEY renew my quest with their love of life. They have such hard-won wisdom and compassion to share. They go out of their way to make me feel welcomed and at home until I hear myself singing: Amazing grace! My mentor in ministry (and one of my first older buddies) Ray Swartzback, used to tell me: if you're paying attention, this journey is a total roller coaster. So, don't fight it, man. Make the best of it. To which I now whisper under my breath: You're right, Swartzy, you're right. Still, sometimes it's a bitch to have to practice what you preach...

our weariness is an invitation into grace...

2026-01-26T14:26:00.000-05:00

No worship or fellowship today - or tomorrow - as a real
snowmageddon delivers 1-2 inches an hour in these rolling Berkshire hills. All the hoopla and hollering of the past week felt more like hyperbole than honesty. Besides, real New Englanders know how to traverse a winter wonderland, and we haven't had a doozy for a few years - but we do today, and so far I am loving it. Silent. Beautiful. Powerful. And mysterious. Granted, I can make such observations from within the warm safety of our little home - and not everyone knows such privilege. So, it's with a measure of gratitude and humility that I sit silently in my study, savoring the snowfall.

Perched within the security of my solitude, this blizzard is simultaneously majestic and disturbing. Like standing on the seashore during a storm, there's no way to escape the raw, unharnessed fury reining down upon us. There is neither rhyme nor reason to this storm. The Potawatomi author and poet Kaitlin Curtice rightly notes that those who live in these environs cannot avoid winter; we can only go through it. So, I hope to avoid even the hint of sentimentality as I confess to being awed by its elegance. Rudolph Otto wrote in The Idea of the Holy that an authentic encounter with the sacred is always a "fearful and fascinating encounter with mystery." The mysterium tremendum et fascinans is wholly other and entirely beyond the ordinary, evoking wonder; it is saturated with power and awe that is uncontrollable, and despite our fears, also attracts us with the presence of joy. Don't get me wrong: there are times I HATE to drive in such a mess, but I'm not out on the roads today. No, right now I am savoring the mystical bounty of this storm.

My inward/outward serenity rests in jarring contrast to the violence and fear that now engulfs Minneapolis and Portland, ME. ICE thugs, hellbent on terrorizing - and now murdering - their opponents, are pushing us ever closer to civil war as they give shape and form to our nation's shadow. No matter that the current regime literally tries to white-wash our origins and sanitize our memories by taking down historical markers and applying Soviet-era photo scrubs at the Smithsonian, the United States will always be a nation conceived in a cauldron of contradiction: freedom and the pursuit of liberty (read: property) for the landed elite have long been parasitically twinned with acts of genocide, slavery, scapegoating, and gun violence. Yes, since 1607, we have made authentic albeit incremental progress towards a more perfect union through the blood sacrifices of brave and compassionate martyrs. But almost like clockwork, these advances are clawed back in an unholy ebb and flow that punishes the most vulnerable among us while rewarding the 1%. I choose to believe that our better angels always seek to create the land of the brave and the home of the free, but because we're at war with ourselves and refuse to acknowledge this truth, we can't help but attack, demonize, and destroy with a vengeance those who seek the same blessings the privileged take for granted.

Indeed, our national soul is so riven with contradictions, coupled with an incredible tolerance for shedding innocent blood, self- deception, and periodic propaganda that no matter how many times the Holy tells us that God's bounty is to be shared by all so that there is scarcity for none, our habits, fears, history, and addictions insist upon a zero sum ideology where other's gain only if we lose. It is a vicious downward spiral that has once again raised its ugly head and become normative.

And I'm not the only one locked in lament: North American theologian and podcaster, Tripp Fuller, recently published an insightful essay entitled, "The Exhausted Soul and a World Gone Mute," which begins: "I want to tell you about a moment that changed how I see the world. I was sitting at my desk a few years ago, staring at my inbox, when I realized something that should have been obvious but somehow wasn’t: I was losing."

Not losing at anything in particular. Just... losing. Falling behind. No matter how early I woke up, no matter how efficiently I worked, no matter how many productivity apps I downloaded or time-management systems I tried, the gap between what I needed to do and what I could do kept widening. I went to bed each night—as the German sociologist Hartmut Rosa puts it so perfectly—as a “subject of guilt,” unable to work off my ever-expanding to-do list. And here’s the thing: I wasn’t alone. Everyone I knew was drowning in the same invisible flood. What if this isn’t a personal failure? What if it’s something much larger—something structural, something spiritual, something that goes to the very heart of what it means to live in the modern world?

Please read the full essay here (https://open.substack.com/pub/ processthis/ p/the-exhausted-soul-and-a-world-gone?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web) knowing that he makes three clarifying insights: 1) One of the reasons for our culture of exhaustion is that modernity is ALL about accelerating. "What used to take months now takes minutes... as we move faster, produce faster, and connect faster than any generation in history." 2) Acceleration renders time-tested skills and values obsolete as "the institutions we once trusted disappear and the ground shifts beneath your feet." And 3) Multitasking has become normative, meaning we strive to compress more and more into lives that are finite, resulting in "burnout, burn up, and burndown." As Canadian author and theologian Ralph Heinzman notes in Rediscovering Reverence, contemporary Western culture has lost the very idea of reverence and awe.

Reverence conveys a human attitude of respect and deference for something larger or higher in priority than our own individual selves... Reverence results in humility as a Jewish text puts it... (And) awe is the emotion we feel when we encounter someone or something that transcends our normal life, and embodies qualities of excellence, or beauty, or some kind of power or authority that force our admiration, and to which, in some way or other, we submit ourselves, voluntarily or no... (pp. 18-19)

Which brings me back to what I am learning about a spirituality of winter in general and our encounters with snow in specific. "We cannot force the snow to fall. But we can go outside and wait. Grace cannot be manufactured. It arrives—or it doesn't. This is what the contemplatives have always known. This is what Sabbath practice is about. This is what silence and solitude offer. Not escape from the world, but a different relationship with it—one based not on aggression and acquisition but on receptivity, response, and cooperative participation in the ongoing creation of the world." (Fuller, ibid) From my perspective, this means at least the following:

+ First, we must recognize that there is a momentum to a storm that can not be stopped. We may rail against it - piss and moan, bellyache, and carp till the cows come home, too - but none of that matters. We must go through this storm as both Meister Eckhart and the Serenity Prayer tell us: reality is the will of God. It can always be better, but we must accept what cannot be changed and make our peace with it. We are now in a radical and cyclical realignment that is not only bringing to a close 70+ years of rule of law but also the ethos of social equality. I am not saying we must like this - I hate it - but culture, politics, and religion are shifting in ways that are challenging and dangerous. Nostalgia for the past is pointless. So, too, the self-righteous posturing of the Left that's long on elitist blame but short of practical solutions to economic, cultural, and spiritual alienation. The blathering of the Right with its hatred and denigration is equally destructive. The time has come to steel ourselves for our current "dark night," practicing the time-tested tools of contemplation, including centering, stillness, celebration, and small acts of service and care for those most vulnerable.

+ Second, if storms cannot be changed or tamed but, rather, only endured, it is also true that they don't last forever. It is neither fantasy, naivete, nor ideological projection to suggest that a slowly emerging majority of ordinary Americans are growing weary of the current cruelty and chaos. More and more are realizing that WE are not" failing modern life, but modernity is failing US!" (Fuller) This transition is far from complete - and will clearly take more time - but objective evidence points to those who are once again shifting their political and emotional alliances. Those who have lost faith in this current darkness and brokenness are seeking solace. And those who recognize that the storm cannot last forever are starting to build bridges. A recent poll taken immediately after the murder of Alex Pretti documents that many of the young and Latino voters who shifted loyalties in the last national election are now shifting back with a vengeance. A small but growing number of Republicans and their pundits are breaking away from the monolith by demanding a joint investigation into Mr. Pretti's murder. And a few new media outlets are pointing out both the outright lies of the current regime, as well as their ugly and dangerous consequences. An old movement song reminds us that, "It's always darkest before the storm..." Today the snow is still coming down - and we already have more than 24 inches to deal with - but my eyes are not lying: this storm - and all storms - will end.

+ And third, this snowstorm has slowly pushed some towards a new level of cooperation. It is too early to say too much about the all too new mayor of NYC, but he put together a winning coalition that tapped into the real angst of real people without much ideological carping or blame. He clearly respects our wounds and vulnerabilities. He also knows how to bring desperate communities back into relationship with one another in pursuit of the common good. Cultural critique, Ted Gioia at Substack's "The Honest Broker" has named the work of Mamdani and others the ascent of a "new romanticism." (read his essay @ https://www.honest-broker.com/p/25-propositions-about-the-new-romanticism?img=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%

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More than two years ago, I predicted the rise of a New Romanticism—a movement to counter the intense rationalization and expanding technological control of society. This idea had started as a joke. Oh Beethoven, come save us! And give Tchaikovsky the news. But when I dug deeply into the history of the original Romanticist movement, circa 1800, I stopped laughing. The more I probed, the more I was convinced that this provided a blueprint for countering the overreach of technology, the massive expansion in surveillance, and the centralization of both political and economic power.

A few weeks back, right after Renee Good was murdered, I awoke from a deep sleep with an aching panic attack. I'm not prone to these, but have experienced them from time to time when my inner equilibrium is being challenged and/or changed. Over the past decade, I've had to confront my anxieties in pursuit of both personal equanimity and social compassion. Initially, I concluded that there was something wrong or broken in me that caused me to inwardly come apart at the seams with grief and uncertainty. But on the night in question, two things happened that I now recognize as sacred revelation. First, lying silently in bed that night with my anxiety over the violence and hatred allowed me to feel it deeply. I wept. I felt unhinged. Or, in other words, I grieved. I practiced what I've preached. Like Job, I didn't distract myself from my despair. I felt it. Fully. Part of what I realized in my silent darkness was that I was doubting God's grace and love: could the way of the Cross REALLY transform reality? Was it enough? Was there something MORE I could or should do?

Doubt is NOT the absence of faith. Rather, it's an act of clarifying and I started to sense that whenever I felt overwhelmed with anxiety, it was NOT an inward fault but the very voice of God calling me deeper. Like the Rumi poem, Love Dogs, says:

One night a man was crying,
“Allah, Allah!”
His lips grew sweet with the praising,
until a cynic said,
“So! I have heard you
calling out, but have you ever
gotten any response?”
The man had no answer for that.
He quit praying and fell into a confused sleep.
He dreamed he saw Khidr, the guide of souls,
in a thick, green foliage,
“Why did you stop praising?”
“Because I’ve never heard anything back.”
“This longing you express
is the return message.”
The grief you cry out from
draws you toward union.
Your pure sadness that wants help
is the secret cup.
Listen to the moan of a dog for its master.
That whining is the connection.
There are love dogs no one knows the names of.

Give your life to be one of them.

My feelings of emptiness and yearning were the Via Negativa - the silent call of the sacred - into deeper trust. So, while holding my despair, I read a few lines from Cynthia Bourgeault's The Wisdom Jesus about kenosis - Christ's commitment to self-emptying that empowered him to get over himself and trust God ever more deeply. And as I read, and let the words speak to my heart, I could feel the anxiety lift. It was palpable. It was awesome. It was restorative. Not that my feelings changed anything objectively in the world. No, what the presence of grace did was change me. A little bit. Enough to get grounded again. Enough to trust that Dr. King was right: hatred cannot conquer hatred, only love can do that; just as the darkness cannot overcome darkness but needs the light. Call this my new credo: be still and know - reconnect to small celebrations as I seek and serve - and trust that grief and emptiness are just as much of the Lord as jubilation. And just in case I wasn't listening, I just received this announcement from Kaitlin Curtice about the creation of her Aki Institute of Peace and Justice, built upon three pillars: rest, resistance, and responsibility. (check it out along with me @

https://kaitlincurtice.substack.com/p/announcing-the-aki-institute?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=29242&post_id=185735318&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=49p8n&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

aging, letting go, and rocking into a new year

2026-01-01T18:32:00.000-05:00

Somewhere along the line, I came across this quote from Meryl Streep: Aging means letting go, it means accepting, it means discovering that beauty was never in our skin... but in the story we carry inside us. Ten years ago, while on sabbatical in Montreal, Di and I read aloud The Art of Aging by Alice Matzkin. It added depth to our own experiences with aging and breadth to Streep's paraphrase of Carl Jung's insights about:

Moving from outward ambition to inward meaning, a process he called individuation, where the second half of life becomes about integrating unconscious aspects to find wholeness, wisdom, and a deeper self, rather than mere decline. He described this as the "afternoon of life," shifting focus from accumulating achievements to cultivating inner richness, embracing one's whole story, and becoming truly oneself.

This insight keeps drifting through my mind, especially as we played a rocking set at the Sideline Saloon earlier this week. Our band, All of Us, is certainly "over the hill" by popular standards: we're all over 70. Nevertheless, we still rock hard, get jiggy with it, and encourage others to shake it up with abandon. In addition to backing up two friends on Neil Young and Bob Dylan tunes, we did "Baby Blue" by Badfinger, "Main Street" by Bob Seeger, and the extended rock version of Lou Reed's "Sweet Jane."

I'm not as spry as I once was: my lower back often aches after playing a gig, my hearing is increasingly compromised, and I get klutzier and klutzier with every passing month, tripping over guitar cords, gear, and knocking down more microphones than I care to admit. But while packing up, a young local musician said to me: Dude, you guys are freakin' awesome, and I LOVE that you're keeping the candle of joy. resistance, and beauty alive! It filled my heart to overflowing to hear this, as THIS is precisely the band's mission. Not just playing oldies, but playing songs so passionately that we nourish one another's joy. St. Lucinda sure as hell gets this right:

That's why we invite other local artists who affirm our mission to join us at our various gigs: we want THEM to have the musical support needed to multiply the joy in the miracle of music.

I've come to realize that's also why the sacred pushed me back into ministry. I thought I was done. Like Lou Reed snarled, stick a fork in it, it's done, in the Last Great American Whale. I was tired, worn, and burned out, discouraged and profoundly disappointed with so-called organized religion. So, I called it quits, spent a few years of solitude, gardened, and settled into being grandpa. True, I created an online spiritual reflection during COVID that I kept up for a few years, exploring the mystical aspects of following Jesus. But I stayed as far away from a local church as possible.

After the pandemic, however, I was invited to serve as a worship leader and provide pastoral care to a North County congregation for 6 months. I'd been away for half a decade, so I gave it a shot - and loved it. That extended break - and the ministry we crafted together - not only replenished my soul, but gave my body an extended rest. Clearly, there are times we're called INTO ministry just as there are times we're called OUT, too. Today, I'm about to start year three of a ministry in Palmer, MA - and I love it.

So, what have I learned and made flesh as an aging rock'n'soul disciple of Jesus? At least the following:

+ Wisdom-keeper. Kaitlin Curtice is right when she writes: like winter itself, the only way through this moment in reality is through it. "There is no other way to approach winter but to travel through it. We can’t go around it, can’t avoid it, can’t pretend it’s not there." I resonate with her poetic articulation of this:

It was never around but through, never the easiest way, but the one that guarantees us the chance to know and love ourselves at the end. So, open the door, go through the portal, stand at the threshold, carry yourself through the winds of grief, walk the perimeter of your soul's deep forest until you are ready to journey through. Get your shoes on. It's time.

+ Small is Holy - so quit trying to make it big. My ego and training pushed me to try to do something significant with my life. But mostly that's bullshit: what truly matters is being awake, present, and loving with whatever is right before you. In trying to be a hotshot, I missed loving those closest and most dear to me. It's not that I wanted to ignore them; I simply wasn't paying attention. A few years ago I found these words for a song I called "small is holy."

Thinking big and acting strong – led me into all that’s wrong Hitting bottom taught me well .– strategies to get through hell

Touch the wound in front of you, that’s all you can really do
Keep it close, don’t turn away, make room for what’s real today

SMALL IS ME, SMALL IS YOU, SMALL IS HOLY AND RINGS TRUE
SMALL IS HARD, SMALL REVEALS
THE WAY OUR HEARTS CAN BE HEALED

Blame is such a viscous deal, wastes your time and never heals
Pay it forward’s more the way, grace trumps karma every day
Live the questions, wait your turn, take a deep breath, try to learn
Losing is one way to win what once has died might live again…

Wisdom’s blessing’s upside down
Something’s lost and something’s found
Each day brings us something good
Carry water, chop the wood

When my life bewilders me – it's time to listen silently
Don’t say too much, don’t push too hard
What helps the most is in your backyard
Let it lead your soul to rest
Just like a child on momma’s breast
The arc of love is slow but true
And waiting to come home to you…

+ Music is the best way to articulate and share spiritual wisdom. Theology has its place for those who want a linear explication of grace. But music, as Tricia Gates Brown writes: cuts deeper. I've known this for ages, but in the last decade have devoted myself to going deeper into this gift. Ms. Gates Brown puts it like this:

I have found that for me, nothing stirs my pot like listening to certain kinds of music; and listening in a certain heart-wide-open way. I have come to see this heartful listening as the closest thing to prayer for me. It is not that listening to such music leads me to pray or puts me in a mind for prayer. No, it is that the experience of listening itself is prayer. Heartful music listening has become my most impactful and meaningful prayer experience. Sometimes I have this experience when I’ve read an amazing poem, but rarely. When listening to my favorite music, I become so filled with love/empathy/awe for my fellow creatures and life itself, and feel so deeply in touch with the divine, that prayer is all I know to call it.

And when I am PLAYING and SHARING music... OMG! Giving up some of my former understanding of ministry simply to groove has been life-changing. Getting older - and owning it - as the New Year embraces us DOES invite relinquishing a lot. But letting go also opens new gifts and blessings way beyond my control. Happy New Year dear friends.

cultivating a sacramental consciousness during advent...

2025-12-20T10:57:00.000-05:00

We are quickly approaching the Fourth Sunday of Advent. My spiritual tradition asks us to embrace a threefold discipline during the four weeks before Christmas by getting grounded in the practice of patience, cultivating a contemplative presence each day, and trusting the spirituality of this season, wherein the earth shares wisdom with us if we have eyes to see and ears to hear. It is a practical mysticism committed to nourishing a sacramental consciousness: a way of being that discerns both the facts of our reality and their more profound truths. Chris Webb suggests that living sacramentally means consciously acting so that "everything we do and everything we experience in the material world - the depth and breadth of our existence - is an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace." Interfaith author, Kaitlin Curtice, talks about this as "wintering" - going inward, watching, waiting, and wondering what will be revealed and experienced during the unfolding darkness - a core commitment of her Potawatomie heritage. My soul hears a parallel in Gertrud Mueller-Nelson' description of Advent spirituality:

Waiting is mysteriously necessary to all that is becoming. As in a pregnancy, nothing of value comes into being without a period of quiet incubation: not a healthy baby, not a loving relationship, not a reconciliation, a new understanding, a work of art, never a transformation. Rather, a shortened period of incubation brings forth what is not whole or strong or even alive. Brewing, baking, simmering, fermenting, ripening, germinating, and gestating are the feminine processes of becoming, and they are the symbolic states of being that belong in a life of value, necessary to transformation. (To Dance with God, p. 64)

Cultivating a sacramental consciousness has always been a challenge, all the more so in these days of perpetual engagement with our digital distractions. Nevertheless, my musical colleagues and I in Wednesday's Child believe that we can not only interrupt the tumult of our culture by offering a bit of respite in what we call our Blue Christmas/Longest Night liturgy, but also share tools for unplugging, too. I have partnered with these gifted and faithful musicians for over 15 years of music-making, gift-bearing, consciousness-raising, and soul-sharing. We create in pursuit of faith, hope, and love. In doing so, we have become a small but eclectic collective that spans different ages, backgrounds, genders, spirituality, family, aesthetics, and perspectives. A small faith community nourished by song, striving to integrate each person's unique gifts, quirks, and blessings into the whole. As we've been preparing our 2025 take on the Longest Night (December 21) through music, song, silence, poetry, candlelight, and presence, I've heard a sacred invitation to learn from the darkness.

Darkness scares us. Darkness can feel like a nightmare. We’ve been taught to fear it, to avoid it, to keep the lights on, to think happy thoughts, to pretend everything’s all right, and to not go into “that dark place.” Yet because God created both light and dark, day and night, and called ALL of creation good, we are invited to learn to see in the dark. It is, to be sure, an acquired art, without which we will miss what is there. Barbara Brown Taylor, put it like this in her book, Learning to Walk in the Dark: "I have learned things in the dark that I could never have learned in the light, things that have saved my life over and over again, so that there is really only one logical conclusion. I need darkness as much as I need light....new life starts in the dark. Whether it is a seed in the ground, a baby in the womb, or Jesus in the tomb, it starts in the dark."

After collecting the songs and poems that resonated with us this year, three discrete yet interrelated challenges surfaced. One recognized the fullness of our respective schedules: it hasn't been easy to ensure the whole band is consistently together for rehearsals. Because we deconstruct songs before refashioning them, having folk away slowed the simmering process of creativity down considerably. There are a ton of reasons why this has been so, and there's no blame; it's just the luck of the draw that's made this year more complicated.

A second challenge involved new material and genres: the core of this year's liturgy is built on seven songs from Gen X and Millennial culture, which is a big shift for some of us old timers. It's been exciting, but also required a longer learning curve to make the art of Alanis Morrissette, NIN, REM, David Bowie, and others work within our groove. Which points to wrinkle number three: how to close this gig? After finding a path through the first two challenges, we came to a strategic and aesthetic fork in the road. After tossing away a few good but as yet unformed songs, there was no consensus about how to bring it all home.

At first, this was vexing to me: with only a few days before it was time to stand and deliver, I was yearning for clarity, and it wasn't coming. Further, my heart genuinely wanted us ALL to weigh in and clarify how we thought it best to wrap things up, but we had to do this virtually. Would that we had a few more weeks to meet, talk, and rework some tunes in person, but we'd already used all the available time. So, after probably too many IMs and emails, we agreed to trust simplicity and see how that shakes out. My point in recounting these challenges is that creating art and worship in community is an existential act of practicing sacramental consciousness. We were listening to what the heart wanted us to know. What were likewise searching through the wisdom of our flesh, too, even while discerning how the whole presentation fit together intellectually. Aesthetics, culture, liturgy, and experience mashed together with reality, trust, love, confusion, and our mission to create a safe space for contemplation. I won't speak for others, but this strikes me as a growing edge for the band. Tricia Gates Brown wrote in her Substack column:

Listening, singing, and sharing music in a certain heart-wide-and-open way has become for us closest thing to prayer we know. And it’s not that listening leads me to pray or puts me in a mind for prayer and we become so filled with love/empathy/awe for my fellow creatures and life itself, that we feel deeply in touch with the divine.

Creating and sharing sacramental consciousness music in cooperative solidarity is transformative. It is not always easy and never simple, but rich, rewarding, and blessed in ways I could never have imagined. Come join us this Sunday in Palmer, MA @ 4 pm.

a week of sorting clutter...

2025-12-02T16:15:00.000-05:00

Advent One 2025: I HATE clutter. Always have and always will. So, on what became a delightful snow day, I gave my attention to dusting, vacuuming, sorting, tossing, and scouring our home. I have no idea when this happened last, but the accumulating detritus was contributing to my weariness and needed the old heave-ho! (There's still a bedroom in need of attention - and my personal study is a wreck - but that may have to wait for another day.) The "Two of Us" band practice was cancelled, a chicken is in the sink defrosting, and soon our satchel of Advent/ Christmas music will reappear to grace our home with the sounds of Loreena McKinnitt, Vince Guaraldi, John Rutter, George Winston, and a host of subdued Celtic and French carols. All of this, as well as the silence of the snowfall and the absence of our clutter, has brought me a measure of blessed serenity - and I am grateful.

To say that this Advent feels like a reckoning of sorts for me would not be wrong: I am increasingly aware of my own mortality, conscious that on some days my energy dwindles and requires a newfound attention to choices, profoundly concerned about the ups and mostly downs of my loved one's health, and perplexed about the long-term consequences of my nation's ongoing obsession with chaos and cruelty. Earlier in the day, I read C. Christopher Smith's Substack column, Paying Attention to Poetry, which noted that:

Poetry (can be) a way to practice paying better attention—a habit that is essential to resisting the ever-encroaching allure of exploitative technology and consumerism and to being formed more deeply into the image of Christ. Paying attention is a key part of what makes us human, and poetry can be a valuable tool for developing that skill.

https://cultivatingcommunities.substack.com/p/paying-attention-to-poetry?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Could it be that in this season of watching, waiting, and paying attention, beyond the clutter, it's the poetry of Advent that is calling to me for a new hearing? I'm rather taken with this from Wisława Szymborska: A Little Bit About the Soul

A soul is something we have every now and then.
Nobody has one all the time
or forever.

Day after day,
year after year,
can go by without one.

Only sometimes in rapture
or in the fears of childhood
it nests a little longer.
Only sometimes in the wonderment
that we are old.

It rarely assists us
during tiresome tasks,
such as moving furniture,
carrying suitcases,
or traveling on foot in shoes too tight.

When we’re filling out questionnaires
or chopping meat
it’s usually given time off.

Out of our thousand conversations
it participates in one,
and even that isn’t a given,
for it prefers silence.

When the body starts to ache and ache
it quietly steals from its post.

It’s choosy:
not happy to see us in crowds,
sickened by our struggle for any old advantage
and the drone of business dealings.

It doesn’t see joy and sorrow
as two different feelings.
It is with us
only in their union.
We can count on it
when we’re not sure of anything
and curious about everything.

Of all material objects
it likes grandfather clocks
and mirrors, which work diligently
even when no one is looking.

It doesn’t state where it comes from
or when it will vanish again,
but clearly it awaits such questions.

Evidently,
just as we need it,
it can also use us
for something.

This is an act of faith - trusting that our elusive souls can and will use us for something - an incarnational paradox resolved only by patience and practice. Lou Reed sang, "It takes a busload of faith to get by" - and he wasn't kidding. Kate Bowler adds, "Advent begins in the dark—with one small candle and a stubborn kind of hope. Not the shiny, everything’s-fine version. The gritty, keep-going kind. We wait. We bless what’s unfinished. Because the world is still a mess. And God is still coming." Her reflection for Advent One rings true to me and feels like I do today:

The church, in its wisdom, starts the new year not with champagne toasts or gym memberships but with a candle in the dark. Advent is the beginning of the Christian calendar, though you’d be forgiven for missing that detail if your mailbox is already stuffed with glossy holiday catalogues. We start here—not at the finish line of Christmas morning—but in the long, deliberate work of waiting. Advent always begins on (or around) the feast of St. Andrew, the first disciple to follow Jesus and the first to drag someone else (his brother Peter, no less) along with him. Andrew is not the most memorable apostle. He’s not Peter with the speeches or John with the poetry. He’s the brother in the background. But he is the one who told his brother, “We have found the Messiah” (John 1:41).

The first week of Advent is devoted to hope. Not optimism, which is a little too seamless, too unrealistic, too pie-in-every-sky. And not nostalgia either. Remember those childhood Christmas concerts in drafty school gyms, where a dozen shaky recorders and one out-of-tune piano were supposed to sound like angels singing? We didn’t care—it was magic. But nostalgia can trick us into thinking the best days are behind us. Advent hope is grittier. It looks squarely at the world as it is—fragile, unjust, unfinished—and still insists that God is not done yet.

And so it is, has been, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen. Last Sunday, I taught the children of the church some of our Advent hymns - and how to use the hymnal. After worship, we all made Advent wreaths to take home and I was given this stunning and arresting crucifix made of wire and nails. It took my breath away. This Sunday, our children will present the congregation with a new white altar cloth. We will baptize a newborn, too, before gathering around the Lord's table to celebrate Eucharist. Indeed, the world is still a mess - and God continues to come to us for the Holy One is not done yet.

this year's advent wreath...

2025-11-30T19:40:00.000-05:00

I love Advent almost as much as All Saints/All Souls Days: these semi-barren early winter holy days speak to my soul like this blessing from Jan Richardson.

Go slow if you can.
Slower. More slowly still.
Friendly dark or fearsome,
this is no place to break your neck by rushing,
by running, by crashing into what you cannot see.
Then again, it is true: different darks
have different tasks, and if you have arrived here unawares,
if you have come in peril or in pain,
this might be no place you should dawdle
I do not know what these shadows ask of you,
what they might hold that means you good or ill.
It is not for me to reckon whether you should linger
or you should leave.
But this is what I can ask for you:
That in the darkness there be a blessing.
That in the shadows there be a welcome.
That in the night you be encompassed by the Love that knows your name.

Given the complexities of contemporary blended families, we head out of town for the feast of Thanksgiving in the USA. We cherish the quiet solitude of Quebec's Eastern Townships and take a few days to bask in the stark boldness of the land. This also lays a foundation for the practice of Advent that always begins with the call to watch and wait. The Community of Corrymela in Northern Ireland frames Advent well in this prayer:

God, the thief who breaks into this world;
God, the child who cries out with new life:
as we prepare ourselves for Christmas,
and bed down for this season,
surprise us in the night.
Steal us away from the gloom.
May we find ourselves separated
from monotonous tasks
and ready
for the coming of light.
Amen.

To suggest that I was replenished and well rested for today's Advent One worship would be an understatement: I was pumped! And the good souls in Palmer outdid themselves in setting the environment with tasteful holiday lights, garlands, a lovely little tree, and the Advent wreath. I am partial to Advent wreaths having been schooled by Gertrud Mueller-Nelson's insights in To Dance with God. Some years back, while going deeper into Celtic practices, we celebrated Advent for a full 40 days. This is the Advent wreath from that year.

This year, after our church's Advent wreath workshop, a fun intergenerational event that was well attended, I schlepped home through a mini-snow squall on the mountain, I had a thought about this year's home wreath. I still have a TON of pumpkins - my autumn/early winter delight - and wanted to incorporate them somehow into the mix. So, with a bit of ascetic and sacramental liberty, this is what I came up with for this year.

There's pumpkins and Native corn, apples, evergreen, candles in Advent blue, and a Tohono O'otham nativity painting from Tucson crafted by Ted DeGrazia. This year's wreath is ALL about Mother Earth and solidarity with what is small, vulnerable, and ultimately holy. And so, like the lone candle, I begin another cycle of watching, waiting, and trusting that a small sign of blessing will break forth from the darkness.

from thanksgiving eve to blue christmas...

2025-11-28T11:48:00.001-05:00

For 30 years, in the spirit of Pete and Arlo, my various churches celebrated Thanksgiving Eve as a Night of American Music. In one incarnation, it was like a Prairie Home Companion: lots of group singing, emphasis on folk songs and the blues. In time, it became more like the Last Waltz with special guests playing short sets, the house band rocking things up, and a few a capella gospel tunes added for good measure.

All that came to a close 12 years ago when a massive snowstorm shut down the town. The Thanksgiving Eve shows never recovered. And while we have shared a variety of other benefits, one era had clearly ended - and, truth be told, I am still nostalgic for the magic we shared on those sacred nights.

After COVID, the core band regrouped into what is now Wednesday's Child. On Sunday, December at @ 4 pm in Palmer, MA, Wednesday's Child will offer up a "BLUE CHRISTMAS/LONGEST NIGHT" encounter with song and silence, prayer and candlelight, as an act of refuge and solidarity with all who grieve during this season. It is a quiet and safe space to feel all those complicated emotions truth so often obscured by popular culture.

These days, the promise and potential of that first Massachusetts Thanksgiving in 1621 still resonates in my soul. That's why we slip out of town for a few quiet days of rest and reflection on the big picture - NOT the sentimental or sanitized version of this holiday that ignores the genocide the white settlers committed not long after the harvest feast - but the whole story. For we must own that legacy even as we strive to live into and through it. Historians agree that the English Pilgrims and others didn't make contact with the Wampanoag people for the first four months on North American soil.

"The "real history" of Thanksgiving involves a 1621 harvest feast between Plymouth colonists and the Wampanoag people, which was a brief moment of cooperation that contrasts with the subsequent history of conflict and oppression. The traditional narrative focuses on the 1621 event, while more complete histories acknowledge the violence and displacement of Native Americans that followed. From a Native American perspective, particularly the Wampanoag, Thanksgiving is often seen as a day of mourning, not celebration."

If you are free, please join on in December. We're using the music of Sarah MacLachlan, Bruce Springsteen, Alanis Morissette, David Bowie, NIN/Johnny Cash, and others for a quiet time of owning and sharing the complexities of this season.

letting a word from the Lord choose me...

2025-11-25T17:57:00.003-05:00

Sometimes we just don't know until it happens: a blessing, a sorrow, a joy, a grief, or a word. Over the past three decades, I've been slowly practicing the spiritual discipline of "listening for a word." The wise and creative spiritual director, Christine Valters Paintner, puts it like this:

Beginning in around the third century CE, a group of monastics known as the desert mothers and fathers retreated to the deserts of northern Egypt, Syria, and Palestine to pursue lives of silence and prayer. A key phrase, repeated often among the sayings of the desert mothers and fathers, is "Give me a word." Rather than choosing a word, I invite you to let a word choose you. What does this mean exactly? How am I chosen by a word? It means releasing your thinking mind and expectations and resting into your heart....What if I trusted that a word would come when the time was ripe? What if I let go of the need to find something for myself and opened myself to receive what comes? If you find yourself obsessing over the “right” word, it is time to breathe and let go. Pay attention to synchronicities around you. Look for images that shimmer and make your heart stir with delight. Notice what is making you uncomfortable, calling you to grow beyond the known edges of your life. These are the places where your word will make itself known. Eventually.

When I was considering leaving ministry in Tucson, I kept "hearing" the call to trust the "unforced rhythms of grace." During my sabbatical 10 years ago, it was "tenderness." And when my congregation offered me an insulting and professionally unacceptable offer in order to save money, after stealing away for a week of silence, what I "heard" was the word "behold." Behold what the Lord is doing! Behold what the Scriptures are saying. Behold what options are unfolding. And as I beheld, it became clear it was time to let go - so I retired. After Covid, a denominational leader suggested to me that just because I sensed it was once time to let go of ministry... we're a people of the resurrection, so maybe there's new life yet to be discerned. And she was right: new life became my word as I returned to ministry first in Williamstown and now in Palmer.

Once again, we are away for a few days of silence and solitude - and beyond any plans or expectations - an from Dr. Valters-Paintner arrived to "let a word choose me" for Advent or the unfolding year. As I felt my heart smile it hit me: Oh, THAT is what this Thanksgiving retreat is all about: listening for a word to choose me. The good doctor writes:

For some of you, the word may come right away, but others may find the process much slower. Trust that perhaps it is the waiting itself that is being offered to you as wisdom and practice. The word comes as a gift. You will often know it through an intuitive experience, a more embodied sense of yes. The word (or phrase) is one that will work in you (rather than you working on it). Remember that a word that creates a sense of inner resistance is as important to pay attention to as one that has a great deal of resonance.

This rings true... so may it be so. Tonight we'll light a fire in the fireplace, eat pierogis and sausage, and sleep in a new place. Tomorrow we will explore. We'll rest and wander, listen and pray in anticipation of the Feast of Thanksgiving.

christ the upside-down king, thanksgiving harvest, and letting go...

2025-11-23T17:53:00.000-05:00

Today is Christ the King Sunday within the Western Body of Christ. It is a relatively new feast day crafted and advanced by Pope Pius XI in 1925 to challenge the rise of fascism throughout Europe after WWI. As one who came late to celebrating liturgical and sacramental spirituality, I cherish this feast, which closes the circular church calendar with a strong blast of paradoxical wisdom. To be sure, like many of the "imperial" festivities of formal Christianity, there is a literal and obvious focus to Christ the King Sunday - the cosmic rule of Christ over all temporal powers - which is what Pius intended. But as Diana Butler Bass so eloquently notes:

One thing has messed up Christianity more than any other single problem — the desire of Christians for a king. If you consider the inquisitions, crusades, heresy hunts, persecutions, and wars conducted by a religion claiming the Prince of Peace as its savior, the problem of human kings seems obvious. For about 1,600 years — ever since Christians hailed the Emperor Constantine as the “Thirteenth Apostle” — the church founded by and for the poor has constantly given in to the temptations of worldly wealth and power. There will be a lot of sermons preached today on the kingship of Jesus. Jesus, the crucified King. Jesus, the King of a Kingdom within. Jesus, the King of love. Many of those sermons will relocate, redefine, or reconstruct the idea of kings and kingdoms. Most, I suspect, will be thoughtful and helpful. Then, churchgoers will lustily sing, “Crown Him with Many Crowns.” The real issue is not relocating, redefining, or reconstructing the language or imagery of kings and kingdoms — the problem is kings. Period. Kings are the problem.

https://dianabutlerbass.substack.com/p/christ-the-no-kings-sunday

Rather than advance this corrupt and corrupting practice, however, I have found myself searching for the "Paschal Mystery" rooted in the most profound truths of our faith. Like the Cross itself, Christ the King Sunday is saturated in subversive blessings: it is a time to clearly articulate the upside-down, paradoxical, and compassionate spirituality of God's "Small is Holy" realm. Our guide is the leader who empties himself to stand in solidarity with the wounded. It is a messiah born from below who washes feet and tells us that our new commandment is to do like wise. It is the Lord who incarnates God's presence through embodied acts of tenderness and restoration. This requires a sacramental spirituality rather than a doctrinaire or literal take on scripture and tradition. I have long been shaped by the clarifying words of Gertrud Mueller-Nelson in her brilliant text, To Dance with God.

Voting with the right wing or cheering for the left wing is our attempt to create a kingdom outside ourselves, but the kingdom we ultimately discover is "not of this world." It is not a perfect government, nor is it the kingdom of God, only a pie in the sky which we get in a better day than this one. It is a process in which each of us participates. It lies in our individual, inward relatedness to God. The kingdom God has prepared for us becomes ours as we participate personally, with growing consciousness, in its ultimate unfolding and fulfillment. In knowing ourselves, in living out creatively our unique way, and in loving relationships with our fellows, the process takes place, and we inherit the kingdom. (To Dance with God, p. 231)

Beauty, paradox, and the challenge of relinquishing control shape my take on the feast of Christ the King Sunday, all of which have been obscured in my tradition for too long by our sentimental attachment to the dominant culture's take on our secular Thanksgiving. Two more wise women have helped me move beyond the mythology and ideology of this holiday. Carrie Newcomer links God's revelation in nature at this time of year with a sacred invitation to make harvesting flesh:

I’ve always have connected the holiday of Thanksgiving to the concept of harvest. In September and October people are still stopping their cars at road side stands for the last tomatoes, red peppers, waxy light green cabbage, round womanly squash, sweet potatoes, sweet apples and cider. Although the unbridled abundance of July has slowed, the last crops are still completing their natural cycle. But by the end of November the harvest is now fully in and next year’s garlic planted. The fields, so recently lush with tasseled corn, are now dry stalks and stubble. The last golden remnants of warm air is now carrying the first early hints of the coming winter. Harvest is a time of cutting down and bringing in, preparing for leaner times and longer nights. And yet, I can’t think of harvest as a time comprised solely of dying. Yes, Harvest is the completion of a cycle of planting, growing and reaping, but it is also a time of taking stock and acknowledging the fruits of our labor. Harvest is a time to consider what has grown from the seeds we planted in hope and tended with our most sincere trying. Harvest is also about grace and gratitude for what we did not do—for the sunshine and rain, for natural processes, butterflies and bees, for all the things we did not create but only received as a gift.

Harvest is also about considering who the fruits of our work might feed. For I am surely the recipient of the work of those who came before me, the ancestors who did not meet me in person, but dreamt of me when they planted seeds that would take more than one life time to bear fruit. I am the receiver of all they envisioned and I am the keeper of a promise I carry forward. I am planting seeds for those I’ll never meet. I am sending songs into the air to fly where they will, landing like birds or apples in the grass. I am not done by a long shot with all my growing, but at the end of autumn I am considering who the harvest of my life might feed. This is one of the beauties of autumn, a reminder that the work of our lives is not measured in how much we did—but how deeply we loved, how hopefully we planted and how faithfully we tended our gardens the time we are given.

https://carrienewcomer.substack.com/p/in-the-time-of-harvest?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=49p8n&utm_

source=substack&utm_medium=email

And Kaitlin Curtice, a citizen of the Potawatomi Nation, amplifies this in the ways she encourages us to move beyond the algorithms of empire by returning: "to the dust, aki, earth, our wild selves, our relationship with Segmekwe refreshed and refined."

"Be wild; this is how to clear the river. In its original form, the river does not flow in polluted, we manage that. The river does not dry up, we block it. If we want to allow it its freedom, we have to allow our ideational lives to be let loose to stream, letting anything come, initially censoring nothing. That is creative life. IT is made up of divine paradox. It is an entirely interior process."(Clarissa Pinkola Etsés) Want to escape the technological grip on your life? Get to the woods, to the river, to a quiet spot of the house where you can stare at the leaves falling from trees or birds flying by.

https://kaitlincurtice.substack.com/p/rhythms-of-reciprocity

So, while dominant culture squeezes us into the mold of conformity by paying homage to the idols of Black Friday; empire ignores our legacy of genocide by confusing overeating and falling asleep in front of our TV sets with gratitude; and popular religion hides the subversive elements of Christ the King Sunday: the heart of the feast day insists that:

This is one of the rare times in the year when Christianity’s two major feasts — Easter and Christmas, Cross and Incarnation — come into close connection. The one condemned before crowds in Jerusalem is the same one born in a forgotten, backwater town. The one hailed by angels, shepherds, and philosophers from afar is the same one eventually betrayed, abandoned, and left to die in shame. “Silent Night” and “What Wondrous Love is This?” overlap and interweave, together creating another kind of song entirely. And this juxtaposition, this creative tension, is precisely the point. To paraphrase the great womanist theologian Delores Williams, the “kingship” of Christ can only be understood through dissonance and harmony: “King of Kings!” on the one hand, as if sung by a resplendent choir; and “poor little Mary’s boy” on the other, as if whispered by an elderly woman standing alone. Or, “Reign of Christ” on the one hand; and God’s child, exquisitely vulnerable, on the other. These two songs, Williams contends, sung back and forth in call and response, is “the Black church doing theology.” Each song needs the other for the truth to shine through.

(SALT Project, https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/2019/11/18/power-and-mercy-salts-lectionary-commentary-for-reign-of-christ-the-king-sunday)

Every year, to honor THIS Christ the King as well as the discipline of Advent, we leave these barely United States of America for French-speaking Quebec to sit in the woods. To be still and know. To let go of all the superficialities of our native land so that we might discern not only what is real but what the Spirit may be asking of us as the new year of Advent ripens. Kaitline Curtice gets it right for me when she asks that this year:

In the United States, it’s Thanksgiving Week, and, hardly anyone would know it, but the day after Thanksgiving is Native American Heritage Day.
And I feel a lot like the way it feels with a lot of things, how the build up to something is so big, so epic, so monumental—get Thanksgiving right or get out of the way. But I want something different this year. In the same way that I don’t necessarily endorse New Year’s resolutions in the sense that they are supposed to last all year—we need seasonal resolutions and goals—I wouldn’t endorse Thanksgiving to be the destination for us.

This year, I want Thanksgiving to be a beginning, not a destination.In other words, I want us to show up tenderly to this moment, whether it’s in our personal lives or in our collective ones. I want us to think of Thanksgiving as a marker on our journey, or the beginning of something, not the final destination. I think we put too much pressure on ourselves—to change, to say the right thing, to deal with people in the ways we think we should, to read the right books, to post the right things to social media. This is where the tenderness of words, of poetry, of the prophets of our time speak to us.

Slow down. Let the words come as they come. Don’t rush this process. You will be ready for everything when you’re ready.This week, we begin. We decide where we want to start from—the truth about Thanksgiving, holding nuance and complexity, honoring the sacredness of Mother Earth, or all of the above. We begin here, knowing that the journey is lifelong, that it isn’t just this holiday season, but the coming cold winter months that will guide us home to ourselves, the sacred Earth always tending to our wounds with us. That is where we begin, and that is how we hold space for a destination beyond and above us. We have arrived, but we are still arriving.

https://kaitlincurtice.substack.com/p/thanksgiving-as-beginning-not-as

Lord, may it be so for those open to a new/old way of being...

credits:

1) karl barth for dummies

2) kay redman: servant king

3) christ the king: ronald raab

heaven and earth shall become one...

2025-11-19T14:28:00.001-05:00

One of my favorite lines in the Psalter is found in Psalm 85:10: Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other. (KJV) A The more contemporary rendering is equally evocative: Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; righteousness and peace will kiss. Faithfulness will spring up from the ground, and righteousness will look down from the sky. (NRSV) This verse revels in paradox while simultaneously revealing the sacred unity of creation. The wedding of our existential Alpha with the eternal spiritual Omega unites humanity with the holy, light with darkness, the feminine with the masculine, and spirit with matter beyond all dualistic distractions. It depicts wisdom within mystery - ecstasy within existence - awe and even trust within doubt. Other verses in the Psalter amplify this blessing as well:

+ Psalm 89:14: Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne, O Lord, as loving devotion and faithfulness go before you.

+ Psalm 112:4-5: A righteous person is gracious, compassionate and just... his/her affairs are guided by justice.

+ Psalm 103:6: The Lord works righteousness and justice for all the oppressed.

+ Psalm 145:8: The Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love.

Unpacking the implications of this text has long been essential to my spirituality and ethics. Mercy - or steadfast love - is how English Bibles translate the Hebrew word: hesed. My heart prefers compassion from: "the Latin "compati", meaning "to suffer with," and is a combination of the prefix "com-" (meaning "with" or "together") and the verb "pati" (meaning "to suffer"). It literally means to "suffer with" another person and is related to the English word "patient" and the Greek word for suffering, "pathos". Compassion is spiritual, emotional, and incarnational solidarity. Truth or faithfulness are how we have translated the Hebrew, emeth, a noun describing that which is certain or trustworthy. Righteousness, from the Hebrew, tsedek, could be rendered into English as justice or right relations especially when the Hebrew, shalom, is added. Peace often sounds too passive, as in the absence of conflict, when it is all about everything that makes creation whole, safe, and satisfying.

For me, these two verses offer a pattern to practice - a model for a living, nondual spirituality - or the path of embodied prayer. It is a way of being where I can experience the essence of the holy through the choices I make every day: it is not a sappy piety promising "pie in the sky" or eternal bliss in the great by and by, but sacramental living that trusts the promises of God. A spirituality that not only changes me but advances tenderness and healing in my relationships and choices. That's what I hear in part two of the text: Eternal verity will spring from the earth (from the Hebrew erets for our fields, soil, or the ground below the sky) as the bounty and blessings of heaven are given shape and form by our activity (from shamayim for the restorative power linking the love of the celestial realm with the nitty gritty earth cycle of life below.)

Poetically, prophetically, and practically, Psalm 85 offers me both guidance for living a spirit-filled life as well as the assurance that compassion and right relations fulfill what became the Lord's Prayer: Our Father/Mother, who art in heaven... Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is already being done in heaven. Like the words of the prophet in Micah 6:8 - The Holy One has told you already, O mortal one, what is good and what the Lord requires: to DO justice (that is to become - ashah - an act of healing - from the Hebrew mishpat for the one who renders a just verdict), to cherish kindness (from hesed) and walk through this life humbly with the Lord (from halak for walking/behaving and tsana` for cultivating a perspective or vision born from below.) The wisdom of Jesus gives me the tools and practices to cultivate this holy/human embrace. St. Paul amplifies it in Romans 12:

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 the Lord. 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 God requires wants, 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, and develops well-formed maturity in you. (From Eugene Peterson's The Message)

Last week was for me a series of mini-humiliations - nothing catastrophic or immobilizing (save a flat tire that is currently being repaired) - just a series of little upsets to my expectations. Both a bit of minor frustration encased in a sacred invitation to make some attitude adjustments. As things unfolded, and I resisted, I kept hearing Fr. Richard Rohr's words: I pray to the Lord that every day I face at least three humiliations, for they help me practice humility by knocking me off my high horse. These roadblocks to my expectations remind me NOT to believe my own public relations and to trust that my shadow is a gift that helps me live beyond my self-imposed limitations. The poet, Juan Ramón Jiménez, puts it like this in Robert Bly's translation of "Yo No Soy Yo."

I am not I.
I am this one
walking beside me whom I do not see,
whom at times I manage to visit,
and whom at other times I forget;
who remains calm and silent while I talk,
and forgives, gently, when I hate,
who walks where I am not,
who will remain standing when I die.

So, in the spirit of All Saints' and All Souls' Day - and en route to the mixed-up and paradoxical holiday of American Thanksgiving - Di and I are preparing for a few weeks of letting go. Tonight we'll rehearse with Wednesday's Child for our Blue Christmas gig on December 21st in Palmer. On Friday, we head to Vermont with part of our family to join my Sunday School teacher at the memorial service for his beloved wife of 46 years. And soon afterwards, we'll get out of Dodge for a retreat in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, where solitude and rest will be the way we return thanks. The wise and time-tested Gertrud Mueller-Nelson recently suggested that gratitude is likely the best way to celebrate Thanksgiving. So, today, as I wait for my tire to be replaced, I choose to be grateful for this past week - roadblocks, shadows, and all.

art work from Jan Richardon.

humility and gratitude embrace...

2025-11-15T11:59:00.000-05:00

The Lord works in mysterious ways, God's wonders to behold. Sometimes I have to be reminded of that - especially trusting that something sacred is happening beyond the obvious and way beyond my control. Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder, author of Mother, Creature, Kin: What We Learn From Nature's Mothers in a Time of Unraveling, notes that:

Sacred as that which pulls us beyond the bounds of our individual selves, envelops us within mystery, and gives us a glimpse into the vast, entwined, eternal network of living beings that we are in relationship with.

On and off for 40+ years, I've been reminded of this when someone says to me after Sunday worship: "That message REALLY helped me today, pastor. Thank you." That is always nice to hear. But when my message was only modestly delivered - or worse, when I think it was a train wreck, no matter how hard I tried to do otherwise - not only am I immediately humbled, but mystically awakened to the way the Holy Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for human words. (Romans 8:6) I've loved quoting St. Bob Dylan over the years when he snarled, "Something's going on all around you and you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?" (Ballad of a Thin Man) And then it happens to me, and I don't hear it as a cynical snarl, but more like an invitation to rest and trust God's grace is bigger than anything I can control or even comprehend.

Our band, All of Us, played Methuselah in Pittsfield, MA, last night with some of our beloved friends. It was an uneven show. Our shared songs - with Sean and Deb and later with Wendy and Elaine - worked pretty well as they are always gracious and gifted. And a number of our rock and soul songs shook the house, too. But there were a few genuine clunkers that not only took me by surprise but left me a bit frustrated. It's happened before, of course, and will occur again. For some reason, I wanted last night to be special. Maybe my expectations got in the way - that's been known to throw me off balance before - and I'm aware there was only a limited time for rehearsal, too. But given the grief and angst that dampens life in these barely United States of America these days, I yearned to share a balm in Gilded. As I drove home in the cold, dark, early winter night, however, I was feeling blue. Not bereft or despondent, just tender and sad. The night air seemed to affirm the gig's ambiguity. (Photo credit: Lee Everitt)

When I woke up this morning, after re-editing this week's sermon about holding sorrow and celebration together as part of an integrated whole, not only did I get two beautiful emails of encouragement from friends that had joined us last night; but one included a tender rendition of a sweet song by Lowell George and the other not only a jazz reworking of "Bless be the Ties That Bind" but a request for our set list so that he might learn a few of our songs and add some addition harmonies. Truly, "something is going on all around me, and I don't know what it is, do I, Mr. Jones?"

It is wonderfully humbling to be confronted with truths I've been preaching for decades, but apparently still don't fully practice myself. As one note said: Your passion is infectious! All I can say is thank you - and thanks be to God.

yearning for all saints' day...

2025-10-28T12:34:00.003-04:00

I am still blessed to have a few childhood friends. That may not be such an awesome reality for those who grew up in small communities and stayed there, but it was for me. Given my father's career path, we moved every two years until we stayed put in Southern Connecticut so that I might complete junior and senior high school. These are the friends and lovers I still hold close to my heart. I hear from them periodically on FB and rejoice in that simple pleasure. And when possible, I try to visit. This August, I spent an afternoon with my once Sunday School teacher, who now lives in a retirement community in Vermont. Last week, he told me that his beloved wife of over 40 years had died and wondered if I might be able to join the upcoming Memorial Service to sing the Paul Stookey song I sang at their wedding. "In a heartbeat, brother," I replied without hesitation and have started reworking the music for this occasion.

Her death - and others throughout 2025 - have awakened in me a yearning to celebrate All Saints/All Souls Day more intentionally this year. Once upon a time, we would use our annual Thanksgiving Eve gig to name and perform some of the music crafted and shared with the world by musicians who had crossed over that year. We would also mark those who had joined the journey home in our church. I find that this year I am keenly missing the presence of: Bill Moyers, Sly Stone, Brian Wilson, Diane Keeton, Phyllis Tribble, Robert Redford, Jane Goodall, Graham Greene, Lou Christie, Rick Derringer, Valerie Mahaffey, Ruth Buzzi, Jesse Colin Young, June Lockhart, Danny Thompson, Roberta Flack, Jerry Butler, Marianne Faithfull, Garth Hudson, Sam Moore, and Peter Yarrow. Everyone will have their own list, of course, and this is mine, highly subjective and top-heavy with musicians to be sure.

I trust that one of the reasons I'm so focused on the fleeting holy days of All Saints' and All Souls' this year is my own mortality. There's no escaping the fact that I know I am much closer to the end than the beginning. Another concerns the current chaos in our culture, which denigrates history and depth in relationships in favor of short-term profits and selfish acquisitions. Social critic Ted Goia writes that we are now living through a time when most social institutions are run like casinos, eager to bleed us dry in a fun house we cannot escape. If you've ever been in a casino, you know what I mean: countless seemingly exciting distractions, no easy way out, the lure of winning against the odds, and a conspicuous absence of any clocks.

So, this weekend, we'll quietly slip out of Dodge for a few days and nights of quiet wandering. And reminiscing. And reconnecting with loved ones. I need a little downtime right now to feel both my loss and my gratitude. Tonight, our band, All of Us, will play some rock'n'roll Halloween favorites. Tomorrow, our Wednesday's Child band will work on this year's "Blue Christmas" gathering. This weekend, our church will present an intergenerational liturgical drama before celebrating Eucharist. And in between, there are leaves to gather, acorns to scatter, outdoor chores to be completed before the first heavy frost, and a whole lot of quiet time to take stock. The poet, Jacqueline Osherow, gets it so right for me this year with her "Autumn Psalm" poem. It's long, obviously, but well worth the time.

A full year passed (the seasons keep me honest)
since I last noticed this same commotion.
Who knew God was an abstract expressionist?

I’m asking myself—the very question
I asked last year, staring out at this array
of racing colors, then set in motion

by the chance invasion of a Steller’s jay.
Is this what people mean by speed of light?
My usually levelheaded mulberry tree

hurling arrows everywhere in sight—
its bow: the out-of-control Virginia creeper
my friends say I should do something about,

whose vermilion went at least a full shade deeper
at the provocation of the upstart blue,
the leaves (half green, half gold) suddenly hyper

in savage competition with that red and blue—
tohubohu returned, in living color.
Kandinsky: where were you when I needed you?

My attempted poem would lie fallow a year;
I was so busy focusing on the desert’s
stinginess with everything but rumor.

No place even for the spectrum’s introverts—
rose, olive, gray—no pigment at all—
and certainly no room for shameless braggarts

like the ones that barge in here every fall
and make me feel like an unredeemed failure
even more emphatically than usual.

And here they are again, their fleet allure
still more urgent this time—the desert’s gone;
I’m through with it, want something fuller—

why shouldn’t a person have a little fun,
some utterly unnecessary extravagance?
Which was—at least I think it was—God’s plan

when He set up (such things are never left to chance)
that one split-second assignation
with genuine, no-kidding-around omnipotence

what, for lack of better words, I’m calling vision.
You breathe in, and, for once, there’s something there.
Just when you thought you’d learned some resignation,

there’s real resistance in the nearby air
until the entire universe is swayed.
Even that desert of yours isn’t quite so bare

and God’s not nonexistent; He’s just been waylaid
by a host of what no one could’ve foreseen.
He’s got plans for you: this red-gold-green parade

is actually a fairly detailed outline.
David never needed one, but he’s long dead
and God could use a little recognition.

He promises. It won’t go to His head
and if you praise Him properly (an autumn psalm!
Why didn’t I think of that?) you’ll have it made.

But while it’s true that my Virginia creeper praises Him,
its palms and fingers crimson with applause,
that the local breeze is weaving Him a diadem,

inspecting my tree’s uncut gold for flaws,
I came to talk about the way that violet-blue
sprang the greens and reds and yellows

into action: actual motion. I swear it’s true
though I’m not sure I ever took it in.
Now I’d be prepared, if some magician flew

into my field of vision, to realign
that dazzle out my window yet again.
It’s not likely, but I’m keeping my eyes open

though I still wouldn’t be able to explain
precisely what happened to these vines, these trees.
It isn’t available in my tradition.

For this, I would have to be Chinese,
Wang Wei, to be precise, on a mountain,
autumn rain converging on the trees,

a cassia flower nearby, a cloud, a pine,
washerwomen heading home for the day,
my senses and the mountain so entirely in tune

that when my stroke of blue arrives, I’m ready.
Though there is no rain here: the air’s shot through
with gold on golden leaves. Wang Wei’s so giddy

he’s calling back the dead: Li Bai! Du Fu!
Guys! You’ve got to see this—autumn sun!
They’re suddenly hell-bent on learning Hebrew

in order to get inside the celebration,
which explains how they wound up where they are
in my university library’s squashed domain.

Poor guys, it was Hebrew they were looking for,
but they ended up across the aisle from Yiddish—
some Library of Congress cataloger’s sense of humor:

the world’s calmest characters and its most skittish
squinting at each other, head to head,
all silently intoning some version of kaddish

for their nonexistent readers, one side’s dead
(the twentieth century’s lasting contribution)
and the other’s insufficiently learned

to understand a fraction of what they mean.
The writings in the world’s most spoken language
across from one that can barely get a minyan.

Sick of lanzmen, the yidden are trying to engage
the guys across the aisle in some conversation:
How, for example, do you squeeze an image
into so few words, respectfully asks Glatstein.
Wang Wei, at first, doesn’t understand the problem
but then he shrugs his shoulders, mumbles Zen
… but, please, I, myself, overheard a poem,
in the autumn rain, once, on a mountain.
How do you do it? I believe it’s called a psalm?

Glatstein’s cronies all crack up in unison.
Okay, groise macher, give him an answer.
But Glatstein dons his yarmulke (who knew he had one?)

and starts the introduction to the morning prayer,
Pisukei di zimrah, psalm by psalm.
Wang Wei is spellbound, the stacks’ stale air

suddenly a veritable balm
and I’m so touched by these amazing goings-on
that I’ve forgotten all about the autumn

staring straight at me: still alive, still golden.
What’s gold, anyway, compared to poetry?
a trick of chlorophyll, a trick of sun.

True. It was something, my changing tree
with its perfect complement: a crimson vine,
both thrown into panic by a Steller’s jay,

but it’s hard to shake the habit of digression.
Wandering has always been my people’s way
whether we’re in a desert or narration.

It’s too late to emulate Wang Wei
and his solitary years on that one mountain
though I’d love to say what I set out to say

just once. Next autumn, maybe. What’s the occasion?
Glatstein will shout over to me from the bookcase
(that is, if he’s paying any attention)

and, finally, I’ll look him in the face.
Quick. Out the window, Yankev. It’s here again.

when you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you don't blame the lettuce...

2025-10-15T14:07:00.001-04:00

As a part of my commitment to self-care AND professional development as both pastor and spiritual director, this week I began a five-part reflection at Wisdom Ways. The Rev. Dr. Cynthia Bourgeault has revised her "Introduction to Wisdom School" course, designed to help practitioners move beyond mere information to "knowing more deeply rather than knowing more." She writes:

Wisdom schools appear throughout history during two critical periods: when humanity stands on the edge of evolutionary leaps in consciousness, and, during times of great planetary instability. Our current era fulfills both of these conditions as we struggle between individualistic consciousness and an emerging collective awareness that can think from the whole to the part.

Taking on this commitment of study and practice - including renewing my on-
again, off-again romance with Centering Prayer - brought to mind a poem by Tich Naht Hanh he calls: When You Plant Lettuce.

When you plant lettuce,
if it does not grow well,
you don't blame the lettuce.

You look for reasons
it is not doing well.
It may need fertilizer,
or more water, or less sun.
You never blame the lettuce.

Yet if we have problems
with our friends or family,
we blame the other person.

But if we know how
to take care of them,
they will grow well,
like the lettuce. Blaming
has no positive effect at all,
nor does trying to persuade
using reason and argument.
That is my experience.

No blame,
no reasoning,
no argument,
just understanding.

If you understand,
and you show that you understand,
you can love, and the situation will change.

Blaming - and reacting - is not what's needed. Instead, to paraphrase Bourgeault, whenever we engage in conversation, it is best to do so from an inner quiet so that we might speak from silence with force and agency. For the past 45 years, I seem to learn and practice this only to gradually forget it and lose touch. Perhaps with each recollection, I go a little deeper, but then again, maybe not. There is a rhythm to my journey and it involves trust, rest, silence, and careful conversation.

reflections on relinquishing and renewal part two...

2025-10-13T13:26:00.001-04:00

NOTE: This is part two of an unfolding reflection on relinquishing and renewal.
Over the past week, our small family marked the Feast Day of St. Francis and celebrated our grandson’s 12th birthday (they’re the same day), harvested our first 10lb pumpkin from our own garden, brought most of our plants indoors to escape the first frost, visited Ioka Farms for yet another family search for the Great Pumpkin, and blessed about 15 dogs, along with a few cats and a bunny, at church. It has been a full time. Autumn is now full-blown in these parts as the trees shed their colors and the squirrels and chipmunks snatch up the acorns. Soon, all the yellows, oranges, and browns will give way to silvers and greys, and the stripped-down hills and wetlands will invite us to return to the inward journey. All Hallows’ Eve is just around the corner, so too All Saints and Souls Days – thin places in time and matter where ordinary people sometimes sense something of the Creator’s vast albeit mysterious presence within and all around us. Parker Palmer puts it like this:

For years, my delight in the autumn color show quickly morphed into sadness as I watched the beauty die. Focused on the browning of summer’s green growth, I allowed the prospect of death to eclipse all that’s life-giving about fall and its sensuous delights. Then I began to understand a simple fact: All the “falling” that’s going on out there is full of promise. Seeds are being planted and leaves are being composted as Earth prepares for yet another uprising of green. Today, as I weather the late autumn of my own life, I find nature a trustworthy guide. It’s easy to fixate on everything that goes to ground as time goes by: the disintegration of a relationship, the disappearance of good work well-done, the diminishment of a sense of purpose and meaning. But as I’ve come to understand that life “composts” and “seeds” us as autumn does the Earth, I’ve seen how possibility gets planted in us even in the hardest of times.
(check it out: https://www.yesmagazine.org/orphan/2018/10/22/parker-palmer-on-autumn-aging-and-acceptance)

One layer is diminished – and dies – while another simultaneously sends seeds of new life outward to prosper and grow in their own time. On Indigenous Peoples Day in the USA – a national holiday saturated in our culture wars – I find my heart singing the wisdom of the ancient prophet Isaiah, who captured the paradox of creation in his poetic oracle.

Seek the Lord while he may be found; call upon him while he is near; For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose and succeed in the thing for which I sent it. For you shall go out in joy and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress; instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle, and it shall be to the Lord for a memorial, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.(Isaiah 55)

This sounds to me like both the first inhabitants of this land—the Pocomtuc and Nipmuc nations of the Machican/Algonquin region—and St. Francis of Assisi. Without appropriating their respective cultures, I am grateful to recognize that my own Western spiritual tradition celebrates a holistic spirituality that honors the unity of creation, too.

To be sure, the Franciscan way is a minority report in Christianity – what Richard Rohr calls a generous and alternative orthodoxy - but so too the practices of ancient Celtic spirituality that peeks its head up in culture from time to time. For those who practice, we have now entered one of the unique, but all too often ignored, liturgical season called Allhallowtide. Officially, it spans only the three days between October 31 and November 2. Aesthetically and incarnationally, however, it feels like it has already begun. In this, nature clearly manifests a wisdom greater than the contemporary church, as the greenery, mammals, birds, and reptiles of this region prepare to withdraw from their outward activities in anticipation of winter.

Those who live close to the land grasp this as their once-abundant fields are

harvested and ploughed under before the frost. But rather than honoring the rhythmic wisdom of nature with rest, New Englanders initiate a new cycle of activity: schools reopen and students return, organizational budgeting ramps up, and church programming kicks into high gear after the summer hiatus. This feels increasingly wrong to me. Could it be yet another contradiction of domination long embedded into our culture, economics, and politics? Trisha Hersey of the Nap Ministry is on to something when she observes that:

We are grind culture. Grind culture is our everyday behaviors, expectations, and engagements with each other and the world around us. We have been socialized, manipulated, and indoctrinated by everything in culture to believe the lies of grind culture. For a capitalist system to thrive, our false beliefs about productivity and labor must remain. We have internalized its teachings and become zombie-like in Spirit and exhausted in body. So, we push ourselves and each other under the guise of being hyperproductive and efficient. From a very young age, we begin the slow process of disconnecting from our bodies’ need to rest, and we are praised when we work ourselves to exhaustion… Our bodies and Spirits do not belong to capitalism, no matter how it is theorized and presented. Our divinity secures this, and it is our right to claim this boldly. I’m not grinding ever. I trust the Creator and my Ancestors to always make space for my gifts and talents without needing to work myself into exhaustion.

Small wonder the ancient Celts created a 40-day Advent season that not only mirrors Lent but constructs an intentionally counter-cultural season of rest and respect that resonates with Mother Nature. In Celtic Advent, a wheel was removed from one of the farm’s working wagons to become the prototype of our Advent wreath. It thus slowed work down while providing a frame for candles to illuminate a darken home. Ms. Hershey adds:

Rest is as natural as breathing and waking up. Rest is part of our nature. Resting is about getting people back to their truest selves. To what they were before capitalism robbed you of your ability to just be. Rest is anything that slows you down enough to allow your body and mind to connect in the deepest way. We must focus on knowing that our bodies and our worth are not connected to how many things we can check off a list. You can begin to create a “Not-To-Do-List” as you gain the energy to maintain healthy boundaries. Our opportunity to rest and reimagine rest is endless. There is always time to rest when we reimagine.

I rather like the way Randy and Edith Woodley, co-founders of the Eloheh Indigenous Center for Earth Justice and Eloheh Farm and Seeds, put it: “To overwork—that is, to spend time working for what one does not need—means that one’s life is out of balance, and it breaks the circle of harmony.” I have come to trust that the liturgical calendar I have inherited – and cherish – holds some additional possibilities for reclaiming a more balanced way of being. Like the great Red Maple in the wetlands behind our home that first bursts forth in wild yellows before becoming gray and bare, there is a time for every purpose under heaven – and now is clearly a time to journey inward.

reflections on relinquishing and renewal: part one

2025-09-30T14:59:00.003-04:00

NOTE: In keeping with the spirituality of this season, I’ve been drawn to craft a multiple-part reflection on relinquishing. Over the next few weeks, I will attempt to articulate some of the reasons why St. Paul’s call to kenosis has become a touchstone. In Philippians 2, the apostle borrows a baptismal hymn from the early church: “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 himself 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.”

Part One:

When we moved from Tucson to Pittsfield – a dramatic journey that included emotional peaks and valleys as well as geographic ones – we not only slowly wandered through deserts, prairies, mountains, and farmland before crossing the Atlantic for an extended romp through London, but we also returned to the land of our respective births. In ways that continue to be revealed, we began a sojourn of relinquishment: travelling backwards through lands once vanquished and violated by so-called pioneers and settlers, our return to New England has been an expedition of reversal. To say that this was not clear at the outset would be an understatement. Yes, I felt a warm sense of security when we first hit the rolling hills of the Berkshires. Clearly, the terrain around Webster and Lake Chaubunagungamaug had long been a family homeland. At least four generations regularly made the lake our vacation destination. A variety of church retreats and numerous honeymoons also took place here. And experiencing all four seasons was ecstatic.

But it wasn’t until I returned to gardening that the magnitude and meaning of this move was clarified. You see, while I experienced blessing after blessing while doing urban ministry in Michigan and Ohio, and genuinely loved the Sonoran Desert with its big sky, wild flora, and almost prehistoric fauna (okay, I am not a fan of rattlesnakes!). I could never get the hang of gardening in those places. In Saginaw and Cleveland, there wasn’t adequate space. And in Arizona, without perpetual drip irrigation, plants placed outdoors in the morning withered and died by sunset. I was able to amass an unruly collection of houseplants for a few years, but nothing grounded me like the feel of cool, dark soil in my hands as I carefully nestled seedlings into fertile earth. I had not realized how much I missed intimacy with Mother Earth. Nor did I know how much she wanted to teach me about owning, grieving, relinquishing, and then revisioning my heritage as a Scots-Irish settler. The Native American wisdom-keeper, Robin Wall Kimmerer, put it like this:

“Action on behalf of life transforms. Because the relationship between self and the world is reciprocal, it is not a question of first getting enlightened or saved and then acting. As we work to heal the earth, the earth heals us.” (Braiding Sweetgrass)

It began with the seasons. New England blessed us the first year back with a smorgasbord of colors. The trees in the wetlands behind our home burst into vibrant yellows, reds, oranges, and browns, while sumac turned a deep crimson, and sunflowers and goldenrod waved to us in the wind. The aroma of burning wood wafted our way as daylight gave up to midnight in the afternoon. At first, it was disorienting to enter a store at 3:30 pm only to exit into a shroud of darkness. But those late October and early November days helped me reconnect with the numinous mystery of thin places in time and space – small wonder that All Hallows’ Eve and All Saints' and Souls' Days became ensconced in these months.

Add to that our first local Halloween parade, with costumes and floats right out of “Northern Exposure,” and it was clear that we were no longer in Kansas anymore, Toto. We promised ourselves we wouldn’t carp or whine about winter – it rarely even hints at freezing in the desert – so we soon gathered protective thermal underwear, snowshoes, and eventually hand-me-down cross-country skis. I discovered the varying shades of grey and brown of winter to be soothing after a decade of 300+ days of sunshine in the Sonoran Desert. The barren trees and frozen rivers offered a calming call to join nature’s inward journey, which led me to Parker Palmer’s “spirituality of the seasons”.

Autumn is a season of sacred beauty, but it is also a season of decline: the days grow shorter, the light is suffused, and summer’s abundance decays toward winter’s death. Faced with this inevitable winter, what does nature do in autumn? She scatters the seeds that will bring new growth in the spring — and she scatters them with amazing abandon. In my own experience of autumn, I am rarely aware that seeds are being planted. Instead, my mind is on the fact that the green growth of summer is browning and beginning to die. My delight in the autumn colors is always tinged with melancholy, a sense of impending loss that is only heightened by the beauty all around. I am drawn down by the prospect of death more than I am lifted by the hope of new life. But as I explore autumn’s paradox of dying and seeding, I feel the power of a metaphor. In the autumnal events of my own experience, I fixate on surface appearances — on the decline of meaning, the decay of relationships, the death of a work. (For more, please go to: https://fetzer.org/news/the-paradox-of-fall-a-sacred-meditation/)

Palmer put me back in touch with Thomas Merton, whom I had read in the 1970s but lost touch with as my ministry matured. “There is in all visible things…a hidden wholeness,” Merton contends. A sacramental way of seeing wherein “the visible world of nature conceals a great truth in plain sight: diminishment and beauty, darkness and light, death and life are not opposites. They hold together in the paradox of the 'hidden wholeness.” A Zen koan says: When the student is ready, the Buddha will appear. And my Buddha was Mother Nature, who was starting to sound a lot like the Grateful Dead in “Ripple. (Additional parts to follow as autumn unfolds.)