Blessing for a Dearly Departed Mouse

Written on the occasion of the death of Sarah, my daughter's pet mouse:

Spirit of all that is and ever will be, we are grateful for the life of this mouse Sarah, who brought us joy and laughter. While she was not with us for very long, she was a cherished member of our family and one that we will miss very much. She helped remind us that even the littlest and least of earth’s creatures is important and worthy of our respect. We will carry her memory with us always, and when we remember her, we will know that we are blessed to have known and loved her. Blessed be the life of Sarah. Blessed be all those who live and die. Blessed be those who mourn. Blessed be.

Why Every Seminarian Needs a Child

Not long ago, I overheard a conversation between two prospective seminarians who were wavering about taking the plunge into the madness that is divinity school. As they were both parents of young children, one of their concerns was how they would manage doing all the necessary work to get through school while still managing their parental duties.

What I told them--and what I'll tell you--is that I don't think I could get through seminary without my child. My daughter keeps things real, keeps things light and keeps things moving. Having a young child gives me the opportunity to live my faith in intimate, meaningful ways even while I am in the midst of the ministerial formation process. At the end of the day, it's good to have a reminder of what is truly most important--otherwise, the liminal nature of the seminary experience can seem dizzyingly disorienting.

And, more than anything else, I find myself in need of constant invitations and opportunities to play, to explore and to create. I'd like to think I'd be able to come up with these opportunities on my own, but, without a child to lead the way, I'm pretty sure I'd just be bearing down harder and harder, with little thought about the importance of play.

At the same time, my daughter is being given the opportunity to witness me pursuing a heartfelt calling and working really hard to realize my vision. In other words I am, at my best, modeling what I believe are some of our most important human characterstics: perseverance, curiosity and risk-taking.

While I'm not seriously advocating the idea that everyone in divinity school should have a child, I do believe that my experience of seminary is greatly enhanced by being a parent, and my experience of being a parent is great enhanced by being a seminarian.

Today my daughter Ella turns seven, an auspicious occasion and a good time for me to remember that, without her presence in my life, I probably would not be doing what I am doing. For all these gifts, I am grateful beyond words.

"I Can't Believe We're Actually Doing This" (again)

Since I began seminary last year, I have been having these "I-can't-believe-I'm-actually-doing-this" moments on a fairly regular basis. It happened when I was working at the homeless shelter last year, and when I was working as a hospital chaplain last summer, and it happened again this past Sunday as I stood before my internship congregation.

I was excited because my teaching pastor (the senior minister who is supervising me) Deb had given me the responsibility of writing and reciting a short chalice lighting for the start of the service. Deb welcomed everyone, I sounded the bell, Deb read a beautiful Rilke poem. And then I pulled from my pocket my painstakingly written . . . to-do list for the weekend. I had grabbed the wrong piece of paper from the table as I dashed out of the house that morning.

"This is it," I thought to myself. "Here you are, and there they are. Let's see what happens now."

So, rather than say to the congregation: "Fold laundry; buy salad stuff; change cover on couch . . .", I recited the chalice lighting text from memory -- which, as it turns out, was not all that difficult to do as it was very short and based upon a poem I had written just a few weeks ago.

And later I started thinking that this experience is what congregational life is really like. You work on something, you become a part of a community, you lovingly prepare something to share with others, you practice -- and then, when things go wrong (as they so often do), you improvise. And, almost always, things turn out alright.

What's most exciting to me as I have begun this two-year period of learning in an real-life congregation is the fact that it's actually happening. My seminary classmates and I have taken yet another leap into the unknown, trusting that, while the world may be dangerous, it is also a place that calls us to act in faith.

And, as much as we might prepare for something -- even agonize over it sometimes -- I have a feeling that it is this faith that, in the end, will be of most importance to us.

In his beautiful novel "The Fifth Mountain," Paulo Coelho writes, "Fear reaches only to the point where the unavoidable begins; from there on, it loses its meaning." I believe that each moment, as it presents itself to us, offers us that encounter with the unavoidable. I pray that we may face it faithfully and with whatever grace might be given to us.

(And, just in case you're wondering: Yes, the laundry did get folded, the salad stuff was purchased, and the couch cover was changed . . .)

Late Summer Light

Late summer light on the lake

reminds me of the thinness

between seasons, between

bodies in motion and at rest.

Lying on the ground, I feel

the stillness of the water,

the heat of the sun and the

great fullness of the earth.

Falling now more like particles

than waves, the light weighs

heavily on the yellow-tinged

leaves. With them, I breathe,

yearning to burst into flame.

Meadville Convocation 2011: Congregational Studies

I am very grateful to be back in Chicago, where I re-connected with classmates and faculty for a 2-1/2 day convocation to kick off our congregational studies sequence. What a joy to see these folks after an absence of more than 5 months! And what a pleasure it was to meet some of the first-year students and to interact again with the third-year students--really an outstanding assembly of caring, committed people.

One of the greatest pleasures of convocation was being able to share our clinical pastoral education experiences with each other, both formally and informally. Some had better experiences than others, but it was for all a summer of great transformation and deepening and broadening of our understanding of what it means to be a minister.

This year will be a challenging one, but I am excited about the possibilities that it holds for me and for my classmates. The world has already been changed by us in ways, large and small, and I believe that we will begin living even more fully into our potential during this year. If we love and nurture our congregations in the same way we do each other, all will be well.

CPE: I found God . . .

For our closing worship service, my CPE intern group led an exercise in which all the chaplains who were gathered reflected on where they had found the sacred in the hospital. People were encouraged to write and draw where they had found God in their work there. I loved all the responses people came up with. Mine was as follows:

I have found God
in the hands of
the nurse who rubbed
the back of a grieving
mother for hours in
the middle of a long
night in the ICU.

I remember that night as I sat and stood in the room with a large group of family members who were watching their beloved 18-year-old son/brother/cousin die and saying their goodbyes. The mother was inconsolable, and I'm pretty sure that almost nothing I said (which was very little to begin with) made it through to her. It seemed as if the only thing that kept her from dying of grief in that moment, the only thing that kept her anchored in the room was the nurse who stayed right there with her and, for maybe 2-3 hours, never let go of her.

After the young man died and the family had gone, I walked back across the hospital and chanted quietly, "Om, shanti, shanti, shanti . . ."

CPE: So Little and Yet So Much

When I was beginning my summer of clinical pastoral education (CPE), I was somewhat intimidated by those who had already been through CPE and said that it taught them how very little anyone can do in these acute care situations, how anything and everything we might do falls well short of what is needed, and how CPE dispels any notion that we as pastors might actually be able to make much of a difference to people who are suffering.

While I do agree that the CPE experience is humbling in many ways, I have come away feeling amazed at just how much we can do in these challenging situations and how much difference even the slightest bit of pastoral care can make. While I have not cured or healed a single person this summer, I do believe my presence has been meaningful to many of the people I have seen at my hospital.


Maybe it was less traumatic for me than it has been for others because I had fewer unrealistic notions about my abilities going into CPE. At age 50, I don't have a whole lot of youthful fantasies or delusions about what I can and cannot do, and I have never held myself in such high esteem that I thought I could single-handedly turn someone's sorrow into joy -- nor have I ever believed that I might make the lame walk or cause the blind see.


And, without a doubt, I was blessed to have a CPE supervisor who follows a collegial educational model, rather than believing that CPE students should be treated rather like soup ingredients that must be thoroughly chopped into small pieces before they can be of any use. While I did feel challenged, I did not feel belittled or disrespected at any time during the summer.


And, when all else is said and done, I am left with a number of crystalline moments that I am not likely to forget. Over the last 10 weeks I have been present at more than 20 deaths, a couple of dozen severe traumas, and more heart-wrenching moments of suffering and painful decisions than I can name.


What amazes me more than anything else is that people have welcomed me into these most intimate of moments in their lives, have allowed me to be part of this experience that they might share only with close family members or, in some cases, with no one else at all. What a great gift that is!


Pastoral care is exhausting and difficult work, but I believe that, as a result of this experience, I have begun to see how compassion works in situations that are difficult almost beyond imagining. And I am reminded of the difference between mere empathy and compassion. As Matthieu Ricard has written:


"A way to deal with this challenge effectively is to cultivate unconditional love and compassion toward the suffering person. This is much more than merely resonating emotionally with the suffering person. . . Compassion is nothing else than love applied to suffering. Such love and compassion can override the feelings of distress and powerlessness that empathy alone generates and lead to constructive states of mind such as compassionate courage.”


Compassionate courage is a great gift of pastoral care work. It may not look like much from the outside, but I believe it is one of the most powerful forces in the world. I pray that we all might be courageous bearers of compassion in the face of suffering, that we all might be witnesses and bringers of the love that will not let us go.

Outside the Women's Hospital

A woman who is holding a teddy bear sits in a wheelchair in front of the hospital waiting for her ride home. About 10 feet away from her sits another woman in a wheelchair, also waiting for a ride home, but this one is holding a newborn baby.

In our hospital, women who lose a child—either through stillbirth or infant death—are given a teddy bear. The bear is not in any way intended to take the place of the baby, but rather is something to hold, something to serve as a small comfort in a time of great pain. It is also a reminder that their loss is real.

The woman with the bear glances at the woman with the baby, and I see tears form in her tired-looking eyes. I step over to her and say, “My name’s Jim. I’m a hospital chaplain. May I wait with you?” She nods.

I kneel beside her and take her hand while, with her other hand, she still clutches her bear tightly. We weep together in silence for about five minutes until her husband appears with their car, in which I see a very new and very empty baby seat.

As I help her to the car, the woman squeezes my hand and says, “Thank you.” I turn to go back inside, and I notice the woman with the baby still waiting for her ride. But now she is crying, too. She says, “Did I hear you say you were a chaplain?” When I answer “yes,” she asks, “Would you say a blessing for my daughter?”

“Of course." I hold the woman’s hand and place my other hand on the sleeping baby’s beautifully round, soft, bald head.

“Spirit of life and love, we give thanks today for this child. May she be happy and healthy and a blessing to all who know her. We do not understand the great mystery from which each of us emerges and to which each of us returns. But we pray that, while we are here together, we might all be angels for each other, bringers of peace and grace and love. Bless this child, bless this family and bless all who know joy and all who know suffering. This we pray now and always. Amen.”

CPE: What To Do When Everything Is a Crisis

For my clinical pastoral education, I am serving as a chaplain in a hospital that is a major trauma center, which means that ours is a crisis-driven department of pastoral care. As chaplains, we prioritize our calls as follows: (1) deaths; (2) traumas; (3) codes (generally called when someone’s heart or breathing stops); (4) urgent support; and (5) routine support.

During nights and weekends, when there is only one chaplain to cover the entire hospital complex (some 800 beds), we rarely have time to do anything but respond to deaths, traumas and codes. At these times, literally everything with which we are dealing is a crisis.

And what are we charged with doing during crises? Several things:

1. Be the calmest person in the room. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say *seem to be* the calmest person in the room. Simply having an apparently non-anxious presence can be a real gift to people in the middle of a situation that is wholly and madly chaotic. Being such a calm presence is certainly easier said than done, of course—especially when there is so much screaming of orders on the part of the medical staff and wailing pain and grief on the part of patients and their families. Still, I have found that at least the pretense of a calm demeanor is actually possible in most cases, and it gets easier as one gains experience in these situations.

2. Serve and advocate on behalf of patients and their families. In our trauma bays, chaplains are the ones who draw the privacy curtains, trying to maintain some semblance of dignity for those who are laid out on the examination table, often bruised and bleeding, with their clothes cut from their bodies. And we are the ones who often remind medical staff that there are family members in the waiting room who need to know what is going on with their loved one. And we are the ones who fetch the doctor when the answers they have given to family members are confusing, misleading or incomplete. We are the ones who take the family from the emergency waiting area to the intensive care unit, who show them where the restrooms and cafeteria are, who ask them if there’s anyone else who needs to be called.

3. Pray when requested and as needed. I’ve had to learn how to pray with people as I never have before. As chaplains, we are asked to pray in nearly every imaginable situation in the hospital—at births, deaths, just before surgeries, at times of great despair and loneliness, at times of confusion and misunderstanding, at the times when life-and-death decisions are being made, and—every now and then—at times of joy. I have changed from being a person who almost never prays (unless you count the many times I’ve said, “Please, God!” sotto voce over the years) to being a person who is praying all the time—both at the hospital and when I’m away from the hospital.

So, during on-call shifts (and much of the rest of the time) we get to see a lot of blood, raw pain, unedited grief and, occasionally, astonishing moments of grace. These last moments often come about only after hanging in there through all the other stuff.

There’s a reason why these “crisis shifts” at major trauma centers are mostly staffed by intern and resident chaplains who are serving for fixed periods of time. The intensity of the experience can be a source of awe and can also be thoroughly exhausting. Over time, such work takes its toll, even if one is the best self-nurturer in the world. As for me, I am grateful for my CPE experience and for the work of the many people who minister to those who are in the midst of crisis.

CPE: Learning by Leaping

The other day, I had another one of those moments where I found myself thinking: "If you'd told me a few years ago that I would be doing this, I would have said, 'No way.'"

In this case, I was standing in a hospital room surrounded by a large Spanish-speaking family, holding in my arms a beautiful, dead infant girl, whom I was anointing and blessing. The child's mother lay across the hall in the surgical intensive care unit, very near death herself after a terrible car wreck that occurred as the family was on their way to the hospital to deliver the baby.

In that room, at that moment, there was immense, raw pain. The pain of hopes dashed, loved ones lost, dreams shattered. And there was love.

I had hoped that I might get through my summer of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE), without having to deal with an infant death. But there I was, and there was the baby who died before she could be born, and there was the family, seeping pure grief from every pore.

With the help of an interpreter, I spoke with the family for a while. But, aside from the anointing and blessing, I had little to offer to these people other than my presence. I have no idea if my being there was any help or not, but I do know that I felt privileged to have been a witness to this moment of stunning sorrow.

As awful as this scene was, it was also a great gift to have been allowed to be with these people at this time. And there was no doubt in my mind that this moment was holy. At least for a little while, their great sadness was also mine, and together we lifted up what was lost, blessing all that might have been and all that has come to pass.

Singing the Names of God

To mark my 50th birthday, I made a pilgrimage to the Satchidananda Ashram-Yogaville in Virginia to sing with Krishna Das, who is a leading voice in the world of devotional chanting. His call-and-response songs are based on traditional Hindu kirtan but often with new melodies and new instrumentation. KD accompanies himself on harmonium (a small reed organ with hand-pumped bellows), and his band includes a violinist, two hand drummers, electric bassist, and finger cymbalist.

The evening began with a video of the ashram’s founder, Swami Satchidananda (who died in 2002) talking about the nature of sound and how it relates to yoga and meditation. He put forth the idea that sound is the highest or most refined form of matter. And the sound that one reaches toward is a universal hum: Om, Amen, Amin are all expressions of this same hum. The most basic and the most difficult to attain essence comes down to this hum.

He also talked about the Ramayana, the great epic Hindu poem, and how Ram (an incarnation of the supreme being Vishnu) had to wait for a bridge to be built to go across the sea to rescue his partner Sita, while Hanuman, the monkey-man companion of Ram, simply chanted the name of Ram and flew across the water. Swami-ji asked: So which is more powerful: Ram or the name of Ram?

In the introduction to one of his songs (My Foolish Heart/Bhaja Govinda), Krishna Das told the story of the aging Sanskrit scholar who was told by the Indian saint Adi Shankaracharya, “Bhaja Govinda,” meaning “Sing the names of God.” In other words, this man did not have long to live and better get busy with what really matters, rather than mere rote learning.

In fact, we all better get busy singing the names of God. And what are the names of God in our own lives and in our own experience? In his popular book about end-of-life issues, Ira Byock talks about “The Four Things That Matter Most.” They are: “Please forgive me.” “I forgive you.” “Thank you.” and “I love you.”

I would like to suggest that when we give voice to those four things, we are “singing the names of God.”

When we forgive ourselves we are on the path of compassion. When we forgive others, we are moving that compassion outward and extending mercy. “Thank you” is a prayer and perhaps the best expression of gratitude. And to say “I love you” is to impart that which is most important—the love that will not let us go and that, when shared, is the love that holds each of us in it.

Compassion, mercy, gratitude, love. We need to give form and voice to them all of our days. And then our lives may become a part of the great song that connects all to all. May it be so!

Om. Amen. Amin.

What have I learned in my first year of divinity school?

To Prophesy and To Praise

As we wrap up our community studies class, we've been making connections between brokenness and worship. What do we do as ministers to address what is broken in the world while holding up that which is praiseworthy? Is there really any difference or distinction between what's broken and what's worthy of praise?

Mary Oliver, in a recent O interview with Maria Shriver, says something interesting about being a "praise poet":

Mary Oliver: I like to think of myself as a praise poet.
Maria Shriver: What does that mean?

MO: That I acknowledge my feeling and gratitude for life by praising the world and whoever made all these things . . . Wendell Berry is a wonderful poet, and he talks about this coming devastation a great deal. I just happen to think you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. So I try to do more of the "Have you noticed this wonderful thing? Do you remember this?"

MS: You try to praise.

MO: Yes, I try to praise.

So, on one hand, we have Wendell Berry as the prophet/poet who holds up a mirror in which we see the havoc unfolding on our planet. And, on the other hand, we have Mary Oliver as the praise poet who holds up a mirror in which we see the beauty that is manifest in the world. In some ways, of course, this dichotomy is false. Certainly, Berry has praised and still praises, and Oliver has pointed out brokenness in small and large ways.

But I want us to remember that, whether we are prophesying or praising, we are still holding up the same mirror. In it, you can see both the beautiful and the broken. In fact, you cannot see the beautiful without seeing the broken. And you cannot address the brokenness until you have started to appreciate the beauty of everything--whole, broken, remembered, suddenly realized, healed, rent and scattered.

All of it praiseworthy and all of it broken. All of it made holy by the sacred "and" that allows us to hold apparently disparate visions simultaneously.

The world is additive. Reductive logic works in small ways for small tasks, but it does not reflect the nature of the universe.


It's always "and." Again and always "and." The greatest songs of praise emerge from the cracks in the world. And the only chance we have for healing and wholeness is to remember that these songs must be sung.

Intensive Classes as Baptism by Complete Immersion

Since Meadville has migrated to its new educational model, weekly, residential, semester-long classes are a thing of the past--rather like afternoon tea at the parsonage. And in their place are these absolutely crazy things called intensive classes, in which a whole semester's worth of learning is crammed into one week (more or less).

For the typical intensive course at Meadville, you do most of your required reading ahead of time, then attend one week, 6-8 hours each day, of lectures, discussions and various other learning activities. And after that, you have a few weeks to a couple of months to write a paper (or several papers) or produce some other artifact that demonstrates what you have learned.

Just to make things a bit more interesting, you are also doing some intense socializing/bonding with your classmates during the intensive week--oh, and attending whatever other extracurricular activities the school cooks up.

These classes are better than traditional classes because, at least for one week, you have to be pretty much totally invested in the class you are taking. You're forced to eat, breathe and think the material--waking, sleeping and everything in between. This baptism by total immersion in the material ensures that you get soaked to the bone in whatever you are studying.

Traditional classes, by contrast, are more like baptism by aspersion. You do have to show up for a couple of hours every week while a few drops of wisdom are sprinkled about your scalp, but there's no guarantee that you'll remember the experience at all. And memory of the actual experience is key, I think. It's difficult for me to imagine that I will ever forget sitting in a room with my classmates all day, every day for a week and laughing, crying and moaning together as we try to get a handle on whatever it is we are studying/experiencing.

There is value added in the emotional intensity that gets attached to the otherwise somewhat dry intellectual matter. Mixing some sweat and tears with the dust of the intellect results in something sticky that stays with you longer than the kind of learning you experience in a more traditional class.

What's harder about intensive classes is that they are exhausting. They are exhausting for everyone, but especially, I think, for those of us who tend toward introversion and really need a certain amount of alone time in order to process and regain some energy. But such is the life we are called to--a life of daily full immersion.

And for seminarians, it seems entirely appropriate that each class involves a kind of intensity that is something like a religious experience.

Susi Pangerl's Last Lecture

Today was the last day of my intensive class, "Introduction to Pastoral Ministry," at Meadville Lombard Theological School. I'm feeling loss in at least three areas:

First, it's hard to say au revoir to my classmates. Most of us won't see each other again until the end of August or later. Although I've known this group of people for less than 9 months, I already know them better than many people whom I've interacted with for 30 years or more. There's a special closeness that we share, a bond that is formed in the insanity of intensive classes and all the related glorious chaos. I love them; they drive me crazy; and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Second, it's hard to say goodbye to the Meadville Lombard building, which has been sold to the University of Chicago and will no longer be Meadville's home, beginning this summer. Although I'm a first-year student, I recognize the history that is contained in this building, and I know that this physical place is sacred for many who have come before me--and will hold little meaning for those who come after me. It's a rusty, old, run-down relic; but it's OUR rusty, old, run-down relic, and it's hard to let it go.

Finally, my main regret as a Meadville student (actually, the only major regret so far) is that I will not have the opportunity to take another class from Susi Pangerl, a gifted and empathic teacher, who is not only extremely knowledgeable and wise but also passionate and engaged with students in a way that is increasingly rare. I have learned so much from her this week--not the least of which is how to maintain professional standards and integrity in difficult circumstances, while still being honest and authentic.

Today, Susi discussed the three elements of pastoral care which she has found most useful to remember. They are:

1. Show up (be there physically)
2. Be present (be there emotionally/psychologically in that particular moment in someone's life)
3. Speak the "truth" (not necessarily the facts, but the important truth that needs to be told)

I could go on--and maybe I will later--but for now I will simply say that these three things will be etched on my memory as I go forward. And, if and when I start to forget them, I will count on one of my colleagues to remind me so that I can jot them down on my hand again.

And someday in the future, I will walk past the building that used to house Meadville (or whatever building has taken its place), and I will remember this week, these lessons, these beautiful classmates and this wonderful teacher. I may weep, but I will also sing a song of praise and rejoicing.

Introduction to Pastoral Ministry: Loss, Grief and Death

The past couple of days of class have not been exactly lighthearted. Yesterday we covered loss and grief, and today we had an advance care planning seminar. For me, one of the most effective exercises we've done this week was one that gave us a small taste of what it is like to lose a lot in a very short time. There's a natural human tendency to make sense of the loss, to give it some meaning. But, in the end, most loss is senseless, I think. There are however ways of dealing with loss that fit it into the larger context of our lives.

Ritual, in particular provides a way for us to structure our grief and the ambiguity that surrounds any loss. Ritual also provides ways to think about the unthinkable and connect it to the narrative of a life. As ministers, we are extremely fortunate to have the opportunity to help make these connections in a way that very few people or institutions can do.

Today's Advance Care Planning session gave us some skills to practice in getting people to think about, and plan  for, their deaths. Such planning, while stressful, can be a real gift to individuals and their families when it comes time for some difficult end-of-life decisions. The palliative care physicians who led the class today were very impressive in their candor and in their remarkable dedication to providing care for terminal patients and their families. There are so many people in the world who do such good, hard work, and it is a real privilege to get to know some of them.

Attending to Cracks in the Universe

I'm enjoying and learning a lot from Susi Pangerl's "Introduction to Pastoral Ministry," the last course she will teach at Meadville. She is an extraordinary teacher and will be sorely missed.

There are a number of striking images that she employs to describe the process of pastoral care. One that especially stands out is that of cracks in the universe. When such cracks open up is when we, as givers of pastoral care, come into play. Most of the time, people are able to make meaning of their lives and of the world. But when that ability is compromised, when trauma or something else gets in the way of this meaning-making ability, people need some help.

And the help that's needed most often comes in the form of a living, breathing person who can walk or stand with the person whose world is shattered as we, together, reconstruct meaning. The process involves working with trauma, which can be defined as the inability to tell one's own story, in such a way that it becomes a part of that story.

It occurs to me that what's involved in this process is also what's involved in the best poetry: taking that which keeps us from seeing clearly and incorporating it into something larger that allows us to spiral outward and upward toward a kind of understanding that would not have been possible otherwise.

People are really amazing in their ability to right themselves after being knocked over by the awfulness of life. But most of us need someone next to us while we work our way toward a new center of balance. Fortunately, some of us are willing to step forward to be that someone. We bless each other when we are able to recognize, together, not just the brokenness, but also the light, that is revealed through the cracks in our shattered world.

Meanwhile, back in Chicago . . .

I'm back in Chicago and staying in the same apartment I stayed in during January intensive classes. Once again, I felt a need to spruce things up a bit, so I bought these flowers even before I unpacked.

I am looking forward to this week's course, Introduction to Pastoral Ministry, taught by Susi Pangerl. The assignments, which I've almost completely finished, have been challenging as they require a lot of deep digging into one's personal experience of difficult emotions, including shame and grief and loss. So it's hard, but I know that when we're actually engage in pastoral ministry its difficult to know how much of what we perceive is our baggage and how much is the other person's.

I'm very excited about seeing my classmates again, all of whom are such great people.

Waiting with the Quakers

Last week, I traveled to Pendle Hill, a Quaker retreat center near Philadelphia, to interview with the Unitarian Universalist Association's South/East Regional Sub-Committee on Candidacy (SERSCC). I am so happy that the interviews were held in this lovely, peaceful setting instead of in some generic hotel conference room. I decided to make a weekend of it, staying 3 nights and attending daily morning and evening worship services.

Photo by Tisha Moore

I'd not attended a Quaker meeting before, and, although I knew some basics about Quakerism, I never really understood unprogrammed corporate worship until experiencing it in person. There's something very moving about non-directed shared silence. As I sat with the others, I became aware that, although I had no idea what particulars were running through everyone's minds, we were really sharing something quite special.

In fact, it's only in shared silence that we achieve anything like perfect understanding--because the moment we open our mouths is when misunderstanding begins. So, at least for the time while we sit quietly together, there is an absolute absence of misinterpretation, an absence of misconstruance, miscommunication and inattention. In their place is, instead, an abundance of possibility and a sense of waiting patiently for something important.

What that "something" might be is so difficult to articulate that perhaps only silence can do it justice. God? Peace? Love? Yes, all those and more. But how much more profoundly these things are expressed in shared silence than in thousands of pages of theological ramblings. And how much more bonding a time of quiet can be than mere chatter. Half an hour of silent communal discernment can accomplish so much more, I think, than many hours of heated debate.

There's a very appealing intimacy about this particular kind of group-oriented direct experience of the divine. In the absence of anything explicitly stated, what we seem to be waiting for is whatever happens. And what else is there for us to revere but this moment and the next? For this moment is the container that holds all of life like a gentle, giant hand. In it, we are supported, caressed, held close.

I am grateful for the good people at Pendle Hill, who were kind enough to include us in their circle, holding us in the light and love of the moment.

Crying Out to God as a Spiritual Practice

As part of my seminary training, I’m working at a men’s homeless shelter and participating in a recovery group that meets at the shelter each morning. These men are tortured by demons. I really can’t think of a better way to describe the struggle with addiction.

One man in particular, newly sober and detoxed, was going through a really horrible time a couple of months ago. He was waking up screaming in the middle of the night and pounding the wall in his sleep. One morning after our group meeting, he asked me, “How do you pray?” It seems like a perfectly reasonable question to ask a seminarian, right?

But I wasn’t quite sure how to answer. I mumbled something about my own practice of centering prayer, which involves finding a quiet place and choosing a sacred word or phrase to put at the center of my consciousness in order to contemplate and experience the presence of the divine.

Not surprisingly, my homeless friend’s eyes glazed over somewhat as I described my way of praying. To my credit, I quickly realized that what I was talking about was not going to work for him at this particular time. So, I suggested that he talk to some of the other men in the group about how they pray—as I know that many of them are quite religious and would be happy to share.

It turns out that what he needed was really what I need sometimes, too. When you are tortured by demons, contemplative centering prayer may not get you where you need to go. What you need to do is cry out. You need to make known your pain. You need to give voice to your deepest, darkest suffering and grief and ask for help.

As Anthony Bloom wrote in "Courage to Pray": "God reveals himself to us in this awareness that we are essentially a cry for him."

And from Rumi (via Coleman Barks): "The grief you cry out from / draws you toward union. / Your pure sadness that wants help / is the secret cup."

One of the old jokes about UUs is that we begin our prayers with the words “To whom it may concern . . .” But the fact is that, with some notable exceptions, there’s just not a whole lot of praying of any kind going on in our congregations (unless, as another old joke goes, it looks like a Democrat is about to lose an election).

If you ask a group of UUs what their spiritual practices are, you are likely to get answers like the following: “My peace and justice work is my spiritual practice.” “I try to parent in a mindful and spiritual way.” “I practice my spirituality in spirited discussions about vital issues with people.”

Those are nice things, but I'd like to see all of us go a little deeper. If we are to minister to a suffering world, we need to find ways of expressing our own suffering--which is what will ultimately connect us to one another and to something greater than ourselves.

May it be so!

Same Language, Different Accents

Through the soul-churning work of deep sharing with those we perceive as radically different from ourselves, I hope we start to learn that the language of the heart is something that all of us can comprehend – we may speak it with different accents, but it is the mother tongue shared by all of us who are sojourners on this planet, strangers in a strange land.

What's a contemporary Schleiermachian to do?

How do I make and articulate the connection between my highly personal, individual religious experience and the larger work that I believe springs (inevitably) as a result of reflection on these experiences?  How do I, as a religious leader, help move people along the continuum that I believe exists from direct, unmediated experience of the divine to engagement with others to larger prophetic work?

As a result of my recent liberal theology course and other experiences I have had, I now think of myself as a Schleiermachian for the most part. For me, the essence of religion is feeling and intuiting. I cannot explain religious experience, but I can come close to describing or communicating it through poetry and music. Because of the internal nature of this kind of religious experience, religious sharing becomes an exercise in imperfect description that may or may not lead to a perfect understanding.

But, for me, religious experience is something that must be shared.  In fact, although my idea of religious experience is highly personal, the experience itself is almost always born in a moment of intense engagement—either with other people or creatures or with the inanimate world.  And I believe religious experience of this sort—especially if it is felt intensely—almost always leads to action of some sort.

So, my own experience of religion is a circle in which highly personal experiences of the infinite necessarily lead to sharing with others about meaningful experiences, which leads to more intense interactions with others toward a moral—if not salvific—end, and, to complete the cycle, these intense interactions with some “other” or others inevitably lead to a personal experience of the infinite.

The problem, of course, is that not everyone dances this same dance. And many people will not be interested in learning the steps or even swaying to the rhythm.  And yet, I do believe that nearly all people, whether they recognize it or not, have these moments of highly personal religious experience. But, because most of us are trained to abandon our natural creative impulses at an early age, we give up on trying to communicate and share these experiences with others, and, in fact, downplay their significance even to ourselves. Further, I believe that if people give up on this first step, the other steps of possible deep connection with others and movement toward something bigger are severely limited.

For me, unmediated experience of the divine is not in any way supernatural but, rather, is the most natural of experiences available to the human being.  I see it in children.  I see it in some artists and writers and musicians.  And I sense it in nearly every loving relationship that I have known. So, it is a real challenge for me to deal with people who are not as inclined as I am to run with feelings and intuition without an overwhelming regard for rational thought.

I plan to start testing my beliefs in regard to this question. Specifically, I want to really challenge people with whom I work and live to reach inward to their most elemental creative selves, the parts of our being that have been squeezed thin or ordered out as we have grown older. And I want to work with the people who are, in many cases, the hardest nuts to crack (namely Unitarians Universalists) when it comes to setting aside rational thought sometimes in order to do something that has real and lasting meaning. I also want to explore this question actively with others who are trying to do something similar in their congregations and communities.

A Hermeneutic of Trees

Two trees stand naked on Lake Michigan:
one twisted and bent at broken right angles,
the other an ideal of arboreal roundness.

Silently they reach for each other, for light,
for air, for earth and sky, for water, for life.

In reaching, they do not mind the cold wind--
Chicago’s winter cannot stop their branching
out toward oneness while moving in their own
wholly unique way.
                     There is no other way
than this--to stand near the stillness of each
other while letting a great song emerge, sighing,
from the depths of difference and connection.

Dusk on Lake Michigan

I walked down to the lake after class today. I love the water and the trees in winter--beautiful and quiet and settling.

Liberal Theology: Wrap-Up

On this, the final day of our Liberal Theology class, we discussed James Luther Adams extensively.  The challenge he posed to liberal theologians in  1940 is still very much the challenge of today. I am thinking specifically of his plea "for a religious liberalism which, though permitting and encouraging variety and breadth, will acquire a precise character, a cutting edge of its own . . . if it is to be effective in the arena of competing world-views today, [liberalism] must know pretty definitely what its convictions are and expect at least its own adherents to take them seriously."

So what is it that we take seriously or ought to take seriously? This whole week has been helpful for me in refining my personal vision for ministry and my vision for what liberal religion and Unitarian Universalism must take most seriously.  I believe it comes down to this:

We must be a church that ministers not to ideas but to people and the world--people and the world just as they are at this moment. Liberal religionists do not minister in order to save souls but to practice radical acceptance and radical service. We do not minister in order to convince everyone else how wrong-minded they are and how right-minded we are. We do not minister to make idols of the status quo or white, educated middle-class ideals or anything else.  We minister because we love human beings and we love the world.

At least, I believe that's what we ought to do, and to follow the Kantian turn I learned this week, because we ought to do so, we can do so. So may it be!

Walking Along Lake Michigan

One of the greatest things about Chicago is the path that follows the shore of Lake Michigan.  Took a beautiful and bracing walk there today at lunchtime. In the winter, as my friend Tisha pointed out, downtown Chicago looks like something from a snow globe--or maybe the Emerald City.

Liberal Theology Day 3: Emerson & Parker; Dewey & Pinn

Mike reviewed two of the most important themes of the course: authority (what are the sources of religious knowledge or experience) and the changing reputation of human nature (from total depravity in Calvinism to inherently moral in other places). Transcendentalists, as represented by Emerson and Parker in this course, described human nature at its most respected and the source of authority as completely inward.

One of the concepts introduced today that was interesting to me was what Mike called a "strong misreading"--that is, misreading someone else's work, but then running with the new idea that you've developed from your misunderstanding of the other person's view in order to create something entirely new. Such, Mike says, is what the Transcendentalists did with their misreading of Kant. (After having read Kant--and after having read the Transcendentalists--I am grateful for their misreading.)

A prayer for my fellow seminarians and me: May all our misreadings be strong misreadings and may they shed light on the dark parts of our misunderstandings!

Liberal Theology Day 2: Schleiermacher, Channing and Ballou

We started the day with a wrap-up of Kant (rationalist and moralist, denied knowledge of God to make room for faith, believed that what can be known does not exhaust what can be thought, etc.), then plunged into Schleiermacher.

The Methodist in me was pleased to discover that the Wesleyan Quadrilateral is still taught in divinity schools. If the four sources for theological claims are tradition, scripture, experience and reason, we can see that Kant pretty much rejected tradition and put reason first.  Schleiermacher also rejected tradition for the most part, but put experience first. Unlike Kant, Schleiermacher believed that religion could only be described--not explained.

For Schleiermacher, religious experience was an unmediated experience of the infinite, an intuition of the Universe.  He believed that any religious formulation that posited God as a being among beings was a sort of idolatry.

Mike asked how can an object of intuition be pre-conceptual (a la Schleiermacher)? In other words, he has a hard time buying that anything can be intuited without our already having some notion of what it is we are intuiting.

I, on the other hand don't understand how anything that is intuited can be described as other than pre-conceptual. From my perspective, intuition is by its very nature unshaped by language and ideas--although we can use language and ideas to attempt to describe the object of our intuition.

So maybe I'm a mystic after all!

I'll not write about Channing and Ballou here, but the lecture and discussion were both very useful and informative.  And I led the morning devotional today. A beautiful, snowy day in Chicago!

The View from My Window

Liberal Theology: Day 1

We sprinted through an introduction to and overview of liberal theology this morning, and spent the afternoon on Immanuel Kant's philosophy of religion.

Mike Hogue is brilliant and is keeping us on our toes.  A special treat is that the class is being co-taught by Myriam Renaud, who has a very direct teaching style and, as a UU minister has some good ideas about how some of these ideas might find their way into our congregations (or how they're already there).

The description of liberal theology that I like best is that it is the "anti-tradition tradition." One of liberal theology's distinguishing characteristics (the most important one, I think) is that exists in friction with other traditions.  So, what we see in many UU congregations today is a deeply ingrained tradition of being averse to all traditions including our own (!).

It's pretty obvious to me that this kind of attitude is not sustainable--or maybe it would be more accurate to say that this kind of attitude will not help sustain healthy, thriving congregations.  The trick is how to engage constructively with other traditions and with our own history.

Mike asked us to work on developing the ability to understand other people's ideas and beliefs on their own terms.  All the authors that we are reading are dealing with issues and questions that are vital to them, and there is almost certainly something for us to learn from them, whether or not we agree with much of what they say or the ways in which they say it.

My best hope for liberal theology and liberal religion is that we might be able to stop seeing other theologies and traditions as being somehow less highly evolved than our own. In a world in which everything is increasingly interconnected (including ideas and theologies), we would do well to lean into some of these challenging engagements with other traditions, rather than avoiding or dismissing them.

Meadville January 2011 Convo: Day 1

Very good start to the convocation today. Started with musings on theology and music from Mike Hogue, interspersed with beautiful singing led by Dent Davidson. Afterward, we had breakout sessions; I attended one led by Leslie Takahashi-Morris and Jean Pupke on "Ministering Across Cultures." Interesting insights from both of them, especially about using music in ways that can attract or repel a more multicultural crowd than one finds at the typical UU congregation.

We ended with a good vespers service that included lots of hymn singing, readings, a dramatic reading by three of our faculty members and a great sermon from Leslie. She quoted one of my favorite Martin Luther King, Jr. speeches (from his address to the 1967 Southern Christian Leadership Conference:

"A nation that will keep people in slavery for 244 years will 'thingify' them—make them things. Therefore they will exploit them, and poor people generally, economically. And a nation that will exploit economically will have foreign investments and everything else, and will have to use its military to protect them. All of these problems are tied together.

"What I am saying today is that we must go from this convention and say, 'America, you must be born again!'

Back in Chicago

I'm delighted to be back in Chicago and very much looking forward to Meadville's January convocation and intensive classes. I'm happy to have arrived a day early to get a bit settled in. I have spacious living quarters this time at a brownstone apartment owned by the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, just one block from where our classes are being held.

I feel like I need to do some decorating to make this rather drab and empty apartment come to life as a cozy home for me for the next couple of weeks:

New Year's Study Break: Thoughts on Vulnerability and Connection

I took a break from studying for most of today to spend some time with my six-year-old daughter and to reflect on several thoughts that have been bouncing around in my head for the past couple of days. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about human connection and what it means to us.

When we are not connected with other people, we are not happy and we are not functioning in a healthy way.  I believe that our poor ways of dealing with our own vulnerability prevent us from connecting with our truest selves and with others—and with something bigger than ourselves and others—in deep and meaningful ways.

Rather than allowing ourselves to feel vulnerable, which also allows us to feel joyful, creative and truly free, we find ways of numbing ourselves and ways of trying to attain some kind of invulnerable perfection for ourselves and for our children.

In her recent TED Talk, Brene Brown said, “Our job is not to see our perfect child and try to keep them perfect, to get them accepted in Yale by 7^th grade; our job is to say you’re imperfect and you’re hard-wired for struggle, but you are worthy of love and belonging. That’s our job. Show me a generation of kids who are raised like that and I think we’ll see an end to some of the problems we’re seeing today.”

As I spent time with my daughter today, I thought about these words. I do know both of us (and all of us) are imperfect and vulnerable. That’s what human beings are. We can start from that place of imperfection and vulnerability, or we can pretend we’re something else and just wait for the façade to come crashing down one day, as it surely will. It made a big difference to me today to think that my main job as a parent is to deliver that message of worthiness of love and belonging to my child (and to me).. I can do that. I need reminders, but I can do that.

There is something special about children, but it’s not perfection, at least not in an adult sense of the word (without flaw or fault). Rather that something special is the ability to approach the world with creative faculties operating at full bore, unimpeded by expectations or shame or fear of failure. Children hear, they see, they create, they are. Nothing more, and certainly nothing less.

In 1971, R. Buckminster Fuller met with the Maharashi Mahesh Yogi to talk about human potential and the relationship between human knowing and the design of the universe. Fuller talked about special faculties that children exhibit but “lose very quickly due to the misunderstanding of the life experience by their elders who, in fear, think their children are going to experience pain that they have experienced, and tend to guide their children into ways that disconnect the switchboard of extraordinary connections with extraordinary faculties which we all do have.”

Out of concern about the vulnerability that we fear as adults, we think we’re protecting our children by moving them away from the very thing that we ourselves need to be moving toward—the ability to connect to the broader world directly and without self-generated anxiety and without boxing ourselves in with ever narrower expectations.

I was thinking about these things today as I watched the movie “Akeelah and the Bee” (which, I admit, was a school assignment) with my daughter. The movie featured an extended quote from Marianne Williamson, which, in part, reads as follows: “We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Note from Ella, who lost her first tooth today, to the tooth fairy.

This year I am going to try to allow myself to be vulnerable and in so doing experience real pain and real joy—not the worries about potential pain that my mind generates, which, in fact, precludes real joy.  I am going to strive to be my most authentic self, to shine and to encourage my daughter and others around me to shine as they were meant to. And, with any luck, we will all watch that light grow.

May it be so.