Jim's Meadville Journal

A Mammal Views the City from on High

2012-01-25T09:01:00.000-05:00

Up on the 27^th floor of the apartment building

Across the way, in the corner window stands a dog.

She is perched atop a couch, attentive, gazing intently

At Chicago’s winter streets so far beneath her wet nose.

What does she see? What can a dog know of a world

So distant, composed almost entirely of made things?

And yet the lights of the cars and buses streak like blood

Through the city’s arteries, like water through streams,

Like sap feeding the trees that here are skyscrapers—

Larger than life oaks and willows, ramrod pines, barest

Burches iced and lit up, windows twinkling like fireflies.

As far as we have come from nature, here from this high place,

It seems that the city imitates the natural world despite itself.

Here from this high place, where airplanes circle like hawks

And trains rumble like bears, a dog stands at attention and regards,

Just beyond all these things, the frozen stillness of the lake.

Minister as Educator

2012-01-22T11:47:00.000-05:00

Throughout most of my ministerial formation process to date, I have been thinking of the minister as Pastor, Prophet and Priest, and I have felt myself growing into each of those roles. This week, in Mark Hicks' "Religious Education for a Changing World" class, I was given the opportunity to think of the minister as Educator.

In some ways, it seems obvious that ministers are called to work as educators, but it is important to make sure that we are aware of the ways in which function as educators. It's not just in teaching religious education classes, but in everything we do that we are functioning as educators.

And when I talk about being an educator, I'm not thinking of someone who is a static transmitter of information, but rather one who creates an environment in which people can learn. If our congregations do not function as communities of learners, then I believe that we are not being very effective in our work.

For me this week reinforced the idea that everything we do teaches some lesson or another. Or, even if it doesn't teach a lesson, that fact in itself is instructive.

I really want to bring to any congregation I serve the notion that we are hear to learn from one another--and that, as ministers, we are both teachers and learners engaged in a process of change that is, as a matter of faith, rooted in education at every step along the way.

Chicago Skyline at Night

2012-01-16T21:10:00.001-05:00

It was a blustery night for a walk last night, but we were rewarded by a breathtaking view of the city:

UU Polity in Snowy Chicago

2012-01-16T21:06:00.000-05:00

When I returned to Chicago a few days ago, I found that some snow had fallen. So it seems that winter has returned to the Windy City of Big Shoulders, my kind of town. The view from my window:

And I got to spend two days studying UU polity with the Rev. John Morehouse. My short take on polity?

On one hand, what’s not to like about congregational polity? Essentially, it is a structure that empowers people to love one another in committed communities that value real democracy and believe that each of us has something to give and to receive from one another. Congregational polity gives shape and structure to the idea that empowered individuals in empowered communities can thrive and resist the corruption, apathy and cynicism that are inherent in larger, hierarchal systems. So, my overall view of congregational polity is that it is great, and I can’t imagine seriously wanting to affiliate with any other system. On the other hand, I do think that we need to be mindful of two pitfalls of congregational polity: polity as a way of maintaining dysfunction and polity as means of losing our significance in the larger culture.

Most UUs do, I believe, understand that real love for one another does not mean putting up with the tyranny of the few who will have their way only because others will not challenge them (for fear of not having every voice heard). But this danger is present in every congregation and in every meeting where democratic principles are held as dear. Also, the love of endless debate (in the service of this same democratic ideal) can also become normative within our congregations. In other words, sometimes the idea of congregational polity itself can become idolatrous and prop up an endless cycle of dysfunction.

And, in relationship to the dominant culture, those of us who are in covenantal communities can sometimes view ourselves as separate from the larger systems of injustice and oppression, without seeing the ways in which our sense of separateness serves to perpetuate these larger systems. For congregational polity to make sense in the larger world, I believe we need to remember that the covenant that calls us together is one that is larger than our congregations, larger than our faith tradition, larger than our nation.

At the same time, if our congregational polity serves as a stumbling block to reconciliation—which I see as central to any larger covenant—then if does not serve us well. As faith communities, we need to be more than microcosms of the ideal that we hold up to the rest of the world. We need to be arteries that supply the blood that nourishes the world’s muscle and the world’s heart. The extent to which congregational polity helps us become open channels for this lifeblood determines how relevant and vital we will be to the rest of the world.

Between Trips

2012-01-11T17:02:00.000-05:00

Chicago was beautiful when I was there last week for Meadville's January Convocation. Temperatures in the 50s (in January!) will give way to something rather chillier by the time I return to Chicago at the end of this week, but it was fun to see people strolling by the lake in their shirtsleeves at this time of year. It was also fun and comfortingly familiar to see my classmates again. I look forward to seeing many of them when I return in a few days.

It is odd to be headquartered in downtown Chicago (smack-dab in the middle of the Loop) rather than in Hyde Park. The larger scale of everything is difficult for me to get used to. And, while the city is beautiful, it lacks the charm of some of the little neighborhoods surrounding the University of Chicago.

Having said all that, I am pleased that Meadville has found a home for the next little while. And, while the physical surroundings are very different, the heart of the seminary is still there, beating strong. To be sure, there is a great deal of turbulence surrounding this move and the many other changes that have taken place, but I still can't think of any other school where I'd rather be.

One of the highlights of convocation for me was being in conversation with so many teaching pastors--those ministers who are serving as our mentors and internship hosts. What a terrific bunch of people they are. Our conversations are definitely enriched and expanded as a result of their presence among us. Meadville's practitioner-oriented program really depends on the wisdom and patience of the teaching pastors, and they seem very much up to the task.

Blessing for a Dearly Departed Mouse

2011-11-09T12:50:00.000-05:00

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

2011-10-27T16:46:00.000-04:00

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)

2011-09-26T16:32:00.000-04:00

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

2011-09-03T22:17:00.003-04:00

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

2011-09-03T22:16:00.000-04:00

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 . . .

2011-08-13T09:58:00.003-04:00

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

2011-08-07T17:06:00.000-04:00

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

2011-07-16T12:14:00.002-04:00

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

2011-07-11T15:35:00.002-04:00

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

2011-06-25T22:24:00.001-04:00

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

2011-05-30T10:16:00.001-04:00

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?

2011-04-28T18:30:00.000-04:00

To Prophesy and To Praise

2011-04-22T15:35:00.004-04:00

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

2011-04-01T17:04:00.000-04:00

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

2011-03-25T17:15:00.003-04:00

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:

Show up (be there physically)
Be present (be there emotionally/psychologically in that particular moment in someone's life)
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

2011-03-24T23:59:00.000-04:00

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

2011-03-23T08:52:00.002-04:00

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 . . .

2011-03-19T20:08:00.000-04:00

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

2011-03-09T17:41:00.001-05:00

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

2011-02-16T09:54:00.003-05:00

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

2011-02-16T08:44:00.001-05:00

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?

2011-01-27T21:07:00.001-05:00

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

2011-01-22T22:01:00.001-05:00

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

2011-01-14T20:23:00.000-05:00

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

2011-01-14T19:35:00.001-05:00

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

2011-01-12T22:58:00.000-05:00

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

2011-01-12T22:51:00.001-05:00

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

2011-01-11T20:38:00.000-05:00

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

2011-01-10T22:56:00.002-05:00

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

2011-01-05T22:43:00.002-05:00

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

2011-01-04T20:03:00.000-05:00

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

2011-01-01T23:14:00.004-05:00

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.

Christmas After All

2010-12-25T22:48:00.003-05:00

Our Christmas revels were tempered by a miserable cold suffered by my six-year-old daughter, although she did perk up enough to enjoy opening presents and watching movies.

My daughter is a being of pure energy. For me, she exists not so much as a child as an unstoppable force in a child's guise. So, seeing her laid low--even with something so clearly insignificant in the grand scheme of things--fills me with fear. I am made painfully aware of my own weakness and the flimsy pretense of invincibility with which I cloak myself and those I love most.

Today, it is not joy that connects me with others I know. Instead, it is this: we have all walked in a great darkness, and we walk in darkness still. Sometimes as we walk, we tell stories or sing songs. Sometimes we hold hands or fall asleep in each other's arms. Sometimes we laugh or cry or simply stare in silence.

As the snow falls in tonight's darkness, I imagine it is falling not just here but in Ohio and Michigan and Illinois, in Kentucky and Tennessee, in New York and Massachusetts.

The snow falls tonight as a benediction, covering with a quieting beauty, the hopes and fears that met to make this day a blessing, a holy day after all.

Illuminating Manuscripts

2010-12-22T10:15:00.000-05:00

Let’s say the barbarians have taken over,

And let’s say they’re burning everything,

And the only way to save the books—

All the sacred writings that breathe

Light and meaning into our dusty shells—

The only way to preserve that which

For all these years has preserved us

Is to illuminate it,

To construct a place,

A scriptorium where we sit each day

And read and paint with gold and silver,

In hopes that maybe the texts so adorned,

Shiny, exquisite, pleasing, mysterious,

Will be deemed valuable enough to save

By those who left their souls behind

To conquer for the sake of conquest.

Let’s say we awaken suddenly to find

The smoke is already billowing through

Our streets, and darkness is falling:

Find your holy place and take up

Your pen and brush, your gold leaf

And your silver dust, and now at once

Begin and do not cease, begin and

Do not cease, begin and do not cease.

A Lesson Learned from My First Semester in Divinity School

2010-12-21T17:51:00.001-05:00

When you are busier than you have ever been in your entire life, you have to make some difficult decisions about how to spend your precious time. What I believe you must not do is completely abandon that which nourishes you, that which fans the flames of your soul, that which has brought you to this special place and this particular moment.

I believe it is especially important to keep the creative energy flowing. If you are a dancer, dance; if you are a painter, paint, if you are a singer, sing. You probably won't get class credit for any of these things (with a few notable exceptions), but you will be happier and healthier than if you were to limit your activities to reading dusty textbooks and producing even dustier papers. If nothing else, I recommend keeping a journal. The energy and the ideas that are generated by journal writing frequently become something upon which you can build.

These past six months have been an amazingly fertile time for me as a writer and musician. Theoretically, I have much less time for writing than ever before. And yet, almost every time I've taken the time to write a poem or a song or a journal entry, I've learned something new and significant about myself and about the world, both visible and invisible.

As a seminarian, I do not believe it is my job to cough up digested bits of other people's wisdom. Rather, I believe my task is to take the received wisdom of others into my hands like bricks with which I can construct something entirely new and meaningful and beautiful. May it be so.

Speed Reading the Book of Psalms

2010-12-04T21:24:00.000-05:00

My Hebrew Scriptures class has covered a lot of territory--almost the entirety of the Hebrew Bible--in a very short time, which has necessitated reading these amazingly rich and complex texts much, much faster than is desirable.

So, most of the time, I've been in "reading-for-comprehension-rather-than-appreciation" mode. But, when a particular passage has really struck me right between the eyes, I've tried to slow down and take a good look at it.

Sections of several psalms struck me in just such a way. So much so, that I've actually set one of these passages to music (audio and/or video to follow).

It occurs to me that the parts of the Bible that are most meaningful and important to me are often poems, or are at least poetic. And I think that's true for most other people, too. Why is this the case?

The answer, at least for me, is that poetry speaks not just to the mind but to the soul.

As Kim Rosen says in her book "Saved by a Poem":

"Indeed, the very indefinability of the word gives us the need for poetry. Poems can speak these ineffables with a kind of mysterious accuracy. 'Poetry is a commitment of the soul,' Gaston Bachelard writes. 'Forces are manifested in poems that do not pass through the circuits of knowledge.'"

What kind of understanding is deeper than knowledge? And why is it that we spend so much time gleaning facts when we read, rather than experiencing this deeper understanding?

I understand the exigencies of a demanding MDiv program, but I also understand the need of the human soul to breathe its way into the deeper understanding that poetry can provide. And now to learn how to balance the two . . .

I'm a seminarian now

2010-11-23T19:57:00.000-05:00

Based on actual conversations between real people:

Mere Breath and Herding the Wind

2010-11-14T22:29:00.002-05:00

I read Ecclesiastes today, and I recently started re-watching the HBO television series Six Feet Under. There's a similar kind of wisdom at work in both places.

No matter who we are--rich or poor, righteous or wicked, wise or foolish (and all of us are all of these, I think)--we shall all meet the same fate. All human enterprise and undertakings are like herding the wind, and, in the end, it all passes as mere breath. But this merest of breaths exhaled, that ephemeral dewy moment that soon turns to vapor, how much it contains!

And the riddle is this: how can all that we know be so full and yet so empty? And how can this elegant dance we do on the edge be all that there is? And why do we think we need anything more?

What We've Given Up and What We're Gaining

2010-11-05T22:54:00.002-04:00

I was thinking about the various things my classmates have given up in order to complete this rigorous MDiv program, and I came up with this poem:

Sacrifice and Sacred Presence

We have lost lovers, left mystified friends behind,

given up time with family, seen our own time shrink to nothing,

felt wearier than weary, thrown away careers,

increased our indebtedness a hundredfold—

and sacrificed more things than these.

We have given up some layers of protected privilege,

let go of the outer garments of comfort that hid us

from what is real and what is really calling us.

We hear it now at the bedsides of the sick and dying;

we hear it in the soup kitchens, in the prisons,

the homeless shelters, the community meetings.

We hear it in the rituals that mark the Sabbath

and births and deaths and weddings;

and we’ve begun to share it with others—

at first cautiously and then with more confidence,

more openness, more authenticity.

This presence that draws us in and draws us out

and leads us on; this moment; this shimmer

that seems to disappear just as we turn to gaze at it

is our pillar of cloud and fire in the wilderness.

Sweet Silence

2010-11-02T14:05:00.000-04:00

Since starting divinity school, my already busy day-to-day life has become an even more rigorous and demanding experience. There’s no getting around the work that must be completed and the accompanying whirlwind of activities in which I find myself. Even the reflection that I do is structured and purposeful—a means to an end.

And all of that activity is good. But it’s also very noisy. Whether it’s external noise or internal chatter, I have found that moments of real silence are increasingly hard to come by.

And it is for this reason that, for 36 hours this past weekend, I retreated to a cabin in the middle of the woods, soaking in the silence of the natural world. People are such loud creatures, and most of the noise we make is a by-product of some other activity—usually trying to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible.

I believe that we get so lost in the noise that it is almost impossible for us to recognize the presence of anything truly important.

Acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton wrote, “Silence is not the absence of something, but the presence of everything.” In other words, silence allows us to be aware of a presence that we cannot otherwise perceive. When this presence is lost, I believe we have lost our center.

The silence of the woods allowed me to be in the presence of a large oak tree towering over the cabin, shedding leaves in the afternoon sunlight, recycling itself and transforming light to earth and earth to light.

If we are to be witnesses to the presence of something beyond the chatter of our minds and roar of the highway, I commend to you, one and all, silence. Find it where you can, as often as you can; live in it and learn from it.

All the books in the world, all the lectures, all the busy doing of our lives will get us only so far. The quiet of the silent oak is by far the greatest teacher I have recently encountered.

On Learning

2010-10-18T20:28:00.000-04:00

There are ways of learning that are less like gathering up glittery little bits of data than they are like feeling your way through darkness until you come upon something that you recognize.

It's easy to forget the things that you try to implant in your brain--little shards that seem to be a part of something bigger, although you may never know what that bigger something is. But you cannot so easily forget that which suddenly illumines your path and helps you realize that what you were looking for needed only to be uncovered.

With each step through the darkness, I find more that I can recognize. And, even when I feel completely lost and abandoned, I can appreciate the stars, the smell of nighttime, and the comforting stillness of the air.

The View from My Window: Rapidly Increasing Religious Diversity

2010-10-15T17:22:00.000-04:00

My office window faces an alley where a local artist, Michael Brown, is renovating a mural that he originally painted some 20 years ago. It had faded and peeled, so he's putting on a fresh coat of paint--and also making a few changes in detail to modernize the work.

The woman with the academic gown and cap had been holding a Latin book, but now seems to be texting. And the woman carrying the large stack of books was originally depicted with free flowing curly locks, but now she has donned a Muslim headscarf. The world is changing before my eyes!

However, when I look up, I notice that the spire of the University United Methodist Church remains unchanged:

Disembodied Reason, Embodied Experience and the Hebrew Bible

2010-10-08T17:05:00.000-04:00

In his book Faith without Certainty, Paul Rasor identifies as a liberal "myth" the idea that moral stands are (or can be) arrived at purely through disembodied reason. In other words, liberals tend to do things because we have decided as the result of a rational process that these things are right to do.

But, Rasor points out, "moral stands can be understood as moral only within the context of a defining community." And that's where things start getting messy because the world has become increasingly complex and interconnected in new ways, which means that we are all members of multiple communities that overlap in various ways.

And when the going gets messy, liberals tend to get skittish. (As opposed to conservatives, for example who tend to get mean.) It's difficult to balance the reality of ourselves as social beings interacting with other social beings with the fact that we are also products of our own culture, even when we are critics of that culture.

But I think that this is the point at which an emphasis on embodied experience becomes really useful. When you bring a sense of community down to the fundamentals, you're left, I think, with something to which most of us can feel connected.

I understand the need for food and water and a warm place to sleep. And that's where real community begins. And that's where justice begins--when we recognize viscerally that many of us do not have adequate food, water and shelter.

Poverty and oppression are not abstractions when we live in deep community with others--not just a community of "like-minded" individuals, but a community that is really and truly radically inclusive.

And what does all this have to do with the Hebrew Bible? Most of what I've read in the Hebrew scriptures thus far has something to do with direct embodied experience. Think of the many provisions for those who are in the greatest need and the wayfarers (not to mention the obsession with bodily fluids).

Think, too, of the passage from Deuteronomy I quoted in another post about how the word is in our mouths and in our hearts. Moses didn't say the word dwelt in our minds, but in our mouths and hearts--right where we live.

How My Life Is Being Changed by Seminary

2010-09-30T21:57:00.000-04:00

Last week, when I was in the middle of reading Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy (and actually enjoying it!), I found myself thinking, "There's no way I would ever do this on my own." That's not to say that I would not engage with the Hebrew Scriptures in some way; but, without taking this required course, I'm pretty sure that I would never have taken the time to wade through these books as I am now doing. Instead, I'm fairly certain I would have cherry-picked a few passages that I liked and ignored the rest.

And this morning, as part of my site work for my Community Studies course, I met a homeless man who, at age 60, decided he wanted to learn to read and has been going to classes for the past couple of months. Last week, at his recovery group meeting, he read the serenity prayer out loud to open the meeting. Would I have met this man had I not been in seminary? Not likely. I might have waxed on about the determination of many homeless people to learn and grow, but this kind of first-hand engagement probably would not have occurred.

So, what I'm learning from seminary is not so much "things" (as in facts and figures); rather I am learning how to engage with the world in new and meaningful ways. In other words, that whole "living our way into new ways of thinking" thing seems to be working for me.

I am so grateful for this opportunity for deep and profound learning.

And here's a common thread across courses that I just picked up on: embodied experience. It's a term that's central to the theology of Sallie McFague (whose work I'm learning about in my reading for my upcoming Liberal Theology course); it's also what I'm learning about in my field site; and it's definitely a central theme in the Hebrew Bible. More on this topic later . . .

But the word is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart . . .

2010-09-26T23:40:00.003-04:00

Deuteronomy presents a number of challenges, but I found it interesting, if only because of the lofty rhetoric employed to recapitulate (and, in some cases, reformulate) the story of the Israelites, the hardships they faced in Egypt, their escape from the cruel tyranny of the Pharoah, their struggles in the wilderness (always led by God just before them), their various battles with other tribes, their laws, and their eventual deliverance.

The book reads as a series of sermons to rouse the troops and to remind them of the good that will surely be theirs if they obey the law of the LORD, and the curses that will befall them is they do not. As usual in the Mosaic books, the curses outnumber the blessings by about 4:1, so it was clearly the theory back then that the stick was more effective than the carrot as a motivational tool.

So, as I said, Moses rouses, reminds, reassures and harangues the Israelites in this lengthy valedictory address. And then, toward the end, in chapter 30, my favorite passage appears:

"For this command which I charge you this day is not too wondrous for you, nor is it distant. It is not in the heavens to say, 'Who will go up for us and take it for us and let us hear it, that we may do it?' And it is not beyond the sea to say, 'Who will cross over for us beyond the sea and take it for us and let us hear it, that we may do it?' But the word is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to do it."

Here Moses proclaims that the era of the mythological hero is over. It's not up to some superhuman to go find that elusive something from the gods that will help us lead our lives and fulfill our destiny. Rather, the word (the word!) is already with us in our mouths and in our hearts. And it is up to each of us to live up to it and to live into it.

May it be so!

" . . . and things of this sort befell me": Reading Leviticus

2010-09-20T10:51:00.001-04:00

I found Leviticus pretty rough going--especially the lengthy section on the particulars of burnt animal offerings. And the God character is still huffing and puffing and refusing to conform to any of our contemporary warm and fuzzy notions about Him.

And then I came to the 10th chapter, which begins with a startling narrative about two of Aaron's sons who bring "alien fire" before the Lord, and, because of this offense, God kills them on the spot. Moses tries to explain to Aaron why this was necessary, but, of course, his words don't quite seem to hit home. As the Bible says, "And Aaron was silent."

Then Moses starts to insist that Aaron and his remaining sons eat a meat sacrifice in the proper place and the proper way as an offense offering in order to atone for the wrong that their family has done. And it's at this point that Aaron speaks:

"'Look, today they brought forward their offense offering and their burnt offering before the LORD, and things of this sort befell me. Had I eaten an offense offering today, would it have seemed good in the eyes of the LORD?' And Moses heard, and it seemed good in his eyes."

I notice something interesting about this rather poignant passage. One of its messages seems to be that Moses' relationship with his brother Aaron trumps priestly law in some way. Moses did not continue to insist that Aaron and his sons make further sacrifice, nor did he chastise. Rather, he simply "heard."

I find it significant that there are echoes of Genesis 1 here; and notice how that echo moves from "seemed good in the eyes of the LORD" to "seemed good in his [Moses'] eyes."

I am reminded of one of my favorite Miraslov Volf quotes: "Relationship is prior to moral rules; moral performance may do something to the relationship, but relationship is not grounded in moral performance."

I was also thinking about one of James Luther Adams' observations about covenant: "The covenant can include a rule of law but it is not fundamentally a legal agreement. It depends on faithfulness, and faithfulness is nerved by loyalty, by love . . . Ultimately the ground of faithfulness is the divine or human love that will not let us go."

And such was the love, it seems, between Moses and Aaron.

Up to My Neck in the Hebrew Bible: Big, Muddy Wisdom

2010-09-12T18:52:00.002-04:00

I've been reading a lot of commentaries, criticisms, and reflections about the Hebrew Bible for my Hebrew scriptures class. Almost all of it is interesting and helpful, and much of it is ambiguous and leads to more questions than answers.

I'm sure I'm not the only person who is involved in scripture studies who asks himself--repeatedly--why am I reading this and what real relevance could it possibly to life as I know it? And, as with most questions that I've stumbled across recently, the answer seems to be "nothing" and "everything."

The textbook we're reading makes it clear that the Hebrew scriptures are literature and not mathematical formulas or scientific data. Nor is this literature historical in a contemporary sense, although the historical elements are very important. But what's there is, at its most essential level, narrative and poetry.

So any appreciation, I think needs to start from that place. We're not likely to find hard and fast historicity or hard and fast anything, for that matter. The genius of the Hebrew Bible, at least in part, is its stubborn and apparently purposeful ambiguity.

We are so far removed from the authors/editors/redactors/copyists of these works that it's pretty much impossible to understand exactly what they were thinking and what the exact significance of this literature was to them.

So, the tradition that becomes most important is the one that points to the narrative itself, to the poetry, the wordplay, and the other devices employed to create something that is endlessly meaningful. And how does meaning (and in some cases Truth) emerge from that which is so ambiguous?

I'm beginning to learn that meaning and truth are elusive targets. I'm beginning to learn that the struggle which is ours is informed and enriched by the struggle that others have had for centuries when facing these same ambiguities contained in the Hebrew Bible and elsewhere.

Jacob wrestled with God and was rewarded for his efforts, even though he had no idea what he was doing. We, as students (of life, of love, of meaning and truth), wrestle with what we have inherited--the myths, the poetry, the redundancies and inconsistencies--in order to reap the reward of making sense of what is going on in our own lives in our own time.

We can't fully know what the scripture meant to those who wrote and developed it, but by building our own relationship to it, we can find our own meaning. And therein lies the great big, muddy wisdom of the Hebrew Bible.

The Story of God Learning to Be God

2010-09-08T10:39:00.000-04:00

I've been reading Genesis for my Hebrew Scriptures class, and I really like the idea, suggested in one of the commentaries I read, that the book of Genesis is, at least in part, the story of God learning to be God. He's all over the map in terms of his relationship with humankind, sometimes stern, sometimes forgiving, sometimes seemingly indifferent. And he's willing to strike bargains.

At one point, Abraham is trying to save his nephew Lot and asks God if he will spare Sodom from destruction, despite the depravity of everyone living there. God says if 50 virtuous men can be found there, he will spare the city. Abraham eventually talks him down to just 10 men. But none of that seems to matter as God's angels start destroying the city before anyone can even start the search for virtuous men.

In contemporary parenting parlance, we might say that God had boundary issues. The experts tell us that we are supposed to set firm (not rigid, but firm) limits with our children and enforce those limits consistently.

But not only does God keep changing his mind about the limits, he's also very selective in how he enforces them. Is it any wonder, then, that humankind has turned out to the the petulant, whining, wild child that it is?

As Genesis progresses, it does seem as if God gradually backs away from so much direct involvement in human affairs and is content with sending angels to do his business for him. So is this backing away sort of like the father who yells at the kids and then returns to watching the football game? Or is it more like the parent who has found out that some (if not most) lessons are best learned without a parental mediator?

Still, even in the midst of all this dysfunction in Genesis (and there's a lot of it), there are moments of grace, like the way Joseph deals with his brothers:

"Fear not: for am I in the place of God? But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive. Now therefore fear ye not: I will nourish you, and your little ones. And he comforted them, and spake kindly unto them."

Beauty Walk

2010-09-05T22:21:00.001-04:00

The first assignment for our Community Studies class was to read an essay by Carol Lee Sanchez, "Animal, Vegetable, and Mineral," and then take a mindful walk through our neighborhood. We were to describe where we walked and one thing that surprised or delighted us.

Carol Lee Sanchez is an artist and poet who believes that Euro-Americans waste resources and destroy the environment "because they are not spiritually connected to this land-base, because they have no ancient mythos or legendary origins rooted to this land . . ." She attempts to articulate the "concept of 'relationship' or relatedness and the idea of the sacred in our lives, from a Native American-American Indian perspective and to suggest some ways of embracing a Tribal way of thinking." Sanchez posits that there is nothing in this world that can be called unnatural or separated from Nature: "Indians say that to live a good life is to walk in Beauty."

Below is an excerpt from my own 'beauty walk."

I am surprised by the first hints of fall—the tinge of yellow on the edges of leaves, the delightful coolness of the morning, the beginning diminuendo of chirps and buzzes, croaks and flutters. When I left five days ago, it was late August in North Carolina—temperatures in the upper 90s, sun-scorched yards, and humidity that only the mosquitoes could enjoy. But sometime during my absence, a seasonal shift began, and now the morning is filled with the clearly discernible whisperings of autumn . . .

Many of the houses here, including my own, are “mill houses” constructed for the workers and their families, who had to pay rent to the mill owners for the privilege of living in these small wooden structures, built low to the ground. Many of them still have their original tin roofs; almost all of them have additions that have been constructed over the last 75 years or so to accommodate our ever-expanding lifestyles and the advent of indoor plumbing.

I walk past the one remaining mill building in town, which since the mid-1970s has been a shopping mall with clothing boutiques, a hair salon, jewelry store, restaurants. The red-brick structure with rough-hewn hardwood floors sits at the center of town, and next to it is our beloved food co-op, whose yard serves as the unofficial town commons—a gathering place for shared meals and music and seemingly endless streams of conversation . . .

I turn to the right, onto a side street that leads me to the elementary school where my daughter recently began her career as a kindergartener, just across from the tiny house that served as her pre-school. Our community has a rapidly growing Hispanic population, and my daughter is in a dual-language program, spending half of her day learning in Spanish and the other half in English . . .

I'm reminded of the Native Americans who must have lived here, probably close to the creek that runs a few blocks behind our house. And I wonder if they enjoyed the first promises of autumn as much as I do. As I return to my house, I begin thinking about the words of Rumi, "Let the beauty that we love be the beauty that we do."

The Goddess of Not Cleaning Up

2010-09-03T20:45:00.002-04:00

A snippet of theological conversation between my 5-year-old daughter Ella and me tonight at bedtime:

"How many gods are there?"

"Well, different people believe different things, but I tend to believe there's one spirit that binds everything together, and that's what I call God."
"I think there's like 40 gods and goddesses."
"Oh, yeah? Like a goddess of the moon and a god of the sun, and the trees and everything?"
"Uh-huh. And a god of candy. And a goddess of not cleaning up--and you know who that is?"
"Who?"
"Me!"

The music of what happens

2010-09-03T12:42:00.005-04:00

If, like me, you are setting out to achieve something that seems at this moment impossible, something that simply can't be done, I direct your attention to this quote from Thomas Powers:

"The composer Stravinsky had written a new piece. After it had been in rehearsal for several weeks, the solo violinist came to Stravinsky and said he was sorry, he had tried his best, the passage was too difficult, no violinist could play it. Stravinsky said, 'I understand that. What I am after is the sound of someone trying to play it.'"

Meadville Orientation Day 3

2010-09-01T21:35:00.001-04:00

We started the day with another excellent worship experience, including a very nice homily by David Owen-O'Quinn. The rest of the morning was devoted to learning about community studies site logistics, teaching pastor logistics and credentialing logistics. There was a fair amount of anxiety about seemingly conflicting information and questions about special situations. I started to drift away a bit during some of the discussion but regained a sense of place and purpose after staring at the stained glass window at the front of the chapel and writing a short poem (posted elsewhere on this blog).

After lunch, several second-year students presented their end-of-year projects for the community studies course. All three were outstanding and aptly illustrated the kind of perspective-shifting experiences that each of us might expect over the course of the year. I was especially taken with Jennifer's experience volunteering at Cathedral Kitchen in Camden, New Jersey. She quoted a passage from Father Michael Doyle who has done a lot of work in Camden, which he described as being located ". . . one hour from Philadelphia's Independence Hall and zero seconds from God."

The students then took questions from us newbies, which was helpful, if somewhat anxiety-provoking.

We ended the day with vespers, being joined by all the faculty and the second-year students, whose congregational studies orientation begins tomorrow. I wasn't expecting the faculty to process fully-robed into the chapel in such warm weather, but process they did, accompanied by some beautiful organ music and all of us singing "Rank by Rank Again We Stand."

Lee Barker delivered a very thoughtful and inspiring sermon, entitled "I Bloody Did That"-- a line borrowed from the poem "Cathedral Builders" by John Ormond:

They climbed on sketchy ladders towards God,

with winch and pulley hoisted hewn rock into heaven,
inhabited the sky with hammers,
defied gravity,
deified stone,
took up God's house to meet him,
and came down to their suppers
and small beer,
every night slept, lay with their smelly wives,
quarreled and cuffed the children,
lied, spat, sang, were happy, or unhappy,
and every day took to the ladders again,
impeded the rights of way of another summer's swallows,
grew greyer, shakier,
became less inclined to fix a neighbour's roof of a fine evening,
saw naves sprout arches, clerestories soar,
cursed the loud fancy glaziers for their luck,
somehow escaped the plague,
got rheumatism,
decided it was time to give it up,
to leave the spire to others,
stood in the crowd, well back from the vestments at the consecration,
envied the fat bishop his warm boots,
cocked a squint eye aloft,
and said, "I bloody did that."

Chapel poem

2010-09-01T17:31:00.001-04:00

Zoning Out During Seminary Orientation

Staring at this stained-glass window
Amid the arches at the front of the chapel
I wonder how many people have stared
At this window and what was held in their hearts.
What sorrows, what joys, what concerns,
How many prayers have found their way

Through this window, flying up and out
Over our heads, flowing through and around
This place, this sacred space,
This place of learning and worship.
The hymns that have stirred souls
Piping through the organ and in voices raised.

What can this moment filled as it is
With anxiety and unknowing have to do with
The beauty of the human soul revealed
In attitudes of praise and prayer and wonder?
Everything, I think, and nothing.
Still, something is moving.

Meadville Orientation Day 2

2010-08-31T22:23:00.001-04:00

Quotes of the day:

"Love is not enough, but it is essential." David Owen O'Quill during morning worship.

"Just because something is desired does not make it good, right, justifiable or wise. That's why desires must be critically examined." Mike Hogue presenting on the theological foundations of the Meadville educational model.

"Roots in motion." Sharon Welch describing the kind of experience we hope to have as participants in the community studies signature course.

"I have the luxury of experiencing hope as a convenience. These people experience hope as a necessity. That's where you learn about hope." Father Bruce Wellems, pastor of the Holy Cross/Immaculate Heart of Mary Church in the Back of the Yards community, talking about his work with people in need.

It was another very full and very informative day of activities. I'm really starting to have a greater appreciation for the work of the faculty and staff in developing a unique vision for ministerial formation and for their commitment to making it work.

After a morning of lecture and discussion and and a very hot afternoon touring local Community Studies sites, we ended the day with a dinner that was graciously hosted by Lee and Kris Barker at their home near the school.

I am sometimes almost overwhelmed by a sense of gratitude for being here and having the opportunity to learn with these people. Blessings.

Meadville Orientation Day 1-B

2010-08-30T22:44:00.001-04:00

Mark Hicks presented after dinner tonight on the topic of critical pedagogy, which undergirds the Meadville Lombard Educational Model. Essentially, it is a process of learning, unlearning and relearning. The goal is to be aware of the power dynamic in learning--and that the dominant point of view which pervades most education is not necessarily the only view or the right one.

To illustrate different views of the same subject, we listened to five different versions of the national anthem ("Oh, say can you see . . .)--from a very traditional navy band and chorus version to Jimi Hendrix, hip hop artists, the Latin All Stars, and Whitney Houston at the Super Bowl. We then divided ourselves into groups based on which rendition we felt best expressed the "American dream" to us. We talked in small groups and then reported back to the larger group.

One of the themes that emerged was how much better we were able to appreciate other people's choices after we had a chance to listen to them discuss their thoughts and reasons for picking a particular version, rather than focusing on our own choice solely.

I liked the Latin All Stars version of the national anthem best--mostly because of the poetry, which, even in translation was beautiful:

In fierce combat, a symbol of victory
the glory of battle
(My people fight on)
the march toward liberty.
(The time has come to break the chains.)
Throughout the night they proclaimed:
"We will defend it!"
Tell me! Does its starry beauty still wave
above the land of the free,
the sacred flag?

I sense some similarities here to the famous Chicago poet, Carl Sandburg, from "The People, Yes":

In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
the people march.

In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps, the people march:
Where to? what next?

Meadville Orientation Day 1

2010-08-30T18:02:00.001-04:00

It's great to be back in Chicago! Despite being fuzzy-brained from getting up way too early this morning in order to catch a 6:00 a.m. flight here, I enjoyed the opening orientation session.

We got to hear some well-crafted and deftly delivered "sermonettes" from David Owen O'Quill and Qiyamah Rahman at our opening worship. They both addressed the theme of darkness and light in life and what to do "when the lights go out." David talked about his two-year-old's recognition of the necessity of darkness in order to fully experience light--flashlights aren't very fun to play with in well-lit spaces.

Mark Hicks led us through some experiential learning exercises centered on the theme of "who loved us into this place." We wrote "six-word novels" that told the stories of ourselves and the people that helped bring us here. And we created some clay artwork to represent what and/or who anchors us in our journeys.

I'm again finding myself very impressed by the creativity, openness and warmth of my classmates and the staff and faculty here. And what a joy it is to see some of these people again after July intensives.

Sharon Welch and Mike Hogue walked us through all three years of the MDiv program, with an emphasis on the "signature courses" that are at the heart of the Meadville educational model. And now I hope to get some rest before dinner and our evening session.

My main regret in life right now is that there's no air conditioning in our meeting space, but we're all hanging tough so far.

Sanctifiers of Souls, Aflame with Love

2010-08-27T16:41:00.000-04:00

I came across a "Prayer for Seminarians" that I'm taking the liberty of revising for UU divinity school students as follows:
"May we become possessors of wisdom and sanctifiers of souls, steeped in humility and aflame with love for all of creation."

I especially love the "sanctifiers of souls" part.

As upholders of the inherent worth and dignity of every person and respect for the interdependent web of all existence, I do believe we are doing the work of sanctifying souls. It's accomplished, I think, by holding up a mirror that reflects who we are and how the world is and reminding everyone that what they see in the mirror is sacred and that all who gather in front of that mirror are on holy ground.

And who does not want to be aflame with love? When we burn in this way, we are not consumed but serve as beacons for all who are seeking to open themselves and the world to transformation. Blessed be.

My first sermon as a seminarian

2010-08-24T08:46:00.000-04:00

I've given a few sermons at my home congregation in the past, but this is the first one since I've officially become a seminarian. I wanted to avoid giving the kind of sermon that just reeks of divinity school--like an extended treatise on James Fowler's stages of faith development or a contemporary reflection on Emerson's Harvard Divinity School Address--not that there's anything wrong with such things, of course.

I mostly kept it simple and personal and talked a little bit about my call to ministry. Here's an excerpt:

The Calm Before the Storm

2010-08-19T10:23:00.000-04:00

The school year is about to start--and, with it, the official beginning of my career as a seminarian. I'm diving into the reading next week and will be journaling about what I'm reading. Then, week after next is orientation in Chicago. Then, the following week I will begin my community studies field placement at Club Nova, and will start my online Hebrew Scriptures class, along with the readings for my January intensive classes, including the somewhat daunting Liberal Theology course.

For now, I'm trying to remember simply to breathe.

Art That Is Made and Understood by Being Still

2010-08-15T07:44:00.000-04:00

Sometimes magic happens when we are able to remain still. Still and aware.

Andy Goldsworthy made this impression of himself (from the movie "Rivers and Tides") by lying motionless on the ground for several minutes just as it started to rain.

Cultivating this kind of openness and curiosity is key to developing an awareness of what is holy in every moment.

Woman with a Parasol

2010-08-12T08:46:00.001-04:00

This painting, Woman with a Parasol, by Giovanni Boldini, was my "discovery" at the Art Institute of Chicago during our "double-parked at the Louvre" exercise as part of John Tolley's Arts and Aesthetics in Ministry class.

It struck me then, as it does now, because of the way wild nature seems to be triumphing over human contrivance. The bramble appears to be swallowing this elegant woman whole, with no regard for the niceties of high society.

In person, it's easier to see the contrasting techniques the painter used in this piece. The figure of the woman is rendered in great and beautiful detail--very fine, flat work. But the foliage all around her was created by laying the pigment on in great, thick blobs.

The painting hooked me in part because of the discussion we'd been having in our Contemporary Paganism class about Bron Taylor's "Dark Green Religion" and what it has to say about the place of humans in the natural world.

We might try to conquer nature--and we humans are certainly capable of a lot of destruction--but in the end the dark green goddesses and gods will prevail for we are all born of the earth and to it we will all return.

Reflections on Ritual and Art

2010-08-09T21:28:00.001-04:00

Another connection that became clearer for me than ever before as a result of my seminary classes is the connection between art and ritual. It it apparent to me that one of the primary purposes of both ritual and art is to connect us with each other and with that which is greater than us. The best rituals are artistic, and most art has ritualistic elements--it's no coincidence, I think, that art museums and places of worship seem very much alike.

And it's not just "pretty" art that resembles religious rites. The challenging, startling, sometimes suffocating pieces created by artists provide a means for connecting with the shadow side of ourselves and gives us an opportunity to reflect on the cruelty of life in a seemingly indifferent universe. Those reflections are religious almost by definition.

"A voice says, 'Cry!' And I said, 'What shall I cry?'" (Isaiah)

Contained in that fragment is the whole of the artistic process and the whole of religious ritual writ small. This verse, I think expresses succinctly and beautifully the concept of the artist and the religious celebrant as co-creators with the divine. And what's created, ultimately, is almost always a statement about transience and permanence.

For implicit in the idea of creation is idea of death as well as the idea of joining together with everything that has been and everything that shall be.

"The grief you cry out from/draws you toward union." (Rumi)

Human existence is marked by grief and joy and isolation and coming together, both in joy and in grief, circling around, and going back to where we started but maybe on a slightly higher plane than before.

I love the "COEXIST" bumper stickers that have sprung up. But I'd like to aim for something more like "CO-CREATE." May it be so.

Why is any of this important?

2010-08-04T10:29:00.000-04:00

One of my classmates asked this question during our arts and aesthetics class: "Why is any of this important?"--meaning, how did our readings and discussions about art and art appreciation have any bearing on our work as ministers?

John Tolley had already answered that questions pretty well, I think. Since approximately two-thirds of the people in the world process information primarily visually or kinesthetically, we're less likely to be able reach them if all we do is talk to them. Finding ways to present religious ideas with art and movement can be a powerful tool for communication.

I'd like to go a bit further with that idea.

If we're serious about transforming people's lives--and I think that we'd better be--then we're fooling ourselves if we think that we're going to get the job done by giving folks a few interesting ideas to think about on Sunday mornings. There's nothing wrong with interesting ideas --indeed, the world would be a much worse place without them. But I believe meaningful change starts to occur when people are able to open their hearts, and this process of opening our hearts is the fundamental work of religious communities.

Mere words work around the edges of our consciousness, while art pierces the layers of armor that our minds have created and allows us to feel a profound connection to that which is Universal. And those moments of connection, especially when shared in community, can make all the difference.

Meadville's current marketing motto is "Changing Lives to Change the World." Sometimes we have a tendency to give short shrift to the first part and concentrate more on the second part, which can be very discouraging, especially when we see all the tragedies and insanities that are featured prominently on the 24-hour news machine.

But real change is only possible when we know--when we really know--that we are connected to each other and to something greater than ourselves. Art anchors us in this connection and shines a light on the here and now, illuminating and lifting up the only thing that we really and truly have--this moment, this fleeting Now.

Change starts to happen when the light is shining.

Connecting seemingly disparate ideas

2010-07-31T15:15:00.000-04:00

One of the things I most liked about being an undergraduate student was having moments when I was able to make connections among the various classes I was taking. I remember one semester when I was taking philosophy of art, science and society, Russian history, and Shakespeare--and I had one of those moments. It seemed like all the courses were pointing me in the same direction and toward a single underlying thought that had to do with metaphor as something much bigger than just a rhetorical device.

I've had a similar experience since I've started divinity school. I saw multiple connections between my first two classes--most of them had to do with the role of ritual in perceptual shifts and in a spiritual "opening up." Since I've started making those connections, I tend to see them everywhere.

Yesterday, I attended a work retreat and got to hear a couple of very good speakers. Barbara Fredrickson, in particular, really had my mind buzzing when she was talking about meditation techniques (especially lovingkindness meditation) that result in a more "positive" outlook and lives that are flourishing. Meditation, for me, is a ritual--sometimes shared and sometimes not--that clearly leads to perceptual shifts and a general opening up.

Fredrickson mentioned that one of the worst things to do is to tell yourself to just "be positive." Instead, it's much more effective to strive to be "open, appreciative, curious, kind and real." That's where it's at, and that's where I hope to keep going. People who are working on being all those things are much better able to work on problems of all sorts, from personal to global in scale. And Fredrickson, because she's a research psychologist, has the hard scientific data to prove it.

Paper complete (sort of)

2010-07-28T23:12:00.000-04:00

I finished the writing of my final paper for my Contemporary Paganism class and now just need to add footnotes and references. Everything that I've been writing lately (from my Meadville admissions essay and Sanders Scholarship essay, to class papers and sermons) is about the same thing: engaging with some "other" (whether it is a person, a tree, a rock or a summer breeze) in such a way as to recognize the profound connection between ourselves and that other.

I haven't set out to write the same thing over and over again, but, when the smoke has cleared and the computer keyboard has started to cool off, there it is--some variation of the exact same thing that I've already written about--albeit in a slightly different form.

People say that every minister has just one sermon, and maybe I've already found mine. We'll see . . .

Arts & Aesthetics Journal excerpt

2010-07-26T08:55:00.000-04:00

The Arch that Spans Thought and Expression

Throughout my recent stay in Chicago, I was drawn to the arches (Gothic and otherwise) that I saw around campus and around town. I see arches as representing one of the class themes that emerged during the week: the role of creative tensions in art and in life.

An arch spans space, connecting one side to the other, while supporting weight that keeps the structure from collapsing. The tension between opposing sides is a necessary part of any structure, and the arch bridges these seeming opposites while providing space through which light and air and people can pass.

Creative tensions that are bridged by art and art appreciation include:

Wildness and Purpose
Stillness and Motion
Divine and Human
Intent and Outcome
Birth and Death
Mystery and Certainty
Hunger and Satisfaction
Known and Unknown
Love and Fear
Sin and Faith

Making progress

2010-07-25T22:17:00.000-04:00

I finished my journal/scrapbook for my Arts and Aesthetics class and will mail it tomorrow--the last remaining requirement for that class. I also made some good progress on my final paper for the Contemporary Paganism class--I just need to write a conclusion and then do a bit of editing. The topic I came up with is "Practical Enchantment: Concepts of Magic in 'Dark Green Religion.'" Some of it is re-worked from posts on this blog--Yay!

I'll write more about the "Dark Green Religion" book later.

Ever onward . . .

Shared Experience

2010-07-23T10:38:00.000-04:00

It's been a bit of a rough landing here in the real world after breathing the rarefied air of divinity school. So, what was it about my experience at Meadville that made it feel so alive to me? And what can I do now to make every moment holy?

Here's what I brought (or tried to bring) to the experience in Chicago: an open heart and an open mind, a willingness to do pretty much whatever was asked of me, the expectation that something special might happen, and an immense sense of gratitude for the opportunity.

My classmates, I think, brought pretty much the same thing.

And therein lies the magic.

I wish I could get everyone at work to join hands and do a spiral dance with me. I wish I could look each person that I encounter each day straight in the eyes and tell them that they have my love and respect (and that they could do the same for me). I wish that I could trust everyone (and the world) enough to drop my fear of making a fool of myself. I wish that I could say, "Look at this!" and everyone would look and see what I see.

I wish I could open up like a flower in a field of flowers, full of life and light, but still aware of my own smallness, grounded in the moist, rich darkness of the earth.

Here's how I'll work on getting there: keeping my eyes (and heart and mind) open while prying at every crack that seems to let the light in.

May it be so!

Bricolage

2010-07-22T22:51:00.000-04:00

I've run into this word--bricolage--a couple of times in the last few weeks: first in Bron Taylor's "Dark Green Religion," which I read for the Contemporary Paganism class, and then again in a "Sightings" post from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Taylor uses the term to describe what he sees as some common themes shared by a number of contemporary earth-centered groups, drawn from various traditions and ideologies. In his words: "In a bricolage these various ideas and practices are fused together, like a bricklayer or mason piecing together a wall or building with mortar or stone."

In the Sightings post, contributor Benjamin E. Zeller writes about "The Bricolage Religion of LOST and American Religious Culture." He points out that the television series LOST (which I admit I have not seen) put together various elements from a number of religious traditions to create a unique "mythos" on the island. Zeller goes on to note that such bricolage is not at all new in American culture. He describes this tendency as " a continuing proclivity for combinativeness in American religious culture."

It occurs to me that we UUs are bricoleurs par excellence. We reuse and recycle various elements of different religious traditions to come up with something new and personally relevant. And I don't think there's any need to apologize or feel bad about that. If there ever was any such thing as a "pure" religion, untainted by other influences, it has long since turned into something else.

I believe that any contemporary religious movement needs to recognize that there is a multiplicity of religious and ideological notions floating about in the cultural ether and that people will tend to combine those elements that best correspond with their interests and experiences. We do need to be respectful when we engage with other religious traditions, but engagement itself is the key, I think.

Vive le bricolage!

(So, somewhere in there, I hope, is a paper topic. Hmm . . .)

Magfantabulanimous!

2010-07-18T17:07:00.000-04:00

One of my classmates in Arts and Aesthetics gave us a creative writing exercise that involved making up a new word and then using it in a poem (along with two words we chose from two lists we were given). Here's mine:

This juicy fruit picked from my tree is far more than fantastic,
Plucked from the foliage in my yard, it's really quite majestic.
But, if you think, as I do too, that language should be generous,
It's not just great, or merely good, it's magfantabulanimous!

Collage

2010-07-18T15:28:00.000-04:00

These are some of the photos I took in Chicago for my class journal.

Arts and Aesthetics, Day 5: Class Presentations

2010-07-17T00:28:00.000-04:00

We each made class presentations today. They were supposed to involve "the creation of a visual statement, dramatic production or liturgical dance element in worship." We did a lot of artwork. The banner I made (at right) is a celebration of the great cycle of life and creation.

For my presentation, I told the story of "Elsie Piddock" who skipped rope in her sleep, and then had everyone create a picture of some place that is sacred to them, as well as something that might guard that place.

Again, I was impressed with everything that my classmates did--what a great bunch. And again, I was sad to part company with them. But we shall be together again soon.

All in all, my experience so far at Meadville has been marvelous. Glory be!

Arts and Aesthetics, Day 4: Visual Art

2010-07-15T23:26:00.000-04:00

Today we watched a slide show that featured various depictions of Jesus through the ages and from multiple cultural perspectives. It was interesting to see how many variations there are, and how many of those depend on the artist's culture and circumstances.

Then we drew, sketched, painted, etc. and shared our creations with the rest of the class. Everyone did a good job, I think. I'll try to post my piece on the blog this weekend.

After our art projects, we took a field trip to the Art Institute and did a great exercise that John calls "double-parked at the Louvre." We scattered for one hour, each looking for one piece of art that really hooked us. Then we re-grouped and went from piece to piece, with each person explaining why the particular work they chose appealed to them.

It's hard to believe tomorrow's the last day of my stay in Chicago. We'll do final presentations in class all day, and then I'll be flying back to North Carolina. It'll be great to be home, but it will be hard to be away from all the wonderful people I've met and experiences that I've had over the past eight days.

Religious Drama

2010-07-14T21:54:00.000-04:00

When we talked about religious drama, we were not talking about board members storming out of a heated meeting and renouncing the church.

Rather, we were discussing theater and what makes a drama religious rather than secular. We discussed Alfred Edyvean's "This Dramatic World: Using Contemporary Drama in the Church." Edyvean offers an interesting and succinct history of the relationship between the church and theater, and then goes on to name a number of characteristics of religious drama and Christian drama. John summarized Edyvean's primary points as saying that religious drama explores: Human relationship to the divine, human relationship to the self, and human relationship to society/culture.

In the end, almost any drama can be thought of as a religious drama when viewed through the proper lens. But offering a dramatic presentation in a religious setting certainly does shift the focus and leads the audience to consider the material in a different (and one hopes deeper) way.

We read aloud from T.S. Eliot's "Murder in the Cathedral," Neil Simon's "God's Favorite" and Michael Christofer's "The Shadow Box"--three very different plays, but each thought-provoking and beautiful in its own way. OK, so maybe the Neil Simon play wasn't so beautiful, but it was certainly a very funny re-telling of the Book of Job.

John also offered some helpful pointers about how to present drama in a church setting.

This afternoon we started working on our class presentations, which we'll be giving on Friday. I'm telling a story I learned from Margot Adler and still have a fair amount of work to do to get it into shape.

I'm very much looking forward to our class field trip to the Chicago Art Insitute tomorrow evening. Should be fun!

Arts and Aesthetics, Day 2: "Let's ratchet it up!"

2010-07-13T19:42:00.000-04:00

We started the day with a lecture from John (the only formal lecture he has planned for this week) on the topic of Theology and the Arts. He suggested that religious art has three primary aims: to teach social morality, to engage us in the creative event, and to help us transcend isolation.

I haven't been in divinity school even a whole week yet, but I'm already detecting a pattern. The three things you're likely to hear about as being "the" three things in any given class can be broken down to the three P's:
1. The prophetic (cf. teaching morality above)
2. The priestly (cf. engaging in the creative event)
3. The pastoral (cf. transcend isolation)

Of course, these three are not just the domain of ordained ministers, but rather are the responsibility of all members of a church community.

I got a triple-shot of the priestly (and priestessly?) aspects over the weekend, but with strong tinges of the other two. This week, our class is pretty well balanced between the three.

After the lecture and an interesting discussion of Rollo May's "The Courage to Create," today was dramatic improvisation exercise day. We started with relatively simple exercises (a very nice mirroring excercise, for example) and by the end of the day we were improvising whole scenes with props and character/situation suggestions. It became a little joke among the students that after each exercise, John would say, "We're going to ratchet it up a little now."

Some of us were wondering how much more ratcheting we could stand, but, in the end, everything was fine. I was really impressed with the creativity and good nature of every one of my classmates. And John is a first-rate instructor who really knows his material and does a great job making the exercises relevant to things that we're likely to face in ministry.

Another very good day at Meadville.

Prodigal Son

2010-07-12T21:44:00.000-04:00

The final scene in the "Prodigal Son" ballet is the embrace between the father and son. It's rendered beautifully and very dramatically in Baryshnikov's production. The father stands stock still as the son crawls up his body. And then, at the very last moment the father's arms close around the son as he holds him as he would an infant.

As I was watching this scene, I was reminded of Mirolav Volf's "Exclusion and Embrace." One lengthy section of the book is devoted entirely to a very close reading of the story of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32). Volf writes:

"The secret of the son's transformation is the same as the secret of his unconditional acceptance: the father would not let his son--the 'lost' and 'dead' son--out of his heart's embrace . . . Relationship is prior to moral rules; moral performance may do something to the relationship, but relationship is not grounded in moral performance. Hence the will to embrace is independent of the quality of behavior . . ."

Class photo

2010-07-12T20:45:00.000-04:00

Thanks to classmate Tisha Moore, here's a group shot of a number of us from the class with Margot Adler:

Poem Inspired by Andy Goldsworthy

2010-07-12T20:41:00.000-04:00

Winding Turning Liquefying Resolidifying
(Nothing winds like a river)
A vision that stops and starts
And picks up again where it left off.

Testing limits
And failing
And trying again.

Connecting what's natural to what's
Natural within
Finding the visual pulse
That centers
Finding the shape that connects.

Winding and unwinding
Like a river
Like the mind
Like nothing you've ever seen before
Unless you've looked the right way
Unless you've gone to the right place
Unless you've done the work
And then left it alone
And then come back to it.

Is it a vision of impermanence
Or a statement about the permanent within the transient?

Motion and stillness together
In one place.
In many places.
In every place.

Arts and Aesthetics in Ministry: Day One

2010-07-12T20:25:00.000-04:00

Excellent first day in John Tolley's Arts and Aesthetics class. He reminded us that people can be divided into those who primarily learn visually, kinesthetically and auditorily. In most of our churches, we give the the people a lot of talk, but not much else. So, the point of this course, is to learn ways to keep the attention of those who are more inclined to take in information through sight and motion.

We saw a great film, "Rivers and Tides" about the work of Andy Goldsworthy. He's an amazing and absolutely unique artist. A clip of the film can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5qrE_rBrJQ.

Also, John and two members of the class did a reading of a scene from Edna St. Vincent Millay's "Aria da Capo," and we watched a dance version of "Prodigal Son" performed by Mikhail Baryshnikov and his company.

The idea was to expose us to three different artistic modes and notice which ways we leaned in terms of our own learning style. It was an interesting and effective exercise. John Tolley himself leans toward the visual and is an avid and very involved theater person. I like his teaching style and the ideas he's trying to convey in the class.

I'll write more about Goldsworthy and the "Prodigal Son" later.

Finding a Place Where You Belong

2010-07-11T17:10:00.000-04:00

I am so thrilled finally to have found a place where I really and truly feel like I belong. Intellectually, I knew that I belonged here, but now I am really feeling it. I was worried that the Contemporary Paganism class might be a weird introduction to divinity school, but it was wonderful. I love and respect everyone that was in this class, and, as I have noted elsewhere, Margot Adler is fabulous. I always thought she would be an interesting person, based on her NPR reporting, but she's more than I expected in very many ways.

One of our most interesting discussions today centered on the differences between "historic truth" and "narrative truth." Several historians have noted (quite justifiably) that some of the contemporary Pagans play a bit fast and loose with the facts, especially about how the movement came into being and whether or not it can really trace its roots back to the dawn of time, as some claim. On the other hand, literal truth has less importance in the realm of myth and ritual. There's a tension between the two, but it is possible to have one foot in each world--or maybe to hop back and forth with both feet from one world to the other.

Anyway, I am happy and looking forward to my Arts and Aesthetics in Ministry class, which starts tomorrow. I'll close with one of the (many) chants we did in class. This one's dedicated to my classmates.

Listen, listen, listen to my heart's song.
Listen, listen, listen to my heart's song.

I will never forget you, I will never forsake you.
I will never forget you, I will never forsake you . .

My new room and suite

2010-07-11T16:55:00.000-04:00

I've moved to McCormick House, which is a much newer, more modern dorm with air conditioning (!) and a number of other creature comforts. Pictures below:

Re-Enchantment and Recovering Ritual

2010-07-10T19:03:00.000-04:00

A very large part of what happens in the world and in our lives defies explanation. From a scientific point of view, this dearth of explanations probably just means that there are more discoveries to be made (and more science that needs to be done to undergird these discoveries and point to new explanations).

Another view (not necessarily in conflict with the scientific view) is that, in fact, there will always be some things that are not fully explained--the source and exact nature of consciousness, for example. So what do we do with the unexplained phenomena?

My vote is to learn to live with them. Getting curious about them, exploring them, trying to make generalizations about them are all fine, but there's some point at which I must acknowledge that I have to let the mystery be. Acknowledge that some problems are currently insoluble, but know that there are things we can do and ways that we can effect change.

I'm suggesting that which some call magic is mostly a result of a certain attitude toward the unknown, including what will happen next in our lives. We can shape the direction of our lives, but we have little control over the outcome. So, why not re-enchant the universe?

Whatever I can do to manifest change in the world really is magic to me. What can one "human merely being" do to make a difference about anything? But there are ways of working that often lead to better results.

When I was re-doing our kitchen floor, I came to a point where I was stuck and just not getting anything done. I was trying to remove two layers of linoleum and plywood that had been nailed to the underlying hardwood floor (who would do such a thing?). I was trying all the tools on hand, working around the edges doggedly but without many results.

So I asked my friend Ed, who is an expert in getting things done, if there was any trick that I should try. He answered me simply: "Sometimes you just can't take 'no' for an answer."

At first, I thought he was just referring the use of brute force, which, I found, did get some results but at the cost of a certain amount of needless destruction. But then I gradually learned, over the course of an hour or so, that there are ways of not taking "no" for an answer that involve a certain amount of coaxing and a certain amount of finesse, combined with a positive vision of the outcome, that resulted in my being able to complete the job in fairly short order.

In effect, I learned not to take my own "no" that I was giving to myself, and really work with what was before me, rather than against it.

Among other things, ritual connects us with mystery and the unknown on the one hand, and with our own ability to perform practical magic on the other hand. There are a million such small acts of magic accomplished each day when our eyes are opened to it. May we all awaken with the "eyes of our eyes" opened!

Margot Adler is a Pagan Rock Star

2010-07-10T18:40:00.000-04:00

After day two of Margot Adler's course on Contemporary Paganism, I can make a couple of observations:

1. Paganism, in its contemporary form, is about as intellectually/spiritually diverse a religion as can be found. A multiplicity of ideas, ideals and deities permeates the movement. The large umbrella groups that have become dominant in the Pagan world serve as a means for these diverse groups (and solitary individuals) to gather together (at festivals or online) and feel that they are part of a larger community. The future of the movement will depend on the success of its leaders in maintaining some sense of cohesiveness without employing the strong hand of authoritarianism that is anathema to all Pagans.

2. Margot Adler must know 5,000 chants, and, with even the slightest bit of encouragement, will energetically, enthusiastically and soulfully (!) sing them for you. She's a great teacher, too. Her energy is amazing. And, like all the best people in the world she is as compassionate as she is intelligent. She's discouraged about the future of the country and the world, but her energy defies discouragement. Let the spiral dance continue!

2010-07-09T14:19:00.000-04:00

Photos of my room at the Disciples Divinity House.