2021.01.03 A STORY. AN IMAGE. A SONG.

The Christmas season lasts for a mere twelve days, but that’s silly really, because Christmas is whenever, however, wherever there is awe, splendor and wonder.

A STORY
    Once a man told me a Christmas story I never forget. His father had told him and he told me. It was Christmas Eve and my friend’s father was a boy of about eight in bed very sick with chronic bronchitis. The doctor had been giving him Sulpha. It was the 1940s and the miracle of Penicillin had not yet hit the market. The doctor told the parents that he didn’t think he could pull the boy through this bout.
    The boy’s parents felt helpless and frantic. Suddenly the boy’s father couldn’t stand sitting idle. He jumped up, put on his heavy overcoat, hat, and a muffler against the winter cold, then left their small New York City apartment, being careful not to slam the door. This father had a plan.      

He trudged along the snow-filled city streets where he knew he’d find what he was looking for a few city blocks off on the corner. Yes, there was the scruffy old Santa Claus, all dressed in red, with the scraggly white beard covered with bits of the soup he’d slurped earlier, liquor on his breath, and a bell in his hand. He stood next to a pot on a tripod with a sign on it reading Salvation Army. Santa rang his little bell and called out, Merry Christmas—over and over. People passed by and popped coins into his pot.
    The father approached this Santa, pulled out a small wad of cash, pressed it into Santa’s mitten, whispered something in his ear, turned and walked off the way he’d come. Santa followed. The dad led Santa back to the apartment and into the bedroom of his sick little son. The parents propped their son up a bit. Santa stood at the foot of the bed, rang his little bell and said Merry Christmas. HO. HO. HO.
    The son got well soon. The parents were jubilant. This Santa Claus belched and rang his bell.

Who knows what Christmas really is? Who knows what salvation really is? Who know what a miracle is?
 

AN IMAGE

    The image above is of the little Christmas array we have outside our apartment door.  Ollie the Otter has hopped down from his usual perch to make room for the manger scene, the creche. If you look closely to the left on the floor you will see a three-humped camel (a dromedary) carrying three “Royals” one on each hump, their crowns askew. It’s been a rough desert journey eastward through many nights with only the light of one bright star, seeming to be close but always elusive. Luckily, these three, one a female, are gifted astrologers.
    They will arrive on January 6 to place luxury gifts at the foot of this newborn babe whom they believe offers hope for a just new kingdom, one free of tyranny and deception, one that promises peace, PEACE.

A SONG.

Everyone everywhere always needs a theme song. Here's mine. The lyrics are by songwriter, author, and comedian, Katie Goodman, daughter of Ellen Goodman, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and a favorite of mine. This song has been and will continue to be my theme song—including that old unexcised "u".  It is very base, maybe a little arch, and not traditionally christmassy. But it’s Christmas!
    I didn’t fuck this up.
    You probably didn’t fuck this up.
    We didn’t fuck this up.
    So let’s all un-fuck this up.

We can together unscramble our world, our politics, our economy, our social compact, our spirituality and more for the sake of our planet and all living things.

Will we?
   

    

2020.12.27 Grace-To-Go

Many people wonder what exactly grace is. It's a verb. Spiritual grace, the kind that comes out of nowhere and stuns one awake, is often confused with forgiveness, which is more transactional. Grace is a verb.

I have a dear friend who adopted/rescued a small female puppy in the wake of her beloved husband’s death.The puppy was named Minnie, but my friend rechristened as Grace. Grace came into her life at just the right moment when she needed the most comfort and courage to help her with her intense grief. I imagine that the dog represented the soul of her dead spouse coming into her life in the flesh of this tiny pup called Grace. She told me: "I named her “Grace” because I somehow KNEW deep down that she would be a grace to and for me following my husband's death earlier in 2018. And she has been just that, a grace, a blessing in so many ways. Gift of Godde… that’s my Grace."

There is enough sour in the sweet of Love to make it a VERB. So it is also with the Grace of Godde—also a verb.

Here is my alphabet:

A  aerate, amaze, activate
B   burst, bother, bellow
C   clap, cherish, create
D   drop-kick, delve, dazzle, deify, DO
E   eulogize, effervesce, erase, eulogize
F   fly, fix, forgive
G   God/Godde, grace, GO
H   hallow
I    irrigate, itch
J   jolt
K  know, kiss
L   lift, love, lavish
M  mourn, marry, mortify
N   notarize, navigate, nourish
O   own, overwhelm
P   potentiate
Q   query, quake
R   reconstitute, re-open
S   sanitize, suffer, sanitize, STOP
T   thank, terrify, tenderize
U   undergird, ullulate
V   vivify, verify, verbalize
W   wonder, water, WAIT
X   xylophonize
Y   yearn
Z   zest, zip

GODDE = GO ORDER DEIFY DIVINIZE EARTH

2020.12.20 My "Racism". Part Fourteen. Words Alive.

Scene XXXIX. Potentiation

I am an inveterate note-taker—a regular nerd. But who do people ask when there’s uncertainty about what happened at a meeting? Or, what did that professor say again?  

Here I sat, ready, poised, pen in hand, spiral notebook open, my arm resting on the little pop-up writing desk in the huge lecture hall full of upturned faces. The professor of Old Testament (required course for all of us first-year seminarians) entered, mounted the podium, slapped a swath of notes onto the awaiting lectern, put on his large dark-rimmed glasses, looked down, then up. A hush fell. Inhaled breath held. He began: “In the beginning God . . .”  God what?  

Potentiated.  That wasn’t right. Genesis said created, didn’t it? Nope, it said: In the beginning, Earth was an empty nest. . .

Empty like a womb? Waiting? Barren? Divorced?  

No, I was wrong. What was I hoping for? Genesis said: “In the beginning when God began creating, or God created.” Obviously, God came first, took action first. I exhaled. Also, there was nothing written in Genesis about potentiation. Wrong again. Then, who said potentiate? I know that’s what I heard, but who said it? Never mind. I loved that word, fell quickly in thrall to its potency.

Potentiation.

I was at God-school in the lats 70s. Would I too be potentiated? I glanced around, looked up from my obsessive note-taking. The students were mostly white, but not all white. They were mostly male, but not all male. They were mostly young, but not all young. (I was forty!) They were mostly Protestant, I surmised, because I didn’t see a lot of quickie self-blessings with the sign of the cross. Everyone looked bright-eyed. I felt good. I felt as if I belonged. The first day. Potentiated.  

Later we streamed into the refectory for lunch. I found my “group”—my pod without the peas. We were older mid-life women, most of us commuters, some with children, all of different Christian denominations—Lutheran, United Church of Christ, one Catholic, and three Episcopalians. We were chatty and excited about jumping into potentiation, which word they loved, even though I was the only one who heard it. I swear I did.

I headed for my car at dusk to drive home, lugging the biggest, newest brand new Bible I’d ever seen or owned. I felt scared. By the time I got home it was dark. I hugged my children, threw some supper together, and sat down with my notes and my outsized holy text. I would study for this potentiation till I dropped.
 

I’d craved independence and called it freedom. What I began to see as I plunged into the Old Testament was that God created freedom of choice, not paradise. Biblical people were all mixed up and messed up, yet somehow they kept getting re-potentiated—back in sync with God who, for no sane reason, went on potentiating. Anything could happen. Risky business this kind of spiritual freedom. I felt just like these ancients—completely fascinated and and equally fearful.

What if I chose wrong, and what if God really did exile me, or I rejected God?  

Despite my mixed feelings, I dove in—too much, because once when a child came begging for one more cookie or something, I’m ashamed to say, I said: “Leave me alone, I’m reading my Bible.”

Scene XL. Inerrancy

The big required hot-shot basic courses had one lecture and three section meetings a week. To my surprise, Jim Echols, a young black man, a student in the doctoral program, was the teaching assistant of my section. I don’t know why his skin color surprised me, but of course a God-school could never be racially segregated.

Jim was tall and lean with a lavish but neatly trimmed afro. We were invited to call him Jim. I loved his sense of humor, his mild, slightly amused manner, and his willingness to entertain any and all argument. Jim believed in and taught us biblical inerrancy, the idea that there were no errors or faults in the Holy Bible.

Inerrancy?

What? That’s nuts? What about God’s telling Abraham to kill his son Isaac as proof of Abe’s great faith? What about God’s having created, even invited, sin in the first place in Genesis? What about God’s holy wrath—wholly unjust? I argued ferociously against this inerrancy idea. Jim listened with kindness. I thought he was completely wrong. I mean he was a black man. What about racial injustice in the Bible? How about women? Errant and still holy?

What I noticed as I pored over the Hebrew Scriptures, however, was how easily I assumed that all those people were white. I also noticed in story after story that God seemed quite content to include the whole messy array of Creation in the divine plan to keep this creation thing going—all of it. If not why did God refrain from blasting Eve out of Eden, divorced, after her brilliant grab for freedom?  And why had Sarah survived divine wrath after laughing at the absurdity of God’s promise that she’d get pregnant in old—very old—age? There were countless examples (Ruth, Miriam, Hagar, Job’s wife who cursed God, Moses the murderer, David the adulterer, and more).

Why was all this sin and deceit and acting out, obviously all wrong and errant as hell, so visible in people God chose as collaborators, the ones who got written up in the HOLY book?  

Jim stuck with his inerrancy platform while I struggled mightily with my confusion and my effort to make this Holy Bible literal, factual, historical, infallible. How could something called holy—and taught in a God school—not be thus? I’d read the whole thing in 7th grade. But now I was a mature woman of forty—seeking only comfort and answers. Where was my God?

I kept going to lectures and listening to Jim anyway.  After a time I found my consistency, the inerrant God Jim proclaimed. It turned out to be in the compassion of Jim Echols, a young black man with chutzpah and intellect—both. 

Thank you, Jim, for not evading all the academic material of scripture, yet  always saying: “Remember there is a story here, too.” I felt alive. Stories. My story. I wrote in my little blue final exam book:  OT LIVES!!  You added a big red exclamation point right next to mine. You gave me a new word. You expanded my little white world, my little Christian world.

PS. Today in twenty-first century America, there is confusion over facts, so much that we’re losing the founding vision of our nation. What is a fact and what is fake news? How do we evaluate the news of the day? It seems to depend on who says it. Some call this era post-truth  We need leaders like you, Jim, to help us see both facts and truth in context, the larger vision within well-examined, well-articulated facts. We need to remember there’s a story.

By the way, here’s an inerrant truth, obviously not a fact: There are no white people in the Bible.

2020.12.13 I FLESH.

Dear God
    I’m here
I flesh
    tired, blurred, blessed

Dear God
    I love you
    I need you
    
    I’m sorry
    I thank you

For the beauty of Earth
For gleam and glower
For dirt and long-gone flower.

So?

Is there any chocolate in this house?

For the pain and for its power
For today and for its morrow

So?

For clouds and shrouds
    and silence loud

I hear
    I listen
        I here

I flesh

    You?

Son. Sun.

2020.12.06 HOLY

Where is John the Baptist when you need him? His is the voice of alarm, the clarion call to wake up. It is the screeching of the fire engine racing to help. It is the scream of a police car siren racing to help. It is the cry of a hungry baby, the agonized why? of the crucified, the whimper of those alone and dying, the near-silent mutter of a street beggar, the rage of the able and of the helpless, the sigh of the contented writing out a check which is too small to matter, the groan of a planet in peril, the blast of a shofar in early morning—calling, calling, calling.  

What voice do you need to hear? What voice is strong enough to break open your heart? To wake you up to the naked need that surrounds us even when we neither heed, nor hear, nor need. It’s there. What voice moves you to stop running and start listening? Who is your prophet?

In every call, there is Godde. In every need, there is Soul. In every despair, there is Hope. In every wound, there is healing. I know this by faith and by glimmers, glimpses, glows, and guesses.

A glow: December 6th is St. Nicholas day. In life he was a bishop in the early Christian church who died in 343 CE. Nicholas was of Greek origin. At 5’6” he was small in stature but giantesque in heart. Sometimes called the Wonderworker, Nicholas instructed children to leave their empty shoes out by night, and by morning the shoes were filled with goodies and surprise treats. From this small holy activity emerged Saint Nic’las and then/now Santa Claus.

 

 

 

 

 

 I am reminded that the generosity of Godde —in Creation and through all life of all beings—is extravagant and eternal.

 

 

 

 

 

A shimmering story. One of my granddaughters asked for a cross on a chain for her 21st birthday. She specified :“Not one with that body on it.” I remembered a time when this young woman was in her teens and had a fight with a classmate about religion. What middle-schooler fights over that? She’d angrily insulted her friend’s religion, calling it stupid. The dispute was arbitrated by the principal, an apology was made, and my girl did further penance on her own. She went to church with her friend, jumped up for the altar call, and got “saved.” She came home, announced her salvation, and told her older sister that she should get “saved”—it would help her a lot. By the next weekend she decided against church and for the mall.

All of this is not exactly what one might call divine salvation—or is it? Something happened that this girl never forgot. Something to do with Christ, she told me, and wrote me a note, with this salutation: “To my Holy Grandmother.”  It is a beautiful articulation of her spiritual experience, her gropings and her raw and innocent wonderings as she tries to discern what Christ means to her. Salvation is a process. This kid’s a pretty topnotch theologian already!

I wondered about myself being called “holy” refraining from sophisticated definitions of holy.  She wrote me this: “In terms of your holiness, I think I meant it in the way I have always seen you. The only person in my family growing up that was spiritual and religious. I remember being young, exploring at St. John's, and finding peace there. I also remember always asking my parents if we could go to church (I mean, what kid does that??). There's always been a yearning in me for spiritual knowledge. I think for me growing up, you embodied that for me. So thank YOU!! :)”

I say the same to her!

11.29.20 ADVENT FLASH

Every once in a while—requested or not, planned or not, expected or not, desired or not, rational or not, explicable or not—there come a flash of awakening.  It’s not like the slow sleepy arising in the morning. Nor is it the sudden kick in the gut of noticing the obvious for the first time, or the surprise of finding a lost earring peeking from under the edge of the bureau. This flash partakes of Mystery.

We live as everyone the world over is living in near-quarantine in this season of Covid-fear and masks and huglessness. In the midst of this the town where we just moved, Simsbury, Connecticut, had its 350th anniversary. How does one celebrate antisocially?  Town officials decided the best, perhaps only, way was to have fireworks. This phenomenon is bravely American and traditionally reserved to July 4th. The best place to set off the display was at a local golf course. Guess who lives right behind that golf course, bordering its well-pruned green expanses. WE DO!  

Last night Dick and I sat at our window and watched. The flashes came in succession, each one louder and more colorful than the last. In the parking lot below, cars gathered, one with a bunch of young children atop it and all around it. Sounds of their laughter and screams of delight accompanied the fireworks. 

Mysteriously, this 20-minute flash was better than any July 4th I’ve ever seen. It was far better than the costly displays with musical accompaniment, tailored for global viewing to advertise America’s brand of freedom. Now more than ever we need to learn how to live our brand of freedom—not as power but as joy, not as exclusive to us but as available to all living things in nature and human nature, not as dogma but as covenant.

As this flash subsided, I was suddenly suffused with tears—gratitude, inner warmth, hope, awe, and sheer Mystery.

PS.  Simsbury. Thanks for your wondrous fiscal irresponsibility!

I LIKE YOU JUST THE WAY YOU ARE. 11/22/20

You might think I am obsessed with Mr. Rogers, and you’d be right. My obsession isn’t pathological but spiritual—something this secular world might consider pathological anyway.

My “Rogerian” focus is broad and deep, perhaps global. I think the late Fred Rogers is an icon for our time. An icon is an image through which we see the glory of God, aka divinity. It’s only a glimpse, but when you see it you recognize it. The early Christian bishop, Irenaeus of Lyons (130-202 CE), pictured below, best summarized such spirituality this way:                       

                  The Glory of God is the human person fully alive.

But this post isn’t about Irenaeus; it is about Fred McFeely Rogers (b.1928, Latrobe, PA.) who embodied Irenaeus’s theology:
    -not because he happened to be an ordained Presbyterian minister who had attended Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, spoke Greek and Hebrew, and in time graduated magna cum laude with a specialty in musical composition from the University of Pittsburgh
    -not because he was strictly religious or doctrinaire: You don’t have to speak overtly about religion in order to get a message across. He knew there were “terrifying ideas in all religions.”
    -not because he loved children so much
    -not because he became famous for his work in public television for children, won many awards and honorary degrees including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded by President George W. Bush in 2002
    -not because he took daily naps, stayed fit, maintaining his weight at 143 all his 74 years
    -not because he never smoked or drank
    -not because he was a registered Republican, which some folks think is godly these days
    -not even because he was a vegetarian: I couldn’t eat anything that had had a mother, he'd say.

Rogers reflected the glory of God because he was a person fully alive—and imperfect:
    -because he had a difficult childhood, spending many hours at home because of asthma
    -because he had many stuffed animals who helped him make friends with himself
    -because he learned to play the piano at age 5, and followed this passion to get a degree
    -because his personality was introverted and shy
    -because he was bullied in early school for being overweight, called Fat Freddy, and made to feel “very sad”   
    -because he was resilient and blossomed in high school to pursue his early passion for music, eventually marrying a fellow student Sara Joanne Byrd with whom he played dual pianos and who became the puppet Sara Saturday on Mr. Rogers’s Neighborhood
    -because he would get perfectionistic about his show and cranky, as he did over the arrival of the educational television show for children called Sesame Street. It was competition and he didn’t like it, probably because it was too teacherish.   
    -because he struggled all his life with anger and self-hate
    -because he hated television, yet when he discovered an old television at his parents’ home in 1951, he exclaimed: There must be some way to use this fabulous instrument to nurture those who would watch and listen.” This “aha!” moment shaped his career in public television.
    -because he insisted on a private funeral in 2003 in a chapel in Latrobe for family and friends to have some protected time for their own grief.  There was a public ceremony later at which violinist Yitzkak Rabin, cellist Yoyo Ma, and organist Alan Morrison played, for 2700 people who mourned this humble hero fully alive in their hearts
    -because his mother knitted all his sweaters, including the famous red, front-zippered one he wore on his daily television show, Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. Tom Hanks, who played Mr. Rogers in the current movie, “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” had difficulty managing Rogers’s nightly entrance into his “neighborhood”—grabbing the red sweater, zipping it up, spit spat like that, removing his shoes, flipping one shoe into his free hand, then donning sneakers, ready to play with puppets and charm his young audience, nightly from 1968 to 2001.
    -because he was an avid swimmer of laps, saying that this and the piano gave him a chance to feel capable and in charge. Swimming was his most important self-discipline.
    -because as a boy Fred Rogers saw scary things in the news and never forgot the advice his mother gave him: Look for the helpers. you will always find people who are helping.
    -because, despite his lifelong dedication to the psychological and moral well-being of children’s emotions about painful life challenges like divorce, sibling rivalry, death, Rogers ably directed his energy to adult politicians when he testified before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Communications on May 1, 1969. His testimony enchanted the Senators charged with eliminating government funding for public television for children. He closed his testimony singing a song he wrote for his own show: “What Do You Do With The Mad That You Feel?”  

Guess who got the funding? And guess who left the hearing feeling fully alive—divinely so?

I think Rogers is an icon for this time, this 2020 year,
    -because he listened attentively—present physically and emotionally to every single child, kneeling to be on their level,
    -because he said over and over: “I like you just the way you are.”   
    -because he prayed— regularly and no matter what
    -because journalist Tom Junod said of Rogers: “It was very hard to interview him because he just wanted to focus on me and who I was and my feelings.”
    -because when asked what he thought Mr. Rogers wanted him to do, Junod said: “Oh, I think he wanted me to pray.”  
                                              *  *  *  *
Tomorrow is the 34th anniversary of my marriage to Richard J. Simeone, brother priest, mentor, friend and companion-in-cranky. Above our sleeping bed hangs the wisdom of old Irenaeus.  
    
               The Glory of God is the human person fully alive.

 
I like you, Dick, just the way you are—whether asleep or awake. Some days I don’t love your every way, but I always like you just the way you are.

And to us all: Let’s try to be a little bit like Mr. Rogers in our own neighborhoods—every day.