2020.03.01 This LIttle Chair of Mine

Downsizing is an ongoing process, made bearable by tempting interruptions. Unlike Jesus, I allow myself to get drawn away from the task at hand and into the sweet joy of every distraction—whispered memories that remind me who I am and who we are.

Many pieces of furniture have a story to tell. I listen to their stories—sad, funny, puzzling, sacred, delicious. The stories let me know which items I will keep for now, which will go to 1-800-Junk, to the weekly recycling bin, into the city sidewalk box to be picked up and treasured by someone else, and which will stay with me till death do us part.

This little chair of mine is I suppose an antique. It is over eighty years old, like me. It was a gift to me on my birth day from a woman I used to call Aunt Dodie, the first wife of Uncle Louie, one of my dad’s older brothers. That’s the brief bio of my little chair.

I adored my little chair from the beginning. Less so Aunt Dodie who was a woman of extravagantly overbearing personality. She did, however, hit the jackpot with my little chair. I sat in it each night as my parents enjoyed their cocktail hour—a boring ritual that shifted all attention away from me and onto a martini glass. I rocked very fast in my sturdy little chair, hoping to attract attention. My chair did its job perfectly. I trusted it to stand guard on the cocktail hour while I hopped off, snitching some Ritz crackers as any wise explorer in search of other “worlds” would. I ended up under my parents’ large dining room table where I chattered, kvetched, and lamented to God who listened to my every word without comment. Such was my earliest spiritual experience. Such is the story the little chair tells.

I’ve had my little chair reconditioned twice. It has lived with me in New York, Connecticut, Alabama, and Massachusetts in five different towns and two cities. It has rocked more than one of my own children and a grandchild or two.

Today it sits next to my home altar in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but it is never alone. Our Francis bear, a tiny disheveled dog named Love sit in the chair, and a St. Bernard rescue dog named Steadfast stands at the ready next to the chair. Francis is curious and has never-ending questions, like me. Steadfast and Love I gave to my beloved when we were courting. They represent how we feel, and sometime behave, towards each other. More deeply, they represent the principal, and I’d dare to say only, quality of divine love, as does my little chair.

I hope a great grandchild will one day sit in my little chair, add to her story, and rock and rock and rock. The story goes on.

I’ve come to believe that when we stack up all our stories, including those we hear from our most treasured objects, the story-power alone will bust through any dammed up resentments, hostilities, or fables that threaten to keep us apart. 

Thank you, Little Chair. 

2020.02.23 Societal Transfiguration

On February 19, 1963, Betty Friedan’s book, The Feminine Mystique, was published. It’s opening words and question ignited a revolution of awareness in American culture. 

"The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the 20th century in the United States. Each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night — she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question — 'Is this all?'"

That question would spark a second wave of feminism in the United States, would permanently transform the American social fabric, and would come to be seen as a pioneering moment in American history. Friedan’s book is one of the most influential nonfiction books of the 20th century.

I was a brand new mother in 1963, delighted and awed by my baby daughter, born Jan 13. I knew I didn’t favor my own mother’s hovering, smothering, mothering style, but I wasn’t quite sure what kind of mother I could be. Friedan’s question sat silently brooding in my heart but didn’t take shape  until the 1970s when I sat alone, spiritually deadened and bereft in my kitchen over yet one more batch of chocolate chip cookies. Suddenly, our of nowhere I heard this question:  “Why are you doing this?”  That inner voice was deep and jolting. I understood it to be God's voice. It moved me to tears, and in time to ask myself another question:

“Can there be more than motherhood for me?”

Motherhood has much to do with love and child-bearing, if that’s a possibility of course. It also has to do with the capacity to love yourself enough to make personal life choices—NOT against any children but for yourself and your life.

Today, nearly sixty years post-Friedan's book and fifteen years after her own death, women of all colors and nations are still asking the same questions and embarking on the same quests for sexual equality in church and state. I would call this very long, groaning-in-travail, movement "societal transfiguration".

The New Testament records an experience of transfiguration—a solo event just for Jesus. The light shone all around him, and his disciples were afraid. They interpreted this as the light of God’s glory. All biblical narratives are exaggerated to make sure they are unforgettable, and yet we must still interpret their meaning in every generation. With every transfiguring advance there is cruel and vicious backlash, yet the movement does not, and will not, die.

In the beginning, Creator God made all things good and called it ALL good. ALL of it. ALL of us. Good doesn’t mean morally sound, although that helps I suppose. The word is of germanic origin, god in Old English. Goodness is not a performance word, or even a value word, a love word, or a justice word. It’s a Being word, a soul word, a spiritual word, a transfiguring word. It means authenticity of word and deed, through and through. You all know a good person when you meet them. It’s catching. Is this all?

NO. We do not yet know a good society—anywhere.

May we keep praying and working for global Societal Transfiguration.

2020.02.16 Words Matter. Wisdom Sweet, Calm, Compelling Matters

DESIDERATA

GO PLACIDLY amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.

And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

         By Max Ehrmann © 1927
 Original text


Desiderata is Latin for “things desired”—not desirable but desired.

Author bio:  Max Ehrmann (1872-1945) was of German descent, the son of Bavarian emigrants, an immigrant to the United States where he was educated at the Terre Haute Indiana Fourth District School and the German Methodist Church. He received a degree in English from De Pauw University and studied philosophy and law at Harvard University where he edited the Delta Tau Delta’s national Magazine. In 1937 Ehrmann received an honorary Doctor of of Letters from De Pauw University, and by 2010 Terre Haute honored him with a life-size bronze statue, posed with pen and pad as the writer.

Well, well, you can’t get much spark from Wikipedia, but isn’t it fun that this bright German immigrant from the Midwest, educated at la-dee-dah Hahvahd, frat boy, hoosier, Christian, employed as an attorney and businessman, produced such a grand corpus of material for which he is still admired—and remembered?

Good gawda’mighty, perhaps he should run for our highest office in 2020. 

2020.02.09 Salt of The Earth. Who, Me?

Jesus is on a roll with his platform, Sermon on the Mount, as remembered in Matthew’s gospel, delivering a hefty load of expectations, addressed to his Jewish listeners: “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, then how can its saltiness be restored? It is no good for anything but is thrown out and trampled underfoot.”

Pretty harsh! Jesus was a wise and compassionate teacher, not one to offer gut courses in how to get into God’s graces. He offered Beatitudes (blessings) to help his listeners feel safe before he unfurled the full syllabus, replete with many images they would not/could not forget. One has always drawn me up short. I remember it often.

You are the salt of the earth. Do not lose your saltiness!

They didn’t forget. Even after Jesus was long dead and it took sixty years for anyone to write things down, they never stopped talking—talking, arguing, wondering, puzzling. We’re still doing this centuries later. The biblical memoir retains its powerful sting and crispness—saltiness.  Why?

First, Jesus was so charismatic they came to believe that he was intimate with their God and Creator—intimate enough to speak for God, and to God. 

Second, the followers, mostly poor and filled with fear and longing, were open to a message of hope against hope, even though it bewildered them and left them reeling. So drawn were they into Jesus’s irresistible message that God had not abandoned them that they kept on coming back for more.

Finally, there was a compelling reason to stay—a promise: energy and inspiration to find their own answers, to become activists if you will.  To stay salty.


You are the salt of the earth. Do not lose your saltiness!


Today this charge looms large on our own horizons in this United States and in our Christian religion. How do we believe in ourselves when we’re so divided? How are we to be salty when so much feels flavorless? When so many do not want even to keep up with the daily news? When we go blind to the salty potential of putative enemies? Whom shall we follow?

Religious and political authority of Jesus’s day were stumped yet attracted as well, but they resorted to politics. They said: Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” they scoffed. Jesus was of course from Nazareth, a veritable slum not worth its own salt.

We are as scattered and in disarray in this country as they were in Jesus’s day. And yet we hear the echo and the challenge of Jesus’s wisdom ring in our ears, and sometimes from our public platforms.

You are the salt of the earth. Do not lose your saltiness!


I don’t know where you look for your saltiness, but I wonder if there is a Nazareth inside you, a hidden place you don’t easily reveal for fear of ridicule?  Or outside you: someplace or group you revile out of fear? We all have our “nazareths.”  Many can still feel stunned by ancient words so profound, demanding, and simultaneously compelling and frightening.

You are the salt of the earth. Do not lose your saltiness!

I don’t use salt anymore for health reasons and plain common sense, so I miss salt, its taste on my tongue, how it enhances an already good meal. Salt can jar my taste buds awake. I miss saltiness. Yet, if salt loses its saltiness can it be restored, or is it really doomed and worthless, a Jesus suggests?

Well, salt is not just a flavor savory, it is also a preservative. Most of us know people who are like the salt of the earth—good folks, often old, who have character, sardonic wit, and crust. There were many old salts in Gloucester where we served a parish for thirteen years. These are the people who remember, who preserve the good with the bad in their history and culture. These are they who are not afraid to argue and fight for what they love—and also to change their views for the same reason.

Our American democracy is at stake right now. It feels to many as if the saltiness has drained right out of it. This is not a new phenomenon. According to Jill Lepore, writing for The New Yorker Magazine (2/3/2020):“It’s the paradox of democracy that the best way to defend it is to argue about it.” That has been true throughout our history. This is how we preserve it. This is not at all to dismiss genuine concern and worry; it is, however, to say that when we are puzzled and bewildered and sure there’s not any good thing to come out of this, like Nazareth, just keep talking and arguing and loving and caring anyway, just as Jesus’s followers did.

I would say the same thing about the Bible—scriptures some call holy in the way that many Americans reverence the Bill of Rights and our Constitution. Why is this immense Holy Bible still alive? Why still salty?

We argue about what we love the most, and in the arguing process itself come new vitality, new awakenings, new directions, new ways to stay salty—both flavorful and preservative. So it was for Jesus’s listeners. So it will be for us.


You are the salt of the earth. Do not lose your saltiness!

2020.02.02 LIturgical MIndfulness

The Church blasts on about the Epiphany LIGHT of Christ. It’s Candlemas. We bless candles. We light candles. Remember however that shedding light can hurt as well as enlighten. Christ’s light exposes the whole truth and nothing but the truth—the ugly with the lovely, the good with the un-good, the godly with the ungodly.

I picked up one of my liturgist-spouse’s old WORSHIP magazines recently and read the column, “The Amen Corner.” Anthony Ruff, O.S.B. wrote that “liturgical incompetence” is “killing us.”  Ruff, Associate Professor of Theology at St. John’s Abbey, Collegeville, Minnesota, is a gifted teacher of liturgy and music, author, and blogger who calls himself an “accidental activist.”

Ruff quotes this report of a priest who went to a summer parish mass on Sunday morning while at a weekend gathering at the beach of 25-30 extended family and friends—all cradle Catholics. Only the priest went off to Mass. No wonder.

“There was no opening hymn, because the organist hadn’t shown up on time. The organ was in the sanctuary, so you could see she wasn’t there, and you could also see when our luck ran out and she did show up (during the homily)   . . .  Nobody sang or even pretended to try, except the organist herself who also served as a kind of Wagnerian cantor (she definitely didn’t need that mike). And she seemed fine with the ‘no one else is singing but me’ part; really, she did.
    The lector read the readings in a way that convinced me that he’d never read eyes on them before.  
    We powered through the  . . . Mass as if the building was on fire. When I returned to my seat from communion, almost the entire section I was seated in was gone.  . . .
    At the dismissal, instead of some charge to go in peace and serve the Lord or announce the Gospel, the celebrant says, ‘Don’t forget, at the beach, it’s always Happy Hour.’ Really? Did he just give them permission to start drinking?”
    Why would I want any of my dechurched family members to have set aside their various weekend activities to witness this gathering of the Body of Christ? The last place I would want to reintroduce them to worship was this half empty church for  . . . a full miss when it comes to what the Christian community is supposed to be about when it assembles.”

This report is hilarious, incredible, and depressing. Tragically, it is NOT fake news!  Okay, Ruff is Catholic, and okay, it was summer, and yes, okay, there are brilliant exceptions. Nevertheless, Ruff  hit on something diagnostic that ails all churches today: liturgical incompetence. I might call it a lack of liturgical mindfulness. Mindfulness is focus, paying attention. We do it in yoga classes. Do we do that in liturgy?

Episcopalians rush to say that our church is liturgically exceptional, but it’s not. I have been in too many parishes in which mindless things happened, such as:
    -the tempo is lickety-split (“powering” through, according to Ruff) as if worship of God were to be measured by clock time, or tee time;
    -a reader does not know the difference between  between prophecy (noun) and prophesy (verb), screeching out boldly proclaiming the voice of God calling the prophet to Prophesee! Prophesee! 
    -Lepers becoming “leapers.” Honestly, it’s happened, making the amazing gospel story of Jesus’s healing ten Leapers quite effective visually. One leapt back to say thanks. 
    -a young lector either races anxiously through a text, seemingly to show off their reading skills, or drags through it slowly and inaudibly, making the proclamation a secret;
    -the POPS (Prayers of the People) being so wordy I forgot the focus, and/or there is absolute silence from the people, save for a parroted response: “Lord, hear our prayer”—proof we can read and obey instructions;   
    -a reader announcing the Opening CollECT, instead of COllect. We CollECT your money; we pray a COllect
    -The Peace, originally instituted as a way for worshipers to share the Peace of Christ with one another, turning into a back fence hug fest of affection, as if it were our own personal greeting, including our own daily news;
    -the Holy Eucharist becoming a contest to see who can get to the altar first, gulp a wafer, and race out in pursuit of the “real spread” at coffee hour.  

These are pet peeves only, yet in truth, Ruff is right: we need to shed the harsh, illuminative light of Christ on liturgy, helping everyone experience the meaning of what we do and why. What does it tell us about God, ourselves, ritual, and prayer? Be mindful not rigid.

Cautonary: The late Aidan Kavanaugh, OSB, faculty at Yale Divinity School’s S.T.M. (Masters of Sacred Theology) program, and liturgical scholar issued a warning about liturgical perfectionism:

“To be consumed with worry over making a liturgical mistake is the greatest mistake of all. Reverence is a virtue, not a neurosis, and God can take care of [sic] Godself.

Tragic postscript: In 2019, Anthony Ruff was credibly accused of sexual predation by a minor at a summer camp, run by the National Catholic Youth Choir.  The outcome is pending.This makes me feel very sad, but, in my opinion, it neither discredits or demeans Ruff’s scholarship, wisdom, wit, and keen liturgical perspective. His writing still edifies. He does not deserve erasure, only time, prayer, perhaps institutional mindfulness regarding its own roles and rules—and the Light of Christ. 

   

2020.01.26 The Beatitudes—Jesus Takes Off!

A beatitude is not a bad attitude, although it might occasionally be construed that way. Beatitude means a supreme blessing or supreme blessedness, from Latin beatus (blessed). In the Orthodox Church it is a title given to patriarchs, as in his or your Beatitude. Don’t you love that? I will try it on my beloved Beatitude husband—And how is His Beatitude today? 

Traditionally, then, a beatitude is a very good thing to be, or to have, or even to witness.

Nevertheless, and but……the eight beatitudes, placed into the mouth of Jesus the Christ, as remembered according to Matthew 5:3-10 in the New Testament from the Sermon on the Mount, are very hard blessings, mixed blessings. In short, you get the good with the not so good; for example, the merciful will obtain mercy, which implies they are in a state of being in need of mercy and/or are merciless. Mourners will be comforted, yet they will deeply mourn many times.

The biblical Beatitudes are the prelude to the Sermon on the Mount. I call this grand stump speech: Jesus takes off!

Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are they who mourn,
for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the meek,
for they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they shall be satisfied.

Blessed are the merciful,
for they shall obtain mercy.

Blessed are the pure of heart,
for they shall see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they shall be called children of God.

Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
              Gospel of St. Matthew 5:3-10


What beatitudes might be meaningful centuries later in 2020?

Blessed are you who are impaired in mind, body or spirit,
for you elicit the joy of love, and will be made whole.

Blessed are they who hate and despise,
for they shall be loved anyway.

Blessed are you beggars who bless us with gratitude and good cheer,
for you shall receive bits of money.

Blessed are you atheists and agnostics and cynics,
for you shall see God.

Blessed are you of great financial wealth,
for you shall receive greater wealth of soul.

Blessed are you sinners who twist and writhe away from light,
for they shall be seen and their fear banished.

Blessed are you who blame or shame,
for you shall be transformed into a giant seesaw that teeters but never slams down on either side.

Blessed are you know-it-alls,
for you shall receive the gift of uproarious laughter.

Blessed are children who wonder and wander and giggle and weep and whoop and holler and bother, for yours is already the kingdom of heaven.

AMEN, my Beatitudes.

2020.01.19 Prayer Habits

The most important thing I offer about prayer is this: Make it a habit! Some of it will feel useless or tepid, or foolish, or too wise for your own darn good, but do it anyway. It forces you to shift the focus away from your own glorious and ever-needy ego—at least once a day. It humbles you to invest some faith in a mysterious power deeper and greater than yourself, while you are simultaneously investing in your embodied self.

Things about prayer:
    There is no wrong or right way to pray.
    Never pray for something you are not willing also to work for, however you can.
    There are public prayers we all say together when we worship, and there are personal prayers we say inside our hearts, or alone in voice or song. All are equally spiritual. There is absolutely nothing you cannot express to God in prayer.
    You do not have to believe in God to pray.  If you’re worried about that, just pretend you do, or address an image of God you can open up to. God does not care. (It’s humans who do!) Besides, God will pray with and for you—no matter what.
    Prayer may not change things outside you, but it will change you from within. You will get to know yourself better as you pray. What matters most deeply? What are your ideas about God and why? What happens when you pray to Jesus?
    It is as important to ask as it is to receive. BOTH. And for the love of God do remember to say thank you, occasionally.
    It’s important to involve your body when you pray. There are many praying postures.
    Jews daven and murmur prayers. They move their lips and their bodies bow up and down. They pace and pray the psalms when a child is being born—nervous for the labor of childbirth, therefore rote well known prayers are the menu.
    All Psalms are prayer songs to chant.  Shiru l’Adonai shir chadash (Sing to the Lord a new song.)
    Buddhists and yogis and yoginis  make prayer hands as they bow to one another and say Namaste (The divine within me salutes the divine within you.)

    Muslims kneel and bow down five times a day to recite prayers—all the way down to touch the sacred earth and pray. FIVE!
     Pray naked—very revealing. (Don't recommend trying this in church on Sunday, at least until everyone has gone home—or not.)
      Christians pray standing , kneeling, sitting, and making the sign of the cross (head, groin, right side, left side). The Eastern Orthodox cross right to left. I do both. The gesture makes the sign of the cross to remember the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Christ, Christians’ role model to say the very least, and to remind me—and God—to be in my mind, womb, right side, left side. [I cannot resist an old yiddish joke that explains crossing oneself to remember: spectacles, testicles, vallet and vatch.] 

Most prayers address the Divine. ALL prayer is energy that connects divine and earthly, temporal and eternal. Do animals pray? Of course. Look deeply into the eyes of a dog. Relax into the vibrations of a cat’s purr. Shiver to a lion's roar. Or go on a silent retreat and listen to your own breath.

Prayer is a spiritual practice, a habit as essential to life as cleanliness and courtesy. It keeps the soul alive. When you cannot pray, others do it for you.

I have kept a prayer journal at different times in my life. I write letters to God: Dear God, love, Lyn. P.S. Amen and I love you.