Tag: why I write

You are witnesses of these things

Background: At the healing service on Wednesday, April 10 and for the Zoom prayer service and discussion on Sunday, this is the text/basis for a homily and discussion we had on Luke 24:36b-48, where Jesus appears to the disciples for the first time after his Resurrection, per Luke’s account. (artwork: “Jesus’ Appearance While the Apostles are at Table,” by Duccio di Buoninsegna (1255-1319))

“You are witnesses of these things.”

Today’s reading gives us Luke’s version of a story similar to what we heard from John’s Gospel last week. The disciples are gathered in a room and Jesus appears to them. In the course of their encounter, they go from being terrified and afraid, thinking they are seeing a ghost, to being witnesses, inspired and charged up to share their testimony.

How does this change happen?

Does Jesus make some rousing speech? Does he scientifically explain what happened to him?

He gives them his body. He says “look at my hands and feet. Touch me and see. That’s a line I want to let sink in for a bit.

Over the different Gospels we have heard Jesus say, “Follow me” and “Come and see,” now this is the most personal, most intimate invitation he could give, “Touch me and see.”

They are starting to come around, still not sure about all this—they know he died, there is no way this can be… Jesus looks around and says, “Got anything to eat?” And then eats fish to show them he’s legit.

I love the encounters with the risen Jesus in Luke—this story and the Road to Emmaus—there is a light-heartedness about Jesus, there is humor even in the serious work that he is there to do.

In light of the Resurrection, everything takes on new meaning. In the Road to Emmaus story, it’s just two disciples walking and Jesus comes upon them, and they walk and talk and he teaches them and then breaks bread with them, and their lives and hearts are changed. In a way that didn’t happen before. Things are different.

In today’s reading, for the disciples it is conversation, it is Jesus’s bodily presence, it is teaching, all things they have experienced before, but this is different. This changes everything.

I want to ask a question here and see what you think. Why does Jesus come back to his disciples? What’s his purpose in appearing to them and spending time with them?

To fulfill his mission; to do what he said he was going to do. To show them he is who he said he was; to show them that love conquers death.

It’s also this: to give them living and credible proof. To help them take the next step in their learning.

He is going to ascend and it is going to be up to them. His life, his love, his teaching, he is placing it in their hands to pass on to others.

“These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you,” … he goes back over what he told them before he was killed, but it all has a new significance; it means something different now.

Then he opens their mind to understand the Scriptures. Wow, that would be a lovely gift, wouldn’t it? Hey, Jesus, what does this mean? How do I make sense out of this? Like a phone-a-friend lifeline to Jesus.

In coming back, in appearing to the disciples, in teaching them, and being with them, in them touching him, Jesus says:

“You are witnesses of these things.”

If the disciples aren’t credible witnesses, it will never work. If they don’t believe, if they aren’t convinced and convicted, how will anyone else come to believe?

But not just credible witnesses, they have to be fired up, they have to be motivated, they have to want nothing more than to share their testimony, to share the good news. It has to be part of their core purpose.

Imagine if after Jesus leaves, the disciples are sitting on this amazing, life-giving story that can change the world, and they decide, “Okay, well, we’ve got this church here, a house church, and if anyone new comes in, we’ll tell them. That’s what it means to be a disciple, right—that we proclaim the word within the walls of our specific church, we celebrate Communion, we pray for others, and Jesus is happy, right?”

Jesus knows his work, his purpose, his life, his love for us hangs on the disciples becoming apostles—being sent out to spread the good news. So he supercharges them, gives them everything they need to succeed, including the Holy Spirit (that comes in Luke, Part II, Acts).

Let’s look at how Jesus gives them what they need in this story. He doesn’t come in and say, “Great to see you guys, would you please pick up your Bibles and turn to page 42 for today’s lesson.”

He shows them his scars, he says, “touch me and see,” he eats with them. He is vulnerable, intimate, and authentic. Explaining Scripture doesn’t come until later.


I love this quote from Debie Thomas in the book we studied last year, “Into the Mess & Other Jesus Stories.” She says:

“Maybe when the world looks at us to see if OUR faith is authentic and trustworthy, it needs to see our scars and hungers, too. Our vulnerability, not our immunity. Our honesty, not our pretenses to perfection. What would it look like for us to offer our stories of scars and graces, hungers, and feasts, in testimony to this world? How might our embodied lives become a way of love? Naming our hungers, widening our tables, sharing our scars and our feasts—what if THIS is practicing resurrection? Maybe more is at stake in a piece of fish, or a glass of water, or a loaf of bread, than we have imagined.”

Another question I want to ask you, and if it is something you feel like you have an answer for or want to talk about, wonderful, if not, ponder it over the week:

What is YOUR witness?

What is it from your life, your scars, your hunger, your passions, your relationships that might speak to others?

We are all different witnesses. The good news is the good news, but we connect to it in different ways, and we connect to other people in different ways. My witness, my testimony, is different than yours.

Part of this whole line of thinking came to me yesterday while I was skateboarding. I had been sitting at my desk for the afternoon, I needed to go to the grocery store, and there is a paved trail down next to Easton Point that goes across Papermill Pond, right on the way to Harris Teeter or Target. I wanted to stretch my legs.

And I got to thinking that the joy that I get from cruising on a skateboard, a joy I found when I was 13 and almost 40 years later is still there, is part of my witness. Writing is part of my witness. Discussing the Bible, laughing, asking questions, building friendships while wondering about Scripture, is part of my witness. Sitting outside in nature and feeling like a part of Creation is a part of my witness.

What things are a part of yours?

I want to mention one more aspect to this Resurrection story. Jesus is changed. The disciples are changed. Something has happened, they have received something from Jesus that has made them witnesses.

What is it and how can it help our witness? This is how Debie Thomas puts it:

“The resurrection is not a platitude or a line in a creed. The resurrection is fire in our bones, steel in our blood, impetus for our feet, a song of lamentation, protest, and ferocious hope for our souls. The resurrection is God’s insistence that we speak, stand, and work for life in a world desperate for fewer crosses, fewer graves, fewer landscapes littered with the desolate and the dead.”

This is the season of the Resurrection. This is the Easter season of new life. That power and love and energy is for us, it is supposed to be a part of our witness. Is it a part of yours?

The wonder of being here

Sometimes I’m drawn forward and sometimes I am turned to circle back, usually so I can pick something up I need to go forward. That’s an eyebrow-raising, quizzical-look statement, I know. Let’s try this:

This past weekend, I went for a run–my first run since early April. It was slow, but it didn’t matter–the smile on my face running through John Ford Park, saying good morning to folks I encountered, feeling air in my lungs and my feet in motion, even if stumbling slowly, was something I have been missing.

Running, skateboarding, and writing are three life-giving activities I discovered in my early teens that sustain and stoke me in my early 50s. There is a thread that connects them.


I’ve been reading Mark Nepo’s book, “Drinking from the River of Light: the Life of Expression,” which I take in small bites, so I can savor it and let is wash over me. Nepo circled me back to one of my favorite writers, poet William Stafford, by sharing and talking about Stafford’s poem, “The Way It Is”–

“There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.“

Nepo writes, “To discover the thread that goes through everything is the main reason to listen, express, and write… I began to realize that listening, expressing, and writing are the means by which we stay clear, the inner practices by which we realize our connection to other souls and a living Universe.” Then he invites us to think about, write about, and try to discern what that thread is for us, individually. What is the constant that is with you, through joy, pain, sadness, lows, highs, that makes you, you?

As I sat there, coffee, sunlight, and summer-breeze-fueled, scratching out a few notes, the thing that hit me was: a sense of wonder. That’s the thread. From marveling at honeysuckle and marsh grasses in the neighborhood as a kid, to Morning Glories and Great Blue Herons as an adult, a childlike sense of wonder has underpinned it all.

Nepo is a writer I’ve just found. He circled me back to Stafford and a poem I’ve been reading for years–something I needed to pick back up to move forward with new eyes.

Running, skateboarding, and writing have been wonder-stokers for me all along. Somehow they have distilled over time to where the wonder is there now as soon as I step on a board, pick up a pen, or put running shoe to pavement.


Yesterday morning, Landy Cook and I met at the Oxford Conservation Park to start the week off with a sunrise longboarding adventure. The sun was smiling with us and lent its rays to every moment and every photo. It was a morning to catch up, to laugh, to skate, to enjoy the moments, to breathe in the day. It’s a place we skate frequently, it’s not new scenery, but every morning is its own, there is always something new or different to catch, to appreciate, to be grateful for.

For me, part of those experiences, those moments, of being given a gift, is wanting to communicate it, to share it, maybe if I am lucky to wake something up for someone else, to connect in some way.

Nepo says it: “listening, expressing, and writing are the means by which we stay clear, the inner practices by which we realize our connection to other souls and a living Universe.” That’s what writing brings to my aesthetic and Spirit-filled table. Even rolling on a skateboard, I make sure to have a pocket notebook and pen to try to catch something of the wonder of the experience.


A couple weeks ago I was sent back to another favorite writer, John O’Donohue. Last summer we led a small group discussing his book, “Anam Cara.” A friend from church continues to read and reflect on it regularly and he wanted to pass along a copy to someone who is going through profound loss, hoping it might give them something to latch onto–perspective, compassion, care, connection, hope.

The class last summer was right around this time of year and a memory, a quote from “Anam Cara” circled its way back in front of me. It’s a thought that struck me as something Holly has been working through after coming back from a 12-day mission trip to Amazon river villages in Peru, where the life of the villagers was deliberate, present, and connected to the days and nights, the land, and each other. O’Donohue wrote:

“It is a strange and magical fact to be here, walking around in a body, to have a whole world within you and a world at your fingertips outside you. It is an immense privilege, and it is incredible that humans manage to forget the miracle of being here.”

The miracle, the wonder, of being here. That’s our connection to each other, other living souls, to God, to the living Universe; whether we are in Peru, the backyard, or skateboarding with the sunrise.

Some prayers

Dear God,

Some prayers move, they wander, they surf like a skateboard, they stop to look at birds or sit under a tree. Some prayers stop to pick up a six pack. Some prayers start while reading and writing next to the river and keep going sitting in a salon where my daughter is getting box braids in her hair to get ready for surgery on Monday.

U2’s “Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” plays from the speakers, which makes me smile because a couple days ago Ava mentioned having that song on her playlist.

My prayer reads Brenda Miller’s “The Shape of Emptiness “ where a creative writing student whose mother had just died passes out Playdough to the class and has them squeeze it in their hands and then puts all their “hands” on a table at the front of the classroom. Miller says, “He made visible the air we never see.” And then:

“When he finishes reading he gathers our hands and gives them back to us one by one. We take them from him carefully so we can carry our emptiness into the day. We compare them, showing off the shape of our grasping. Curved like prayers. Like anger. Like love.”


God, maybe our prayers are like those hands, our grasping to fill emptiness, trying to bridge the distance between us. Sometimes that distance is wide and tough to cross. Other days we are sitting next to each other by the river smiling the same smile, thinking the same thoughts.

Lord, my prayer is written on my heart and it is for Ava on Monday and the next couple weeks, that all goes well and the surgeons and neurologists and medical team find what they need to know and that their knowledge brings hope.

Some prayers last for a couple days and have more silence in them than words. I know you appreciate the silence, Lord, because sometimes the world is too noisy. And silence speaks louder.

My prayer, God, is about love and right now love is sitting in a salon and being so full that words either pour out or nothing will come. Right now, love looks like box braids and someone taking the time and care to help my daughter so she doesn’t have to have her head shaved.


Some prayers take weeks, months, years. Some prayers run out of ink as I write them, run out of words as I speak them, and take an entire life to say what I need to say and listen for what I need to hear.

Some prayers are to be continued. Just like our love. Just like your love. And all of them are written on our hearts and with our lives, which belong to you.

Amen.

Sitting by the river

Solitude is a gift.

Silence is a gift.

Sunlight is a gift.

Sitting by the river with a strong breeze moving the water and blowing against one side of my face while the sun warms the other.

I woke up in a warm house, while it was still dark and made coffee. Made a to-go breakfast for my older daughter for her drive to work. I laughed with my younger daughter taking her to school.

Now I am sitting in the sun and the wind by the water praying, reading, writing, listening, smiling.

Behind me is a cemetery where my grandparents, family members, and friends rest peacefully. Memories and love dance between us and connect us.

The books in front of me are titled “Pilgrim” and “Gold.”

Talking to God, Rumi writes:

“Today you arrived beaming with laughter–
that swinging key that unlocks prison doors.

You are hope’s beating heart.
You are a doorway to the sun.
You are the one I seek and the one who seeks me.
Beginning and end.

You greet need with generous hands.
You flood us with spirit,

ringing from the heart,
lifting thought.”

Reading this, he and I say it together. I like to think God smiles in the sunlight.

Across the cove the sun and the wind dress a weeping willow tree. Geese float tucked away from the tide.

When I am fully here, in this moment, with a full heart and an open mind, and time alone with God, what more can I ask for? I am not alone.

Thank you for this view.
Thank you for this day.
Thank you for this life.
Thank you for your love.

Amen.

* My practice/devotion for Lent this year is to write a “proem” (prayer-poem-prose) in the spirit of Brian Doyle each day of the season. I will share some of them. This is day #3.

What should a king know?

If you had a chance to educate a future king (or queen), what would you want him/her to know? Let’s say that key things we would want them to have include kindness, justice, empathy, humility, compassion, courage, love. I mean, if we have a chance to help form someone to rule the right way, wouldn’t we want to go all in?

In T.H. White’s novel, “The Once and Future King,” we meet the character who is to become King Arthur, first as a boy, who knows nothing about his parents, who has been taken in by a kind nobleman, Sir Ector, and raised side-by-side with Ector’s son Kay. It is expected that Kay will grow up to be a knight, and Arthur, who everyone knows as “Wart,” will be his squire/servant.

The Wart believes himself to be of lowly, common descent. He feels like a second-rate citizen without much control over his own destiny. Out on an adventure, Wart meets the wizard Merlyn, who becomes his tutor. Merlyn lives forwards and backwards in time and knows who Arthur is and that he will be the King of England. Merlyn does not tell the boy this and as he directs his education, one of the bits of learning Wart likes best is when Merlyn turns him into different creatures–a fish, a hawk, an ant, a goose, a badger–and the boy has to talk to others of the species and experience life from their perspective.

This is empathy in action and not just with humanity. With all of Creation.

In broader form, Arthur experiences moments. And not just moments, but moments as other creatures.

Here he takes flight with other geese in the reverie of flying at first light:

“The dawn, the sea-dawn and the mastery of ordered flight, were of such intense beauty that the boy was moved to sing. He wanted to cry a chorus to life, and since a thousand geese were on the wing about him, he had not long to wait. The lines of these creatures, wavering like smoke upon the sky as they breasted the sunrise, were all at once in music and in laughter. Each squadron of them was in different voice, some larking, some triumphant, some in sentiment or glee. The vault of daybreak filled itself with heralds…”

T. H. White, “The Once and Future King”

Imagine experiencing (and thus acknowledging) epiphanies, transcendent moments from other, non-human viewpoints. Of course Wart/Arthur and any of us would have to relate it from our own vocabulary and ways of thinking. But imagine people in power making decisions who consider the wider world, not just our human interests. Because if we don’t consider the wider world, we won’t have anywhere left for our human interests.

There are other things that are critical to Arthur’s ongoing education, had by different adventures, experiences, and learning, but I want to stick to these moments as that is the thread that started my mind moving.

Moments give our own lives meaning.

Red-Breasted Nuthatch in Worchester County, 2016. Photo by Bill Hubick at Maryland Biodiversity Project.

The magnolia tree in my front yard has become a home and stomping grounds for nuthatches. Lately when I fill my birdfeeders, they come visit and chat. Saturday afternoon, Holly and I stood and watched a few feet from four Red-Breasted Nuthatches circling from branches to cylinder feeder, in chirp-and-song conversation, sounding precisely like a group of Woodstocks from Peanuts/Charlie Brown. They didn’t mind that we were there and they let us into a frenzy that I can still glimpse in my mind, something bigger than me or us, something we were able to be a part of.

It’s not like Wart’s experience of being among geese flying at dawn, but at the same time, it lights up that these experiences are out there to be had, to be a part of, in a way that connects us to Creation.

Later, as Saturday moved into evening, I was walking from the parking lot behind Christ Church Easton to go to our Saturday worship service. The sun was beginning to set and was casting an incredible light on the steeple of the church and as I watched a “V” of Canadian Geese flying in formation flew over, like the light was shining specifically on them, and the low point of the V came directly overtop the point of the steeple. It was another transcendent moment, there for only a few seconds, but showing something so much more.

All it took to experience these two separate moments, in one afternoon, was to pay attention.

I was looking through photos on my phone, in search of moments. It seems natural to try to capture and share the moments we have. I couldn’t catch either of them from Saturday with a picture, so I try to communicate them in words, in a similar way to White in his novel.

Bubbles and sunsets.

A few years back we were at The Claggett Center on an Alpha Retreat. A handful of us were coming back from a walk through the woods and there was a woman blowing huge bubbles that had the youth group mesmerized. Our friend Dave, who might be the most youthful person you will ever meet, jumped in with the kids chasing bubbles around the yard. It was a happened-upon moment, easy enough just to walk right by, but seizing it, embracing it, enjoying it, colored everything in a way that could have been missed.

Going back further, an evening we were at the yacht club in Oxford for dinner and my daughter Ava, my father and I walked out onto the dock as the sun was setting. I remember it being a beautiful scene, but I can’t tell you anything about that particular sunset. What I remember, what the moment was for me, was looking over and seeing my Dad trying to catch it, trying to capture something of what he saw. In addition to being an accountant, my Dad has always taken pictures–from getting slides developed when my sister and I were little, of ice storms and sailboats, to grandkids’ sports games in the digital camera era, to now having our cameras on our phones; looking over to see my father pulled into a moment was my moment.

These moments, by themselves, don’t make for a complete education. But without moments that make life, that give life depth and feeling, what good is an education?

There is a scene in “The Once and Future King” where the young Arthur first encounters the sword that he will pull out of the stone, which will show him to be the king. Upon touching the sword, he sees more deeply into life:

“I feel strange when I have hold of this sword, and I notice everything much more clearly. Look at the beautiful gargoyles of the church, and of the monastery which it belongs to. See how splendidly all the famous banners in the aisle are waving. How nobly that yew holds up the red flakes on its timbers to worship God. How clean the snow is. I can smell something like fetherfew and sweet briar–and is it music that I hear?”

Arthur’s adventures and experiences, his being changed and living in different perspectives, has given him a deeper soul to experience this moment of his destiny.

He is not able to pull the sword out of the stone immediately. But because he is intimately connected with so much of Creation, something happens:

“All round the churchyard there were hundreds of old friends. They rose over the church wall all together… there were badgers and nightingales and vulgar crows and hares and wild geese and falcons and fishes and dogs and dainty unicorns and solitary wasps and corkindrills and hedgehogs and griffins and the thousand other animals he had met. They loomed round the church wall, the lovers and helpers of the Wart, and they all spoke solemnly in turn. Some of them had come from the banners in the church, where they were painted in heraldry, some from the waters and the sky and the fields about–but all, down to the smallest shrew mouse, had come to help on account of love. Wart felt his power grow.”

There it is. Part of Arthur’s education was to gain insight and understanding and appreciation for creatures and history and all of Creation. And what happened in turn is that Creation embraced and had a love for Arthur.

That isn’t all we might want a king to know in order to rule justly and compassionately. But it’s certainly something we would want on the list.

When we can experience and appreciate moments; when we can see that life and the world is bigger than we are; when we can acknowledge and understand that other people are open to experience these transcendent moments just like we are; when we can learn that every living thing can be part of the moments that we have; when we can look into the eyes of someone or something and see something reflected back to us that causes love to grow in us, for others and for all Creation… those are things that would make a king, and a kingdom, worthwhile.

Taking Notes, at peace or in the wilderness

I am rarely without a notebook and pen. It would be fair for me to wear a sign on my back that says, “Will stop to write.” Mostly because otherwise I will forget. I will stop my longboard if a compelling thought jumps into my mind. And I frequently sit along a shoreline, in the woods, on a bench or wherever to take notes.

When it comes to church, for the readings and the sermon, I often just have pen and paper at the ready.

These are notes and thoughts after sermons and discussion last weekend at Christ Church Easton.

Last weekend’s lectionary readings were Isaiah 11:1-10 (The Peaceful Kingdom) and Matthew 3:1-12 (The Proclamation of John the Baptist). They will both speak to you if you let them.

A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse,
    and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him,
    the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
    the spirit of counsel and might,
    the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.

Isaiah 11:1-3

On our Sunday morning Zoom discussion, Fr. Bill Ortt unpacked the Isaiah reading.

Wisdom happens in the heart and soul. Understanding takes place in the mind.

Fr. Bill Ortt

That’s one to sit with. We comprehend things with our mind, but when something sinks into our soul, it changes us.

And as we got talking about how to take “the fear of the Lord,” Fr. Bill talked about the ocean–how it deserves reverence and respect; how it leaves us humbled and in awe when we think about its size and power.

My mind went to the stars. When I stare at a clear night sky and try to think about the distance and time that is between us and God’s artwork across the cosmos; if I see a shooting star or the recent eclipse, my sense of awe and wonder is beyond stoked.

In verses 6-10, Isaiah goes on to describe what the coming peaceful kingdom might be like:

The wolf shall live with the lamb;
    the leopard shall lie down with the kid;
the calf and the lion will feed together,
    and a little child shall lead them.
7 The cow and the bear shall graze;
    their young shall lie down together;
    and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
8 The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
    and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.
9 They will not hurt or destroy
    on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
    as the waters cover the sea.

This whole section is filled with hope for a people that need it. Maybe with what the world we live in feels like, looking forward with hope for a time to come might do us some good.

In Matthew’s Gospel, John the Baptist appears in the wilderness. He looks crazy, wearing camel-hair clothing and a leather belt, eating locusts and wild honey. He tells people to change their lives, to live differently.

We got talking about the wilderness.

“Temptation in the Wilderness” by Briton Riviere, WikiMedia Commons

The kind of wilderness they talk about in the Bible is not a place we want to be. Wilderness experiences are those times we feel alone, lost, stripped down, exhausted, confused.

We talked about the need for recognizing those times in the wilderness, those times of desperation.

“Sometimes we go into the wilderness, but sometimes the wilderness comes to us.”

That was a comment made in our Zoom discussion. There is a lot of truth to that. Being aware of the wilderness, even if we don’t feel that’s where we are, can be a saving grace.

Wilderness changes us. It can make us wiser. It can help us understand what other people are going through. It can wake up our compassion. When we come out of the wilderness renewed, we want to be people who help others who are struggling to make it through.

Towards the end of Fr. Bill’s sermon in the church on Sunday morning, he tied it together:

“We need to know what it means to be people who have been healed, forgiven, and renewed.”

Amen.

Falling Forward

Fall is a time of change, a time of incredible colors, crisp air, clear skies, and fire-pit warmth. My bones know when fall hits. It’s also always been a time of renewal, energy, and new beginnings.

This year, fall is the beginning of year two of seminary through Iona Eastern Shore for seven of us aspirants and postulants. Our studies this year are focused on the history of the Christianity (what happened between the Acts of the Apostles and today) and heavily on homiletics–preaching. I’m especially appreciating lectures, essays, and books by Tom Long, who makes me think that preaching is something that can be taught, even to those of us to whom it doesn’t come naturally.

To borrow a few aspirational sentences from Long’s book “The Witness of Preaching”–

“To have our own lives, our own work, our own words, our own struggles and fears gathered up in some way into that event (preaching) is an occasion of rich and joyful grace… To be a preacher is to be a midwife of the word… we do not establish the time of its arriving; we cannot eliminate the labor pains that surround it; but we serve with gratitude at its coming and exclaim with joy at its birth.”

And:

“Faithful preaching requires such gifts as sensitivity to human need, a discerning eye for the connections between faith and life, an ear attuned to hearing the voice of Scripture, compassion, a growing personal faith, and the courage to tell the truth.”

I have such a long way to go, but I am inspired and encouraged and am becoming a student of the art and event of preaching.

I’ve also been helped along the way this fall by a discernment group who have gathered multiple times to help me discern, distill, and clarify my calling as part of the canonical process toward ordination. The way is each and every step and I am grateful beyond words for the questions, love, and encouragement from these friends.

Small Groups

At Christ Church Easton, new small groups are gathering to wrestle with Paul’s Letter to the Romans; a group of men are two weeks into discussing Richard Rohr’s “From Wild Man to Wise Man”; and we’re looking forward to our next newcomers class, where Brenda Wood and I will help orient folks to the ministries and work of our church, while looking at how baptism, Bible study, Communion, and prayer help define our faith in Rowan Williams’ book “Being Christian.”

Romans has given me a particular focus and opportunity for the fall/winter. In the same way that I wrote each week about our small group study of John O’Donohue’s book “Anam Cara,” I’ll be writing about Romans–thoughts from different scholars, snippets from our group discussions, and I am hoping to do some video segments and interviews with folks talking Romans.

I think for many church-goers, Paul’s Letter to the Romans is something experienced piecemeal, here and there, in lectionary readings. People know it’s a big deal, but they never take the time to read it and reckon with it. And that’s understandable–it’s daunting! But it’s also beautiful and potentially transformative. I love this thought by Rev. Jay Sidebotham, in “Conversations with Scripture: Romans,” when he says:

“The expression of trust in God’s grace, a theme of the Letter to the Romans, has the power to change individual lives. It also has the power to change communities, which is why it matters that we enter into this conversation. Such a conversation does not mean that we will like or understand everything in the letter… In the spirit of conversation, a word that suggests companionship on the journey, we hope that faithful attention to this ancient letter may open the door for new insights into the expansiveness of the grace of God.”

Romans has a history of changing lives and communities. Would that our studies might increase our trust in God’s grace.

To Live Prayerfully

Last weekend, Fr. Bill Ortt preached on Luke 18:1-8, the Parable of the Widow and the Unjust Judge. The text starts out by saying, “Jesus told his disciples a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose hope.” This is advice you give people who are going through tough times; people who might reach a point in their lives and their faith where they want to give up.

If we are going to be people for God, who is love, and so people for love, we need to lean in, not give up. We need to live prayerfully. Prayer is not simply asking for things–prayer is our connection to God. Prayer requires listening as much, if not more than talking.

That’s part of the reason why we use Rowan Williams’ book “Being Christian” in our newcomer class. It ends with prayer. And Williams describes three things that are essential for prayer:

  1. First, and most importantly, prayer is God’s work in us… It is the opening of our minds and hearts to the Father…
  2. Second, there is the deep connection… between praying and living justly in the world… Prayer is the life of Jesus coming alive in you, so it is hardly surprising if it is absolutely bound up with a certain way of being human which is about reconciliation, mercy, and freely extending the welcome and the love of God to others.
  3. Third, prayer from our point of view is about fidelity, faithfulness, sticking to it… Just stay there and if in doubt say, ‘O God, make speed to save me.’ Prayer is your promise and pledge to be there for the God who is there for you.

To live a prayerful life is to open our hearts, minds, and lives to God. It’s about praying and living in a way that shows reconciliation, mercy, welcome, and love. And it’s about sticking with it.

It’s a lot to take in. It’s a lot to try. We won’t always get it right. We will stumble and fall. And none of us can do it alone. But with God’s help, and with each other, we can get back up, try again, and keep forward on the way.

I come back to the Thomas Merton Prayer regularly. We prayed it together at the first meeting of our discernment group. And it feels like a good time to offer it here:

Morning Snapshots

Eastern Bluebirds are flying in front of and behind me as I skate onto the Oxford Conservation Park loop. I’ve had their shade of blue and orange in my head since I first saw a bluebird years ago and they still quicken my heart.

It is a Saturday with nothing on the morning calendar and temperatures looking to move into the mid-90s. This early though, there is a breeze and it’s perfect sitting outside weather.

Books frequently open my mind and expand my worldview. The path I am walking (or skating) I owe in part to a Trappist monk named Thomas Merton. Recently I’ve encountered another Trappist monk Thomas, Thomas Keating.

“Grace is a participation in the Divine nature, it’s not just something added on like an overcoat. It’s a radical transformation of the whole of human nature so that it can be a divine human being, meaning it can exercise freedom, compassion, love…”

Fr. Thomas Keating

From reading his books to watching the documentary, “A Rising Tide of Silence,” Keating and a former student of his, an Episcopal priest named Cynthia Bourgeault, have pointed me to the practice of centering prayer. I’ve made this type of silent prayer part of my mornings for the past month or so, and I hope to keep it in my daily routine.

This morning, I want to go outside, to make this time under my sitting tree. After my bluebird greeting, I have a deer run across the cemetery loop about 10 feet in front of me.

I’m traveling light, just a notebook, pen, and binoculars, and I sit on my skateboard on the shoreline looking out onto the cove.

For centering prayer, they recommend picking a word that can bring you back to the moment, Bourgeault describes the word as being like windshield wipers to wipe away the thoughts that always jump in the way for attention. The word I have been using is “rest.” In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus says, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28). Psalm 37:7 says “Rest in the Lord,” which can also be translated as “Be still in the Lord,” meaning be at peace. I find that to be the right approach and mindset for me.

Sitting by the water, I breathe and close my eyes. A breeze is across my skin and in my ears like a conversation and listening, there is a constant concert of songbird voices. I can hear a fish jump in front of me to the left, and I open my eyes to see the rings it left–a cardinal flies low over the water, like it’s his cue to go on. The ascending sun reflects off the water to the right.

I am new to centering prayer, but even with my limited experience, I find that when I let my passing thoughts go, it gives me an opportunity to be closer to God. Keating’s quote that grace is for us a chance to participate in the work God is doing in the world and the love He has for us and for creation. And I can feel that this morning. And sitting alongside a cemetery, where my grandparents, family, and friends are buried, remembering and feeling them, I feel re-connected over and through time, like we are all sharing these remarkable moments.

Keating writes:

“When the presence of God emerges from our inmost being into our faculties, whether we walk down the street or drink a cup of soup, divine life is pouring into the world.”

For most of my life, this kind of quiet prayer time, these morning moments and experiences have been solo endeavors, an introvert’s delight. And I still need plenty of those. But I also find that I can be around people and still be at peace; I can even delight in what other people are doing. Like Keating says, walking down the street, or having a cup of coffee (too early for soup), I want to take those moments with me into the world, to be a part of that divine life pouring into the world . And I am not ready for the next phase of the day to start, so I head to the Oxford Park.

I stop through Oxford Social, the cafe right next to the park, for the first time. A birding friend from my Oxford Community Center days gets in line and we talk birds a bit, and about Third Haven Quaker Meeting House, and about seminary. I walk down to a bench by the river and sit with coffee, the view, conversations off to my right, kids playing on the swings to my left, and a young boy running with his dog.

I pick up John O’Donohue‘s book “Anam Cara,” a favorite book, which Rev. Susie Leight and I will be leading a book study of starting in July, and I come across this:

“Love is absolutely vital for a human life. For love alone can awaken what is divine with in you. In love, you grow and come to your self. When you learn to love and to let yourself be loved, you come home to the hearth of your own spirit… Love begins with paying attention to others, with an act of gracious self-forgetting. This is the condition in which we grow.”

John O’Donohue, “Anam Cara”

And it’s this openness, this paying attention to others, this self-forgetting, letting go of ourselves, letting go of myself, where I seem to be spending a lot of my time of late. O’Donohue continues:

“Once the soul awakens, the search begins and you can never go back. From then on, you inflamed with a special longing that will never again let you linger in the lowlands of complacency and partial fulfillment. The eternal makes you urgent.”

Maybe this has been a slow build over the last 50 years. Maybe all those different moments I can look back on and feel sitting here now, have all been hints and flickers, breadcrumbs or candles of encouragement. And each epiphany adds to a longing, pushes further into the search. Maybe with the state of the world, the worry, the suffering, the confusion, the time is coming that we need to look at differently and help others do the same; we need to live differently and help others do the same.

Maybe when we have moments of sitting quietly and emptying ourselves out, what’s there that we connect to, is Love (God is Love). And what could be more important to share with each other?

Saturday Tangents

On any given day, my mind travels far more places than my body does. On the best days, both get to roam free and find beautiful places and experiences.

Yesterday was Saturday, a day that started in downpour and ended in sunshine. It was a typical day on the outside–I didn’t have a single in-person conversation with anyone, which isn’t unusual on weekends I don’t have the girls.

Saturdays start with coffee, reading, prayer, daydreams. When the rain let up, rescue dog Harper and I wandered around the yard a bit.

TANGENT 1 – BACKYARD PURPLE. If I don’t notice flowers, birds, and butterflies in my own backyard, how will I spot them anywhere else? I can’t count how many times I have walked out to the writing shed since our COVID-19 quarantine began. Each time I try to take in and appreciate something different. As we’ve discussed with Alice Walker, God gives us purple in our lives, it is up to us to notice it.

Thanks to adventurer Beau Miles, who has re-thought what to do with 24 hours, even if you don’t leave your own block, I am trying to be more conscious of what I do with my time, giving myself permission to chase down tangents, which is how my mind works anyway. So here are some more tangents from the day.

Three men who shaped the Black Panther. From left: Christopher Priest, whose epic and iconic run writing the Black Panther comic book made the character cool again; Chadwick Boseman, whose incredible on-screen performances brought T’Challa to life for all new audiences; and Ta-Nehisi Coates, the powerhouse writer and thinker who currently writes Black Panther and who has elevated him even higher in cultural relevance.

TANGENT 2 – CHADWICK BOSEMAN/BLACK PANTHER. Friday night brought the sad news of Black Panther actor Chadwick Boseman’s death from colon cancer at age 43. When actors, musicians, or athletes that we’ve never met die, maybe it shouldn’t feel like a big deal, but the ones who have touched our lives have real presence with us.

The three biggest common interests my daughters and I share are: Marvel movies, Washington Nationals baseball, and the show “The Office.” We’ve watched pretty well every Marvel movie together, multiple times, many in the theaters on their debuts. It’s a way I share my lifelong love of comic books and stories with them. More than any other Marvel movie to date, Black Panther was a cultural event. If you want to get a sense for why, check out this clip from The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, where they had Boseman surprise movie-goers who thought they were filming a video thanks to the actor. Boseman’s graciousness, humility, humor, and humanity off-screen, in his personal life made him every bit the king he portrayed on screen. Do yourself a favor and Google his name and watch clips and read articles.

Yesterday I spent time watching Marvel movies with Black Panther in them, as well as reading more of Christopher Priest’s character-resurrecting run, and Ta-Nehisi Coates’s mythological and epic first arc.

TANGENT 3 – RUNNING IN THE RAIN. There are times when I have to let my body catch up to my brain. Early afternoon the rain had stopped for a bit, so I added a run to the day. As I started up Rails to Trails, about a mile in, the rain started again, first as a slow drizzle, building to an ever-present curtain, then to a downpour by the last half-mile of my 4.5 miles. There is a feeling that warm rain on a run on a hot day brings, that makes the run worth it just for that.

TANGENT 4 – MIND FOOD. I’m a believer in the notion that what we take in is what we put back out, and formative in who we become. If I read Scripture, imaginative, thought-provoking stories, poetry, cosmic graphic novels, world-building fiction; watch movies and documentaries that open my mind and heart and help me see and dream, maybe that is part of my path?

Krista Tippett, in her book “Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living,” reminds us that, “what we practice, we become. What’s true of playing the piano or throwing a ball also holds for our capacity to move through the world mindlessly and destructively or generously and gracefully.”

After running, it’s orange slices and water, it’s chopping peppers from the garden into tuna salad, and making time to read, to imagine, and to be still.

Tippett continues:

“I believe that mystery is a common human experience, like being born and falling in love and dying. A new openness to the language of mystery–and the kindred virtue of wondering–across boundaries of belief and non-belief, science and faith, is helping us inhabit our own truths and gifts exuberantly while honoring the reality of the other.”

I want to believe that. And I can see evidence in pockets, or more like veins running through rock, but there is a lot of rock too. Tippett published the book in 2016 and wasn’t looking at the nastiness and yelling and how divided people are right now. But maybe it’s times like now that we need to focus on the veins of hope and not the rock itself. Maybe now hope and love and mystery and wonder are everything, in part because of their scarcity on the national stage.

The apostle Paul wrote letters of encouragement and hope and thanksgiving from prison and gave shape and direction to a young church. He was looking forward. Poet Ross Gay, in his book “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude,” and poem of the same name, in giving thanks to different aspects of his life, looks back:

...thank you
the ancestor who loved you
before she knew you
by smuggling seeds into her braid for the long
journey, who loved you
before he knew you by putting
a walnut tree in the ground, who loved you
before she knew you by not slaughtering
the land; thank you
who did not bulldoze that ancient grove
of dates and olives,
who sailed his keys into the ocean
and walked softly home; who did not fire, who did not
plunge the head into the toilet, who said stop,
don’t do that; who lifted some broken
someone up; who volunteered
the way a plant birthed of the reseeding plant
is called a volunteer…

And there it is. There are our options laid out before us. This is our time (and I have “The Goonies” in my head typing that); we are here as volunteers the way plants are–we aren’t here by our choosing, but this is where we have sprung up.

What will we do? What will I do?

Will we choose to bulldoze, fire, and plunge heads with our words and actions? Will I incite violence, confusion, and add to the hate?

Or will I bring seeds, plant trees for shade and sustenance? Will I throw the keys to hate’s bulldozer that everyone is so quick to put in our hands–will I sail those keys into the ocean; will I say STOP, and instead try to lift some broken someone up?

Saturday was a day of running down tangents and seeing what was down each. When I take the time to follow tangents, to follow those paths my mind and heart open up, I find things I might not find otherwise. Down each of them, I find gratitude, mystery, wonder, and hope.

Those are the things I choose to share and hope to pass on.

Adding it all up

I’m not sure there is a math to moments. You can’t sum up your life or your heart with an equation, nor can you quantify those days that you feel like give you some semblance of why you are here.

I’ve had a habit of sitting on the deck and writing with coffee for a number of years now. There was the time that Anna, also an early riser, came out and asked if she could sit and write with me.

There was the time I was on my way out the front door for an early run, when Anna came down the steps asking if she could come too. We grabbed her bike, my longboard, the dog, and drove to St. Michaels Rails to Trails.

There was the time I won Wilco tickets and Anna, not really knowing who Wilco was, asked if she could go with me, and it became her first concert experience. All the leaf piles raked just so the girls could jump into them. Turning the back of the truck into a play room on a sunny day. Digging for sand crabs on any beach trip. Any time I have gotten anything about being a father remotely close to right, it has been the times when I didn’t let a moment pass us by; the times when I showed up, leaned in, and we created memories together. Any parent who hasn’t learned a huge lesson from listening to Harry Chapin’s “Cat’s in the Cradle,” should go listen to it right now. We don’t get that time, or those times, back.

When I look back on all the best moments in my life, almost none of them have been about me; there is almost always a “we” or an “us.” And so many of them have been about Anna and Ava.

Yesterday, May 13, Anna graduated from Easton High School, the same high school I graduated from 29 years earlier. Her graduation ceremony was co-opted by a pandemic, which also took the entire spring of her senior year. Honestly, the graduation ceremony for the Class of 2020 was maybe more special for being unique and because of the care of so many people who organized it.

Yesterday morning, before the girls were up, I read Jim Harrison’s poem, “Adding It Up.” He’s looking for a rubric, or some way to summarize his life.

“…two daughters, eight dogs,
I can’t name all that cats and horses, a farm
for thirty-five years, then Montana, a cabin,
a border casita, two grandsons, two sons-in-law,
and graced by the sun and the moon, red wine
and garlic, lakes and rivers, the millions of trees.”

His mind is already wandering from things that can be quantified–it’s a flawed math. And then he goes further into experiences which don’t fit equations at all. He talks about a hiding place underneath a huge stump, through which…

“I’ve watched the passing legs of sandhill cranes,
napping where countless bears have napped,
an aperture above where the sky and the gods
may enter, yet I’m without the courage to watch
the full moon through this space. I can’t figure
out a life.”

He finds and enters into a sacred space, where he has to pause, unsure. And that’s what parenthood, at it’s best, can do–create sacred spaces through which we watch our children grow and accomplish things, while also falling, failing, and getting hurt.

And I have to pause, unsure.

And all of those moments, every one of them, come together in a moment like graduating from high school; walking through that particular gateway that opens up the next part of life, and the world.

Fatherhood and church have both made me soft. But it’s a soft-heartedness I will take. When my father sends a card he’s written a note in to Anna; when her mom makes a photo memory board of so many of Anna’s friends and experiences through her 18 years; when her sister Ava–who doesn’t cry–gets teary before a photo; when my sister and her kids show up and turn the front yard into party central and have an impromptu social distancing back yard graduation picnic. It all makes my heart overfull and trips me up. But tripping on those moments helps me recognize them.

These are Anna’s moments, not mine. She drives them. But I get to be a part of them. When I think of what yesterday meant, what it means, through Anna’s struggles and accomplishments, which we watch as parents, but can’t fix or do ourselves; when I realize how little words can actually do or say about the biggest moments our hearts experience; I maybe get a glimpse of the things my parents watched and were a part of for my sister and me; and I can tell you how much more Anna’s graduation means to me than my own.