How Charles Ives Saved My Soul

Thank God for Charles Ives! Without him I couldn’t have gotten through seminary. To be more precise, without his The Unanswered Question, I might have lost my sanity altogether. I discovered this short piece of music as I was plowing through the writings of the Early Church Fathers. (Yes, they were only Fathers in those days.) Mystics and theologians battled – literally - with one another over words and even over the spelling of those words. They argued with a vitriol I had not heard since I stopped listening to radio preachers years before.

One evening in Bound Brook, NJ, as I poured over these ancient texts, unable to fathom the light within them that had animated and agitated so many, the local public radio station broadcast Ives’ piece into my study: The Unanswered Question. Fittingly, it is subtitled “A Contemplation of Something Serious.” The music struck a chord with me, if you’ll pardon the expression. It is hauntingly plaintive and inconclusive, and it has stayed with me ever since. It is a deeply humane composition.

Ives wrote The Unanswered Question in 1906 along with its companion, Central Park in the Dark in the Good Old Summer Time (subtitled “A Contemplation of Nothing Serious”). Within its simple structure there are three distinct kinds of music layered upon one another: a string chorale, an unchanging trumpet phrase and a chattering woodwind response. Ives wrote,

“The strings play pianississimo (very softly) throughout with no change in tempo. They are to represent the ‘Silence of the Druids — Who Know, See and Hear Nothing.’ The trumpet intones ‘The Perennial Question of Existence,’ and states it in the same tone of voice each time. But the hunt for ‘The Invisible Answer’ undertaken by the flutes and other human beings becomes gradually more active, faster and louder.... ‘The Fighting Answerers,’ as the time goes on and after a ‘secret conference,’ seem to realize a futility, and begin to mock ‘The Question’ — the strife is over for the moment. After they disappear, ‘The Question’ is asked for the last time, and ‘The Silences’ are heard beyond in ‘Undisturbed Solitude'."

The contrast between the words on the page and the music in my ears was startling. The apodictic certainty of the theologians paled before the “Perennial Question” put by the trumpet’s voice. I experienced great empathy with the Questioner, and a deep yearning for The Silences, but I felt the theologians were the “Fighting Answerers” whose many words lead nowhere. In that moment I gave up forever the search for all-explaining dogmatic formulations. I turned whole-heartedly toward ambiguity and embraced it. Henceforth The Question, not the Answerers, would be my guide.

Left to my own devices, I would choose to dwell within the Silence of the Druids. This is the “tacit dimension” about which the Hungarian physicist Michael Polanyi wrote so perceptively. It is the “imaginal world” of the 12^th Century mystic, Ibn Arabi; it yields real knowledge though it can be accessed only through the creative imagination. It is the Tao of Lao Tzu, the Logos of St. John and the Wheel of American Indian spirituality. “We know much more than we can tell,” wrote Polanyi. And we love much more than we can know.

In later years, I came to understand that theologians also are “Questioners” first, whose “certainties” grow out of their struggles with all that is unresolved in their own hearts and in our world. I accept their words as their hypotheses, their attempts to cross the chasm.

Charles Ives was a church-going New England organist, and a Transcendentalist, but he was more. He was willing to let words fail and answers dissipate. "Vagueness,” he said, “is at times an indication of nearness to a perfect truth." Today, when too many are too certain about too much, a little vagueness would be salutary, and the Silences most welcomed

Wales forever, Amen!

When the train doors opened, a veritable sea of excited sports fans flooded toward Cardiff Arms Park. Like small figurines in a swift current, we were swept with them through narrow lanes of vendors hawking fish and chips, beer and leek soup. Leek soup? Yes, the aroma of leek soup wafted over us in the damp March air, as pervasive and enticing as the smell of sizzling bratwursts at a Vikings opener. The Welsh National Union rugby team soon would take the field against their vaunted English rivals. Two of the greatest players of all time, Gareth Edwards and Phil Bennett, would lead the charge. Spirits were unbelievably high. Little did I know I was about to witness one of the finest games in what later came to be called the “second golden era” of Welsh Rugby.

The rivalry between the Welsh and the English is especially deep-seated and arouses the most intense emotion. It is rooted in the long and unfortunate history between these two nations. Just before the match, I later learned, Bennett rallied the team with words that became iconic throughout the country:  "Look what these bastards have done to Wales. They've taken our coal, our water, our steel. They buy our homes and live in them for a fortnight every year. What have they given us? Absolutely nothing. We've been exploited, raped, controlled and punished by the English — and that's who you are playing this afternoon."

Rugby occupies an exalted place in the Welsh consciousness. It is said that one Sunday morning worshippers entering their chapel were confronted by a huge sign on the communion table.  Cymru am byth! (Wales forever!) The minister was perturbed and had the Deacons remove it because it lacked religious significance. But when he returned that evening he found an even bigger sign that now read, Cymru yn oes oesoedd. Amen! (Wales forever and ever, Amen!)

Indeed, in Wales rugby approaches the status of a national religion. A Welshman in Hong Kong, Gareth Thomas, declared that Twickenham (England), Stade Français (France) and other national stadia “are great fortresses of the game, but its cathedral is in Cardiff.” He observed that anyone who has experienced the unique atmosphere in the Welsh capital on the day of an international  “cannot but subscribe to this notion.” Comedian Max Boyce said that the roof over the new Millennium Stadium is pulled back when Wales attacks, “so God can see us play”. It was even suggested that a church be built on the spot where Edwards once scored a “try” over Scotland in the mud.

The two other great passions of Wales are poetry and choral singing. Although the “Chairing of the Bard” is perhaps the grandest annual ritual in the country, it is for their music that the Welsh are justly famous. Every Sunday afternoon in chapels across the land they gather to practice their four-part singing of sacred songs. Cymanfa Ganus (Singing Festivals) are held in towns throughout the year, and annually at their great cultural event, the National Eisteddfod. Throughout the world, wherever two or three (of Welsh descent) are gathered, there are Cymanfa Ganus.

Oh, and I forgot to mention one other favorite pastime: the pub! Many a Welshman - and woman too - repair often to the pub for a good time and good conversation. In Pontardawe even the local A.A. meets in the pub. (“Recovery means drinking less,” I was told.) The Welsh insist on distinguishing between “chapel” and “pub” folks - you are one or the other - but many households have a foot in both. The proof of this soon will become obvious.

We entered the stadium and found our way to our places. Cardiff Arms Park was built to hold 53,000 people, more or less. The announcer told us the crowd that day numbered in excess of 60,000. Among the throng of people were many of the rich and famous. The announcer even welcomed Frank Sinatra. There were no seats or bleachers to be seen. Sinatra et al. may have had seats but the rest of us stood through the game. (That’s why they are called stands!) Forget any sense of personal space. We were a single collective mass who raised a deafening roar when the Welsh players ran onto the pitch.

Though we were packed elbow-to-elbow and front-to-back, somehow vendors made their way to and fro, up and down among us. Beer was abundantly available, and abundantly consumed.  As my fellow stand-mates began to drink, they also began to sing.

They sang in four parts, and they sang the great hymns of their great tradition. The more they drank, the more they sang. They sang and drank and cheered and sang some more.

How gloriously they sang! They sang the sweetest of lullabies, Ar Hyd y Nos, with an unimaginable tenderness, and they sang their stirring national anthem, Hen Wlad fy Nhadau with patriotic fervor. Imagine 60,000 Welshmen, with no apparent concern about designated drivers, singing in practiced harmonies: Cwm Rhondda. Aberystwyth. Bryn Calfaria. Llangloffen. Ton-y-Botel. Hyfrydol, Calon Lân. (Now I understood Vernon Davies' comment about his son’s decision to play for England: “I knew he would never play for Wales," he said. "He’s tone deaf.”) Raucous cheers punctuated their singling when Wales scored or made a play, and indignant boos when England did the same. 

The Welsh triumphed over the English, 14-9, in that well-contested match. I had gotten to see Gareth Edwards and Phil Bennett at their peak, even as they were nearing the ends of their storied careers. In high spirits when the match was over, my friend and I sang our way out of the stadium with the boisterous crowd, down the narrow streets and back onto the train.

I always will remember that day - not as much for the match as for the music. Not as much for Gareth Edwards or Phil Bennett (or even Frank Sinatra) as for the thousands of anonymous Welsh men and women under that gray March sky who sang of their homeland in the language of their ancestors. I have been to many cathedrals in the UK and elsewhere, but never have I been so stirred. Leek soup and Welsh hymns were not what I expected when I left Pontardawe that morning.

Esther's Sea

Esther loved the sea. In her apartment were her father’s photographs of the sea. Rocks and clefts along the Atlantic coast, with names like Purgatory and Camel Rock, shaped her childhood consciousness. She once wrote:

“How I pity those who have never had the opportunity to fall in love with the sea. Even at its most peaceful moments there is movement and rhythm and a tremendous tranquility that can put at ease even the most disturbed frame of mind. But when it is at its wildest, whipped by winds of hurricane force, with waves and spray flying high above the cliffs and rocks, then the sea is its most thrilling self.”

Esther’s sea and Esther's life mirrored one another: tumultuous and powerful one moment, serene and gentle the next. As she was an enthusiast of the sea, so was she an enthusiast for life - from family and gardening to the reconciliation of peoples distanced by conflict. To be alive for her meant to engage life passionately, and to embrace it immodestly, whatever her circumstance. Even when she battled the ravages of cancer she did not give in to negativism. She had an untethered optimism and an abiding faith in life's possibilities.

The sea is a wise teacher. Esther was its discerning student. She came to know intuitively what the sea was eager to teach: that the web of life is seamless and complete and that divine reality encompasses all in a loving embrace.

(Photo from Widescreen Wallpapers)

The Tomb and Womb of Life

Bonnie and Duke were with us that day. We arrived in Shepherdstown around 4:30 p.m. After stopping at the only stop-light in town, we drove past the college, the abandoned train station and the shanties huddled under hickory. We continued over a pocketed, dirt road until we could drive no further. With supplies in our arms, we walked the last half-mile through brush and bracken to a deserted mansion. The moist black earth hushed our eager tread. Squirrels heralded our arrival as they called their greetings from the limbs. Sparrows took note of us, but continued their more important work overhead.

According to townsfolk, this house had been built by a local man in the early 1900's for his young and lovely European bride. But soon after it was completed, the house and its lady within - its soul, its raison d’être - were consumed by a raging fire. Only the shell remains - a home now for all manner of other-than-human life. They say the man despaired and never returned. It is clear that he never reclaimed the home which housed his dream.

Our Lady of Nature has dreams of her own. She has begun the slow, healing work of destruction. Scavengers have stripped the interior of its paneling, exposing red clay block walls. Trees have sent roots into beams and stone walls; saplings spring from the remaining sections of the roof. Rains are attacking the foundations. Pipes, cables and even nails, corroding under the coordinated assaults of wind and water, are returning to the dust from which they came. Vines have scaled the walls, exploiting every crevice.

Wildflowers now grow in fireplaces high above the foundations. Blooming roses poke their heads above the ferns. They are all that remain of once-formal gardens overlooking the Potomac.

We approached deferentially. Soon the smells of burning wood and cooking hamburgers mingled with the honeysuckle and nearby river odors. We ate our bread and drank our wine in silence: the bittersweet Eucharist of friends too soon to part. We laughed at the follies of our childhood and grew pensive before the hopes those children entrusted to us.

We tried to see the future; the house loomed before us. Its enigmatic presence commanded our attention even as it commanded the landscape. Without its soul, it became the soul of the larger wilderness. Embracing earth and sky as one, it welcomed all into its sun-warmed cavities - to rest and peace, to the tomb and womb of life.

 All too quickly the sun, that benevolent tyrant of our lives, hastened westward. Shadows climbed the walls to join the coming darkness of the skies. We turned away from this strange presence and retraced our steps to the car. Along the way we stopped to examine other half- hidden buildings. They also were beginning the long transformation.

We loaded the car and drove the last seven miles through the gentle West Virginia countryside -- back to the towns, our homes and the on-going busyness of our species.

Another Gun, Another Kid

Another gun, another bullet, another fifteen-year-old lay dead in the streets. His body was stretched out on the street where he had fallen. No one thought to cover it. No one knelt beside him. No one held his hand or head or offered a prayer. The loud staccato of police radios, the roaring engine of a passing car, the wailing siren of an approaching ambulance -- these noises masked the silence into which Torrey Milon had descended. Squad cars parked obliquely; their flashing lights swept the street. Uniformed officers paced this way and that. A news photographer bent awkwardly, trying to get the best angle of this scene. Neighbors gathered, but were kept at a distance.

A good kid, we are told. A high school freshman, a good student, the son and brother, the nephew and cousin of a loving family. He was biking home from the South Minneapolis community center when he was shot. No obvious reason has emerged. Though his slaying might be “gang-related”, family, friends and neighbors who knew him deny vehemently that he was a member of any gang. (And what difference would it make?) For his family and friends, anguish, grief and the fearful question of “Why?” make this Holy Week especially painful, and Easter problematic.  

At the site where Torrey Milon died, a neighbor erected a wooden cross. He painted on it the words, “Be With God,” and also “Please, we must stop killing each other.” The traffic has been steady at this little shrine in the center of a struggling neighborhood. Kids and adults have stopped, and bus drivers, police officers and total strangers. Figurines and flowers have been placed by the cross, and messages that say, “We miss you,” and “I love you,” and “God bless you.”

The neighbor who placed the cross is Charles Steen, a burly newspaper press operator who also bakes cookies for kids, cops and fire fighters. “I keep thinking that this is my fault and your fault,” he said. “We got caught up in having the nicer car, the better job, and we’ve forgotten the important things. Kids like Torrey are paying the price for our neglect. I had to do something. I didn’t want people to just see bloodstains on the street where the boy had died.” The world needs less rage and more goodies, he believes. “The answer is not more jails, more cops,” he said. The answer is to keep gymnasiums open late at night so kids have constructive places to go. The answer is to hire people to teach kids skills such as how to fix cars or play musical instruments. “The answer,” according to Steen, “is more chocolate chip cookies.”

(Written in Minneapolis, March 1996)

Start Seeing Motorcycles

"Start Seeing Motorcycles!" the bumper sticker screams from the car in front. No doubt an enthusiast for the open road, I think, or an anxious mom. These words assume (rightly) that most of us don’t see motorcycles. They imply (also rightly) that road running cyclists (and not the rest of us) are most at risk when drivers fail to see them. They remind us of the obvious: bikers are especially vulnerable in accidents. The conclusion surely follows that all of us on the road share a particular responsibility for the safety and well-being of motorcyclists. To “see” them means to respect them, to treat them with common courtesy, to yield rights-of-way and, sometimes, to give them the benefit of a doubt. Not to see them means to violate their space, cut them off, and “marginalize” them as citizens of the highway.

Some people don’t like cyclists. If you are one of these, already you are conjuring rear-view images of leather-clad, motor-gunning, chain-laden, grungy, frowning, freeway marauders who interrupt the serenity of your Sunday drive, who rapidly bear down on you with God knows what intent, who arrogantly weave, pass, and lean recklessly into the ground. You see helmet-less hair trailing in the wind. And you are thinking, “Who do they think they are, anyway? Why should I be responsible for them?”

But you are. And the bumper sticker is right. Whether our vehicles have two wheels or ten, highway travel is a great equalizer. We have responsibility for each other. It behooves us to see everyone on the road we share.

To start “seeing” motorcycles is to discover something important. Bikers are as diverse as shoppers. For every “Hell’s Angel,” there is a college student on a Harley. More than 500,000 bikers will converge in Sturgis, South Dakota, for the 70th Annual Road Rally in August. There may be violent types among them, but there also will be attorneys, doctors, dancers and housewives.  There will be potheads and teetotalers, carnivores and vegetarians. There will be week-end riders and those colorful free-spirits who meander the continent like medieval vagabonds. Some may be living out their wildest machismo fantasies, but most will be plain and friendly folks. They are part-and-parcel of the multi-cultural stew of contemporary America. Not to see them not only endangers them; it impoverishes our own cultural self- understanding. I wonder how many other people I see, but fail to see, because of my fears, prejudices and stereotypes? 

I wonder also how many people fail to see me even when I stand directly in front of them? Do they see only my suit and tie, my white skin and balding pate, but fail to see me? Do our jobs, gender, race, age, physique, accent, religion, or neighborhood get in the way? Do our tattoos and piercings or lack thereof make us 'invisible' to one another?  I’m ready for another bumper sticker: “START SEEING EACH OTHER!” Do you think it will sell?

Photos from Sturgis.Com

Mourning by Bumps and Band-Aids

I was in a hurry. Bending forward to pick up a shoe, I banged my head on the corner of a shelf. A huge and bleeding bump -- my friend called it a “hematoma” -- immediately rose from my skull, bringing pain to me and horror to my children. No serious injury occurred, but the wound remained for days. I covered it with a band-aid, more to spare others its unsightliness than to protect my head. I soon discovered that the band-aid and the bump served a purpose I had not anticipated. They signaled the world that I was hurting, vulnerable and tender.

My mother died a week earlier, after a painful and progressive disability. Her death left me with a deep psychic wound. There was a rawness and immediacy about my pain. Sometimes I needed to talk about it, and at other times I couldn’t. The business of my life continued relentlessly, whether I was prepared or not prepared, whether I felt strong or weak. Healing had to be squeezed in between the carpool and the church meeting.

However, this band-aid stopped people. “What happened to you?” they asked. Sometimes I responded, “I bumped my head.” At other times I said, “My mother died.” I wanted the world to know of my loss but I didn’t always want to talk about it.

Every member of my family experienced injury or illness after my mother died. While most people would attribute this to “stress”, I suggest a different explanation. It may have been the psyche’s way of declaring its need for special consideration.

Grieving is neither well understood or accepted in our culture. Many thanatologists (death specialists) seek to tame its wildness by describing a predictable “process” with inevitable “stages”. We are told to “work through” our grief as we “let go” of our loved one. There is, it seems, a “right way” to grieve.

I long for the days when grieving was more mysterious, and when we who grieve were given time and (psychic) space to allow the inevitable transformations to grow within us. To burn a candle, to regather after a month (or forty days or a year), to ritually observe the loosening of the bonds -- these make more sense to me. They are public ways of honoring private grief, without dictating the form or content one’s healing should take. The black arm-bands or head coverings, the crepe hung over doors -- these were the bumps and band-aids of past generations. They discreetly informed the public that here were individuals in a special condition of vulnerability, who were adjusting to a world that had been made unacceptable by their loss. Here were individuals who carried within them a need for special care.

In our fast-paced modern world, crowded with commitments and obligations, crepe no longer hangs over our doors; neither do arm bands nor head coverings protect us. We are left to heal as best we can in the spaces we create. Bumps and band-aids will have to do. I thank God for friends who understand.

The Invitation

I still remember the smells of sweat and sawdust. In my West Virginia hometown the whole community came out when traveling evangelists brought their road shows to town. We worshiped in churches, at the park, or in tents outside of town. We worshiped with singing and shouting, with laughter and tears. No one watched the clock when we got together. No one could imagine a better place to be. What our religion lacked in sophistication we made up for with joyful exuberance.

But as I grew older this was not enough. I had too many questions, and my persistence in asking them made my elders uneasy. These 'revivals' were designed not to open my mind or expand my heart but to save my soul from the eternal fires of hell. I believe that my childhood religion was deeply rooted in a genuine faith, but it was too narrowly conceived to sustain the journey of a lifetime.

While I was quite young, and for reasons I still do not understand fully, I walked to a drugstore across town and purchased a recorded symphony. I could not even pronounce the composer’s name: Tchaikovsky. The symphony was his Pathetique. Closeted in my bedroom, I played it over and over on my sister's Decca phonograph. At first it made little sense to me, but soon I began to hear tunes, themes and particular instruments. The more intently I listened, the more the music revealed itself to me. It had come from another world, and it beckoned me beyond the boundaries of my life as I had known it until then.

This invitation to cross some unspecified boundary has become a frequent and welcomed visitor in the intervening years.  I heard it again in a loon’s call in northern Minnesota, in the plaintive horn of Louis Armstrong, and in the violent rush of spring waters down a New Hampshire mountainside. While walking alone amidst the ruins of Olympia, or preaching in an old Welsh chapel in Swansea, or walking with my children in the Badlands of South Dakota, I felt, like Jacob at Bethel, that “surely God is in this place.”

When dancers moved across the stage in a darkened Princeton theater, when an unknown woman played Brahms in a dimly lighted room in St. Galen, or when a single soprano heralded the Easter dawn in a crowed Siberian cathedral, I knew that I was part of a larger reality. Even in the dirty confines of a migrant laborers’ camp, or an NAACP-sponsored summer job corps office in Trenton, N. J., or by the bedside of a dying friend, I did not escape God’s presence. “Deep calls unto deep. At night, God’s song is with me.”

Much contemporary religion fails to do justice to the grandeur of God and the ambiguity of the human situation. Too often theology is reduced to clichés and mindless confessions. Religious communities are manipulated as mere political constituencies. A reverence for deeper things - what Aeschylus called “the monarchy of awe” - has disappeared nearly altogether. Yet awe veils a mystery, and from this mystery comes a summons. Humbling ourselves, we hear it.  Opening ourselves, we find answers to  questions we didn't know resided in our hearts.

(Badlands view from Norbeck Pass. NPS Photo by Shaina Niehans)

Singing

In my mind, I am a convinced rationalist. I honor God with words. Although precise verbal formulations never “capture” reality, words and phrases can evoke and reveal what might otherwise remain obscure. Words are our hypotheses, thrown before us into the abyss of the unknown. They are our bridges, linking soul to soul. They reassure us with their compelling logic. They comfort us with their illusory ability to name the unnameable.
 

But in my heart, something more is going on. Why is the worship of many African American congregations so moving? Why do I come away from the liturgy of a Russian Orthodox Church physically exhausted but spiritually soaring? From whence comes the thrill in my breast as bright Brandenburg cadences dance through the hall? From what well flow the tears in my eyes as the plaintive wail of Louis Armstrong’s trumpet engulfs me?

Words may be our bridges, but music is the rising dew, the meandering stream, the roaring cataract beneath -- now gentle, now ominous, now elfish, now raging, now sorrowful, now luminous, now full of dread, now full of mystery. Where words circle or suggest our reality, music draws us deeply into it. Where words are our hypotheses, music is our affirmation.

Singing, especially. Singing is to humans as roaring is to lions, as neighing is to horses, as chirping is to birds. The breath of creation flows through us as it blows through tree branches and tumbleweed. When we stop singing, the breath of life is blocked in us, and life itself begins to wane.

From times immemorial, we have sung -- at the hearth, in public arenas, around campfires, in the market place. We have sung old songs and new. We have sung at birth and at war, in joy and in fear. Our songs have linked generations. What will become of our world when that last real songs pass from our memory, if no new songs take their place, and if we are left only with I-Pods to fill the void?

Singing knows neither tomorrow nor yesterday, yet it links us to those who have gone before and those who will follow us. It gives energy, yields meaning, and invites commitment. It originates in the mysterious depths of life itself, and calls us into the Community of Life. It may be that my breath and your breath together produce the sound. But is that sound not waiting already on the lips of God, waiting for our breath to bring it to life in this world? When we truly sing together, do we not open ourselves to the breath of all life, the breath of all being, and let it sing its song through us?

Singing together -- in concert, as it were -- is one of the great pleasures in life. Whether the music divides us into parts or pulls us along from the beginning in some irenic unison, it fashions a community from the separate selves that we bring. As we give ourselves to song, does not the song give back to us? Although it depends upon our individual gifts, does not our singing transcend our individuality? It brings -- at least for the moment -- minds, hearts and bodies together with a common passion. My singing involves my commitment to life. Our singing together involves our commitment to share our lives in community.

We welcome the lilt and loveliness of our music. As its chords and cadences come to life among us,  we honor the songs we sing. 

Praising God with dandelions

She has a knack for creating lovely arrangements with flowers and greens from her yard and the woods near her home. When she brings her work to grace our Sunday worship, we are reminded that all of nature joins with us in our joyful praise of God.

On one such Sunday, as she approached our meeting place, her daughter ran from behind and thrust a handful of dandelions into the middle of her carefully crafted arrangement. At first she was perturbed because she hardly had time to repair the damage. Then she decided to leave the arrangement exactly as it was, dandelions and all. Dandelions are everywhere, she thought, yet they are never included in anybody’s arrangement. “Sometimes I feel like a dandelion,” she explained during the coffee hour.

The dandelion, of course, is well known to all who would perfect their lawns. It is sturdy, tenacious, aggressive, prolific and capable of growing under the most adverse of circumstances. It is a survivor. It intrudes where it is not appreciated. It brashly disturbs the otherwise quiet elegance of a cultivated lawn. Powerful poisons have been designed to destroy it, but it returns.

It’s greatest offense may be that it is so common. It takes no skill to grow a dandelion; having a crack in one’s concrete step may be sufficient. I have never heard anyone brag, even in the most indirect manner, about the dandelions in their gardens.

To an impartial observer this may seem curious. The dandelion has all the requisites of a lovely and useful flower. It had an exotic name derived from the French - dent de lion, or “lion’s tooth”, because of the tooth-like outline of its leaves. Its soft yellow blossoms, when massed, create carpets of brilliant color over sunlit meadows and fields. Its puff-balls possess a fragile beauty whose design has been copied by sculptors. Generations of earth’s children have enjoyed blowing into these buff-balls, watching them disintegrate and vanish in the breeze.

In ancient times the dandelion was considered a useful herb. Even today people add tender dandelion greens to their spring salads. The delicacy of the color, bouquet and taste of a well-made dandelion wine defies verbal description. This “lowly” flower may simply be the victim of a very bad press.

Someone once said that a weed is merely a flower misplaced. I quite agree. I am grateful to my young friend who saw the beauty and dignity of this common plant and gave it the place of honor on a Sunday morning. She has not yet learned to see it as a weed. I suspect that she sees beauty in a great many other places that I overlook. Is it any wonder that so many of our spiritual leaders have insisted that children have the clearest vision of us all? 

Photos from "Wildman" Steve Brill's Identifying and Harvesting Edible and Medicinal Plants in Wild (and Not So Wild) Places.

Pomp and Circumstance

Jim and I were fellow seminarians. Neither of us is very tall, and I always admired the way he conducted himself. He was something of a prince -- urbane, articulate, even a bit haughty. His  beard was precisely trimmed; his clothing was exquisitely appropriate to every occasion. I never saw Jim in a situation in which he was not in complete control.

Once he was asked to conduct worship for one of the more stately Presbyterian churches in Princeton. Jim was a master at ceremonies. What would seem hopelessly pompous in anyone else was merely dignified when performed by Jim; he was a good choice to direct the staid and proper rites of these eminent folks.

On this occasion, while he was leading a responsive litany, Jim felt a peculiarly insistent call of nature -- one he could not ignore. Alone in the pulpit, he also could not depart to relieve himself. He glanced hurriedly through the order of service and devised a strategy. While the offering was being collected, he would sneak out behind the choir and return unnoticed before the doxology and prayer. Much depended on timing.

The first part of his plan went well. Enthralled by a typically magnificent anthem, the attentive congregation did not know that they were temporarily without a leader. But as the anthem neared its conclusion and Jim started back to his place, he found that the door separating him from the sanctuary had locked when he passed through. He was alone and trapped in an upper hallway. With the choir singing gustily away, no one heard him scratching behind the door.

But Jim is smart, as I say, and he never loses control. He found an open window and, with nary a pause to consider the consequences, he leaped through it - black robes, academic hood and all. Landing on his feet, he ran around the church as the organist hit the chords for the doxology.

The congregation performed its conditioned response of standing, and joined in the song, "Praise God from Whom all blessings flow...” The ushers began their ritual walk down the center aisle with offerings great and bountiful. And marching right behind them, with head held high and singing as loudly as anyone present, was the Reverend Mr. Jim. He waltzed around the ushers in time to collect the plates, and gave a most deeply-felt prayer of thanksgiving. Then he continued with his sermon.

To this day he swears that ninety-nine percent of the congregation never noticed anything unusual about that service.

Playing With Fire

My parents were right about fire. They cautioned me not to play with it. Not to play with matches, or kerosene, or the gas burners in the kitchen. My mother was a nurse. She had seen what fire can do. My father was a fireman. He had watched lives and properties destroyed by fire.

On the other hand, we cooked our food and heated our home with fire. We shoveled coal into the roaring giant of a stove in our cellar. We learned how to start campfires with flint, steel and tinder. We made them blaze for story-telling, body-warmth and entertainment, and we turned them into glowing coals to cook the most amazing meals. My father said that sometimes he set controlled fires to fight wild fires – a concept that is still tinged (if not singed) with mystery for me.

Later I learned that our sun is a seething ball of fire, and beneath the crust of our planet lie fiery volcanoes, simmering. Wires in our house carry a kind of controlled and pulsating fire; too many plugs in a socket once made that unforgettable. Under the hood of our car an engine harnesses a sequence of fiery explosions to bring us to the park. Even my body burns calories in a continuous metabolic fire.

Fire can be released from rocks (coal, uranium), water, wind, oil, wood, or even corn. Controlled fire propels bullets, planes and rockets through space at unimaginable speeds. With it we build canyoned cities, cruise ships, and congested highways. Without it, war as we know it would cease upon the earth. Without it, nights and all enclosed spaces would be invariably and impenetrably dark.

Fire has always been associated with the Sacred. There is little wonder that fire is one of the four (or five or seven) basic elements of antiquity. No fire, no life. We are a long way from the Beltane Fires of pagan practice, but we still light candles, use incense and announce a pope’s election with smoke. Why did the writer of Acts describe the arrival of the Holy Spirit as manifested by “tongues of fire”? Why have we retained fire as the very symbol of Pentecost – the third of our three greatest Feasts?

Does the Holy Spirit reveal a dangerous side of God? Krister Stendahl, former Bishop of the Church of Sweden and Harvard Dean, once compared religion itself to nuclear energy – an immensely powerful kind of fire. Like nuclear energy, he said, religion can do an enormous amount of good when respected and properly channeled. But if misused or treated casually, it can be awesome in its destructiveness. He said this before 9/11 and the radical simple-minded extremism of today.

When affirming belief in the Holy Spirit, our ancient creed heralds “the Lord and Giver of Life.” The Holy Spirit brings liberating transformation; She is the source of all hope. The Holy Spirit is “God-as-change-agent.” Pentecost reminds us that God, like fire, is above us and beneath us, around us and within us. She is the One who brings warmth and possibility. She is the Source of life itself, and accessible to everyone one equally. She is the Holy Comforter.

But Pentecost also reveals the awesome, fiery, unpredictable and passionate side of God. Our invocation “Come Holy Spirit, Come!” may never be said easily, indifferently or with over-familiarity. For me, this prayer will always be tinged with fear and trembling. I learned long ago never to play with fire.

(The first "Fire" photo is by Jackie Keepers, from her facebook site. The second "Fire" photo is by Ernest von Rosen, www.amgmedia.com)

The Holy Mobile

If you have ever visited the Philadelphia Museum of Art, you may have seen a great and colorful mobile by Alexander Calder, one of America’s foremost modem sculptors. Calder’s mobiles are huge, welded, metallic surfaces, delicately balanced and suspended so as to move constantly with the slightest currents of air. Calder himself was one of the great and colorful characters in American life. He was noted for his love of double entendres, his shocking bluntness, and his willingness to take great artistic and personal risks. He was not noted for spirituality, piety nor for having even an inkling of religious sensibility. So the art world was puzzled when he named this Philadelphia mobile The Holy Ghost. Essays were written and theologians speculated. What could this possibly mean?

Then someone noticed that the beautiful fountain at Logan Square lay on a direct axis between the art museum and the Philadelphia City Hall. A grandiose statue of William Penn and four huge carved eagles all had been mounted on that building. They were the work of Calder’s grandfather, Alexander Milne Calder, an immigrant from Scotland. The fountain itself had been carved by Calder’s father, Alexander Stirling Calder, another prominent sculptor of the city. So naturally, when the modem “Sandy” Calder installed his work he thought of... Father, Son and... Holy Ghost!

For many people in today’s world, even in the church, talk about the Holy Spirit carries just about this level of importance. If it is thought of at all, it is considered little more than an inside joke, and as little understood. It has been called the “poor relation” of the Trinity, a bit of an embarrassment to modem minds.

In the long history of the church, on the other hand, Pentecost was and is considered the third great festival of our faith. It brings to fruition and makes real the work silently begun at Christmas and declared to the world at Easter. It celebrates the gift of the Holy Spirit, the birth of the church on earth, and the gifts of the Spirit given to us for the transformation of the world. The Holy Spirit is God’s way of being “present” now. It is “in” the Holy Spirit that we discover both our unique individuality and our deepest communion with others, our freedom and our most intimate love. The fruits of the Spirit, Paul writes to the Galatians, are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, fidelity, gentleness, and self-control. In the creeds the Holy Spirit is worshipped as “the Lord, the Giver of Life.” The symbols of the Spirit are many; fire, dove and wind are among the most well known.

Calder’s title for his Philadelphia mobile may have been more of a double entendre than he intended. For in 1951 he wrote, “The underlying sense of form in my work has been the system of the Universe, or a part thereof. This is a rather large model.” And twenty years later he emphasized, “I work from a very large live model.” Sounds like the Spirit to me!

Choose Life

“I call heaven and earth to witness this day: I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life -- if you and your offspring would live -- by loving the Lord your God, by heeding God’s commands, and by holding fast to God..."

from an ancient ony ceremof covenant renewal,

recorded in Deuteronomy 30: 19-20a

“Why do you seek the living among the dead?”

Jesus, as recorded in Luke 24:5b

“When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.”

Mary Oliver, from “When Death Comes”

Collected Poems

In the heart of every religion lies its distinguishing affirmation: the Shema in Judaism, the incarnation/resurrection in Christian teaching. Buddhism’s fourfold noble truth, the circle in Native American spirituality. Beneath these affirmations lies a deeper and more fundamental insight: to be human is to live constantly in the presence of choice. Choices are intellectual, ethical, relational. Our choices open us to deeper life, or rob us of vitality. They expand our minds and hearts, or constrict our spirits. Every wisdom tradition offers its own hard-won experience to guide our choices, but the choices remain uniquely ours to make.

Religion is obsessed with Life – life that is full, fecund and abundant, life that is alive and forever escapes definition. Judaism’s railing against idols is its way of distinguishing Life from all that imitates or diminishes it. Buddhists perceive the vitality within or beyond the illusions that clamor for our attention. “Let the dead bury the dead,” Jesus instructs, forcing upon us a reconsideration of our most elementary notions.

Our experience confirms that this world bears an ambivalent character. On the one hand it carries within it the “original blessing” of God’s creation; it is the chosen medium of divine life and self-expression. Only in this world do we know grace, loveliness and awe. Only in this world can we experience a love that casts out fear, and a hope greater than death itself. On the other hand, this world continually disappoints us. It produces tawdry substitutes for authentic life. It offers cheap grace when sacrifice is required. It presents idols of attractiveness that promise more than they deliver.

Spiritual discernment seeks to recognize Life in the midst of all that is false. Spiritual liberation begins when we serve Life with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.

The Last Guy

Arlo Gutherie, Woody’s son, once wrote a little song about the “last guy.”  While all of us have troubles, he said, we take comfort by knowing that some people are “a lot worse off” than we are.

As a child, when I complained about anything, my father reminded me how much worse life was for the little kids in Italy.  Substitute Iraq or Afghanistan and the argument still holds.  Even today, when things don’t go my way I often find myself saying, “Well, yes, Budd, but this is a very high level problem to have. Think of the people whose lives are so wretched that they cannot even imagine having a problem like this. Want to switch places with them?”  

If all of us feel better because we compare ourselves to “those less fortunate,” then somewhere there has to be a “last guy” who is the least fortunate of all. Nobody has a worse situation.  The last guy, said Arlo, “doesn’t even have a street to lie down in for a truck to run him over.”

A kind of inverted pyramid emerges.  At the top are the myriads of complainers who put up with minor annoyances.  They get by because just below them are people with more serious problems.  They in turn survive because below them are people with more severe situations.  Each group gets smaller as the misery intensifies. Each group takes comfort that their situations are not as desperate as those of the people below them who suffer even more. At the very bottom, of course, upon which the entire structure depends, is “the last guy.”

Of course the logic here is as wobbly as the pyramid. Does it really make me feel better to know that homeless orphans in Africa are rummaging through garbage cans for dinner? Of course not. Yet it does put my grievances into a salutary perspective. As a white Protestant male I have experienced discrimination, but it is nothing compared to the prejudice, segregation, pogroms, abuse and lynchings that others have endured.  I have my share of health issues, and frustrations with our health care system, but I also have access to some of the best health care in the world.  I may hate the traffic on I-90, but because of our freeways I can go places and do things that were unimaginable just a few generations back. My complaints reveal a privileged existence indeed.

The “problem” with spirituality is that it opens my heart to others. When they suffer, I suffer.  When they rejoice, I rejoice. Examining my complaints, I find that my own deep gladness is deeply linked to - and dependent upon - the happiness of others.

Not just happiness is at stake. So is our security.  Never has the reality of our interdependence been so apparent. An Icelandic volcano shuts down air traffic in Europe and strands millions. A single computer-generated error causes panic on Wall Street. Angry Pashtuns in the tribal lands of Pakistan create havoc in Times Square. Our demand for bargains creates sweatshops in Asia. And who can tell what horizons will be impacted by the collapse of the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform off the coast of Louisiana?  In today’s world, our survival requires us to attend to the misery and seek the happiness of each other. To be happy and safe, we must engage in tikkun olam, the healing of the world. To find paradise we must be concerned with the happiness and security of “the least of these.”

Nicholas Berdayev once wrote that none of us will be saved until all of us are saved. I can’t be truly happy until the last guy is safely home.

Yesterday's Tomorrow

A Minnesota humorist once created a motto for the Future Historians of America: "Planning Today for the Yesterday of Tomorrow." I thought of that as I visited my father. He was living in a nursing home in Clearfield, Utah, about as far from our West Virginia hometown as he could imagine. He inhabited a tomorrow he never dreamed of yesterday. 

My Dad had been a Methodist lay preacher. After I moved north to attend Princeton Seminary, he took over a little church in Wardensville that I had served.  “Like son, like father,” he liked to say. One summer evening he gave a sermon in our hometown church. It happened to be taped. That particular homily was about the Good Samaritan.

“Never waste an audience,” someone told him. Well, he didn’t. His plain speech, earthy humor and common sense are abundantly apparent on that tape. Since Dad himself was always going the extra mile for folks who needed help, the integrity in that speech must touched the hearts of his listeners. He loved the Bible. He loved a good story. He loved charming people into faithfulness.

After a routine dental appointment he suffered a massive stroke that left him paralyzed, speechless, and with limited comprehension. We had to transport him and my mother to Utah where my sister lived. No one else could provide the quality of care and advocacy that they needed.

I felt all the conflicting emotions one would expect when I flew out from Minnesota to visit: tenderness, fear, helplessness, love, guilt, anger, appreciation. Once so energetic in his caring for others, now he lay in his bed or sat in his wheel chair for hours. Once so spontaneous and playful, now his daily life was organized by the routines of institutional care. Yet even here there was so much more to him than disability and confinement. The many “disciplines” of his previous life continued to serve him well: his enjoyment of simple things like colored glass, his friendly way with others, his patient disposition. And, almost certainly, his faith.

Dad listened frequently to that recorded sermon. Because of the damage the stroke inflicted to his brain, he heard it for the “first” time every time it was played. A kind of "beginner’s mind" perhaps. The voice on the tape, his own voice, came from twenty years earlier and two thousand miles away. With nary a thought of Utah, strokes or nursing homes, that voice spoke of a life well lived, a life lived for others. It spoke with the conviction of one who knew that we cannot know what the future holds, but who believed that God is good.

Each time he heard it, my father smiled. He nodded his approval of yesterday’s father’s words. Never an erudite historian, nevertheless Dad excelled at “planning today for the yesterday of tomorrow”. 

Homily or Sermon

In recent months I have found myself wanting to substitute the word “homily” for “sermon” in our Sunday orders of worship. “This is curious,” I said to myself. “What is this about?” 

At first I suspected my desire to appear more southern than I have a right to claim to be. Homily. Hominy. Homily. Hominy. Homily. Hominy. This word association evokes all things truly southern. The very sound of it suggests a languid, non-pretentious, warm-morning southern repast. Perhaps I will even develop a drawl.

 “Hominy” derives from the Algonquin term for grain; it never occurs alone. What is its partner? “Grits.” True grits. Real Southerners spot us interlopers a mile away:

“What would you like for breakfast, sir?”

“I’ll have a grit.”

“A grit? I’m sorry, sir. They never come alone.”

I think a good sermon ought to be a little “gritty,” don’t you? Grits on your plate keep you humble. The best upscale sermons ever savored still have some down home common sense about them.

But I don’t think this is it. My Catholic friends point out that they “do” homilies while Protestants “do” sermons. So maybe there’s a wanna-be priest lurking in my robe. But while I confess to being an ecu-maniac, and believe with every fiber of my being that we should work that “all may be one,” I have no desire to exchange the riotous freedoms of our tradition for the particular restrictions of another.

I asked my erudite colleagues to tell me the difference between a homily and a sermon. No one seems to know. I asked you who sit through them. “Homilies are shorter,” you say. With all do respect, I think you beg the question. Certainly my homilies are not shorter. (“Pastor,” pleaded one member, “your words don’t have to be eternal in order for them to be immortal.”)

Finally I looked in the dictionary. “Homily” is rooted in the Greek homiletikos, meaning “conversation.” “Sermon” comes directly from medieval Latin for “speech”, and that probably derives from serere, “to link together or string together” like beads on a necklace. While both words carry the meaning of “a religious discourse before a congregation,” the nuance of homily is “an informal exposition usually of Scripture.” “Sermon” carries the additional shade of “an annoying harangue”.

I am allergic, by temperament, to harangues. I cherish dialogue. I like the thought that what I say from the pulpit is one piece of a much longer conversation that has been going on for centuries.

So as I prepare for our worship, perhaps I am asking myself this question: “What shall it be this Sunday? An informal exposition, or an annoying harangue? A speech, or a searching conversation?”

Beauty

I listened intently. An Orthodox nun was responding to a question about which I care deeply: how to nurture spirituality in children. As parent and pastor, I often ponder this question but Mother Rafaela’s answer took me by surprise. “The question really is,” she said, “how to put beauty into a child’s life.”

Both beauty and ugliness have the power to shape and transform our lives and our communities. Mother Rafaela’s point seems as relevant to stopping violence and curbing teen age pregnancy as to spiritual formation. How can we put beauty into a child’s life? Or, as Plato observed about the purpose of education, “How can we teach our children to take pleasure in the right things?”

Beauty occurs as readily in unadorned nature as in our most elegant gardens. It is not always “pretty.’ It is not merely decorative. It may be -- should be -- cultivated, but beauty must not to be confused with art. It is both less and more than art. The artistic function in our culture encompasses all manner of expressions, only some of which are beautiful.

When we experience beauty, we enter a dimension of life too deep for words, a dimension which transcends much of the ugliness, pain and fear that is our daily bread. We are touched by a gracious order. We are enabled to reach a new level of spiritual integration. We encounter a “lightness of being” (Tolstoy) that frees our spirit. Perspective, balance and catharsis are among the gifts that beauty bestows. The divine in us resonates with the divine in all creation.

The beauty I am able to perceive or create intimately shapes the meaning of my life. “Consider the lilies of the field,” said Jesus. The so-called “amenities” of our community (both natural and cultural) feed my spirit and shape my soul. The pursuit of beauty in worship, conversation and a life lived well is among my most important motivations. Why should it be otherwise for children?

The composer Ottorino Respighi surely was one of the great joy-bearers of the modern world. According to critic Geoffrey Crankshaw, “Beauty of expression was his perpetual aim. He hated ugliness, and eschewed any tendency toward the brutal.” One could do worse than leave such a legacy to the world.

It is said that, when Adonis arrived in the Underworld after his death, only one question was put to him by the shades: “What was the most beautiful thing you left behind?” If this were the standard to which all of us were held. I wonder how our children’s world would change.