Category: The Comma

I am excited that Alastair McIntosh is coming to University Congregational Church this weekend.

You may have never have heard of him.   I hadn’t until a few months ago.  But in Scotland and in international conversations about ecological and social justice, McIntosh is well known.  He’s an activist and a mystic, a realist and a dreamer.  He walks his talk.

He understands the need to address the challenge of climate change through political action and technological changes to renewable energy use.  He speaks clearly about the possibilities and limits of what individuals can do.  And he brings something else to the conversation about climate change and activism that captures my attention.

Like Pope Francis, McIntosh believes that climate change will necessitate the need to refashion ourselves – the ways we relate to each other and to the land upon which we live.  It means the long and slow work of examining the spiritual and psychological needs behind our drive to consume.

I for one like big challenges.  But seriously, is this even possible?  Can we as societies and people really do that – and can we do it in time?  And isn’t it also true that if we don’t get at the root of what drives our habits, our patterns of living will never really change?

Can we live differently?

Churches like the one I serve are full of programs and activities that equip, encourage and enable us to do lots of good things.  At times, communities like ours can look like that’s all we are – busy people doing all sorts of important things in different ways.

But at our core, communities like ours were formed out of the conviction that there is a different way to BE in the world.

Communities like ours are custodians of ancient traditions and texts that at their best call us to remember what it means to be human and our responsibilities to each other.

Communities like ours at our best remind us of our place in the world and our connection to the land we live upon and the peoples and communities we are part of.

Communities like ours at are best are bearers of the flame of imagination that dares to dream of a different way to be, a different way to follow as we navigate our way through life.  Jesus called it life in “the kingdom of God.”

We forget these tasks lost in our urgent to-do lists.  Sometimes we are too close to the work at hand that we forget why we are here and doing what we are doing.

People like McIntosh help me remember.  They help me to hear the call for the church to join other communities in remembering and imagining what it means to be human and our responsibilities to each other and our earth.  He makes real in his life and faith the challenge and possibility, the imagination and impossible idealism of what such a life in the kingdom of God might look like.  I don’t even understand all the terms and words he uses below but they point to something that stirs my imagination.

‘Our drift must be toward becoming whole people in a whole world,’ he says in Hell and High Water.  He outlines 12 steps to take us there – a call for a different way to BE:

1. Rekindle inner life:

‘Too much inner life without nourishment of getting our hands dirty is just as toxic to the soul as the other way around. We need to dance between the fantastical and the practical…

2. Value children’s primal integrity

3. Cultivate psycho-spiritual literacy

4. Expand our concept of consciousness

5. Shift from violent to non-violent security:

‘The only antidote to the spiral of violence is the spiral of love. This is the power of nonviolence, not as passive ‘pacifism’ but as vibrant ‘truth force’….’

6. Serve fundamental human needs

7. Value mutuality over competition

8. Make more with less:

‘The drive to consume is an addiction…and acts as a second-rate substitute for the things that our urban, post-industrial existence deprives us of: most crucially, our sense of belonging to something greater than ourselves in both human and environmental terms…

9. Regenerate community of place
10. Build strong but inclusive identities
11. Educate for elementality

‘I am convinced, especially from my own experience growing up on the Isle of Lewis, that children both young and old need an ‘elemental education’ fully to be able to appreciate reality… They need to experience nature’s beauty and the sheer fun of it, for nature absorbs children in so many different ways’

12. Open to grace and truth:

‘It may not be possible for humankind to head off the consequences of the hubris that afflicts our planet. But if worst comes to the worst, and if increased suffering falls upon life on Earth – then let us never forget that our spiritual imperative is to hold fast to hope… The problem with mere optimism is that it tries to alleviate suffering by denying reality. Hope, on the other hand, draws on inner resources that can co-exist even with outer pessimism or catastrophe.’

In a time full of bad news, I count on those who point the way to other news.  Those who point to the challenge and possibility of another way to live.   I hope I might see you this weekend.

The Lecture Series at University Congregational United Church of Christ

 Alastair McIntosh
Weekend 5^th to 7^th February 2016
Spiritual Activism, Climate Change and Liberation Theology for our Times

Friday, Feb 5

7 – 8:30 | Spiritual Activism – Land, Soul and Agency in Social Change
In his main lecture, Alastair will speak to what can sustain our activism for social, environmental or religious change. Drawing on principles from his latest book Spiritual Activism: Leadership as Service he will use a case study of community land reform in Scotland to explore community empowerment that has had a positive impact on tackling climate change. The land, he will argue, has been colonized because our hearts are colonized. The building of right relationships with the Earth and one another requires a profound decolonisation, starting with the inner life that is the soul.

 

Saturday, Feb 6
9:00-10:30 am | Spiritual Experience as a Basis for Activism
It’s all very well to talk about spiritual activism, but what basis do we have for thinking that the spiritual is ‘real’? How can we deepen the inner life of the soul, hand in hand with making our outer life as activists more effective? This session will start with listening and sharing from the previous evening’s lecture.

 

11 am –12 Noon | Climate Change as a Focus for Liberation Theology
Alastair sees liberation theology as theology that liberates theology to do the job that theology should be doing. What does theology have to say about the driving factors behind climate change, and how might it help us cope with come what may in the come to pass?

 

1:00-2:30 pm | Nonviolence in a Context of Engagement with the Military
Nonviolence as informed by the Quaker Peace Testimony is central to Alastair’s work as an activist. For nearly two decades he has lectured regularly on this theme at military staff colleges across Europe. What is the spirituality of nonviolence, why does it matter, and how does he present the case to senior officers in the armed forces?

 

Sunday, Feb 7
9:00-9:45 am | Christianity, the Cross and Activism Today?
Is it time to dump the embarrassment of the Cross, to dump Christianity itself? Are these things past their sell by date, or have we hardly yet begun to appreciate what a spirituality of the Cross might offer to the world in this, the third millennium?

 

10 am Worship Service – Preaching (Mark 6:30-52).
This passage describes the feeding of the five thousand and the walking on the water. How are the challenges of our calling to feed the hungry, and to walk on water, as activists in these our troubled times?

Last night I saw Ayad Akhtar’s Pulitzer Prize winning play, “Disgraced” at the Seattle Repertory Theater.  I don’t get to the theater often but a recommendation from church members that “you HAVE to see this – there is loads of sermon material here” will sometimes, like this time, get me on line and ordering tickets.

Here’s a shout-out to go see it if you can (it’s here through January 31).

In the post-play discussion (held after each performance) an actor noted, “The play will speak to you differently tomorrow, a week, a month from now” and indeed today, I see things I didn’t in the aftermath of this incredible play.

“What is the play about?” the facilitator asks.

“Racism..Prejudice..Violence..Religion…Duplicity…”  Indeed, it’s all here.

There’s Amir a successful Pakistani-American lawyer and his white wife, Emily, an artist with a fascination with Islamic art.  Abe, Amir’s nephew and a young immigrant from Pakistan.  Isaac, a Jewish art dealer and Jory, his African-American wife and a successful lawyer.

The small dinner party turns ugly as each acts against each other and against themselves.  Each in turn, questioning stereotypes and acting according to them.  Denouncing fears and manifesting fears.   Taking their own particular experiences and assuming that they are true for everyone else.    There is so much right out of the conversations we are having or need to be having in our families, churches and communities here.  But no, not in the way it all plays out on stage.

The issues are all here in today’s morning paper…..

A 73-year-old woman sees something she hadn’t since she was a little girl:  her father’s grave.  Dorothy Nixon Williams was 6 years old when she saw her father, a black farmer, shot by two white men on the day of the primary election for Georgia governor in 1949.  In a one day trial, an all-white jury acquitted his assailants.   Thanks to the Emory University’s “Georgia Civil Rights Cold Cases Project” that investigates Jim Crow-era murders of black people in Georgia, Dorothy Nixon Williams was able to visit her father’s grave and take one more step on that long road towards justice and healing.

Donald Trump tops the polls with a “style that degrades people and public discourse” according to Pete Wehner, a former White House adviser and speechwriter for President George W. Bush.

Oxford University responds to demands that the university expunge its history with Cecil Rhodes, including removing a statue of its imperialist graduate and benefactor who as a young 24-year-old declared at a dinner party, “Gentleman, the object of which I intend to devote my life is the defense and extension of the British Empire…we are the finest race in the world and the more of it we inhabit, the better for the human race.”

In Malaysia, a predominantly Muslim nation of some 30 million people, police arrested seven people with suspected links to Islamic State.  (News clips from The Wall Street Journal, Monday, January 25, 2016)

What might have made the dinner party in the play go differently?

How might we change the dialogue about race, religion and the differences between us without deteriorating into an experience of disgrace for all?

It the key in embracing and accepting our differences?

How do we learn to see the gifts in those who have different experiences than our own?

Is the key detachment?  Maybe indeed it is true that “attachment” is life’s greatest self-cruelty – our attachment to OUR ideas, our ways, our prejudices.

Where is the White Anglo Saxon Protestant in the play?   Is he intentionally missing?  Is he the one that through history has set in motion the “wasp’s nest” we see lived out on stage? And what’s his, read “my” responsibilities today?  I can so easily assume  that everyone else will always be able to get and hold a job, get picked up by a cab, and be treated with respect most anywhere they go.  And what does it mean to put down that assumption, look at my own privilege and be open to really listening to another’s experience?

Do I want to be open to being changed?

Can I risk being curious and not rush to condemnation?

“Sitting with the pain and joy of being a human, while refusing to run for any exits, is the only way to become a real human being.  Brave is a decision,” Glennon Doyle Melton writes.

After seeing “Disgraced” I recommitted to being brave.

I want to be brave and take one step forward today and move from all that causes “disgrace” to honor and respect for the “others” I meet.  I want to be open to a different kind of connection and imagine a dinner party with a happier ending.

It was not a trip I planned.  But of all the “crazy” decisions I have made, this was one of the best.  On New Year’s Day instead of running a race and jumping into the lake, I jumped on a plane andflew to Japan.

It all started on New Year’s Eve and a last conversation with someone I’ve been talking with for the past ten years through all of the changes, transitions and stepping into fear that is my life.  As this was our final meeting, Carter told me he usually doesn’t say much.  But as he has done numerous times before, he broke his own rule once again and said aloud, “Come on man!  It sounds like you are either going to come see me next week and gripe about what you did not do or you are going to figure out a way to get to Japan.”

I went back to the office and called Tsuneko.

She’d been in Japan a week for the big New Year’s preparations and feasts.  As I’ve understood, it’s kind of like Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July rolled together.  For preparation, there’s a day of house cleaning and another day of cooking followed by three days of feasting.

She answered the phone, “Hey!  I’m standing here in my office on New Year’s Eve wondering why I am here and not there with you.  What would you think if I flew over to join you?”

She laughed.

I continued, “I miss you and I want to meet your Dad and brothers.  What do you think?”

One thing I really like about Tsuneko is that she doesn’t let others put her in the position of deciding what they ought to do.  As she’s told me more than once, “I just don’t get it.  If you want to do it, do it.  Don’t make me decide what you should do.”  I wanted to go to Japan.  I wanted to meet her Dad and brothers.  And most importantly, I wanted to see the place she was from and see her in her own culture.  I knew if I didn’t go now, it would be a year before I could.

We’d each had our reasons why I wasn’t on this trip with her now.  But whatever reasons there were, I couldn’t remember any of them now.

Once in a while in my life I have been knocked sideways by a dream that “makes no sense.”  I saw a postcard for a writer’s retreat in Iceland and knew I needed to go even though I had never wanted to go to Iceland and had made other plans.  I took sailing lessons because I felt this weird urge that I needed to learn to sail even though I’ve never liked boats or being out on the water.

Sometimes, I’ve ignored the urges and hunches, but more often now I have learned to trust in them.  I see them for what they often are – a call to step out of my familiar and into the new.  I hear in them the beckoning of God.

There’s a parable that Jesus tells about a man who sold everything to buy a field:  “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field.  When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.”(Matthew 12:44)

I felt like that man.  It felt like it was one of those times that I needed to just go and buy this field.

Back to my New Year’s Eve phone call.  Tsuneko soon had to get off the phone and go back to the festivities with her family.  I got on my computer and found a flight over the next day and a way home on her same flight a week later.  I made a reservation.  Cancelled it.  I called her again to try to get her to tell me what to do.

“If you come,” she said, “you should be here for the last of the three days of the holiday.  After that, everyone is back to work.”

“That means,” I said, “I need to leave tomorrow and I am not a free man.  I have your cats and fish to take care of while you are away.”

She told me where the Pet Hotel is located.  She told me where to find the feeding tablets for the fish.

“So what do you think about my coming?” I tried again.

“What does Jesus tell you?” she asked.

Jesus?  I had not thought of consulting Jesus.

I made a grand speech of letting her decide yes or no, should I come or not.  She said “Happy New Year.  Send me pictures of the race.”  She hung up.

I went to bed.  I woke early the next morning thinking about running three miles and jumping into the lake.  I thought of being here all week disappointed that I had chosen to step away from something I knew I needed to do, I wanted to do.  I had only a few meetings on my schedule the next week.  My colleagues had agreed to cover a few obligations for me.  I had no excuse not to go.

The day before I had talked with my sister, about a sermon she had heard on the need to not just say your prayers but to put your prayers into action.  “It sounds like what you are doing,” she said. It was.  I jumped out of bed and called Tsuneko.  I called her seven times that morning.  Emailed her.  I never heard back.

I remembered Jesus’ parable about the field of great price.

I thought of Mary Oliver’s poem, “Wild Geese” and her reminder that “You do not have to be good…..You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”

I checked out my “crazy” idea with a trusted friend who told me it was not so “crazy”.

I listened.

I heard Jesus.

I started packing, making calls, sending emails.  I tried to drop off the cats and had to come back to try and find their vaccination paperwork.  I found it.  I dropped the cats off again.  I got to the airport far too late for an international flight.  The flight was delayed.  I had plenty of time.

I called one last time.  No answer.  (Later I learned that it was night in Japan and she was asleep!)

I knew as the plane lifted off that if I flew to Osaka and she wasn’t there to pick me up and I had to fly home again later that day that it all would be worth it.  I fell asleep.

The Sufi poet, Rumi, has a poem:

Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing,

there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

Suddenly, I was in that place – that field.  A field of great price.  A place of wonder.

Was it wrong to go?  Well, there were lots of reasons why, yes, I could say it was.  I certainly could have planned a bit better.  I certainly could have talked through some things before and recognized why it was so important for me to go.

Was it right to go as well?  So right.

Tsuneko didn’t have a big smile on her face like I had fantasized she might when she met me at the airport.    It was late at night and she’d had a long day and woken to the news of her surprise visitor coming that evening.  But on the train to her family’s house, she said, “It is like a comedy”, which for me felt a lot better than her saying it was a “tragedy”.

The next morning and days ahead were truly a wonder.   A priceless gift to take part in New Year’s rituals with her father, brothers and nephew.  A wonder to visit temples and castles and especially to see Tsuneko where she was some and see in her own culture.  It reminded me again what a huge thing it is to be a foreigner in a strange land and what strength and strong will it takes to survive.  The kind of gifts I see in her.

Maybe there is a field you have to go and pursue even though it makes no sense, full of your thousand and one excuses as you always are.   And maybe, you go this time.  You buy the field.

And when you get there, you see that Jesus has been there all the time.  Rumi and Mary Oliver too. Sometimes, despite myself, I am there as well.  It’s a good place to be.

Out there, in that field, I hope soon, we’ll meet together there.

Some of you know what it’s like to write a coming out letter.

I just never thought I’d have to write two.

Last month I sent out a letter to my congregation sharing the good news that I was in a wonderful new relationship and had recently gotten engaged.

The fact that a man gets engaged to a woman is everyday news.  Except, that is, when everyone has known that man as a gay man who had been in a long term same sex relationship.  And then, everyday news is news.  What happened?

I’d written a first draft of my letter trying to explain that reminded me of my first coming out letters and conversations 30 years ago.  It was full of earnest explanation and trying to take care of any possible concerns that I could imagine.   I included a nice little sermon.  I quoted Pilgrim pastor John Robinson.

A member of our Parish Relations Committee read my very long first draft and wrote me back. “I think you could just share some good news, Peter,” she wrote.  In other words, I could cut the sermon, the explanations, the apologies, the need to take care of every variety of reaction I could anticipate and just share some simple good news.

I had told a gay clergy friend that I felt like I needed to apologize to the entire gay community for falling in love with a woman – he knew how seriously I took being a role model and civil rights advocate.

Kent laughed.  “Maybe, Peter,” he said, “the most important role models we need are those who show us what it means to be real.”

I’ve always shied away from the “real” at first.   Rather than be vulnerable, authentic, and exposed in all my stumbling humanity, I’d much rather be erudite, together, competent and cool under pressure.

It was some of the hardest and most important work I had ever done to pare down my long pastoral letter into the sharing of some simple happy news:  I have fallen in love.  I have gotten engaged.  I am very happy.

For the past several years I had been growing a lot and stepping off the dock of my familiar.  I felt like my whole life was expanding, calling me into new places.   And no, I never expected to have to write two coming out letters.   But come to think of it there are a lot of things in my life I never expected to do.   I never expected to be a minister, practice Zen Buddhism, become a sailor and a painter.  I never expected to be living in Seattle and serving the same church for 22 years.  I never expected to study ballet and run a marathon.  I never expected to have a foster son named Pedro.  None of those were on any dream or “bucket” list.  They were things that happened.  All of it  a “surprise” and yet on reflection, really not so much of a surprise.  Looking back, I could see how these pivotal experiences in my life all made sense in this journey of learning about myself and my own “becoming”, what I would call the creation of God at work in me.  All of these felt like call. Calls that begin and end as calls do.

For sure I have struggled with my changing self.  Like in my first coming out, the sharing of the news of my new relationship with Tsuneko was full of fits and starts, stepping out in excitement and joy, retreating in fear and worry about what others would think.  It all gave me renewed compassion for others who struggle with the excitement and terror “coming out” and my own stumbling coming out process 30 years ago.

In the sermon after my letter came out, I wondered aloud how any of us can explain the mystery of love.  How can we explain who we love and why?   We can’t or at least I can’t.  Scientists explain love as a series of chemical reactions in our brains (that in fact are similar to the chemical reactions we feel when we have fear).  Psychologists argue over “essentialist” and “constructivist” ideas about sexual identity.  But mainly there is a lot we don’t know.  So much about our sexuality as with the rest of our identity is a wonder indeed.

In times like ours of great uncertainty and change, I understand that one thing we all want is for certain things to stay fixed.  I understand our desire for boxes of identity.  But more and more I find God calling me to life outside of  labels and explanations about things I can’t explain.

A congregation member shared the other day that as she has grown older, God has become bigger.  I too have grown outside of the familiar boxes I have made of “God”, “faith” and “church”.  And my sense of myself bigger as well as I have trusted in God at work in me – creating, opening up my life to the new.

Rabbi, theologian, activist Abraham Joshua Heschel is one of the great theologians of the 20th century.  A collection of some of his most famous sayings is in a little book called, I Asked for Wonder.  “Wonder” is where Heschel found God.  And while I come more often than not at first with fear and trembling, denial and avoidance to the wonder of God’s newness at work in my life and our world, it is to wonder that I am trusting more and more.

So I don’t know if I’m done with my “coming out” letters.  Perhaps life finally is a series of coming out letters – the further risk of sharing the mystery of who we are and becoming with one other.

I do know I am grateful beyond words for a church that has rolled along with me in the ongoing wonder of what Peter is up to next.  It’s truly been a grace to be met by others who trust in the wonder that is life and God and have given themselves over to it.

Maybe there’s New Years resolution worth keeping!

In New England long ago, the Unitarian Churches in Boston used to close for the summer. Some good church-goers headed north to their    cottages in Maine. Some went fishing. Some slept in on Sundays.

I have heard it said that the Unitarians were the only church that trusted that if they took a break for the summer, their congregations would faithfully gather again in the fall.

I haven’t been as good as my Unitarian cousins in risking putting things down for the summer in the expectation that once fall comes, I will return in a new way. But this summer, I’m trying that on.

I have a writing project that I am compelled to complete – or at least find my next step in the process this summer. The completion of a writing project necessitates the need for time. Time to write. And time to stare at the wall, scribble, grab a cup of water, take off on my bike and scribble again in my tiny red notebook. How writing often looks to me.

So in order to steal some time in my schedule, I am taking a summer vacation from The Comma and will return to writing in September as summer turns to fall.

For now, a time to put down for something else to be.

My hope, my prayer is with you,
and me this summer season,
that in whatever we decide to put down,
we might make room for the gift,
we have longed to receive.

See you in the fall,

Peter

Like many pastors, in my sermon this Sunday, I preached about the massacre of nine women and men on Wednesday evening at a Bible Study at Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

But as I remembered the events of that tragic night with our congregation, there was one line that after the sermon was finished, I realized I forgot.  The one line Dylann Roof wanted us all, above all, to remember. A word he left one person alive, intentionally, to share.

“You are raping our women and taking over our country.” 

Maybe, I didn’t want to stain our worship on Sunday with such racism.

Maybe, I didn’t want to speak such a word myself

Maybe, I didn’t want to remember.

But unless we remember Dylann’s word that he wanted above all us to remember, to put it in our mouths, and taste its hate, we will not have to look at what racism is doing to our country, our souls, ourselves.

Unless we can name such words and sit together with the horror of such words, we will not also have to see how our country has made peace with such words. How such words are born from our nation’s history. How such words continue to live and move among us, our institutions, our society today.

An uncomfortable word? For sure.

A despicable word? Yes, that too.

A word that runs in the face of all our pride in being “the greatest nation on earth”. A word that reminds us how far we fall from such self-congratulatory praise.

A word that calls us to repentance.

To humility. To change.

And I would be the first to admit, I do not want to change.

I do not want to be changed.

But it is change, that Wednesday night’s act of terrorism in Charleston calls us to.

It is change that Pope Francis’ Papal Encyclical on Climate Change calls us to. The encyclical was supposed to be the headline on Thursday, not the massacre in Charleston. The headline that had been carefully prepared for months. A passionate call by Francis not to just faithful Roman Catholics, but to “all living people on earth.” A call to change. To transformation. To have our hearts broken open by the suffering of the world and to make such suffering our own.

Yes, the suffering in our nation caused by a racist wound that runs deep through our country’s history and soul and the heart of white America.

Yes, the suffering caused by our country’s love affair with guns and individual freedom at the expense of the common good.

Yes, the suffering caused by the peace we have all made with the senseless violence that wounds our country each day.

Yes, the suffering that we inflict and continue to inflict against our planet, our very lifeblood, that threatens the very survival of our planet and species.

Yes, the suffering caused by a privileged world and position of the few of us “great nations” against the poor of the world.

No, I do not want to remember such suffering.

No, I do not want to change.

And the future of our country, our souls, our planet requires that we do.

 

 

 

 

 

In class on Friday we’ll practice getting stuck.

“Becalmed”, the sailors word for it.  Those times in life, when the winds slow and die.   All that propelled us – delight, excitement, energy, exuberance – flutters to a stop.  No wind.  No luff on the sails.  Only the still lapping of water against your little boat bobbing listlessly on the sea.

Going nowhere.

This Friday is the fourth class in our series, “Uncharted Waters: Navigating Times of Change and Transition”.

In the past weeks, Bob Perkins and I have been learning with the eight members of our class about what sailing can teach us about finding our way through times of change. First, in an hour in a boat, followed by an hour of reflection on land. We’ve explored the terror and excitement of stepping into a new experience. The tippiness of trust. What it means to listen for the   wind. All important parts that can help make a time of transition truly a transformational season with new perspectives, new commitments. A new life.

And yes, as well, times like this. No wind. When all that forward movement stills, stalls. You want to go back or forward. Exactly what you cannot do. All you can do, is be here, in this strange, uncomfortable place of being “becalmed”.

All week I’ve been learning about it.  I think it’s allergies that finally caught up with me in this weird spring of hot sunshine in Seattle. Clobbered me in lethargy, sleepiness.  Gain new sympathy again for people who due to age or disease have to live more often than I in this wear of weariness.  Someday, that too, might well be me.  But right now, I am expecting the wind to come and blow the pollen free, my plugged sinuses to clear.   To be out sailing in exultation again. But, no, not quite yet.

Times of stillness are no stranger to all of us, allergy suffering or not.  No stranger to sailors, although you won’t find a lot written about such times in sailing books.  “Becalmed” is not what sailing is “supposed” to be about. Not what you are “supposed” to be doing. Yet, as any experienced sailor will tell you, “becalmed” is often exactly what you do. Sit there bobbing quietly on a glassy sea. Going nowhere.

Our “textbook” for our class is a little book called, First You Have to Row a Little Boat:  Reflections on Life and Living.  Author Richard Bode learned to sail as a boy in Long Island Sound. One late afternoon, after a joyous day of playing in the wind, he turns to home. The steady breeze, stills, dies.  A mile from home. No way to get there.

As I have done, he runs to think of all he needs to do, could do, to get out of this mess. Lean the boat this way, or that. Bring the sails as far out as they will go. None of it helps.

What he learns in the hours that follow is what it means to not have to “do” anything. To “do nothing” and wait for the wind to return.

The sun drops, the darkening sky begins to glisten with lights. He lies in his boat. A gull perches on the mast. He waits. Rests.

Awakes.   A gentle ruffling of sail. A little puff of wind.  He sits up. Adjusts his sails. The wind in the past hours has not been idle.   It’s done a complete turn about, 180 degrees.

Wind can shift an imperceptible degree or two, this way or that, but the wind can’t make a radical change of direction – from South to North, East to West – without first passing through a period of calm.

Decades later, far from the sea, Richard learns the same lesson. Rushing off into one more frenetic day that he has been calling his life, he is leveled by his hip caving in.  Months in a cast. A long season of healing and immobility. A journey he did not want, did not choose. And an insight that is born of it that he didn’t want to face. He realizes how he has been so caught up in his restless, exhausting, push-through-it-all-and-keep-on-going life – and scared to death that it might stop.  For who would he be, how would he define, think of himself, if he couldn’t do what he has always done? He is leveled by the dead calm he has so feared and avoided.  And what is born of it, a change in the wind. A change of direction. A leaving of the life he had, so that he might become the man he has wanted to be.

I’m not sure how this Friday will be for our class.  Gusty winds or dead calm.  But in any case, we will practice going nowhere, fluttering sails in the wind or drifting quietly on our little sea of Lake Union.

Come Friday or not, it will come. Call it becalmed. Call it allergy season. Call it sickness. Growing pains.  Aging bodies. The frustration of not going as quickly as we can. The little boats of our lives inevitably, bring us here to this place of stillness.

But maybe, call it as well, an invitation to summer. When the wind is stilling, so it can change directions.

And in this stillness, to realize the deep mystery that is at work. From whence will the new wind blow? How will we trim our sails to meet it? Where will we let it take us?

Perhaps,
here becalmed,
a good season,
to wait.

Peter Ilgenfritz
June 18, 2015

The last time I saw him, all he could do was say my name.

It was a warm Saturday afternoon, late June a year ago, when I sat with Coleman and Irene as I have had the gift of doing just about every year for the past 31 years since I graduated from Colgate University.

Naming. The heart of what Coleman always did.  Heard me out. All the words I poured out in fervent conversations, in times of confusion, discernment and distress.  Read with care the long letters I wrote.  The phone calls we shared. Heard beneath all the words, the essential word I was trying to say, but often didn’t know.  Offered a turning word, a simple question, that opened my awareness to what was required.   Called me to be more than I thought I could be or dare. Made me want to choose again to be a man of faith. To take courage in the midst of the questions and doubts, fears and anxieties. To live into my name.

What Coleman did for me, he did for so many that called him our mentor, our teacher, our pastor. Professor of Philosophy and Religion. Chaplain of our little Protestant community. 26 years at Colgate.

Last Saturday I went back to Colgate for Coleman’s memorial.  To grieve his death this past winter, give thanks for all he has meant.

How do you remember a life?  The kind of life that has touched, shaped, yours beyond any words can say?

I left early morning so I could visit again one of my favorite places in the world.  At the top of the campus, a meadow called the “Old Golf Course”.  Today, all that remains, a fire pit at the top, a view down the valley.  Green hills, fields.  Silos and sky.  Especially the sky.   Windswept clouds, gray and white, billowing, climbing the valley, as they are today.

Pulled out some brief reflections I’d written about Coleman years before. Read them aloud.  Wept. A good time and place to weep. Not even sure what I was crying for.  I didn’t want to be here today.   And no place I’d rather be.  Not here in this place of grief, no.  Yes, here in this place of tears of thanksgiving for a life that has touched mine so deeply.

Down the hill, I slipped on my blue suit jacket, straightened my tie.  Walked through the trees to find a place in the chapel. A crowd of strangers. Looked for any familiar faces from 31 years ago.  Rose to sing. “O God Our Help in Ages Past.” “God of Grace and God of Glory.” Listened to beautiful testimonies about a life that mattered because he mattered to us. Had touched, shaped our own.

Heard echoes again and again that what Coleman had done for me, he had done for so many. He listened.  Read our long letters.  Heard us out through the struggles and crises of our lives.  Shared words, old words, from those who echo the Gospel clear – Eliot, Auden, Niebuhr. Heschel, Tillich, King.   Spoke, as they, with assurance, challenge, conviction.  The reality of confusion and despair. He did not mince words.

Instilled in us, a passion. For the life of faith, the life of the mind and the limits of it.  A great teacher in the classroom, the pulpit, the conversations in his book lined office.

In recent years, a changed relationship. Coleman had been in declining health and we no longer walked down to the Colgate Inn for lunch. No more long conversations, waiting for his every word. But the deep grace of just being together, sitting in silence.

After the memorial, a lunch, and a time for sharing of more remembrances. All I could have said, was finally beyond words.  For how to speak of the way that some like Coleman have shaped our lives?  Without his witness, his presence, I and so many others in my generation might never have been brought to wrestle with the essential questions of faith, “believers, seekers, doubters, yes, as we always are”, as Coleman reminded us each Sunday at chapel. So many of us, never imagined the possibility of ministry ourselves.

After the memorial, the Colgate Inn.  I hadn’t seen Rich for 31 years.  We shared the turns and twists our lives have made.  The questions our lives were asking today.  “What would Coleman say?”, we wondered, as we pondered the various decisions before us.

“Where can we do the most good?”  Yes, maybe. I think that’s it.  Something like that he would ask. And we would know, as maybe we do now, what we must do.

One last walk, up the hill. One last look.  A single bird, crosses the sky.

Thank you, Coleman, for calling my name.

For calling me into the challenge and possibility of who I yet may be.

One of the great wonders is how in the world the Polynesians set out over 2000 miles – long before GPS, radar and Google Maps – and discovered remote island chains like Hawaii, some 2000 miles from the nearest shore.

The theories abound, but my favorite, the practice of their beginning with great time and care to center themselves. To orient their sight not to something way out there, but with what is right here – their breath, their boat, their crew.

Much as I am inspired by the technique, I am much more like my European ancestors, who strove sea and storm, battled wind and wave to make their way to islands like Hawaii.   It’s somewhere deep in my DNA that working hard – pushing, shoving, striving ever forward – is in fact the only way to get somewhere.

And personally, I’ve found this approach quite satisfying. Enjoying the energy rush, the sweat and sheer exhaustion of it all. But lately, I’ve decided I’m kind of done with it. Whatever “charge” such breathless anxious rushing used to give me, isn’t so gratifying anymore. So, I’ve been trying on getting there differently, Polynesian style.

Last night on my bike ride home, instead of looking ahead at those 15 telephone poles stretched up the long hill on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, counting my breaths, huffing and puffing my way to the top, I tried on being right here. Here, sitting on my bike. Just, being present here. Noticing this blooming tree, this parting of clouds.

I mean, there is still the pedal power necessary to reach the top, but I must also say that pushing my way forward to get there doesn’t in fact get me there any faster.  Neither, have I noticed, does jumping lane to lane in a traffic jam, trying to measure my progress ahead of that little blue car beside me. Satisfying as it is, cutting lanes doesn’t get me any faster to work.  In fact, much to my chagrin, I look out and see that little blue car I have been trying to stay ahead of all these miles, buzzing by in front of me while my lane screeches to a stop.

Getting there.  How we do it, matters.

Sure, like you, I’d often like to get there quicker, but I’m learning that quicker isn’t always better.

It reminds me of one of my favorite Biblical passages, a favorite because I’ve needed to remember it so often:

Those who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength,

they shall rise up with wings like eagles,

they shall run and not be weary,

they shall walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40:31)

We were drifting, a gentle breeze pushing us along, Jim, Cathy and I in our little boat. And then suddenly, above us, a rustling of wings. An eagle. It was the first time I’ve ever seen an eagle out here on Lake Union. I hope it won’t be my last.

For today, I’m going Polynesian.

Centering a little deeper,

connecting a little truer,

and letting the islands,

come rolling in to me.

 

Three Men and a Parable

It has to be one of the most perplexing of parables:

The Parable of the Dishonest Steward, Luke 16:1-13:

Then Jesus said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. ² So he summoned him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.’

³ Then the manager said to himself, ‘What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me?

I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg.

⁴ I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.’ ⁵ So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ ⁶ He answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.’ ⁷ Then he asked another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He replied, ‘A hundred containers of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill and make it eighty.’

⁸ And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light. ⁹ And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.

On Sunday, May 17, I was grateful to have guest preacher, Charles McCollough with us, to help us untangle the parable. Charles is a UCC pastor, theologian and sculptor. He worked for the national staff of the UCC in adult education and social justice. His book, The Art of the Parables, examines Jesus’ parables using his own sculptures (see the sculptures in the scripture text above) which draw on the work of William Herzog (Parables as Subversive Speech).

It is true gift for any preacher when whatever was shared, is shared back and my dialogue with Charles about this parable and the sculptures he had made, prompted two responses.

Denis Streeter and has been writing poetry for 15 years and writes 2-4 poems a month, and always provides me after I preach with very insightful reflections and critiques. Charles’ sermon prompted Denis to write a poem in response which arrived on my cell phone during lunch with Charles and Carol McCollough.  They were amazed as was I.  A preacher’s dream – someone who not only heard, but remembered and integrated in their own life and situation a scripture and sermon.  Denis caught the heart of Charle’s refections on the text:

“The Dishonest Steward”
The orator says
Let’s put this in a cultural historical context
This was written in the time of the Roman Empire
So rendering to Caesar what was Caesar’s was not much choice
So Jesus was creating a parable of a corrupt system
Something anyone could relate to, by showing how life really was
The guy swindling his master is found out
And told he’s fired
So he thinks…
What can I do?
I can’t dig and I won’t beg
I’m financially ruined
So he thinks…
I know!
I’ll reduce the debt by 50% for one and 20% for another
He does and the master is impressed by his shrewdness and let’s him keep his job
And why not?
His master is more likely to be repaid
You know
Lower your interest rates…
It’s in your own interest
It rewards a shrewd even devious nature
Jesus is saying
Look we live in a corrupt system
I’m just pointing it out
You know it’s true
Nobody really did that
Counter-intuitive
So how do you live in this world
Well some scholars say this
Some scholars say that
Let’s put this in a cultural historical context
No one can decide what to make of the parable
Just work around the edges like the grand equivocator
Theologians, philosophers, historians
Are rewarded for seeing the “big picture”
Even when it doesn’t say anything
Working around the edges
It’s a devious nature that sucks in the intellectuals
Reaping rewards
Certainly beats digging and begging
Who wants to get their hands dirty
Well…what about knowing the system and working within it
With your own…some would say…God given gifts
What about working with clay
Sculpting your own images
It doesn’t have to be clay
It could be poetry
The sculpting of ideas, shaping of words
Make something different
Delve into the mud and create
Iconoclast your way
Remold and cast away
You will not lose your interest
And you may keep some change.

Denis Streeter  5/17/15

Burton Smith is a computer architect, church choir member and something I didn’t know, a Biblical scholar as well! He shared another take on the parable with me on Sunday and wrote up some comments for me to share:

I came to a different understanding of the “parable of the dishonest manager” than the one in your sermon this morning.  Basically, I prefer to read the parable backwards, as follows:

Verse 9 mentions “dishonest wealth” rather than dishonest management of it. Could Jesus be talking about Caesar’s wealth?  And what is this allusion to a welcome in the “eternal homes”? Maybe the welcome is in the next world rather than this one.

In verse 8, what kind of master is it that is in favor of the forgiving of debts? I think I know who it was Jesus had in mind. But in what way was the manager’s behavior “shrewd”? Could it be that he was beginning to store up riches in heaven by giving his master’s “dishonest riches”, over which he had full but temporary control, to his fellow human beings?

The manager’s stated motive in verses 3 and 4 is to make the master’s debtors grateful enough to feed and house him later. Simple enough. He was probably as surprised as we are when the master tells him in verse 8 he had acted “shrewdly”. Verses 5-7 increase the shock.

Verse 2 implies the master disapproved of the manager’s behavior, but the master’s call for an accounting at the end of the manager’s tenure reads like judgement had already been passed. Perhaps it was the manager’s life itself that was ending; in either case, he would not be able to redress his pursuit of “dishonest wealth” once his tenure ended. And this may explain Jesus’ words in verse 9.

So that’s what I make of this parable. By the way, the content of verse 11 supports my thesis, I think. What does it mean to be faithful with the “dishonest wealth”? Jesus tells us over and over: we must give it to the poor and follow him. The world and everything in it belong to God, and so verse 12 reminds us that if we cannot be faithful with what belongs to God how can we expect a reward of our own? We are all managers of the wealth we think is ours, but God is our master and expects us to behave shrewdly with his riches.

Dialogue. Discovery. Insight. The heart of what parables are all about.  Stirring up new ways of looking at our lives.  And why the world of parable interpretation knows no end.  So grateful for these three men, three takes on a parable.

And now, the most important part.  What about you? What’s your take?

As Denis invites us,

What about working with clay
Sculpting your own images
It doesn’t have to be clay
It could be poetry
The sculpting of ideas, shaping of words
Make something different
Delve into the mud and create
Iconoclast your way
Remold and cast away
You will not lose your interest
And you may keep some change.