Autumn Leaves

I made a playlist of autumn music the other day. As I listened to it yesterday, I noticed how sad most of the songs were. Except for those few songs about harvest, songwriters conceive of autumn as an ending, a dying. This was across genres: folk, pop, rock—the classical pieces I picked were about the harvest, so I'll exclude them. If the song had autumn in the title, it was mournful.

I've always loved the fall, so this perspective came as a surprise to me. Growing up on a farm, the fall was a time of hard work, harvest bounty, and then in the late fall, the preparation for a time of lying fallow, of having a well-deserved rest. There was nothing sad about any of that. This is a time of culmination and celebration of the whole year's work! What could be more satisfying than picking the dozen butternut squash from the vines that spread across the side of my yard this summer?

You shall observe the festival of harvest, of the first fruits of your labor, of what you sow in the field. You shall observe the festival of ingathering at the end of the year, when you gather in from the field the fruit of your labor. Exodus 23:16

My mother has always loved the autumn colors and would exclaim over the hillsides of quaking yellow-gold aspens and the reds of the brush oak beneath. It was sometimes tedious as a child, but now I too have that appreciation. At the end of my street the maple trees in the cemetery across the way have been a show for the past month, and my daughter has confessed to being distracted by the brilliant colors of a tree outside of one of her classroom windows. We have learned to appreciate and savor the beauty of the season.

So, I don't know whether the sad tone of these songs reflects our fears of maturity and culmination versus the excitement of youth and beginnings, or is a commentary on how distant we've become from the cycle of the seasons, but today I want to celebrate the crisp autumn air, the harvest of the work of our gardens and our lives, the beauty of each leaf as it just lets go and drifts to the next phase of its life. Carrie Newcomer's song, Leaves don't drop, (they just let go), says it well:

Leaves don't drop, they just let go,
And make a place for seeds to grow.
Every season brings a change;
A seed is what a tree contains;
To die and live is life's refrain.

Today, take the time to scuff through a pile of leaves, find some moments to let yourself rest and lie fallow and quiet, and eat some squash. May we find some leaf-like moments this autumn day where we just let go and make room for seeds to grow anew.

The Value of Community and of Friendships

I've been missing from the blogosphere for a while. The past few months my energy has been absorbed mostly by my job and in some travel. I did preach a number of times during the summer, so did write some sermons, but somehow in the midst of all of that busy-ness (someone illustrated for me the other night that the Chinese symbols for busyness = kill/heart), I could not find words or energy to write.

I am in the search and call process, and have had some hopeful "nibbles," but the search process is long these days, and waiting has been very hard, particularly while juggling an extra full plate at work, and this has not been conducive to my reflective writing while in the midst of uncertainty.

Instead I have turned to writing music while waiting. Two of the recent pieces of music I've written are appropriate for Advent, that period in the Christian church year that is about waiting for the coming. I've adapted biblical texts, rather than write my own, and so it's the music that carries the emotional load of my uncertainty, restlessness, waiting or yearning, I've arranged the pieces for choir as well as in solo versions—who knows, maybe I'll have enough music to put out a CD sometime soon. I'll keep you posted.

But this inwardness and frankly, feeling stuck, has been a bit stifling. So when I got an invitation to attend an evening conference on Feminist Practical Theology Thursday night at Boston University, I decided to make that a priority in my week. The invitation was from someone who is now a PhD student at BU who is a good friend of the woman who was my fellow student pastor and with whom I had taken a class once. God knew I needed something and this nebulous link led me to it. There is a God, and God does speak in nudges. What a blessing to be in a community for the evening of feminist and womanist pastors and theologians, mostly women and some men.

The topic of the evening was "Practicing New Ways of Being in the Academy and the Church: Conversations with Emerging Feminist Practical Theologians." This evening was convened by Dr. Susan Abraham of Harvard University and Dr. Shelly Rambo of Boston University (who has a new book out that I am planning to buy and read: Spirit and Trauma: A Theology of Remaining) as a follow-up to a similar conversation last year, and coordinated by Ph.D. students Danielle Tumminio, Elizabeth Siw0-Okundi, and Xochitl Alvizo. My thanks to all of them!

Presenters addressed these questions:

How do we move in institutions where women's presence and authority is still challenged?

Rev. Jennifer Wegter-McNelly spoke of the little stones and pebbles that come our way in churches as women in leadership, and sometimes as rocks to the head and how that wears on us. She finds intentional ways of coping through feminist practical theology, by dealing with the systemic sin and through communal grace, looking to love people as God calls us to love, and overlooking the individual stones that they throw. There is no reward, she said, for being self-muting. Bring your whole self to the ministry. The most subversive and radical act you can do as a minister who is a woman is in being incarnational.

Dr. Courtney Goto spoke to our need to give intentional mentoring to other women, and mourned that she has now aged out of being mentored as a young woman of color, and is no longer invited to the international conferences where she so admirably met all of those diversity requirements. So now the institutions do not provide a way for her experience and confidence to be passed on in those settings. We must seek ways to pass along our learning and experience.

During the question period, I asked these two women how they were mentored now. Rev. Wegter-McNelly spoke of three groups of intentional colleagues in ministry that provide both fellowship and mentoring: a group of pastors in her denomination, a group of friends from seminary, and a group of women pastors from nearby churches of several denominations. Dr. Goto said that she gets mentoring from Asian-American religion academics in other places, not from other practical theologians, acknowledging the competition that sometimes exists in the same field or institution.

How do we build and maintain our church and academic friendships with other women?

Rev. Dr. Brita Gill-Austern and Rev. Dr. Sharon Thornton from Andover Newton Theological School celebrated their own friendship in their remarks. They asked us to consider the questions: why is friendship important and why embodied friendships nourish our spirituality? Friendship is an often neglected and under-emphasized spiritual practice. Spirituality requires that we strengthen the ways to give and receive love, and our capacity to love self and creation. Friendship gives us the opportunity to do that.

Brita Gill-Austern spoke of 6 practices of friendship:

1) Attentive presence to the other—if the translation of "I am that I am" might be "I am present", then God is present when and as we are present to one another.

2) Taking time—to stop to see takes time like having a friend takes time. Besides the necessity of spending time together to nourish friendship, this time might include a quick email, flowers, picking up lunch for someone, or holding your friends in thought and prayer. She showed a Chinese calligraphy hanging—the Chinese characters for busyness are "kill" "heart". If we are too busy for friends, our hearts shrivel.

3) Mirroring—friends help us form accurate reflections of ourselves.

4) Mutuality—mutual generosity and equality.

5) Forgiveness—in spite of not because of. Friendships are not perfect, so we must forgive one another to maintain them.

6) Being & doing justice in the world—we are drawn to their goodness and it enlivens and nourishes ours.

Sharon Thornton quoted Mary Hunt: "Women's friendships are the ultimate political act." She spoke of three friendships with women who have given her courage to be, competence to lead, and hope to continue. Friends provide a place to be vulnerable and vulnerability requires strength to open up. Friends give us at least three gifts: laughter as a thread to subvert, vision and space to be, and gratitude that counters cynicism.

Recommended reading on friendship: Fierce Tenderness by Mary Hunt and The Friendship of Women by Joan Chittister.

How do we write for diverse audiences in both academic writing and congregational sermons?

Rev. LaTrelle Easterling reminded us that in sermon preparation you are the instrument, and so you need to prepare yourself just like the flute or trumpet player would prepare her instrument: clean, oil, polish. First, be in prayer—hear God and the Spirit. Next, bring the gospel to the issues, not my issues to the gospel. Third, notice the everyday. Nothing is lost in the economy of God—all that you notice can work its way into a sermon. Your sermons should be portable and adaptable in their examples to different audiences, because the main points speak to the text.

Learnings from this gathered community:

Rev. Mary Elizabeth Moore, Dean of Boston University School of Theology listened throughout the evening and offered and asked for a summary of the practices that feminist practical theology offer.

She offered this metaphor. Practices are streams. Sometimes they rush joyfully, sometimes they slow and spread and go deeper, sometimes they take a while to find their way around obstacles, and sometimes they polish the pebbles and rocks that hit us and carry them downstream to become someone's treasures. We have heard about streams of tough vulnerability, beauty, laughter.

Loving the ordinary and unexpected.

Honoring the everyday sacred.

Loving and being loved by another so as to love all of God's creation.

Imagining what's not there yet!

Be intentional and create the friends and support you need.

Practice chins up defiance.

Being self-be who you are.

Uncertainty is okay as part of the process.

Toughening our beauty, beautify our toughness.

Telling vulnerable truth in full voice.

Nourish one another.

Speak your gratitude.

Recognize that writing is a lonely and communal process.

Celebrate community, especially across generations with the wisdom that each generation brings.

I celebrate the nourishment and blessing that this evening in community brought to me. Besides the presentations, I had the opportunity to spend some time and catch up with friends there and that was a great joy. I invite each of you in the coming week to spend some time holding your friends in thought and in deed and taking time for your friends as an intentional spiritual practice. The rewards will be self-evident.

Awakening to Thunder

The farthest Thunder that I heard
Was nearer than the Sky
And rumbles still, though torrid Noons
Have lain their missiles by –
The Lightning that preceded it
Struck no one but myself –
But I would not exchange the Bolt
For all the rest of Life –
Indebtedness to Oxygen
The Happy may repay,
But not the obligation
To Electricity –
It founds the Homes and decks the Days
And every clamor bright
Is but the gleam concomitant
Of that waylaying Light –
The Thought is quiet as a Flake –
A Crash without a Sound,
How Life's reverberation
Its Explanation found --
~Emily Dickinson, #1581, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

I woke at 3 a.m. to a thunderstorm and saw a flash of lightning and counted the seconds until the thunder crashed. One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand. Crash!!! It was close—less than a mile. I got up and took the fans out of the windows and closed them as the rain started and the thunder and lightning marched through.

What do you tell your children when it thunders? Are they afraid? Are you yourself afraid of thunderstorms? Or are you fascinated by them? What explanation do you use or understand? Are thunderstorms a sign of an angry God, or one of nature's amazing spectacles? Are the gods bowling in the skies? Or as Emily Dickinson suggests, can we understand lightning as a metaphor for a flash of inspiration and understanding, something that jolts us out of our usual thinking—that illuminates our lives for a moment?

Your way, O God, is holy. What god is so great as our God?
You are the God who works wonders; you have displayed your might among the peoples.
The clouds poured out water; the skies thundered; your arrows flashed on every side.
The crash of your thunder was in the whirlwind; your lightnings lit up the world; the earth trembled and shook.
Your way was through the sea, your path, through the mighty waters; yet your footprints were unseen.
Psalm 77: 13-14, 17-19

I grew up in western Colorado where there wasn't much rain (annual rainfall of 10-12 inches/year) and you could see the horizons for 50 or more miles away. My father was a farmer and we cared about rain. Watching rainstorms and thunderstorms is something I remember fondly, because my father would go out driving to the top of a hill, often with our company, and see where it was raining, and judge if it was raining on our crops on the "north forty" or on the neighbors somewhere else. He sought knowledge and understanding in watching the rain and lightning, and I think that this was also one of the times that he was close to God.

Then where does one find wisdom? Where is the place of understanding?
It is hidden from the eyes of the living. It is hidden from the birds of the air.
Perdition and Death say, "Only a rumor of it has reached our ears."
Only God knows how to get there; for God is where it is; for the Most High looks to the ends of the earth, and sees everything under the heavens all at once.
When God gave to the wind its movement, and measured the breadth and depth of the waters, and made rules for the rain, and designed paths for the lightning, God beheld Wisdom and named it, confirmed it and tested it.
Then the Most High said to us all: "Reverence for God—that is wisdom! And to shun all evil—that is understanding!"
Job 28: 20-28 (translation from The Inclusive Bible)

How do you seek wisdom?

This morning while I am heavy eyed from not much sleep, the air is fresh washed and the odor of honeysuckle is heavy in the air. I remember the rain and lightning, and just sit, listening to the birds that are singing without seeing Wisdom, but knowing its presence nonetheless. May we also find God's presence and the beginning of wisdom in the thunder and lightning and in this morning of creation.

Even though the day be laden

When I realized that I hadn't posted here since March 24, I couldn't quite figure out why, so I went back through those dates in my emails and on my calendar.

Since March 24,
I've celebrated Passover, Maundy Thursday, Easter—with extra choir rehearsals;
I've had my basement flood for the second time this spring, and cleaned it up;
I've led worship several times, preached and designed a service once;
along with colleagues, over the past two months, I wrote, edited and compiled a 650 page response to a state request for proposal on the agency's largest contract—a process that has to have been the most tedious thing I have ever done in my work life;
then I played catch up at work while interviewing to hire for a new position;
my mother has fallen twice and I've worried a lot;
my daughter has had some difficult things that fortunately she talks about with me, but almost always late at night;
we had a boil water order in our area for one weekend and part of the week because the metropolitan water supply line broke;
I've tried to get my yard into shape again after the winter.
That's a sampling…

In other words, I've been living a rather over-full life. I did make time for some intentional contemplation and centering. With all of this, though, I didn't have the energy to take my contemplations and reflections and turn them back around again into writing. That's okay. Sometimes, things need to simmer.

A thank you is in order to my friend, John B., for his recent Facebook posts for their inspiration, then:

But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, God's mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. Lamentations 3:21-23

What a wonderful reminder today, when it is a lovely fresh and new spring morning.

John's second contribution was this poem that he said summarized his life just now (he's finishing seminary and has been organizing his papers and books).

At Fifty-Seven

By Mark Nepo on 05-14-2010

I feel like I stumbled
down a hill of years, only
to land in a pile of my books.

Along the way, I cracked
like a Russian doll; finding
something smaller and more
essential inside every version
I've known as me.

And now, when all I know
bursts into flame each time
I try to give it away, I'm asked
what matters.

There's something perfect
in how we're worn; like sculptures
left for Spirit and wind to finish, the
film taken from our eye just as
our heart is exposed, one
crumbling into the other.

John mentioned that you can subscribe to these postings here, so I did. Today as I was contemplating whether I should mop the kitchen floor, vacuum the rugs, mow the lawn, or do something else entirely (like write), I got a new posting, entitled My Messy House by Kathleen Norris, and this line struck me.

If the house is messy, they might have said, why not clean it up, why not make it into a place where God might wish to dwell?

God always dwells with us, and yet we need to make space and time to remember that. We need to clear out the clutter in our space, our lives, and our calendars to have room for what is truly important.

One thing I have held onto through all of the physical and mental labor of the last seven weeks is the spiritual and emotional assurance that God is always with us. My theme song during this time came from the Northumbria Community whom I first "met" via the book Celtic Daily Prayer. I had the book, but discovered their prayers are online, as is some of their music, and I ordered the music and recordings for Celtic Daily Prayer and Waymarks as an Easter present to myself. Their words and music have been the backbone of my contemplative practices these past weeks.

Even though the day be laden is from their Waymarks CD (also available as an mp3 download).

Even though the day be laden

and my task dreary

and my strength small,

a song keeps singing in my heart,

for I know that I am thine,

I am part of thee,

thou art kin to me,

and all my times,

all my times are in thy hands.

Sing that slowly and then work it up to jig tempo. May your tasks be lightened by song and by a reminder of God's ever present grace and love in your life today.

Domestic Mysticism

I must give credit to Grace for the title of this posting. Grace and her sister came to our church once recently and stayed for lunch and the inquirer's class afterward. We were talking about calling, and Grace said that she is called to domestic mysticism, among other things, you know: where you meditate as you sweep. Someone else that day was a proponent of mindfulness while doing dishes.

Poet Ann Weems poses the question of how we might do this in her poem, The Holy in the Ordinary, from her book, Kneeling in Jerusalem, a recommended resource for Lent and Easter. The last part captures the question:

Spiritual contemplation is all right
for those who have the time,
but most of us have to make a living.

Most of us have to live in the real world
where profanity splashes and blots out
anything holy.

Where, O Holy One, can we find You in this unholy mess?

How, O God, can we find the holy in the ordinary?

The Buddhist version of domestic mysticism is found in the saying, "chop wood, carry water." How do we practice mindfulness in everyday life? How do we gain the understanding that our everyday tasks are worthy and holy?

Molly Wolf has a book worth reading, or skimming and re-reading, if you've already read it, about this: White China: Finding the Divine in the Everyday. Mostly, I think this is about paying attention, about knowing that God really is present everywhere, and about understanding that being made in the image of God allows the possibility that we are and can be whole and holy, and Wolf emphasizes, while not letting our language about "God-stuff" get in our way.

Personally, cleaning is something I prefer in small doses. Unfortunately, like much of the rest of New England, I spent a lot of time the past two weekends cleaning out my waterlogged basement. After bailing out buckets and buckets of water to keep my basement from overflowing while it rained, mopping up, and picking up and taking out sixteen bags of soggy tiles and trash, I think that I may not want more opportunities to be a domestic mystic for a while.

As Passover coincides with Easter this year, though, I am reminded that a critical part of the ritual preparation for Passover is the attention paid to cleaning the house—mindfully and thoroughly. As we are planning to have both a Passover Seder and an Easter dinner, I just realized that I'm going to need to find the time to give the house a good cleaning. I think I may need to ask for help.

But you know, I don't find the phrase "clean house" in the Bible. So perhaps I will turn to this song that is often used during Lent instead:
Give me a clean heart, so I may serve you, a paraphrase of Psalm 51: 10:

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.

May our hearts be swept by and with the Spirit, and perhaps then cleaning our houses can be an ordinary, yet mindful and holy practice of our spirit filled hearts.

What matters?

O God, my God, I pray that these things never end...

I've had this song as a part of my listening collection for several years now, and just found the sheet music in the UUA hymnal supplement: Singing the Journey. It's written in Hebrew and in English, but here's the English text for the really haunting tune by David Zehavi: Eili, Eili

O God, my God, I pray that these things never end:
The sand and the sea,
The rush of the waters,
The crèche of the heavens,
The prayer of the heart.
~Hannah Senesh, 1921-1944

Hannah Senesh was a young Jewish woman, a writer who wanted to make a difference in the world, and who volunteered as a paratrooper and was killed after being captured while on a rescue mission to Hungary during World War II.

There are stars whose radiance is visible on earth
though they have long been extinct.
There are people whose brilliance continues to light
the world even though they are not longer among the living.
These lights are particularly bright
when the night is dark.
They light the way for human kind.
~Hannah Senesh

A more recent addition to my collection is the song by country/pop group Lady Antebellum: I Was Here.

You will notice me
I'll be leavin' my mark, like initials carved in an old oak tree,
you wait and see.
maybe I'll write like Twain wrote,
maybe I'll paint like Van Gogh,
cure the common cold.
I don't know but I'm ready to start 'cause I know in my heart

I wanna do something that matters,
say something different,
something that sets the whole world on its ear
I wanna do something better, with the time I've been given
and I wanna try to touch a few hearts in this life
and leave nothing less than something that says, I was here

I will prove you wrong
if you think I'm all talk, you're in for a shock
'cause this dream's too strong, and before too long
maybe I'll compose symphonies
maybe I'll fight for world peace
'cause I know it's my destiny to leave more than a trace of myself in this
place

I wanna do something that matters
say something different
something that sets the whole world on its ear
I wanna do something better, with the time I've been given
and I wanna try to touch a few hearts in this life
and leave nothing less than something that says, I was here

And I know that I, I will do more than just pass through this life
I'll leave nothing less than something that says I was here,
I was here,
I was here,
I was here

Wanna do something that matters
something that says I was here
wanna do something that matters
something that says, I was here,
I was here

Most of us are probably more like the person who wants to do something that matters, who fears that others will scoff because she is perhaps is all talk, with a dream that we don't know how to make come true. Hannah Senesh was right: we need to work and pray for the things that are important, those things we want to last, and in doing that perhaps we will become one of those people who do make a difference and light the way for others. That seems like a lot to ask some days.

Yet Emily Dickinson put it another way:

If I can stop one Heart from breaking
I shall not live in vain
If I can ease one Life the Aching
Or cool one Pain

Or help one fainting Robin
Unto his Nest again
I shall not live in Vain.
(from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson)

So what if I am not a star that lights the way for all of human kind? We don't have to be heroes, write like Mark Twain, paint like Van Gogh, or cure the common cold to matter: just cool one pain, help one robin, ease one life. Surely, we can do that? It's a helpful perspective for me when I wonder if I am making a difference, if I'm doing the ministry I "should" be doing.

In doing something that matters: I gave up "shoulds" for Lent, yet in this last week I cooled one pain (brought out the icepack for my daughter's bruised shin), helped at least one robin (found a bag of bird seed in the basement to go out into the feeder), and eased one life (had a phone conversation about living in a relationship with chronic illness with someone who doesn't have nearby supports). It's perhaps not the ministry I could be doing or hoped I'd be doing now, but it is the ministry I am doing, and that's what matters.

Let us do what really matters. May the prayer of my heart and yours never end.

Foreseen in Joy, Present in Grace

This morning I took time to read a poem and my hand fell on Sabbaths by Wendell Berry and I opened to this poem, number X:

Whatever is foreseen in joy
Must be lived out from day to day.
Vision held open in the dark
By our ten thousand days of work.
Harvest will fill the barn; for that
The hand must ache, the face must sweat.

And yet no leaf or grain is filled
By work of ours; the field is tilled
And left to grace. That we may reap,
Great work is done while we're asleep.

When we work well, a Sabbath mood
Rests on our day, and finds it good.

What do you look forward to in joy? Is it your work? Do you have a vision, a goal or a harvest that you are willing to sweat for?

Yet, catch the punch line: "no leaf or grain is filled by work of ours; the field is tilled and left to grace."

How are you at leaving things to grace?

I find I am often busy doing, and am less successful at being present in grace, whatever that is. To know and understand that we are a forgiven people, to rest in true Sabbath in God's love and presence, to turn our work and our lives over with the understanding that our work and lives are a part of a greater work, those are inklings of grace.

I do not at all understand the mystery of grace -- only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us. ~Anne Lamott via Jim Taylor in Rumors

Yes, what is grace? My word processor's dictionary offers these definitions:

grace n
1. elegance, beauty, and smoothness of form or movement
2. dignified, polite, and decent behavior
3. a capacity to tolerate, accommodate, or forgive people
4. a short prayer of thanks to God said before, or sometimes after, a meal
5. See grace period
6. a pleasing and admirable quality or characteristic (usually plural)
7. in Christianity, the infinite love, mercy, favor, and goodwill shown to humankind by God
8. in Christianity, the condition of being free of sin, for example, through repentance to God
9. See grace note

vt
1. to make a pleasing contribution to an event, often by attending it (often used ironically)
2. to add elegance, beauty, or charm to something
3. to add ornamental or decorative notes to a piece of music

Encarta® World English Dictionary © 1999 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Developed for Microsoft by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

I think about grace often—my name, Nancy, means "full of grace" or "gracious." This morning my "Nancy" tea mug reminds me of that. Fortunately, I didn't discover that when I was adolescent and gawky and not at all living up to my name in being graceful. Now I understand grace more broadly, not just in large movements of the body, but in smaller gestures of the hands, and in actions toward others: that "capacity to tolerate, accommodate, or forgive people," made possible mostly by God's grace: "infinite love, mercy, and favor."

What is important about this poem is the reminder that joy and grace go together. Looking forward in joy requires grace in the present, or being present in grace. It also may mean getting unstuck from the past as this acronym of GRACE illustrates:

FIVE STEPS FOR MAKING A COMEBACK
1. Grieve to flush out the frustration over disappointment.
2. Rest to replenish your strength.
3. Accept new hope rising inside you.
4. Create new dreams.
5. Engage life with fresh energy.
Note the first letter of each strategy to identify the great comeback agent that makes all the difference in the world.
from Faithbook by Kirk B. Jones

The grace note to this morning's writing was the singing of Amazing Grace as our closing hymn today at church.

’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears relieved;
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed.

Grace taught my heart to fear? That's in an old sense of that word: to be awed and to have wonder. It's a play on two meanings of the word, where today fear is almost always used negatively. But it is always wonderful when grace appears.

This morning's serendipitous occurrence of amazing grace reminded me of the bumper sticker I saw the other morning on the way to work:


The grace, joy and peace of God be with you.