Singing a New Song...

I ran across this Ted Talk this week on "Reclaiming Religion" by Rabbi Sharon Brous on the two most dangerous forces to religion - religious extremism and what she calls "religious routine-ism".  The extremism we see all the time - in terrorist attacks all over the globe, in the Israel/Palestinian conflict, in the recent hate crimes against Jews in the United States, and a resurgence in the Klan and other white nationalist groups since the Presidential campaign last year.  It is a dangerous thing what people are doing in the name of God, not just to the people affected, but to the religions that they use to blaspheme our God, turning the mass of people against religion.

Routine-ism is a more quiet danger to religion - the quiet death of institutions either unwilling to change, or using liturgy or reverence as shield for its members' fear of change, or as an excuse to being unwilling to engage those that most need help - the hungry, the poor, the addicted, the despondent and depressed.  A living religion, Rabbi Brous says, is one that seeks to create social change, and one where the worship is relevant and joyful.  Here's her Ted Talk:

This comes following last week's meeting at church to address the needs of our kids and youth at St. Peter's.  This meeting has become a wellspring of energy and ideas flowing out of all corners of the church.  We have so many new projects and new energy that have come out of a one hour meeting that I have been amazed by the power of the spirit that has emerged.  And it seems to be growing exponentially across different sectors of the church.  

As we enter into a high energy surge at St. Peter's, it reminds me that worship should be capable of being joyful, to provide solace when called for, and to allow reflection or penitence when needed.  A worship that is not capable of providing all of that when called upon in the life of a church, is not an alive religion, but another casualty of "routine-ism."

I found another video from Rabbi Brous, of one of the services from Ikar Los Angeles, which she helped found:  

This seems to me to be such a perfect blend of tradition and modern worship - this is not a mega church that seeks to give every person some kind of entertainment over substance, but a group with its feet firmly planted in tradition, that makes it relevant and joyful.

Then Mother Chris showed me a video of St. Gregory of Nyssa in San Francisco, an Episcopal church:

I don't think this type of service would fit at St. Peter's or many other churches, but it shows that there are ways to make liturgy relevant without giving up the tradition that help to define our religion.  And it's exciting, and joyful.  Because it is with hope and joy that we are to engage the world, for that is what the Word gives us - empathy for others, prayers for our enemies, and hope for a better world in the future.

Remember the Children... A First Step at Reconciliation

Mo. Chris' sermon today was on Matthew 5:21-37, which has to be an incredibly difficult part of the Sermon on the Mount to preach on, because it is more or less a collection of all the stuff that is hard to talk about stuffed into one passage: hardness of heart, adultery, divorce, and swearing oaths.  (I always think this is one of the "Let's Get It Over With" days that the folks who compiled the Revised Common Lectionary try to add as much stuff all on one day so we don't have to deal with it the rest of the year, kind of like how they completely leave out the story about the prophet Elisha bringing the bear out of the wildnerness to devour some village boys who were making fun of his bald head - it's in there, I swear.  Dang, just broke Matthew 5:34.  See, it's hard.)

So, Mo. Chris picked maybe the easiest part to preach about, but one of the hardest to live - that we should not let things come between us and others, but if you hold something against a brother or sister, you should reconcile that as quickly as possible.  We reconcile those hurts by talking about them, Chris said, or else holding a hurt or grudge can turn cancerous, and growth within us, from where it can infect our family, our community, and the society at large.  The key is reconciliation, not just an airing of grievances.  Jesus says that we should reconcile and then go offer our gift at the temple, which means that we should work out whatever we have against someone to the point that we are of sufficiently open heart that we could then ask for forgiveness.

Being that open about our hurts is a big step, to not only tell someone that they hurt us, or allow someone to tell us we have hurt them, but to do it to the point we of a forgiving mind and heart is an incredibly difficult thing to do.  So, I am going to air one of my hurts that I have been harboring about my church family for some time, hoping this is a right forum, and with full effort at loving-kindness, with no judgment or attacks, but knowing that airing my hurt may make our church family better able to serve ourselves and others in love.

This morning in our children's Sunday School class, we talked about a different part of the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 6:19-21: "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth... but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven... For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

Since we joined St. Peter's 10 years ago, I have held the thought that the church does not place much of its treasure in our children.  Without blaming or accusing, here's what I've seen.

We have never had a regular Sunday School program until Dawn and I volunteered to do it every Sunday.  It is more or less a case of "if you don't do it yourself, no one else is going to do it." And at this point, if it were not for the parents of the few children, along with Mo. Chris, and Elizabeth Taylor, Heather Prichard, Debbie Lowe, and Kathy Johnson, they would not be provided for at all.  Children often feel to me like secondary members of the church.

Earlier attempts at Children's Chapel died off because it was difficult to get several volunteers to commit to Sundays and there was little training for the ones that did show up. There was a music program one year for kids, but that didn't carry on - even though we have at least 3 young women who are fully prepared for the full choir, and are probably the best voices in the church - Abby, Erin, and Sidney...

At events for Shrove Tuesday (we're Episcopalians, we do NOT celebrate Mardi Gras), we are having the traditional meal of pancakes, only because Dawn volunteered to do them.  Otherwise, the kids would be left out - have you ever tried to get an 8 year old not born in Louisiana to eat gumbo, or etouffee, or crawfish?  At other evening events we have,  the children are purposefully excluded - "childcare will be provided".  There is always plenty of wine available, but not often is there anything for kids to drink.

Our Sunday School room and the youth room gets randomly used for storage, from the flower guild, from construction in the church, from the "Junque and Treasure" sale.  Once we had to share the youth room where we were doing Easter painting projects with groomsmen drinking large quantities of beer for a wedding much later that day.  We had a refrigerator in our Sunday School room for most of last year.  One of the bathrooms downstairs has gone unrepaired for several years, first the wall was out, then the sink was unhooked, now the toilet doesn't work.  The Hispanic Men's AA group that shares our Youth Room have always been respectful of our shared space and the kids actually talk about how we should do nice things for them.  I don't know that the kids understand our relationship to St. Peter's, other than this is a place where they can have some space in the church.

Ok.  So maybe this hurt has grown a bit inside me already.

But through worship, music, fellowship, Christian Education, facilities, it's plain to me that St. Peter's does not put our treasure into our children.  When our room gets used for storage, it sends a message to these kids that their space is not important.  When they are left out of food in our dinners, it tells them they are not a part of what is going on.  I feel that we think - well, what should we do with the kids, and not, the kids will be here, what can we do to include them.

Here's what we do not need - more money.  Throwing that kind of treasure at renovating facilities, or hiring youth ministers, or sending kids to camp won't change a thing.

What we need is commitment and time and inclusion.  Regular commitment of time spent with the kids and integration of the kids in every thing that we do.  Kids thrive off consistency.  We need at least two people to commit to being there everything Sunday for Sunday School.  We need four or five people to volunteer for the rotation in Godly Play.  We need a dumpster to clean out all the old stuff that keeps accumulating in the Youth Room.  We need everything fixed and in working order just like it is in the new Paris Hall, not new, just working.  We need integration of the kids into every level of the Church as full members, not just as cute kids that we can share pictures of and post videos on Facebook.  We need to treat them like the members they are and to love them.

When Dawn started on Vestry last year, I stole that line from Abigail Adams when John Adams went off to serve at the Constitutional Convention - I told her to "remember the children".   Most at St. Peter's want our church to grow, to add families.  That won't happen unless we all put more emphasis into including children into everything we do.  They don't need separate programs, they need to be treated like the full members of the church that they are.  If we can show the world that we love and value our children, only then will they believe they will love and value theirs as well.

Like I said, that has been a long, lingering hurt.  But I hope it starts a good conversation, and I'm asking Mo. Chris to forward this to the Church email list.  This is not a problem that falls on one person, or one group, but all of us are complicit.  I hope that through love and respect that we can all get to the place where we are of open hearts ready for forgiveness, myself most of all.

Namaste, and Peace and Love in Christ,
Brian

A Sunday Contemplation

We have just finished our second month of contemplative Wednesday night services at church and in the middle of anxiety, fear, and anger, quiet, incense, and prayer may seem like an escape, or avoidance. I've found these past several weeks, though, that contemplation is necessary to keep a plumb line, to reorient my compass, to look, in the words of the prayer, to changlessness in the midst of chances and changes. To turn away others in need, because we have surrendered to fear, or to get lost in anger, even when in the sake of what is righteous, is still to be lost.

Thomas Merton:

“Contemplation is also the response to a call: a call from Him Who has no voice, and yet Who speaks in everything that is, and Who, most of all, speaks in the depths of our own being: for we ourselves are words of His. But we are words that are meant to respond to Him, to answer to Him, to echo Him, and even in some way to contain Him and signify Him. Contemplation is this echo.”

Amen.

Slow

I have been watching slow things the long afternoon,
The thickening pad of snow out on the windowsill
That grows so slowly we can never see it grow
Although we say we can.  All that we know is that
It has grown and most probably will grow so long
As the snow falls.  And that is quite enough to know.
Then it will go and that will be a slow thing too
Whether it goes in sun or rain, whether a wind
Is or is not blowing. It always has been so.
And what is slower than this short, gray afternoon?
Slower than the way the sun, almost snowed in,
Begins by being low and ends by being low
And never sets or so it seems?  Such a slow sun.
Nor is there much to show for my long afternoon
Except perhaps that I've been growing I suppose.
Only the unremarkable growth that must be, though,
Which isn't much, Heaven knows, for anyone to show.

~ Robert Francis

What's So Funny About Peace, Lovingkindness and Understanding?

Or How Metta Made Me Like Chris Thile...

Sometime in the past couple of years, I stumbled on a lovingkindness guided meditation by Jon Kabat Zinn, a doctor who teaches mindfulness practice.  The practice was similar to the mindfulness or breathing meditation I was used to, except that he asked that we imagine someone that for us exudes unconditional love, to visualize that person, and to visualize embracing that person.  Unconditional love is impossible for us to reason with our brains, but if we've felt it, we know it.  It is warm and happy and forgiving and understanding.  Unconditional love is unchangeable, so that no matter what you do, it will never be less and it will never go away.  It is the love of God, and most of us have experienced it through the love of a parent (hopefully), or a grandparent, or family.

The guided meditation continued, though, to not just experience that unconditional love, but to imagine what the person is feeling toward you, to physically feel the love they have for you, and then imagine it radiating out of them into you.  Finally, after meditating on that love for a bit, you were to imagine it was radiating out of you into the whole world.

This one exercise fundamentally changed me, in just one session.  I had been practicing mindfulness meditation for a couple of years as a means to ease anxiety and increase awareness and calm, but this was different.  It was proactive, it was radiant, it was compassionate.  So, I started reading up.

Lovingkindness is a translation of the word Metta in the Pali language of the ancient Buddhist writings, and is a Buddhist meditation practice that cultivates love - for yourself and for others, people you like, and even your enemies.  It is the foundation for the Brahma Vihara, or heavenly dwelling mediations along with compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity.  Basically, in lovingkindness when you meditate, you focus on certain phrases, like:

May I live in safety
May I have mental happiness
May I have physical happiness
May I live with ease

When your mind wanders, or you lose focus, you return to these phrases, with a concentration, not thoughts.  Lovingkindness is a religious practice, but in many Buddhist traditions it is easily useable within Western religions, especially Christianity, where we seek to love our neighbors as ourselves. Metta, however, understands that before you can love your neighbor, you HAVE to necessarily love yourself.

Combining Metta practice with basic Buddhist and Christian teachings of non-judgment, compassion, forgiveness, and love for others, led me to a new way of thinking about how I dealt with others.  I would try not to act in a way that would do others harm.  I would try to think about how my actions affected other people, to try to do the thing that they needed at that moment over what I may want to do.  I would try to be kind and understanding.  And I would try to re You member that whatever emotion I experienced caused by the actions of another would quickly pass, that before I acted in a negative way, I should think what a right and good and appropriate reaction would be.  Granted, I'm not perfect, so depending on the day, hour, how tired or hungry I am, my success can change.  But when I am in a decent mind, I think - may this person live in safety, may this person have mental happiness, may this person have physical happiness, may this person live with ease.  Sometimes, I repeat those phrases right after I have just called that person an idiot, but not to his or her face, and then like I said, I'm not perfect.

One side note - Buddhist practices in many traditions are very compatible with Christian belief.  In fact, they supplement it - they are methods to get to the point where we live as Christ.  I've heard some Buddhists say that the Buddha had 80 years on Earth and Christ only had around 30, so that while the basic teachings on how to live and act are much the same between the traditions, Christ was taken away before he had time to teach us how to get there, but the Buddha taught for 50 more years.  You CAN be a Christian and practice Buddhist meditation - read Living Buddha, Living Christ by Thich Nhat Hanh for details.

So even people I have held grudges against, for whatever reason, I am compelled under the teachings of both Christ and the Buddha to let go of judgment, to seek a way to love them as my neighbor, to show them lovingkindness.  That brings me to Chris Thile.

The first time I saw Chris Thile perform, it was before he was leading Nickel Creek, at Merlefest in 1998, I think.  Sara and Shawn Watkins were with him, but I don't think they were going by the Nickel Creek name yet.  At the time, I was a hardcore bluegrass and country traditionalist.  Ralph Stanley was still in decent health, Del McCoury had the best band in the world, and I got to see Guy Clark, one of my absolute all-time music heroes, on a small stage with 150 or so others, so close I could smell his cigarette smoke from the stage.  Guy Clark can always make me feel something real, raw, yell out, or cry.  His songs are about packing up with his wife and taking the freeway out of Los Angeles, or about crying over his dead father's Randall knife, or how feeling yourself free after a bad relationship was a like a coat in the cold, or how a man could go to his grave knowing that the only happiness he found was in the arms of a Dallas prostitute.  Oh, and also home-gown tomatoes.  Hey life ain't all bad.  Sometimes you forget all about the sweatin' and diggin'.  But for the most part, his songs were gritty, heart-wrenching, real, poetic, beautiful stuff.

In the midst of my Guy Clark worship, and Ralph, and Earl Scruggs playing live for the first time in decades, and Gillian Welch on the small stage, and some really amazing stuff, here comes Chris Thile, with his teenage arrogance and show-offy mandolin runs, and preppy haircut, and white guy guitar expressions on his wankerish solos.  At one point during their set, he told the audience to "imagine you are a lighthouse" and then he sang this overly-emotive, new agey song about how he was a light house and I left.  That was it for me and Chris Thile.  Sorry bud, not my thing - you live in your world and I'll live in mine.  Difference being mine has good music.

So, cut to last night - January 14, 2017 and on my way to Tractor Supply to get dog food, who should come on WUKY, but Chris Thile, new host of the Prairie Home Companion.  If this were 5 years ago, no question, I would have turned the dial and not thought anything of it.  I actually would have felt good about myself for having standards.  But a self-congratulatory attitude about negative judgments do not really mesh with metta, you know?

So, in a completely open, non-judgmental, open way, I thought, may Chris Thile live in safety, may Chris Thile have mental happiness, may Chris Thile have physical happiness, may Chris Thile live in ease.  And it kind of worked. I eased into listening, letting judgment slide on by each time it popped up, and when talking about Chicago, from where Prairie Home was being broadcast yesterday, he mentioned Wilco, and one of his favorite albums, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.  And then he sang part of a David Bowie song, and part of Led Zeppelin song, and the intro to a Rage song, and a song he wrote comparing the bad pitching changes of the Cubs manager to our country picking Trump as president. I remembered then that when I saw Chris Thile play in 1998, almost 20 years ago, he was probably 15 year old and I think I was probably more obnoxious than him at that age, especially since I didn't have his talent.  We'd both grown older, more mature, our tastes had changed, we'd lived life, and by the end of the episode, not only had I shown Chris Thile some lovingkindness and compassion, I think we're friends now.

That's how the metta practice works - start with yourself, then reach out to others.  Start by loving the neighbors close to you, and then eventually you can work your way to even your enemies, even Chris Thile.

A Word About the Blog Title...

So, blogging can be a very egocentric exercise - with a tinge of arrogance in a belief that something the blogger could publish would enlighten the world.  That feeling has kept me away from this for awhile, but I'm still feeling the need to publish one, mainly with the thought that regular publishing would force me to actually finish something with punctuation and proper grammar. 

With the bare truth that not many will ever read my blog, but still fighting off the feeling that I am participating in an exercise of some self-centeredness, I finally came up with a name.

...That's All I Got...  means two things.  First, I probably won't blog that much, and when I rarely do have a thought worth writing about, that will be the end of it - I won't be holding back any big ideas that would benefit the world.  There's nothing else there in my brain.

Second, it's the admission that what I do end up typing on this free space on the web provided by Google is that it's probably not worth much - you want enlightenment, you might want to check somewhere else. 

So, the title is both a comment on the quality AND quantity of my thoughts and writing.  Not much there, and, when there is, there's not much to it, but that's all I got.  Like that joke from Annie Hall - the food is really terrible, and the portions are so small...

Welcome to my small portion...