Blessed are you among women . . .

It seems like a long time since I wrote.  Last week were in silent retreat for three days, and the last day was very hard for me.  I was in a funk for several days after that.  Then I got busy - a women's gathering in New Jersey on Saturday, a wedding (New Jersey again) on Sunday.  But the real problem was the funk.  I just didn't have anything I wanted to share.  My mind and spirit were clogged with ancient pain I thought was gone.  But I'm back now.

Now I'm thinking about the Visitation, upcoming on May 31.  It comes every year, but this year it feels very special.  This year, the story of two women making a journey, greeting the divine spark in one another, celebrating what God can do, is very real to me.  Elizabeth - my companion in this adventure, not the mother of John the Baptist - is gifted and gifting.  My heart has been rising all day in anticipation of this great feast.

As we have been getting ready for a women's gathering that we will hold that day, we've been talking about the need for a matrilineal salvation story.  The Visitation is listed in the Book of Common Prayer as a moment in the life of Jesus.  It's that, but it's also a moment in the lives of Mary and Elizabeth.  As we've talked, we've realized that Elizabeth, the first to point to Jesus, doesn't have her own feast day in the calendar.  Men who never spoke a word in the Biblical record have their own days, but this prophetic voice is subsumed under the life of Jesus.  How would the church calendar be different if women counted?

The Visitation is the occasion for the Magnificat, the great hymn of overturning.  It's Mary's proclamation of God's continuing power.  So how would the church be different if we really heard it and participated in its vision?

This week, look for women who lead and women who celebrate other women's leadership.  Thank them, mentor them, stand with them.  Tell them they're a blessing, and remind them they are blessed.  Work to ensure that they are.

Remembering the Visitation means that no woman need to give birth alone, in shame, or in fear.  It means that we will surround her with love and peace.  It means that every woman's child will be welcomed as the face of God among us, and every mother as the Christ-bearer.  It means that men will care for women, even in the face of pressure to reject them.  Then we will have cause to celebrate!

Cat Breatkthrough!

If you've been with us a while, you know about our cat situation.  Our two cats couldn't seem to work things out, so we kept them separated for over three months.  Then we just couldn't stand it and decided to try again.  And now, this very minute, they are both lying in the sun.  They are four feet apart.  They are separated by an open door, and I suspect that without the door they wouldn't be doing this, but a few days ago they wouldn't have done it at all.  It seems that the sun is more powerful than their fear.

Oh - was that a metaphor?  Of course.

Yesterday was Pentecost.  I celebrated by serving at two different - very different - churches in New Jersey.  Three services, two churches.  The first is a lovely suburban, white church, with a children's choir and a big complex and orderly services.  The second is at the top of the state, with a congregation mostly of Lenape Native Americans, with very few resources.  Their service was more disorganized because I forgot to bring the bulletins from the first church, and the organist was a volunteer who had the wrong numbers for a hymn.  We were a mess.

But the Spirit was powerful there.  It was present in both places, but in its different guises.  In the first church it was orderly and gentle.  In the second it was fluid, blowing the chaos into peace.

In the meantime, my Sister Elizabeth had foot surgery on Friday, so she is stuck in a chair for a while.  Pentecost for me was full of driving and moving.  For her it was too quiet, separated from the larger community of worship.  But the Spirit came anyway.  And today it is bringing peace to our cats, and to the world.

May it bring peace to you, and to those you live and serve with, every day of your life.

Bluestone Farm

We just returned from a visit to Bluestone Farm, the emerging enterprise of the Community of the Holy Spirit.  We visited to see and learn how an established Anglican community is going about reinventing itself.  New seeds are exciting, but it's also inspiring and instructive to see settled gardens plow themselves up to bring forth new fruit.  They have four Sisters there, milking cows and gardening and preserving what they grow.  They also have several companions in residence, three young people and a couple, moving on right now but there for years, who share in daily life and decisions.

We are thinking a lot about the different ways people affiliate to a community.  Traditional religious orders have had members, in vows, people moving toward vows (novices, postulants), and then other "rings" of membership - oblates, close in, with a rule and maybe a vote, maybe a habit, maybe living at the monastery but maybe not; associates, living "secular" lives but praying for the community, giving to it, and following a simpler rule; and maybe some other layers.

I get the need for that.  We don't all want to belong in the same way.

When we began, we said we'd all be Companions, though some would be residential and some would not.  Then we learned that some people don't want that level of commitment.  Some people want looser affiliation, but they still want to belong.  

Now I'm thinking we were on to something before.  We've heard from the Erie Sisters about temporary 

Sisters, who live with them for up to 3 years.  We heard from CHS about people living alongside, some temporarily and others who knows?  So we're thinking about how to be a companion again.

Elizabeth and I are companions in residence.  Our relation is not defined by residence, but living together is important for our formation - it teaches us things that we can never learn alone.  But there might be other ways to be a companion.  Companions in prayer.  Companions on the road.  Temporary companions.  Fellow travelers (whatever that means).  I don't know.

What do you dream of?  What sort of companionship are you hungry for?  Let us know.  

What's your racket?

Just a few days after preaching the second sermon at Redeemer (my last post), I went to my semi-annual meeting of the Mastery Foundation's School for Leadership.  During our time together we talked a bit about the concept of "racket."  A racket is a complex with the following elements: a fixed way of being, a recurring complaint, a behavior or situation that is unwanted but persists.  Every racket feels awful, yet it carries payoffs that keep us going: we get to dominate others (or avoid being dominated), we can justify ourselves (either by being right or by making others wrong), and we can look good even while we're losing at whatever most matters to us.  But the costs are great: we lose energy, relationship, joy, and self-expression.

I started to suspect I had a racket going when I was asked what I want to work on in myself in the coming months.  I mentioned my persistent difficulties in building and maintaining connection.  But when it came time to actually do something different, I realized that I am more connected than I think.  I may not be connected to everyone I'd like to be, and I certainly am not connected to some people I think I "should" be to be a "good" person, but I'm surrounded by friends and companions.  So I learned about my racket.

I tell you this because I'm excited, on the verge of a breakthrough about this, but also because it seems to go so well with last week's Gospel.  I'm that guy by the pool, whining about why I can't get it.  But when Jesus asks, "Do you want to be healed?" I'm not sure.  I kind of like my racket.  I'm not sure why, exactly, but I'm going to find out.  I'm getting in that pool!

Do you have a racket going somewhere, a little self-talk that justifies limitations even when they hurt?  Ask Jesus to help.  Really, I think it's that simple.  Just say, "Help me.  I'm stuck in this stagnant place, and I want out!"  If we keep praying, we get conscious, and we get to choose.  And sometimes, we get healed even before we're ready to choose.  So don't ask unless you're really willing to be thrown in the pool, or at least willing to be thrown in anyway.

I could write all day about the last three days, but I've got work to do and people to talk to!
Have a blessed Ascensiontide.

Sermon May 5, Redeemer Morristown

I told you last week that I belong to a school for leadership.  It focuses on helping people to manifest their dreams and passions.  It doesn’t teach techniques or qualities; their position is that leadership is not a characteristic of certain people, but can appear in groups and among people.  We know leadership is present when something new emerges, something that wouldn’t have happened in the current context, something that answers the needs and concerns of the people involved.
We spend a lot of time on our own internal barriers to leadership.  We look at the payoffs we get from not committing ourselves or from not changing.  We look there, because the inertia of the daily world and our own fears are the biggest obstacles to meaningful transformation.  Then we work on what we can do differently.
I’m thinking about the school because these readings call us to our responsibility for the futures we live.  They present very different responses to an invitation to wholeness.  We don’t know how either story ends, but the pictures they paint make clear the stakes and the choices we face every day.

Do you want to be healed?

Throughout the Gospels we read about people who came to Jesus for healing.  In most of them, the person asks for themselves or for another, and Jesus answers.  One time, shockingly, a woman comes and asks, and Jesus says no until she wins her argument with him and shows him a new way.  Another time, a woman doesn’t ask, just touches him, and that is enough.  Jesus is reported to be able to heal from a distance.

Now, things are a little different in the Gospel of John.  John wants to teach us that the healings are signs of something bigger.  The point for him is not that Jesus is a healer, but that Jesus is the Messiah, the chosen one of God.  Healing is just a sign.  So sometimes he tells stories where the individual does not ask for healing, where Jesus initiates healing to make a point.  A blind man is healed, in order to come to proclaim Jesus as Messiah.
But this Gospel story is different even from that.  Jesus has just healed an official’s son, when the official asked him to.  Now the action shifts to Jerusalem, to a pool by one of the gates in the city wall.  This pool evidently has healing properties, but only at certain times.  The early manuscripts disagree about how this happened, but it clearly isn’t automatic.  In fact, this poor guy has been sitting there for 38 years and never gets healed!
I don’t know about you, but I would have gone to another pool by now.

Jesus cuts right to the chase.  He asks him to commit to his own healing.
“Do you want to be healed?”

And, you know, it’s not clear that he does.

He doesn’t say yes.
He makes excuses.  I’m alone, I’m slow, I never get there.
OK, he can’t seem to walk, but where are his friends?  Can’t his relatives take him somewhere else?  Why is he so helpless?

In 38 years, he hasn’t made a friend.  He hasn’t made enough community for others to help him, or defer to him.  In 38 years lying around the pool, he hasn’t gained the attention of others enough for them to say, “We’d better get him into the water.”

I don’t know.  Maybe there was a time when he tried, and failed.  Maybe he committed before, but when it got hard he gave up.  Now he’s just lying by the pool, not really expecting anything to be better, afraid to give voice to his desire.

Do you want to be healed?

How much desire do we kill because the world has taught us it’s hopeless?
One way the consumer economy works is by teaching us to trade in our deep desires for connection and creativity for products and amusements.
But it also works by telling us that our deep desires are impossible to fulfill.
We can lie around the pool, but we can’t expect real transformation.  It’s no one’s fault.  Certainly it’s not my fault.

If this man were to name his desire to be healed, he would become vulnerable.  He would become responsible - response-able.  His disempowered innocence would end.

There are plenty of days when I want to live like that.  I want to tell you why I can’t change, why I can’t help, why you can’t count on me.  If I name my desire, I become responsible for whether it comes to pass or not.

In the story, Jesus cuts right through this guy’s resignation.  He heals him.  Just like that, the guy can walk.  But he doesn’t heal his heart.  When the man is confronted for carrying his mat on the sabbath, he makes excuses again.  “The guy who healed me told me to do this.”  Later he turns Jesus into the authorities.  His body is healed, but he’s still not responsible for his life.

Fortunately, we have choices.  Encountering God is not a one-time event.  God keeps showing up.

After Jesus’ death, after the disciples have become bearers of the Holy Spirit, Paul meets a woman by another body of water.  He’s come to Greece, to Philippi, and he goes to the river outside the gate in hopes of finding Jews to pray with.  He meets Lydia and other women.  Lydia gets it.  She asks for the water of transformation, for baptism, and then she asks Paul and his party to stay at her house.  That house becomes a center for the new community in Philippi.

I don’t know why the guy in Jerusalem couldn’t grab his desire and claim it.  I don’t know why Lydia could.  But I’d rather live like Lydia.

The water of healing awaits us.  God awaits us.  And sometimes God intervenes directly in our lives.  But even then, it’s up to us to decide whether to acknowledge it, whether to participate and claim our lives.

In the School for Leadership, we don’t talk about what we want to do.  We talk about what we plan to do.  Desire is good, but planning takes us even further into commitment, into vulnerability, into our own power.

Planning doesn’t push God out.  Part of planning is opening myself to God’s action, and going with the momentum.  We can plan to keep our eyes open to what God is offering.

Do you plan to be healed?

Is there a place in you that sits by the poolside, waiting for the world to come to you?
Is there a place so wounded that you don’t want to risk wanting anymore?

Listen to Mary Oliver:

What I want to say is
that the past is the past,
and the present is what your life is,
and you are capable
of choosing what that will be,
darling citizen.

So come to the pond,
or the river of your imagination,
or the harbor of your longing,

and put your lips to the world.
And live
your life.

Scattering Seeds

I couldn't sleep last night, so I went to the blog and for the first time found the page where you can see where people are reading from.  I'm so excited to see that some of you are in Russia and Italy and Mexico and Germany and . . . !  It gives a new, visceral feeling to the mystical body of Christ.

I hope you read something that sparks hope and renewal in you.  I hope, I pray, that you will pass that on to others.  And please pray for me, for us, as we stand at the door and peer in.  Bless you wherever you are!

Sermon at Redeemer Morristown, April 28

It was great to be back at Redeemer last Sunday. Readings were Acts 11, John 13:31-35, and a quote from Peter Block on belonging.


As always, I have to begin by saying how glad I am to be back with you. Many of you don’t know me yet, but I know you, because I know this community. I know this to be a place of commitment and compassion.

The Gospel and the reading from Acts were not chosen for you, believe it or not. They were appointed in the lectionary. But what gifts they bring us! And they speak to my concerns these days, to the work I’m doing. And they speak, I hope, to you.

For the past year and a half, I’ve been part of a school for leadership sponsored by a group called the Mastery Foundation. They are not connected to any particular faith tradition, but they have been shaped by many active ministers of many faiths. They are passionate about fostering workability and resilience in communities. They offer courses on community building, peace and reconciliation, and ministry development. They work in Israel, in Ireland, and in the U.S. They are giving me the resources to start a new women’s community, to step out and do something that makes a difference in people’s lives. I’m able to be here today because I left my parish position to take a leap of faith. I’m looking to build community. This brings me continually back to thinking about what community is and how to do it.

Between the story in Acts and the Gospel, we hear some important things about community. The story in Acts describes how the early group of Jesus’ disciples spread beyond the bounds of Judaism. Peter recounts a vision in which he learns not to disdain the Gentiles and their ways. As Luke tells the story, it’s pretty easy and clear. Peter tells the Judean community what happened, and they say, “Oh, OK, that’s great. Even those scummy Gentiles get a second chance at life.”
It’s not likely that things were that smooth. Luke’s version leaves out a long process of argument and downright name-calling that didn’t end for centuries. But the story remains pointed and important. It reminds us that we will continually be called to reach beyond what makes sense to us. The Gospel keeps growing, calling to wider circles of people, and when it does it’s likely that “those people” will appear to us as a problem rather than the answer to our prayers.

But say we expand the circle. Say we even realize, one day, that others have opened the circle to us. At some point in our lives, we all find ourselves in the position of the Gentiles who were waiting to be included. Women and people of color know this position. Queer folk know this position. The revolutionary, insulting moment of awareness for privileged people is exactly that moment when we find that we are outside some circle, needing others’ permission to enter. When men first encountered women’s spaces where they were not invited, it was a shock. When heterosexuals realize that there’s a whole world they didn’t know about and weren’t invited into, it can be a shock. We all have some place where we find ourselves outside waiting.

When we’re in together, it can be exhilarating. Finally - a place where I’m welcome! A place where I fit, with all my rough edges and quirky parts! A place where I’m loved and accepted as I am!

But that’s just the beginning of belonging. We long for it. We long for that place of recognition. But belonging is a community capacity, as Block says. We cannot experience it without the other parts of belonging. When we truly belong to something or someone, they belong to us. That means we are responsible for the building up and maintaining of that community. Belonging without ownership and accountability is just warm feeling. It isn’t yet community, and it isn’t yet what Jesus promises. There’s so much more waiting for us.

In John’s account, Jesus tells the disciples to love one another. What we miss in today’s reading is that he tells them this just after Judas has left them on the night of the Last Supper. Judas has left to betray Jesus, after Jesus has washed his feet and eaten with him. And Jesus knows Judas is doing this.
Why does this matter to us?

Luke’s happy story about welcome really hides just how challenging this Gospel work can be. The hard part isn’t just opening the door to those we think of as outside. It isn’t just walking in when we’ve been told we don’t belong.
The hard work begins when we’re in, and we look around and say, “What am I doing with these losers?”
What am I doing with that traitor?
What am I doing with that sinner?
What am I doing with that not-so-educated, or too educated, person?
What am I doing here with Republicans, or Democrats?
What am I doing here with people who don’t share my theology?

Those are exactly the questions we need to ask.

What are we doing here?

What am I doing with the person who walks in for the first time?
What am I doing with the people who disagree about the direction of the church, or the country, or the world?
What am I doing with the people who aren’t here, who need what I have?
What am I doing with the resources entrusted to me by previous generations?

What are we doing here?

Social justice work and community service and cutting-edge worship are inseparable from the internal work of community building. We need always to reach out beyond our current borders, and we need also to strengthen and repair the internal fabric of community.

In my new community, with only two members, we spend a huge amount of time working on internal relations. We’re not doing it because we have nothing else to do, or because we have a lot of conflict. We’re doing it because we are keenly aware that our effectiveness in the world is linked to our internal communication and commitment. We do it so we can be ready to receive the next members with open arms.

Each day we deepen our commitment to one another and to the ministry we see awaiting us. We leave open room for disagreement, because disagreement is one form of commitment. But we return to the work of belonging, for the sake of the world.

In a world in which it’s easier and easier for people to become isolated, the work of belonging is more important than ever. And it is work. It is holy work, the work of stewardship and reconciliation and outreach. It brings great gifts, and also great demands. But the demands turn out to be gifts as well, when we are called to use all of our capacities in the service of the world.

By this everyone will know that we are disciples, if we have love for one another.