Where the Wind Blows: Speaking to the Soul March 2, 2023

Abraham, back when 

he was just two syllable Abram
heard the voice of God
from within his soul
speak so convincingly that even
as his molars still
rattled from the conversation,
he packed up
wife and cattle and nephew
and headed to an unknown land.
In doing so
he left behind
all he had ever known.

I am a good man,
admired, respected,
a leader.
So through the anonymity
of dark-veiled streets
I went, seeking answers,
overflowing with questions.

I started with oil:
Rabbi, we know
that you were sent by God.
He blinked up.

And to be fair,
I did barge in
in the middle of the night.

There were signs.
But I wanted answers.
Instead I got riddles.
And he left me here.

To be brave enough
to let go of our “certainties”
—which are often just opinions
wrapped up in fear
and cynicism.
“The wind blows
where it chooses.”
And I hear leaves
rattling down the narrow alleys

I took my questions to Jesus.
The answer took me
someplace unexpected.

This was first published at Episcopal Journal and Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on March 2, 2023.

Salt and Faith: Speaking to the Soul, Feb. 2, 2023

“You are the salt of the earth… and the light of the world.” Matthew 5:13, 16


Reminder of the warm seas of our primordial wading ashore
in ages beyond words; or
the amniotic fluid that caressed and cushioned us
beneath our mother’s beating heart;
or the taste and trace of tears, whether joy or sorrow.
The sun may cause the vapor to rise, but the salt remains--
the water may ascend to heaven,
but the salt as God’s gift resolutely remains.
Our very blood carries the brackish proof
of its rootedness in our lives.
Lot’s wife became intimately aware of her salty heritage
when her backwards glance made her a pillar, and a warning.

The poets say Scipio beat his swords into plowshares at Carthage’s collapse
so that he could sow not seed but salt as a blight and a curse. Rome
later paid her soldiers in salt, the first “salary,” although
some take such tales “with a grain of salt.”

But it is precious.
It was required at each meal,
and offered on altars as a sign
of covenant faithfulness and steadfastness
a reminder of tenderness where destruction could just as well rule.
It can be eaten but is never fully consumed.
It preserves;
it saves;
it provides savor and delight.
Our faithfulness is designed to be as vital, as blessed to all we encounter.
Without flavor, it is nothing but bitter grit,
just as we are,
without faith.

This was first published at Episcopal Journal and Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on February 2, 2023.

Naming Our Demons: Speaking to the Soul, June 16, 2022

We may not think we have any common ground with the story of Jesus’s healing of the man with a multitude of demons in this Sunday’s gospel passage of Luke 8:26-39. Most of us no longer believe in demons, so we think we have nothing to relate to in this story. It’s too pre-scientific. It’s too fantastic. But maybe we shrug off this story due to a lack of imagination, a lack of understanding of the importance of metaphor and analogy that Jesus certainly utilized in the stories he told, and that the gospel writers used in the stories they told about Jesus.

For instance, I notice that Jesus asks the demons—not the man, whose lack of conversation reveals his loss of identity except by his illness—what their name is. And they answer “Legion.”

Those hearing this story from Luke’s gospel at the time of its writing would probably have been interested in hearing another healing story about Jesus, but at that word, I imagine their ears pricked up and they suddenly became very alert. Jesus and his contemporaries KNEW what a legion was. Most of the people in the known world two thousand years ago, from Scotland to Egypt, knew what a legion was. A legion was an invading army—a force of six thousand Roman soldiers, shock troops who would roll over a weaker people and place them ruthlessly under Roman authority and keep them subjugated. Jesus himself would die at the hands of the Roman authorities who held the leashes of the legions.

With the revelation of the name “Legion,” suddenly there is another element mixed into this story to its original audience. Suddenly this is more than simply about uncleanliness or mere illness. It’s about oppression, and suffering to which everyone hearing the story can relate. By naming the forces holding that man captive as “Legion,” the point is driven home as to the helplessness he exhibited in the face of the occupying forces that had seized control of him-- body, mind, and spirit-- and had taken away his voice and cut him off from all that he held dear.

Demons are things that take away our sense of agency, that try to convince us that we are helpless and powerless. So let's name it: Our demons too, even in the year 2022, are legion. Our demons, just like those that afflicted this poor nameless person, are forces of oppression, chaos, and division. Our demons claim power by convincing us we are helpless before them. And just as Jesus demands their name before casting the demons out of the poor man who is held captive, it is important for us, too, to name our own demons as such—to name them, so that we may rebuke them and take up the fight against them in the name of love and community.

What if we understood our modern demons as those dysfunctions, illnesses, and delusions that destroy community? The names we use for these demons may be different; but they are, indeed legion. There’s alcoholism, drug addiction—meth, fentanyl, oxycontin being just the latest scourges-- or even mental illness, which remains stigmatized even as we struggle still to recognize it as a medical condition rather than a personal failure.

But it goes on. Our modern demons also include the institutional demons of gun violence, homelessness, indifference to the suffering of others, especially when it is inflicted in our name. Then there’s grinding poverty and demonization of the poor, racism, xenophobia, dehumanizing or even “demonizing” those who are different from us—and I would argue that another demon is our tolerance or claimed helplessness in the face of those demons.

There is one thing all these demons have in common: they destroy relationships and the ties of community. And putting back on our lens as disciples of Jesus, community is one of the holiest works and tasks that we are called to embody.

For Christians, community does not just mean the group of insiders in each parish or denomination. Christian community is understood as being OUTWARDLY focused. Each group of Christians is tasked with not existing for its own sake, but for the life of the world, to draw all the world into the radical idea that we are all God’s children, all beloved, all worthy of dignity and respect and peace and wholeness—what our Jewish friends encompass in a beautiful and often misunderstood word when we use it: shalom. Another name for God—and for the love-as-action-and-justice that conquers the demons that plague us.

This was first published at Episcopal Journal and Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on June 16, 2022.

Yearning for Peace-- Speaking to the Soul, June 9, 2022

Today, June 9, is the feast day of the sixth century St. Columba of Iona, also known as Colmcille in Ireland, the land of his birth. Born into the clan Neill, some claim that his name originally was “Crimthann,” meaning “fox,” but he comes down to us as “Columba,” which means “dove.” Perhaps this story is told because his life was held in tension as a negotiation between strife and peace, between the necessity for diplomacy as a result of his lineage and station, and his yen for a quiet, monastic life as a contemplative and poet.

In the middle of his life, it is said that Columba became embroiled in violent disputes between his kinsmen and King Diarmait, the high king, concluding with a relative of his accused of murder being dragged from his protection and slain by the High King’s men. The responsibility for both deaths weighed heavily upon Columba, it is said, and so he and twelve followers left Ireland in a reed boat covered with leather, and set out to Scotland, eventually making landfall on the tiny island of Iona, off the coast of southwestern Scotland in the Inner Hebrides. There he lived the rest of his days, founding a monastery that was his home base as an apostle to the Scottish Picts as well as a center of learning. He was said to be happiest in his simple cell there, near a cross dedicated to St. Martin, himself a soldier who turned to peace. Although Columba made his home on a remote island, he nonetheless remained engaged with the world around him.

Many poems and prayers are attributed to St. Columba, including this one:

Let me bless almighty God,
Whose power extends over sea and land,
Whose angels watch over all.

Let me study sacred books to calm my soul:

I pray for peace,
Kneeling at heaven’s gates.

Let me do my daily work,
Gathering seaweed, catching fish,
Giving food to the poor.

Let me say my daily prayers,
Sometimes chanting, sometimes quiet,
Always thanking God.

Delightful it is to live
On a peaceful isle, in a quiet cell,
Serving the King of kings.

This beautiful prayer lays out in its five stanzas five actions of the life of a disciple: blessing, study, work, prayer, and service, all dedicated to God, but in service to the world. In all we do, we start by blessing God, by opening our hearts to holy learning, by laboring for the least and most vulnerable among us, by seeking God’s presence and guidance daily in our prayer lives, dedicating all our effort, even our resting, to the inbreaking of God’s reign within us and over us.

The prop upholding all is a longing for peace, and this is where perhaps we can hear Columba’s prayer resounding in our own hearts today, as we ourselves have been awash in repeated news of violence, war, and division all about us in the last few weeks.

In thanksgiving for the life of St. Columba, may we all make our prayer a prayer for peace—peace we are willing to back up by action to protect each other from the scourge of violence. May we remember that silence in the face of evil is not, and never can be, considered peace.

Beloved Savior, settle your peace upon us,
peace beyond our ken,
peace that drops soft and slow
like the rays from the sun at the clouds’ parting.

Light us from within, Lord Jesus,
with the beauty of your gospel of grace and mercy,
that we may radiate your love
as a beacon to the world.

Help us be truly present
in each moment with You, O God,
that we may be filled with the wisdom
of compassion and charity,
walking in truth and integrity with each other.

Breathe upon us your Spirit, O God,
that we may be utterly at peace
and grounded within your love.
Trusting in your unfailing goodness,
we commend to your care those we lift before You.

Amen.

This was first published at Episcopal Journal and Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on June 9, 2022.

Beauty Broken Open: Speaking to the Soul for April 14, 2022

(Maundy Thursday, 2022)

When I was a child, our neighbors across the street, Veta and Myron, were a retired school principal and a retired school counselor. They were generous with their time—inviting us over to play on the swing set they still had up even though their son was long grown and gone. In a rarity for Tulsa, their home sat atop a cellar, and there our neighbor had a collection of rocks, semi-precious stones, and fossils. There were dozens of rose rocks, the State Rock of Oklahoma. He told me about the great inland sea that had once covered the central part of North America, and showed me rocks he had brought back from trips all over the continent. It didn’t take long until I was hooked, and I spent hours over there learning.

One day, he handed me a mud-colored gray-brown orb. It was perfectly round, and surprisingly light—about the size of a croquet ball. I thought it was pretty cool. Then he handed me a hammer. I was confused when he told me to put the rock on the work bench and hit it. But eventually I realized he was serious and did as I was told, not too hard. After a couple of whacks, the thing cracked, and he gave one more expert tap and the orb cracked open. Inside there was a glowing array of light lavender colored crystals. He told me it was a geode. He then let me take my treasure home. I wondered that something so drab and nondescript could be so beautiful when it was broken open.

Tonight, we observe Maundy Thursday—a day when we ourselves are invited to be broken open to the beauty and pathos of these next three holiest of days in the Christian calendar. Our service tonight begins what's known as the Triduum, the great three days leading up to Easter Sunday. In the early church, the Maundy Thursday service always began after sundown, just before Passover will begin for our beloved Jewish kindred after sundown tomorrow.

It is traditional for Christians to meet for a simple meal, engaging in foot washing as a sign of our servanthood, just as Jesus set an example for us, and then have Holy Communion one last time until the Great Vigil. And as we share together this Holy Communion, we are called to re-member that Jesus takes and blesses the bread before the meal itself has really started—he takes it and urges that it be broken and shared among those who sit with him at table for the meal. That bread cannot be shared unless it is broken. It cannot be used for eating the rest of the food. It must be broken in the same way that dawn must be broken, in the same way that geode must be broken in order to allow the beauty within to dazzle our eyes.

Tonight, we are reminded that Jesus gathers us, just as he did those apostles on that night long ago, and offers us the Peace of God, not for our own comfort only, but so that we can share and embody that Peace and Grace to those around us. Tonight we remember that Jesus showed us that the heart of love is service—humble, tender, and compassionate. Jesus shows us in word and action how to live the best life we can have. Tonight Jesus shows that only in breaking ourselves open can we be then filled with eternal life and love.

Tonight may we be willing to be broken open ourselves, broken open to the call of love and community and service to our neighbors and to creation, especially during these next beautiful three days.

This was first published at Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on April 14, 2022.