Youthful Idealism -- Sundays nearest August 6 & 8

"Youthful Idealism"

People grow old by deserting their ideals. Years may wrinkle our skin, but to give up our enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. (Samuel Allman)

To whom can we be given up? What other hope is there for Earth? For Children? By what delusion dare we abandon, despair? Hosea from depths of own suffering able to hear and feel all: His God's heart splitting open, compassion metastasizing, no longer able, willing, to execute, carry out anger: "For I am God! I will not come in wrath!" Wrath-making not God, but choice-making, change-making are, disposing of angers, deploying of strengths; in Jesus deciding to die before killing -- again -- if God ever did? God gravitating toward Anne Frank, "ideals, and dreams, and cherished hopes," toward Sadako, flickering, trembling cranes:

The kind of God we choose to believe in the end makes all the difference . . . Until I discover the God in which I believe, I will never understand a thing about my own life . . . Made in the image of God, we grow in the image of God we make of ourselves. (Joan Chittister)
Grappling, goading, pleading for each others' blessings, like Jacob, just wanting to live to tell about it; even as Holocaust deniers, resenters, begin to outnumber survivors, endurers, ideological renderings replacing, crowding out eye-witness accounts: Who lives to tell about Death Camps? Atomic Bombs? Genocides and Ethnic Cleansings? Each of us living to tell about something? Own unrepeatable- and unforgettableness? Long-distance invincibleness? Joining in stories, faith-foolish salvation-struggles, even, especially, for soul of "One Who Acts Crookedly," one who deceives, who hustles, rustles, wrestles, "gets over," at points of crossing, of crisis, of kairos -- Still getting away with world as our plaything? Peoples as pawns in our power games? Resources as weapons at our commands? (Crusty, crunchy Aunt Jessie and I sneak from our beds to the TV in my grandmother's house late at night, cheering in mime, Vern Gagne against Dick the Bruiser!)

Jacob's whole world-wrestling way of life, waxing from womb, springing forth foothold on brother, announcing self serious contender; inveigling, untangling, extracting -- birthright from brother, blessing from father, two daughters, many servants, animals from father-in-law -- all merely preparing this crossing again, re-entering land of promise, now com-promised, justly expecting the worst -- anything wealth cannot sway his way out of? Fruits from procuring now fruits for securing? Alerting Esau to how much he possesses, sporting, comporting position to bargain for life, forgiveness, forgetfulness; Esau advancing, four hundred strong, reducing brother to pretense and bribe, still missing no tricks, even praying! Poised on promise, glorious destiny, countless progeny, about to be certified "Israel," who strive to be blessed, and be blessing, "Israel," from "Jacob," who never quit!

No matter how sorely wounded, refusing to be defeated, encountering all mysteries, power and grace, Creation herself, face-to-face -- yet telling about it! "Israel" for whom world even now waiting, aching, longing, corresponding to Jacob's own deepest soundings of self, years of work, sacrifice, exile, reckless inventiveness, restless evasiveness, nonetheless fearful, nonetheless fugitive, strangers, refugees -- In our own lands? To own peoples? Closest relations?

Elie Weisel: "God" of Hebrew Scripture loves being shown new things, new ways, by "God's (Many!) Children!" "Both were wounded: Jacob at the hip, the angel in his vanity. Yet they parted friends, or was it accomplices? Jacob accepted his aggressor's departure willingly; the latter, as if to thank him, made him a gift: a new name which for generations to come would symbolize eternal struggle and endurance in more than one land, during more than one night."

Much as "God" dealing and and from settings of power, postures of strength, doing so only in ways building up, redeeming, invoking, provoking: How big is our God? Big enough to lose a few skirmishes with us? Inducing, seducing our growing toward fitter partnership, fuller responsibility? God wins some, loses some, exhausts some to draw, "no decision" at best, inviting less fearfulness of our own weakness! Warring madness! Sublimate more addiction to dominate!
Reapproach, reappropriate Jabbock, River of Rockstacked Reckoning, our Jesus a Jew, the Christ, so we claim -- Jewish Messiah! Not charging Jews, nor anyone else, but Christians with coming, confessing, costing, to Jesus! Suffering sacraments, solidarities in, to, and through each generation . . .

All these replacement parts, dislocations, hip sockets wrenched out of joint with own bodies, exemplary excruciation! "While there is a lower class, I am in it; and while there is a criminal element, I am of it; and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free." (Eugene Debs) Then he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. They ate and were filled -- beyond measure!

Weapons That Heal -- Sundays nearest August 6 & 8

"Weapons That Heal, Food That Endures"

Judgment on David, perversion of sun, illusion of invincibility, releasing scourge deadly to world as faithlessness to his own house; credit him with allowance of hearing to prophet, unbound to tell us what we want to hear, scandalous to self-invested perspectives; credit him with discernment of outrageous rich man, protecting own abundance, accumulation, seizing the little to poor man's name, deserving to forfeit a life, for restoring semblance of one in wronged other; but credit him not with failure to find his own face in prophets self-shattering mirror of words, far sharper than swords, so slow, if ever, to sight sliver of self stealing sustenance from all the rest.

Violence, vengeance, rape, retribution: Nathan before us, upholding our image: Thirty thousand nuclear weapons, one hundred thousand times more explosive than Hiroshima, Nagasaki; not even to mention six hundred thirty-nine million "small arms" squeezing life out of our children. "We live in a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. It is a world that has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. We have solved the mystery of the atom and forgotten the lessons of the Sermon on the Mount. We know more about war than we do about peace, more about dying than we do about living." (Omar Bradley) And more about killing than we do about dying?

Colman McCarthy, Center for Teaching Peace, "looking for world where it becomes a little bit easier to love, a lot harder to hate -- where learning nonviolence means we dedicate our our hearts, minds, time, money to a commitment that forces of love, of truth, of justice, of resistance to corrupt powers are seen as sane! Forces of fists, guns, armies, bombs are seen as insane!" Where, it is dreamed, child care is fully funded, new weapons require bake sales! One student's essay in full -- "Q. Why are we violent but not illiterate? "A. Because we are taught to read."

What life is worthy of calling to which we are called? Memory we are to leave? What food will perish? What will endure? "The first thing to be disrupted by our commitment to nonviolence will not be the system but our lives." How to be both forceful, nonviolent, at once? Morally forceful? Persuasively so? Gandhi's "weapon of the strong?" Leaving to David the swords, learning from Nathan the words, more dangerous, more transfigurative, than any sword -- "with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace."

Military history of Japan as offensive as any other, no one with any room to talk, nonviolent elephant in every closet, so much to forgive, to be forgiven, only way anything new might happen? Each hearing Nathan, "You are the one!" One counted upon to get it -- and get beyond!

I too, born in World War, have lived and written against this particular stupidity and pointless, hopeless pain in my agonizing days. Has even a single life thereby been saved? Who can say? Except that doing so saved mine. Oh, I could tell you about saved lives . . . Yes, poetry saves lives. All wars begin at home within the warring self. No, our poems cannot stop war, not his or any war, but the one that rages within which is the first and only step. It is a sacred trust, a duty, the poet's avocation. We write the poetry we must. (Sam Hamill) And live the poetry we write?

Today is like a bomb in each of our gardens, like Jesus, warning even now, never knowing just how, when, for what, our souls are required; preferring procuring such properties in world as might protect us from world! But there is a bomb in our garden, not leaving of its own volition, going by so many names, disguising deadlinesses, set to go off any time -- taking everyone possible with them? Any one bomb threatening all, Cain's genocide wiping out half their generation.

There is a bomb in my garden. I know I should call someone but imagine the hubbub: men in mackintoshes leaving boot prints in the peas, their heels pasted with scraps of tender lettuce, and I would be shunted off, barred from my home while others muck about in what is mine. No, I think I'll just let it be. Clean the exposed parts, buff it up, perhaps. Build a gazebo; plant roses. Listen to it tick. (Meg Jeffers) Jesus' story applied to each of our souls, to the Soul of the World -- Listen to us tick . . .

Just know we should call someone -- about Anne Frank, experimentation, extermination, concentration camps; about Sadako, radiation and "atom bomb sickness;" about Agent Orange, Depleted Uranium, "all this poison with half-life the age of the Earth." (Ellen Bass) How desperate, and how capable, capturing nuclear niceties, of healing, nurturing, saving, sustaining; yet with a bomb in our garden, our hearts, and nobody left to call about it but us.

Imagine! Half trillion dollars on weapons a year, distributed in and by us, governments in our names; some one-fifth world's scientists researching solely for military; relative peace some five hundred of thirty-six hundred recorded years human history; some three and a half billion of us (human beings) killed, murdered, in some fourteen thousand wars in short life of this species on planet, for whom all Species, Earth Herself, Sources, Resources, suffer -- no bullet random, no damage collateral, no anger extraneous.

Rich Fool: I need to Supersize My Economy! Lower taxes, drive-up interest, squander past, borrow future, tear down perfectly good barns, build even larger ones to replace them, hoard all goods, all grains -- as if to take them with me? As if Progressive enough, Successful enough, to outgrow the use of my soul? Consciousness? Conscience? Jesus: Not so fast! Never know what crisis, what call coming next, only that one, or more, coming; in all choices choosing for children or selves; "And a little child shall lead them." "God," if ever, no longer needingto sort who is to punish, who is to blame; rather, "like those who lift infants to their cheeks," longing to lead us to kindness, wrap us with love, bend to us, feed us, choose us over war.

Hiroshima Haunting, Hunting - Sundays nearest August 6 & 8

"Hiroshima Haunting, Hunting"

"We are all survivors of Hiroshima." (Robert Jay Lifton)

Reliving memory, reviving hope, works of the Holy Spirit, re-membering, re-calling, much, and far back, as we can; piercingly piecing together, new, different ways, all yet disfigured, dismembered, destroyed and deadened in us;
learning to listen, to, with, for Specific and General Dead, in and after the bombings, (Seventy percent war casualties now civilian!), speaking their language with us, "filling us in -- filling us in," (Daniel Berrigan) lest we dare try to "speak normal, words in the normal order," ever again! (Mark Kaminsky)

"It may be only by descending into this hell in imagination now that we can hope to escape descending into it in reality at some later time." (Jonathan Schell) War, violence first fettering failures of our imaginations: We are no good at creating weapons we then do not use? Or do not use us?

Of kings and worldly powers, David perhaps without peer, revered, respected, only retrievable root of Messiah; now covenanter turned coveter, arrogant by dint of power-position, right of might, doing what hardly ever is kept, by self or other, from being committed, uncovered, or covered up: "Do not be disturbed by this," David to General Joab, uncritical carrier-out, royal plot, betraying Uriah, loyalest subject-soldier of all: "Do not let this thing appear to be evil in your sight." No longer trusting in our own perceivings, what's being done in our names, without counsel, advice, or consent -- Is evil ever only if and how we behold it? How we are beholden? Beheld?

"More than one hundred seventy thousand people died instantly or within hours. Few of them were soldiers." (Susan Adams) How do we wonder where God learns to weep? Wars in our times, our technologies, lingering limitlessly, festering infinitely -- in every vacuous dissemblance, self-assured unawareness: "In a hundred years, nearly two hundred million civilians have died on this beautiful Earth of armies, governments, causes, and platforms." Any escaping Creator's anguishing as any parent? World's Children remaining best hope?

To go in the direction of the threat, to face the enemy with our precious lives,
and the lives of our children and our children's children in our hands, to seek humanity in the hearts of our enemies -- this is the great work of mothers and nations . . . A dead enemy cannot be our friend. (Jeanette Rankin)

Ours only atomic bombings world ever has known, or disowned? Only destructive use, ever, very Energies of Creation! Universe! Life Itself! Work of remembering all the more sacred, renewed every breaking of bread, every sharing of cup: Remembering Me! Remembering Them! Neither rejecting past nor projecting future horrors, assigning no blame, assuaging no guilt, acknowledging Humans, youngest, most precocious, precarious Species, like Icarus now challenging Sun, Creation's Source and Substance . . .

This fire represents the power of the sun, the power of light and heat, the energy that knits together the nucleus of the atom itself, the basis of all matter. For billions of years these great matrices of energy have upheld all existing things, the sun bringing light and warmth to our planet, causing all things to grow, the energy locked in the nucleus of the atom, holding together the foundations of matter itself . . . (Rosemary Reuther)

Nearing waters, bearing witness, insatiable thirstings, atomical victims; one day whole world holding breath for rescue of sailors off ocean floor; next day for safe return astronauts from outer space; who held breath then, held breath there? World's Life Continuum fragile, unstable, every last nation subject-hostage, nuclear terror -- Starting with us? Ending with us? Imaging Who?

Tolling bells, folding cranes, holding sunflowers, mixing ashes with waters, reenacting loving remembrance, active resistance, to "the human war with ourselves, the war against earth, against nature." (Denise Levertov) Trees rejoicing, our slightest attendings, lifeoffering light enveloping world, not condemning but saving, yet we, to this time, opting for light that destroys -- ever noticing war does not work? Weapons, for all trillions we spend on them, useless to God in us? Calling Earth "Home," depending on her disarmament, while never disclosing, uncloseting guns of our own bedrooms?

We have assumed the name of peacemakers, but we have been, by and large, unwilling to pay any significant price. And because we want peace with half a heart and half a life and will, war, of course, continues, because waging war is, by its very nature, total -- but waging peace, by our own cowardice, is partial . . . There is no peace because there are no peacemakers. There are no makers of peace because making peace is at least as costly as making war -- at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake. (Daniel Berrigan)

Daring dreams, walking waters, step or two at a time, falling, flailing, trying, dying, uncertainly as any other; those doing least to cause bombings suffering most, even self-blaming; those causing most suffering suffering least, never self- but victim-blaming, weapon-excusing, -exonerating. Hauntings, huntings of horror, of hope, no matter how battered the boats of our lives, all we ever have held to, all holding us, shaken, shattered to shards, Jesus looming, ghostily, still modeling, step at a time, as we sink.

We are holding candles: we kneel to set them afloat on dark river as they did in Hiroshima. We are invoking saints and prophets, heroes and heroines of justice and peace, to be with us, to help us stop the torment of our evil dreams . . . Windthreatened flames bob on the current . . . They don't get far from shore. But none capsizes, even in swell of boat's wake. The waxy paper cups sheltering them catch fire. But still the candles sail their gold downstream. (Denise Levertov) Still the candles, all of us, in every land, of every age, sail our gold downstream -- and up?

Holding Out Where Ex-seed-ingly Hard!

"Holding Out Where Ex-seed-ingly Hard!"

Might as well take a whore as a spouse; vow-torn nation conducive to nothing but faithlessness, trustlessness; given so much, yet acting on no Source of Gift, no Covenant with one another, no marriage, no union, no mutual responsibility; hiring whores, feeling good without deeper cost, wishful for "feel good" God, of appearances; toxically dumping sins on our children, provoking their bitterest defamations:

"God Will Reap What God Sows,"
"These People Are Not To Be Pitied,"
"These Are Not Even My People!"

Yet and still, God being God, cannot help Godself, trying again, and again, God-set against giving up -- what else can it mean to be Resurrectionary! Nonetheless growing wiser about us, as any parent learns loving own children!
If ever God was a War-God at all, "I will not save them by bow, or by sword, or by war!" Shamelessly undeserving our saving, reachable only by One Being Like Us, a Child, unfazeable by bought-out priests, profiting prophets, patronizing splendor -- salary, sharkskin, skyscraper, success -- offering no options to kingly seductions -- Military-Industrial-Security-Incarcerational complexes, crass concentrations, craven corruptions.

Paul: "Instead of doubling our own efforts, simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us" -- Simply embrace! Miracles of provision, proliferations of plantings: from expectable eight-fold or ten-fold increase, to exhorbitant hundred-fold, sixty-fold, even thirty-fold -- exceeding everything! Exposing all our audacities of austerity, persuasions of poverty, mindsets of scarcity -- contradistinguishing sower's casual, carefree confidence; scatterings of plucky persistence, stubborn survival, no matter "conditions on ground," odds against us -- pecked, withered, choking as we are on circumstance and condition!

Sower even seeming to care, much less contain or control, how far afield seeds are flung? Oblivious to birdiness, stoniness, weediness? Attentioning less who we are not, what we lack, than who we are, what gifts are hid in whatever we got? No blaming of victims! No condemning of seeds that fail, soils that abet them. If we do not use all our seeds, just as they're given, spreading them freely, fully, apt to miss out on soil of best chance to grow in. Without trying, at least, to save, to liberate, free and include, everybody, surely will miss out on somebody -- run risk of not saving anybody -- Gospel Living so adamant: so all-or-nothing! Keep sowing seeds, no matter what -- only proposing, never disposing -- nor pretending worthiness to receive. Creation revolving around us? Or shining in us and through us? Ex-seed-ing endurance through rocking resistance: "I just want to go the distance? (Rocky) Even Sower lands one seed in four . . .

Grounding in "faith facts" as well as in natural ones, rejoicing in creative, dynamic in-tenseness, where religion and science, mundane and miraculous, engage and embrace one another! Who knows what finally happens -- or why? Faith communities born raising questions: What else is going on here? What else -- more than meets the eye? What else -- more than fits the tradition? What else -- more than suits the logic? What else -- more than avoids the risk? What else -- yet to be given new Pentecost, Jubilee, vision and voice? What kind of seeds do we think we are anyway? Yielding from isolation, insulation, to interdependence, acknowledging all share One Fate of One Earth! How easy, how arbitrary and accidental, for me, for us, to fall anytime, anyplace . . .

Seed to soil, leaven to loaf, salt to meat, light to hill, death to life -- If I should die before I wake, all my bones and sinews take. Put me in the compost pile to decompose me for a while. Worms, water, sun will have their way, returning me to common clay. All that I am will feed the trees and little fishies in the seas. When radishes and corn you munch, you may be having me for lunch! And then excrete me with a grin, chortling, "There goes Lee again!" (Lee Hayes)

No longer affording straight, narrow ascents, long-laddered escapings from Earth shared with every Other -- One hundred ninety-two nations -- and counting! (South Sudan making one ninety three!) How dare there be room only for One at the Top? One over All? Eternally questing perfection, upwardly mobile forever, heavenly state of comfort, personal glory, head trip right out of our bodies? Ladder our way up to rest in God? Or God's way down to wrestle in us? Who descends for no favored few but for all -- beginning with First Mother Sarah, laughing at angels, suspecting of old-aged birth announcement, dancing no more ups-and-downs, only ins-and-outs? Spreading Circle to all who come in -- or out?

"The image of Sisyphus pushing his personal boulder up the eternal mountain grips me as I push, transforms my labor into consciousness, reshapes my grasp on destiny." (Gerald Forshey)

Room always for more in the Circle; how quickly the Ladder is filled! Ladders tending to hierarchy, violence, ruthless independence; circles to democracy, strong gentleness/gentle strength, interdependence; ladders to jealousy, judgmentalism, abstraction, distance, linearity, ladder-likeness; circles to pride, acceptance, nurture, sensuality, curvature, circle-likeness; ladders either immanent or transcendent theism, separation love of neighbor from love of what's at the top, circles panentheistic, neither God in everything, nor everything in God, but both! All at once! Mestizo! Utter Transparency: Love of Neighbor IS Love of God! (Matthew Fox)

Jacob's whole life getting up, getting over, at odds with Esau even in womb; (Interests of Full Disclosure: We birthed a later-life Jacob, after adopting Jeff and Jane, who liked reminding him, he was mistaken, they were chosen -- Abraham, Sarah at it again!) life on lam, flight in fear, forever dread, meeting again! Yet, indisputably, stemming from Single Source. One Womb, Many Peoples! One Seed, Many Fruits. Jesus warning of premature judging -- judging at all? Letting wheat, weeds grow together; nothing outside can defile us, only psychoses, projections on others. How would we not tend to judge prematurely, impetuously? Jacob's whole laddered life circle-dancing toward Esau?

One of my hands is black and one white . . . One part of me is being strangled, while another part horribly laughs. Until it changes, I shall be forever killing and being killed. (Kenneth Patchen)

One hand black, one white; one male, one female; one young, one old; one gay, one straight; one Israeli, one Palestinian; one English-speaking, one any number of other tongues! One born in U.S., one in place we call "foreign." One of my hands is victim, one executioner . . . "Where can I go from your spirit, O LORD; Or where can I flee from your presence?"

Survival of the Fittingest

"Survival of the Fittingest"

Dr. King's campaign, Garbage Workers in Memphis, envisioned as "Going Down Jericho Road," "dangerous kind of unselfishness;" Jesus plucking question of "Eternal Life," out of repertoire, or thin air, positioning "on dangerous curve between Jerusalem and Jericho;" one stopping there risking, "not to be passionate by proxy," choosing for common capacity of you and me, "to project the 'I' into the 'thou,'" Jesus -- routinely? -- reversing one question with another, or with parable, one never-ending question!

Nitty-gritty not Priest's and Levite's "If I stop what will happen to me?" but Samaritan's "If I do not stop to help, what will happen to him?" Diverting to "causal root," avoiding "individual effect?" Bypassers on self-important ways, organizing "Jericho Road Improvement Association?"! Akin to kids' cat-quick quip, "Daddy, we know you love the whole world -- what about us?"!
On the one hand we are called to play "Good Samaritan" on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we will come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed, so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they journey life's highway. (Dr. King)

"Given moment" deflects to "big picture," no way for us to pass by on some other side, nor to let ourselves be passed by! Jesus walking all roads, intrinsically interruptible, so much desperation forbidding him ever pass by!
Even Jesus' awareness expanding, consciousness rising, parabling to mirror us, turning up unturned parts of us, never found, or lost long ago -- So are we mostly the one attacked? The attacker? One or both of the waypassers? The stopper? Donkey? Innkeeper: Yeah, sure you'll be back to pay for it all!

At ease in our own Zions? Watching World Struggles pass distantly by? Passing by them in return? "It takes great humility to step aside for a parable's sake! And without the parable I would never have been saved." (Stephen Mitchell) Seed into ground, as leaven in loaf, salt in meat, light in world, parable in reality -- losing, dispersing selves in one another? Imagine numbers through centuries helped -- even "saved" in some way? -- by this story! Connecting experiences everywhere, discovering ourselves in discovering others as well, many lives, many stories -- Like Trojan Horses? Never know whom we'll end up in?

Activist Art, Artistic Action, art, like action, of inward and outward selves, albethey imperfectly balanced -- My AA: Activists Anonymous: "My name is John, I am helpless to do nothing about it!" Wears me out, gives me grace to go on, rathering "yes" than "no," some method to every waking Wesleyan moment? After all, who are we -- to be of any assistance to First-Born? In Whom, by Wisdom, all things created? Bearing Creator's own irresistibleness, even to thrones, dominions, rulers, powers? Head of the Body, First Raised from the Dead! Mansion of Rooms for All! Reconciling wickedest weaponers to Service of Life! As yet still revealing, in and through US? Finding, fitting, holding, keeping together every last lonely dislocated Piece of Universe? In Culture so frenzied, so doing without discerning? Church so sedated, so discerning without ever doing?

Beyond all fixingness, one of another, foundation of fittingness, each one with all others; Mary, Martha, Lazarus more faith community than blood family; Early Church welcoming women surely, securely, as men -- studying scripture, teaching, preaching, traveling, evangelizing -- all baptized in Jesus! Uniquely! One among equals in every last witness and service! All things fitting, at last, together for good?

Coming in from the Cold; So Few Artists, So Many Arts

"Coming in from the Cold; So Few Artists, So Many Arts"

When did every Christian become a Jew? Every Muslim become a Christian? Who knows who becoming a Muslim? What "New World" as "Family," as "Household," now looms at hand, and at mind? Miracles happening while we're yet ensconced in self-interest, self-investment, no world before ours connected in such opportunity, such obligation, to know and be known, relate and be related -- Everything is everything! Everybody is everybody!

Yet David trying to hide here, building self House of Cedar, coming in from the cold, from relations frozen in maddened mistrust, trading tent in upwardly mobile direction, wanting to do same -- in shame? -- for God? Whom we still share with nomads and shepherds? Outdoor God of all open spaces, in and around? Who becomes flesh and dwells among us? Pitching tent, booth, hut, shack in our assorted midsts? Neither lingering long in any one space, nor attaching to any one people? Enduring all seasons, directions, elements, weathers? Nothing human, about us, happening to us, any more alien than anything naturally is?

Relinquishing all removal, all isolation, distance and ignorance of us, detachment and safety from us, releasing Only Child, Every Child, into fearful, murderous world for us, submersing in state of "sin," more like "struggle," wont to say now, at stake no longer sharp separation, some into bad, but subtle survival, all into human -- What God of Job, of Jesus, seeks indoor solace?

We're now together on this -- insiders, outsiders -- house-builders, tent-dwellers -- both! Christ tears down the wall, the distance between us -- and that means all of us! -- for God in Christ plays no favorites -- with any people of any faith or nation any place in this world. God repeals the very code that puts some over others! God starts all over -- creates a new human in a new world -- a fresh chance for everybody! We are made equals again in Christ -- no matter who we are! We partake same Spirit -- who gives us all gifts, all graces, all sacraments, all solidarities! To share for the common good of the whole -- in fact, the whole human species -- and all other species as well!

This is the Jubilee, once and for all! This is the only "home" God has made for us in Christ -- in whose very body we all belong -- together! -- no matter how, or whether, we name "God!" Every one of us in a part -- every one has a part to play! The tent of God has become our own skins! God uses all -- no matter how we get here. No matter how long we take. No matter how many false starts, wrong turns, dead ends -- God is not done with us yet! God is building us brick by brick. (Paul and Me)

* * *

"Not everyone can be a great artist, but great art can come from anyone." (Ratatouille) Few think of ourselves as artists, yet anything we love doing, and try doing as well as we can, becomes art with us: "We know more than we know!" (Beverly Shamana, et seq) Each Created, in Creator image, for Creativity! Something worth expressing "scribbled on inner cavity of our bones!" Even creative recycling, what others call junk, form in itself, as we are.

Till we go off to school, ninety percent showing "high creativity;" between ages five and seven, dropping to ten percent! Adults letting down to two. Creating from nothing, ordering chaos -- or chaoticizing too much order? Selecting, combining, existing elements into new things? Light out of darkness, life where none appears yet to be, pathways to holy, to worldly, to selves and to others, doing without neither potter nor clay: "Every person is a special kind of artist, and every activity is a special art."

Sankofa bird of West Africa: "Go back and fetch what you forgot," to roots, to origins, ancestors, reclaiming Source, resources, gathering, honoring best past has to offer, forward in new, empowering ways, neglecting no history, flown or on wing; in art as in life, best-meant institutions of early life -- family, church, school -- even in spite of selves, "saving" us from own creativeness, solemnizing free-spirited troublesomeness?

Sankofa flies forward while looking back, egg that is future treasured in mouth:

"A heart embellished with two circles that meet in the center." Maya Angelou's "Still I Rise" -- "Healing power that comes linking hands across Sankofa bridge with ancestors who, like hers, trod in the dirt of history." How might our history/histories/herstories heal?

Bezalel constructing God's dwelling among us, where we come seeking Source and resources, with every kind, craft and artistic design -- gold, silver, bronze, wood, yarn, linen, wool -- We find it, we name it, it can be used! Where "kairos" meets "chronos" lies "creos," gifts offerable, by grace, meet gifts receivable! "IT IS GOOD!" Whatever it is, however it's done, "Love Made Visible."

The persistent love of God speaks to us in the language of our heart -- in dreams, music, clay, canvas, the wind, the mountains; through color and stones; and we learn again that creativity is a collaborative process between the Spirit, our gifts, and our yes. Our part of the process is to watch and pray -- to listen and be attentive to that divine presence, the voice of the holy, the flap of angel wings and notes in the breeze. Then we act!

God "painting with crooked lines," our creativity one shaky paintbrush! "Art" manifesting "connection," piece by piece, peace by peace, aesthetics of ethics, corralaries of communion, community, re-membering, re-fitting, re-joining, AIDS-quilting a common life, Whole New World, New World Whole.

Create your own official title. Put it on your refrigerator door, your license plate, your office door, your lunchbox: Artist/Engineer, Artist/Gardener, Artist/Father, Artist/Artist, Artist/Cook, Artist/Punster, Artist/Videographer, Artist/Birdwatcher, Artist/Calligrapher, Artist/Bookkeeper, and so on. [How do we name our own art/s?] Jesus said let your light shine . . . .

Acting So Jesus Might Know Who We Are

"Acting So Jesus Might Know Who We Are"

"We are not sent into the world in order to make people good. God forbid! We are to let people know God is for them! . . . God is calling us into the family of God's love; the uniqueness of each forms a part of the whole! God is a gracious God who has already judged the earth in mercy. This is the good news -- that we can be! We can be what in our deepest hearts we know we are entitled to be. We can do what we are meant to do." (Gordon Cosby)

Prayer acts upon how seriously we believe "God" is taking "us" -- hoping in, even expecting for us, entrusting us as co-creators, as partners; prayer plaintive language of partnership, imagining best in ourselves, in each other, God-likenesses bolstered and built-on: We, so limited, glimpsing our one tiny part of the whole, doing what we would not, not doing what we would -- yet even we distinguish the giving of good from bad to our children? Glimpsing as well how much has been given, good from bad, to us?

We are not alone, not left to ourselves -- even when visitors knock without warning at midnight, since none of their own bread on hand is fit for their guests! All neighbors response-able for any in need, bread baked communally anyway, so everyone knows whose batch is freshest, most likely providable. Entitled, empowered to do all it takes, even shouting out, banging on every door, to see that justice of Hospitality done, dignity of Hospitality respected, community of Hospitality offered for least expected of guests in our lives.

Praying is rattling God's cage and waking God up and setting God free and giving this famished God water and this starved God food and cutting the ropes off God's hands and the manacles off God's feet and washing the caked sweat from God's eyes and then watching God swell with life and vitality and energy and following God wherever God goes . . .

When we pray we are not sending a letter to a celestial White House, where it's sorted among piles of others. We are engaged, rather, in an act of co-creation, in which one little sector of the universe rises up and becomes translucent, incandescent, a vibratory center of power that radiates the power of the universe . . .

History belongs to the intercessors, who believe the future into being.
(Walter Wink)

Parables, deceptively short, if not sweet, plain, if not simple. built to last -- like river, never the same stepped in twice! Where are we in this picture? Where is it in us? How many people are we anyway -- and how many parts of us here? Both sowers and seeds, for instance? Never knowing when, where, how, how soon, how many results of our life-work we will be?

One seed in four finding growable soil, not rational ratio for Master Sower! No underestimating -- birds, thorns, rocks, sun, not a whole lot of soil to begin with; no forcing to grow up too soon, to come out before we are ready! Transitions -- darkness to light, dream world to real -- intensely stymieing; sufficiently rooting, blooming where planted?

Jesus gratuitous, graciously "green," breaking new ground, turning old ground into new, making future way out of none -- waiting forever on all us slow seeds? Parents on children, children on parents? Students on teachers, teachers on students? So much interminable busyness everywhere - how do we keep from killing (more of) each other? Seeds enduring, stones crumbling to soil, holding out in such stony spaces as war -- for thousands of years! Leading poet to question, "What kind of seeds do you think we're talking about?" (Stephen Mitchell)

Wangari Mathhai, Kenyan, now Minister of Environment, yet longtime beaten, arrested, repeatedly jailed, forced underground -- seed-like! -- colleagues killed, organization good as abolished -- and yet! Green Belt Movement, planting 30 million trees over 30 years! "When you're trapped in poverty, the poorer you become, the more you degrade the environment, the poorer you become! It's a matter of breaking the cycle" -- A Jubilee Matter! For Pentecost Work!

"It is easy, it is doable, and you could go and tell ordinary women with no education: OK, this is the tree. It is now flowering. We're going to observe the tree until it produces seeds. When they're ready, we'll harvest them. We'll dry them, we'll put them in the soil. If they're no good, we'll eliminate them. We'll nurture them. We'll plant them in gardens. If they're fruit trees, within five years we'll have fruits. If they're fodder, our animals will have fodder. The tree has become for me a wonderful way of breaking that cycle." Last year awarded Nobel Prize for Peace . . . .

Freely Circulating

"Freely Circulating"

Somebody's work, somebody's sweat, sacrifice, suffering smuggled in every good gift, everything but the Beginning coming from something, everything present in all Creation since origin; Where else would anything come from? Where else would anything go? When we say we "throw something away," where is "away?" There is no "away," everything's here to stay, somewhere, somehow, now and forever; nothing from nothing, nothing new under the sun.

How to become, like Jesus, ever more recyclable, more recycling? What it means to be "saved" today? "Savored?' Nothing and no one wasted? Tasted? No waste but holy? Regaling, cajoling, extravagant grace, enjoyed without emptying, well-used without over-wringing; Jesus soothing multitudinous hunger on minuscule supply: "and when they had eaten enough" -- There eventually is an "enough!" Point of fullness beyond which it hurts us to go! Beyond which lies more than our Share of the Whole! Yet pieces left over, people left out, to be gathered up, and in!

All that there is we are given to share! Protection, possession, property, profit, all have to be carefully taught? Communion form of learning by imbibing, gifts circulating, passing through, passing on, nothing at last to show for ourselves but ourselves, everyone, ultimately right where we are, being us! Playing in pent-up proportion our indispensable parts, fully recycled, nothing withheld.

Coming from kindness of strangers, responded to even before we respond, Source of Compassion in motion toward us; like Samaritan toward one left at roadside, no rhetoric, no abstraction, only litany of Direct Action -- Approach! Anoint! Apply bandage! Assume every cost, every consequence, advancing whatever it takes! Jesus alerting the lawyer in us, lost in our looking out for limits of our liabilities, at all costs protecting our giant clients: polluting as if simply performing, natural, personal bodily function?

Samaritan part of us "didn't stop to think; the oil and the wine poured themselves, the wound bound itself." (Stephen Mitchell) Miracle of just doing, justly, whatever needs doing, not asking, Who is my neighbor, as if to determine how worthy, of how much help, but only, Who am I, how am I made? From, there BUT for grace, to, there BOUND by grace go I - and there! -- and there! And everywhere, in everyone. "'You got to,' she said." (John Steinbeck)

The people, yes the people live on. The learning and blundering people will live on . . . The people hold to the humdrum bidding of work and food while reaching out when it comes their way for lights beyond the prison of the five senses, for the keepsakes lasting beyond any hunger or death. This reaching is alive. (Carl Sandburg)

Reaching beyond what is for what is yet to be, refusing to be divided, conquered, our Marys from our Marthas; Pioneer Woman Jeanette Rankin, in apron throughout "A Single Woman," adroitly aligning kitchen table with speaker's podium, cautiously confessing, history inspiring advocacy; scandalously as Mary, Martha in concert confronting imperial systems, undermining with "needful" things, fitting occasions while remaining true; hospitality heartening all gospel practice, beginning with, "No room in the inn!" Ending with, "Tarry here a while!" Jesus and followers living to be "taken in" -- more ways than one!

Vulnerability displacing purity, messy work, loving each other, no longer hidden behind own integrity; no way to be Martha, world-serving, without white-staining -- "It is the Samaritan, the outsider, who proves neighbor, not anxiously keeping apart from one he is supposed to despise . . . Christianity not a principle to follow with utter clarity or precision . . . an experiment in living together -- with certain flexible ability, differences into account without being divided." (Krister Stendahl)

Jesus, to Paul, Cosmic Glue, holding together in spite of, because of, every divergency, nothing created, nothing about us, any more, if ever, alien to, One "pleased to be reconciled in all things . . . making peace."

Danced If We Do, Danced If We Don't

"Danced If We Do, Danced If We Don't"

Martin Buber: All real living is meeting. John Auer: All real meeting is relationship. All real relationship is power. All real power is dance! Emma Goldman: If I cannot dance, I cannot join your revolution. John Auer: Damn right! No dance, no dice! For I am a Place in the Dance.

COSMIC DANCE-CARD ALERT: "Astronomers Find Oldest, Most Distant Planet!" Of course, Who Made It always knew right where it was, our latest gadgets lagging behind, Oldest of Secrets, thirteen billion years, Most Distant Surprises, fifty-six hundred light years away, just finding out here, just finding out now, new stars being born as we speak! New species appearing, no help from us -- nor any help from us for disappearing! COME, COSMIC DANCERS!

Danced if we do, danced if we don't, life dancing, death dancing, dancing to consecrate, dancing to desecrate, dancing conducive to public interests, dancing condemning to private interests, dancing to circulate, give life again and again, dancing to consummate, snuff life once and for all.

Dancing Jacob's Ladder, like Herod: narrowly-gaited, autocratic, expedient, self-serving, room only for one at the top; dancing Sarah's Circle, like David: broadly-strident, equal, mutual, each beside other, room always to take one more in. Dances of princes apt to achieve against own inclinations? Herod drawn personally to John, respecting, even protecting him, up to a popular point; then saving face -- other parts? -- from looking weak in eyes of rank Roman powers behind every throne; glibly, gladly abandoning John -- How much can any one prophet be worth?

More danced upon than dancing - Malcolm, Martin, Medgar, Fred, JFK, RFK, Bonhoeffer, Gandhi, Biko, Sandino, Harvey Milk, Mendez, Stang, Romero, Allende, Aquino, North American Religious Women, Jesuit Priests and their Household -- disappeared, detained, damned to death -- "When his disciples heard about it, they came and took his body and laid him in a tomb;" "They buried my body, and they thought I'd gone, but I Am the Dance, and I still go on . . ."

My life about learning to dance falling down, literally self meeting ground, coming down to earth, standing where and with whom I can, heart-beating to drumming of all, Jon Carroll once dubbing me, "Pope," of The Church of the Falling Down.

Coming-out dancing, bringing-in dancing -- fast, slow, ballroom, ballet, belly, hula, folk, square, taxi, marathon, fancy, calypso, gandy, liturgical, disco, sun, rain, fire, ghost, Holy Ghost, Irish, Latin, mambo, samba, go-go, circle, line, table, clog, tap, break, jazz, modern, postmodern, trance, hokey-pokey, bunny-hop, and with wolves. As many dances unnamed as dancers to name them!

Western Wall, Wailing Wall, Great Wall, Walled Cities (Diyarbakir, Quebec), Hadrian's Wall, Berlin Wall, Wall of Respect, Wall of Respect, Israel/Palestine, US/Mexico Walls of Fiasco, Walls of the Torreadors . . . Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall: We, veterans of Peace Corps during the war, veterans of every contingency, spending lives since that war, trying to tell its truths, about it and us, names of its (limited) dead reflecting in yet-living, yet-changing faces, in preciousness, passingness, of one and other.

Veterans killed there, veterans who fought without dying, families, friends of them living and dead, Vietnamese, South and North, armed and not, underage and above it, veterans of EveryWar, EveryNation's latest best cause -- selfless, self-lost, coexistence only in death? Wolves, lambs, leopards, goats, children, adders -- "no longer strangers and aliens," "dwelling places for God," one house, many rooms, one tune, many dances -- dead interchangeably human?

From one killed in action there -- If you are able, save for them a place inside you, save one backward glance when you are leaving for places they can no longer go. Be not ashamed to say you loved them, though you may or may not have always. Take what they have taught you with their dying and keep it with your own. And in that time when all decide and feel safe to call war insane, take one moment to embrace those gentle heroes you left behind. (Michael Davis O'Connell)