WHAT IS BIRTH BUT A PASSING BETWEEN WORLDS?

I haven’t written anything in a while, partly because I’ve been busy writing other stuff: proposals, plans, poems, stories.  But partly—or maybe mostly—because I haven’t felt like I had much to say. As a pastor, I’m called to say something every Sunday: something that is relevant, important and has an effect on the hearer: either to move them to action or move them to a different feeling, idea or level of trust.  To be perfectly honest, I’m not entirely sure what I hoped for from readers when I started this blog.  I have appreciated the few comments I get, but I would like more interaction.  I write because I need to write.  And when I don’t feel like I have anything to say, it’s hard to need.

Enter the metaphor of birth, which rose in last Sunday’s sermon as a way to talk about great changes, and the shock and joy they bring.  The texts were Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dead bones (Ezekiel 37) and the story of Pentecost in Acts 2.  I was trying to get at why change—especially change that pushes us into unknown territory, or into relationship with people we don’t know, who are different, whom we fear—why is that so hard?

So I talked about birth—the pain of the mother, and the noisiness of the place of birth. I have been privileged to be present at the death of many people, and it is a holy time.  To hold the dying one’s hand, to pray, to anoint—or the last time I was present at a dying—to sing Josephine’s favorite hymn while my wife held her hand and gently stroked her head.  Those are sacred moments.

I’ve never been present at a birth.  I’ve held babies on their first day of life, with proud parents and family around.  I baptized a baby on her first day of life, with her mother holding her, before the child was taken by Children’s Services, because the mother was addicted. Those were sacred moments, too.

I’ve never been present at a birth. But I’ve been told that the birthing process can be very loud, as the mother experiences the pain.  There are also moments of quiet, either of peace or of exhaustion.  But there comes a moment when everyone there really wants to hear something: the cry of newborn!

Many times, I’ve preached or written about the pain the mother goes through and the joy she hopes for after it is over.  But then I started thinking about the pain the baby goes through.

All of us have this in common: we were born.  We don’t remember anything about that (at least not consciously).  But we can suppose that it was quite a trembling, fascinating event.  To leave a place of warmth, to arrive at a place twenty some degrees colder.  To leave a place of darkness, to come to a place of bright light.  To leave a place of protection, sheltered in the flesh of another, to one of being exposed, to strangers, and naked at that.  To leave a place where sound comes only through the loving flesh of your mother, to this noisy place we call life.  And on top of all the shock to our senses of sight (brightness), hearing (noise), physical touch (cold), we also really experience smell for the first time. As we breathe, we smell.  And then soon we taste.

No wonder babies cry!  It’s a cry of pain!  But also of exultation: I am here! I am alive!  I belong to the world! 

I think of all the changes I want to see in our world: an end to violence, a loving repair of the planet, equality and quality for all in so many ways.  All those are pretty big births, and are going to be full of shock and pain.  But isn’t it worth it?  Isn’t the joy promised—even if not fully given—worth the struggle?  I sure hope so.

Be justice. Be beauty.  Be birth.

Patrick

GOOD FRIDAY BIRTHDAY

So today is my 62^nd Birthday.  My dad, who was a self-employed barber, retired at 62 ½.  That ain’t happening for a couple reasons. One, we don’t have enough in retirement yet, though we’ve been saving (and unfortunately, more and more people are having to retire later, given the “fundamental structural variables in our increasing globalized, inequitable economy ad infinitum”).  Two, I’m having too much fun.  Most days.  At least part of every day.  Today I am

There’s a lot of hope in my day, and a lot of sorrow.  Mourning over the students murdered in Kenya, and the ongoing killing in Syria, Iraq, so many parts of the world. Morning a dear friend from high school, who also is an April birthday boy, who died last month.  Hopeful, because it looks like diplomacy did work (duh!) in the Iran talks.   Hopeful, because our church walked with four other churches throughout the neighborhood today, praying for those in recovery, affordable housing, the arts, youth and families and so many more joys and sorrows life has given us.

This is the first time my birthday has been on Good Friday since…well, since my birthday. My actual one, in 1953 (it could land on Good Friday 2-3 more times before I die).  My Mom would kid me when I was a kid about my birth having caused her to miss Easter that year.  My birthday landed on Easter three times: when I turned 30—in Cuajimalpa, a barrio of Mexico City, while in seminary; the year we got engaged and married; and the first Easter of New Creation/Nueva Creación, the church we planted in Philadelphia.  Alas, the next time it will be on Easter, will be 2078, when I will be 123.  Or dead.

It is strange celebrating my birthday on Good Friday—the two moods are quite different, but the solemnity of the Christian feast also has joy and wonder in it.  The humanness of the story of Jesus’ death is so moving, and for most of my life—even during the time I was an atheist—the humanness of Jesus has been connected to all human suffering, struggle and triumph.  I remember seeing in Mexico a painting by Chilean artist Guillermo Nuñez, who was in a concentration camp during the military dictatorship.  It was simple and profound: the barbed wire of the concentration camp came from the left and the right to the middle of the picture, where it was twisted into a crown of thorns.  There are so many being tortured and murdered still today, in so many places, and sometimes I just want to give up.  But I will now

(You can read a letter from Nuñez from the period of the dictatorship at: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1977/may/12/inside-chiles-prisons/)

For 40 years, I have fasted on Good Friday, as a spiritual discipline.  For about that long, I have broken my usual Lenten discipline (no coffee, sweets or alcohol—some good stuff too, like trying not to be sarcastic and be patient) on my birthday.  Like a bit of Easter in the midst of the penitence.  So I’ve thought a lot about what to do when my birthday came along this year.  Do I fast, in keeping with Good Friday, or delight, in keeping with my birth?  My wife suggested this morning that maybe I could “celebrate Good Friday this year by not fasting”.  That felt like a betrayal to me, but when I checked my spirit on that, it was more to keep my tradition going, then to keep the day as I have kept it.

So I fasted until the close of our Community Way of the Cross, and then ate, in fellowship with the other urban pilgrims.  It was a blessing to my spirit.  It also was a spark—no, more of a volcano eruption—to my flesh.  If you don’t drink coffee or eat sweets for weeks, maybe you shouldn’t have two cups of coffee and two cookies on an empty stomach.  I think I’ll be down in time for Easter!

Today, I wrote poetry, as I do almost every birthday.  I will work on my Easter sermon, which I do every Good Friday.  I also have to work on a funding proposal, which is due Monday.  As I’ve written elsewhere, when writing a proposal, you have to detail what’s going to happen, when it’s going to happen, how it will be measured, what will be different.  Really focused, linear and to each point the funder asks for, explicitly or implicitly.   Look out for surprises!  Whereas celebrating a birthday, and the celebration of the death of whom I love as the giver of all is so open-ended.  There are surprises a plenty.

One of the blessings of Face Book is receiving lots of birthday wishes.  The best so far is a friend who saluted me as “being a Servant of the Holy and joyful in the world.”  May that be your blessing as well.

Be beauty. Be justice.  Be birth.

Patrick

GOOD GUYS AND BAD GUYS

I haven’t checked the news sites to see if there’s any progress on the talks with Iran.  “Time is running out”, as they say.  But apparently, from what I’ve heard on the news and read in various forums, time is not running out on our country—and the people in it—claiming the role of “good guys” and casting our adversaries in the role of “bad guys”.

Thus with Iran and the nuclear issue.  So much of the discussion has been “how do we keep Iran from getting the bomb” and why that is a bad thing.  Although I don’t see very much written or said that it is a bad thing because nuclear weapons are bad, but rather it’s a bad thing because Iran is bad, and “we” have to stop them.

There is no doubt that Iran’s government has a long way to go to be considered democratic and free. There is progress in that area, both in civil society, and in the new government.  But the Iranian government continues to oppress its people.  They’ve killed and tortured.  They’ve imprisoned dissenters. There is also no doubt that Iran also is involved in supporting state or militia violence—In Syria, in Yemen, in Iraq (though ironically, on “our side” in the latter).  There is also no doubt that Iran has a pretty big and well trained army, which should give pause to any war plans by other nations.

I read a site today where it stated, unequivocally, that “Iran is the biggest exporter of violence” in the region.  Let’s look at that for a moment.

In the last 15 years, the United States has invaded and occupied two countries—Afghanistan and Iraq.  Conservative estimates put the dead in Iraq at at least 1 million as a result of the war.  We’ve bombed at least four other countries in the region: Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan.  Our military budget is larger than the next 10 countries combined.  That includes China, Russia, the Koreas, India, etc.

Let’s also look at our record on democracy in Iran.  The United States overthrew the elected democratic government of Iran in 1954, and helped install the Shah. We provided military aid to him and helped train the SAVAK, the secret police that used torture and rape constantly.  We provided military aid to Iraq under Saddam Hussein, including intelligence on how effective Saddam’s chemical weapons were in killing Iranians. 

And on nuclear weapons.  The US has lots of them.  We’re the only country that has used them. Our ally in the region, Israel, has them and refuses to sign the international treaties on nuclear weapons.  We tried to stop Pakistan from getting the bomb, but did not with India, our ally.

So the destabilization and militarization in the region is much more complicated than just Iran’s misdeeds.

I truly hope that an agreement will be reached with Iran and the other powers negotiating.  It won’t solve all the problems in the region, but it might bring us a step back from violence.  It has the promise of helping Iran back away from its war-like rhetoric and actions. And it may even hold the promise of helping us back away from ours.

Be justice. Be beauty.

Patrick

WHAT FALLS AWAY IS ALWAYS

Today is St. Patrick’s Day, and I have green, proud green on my chest and heart, and green, sorrowing green in my heart.  The sorrow in me is for the death of a dear friend, a sorrow that has barely begun to bloom.  It is like the stems of the bushes and the limbs of the trees here in Minnesota, who were stirred by the early spring come after winter, but have not risen, have not blossomed.

Mark and I were in every class together our freshman year at Austin Pacelli High School (Go Shamrocks!): Latin, English, Biology, Algebra I, Civics, Religion, Phy Ed.  I think I got them all.  Even into our early sixties, we would quote to each other the rousing dictum: Agricolae portam frumentam per silvam ad equis in agris. Words to laugh about, to toast with.  We stayed close though we went to different colleges; we were “young urban professionals” in Minneapolis before there was such a term, doing jobs we knew we wouldn’t do for long—he driving a school bus, me serving as a home health care aide.  We were a part of each other’s weddings, and in fact, I caught the garter of his wife that he threw at his wedding, and gave it back to his wife Debbie at mine.  He became a lawyer, I a pastor, but continued to share our love for politics, poetry, sports and above all family.

Mark stayed in Minneapolis and built a career as an honest, caring, dedicated lawyer. I lived on the East Coast for almost 23 years, but we stayed in touch.  Many friends call each other on their birthdays, or Christmas or New Years or another holiday.  We called each other every election night, as much to commiserate as to celebrate, and always ending in laughter and wishes for each other and our families. He was a partner in the firm that Walter Mondale is a part of.  The senior senator from Minnesota, Amy Klobuchar and him shared a secretary for awhile.

I write all these words, and smile, and feel empty.  I want to bring Mark back, talk with him, go to the Twins home opener and drink a beer.  I want to touch his hand, and salute him.

This time of Lent is a time to reflect on our mortality, as we reflect on God’s.  I am called as a pastor to talk about death often—as death approaches, at the moment of death, at the funeral, in the long, lonely painful times after.  I do so joyfully, knowing my own doubts about what death is, and what comes “after”, when there is no after, no before, no time, but just is.

As I age, I have found that I can less and less explain death and the promise of resurrection my faith leads me to.  There is less and less certainty, and more and more hope.  I’m OK with that this St. Patrick’s Day, but it hurts.  The thing about St. Patrick that most draws me is his desire and his decision to go back to Ireland—the land of his enslavement—and serve the people who had mistreated him, even willing to face death.

Mark died the same day as a long-term parishioner, Josephine. My wife Luisa and I were privileged to be her pastors for almost ten years, and privileged to be with her the morning of her death.  The morning I was singing to myself the old hymn “Softly and Tenderly Jesus Is Calling” because we were going to sing it the next Sunday.  When we went to Jo’s room at the care center, her one surviving sister, Ruth was there.  Jo was “there” in the sense of her body and her labored breathing, but her eyes showed no recognition.  I had brought the old hymnbook to sing and asked Ruth if Jo had any favorite hymns. Ruth said Jo’s favorite was “Softly and Tenderly”, and so I sang that to Jo, as Luisa knelt by her bed and softly and tenderly stroked her head.  It was a holy moment, and I am grateful for it.

I am not grateful for death.  When my father was dying of lung cancer, we prayed for the ending of his suffering but I did not pray for his death.  Mark and Jo were suffering, but I do not rejoice in their death, though it brought an end to their suffering.  I am with Dylan Thomas on that one:

Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

But I am also with Theodore Roethke, in one of my favorite poems, “The Waking”—a poem that started me writing poetry:

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

Mark would have loved that poem, I think.  And does, somehow, in some way, still.

Though he is still. And is no more.

The bonds of love that hold us together in life are not broken in death, but oh they are surely tested and tried.  I want to hold onto each cord of each person I treasure tonight, but I know that I do not have the strength—do I even have the will?—to do so.  But I hear around me the call to let go: let go of Mark, let go of Josephine, let go of my desires and my plans, let go even of my life.  But these hands, these hands of mine…

 

Trust, hands, that what falls away is always and is near.

 

Be beauty. Be justice.  Be sorrowing green.

Patrick

WRITING GRANTS WRITING POEMS

For the last two weeks, a big chunk of my time has been spent writing: writing poems and writing grant proposals.  There are some similarities: for both, a lot of the writing is in the revision; you seek for a unity and flow in a poem and in a proposal; and for both, years of practice may not make perfect, but they do matter a lot in developing the craft.

On the other hand, they are really different, particularly when it comes to the mind and heart (and even the body) process of creating.  Especially when it relates to outcomes.

When you write a grant proposal, you have to tell what you expect your outcomes to be, the steps you will take to get there, how you will evaluate whether you’ve been successful, not to mention who’s going to do it, when it’s going to get done, how much will it cost, how will you promote it, what data will you collect, et cetera.

When I write a poem—or at least, when I’m at my best and least distracted—I may start with an image, a story, an idea, and I may have an idea of where I want the poem to go.  But woe to me if I insist on the ending or even the path I have in my mind!  When I was just starting to write poems (40 years ago!), I usually had an idea what I wanted the poem to be, to promote, to say.  Thank God, most of the time now, I am more interested in exploring where the poem will go, not deciding where it will go.  There are still a lot of decisions I make in the creative process: word choice, line and stanza breaks, and so on.  But there is more surprise, more gift in my writing when I let go and let things happen as I write. 

Sometimes, that means letting go of some pretty cherished words and lines.  And every now and then—rare, but deliciously rare like a steak—what I cut out or kill in one poem becomes the seed for another.

Much of the first lines of this poem came from a poem I was writing about my father, how the Depression came early to farm country with drought and the despair of the land to provide what families depended on.  I was riffing on the process of nitrogen fixation in the soil, and was enjoying it.  But it really didn’t belong in that poem.  So I took them out, cleaned them up a lit, and started to explore where the poem was leading me.  It wasn’t until I had written almost all of the poem that I saw what it was “about”—or rather who it was “to”: a 6^th grade science class at Hans Christian Andersen United School in Minneapolis, where I taught community gardening two springs ago.  Here’s the risen poem:

TO MY 6^TH GRADE SCIENCE CLASS

At the root, in the dark, in

tandem with rhizome and wish,

bacteria beg nitrogen

from the soil. It is lifted

up the xylem like a psalm:

some days lament, some

days praise.  Seeds die

and stems are born.  Leaflets

appear as wings out of

a chrysalis.  Sun kisses

chloroplasts into sugar,

and the stamen and pistil

bathe in the nectar that

sirens in the bees.  It’s

all done without an eye,

without a brain, and yet

deep in the deep, roots

burrow like moles: ancient

rock has bedded down there,

ancient ice is flowing.  Taste

and see: this tomato, this corn

has been waiting for you.

Be beauty. Be justice. Taste and see.

Patrick

WHOSE TERRORISM DO WE SEE?

After the obligatory gasping stories about how much snow and cold there is (Shocking! During winter, no less!), the first few stories on the CBS Evening News tonight were about terrorism and violence afflicting the world:

- President Obama’s plan to confront ISIS.

- Jeb Bush “breaking” with the two former Bush Presidents about Iraq.

- An inside look at ISIS’s ability to recruit young, disaffected men in many countries, from a reporter and the former number two man at the CIA.

- A report on the “American Sniper” trial, and then another “inside look” at real American snipers.

There is no doubt that the world is a pretty dangerous place these days: Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Nigeria, and Palestine, just to name a few.  Plots and foiled plots in Canada, Denmark, France, the U.S. It does seem at times that violence and cruelty are winning.

What was interesting in all the news stories was what wasn’t being said.  No mention of our drone strikes in various countries.  The CIA spook turned terrorism expert—who has resolutely defended our torture in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo as justified—did not mention that ISIS grew out of the US invasion of Iraq, and the sectarian war that invasion ignited.  Jeb Bush was quoted on Iraq that saying he would have done a better job of providing security in Iraq after Hussein was overthrown.  What he didn’t say was that he would not have invaded a predominately Muslim country under false pretences. 

All of the stories put violence and terrorism as something others do, and that we have to confront.  Nothing about our role in all this.  To me, the most chilling was the report on “our” snipers, who can hit a “target” (that is, human being) from miles away, without being seen.  This may not be the exact quote about the effect on those being sniped, but it’s pretty close:

“When you have no idea where the shot just came from, and you see someone around your drop, that sends a very strong message.”

That message, of course, is terror: we can do to you what we just did to the person next to you. We killed him, and we can do that to you whenever we want.

The problem of terror and violence is real, and we need to confront it.  But as long as we see it only as something other nations and other groups do, and not see how our actions and those of our allies (including horrible regimes like Saudi Arabia) are part of it, we’re not likely to see it diminishing.   I don’t have an easy, or even a complicated solution to offer. I do know that seeing the truth, and telling it have to be at the foundation.

I just placed ashes on beloved parishioners’ foreheads, and reminded them of our mortality and the promise of resurrection beyond that.  Then my wife placed the same ashes on me.  I know the violence that lives in my heart, and I know how easy that is to come out in words, and in judgment of other people.  Confessing that in the presence of others is not the end of it, but I pray that it can be a beginning.

Be justice. Be beauty.  Be honest.

Patrick 

AWE

I’m at the end of a very challenging, stressful couple of weeks, and am relieved that I don’t have to produce anything today.  My wife and I had a nice breakfast downtown, and went to the library to pick up some art books for her.  Besides being co-pastor with me at our church, she is now the artist-in-residence as well, creating beautiful murals in our church and community with people who maybe never saw themselves as artists, and now are flourishing.

Books on language were near the art books, so I picked up a couple.  I love my mother tongue.  I don’t like how many English speakers think the whole world should speak our language, or that it’s better than other tongues.  But I love my mother tongue.  Partly because it’s so weird, and its origins so complex. From Sanskrit to Indo-European, to all the Germanic and Roman and Celtic tribes fighting it out and figuring it out, to words brought in from so many languages.  I stand in awe of what the language can do. 

These are the words of a young woman named Fatima, part of a group poem written by youth in our neighborhood called “The hardest thing I’ve ever done…”  It’s included in a new literary journal The Phoenix of Phillips that our church is putting out. *

“The hardest thing I’ve ever done … was leaving the place where I was born to come to a country that I’ve never been before. To leave my grandpar­ents behind and having the thought that I would never see them again. Calling my grandma once I was here and trying to hold back the tears, being able to explain to her why I didn’t tell her that I needed to leave.”

Nothing fancy, just beautiful language, beautiful heart.

Because there has been so much pressure on me lately (granted, a lot I put on myself), it has been hard to see the awe around me.  Today’s cracked open my eyes, my heart and my imagination.  I see the sun easing its way back north a month past the solstice.  I hear a scientist on Science Friday on NPR say, “we now know there are black holes ten thousand million times the size of the sun!”  Ten thousand million!  That’s 10,000,000,000 for us analogs.  Some estimates put the mass of the sun at 2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilograms.  That’s  4,400,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 pounds, more or less.  (Now, that just changed as you are reading this: the sun is losing mass at the rate of about 10 million tons per second. All without diet or exercise!)

Which means there are black holes that are roughly:

44,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 pounds.

If I understood the scientist well, black holes do not lose mass.  And yes, I know that mass does not equal weight!

They are an estimated 100,000,000,000,000 microbes living in and on our bodies (ten times as many little one-cell friends as we have cells).   Without them we can’t digest food, or have an immune system.  With them, we sometimes get so sick we die.

And yet, in the midst of this enormity, there is the joy of playing with one little organism, my great niece Addison on Wednesday, as she has now learned to run—like a drunken cowgirl—all over creation.  It was at the funeral for her great-grandfather Stan. Who knows how many great (10¹⁰⁰⁰?) ancestors she has, or how many great (10^{10, 000}?) descendants she will have.   And yet even “all the hairs of her head are counted” by the Great Creator.

It makes all my stressing over the last several days seem kind of silly.  Not to mention all the petty resentments and fears we hold onto in our world.

Wow!

Be beauty. Be justice.  Be awe.

Patrick

* For those in the Twin Cities area, The Phoenix of Phillips debuts January 29 at 6 pm at the Midtown Global Market, Lake Street and Elliot Avenue in Minneapolis.