“Darkening Sky” Spirituality

Change. Say it soft and it’s almost like puking.

I used to dread Autumn.

About thirty years ago (college era) Seasonal Affective Disorder dawned in me. My love for distinctive Midwestern seasons got complicated.

Since then, good support and meds have helped attune me to my holistic health, but I’d be lying if I said the 4th quarter was easy.

I trust I’m not alone with clinical depression and a sense of guarding my emotional health when the weather turns cold and dark.

In the Midwestern USA where I’m from, there is no more intense earth season than fall to enact the disruptive, beautiful prospect of transformative change.

All through autumn we hear a double voice:
one says everything is ripe;
the other says everything is dying.
The paradox is exquisite.
– Gretel Ehrlich

In the psalms, life comes naturally in waves, and each one is faithful unto itself. Right now, you may be in a season of great joy. Enjoy it; it will pass. You may be in the midst of freaked-out fear. Hang on; something different is on its way.

In 12 days, I’m hosting a free/tip call-in class called Deep Change and the Psalms: Navigating the Intensity of Harvest Time, and you’re all invited.

Is it possible to accept a life that includes melancholia? Can we prepare for seasons of disruptive change and frame them as good? Or at least understand them so we can make the best of them?

What I’m calling “Darkening Sky” spirituality is a psalm-centered faith. This is theology that honors our most intense moments of transition, acknowledging God smack in the middle of whatever slow-mo rotating stage we’re on.

The parts of life we judge as intolerably dire straits the psalms name holy. As my psalmentor Rev. Dr. Clint McCann says, these moments of honest suffering are not good, but normal. See also Ecclesiastes 3 and Jesus’ mystical ministry of disrupting pretty much every life he encountered.

Need some courage? Here are a few psalm-songs that might be good company for your holy life that might feel like it’s unraveling: (Note: these are NOT cheer-up songs, but psalm-honest cries for what’s happening in you).

• Desert Blues (Psalm 63)
• When We Are Afraid (Psalm 56)
• Hear My Cry, O God (Psalm 61)
• A Life of Trust (Psalm 40)
• It’s a New Day (Psalm 104) (okay, this one’s a bit happy)

As summer moves into autumn, we know earth seasons will turn as they always have. It’s something we know, but sometimes do not wish to allow.

Here’s to allowing change to ripen what’s in our heart-gardens, that Gretel Ehrlich’s exquisite season would bring us to fullness before moving into the next.

Register now for Deep Change and the Psalms: Navigating the Intensity of Harvest Time.

Give Me a Word for 2016

Portrait by my frolleague Roy DeLeon

My word arrived the other day: qavah.

At the turn of the year, Abbey of the Arts offers a free mini-retreat— twelve moments to imagine the next season of one’s life and ask for a word.

In the tradition of the old desert moms and pops, the Abbey’s Holy Disorder of Dancing Monks consider what word or phrase might be a compass, seed or traveling companion for the coming year. In past years for me it’s been a koan-thing– an idea to chew on over months.

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Richard’s Word History:
2011 Stretch
2012 Empty
2013 Salmon
2014 Turn
2015 Edge

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Which brings us to what 2016 seems to be serving up: qavah. (keh-VAH)

It’s a Hebrew word used a lot in the psalms, meaning wait, hope, expect. As in,

Wait/hope for God.
Be strong and let your heart take courage
and wait/hope for God.
(Psalm 27.14)

It’s root means gather.

As this word and I claim each other, here’s what I’m wondering about in a stream way:

Wait Patience Time
Weight
Loss Longing
Wait! Wait! Don’t tell me!
Okay! Tell me!
Expecting, Pregnant. Growing with Life
How exquisite and terrifying to have growing life within you.
Incubation takes time. What do I expect?
Surrendering, Giving one’s self.
Nutrition for a womb-person, energy for new ideas, new mysteries.
Will it be born? Borne away? Will it be what I expect?
What will its lifespan be? Is this how I value fresh, new things?
What comes to those who wait?
Sometimes good things. Sometimes nothing. Or worse.
What do I expect?
What am I waiting for?
My waiting and longing– is it hope-full and expectant of goodness, or am I tapping my foot offended like it’s a waste of my time.

Hmm. Could be an interesting year!

If you’re interested, try a “Give Me a Word” thing at the Abbey.

All best blessings to you, my friends, as we ease into a new year.

Dirty Confessions

Well, it’s gettin’ on Lent. That means good Christians everywhere are making plans to feel bad.

A friendly reminder for your upcoming 40 days: confession is about facing a life of forgiveness, not one of grieving the past.

Psalm 51 is the classic prayer of confession: Make me new. Restore my life. It’s really a deep trust in a simple principle of the universe: things change. 

Lord knows David had some baggage, so when we utter Psalm 51 together we know we’re in good sinner/saint company. (Is my Lutheran showing?) I don’t know a soul who doesn’t desire renewal in their life in an honest, continual way.

This 3000 year old text has been spun into the liturgy for a loooong time. We pray together:

Create in me a brand new heart,
       forgiven and renewed
Restore to me your spirit now
       and the joy of your rescue

May you and your circle experience true renewal this Lent.

Listen to Richard’s community song “Wash Me Clean” for Psalm 51. It’s a little groovy, but don’t worry– if you feel bad about feeling good after, read the Psalm again.

Spiritual Life in the 4th Quarter

In the final stretch of the calendar year, there is much to pay attention to. Lots of cultural traditions and liturgical moments converge in these final months.

From here on out the river moves fast, and something special will happen if you let go of the bank and let the current take you.

This post (should you choose to accept it) is to prime your imagination for the ride.

Autumn is a bell for change. Colors, aromas and temperature embodies the continual transformation of the Christ in us– death and life, ever recycling– and invites us to feel it in our bones. It’s a mixed emotional ride for many of us, however. As Gretel Ehrlich writes, in autumn “we hear a double voice. One says that everything is ripe; the other says that everything is dying. The paradox is exquisite.”

That intense mix resonates with these last few months of the year. As a liturgist, I think about how natural markers in time demand or romance our attention. At the end of the year, there are a whole lot of them piled up. It can be a spiritual practice to follow them– to keep in touch with the invitations to integrate what you feel and know, like you’d follow someone on Twitter.

Here’s a quick tour of some of these moments for your preparation. Notice the wide range of experiences we are invited into.

• Harvest: Celebration! Seeds have, without any advice from us or wi-fi, made food. We are woven into all creation.
• Day of the Dead, All Hallow’s Eve: Re-membering our dead dears, accepting our past, feeling grief and letting go.
• All Saints: Each of us is woven into a great web of holy witnesses. We ask how to be purely present in the flow of past-future.
• Thanksgiving: Refreshing our gratitude; imagining a thriving, generous life.
• Advent: Whisper it: Mystery! Longing for newness, we are pregnant with change.
• Winter Solstice: The darkest day of the year, quiet and stark. The ancients used to climb the mountain with fire to help stoke up the sun.
• Christmas: Surprise and celebration! Holy-ness is among us; in fact, our very lives carry the Christ.
• New Year’s: With hope and with tender trust, we begin again.
• Epiphany: Share what you have; that’s the point of all this.

Quite a ride.

How does it feel to see your life as part of these moments? Celebration and contemplation, gathering and letting go, remembering and starting again.

To be a liturgist is to be a farmer. I often find myself in leadership simply inviting people to pay attention to what the current season calls for. It’s not to be taken literally. These moments don’t just happen once a year on the calendar, like, “better get ready to be grateful, because Thanksgiving Day is coming!” No, all these days are practice for what’s possible every day. It’s a spiritual life that recognizes what your life is asking for.

You probably have favorite things coming up as well as moments for which you have natural resistance. But listen: you’ve experienced all manner of things this year. These next few months offer the opportunity to integrate these experiences. Each moment coming your way is an invitation to acknowledge, accept and welcome your whole life experience.

Are you open to that?

A deep breath of space in your body is all that’s needed for today.

Introvert Practice: Good, Alone and Free

I went to strip away what I had been taught, to accept as true my own thinking…no one around to look at what I was doing, no one interested, no one to say anything about it one way or another.

I was alone and singularly free.

— Georgia O’Keeffe

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Sometimes you need to get away to see yourself clearly. Pry yourself away from the impulse to please family and friends, watch yourself be a self-standing whole You, and feel what that feels like.

Much of my vocation orbits family life, to give myself to wife, son, parents, sister, friends. The feeling is cozy, immersed in a glorious web of color and song. I love this life.

And then there are seasons where I feel entangled, and I begin to feel derivative of these powerful forces to which I gladly give myself.

Imagine with me browns, greens and blues. I am thinking of one of my favorite solitude spots, a one-room, no-electricity cabin in the woods. I stand on the edge of the forest, swallow hard my Blair Witch-phobia, and exhale. “This is my time,” I speak out loud. Nothing to produce, no multi-tasking, no email. Nothing to keep up with, no meetings, no waiting. No, in fact, clock.

I step slowly on the path through the oaks, as to not cause a wake to disturb the leafy floor. Slow. Slow. Slow feet for this seasonal pilgrimage to meet myself. “Nice to meet you,” I’ll say. Deep smiling sigh. “Tea?”

I inhale the sounds of squirrels and birds and the leafybreeze. Wind, spirit, Ruach. I watch for deer and turkeys for their medicine. I look for the cabin to come into view like meeting an old friend.

There is absolutely no one interested in what I am doing, and I am for the moment singularly free. Like Georgia.

When I am in the midst of change, I need solitude to get my bearings. Shout it from the mountaintops: I am an Introvert.

I love people for whom the opposite is true: when they are overwhelmed, they need a party. Like my friend Doug who just about crawls out of skin when faced with a contemplative exercise. Both ways in the world are good, and it’s good to know who you are.

Georgia cultivated her artist’s life by getting away. Silence and space refreshed her imagination for her true life.

Introverts unite! Er, Disperse!  In this change of season, some of us are getting out of the current that’s been sweeping us along. Even for an overnight, or an afternoon. Shoot, maybe an hour would do it: to practice your alone-ness, your free-ness and your goodness.