Give Me a Word

It’s happened the past three years at this same time.

I’ve discovered a centering, resonating, challenging word as a kind of companion for the coming year. And it happened again this morning. Thought I’d share.

Following the tradition of desert pilgrims, hundreds of my fellow Dancing Monks at Abbey of the Arts have been seeking their own words, too, with the question:

“What is your word for the year ahead? A word which contains within it a seed of invitation to cross a new threshold in your life?”

It’s a powerful moment when we put ourselves in a position of open-hearted vulnerability. In this case, it’s surrender to a piece of vocabulary, a part of speech. I’ve lost some of you by now, but some of you are curious as to what manner of weirdness this be.

In 2011, my word was Stretch.

2012: Empty.

2013: Salmon.

My word for 2014 arrived this morning: Turn.

Turn.

To commit a switch on or off,
to flip over a piece of grilling salmon.

Autumn maples.

Milk on its last day,
to repent and move again,
to reach for the corner of the page you’ve finished.

His face was set toward Jerusalem.

To respond to magnetic attraction,
to move a screw deeper,
to switch moments: is it mine or yours now?

To evolve in season.
To reorient.
To be romanced.

Turn.

What’s on your mind as 2013 closes up shop?

What hopes and fears are with you about 2014?

In which areas of your life are you excited and curious? Which ones carry anxiety?

If you want to try “Give Me a Word” yourself, Abbey of the Arts has a free 7-day mini-retreat that guides you through a contemplative process of discovering your word.

Here’s entering a new calendar year with hope. May you welcome all the goodness coming your way.

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.

Pregnant with Holy

The Christian liturgical year spins the same every year. Advent marks the beginning, so by now the Christian community has already flipped its calendar. Identical seasons as ever, but, being a species of continual re-newal, it’s a time of discovery. If we’re paying attention, wonder even.

In Advent, we hear stories of Mary and Elizabeth, and some of us are uncomfortable.

In this most “feminine” of seasons, we hear stories of pregnancy and all the natural wildness that is creation emerging into the world. If you’ve ever been pregnant– and I know I haven’t– that season was marked by transformation in mind, body and spirit. Evident to the whole wide world, something changed in your life forever.

For our family, as our son Sam was ripening, Trish experienced freak-out as well as hope. Peace as well as terror. Her somewhat snooty vegetarianism found her eating beef and chicken, and life was out of control.

She felt the summons to surrender everything.

This is not a XX chromosome thing; this is a human thing. So– heads up, pastors and worship leaders– if we’re not emphasizing the spirituality of women in Advent, we’re missing something essential.

One text I wish were part of Advent is Psalm 27. (No one asked me). It has several distinct chunks. In fact, some scholars say it was originally two or three separate songs.

The last line goes,

Wait for God; be strong and take heart.
And wait for God.

I think our midwife spoke those words years ago during our home birth.

In Hebrew, the word translated wait could just as aptly be hope. In Advent, we are invited to prepare, wait and look forward. Good practice for life in general, right?

So.

What is ripening in you right now?

How is your community swelling with new life?

Does it feel joyful? Solemn? Scary?

Any of that would be expected in a life-changing endeavor.

There’s something alive, growing in you. Ripening in its time. Welcome to Advent, the perfect season to practice this pivotal time as holy.

May we pay attention as G-d brings us to term.

Listen now to “Wait For God,” a Psalm 27 belly-softening song for Advent hope.

Pic by Ben Earwicker Garrison Photography. http://www.garrisonphoto.org

New Year’s, The Point of the Church, and Johnny Depp

After the Twelve Days of Christmas is Epiphany. It kicks off the most important season of the church year– better than Christmas, stronger than Easter, able to leap Pentecost in a single liturgical bound.

At this point in the post, I pause for a number of you to scoot to the edge of your seat in fascination, and the rest to politely excuse yourselves to do anything else you can think of.

Bob Webber called Advent-Christmas-Epiphany “The Cycle of Light,” (unrelated to Tron). If Advent is about longing and preparing for Christ’s presence and Christmas rejoices in the eternal breakthrough of God-With-Us, then Epiphany is about manifesting the Christ.

Which, in my humbly-justified, sinner-saintly opinion, is the Point of the church.

It’s too bad only 11 percent of church-goers know what Epiphany is about. (Okay, I actually made that stat up. But shocking, right?)

The church exists to reveal, proclaim and embody the Christ. If that seems like a funky new theology, note that the New Testament people of God are collectively called the Body of Christ (Romans 12; I Corinthians 12). That’s a metaphor for the physical manifestation of presence.

It’s the Incarnation kicked up a notch.

We hear some strong stories in the Epiphany season, among them:

• The Magi pilgrimage with gifts: devotion made manifest.

• Isaiah 60: “Arise, shine! Your light has come… and nations shall come to your light.” We occupy with our lives what’s otherwise 99% invisible.

• Jesus is baptized by his cousin John, J’s anointing revealed publicly. (The Baptizer played by Johnny Depp.)

• At the Cana wedding party J does water to wine, saying something about “his time” coming, the first of seven signs of transformation in John.

• J calls and trains the disciples– gathering, equipping, sending.

• The Transfiguration. Glory in the ordinary leaves us sputtering in awe.

To me, all these stories are images of transformation, inviting us to imagine what’s possible in a life. What a great way to begin a new calendar year.

In these Epiphany stories, God is up to something brilliantly earthy and mystically intuitive: Christ is to be found in the ordinary, even enacted in you and me with all our uniqueness, embodied in us together.

Look up “Christ, Body of” in the dictionary, and you see a family picture of all of us (that’s all) with J. Our Celtic brothers and sisters would not leave out the earth itself, insisting we honor God ‘s presence in all of creation.

Of course, there are other ways to put it:

• My “conservative” Christian friends speak in terms of evangelism, proclaiming God’s love to all the world. Yes, that’s it.

• For my “liberal” Christian friends it’s the call to be Christ’s hands and feet in the world, making a difference in creation. Absolutely.

• My Buddhist friends work with radical compassion, recognizing that everything is impermanent– the world can change, and we can be part of it. Amen and gassho to that.

• My New Age friends speak about manifesting divinity in our lives. Sure, that’s it, too.

• My Muslim friends are clear about his call to serve the world, enriching human fitrah.

• The Hebrew Covenant in Presence and Torah is embodied in family, politics, religion, meal, prayer, story and song. Yes!

• My pagan friends are committed to actively honoring the holy in each and every piece of creation.

• For my atheist friends, there’s transcendent purpose in doing good on behalf of ourselves and the world.

• Mr. Rogers taught me it’s good to share who you are and what you have. Your seven-year-old knows it.

As the New Year turns, we take stock of last year and let it go. Then we turn, taking a deep breath with some hope and some trembling as we face another year. Our call as humanity has never been clearer: we are important to one another. We are designed– mind, body, soul and strength– to be of influence and to work/play together to be of even greater influence. This is the metaphoric Light of Isaiah and of the gospels. Didn’t J say not only, “I am the light of the world” but also, “You are the light of the world?”

In Epiphany, this is a moment to celebrate this is how the universe works. We might also meditate on the poignancy of just how connected we all are.

How might this Epiphany be a time of renewal for your local church? Time to celebrate your light that naturally shines, to consider how you are embodying the Christ, and how God is leading you more deeply in and in some cases farther out.

Here’s a short but juicy song for you and your community this Epiphany: “Your Light Has Come” crystallized from a great discussion with Marcia McFee‘s Worship Design Studio a couple of years ago.

The lyrics reflect a post-modern paraphrase of Isaiah 60:

Lift your head, raise your eyes, look around:
       Your light has come! your light has come!
Light the world, heal the earth, bear the Christ:
       Your light has come! your light has come!

Here’s to the New Year with a Eucharistic toast all together.

Download Your Light Has Come music resources from Worldmaking.net.

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.