A Comma for All Saints Day

In confirmation class back in 1980, we were deep into the Third Article of the Apostles Creed (your favorite topic). Pastor Yunker, training us in the jedi ways of Lutheran doctrine, said this weird thing:

“Pay attention to the comma.”

Okay. What young teen isn’t riveted when invited to behold punctuation.

Here’s how my thirteen-year-old self memorized the Third Article from Luther’s Small Catechism:

I believe in the Holy Ghost;
the holy Christian church,
the communion of saints;
the forgiveness of sins;
the resurrection of the body;
and the life everlasting. Amen

You’ll note a number of phrases here separated by semicolons. The only comma is between “the holy Christian church” and “the communion of saints,” not setting them apart like the other petitions, but identifying them with each other.

As I understand it, the 1941 LCMS (Lutheran Church Missouri Synod) catechism and hymnal used that comma amid semicolons. Most every version I see these days has all commas.

A comma might matter on All Saints Day.

With it, we honor the holy Christian church being the communion of saints. Or at least the one being folded into the other as the Body of Christ beyond space and time.

Without it, we make a distinction between them. Not a bad thing, and theologically there may be good reasons to do so.

But in this moment of the liturgical year, we are re-membering who we are: All Saints. With the comma, we understand that the single, global church, having evolved over generations and sprawled across our planet is comprised of saints in communion. In other words, people embodying the Christ as they live in harmony, unity.

Sound like us?

Sure is. You with the barbecue drippings on your sweatshirt, her with the foul mouth, him oblivious to his rudeness, people theologically inferior to you– all of us forgiven sinners, all of us stumbling saints.

On All Saints, we re-gather, re-member, re-claim one another around the bombastic notion that Christ’s single, living Presence is made up of no one else.

We’re invited to live into God’s claim on us.

We’re challenged in our vocation to– depending on your favorite gospel of epistle– follow, obey, nurture friendship with and/or embody the Christ.

I like that comma.

The Dark Party

A decade ago, Trish and I gathered some of our favorite people on earth to our house. We invited them to wear dark clothes, bring dark-coloured food to share, and be prepared to share a real-life story of the past year.

It was our first Dark Party.

Though guests may have looked prepared for a goth rave, the occasion was Winter Solstice, one of our favorite moments of the year. It’s the longest night (or shortest day, if you like) of the year, when the sun hits our planet at 23° 26′, the steepest it’s gonna get.

And Winter officially begins.

If you’re like me, you have mixed feelings about the season’s turning.

I grew up in Minnesota, so the contrast of seasons is a vital experience for my soul. Boiling-hot and humid summers, butt-clenching cold winters, planting and harvest in between. Exhilarating!  On the other hand, winter calls me to pay careful attention to my mood, making sure I’m taking my anti-depressant, getting good light and getting exercise (snow shoveling often does the trick).

It is indeed a season of contrasts. My faith heritage celebrates Christmas as the breakthrough of God’s presence. Advent builds to it, Epiphany cools down from it. Most Christ-traditions welcome the light of the world as the highest festival day of the liturgical year. Excepting maybe Easter, depending on if your theology runs more incarnational or resurrectional.

Our first Dark Party came about because our friends and we had a damn rough year, and we wanted to recognize the gifts of the dark. Not desperately wait for the light, not avoid the dark, but to honor the rich stuff that happens when things are bleak, veiled and mysterious.

We sat in a circle and listened carefully to one another speak about the past year. There was a lot of rich silence. There were stories of cancer, divorce, exile, grief and wonder. There was weeping and some laughter, too. There was dancing. On this quiet night, we witnessed for one another the description of deep humanity with all its brokenness and hope-fullness.

At the end of our story-sharing, people were invited to light a candle. Some did, trusting that change was on their horizon; some did not, honoring the mystery of the present moment.

And there was food. (Did I mention the food?) Trish’s famous Edgar Allen Bean Dip, my “fear not the valley of the shadow ” fudge, big blackberries, pumpernickel bread… you get the picture. As a Lutheran, fellowship just can’t happen without a potluck.

Deep breath now.

That gathering remains one of the deepest, wonder-filled, most intimate, truly human and unforgettable moments of my life. As I bring up the faces of those who have joined us over the years, I am touched at the honesty and the open-hearted listening.

How is it with your soul here at the end of this year?

You may have had a hell of a year.

Maybe you have sadness, terror or deep grief. Maybe there are loose ends where resolution is unknown. What you may need is a kind of Dark Party, a moment to be in awe of your life, as crazy as it may be.

May I invite you to call someone to share your story? Or ask your friends to pray with you?  Or maybe solitude in darkness would be a true companion for you. Not because gloominess suits you, but because harmony can happen in shadows.

To close, a benediction for you from David Whyte:

Sweet Darkness

When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.

When your vision has gone
no part of the world can find you.

Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.

There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.

The dark will be your womb
tonight.

The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.

You must learn one thing:
the world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn

anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive

is too small for you.

Our family celebrates Solstice because we are citizens of the planet. And because we desire honesty with and from our friends, especially when life is hard and a lot of our culture is about denial. (Lest you think me morbidly dismal, I also enjoy the celebration of light in its time.)

May you receive all the gifts of this season you can bear, whether they be excavated in the mystery of darkness or placed in your hand with the sunrise. Both are the realm of Holy.

And you are right in it.

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.

Tom Bosley, Man of Mystery or Thoughts On Re-membering

When eating bamboo sprouts, remember the man who planted them.”
– Chinese proverb

Today: some thoughts on remembering.

Thich Nhat Hahn has a poem about a bell: “Listen, listen! This wonderful sound calls me back to my true home.”

A word overheard last week took me back to a dream I thought was lost forever. The scent of old yarn in boxes on our porch tracks my imagination back to my Grandma Lu’s house on the farm. Jesus invited his friends to be re-minded of him every time they ate and drank together.

Re-minded.

On a late summer day here in Ioway, let me be aware that seasons turn. As the Jewish story goes, let me be re-Membered to the whole, gathered back into the brilliance of creation where all is good.

I was at a Holocaust remembrance service a few years ago when I heard the man say, “Only that which is remembered can be healed.” Those are words of great hope, even though re-membering can take energy, time and real work.

Memory is our link to identity. Oliver Sacks knows a man who has virtually no short-term memory. He is both lost and utterly present in the Now. For him, there’s nothing but. Old stories can anchor and orient us.

My friends who take reincarnation seriously say we have stories of past lives hundreds or thousands of years ago that we may need to “delete” in order to live clearly now. Old stories can get in our way.

Today as I am re-membering elements of my life, I invite you to gather your past. The You that once didn’t know how to speak words? That was You. And you knew things then. The You that once called parmesan cheese “farmer john cheese” because you didn’t know? That person was brilliant, and it’s You. A younger You had a cozy blankie and never worried about the things you worry about now. That You might be important today. Can you feel that person? Bring him or her to be part of your current you?

As you re-member– literally bringing pieces back together– here’s a song called “Better Git Home” I made 15 years ago. It’s one of my favorites, tracking three different life stories with a groove borrowed from Paul Simon. Enjoy as you gather yourself today.

Tom Bosley? It’s just that when I hear Mr. Bleekman’s voice on Clifford , I always think of him. It’s not, actually. When Sam was little, hearing Mr. Bleekman’s voice-over guy always reminded me of Mr. C. and me watching Happy days with my sister, me in 6th grade with my own Fonz-style switch-comb from the Johnson-Smith catalog.

That sixth-grader knew things. I wonder what I’ve forgotten?