Oneing Weekend: Let’s

I want to spend more time “oneing.” “Oneing” is a term the mystic Julian of Norwich used to describe the encounter between God and the soul. It’s a word and idea so meaningful to Franciscan Richard Rohr that he named the publication of his Center for Action and Contemplation “Oneing.”

It’s a feeling I get frequently when I sit quietly outside.

April 19

Skateboard, notebook, pen, binoculars, an issue of “Oneing,” reading an essay from Scott Avett of Avett Brothers fame about “Creating Faithfully.” On the shore of the river, purple flowers pull my attention until watching them and taking pictures and listening to the water, I just feel like an extension of the scene, part of it. A feeling of oneness.

Skating, gliding along pavement, has been a oneing experience for almost 30 years.

Around the Oxford Conservation Park, there are Eastern Bluebirds and I sit on a bench and watch a bluebird house where one flew out of and I read.


In addition to being a world famous singer, songwriter and musician, Scott Avett is a talented painter and a moving writer. His essay is on his faith and the creative process. He talks about contemplating Jesus’s identity and how Jesus knew exactly who he was, something most of us struggle with. Avett writes, “I think this truth alone, separates him from us. I can see how this knowing of who one is can be the most loving truth one can offer.”

He talks about going into the studio in solitude to create.

“This time alone is fertile ground where I cultivate my purpose. My contribution is my engagement in it. The studio is my cloister. To pray is to be drawn nearer to my existence. The only control I have is to show up and respond. I build from that simple idea… I long to create faithfully rather than successfully, productively, intelligently, or even truthfully. Creating faithfully is not knowing how to do it. It is believing that it is worth doing… With this, I replace the anxiety-ridden aspirations of arrival with peace in a true being. This is who I am in Christ and who Christ is in me… What a precious revelation. Simply put, to create faithfully is to be me.”

Avett arrives at this oneing through creating art. I read and sit with his words waiting on bluebirds, greeting walkers, dog walkers, and folks riding bikes as they loop the park.

April 20

It’s the last day of classes for our three-year Iona Eastern Shore seminary program, a day retreat at Old Trinity Church in Church Creek, which is about a mile down the road if you don’t turn left to go to Blackwater Wildlife Refuge. Seminary day retreats are the only reason I have been to Old Trinity, which is a beautiful church and campus. I smile that their parish hall is named “Valliant Hall.” I’ve now preached from the pulpit there twice in front of classmates and instructors, working on our homiletics.


On days when the weather is nice, I get there early so I can sit out on the dock or on a bench by the shoreline to pray, breathe, drink coffee. It’s another experience of oneing, of an encounter between my soul and God.

It’s the last time our class will be gathered together for the purpose of learning, when we are one in that way. We will graduate together on June 15.

April 21

Oneing is an encounter between God and the soul. But it can and does also include other people. According to Richard Rohr:

Julian of Norwich says, “The love of God creates in us such a oneing that when it is truly seen, no person can separate themselves from another person,” and “In the sight of God all humans are oned, and one person is all people and all people are in one person.”

We are connected to each other and we are connected to God and we can experience God in each other. In my experience, some people make us more aware of that connection, or more quickly and intuitively aware than other people do, and there are people who show and remind us of our own connection to God. Those are people to treasure and spend time with.

The first time I met Holly was on a retreat in late October 2017. Despite both living on the Eastern Shore for our whole lives, and having a number of mutual friends, we had never met. The first real conversation we had was a few weeks later at the Waterfowl Festival. We met for coffee a few times at Rise Up Coffee to continue our conversations.

In December we went for a five-mile hike together at Tuckahoe State Park, which we consider our anniversary. We walked in as two people and by the end of the hike, we were different, together. That was almost six-and-a-half years ago. Tuckahoe has been a holy, sacred, thin space for me since 2005, when I went trail running there. It is a place I called “church” long before I was going to church. Oxford and Tuckahoe are two places where oneing and walking are almost the same for me. Holly and I have hiked there a number of times since.

On April 21, we decided to hike our anniversary route.


Time passes differently with Holly. We can get lost in the backyard together, listening to and watching birds, lying under the stars; we lose track of time making dinner together, or sharing something we are excited about.

If you’ve taken time and put in work to get to know yourself, in the way that Scott Avett talks about, knowing who we are and being ourselves as the most loving truth we can offer, my experience with Holly is that you can be even more free and encouraged to be yourself by the presence of someone else. In oneing, in being together, you can be more than you were. And you can do and be that for someone else. That’s love and freedom together.

Tom Robbins, a favorite writer of mine in his book “Still Life with a Woodpecker” said, “There are only two mantras, yum and yuck, mine is yum.”

There are people who increase your yum exponentially, and you theirs. That has been our experience together. From our earliest conversations, talking about life, and dreaming about adventures, “Let’s” has always been our response to each other.

On this day, we walked into the woods together. We talked, we dreamed out loud, we watched and listened, we encountered friends along our Sunday walk who we hadn’t seen in a while.

And we said, “Let’s” to our next adventure together. Further experiences in oneing.

What’s Next?

I have two kinds of reading: work/church reading and other/personal reading, though they almost always overlap.

Work/church reading is reading that goes toward discussion groups and Bible studies. Over the past few years, we have done chapter by chapter group studies of the Gospels of Matthew, Luke, and John, and Paul’s Letter to the Philippians; shorter survey’s of Mark and Matthew’s Gospels, book studies of two Bob Goff books, one Brene Brown book, Henri Nouwen’s “The Return of the Prodigal Son,” and a deep-dive into The Lord’s Prayer. We have groups that have become like family, who have been meeting for multiple years now and when one study is done, they ask, “what’s next?” And it’s awesome. 

When we could no longer gather together as groups this spring, Zoom meetings became our way of getting together. And for the past several weeks, on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, we have had folks on screen together, live from their homes in Wittman, Sherwood, outside Cambridge, all around Easton, and it has helped–both with the stir crazy, cooped up feelings, but also staying connected to each other and connected to God.

As we finished our long studies of John’s Gospel and our Lent survey of Matthew’s Gospel, we kicked around some options of what to explore next. The thought of Paul’s prison letters resonated, as we quarantine in place. A reliable, accessible commentary can be hugely illuminating for Bible study, and we have loved N.T. Wright’s New Testament for Everyone books. His “Paul for Everyone: The Prison Letters” is what we used for our Philippians study a couple years ago and we are heading back there to start with Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians.

From Wright’s introduction:

“This book includes the four short letters Paul wrote from prison: Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon. His own personal circumstances make these especially poignant, and give us a portrait of a man facing huge difficulties and hardships and coming through with his faith and hope unscathed. But what he has to say to young churches–and in the case of Philemon, to one man facing a hugely difficult moral dilemna–is even more impressive. Already, within 30 years of Jesus’ death and resurrection, Paul has worked out a wonderful, many-colored picture of what Jesus achieved, of God’s worldwide plan, and how it all works out in the lives of ordinary people.”

Paul’s letters from prison give us plenty to think, pray, and reflect on, and something to work towards. I always recall the line from Ephesians about putting on the “full armor of God.”

Something has happened in the shift from being able to come together at church, or anywhere, to now being distanced. Maybe we realize how much we need each other, how much we miss each other. And creating content to engage, inspire, and give hope, as well as creating interactive opportunities and experiences is more important than ever. So as we start with Ephesians and go through the prison letters, I want to throw out there for anyone who wants to, to do the same. I’ll be blogging and trying to find some creative writing opportunities with it; I will look to have some video conversations with Fr. Bill Ortt, Fr. Charlie Barton, and others to get their thoughts on issues and chapters that come up; possible podcasts with staff members and others; I will see if I can find some special guest stars to weigh in; and we can open up some Zoom meetings during the week where people can drop in and share and discuss their thoughts. The more the merrier–and has always been the case for our small groups, you don’t have to be a member of the church or any church to be a part of what’s going on. If it sounds interesting, give it a shot. With Zoom, Facebook, Instagram and the like, you can be in Florida, California, Maine, or in a different country.

In January 2017, I had started working at Christ Church Easton part-time in addition to my job as director of the Oxford Community Center. Our rector/pastor, Fr. Bill Ortt, asked me to put together a short (5-6 week) Bible study, whatever I picked to study, find 10 or so people to be a part of it, and he and I would co-lead the group. I had led small groups before, but this would be my first Bible study. I picked Ephesians. Many of the guinea pigs…er… willing participants, have become close friends, and are still both involved in and leading small groups at the church, with one woman finishing up her work to become a deacon. It’s been a wonderful journey together.

I was reminded recently (by Wright, in our John study) of lines from T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets,” which is one of my absolute favorite poems/books ever written. Eliot says:

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”

T.S. Eliot

I feel like that is the case for me with Ephesians. It’s maybe the case with small groups. It’s maybe the case with church and communities, who are having to re-examine what’s important and how to do things.

Fair warning though: it seems the longer you study with and work with someone, the more likely you are to dress alike.