Tag: music

Commencing

In 2013 I got the strong feeling I was supposed to go to seminary. It didn’t make sense–I couldn’t put it anywhere, church wasn’t even a part of my daily life. But life was at a crossroads, and the nudge was there. In 2017, when I started working for Christ Church Easton, I was pulled in that direction, but it still didn’t feel like a real possibility; I couldn’t stop working and go off to seminary for three years.

The Iona Eastern Shore seminary program came to the Episcopal Diocese of Easton (the Eastern Shore of Maryland) in 2021. The program was created specifically for those who couldn’t attend a traditional residential seminary, but who discerned a calling to ordination. Seven of us from around the Shore signed on with the intent to become priests, and another would later join to become a vocational deacon.

On June 15, the inaugural class of Iona Eastern Shore graduated in a ceremony at Christ Church Easton. A couple quick takeaways: 1) there was no other way I could have done something like this–I am grateful beyond words; and 2) I am ruined for any potential future graduations.

Background/Context

Iona Eastern Shore is a part of an international partnership between the Iona Collaborative and the Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas. Bishop Santosh Marray brought the program to the Diocese of Easton in 2021 and Fr. Dan Dunlap, Rector of Old Trinity Church in Church Creek, and St. John’s Cornersville, who was a seminary professor at Seminary of the Southwest became the lead instructor/professor/dean for Iona Eastern Shore.

Students in the Iona Eastern Shore program on the priesthood track went through three years of academic study with a combination of weekly Zoom classes to review and discuss the weekly reading assignments, and monthly day retreats, where in addition to academic discussion, homiletics and liturgy were practiced and discussed. Classes were focused on Bible study, history of the church, theology and ethics. We had guest lecturers in the form of clergy from throughout the Eastern Shore, including Dr. Tom Long, renowned author, preacher, and teacher of preachers. We took the General Ordination Exams this past winter and are working through our Clinical Pastoral Education requirements on our way to ordination as priests.

Graduation Day

I’m giving you my lens on the day. We had a full church of family and friends of the seven of us who were at the ceremony, clergy from all over the Shore, and a big turn out from our Christ Church Easton congregation.

Welcoming everyone at the beginning of the service, Bishop San touched on the “why” for the program:

“The church is called to be adaptive and creative in the time it lives in,” the Bishop said. “This is one of those initiatives that speaks to the adaptability and the creativity of the church so that God’s kingdom is proclaimed among God’s people.”

Rev. Greg Harbaugh, a long-time Lutheran minister, who now serves at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Salisbury, was the preacher for the day.

Here are some highlights/takeaways from his sermon, writing out a few of them because they are full of such great concern and advice for us moving forward :

  • “Ministry, like life, is difficult. I suspect you already know this. Nevertheless, as clergy we are adept at thinking it should be otherwise. Truth be told, ministry has always been difficult: remember (what happened to) Jesus… Paul, Peter, and all the rest.”
  • “When you enter your call, do so with repentance and humility. Turn first to the Lord in prayer.  Consult with the Bishop and colleagues. Talk and mostly listen to your lay leadership. Visit your people to get to know them. And let them know you.”
  • “Ministry can be difficult. Humility and patience matter, lead by example of your piety and your own faithfulness. There will be joys along the way; there will be fecundity and peace; there will be shortfalls and successes.”
  • “My final injunction, prayer really, is to continually experience Jesus both more broadly and more deeply. His cruciforming love and grace will continue to open you… experience his breath as spirit of life, his Word as truth, his Gospel as the Way.
  • “Through prayer and study of Scripture and holy writings, the deep breath of Holy Spirit will turn you inside out—to recognize yourself in Jesus as a child of the Heavenly Father.”
  • “In your ministry, continue the lifeway that allows you to know and experience Jesus through prayer and service; know him through study and the listening to his Word; receiving his grace; this is your deepest service and will hold you fast during the buffeting winds of ministry. Then, too, he will surprise you in your own preaching, as you will surprise your people with Jesus’s good news—in such moments you and they will know who and whose you are in beloved community.”
Adding my part to the prayers of the people during the service, Concerns for the Local Community: “Lord, you minister to the whole world and you have called us to serve here on the Eastern Shore. Help us to discern the changing needs of our communities, to go where people are hurting, feel lost, and feel far from you. Give us compassion, empathy, and wisdom as we go out into the towns, into the counties, and working together as your hands and feet on the grassroots level, help us to be your love here where we serve you and your people.”

Supported and Seen

In the weeks leading up to graduation, people asked if I was excited for the day. I’d answer, “Of course, looking forward to it,” or something along those lines. But it wasn’t registering. Until the first note of the first song, once we were seated and the service was beginning. That’s when the tears of gratitude began and didn’t stop.

Fr. Dan Dunlap, our professor and dean, gave personal remarks about each of us before he gave us our certificates and the Bishop put our tippets on us. Fr. Dan’s comments were so specific and communicated so much about who we are. This is what he said about me:

“Michael, our contemplative. No matter how hectic life gets, no matter what’s going on out there in the world, we have people like Michael. Michael, who reminds us that there is always time to stop and smell the roses, or sit on the dock and take a picture. Or write a journal entry. And that’s the one thing, the best part about his contemplativeness is that he communicates it to others so that even if we don’t think we have time to be contemplatives, he’s made the time and shares it with us. Thank you, Michael, for that.”

Going to school around the edges of working, of being a Dad, of being a partner, of being a part of a church community, is out of the sight of others. And that’s okay, ministry is about serving, not being seen. But every now and then, through comments like Fr. Dan’s, or the turn out from the congregation, I feel some nods of affirmation in a way that inspires me , motivates me, and pushes me on.

Another of those moments came after our class had each been announced, the Bishop had us turn to face the congregation. Gratitude came out of my eyes and lungs, that’s the only way I can say it.

Commencing

“What’s past is prologue; what to come, in yours and my discharge.”

William Shakespeare, from “The Tempest”

“What’s past is prologue” is the part of that quote that Fr. Bill Ortt, our long-time rector and mentor liked to use. The idea is that what’s happened before is just a lead up to the present moment. It’s a foundation for what’s to come, but it doesn’t determine what’s to come, we do (with God’s help).

Our class of seminarians went back to school and finished our course of study in our 40s, 50s, and 60s. That speaks to our natures as lifelong learners. Our prescribed program for this particular time has come to an end. But it serves as a beginning for what’s next.

Studying to prepare for sermons, developing a deeper understanding of the liturgy, being with people going through difficult times, celebrating milestones, being shaped by grief, difficulties, and empathy for what others are going through, as well as sharing joy and small and large victories with others. Learning never stops.

For a number of us, we will next learn to be deacons. Ordination for classmates Joanne Fisher, Kelsey Spiker, Jessica Stehle, and I will be on Saturday, September 14 at Trinity Cathedral in Easton. Bishop San let Kelsey and I know that with our full-time staff positions at Christ Church Easton that our diaconal placement will also be Christ Church.

Graduation marked a moment in time. It was a coming together of our class for the last time in a culmination of our studies. I don’t take graduation ceremonies lightly: the last time I graduated was from Washington College when I was 26. Now at 52, that was half my life ago. I hope to continue my education, both formally and informally. But I don’t think any graduation ceremony will touch what happened on June 15. With seven of us there (we were missing one classmate), our home traditional choir and contemporary band, a service with and by friends and colleagues, it was personal, Holy Spirit-filled, and a perfect commencement, sending us out to do the work God has given us to do.

I am grateful to a Diocese and Bishop for thinking outside the box, embracing creative approaches to education, ministry, and ordination; to our professors, instructors, and lecturers; to our classmates; and to our congregation and families. It takes a village, and a diocese, to facilitate a calling.

Quarantine All-stars

I’ve come to realize that living life in quarantine isn’t that much different than my daily life. Less nature than I would like, and my work schedule may actually be busier working from home, but on the whole I dig being at home. In the case of the Coronavirus and everyone being home, and teenage girls having to change their mindset; and just the general mental and emotional uneasiness of a global pandemic, there is something different afoot.

When we look back, everyone will have different things that buoyed them, or helped them re-acclimate, helped them connect. So I thought I’d look at some of my quarantine all-stars to date.

You can’t overstate the importance of music. I concur with Friedrich Nietzsche when he wrote, “Without music, life would be a mistake,” and Kurt Vonnegut who said his epitaph could say, “The only proof he needed for the existence of God was music.”

I am a fan of Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats. I’ve dug hearing them on 103.1 WRNR. Hearing the title track from his new solo album, “And It’s Still Alright” on the radio, I’ve always let it play. Then multiple people started weighing in with how good the whole album is. Rateliff started writing the album at the unraveling of his marriage and later had to get through the death of a close friend. From his website, talking about the album, and how he worked through what the album wanted to be:

“out of his restless subconscious, helping him address some big life questions — the ones that have stumped philosophers, statesmen and profound thinkers since time began, exploring the unsteady terrain of love and death. But in the end, what he really was doing was creating an homage to his friend.”

It’s an album about questions; it’s an album about getting through things; it’s an album with lines that stick in my head, such as, “If the world goes strange, its dying flames / Would light the end of the last morning.”

Questlove, live from his house, paying tribute to Bill Withers.

A different take on quarantine soundtrack has come from Questlove of the Roots. With the band staying home, Questlove has been holding DJ sessions from his house, raising money for different causes, and paying tribute to eras of music, with his Native Tongues Review, and to Bill Withers who just died, with Bill Still. I am telling you, if you want to put something on in your house and let it play for a couple hours, Native Tongues brings back an era of hip hop with A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, the Jungle Brothers, you name it, some formative bands, and just blending it altogether. And Bill Withers, man, the whole session is just smooth and flowing and feels good.

I’m used to Questlove being the drummer and front man for one of my favorite bands. He’s written books and been featured in great articles, and this social media scholar and DJ is just another aspect of a guy who carries the cool banner for this, and other eras.

From music to movies. I’ve watched Rian Johnson’s “Knives Out,” multiple times now. I didn’t catch it in the theaters, so one night I kicked back and pulled it up at home. And I knew I needed to check it out again. So a few nights ago, I pulled my daughters into the next screening. Both girls loved it, Anna (18) said it was the best movie she’d seen in a long time, and maybe one of her favorites. It’s a great whodunnit-typed movie; it’s got James Bond (Daniel Craig) and Captain America (Chris Evans), who play roles nothing like their famous characters; and as someone who likes to figure movies out, even when halfway through the movie you think you know everything, you don’t. Not even close.

Screens certainly dominate media these days. And I am psyched that “Cheers” is now on Netflix; “The Office” is a constant connection, time-filler, and connector between the girls and I, who quote it back and forth frequently; and I have them part-way through the series “Lost,” which was a favorite show of mine while it was on TV.

You know I have to finish with books. We have had substantial reading going with work–studies of John’s Gospel, which started last October, a quick devotional through Matthew’s Gospel for Lent, and looking for our next online classes–but in this case, I am looking at the just for fun reading.

On the graphic novel front, Kieron Gillen’s “Once and Future” plays King Arthur’s legend into our modern world, which is a trippy, mythical, re-imaging as a kind of ghost story. I ate Arthurian legend stuff up growing up (named our Golden Retriever “Morgan” after King Arthur’s sister when I was nine) and Gillen has become a writer who I try to read about everything I can from. Christian Ward is known as an artist, but is trying his hand at writing and in Machine Gun Wizards, he looks at Eliot Ness and prohibition, but if prohibition was outlawing magic, not booze. And what can I say about Neil Gaiman’s “Sandman,” which was cited as one of the 100 best books (not graphic novels, books) of the century. It bears reading and re-reading. And since a friend and I are currently taking Gaiman’s masterclass on storytelling, this seemed like a great time to dig back into the world of dream and open my imagination.

I’m 180-something pages into Emily St. John Mandel’s “Station Eleven,” which we will be doing an online/Zoom book club for in the very near future. I am having a lot of fun with it. It’s set after the collapse of civilization due to a global pandemic virus. This is one of the blurbs that pulled me in:

“An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days of civilization’s collapse, Station Eleven tells the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity.”

A motto of one of the main characters is “Survival is insufficient.”

Sometimes when we enter new territory, it’s not novelty we need, but familiarity. We need something to ground us and help us get our footing. I’ve written a lot about Jim Harrison, who I consider one of the writers to have the biggest impact on me, both through his writing, his persona, and how he lived his life. And despite having written numerous great novels, novellas, and short stories, it’s often his poetry that I end up keeping nearby.

I was reminded recently of Harrison’s poem, “I believe.” He lists things he believes in, which include: steep drop-offs, empty swimming pools, the overgrown path to the lake, abandoned farmhouses, gravel roads that end, leaky wooden boats…”

You know what? I’ll let you read it for yourself, noting that the poem ends with “struggling to stay alive in a world that grinds them underfoot.” Let me just say that music, movies, books–these thinks aren’t just diversions that distract us from what’s going on in the world; instead, they are connection, connecting us to the artists, connecting us to something bigger than ourselves; connecting us to each other through music, art, and stories; and in the process of creation, connecting us to God.

Don’t bury your talents

We all bring something to the table. And what each person brings is necessarily different from what anyone else brings. And if you subscribe to the notion of life taking a village, a community, part of what makes everything work is each of us adding our own gifts.

This week in our Lent small group, we read Matthew 25 in N.T. Wright’s “Lent for Everyone,” which includes the parable of the talents. In the story Jesus tells, the master goes on a journey and leaves a sum of money (talents) with three different slaves. He gives the first slave five talents, the slave turns it into 10; he gives the second two talents, he turns it into four. The master is pleased and rewards them. The last slave is given one talent, is scared, buries the talent, and just gives it back to the master when he gets back. The master is not happy and wants him thrown out into the dark where bad stuff goes down.

The things about parables, about stories, if they aren’t memorable, they aren’t worth much. Some of them are harsh, and each of the stories Jesus tells are meant to get a message across. Whereas a talent in the story is currency or money, it is a word that works for us in our time as well: talking about our own talents.

Wright breaks it down for us in his commentary after the reading:

“…each of us has been put here with a particular purpose and calling, which only we can do. Our task is to find out what that is and to do it. That remains true whether the purpose is playing the trumpet, cooking meals, planting trees, performing heart transplants, or even preaching sermons. Sometimes, of course, it’s a struggle to discover what our calling is.”

N.T. Wright

We could stand to listen to Jesus, and to Wright, during this time of pandemic with COVID-19 calling for so many different responses from all of us. Some of the shining talents that have come to light at Christ Church Easton during this time, are the musical and video editing skills of members of the church’s music ministers, bands, and choirs. “Hold Us Together,” “Stand in Your Love / Chain Breaker,” and “Be Still My Soul,” have each become Facebook phenomena going far beyond anything the church has recorded or media that it has created. The comments about the hope and connection people are feeling from them have had hearts overflowing all over. I still have a hard time getting through any one of the videos without breaking down.

None of this happens if contemporary music minister Ray Remesch doesn’t step up and say he can direct, record, and edit videos; if Alive @ 5 music minister Bruce Strazza isn’t using his technical expertise, above and beyond his musical talent, to make sure the staff and the band have the systems and equipment they need to work remotely; if the musicians and singers don’t make the time to bring their skills to the table; and Tracy Kollinger doesn’t research and figure out the best ways to upload and stream live videos. We’ve had different staff and volunteers who have stepped up and into different hats in both subtle and profound ways.

Obviously these aren’t front-line jobs. The talents of doctors, first responders, school systems and community volunteers working to make sure kids and families are fed; grocery store and restaurant workers coming up with new ways to stay open and feed people; there are so many people offering and stretching their talents in so many ways, that it is nothing short of remarkable. People are stepping up with the gifts they have been given and are increasing their talents, not burying them.

There are also those of us that are waiting, maybe unsure what gifts we bring to the table, and unsure about the timing and way we might use them. In his commentary on the parable of the talents, Wright has some thoughts:

“…each of us is called to exercise the primary, underlying gifts of living as a wise, loving human being, celebrating God’s love, forgiving, praying, seeking justice, acting prudently and courageously, waiting patiently for God’s will to be done.”

Wright

In this case, God’s will has nothing to do with the pandemic virus sweeping the world, but everything to do with how God’s people are called to respond. It’s up to us, to use the talents God has given us to give back to the community, our neighbors, and thereby the world.

It could be praying; it could be reaching out to a friend or family member; it could be supporting local businesses who are going through an unprecedented time; it could be feeding people; it could be staying home and being available when ready; it could be giving hope and humor and peace to someone who needs it.

What’s asked of us is not to bury our talents, but to be open, to increase them, and to share them. There is hope there.

Contributing a Verse

Sometimes it’s there, just below the surface. My mind is distracted, looking for the familiar, but knowing it won’t come from there. It’s something new.

A beautiful morning, or evening, outside, smelling cut grass, swooning in the start of spring. It seems like normal. But go to grab groceries and it hits: it’s eerie. Off. Something is not right. You can feel it.

We are all called to respond in our own ways. To stay home, yes, but also called to look differently, think differently, maybe to live and be differently. I’ve been trying to get my head around it.

Before COVID-19 arrived, Fr. Bill Ortt put out a Lenten challenge at Christ Church Easton: 1) Find a word that speaks to you; 2) choose a Bible verse that uses your word; 3) Memorize your verse and pray, meditate, reflect on your word/verse as a Lenten mantra of sorts; 4) Write your word on one of the small, wooden crosses the church gives out. And if you are inspired to, take a picture and share your cross-verse.

There have been some wholly wonderful responses. “Heal,” “light,” “love,” “pray,” “faith”–it’s been inspiring to see and read how people came to their word (or their word came to them) and what they are doing with the experience.

My word wasn’t there at first. Or it was, but I wasn’t listening.

As a church, when it was clear that we weren’t going to be gathering together for a time, we had to figure out what that meant; what it looked like; how to stay relevant, be there for people; how to continue to shine a light; how to connect; how to help people be hopeful. We had to do things differently.

We had to create something new. Or at least new to us. We moved our meetings, small groups, and prayer gatherings to ZOOM. Worship services (what would worship look like now?) to Facebook Live. And our music ministries became video artists–I stop every time I hear/watch “Hold Us Together,” “Stand in Your Love / Chain Breaker,” or “Be Still My Soul.” These are videos that have been viewed tens of thousands of times now on Facebook and shared widely. They strike a chord, they speak to hope and faith and love and connection. They weren’t a priority before social distancing, until they became one of the key ways to communicate. This is a time that is teaching us how to create, how to be differently, how to look at what’s important. And it’s not about adapting to a temporary predicament–it’s about moving toward, embracing something new.

I am fascinated by stories. As a writer, I read them, listen to them, think about them, and hope to share and tell them in new and interesting ways. But with between work, two teenage daughters, life, it’s not always easy to make time to write.

As I sat, prayed, reflected, my word, both professionally and personally was there all along: CREATE. And when I started looking through Bible verses, Isaiah practically smacked me upside the head:

“For I am about to create new heavens
and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered
or come to mind.”

Isaiah, 65:17

In this time, our time, maybe we are called to look at our lives with an eye towards creating better lives.

Maybe we are called to look at our personal and collective stories, and tell new ones.

If our world is necessarily knocked off its axis, perhaps we can look at how to get it spinning around love, kindness, community, sustainability, and creativity.

If I stay home, simply waiting, doing things as I’ve always done them, and at the other end of this pandemic, just shrug, and go back to business as usual, what have I learned or gained from the experience?

This isn’t meant to be some Pollyanna motivational speech. I know my shortcomings. I know I will be lazy, I will fall short, I will miss opportunities. I try to own my humanity, my flaws, and my mistakes. But the idea behind a word, a mantra, a verse to think, pray, reflect on, is what I set my eyes to–what I aim towards, what I strive for. And in the face of a global virus the world is responding to in ways that none of us have seen in our lifetimes, it is a legitimate time to look at our lives and think about where and how we are and where we want to be.

Each spring, I go back to Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass.” It’s become a way to enter the season of rebirth, of resurrection. And this year I am hit especially by his “O ME! O LIFE!” in the same space and way that Robin Williams quoted it in Dead Poets Society.

We are here. We exist. It didn’t have to be, but it is. And in life’s powerful play, we may contribute a verse. That is what we create. But it’s up to us.

I want to wake up open to what it is God is creating in the world and creating in me.

“Create in my a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit.”

(Psalm 51:10-12)

Mapmakers & Travelers

“I don’t know, maybe your experience differed from mine. For me, growing up as a human being on the planet Earth in the twenty-first century was a real kick in the teeth. Existentially speaking.” – Ernest Cline, “Ready Player One.”

Ernest Cline lured me in with Oingo Boingo, got me to sit down with Atari 2600, and handed out popcorn with 80’s pop culture references in spades. For the better part of two summers growing up, I had a boombox covered with skateboard grip-tape and anarchy symbols on my 13-foot Boston Whaler. The cassette tape that lived in the boombox was dubbed from vinyl records: on one side was Bob Marley “Exodus” and on the other was Oingo Boingo “Dead Man’s Party.”

I can’t tell you how many times we listened to that song. I can hear the music over the wail of the outboard motor with the boat planing. Cline conjured up the beginning of Dead Man’s Party and I was there.

Ready Player One’s main character Wade Watts is born into a crappy existence where virtual reality (the OASIS) is much more inviting and compelling than real life. And the more he learns about history and life in general, the further he is convinced that life is a raw deal.

“I started to figure out the ugly truth as soon as I began to explore the free OASIS libraries. The facts were right there waiting for me, hidden in old books written by people who weren’t afraid to be honest. Artists and scientists and philosophers and poets, many of them long dead. As I read the words they’d left behind, I finally began to get a grip on the situation. My situation. Our situation. What most people referred to as ‘the human condition.’ It was not good news.” – Ernest Cline, “Ready Player One”

Map of the world of Greyhawk. Yeah, definitely spent more than a normal amount of time pouring over, recreating, and drawing my own maps on graph paper.

Cline walks us through the interior minds of any of us who grew up immersed in pop culture and fantasy during the 1980s. And he also walks us through our current culture and the pull of virtual/screen reality over the world around us. He both maps it and travels the terrain. I’ve been mulling over a comment from Brene Brown in her book “Daring Greatly,” when she says:

“I have found that the most difficult and most rewarding challenge of my work is how to be both a mapmaker and a traveler.”

Brene Brown, Daring Greatly

I’ve been fascinated by maps for as long as I can recall, and it could have started with the map of Greyhawk above. But it’s not just the map itself–hiking through the White Mountains more than 10 years ago, and seeing where we were on the map, there was just something inherently cool about it. Maybe it’s a combination of knowledge and adventure, which multiply into some sort of lived truth. It’s also the idea of charting the intersection of imagination and culture, say in Cline’s case, which made reading feel like both a revelation and an adventure, and left my head spinning.

Neil Gaiman, taken by his wife Amanda Palmer

“Truth is not in what happens, but in what it tells us about who we are.” If you want to get inspired to read and fire up your imagination, go read Maria Popova’s piece on Neil Gaiman writing about what books do for the human experience.

In the mornings, when I read or pray, my mind, heart, and soul soar and dive and question and sit in awe and wonder. That’s part of being a traveler, making an interior journey. For me, there is then something in the act of trying to write down what I am seeing, feeling, wondering about; the act of writing becomes an act of mapmaking. I try to do the same thing when my mind wanders somewhere cool while running or whatever I am doing (hence always having a notebook and pen in my pockets).

Gaiman goes on to give his own take on things hidden in old books:

“Books are the way that we communicate with the dead. The way that we learn lessons from those who are no longer with us, that humanity has built on itself, progressed, made knowledge incremental rather than something that has to be relearned, over and over. There are tales that are older than most countries, tales that have long outlasted the cultures and the buildings in which they were first told.”

So many times it’s the old tales. When we study the Bible, I am always taken to these other places, God journeys, that almost always end up also describing something I am currently feeling, or a feeling I know. So the journeys become linked; the traveling is not alone.

Maybe the act of reading, the act of imagining, the act of praying, is also an act of connecting. It can be connecting with the past, connecting with the writer, connecting with God. But we are forming connections. We aren’t the first or the last to find or feel them. But in the same way that we benefit from what these cultures, writers, and artists have left behind–the maps they have given us–maybe we are compelled to chart out our travels, our journeys, so that we can leave them behind for others to do the same.

Maybe we can help make some better news for the human condition.

Beginner’s Mind: Reset to Wonder

“If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything, it is open to everything. In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.” That line from Shunryu Suzuki and the idea of beginner’s mind have stuck with me as much or more than anything I’ve read. It applies to pretty well every breath and step we take each day, but it’s been on my mind a lot lately with different things–particularly practices and passions where you have to hit reset every time you do them.

Beginner’s mind has been loud for running, something I started doing when I was 15, but running doesn’t care how long you’ve done it. Every run is its own thing, no matter how good or bad the last one was. On a nine-mile run this morning, the races and distances I have run in the past don’t count. They don’t get me a step further. In getting ready for the Tuckahoe 25K (15.5 mile) trail race in November, I’m two minutes per mile slower than I was three years ago, when I was running more and in better shape. I may get some of that back, but I’m not really worried about it, I just like going out to run.

Seeing birds scatter from phragmites and cattails, watching cardinals and blue jays in trees along the rail trail; stopping to look off bridges at the sun coming through clouds; or watching a monarch butterfly fly across my path, followed instantly by a leaf of almost the same color, moving in the same way, mimicking each other, as God smiles and says, “see what I did there?” Even running on the same roads and routes I have run for years, there is always something new and different to hit the reset button and dial up the wonder.

Beginner’s mind has turned up during prayer or meditation, where what I did yesterday or last month or last year doesn’t mean I will show up, or make time, or connect today. If I want to get something out of prayer, I have to be mindful. N.T. Wright, in his book “The Lord and His Prayer,” says:

“Whenever we pray, that is what we are coming to do: to pursue the mystery, to listen and respond to the voice we thought we just heard, to follow the light which beckons round the next corner, to lay hold of the love of God which has somehow already laid hold of us.”

N.T. Wright

It’s funny how you can take something like the Lord’s Prayer, which maybe you’ve heard or recited enough not to even listen to the words anymore, but when you take it apart, pray or reflect on it line by line, or read about it, how it can take on new life, new meaning. Whether prayer, The Lord’s Prayer, or meditation, coming at it with beginner’s mind opens it to wonder and newness.

Each year, Uncle Chad and the kids make sand sculptures, just so they can wreck them.

Every year at the beach, my sister’s husband comes up with new ideas for sand sculptures. He and the kids have created airplanes, dragons, castles, all intricately and painstakingly built. But his end goal, the highlight of the creation, is when he has the kids destroy it. Sometimes they line up youngest to oldest to take their shots at it. The joy is in creating it, not trying to make it last. In that, their sculptures are like the sand mandalas the Tibetan monks create, simply to wipe them away. You start anew, every day.

Beginner’s mind applies to having new ears as well as new eyes. On the last mile of this morning’s run, the farthest I have run in a long time, Arrested Development’s “Tennessee” shuffled up.

I can’t count how many times I’ve heard this song, both when it came out, and from being on my running playlist for a while now. But it’s come to mean more over the last few years. The singer is talking to God and about their relationship. The song is a prayer.

“Lord it’s obvious we got a relationship
Talkin’ to each other every night and day
Although you’re superior over me
we talk to each other in a friendship way…

I ask you, Lord, why you enlightened me
without the enlightenment of all my folks
He said, cuz I set myself on a quest for truth
and he was there to quench my thirst.
But I am still thirsty.
The Lord allowed me to drink some more
He said what I am searching for are
The answers to all which are in front of me
the ultimate truth started to get blurry..

Speech (Todd Thomas)

There are songs whose lyrics wash over me new and differently maybe each time I hear them. At the end of a run, when legs are heavy, mind wants to be on autopilot, breathing is conscious, in a moment created and shared with the Universe, is an old song, a prayer, between a man and God.

Beginner’s mind is coming back for more. It’s seeing possibility. It’s starting again. It’s realizing we aren’t perfect and we don’t really know anything. It is finding wonder in the same roads, in the same songs, in the same body, but seeing it differently. It’s being thirsty for more.

And I am still thirsty.

Surveying the Sensational

Sometimes the coolest ideas begin as a conversation. The kind where you talk about every subject under and above the sun, laugh your face off, and find yourself frequently running down paths of wonder. The kind of conversation where when it’s done, you wish you had recorded it, or at least written parts down.

I had one of those conversations with Gary Skirka this winter on our way to Third Eye Comics in Annapolis for a book signing with writer Jason Aaron (who writes the Avengers, Thor, Conan, has written Wolverine). Both of our imaginations have been and continue to be shaped by comic books; we both lead groups at different churches; we both have two quickly growing up daughters; we are both trying to read more, get ourselves back into shape. The discussion jumped from faith to favorite comics; from the Wu-Tang Clan to John’s Gospel; from cosmology to kung fu.

Jason Aaron signing books at Third Eye Comics for the release of his Conan book for Marvel Comics.

Gary mentioned that for a number of years now he’s wanted to do a podcast about comics, pop culture, faith and spirituality, with people you wouldn’t think of as the geek culture type.

Fast forward to earlier this week. Seven of us got together and laid out our own origin stories when it comes to faith and comics. We’ve got a few guys that work for churches, a couple police officers, a former Army medic. In one case, comic books had been an outlet during chemo and childhood cancer. In another comics were a bond between father and son; one found he could draw superheroes to pass the time or sell his art. In terms of faith, it was all over the map–from one-time adamant non-believers, to lifelong church goers; former philosophy students. It was a melting pot from a number of different churches and theologies, with maybe the constant being guys who wouldn’t be told what to think or do or what box they had to fit in, but who found their own path to God.

Grant Morrison is one of the most acclaimed comic book writers of all time. He’s written everything from Superman to Batman, the Justice League to Green Lantern, shaped the DC Universe, as well as creating new characters, universes, and books that transcend the medium. In his book “Supergods,” he looks at what superhero stories might say about our culture:

“We live in the stories we tell ourselves. In a secular, scientific, rational culture lacking in any convincing spiritual leadership, superhero stories speak loudly and boldly to our greatest fears, deepest longings, and highest aspirations. They’re not afraid to be hopeful, not embarrassed to be optimistic, and utterly fearless in the dark. They’re about as far from social realism as you can get, but the best superhero stories deal directly with mythic elements of human experience that we can all relate to, in ways that are imaginative, profound, funny, and provocative. They exist to solve problems of all kinds and can always be counted on to find a way to save the day. At their best, they help us to confront and resolve even the deepest existential crises. We should listen to what they have to tell us.”

Yeah, what he said 🙂 Add to that, graphic storytelling is currently doing some of the most creative and imaginative storytelling going, and are often just plain fun to read and experience as art at the same time.

Comics and dime detective and science fiction novels have their roots in pulp culture. Not the orange juice kind, the “Pulp Fiction” kind. Merriam Webster gives a definition of pulp as:

PULP (noun), a magazine or book printed on cheap paper (such as newsprint) and often dealing with sensational material.

Merriam Webster Dictionary

As we all got talking back and forth, we dug the ideas of podcasts, interviews with different guests, blogs, articles, videos, road trips, movie and book reviews on any and all things pop/pulp culture as well as faith, spirituality, theology, etc. And we wanted a name to go with the pulp idea. Something big, reaching, something that calls your imagination into action. And who knows, maybe something that calls “Young Guns” or Nate Dogg and Warren G. to mind.

Revelators. Why revelators? Why not! You could ask Blind Willie Johnson, or Son House, who both have stripped down, bare bones versions of the song “John the Revelator,” or you can go with the dressed up version the used in the show “Sons of Anarchy.” You get the idea.

With “Pulp Revelators,” we are starting a discussion. We hope you’ll follow along on different social media channels and look for a website to be up and running before long. We hope you’ll join in, ask questions, tell us what you think, and what topics, characters, or subjects you’d like to hear more about. We’ve got some fun adventures ahead. In a nutshell, what we hope to be doing is “surveying the sensational.” Stay tuned.

Summer as a Verb

Summer means different things to different people. If you are a kid, it means no school. If you dig the water, it means game on. If you are in Maryland, it can mean eating steamed crabs, rockfish season, river swimming, and/or lightning bugs. Maybe it means family vacations.

Winter and spring this year were fully scheduled. Events and programs at the community center; three different evening small groups at Christ Church Easton; lacrosse season and school for the girls. All great things, which drove where and when to be and what to do.

Summer right now is an opening up of the schedule. But in some ways, I can already feel this notion of chaos taking over from order, or inactivity as a response to hyperactivity. So it’s time to create fun and balance and challenge all at the same time.

Yesterday morning, I found Paul’s Letter to the Galatians staring at me:

…the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control… If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit. (Galatians 5, 22-25)

That is a great reminder, note to self, and guide for how to approach summer, or life in general, every day.

With all that as backdrop, I like making fun “to do” lists. Here’s one for the summer months.

1. Summer reading – read three unread/unfinished books from my bookshelf. My “to be read” stacks of books grow and books I have started or wanted to read get cast off. I started yesterday by picking back up T. H. White’s “The Once and Future King,” White’s wild take on the King Arthur legend, an imagination-shaping story for me as a kid, a favorite book of my brother-in-law, a book I have started and not finished. I am giving myself to the end of June. Other likely contenders are James Hillman’s “A Blue Fire,” Richard Rohr’s “The Divine Dance” and Kurt Vonnegut’s “Breakfast of Champions.” Every summer should have some Vonnegut.

2. Regular running – as a 5-mile run yesterday evening can attest to, I have some work to do. I let my running slide this winter/spring, and it is one of the habits that rights my body and mind.

3. Paddleboarding – at least 50 miles of summer paddleboarding. More than doable without being a stretch goal at all. I’ve just written about stand-up paddleboarding on the Shore, I live walking distance to the water, make the miles happen.

4. It’s called Natitude – go to five Washington Nationals home games (September counts). When I worked in DC, it was a habit. The girls are Nats fans and enjoy live baseball, and we haven’t caught a Nats home game the last two seasons. Time to change that.

5. Prayer – My deepest connections and most meaningful moments are when I can feel the Holy Spirit at work, when I “let go and let God” to quote a friend and small group leader. That happens more frequently when I silence and open my mind. Making time for prayer is an integral part of being guided by the Spirit.

6. Life’s a Beach – we’ve got our annual Ocean City pilgrimage on the map for July. But Assateague Island is easy. Boat and paddleboard beach exploring. Make more time beach time.

7. Go new places – I’m going to keep this broad. It could be trails, small towns, road trips, scheduled or unscripted.

8. Grow things – summer mulching has begun. I need to plant tomatoes again and regain that connection to the earth, even potted flowers and plants and the habit of watering in the mornings while drinking coffee.

9. Make a skateboarding adventure – there are a few folks who I think will be on board with this. We’ve pondered the Western Maryland Rail Trail before. I don’t know what this might become or where, but I want to recapture the feeling skater Jason Adams talks about here.

10. Live music – summer and live music are meant to go together. In June, we’ve got Josh Ritter at the Avalon Theatre and The Specials in Baltimore on the books. The Avalon has outdoor music on Harrison Street, the community center will be having Philip Dutton and the Alligators, just to name a few.

This list is hardly exhaustive, but it’s a way to shape thinking about the summer. A way to carpe the diem. John Eldredge wrote something that resonates with me: “We are created for adventure, and if we cannot find one, we start blowing things out of proportion so it feels like we have one.”

In the case of adventure, or summer, it can also be a state of mind. Be guided by the spirit, and approach these days, weeks, and months for all that they, and we can be.

Show Me How to Live

Our senses are gateways to the world. What we see, hear, smell, touch, taste give us our world, in part. And our senses have memories.

Walking the dog the other morning, I was overwhelmed by the smell of honeysuckle. It transported me back to being a kid, building forts in the marsh, sections of which were absolutely and wonderfully overgrown with it. The smell of steamed crabs has the same effect.

The feel of cut grass under bare feet, or hot sand, or gravel under toughened summer feet. The first time my daughters’ newborn hands wrapped around my finger.

Our senses cue up a lifetime of memories in our mind’s eye and in our souls.

And there is music. Our lives have a soundtrack. Mine is different from anyone else’s, though certainly we share songs and groups with others. Anyone who rode in my car during high school heard their share of the Beastie Boys “Paul’s Boutique,” The Specials, Public Enemy, The Clash, and Metallica.

Getting to North Carolina for college, it was meeting Chris Cornell, Eddie Vedder, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam and Temple of the Dog.

I don’t generally sing, but to this day when Temple of the Dog’s “Hunger Strike” comes on the radio, much to my daughters’ cringing, I am belting it out.

Cornell and Vedder are still on about every running playlist I have. But Cornell is integral.

We all get to those rough places in our emotional lives. When I was driving four to five hours a day back and forth to DC, in what came to feel like a soul-less grind, and my marriage was crumbling around me, it was Cornell, Tom Morello and Audioslave. Played so loud the windows and dashboard shook. It was the angst, the wail Morello’s guitar, the reach and pitch and emotion and questions in Cornell’s voice.

You gave me life
Now show me how to live.

Audioslave was and is catharsis, solace, energy. When I moved down Bailey’s Neck and got my feet back under me, and would run the wood-lined back roads, it was Audioslave time and time again.

Show me how to live.

In finding a job in Oxford at the community center and re-embracing a community that helped raise me, in moving back to town here, and running through town and up Oxford Rd.

Show me how to live.

The night Ava had her big seizure in Pennsylvania and was flown by helicopter to Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh; as I buried the gas pedal driving through the night it was Cornell and company playing in the car to keep me awake and focused.

Show me how to live.

As we all returned home, and I was filled with gratitude for the outpouring of support and prayers from friends and family and strangers, and I found church and faith, and would shuffle a playlist on my runs, I could hear:

You gave me life
Now show me how to live.

In hearing and finding a calling and Christ Church and being in small groups and building a family and community of faith through our Alpha program, I hear the same words.

I’ve never met Chris Cornell. His death isn’t like losing a family member or close friend. There isn’t a hole in my life in that way. When David Bowie, Prince, or Lemmy died it was sad to lose great artists. But they weren’t a part of first team soundtrack of my life.

We come to know artists through their art. When we find those artists whose work resonates and enlarges our souls, we know it. We connect with them in ways that makes our own struggles and questions seem relevant for someone else; we feel less alone. Like together we tap into something bigger–in the best art we can feel connected; at times maybe we can hear God’s message for us.

In the end, I’m best leaving the words to Morello, who knew Cornell well. The poem Morello wrote to Cornell after his death is beautiful, moving, and open-hearted and minded. Go read the whole thing. But we’ll leave his last words here:

You’re the clear bell ringing, the mountains echo your song

Maybe no one has ever known you

You are twilight and star burn and shade