Johnny Thunders died for your sins!

Like my wife, I was astonished at how much I enjoyed giving out candy last night for Halloween. We have only this year moved into a hub, and while we're no mistake on the far edge of it-the city limits sign is roughly six blocks to our south-we are also no mistake part of a neighborhood. There are a couple bars, an auto repair shop, many single story homes with immaculate, manicured lawns, and the wide great inland sea just a few yards to our east. And last night we partook, for a couple hours, in one of the last surviving community regular events. Giving out candy to children who come to the door and ask for it.

In trying to explain my glee to her last night, I made reference to the change of perspective I got when I interned with a kindergarten class. But that's not what I want to write about.

 A friend wrote a Facebook post about watching some 17 year olds walking through her neighborhood and going up to doors to trick or treat. They carried a pillowcase for their loot. None wore anything she recognized as a costume. Her response, she reported, was to switch off her lights and ignore their ringing her doorbell.

"At least make a pretence," she told them via her friends on Facebook.

I noted that I was giving candy out to similar groups at my door; but as I thought about it, I started articulating a more complicated idea. In my childhood in the 60s and early 70s, trick or treating was something you did in an area you were already familiar with, with groups of kids you spent your days with (although some, like me, did it with siblings and a parent in tow). But the point was it was in an area and among people you already knew and were comfortable among. This accounted for the frisson of excitement that even in the familiar there could be deliciously spooky surprises.

No mistake, we were acting out a then-comfortably stereotypical American childhood event in which we were safe, no matter how we might enjoy feeling otherwise. For our parents, children themselves of the Depression or the War Years, it was a chance to see their kids enact something that they might have only seen in magazines or heard about from other kids or imagined staring at costumes available in stores.

All this changed because of fears real and imagined, as well as the shrinking and then eradication of neighborhoods and what people thought of as safe. Now younger kids are driven to approved Halloween events at malls. The younger we are the more time we spend online and less among people we might otherwise come to know from playing and exploring together.

Enter a feeling of having missed out on something. Maybe the delightful scare at being at someone's door and your parent absent or more than a short scamper away. Maybe the same parent's reminiscences about when he was young. Maybe even the uncertainty of what candy you might get from stores not sponsoring the mall event: unfamiliar wrapped sweetstuff or homemade candy apples (with or without razor blades) or anything other than that nasty candy corn filler. You're old enough now that your parents feel or you've told them you're too mature for costuming up.

But you're hanging out with friends and in between times or slugs of cheap beer one of them mentions the brother or sister going out in costume that night. And it wakens some urge in you, mixing with the crisp air and early darkness and driving you and the friend out to the street. Maybe you run home to slap some makeup on and rip some old clothes and become a couple zombies, but maybe you don't, you grab a pillowcase or a plastic bag and you say, "Let's get treats"-because you still think of them as treats-and you and the friends go out to explore the neighborhoods that are usually just background to wherever else you're going.

Maybe you're tipsy or a little buzzed because it's the only way you've got to make facing people you don't know, or will be surprised you do know, and asking them to reenact with you a ritual neither one is sure the other understands. Some of us leave the lights on and give them an extra handful because we remember what it is to be 17.

And ultimately, is this really any difference in force and effect from the spiritual impulse that leads people to approach other doors where unfamiliar neighbors might turn them away? And are they treated any differently, especially if they stink of booze or the street? Give them the damn candy.

reposted eulogy to a homeless man

[In the five years I've blogged here I haven't reposted anything I printed (or if I have I'm not aware of it). But I'm breaking this today because I don't have better words to offer some friends.

These friends are currently visiting my wife and I. Yesterday they heard that another friend of theirs had died, apparently as a result of tainted heroin. While, yes, it's true heroin is itself tainted, to put one thing into your body expecting it's something else is an act none of us, despite however wearied we are by the world, intends. But to pretend (as most responders to the above article have) that such death is just desserts to someone poisoning himself slowly is despicable. It is to suggest that some lives (non-addicts) are more important than others (addicts). That's a determination none of us gets to make.

Almost exactly a year ago I penned a eulogy for a homeless man found in St. Paul and I posted it here. I repost it now as I'm reminded of the message I tried to impart of hopefulness and dignity for a member of a group that too often is not granted either.]

About a week ago I was contacted by a friend on behalf of his friend whose homeless father's body had been found in a park in the hub. Both his death and his homelessness was a surprise to the two families he had left behind: other than sporadic phone calls, no one had heard from him in fifteen years and had no idea where he was. His son had contacted my friend, a Lutheran minister, for a suggestion of someone to perform the funeral who was "not too religious." My friend suggested me because of my own bout of homelessness.

After a couple meetings, we held the memorial yesterday in the son's apartment. The two families--a first wife and her adult children, and a second and her teenage children--came together for the first time in a decade and a half to mourn the death and celebrate the life of a man none of them knew what had become of.

I'm not only a minister but also a member of several online homeless and vagabond Facebook groups. I put to their members what they, as people for whom exactly this situation might happen, thought I should tell the families. Their responses, numbering a couple hundred, inform the following eulogy.

We don’t know what the last hours or days or even years of [his] life was like. We do know some things. That he had multiple health problems, including heart and lung issues, that he was addicted, at least for a while, to alcohol, that he was fending for himself in a losing battle against the entropy all of us are heir to, to the extent that this man, a mere 49 years old, could be discovered dead and that it could be considered a natural death. It is fitting that the person who discovered [his] body was also probably homeless. In the final analysis, each of us has only each other.

It’s easy to mistake pride for self-sufficiency. As most of you are aware, I was myself homeless for several years, so I feel comfortable telling you that while it might be tempting to think of [his] last years in terms of unremitting pain, depression, and desperation, that isn’t all there was to it. Those elements were there, certainly, but just like we can’t subsist entirely on a diet of charred toast, his life was undoubtedly leavened by the sweetness of life. Gratitude at the kiss of warm sunlight on his face when he least expected it. Appreciation at the gifts of money and food and shelter offered him. Warmth in his belly at the taste of liquor or cigarettes, the delicious succulence of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The sweet release of lying down to rest, the wonder of dreams. He felt love, perhaps a little ashamed at the families he left behind, but also perhaps relief in, in his mind, rescuing them from the burden of his deterioration.

Enough with idle speculation. What we do know is this: he was ill his last years, he lived on the streets here and maybe spent time in shelters, he died from the combination of his diseases and exposure, and he did not reach out to anyone here for help. Those are hard, uncomfortable truths. Perhaps they should be. Not that anyone should feel bad at not having provided help or feel anger with [him] because he didn’t ask for it. They’re hard because people, like life itself, are complicated. For whatever reasons, to conquer whatever demons, [he] made the decisions he did and accepting them and him is the final dignity we can give him.

Loving him in death is the best we can hope for. Or, if not love, acceptance of the way he chose to live his last years. We are all each other has got, and trying to change anyone, in death as in life, only leads to frustration. [His] life and death, for all the ways it hurts us, has dignity to it, as all life has dignity. We are born, we live, and we die. A single known sandwiched between two portals to the unknown. Buddhists tell the story that the earth is made up of ocean and a single ring floats on it. Every thousand years an ancient tortoise crawls from the bottom mud and rises achingly for a breath of fresh air. He breaks free of his resting place, journeys to where the sky can be seen, gulps a single lungful of air, and descends rest again in the mud. They say as often as that tortoise crests the surface with his head in that ring during each thousand year event, just as often are we born. To be born is rare and lucky. It must be honored. [His] life was no more or less dignified than any of ours. You are lucky to have known him, to have loved him.

In my faith there’s a ritual we sometimes perform at the death of a member of our community. Will you gather in a ring and take hold of the hand of the persons next to you. We sing the words but since you don't know the tune, we'll just say them together. Please repeat after me: “Spirit of Life, come unto me. Sing in my heart all the stirrings of compassion. Blow in the wind, rise in the sea; move in the hand, giving life the shape of justice. Roots hold me close, wings set me free. Spirit of Life, come to me. Come to me.”

[Prayer] God of tears and the mysterious silence, God of suffering and God of hope, you have made for everything a season. This is the season of our sorrow, of our grief, and we pray for grace to deal with what seems impossible to deal with. We remember the promise made to those who mourn, yet too often it seems that comfort is beyond our grasp. We know that we cannot bear this burden alone. Should we pray for our grief to be transformed or, is the purpose of our grief to transform us? Will our sorrow lead somewhere unexpected? Might it lead us back to life if we follow it? Is it a reminder of the precious reality of life and love? The death of Jonathon has created a vast, empty space within our lives, a great longing within our hearts. Can it ever be filled? Can it be healed by the sacred memory that makes [him]forever a part of us?

So many questions, O God, and so much silence. May we be patient toward all that is unanswered in our hearts. And may others be patient with us, with our sorrow, our anger, our fear and our questions. We are those who mourn. We seek the comfort that we can offer each other and the blessings of divine love and grace. Amen.

[Benediction] Take courage, friends. The path is never clear, the end is always in doubt, and the stakes are very high. Take courage. Deep down, there is a greater truth: you are not alone.

when we are most ourselves

My interest and faith in punk and punks is a theme on this blog, as is my attempts to articulate a definition of a punk spirituality. This musician/teacher, Miguel Chen of Teenage Bottlerockets, has gone me one better by creating this short documentary about the interconnectivity of punk and yoga. And while yoga is not my practice, I recognize, in the same way Christianity is for others, it is a potent path. To say I'm in awe of this motherfucker is to downplay the jealousy I feel.

eulogy for a homeless father

About a week ago I was contacted by a friend on behalf of his friend whose homeless father's body had been found in a park in the hub. Both his death and his homelessness was a surprise to the two families he had left behind: other than sporadic phone calls, no one had heard from him in fifteen years and had no idea where he was. His son had contacted my friend, a Lutheran minister, for a suggestion of someone to perform the funeral who was "not too religious." My friend suggested me because of my own bout of homelessness.

After a couple meetings, we held the memorial yesterday in the son's apartment. The two families--a first wife and her adule children, and a second and her teenage children--came together for the first time in a decade and a half to mourn the death and celebrate the life of a man none of them knew what had become of.

I'm not only a minister but also a member of several online homeless and vagabond Facebook groups. I put to their members what they, as people for whom exactly this situation might happen, thought I should tell the families. Their responses, numbering a couple hundred, inform the following eulogy.

We don’t know what the last hours or days or even years of Jonathon’s life was like. We do know some things. That he had multiple health problems, including heart and lung issues, that he was addicted, at least for a while, to alcohol, that he was fending for himself in a losing battle against the entropy all of us are heir to, to the extent that this man, a mere 49 years old, could be discovered dead and that it could be considered a natural death. It is fitting that the person who discovered Jonathon’s body was also probably homeless. In the final analysis, each of us has only each other. 

It’s easy to mistake pride for self-sufficiency. As most of you are aware, I was myself homeless for several years, so I feel comfortable telling you that while it might be tempting to think of Jonathon’s last years in terms of unremitting pain, depression, and desperation, that isn’t all there was to it. Those elements were there, certainly, but just like we can’t subsist entirely on a diet of charred toast, his life was undoubtedly leavened by the sweetness of life. Gratitude at the kiss of warm sunlight on his face when he least expected it. Appreciation at the gifts of money and food and shelter offered him. Warmth in his belly at the taste of liquor or cigarettes, the delicious succulence of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The sweet release of lying down to rest, the wonder of dreams. He felt love, perhaps a little ashamed at the families he left behind, but also perhaps relief in, in his mind, rescuing them from the burden of his deterioration.

Enough with idle speculation. What we do know is this: he was ill his last years, he lived on the streets here and maybe spent time in shelters, he died from the combination of his diseases and exposure, and he did not reach out to anyone here for help. Those are hard, uncomfortable truths. Perhaps they should be. Not that anyone should feel bad at not having provided help or feel anger with Jonathon because he didn’t ask for it. They’re hard because people, like life itself, are complicated. For whatever reasons, to conquer whatever demons, Jonathon made the decisions he did and accepting them and him is the final dignity we can give him.

Loving him in death is the best we can hope for. Or, if not love, acceptance of the way he chose to live his last years. We are all each other has got, and trying to change anyone, in death as in life, only leads to frustration. Jonathon’s life and death, for all the ways it hurts us, has dignity to it, as all life has dignity. We are born, we live, and we die. A single known sandwiched between two portals to the unknown. Buddhists tell the story that the earth is made up of ocean and a single ring floats on it. Every thousand years an ancient tortoise crawls from the bottom mud and rises achingly for a breath of fresh air. He breaks free of his resting place, journeys to where the sky can be seen, gulps a single lungful of air, and descends rest again in the mud. They say as often as that tortoise crests the surface with his head in that ring during each thousand year event, just as often are we born. To be born is rare and lucky. It must be honored. Jonathon’s life was no more or less dignified than any of ours. You are lucky to have known him, to have loved him.

In my faith there’s a ritual we sometimes perform at the death of a member of our community. Will you gather in a ring and take hold of the hand of the persons next to you. We sing the words but since you don't know the tune, we'll just say them together. Please repeat after me: “Spirit of Life, come unto me. Sing in my heart all the stirrings of compassion. Blow in the wind, rise in the sea; move in the hand, giving life the shape of justice. Roots hold me close, wings set me free. Spirit of Life, come to me. Come to me.”

 [Prayer] God of tears and the mysterious silence, God of suffering and God of hope, you have made for everything a season. This is the season of our sorrow, of our grief, and we pray for grace to deal with what seems impossible to deal with. We remember the promise made to those who mourn, yet too often it seems that comfort is beyond our grasp. We know that we cannot bear this burden alone. Should we pray for our grief to be transformed or, is the purpose of our grief to transform us? Will our sorrow lead somewhere unexpected? Might it lead us back to life if we follow it? Is it a reminder of the precious reality of life and love? The death of Jonathon has created a vast, empty space within our lives, a great longing within our hearts. Can it ever be filled? Can it be healed by the sacred memory that makes Jonathon forever a part of us?

So many questions, O God, and so much silence. May we be patient toward all that is unanswered in our hearts. And may others be patient with us, with our sorrow, our anger, our fear and our questions. We are those who mourn. We seek the comfort that we can offer each other and the blessings of divine love and grace. Amen.

[Benediction] Take courage, friends. The path is never clear, the end is always in doubt, and the stakes are very high. Take courage. Deep down, there is a greater truth: you are not alone.

the twelve holy days

A sermon given to the

Dakota Unitarian Universalist Church

Burnsville, MN

December 22, 2013

Scholars are well aware now that Jesus, who probably existed either as an individual or as a group of men and women over the first centuries of the new millenium, certainly was not born on December 25 or anywhere in December, at least not according to the New Testament’s testimony.  It would be sometime in the spring according to the gospels, which makes a good deal more sense metaphorically, Jesus as the lamb of god and bringing in the spring of Christianity and all that.  Interestingly, the First Day of Christmas in the popular song we sang earlier is not Christmas.  In most chronicles of the twelve holy days, Christmas is considered the pre-day, day zero if you will.  It’s the day for celebrating the birth of Jesus among Christians, but it’s also associated with the births of Mithras, Attis, Aion, Horus, Dionysus and the Unconquered Sun.  Mithras you may be familiar with.  The Persian god of light, his name means “Friend” and he is often synonymous with the Sun who protects man after death.  Attis or Atys is not to be confused with Attic which means having to do with Athens, but was a young man laid claim to by the hermaphroditic fertility goddess Agdistis who was so maddened by her jealousy he castrated himself in frustration and before he could cut his throat was changed by her into a pine tree.  Agdistis herself, by the way, was also made wholly female by castration.  Aion is the Germanic term of personification for the age of the universe, an eternal being itself personified.  Horus is familiar as one of the Sky Gods as well as a Sun God and is often represented as having the head of a falcon.  Dionysus, also known as Bacchus, is the god of wine and good times.  His name in Roman, Iacchus, comes from the Latin for “shout” and is thought to have originated as an epithet for the rowdy, noisy god.

            The Unconquered Sun is an interesting character because it is both a stand-in for any of the above gods as well as a euphemism for the thing itself.  The unconquered sun is what we see in the sky along about this time.  It is equally connected with the Reindeer Man, a sort of Green Man of the North, a pagan mix of Sintaklass and Odin, who appears at this time of year with the gift of deer.

            Why twelve days?  The number twelve pops up a lot of places in both Abrahamic and pagan beliefs.  Twelve apostles, twelve months of the year, twelve zodiac signs, two twelve-hour segments to a day, the twelve of the Circular Council to the Dalai Lama, the twelve members of the Arthurian Round Table, the historical Twelve Peers of France, the twelve tribes of Israel, the twelve imams in Shi’a, the twelve principle gods of the Greeks, the twelve cranial nerves in the human cerebellum, the age 12 when a Jewish girl matures and receives bat mitzvah, the twelve sons of Odin, and even the twelve function keys on my PC keyboard—F1 through F12. 

            The true first day of Christmas is Boxing Day, so-called from the British custom of giving a servant a Christmas box the day after his masters have celebrated.  It’s also associated with St. Stephen, the proto-martyr associated with horses—it’s said his body was returned to his people on the back of a horse—and with wrens.  It’s said that to kill a wren on any day other than Boxing Day is to invite bad luck.

            The second day, December 27^th, is given over to Mother Night or MotherCarey or Mother Christmas.  She is the Anglicized version of the German Frau Holle or Holda or Hulda, a figure of fertility, abundance and justice.  She was often seen, originally, as a beautiful woman in white and with a golden girdle or a sash, dispensing gifts from a sleigh pulled by her dogs.  She probably physically resembled the evil character Mrs Colter played by Nicole Kidman in the film The Golden Compass, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Phillip Pullman based this character on her. 

            But far from the nasty Miss Colter, who Pullman chooses to personify the less savory aspects of Christianity, Frau Holle, whose name means “kindly one,” was a gentle goddess specializing in the care of children.  It was up to the early church to turn her to a witch who stole unbaptized children.  But at midnight on the Eve of Epiphany, it’s said that a man walking home heard voices, many voices, behind him and stepped aside in time to allow Frau Holle and her passel of children and her flowing white train to pass him, the children laughing and running beside her.  The last of the children, the smallest, kept falling behind from tripping over his nightshirt.  The man gave him his own belt to tuck the shirt into.  Frau Holle saw this and rewarded the man with a gift that his own children would forever be without want.  It is important that we recall Frau Holle or Mother Night or Mother Carey or Mother Chrismas as a mother.  She is both nurturing and kind and a shrewd judge of character and it’s for these aspects we honor her.

            Following is Day three:  the Day of Holy Innocents.  In the Middle Ages this day of Childremass was considered particularly unlucky; nothing begun on December 28^th would be completed, since children have remarkably poor attention spans and tend to wander around abstractedly.  The practice for this day is an ancient one that survived until the 18^th century: regularly beating children on this day.  The idea was that by mercilessly flogging and smacking children on the 28^th, one would both drive out the evil spirits that had lodged there the previous year and serve as a surrogate for any deserved beatings the following year.  The practice evolved into a call for ritual, painless token beatings between children and parents, husbands and wives, masters and servants.  On this day we honor children and correspondingly honor both our wishes for what they will become and our recognition of the reality of who they are.  We also recall our lives before their arrival, although it’s probably best not to think of that before we whip them.

            The fourth day is one we might be a little familiar with.  This is the Feast of the Fools, celebrated in the Hunchback of Notre Dame and a few other novels and a MASH episode.  This is the day when the normal order of things is reversed.  Servants become masters, pupils become teachers, women behave like men, and the fools rule.  Naturally, this is my favorite day.  Parties were held, masques given, general mayhem encouraged.  It was a ritualistic method for blowing off steam, the opportunity for people who lived by the strictest restrictions to behave in the riotous, cavalier way they had foresworn in order to keep their places in the community.  At one time, this day was more celebrated and better-remembered than Christmas.  So when someone tells you that we ought to put the Christ back in Christmas, you ought to remind him to put the Fool back in Fool’s Day.

Day five is the Feast of the Boar’s Head.  On this day, two ceremonies are honored:  the Scandinavian tradition that Frey, the god of sunshine, rides across the day atop Gulli-burstin, his golden boar, whose spikes are the rays of the sun.  The second is the older, now lost, tradition in England of the boar’s head, whose meat graced the Christmas table until probably the mid Twelfth century when it disappeared, being brought in as the final remnant of the sacred meal and distributed among the revelers.  It is meet we should remember the boars, now gone in both England and here, by leaving for them a small offering to their memory, an apple or orange, in the event one is still snuffling around.

New Year’s Eve, that most festive of drinking holidays, is day six, and in many places supersedes the celebration of Christmas itself.  In Gaelic Christmas is called An Nollaig Mhor “big yule” and New Year’s Day An Nollaig Bheag “little Yule.”  And why not?  The change of year has sturdier and more aged roots than the ostensible birth of the Christ.  Still, how anyone might have guessed this day would become the night when everything switches off for one year and switches on for the next is a feat of mathematical dexterity I couldn’t begin to fathom.  Nevertheless, December 31^st’s feast is known as Hogmanay and it was the day when the Druid priests cut the sacred mistletoe and distributed sprigs among the people.  Hogmanay itself is a corruption of the French term au gui menez “lead [us] to the mistletoe,” and in some parts of France children still celebrate the day with a race during which they cry, “Au guy l’an neuf, au guy Gaulois” “to the mistletoe, to the French mistletoe.”

This is the day when we take care of the things we have missed taking care of throughout the year.  The trash is taken out and fresh sheets placed on the beds.  Socks are darned and brass and silver shined.  Pictures are hung straight.  This is the day for Reclaiming Unfinished Business, clearing up all those things we neglected the rest of the year.  Everyone experiences a new beginning, a new clearing of the old.  After sunset, juniper branches and fresh water were brought into the house.  The branches were dried out overnight, and in the morning the head of house drank the first sips from the water and sprinkled everyone else with some.  Then the dried juniper was lit, the doors and windows latched, and the house was fumigated with the burning branch.  This ensured the gifts of the new year were appreciated appropriately.  The new year’s blessing was brought by the first person to cross the threshold to visit, called “first footing.”  All the lights were put out except for a single candle, and then that first visitor must step outside, protecting the candle from the elements.  At the stroke of twelve, he reenters, is given a mug of eggnog, and sets about relighting all the candles and lanterns of the house, blessing the house with new light.  Often that person also gives a handsel, a gift of coal or whiskey to make the blessings concrete.

Day seven of course everyone sleeps in.  This is the Kalends of the new year, the hopefulness of the new day.  The old year is now officially dead and while we may not immediately see any benefits yet to the new, there is always a reason to be thankful, even if it is our ability to have made it through another year.  In contrast to New Year’s Eve day, nothing is taken out of the house this day—trash, bones, excrement, they are all left inside until the next day, to ensure blessings of the first footing do not escape. 

One of the nostalgic traditions we think of as Christmas in origin is caroling, but this is actually done on the Seventh Day and is referred to as Wassailing.  Wassail is a heated, alcoholic apple cider and is meant to be shared with the trees of the orchard as well as with the visitors who sing.  Robins are the guardians of apple trees and it was them that the wassail was intended to provoke, cake pieces and bread pieces soaked in the wassail being stuck to branches to reward them for their past year of faithful service.  On this bleak day it is beneficent to intone, “The luck of the year, it is the bird-quiet hour, the midday contemplation of the sun.  On this bleak day, when no sun shines, what wraps the birds in silence, what power blankets their song?”  It’s the day of prophesying and divination—weather divination especially, as you can imagine from a people reliant on weather for their well-being, and one saying from Scotland runs, “Wind from the west, fish and bread; wind from the north, cold and flaying; wind from the east, snow on the hills; wind from the south, fruit on trees”—and the first day’s water drawn from the well is considered especially blessed and called the flower of the well. 

The Eighth Day is the day for sitting inside to contemplate and reflect on snow.  It’s imperative that we remain on snow’s good side, since to be in opposition to snow is to be in opposition to winter and that’s simply a waste of energy.  We pay our respects to snow on this day, for its cancelling out the darkness at midwinter and its transformation of even the bleakest spaces into places of wonder and enchantment. 

The Cherokee have a story about the Ninth day, which is devoted to evergreens.  The Druids of course revered the oak and during Kalends yew and juniper play a major role.  In the middle ages there was a well-known play about the Paradise Tree, a descendant of the original Tree of Knowledge, which Adam smuggled out of Eden and planted in the outer world, where it grew to huge proportions and provided the wood for the cross on which Christ was crucified. 

Back to the Cherokee.  When the Great Mystery created all the trees and plants she wanted to give something to all of them.  But she couldn’t decide among them who best deserved it, so she proposed a contest.  Whoever could keep watch for seven days and seven nights would receive the gift.  All the trees were atwitter to be given such an important duty and had no problems remaining awake the first night.  But on the second night they found it hard to stay awake, and the flowers were the first to fall asleep.  By the third night, the birch and grasses were drooped, and by the fourth night the elms were snoring.  On the fifth and sixth nights, the maples and even the oaks had drifted off, until, by the eighth morning only a few—the pine, the cedar, the spruce and fir and holly and laurel—were still awake and watchful.  “What great endurance you have!” cried out the Great Mystery, and so she gave them the gift:  they would remain green forever and keep guard throughout the winter while all the others sleep.  The evergreens, this story says, are always awake.  And always watching. 

            Day Ten is interesting because it is two different days for men and women.  For both it was the day when each had to return to the drudgery of work after the luxurious time off afforded by the festivities of midwinter.  In the case of women who in these preindustrialized times were often employed as weavers and spinners, it was known as St. Distaff‘s Day, while for the men who were also expected to return to work, it was known as Plough Monday.  Whether the day itself fell on a Monday or not wasn’t important, it was simply another Monday in their eyes.  This became the excuse for another day of celebration as mummers, the bemasked players who appeared throughout the year at festivals and feasts, now sped through town blessing the ploughs and spindles.  Today Plough Monday has been given its own day in England, January 8, separate from the twelve holy days, but it’s thought to originate in another ancient Roman celebration, Compitaline.  In this ritual a small shrine was built where four estates met to the four directions, with a miniature plough and wooden doll set on each alter, and then the first earth-breaking of the new year was done on each property. Until now we are living in Liminal Time, the threshold between extraordinary and ordinary events that for pagans began in late October or early November with Samhain. With St. Distaff’s Day we begin a return to normalcy, what Christianity calls Ordinary Time. 

            The Eleventh day of Christmas, January 5, is the Eve of Epiphany and the Festivalof the Three Kings.  This day is given over to the Magi whose journey is often a microcosm of the journey we ourselves make spiritually.  Consider, they were themselves seekers after something and doing what felt right to them to do, going where their inner compass told them to go, and for so many of us, here today in this church, we have traveled so far and so wide only on the basis of our own compasses, be they in our hearts or our heads.  As the Magi found what they sought in the form of a child, may you find what you seek here. 

            This is the day to consider too the gifts that so often become the major focus of these holy days, forgetting as we do that we are ourselves the recipients of a gift.  I quote now from JohnMatthews: 

At a time when the commercial Christmas has a tendency to swamp the sacredness of the season, we ask and are being asked, ‘What do you want this year?’  There are certainly things we would quite like, things that we hope will be brought for us, but these are not the same as our wants.  True wants are not small things satisfied by prettily wrapped parcels:  they are the immense needs of inner space that can be overwhelmed by all our little wants and yearnings.  To consider our real needs—the things we lack in our lives—is often too frightening, opening up an abyss of need that calls our very existence into question.

Our real wants eat holes in us:  never resting, never loving, never greeting, never finding, never seeking, never being satisfied deep down.  These ravenous wants define our treasures…they create a Christmas list that no store could supply:  time to stop and really enjoy, in a space of quietness and contentment all the things we were put on earth to do.

Space to give and receive love reciprocally.  The grace to seek and find our spiritual joy.  Freedom from the tyranny and burden of other’s expectations, of what others think.  Acceptance of ourselves as we truly are.

            This then is the gift afforded us on the twelfth day.  Epiphany.  It means manifestation, making an appearance, and refers theologically to the appearance of Christ to the Three Kings.  But it’s a lot more than that.  In literature James Joyce gave us another meaning in an early draft of what would become Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.  He describes it as a sudden insight, an instant when reality shines through an ordinary object, when “its soul, its whatness, leaps to us from the vestment of its appearance.”  It’s the appearance of what we need.  Perhaps not what we want, because that’s always going to be something good, something we like, and our epiphany is more likely to be something we haven’t considered and don’t want and, god help us, we don’t like.  For me, epiphany is often the realization that the shift from dark to light carries with it a responsibility not to continue hunkering in but, like a bear or a vole, to start the stirring for the reawakening I undergo each spring.  For you it might be a recognition that you’ve had all your needs met and now it’s time to meet them for other people.  For others it may be exactly the opposite:  it’s time to consider yourself a while rather than others.  There’s no one size fits all when it comes to epiphany.  It can come in any number of ways:  in someone’s smile, in the smell of woodsmoke where we thought there were no houses, in the sudden, unexpected taste of a good wine, in the sound of voices where we expected to be alone, in the touch of flesh on flesh that reminds us we are with one another.  These tiny moments bring us out of ourselves and into the wider world. 

            Like anything artistic, epiphany can be ruined by over definition.  Let’s take a minute of silence to reflect on what we have been given. 

 

our children are not our own

On Tuesday night I came home from work to find a message. One of my friends, who is a midwife, had given my name and phone number to her clients who had just delivered a set of twins, one of whom died a few hours after birth. I was being asked to provide a graveside service for him. I met with the couple, organic farmers who live about a half hour to my north, and the following is the order of service and eulogy I wrote and delivered this afternoon. I have done many memorials and funerals but this was the first I've done for a child, let alone a newborn, and my voice caught a few times when I delivered it.

November 15, 2013

Amery, Wisconsin

Welcome/Opening Words

Reading 1: “We Have a Beautiful Mother” by Alice Walker

Reading 2: “A Child Said, What is the Grass?” by Walt Whitman

Silence

Message:

“Your children are not your children.” There is never a time when the words of Khalil Gibran are more true or more cruel than when a child dies. Rabbinic wisdom says it’s in moments like this that people understand how God feels. It’s horrible, it sucks at our soul and gives us reason if we want it not to go on.

            But like God, the universe, and reality, we go on. Eventually the sting of [___] death will feel less and less like our own, and while we aren’t likely to forget it, it will become part of the mosaic of our past that we can look back on and not feel as if our world ended. The bitter taste on our lips, the ashes in our heart, will fade and then there will be laughter on our lips again and delight in our hearts. That’s as it should be. The Ecclesiast says, to everything there is a season. Grief and tears give way in their time to dancing and lovemaking.

            [____] are aware of this. As farmers, they’re aware of the time of year, the quality of the soil, alert to the wind and sunlight, rain and heat. This is how they live. [____] told me that last year was their best year ever, and this was their worst year ever. That’s how it goes, this cycle of day after day after day. There is no guarantee that the next day will be better, just that it will be. You can’t live only in the good days, can’t stay in bed on the bad days, you do what needs doing. And when you’re free gather with your family, warm in the comfort and presence of each other.

            Physicists have calculated that the amount of matter in the universe has remained stable since the moments after the Big Bang. As Walt Whitman wrote, “Everything goes onward and outward, nothing collapses.” It changes. Our children are not our children. We are not our own. We are each other’s. We have our season here and then we are somewhere else. But while we are here we are precious and it is among this precious company that [____] spent his season. Poet Mary Oliver says it best:  “To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.”

            [____], hold one another. Keep each other warm and safe. Grieve how you will as long as you will. Remember [your other children] are shelter for you too. Be gentle together. Know that in this precious company you are safe. You are home.

Reading: “Where the Sidewalk Ends” by Shel Silverstein

Silence

Reflections, Memories, Thoughts

Silence

Reading: “On Children” by Kahlil Gibran

Ending: “I am Goodbye” by Bonnie Prince Billie

Benediction: “Take courage, friends. The way is often hard, the path is never clear, and the stakes are very high. Take courage. For deep down, there is another truth: You are not alone.”

“Our service together has ended. May your individual services continue.”

"everything you did today was important"

this must be what it is to be a religious leader in the 21st century: to be dog tired. I began my day at 8 with driving from the rim into the hub to lead services and preach a new sermon at the uu fellowship where I'm interning. my wife and mother-in-law were guests there today too. it went very well, I think, and I was told by several people that my sermon was dense with information and left people thinking. my topic was feeling fear and acting anyway and last night I blogged a bit about the takeaway I wanted people to get from it.

after service and an hour or so of schmoozing I left for new richmond, which is also on the rim and is where my wife's family lives. one of my nephews has joined the marines and leaves soon for basic training and we had a party to wish him well. all my wife's siblings were there and their families and many of my nephew's friends and we had a good time trying to forget that he is placing himself in the way of harm soon.

then I left there and drove another 45 minutes east to menomonie where the family of friends was holding another get-together to say goodbye to the child they had adopted for a short while. the birth mother, who had initially given up her rights to him, changed her mind about a year ago and halted the procedure. the judge determined that he benefitted from continuing to see his adoptive family until the case was complete, and the decision came down this month that his birth mother will have sole custody. this was a chance for everyone in that extended family to say goodbye to him, and while it's true he's still a tyke less than 3 years old who doesn't speak, it was, like a memorial, more for the people he leaves behind than for him. one of my friends who had been his grandmother wrote a short ceremony in which we all took part, surrounding him as he played in a circle and while she read a list of things he would do without them--learning to use the potty himself, losing teeth, getting a job--we intoned "we will be with you in spirit." it was very affecting. and while I don't "get" the whole child thing, my friends do, and that is enough for me.

I got home after 7, exhausted and in my jammies in minutes. my wife put it all in perspective, however, by saying, "everything you did today was important. not everyone can say that." and I do feel I've done the right things today. yes, it was a good day.

today's service

I work in words. I'm comfortable there since it's been my method for dealing with reality since the drugs wore off. as a preacher I've scripted out nearly every word I've said, even down to side comments and asides.

so I was really taken aback when my computer ate the sermon I'd been working on friday night and the other sermons in the same file.

oh, I ranted and raved, if primarily inwardly. one of the great effects prozac has had on me is to mute much of my ranting and raving and keeping the lightning indoors. but my wife, who was good enough to help me try to recover the lost files, had a headache and the beginning of a sinus infection, and heard a tone in my voice suggesting I blamed her for the loss. that of course was not good or right. even I couldn't see how I could blame her but I apologized anyway since I'd rather be happy than right.

after I calmed I realized I'd been offered a gift. (I'm hesitant to put it that way since a gift implies a giver as well as a recipient, but leave that: being offered a gift sounds like the right wording.) I had the opportunity to create, from whole or nearly whole cloth, a new ceremony. my text had been about el dia de los muertos, the day of the dead, and its significance. I talked about the recent suicides of gay teens and the nasty words of clint mccance and the proximity of the day to yom kippur, all soul's and all saint's days, samhain, halloween, and thanksgiving, and was in the process of tying those spirtitual conversations and forgiveness together. there were observations about the saw and halloween movies and the george romero day of the dead and even a shoutout to tonight's premiere of amc's the walking dead series. it was shaping up nicely and who knows, maybe I'll still find it and resurrect it.

but my opportunity was to do something I've been loathe to do. to speak extemporaneously, from notes or an outline. I teach that way, but I've got the time and the space to do that in a classroom, where a written lecture seems out of place to me (and dull to my class). and for a moment I reflected that maybe such a thing is out of place and dull in church too.

THAT is an overwhelming thought. I haven't dared explore it any further, but I have totted up a series of bulleted doings for a new ceremony for the dead which include music, candles and herbs, constructing a tiny altar, and a guided meditation and room for response. will this work? I haven't a clue.


EL DIA DE LOS MUERTOS RITUAL
Performed at Dakota UU, Burnsville, MN
October 31, 2010

• Music (“L’Autunno” by Vivaldi)
• Light herbs
• Introduction to Dia de los Muertos
o Halloween
o All Saint’s Day
o All Soul’s Day

Samhain

o Yom Kippur
o Thanksgiving
• Introduction to altars
o Rich
o “I have no altars”
• My experiences with Santarians
• Introduction to altar objects
o My mother
o My animals
o Who I was
• Poem (“My November Guest” by Robert Frost)
• Guided meditation
• Responses/Sharing

the introductions and meditation are all intended for extemporaneous speech. I've a rough idea what I'll say for each. the whole thing ought to last 20 minutes and I'll have to watch my clock assiduously since I'm only guessing. one or 2 elements can be dumped at the last moment, and I'm comfortable with that. we'll see how she goes.

love is a rite

I married another couple last night. I'm a sentimentalist when it comes to these things. I'm very proud of the work I do on ceremonies and rituals --weddings, funerals, memorials, child welcomes, coming-of-age rites, community welcomes--and I think a part of the reason I do them well is because I don't feel drawn to the ceremony itself but to the emotion and release people associate with these rites. while I don't cry at weddings, for instance, I love to watch other people, especially the bride or groom, do so, and cater my message and performance to elicit that as honestly as possible. below is the homily I wrote for this most recent ritual and I won't pretend to false modesty--I share it because I think it's a good one.


"The Good Grey Poet, Walt Whitman, has come down to us as a poet of many topics, of self-identity and community, companionship and optimism, equality and even bereavement. But Jon and Sara have, by their inclusion of him, given me a new understanding of Walt’s topicality: as a poet of adventure. Of tenderness. Of marriage.

"We don’t choose our children or our parents. But we do choose our companions. We choose our partner. We choose one another. Jon and Sara, today you look one another in the eye and say, “I love you and I want to be with you, and I want to share my life with you. The good, the bad, the swiftly-moving giddy days when I’m happy just to be with you and the long, never-ending nights when it seems I will never like you again. I want to share my greatest, my least, with you, because only with you do I feel complete.”

"We have to take a lot of “what ifs” in hand when making our choice. “What if I’m not as likeable as I think I am?” “What if she’s not as willing to make concessions as I am?” “What if he just thinks he loves me?” Here is another “what if” most of us never even consider: What if the other person is unwilling to move as often as I’ll need to? What if she or he simply isn’t willing to pack up and go as the opportunity arises? Earlier, Sara’s sister Megan read an excerpt from Walt Whitman’s long poem “Song of the Open Road.” Elsewhere, what he writes sounds almost like a prophecy:

"Listen! I will be honest with you;
I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes;
These are the days that must happen to you:

"You shall not heap up what is call’d riches,
You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve,
You but arrive at the city to which you were destin’d—you hardly settle yourself to satisfaction, before you are call’d by an irresistible call to depart,
You shall be treated to the ironical smiles and mockings of those who remain behind you;
What beckonings of love you receive, you shall only answer with passionate kisses of parting,
You shall not allow the hold of those who spread their reach’d hands toward you.

"The solution is compatibility. Jon and Sara, a fear you shared, maybe even a fear you were certain of, was that you would be unhappy all your lives because the person you settled down with wouldn’t have your passion for different cultures and lands, your love for education and your need for it. You were each afraid that what you wanted in your life was yours alone, that there was no one you could love who could share that. You feared, in Walt’s words,

"'The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine.'

"What you feared was the unspoken assumption that they were yours alone. Your focus would remain on the “me,” “I,” “my” alone, so you would end up

"'Scatter[ing] myself among men and women as I go;'

"Fear is a funny thing. It keeps us from doing things—like dating the friend we feel attracted to because to do so would seem unprofessional—and it forces us to do things—like opening ourselves to that friend because the thought of being alone is unbearable. Remember this in the days ahead as you live in the space of a walk-in closet getting in one another’s way. Remember this is the person you love, the person who shares the way the world excites you and wants to be with you as you explore it. “We will sail pathless and wild seas” you promise one another today, and sometimes those seas will be the distance between the two of you. Be as unafraid of crossing those intimate borders as you are of crossing national ones.

"It is traditional that the officient of a marriage service charges the newly married couple with some office, some task they are to keep in the back of their minds to help their marriage succeed. But I can’t improve on Walt’s charge:

"'Here is the test of wisdom;
Wisdom is not finally tested in schools;
Wisdom cannot be pass’d from one having it, to another not having it;
Wisdom is of the Soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof,
Applies to all stages and objects and qualities, and is content…'

"Sara and Jon, your wisdom has come from schools but is not bound by their limits; has been shared with one another but is made greater than the sum of the two of you. The only proof your wisdom requires is that you remember to love, honor, share and be patient with each other. If there is only one certainty, it is that we’re alone in our lives until we accept another person as our companion. Your road will not be smooth or always clear but it will always be the one you travel together."