No typo in title. I read the most amazing story of dolphins and have been haunted by what they teach about presence and location.   This from Richard Rohr’s meditation Saturday: “The Indus and Ganges river dolphins live in sound. They make sound constantly, echolocating day and night. In a quickly moving environment they ask where, again where, again where.” Alexis Pauline Gumbs They see with sound. I understand something new about communication and care. Presence then means something about attunement to space and time which may not be  what we expect about physical and chronos. What can I learn from the dolphins? It seems to signal a kind of emotional intelligence which we might cultivate learning to “read” the space, or the room. Where people are may have very little to do with physical appearance or actual GPS location. Where people are may require our presence, our showing up, in the fullest way possible and to listen, truly deeply listen.

  I give thanks this morning for baptism. For the reminder and remainder of the echo of belovedness. While it has been too long since I have witnessed or celebrated a baptism, there are other signs and other memories which bring me to water, to covenant and to relationship with Love. May these hold us in the wilderness, hold us in compassion for self and each other. May we know we and thee are beloved, beloved, beloved. May that be the echo in the wilderness. Beloved Is Where We Begin If you would enter into the wilderness, do not begin without a blessing. Do not leave without hearing who you are: Beloved, named by the One who has traveled this path before you. Do not go without letting it echo in your ears, and if you find it is hard to let it into your heart, do not despair. That is what this journey is for. I cannot promise this blessing will free you from danger, from fear, from hunger or thirst, from the scorching of sun or the fall of the night. But I can tell you that on this pa

  Blessed be God who animates our lives and calls us to a Holy Lent. May we so humble ourselves. AMEN We must be empty before we can be filled with the Holy Spirit. The dark night of the soul is a gift. The wilderness is a crucible of opportunity. Those are some of the common lines which theologians use to ground and contextualize Lent, to offer meaning and motivation for entering this 40 day penitential season.  The problem this year is that we entered the wilderness sometime in Lent 2020 and don’t seem to have emerged. Pandemics of viral and social and racial and political nature have been like the demons plaguing our isolation, our casting into the unknowable, the darknesses which simply pervade our days. Simple lines of reassurance of this season may ring hollow this year, or at least require some amplification and context. Here we are on Ash Wednesday almost one year later and while I can point to some glimmerings and shimmerings along the way to sustain our Lenten journey, like E

  Yesterday I wrote about the I-Thou relationship which Martin Buber espouses. Today I follow up with a quote from the great African American mystic and theologian Howard Thurman and hopefully connect the two. “The first step toward love is a common sharing of a sense of mutual worth and value. This cannot be discovered in a vacuum or in a series of artificial or hypothetical relationships.” (Jesus and the Disinherited) I believe that both are speaking to authenticity, connectedness and commonality or community. I also believe that both are distinguishing right relationship or righteousness from self-righteousness and discrimination. Thurman goes on to make two points about mutual worth and value shared. He says that true common worship is intended to honor such mutuality and bring it forth. He also says that Jesus demonstrated this right relationship by coming alongside the poor, the disinherited, the weak.  Unfortunately, Thurman also points out that religion has been used to segrega

  “The primary word I–Thou can only be spoken with the whole being. The primary word I–It can never be spoken with the whole being.” Martin Buber Along with the famous quote by Martin Buber, which is really an entire philosophy, is what some theologians say about God: God is always More. More than we can fathom, measure, express. More in order to inspire wonder and awe. More in order to redeem and reconcile all things, all. Yesterday was Valentine’s Day and I found myself reflecting on the gap between objectifying love in cards and symbols and honoring love with reverence. I think it is in the orientation and the Presence. By that I mean that a card alone is nice but remains an “it” until some intentional presence accompanies. Then it really doesn’t matter what the ‘it’ is; what matters is the kindness. God is in that space or let’s call it the Divine. And it is not just about Valentine’s Day! When we give cards, flowers, candy it becomes more of a sacred “thou” by virtue of the care a

  Silently and serenely one forgets all words; Clearly and vividly That appears… When one realizes it, it is vast and without limit; It is Essence, it is pure awareness. Singularly reflecting in this bright awareness, Full of wonder in this pure reflection… Infinite wonder permeates this serenity; In this Illumination all intentional efforts vanish. Silence is the final word. Reflection is the response to all [manifestation]. Devoid of any effort, This response is natural and spontaneous… The Truth of silent illumination Is perfect and complete. –Chan Master Hung Chih

  I have written about kairos, God’s time, and crucibles, intense chambers where heat and tension forge something new, but re-exploring the presentation of Christ in the temple and praying Simeon’s nunc dimitis, now I depart, offered a deepening of the relationship between these two words and a renewed hope. Kairotic Crucibles! Sometimes there are moments, like Simeon and Anna experienced in the temple with the Christ child, when we are rewarded, if we show up and remain, with a revelation of the Mystery. Sometimes if we lean into the crucible’s discomfort and intensity and realize the true meaning of kairos, opportunity, we glimpse a new dimension of God’s love and power. In that glimpse we realize that we too have that love, we too have the power and possibility of compassion.  Nunc Dimitis Lord you now have set your servant free To go in peace as you have promised For these eyes of mine have seen the Saviour  Whom You have prepared for all the world to see, A Light to enlighten the

  In extraordinary fashion we have been cast into a caldron of the ordinary. And so as we live day in and day out in ways which we never before thought possible or desirable, we ponder things like meaning and measure time. What if the ordinary is the extraordinary? What if the mundane contains sprinklings of the heavenly?   Yesterday in the church marked the presentation of Jesus in the Temple, an expected and ritualistic fulfillment of the routine laws of Judaism. Yet there was nothing ordinary about it! With open heart and contemplative mind, Simeon and Anna “recognized” the Christ in a typical baby! New sacred illumination flooded the sanctuary and the ordinary, the expected, the earthly, was understood as sacred and profound. This all came about through the act of blessing upon recognition of divine substance.  Re-cognize, new cognition, new ways of seeing and believing, come from these simple moments when blessing is offered to ordinary aspects of our lives and we invite the Holy

  I have been facilitating a Bible Study on developing pastoral and prophetic lenses in these difficult times. Developing lenses to care for others and to speak truth to power is holy work. The words of the hymn below, which had not been as familiar to me as I might have wished, leapt off the page in Sunday’s worship. I have been praying them since and offer them to you as not only a comprehensive litany of pastoral responsibilities but as a litany of compassion and mercy, beatitudes really. In today’s world we constantly renew our intercessions for healing and seek the strength and courage to love our neighbors. May the salvation history which this hymn honors be living and burning in our hearts today. Thine arms, O Lord, in days of old Were strong to heal and save; They triumphed o'er disease and death, O'er darkness and the grave. To you they went, the blind, the deaf, The palsied, and the lame, The leper set apart and shunned, The sick and those in shame. And then your touc

  One of the things for which I am profoundly grateful is the joy which radiated from my mother in her last years and in her last hours. To speak of joy as someone dies in the ICU with struggling breath and beeping wires might seem at best dissonant and at worst irreverent; yet I think it is theological irony. I believe, perhaps because I need to, that God calls us to a perfect joy in perfect love and freedom and to experience or glimpse that at a loved one’s death is simply grace and blessing. None of this wipes out or even diminishes the pain of grief; it is excruciating! But it does lay that exquisite grace alongside or at the crevices. I gave my mother a copy of the Book of Joy a few years ago and I was thrilled that she “enjoyed” it. It not only gave us something more to share and discuss but also provided a wisdom space into which she was leaning. Early in the book Bishop Tutu describes a discipline which he tries to employ, namely upon feeling anger, trying to remember there is