Manifest Obama

This video was made at the Asheville Obama Rally I attended recently. Notice the joy in people's faces while waiting for hours in line. This is how the whole day felt. Joyous, hopeful, peaceful. The singer is a local musician -- Billy Jonas -- who is a wonderful, crazy guy. Very mellow in this, though.

Go Asheville! Go Barack! I'm glad the debates are over. Early voting starts today. Be the change, people, be the change!

Opening to Grace -- an ad

I don't think I've ever used this space for an ad before, but I'm going to make an exception.  There is an amazing woman by the name of Tilda Norberg who lives on Staten Island, where she practices and teaches Gestalt Pastoral Care.   Throughout the year she does weekend retreats called "Opening to Grace" near Dingman's Ferry, PA, at her funky little retreat space.   This fall the dates for her weekends are:  Sept. 25-27, Oct. 16-18, and Dec. 4-6.  Each retreat is limited to 6 participants, plus some helpers, and costs $300, which includes room and board.  Gestalt pastoral care is a combination of Gestalt growth work, healing prayer and spiritual companioning.  It's hard to describe.  You kind of have to experience it.  

I studied with Tilda for two years at her home/school on Staten Island.  It was one of the most important experiences of my life.  Given that my life has been a bit of a mess ever since, I realize I'm not the best walking advertisement.   (But then again, I'm not sure this mess isn't partly a result of shaking up my comfortable little world.   Sometimes healing isn't pretty.)

If this sounds even vaguely interesting to you, go to the website and read up on it.  Or give Tilda a call and have a chat.  I highly recommend her and this work.   But maybe you shouldn't go if you like your life exactly the way it is.   I'm just saying ...  

Hafiz -- a poem

Don't surrender your loneliness

So quickly. 

Let it cut more deep.

Let it ferment and season you

As few human

Or even divine ingredients can.

Something missing in my heart tonight

Has made my eyes so soft, 

My voice

So tender,

My need of God

Absolutely

Clear. 

St. Patrick's Prayer

I bind unto myself today
the strong name of the Trinity,
by invocation of the same,
the Three in One, and One in Three.

I bind this day to me forever,
by power of faith, Christ's incarnation;
his baptism in the Jordan river;
his death on the cross for my salvation.
His bursting from the spiced tomb;
his riding up the heavenly way;
his coming at the day of doom
I bind unto myself today.

I bind unto myself today
the virtues of the star-lit heaven,
the glorious sun's life-giving ray,
the whiteness of the moon at even,
the flashing of the lightning free,
the whirling wind's tempestuous shocks,
the stable earth, the deep salt sea
around the old eternal rocks.

I bind unto myself today
the power of God to hold and lead,
God's eye to watch, God's might to stay,
God's ear to hearken to my need,
the wisdom of my God to teach,
God's hand to guide, God's shield to ward,
the word of God to give me speech,
God's heavenly host to be my guard.

Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me,
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

I bind unto myself the name,
the strong name of the Trinity,
by invocation of the same,
the Three in One, the One in Three,
of whom all nature has creation,
eternal Father, Spirit, Word.
Praise to the Lord of my salvation,
salvation is of Christ the Lord. Amen.

(With thanks to my friend, Roy).

Sunday thoughts

OK, I'll take on the first two of my threatened blogging topics, since you commenters were so kind and encouraging.

1. I'm supporting Obama. Clinton has not been in my top three of the various Democratic possibilities at any point in the primary race. But, I have to say that I have grown more and more uncomfortable with the sexism leveled against her in this race. Not by Obama, but by pretty much everyone else. I won't detail it, as that has been done well elsewhere, but it does disturb me to the core. The truth is, while I don't support her for many reasons, her support of the Iraq war chief among them, I nonetheless find her brilliant, talented, articulate, savvy, strong and a formidable politician. Denounce her votes, if you must, stake your claim for other candidates, if you wish, but don't whine about her being bitchy or strident or over-emotional or under-emotional or a bad wife for staying with Bill or a good wife for staying with Bill or even (and I'm guilty of this one) too political. Like anybody who could win the presidential election is NOT too political?

Yesterday on "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me," Peter Sagal was doing his usual job of skewering her when Paula Poundstone, God love her, stopped him in his tracks with her snappy insistence that maybe we should just let the voters decide and shut up about it.

2. Home-(Sunday)schooling the boy. When my son was a baby/toddler he alternated between the nurseries at the Quaker meeting his dad attended and the Presbyterian church I served as pastor. When he was two, we moved for his dad's graduate school and ended up worshiping at an Episcopal church in the outback of New Jersey. Wonderful church. Then we moved for me to take a call and for three years (ages 3-6) he was active in the church where I served. He liked that church. This is the church where I burned out. Before I left the church, his dad had returned to worshipping among the Quakers and for the last two years we were in Maryland, the boy went with him. He liked that church too. So, three good church experiences within his memory: Episcopal, Presbyterian, Quaker.

Then we moved. And our lives imploded. We worshipped together for a while at a local creation-spirituality based non-denominational church. A wild and interesting place, but as the separation became a more certain reality, I went in search of my own church community. I landed quickly in a small ecumenical congregation made up of mostly renegade Baptists. Soon after, my son began coming with me and joined the Sunday school. He never liked it. At all.

Late this past fall, as we entered the holiday season, he became very sad. There were school problems -- icky teacher, class bullies -- and the reality of going through the holidays for the first time since his parents split. He constantly complained of feeling sick. We consulted a child therapist and his primary doc, ran blood tests to rule out physical illness and basically just did our best as parents to hold him through what was just a really sucky time in his life. We tried to give him space and encouragement to grieve and express his feelings and figure out some healthy coping mechanisms. But it was a hard time for all of us.

As a long-term, upbeat substitute came into his class and we made it into the new year and he reconnected with some of his best friends, things were looking up. Except when it came to church. He still hated it. He said he wanted to go back to the church where we had gone last year as a family, so we did. But he didn't like it as much as he remembered. (I think he just like that when we went there, we were still a family). I continued to talk to him about church and why it is important to me and that the fact that he didn't like it wasn't going to change the fact that we were going to attend somewhere regularly, so what might we do to make it more bearable?

Well, as he lived with this reality for a few weeks, he became more articulate about what was bothering him. And it was the other kids in Sunday School. He felt so left out and rejected that it was making him, literally, physically ill Sunday after Sunday. When I started really paying attention to this and seeing that he wasn't making it up (though he did have a role to play in the outsider status), it broke my heart.

So, I began to think about what it was I really want him to know about God and church and faith. I'm a firm believer in the need for community in our walk of faith. I want him to know the Scriptures. Even more, I want him to know the God found there. I want him to know about Jesus. I want him to learn how to pray. I want him to have other adults around him besides me and his dad who are intentional about their spiritual and ethical lives.

In my ideal world, he would learn this among peers at Sunday school as well as in inter-generational worship. But this isn't an ideal world. This is a world where my kid has been through hell recently. And not just recently. His ability to function well among peers is a hard-won case, complicated by his place on the autism spectrum. And the truth is, the church we attend is very cliquey. So much so that I almost left a few months ago. Except, where would I go? It's not like I have any fantasies about an ideal church made of ideal human beings. And there were others, like me, on the margins of the clique, whom I dearly loved.

So, we have come to a compromise. We will worship somewhere together every week. Most weeks, it will be at this same little church. Today it was at Quaker meeting. (And he liked it.) But I will not subject him to the rejection and sadness he has experienced among his peers at Sunday School, just so I can say I take my kid to Christian Ed. I am perfectly capable of teaching him the Bible lessons he would learn there and he is having a hard enough time among peers at school this year without having to do that again on Sunday. I want his affiliations with the Bible to be positive -- not based in a place where he felt physically ill.

So I am now officially home-schooling my child in Christian Ed. And maybe I'll take him Kirtan chanting or Sufi dancing one of these Sundays, too.

December Diary, cont.

I'm asking for prayers ... again! My son has been very, very sad this week. I need to hire a new office manager over the holidays because the volunteer who was going to cover January-February got a new job (found out late Tuesday). I need to take my parents to see my dying uncle who just went into hospice. I've got a lousy cold.

And my dog had a stroke this morning.