Being a Chaplain in a Psychiatric Hospital and not a parish pastor has led me to develop a bit of a niche adapting to the Spiritual But Not Religious seekers. With Thanksgiving just past and Christmas on the horizon, I was asked to develop a seasonal practice for a mother to share with her daughter to focus in gratitude and compassion.

Below, I’ve outlined a two part practice that based on an adaptation of Loving-Kindness Mediation combined with a focus on service and justice for them to share in the weeks leading up to Christmas.  

Part I. Nightly Loving-Kindness Meditation—I know this looks long on paper and can seem long at first but with regular practice it’s about 10 minutes. You can play Native American flute music or some other background music—youtube is full of music for meditation, find one you two like. You can also use chants, Christmas music…. Light a candle, have a little pine bough and flower in a vase, invite the dog…. Whatever makes it a Sacred and special time for you both.

              

Lead her in this guided breath meditation:

                                Have her focus on her breath…. In-out-in-out. Relax…. Relax… Relax…. Have her picture in her mind’s eye a person, pet, place or activity where she feels safe and compassionately held. Focus on your breath in this place of safety and compassion…. And,….. relax……

                Now wish for yourself, or pray for yourself: May I be safe, may I be well, may I be happy, may I be peaceful.

                Focusing on your breath….. and…. Relax…..

May I be safe; safe in my own mind, safe in my own heart, safe in my own body, safe in my own life. May I be safe……

                                                (pause)

Now wish for yourself, or pray for yourself: May I be well; may I be in healthy relationship with myself; free from suffering and anxiety, free from grief and fear, free from loneliness and pain. May I be well in my relationship with myself. May I be well.

                                                (pause)

                Now wish for yourself, or pray for yourself: May I be happy; may I know the happiness that is my birthright, the happiness that comes from living deeply from the most authentic part of my being. May I be happy.

                                                (pause)

                Now wish for yourself, or pray for yourself: May I know the peace that passes all human understanding; the peace that lies in the deepest and most silent recesses of my soul, that deep secret place where the Divine dwells.  May I know peace.

                

This pattern is then repeated calling to mind her family, loved ones, good friends (pets can be included too).

                Then the pattern is repeated for all those struggling and suffering in the world. You can name specific groups, like children living at Home of the Sparrow or PADS, children living in violence in the Westside of Chicago or among refugee families.

Part II. Called to Serve With Compassion and Gratitude.

                Find a focus for each week before Christmas (this time in the Church is called Advent, a season of spiritual preparation for the birth of Jesus)— children living at Home of the Sparrow or PADS, children living in violence in the Westside of Chicago or among refugee families. You will tie this into the loving-kindness meditation above. Just to get your started check out: http://www.rlcw.org/ Look up their “Ministries” tab. http://www.diaperbankni.org/events.aspx or, Woodstock Bible Church Food Bank and Soup Kitchen, http://www.woodstockbiblechurch.com/

               

  Hope this is what you had in mind. Hope you and all those you love are happy and well.

Take good care,

Advent from the Underside: Symbols of Compassion

A rosary ? Why, yes. Despite my deep Protestant roots, literally centuries deep, decades of chaplain training have made certain I always have a few in the glove box in the car. 

 What exactly does a Menorah look like? Let me google it on my phone and we can look at a picture together.... Half an hour or so and several sheets of construction paper later- an almost perfect representation if the Wikipedia pic. 

The hope of divine compassion real in human life. Light overcoming darkness. The comfort of familiar ritual- centuries proved. Human suffering knows no bounds, cares not for doctrine or belief. It seeks only the blessing of relief, the strength beyond strength of hope amid overwhelming grief, suffering and unrelenting pain. 

At a shelter for the homeless, unmedicated mentally ill: Advent from the underside. Come Emmanuel, come soon.  

Sounds from the Deep Silence

This antique singing bowl from Tibet was an Ordination gift. One that brings great grace to my ministry with persons with serious menatal illness. When I was a little girl, a part of the baptismal liturgy used these words to consecrate the water used in the Sacrament, “Almighty God, please set apart this water from a common to a holy use such that by your good grace….”

Yesterday, in our group therapy room gathered broken hearts and minds, seeking healing’s grace.  There I played the tone and healing vibration of your beautiful bowl.  Struck once, twice, three times; the last fading slowly into the deep silence that existed before the creation of the world. With it our space and our hearts and minds were set apart from our common to God’s holy use. Words of strength, words of life and the triumphing of human hearts and minds over the forces of grief, despair and death were slowly, tenderly and tentatively shared.    Struck once, twice, three times; the last fading slowly into the deep silence that existed before the creation of the world, our space, our time, our hearts and minds called back into our common uses, renewed and healed  to  some new and holy purposes…  listening, longing for the fading, lingering tone that echoes in the deep and holy silence of the Still Small Voice that whispers to us all. Thanks be to God.  Amen.

 

The reign of the Kingdom of God is most often most powerfully proclaimed by those who are least aware of it. Jesus knew that so when he, “sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a few cents.

Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on” (Mark 12:41-44).

And when I was sitting in my group room earlier today a widow told this story: “I used to frequent this little food pantry once a week. Somehow they had so much bread, much more than they could give away before it would mold. They would give it to me and I’d drive it around and donate it to other food pantries. I only quit when my car  broke and I couldn’t afford to get if fixed. I miss that and I wonder if someone else started  driving the bread.”

 

Here is what I learned today:  Church matters. It matters, I think, enough or even more to the folks who are not in the pews than it does to us pew sitters.  What should matter for  us churchy folk is  the mirror of cultural perception. All those Spiritual But Not Religious, Lapsed Whatevers,  Grew Up In A Tradition But Quit Goings, still care about what we believe, what we say about the Bible and their lives. They are sitting home and watching the Discovery Chanel, the National Geographic Chanel, the History Chanel and they are filtering what they are hearing through the lens of whatever they remember from as much Sunday School as they got. They are filtering it through the who they year the Christian church is on the news and they believe what they are told, at the same level of faith development that they had when they were 6 or 7 or 12 years old.

All these things do not make sense to them and how they have experienced life and who they are and who they fear they are…. So they are not in our churches. They look to google and drink, sex and sports and drugs and whatever else they  can find to distract or numb or forget or avoid.

I learned this because something deep inside me, the Holy Spirit me thinks, got me responding to a question in my morning group with a brief overview of how the cannon was developed —they had no idea that there was an oral tradition and that the Bible as we came together as the result of men sitting around deciding what parts of the tradition to include and exclude— and the realities of “Biblical Authority” –they’d never considered that folks who claim it to support their position have picked over and left out all kinds of Biblical injunctions that they’ve decided no longer have hold over their lives.

And because there were gay folk in the room, I gave a brief overview of how the Bible once was used in this country to unreflectively enforce slavery and to subjugate women (issues I am aware upon which we still need to work). I told them briefly about the overwhelming medical evidence supporting the truth that same gender sexual orientation is as natural as heterosexual orientation.

To my amazement, the folks in the group were on the edge of their seats. They were finding the words of grace for which they’d been longing. Even the souls, who, by the everyday beliefs and practices and configurations we live in most of our churches, we’d consider the most reprobate, couldn’t get enough of this unexpected grace.  “I like what you’re selling,” is a compliment from a reformed gangbanger with several stints as guest of the state, especially one committed to trying to turn his life around.

These folks who are not in our pews need to be, not for us so we don’t die. Are we not to follow Christ’s command to be proclaiming the salvation of humankind? And isn’t the salvation of God’s compassionate live for their very lives, exactly what they are looking for.  

It matters then for more than just us churchy folk, what we say we believe and how we live what we believe and how we treat one another and the least among us.  Was not the marker of the earliest followers the proclamation from those who were not among their numbers, “See how they live one another?” And, do we not love Jesus loving our neighbors, especially those who are the least? In these we exhibit the Kingdom of heaven to the world.  

 

 

 

Day 13

 

Justice

Safety. Compassion. Outward and visible. Finding some order suffering's chaos.



Day 12.

Hope

The number of inpt behavior health beds declining. People literally wait for days for a bed. Pts are hoping to have their names added to this list.

I know this much is true: In my group room can be a Muslim, a transsexual, an atheist lesbian, two folks who would self-identify as “born again,” a Roman Catholic or two (practicing and/or ‘recovering’), a couple of folks who know nothing whatsoever about religion and are on the fence about the fact that my groups are mandatory. I can count on one hand all the times I’ve ever had to moderate any kind of religious argument or negative judgment. I can state with as much certainty as I can about anything in life this truth: at the core of our human experience is our common plight of suffering and that the thing that unites is our shared search for meaning and necessary reliance on one another as we seek to transcend, to heal.


Compassion, understanding comes from understanding, on our most deeply human level , that we are all in this together and that we desperately, yes, desperately in a very deep existential sense, need each other to survive. Most of us have to wait until we are mired in overwhelming life crises and deep suffering to understand this deep eternal truth. I get to sit witness to its grace everyday and to the miracle of the human and divine spirit at work in the courage of faith’s redemption and human transformation.



   



There is a great danger lurking about—the combination of isolation and easy access to information. Combined, they seem to be undergirding a pernicious despair that seems rampant among folks I see. We seem to be moving farther and farther away from truly connecting with one another min deeply meaningful and, ultimately, healthy ways, despite our ongoing anxious anticipation of the number of Notifications or Inbox pm’s on our Face Book Home pages and our eager attunement to the incoming text ringtone from our smart phones. Not an observation new to me, but combine that with easy internet access to a universe of world religious beliefs and philosophies from most ancient to post-postmodern, and, to my observation across several years of facilitating spirituality group in both in and out patient behavioral health settings, we have a unique opportunity for deep and pernicious despair becoming well integrated deeply in the psyches of already hurting, grieving, traumatized people.


Obviously, anyone can believe anything they want but, it pains me deeply and challenges me as both a pastor and a clinician to hear over and over again things like this gross oversimplification: “I believe in Karma. I was Ivan the Terrible in a previous life.” Using this as a rational and well reasoned explanation for ones many sufferings and misdeeds in this life; all the while, negating any belief in potential for enlightenment within oneself or life. No dharma, no Buddha nature. Despair. No potential to transcend ones pain.

Or this: “I read my bible, I always have. It’s given me great comfort over the years. I just simply ran out of faith;” from someone who has not ever attended church and who has clung to their bible through decades of an abusive home life.

We are designed from community, for deep and meaningful connection. Both emerging (and some established) science and the historic faiths and philosophies tell us that. We are meaning making creatures in deep need and longing for our sister and brother meaning makers. With them we can find new hop and new meaning for our daily living.

They hold the other half or The Story, they hold the other half our story. St Paul said it, “…faith, hope and love.” Love is the greatest. We cannot love ourselves or anyone else deeply all alone.

We cannot end our suffering sitting alone under a tree, even a very lovely tree. Buddha only attained enlightenment under the Bodhi tree after seeing great the suffering of others in the world and realizing that he too would one day suffer. After enlightenment he waded back out to into the suffering of others.

The Desert Mothers and Fathers of the early Christian tradition, lived and meditated alone, except for the time they spent in relationship with the monastic community of which they were a part.

We cannot heal from whatever ails us without deep meaningful connection to the faith, hope and love of those who hold and embody the other side of our rational and well reasoned explanations. Amen.

Advent from the Underside: The D Antiphon

¿Dónde está el Rey de los judíos que ha nacido? Porque vimos su estrella en el oriente y hemos venido a adorarle. (Mateo 2:2)

¿Dónde. Está. el Rey. de los. judíos. We are using an interlinear Spanish/English, Nueva Testament/New Testament provided by the Gideons.  

My patient teacher makes me pronounce each word over and over until my pronunciation is correct enough.

¿Dónde. Está. el Rey. de los. judíos. / ¿Dónde. Está. el Rey. de los. judíos. / ¿Dónde. Está. el Rey. de los. judíos. / ¿Dónde. Está. el Rey. de los. judíos. Porque vimos su estrella en el oriente y hemos venido a adorarle.

The D Antiphon?

Around us, there is lunch and improvising decorations, incredible grace and kindness.

¿Dónde. Está. el Rey. de los. judíos.

I am grateful to see the old man in his grey maxi-skirt and dirty kicks. He taught High School mathematics for years before he lost the struggle to quiet the voices in his head with booze and when that stopped working, weed and stronger things. He somehow successfully dodged the draft and outwitted those sent to arrest him by coming north but President Carter’s pardon did not extend to schizophrenia. He is reading the New York Times and eating chocolate cake.

¿Dónde. Está. el Rey. de los. judíos.

Table decorations are being made from a discarded gift bag and silver and red garland from the pre-Christmas sale bin at Walgreens. They will stay in the kitchen, I am told because the weekend office worker spent her entire shift last Sunday hand making ornaments for the little artificial tree in the living room. It would be wrong to detract from her gracious gift by adding to it.

¿Dónde. Está. el Rey. de los. judíos.

 On the ground floor are five parents, four mothers and a father with young children. They travel from church to church every night so that they do not have to sleep outside. During the day, they can stay here. A board, slouch postured young teen watches something on the TV I don’t quite understand. There are no beds or couches. A preschooler girl sleeps hard on the tile floor wrapped in an old comforter, another in a long discarded stroller. There is a beautiful boy, about a second grader, with long wild curly hair telling his father numbers from a book. The women, I’ve been told, have been asking for blankets for the children.

¿Dónde. Está. el Rey. de los. judíos.

When the Spanish lesson and our kitchen decorations are done, I retrieve the bag of blankets I have in the car.

Porque vimos su estrella en el oriente y hemos venido a adorarle.

Amen.

Advent from the Underside: Saturday before the 3rd Sunday in Advent

“Sin pan.” “El ruido.” My patient teacher, who does not do art, articulates carefully and slowly. I write in Spanish and in English in blue paint upon the news print sheet employed to make clean up go faster. And upon careful questioning, he tells of his child’s long desert journey with his father and the coyote towards the promise of a better life.  

German constriction paper Christmas Bells remembered from a 5^th grade teacher. The grateful story of a  6^th grade teacher who could see the considerable gifts of intellect and empathy in the shy, quiet girl; the same teacher who struggled to maintain order with the active, talkative boys. Hot dogs and diet coke along the third baseline at Wrigley.

A mixed-media Santa with a white glitter nose and matching left thumb sliding down a pink and purple crayon chimney carrying in his acrylic paint sack a purple teddy bear.

“Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem! The Lord has taken away the judgments against you, he has turned away your enemies. The king of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst; you shall fear disaster no more. On that day it shall be said to Jerusalem: Do not fear, O Zion; do not let your hands grow weak. The Lord, your God, is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory; he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing as on a day of festival. I will remove disaster from you, so that you will not bear reproach for it. I will deal with all your oppressors at that time. And I will save the lame and gather the outcast, and I will change their shame into praise and renown in all the earth. At that time I will bring you home, at the time when I gather you; for I will make you renowned and praised among all the peoples of the earth, when I restore your fortunes before your eyes, says the Lord.” (Zephaniah 3:14-20)

Advent fragments gathered the Saturday before the 3^rd Sunday in Advent:   Advent from the Underside. 

Advent from the Underside 1

A rosary ? Why, yes. Despite my deep Protestant roots, literally centuries deep, decades of chaplain training have made certain I always have a few in the glove box in the car. 

What exactly does a Menorah look like? Let me google it on my phone and we can look at a picture together.... Half an hour or so and several sheets of construction paper later- an almost perfect representation if the Wikipedia pic. 

The hope of divine compassion real in human life. Light overcoming darkness. The comfort of familiar ritual- centuries proved. Human suffering knows no bounds, cares not for doctrine or belief. It seeks only the blessing of relief, the strength beyond strength of hope amid overwhelming grief, suffering and unrelenting pain. 

At a shelter for the homeless, unmedicated mentally ill: Advent from the underside. Come Emmanuel, come soon.

Bring People Back To Church

I've known this truth a long time, however this week it seems to be all I've done: the church is not losing people because it does not have rock bands, visibly tattooed preachers, Disney-esque youth pavilions. It is not failing to attract people because it has strayed from orthodoxy or because every sermon is not focused on our dependence on substitutionary atonement. 

I can tell you from

 my group room that the church is failing to attract the very people it is called into being to serve because it is not meeting them at the point of their greatest need. Honestly, the road to Emmaus is a true story, one that is not contained in the Gospel of Luke, but one that is lived out every day, a thousand/million times. I think that when we in the church can open ourselves to the real grace of our risen Lord, alive and well, touching our deepest needs, deepest pains and fears, sufferings and despair then we can live a church which will do the same for God’s hurting, suffering, longing people.

Image to the right is "Dinner at Emmaus," Mondrian.

Jesus is Out of The Church

Here is what I learned today: 

The old Haitian woman is brown, and bent and slight as her walking stick. I was so glad to see her. I had worried in all this heat. In the past, she has told me that she has many years since made peace with the voices in her head and her need for Jesus. With Jesus, she told me, she has a happy life off her meds which often seemed to make things worse. It was not always thus; a jagged life she is glad she is long past.

She came to join us today carrying a bouquet of wild flowers, all green and yellow and sienna and orange. They were beautiful. Finding no vase, she took a can out of the recycling and left them for everyone to enjoy.

She told me, through long missing teeth, to go to the local village fest. It features the music from many cultures, it is important for all of us to try to increase our understanding of other people if we are going to live well with one another. I must go too because they have a gospel tent. They are bringing Jesus to the people.

Jesus, she says, is locked up these days in the churches. It wasn’t always thus. She tells me of  her childhood in a poor mountain town where the RC church was so far away that they could only go twice a year. The Pentecostals were out among all the small villages. All the Catholic parents would send their children to the Pentecostal bible school and worship services held in tents so they could learn about Jesus. All carried strict instructions no to go down to the Alter Call. Many did, though, and later brought their parents.

The people need Jesus today, she tells, me. He needs to be brought out of the churches and back to the poor, hurting, struggling people.