The Church of Second Chances and Free Will

Thus was named the community created by the cathedral's Youth Affirmation class this year. Over the course of their year together the sixth graders each Pentecost unveil their vision of the church.

None of this is easy and none of this is quick, but it is good and it is real.

I've just returned home after the second brief encounter with an old friend in as many weeks. I'm happy to say that it seems he has had such an experience. it had been a long time since I'd seen him. When we had last spent much time together it was under very different circumstances. I'd known him from my days of drinking and nightclubs. At one point things had become a bit more disorganized that usual for him and he was out on the streets for awhile. I was able to provide some hospitality when he had reached a point of exhaustion and frankly was getting beaten up a bit more than I appreciated. Being closer to street kids and understanding how permeable that line can be is one of the great benefits I received from that time in my life. It is good to remember that Jesus was accused of being a drunkard carousing with tax collectors and prostitutes. That edge is an important place to be. I haven't successfully found my way back after sobering up. Perhaps it is just something to keep in mind as I move forward so that the lines do not harden between myself and my neighbors on the streets.

So perhaps five years later, rather than being on the same bar schedule as my friend, we seem to be on the same grocery shopping schedule. His son is four or five and is beautiful. He and his dad seem well matched right down to their hoodies. If I remember right, when he stayed over at my apartment and slept for about two days straight he was distraught and trying to work things out with his girlfriend. I'm pretty sure it was the beginnings of the pregnancy which led to the little boy I saw this afternoon. I'm sure both my friend and the mother where out of their minds with fear for the future. How could they possibly pull this off given the challenges they were facing? I don't know those particulars, but it looks like they've managed to keep walking that path one step at a time. It seems to me that my friend is a great example of living the benedictine vows whether he's ever heard of them or not. He has proven a stable presence for his son, he has been obedient to the needs of his relationship with the mother, and he has very obviously had a sincere conversion of life. I'm so happy that he has been blessed with a second chance and found reward in family life. Not all of my friends from the street have been so fortunate. My prayers go out to the ones still on the road and to those who have come home. Amen.

Always we begin again

Passing under a growing crescent moon in the still-light sky of the early summer on my way home from the cathedral this evening I began to feel again a sense of openness that I lost in the past week or two. Between work imbalances and perhaps prematurely thinking that I was getting close to what the future might look like, the spaciousness that was a lenten gift this year closed in a bit. Returning to the daily office yesterday, checking in with the benedictines in my small group, an education commission meeting, and a wonderful benediction written by John O'Donohue "For New Beginnings" to send us off into that still-lit evening brought it back. I knew it was there around the corner waiting for me to catch up to where it had run off.

There is yet another month on this journey of transformation that I sensed and began to sketch out last fall. There are a number of key elements and events that will close this arc and begin the next: a book reading and signing for Marcus' novel, a retreat on the coast to complete a series of classes, the Episcopal Village conference, and events to highlight and fundraise for Trinity's Center for Spiritual Development.

By that time we will have reached the solstice of summer and whole new vistas will open up. One of the gifts of Marcus' novel is a character's use of "Prayers for a Planetary Pilgrim." It arrived yesterday and looks to be a lovely reconnection to creation in the context of daily and occasional prayer; perfect for a benedictine who also happens to be a druid.

May there be space in the souls of all of us for the spirit to move and breathe. God within, God without; the light of Christ's Peace all around.

Notes from Albuquerque

So I'm back in the cafe that I mentioned in yesterday's post and am finally looking back over my notes from the Emerging conference in Albuquerque. I know there is at least one blog post hiding in there and there may be more.

...

Well I made it half way through and got to the really good stuff that started flowing on the Saturday. Richard Rohr opened up with a fresh examination of the charismatic tradition as found in the New Testament and recovering the important function of prophet in terms of the functioning of the church.

More riches to be mined out of those yellow ledger pages.

...

On the ninth day, I returned to the yellow pages and finished my first distillation into 26 themes. Granted that the details of any of the conversations, lectures and workshop make up the fabric of the experience; these themes may help remind me what I would like to share with others.

Some top highlights in future posts.

Happy Mother's Day!

My mother has often been the person keeping me from getting drastically off course. For that and for everything else I heartily thank her. Apparently one of her gifts this year, in addition to an autographed copy of Marcus Borg's new novel, is the link to this blog. I hadn't told her about it but it came up when I called just a bit ago. So...

Hi Mom!

Love,

Kev

Instantiation Journal

In September last year I started a side journal specifically to cover what I sensed would be an period of transition. In August I caught somewhat more than a glimpse of an upcoming challenge. I was at the point with my return to active Christianity that it would either stick or all fall apart. One Sunday morning I actually walked the up the middle aisle of the cathedral when everyone else was preparing to approach the table. That morning I couldn't do it. I was simply overwhelmed and was in a literal fight or flight state. There isn't anything too educational about the events of that morning or even the days leading up to it. There were some reasons that I might have been frustrated but really I had knowingly reached that threshold of in it or leave it. I was too close to what the real and that brings up a natural aversion that has to be recognized, addressed and transcended. It happens in lots of contexts. It can be particularly dramatic when it occurs in the realm of the spirit or even better when the spirit is brought to bear on the challenges of incarnated life. So that morning I got out. It was best choice at that particular moment in time. I retreated not far away to Cafe Umbria and began journaling in the notebook that I bring to classes & discussions. Not where I usually journal but it was good that I had it. I found neutral ground, neither the church nor my house, and began to deconstruct the complex pile of thoughts and emotions that I was feeling crushed by.

The result of that morning's meditations is a side journal to my usual one. I enjoy using the moleskin journals. They have nice lined pocket ones that last a good while (despite the term I don't actually journal every day, but over the years it has become an important practice to enable the thoughts, work and experience of days turn into a more lasting transformation). For particular purposes I like these thinner ones that come in packs of three. Quite nice. I even have one hidden in a library in a different work of mine with the condensed version of the manual for the order I created & nearly activated based on alchemical symbolism with a mission of reconciling the traditional opposites of the light and the dark, the left and the right. This is clearly a wholly separate story that some how snuck into this post, but that seems to be the nature of that particular order, which is probably the reason I and the others let it go without further pursuing its manifestation in the apparent world. I do get to revisit the subject of alchemy at a Rosicrucian Conference open to the public next September in Santa Fe. I shall be contented in that. Alchemy was how I came to the Order in the first place. It is a very auspicious return to the beginning for me.

So diversion aside, what I thought might be three or four months, became nine and have been cataloged in this little side journal as a way to remember as well as learn from my experiences, including the creation of this blog as way of recording but also beginning to communicate them. As an aside I realized the other day that this blog is hyper-focused on me, which I will admit is true of a lot of my life. Some reading I was doing reminded me that "humility is not thinking less of yourself but thinking of yourself less". I've seen this two places without attribution so I don't know where it actually originates. That make me wonder whether this blog was following a bad habit. Perhaps, but it is not meant to be a comprehensive representation of my thinking, working, or collaborating. It is essentially an electronic forum where I can perform a necessary self-examination with the possibility of witnesses. I doubt very many people will read these words, which is probably for the best, but one of the things I did at the outset of these writings is notify a handful of people that I trust of their existence. That is enough.

As a way of absorbing some of this side journal into the blog itself, I will do what I did with my primary journal, just list out the headings from the side journal. My usual one just has dates but the side one has no dates but has topic/event headings:

A beginning amidst the stormy sea of Galilee
Counsel from a visionary of Christian Existentialism
Counsel from an old ally
Return to Sabbath reading
Squaring the triangular circle
Healing Prayer (in the context of Trinity's Taize Service & Caritas Community)
A word from the Apostle
A wound from the bow of Par-Is
An echo from the Labyrinth
October: Opus Dei phase two [N.B. Opus Dei as a term for the Daily Office]
On the 40th day...
Schedule my birthday week including retreat to Trappist Monastery
Caritas convened
Class convened
Retreat among the Trappists
Compline at St. David of Wales
Healing Amidst Taize
A revisit to the emerging church
A focused Advent and a foggy Christmastide
Five actions to return to the way
Confraternity of St. Gregory's Abbey
Opus Dei Magnam Gloriam
On to Lent
Holy Week
Albuquerque #2
A lunch to bridge the conference and the diocese
Useful meetings back at home
A class retreat
Episcopal Village - Mission West

And thus I am "in a very different place by June."

A changed a couple titles for this venue as things shifted from the metaphoric to the practical towards the end. This in an of itself tells me that the journal did its work.

The one at the end which did not change is the Episcopal Village- Mission West conference which I think it really what will make that connection between my subjunctive future and my indicative present tenses. It should be excellent and hosted right here in Portland at St. David's (mentioned above as the location of Compline after my Trappist retreat). One month away. Just in case it does anyone any good I can't help but put in the link:

Episcopal Village - Mission West

And on it goes. With the sun, another little Easter.

Ok back to that traveling together thing

So I received a friendly reminder today that I can't effectively be doing this myself. There's a conference coming up next month. Following my old patterns I had been looking at it as an opportunity to get information. One of the organizers sent me a message suggesting that I aim for a team from the cathedral in order to help bring back the lessons more easily back into the parish.

Signing up for things is easy for me. Asking other to do things, less so. My natural inclination is to keep as my tasks under my personal control as possible. Luckily, my day work has involved management for three years no so delegation is becoming more natural. Somewhere between those two is actual collaboration.

Here's to hoping I can make that leap in the next five weeks. Last fall I had the impression that I would be in a very different place come June (why June, I've no idea). Perhaps so.

A story complex and intriguing

There is a thread that I'm going to acknowledge as picked up by a recently by a well known author of fiction and then hopefully let it go. I'd like this blog to concentrate on "the gathering center" as called by Phyllis Tickle rather then the possibly good but distracting circumference that Richard Rohr warns against in Everything Belongs.

Phillip Pullman, famous for the trilogy His Dark Materials beginning with The Golden Compass, has very recently released a book called The Good Man Jesus and The Scoundrel Christ. It is a fascinating story that could prompt readers to very important questions about the past, present, and future of the church as well the radical nature of what Jesus was bringing to us.

It picks up a very neglected piece of the Christian story: the challenge of the Shadow of the mission. It does so by by weaving the pieces that we know and possibilities of what I like to think of as the back stitching of the story. In needlework there are a lot of interesting things going on the other side of the fabric. Those odd crossings and resurfacings are what makes the image on the front possible.

Hopefully now that a version of this highly heretical story, and that's all it needs to be: a story, is out there in the public forum I can stop worrying about finding a way to tell it.

Next stop: back to the river. Now that I've readjusted to being back for a bit, I can review my notes and bring out some of the gifts from the Albuquerque conference.

Blessings.