Category: Wednesday Morning Thoughts

The sacred lifework of racial healing is far from done and requires courage to foolishly live in the way of real Love that transforms, heals, reconciles, and brings peace. We are God’s partners and the time is now. Upon receiving the National Medal of Honor, Congressman John Lewis said “I want to see young people in America feel the spirit of the 1960s, and find a way to get in the way…To find a way to get into trouble. Good trouble, necessary trouble.” ~John Lewis

Juneteenth is the oldest known celebration commemorating the ending of slavery in the United States. Dating back to 1865, it was on June 19th that the Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, Texas with news that the war had ended and that the enslaved were now free. Note that this was two and a half years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation – which had become official January 1, 1863. The Emancipation Proclamation had little impact on the Texans due to the minimal number of Union troops to enforce the new Executive Order. However, with the surrender of General Lee in April of 1865, and the arrival of General Granger’s regiment, the forces were finally strong enough to influence and overcome the resistance.

As the historian Heather Cox Richardson reminds us:

“On April 9, 1865, General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses S. Grant of the U.S. Army, but it was not until June 2 that General Edmund Kirby Smith surrendered the Trans-Mississippi Department, the last major army of the Confederacy, to the United States, in Galveston, Texas. Smith then fled to Mexico. 

Seventeen days later, Major General Gordon Granger of the U.S. Army arrived to take charge of the soldiers stationed there. On June 19, he issued General Order Number 3. It read:  

“The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor.” 

The order went on: “The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.”

While the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution abolishing enslavement except as punishment for a crime had passed through Congress on January 31, 1865, and Lincoln had signed it on February 1, the states were still in the process of ratifying it. 

So Granger’s order referred not to the Thirteenth Amendment, but to the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, which declared that Americans enslaved in states that were in rebellion against the United States “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and that the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons.” Granger was informing the people of Galveston that, Texas having been in rebellion on January 1, 1863, their world had changed. The federal government would see to it that, going forward, white people and Black people would be equal.

Black people in Galveston met the news Order No. 3 brought with celebrations in the streets, but emancipation was not a gift from white Americans. Black Americans had fought for the United States and worked in the fields to grow cotton the government could sell. Those unable to leave their homes had hidden U.S. soldiers, while those who could leave indicated their hatred of the Confederacy and enslavement with their feet. They had demonstrated their equality and their importance to the postwar United States. 

The next year, after the Thirteenth Amendment had been added to the Constitution, Texas freedpeople gathered on June 19, 1866, to celebrate with prayers, speeches, food, and socializing the coming of their freedom. By the following year, the federal government encouraged “Juneteenth” celebrations, eager to explain to Black citizens the voting rights that had been put in place by the Military Reconstruction Act in early March 1867, and the tradition of Juneteenth began to spread to Black communities across the nation.

But white former Confederates in Texas were demoralized and angered by the changes in their circumstances. “It looked like everything worth living for was gone,” Texas cattleman Charles Goodnight later recalled. 

In summer 1865, as white legislators in the states of the former Confederacy grudgingly ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, they also passed laws to keep freedpeople subservient to their white neighbors. These laws, known as the Black Codes, varied by state, but they generally bound Black Americans to yearlong contracts working in the fields owned by white men; prohibited Black people from meeting in groups, owning guns or property, or testifying in court; outlawed interracial marriage; and permitted white men to buy out the jail terms of Black people convicted of a wide swath of petty crimes, and then to force those former prisoners into labor to pay off their debt.

In 1865, Congress refused to readmit the Southern states under the Black Codes, and in 1866, congressmen wrote and passed the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Its first section established that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” It went on: “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” 

That was the whole ball game. The federal government had declared that a state could not discriminate against any of its citizens or arbitrarily take away any of a citizen’s rights. Then, like the Thirteenth Amendment before it, the Fourteenth declared that “Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article,” strengthening the federal government.

The addition of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1868 remade the United States. But those determined to preserve a world that discriminated between Americans according to race, gender, ability, and so on, continued to find workarounds. “ (Heather Cox Richardson ~ Letters from an American)

Among those who worked tirelessly for justice was Rev. Dr. James Lawson, whom we lost last week. A faculty member at my alma mater of Vanderbilt Divinity School, Lawson was a mentor to John Lewis and Dr. King. As we mourn the immense loss of Reverend James M. Lawson Jr., we reflect on his life and legacy with deep gratitude.

May his vision of a world filled with nonviolence be a constant guide: James Lawson Institute | Vanderbilt University

Friends, in our Collect for Purity we pray: “Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid…cleanse the thoughts of our hearts that we may perfectly love you, and worthily magnify your Holy Name, through Christ our Lord…Amen.”

This is such a lovely prayer, in part because we know that secrets have the power to transmit grief, pain, and perpetuate toxic patterns in ourselves, families, and community. It’s a prayer about deeper self and other awareness, revealing our personal and cultural “shadow sides,” which, unless brought into the light, can control our actions in ways that are problematic precisely because of our unwillingness to name them. Racism remains too often in the shadows, and we need reminders of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth amendments which are, after all, liberating for everyone.

(John Lewis ~ Nashville Tennessee)

And so we remember and honor those who have gone before us, and fellow members of the human family who live today, enslaved by one another or by injustice in systems that would keep them in bondage.

Thanking God for and deeply encouraged by all who commit to the life work of eradicating racism, and grateful for prayers like this one:

O God of liberty and justice: we live in a nation in which the institution of human bondage was once a legal and accepted practice. We give thanks for those who worked and fought, at great personal sacrifice, to bring about an end to that cruel and oppressive system in our own land, and we pray that governments and authorities everywhere in the world might be led to make a quick end to the enslavement of any human being, throughout the Earth. Amen.

~ Episcopal Diocese of West Virginia, Commission on Racism and Diversity

I’ll catch you later on down the trail, and I hope to see you in church!

Yellowstone Musings – Deep time

Psalm 77

77:17 The clouds poured out water; the skies thundered; your arrows flashed on every side. 77:18 The crash of your thunder was in the whirlwind; your lightning’s lit up the world; the earth trembled and shook. 77:19 Your way was through the sea, your path, through the mighty waters; yet your footprints were unseen. 77:20 You led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron.

Vicky and I recently hosted our older son and his family, visiting from Montana where they have lived for several years. We delight in having our twin 7-year-old grandchildren, born in Montana, here in the Southern Appalachians, a biome quite different from theirs! They refer to our home as being in the “forest” and are fascinated with the profusion of green this time of year. We also enjoy visiting Montana, which we have come to love.

A while back, we visited Yellowstone Park, and our journey from Billings to Yellowstone took us into the Beartooth Mountains by way of the eponymous highway, a spectacular drive. The Beartooth Mountains are composed of Precambrian and metamorphic rocks, dated at approximately 4 billion years old. Expansive plateaus are found at altitudes in excess of 12,000 feet. With miles of alpine meadows where no meadows should be—a lovely plateau atop a mountain range—one begins to sense that the normal “rules” of geology don’t apply here. The Beartooth have over 300 lakes and waterfalls. Winters are severe with heavy snow and incessant winds. This year, the Beartooth highway was still closed as recently as last week, due to heavy snows last winter.

Among my favorite places in the Beartooth Mountains is Clay Butte. A short trail run to the Butte and one finds oneself on an ancient sea floor at 12,000 feet, surrounded by fields of alpine flowers. Marine fossils are plentiful. Prior to the wrinkling of the earth’s crust, the entire Rocky Mountain region was below sea level. This Late Cretaceous seaway extended from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Ocean. The uplift of the crust slowly pushed this seaway up and out of the western interior. Never again has the Rocky Mountain region been invaded by marine waters.

John McPhee, the wonderful and prolific author, has said of Yellowstone that, according to plate tectonic theory, it should not exist; 

“Geologists have come to believe that in a deep geophysical sense it is not Yellowstone that is moving…the great heat that has expressed itself in so many ways on the topographic surface of the modern park derives from a mantle far below the hull of North America. They believe that as North America slides over this fixed locus of thermal energy the rising heat is so intense that it penetrates the plate. The geologic term for such a place is a ‘hot spot.’”[1]

After our sojourn on the Yellowstone trails, I awoke that night to a clear sky, and the glorious Milky Way spinning above us, even as the ground we were on, however, imperceptibly (much of Yellowstone is in an ancient volcanic caldera) moved beneath us. 

Deep Time above and below; I was reminded of the psalmist, who wrote of things often unseen, assumed to be fixed, but nevertheless in motion, wonderfully, miraculously alive. I delight in this as suggestive of God’s ongoing participation in Creation. As Teilhard de Chardin has written;

“By means of all created things, without exception, the Divine penetrates us, and molds us. We imagined it as distant and inaccessible, when in fact we live steeped in its burning layers.”

Or, consider this poem by Mary Oliver:

Some Things, Say the Wise Ones

Some things, say the wise ones who know everything,

are not living. I say,

you live your life your way and leave me alone.

I have talked with the faint clouds in the sky when they

are afraid of being left behind: I have said, hurry, hurry!

and they have said: Thank you, we are hurrying.

About cows, and starfish, and roses, there is no

argument. They die, after all.

But water is a question, so many living things in it,

but what is it, itself, living or not? Oh, gleaming

generosity, how can they write you out?

As I think this I am sitting on the sand beside

the harbor. I am holding in my hand

small pieces of granite, pyrite, schist.

Each one, just now, so thoroughly asleep.

 (Mary Oliver, Why I Wake Early, 2004)

Recently, NASA scientists reported the creation of key DNA components in a laboratory experiment that simulated the space environment. Together, these findings suggest that life’s building blocks were concocted in space and blended into the material that formed Earth and its siblings. As Joni Mitchell famously wrote, “We are stardust, we are golden…billion year old carbon.” Writing in the New York Times, Ray Jayawardhana said that our very “cosmic selves” are the stuff of Deep Time, just as is the geology of the Beartooth Mountains in Montana.

“Tell me a story,” wrote Robert Penn Warren, “Make it a story of great distances, and starlight. The name of the story will be Time, but you must not pronounce its name. Tell me a story of deep delight.”

We are, each of us, part of God’s Divine narrative, and thus, we belong to a story infinitely mysterious, sacred, and unfolding with love. For Teilhard, “love is the most universal, the most tremendous and the most mysterious of the cosmic forces.” Love is both human and divine. Divine love is the energy that brought the universe into being and binds it together. Human love is whatever energy we use to help divine love achieve its purpose. . .

I pray blessings upon each of you in this long, green season of Pentecost. I’ll catch you later on down the trail, and I hope to see you in church!

After the Boston Marathon bombings several years ago, a friend asked me whether, as a veteran of the marathon, I would make a public statement about the events there, and whether I would return to Boston. And, she asked me if the bombings would deter me from running the Peachtree Road Race that year. My response to both questions was the same. My “statement” was to get out with friends the next day, and run, and to run on July 4^th.  

In Paul’s letter to the Galatians, we are reminded that “For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Galatians 5:1, 13-25)  

We live in a complex world that is always changing and the response of any system—whether a family, a business, an economy, a church, or an ecosystem—to the shocks and disturbances of change depends on a number of factors. One of the adages of my band of trail runners is “Conditions may vary.” In other words, we seek to be prepared for the inevitable changes of the trail conditions, weather, and our own minds and bodies as we venture forth, and we do not give in to fear. We seek resilience. I have learned over the years that these changes are best encountered in community. And, I have learned that this is as true for life in general as it is for our recreational activities. 

As a pastoral counselor and Episcopal priest, it is increasingly my conviction that resilience is best understood in the context of hope amidst anxiety and fear. Hope is deeply connected to our ability to cope with life’s difficulties and to live within—and into—communities of faith in ways that are life-giving and resilient. This is especially important in the midst of the life-depleting and debilitating culture of anxiety. In their book, Hope in the Age of Anxiety, Scioli and Biller refer to what they describe as “hopeful resiliency.”The authors believe hope to be at the core of what it means to be resilient. Of particular interest to those of us in the church is the “collaborative coping” of many religious individuals. The authors note that these believers see themselves as engaged in a “joint effort:” 

They do not view themselves as passive souls needing explicit formulas to address life problems. They view their own strength and skill as important factors in coping with these problems. In Saint Paul’s letter to the Philippians, he asserted, “I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.”

The authors see “spiritual integrity” as one of the building blocks of hopeful resiliency. Getting knocked down is as basic as being human—life just does this to us—and so is the desire to get back up. Indeed, the difference between those who repeatedly get back up and those who don’t is exactly the difference between those who are able to lead and those who aren’t. The name for this difference is resilience, the ability to get back up again and again. Kill hope, and resilience will die with it. And where resilience is displayed, there you see hope.

Resilience is best learned in community. We often think of resilience in individual terms: “this or that person is resilient.” But communities of hope—the calling of all Christian communities—are actually places that have resilience written into their being. They are founded on hope and their very existence testifies to the fact that getting back up is not simply a matter of the individual will. We can be helped back up, and we can learn how to help others get back up when they fall. Because of God’s work in Christ, we can, quite literally, hope for someone else, and they can hope for us and with us. Resilience is a communal practice. Fear can be contagious. And, hope is, too.

When we give in to fear, we become slaves not to love, but to those fears that would hold us in bondage. At times, we need community to remind us of this. This past Sunday, I was reminded of this truth again when lost electrical power during the second service. Despite this, our worship proceeded seamlessly thanks to your leadership, calm resilience, and your ability to stay the course in the midst of these vicissitudes. I’m so proud of you all, and grateful for each of you! Thank you all so much for your ongoing faithful and steadfast commitment to Holy Family in this season of transition. And thank you, too, for your resilience and creativity as we make our way forward. 

I’ve mentioned in other contexts the wonderful book “Transitions” by William Bridges, and this quote, in particular, has been deeply important to me: “In other words, change is situational. Transition, on the other hand, is psychological. It is not those events, but rather the inner reorientation and self-redefinition that you have to go through in order to incorporate any of those changes into your life. Without a transition, a change is just a rearrangement of the furniture. Unless transition happens, the change won’t work, because it doesn’t “take.”― William Bridges, Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes

Together, we are engaging in the important work of transition amid the inevitable changes we, and the whole Episcopal Church—are experiencing. And, in a way, the challenges we faced on Sunday are an example of our ability to adapt to the “new normal” with flourishing and creativity. We’ll find a solution to the issues that created our mischievous power loss on Sunday morning, and this will be what Ron Heifetz calls a “technical fix.”

However, together we are also working on “adaptive change” as we find creative and imaginative ways to engage the new challenges, realities, and uncertainties that we, and the whole church, must address: “While technical problems may be very complex and critically important (like replacing a faulty heart valve during cardiac surgery), they have known solutions that can be implemented by current know-how. They can be resolved through the application of authoritative expertise and through the organization’s current structures, procedures, and ways of doing things. Adaptive challenges can only be addressed through changes in people’s priorities, beliefs, habits, and loyalties. Making progress requires going beyond any authoritative expertise to mobilize discovery, shedding certain entrenched ways, tolerating losses, and generating the new capacity to thrive anew.”― Ronald A. Heifetz, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World

I cannot imagine a better group with whom to navigate these transitions, and I am so very grateful for each of you! No matter the loss of electrical power on Sunday, the light shone in the “darkness” and we made our way. So shall it be as we work together for a bright and life-giving future at Holy Family.

Yes, “Conditions may vary,” resilience, and freedom from fear, borne of hope and love, abides.

I’ll catch you later on down the trail, and I hope to see you in church! Pentecost blessings, Bill+

As we begin the long, green season of Pentecost I am filled with gratitude for our Holy Family community. It’s been a wonderful few weeks as we transitioned from Eastertide to Pentecost Sunday, We’ve celebrated with a festive Pentecost worship service, a joyous old-fashioned hymn-sing and potluck, a Wonderful Wednesday at The Reserve, and a lovely evening at Grandview Lake last Wednesday evening! Trinity Sunday was replete with a return of the CAT-man!

A deep bow of gratitude to the Parish Life, Hospitality, Pastoral Care and Outreach, the faithful and steadfast women of the DOK who pray for us each week, the Altar Guild and Flower Guild and those committees often working tirelessly and behind the scenes to keep our parish running, including Finance, our intrepid Grounds Crew (aka the “Woodchucks”) and of course the Nominating Committee and Vestry. Thanks, too, to our staff of Jacques, Christie, and John who give so freely of themselves to keep us moving forward! Thank you all!

Jesus encouraged us to become like little children, and regardless of our vision for the future, and our hopes and dreams for Holy Family as we live into this season of transition, our willingness to do this together finds encouragement from other sources. As Mary Oliver said so well:

“Instructions for living a life.

Pay attention.

Be astonished.

Tell about it.”

I’ve been astonished by the spirit of community, grace, and hospitality you have all demonstrated. Kindred spirits all, this spirit of gratitude and cooperation is contagious, and a perspective we can cultivate. Neuroscience reminds us that we can find healing and solace in gratitude, forgiveness, and letting go of attachment to things we cannot control…and some things perhaps we should not try to control. Cultivating a sense of wonder during times of uncertainty can allow us to see things sometimes hidden to us when we are anxious, and needing to be in control. We welcome the Holy Spirit in Her wisdom as a guide and advocate during our search process!

Shoshin (Japanese: 初心) is a concept from Zen Buddhism meaning “beginner’s mind.” It refers to having an attitude of openness, eagerness, and lack of preconceptions when encountering the world—especially things new to us—and even at an advanced level, just as a beginner would. The term is especially used in the study of Zen Buddhism and Japanese martial arts and was popularized outside of Japan by Shunryū Suzuki’s 1970 book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. The practice of Shoshin acts as a counter to the hubris and closed-mindedness often associated with thinking of oneself as an expert. This includes the Einstellung effect, where a person becomes so accustomed to a certain way of doing things that they do not consider or acknowledge new ideas or approaches.

It was during his sojourn in the desert that Jesus came to accept and appreciate the ministry he was called to embrace. In order to be fully open to his call, Jesus forsook the company of people and spent time in the wilderness. He regularly returned to the hills to pray and commune with God, especially before making important decisions, attaining his distinctive version of “beginner’s mind.” Jesus’ ministry was carried out, not so much in synagogues or the Temple, as in the cathedral of nature. In Matthew’s Gospel, the beatitudes and subsequent teachings are delivered on a mountainside (Matt 5:1-7:29).

Jesus displayed an appreciative and contemplative attitude which, of course, was rooted in God’s love for all creatures and of nature. ‘Think of the ravens. They neither sow nor reap; they have no storehouses and no barns; yet God feeds them’ (Lk 12:24). The gospels warn about the urge to continually accumulate more and more goods. The natural world can assist us in understanding what Jesus meant by his invitation that we become like little children.

Moving in and out of rhododendron and hemlock forests, and emerging into sunlit high mountain meadows on a lovely afternoon trail run; balanced, held just so, in this grace-full milieu. These high meadows provide their own, distinctive microclimates and biomes with fascinating worlds to explore. Rose Breasted Grosbeaks, Scarlet Tanagers, Kingfishers, Pileated Woodpeckers, and a host of other avian friends supplied the music. One is humbled, and grateful. In the shadows are deer, black bear, turkey, and life-giving pollinators doing their good and essential work. 

As Richard Powers has written:

“We found that trees could communicate, over the air and through their roots. Common sense hooted us down. We found that trees take care of each other. Collective science dismissed the idea. Outsiders discovered how seeds remember the seasons of their childhood and set buds accordingly. Outsiders discovered that trees sense the presence of other nearby life. That a tree learns to save water. That trees feed their young and synchronize their masts and bank resources and warn kin and send out signals to wasps to come and save them from attacks. “Here’s a little outsider information, and you can wait for it to be confirmed. A forest knows things. They wire themselves up underground. There are brains down there, ones our own brains aren’t shaped to see. Root plasticity, solving problems and making decisions. Fungal synapses. What else do you want to call it? Link enough trees together, and a forest grows aware.”

― Richard Powers, The Overstory

Yes, it seems that nature has much to teach us about life in community. Jesus knew this too, and in this Pentecost season, I pray that we may continue to demonstrate hospitality, imagination, and hope. We are called to give ourselves away in love, and this will guide us in this new and hopeful season.

Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves.

We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole,

A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous.

Within its vital boundary, the mind.

We say God and the imagination are one…

How high that highest candle lights the dark.

Out of this same light, out of the central mind,

We make a dwelling in the evening air,

In which being there together is enough.

~Wallace Stevens

A deep bow of gratitude to each of you for all that you do. I’ll catch you later on down the trail, and I hope to see you in church! Bill+

We paused on the trail—tired, hot, and momentarily liberated from the weight of our heavy packs—and I sat down on a scorched, fallen log, grateful for the respite, in what only three years earlier had been a verdant, old growth Montana forest. Now, the charred remains of spruce, lodge-pole pine, and fir were all that I could see. Burned sentinels of formerly majestic trees rose ahead and above us, and those no longer standing seemed to litter the forest floor as if some great force had arbitrarily tossed them and let them lay where they fell. Chaos and destruction seemed all around. I found myself feeling sad, and lamenting the loss of what I knew had once been a fecund, flourishing forest ecosystem.

I was in the Scapegoat Wilderness area of Montana with dear friends from graduate school, an annual, much-anticipated sojourn, and this was not what I had in mind when I flew into Great Falls a few days before. I’d had visions of escaping my native southern heat by hiking in cool, pristine sub-alpine forests, and I now found myself in a forest radically changed by fire; ravaged, and permanently damaged. Or was it? Was I seeing the whole picture? We live in a complex world that is always changing, and the response of any “system,” whether a family, a business (or an economy), a church in a season of change as we are currently experiencing—or an ecosystem, to the shocks and disturbances of change, depends on a number of factors. But what are they, and how do we understand change (and its subtler iteration, transition) and resilience in response to them? 

After several miles of hiking on this hot day, we stopped for water and rest on a trail still ensconced in the burn. As we sat, quietly, I began to look around. Amidst the desolation, I began to see that life was everywhere, pushing upward in infinite detail, where my vision had been limited only to what was most obvious to the eye. I caught a glimpse of a mule-deer, drawn to the open terrain by the lush, waist-high vegetation now growing in the sunlight. Light, life-giving and fierce, seemed to have given birth to the life hidden in the trees, and in the soil, all along. Fireweed, a lovely plant, with lavender and pink flowers, that grows in just such burned-over land, was everywhere round us. How had I missed it?

As I listened, and watched, and finally began to pay attention, I heard a low, buzzing hum, and then began to see that the fireweed had attracted hundreds of hummingbirds, dodging and darting, feeding on the fireweed nectar, along with bees and other insects. Birds, marmots, chipmunks, wildlife of all kinds seemed suddenly visible, where before I had seen only blackened trees and desolation. Life seemed to be flourishing where once there I had seen only death, and destruction. And I had not seen it, in part because I had not paid attention to the moment—and to the larger, more complex picture it contained. Focusing only on the blackened trees straight ahead and above me, and on my fear of the fires to the north, fears stirred by the landscape all around me, I failed to see the profusion of life flourishing right beneath my feet. Seeds of lodge-pole pines, needing only the intense heat of the fire to release their inner Chi—the deepest, essential life breath and energy, and I had both literally and metaphorically not seen the emerging new forest for the desolate, burned trees. To contend with high-impact fire, lodge-pole pine produce cones that open following exposure to extreme heat (termed ‘serotiny’). This serotinous strategy is one piece of evidence that fire was historically a prevalent disturbance across the lodge-pole pine ecosystems of the Rocky Mountains. And, though trees are the big players in forests, understory species (like grasses and shrubs) also have a strong evolutionary relationship with fire. Following fire, areas dominated by sprouting species (aspen, cottonwood, oak, many grasses, and many shrubs) tend to rapidly return to pre-fire conditions. These species, many of which were previously rare or absent, flourish under the new conditions. Indeed, flourishing was everywhere, in stark contrast to the all too evident reminders of what had been, on the surface, a very challenging time for this forest ecosystem.

This is how change becomes transition, through resilience, as we adapt to the inevitable changes in our lives. Mary Oliver hints at this in a recent poem, which captures well the ambiguous, sacred mystery of the spaces between us, and the ongoing, emergent fluidity of creation.

Mysteries, Yes

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous

to be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the

mouths of the lambs.

How rivers and stones are forever

in allegiance with gravity

while we ourselves dream of rising.

How two hands touch and the bonds

will never be broken.

how people come, from delight or the

scars of damage,

to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those

who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say

“Look!” and laugh in astonishment,

and bow their heads.(Mary Oliver~Evidence)

At Holy Family we, too, are in a time of transition. Recently we celebrated Pentecost with a wonderful service, followed by a bountiful potluck meal and old-fashioned hymn-sing in the conference center. A deep bow of gratitude to all who made this wonderful day possible! The Holy Ghost Fire of Pentecost is with us during this season of transition at Holy Family too, as we undergo transition. And as evidenced by our creative responses to this process, resilience and imagination are the fruits of a spirit of compassionate collaboration with the Spirit in Her wisdom, and a living into deep mystery of who we are, and who we are becoming as a parish.

On our Montana sojourn, I found a measure of resilience—or the tentative beginning of it—in a scorched, desolate forest already in transition, a coming back to life signified by an imaginative, creative flourishing beyond expectation. Just this past summer, I found myself running along a trail in northern Colorado, the site of which had experienced a fierce fire in 1994. Now, life flourished in shadows of the former trees, some still standing in testimony to the former conflagration. There, as I ran upward, toward the Mummy Range, some 18 years after the fire, the aspen, fir, lodge-pole pine and, yes, fireweed bore testimony to a deep, abiding resilience at the heart of things. I was filled with gratitude, and with hope. Last Sunday at Holy Family as I looked around at those worshiping in the nave of our beautiful sanctuary, doves flying above us, our amazing choir singing so well, all working in synchrony, I was deeply grateful. And later, I saw the tears of those who sang once again the old hymns of childhood, and I saw the seeds of resilience, hope, and, yes, new life as the Spirit moved among us. Thanks be to God, and thank you, to each of you in this season of hope and resilience at our beloved Holy Family.

This coming Sunday is Pentecost Sunday, a day on which we celebrate the “birthday” of the church! And Happy Birthday to us at Holy Family too! Traditionally, Pentecost marks the beginning of the church. Something remarkable, that changed the course of history, happened on that day so long ago. That same Holy Spirit has led each of us to Holy Family parish, to continue the work of those assembled so long ago.

We share this day, more or less, with the Jewish holiday called Shavu’ot that falls fifty days after Passover. On this day the first fruits of harvest were brought to the Temple. It also commemorates the giving of the Torah to Moses—and thereby to the people of Israel—at Mount Sinai. So on this ritual day the covenant of God was remembered and renewed in the form of a pilgrimage feast. Ideally, all of God’s people were to come celebrate in Jerusalem. 

But of course, there had been the Exile and flight from the Exile into Egypt. Descendents of those who had been taken into exile were living in the lands of the Parthians, and the Elamites, and other peoples beyond the Euphrates. Others were scattered throughout the Roman provinces in what we now call Asia Minor, Cappadocia, Pontus, Phrygia, and Pamphylia. There were heirs of those who had gone to Egypt and Libya, and those found in Rome, Crete, and Nabatean Arabia. At any pilgrimage feast, then, there would be Jewish pilgrims from all of these places, and they would be speaking the local dialects where they lived.

The day of Pentecost described in Acts 2 probably began with Jesus’ disciples filled with worry and anxiety. So much had happened, so much had changed. Jesus had ascended, and they had seen no sign of him since then. He had promised much, there were great expectations, and yet nothing had happened. How often have we felt like that…lonely, scared, and uncertain in the face of changes in our lives, not knowing how to embrace the changes and create transformation—to cultivate resilience in the face of change? 

And in that moment so much of the essence of what it means to be church was present. God is always doing a new thing, and the Holy Spirit in Her wisdom has promised to be among us amid those changes. Jesus invokes the Spirit upon the disciples with the words “Peace be with you…receive the Holy Spirit.” 

Yes, change can be scary, and during times of change we may need to remind ourselves that we are human, and imperfect. Sometimes we need to forgive ourselves for “not knowing” the way to go. Not being able to forgive, not allowing for mistakes—and uncertainty, and vulnerability—can​ hold us in bondage, and prevent us from being available to the life-giving breath of the Spirit. We must also distinguish between the gift of life, and the gift of Spirit. They are not the same thing, and are often given to us at different times. After the resurrection of Jesus, the disciples are given the new life of Christ, but only some time after, at Pentecost, are they given the spirit for the new life that they are already living. This is often the case in our own lives. The Paschal Mystery is a process of transformation. 

The author Ronald Rolheiser has reminded us that there are five clear, distinct moments within the Paschal cycle: Good Friday, Easter Sunday, the forty days leading up to the Ascension, the Ascension, and Pentecost. Each is part, he says, of one process of transformation, of dying and letting go, so as to receive new life and new spirit. Simply put, Good Friday challenges each of us to name our losses and deaths. Easter asks of us that we claim our births. The forty days requires that we grieve what we have lost and adjust to the new reality. Ascension is letting go of the old and letting it bless you, refusing to cling to what was. Pentecost is the reception of the new spirit for the new life that we are in fact now living.

According to Rolheiser, we are each given the gift of the Divine Spark of life. What we do with that Holy flame is up to us, in conversation with who we understand God to be:

“There is within us a fundamental dis-ease, an unquenchable fire… this desire lies at the center of our lives, in the marrow of our bones, and in the deep recesses of the soul. At the heart of all great literature, poetry, art, philosophy, psychology, and religion lies the naming and analyzing of this desire. Spirituality is, ultimately, about what we do with that desire. What we do with our longings, both in terms of handling the pain and the hope they bring us, that is our spirituality . . . Augustine says: ‘You have made us for yourself, Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.’ Spirituality is about what we do with our unrest….spirituality is about what we do about the fire inside of us, about how we channel our eros.”

For Richard Rohr, only your soul can know the soul of other things. Only a part can recognize the whole from which it came. “But first,” Rohr writes, “something within you, your True Self, must be awakened. Most souls are initially “unsaved” in the sense that they cannot dare to imagine they could be one with God/Reality/the universe. This is the illusion of what Thomas Merton (1915–1968) called the “false” self and what I have taken to calling the “separate” or small self that believes it is autonomous and separate from God.

The Divine Spark, for Rolheiser, and the True Self for Rohr, these are the outward and visible signs of a life well lived, in love, and in community. Rohr also speaks of the “flame” of love, the Divine Spark given to us by God: 

“Your True Self is Life and Being and Love. Love is what you were made for and love is who you are. When you live outside of Love, you are not living from your true Being or with full consciousness. The Song of Songs says that “Love is stronger than death. . . . The flash of love is a flash of fire, a flame of YHWH” (Song of Songs 8:6, Jerusalem Bible). Your True Self is a tiny flame of this Universal Reality that is Life itself, Consciousness itself, Being itself, Love itself, God’s very self.

Of course, this Holy Fire is available to us all, regardless of what language we speak or where we find ourselves on the journey. Join us at Holy Family this Sunday at 10:30am (one service only) and stay for the festive lunch, birthday celebration, and Hymn-Sing! Let’s make a joyful noise, and be glad in it!

I’ll catch you later on down the trail! Bill+

As the congregation moved from Mikell Chapel to the post-quinceañera reception, the young woman whose service we had just celebrated said to me, “Padre Bill, estás entre mis abuelos,” or, “Father Bill, now you are among my grandfathers.” 

Each Sunday for 18 years, I could be found on the Cathedral Close of the Cathedral of St. Philip, where I was a part-time Associate Priest, and where I continue to see patients at the counseling center, a wonderful, sacred space so dear to me. Among the services in which I participated was Catedral de San Felipe, our Hispanic ministry held in Mikell Chapel each Sunday. During those years, my learning curve was rapidly ascending, both in terms of my language skills and my role in relation to the congregation. They had several names for me, including “Padre Guillermo,” and more recently, “Abuelo,” meaning “Grandfather.” The latter is perhaps my favorite name. On Christmas Eve 2018 our granddaughter Sophia was born, and in December of 2022, our grandson Georgie joined his sister. Our twin grandchildren Jack and Alice—age 7 (who call me “Granddaddy,”) were born in March of 2017, so I am now un abuelo multiplicado por quatro or, a grandfather times four!

Jack and Alice Harkins

So, how am I living into this new normal of being a grandfather, and how has it changed my ministry, my perspectives on life—and perhaps my sense of self and “being in the world” or “Dasein,” as Heidegger called it?(“Dasein” for Heidegger can be a way of being involved with and caring for the immediate world in which one lives).

Erik Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development included the penultimate stage, or “generativity versus stagnation.” Typically, this stage takes place during middle adulthood between the ages of approximately 40 and 65, so becoming un abuelo is, in this sense, right on time for me.During this developmental stage adults strive to create or nurture things that will outlast them, often by parenting grandchildren, and hopefully contributing to positive, “generative” changes that benefit the common good. Vicky and I spent much of our married life raising our two sons amid busy professional careers, and now, to see them have careers and children of their own gives us a deep sense of joy. Yes, we’ve had deeply satisfying vocational journeys, but these cannot compare to the delight we find in bearing witness to the unfolding of the lives of our sons, and, now, to see our grandchildren being born, grow and develop their own wonderfully distinctive lives.

And this is not all. A subtext in Erikson’s developmental narrative is that we become more connected to those aspects of our world that allow for a “transcendence of self.” We become more deeply aware that we are part of something larger than ourselves, a kind of “operational theology of abundance.” Wendell Berry hints at this when he says:

“Ask the questions that have no answers. Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias. Say that your main crop is the forest that you did not plant, that you will not live to harvest.” (”Mad Farmer Liberation Front”~ Wendell Berry, Collected Poems)

Indeed, nature can assist us with this journey of generativity. Each year I gather in northern Colorado for a week of trail running, hiking, and fellowship with friends of some 40 years. We reconnect with one another, laugh, hike, read, and write. And we do all of this deep in a sub-alpine forest, engaging in what the Japanese call “shinrin-yoku,” or “forest bathing,” now known to increase levels of serotonin, dopamine, healthy cellular development, and an awareness of connection to God’s Creation—giving birth to empathy and compassion. And speaking of empathy, perhaps we can learn something from trees about being in community during what some are calling an “epidemic of polarization and loneliness” in our culture. Trees live communally in ways we are only beginning to understand. In his remarkable novel “The Overstory” Richard Powers writes about what we might call “grandparent trees”:

“Before it dies, a Douglas fir, half a millennium old, will send its storehouse of chemicals back down into its roots and out through its fungal partners, donating its riches to the community pool in a last will and testament. We might well call these ancient benefactors giving trees…Trees communicate, over the air and through their roots…they take care of each other. Link enough trees together, and a forest grows aware. ”

In his recent book “The Second Mountain,” David Brooks says this about the cultivation of generative moments of transcendence: “The universe is alive and connected, these moments tell us. There are dimensions of existence you never could have imagined before. Quantum particles inexplicably flip together, even though they are separated by vast differences of time and space. Somehow the world is alive and communicating with itself. There is some interconnecting animating force, and we are awash in that force, which we with our paltry vocabulary call love.”

Becoming a grandfather has indeed made me more aware of the beauty of non-binary, liminal spaces, where we greet the other with dignity and respect, just as our Baptismal Prayer calls us to do, and where, as the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas said, we welcome the infinite mystery of the Face of the other. In becoming un abuelo, I see artificial borders become diffuse and disappear. As one of my Hispanic parishioners said to me, “Padre, quiero sentirme vivo,” or, “Father, I want to feel alive.” As the abuelo in me comes alive, my connection to all of Creation becomes more alive as well, with more clarity, urgency, and meaning. May our sense of “generativity” at Holy Family also continue to grow, evolve, and flow out into the community we are called to serve! May our Outreach and Parish Life Committees, among others, guide us in contributing to the common good in life-giving ways, extending love and friendship to one another, and to the communities we serve.

As Gerard Manly Hopkins wrote,

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

   It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

   It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

   And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

   And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

   There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

   Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

   World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

I’ll catch you later on down the trail, and I hope to see you in church on Sunday!

Blessings, Bill+

“So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal.”

 2 Corinthians

Among my favorite pieces of music is John Coltrane’s iconic composition “A Love Supreme,” recorded in December of 1964. Coltrane’s gift to us was a declaration that his musical devotion was now intertwined with his faith in God, a spiritual quest that grew out of his personal troubles and addiction. The album was recorded in one session on December 9, 1964, in a studio in New Jersey, leading a quartet featuring pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison and drummer Elvin Jones. Of that experience, Coltrane said, “I experienced, by the grace of God, a spiritual awakening… leading me to a richer, fuller, more productive life.” After running the NYC marathon in 1979 I joined a group of college friends at the Cookery, in Greenwich Village. McCoy Tyner, who played piano on the recording, was playing piano that evening with the band accompanying the Blues impresario Alberta Hunter. As he began a selection from Coltrane’s album, Tyner said to those of us gathered that night; “It was just such a wonderful experience….we couldn’t really explain why it was… meant to be. The Spirit was present in that room that day.” 

Music has the power to evoke the mystery of Paul’s call in Corinthians to “see what cannot be seen” in ways that move us to deeper understanding, as in this favorite hymn of mine:

My song is love unknown, / My Savior’s love to me; / Love to the loveless shown, / That they might lovely be. / O who am I, / That for my sake / My Lord should take / Frail flesh, and die?

My Song Is Love Unknown – King’s College, Cambridge (youtube.com)

Some time ago, I was with my family for a trail race in northern New Mexico and visited the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi, in Santa Fe, site of Willa Cather’s novel Death Comes for the Archbishop. Among my favorite passages in the novel has Archbishop Latour, the main character, say:

“Where there is great love there are always miracles…One might almost say that an apparition is human vision corrected by divine love. I do not see you as you really are… I see you through my affection for you. The Miracles of the Church seem to me to rest …upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there about us always.”

A few years earlier, while attending a clinical conference in Santa Fe, I watched a glorious parade on the Plaza of St. Francis Cathedral. The morning was filled with music, including Spanish violin groups, Mariachi bands representing various societies paying homage to saints, and music from many of the Pueblos found in the region—so much wonderful music!

As the participants entered the Cathedral, I found myself moved by the richness of God’s creation. I was also acutely aware that in this time and place, I was very much in the minority. I was the “Anglo” stranger, standing on the periphery as the parade passed me by. I felt a momentary loneliness, even in the crowd gathered to watch the parade.

Then a Mariachi band of old Hispanic men, with deep, leathery skin the reddish brown color of the very earth in the surrounding hills, came into view. As they passed by me, one of them paused, and bowed, still playing his violin. Nodding, he motioned me to enter the procession. His deep brown eyes were smiling, and in a moment of joyful, grace-filled transcendence, I found myself a part of this glorious dance, healed, and moving up the stairs into the deep, delightful, sacred mystery of the Cathedral. Music accompanied me on this journey, and was reminiscent of the final verse of “Love Unknown”:

Here might I stay and sing, / No story so divine; / Never was love, dear King, / Never was grief like Thine. / This is my Friend, / In whose sweet praise / I all my days / Could gladly spend.

Paul reminds us that death does not rule, not only when we die, but also while we live. As Cather’s Archbishop Latour says, miracles of grace are all around us, if we will open our eyes and ears to see and hear. We have so much love to share here at Holy Family, so many ways to give of ourselves—to give that love away. Find a way to join us, won’t you? There are so many opportunities for service—including our amazing choir, gifting us with beautiful music each week!

It takes a combination of creativity, imagination, talent, and the gift of the Holy Spirit to gift us with these lovely pieces of music. John Coltrane understood this as a “Love Supreme.” I do as well. And that morning in Santa Fe, love unknown and unseen was made “manifest” to me. May we, too, join in the Holy procession—the grace-filled resurrection parade on into Pentecost, and beyond, with gratitude. May our eyes see and our ears hear the music of love supreme, unknown and unseen, and may we not lose heart.

I’ll catch you later on down the trail. And I hope to see you in church! Bill+

God covers the heavens with clouds, prepares rain for the earth, makes grass grow on the hills. … God gives to the animals their food, and to the young ravens when they cry.

~ Psalm 147

Somewhere John Muir wrote “I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was going in.” As I write, I’m just in from a trail run up to Mt. Oglethorpe on a day of cerulean blues skies and spring breezes. The view from Eagle Rock was lovely, and reminded me of an annual trail run with friends in Colorado, near the confluence of Rocky Mountain National Park and the Roosevelt/Comanche Wilderness Area. An alpine start and half day’s climb to Comanche Peak (12,700’) reveals the crenellated waves of mountains from Wyoming to the north, and the San Juan’s to the south and west. Last year, an unusually heavy snowpack remained well into July. Daily visitations from moose, deer, raven and peregrine falcons—and, based on tracks around the cabin, brown bear enlivened and blessed our sojourn here in the lovely Pingree Valley. And indeed, in going out, I found myself going in, both here in the lovely Southern Appalachians, and in the Colorado Rockies. But what might “going out and going in” mean? Why did Muir find such inward solace outdoors?

Each year for 30 years I have gathered in wilderness settings with friends from Vanderbilt, for trail running, hiking, fellowship and laughter. For the past 20 years we have gathered in the Pingree Valley, an artifact of glaciers following the uplift of the Rocky Mountains some sixty million years ago. Deep in a sub-alpine forest of spruce, fir, and aspen we are bathing in the pinenes, limonenes, and other aerosols emitted by trees, and believed to elevate NK cells, a type of white blood cell known to send self-destruct messages to tumors and virus-infected cells, and lower levels of cortisol and other stress-related hormones. We’ve known for a long time that factors like stress, aging, and pesticides can reduce our NK count, at least temporarily.[1] After an unusually busy winter and spring, I am grateful for this time away with my friends, including the trees!

In his book “The Three Day Effect” Richard Strayer from Arizona State studied the effect of time spent in nature on networks in the brain, especially the attention network. Strayer writes.

“So many things demand our attention: emails, deadlines, chores, grocery lists, elusive parking spots, and, as William Wordsworth put it, all the ‘getting and spending.’ ‘The world,’ wrote the poet ‘is too much with us.’”[2] When the attention network is freed up, other parts of the brain appear to take over, like those associated with sensory perception, empathy and productive day-dreaming.  

And speaking of empathy, perhaps we can learn something from trees about being in community during what some are calling an “epidemic of polarization and loneliness.”[3] Trees live communally in ways we are only beginning to understand:

“Before it dies, a Douglas fir, half a millennium old, will send its storehouse of chemicals back down into its roots and out through its fungal partners, donating its riches to the community pool in a last will and testament…trees communicate, over the air and through their roots…trees take care of each other….seeds remember the seasons of their childhood and set buds accordingly. Trees sense the presence of other nearby life…learn to save water and feed their young and synchronize their masts and bank resources and warn kin and send out signals to wasps to come and save them from attacks. Forests wire themselves up underground. There are brains down there, ones our own brains aren’t shaped to see. Root plasticity, solving problems and making decisions. Fungal synapses. Link enough trees together, and a forest grows aware. ” (Richard Powers, The Overstory)

Our beloved Holy Family parish is, in many ways, like a deep and abiding forest. Community, like nature, as Muir suggests, has the power to heal, nurture and sustain us, and to remind us that we are not alone. We are reminded that whatever our burdens we are part of God’ beloved Creation, in Deep Time. As Mary Oliver says so well:

Around me the trees stir in their leaves

and call out, “Stay awhile.”

The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,

“and you too have come

into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled

with light, and to shine.”[4]

So consider finding a way to get outside this spring and summer, if only to sit or stroll in a local park, or perhaps to plant a tree. Of course, our own Holy Family campus is perfect for what Muir called a “saunter.” And consider, too, finding ways to reach into our parish community, and to co-create relationships in this sacred space, and be filled with light! We need volunteers for Eucharistic Ministry, Pastoral Care, Outreach, and other forms of service. In volunteering you may find that in reaching out, you are going in…deeper into your relationship with God, and in so doing, deeper awareness of your own spiritual journey. What we care for, we grow to resemble, and yes, by going out, we may find that we are going in.

I’ll catch you later on down the trail…and see you in church!

Eastertide blessings,

Bill

[1] https://www.outsideonline.com/1870381/take-two-hours-pine-forest-and-call-me-morning

[2] https://www.rei.com/blog/camp/the-nature-fix-the-three-day-effect

[3] https://www.hrsa.gov/enews/past-issues/2019/january-17/loneliness-epidemic

[4] Mary Oliver, When I am Among the Trees 

“The physical structure of the Universe is love. It draws together and unites; in uniting, it differentiates. Love is the core energy of evolution and its goal.”

~ Teilhard de Chardin, Human Energy

One of my favorite professors at Vanderbilt University was Dr. John Compton, who taught courses in the philosophy of science, hermeneutics, and phenomenology. He was a brilliant teacher whose father, Arthur Compton, was a Nobel Laureate who worked on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, New Mexico, where John attended High School.

John encouraged us to engage in the dialogue between science and religion, ask tough questions, and enjoy and explore the ambiguous spaces in between. We read Thomas Kuhn’s book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) which challenged the view of scientific discovery in which progress is generated and accelerated by a particular great scientist. Rather, Kuhn suggested, new discoveries depend on shared theoretical beliefs, values, and techniques of the larger scientific community—what he called the “disciplinary matrix” or “paradigm.”

Building upon this, feminist scholars identified attitudes towards gender and race as among those shared values and beliefs, and suggested that we need to question the way in which histories of science recount who does what, and who gets credit. Evelyn Fox Keller, writing in her book Reflections on Gender and Science, suggested that science is neither as impersonal nor as cognitive as we thought. And it is not reserved for male geniuses working on their own. It occurs through collaboration. This includes religious values, critical inquiry, and dialogue between science and religion. Having come to doctoral work at Vanderbilt as a neuroscience undergraduate major, I appreciated this reciprocal, interdisciplinary dialogue.

The year Kuhn’s text was published, the Mercury Friendship 7 mission occurred. John Glenn, piloting the spacecraft, was returning to earth when the automatic control system failed, forcing him to manually navigate the capsule to touchdown. Katherine Johnson, one of the (“Hidden Figures”) African American mathematicians working for NASA, calculated and graphed Glenn’s reentry trajectory in real time, accounted for all possible complications, and traced the exact path that Glenn needed to follow in order to safely splash down in the Atlantic.

Such stories amplify and deepen the work of Kuhn, Keller, and others who encourage us to create a future in which more and different people—regardless of race, gender, religion, class, or sexual identity—can imagine themselves as participants in new unfolding discoveries. Collaboration in a season of transition, or times of crisis, is essential to resilience, and to hope.

At heart, these narratives evoke the essentially relational nature of Creation, and God’s love, an evolving, divine, dynamic energy. As the poet Wallace Stevens said; “Nothing is itself taken alone. Things are because of interrelations or interactions.” We are reminded that nature itself is a system of reciprocal and deeply related interactions:

“Ecosystems are so similar to human societies—they’re built on relationships. The stronger those are, the more resilient the system. And since our world’s systems are composed of individual organisms, they have the capacity to change… Out of the resulting adaptation and evolution emerge behaviors that help us survive, grow, and thrive.” ~ Suzanne Simard, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest

And as Ilia Delio has written, “If being is intrinsically relational (as the Trinity evokes) then nothing exists independently or autonomously. Rather, “to be” is “to be with”…I do not exist in order that I may possess; rather, I exist in order that I may give of myself, for it is in giving that I am myself.”[i] Or, as Mary Oliver said so well,

“And what do I risk to tell you this, which is all I know?

Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world. ”

Sounds like a relational, incarnational, Trinitarian Gospel to me. I pray that in this Eastertide season and beyond, we at Holy Family find ways to live into, and out of this “matrix” of God’s unfolding Creation. This requires of us a willingness to collaborate, imagine new possibilities, and to remember our Baptism, in which we pray:Give us…an inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will and to persevere, a spirit to know and to love you, and the gift of joy and wonder in all your works. Amen.