Thanksgiving

 Well, it’s late November and all of my siblings are gathering for the first time since my father passed away in 2018.  One sib lives overseas, three live in the south, and two of us live on the west coast.  As always with family gatherings, it can be stressful as old grievances pop up, egos puff up, the need to be right rears its ugly head, and generally, we have a tendency to trigger each other emotionally.  

To be honest, I’ve already snipped back at one sibling several times.  So today, I need to heed my own advice and focus on gratitude.  Gratitude has a way of changing our perspective.  It might not change my circumstances, but it changes me!  Start with small stuff.  

Today, I’m grateful for coffee.  What else?  I am grateful that we could all get together.  Grateful that my mom is doing better.  Grateful for the two siblings who care for my mom daily.   I’m grateful for a cool, cloudy day in the south.  Reminds me of Thanksgiving in my youth.  

As I remember to be in a state of gratitude, I feel my defenses softening.  I’m grateful that my younger sibling is here. We share similar-ish worldviews.  That sense of solidarity, in an environment of overwhelmingly harsh and hostile worldviews, is reassuring.   And if I remember to relax, smile, and breathe, my whole attitude changes and softens.  

I no longer enjoy conversations about politics or religion.  Good lord!  When I think of how certain I was in my youth of the duality of the world!  (Shudder). How off-putting that must have been as I declared everything black or white, good or bad, either/or.  I do feel empathy for my classmates and friends and family over the years who so kindly put up with my declarative statements and tiny, restrictive worldview.   And I am reminded of how many truly gentle and sweet people have been in my life…and I am grateful.  

We’ve had a nice journey so far.  On Monday, we stopped in to visit a former colleague of one sibling.  Sister Kathleen and her cousin, Sister Sheila, are Irish Catholic nuns who reside at the Villa de Mattel convent in Houston, Texas.  We had a lovely tour and visit.  Sister Kathleen, now 96 years young, emphatically stated that I must return, that I was called to be a nun, and that the convent was the place for me.  I’ll admit.  I’ve often entertained the idea of becoming a nun.  And the 70-80 acre compound in Houston was a dream with its 100 year old brick buildings, beautiful chapels, archives building, retreat center, retreat cottages, hermitage, labyrinth and forest paths.  I could certainly see myself gardening, helping with retreats (whether Catholic or not), and helping there.  Though, I am not Catholic, nor do I feel a need for organized religion in my own life.  However, I see the value for others who feel that need for community connection through church.  

While I may no longer hold any of the same beliefs I grew up with, I recognize that those beliefs provide comfort for others.  My own spiritual journey and subsequent transformation have taken a lifetime.  I can hardly expect others to be on the same path to enlightenment.  I have to allow others to find their own way.  This reminds me of the first principle of enlightenment: stop judging.  Judge not, lest you be judged.

And my second mantra for my own benefit is: forgive.  Let it go.  Don’t hold on to offenses.  

And finally, “you can be right or you can have peace.”  Choose peace.  

On the subject of god, gender, and music

A note about names and references to God

While language is a wonderful tool that allows us to understand and to experience many different facets of life and religion, language can also be limiting. When it comes to references to God, we have been taught that God is a man. It's not surprising in a male-dominated society.  But we are beginning to see that people can now express their view of God in many ways.  Some see God as goddess or mother.  Others see God as father, brother, friend, counselor, or teacher. No matter how you view God, our language will always be somewhat limiting.  Even the use of the word "God" implies a male gender to a spiritual being or deity, which is so far beyond our human comprehension. 

It's human nature to try to label and categorize.  It is, however, tricky when we try to define the limitless.  Spirit, as we learn in Galatians 3:28, has no gender, no nationality, no race, no identity as we know it in physical form, and yet, this does not stop us from assigning our own human attributes to an invisible, immortal, omniscient, omnipresent being. To be "in Christ" is to let go of all those labels and be one in the Spirit.  But we still fall into the limiting, finite world of language and words to describe our understanding of this indescribable being. 

As a musician and worship leader, I try to avoid gendered references to "God".  I do not remove ALL references, because our language does not permit that, really.  For some people, God is a loving Father.  I also recognize that for many souls, the idea of God as Father might be problematic, if their own earthly father was problematic or abusive.  For many who suffered abuse by others in some form of earthly authority, it can be hard to relate to "god" as Father, Priest, or authority.  So, sometimes, I will substitute gendered language in our songs with gender-neutral language, if possible.  Sometimes, I substitute male words or pronouns with female ones, e.g. for "he", I might replace it with she, they, or You.  Sometimes I leave them in.  Because we all relate to God/Goddess/Creator differently.  

So don't be offended if someone refers to this immortal being as god or goddess or brother or sister, or friend or any other name, because the "I am that I am" defies all human labels. 

As another example, in the song "Good, Good Father", I replace the words "good, good Father" in subsequent choruses with "mother" or friend", so that in some way, each person might be able to relate to the Creator in a different way.  

Whatever language you are comfortable with, in describing the indescribable, use it with joy. And don't judge those who might use other language to describe the indescribable "I am that I am", because that is just how they relate to God/Goddess/Father/Mother/Priest/Friend. 

I'll write more in the future on re-writing old lyrics to try to remove references to Christ as "king, Lord, authority" etc, as Jesus was adamantly AGAINST having power over people or abusing authority.  These references seeped into the Christian language and worldview centuries after Jesus died. And we can still see the malicious, destructive threads still working their evil in our world today: social injustice, gender inequality, ecological domination, devastation of other species and ruination (yes, I just used "ruination", mwah ha ha!), the growing disparity between rich and poor, etc. 

Venting my band frustrations…

I spend dozens of hours getting ready for our once a month Band Sunday.  We can no longer keep playing the same songs from 40-50 years ago if we want to reach a younger audience or even our own modern worship-loving parishioners.  

So, I am constantly:

• Listening to new songs, critically, with an ear for sing-ability for the congregation AND for sound theology
• At the same time, trying not to overwhelm the band with all new music every month, so I have to find old songs with which they are already familiar
• researching the scripture readings for that Sunday, 
• then researching appropriate songs, 
• finding and paying for sheet music when needed, downloading the music, 
• deciding which key is best for the singers, 
• finding copyright permissions, 
• checking the livestream licenses, 
• doublechecking permissions,
• re-writing lyrics to be more gender neutral or less "violent",
• writing new arrangements of the sheet music to fit the time constraints, 
• looking up FREE video links for the band members to watch so they can get familiar with the new songs before we rehearse, then sending those FREE links to the band with reminders to PLEASE LISTEN to the songs…
• emailing the team semi-weekly, 
• reminding the team of rehearsals at 5:30 on Thursdays
• setting up and showing up for rehearsals every week because the band says they need weekly rehearsals to which only a few show up, 
• sending everyone the sheet music, edited, weeks in advance when possible
• then making sure everything is printed correctly (checks and double-checks for the double-checks) in the church bulletin, in advance, 
• then practicing at home so I can lead rehearsals, 
• because the new music director (church organist) is uncomfortable with contemporary music… fair enough. We all have our comfort zones. And if I’m honest, the new person is getting more and more comfortable… YAY!  
• I also try to reach out to individual band members to show appreciation and try to encourage them, and let them know that we do not take them for granted.

That's what I bring to the band.  I know I'll regret this egoic, plaintive post later…. Can you guess I'm a little frustrated with some of my team right now?  I love them.  But I do all this work and some of them don't even practice or listen…. The end result is very poor musicianship.  

But first, I need to acknowledge that when I first came back to the band after taking a sabbatical, several band members helped find the sheet music and researched the copyright/ live-streaming permissions.  They even made paper copies for the older band members who do not use electronic formats.  And one gal still helps with getting all the copy / lyrics ready for the church bulletin, making sure every word is correct, working with both me and the church secretary.

I guess, unless you have poured your energy into a project, you don't really understand how much work goes into the behind-the-scenes…. 

But then, I have to let people live their lives as they see fit. I understand that not everyone feels the same commitment, because …well, LIFE is so much more than this.  I mean, life is busy, so I get it.  And I just have to let them be.  I can’t impose my desires on others.  They will do what they feel is right for them, and

I have to be at peace with that or I add to my own suffering.  The more I reflect on it, the more I see how much others have been doing for the band in the last year that I was away.  I’m grateful for all their help and contributions and eye for detail.  So, really, I’m not doing this alone at all, even if my rant seems to imply that I am.  

I am grateful for a team of musicians who enjoy leading at our little community.  I especially am thankful for the most enthusiastic members who help push new music into our gatherings!  So, no more pity party.  Time for a GRATITUDE PARTY!  Woo hoo!  I think I need to go write some “Thank You” notes to my team members for all their help.

Autumn thoughts

I'm out walking in Temescal Valley this morning. It's cool and cloudy. It even sprinkled a little bit this morning. I was walking my friends' miniature dachshunds, when suddenly it hit me- a wave of nostalgia for the Midwest. I miss things like seeing deer, rabbits, squirrels, white squirrels, minks or weasels, beavers, groundhogs, moles and voles, turkeys, pheasants, and quail.  I miss seeing the flocks of geese and other waterfowl winding their way south, with the occasional honk heard high above the fields.  I miss the chainsaws buzzing as we gathered firewood for the wood burning stove.  I miss the giant, green "horse apples" from the Osage Orange trees thudding with a "thunk" as they fell to the soft, muddy ground.  I miss horses and small town parades.  I miss hearing the call of the owl or the bobwhite.  I miss the brilliant red cardinals and the brightly colored bluebirds or goldfinches. 

I miss seeing the seasons. I miss beautiful fall colors. I miss seeing the brilliant reds and oranges and yellows.  I miss long bike rides along the Mississippi River.  Fall makes me think of Pere Marquette park and its lodge with the human sized chess board. 

I miss my long bike rides through the still countryside on my brother's borrowed bike.  I miss my morning runs to Beaver Dam State Park.  I miss sitting in that wonderful old oak tree down in the woods, quietly listening to brown, crunchy leaves falling to the ground, watching for deer bounding along the trail below, and hearing squirrels barking at each other and jumping from branch to branch.  Do the flying squirrels even exist anymore?  Weren't the quail populations decimated?  Are there any more white squirrels?  And the great white stag is long dead.  Do foxes even exist there anymore? 

I feel the longing for connection to this fragile, dying world- a powerful longing which I always sensed in the cool, cloudy, brisk autumn days.  Like rare gems, it is the very finiteness of objects or even seasons which makes them so precious.  

Today, I miss picking apples in September when the days are still warm, but you can sense the brisk mornings are only days away, and the apple festival is too hot for the caramel drizzle over fresh cut apples from the orchard. Most of all, I miss the cool, autumn weather. I miss that sense of nostalgia, of closure, the sense of the ending of a season, the beginning of the dark time of winter. I know I'm supposed to be living in the moment and being at peace with where I am, and for the most part, I am. I do enjoy the cool winters here in Southern California.  I do enjoy the occasional rains here.

But I miss those heavy, massive thunderstorms, the deafening cracks of lightning, the heavy, rain-laden air you can feel and smell, and the sense of being safely snuggled inside when one of those major tornadic storms rolls through. 

I miss the simplicity of life in the Midwest, but I suppose that's just nostalgia speaking and not reality. I woke up today with that old sense of longing that wells up in my soul on a cloudy fall day.

I think more than anything, cool days in September always remind me of Dad. I remember his cheerful, morning greetings as we started each school day.  September reminds me of Dad commenting every year on KP Morton's tree: "Look! KP Morton's tree is turning red. It's always the first sign that autumn is on the way." 

I also know that if I went back home today, KP Morton's tree would not be turning red. It was cut down years ago. The top of the tree turned brilliant red against the courthouse dome as it towered above every other tree in town. It was the first to turn red every fall.  You could see the top of the tree from several miles outside of town.   For over 200 years, it was first to proclaim the changing of seasons, but then, as with all things in this finite realm, it became weak and diseased and was cut down.  So today, I find myself just longing for something that no longer exists.

Even in my earliest years, my formative years, back in Illinois, as a young child of less than five years old, I remember that sense of longing welling up in my soul every autumn. It was a sense of longing to know the creator of the beautiful world that I saw: as wheat fields turned golden, cool, crisp air with the pungent smell of decaying leaves filled my nostrils, and maple and sweet gum trees changed into brilliant robes of color.  Madeleine L'Engle in her amazing works on "Icons of the True" and her own aesthetic, that is, her own philosophy of art, once said that that longing we feel when we see a beautiful sunset or a wonderful painting is the same longing to know the creator. For me, that sense of longing is the proof that we have a soul, and that there is a creator. Now I know that that indeed is NOT proof. But for me, that is the longing for connection to the rest of the created world and its creator. When autumn comes with its transformative messages and its quiet whispers to "hush" and be still, I always feel a deeper connection to all of creation.  I feel quiet and still, but not lonely.  I feel connected.  

Gender-neutral, non-gendered or non-binary names for God

God is spirit, as such, God has no gender or, at the least, represents both male and female.  The earliest scriptures tell us that “both male and female” were created in God’s image.  Even in Moses’ account of the burning bush episode, God defies all labels:  gender, nationality, color, race, creed, physical description, etc.  When Moses asks, “Whom should I say sent me to the people?” God answers, “Yahweh” or “I am that I am”, being-ness… In other words, spirit is something that defies ALL description or labels or identities, and yet we seem determined as humans to make God in our image.

Yes, Jesus- the human- related to God as Father or Abba, “daddy”, but nearly every word out of his mouth was a metaphor.  Metaphors are not literal!  Here’s an old example of metaphor from  high school English class from Shakespeare, “What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.”  IS Juliet the sun, literally?  No.  Obviously not.  Metaphors are used as a way of pointing us in the direction of a rhetorical idea.

Jesus referred to God as a man looking for a hidden treasure or a woman searching for a lost coin or a sheep herder (could be male or female) looking for a lost sheep.  The point is NOT the gender of God.  It is always about relationship, communion, community, and love.

So as I endeavor to make “God” seem more accessible to a younger, less gender-identified generation, I am struggling to replace old, antiquated concepts of God in the liturgy and the hymns.  Stereotypes of God as Lord, King, Ruler, or a dominant, almighty, powerful being seem to reinforce these worn out images of a control freak, masculine, dominant deity who doesn’t really care about humans, but is obsessed with being worshiped and exercising powers over others.  THIS IS the antithesis of everything Jesus stood for or said about God.  Paraphrase: Don’t call me ‘Lord’ or get excited when people do what you want.  God is not about being served, but about serving.  See Luke 22:25-26 (NIV)-“25 Jesus said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who exercise authority over them call themselves Benefactors. 26 But you are not to be like that. Instead, the greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves.”  Jesus chastised his followers a few times when they fell into that old human way of thinking that “power over others” or dominance is the way to live.  

Jesus rejected all forms of dominance or “power over”.    (I know, those are fighting words in modern “Christian” America).  Yet, our Bibles are filled with references to the LORD.  First translated into the English vernacular in the 1500’s, let’s just say that translations were good, but imperfect, as all translations are.  The word “LORD”, all caps in the Bible were a substitution for the Hebrew word “Yahweh” or “Jehovah”, a name that was so holy to the Hebrews that they were only barely permitted to whisper or breathe the name which means “I Am that I Am”, the indescribable being, an entity beyond human comprehension.  

Language is so limiting!  Even now, God or Spirit or Being or even Entity has a finiteness inherent in the very object-ness of the words.  God is not an object.  God is being.  Not “a being”, but being, I am-ness.  Even this word, “being”, as a noun, implies that God is an object.  An object needs an observer, someone or something separate from it to “do the observing”.  But how can we be separate from God?  This is the very point of early Christianity, finding the “Christ” or god-particle in everyone and everything, no longer seeing ourselves as separate, but one with God, and each “other”.  Love your neighbor as yourself.   Love IS seeing your neighbor AS yourself, no longer separate, but connected.  All this implied separateness invades our world views.  So, “being” as a noun, falls far short of any true concept of God.  Being is more of a verb.  This kind of “being” can never truly be understood.  It can only be experienced (and only in this moment).

I could go on….But I won’t.  I’ve written to a small extent on this subject before.  And others, like Eckhart Tolle and Father Richard Rohr have written so much more eloquently and succinctly on this subject that there is no need for my poor explanations.

All of that to say, that as I attempt to lead others into communion and the being-ness that is God/Goddess/Christ on Sunday mornings at my little episcopal church in Southern California, I am cognizant that, for so many, terms like “Father” and even “God” have a distinctly masculine, dominant, power-over kind of vibe that I would like to avoid, in order that some might find connection.  

The language of domination and dominion seeped into the early church when Constantine adopted Christianity in the year 313 CE as the official state religion of Rome.  While many saw this adoption as a legitimization of an unorthodox cult, the language of the emperor’s world view invaded the church.  The mild, meek Jesus and what he said, what he stood for, was no longer palatable.  Jesus was portrayed as the the Lord, the Ruler, the great authority, the Almighty, the King of Kings, the Sovereign One, the Warrior King.  See Father Richard Rohr’s history of the early church in any of his dozens of books.  This powerful imagery of the Christ has pervaded the church ever since.  It’s not surprising.  Humans tend to feel the need to follow powerful leaders.  The image of Jesus as a poor, meek, lowly, humble guy just doesn’t fit into the “great leader” mold.

So, as I seek to change up some, certainly not ALL, of the language in the church to make it more equitable for all or, at least, less gendered to describe a BEING which defies all labels, I am struggling. So much of this language about domination is hard to weed out or replace in the old hymns. It’s just so pervasive.  Underlying those concepts of dominion and domination is a quiet, unspoken violence, because “power over” is a form of violence.  And much of the new music still refers to God almost always as “he, him, Lord, or King”.  Now, I’m not trying to replace every pronoun, but I would like to soften some of the language to be more inclusive.  Sometimes, I replace “him” with “her”, or “Father” with “Mother”.  They/them could work, but often just feels awkward, even though we talk of God as a triune being- Father/Mother, Son, & Holy Spirit.  

How do I replace the words “Lord, King, Ruler, or God”? 

We don’t have any one-syllable words in English to replace these antiquated concepts.  Again, the word, “LORD” in the King James Version of the Bible meant “Yahweh” or “I Am that I Am”.  There’s no one-syllable word for that in English which is not already burdened by preconceived ideas of “god” as an old, white bearded, mean, judgmental, demanding, all powerful, masculine being. The word, “God” should be gender-less, and yet it comes pre-packed with all kinds of connotations. Perhaps, I should be looking to some of the language of the early deists in American society, our “Founding Fathers”, who as imperfect as they were (many slave holders, for one), did have a few good ideas from time to time.  And for those who claim that the American Founders were all Christian, you’d be wrong, but then, many people insist on being perverse in their stubborn refusal to acknowledge the truth.  Many founders were deists, believers in a Creator or great spirit, but not much more than that. But that’s another discussion for another time, maybe…

So, what non-gendered or non-binary English words do I have at my disposal for modern worship which are inclusive and perhaps less negatively suggestive?

• Spirit
• Being
• One
• Pronouns: You, They/them
• Christ
• Creator
• Love
• Healer
• God With Us, One with Us
• Peace
• Rock
• Glory
• Everlasting
• One who sees
• Eternal One
• Protector
• Provider
• Helper
• Maker
• Way maker
• Miracle worker
• Promise Keeper
• Light in the darkness
• Refuge
• Holy One
• Light of the World
• Present One
• Eternal Light
• Immortal one
• Anointed One
• Lamb of God
• Source, life source
• Sustainer
• The Word
• Bread of Life
• Life, Life Giver
• The Vine
• Wonderful Counselor
• Divine One
• Mediator
• Teacher
• Friend
• Great Being