Befriending the Thief

 

A homily on death, delivered at the Unitarian Church of Harrisburg for the Annual Service of Remembrance, Feb 21, 2016. 

Rebirth

For several years this blog has languished while I worked on Seven Candles projects. I'm back. I realized this blog is not limited to poetic writings - I can post anything here. So be prepared! Let's start with something I wrote back in 2008 and filed away. Seems relevant in this election season.

Transformation, like Fire, has three ingredients:

Fuel – Community (People who know each other and have dynamic relations together)

Oxygen – Ritual (singing, dancing, prayer, meditation, sports, washing dishes, walking, etc)

Heat – Risk (anything that is out of the routine, involves taking a step towards the unknown/uncomfortable, and happens with the knowledge, support, and encouragement of the community)

For Aaron

  
  

forward effort spent,

Wave relaxes back from sand

serenely accepting,

delighted to discover

he was Ocean

all along.

  

  

  

  

For Jeffrey Aaron Winborn, who made a splash in life and embraced his death with grace. 

  

Advent Reflection

Ancestors. So many, so diverse. For the moment, let's set aside the ancient swimmers and crawlers, our scaled and sharp-toothed forebears, and the small furry cousins sleeping soundly beneath the grassy lot next door. 

In this season between remembering ancestors at AllHallowsEve, and the deep dark of the winter solstice, our early human grandfathers and grandmothers saw only a dying god, the life-giving sun each day diminished, decaying before their eyes and altars, with no promise of redemption from a cold, dark, empty death.  

They knew that life is a circle; that this darkening time had come, and gone, and come again since before people sang songs and made fires, but they did not know why or how. Perhaps this year, Helios would succumb, sinking ever lower, ever weaker until gone forever.  And all the while, food is running out; day by day reserves wither like the stalks and vines picked clean two moons prior. 

So they waited, and inside them we, with all our far-future aspirations, waited too. Waited in uncertainty. In doubt. In fear. 

Millennia later, we great-great-grandchildren still feel a vague unease as we drive to work in the grey early dawn, and return home after sundown.  We awake in the dark, and go to sleep in the dark, more-so each day, until our whole lives seem encompassed by cold empty darkness, and bare skeletons of trees, and an increasingly greyscale existence. 

Chilling winds seek and find vulnerabilities in our parkas and families, so we bundle our coats and our kids closer around.  And we wait. 

They say every person has a hole in their soul, well, this season makes it hard to pretend otherwise.  So we try to fill our cold hunger with fermented spirits, and sugar, and fat, with bloated bellies and even emptier souls.  We try to color the grey with brightly ribboned packages, purchased with buckets of bright red ink.  We try to fill the deep emptiness with clichéd music, fake cheer and shallow smiles, then snap and gripe at those we love the most. 

But we, know, better.  We know something important that our hungry ancestors could not have known.  Behind the veil of the sky, hidden but to those who follow subtle clues and make precise measurements, the sun’s wanderings become still – it is we who wander the heavens from morning to night, and season to season.  

This we know: the sun, with celestial powers far beyond the wildest imaginings of ancient priests and prophets, a burning bush of a thousand thousand worlds, yet slavishly follows the common law of falling apples and running water.  

Spring will come.  It must, because it’s the law!  Not laws of men or kings or even gods, but law both higher and lower than all of these, the laws of heaven and earth and space and time themselves.  Call it faith, yes, but also knowledge; spring will come. The light will return. 

They say that all good things come to those who wait.  Let us wait thoughtfully, patiently, confidently, faithfully.  In the quiet and welcoming dark.  Together, we wait.  

Light Seekers

If you think the purpose of science is 
to eradicate spirituality, then 
science is already dead, 
at least for you.  

Science is devotion and joy.  
It’s as spiritual as 
any hymn, any prayer, 
any great awakening of history. 

One-liners

The universe is not a machine.

We have met the enemy and he is us, but we're smarter.

If it involves worksheets, it's probably not unschooling.

Convenient Truths

Global warming is a hoax.  

Homosexuality is a choice. 

Evolution is a lie.   

The holocaust never happened. 

Moon shots were staged.

Medicine is a trick. 

Bacteria don’t exist.

The sun orbits the earth. 

Gravity isn’t real. 

The earth is flat. 

Knowledge is bogus. 

Reason is arbitrary. 

“Facts” are just opinions.

Science is someone’s agenda. 

The world is dangerous. 

I need more ammo.