Circles of Friends and the Cloud of Witnesses

November 14th, 2024 | Click to Comment

Friends have always mattered, but I’m particularly aware of how important they are right now.  When the outer world is in upheaval, stirring up fear and anxiety within, the people whom we love and trust help steady us with their presence. Wise friends make it easier to calm the distracting agitation, hear the inner voice of wisdom, and act in a way that truly serves life.

A few days ago in the company of a trusted friend, I found myself releasing tears that I didn’t even know were there. I had no idea of the weight I carried until the shelter of our friendship allowed me to feel safe enough to acknowledge it. Feeling loved allows us to open our tender hearts. Each of us is carrying more than we know. Recognizing the state we’re in is how we release the burden of our human woundedness into the healing light.

Being aware of our inner state also helps us recognize both positive and negative aspects of ourselves, and to make decisions informed by what is best in us. It helps us recognize the difference between being manipulated and being informed. It allows us to know when our actions come from a place of clarity and wisdom, and when we’re being driven by destructive emotions and blinded by a too-narrow focus.

Outrage and judgment, grief and despair, are natural human emotions arising in many of us in response to the kind of leader this country has chosen to elevate. It’s important to make space in ourselves for these genuine emotions, and it is also important not to cling to them. We can allow emotion to move through us without our being consumed by it.

This is important, because however appropriate these emotional states may feel, they cannot sustain us. Neither can the agitation of an anxious mind, with its anticipation of doom and plans for catastrophe. We need a more steady source of fuel that does not burn us out. We need a connection to the quiet center within. The onslaught of analysis and outrage distracts us from connecting to the deeper wisdom that lets us know the next right step that is ours to take.

Many of us feel dismay at the prospect of dismantled safeguards and deconstructed institutions that may occur in the coming months. Nonetheless, the values that gave rise to those structures remain. Values such as education, justice, civility, and kindness are strengthened and preserved in the lived experience of individual people. We have the power to guard them at the micro-local level where we live our lives.

We all have a choice in where to place our attention and energy. I have limited ability to effect change at the national level, which is the focus of most news reporting. There are others in a better position than I to navigate those political waters; perhaps I can find ways to support them. Yet I do have agency. I trust that each of us has important work to do right where we are. In fact, that is the only place where we can work.

The fabric of American society is strained. Small tears are visible in many places. Our enemies exult in this. Finding what is ours to do, individually and in small groups, will yield actions that bring a new fiber into the weave of the beloved and vital fabric of our country. This new fiber, and the ways we find to thread it through the material of American life, will be created from a clear-eyed perception and response to the context of our everyday lives. It will be informed by the Source of life moving through us, grounding us in the ability to really see what is happening, surprising us with new possibilities, and supporting the day-by-day work of holding the fabric together. This fiber may be neither red nor blue. Part of the work involves recognizing that there is much more to a person than how they voted in the election. This, too, is something our enemies want us to deny.

We can’t know exactly what will happen in the coming months, much less years, and we waste our precious energy flinging ourselves at imagined outcomes. Our strength is needed for being present to whatever each moment requires of us. Our energy is needed for guarding our values. Our attention is needed for seeing others in their full humanity, remembering that our entire society is strengthened when we honor and guard the dignity of each individual. People are more complex than any one aspect of their lives.

And in the meantime, it is not only wise but glorious to take sustenance from this life, in the company of those we love, and sustained by the beauty of the natural world. We can be uplifted by those around us, and inspired by the words and the lives of those who have gone before us. There is a great cloud of witnesses who have shown us how to keep the faith. They are whispering, “Do not be afraid.”

Susan Christerson Brown

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The Fragrance that Draws Us In

June 22nd, 2024 | Click to Comment

The largest lavender plant I’ve ever seen is blooming beside my front porch this summer. Most of my mature plants are about ten inches tall. But this year one of them shot out stalks three or four feet long in every direction, like a botanical version of spherical fireworks. Each is tipped by a slender cone of buds opening into tiny purple flowers.

From early morning until twilight the blossoms attract bumblebees. They land heavily, bouncing at the ends of the long stalks like reverse bungee jumpers. The bees tolerate the thrill ride for the sake of lavender pollen and nectar, precious food for a nest located somewhere over the roof and beyond. Today, one of the bees is weighted with two full pollen baskets. They look like little orange balls attached to the bee’s hind legs—nature’s original cargo pants. It’s almost always four bees—for days, even weeks now, four bees at a time bobbing among the lavender stalks. The same four? I wonder.

Bumblebee with a full pollen sack

I enjoy taking my morning coffee onto the porch, breathing the scent of lavender and observing the bees sampling bloom after bloom. In recent days I’ve watched them with a grieving friend on my mind. I wish I could make life into something that holds the sense of the purpose and beauty and peace of this small garden spot. My friend knows suffering, from long years of heartache and loss as mental illness and addiction claimed this child she loved. Even so, the death her child, of anyone’s child, at any age, is too much, whatever the circumstances. The heartbreak this world contains is terrible.

I have so little to offer her, but decide I could cut some of these enormous stalks to make a generous lavender wand, weaving prayers along with the ribbons and stems. As I work, the scent of lavender wafts not only from the flowers, but leaves and stems as well. The lavender-scented air fills my breath and my thoughts; I imagine the pleasure taken by the bees in simply navigating by this perfume.

We’re all following the fragrance that draws us in. We are compelled by what attracts us, and by what we believe we need. The natural instincts of the bees lead them to the life-giving nectar and nourishment of a flower on a swaying stem. The instincts of the human psyche are rarely so simple and pure. What we cling to and what we resist often distort our sense of what we must have. Recognizing the fragrance of what is truly life-giving, and following it to the source, is the work of a lifetime.

What can we learn from the bees? They bury themselves in the blossoms for a moment then move on, their transitory bliss part of a larger pattern. They take their fill and buzz off toward the nest, returning from their explorations with something of value. They never forget that they’re part of a larger colony. They follow the scent of the flowers, and still they remember how to find their way home.

We humans have the freedom to choose what to put in our pollen baskets. If our choices are to be life-giving, we need discernment and sometimes help. Through some mysterious interplay of strength and humility, discipline and grace, we generally learn to delight in what brings life. Through wisdom we come to know our place in the larger pattern of things. Through the leading of the heart we learn to navigate by love. And I trust that even when we leave these gifts unopened, the greater love holding all of us will find a way to carry us home.

Susan Christerson Brown

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Presence without Answers

June 11th, 2022 | Click to Comment

In my mom’s new electronic photo frame, images from across the decades show up in delightfully unexpected order. Our family keeps it interesting by continually sending new pictures—some recent and some from the past. Yesterday the display showed a fabulous picture of my dad from the late 1950s. He was in his mid-twenties, leaning against his Chevy and looking like he was going to own the world. Then a recent picture of my thirty-six-year-old son came into view. Stretched out on the floor with his baby daughter, his face expressed a more mature kind of optimism. He showed the peace, strength, and love I knew from my father, years after that youthful snapshot.

Seeing the younger generation at a later stage of life suspended my usual sense of the passing of years. It bent time to see the grandson older than his grandpa. The daughter who would be me was not yet born; in that juxtaposition of photos my baby granddaughter was older than I was!

There’s a rare and treasured picture of four generations of mothers and daughters in our family taken when I was a baby. My mother is now about the age of the great-grandmother who seemed ancient when I was young. Somehow, I’m now in the role of grandmother. Decades after that picture was taken (and still many years ago) I took my place in a different photo of four generations, posing on the porch of the same house. I can still hear the ringing metallic creak of that screen door swinging open—a sound that announced love and welcome, remaining constant through all the changes from childhood into my years as a young mother. In this front porch snapshot my daughter was five or six, and my grandmother had become her great-grandmother. My mom in the photo is a little younger than I am now. How can this be? As with so many before me, I understand my elders better with each passing year.

My beloved grandparents passed on long ago. Recently I’ve lost my dad. A friend says one of the gifts of grief is the appreciation of what’s here, of our time with each other, and how much it matters. How brief it is. Another gift is the perspective on what has real weight and what doesn’t. It helps us see difficulties as the passing circumstances they are. It can remind us not to fritter away our energy and attention on things that don’t really matter.

Ironically, it takes a long time to understand how short life is. For much of my life the years seemed to extend far in front of me, and I took them for granted. But it’s not just the brevity of life that we’re slow to appreciate. There is also the mystery and gift at work through the living of our days. We have access to the Source of life, but it usually takes a long time to wake up to that reality.

Regardless of whether we’re awake to it, the Life Force moves and animates us in amazing ways. What unfolds is glorious. Looking back from a distance is like watching time-lapse photography of a flower bloom. In those earlier years I thought that living a life was my own doing. Now I know that my actions were more a matter of Life moving through me. Sometimes I was in the flow, sometimes I resisted it. On my best days, I showed up fully for what unfolded. I responded to the ways Spirit nudged me forward. Am I doing that now? I hope so.

One thing I know is that life is short, and I don’t want to miss out on it by not being present. As I experience time bending, connecting the generations, I see the fleeting beauty of the time that I have. I want to savor it, or at least show up fully for it. And I’ve learned that engaging in some kind of creative work helps.

Creating calls forth our best self. It asks only that we show up and engage. In making art, or taking it in, we engage with Presence. Art doesn’t provide us with answers; it doesn’t have to. Its job is to be present. It invites us to attend to what’s real, and to experience how reality shows up in the beauty that passes away. It helps us hold the questions, and to allow life, whatever it brings, to flow through us.  

Like a Rothko painting, art can be a doorway into a temple. Engaging with art creates a still point in a turning world, the axis mundi that makes an opening for eternity.

Susan Christerson Brown

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Illumination

July 9th, 2021 | Click to Comment

For a few minutes in the early morning, the angle of light from the sun, the tree line out back, the frame of a particular window and doorway, all align perfectly to send a shard of light across the kitchen counter. It illuminates a simple notepad I keep there. This narrow pointer of sunlight travels through the house from another room—an alignment that happens only around the summer solstice.

I’m still learning the light in this house and across this bit of land. Even now as I write, the changing angle of light illuminates a small brass nail on the oak floor. It must have fallen there, unnoticed, in a recent round of hanging art on the wall. For a moment the nail is easy to see, though when the light changes it will disappear again.

This week I read David Whyte’s “The House of Belonging.” There’s a subtle trinity in this poem—of wholeness in oneself, belonging, and connection. Whyte’s words embody a peace that comes from knowing that even in solitariness, he’s not alone. His sense of belonging comes from the connection of the soul to its source, to the mystery and beauty of all things, and to life itself. This connection to life is a connection to his own depths. It imbues every interaction with meaning and vitality. The sense of belonging that arises from this deep presence connects him to his home and the “housely angels” that dwell there. The feeling of belonging also connects him to those he loves, whom he welcomes into his home and his life. Belonging fosters an open heart, where others can belong.

Whyte is describing a moment of transcendence when he can see how his life is connected to a greater reality. Sometimes we can see the connection; sometimes we can’t. The golden threads that link our lives to the divine and to one another only show up when the light is just right. In the holy moments when we are most alive, these sacred threads of connection are illuminated. They show us the beauty of our lives. We see them in the light of a poem, a conversation, a loving touch, an image, a ritual, a prayer, a moment of beauty, or countless other ways.

We so easily lose sight of those golden threads. The light shifts, and the sense of wholeness and belonging that they bring seems to disappear. We forget that we’re connected; we lose track of how much our lives matter. It’s an illusion, of course. The golden threads remain as surely as that brass nail on the wooden floor, hidden in plain sight.

Walk on this earth with bare feet, connected to the ground, feeling for the sharp edges, the prick of the nail’s point. Watch for a new angle of light, revealing what is right there, the truth in plain sight that we’re finally able to see.

Susan Christerson Brown

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I’mportant

June 29th, 2019 | Click to Comment

This morning I had coffee on my front porch—a rare pleasure that takes more time than I can usually afford. Or so I’ve long convinced myself. Apparently I believe there are more important things to do than taking in the abundance of an early summer morning. That belief has probably caused me to miss out on a lot of other good things as well.

There are so many things I can’t take time for, I tell myself all too often. I have important things to do. I’m portant. As if goodness and value is something I need to manufacture.  As if there were not something more vast and wise and powerful that wants to show up through me.

The sure sense of what’s important grows distorted when it becomes “I’m portant.” I’m portant says that that the quality of my life and of those around me is all about me—what I do, what I know, what I contribute. I’m portant is what happens when I lose connection with the source of life and instead believe everything hinges on the effort I make to be safe and worthy and loved.

“Portent” foreshadows what’s to come, and I think of “I’m portant” in that way, as if I’m the one determining what’s to come, as if I were in charge. When I’m trying to be the prime generator of my life, I lose touch with the greater reality. It’s like struggling to touch bottom when I could simply let the water hold me up. Or trading away my place in the magnificence of creation for a small world of my own making.

So I’m practicing creating some space between me and the day’s demands. I’m trying to discern the truly important priorities as opposed to the ego’s clamor of “I’m portant.” Pausing to enjoy the world helps me remember that a vast and powerful life force causes everything to unfold, including my life and work. I have a part to play, but I don’t have the job of making it happen by myself. In fact, when I act as if it’s all up to me—believing that I’m portant—I cut myself off from the flow of life that would carry me forward.

Of course, there’s the reality of everyday life to navigate. Showing up at work, getting kids to school, arriving for appointments on time is part of an orderly, responsible life. We can’t always sit on the porch. But making space within the calendars that drive us is part of a life well-lived.

We are more than our schedules and obligations. Every moment marked by the clock is also a moment that manifests what is timeless. There is a greater reality in which we live and move and have our being. In the moments when we can remember that, there is peace.

Those moments enjoying the lavender budding on new stalks, a wren hopping across the porch, and even the ubiquitous morning glory vines winding up in new places, feel a lot like vacation. I feel connected to a world that encompasses more than the current political climate, one that isn’t pitching me to buy anything.

But old patterns die hard. Part of me wants to focus on the weeds that need pulling. “I’m portant,” is the message when those weeds call to the self that is driven to be useful, to get things done, to make the place look good. Yes, there is a time for weeding. But that work can be held in a wider context, one that honors and appreciates the living, growing world.

I do better when I remember that I’m not so portant after all. My mind is clearer when I’m not trying so hard to think. My heart is more open when I bring awareness and compassion to my own limitations. I move through the world more graciously when I can relax and receive the sensory information all around.

Perhaps instead of portant, I can be present.

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Honestly Facing the Darkness

July 11th, 2016 | Click to Comment

During the Festival of Faiths a few weeks ago in Louisville, Kentucky, Pastor Mike McBride posed a question that remains with me. He asked: Where is it that we have gone wrong as a culture in our theological formation of people?

Three Streams


It’s an essential question, asking religion to take a long look at its own shadow. The church has come to be seen as condoning questionable ethical, spiritual, and moral conduct. And for those who reject religion because of the darkness in it, the question remains for other cultural institutions and for the individual: What dark part of ourselves are we being invited to bring into the light for healing?

At the heart of this life, our soul’s journey is supported by a deep foundation of compassion. At the base of everything that is, is love. Love gives us the courage to look into the darkness and compassion gives us the strength to bring it into the light. That’s how we find healing and wholeness.

I’m looking within, asking whether I have been part of feeding the darkness. I’m holding in mind what is required of me: to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly in the presence of the divine source of all life. Asking about my part in the institutions of our culture is more difficult, as is finding my role in bringing about change. But if we currently have the system we have asked for, then let me be clear. I’m asking for change.

Let us keep before us the ideal of a culture where justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

Rabbi Lawrence Kushner (standing), Panel Moderator (?), Jim Wallis, Rev. Michael McBride

Rabbi Lawrence Kushner (standing), Panel Moderator (?), Jim Wallis, Rev. Michael McBride

 

 

 

 

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The Stories that Feed Us

April 17th, 2014 | Click to Comment

I’ve been thinking lately about what faith is, as practiced in community. And about the tension in religious life between nurturing faith and acting for social justice. Not that they’re opposed—they are yin and yang, a union of opposites. The truth, the full picture, transcends each and holds them together. Each at its fullest point gives way to the other, requires the other to continue, loses meaning without the other, whether in the life of an individual or a community.

Herbs on Serving Platter

But where do we put our energy? Feeding the hungry matters, but it matters both physically and spiritually. Soup kitchens and food boxes meet basic needs, but the spirit’s needs are essential as well. The world is hungry in a thousand ways. People must have food, but they are starved for meaning, for hope, for beauty and peace. We cannot live by bread alone.

This week’s radio show, On Being, is an interview with Avivah Zornberg, who explores biblical stories through the Jewish tradition of midrash. She makes the insightful observation that faith is about asking better and better questions.

During the seder meal in the Jewish celebration of Passover, the practice of asking and answering questions is part of the sacred ritual. Children at the table see unusual and interesting foods, placed before them in part to invite questions. Why is this night different from other nights? Why are we eating these herbs tonight? A child’s simple question echoes through layers of experience in the minds of the adults. We need more than simple answers as life goes on, but we continue to ask why.

In the Seder ritual, the answer to the child and to the adults as well, comes through story. There is richness in that kind of teaching. Open spaces with room for exploration are made present in the world of a story. There is wisdom in demonstrating to the young that when people gather around the things that matter, we create a place and a time for questions.

Those early questions usually have answers. Children need information; stories are literal. But when the information comes in the form of stories, the answers invite more wondering, more questions, as time goes on.

The true teachings may be less about what can be known than about the stories that shape our lives, and the questions we’re invited into. A story changes as we inhabit it, and we are changed, too. I wish I had understood this better when my children were young, but we’re all still learning. Still asking questions.

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A Gift Just for Showing Up

September 11th, 2011 | 4 Comments

If I hadn’t had a role to play in the service today, I would have skipped church. With family visiting all too briefly from out of town, another cup of coffee together sounded like a better plan. But since I was needed there I drove to church instead, listening to NPR on the way.

I’ve resisted the anniversary observances of 9/11 this year, wanting to avoid dwelling on the suffering in that event and the dismay at what has transpired since then. But the reminders are everywhere this weekend, and this morning’s coverage left me feeling the weight of the past ten years.

I found myself thinking that if I had to be going anywhere I was glad it was to church. If nothing else, I was glad to be offering up the events and emotions of this anniversary with others, as part of a service that makes remembering more bearable and perhaps even more meaningful because it is shared.

As I waited in back to follow a cherubic acolyte up the aisle during the opening hymn, I had a vision of the sanctuary I had never experienced before. The glass walls at the back of the sanctuary caught the light in just the right way to reflect the trees in the garden behind the church.

The reflection of their trunks blended with the wood of the pews on the other side of the glass, so that the trees seemed to have taken root in the sanctuary. A canopy of green appeared to shelter the worshipers and the center aisle was like a tree-lined garden walk. As a breeze lifted the branches and rustled the leaves outside, the reflected movement seemed an image of the holy spirit, stirring gently among the congregation.

Knowing I couldn’t possibly do justice to the scene, I pulled out my phone and snapped a photo anyway, just to help me remember. It’s the picture you see here, the photographic equivalent of an illegibly scribbled note.

I’ve written about trees in a church before—something I find to be a meaningful symbol. That’s why this scene of a worship service overlaid with the life of a garden felt like a gift. In the fullness of late-summer growth, brought to life by a gentle wind, the reflected image of the trees spoke of suppleness and fruitfulness, deep roots and new branches, life and hope.

At its best, that’s what a church is all about. And because I showed up today, I was able to experience a reminder of the good that can come from people gathering together. On today, of all days, I’m glad I was there.

I’ll leave you with a verse from the opening hymn we sang:

Yes, on through life’s long path,
still singing as you go,
from youth to age, by night and day,
in gladness and in woe
Rejoice, rejoice, rejoice give thanks and sing.

 

 

 

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Green and Growing Faith

May 2nd, 2011 | 2 Comments

The power of ceremony and ritual was evident in the British royal wedding this weekend. It offered a wealth of archetypal images—of union and strength, new beginnings and promise, grandeur and reverence. Many of its elements seemed straight out of a fairy tale. But what I keep remembering is the sight of English Field Maples lining the aisle inside Westminster Abbey.

It was lovely to see life that was fresh, green, and growing inside a sacred space a thousand years old. We have a need for the sturdy structures of the church and its traditions. They can help us contain and interpret the most important moments of our lives. Ideally, religious rituals and teachings help lift our joys to the light and bear us up under the weight of our sorrows. But to fulfill their role to the fullest those practices must meet our lives, and the culture and climate in which we live them, in a meaningful way.

For this to happen we must take responsibility for engaging with the traditions and leaders of the church. We need the courage to express our genuine questions, needs, longings, and aspirations. And at the same time, the church needs to respond with openness, granting a blessing upon our willingness to wrestle with angels in the dark. Where this is possible, the church will be a shelter for green and growing faith that transforms the world. But where we just go through the motions, all that remains is ritual drained of life.

The church helps us live into the truth that our lives are part of something greater than ourselves. But the trees in the abbey speak a message as well: the church is charged with fostering something more important than its traditions; its role is to foster life.

What can we do to live a green and growing faith, and to help build a church that fosters it?

 

 

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A Prayer at Easter

April 24th, 2011 | 2 Comments

 

When the cup we hold is bitter
and its weight heavy to bear
May we look to the One who sustains us
in whom all things work for good.

When we lose our way in the dark
and the night is filled with fear
May we remember that love upholds us
and find strength renewed by the dawn.

And when we find that loss and sorrow
draw us to the tomb
May messengers of life and hope
roll away the stone.

 

May your Easter season bring the gift of life that blooms anew.

 

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