RPM - "Rhythm Prayer Move" project

The word "salvation" derives from the Latin word for "health," salus, and without making too much of that point, as physical-spiritual beings there is benefit to seeking health of both body and spirit. While sickness is no blockade to God's love, and certainly never a sign of divine disfavor, the lack of health can block out ability to be of service to others, and by focusing our attention on our pain and causing worry and fear, it can impede our ability to focus within on meaning-making and  outwardly on service to those who need it..

It's tricky to figure out how to say this, and someone may have a better idea. I've known a lot of sick people, chronically sick, even mortally, who are a lot more other-centered than I will ever be. But by the same token, Jesus never un-healed anyone. Prophetic utterances in Isaiah never described the reign of God as bringing more death, or making people sicker. Restoration to wholeness, to salus, can be an outward sign of the integrity of community, as well as the importance of the individual. As a parent and spouse, I hope to be healthy enough to provide for my family, be of service to my church and to others, and to continue to find and share meaning with others through the gospel until my days are over. For now, it seems the best way to do that is to stay as healthy as I can, and be aware of and helpful to those who are unable to achieve physical health.

My friends Lisa Bagladi and Pedro Rubalcava have collaborated on a musical project to help us achieve mens sana in corpore sano cum spiritu sana. Their concept is "Rhythm Prayer Move," or "RPM," and they have produced together some downloadable music for us. I've known Pedro for more years than either of us cares to recall, but certainly it's three decades; Lisa I've known since the late nineties through our mutual friendship with Gary Daigle. For many years, Lisa graced our liturgical prayer at St. Anne with her beautiful flute playing that flows from an inner integrity as well as well-practiced chops. When I heard that they had been working on this project, I asked Lisa if they might want to share a little bit about the work on my blog, so I asked them some questions and they have answered them. I love these two!

How did you get the idea to do this?
Lisa: Starting as professional dancer, musician, and fitness enthusiast, I began to develop the practice of this method of praying well over 20 years ago. I remember 6 weeks after having my twins (the 3rd and 4th girls) trying to get back in dancing shape, but couldn’t go anywhere because I had 4 kids, four and under. I would find quiet time in the day, while they were napping, and I would have a great need to not only exercise, but truly center myself in prayer, to regenerate for the rest of my busy day. I would use ethereal meditation type of music to relax, then I would start moving in my small space, to work up to an aerobic type of pace. I would focus on a psalm or mantra and started to practice this. I found my experience of going into deep prayer while moving repetitively and rhythmically to be profound, and I just wanted to share it with people! I started to imagine the perfect music to support this, and was on a continuous search. Nothing quite met what I was looking for. Either tracks weren’t long enough, or the tempo had too many changes, or other people’s lyrics (while still beautiful and inspiring) got in the way of my silent listening to God, so I thought, well, I guess I should just create something. I played around with my flute and garage band and developed some ideas…..about 8 years later decided it’s time to make it so. I shared this concept with other musician friends, and while they liked the idea, it didn’t completely resonate, until one day, I shared it with Pedro, and he immediately shared in the vision. He let me know that he wanted to partner with me on it as he had some of his own ideas for something like this as well. We started to play around with the musical ideas and formulated them into our first volume.

With my professional background in dance, dance prayer, as well as continuous study in the area of the mind-body-spirit connection for health and wellness, I envisioned developing this into a lifestyle-type brand of music and method for people to use in their everyday lives. We developed a workshop format and are offering it to parishes, ministries, and groups that are interested in learning and incorporating this type of prayer and mind-body-spirit experience not only in their ministries, but personal life as well. There is a lot of exciting breakthroughs in science and our understanding of the value of prayer combined with moving and it’s effect on our biology, and we hope that this is a wonderful tool and aid to support people on this journey of health and holiness!




Pedro: Lisa is the one who interested me in the idea. However, in my own prayer experience for several years the idea of creating and singing short phrases taken from Scripture and from the Psalms in particular is something that I have used consciously  and unconsciously to accompany my prayer. In think I even began to call this “walking prayers” - chants and melodies that I could use as a focusing element and continuously repeat – not unlike what might be familiar to us through the Taizé prayer experiences.

What are your unique contributions to the project?
Lisa: I composed the Psalm 63 and Psalm 23 instrumental pieces of volume 1. I envisioned a middle-eastern longing feel to the Psalm 63 (My Soul Longs for You, My God) and for Psalm 23, (The Lord is my Shepherd, I Will Want For Nothing) I heard a sort of musical dialogue with God out in the woods, with a Native American feel to the music. (I especially like this piece for running, it has a good rhythmic tempo for breathing and moving) I play flute on the recording of all the pieces. In our workshop experience, I lead everyone in the movement, while Pedro leads our musical support and accompaniment.




Pedro: "Un ángel habló en el sueño" (An angel spoke in a dream) has two inspirational sources. One is the idea from the gospel of Matthew’s infancy narratives in which God speaks to Joseph through an angel appearing in a dream – three distinct times. To me these are wonderful stories of faith and how the Divine enters into our lives. For some reason the idea of an angel appearing to Joseph in the dream seemed like it should be in a flamenco rhythm who’s melody speaks in the voice of the angel telling him to not be afraid to take Mary as his wife, to flee to Egypt with Mary and Jesus, and then to “get up” and return to Nazareth after Herod’s death. The second inspiration was actually a dream that I had in which a mother and daughter were dancing a flamenco rumba and in which I was the guitarist that was providing the soundtrack for their beautiful dance. To me this song has a lot of breathing in it and movement. “Blessed Are They Who Believe” as a mid-tempo expression allows me to breathe more deeply and I imagine it as a cool-down or warm-up song that allows us to stretch. This was inspired by the “doubting Thomas” post-resurrection account in the gospel of John—“Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.” The melodies actually came out of singing those words. After our conversations and reflection on the scope of the project I agreed to become the musical producer of sorts.

Who or what inspired your collaboration?
Lisa: I believe the Holy Spirit inspired our collaboration, as we both share in the desire of leading people into a multicultural deepened prayer experience. Our music is more in the genre of world music using rhythmic percussion and instrumentation. Working together on this has flowed very naturally. Also, Pedro’s gift of leading prayer through music and poetry has always been inspiring to me. In addition,we have teamed up with some wonderful musicians that share in our vision, Antonio Gomez - percussionist from Seattle specializing in latin, and middleastern rhythms and music, and Joseph Hébert, Cellist, professor of music and choir director from the Bay area, along with others that are able to join us in different settings, who will be contributing to our future volumes.

Pedro: Yes, ultimately it was the Holy Spirit  Several years ago, Lisa had asked me (and Peter Kolar) to listen to something she had put together on Garage Band that was a percussion track with flute and spoken word. That led us to have on-going conversations about “bodily" prayer and the idea of creating music that was intentionally religious that allowed people to pray while they moved exercised. Our conversations led to sharing of ideas surrounding this very concept and experimenting in live settings with groups of people, leading them in the prayer experience. These conversations led to further conversations with the folks that Lisa has already mentioned (Antonio Gómez and Joseph Hébert) about possible collaboration. I think we all share in the power of music to transform and integrate our prayer life.

What do you hope to achieve through RPM?
Lisa: Our mission is to help ordinary people (fitness buffs or the newly inspired to incorporate more exercise) in bridging their fitness and prayer life together, and offer ways to deepen their spiritual life through this higher awareness, leading with intention, and a surrender to the living God through Christ and the Holy Spirit.

Our workshop and retreat formats offer a unique, interactive, and engaging experience that provides an oasis from the traditional workshop format, employing the ability to learn through multiple intelligences. We find that the kinesthetic process of learning and praying through the body, in community, reaches and touches people on many levels. The feedback that we have received is that with the experience of live percussion, instruments, and voice to support the rhythm of breathing, moving, and praying together creates a unique communal bonding experience--truly praying as ONE. This experience allows people to connect with the divine through their very body, unifying body, mind, and spirit.  This type of praying is not new, but very old, and very alive in other cultures and religions around the world. Somehow this experience got lost in our U.S./western culture, despite the fact that this was a way of life for the native peoples of this land.  Catholics may be experiencing an element of it in their local yoga or zumba classes, but the unique opportunity to bring our Catholic imagination and theology to it provides inspiration and enrichment, besides that wonderful stimulating feeling of stretching and getting the blood flowing!

Pedro: Lisa expresses this very well. Providing folks with the opportunity to enhance their lives by connecting them with the experience of intentionally praying as they move, can only lead folks to deepen their prayer life. The more people pray and deepen their relationship with the Living God, the better our world is. I have a dream/vision of the transformative power of the Holy Spirit influencing one person exercising at a time, and moving from there to one more, and the next and so on. We know that music is a powerful gift and tool. Let’s use it to make a difference.

Any perspectives on how someone might jump into the world of danced prayer?
Lisa: While the RPM—Rhythm Prayer Move—recording is great for dancers, we also envision it being used by runners,walkers, bikers and anyone working out at the gym. We all use headphones and an iPod of some sort, and our music is important to keeping us pumped for the workout. Hopefully people will find this music as a wonderful alternative and option to help sustain them through their workout, and help them engage in a deepened prayer experience and connection with God!

Pedro: Even for folks who are not into heavy workouts, walking and simply breathing well and deeply is beneficial. RPM is hopefully a simple tool and way that people can enter into this bodily prayer experience and in time develop into more options for the way that folks are extending their prayer life into meditation and reflection using the musical prayer chants. It’s exciting.

In addition, we have a Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/RPMoveMusic  or put "RPM Rhythm Prayer Move" in the search bar. We invite people to LIKE our page. Our aim is to include inspirational content around the subject of Prayer, Fitness, Health, Spirituality, and Wellness.  The music is available for download on iTunes, Amazon, and all the other digital music outlets.
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To contact Lisa for more information, email her. You can sample the other songs from their CD on iTunes (links below) or Amazon (direct link above). Blessings and the very best of luck to Pedro and Lisa in this new enterprise and ministry.

 

Separation anxiety (Ascension)

When they had gathered together they asked him, "Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?" (Acts 1:6)



“The eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had ordered them. When they saw him, they worshiped, but they doubted.” (Mt. 28: 16-17)




I am so grateful that the gospel writers, and Mark in particular, did not too much romanticize the disciples and the Twelve. To have this motley collection of alternately courageous and perfidious, ambitious and deferential, insightful and thick-as-a-brick human beings be the foundation upon which the church is built is eminently reassuring. In a sense, the scandal of their humanity is proof of the Scripture’s fundamental veracity and consistency. In this book, in other words, and in the heart of its God, you don’t even have to be close to perfect. You can betray your friends, you can try to get a better position with the Boss than your companions, you can miss the point over and over again until the teacher’s exasperation is evident. It just doesn’t matter to the God of this narrative, for whom weakness is strength. God himself, in the matter of incarnation, chose to be a peasant artisan in a country dominated by a foreign military power, not a ruler, not a part of the ruling or dominant class.You want a revisionist gospel? Read self-help books, Left Behind, or watch Passion of the Christ. Here, at least, big losers can be bigger winners, runts become lions of faith, and political enemies become table companions.



Even now, at the end of the narrative, captured by Luke in the first chapter of Acts (above) and echoed in the passage from Matthew 28 that ends his gospel, even after the roads of Galilee and Judea, the feeding of the multitudes, his calming the lake, his healing the sick and even raising the dead; after Calvary, and Easter and numerous appearances, the meaning of Jesus and the new vision of God’s universal empire of mercy and equality is lost on the twelve, who ask aloud about the restoration of the political reign of David and the supremacy of Israel, and who even now, in Matthew’s terse, crashing verb, doubt.



Thanks, guys. You’re a good mirror in which to behold one’s Easter self each year. 



The going-away, the absence of Jesus, both in his exodus on the cross and his ascension to Abba, is an essential part of the paschal mystery. Necessarily, this absence, until the disciple has experienced the presence of the Lord in a new way, is a frightening prospect, but like all aspects of paschal life, including, apparently, the nature of Godself, it is life-giving to the full. As Jesus emptied himself on the cross and experienced the absence of Abba in his darkest hour, he was to discover the fullness of life because of the love that neither fears nor is enfeebled by the grave. It is the mystery of the grain that falls into the earth and dies. The disciple, while ever remaining a disciple of the one servant-master, the Messiah, is called to become servant-master, Messiah to others.



Jesus compares this separation anxiety the apostles feel to the birth pain of a woman in labor, an intense pain that will pass because of an as-yet undiscovered joy of new life. In the gospel of John, which does not have an Ascension narrative as such, the death, resurrection, ascension, and sending of the Holy Spirit seem to be aspects of a single reality. In John, when Jesus dies, he returns to Abba and sends the Holy Spirit at the same time, and yet, he continues to abide with the community of disciples. This is evident throughout the entire narrative of the three days, beginning with the supper and the farewell discourse, and continuing through the post-resurrection appearances. “I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me, because I live and you will live. On that day you will realize that I am in my Father and you are in me and I in you.” The intimacy of Jesus with the band of disciples will endure, he says, after the pains of birth (16:21-22). 


As a liturgical musician, I’ve found it hard to find music that is other than representational (in this context, I mean music that paraphrases the scriptural narratives of the Ascension, e.g., “Hail the Day that Sees Him Rise”) for today. The second readings encourage us to see the return of Jesus to Abba as a sign of the divinization of humanity, in other words, of our own going-to-God as the completion of God’s will for us. It’s rarely touched upon in song, at least that I’m aware of. But there’s also the aspect of “why stand staring at the skies,” that refrain that points toward the work to be done and the command to await the Spirit and not lose our way either in grief, inertia, or bewilderment. This brings to mind a couple of lovely texts I’ve used in the past, but whose music is not particularly conducive to congregational participation or our architectural constraints. One is the great Oosterhuis-Huijbers round introduced to the U.S. church by Tom Conry, “Why Stand Staring”:


Why stand staring at what has gone before?
Don’t get lost in things of the past.


I, says he, will begin something new;


It’s beginning already. Haven’t you heard?



The other is Conry’s own lovely “Our Life and Our Song,” which was in Glory and Praise 3 but has been edited out of more recent incarnations of that anthology. Though it’s syncopated folk style would not suit some congregations (and organists), its text is well worth remembering:


Jesus, Son of Mary, was a carpenter’s child


And he knew what it was


To be lost and forgotten


Like the tiny seed before it grows and changes,


Strong as the wind, but near as our breathing.


He is our life and our song.


And, like the wind, gone away.


Word and silence,


He is our life and our song. 


© 1985, Team Productions, Published by OCP.




Preparing for a wedding the other day, I was realizing that my own song, “Mystery,” touches on some of the same Ascension vocabulary and prayer:


Where shall we seek you? Not in the oceans,


Not in heaven, angels have said.


Where shall we find you? Not in our history.


Why seek the living in haunts of the dead?


Why seek the living in haunts of the dead?



© 1987, North American Liturgy Resources



Like “Our Life and Our Song,” “Mystery” isn’t anthologized either. Unlike Conry’s song, it never was. C’est la guerre des chansons liturgiques.



Well, here’s what we’re doing at St. Anne’s for Ascension. Seems like this is an aspect of the paschal season that might use some more attention by poets and songwriters?



Gathering: A Hymn of Glory Let Us Sing or Be Not Afraid (Gather) “I go before you always.” A song about assurance in those times when one feels the absence of God. This is a song about mission, for missionaries. Like us.

Psalm 47 Psalm for Ascension (GIA octavo, Cooney) This is an enthronement psalm, and it’s hard to reconcile with other aspects of Jesus’ preaching about leadership-as-service without some preaching, which no one ever does. When “God mounts his throne to shouts of joy,” God is carrying a bowl of water and a towel; when “all peoples clap their hands,” it is with joy and relief that our slavery to ambition and greed has come to an end, because our God gives everything away without price.
Preparation rite: I Am for You (Gather) In the scriptural story of God’s solidarity with us, and the Spirit of God prompting us toward and enabling our solidarity with one another, the name of God becomes an analog of that ongoing energy. The Exodus name of God, YHWH, whose full meaning, if there is one, is lost in history, was sometimes translated rabbinically to mean something like, “who I am, I am for you.” This insight, from the Jerusalem Bible, was part of the inspiration for this song.

Communion: I Am the Bread of Life (Gather, Toolan)
Recessional:  I Send You Out (Gather, Angotti)
 or Marcy Weckler Barr's adaptation of "Thula Sizwe," a South African liberation song, entitled He Is Living, He Is Risen.

...You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. 
(Acts 1:8)

Mystagogy for Dummies (like me) - Easter 6B - God Is Love - so what?

God is love. So what?



No one is born loving in agape. Most of us learn the hard way, the long way. We journey through the ages of humanity, the stages of development, the path toward “self-actualization” and ultimately transcendence. We learn to love from eros and philia, from the thrill and pleasure of loving, from the security and acceptance and transparency of presence to one another, from the fierceness of a mother’s defensive love, a father’s laughter, the often indefatigable and unalienable devotion of brothers and sisters, or grandparents. 



Somewhere along the line, if we’re lucky, it strikes us that we’re not the center of any universe but our own, and that to become part of the truth of the universe we have to turn outward toward others. We hear the obvious truth of the life of the grain of wheat. It’s not at all that there’s anything wrong with eros and philia. It’s just that they are there to lead us to the Source, the love that is pure life-giving, that is independent of feeling, reciprocation, or even belonging, because it participates in life itself, and finds the source of its joy from its dissipation on behalf of the Other.



Honestly, I’ve been so selfish for so long that I don’t even know how little I do for other people. It’s just in the last ten years, really, that I’ve consciously stopped ignoring the things that I don’t do because I don’t feel like it. It’s like it dawned on me, in my mid-fifties, that to love other people isn’t about feeling anything, it’s about doing. It doesn’t matter what I feel, only what I do. Eventually, with some reflected living, some feelings might catch up, but if they don’t then somehow the actions themselves, if they are for another, and selfless, are part of the paschal mystery, and are life-giving in and of themselves to me as well as to whomever I might have served. It’s hard to imagine it’s taken me so long to even begin to grasp this. And don’t misunderstand me — it’s not like I’ve suddenly become Mother Teresa or Mia Farrow. Just a little bit less Falstaff, or Oscar Wilde.



It’s so obvious, but sometimes it’s just words. Like, I remember Tom Conry once laying one of his famous dictums on me, “Liturgy isn’t about making people feel good; it’s about making people feel like doing something good.” And on the level of drama alone, that’s a world of difference. It’s a movement from the self and eros toward the other, and agape. When that other stands outside the circle of friend and family, that’s the purest form of agape. It’s certainly true that real love is like the river; it doesn’t matter where you drink from, the river is the same. One can be truly, completely selfless with a lover, or with a son, or daughter, or parent, or friend. But Jesus, it seems to me, wants to make a point about this in his culture, which is already loyal to a fault to its own. In the Sermon on the Mount, making a point about loving those who love us, he tells us, “Don’t even the pagans do that?” So the real test is loving our enemies, doing good to those who hate us. As any of my friends in liturgy preparation would tell you, be specific about enemy-love in the general intercessions some time, and see how fast the good Christians shoosh you out the door. “For the safety and well-being of al-Qaeda, let us pray to the Lord.” “For ISIS, the Taliban, the Sendero Luminoso, the Crips, the Bloods, the 18th Street Gang, let us pray to the Lord.” And praying for them is hardly dying, or living, for their good.



For the believer, this relentless divine love is at work even in those who have not heard the Name of God, or who have heard it and rejected it. Every moment of longing and alienation is a doorway to the infinite. God’s life is invitation, the available experience of accepting, unconditional love. The question becomes, who will discover the path of the love that “lets the rain fall and the sun shine on good and bad alike” in the search for meaning in life? Whose Church will be a safe harbor like that, whose preaching of the gospel will be the way it lives and worships and serves the neighborhood? 



Maybe that’s the “so what” question that follows the proclamation that “God is love,” the one that Paul asked just a few decades after the death of Jesus (Romans 10).


But how can they call on him in whom they have not believed?

And how can they believe in him of whom they have not heard?

And how can they hear without someone to preach?

And how can people preach unless they are sent?



Belonging, in Christ, ultimately means being sent. Love, like God, is not satisfied with itself, it is by its nature outward bound. If this “here comes everybody” party is ever going to get underway, we’re going to have to get the word out. Into every cozy upper room, into every lakeside breakfast, into every comfortable Christian’s life, a little fire must fall. Love is mission. Easter, the paschal mystery of God, is Pentecost.

This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends.

θεὸς ἀγάπη ἐστίν (1 Jn. 4:8 - Part 2) B6E

(Read Part 1 here)

Maybe you feel that all these words about agape, about divine love, are a boring, repetitive drone of platitudes that everyone already knows? You may be right. I certainly confess that, for many years of my adult life, probably into my forties even,  I did not look forward to lectionary year B, when, like this year, the gospel of John in passages from the Last Supper discourse was matched to a second reading from 1 John, creating what seemed to me to be an indistinguishable one-trick pony of a goulash, a bland “all you need is love” for four or fives weeks of preaching. It has only been in recent years, as I have come to appreciate the startling gravity of agape and kenosis, as they reveal themselves in the incarnation as the pulsating heart of the paschal mystery, that I have come to love and joyfully anticipate celebrating these Sundays in an adult way.



Consider in the light of what I was talking about last time, the kosher-breaking vision of Peter as he prepared to visit the house of the centurion Cornelius, the meaning of John’s amazing statement that everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. The words do not say, as we might expect, that “everyone begotten by God (in the sense of ‘all who are baptized’) loves God and knows God,” but rather, the text says that everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. That is, those who act for the good of others come to share in the life of those who are the children of God, and live in a state of intimacy with the Holy One. To me, this is as wondrously liberating a credal statement as the parable of Matthew 25, in which the surprising criterion on the last day is not orthodoxy, membership, the correct sexual orientation, ordination, or even confession of the name of Christ. In Matthew 25 as in I John 4, it is agape, that is, disinterested service on behalf of others, not related to ideology, that brings one, startled for even being recognized and unaccustomed to and unprepared for reward, into intimacy with the servant-emperor of life. 



Bear with me a few minutes more as I ask you to read with me again the words of the gospel from Sunday in this pure radiance of God’s love.




"As the Father loves me, so I also love you.

Remain in my love.

If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love,

just as I have kept my Father's commandments

and remain in his love.


I have told you this so that my joy may be in you
and your joy might be complete.

This is my commandment: love one another as I love you.

No one has greater love than this,
to lay down one's life for one's friends.

You are my friends if you do what I command you.

I no longer call you slaves,
 because a slave does not know what his master is doing.

I have called you friends, 
because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father.

It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you

and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain,

so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you.

This I command you: love one another."

This word “remain” - in Greek, the verb μένω (menō), has the sense of “staying in the same place.” It has often been translated as “abide,” a word which is beautiful but possibly suffers from being a kind of religious archaism. But the unmistakeable sense of the word is intimacy; of lodging in another person’s home, and all of the openness and hospitality that that implies. Jesus says in this gospel passage that the intimacy that he shares with Abba, an intimacy that can be described as in-dwelling, living together in one house, is the same intimacy that the disciple can expect from him, and the same intimacy that his commandment compels us to live in with one another. The “commandment” of the “friend” Jesus thus is not a burden laid upon the believer, but the blessing of a lover who only wants the very best for the beloved, as if to say, “I can’t say anything better than this, there’s no other life in the universe, there’s nothing that will ever satisfy any of you, ever, more than being like God, and that is to serve one another’s needs no matter what.” The “commandment”, then, is rather like telling the disciple not to “fall up” or not to stop breathing. Surrender to agape. Float in this divine current, and finally be yourself. Finally, find complete joy by forgetting to pursue it.




Why is it so hard then? Why do we get stuck so often in eros, love that pays us back with good feelings, and philia, the mutual love that’s altruistic enough but shared among the related and like-minded? I reject the possibility that we’re fundamentally oriented toward sin, because the revealed truth is that all of God’s creation is fundamentally good, and breathes with God’s own breath. It must then, be some issue of mistaken identity, substituting other loves (eros and philia), which are also good, for agape, which is divine. Can God possibly be patient enough to wait us out on this, individually and as a race? 



Here, I just want to diverge to another passage in John, chapter 21, verses 15-17. This is the famous dialogue between Jesus and Peter on shore of the lake after the resurrection, one which looks backward to the threefold denial by Peter of Jesus in the courtyard of the High Priest the night before Jesus’ execution by the Romans. In this passage, Jesus asks Peter three times, “Simon bar-Jona, do you love me more than these?” Each time, Peter answers affirmatively, and Jesus charges him to love his flock by nurturing them. But what we miss in every English translation of this passage is the subtle shift in the question of the Lord. The first time, Jesus asks, “Simon bar-Jona, do you agapas me more than these?” He is asking Peter if he has thrown himself completely into the ring of holy fire, the love that gives itself completely for others. And Peter responds in an equivocal way: “Lord, philo you.” I love you like my own family. The second time, it is the same, "Simon, agapas?" "Lord, philo." But the third time, when we might expect Peter to respond to Jesus’ question in kind, John shows us the kenosis of the logos again, as at creation, as at the incarnation, as at the washing of the feet, as at the last breath on Calvary. It is Jesus who changes the question to Peter: "Peter, philos?" Peter responds, "Lord, you know it. Philo!” Jesus then makes what might be thought of as a prophecy “about the sort of death Peter would die,” that is, as a young man he goes where he wants, but as an older man, he’ll be led where he’d rather not go. But you know what? That sounds to me an awful lot like Jesus is saying to him, “Today, you can only offer philia. But things are going to change. Agape is going to grab you around the heart and take you where you can’t go today. I can wait for that.”



God can wait. That’s the way of agape: it is the faithful “remaining,” or “abiding” that empowers love in others by loving, that gives and gives and gives no matter what, if anything, is flowing in the other direction. It is the very first thing on Paul’s list of the qualities of agape in 1 Cor. 13: Agape is patient! The word in Greek means something like, “can endure the injuries of others for a really long time.” Thank God for that. 



...Everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God.

Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love.

Purchase "God Is Love" by Rory Cooney, sung by Theresa Donohoo, on iTunes.

θεὸς ἀγάπη ἐστίν (1 John 4:8, part 1) B6E

Peter's vision, by Doug Jacques.

One of my absolutely favorite stories in the entire Christian scripture, including the parables of Jesus themselves, is the account of the sojourn of Peter in the house of the Roman centurion Cornelius, and the story of his vision of the divine picnic. This vision, by any account, opens Peter’s mind permanently to the possibility that the apostolic mission to proclaim the love of God and the covenant in Christ was not to be just a mission to the Jews, but a mission to the entire world. James Alison calls it the institution of "universal Judaism," the catholic Church! While Peter does backslide occasionally as he seems to be wont to do, the vision sets up a reconciliation (for Luke, anyway) between the two great moving forces of the early church, the charismatically anointed authority of Paul’s preaching, and the dominically “ordained” authority of Peter. Here, in the infancy of the Christian movement already, there is both conflict and reconciliation between charism and office, and the reconciliation is achieved through truth-speaking, prayer, and dialogue, albeit sometimes apparently begrudging and suspicious.



Cornelius, it is very important to note, is a Roman citizen and an officer in the occupying army. He would be required to have been part of the cult of the emperor. But Acts identifies him as a God-fearer, that is, a Jewish sympathizer, one who listens to the Torah, sympathizes with Jewish belief, and actually contributes to the upkeep of the Temple and the priesthood. Unfortunately, all of this information, as well as the story of Peter’s dream during an afternoon nap, happens in the 25 or so verses of chapter 10 of Acts before the reading we hear Sunday. It’s just one of those things: the lectionary imagines that we already know the whole story, and only need to be reminded of it by a little reading. Needless to say, some remedial reading needs to be done by a lot of us, and it would certainly help if homilists took the time to frame their comments with some brief allusion to “the rest of the story.” Cornelius, as one born a pagan and yet attracted to Jewish monotheism and ethical life, is thus a symbol of both that great arena of first century proselytization, the God-fearers of the entire Mediterranean diaspora in Greece, Asia Minor, Rome, Spain, and Africa, but of the wider net yet to be cast among the pagans of those lands.



I say that Cornelius’s identity is important to note because of the unlikelihood of his coming to faith, and the same can be said of his whole family. The man is in the literal employ of another god, Caesar. And yet, as Luke tells it, he is a God-fearer, and is blessed with the vision that tells him to summon Peter to his house. Peter’s vision, in turn, of the divine smorgasbord, allows him to speak those Easter words that have rung down through the ages: “I see that God shows no partiality. Rather, in every nation whoever fears him and acts uprightly is acceptable to him.” This new awareness does not require explicit incorporation into Christ to validate it: Peter’s awareness is about God’s very nature, that God shows no partiality to any nation or people or type of person. His experience in the house of Cornelius, however, of a household which knows Christ and which is alive with the presence of the Holy Spirit leads him to invite these non-Jews to the waters of baptism. He is so overwhelmed by the experience, in fact, that he can barely restrain his language. It is as though the baptismal waters themselves were bursting their boundaries to swallow up these Gentiles.



The love of God, limitless, life-giving, non-judgmental, is poured out on the household of a man whose nation took the life of the innocent Jesus, and many other lives as well. It might be said, I think, that in this story, God is “loving enemies,” as Jesus taught in his life and work, if God can be said to have enemies. But the issue here isn’t even God’s enemies, it’s whom we consider or pre-judge to be God’s enemies upon whom God’s love is poured. The essence here is that love surprises even the insider, the beloved, with its fierce loyalty. Peter, the beloved right-hand man of Jesus, is himself overwhelmed to come to this new insight about God’s love. Barnabas and the community around Antioch and Tarsus are overwhelmed by the unthinkable turnaround that divine love has wrought in Saul/Paul, who is changed from a fire-breathing jihadist against the Way to its most persuasive and peaceful apologist and witness. The best that the “insider” can do inside the storm-center of divine agape is to keep the heart open, because there seems to be no limit to the way God’s love can surprise us.



I will say more on this later in the week, especially in the light of the 2nd reading (quoted in the title of this post) and the gospel. As we approach the feast of Pentecost and the end of the Great Fifty Days, we are immersed ever more deeply in the meaning of the resurrection and the paschal mystery of God, the awesome and creative anti-power that is agape. Week by week, the richness of the Church’s meditation on the Savior, Abba, and their Holy Spirit floods us with hope, and encourages us to follow the Way ever more resolutely and with open, beloved hearts, expecting and savoring the strange interruptions of God’s troublesome, impartial love.



These are the songs we will sing at Mass Sunday, for those of you keeping score.


Gathering: We Have Been Told, by David Haas

Psalm 98: The Lord Has Revealed to the Nations His Saving Power, setting by Rory Cooney (octavo, OCP)

Gifts: God Is Love, by Rory Cooney
Communion: No Greater Love, by Michael Joncas
Recessional: All Shall Be Well, by John Foley

(Read Part two of this Sunday's reflection here.)




I see that God shows no partiality. Rather, in every nation whoever fears him and acts uprightly is acceptable to him. (Acts 10:34, first reading from Easter 6)

Mystagogy for dummies (like me) - B5E - Bold enough to be changed

After Sunday's liturgy, I ask these questions of myself: What did I hear about the paschal mystery of God in today's celebration? What did I hear about what it means to "rise from the dead"?

It may seem obvious, but I keep going back to the question of what life and death mean in the gospels. For my Catholic-school-through-seminary thoughts, the first level of response to these texts with which I've lived my whole life, I default to a personal eschatology—I'm alive, I'm going to die, and life and death are as simple as that. But as I've learned through my life about how we are all connected to one another, how our living now affects the living and dying of others now, I'm no longer satisfied with my original answers, and see that the gospel is calling me to a different way of seeing life and death.

The very heart of the gospel image today, of a vine and branches, is a corporal image, that is, it's an image of a living organism, a body. Jesus suggests that life is interdependent, that we are bound together with him by a single life, and that it is precisely in our being bound together that more life is possible, "bearing fruit," which suggests both nourishment and continuity in the vine. St. Paul's word, in fact, the gospel of St. John's word, for the way that the vine is kept alive with the life of Christ in God is "Spirit." The Holy Spirit of Jesus, the breath of God, the wind of Pentecost, respirated into the Church from the cross and in the revelation of the resurrection, unites us with the life of God and the mission of Christ.

But God is not just another agent in the multiplicity of forces that run the universe. God is not like "one of the gods" to whom we have traditionally ascribed that kind of role, a benevolent or malevolent or insouciant or random force competing with others forces for our allegiance or worship. No, as James Alison says, God is much more "like no god at all" than like that. Infinitely patient, kind, and without any malice or envy, God is the agent in the universe, the I AM whose life is so wildly generous and so utterly shared that, like it or not, there is no other life to be had. Like with the other I AM sayings in the gospel of John, we are to hear the echo of the voice from the burning bush when Jesus speaks, whether of the life of the vine, the flock, living water, living bread, or anything else. The life is the life of God, the life shared in God's given Spirit, deathless, liberating, freedom-for-others, companioned in covenant. It is life that invites participation, and participation which awakens new identity and solidarity among those who relax into it, and that very participation leads us into the life-for-others which is the kenosis and agape of the paschal mystery of God.

St. Paul, whose conversion to Christ was the focus of more than a little skepticism in Luke's Acts narrative Sunday, is a good example to me of someone moving from death to life, all while worshipping, in his own heart, the very same God. Did God change, or did Saul/Paul? After his "conversion" (turning toward) Jesus he did not serve a different God, but he perhaps he saw that he he had projected his own anger, prejudice, and constricted sense of grace and belonging onto God because of a particular way of worship, behavior, and orthodoxy. His catechetical style certainly changed. He left his fire-breathing, sword-wielding, warrant-serving, death-penalty-enforcing self on the desert road, and became a bold persuader, a poet of the body, one who invited participation in Christ and with Christ in the grace made universally available by the Holy Spirit for the equalizing, loving-kindness of every person: man, woman, slave, free, Jew, Greek. No more threats and violence, just the bold invitation to be a part of the body dwells richly in the unifying, liberating grace of the Spirit of God.

"I will praise you, Lord, in the assembly of your people," was the psalm refrain in the liturgy today, and it reasserts the very same principle—whatever the novelty theology might be that infers that we can experience God on our own, the authentic experience of the God revealed in scripture is that God is experienced and worshiped by participation in community life. But God is not in rivalry with individualistic models of belief! With infinite patience, by the gentle, persuasive participation of those who submit to the experience of the vine and branches, all shall be one, because at a depth perceptible only to the Creator and only barely imaginable by the rest of us, we are already one.

What does it mean to "rise from the dead" then? For today, for me, it means to stop projecting my restrictive brand of grace onto God and to accept that God loves everyone equally. St. Paul said that in Christ there is neither "Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, woman nor man." We might today say there is neither "Anglo nor Arab, poor nor rich, liberal nor conservative, straight nor gay," or any of many false dichotomies around which we rally like idol-worshipers. To "rise from the dead" means to try to shed the envy and rivalry in me against perceived enemies, perceived competitors, and to try to encourage others to reject rivalry as well, and to try to let our "sun shine and rain fall on good and bad alike," the way that God does.

To "rise from the dead" is to remain in Christ, and to "love one another" as Christ loved us, ready to occupy the place of the enemy and the victim, full of faith and hope in the I AM whose life is so abundant and without rivalry that death does not even exist. It is participation in that life, the life of God's Spirit, that is the beginning of God's gentle reign, right here, right now.

And his commandment is this:
we should believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ,
and love one another just as he commanded us.
Those who keep his commandments remain in him,
and he in them,
and the way we know that he remains in us
is from the Spirit he gave us.

Dream date

Most of you who read my blog probably access it from Facebook, so you will know the main content of today's post. I'm writing it anyway for archival reasons, because it was such a wonderful day on Saturday, and the day ended with the best surprise of all: the performance of my song "Canticle of the Turning" on Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion show, live on NPR.

Saturday was sweet enough already. Since the young woman who teaches at the school was handling the music for the first communion masses at the parish, I subbed out the evening mass as well and actually took the entire day off from work. Since it virtually never happens that Terry and I have the same day off of work, we decided to take full advantage of it and get out of the house. By some random act of kindness by the hostile universe that will require a supernova destroying a solar system in another quadrant of another galaxy, it was also a perfect spring day. So after a delicious breakfast of mushroom and Gruyere omelet with fruit, we headed to the Chicago Botanic Gardens.

Mid-afternoon, after a stop at Starbucks for some hydration and protein, we made our way over to the Northbrook mall and the movies. We went to see Woman in Gold, a true story about a woman's struggle to retrieve a Klimt portrait of her aunt, stolen from her by the Nazis from the Austrian government and the national museum in Vienna. A really great performance by both Helen Mirren and Ryan Reynolds, and we recommend it if you like this kind of movie.

It was after this, around 6:30, we made our way to a restaurant we'd never tried before, Bobby's in Deerfield. We had just sat down and ordered some drinks when my Facebook feed lit up in a way that was extraordinary for a Saturday night. One colleague from central Missouri sent me a private message that said, "Are you listening to Prairie Home Companion?" The messages were pouring in that there was a vocal group performing my song "Canticle of the Turning" live on national radio!

Garrison and PHC were broadcasting from Goshen, Indiana, not far from South Bend, and from Goshen College, a Mennonite institution. Their Chamber Choir were the featured performers on the program, and they did their own music as well as contributing to Keillor's signature spoofs (an "autobiographical" rendition called "I Wish You'd Keep from Singing," and a re-working of Shenandoah.) Terry and I have seen PHC live a couple of times, once at the Auditorium Theater in Chicago on Thanksgiving weekend, another time at Ravinia in the summer, and it's always such a great experience to be part of the entertainment that Keillor & co. provide. Such an unexpected honor to have song of mine performed there! And this one, this Irish folk song with words by a Catholic from (at the time) Arizona, performed by a concert choir from a Mennonite college! An adventure in musical cross-pollination and eclecticism. I still can't believe it. Now if someone would just let GK know what an opportunity he is missing until he has Terry sing on his show. 😊

This is the entire show. If you click on the sixth entry in the list of songs, "Teach me thy truths..." etc, you can listen to all 11 minutes, or scrub ahead to about 7:45 and hear their energetic cover of "Canticle of the Turning," known here by its hymnal title (it appears in the Mennonite hymnal!) "My Soul Cries Out," with fiddle, whistle, and bodhran. You can also try this link, which should take you to that 11-minute clip. Yesterday's South Bend Tribune, by the way, reported that "The Goshen College Chamber Choir was a bouncy group of effervescent young folks, led by equally peppy director Scott Hochstetler. Numerous choir members sang solos, made-up songs and advertisements throughout the show. Their version of hymn “My Soul Cries Out” was powerful and a standout performance."

As for Saturdays, they don't get much better than that one. I'm bracing for the karmic backlash from having such a great day, but until that happens, I'll just be grateful the gift and thank God that, more than a quarter century after it was first published, this piece of music can speak to the hearts of young people on paths I never would have imagined.

There's something mystagogical about that, one Vine, all of us, wherever we are and however we worship, the branches. I'll think about that some more. Have a great day.