Out and About – Winter 2017-2018

Well, the spring equinox may have been and gone but we're still experiencing wintry weather here in Minnesota. In fact, winter storm is forecast for this weekend, with the Hennepin County Emergency Management issuing a warning that "all precipitation types are likely . . . including heavy rain, freezing rain, snow, and strong winds." In response, the hospital where I work has issued a statement that includes the following: "Predictions vary, but the worst case scenario includes a foot of snow, ice accumulations, widespread tree damage, and power outages." (4/14/18 Update: The Spring Blizzard of 2018.)

Given all of this, I don't feel that bad for the time it's taken me to look back on the winter that looks and feels as though it's very much still with us.

But first, regular readers will be familiar with my "Out and About" series, one that I began in April 2007 as a way of documenting my life as an “out” gay man, seeking to be all “about” the Spirit-inspired work of embodying God’s justice and compassion in the world. I've continued the series in one form or another for the last 10 years – in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 . . . and now into 2018.

So let's get started with this latest installment . . .

My year-long chaplain residency at Abbott Northwestern Hospital (ANW) in Minneapolis continues. In fact, I'm a little over halfway through – which I find hard to believe. Where does the time go?

In the photo above I'm pictured with my fellow resident chaplains Hae, Chandler and Katie. We're in the Bigelow Chapel of United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities at a Transforming Chaplaincy forum on January 10, 2018.

Right: Getting into the holiday spirit with Hae and chaplain intern Simeon – November 29, 2017.

To find out what exactly we're doing to create some holiday cheer, click here.

Above: My desk in the Spiritual Care department of Abbott Northwestern Hospital. If you look closely you'll see a piece of bark from the Prayer Tree, a photo of my family from last August (the last time I was in Australia), a photo of myself with singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie and drummer Michel Lee Bruyere (from August 2016), my Adsum Award from the Catholic Coalition for Church Reform, and a framed print of "The Compassionate Christ" by John Giuliani.

. . . And, yes, I have a new statue of Cernunnos (right)! For a picture of the first one, and a reflection I wrote last year about this Celtic deity, click here.

Following is part of what my CPE supervisor Mark Mallinger wrote in my Unit I evaluation.

Michael has a big heart for those outside the mainstream and much of our patient population is part of this diverse group of people. Michael’s unconditional acceptance of others is I’m sure felt by the patients and families he encounters and cares for. When my mom and daughter were sick, I experienced Michael’s care and compassion as he reached out to ask how I was doing. He is a good listener and skilled at picking up themes and content under the surface. Michael taps into his love for ritual by facilitating appropriate and helpful ritual moments in his care. Michael has received several words and notes of gratitude for his care and wrote the following in his final self-evaluation:

I have no problems with initiating and maintaining pastoral relationships with patients and staff. I see such initiating and the relational interactions that follow as an integral aspect of my role as a chaplain, i.e., to embody a listening and caring presence. I think that, understood in this way, this role answers the key questions of each and every chaplaincy encounter/relationship: Who am I? and Why am I here? . . . I am an embodiment of compassionate listening and care and I’m here to be this embodiment within the context of this particular situation and with these particular people.

In terms of future ministry, Michael has in many ways found his niche in chaplaincy where so many of his gifts are valued and where he has discovered profound meaning. Michael wrote a beautiful paragraph about how he views “calling” and his own preferred description of discovery:

To be honest, I don’t believe in a “calling,” other than that of being a kind, compassionate, and aware presence in whatever circumstance I find myself. But I feel I’ve experienced enough encounters of genuine connection, transforming connection, through my chaplaincy work that I know in my heart that I make a difference – a positive and healing difference – in people’s lives in my role as chaplain. I am definitely mindful of this, and humbled by it too. Whenever I pause to think about it, I find it to be such an awe-filled thing: to be a human embodiment of the Sacred in the healthcare setting – a setting in which people, more often than not, find themselves at their most vulnerable, with many, if not all the securities and certainties of “normal life” suddenly swept away by the anxiety, uncertainty and fear that an illness, loss, or new diagnosis often brings. I’ve discovered that to be a “rock” – a grounded, compassionate, non-anxious and listening presence – for people in these types of situations puts my mind and heart in a space of such gravitas that it can’t help but be for me an amazing, humbling, and transforming experience.

Above: The wonderful group of chaplain interns we had at ANW from the beginning of September until mid December. From left: Simeon, Verna, Parker, Angela, and Yvette.

Above: The new group of chaplain interns that started at ANW in mid January 2018. From left: Dave, Phillipos, Sheila, Suzie, Dong, Mark, and PJ.

Above: The Rev. Denise Dunbar-Perkins, who retired in December 2017 after many years as a chaplain at ANW.


Left and below: The December 19 farewell party for Denise, hosted by the Spiritual Care department.

Above: Katie, Hae, Denise, and Verna – December 7, 2018.

For more about my journey in interfaith chaplaincy work, see the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Interfaith Chaplaincy: Meeting People Where They're At
• Chaplaincy: A Ministry of Welcome
• Spirituality and the Healthcare Setting
• Getting Into the Holiday Spirit

Above and below: Two of a number of gatherings I hosted this past winter to celebrate both the Winter Solstice and Christmastide.

For more pics and commentary, click here and here.

Above: My boyfriend Brent in a winter wonderland! . . . Actually, we were at Rosedale Center. We were there to see the latest Star Wars film, The Last Jedi.

Above: My housemate Tim and his girlfriend Colleen by Minnehaha Creek, close to where we live in south Minneapolis – December 9, 2017.

Above: My dear friend Noelle with her granddaughter Amelia – December 23, 2017.




Right: Brent and Amelia – December 23, 2017.

Above: My dear friend Joan and her fiancee Matt – December 24, 2018. You may recall that Joan accompanied me on a visit back to Australia in 2015.

Above: My friend Kathleen – January 20, 2018.

Above: On Saturday, January 20, 2018 I hosted my fifth (somewhat) annual tea party at my home in south Minneapolis. At this event were my dear friends Ken and Carol Masters and a number of the wise and inspiring women who are members of (or closely connected to) the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet – St. Paul Province. I'm a consociate member of this Catholic order, and two dear CSJs, Marguerite Corcoran and Rita McDonald, served as my companions during my two-year consociate candidacy (2006-2007).

For more images and commentary on this event, click here.

Above: My friend Omar – January 27, 2018.

Above: My friend Simeon – March 13, 2018.

Above: My friend Deandre – March 16, 2018.

Above: With my friend Brian at Minneapolis' Orchestra Hall. I was Brian's guest for the Minnesota Orchestra's February 9 concert, a definitely highlight of which was the orchestra's performance of Gabriel Fauré's Requiem, Opus 48 (concert version of 1900).

For my reflections on what I call Fauré's "ChristoPagan" requiem, click here.

Above: Hey, it's Black Panther himself!


On the evening of Thursday, February 15, Brent and I went to see Black Panther at the West End in St. Louis Park. . . . And who should have reserved seats right beside us but our friends George and John (left)!

The young boy pictured above was just one of a number of movie-goers dressed up as either characters in the film or in traditional African attire. It was great to see how happy and excited everyone was about seeing a movie which, in many ways, is about envisioning a world were all are recognized, represented, and valued. Without doubt, Black Panther plays a big role in ushering in such a world.


For more on Black Panther at The Wild Reed, see:
• The Important Cultural Moment That Is Black Panther
• Celebrating Black Panther – Then and Now

On Sunday, March 4, 2018, my boyfriend Brent hosted an Oscars Night Party.


Above (from left): John, Brent, George, Jim, and Omar.


Right: With my friend Kathleen.

Above: My friends John and George – March 4, 2018.

Above: Winter scenes – Minneapolis, MN, 2017-2018.

NEXT: Out and About – Spring 2018 (Part I)

Winter 2017-2018 Wild Reed posts of note:
• Our Quiet Time
• Vessels of the Holy
• Buffy Sainte-Marie's Medicine Songs
• No Room for Them
• Christmas 2017 – Reflections and Celebrations
• If God Is Love . . .
• Let Us Be "Energized by the Beauty All Around Us": Jane Goodall's New Year Message
• Hope in the Midst of Collapse
• Waking Up
• Global Condemnation for Trump's Latest Ignorant and Racist Comments
• Three Winter Gatherings
• Interiors
• Nakhane Touré's "Tortured Journey to Clarity"
• Winter of Content
• Blessing the Dust
• Gabriel Fauré's "ChristoPagan" Requiem
• The Important Cultural Moment That Is Black Panther
• Happy Birthday, Buffy!
• In Minneapolis, a Snowy February Friday
• In the Wake of Yet Another School Shooting, Signs of the Times
• A New Day
• Remembering Dusty
• In the Garden of Spirituality – Marianne Williamson
• Celebrating Black Panther – Then and Now
• A Day to Celebrate the Survival of the Old Ways
• Farewell Winter

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Out and About – Autumn 2017
• Out and About – Summer 2017
• Out and About – Spring 2017
• Out and About – Winter 2016-2017

Images: Michael J. Bayly.

Spring's Snowy Start

Hmm . . . it seems that my "Farewell Winter" post of last month was a little premature. For one thing, here in the Twin Cities today was the coldest April 6 in 145 years! Plus we had the biggest April snowstorm in 34 years earlier this week . . . with more snow expected this weekend and next! Yes, that look on my face at right kinda says it all!

In short, the spring equinox may have come and gone, but spring sure does seem a long way off – especially considering our green things were this time last year.

Writes the Star Tribune's Paul Douglas on this snowy state of affairs:

Anyone sick of winter yet? If you’re not... well, good for you. Then again, this isn’t the first time we’ve dealt with winter extending into April. In fact, on this date in 1857, snow was reported in every state.

We've already received 9" of snow through the first six days of April here in the Twin Cities, which would be good enough for the 13th snowiest April on record. Looking back through history (since the 1870s), only six Aprils have had a foot or more of snow fall in the Twin Cities. The most ever was back in 1983 when a whopping 21.8" of snow fell – most of which fell during the first half of the month and included a 13.6" snowstorm on the 14th.

Today will be the calmer day of the weekend, with highs climbing into the low 30s. Unfortunately we do watch another system move through Sunday and Sunday night that will bring the potential of several inches of accumulating snow with it.

Temperatures do look warmer toward the end of next week, so that's at least some good news despite the cold, snowy start we've had to April.

NEXT: The Spring Blizzard of 2018

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Photo of the Day – March 31, 2018
• Farewell Winter
• A New Day
• In Minneapolis, A Snowy February Friday
• A Snowy Spring Day
• Waiting in Repose for Spring's Awakening Kiss
• Dreaming of Spring

Easter Bodiliness

The Easter Good News has always involved bodiliness.

Faith in the resurrection of Jesus Christ affirms that it is not his soul alone which is saved from death but his whole body-person-self.

Starting with a humiliated body laid in a tomb, the resurrection story tells of the creative power of divine love triumphing over the crucifying power of evil and the burying power of death.

What this means in the concreate is not seriously imaginable: "We see now in a mirror only dimly."

Yet the empty tomb stands as a historical marker that the love of God, stronger than death, embraces biological existence itself and rescues it from annihilation.

The exuberant joy that breaks out at Easter comes from the realization that this destiny is not meant for Jesus alone but for the whole of humanity.

The outcome of Jesus's death signals that a blessed future awaits all who go through the shattering of death, which is everyone.

– Elizabeth Johnson
Excerpted from "For God So Loved the Cosmos"
U.S. Catholic
April 2010

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Considering Resurrection
• Easter: The Celebration of the Sacrament of Transformation
• The Risen Jesus: Our Integral Ground
• The Two Entwined Events of the Easter Experience
• Resurrection in an Emerging Universe
• Resurrection: A New Depth of Consciousness
• Easter Reflections
• Easter Exultet
• The Resurrected Jesus
• Jesus: The Breakthrough in the History of Humanity
• The Passion of Christ (Part 11) – Jesus Appears to Mary
• The Passion of Christ (Part 12) – Jesus Appears to His Friends
• The Triumph of Love: An Easter Reflection
• A Girl Named Sara: A "Person of the Resurrection"
• Resurrection: Beyond Words, Dogmas, and All Possible Theological Formulations
• A Discerning Balance Between Holiness and Wholeness: A Hallmark of the Resurrected Life

Image: Urtreen by Sergei.

The God from the House of Bread: A Bridge Between Christianity and Paganism (Part 4)

The Wild Reed's 2018 Holy Week series concludes with Part 4 of Druid author and speaker John Michael Greer's essay "The God from the House of Bread," originally published in the 2012 anthology, Jesus Through Pagan Eyes: Bridging Neopagan Perspectives with a Progressive Vision of Christ.

To start at the beginning of this series, click here).

__________________

The relationship between the mythic role assigned to Jesus and the sparse historical traces left by his life is a challenging issue for many modern versions of Christianity. Some theologians refuse to draw any distinction between myth and history – if the Bible says that Jesus rose into heaven, according to these interpretations, then that's what happened – and if television reporters had been there, they could have filmed it for the eleven o'clock news. Others draw a distinction between the "Jesus of history" and the "Christ of faith," though data on the former is so sparse that it can be (and has been) redefined to fit any dizzying assortment of modern agendas. Still others have come to reject the idea that a historical Jesus existed in the first place.

If Christianity was originally a mystery cult focused on the life force, though, these confusion evaporate. Whatever historical reality might have formed the kernel around which the Jesus myth emerged – and in all probability no one will ever know what that reality was – the spiritual meaning of the myth is not dependent on that reality. In Owen Morgan's sense, there is no question as to the factual nature of the resurrection of Jesus, since it takes place in every sunrise and in the sprouting of every seed. The historical figure around which the myth coalesced is simply not that important; there was doubtless some dimly remembered historical figure at the root of the myth of Heracles, too.

The claim that Christianity's dying and resurrected god was a historical person who lived in the very recent past rather than a wholly mythic figure played an important role historically in giving the newborn Christian church an edge over its competitors. When the fall of Rome dragged the classical world to ruin, however, the elegant mythic metaphors that had made Christianity the most successful of the Pagan mystery religions were reinterpreted in blindly literal terms. Later on in the Reformation and afterward, these metaphors lost the last of their original meaning and were transformed in bloodless ideologies completely detached from the seasonal and vegetative context that once gave them their power.

Nowadays, the obscure historical figure around whose life the original core of mythic narratives clustered lies in the distant past, and attempts to force a literal meaning out of those narratives have long since crossed over into absurdity. The widespread modern notion of the Rapture, in which believing Christians will soon be beamed up to heaven by some miraculous equivalent of Star Trek's transport beams, is a troubling case in point. It's a lightly disguised fantasy of mass suicide – when someone tells their children that Grandma has gone to heaven to be with Jesus, most people understand what that means – and its popularity suggests that the conflict between overly literal interpretations of Christianity's exuberant seasonal myths and the awkward solidity of a world that refuses to fit those interpretations may finally have become too great for many Christians to bear.

Efforts to reconnect Christianity with its origins as a mystery religion of life and fertility have been going on for more than two centuries now, and might have succeeded in revitalizing the old myths and rituals, except for one detail: nearly all these attempts were aimed at discrediting Christianity as just another Pagan fertility cult, and therefore unworthy of respect. It took a believer in a different Pagan fertility cult, Owen Morgan, to realize that the equation could be worked the other way. He saw, as a handful of visionaries since his time have seen, that the ancient worship of the life force is a potent and valid spiritual option in its own right, and that Christian ritual and symbols can readily carry this primal constellation of meanings.

It is only fair to say that many other interpretations of Christianity are possible; many people will find some other way of approach to the Christian faith more relevant to their own spiritual lives, and many others will find no need to approach the Christian faith at all. Central to old Paganism was the realization that different people are called to worship different deities, and the corresponding sense that each person has the right and the duty to pursue his or her own religious path within a context of respect and toleration for the deities of others. Still, for those who feel drawn to the rituals and symbolism of Christianity, the vision of Jesus as an image of the ever-returning life force, and of Christianity as a mystery cult that need not conflict with a wider reverence for the divine presence in the world, may offer unexpected possibilities.

– John Michael Greer
From "The God from the House of Bread"
in Jesus Through Pagan Eyes
(edited by Rev. Mark Townsend)
pp. 157-159

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• The God from the House of Bread (Part 1)
• The God from the House of Bread (Part 2)
• The God from the House of Bread (Part 3)
• Advent: A "ChristoPagan" Perspective
• Gabriel Fauré's "ChristoPagan" Requiem
• A Day to Celebrate the Survival of the Old Ways
• Reclaiming the "Hour of God"
• At Hallowtide, Pagan Thoughts on Restoring Our World and Our Souls
• Celebrating the Coming of the Sun and the Son
• The Pagan Roots of All Saints Day
• Beltane: Celebrating the Sheer Exuberance of May
• Beltane and the Reclaiming of Spirit
• Beloved and Antlered
• Integrating Cernunnos, "Archetype of Sensuality and the Instinctual World"
• The Prayer Tree

Opening image: Detail from Salvador Dalí's "The Sacrament of the Last Supper" (1955).

Photo of the Day

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Autumn Remnant
• Farewell Winter
• Within the Mystery, a Strange and Empty State of Suspension

Image: Michael J. Bayly.

The God from the House of Bread: A Bridge Between Christianity and Paganism (Part 3)

The Wild Reed's 2018 Holy Week series continues with Part 3 of Druid author and speaker John Michael Greer's essay "The God from the House of Bread," originally published in the 2012 anthology, Jesus Through Pagan Eyes: Bridging Neopagan Perspectives with a Progressive Vision of Christ.

For Part 1 of this series, click here).

__________________

The mythic narratives that surround Jesus have the greater richness one would expect from the classical Levant, where fertility deities who die and rise again had been a commonplace of Pagan religious thought for thousands of years before the rise of ancient Greece.

It's for this reason that Jesus is paired throughout his myth with his alter ego John the Baptist. The two mirror each other seasonally; Jesus is born at the winter solstice and dies in the spring, the harvest time in the eastern Mediterranean, suspended above the earth like the ripe grain on the stalk; John is born at the summer solstice and dies in the autumn, the planting time, beheaded in a prison beneath the earth, like the seed that goes to its burial behind the plowshare's iron blade. "He must increase," John says of Jesus, "while I must decrease."

Evidence for this interpretation of Christian myth is abundant in the Bible and other early Christian sources. Jesus's traditional birthplace is in Bethlehem, for example, a town whose name literally means "house of bread" in Hebrew, and the central act of traditional Christian ritual centers on eating the bread that is Jesus's body and drinking the wine that is his blood. (John has no similar ritual attributed to him, since one does not eat the seed corn or the rootstock of the grapevine.) "I have come that they might have life," Jesus says in the Bible, "and that they might have it more abundantly"; any other fertility deity could have said as much, and it's only the intellectual distance that separates us from the context of early Christianity that makes so many people nowadays think that the "life" Jesus spoke of is a spiritual abstraction.

Christianity, it must be remembered, had its birth in the bustling spiritual marketplace of the classical Mediterranean world, where religious metaphors of this sort were commonplaces of contemporary thought. The mystery religions, which offered salvation to those who sought union with a god or a goddess through rituals of initiation and communion, were among the most powerful religious forces of the time, and nearly all of them focused on exactly this kind of agricultural symbolism. Thus it's hardly a leap to suggest, as so many scholars of myth have, that the precise parallels between Christianity and the other mystery religions – and the rich agricultural symbolism of Christianity itself – show that the original Christian faith may well have been something not far from what Owen Morgan claimed it to be: a mystery cult venerating the life force in nature, expressed through a rich mythic symbolism that became associated through a complex historical process with the events of the life and death of an otherwise obscure Jewish religious reformer.

– John Michael Greer
From "The God from the House of Bread"
in Jesus Through Pagan Eyes
(edited by Rev. Mark Townsend)
p. 154-156

NEXT: Part 4

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• The God from the House of Bread (Part 1)
• The God from the House of Bread (Part 2)
• Advent: A "ChristoPagan" Perspective
• Gabriel Fauré's "ChristoPagan" Requiem
• A Day to Celebrate the Survival of the Old Ways
• At Hallowtide, Pagan Thoughts on Restoring Our World and Our Souls
• Celebrating the Coming of the Sun and the Son
• The Pagan Roots of All Saints Day
• Beltane: Celebrating the Sheer Exuberance of May
• Beltane and the Reclaiming of Spirit
• Beloved and Antlered
• Integrating Cernunnos, "Archetype of Sensuality and the Instinctual World"
• The Prayer Tree

Opening image: Detail from Salvador Dalí's "The Sacrament of the Last Supper" (1955).