An Academic and a Leaf Blower

I am attending a conference on the realities how people explore and live their spiritual/social lives within a sense of belonging to multiple religions rather than just one. The conference is going very well when, suddenly, an unfortunate and overwhelming experience of boredom arises and detonates in my brain and body. The well-intentioned and well-educated voice of the presenter becomes a drone that I cannot detangle into coherent thoughts and I decamp from my stiff wooden chair to a to a quiet space at the back end of the conference hall hidden by cloth partitions. We are on the fifth floor and it's a beautiful view that looks out over an autumnal scene of the university's central square. The trees are in full fall regalia and dazzling in their final show of hope before the long, wet winter sets in. It is dry, that is, the speech goes on and the speaker's voice is relentlessly mono-dynamic and firmly committed to the dense repose of academic-speak. It goes on and on and I listen to the words, familiar with the ethos, my gaze wondering over the square. It feels good to stand. I finally realize that while the words are drifting into my mind it is actually a leaf blower that I hearing. A worker is bundled in a large yellow coat and over-sized pants like the kind people wear on the tarmac at airports. She is bearing a gas powered leaf blower on her back. I can just hear it, even five stories up behind a glass window with a prominent academic droning on in the speakers directly above my head. The task at hand is to herd the disparate, dry leaves scattered throughout the square toward an opening in the low bulwark wall where students sit and talk when the sun shines. The leaves curl and swirl like a wave in the push of the invisible, manufactured wind. They spray out and only loosely obey the intention of the task. They drift up, and over, and out, and away, in their doomed campaign to maintain chaos and decorate the (now) noisy square. The speaker is talking about multiple religious belonging. It is the theme of the entire conference. How a person can claim (or how they might fear to claim) truths from numerous traditions within their person or congregation. Exclusivist claims of religions hold people in (or down) even as they hold out new possibilities of being and expression. The speaker is wrestling with the tensions of traditional structures of belief to open themselves to new modalities of hybridity and innovation. And to his credit, and credentials, the speaker is making some very salient points of which I might even agree with some. But no matter.... I am in the square. I am with the leaves as they resist the machine of conformity even as they loosely lilt and lift, drift over and around the bulwark opening and out of sight. In all of this, as the words move and the leaves move, I never see the air that becomes wind or words. And I find room for a smile thinking about how the leaves do not change as they move over the wall. Push them around as much as you like; they are the same as before, only in new place of being.

Consciousness and Community with Animals

Hey, all! Here is a link to a talk I gave about consciousness in the human and in our non-verbal partners in consciousness...the animals!

It's about time...

I have just realized how terribly LONG it has been since I posted, so I thought I would sit down and get after it to bring you all (and myself, to be real) up to speed with what it going on. And pardon the title of this post. I know that John Denver has a song with this same title, and that song is awesome. I want to go on record there. Anyway, I am currently sitting in my house in Olympia trying to figure out what has happened these past few months and years. The short version is that a couple years ago I quit my band and my job and decided to complete the Master of Divinity degree that I had been working on part-time since 2009. I became a full-time grad student and got a job doing interfaith dialogue work in Seattle University. It was happening! Loved the community of being a full-time student, the immersion experience of living in the vernacular of the university, being exposed to rabid minds, ideas, and options. It was a good move to go full time! Yes, there were all kinds of sacrifices (financial, artistic, other) but you're not reading to hear about those! And really, I don't linger on them...so there. Suddenly it was June 12th, 2016. I am at Key Arena, standing at the podium before thousands of family members, graduate students, and faculty, staring down at the benediction speech that I had been asked by Seattle University to present. I felt disembodied. I heard my words...they were mostly of gratitude and hope. As I listened I realized a deep, burning joy in my heart to say out loud what I love and vision for the world. There were hugs in the hallways as we bumbled around, caught between looking for our families and saying good-bye to each other. Good-bye? Really?! Until when? Where are you going? Thank you. Your amazing. Keep in touch. Yes, good-byes. Perhaps all and none of this was said, but felt. It happened fast. And so I am here in Olympia. Bethanie and I now live in a house we bought here in the winter of 2015, before we ever officially planned on moving. It was a thing where we saw a house that needed a remodel and was cheap. I didn't have a job that coming summer and could live there and remodel it. What could go wrong? Well, actually, not much went wrong and we ended up each putting in a bunch of work and creating a really cute house in which I now sit and type. Weird, huh? Really, though, Olympia is great. Small, kind, a LOT closer to the ocean (more on that later), and the location of my new job as an interfaith minister. Yeah, that last detail is not one I saw coming even a couple years ago. But something started to happen to me in my final years at Seattle University's School of Theology and Ministry. I started to realize that many of the pursuits in life that bring me joy, passion, and energy (connecting with others, working for justice, inquiring and attending to the spiritual instincts and pursuits of this life), well, these are efforts that are actually part of a job description called "minister". And I have just begun this work....I mean, I started last week, for real. So we are early. Who knows? Maybe this blog will chronicle my descent into exhaustion, disillusionment, and abandonment. That's dreary, but all of that is a part of any effort, right? What I want to do is have a place where I can say what I am going through as I begin work as a minister in an interfaith community. What is interfaith? What is it like to start a totally new career? How is the training I received useful, and/or lacking to what I will encounter doing this? Who knows! Mostly I am responding to an impulse to share. Writing helps me see and know (plus, I am increasingly impatient with holding a pencil and journaling and typing is faster, so....). This feels like a juncture for me. An opening. A reckoning. If nothing else, it is something brand new and I want a place to put it. Hope you are having great day. Mine's off to a good start. Talk soon!