Wednesday, December 24, 2014

                                         A CHRISTMAS EVE BLOG FROM THE BACK PORCH


THE BABY CHANGES EVERYTHING!


       I woke this morning composing this blog! Our Blue Candle prayer over the Old Testament has shown that God – Creator, Lover, Father, Son and Holy Spirit is excited about covenant with us. That covenant is the story of Israel – prototypical People of God, and of all of us: Irish, Ecuadorean, Mexican, Italian, German….we are also the people of God  by virtue of Israel’s YES to that covenant

      This covenant was initially signed in the flesh of Abraham by circumcision, and in the fullness of time, in the sweet, cuddly flesh of a six-pound baby boy, entrusted to Joseph and Mary. He grew up to show us in tall, strong flesh what God looks like, how God acts in the world. I often hear: No one has ever seen God – and I respond: Ain’t so!  I have! In the face and story of Jesus – the baby who changed everything.  

      My friend Sue and her husband Joe are new grandparents: Natalie Claire was born in October and she has changed everything for everyone in that family (and all their friends)!  Every family with a new baby knows that. Love is born again, the fruitful love of a loving marriage: the covenant of a man and woman now seen in the flesh!

       The metaphor persists: God gives a baby boy as sign of God’s covenant with us: so we can see, and touch and hear who our covenant partner is. No burning bush, no Pharaoh - defeating plagues, no flame by night or cloud by day: the New Covenant is as natural as the birth of a baby boy who is more beautiful than the rainbow! This baby is welcomed by the loving adoration of Mary and Joseph, by the poorest of the poor: shepherds and by the richest of the rich: scholar kings from the East. 

       In 2014 I welcome him anew, in my daily work of praise and thanks and awareness of the infinite manifestations and meaning of the metaphor. Thanks and praise, indeed.



    

Sunday, December 14, 2014

READING WALTER BRUEGGEMANN

READING WALTER BRUEGGEMANN


     Reading Walter Brueggemann is for me, like a cold shower: a wake-up call, a kind but firm kick-in-the-pants. Two years ago, I set out to read his 55 ( now 57 ) published books. Modestly, I did not try to read all his peer-reviewed articles!  Hundreds!

     Little did I know that my faith was to be shocked, scrubbed, strengthened by his faith expressed through erudite, exciting, enigmatic and sometimes elusive passages.  What themes have emerged so far?

1.  I have read sixteen of his books – the more accessible, easier-to-read ones were my first selections. I heard Walter sing, over and over again, in many ways – his theme song:

Prophetic proclamation is an attempt to imagine the world as though YHWH— the creator of the world, the deliverer of Israel, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ  - this YHWH whom we Christians come to name as Father, Son, and Spirit— were a real character and an effective agent in the world.

Brueggemann, Walter (2012-01-01). The Practice of Prophetic Imagination (p. 2). Fortress Press. Kindle Edition.)

God -  a real character?  an  effective agent in our world?

Now that would be an imaginative step in the right direction. With that faith, we can relax into joy.

2. Another theme: Well-being - is the end of the Torah (the teachings), and of all that the Hebrew Scripture’s narratives teach. Our well-being is contingent on our recognition of God’s creative and redeeming work, our faithful thanks and praise to God and our avoidance of idols.  Hello!  Idols abound: on the Internet, at the mall, on t.v. and the Big Screen,on Wall Street and at out neighborhood bank! Brueggemann speaks of the totalizing Empire as demanding complete allegiance.

Again, it is the first time in my life that I associated my and society’s well-being with the commandments and rituals.  This story is about us!

3.  A favorite word of Walter’s in these books is commoditization – making a commodity out of other human beings. This is the ultimate idolatry. Our covenant with God is not for wealth, power or “wisdom”, but for our simple well-being.  The theme: each person is invaluable; each person is redeemed.

4.  Newness: God’s covenant is for ongoing newness:  fulfilled in the words and work of Jesus:

     Go and tell John what you have seen and heard:  the blind receive their sight,, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the poor have good news brought to them… Luke 7:22

God is an effective agent in our world – a real character, effecting newness.

5.  The power of dialogue

     Recognizing that we are all children of this Creator God, we turn to one another in dia-logue ( the Word between us )

What matters is that I speak enough to share myself,
That I listen enough to receive the other person in her fullness,
that we commune enough that both of us can be changed.  WB

As a teacher I have come to see that my responsibility is to evoke honest, passionate, serious dialogue in the pedagogical process.
 WB


More to come! Thirty nine ( or so ) more books to read!

Wednesday, November 26, 2014


  • LEARNING FROM LIFE

       What have I learned from life this past eight weeks?  I have no kitchen - a silent flood

undermined the flooring, the bases of my cabinets, everything! My insurance company whom

I have paid faithfully for thirty-six years laughed at my claim! No way can they pay!

        What have I learned from life?  "Do not be afraid. I am with you."  I am with you as your 

friends, coming with pots of chili and corn bread; coming with Japanese noodles and a bottle of 

wine! Coming to talk and listen to my whinging and whining! I am with you as your caring family:

saying, "What can I do?"

         I've learned to make the remaining parts of my life that did not land in the dump as 

beautiful as possible. I've learned to give thanks & praise for what I still have: health, family,

friends, a community of faith, a sweet and patient cocker spaniel who rolls with the punches.

         I've learned to get moving: swim daily and walk when it is not too cold outside!  I've written 

a new little book  DIA-LOGOS: THE WORD BETWEEN US  The Power of Dialogue in 

Christian Formation. Watch for it!

         I've done due diligence in addressing the refusal of State Farm to pay my claim : writing letters 

to their CEO ( he never responded ), to the N.C.Commissioner of Insurance ( he never responded ) : 

their lackeys wrote consolation letters. I called  my State Senator and State Assembly 

Representative whose assistants responded with flair! We meet next week to strategize and to

address the unique North Carolina exclusion in state law that is preventing my being paid.

      I've learned a new level of patient waiting for workmen who have other responsibilities besides 

my kitchen!  I've learned a new level of kind responses to folks whose similar story is much worse

than mine!  I've learned hope: a memory of the future, indeed.  As my wise sister, Joan, said: "Tell 

me, Jane, would you have given yourself the gift of a new kitchen at this time of your life?" Thanks 

and Praise!






Thursday, October 23, 2014

PRESENCE




PRESENCE


       A new principle/practice!  This one is based on a favorite adage from THE DEATH OF A SALESMAN by Arthur Miller:  The salesman’s wife says: Attention must be paid.

       Dialogue Education is rooted in that respectful behavior: attention!  That word comes from the French: attendre: listen!
Learning to Listen… 

       In a recent conversation with my friend and mentor, Paula Berardinelli, we talked of the power of such attention in the act of teaching/learning. Paula had just returned from an amazing experience with a group of professionals in Silicon Valley. They consistently remarked on her attention to each of them.

       I said: “Paula, we should have a principle/practice that captures that skill, that attitude, that concept of deep respect.”

       Paula replied, “ I think of it as presence, Jane.”

       Presence it is: Real Presence!  Looking into the eyes of a learner, listening with your toes, paying attention to learners from the first steps of designing, through your study of their response to the LNRA, through every learning task in the course. Like a mother hen with scattered chicks, we attend to each one as if she were the only one. We are present to all and our presence is operative in the learning. No one escapes our caring, our attention.


     Attention must be paid, indeed.

Sunday, October 12, 2014

A SILENT FLOOD

    On Sunday October 5, I walked barefoot into the kitchen and felt the small rug in front of the sink wet under my feet.  I noticed other signs of water on the kitchen floor. I sent an urgent note to my friend, Jose, a competent, helpful carpenter-electrician-builder.

     He kindly came to my home Sunday afternoon and declared emergency status!  “This is serious, Jane.” I had called Jose two weeks before to examine the threshold strip between my hall and kitchen, which was coming loose. It was dangerous in that I or my friends could trip on it and fall. He promised  at that time to come with a wood threshold strip which he could hammer solidly into the flooring.  That loose strip proved to be another clue to the silent flood  which was flowing, drop by drop from the plastic piping to the ice-maker of my fridge into the floor of my home: kitchen and adjacent halls.

      Jose was not as concerned about the destructive water as he was about the accumulated mold which is dangerous to our health. He and his team ripped out my kitchen: flooring, sink, cabinets, and moved dishwasher, stove, fridge, washer and dryer to the back deck!  I sat in chaos on my back porch…while six blowing machines roared as they dried the soaking-wet wood.

      I sat on the back porch, surrounded by in the chaos, for a week while the driers roared. I slept at my friend Karen’s home and struggled with State Farm Insurance agents who told me I had no claim to insurance because the lead was slow, not sudden. Facing this huge cost and weeks of reconstruction, I got more and more
stressed and depressed. 


       Saturday morning I awoke at Karen’s home and announced: "I am going home to clean what remains of my house within an inch of its life." I did that, and now sit, by the fire, in my living room on a Sunday afternoon after a visit and a lunch treat from a good friend.  I am newly aware that the silent flood saved my life from disease caused by the accumulating mold. I await the next weeks of reconstruction and the joy of a beautiful, and safe, new kitchen! What can I say but: Praise and Thanks!

Friday, October 3, 2014

                               IMAGINATION

      My teacher and mentor, Walter Brueggemann, has written a book entitled The Prophetic Imagination. Another of my teachers, Dr. Joaquin Montero of Chile, is designing a way to get accessible and effective primary health care to 400 million Latin Americans. Now that is the prophetic imagination at work.

       What do you imagine? 

        I love my true story of a day in a graduate classroom at the School of Public Health University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I was the professor of Public Health Education 502, saying to the twenty or so 30 year old graduate students: “Friends, this (Dialogue Education) is how your children and grandchildren will learn. It is coming…”

         The Public Health graduate students scoffed:” You are so naïve! This is a university. It will never change!”

         I offered a story: “Friends, when I was growing up in New York City in the early forties, my dear mother would never allow us to go swimming in the public pools in the hot summer. 

     ‘I do not want any one of my three girls to spend her life in an iron lung,’ Mother argued.

          Silence in the graduate classroom! Staring eyes: finally, “What’s an iron lung?”   Not one of them had ever heard of an iron lung.

          “Ladies and gentlemen, I rest my case. And I propose that you can imagine a world in which your grandchildren will ask, ‘Granpa, what’s a gun?’ Dr. Jonas Salk imagined a world without iron lungs. It is our turn, now.’’



     


Monday, September 29, 2014

NEW LEARNING

          I realized something this week that amazed me:

       When I defend my assumptions or opinions in the face of others’ assumptions and opinions which are different from mine, I kick the amygdala in the brain into action. 

    When I say, in response to another, BUT…the amygdala pours adrenaline into my bloodstream ( It is all biology ) my voice rises, my eyes dilate and I’m in fight/flight mode.

         James E Zull, author of The Art of Changing the Brain, makes it clear that while the amygdala is at work, pumping adrenaline into the blood, synapses towards the front cortext of the brain are inhibited. No dendrites grow. No learning can take place. ( It is all biology! )

        If, in lieu of defense, I invite your explanation of your stated assumption, and say, humbly and honestly, I do not have that experience. Let’s talk further … I can be assured that my amygdala is quiet and my learning is possible. Synapses to the front cortext can occur and dendrites can grow. Dialogue has occurred.

        This is new learning for me! I am in awe at the design!


Thursday, September 25, 2014

YIELDING invites DIALOGUE



  My dear friend has two grown children: a son and a daughter. They are both gainfully employed, living in their own homes with their own friends.  Mom, however ( my friend Agnes! ) was telling me how hard it is for her not to ask: Did you floss?  Do you need any money? Have you had your flu shot?

      As she put it, I am always Mom! I cannot let go!

      We laughed together and I suggested that she consider a word I learned recently from my esteemed mentor, Walter Brueggemann. He says God invites us to yield to God.

       Yield ! What a lovely Alice in Wonderland portmanteau word!

       Yielding is not letting go. Yield is yield: letting the other take the lead. Letting the young man and young woman live their own lives without the intrusion of a loving Mom. Yield is respect for the other as Subject or decision-maker in her own life. Yielding invites dialogue!

         So Mom asks: How are you?  Great, says her son! Good, says Mom without asking if he has a warm enough coat for the coming winter, or if he is still with that woman! Mom celebrates his feeling great without taking the lead by a slew of questions asking what ”great” means.

          Mom yields to her son.  Her conversation becomes a dialogue rather than an interrogation.  She can tell about her reasons for feeling great herself, and they can celebrate their good lives together.

          Yielding invites dialogue.  Imagine the dialogue yielding to God invites!          


Wednesday, September 24, 2014

THE PEOPLES CLIMATE MARCH NYC



Four hundred thousand people made what Walter Brueggemann called a magnificently generous action that can redefine our scarcity-based, consumer primed culture.  And we made it marching down Sixth Avenue of New York City: singing, laughing, dancing, chanting. Sixth Avenue: the epitome of high powered business and monied culture! The image speaks volumes!

I am so glad I was there as one of the People of Faith contingent from my Episcopal Church of the Nativity in Raleigh, North Carolina. Folks kept smiling at me and my sign that said: CHURCH OF THE NATIVITY RALEIGH NORTH CAROLINA. “Wow!” They said, “You came a long way!” “By bus!” I responded! “Wow!” again!

I shared in that magnificently generous action with men and women of every culture, color, and creed! The tone of the event was family festive fun ! The banners reflected that:  A large picture of the blue marble globe with a caution: DON’T MESS WITH MY MAMA!  And another quiet statement : THERE IS NO PLANET B !

We waited four hours on 58th street as our friends from 86th street on down fed into the parade on Sixth Avenue!  Four hours of standing together for  change! I saw folks helping one another, sharing water bottles, fruit and smiles. Four hundred thousand friends having family festive fun!

This poem opened the meetings on climate change of the world's presidents on Tuesday morning, September 23rd,  at the UN. It is  a mother's poem to her six month old son:

You can hear the poem and see the visuals here:   
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJuRjy9k7GA 

She says eloquently what her four hundred thousand friends were saying by our patient, caring peoples’ climate march.


Thursday, August 21, 2014

Grace in the Wilderness

GRACE IN THE WILDERNESS



 Thus says the LORD:

 The people who survived the sword   
  found grace in the wilderness;
  when Israel sought for rest,
  the LORD appeared to him from far away.

Jer 31:2–3a


      Our U.S. culture, our society, can be a wilderness:  the university, the government, business, malls and restaurants, highways, sports, the media: journals and newspapers/radio/television/the Internet ...
 I feel lost in this wilderness.
       The sword in the wilderness carries more weight: I can die from greed, from anxiety, from fear, from loneliness.  Born in 1931, I continually glance expectantly at my IRA…hoping for it to swell. Anxieties and fears multiply and are more painful as one faces them alone.
         Once, when I faced a particularly lonely, ominous moment of fear and anxiety, and wailed at being alone in the struggle, my dear priest, Diane, challenged me: “Perhaps you are looking for help and companionship in the wrong places, Jane. Perhaps you must find God.”
         Grace in the wilderness! 
        Walter Brueggemann suggests that God redefined the wilderness when manna (man hu? What’s that?)  fell daily from the sky to feed the wandering, hungry people of Israel.  Exodus 16
WB suggests that only a magnificently generous action can redefine
our scarcity-based, consumer primed culture.
          Where is God redefining the wilderness that is our national culture?  Watch for it!  Celebrate it!  Notice the shockingly generous actions that fly in the face of anxiety and fearful self-reliance. Like these:
       I pulled my lawnmower out in April two years ago, to mow my small patch of lawn. Three neighbours came at me from three sides of my street:  We don’t think so!”   Al, who lives across the street from me laughed as he gently pushed my ancient lawnmower back into the toolshed: “When I mow my lawn, I’ll come across the street to mow yours.”  Tom and Kerry conceded that Al had won the day. 
         Grace in the wilderness – redefining the place!
         My friend Rita tells the story of her ninety-year old husband Dave whom she could not find early one morning. When he finally appeared, she asked: “Where have you been?”        
          “Oh, honey, I thought I had told you. An old man needed a ride to the station so I picked him up at his house and drove him to the train.”
         Grace in the wilderness – redefining the place!
          A Conference of United States military medical doctors from all services: Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, Coast Guard – all – are considering how to serve their patients and teach their peers more efficiently.  They have invited the Dean of the Medical School of the Catholic University of Chile to offer the keynote address to the 2014 conference because of his skill, knowledge and experience as a medical doctor and educator using dialogue.
            Grace in the wilderness – redefining the place: no north, no south…just us on a journey to the common good.
             Nelson Mandela and his team heard the barred gates of Robbins Island slam on them as they faced a long prison term – punishment for their search for freedom.  Mandela gathered his friends around him to offer one imperative: Our first agenda is to learn to speak and understand Afrikaans. We must communicate with our jailors.
              Unbelievable grace in the wilderness – redefining the place – even Robbins Island!
             We are the means of this grace in the wilderness for and to one another. The grace is from God. We are the universal UPS delivery service, built to use our fertile imagination and courageous hearts to redefine the wilderness as neigborhood, as did Mandela and Dave and Al and the military medical doctors. Consider recent actions you have seen where a courageous man or woman was
redefining the place; changing our wilderness culture into a warm, caring neighborhood. 

                 


Monday, July 28, 2014


THE REST IS HISTORY

       I am  making history here on the back porch: by resting!  At rest, I read differently: slowly, chewing the feelings and ideas until they are digestible and fruitful, giving me strength because they are now mine.

   At rest, I can snooze a lot, and dream. The dreams are rich and vital, telling me more than all the books I read!  How about the latest dream:  I have a house full of company – hundreds of men and   women! And no food ready! I think: I can make a big pot of pasta!

   At rest, I can watch great old films – laughing and crying, celebrating the art and the stories.     At rest I can watch and hear opera – singing along and sometime directing the Met Orchestra, weeping when the lovely lady dies…

    At rest, I can pray…relentlessly thanking GOD for blessing with GOD’S surprises all whom I name…confidently thanking GOD for particular gifts for particular folks…continuously thanking GOD for my life and loves

    At rest, I can imagine a world where the Great Reversal is being implemented:
       Where teachers ask and show and do not tell
       Where food is plentiful and healthy and accessible to all
       Where a church includes women (Acts 1:10)
       Where factories making arms are now making solar panels and windmill turbines
        Where we all travel on buses and trains and automobiles are in a museum

      At rest, I can design the next dinner party, the next tea on the back porch: with fruit of the season and sweet southern tea!   At rest, I can wait patiently, in wonder and awe, in thanks and praise, in sweet reveries and excited anticipation for the next of GOD’s surprises.  
      

The rest is, indeed, history!

Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Good for Nothing

What a joy it is to be good for nothing! I cook for friends, I read up a storm, I watch brilliant opera from the Met, I swim every day, I walk the dog and (sometimes) vacuum the house and water the plants. I’m good – for nothing! It is called retirement!

      Barbara Brown Taylor has a delightful little book, The Practice of Saying NO. As I read it, she reminded me how blessed I am to be able to be good for nothing. For my daily efforts, I am paid in bird song and deep joy. 

       She also reminded me of my privilege of living Sabbath – this is the seventh day, the day of rest in my long and too-busy life. Although I know that, I am continually devising projects that would tie me in knots for days and weeks of futile work.

       Her little book has me examining ways I can honor this Sabbath
more intentionally – how can I be aware of this joy and deepen it? I hope to keep a true Jewish Sabbath one day a week – in order to be more aware of the daily Sabbath-quality of this quiet life of mine.

       What will that mean?  Taylor quotes Meister Eckhardt, a man of prayer: God is not found in the soul by adding anything but by subtracting.  So, what might my Sabbath look like? 

Hang up the car keys.
Close the computer, turn off the tv and radio.
Listen to the music of the lovely world around me.
Sit still, keep quiet, listen!  Pray!
Play with the dog, walk him around the lake. 
Welcome friends for good long talks, and comfortable silence.


        Now, that’s good for nothing at its best. Strangely, we call it a spiritual discipline.  It will not be easy, but someone has to do it!  And I am glad it is me.