SOUL LIBERTY --STILL HERE IN THE BUCKET

How does the Liberty of the Individual Soul  connect to the Freedom of God?

The first time I heard those two words I was enthralled. What did it mean? Soul Liberty.  I  know them now from my reading  about Roger Williams.  The first time I heard the term  was at a Baptist Church  in Woodlawn, Pawtucket where my Aunt Grace  took me on many Sundays. The idea of freedom has always fired my soul.

"One of the outstanding principles and doctrines of Baptists through the centuries has been what we call individual soul liberty. By this phrase is meant the right so far as any human intervention is concerned, of every soul to approach God and interpret God for himself. It does not mean that the soul is sovereign above all other souls. If an individual makes a mistake in the exercise of his soul’s sovereignty in his approach to or interpretation of God, then he must settle with God on that score; but no other human, or combination of humans, anywhere on the face of the earth can coerce him to approach any other way or to interpret God in any other fashion than he chooses for himself. Romans 14:5­–12 is the key passage which instructs us on our individual liberty to interpret the Word of God.
Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your   brother? For ^wwe will all stand before ^xthe judgment seat of God; 11

Also, Joshua 24:15 teaches that we have the responsibility, right, and privilege to choose to follow God or not.Acts 17:11 teaches us about the example of the Bereans who constantly on their own searched the Scriptures to determine what was correct doctrine."

No one fully explained what Williams meant by the term but it thrilled my soul. I knew there was some great  mystery there that I needed  to know and that spoke to me.

Soul liberty. That’s what Roger Williams called freedom of conscience. He believed deeply and passionately in it. To Williams, it followed that religious truth and error existed in every nation and would do so until the end of the world. He believed that soul liberty was absolutely necessary because no one could know with certainty which religion was the religion God intended. God had not only created human beings, but God had given them the right to make their own choices in matters of faith.

That constant openness to the NEW of Roger Williams is one of the  traits of his SOUL LIBERTY, It also explains why after the wonderful achievement of founding the FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH in  the American Colonies,  he wandered off after a short time to  work with the  Native people, to learn their language and their beliefs.

ROGER WILLIAMS  WAS AN ETERNAL SEEKER.
And I have come to  believe that--

GOD IS AN ETERNAL TREASURE EVER ANCIENT AND EVER NEW that we must seek and find every day of our lives.. 

That is the connection between  our SOUL LIBERTY and God's 
TOTAL and UNLIMITED FREEDOM.

Thinking of Mary Oliver

A GREAT POET AND A GREAT ROLE MODEL The death of Mary Oliver in Florida last week roused a number of  her readers to recall  her spirit and revisit their friendship. Mary Oliver was one of the few  contemporary  poets  who was read and  seen as a wisdom figure  by many people in our society.  I had the good fortune of making her acquaintance when she was the visiting Elliston poet and in residence for five weeks at the University of Cincinnati.  I  recall how inspiring her lectures and readings were and also how she went everywhere with her dog. She insisted on living in a rural area in Indiana and commuting to Ohio to teach. Mary Oliver had a consistent  view and lived  out her values and especially her close observations of  the natural world. She had a directness about her tone that made readers feel that she was not just speaking to them she was  speaking for them. Here is one of her poems about DEATH: When death comes like the hungry bear in autumn; when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me, and snaps the purse shut; when death comes like the measles-pox when death comes like an iceberg between the shoulder blades, I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering: what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness? And therefore I look upon everything as a brotherhood and a sisterhood, and I look upon time as no more than an idea, and I consider eternity as another possibility, and I think of each life as a flower, as common as a field daisy, and as singular, and each name a comfortable music in the mouth, tending, as all music does, toward silence, and each body a lion of courage, and something precious to the earth. When it's over, I want to say all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. When it's over, I don't want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real. I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument. I don't want to end up simply having visited this world
I have always loved a short poem of hers that talks about what is called DARSHAN in India--that moment when the veil of appearances trembles and we get a glimpse of the eternal reality that is behind all the illusions we see with our eyes of flesh:
“The Veil” There are moments when the veil seems almost to lift, and we understand what the earth is meant to mean to us — the trees in their docility, the hills in their patience, the flowers and the vines in their wild, sweet vitality. Then the Word is within us, and the Book is put away. I am going to add just one more poem to this little anthology. In this poem Mary Oliver urges us to stop  taking ourselves so seriously and stop making ourselves miserable: WILD GEESE You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting - over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

WHAT CANNOT BE DONE AGAIN

TWO POETIC RENDERINGS OF The PIETA

When the Divine intersects with the human, there is no  second act. It creates a rupture in time and humanity. 

This poem by the great Rilke startled me when I first read it. He helped me to grasp the uniqueness of the INCARNATON.  No part of it can ever come again.

Pietà Rainer Maria Rilke

Fills now my cup, and past thought is my fulness thereof. I harden as a stone sets hard at its heart. Hard that I am, I know this alone: that thou didst grow— — — — — — and grow, to outgrow, as too great pain, my heart’s reach utterly. Now liest thou my womb athwart, now can I not to thee again give birth. I had to read it over several times.  AND then I  recalled how startled I had been when  on my first trip to Rome I went into Saint Peters in the Vatican and  was greeted by the actual  Monument of grief of a Mother holding the body of her adult son.    In a rush of emotion that erupted in me I  sobbed and  had to sit in a pew to just absorb the power of the Truth I had  just seen for the first time. That Mary was  truly the physical mother of Jesus, that she watched him suffer and die, and  then she was left with this form of her son on her lap for the last time.  The visceral reality of Jesus and the intimacy of his relationship to his mother  was all laid out before me.  Here is another poem by another poet and it is a poem that I did not know. Davie imagines Mary living on as a  lonely bereft widow, and childless  she  moves towards old age one of the many old ladies who must" learn to live alone in  public gardens". Diminished.  Her  Assumption into Heaven is not imagined by this poet. Pieta by Donald Davie Issue no. 33 (Winter–Spring 1965) Snow-white ray coal-black earth will swallow now. The heaven glows when twilight has kissed it, but your white face which I kiss now does not. Be still acacia boughs, I talk with my small one. We speak softly. Be still. The sky is blind with white cloud behind the swooping birds. The garden lies round us and birds in the dead tree’s bare boughs shut and open themselves. Be still, or be your unstill selves, birds in the tree. The wind is grievous to the willow. The underside of its leaves as the wind compels them is ashen. Bow never, nor dance willow. How can you bear it? My head goes back on my neck fighting the pain off. Willow in the wind, share it. I have to learn how time can be passed in public gardens. There my dead lies idle. Much bereaved and sitting under a sunny wall old women stare through me. I come too soon and yet at last to fixity, being alone and with a crone’s pastimes. This poem would have us  believe that Mary-- after Angelic visits, and that  scene in the stable, and that miracle she caused at  Cana, and the agony of standing at the foot of the cross-- just drifted into the  "crone's pastimes?"  There is something  misogynistic in that dismissive phrase.  MY VOTE IS WITH RILKE.

THAT GLORIOUS LAST BATTLE

ARE WE BORN TO BATTLE?
Here is a rousing  call to battle from a poet who was killed in WORLD WAR 1.
Philip Edward Thomas was born in London in 1878. A close friend of the poet Robert Frost, he wrote much of his poetry while serving as a soldier during World War I. He was killed in France on April 9, 1917.

The Trumpet Edward Thomas

Rise up, rise up, And, as the trumpet blowing Chases the dreams of men, As the dawn glowing The stars that left unlit The land and water, Rise up and scatter The dew that covers The print of last night’s lovers— Scatter it, scatter it! While you are listening To the clear horn, Forget, men, everything On this earth new-born, Except that it is lovelier Than any mysteries. Open your eyes to the air That has washed the eyes of the stars Through all the dewy night: Up with the light, To the old wars: Arise, arise. There is so much ambivalence in this poem, he  chronicles an awakened sense of the beauty and preciousness of the earth and the very air itself  "that washed the eyes of the stars."  The poet  accepts that awful contradiction of our lives.  That we can only fully appreciate life when we are on the brink of losing it. That, yes, from birth to death, all of life  is  a battle.  Yes, we are a battling species, but the battle for life  and for this world must be waged. Sometimes people are battling for every breath.  Yet we want those battles to be non-bloody and non violent.  I am thinking of  the  famous speeches of Martin Luther King that were celebrated recently. Again I was struck by the way that  apostle of non-violence often resorted to images of  war.  And  his own life ended in a brutal killing.  Again and again King reminds his followers that they are in a  long historical struggle and then he goes back to the hymn of the American Civil War  THE BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC. "He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored. He has loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword. HIS TRUTH IS MARCHING ON" In other remarks by King, he reminds us that the arc of history is towards justice. So it may take a long time but the final battle will be won by Truth and Justice. MLK also saw a deeper truth in the story of the Good Samaritan and  the events that  take place on the road to Jericho: On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. "A Time to Break Silence," at Riverside Church THERE IS A PROFOUND POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS  TRUTH IN KING'S READING OF THE PARABLE OF  THE GOOD SAMARITAN.  WE LIVE NOW IN AN EDIFICE THAT PRODUCES BEGGARS  (and so much worse. Make your own list) AND WE NEED TO TAKE UP THE  RADICAL TASK OF RESTRUCTURING.

FOUL RAG AND BONE SHOP OF THE HEART

SEEKING THE SPARK OF INSPIRATION IN  2019

The Circus Animals’ Desertion

BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

I

I sought a theme and sought for it in vain,

I sought it daily for six weeks or so.

Maybe at last being but a broken man

I must be satisfied with my heart, although

Winter and summer till old age began

My circus animals were all on show,

Those stilted boys, that burnished chariot,

Lion and woman and the Lord knows what.

II

What can I but enumerate old themes,

First that sea-rider Oisin led by the nose

Through three enchanted islands, allegorical dreams,

Vain gaiety, vain battle, vain repose,

Themes of the embittered heart, or so it seems,

That might adorn old songs or courtly shows;

But what cared I that set him on to ride,

I, starved for the bosom of his fairy bride.

And then a counter-truth filled out its play,

`The Countess Cathleen' was the name I gave it,

She, pity-crazed, had given her soul away

But masterful Heaven had intervened to save it.

I thought my dear must her own soul destroy

So did fanaticism and hate enslave it,

And this brought forth a dream and soon enough

This dream itself had all my thought and love.

And when the Fool and Blind Man stole the bread

Cuchulain fought the ungovernable sea;

Heart mysteries there, and yet when all is said

It was the dream itself enchanted me:

Character isolated by a deed

To engross the present and dominate memory.

Players and painted stage took all my love

And not those things that they were emblems of.

III

Those masterful images because complete

Grew in pure mind but out of what began?

A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street,

Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can,

Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut

Who keeps the till. Now that my ladder's gone

I must lie down where all the ladders start

In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.

WHERE ALL THE LADDERS START--

Everything for me started in Pawtucket so geographically that is my starting gate. Now I have returned  to that place when I am so near to the finish line. Why did I feel compelled to do that?  Certainly the claims of love and kinship and the desire to care for my two  Aunts, Grace Jenckes  and Anna Coleman, in their last years.  And to some extent I succeeded in doing that.

Recently, and for the first time I have tried to write about  my Aunt Anna's  actual death  bed moments.  Since I have turned back to writing dramatic pieces for the stage having  completed my first ten-minute play and submitted it to a  contest, I also tried the monologue form.  In a sense I write a monologue every time I complete a blog entry;  so I am in practice for that form.

Years ago, when I was teaching play writing at the University of Cincinnati, I  completed  several  full length plays and  two one act plays, and they were produced. Since that time, new trends have emerged and  the  way to get started in play writing  is  to write a ten minute play for which theaters have generated a huge demand  though their 10 minute play evenings. 

 The group that I became  associated with here in RI is called THE BLUE COW GROUP and it was formed after  some playwrights  met at  workshop they attended for several weeks at the GAMM THEATRE that was then in Pawtucket. They have been writing and  finding some success with ten minute plays.  Writing a ten minute play is a kind of gentle entree to writing a full length play. Sort of like getting ready to write a novel  by writing short stories.

 What surprised me in the completion of my play and monologues  was the subjects I was now  choosing or that were choosing me-- to be more accurate. They are so different from the stories I told in my earlier plays.  I was  amazed  that when I went to write a ten minute play, it turned out to be a dramatization of some bad treatment  I witnessed when I was in rehab. I did not have that subject in my repertoire when I was writing plays in the 80's and 90's.  It was not in my repertoire because it was not in my experience.
Do I sound  naive? 
When I say that when I sat down to write, the subject that forced its way to my  attention was something I  am sorry I witnessed and  that I wish were not true.  I called that play  SKILLED NURSING.

So experience changes us, and aging and illness are huge experiences. They must be told, but who wants  to hear about them? Who could find delight in what I  now have to say?

I fear that my subject matter now is too dour. No romance,  no sex, no  happy endings.  I have  found myself  looking  for stories  right where Yeats found himself: 
in the foul rag and bone shop of the  heart.

GET WISDOM EVEN IN THE BUCKET

CAN WE WISE UP HERE?

"Parables, such as the stories Jesus told, are a wisdom genre belonging to mashal, the Jewish branch of universal wisdom tradition. Jesus not only taught within this tradition, he turned it end for end. Before we can appreciate the extraordinary nuances he brought to understanding human transformation, we need first to know something about the context in which he was working.

There has been a strong tendency among Christians to turn Jesus into a priest—“our great high priest” (see the Letter to the Hebrews). The image of Christos Pantokrator (“Lord of All Creation”) dressed in splendid sacramental robes has dominated the iconography of both Eastern and Western Christendom.

But Jesus was not a priest. 

He had nothing to do with the temple hierarchy in Jerusalem, and he kept a respectful distance from most ritual observances.

 Nor was he a prophet 
in the usual sense of the term: a messenger sent to the people of Israel to warn them of impending political catastrophe in an attempt to redirect their hearts to God. Jesus was not that interested in the political fate of Israel, nor would he accept the role of Messiah continuously being thrust upon him.

His message was not one of repentance  and return to the covenant.

 Rather, he stayed close to the ground of wisdom: the transformation of human consciousness.
He asked timeless and deeply personal questions: What does it mean to die before you die? How do you go about losing your little life to find the bigger one? Is it possible to live on this planet with a generosity, abundance, fearlessness, and beauty that mirror Divine Being itself?"

Shortened comments of Cynthia Bourgeault

These are big questions being raised,  but they are questions that are essential and that we must  seek to answer.  One thing is certain: whether we  consciously ask ourselves these questions or not our lives will provide our answers.

LIFE IS THIS CONSTANT WEB OF EVENTS THAT PROVOKE US.  

Every day like it or not we show ourselves in the choices that we make and the attitudes we maintain.  WE talk about sudden changes, but maybe they were coming in subtle ways before they showed themselves. For example, when the thief asks Jesus to remember him when he comes into his kingdom, that may be the first time he had said those words aloud but the attitude of respect that produced them was forming  inside him.
 He had already showed himself in his refusal to  join in with the other thief to mock Jesus.  It might have  been that  turnaround that  has  actually been developing for years in  that man.

So is it with all of us. 
WE are  the sum of our choices. Good choices that we make that seem very small, if they are  movements towards the light, will in fact lead to more such choices in larger matters.  We choose every moment of our lives.  And those choices  become larger and more momentous until  they form a large mountain of good choices  on which we can stand.

  KNOCK KNOCK KNOCKING ON HEAVEN'S DOOR
                   And it will be opened to us

 THIS VERY DAY YOU WILL BE WITH ME IN PARADISE.

KYRIE CALLED LEBRON--stop the presses !!!

COSMIC SHIFT IN THE BASKETBALL UNIVERSE
My take on this is that Kyrie is having a slight shift towards maturity  something LeBron did a lot earlier in his life when he took on the support of his mother as a  teenager.  LeBron made  being a great player and a great team leader look easy.  Now that Kyrie is trying it on, he sees that it is hard because  the team members may not be thrilled to play second- or third or fifth fiddle to the  great Kyrie. 

 When I see my  beloved CELTICS in disarray I hear the wail of wounded egos.
Here's how the sports news  covered it.

Kyrie Irving admitted Wednesday night he recently reached out to LeBron James to both apologize for past misunderstandings and ask his former Cleveland Cavaliers teammate for advice about leading a young Boston Celtics team.

 How did LeBron react to Kyrie's call?

Thanks to some great reporting, we have an idea: According to The Athletic's Joe Vardon, James was at an "upscale pizzeria" in Los Angeles on Sunday night when he got the call from Irving.

At the table with LeBron: none other than another ex-Cavs teammate, Kevin Love.

"LeBron looked down at his phone and he showed us,” Love told Vardon. “He was like, ‘I wonder what he wants?"

You can't make this stuff up.

The Cavs played the Lakers in L.A. on Sunday night, which explains the incredible coincidence that James was with his ex-Cavs teammate of several years when a third ex-teammate called him out of the blue.

LeBron's agent, Rich Paul, also was at the pizzeria -- as was the head of Nike basketball, Lynn Merritt, and several others -- and showed James' call history to Love, according to Vardon.

"Yeah, I haven’t really absorbed all of it yet,” Love told Vardon. “I was always close with Kyrie, we had a good relationship.

"I don’t know, I was having some vino and enjoying the night when LeBron showed me the call.”

James called Irving back "in private" and was "very appreciative" the ex-Cavs guard reached out to him, a source close to James told Vardon.

STAY TUNED AS WE WATCH HOW THE LAKERS ARE  WINNING GAMES WITHOUT LeBron..Kyrie could tell him where that leads

--MUTINY !