urban wellness

Props to Grenetta Mason and Donna Kelsick who organized a fantastic Urban Wellness Retreat that I participated in today.  The workshops and offerings touched on a wide range of interests – alternative medicine, diet and nutrition, financial planning, aromatherapy, spa treatments, as well as yoga and Reiki sessions.  They have a real sense that personal wholeness is about mind, body and spirit connection.   They day was full of conversation and learning alongside some wonderful souls who are looking for balance and wholeness in their busy lives.  And I love that the event was nestled right in the heart of Harlem (a beautifully rehabbed brownstone that is a B&B)  and drew from the resources that are within this community.   It was great to be part of an event that is intended to bring some measure of wholeness and connectedness to individuals, to our community and to our world.

blessing and relationships

I recently finished “Gilead” by Marilyn Robinson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about a Congregational minister in Gilead, Iowa.  It is a fictional memoir written in the first-person with poignant descriptions of small town life, growing old and work in the church, but also contains brilliant passages that reflect on the meaning and mystery of life.  The book is stunning – simply beautiful – and I can’t recommend it enough.  I was moved to tears at several points not because it was sad or tragic but because it touches something so fundamental to our human experience.

One passage has stuck with me, related to the minister’s understanding of baptism and the act of blessing others.

“I still remember how those warm little brows felt under the palm of my hand.  Everyone has petted a cat, but to touch one like that, with the pure intention of blessing it, is a very different thing.  It stays in the mind.  For years we would wonder what, from a cosmic viewpoint, we had done to them.  It still seems to me a real question.  There is a reality in blessing, which I take baptism to be, primarily.  It doesn’t enhance sacredness, but it acknowledges it, and there is a power in that.  I have felt it pass through me, so to speak.  The sensation is of really knowing a creature, I mean really feeling its mysterious life and your own mysterious life at the same time.”

Over the past few months I have been seeing someone and it has been a beautiful time of learning and discovery.  We are slowly getting more comfortable sharing the deeper parts of ourselves with each other and I have found many of our talks and intimate moments to be much like Robinson’s character describes the act of blessing.  There is a sense of mystery, beauty and joy as you hold a person who has opened their heart, mind, body and soul to you.  Something wells up within me at those times and “deep speaks to deep,” as Henri Nouwen writes.  It is holy experience.

I grew up with an understanding of same-sex relationships as somehow incomplete or incorrect, and was told that one could not find fulfillment in them.  These were conclusions drawn from very different readings of scripture than I have come to accept today and I’m not going to open that can of worms in this entry.   My sense is that an understanding of gay relationships as flawed comes from a narrow/exclusive focus on the physical/sexual aspects of gay relationships – the mechanics, if you will, or their reproductive potential.  They appeal to some notion of what is “natural” in a biological sense but tend to completely ignore the deeper human and spiritual qualities that, to me, both include and transcend our bodies.  And this binary reading of relationships and of sexuality in general makes for a very simplistic, two-dimensional understanding of what it means to be human.

I don’t claim to have profound insights but in my process of discernment it is becoming clearer that relationships are sacramental, and in that respect they are mysterious and deeply personal.  Each one is an occasion to experience God’s presence in a real, tangible way in our lives.  There are as many different types of relationships as there are people, and there are different levels or dimensions in which they are expressed.  But the labels and particulars are secondary.  At the heart of them all – the partner, the friend, even the passing acquaintance or stranger – is this idea of blessing others.  We are not here just for our own satisfaction or pleasure.  Relationships are not simply about being happy or fulfilled (though healthy relationships often bring a sense of wholeness and satisfaction); they are about experiencing and seeing the sacred in and through others. They are about calling forth or naming others’ beauty, worth and potential.  And then, maybe in the process, we find the beauty, worth and potential in ourselves.

I believe that same-sex relationships require great care and thoughtfulness, might I even say prayerfulness.  We have freedom, a scary but equally exhilarating opportunity to define our relationships in the ways that we need to and want to.  Gender roles are not assumed; we do not have to be bound by many of the societal norms and expectations as heterosexual couples.  But I also believe that in our attempts to forge new ways of being together, we should not forget that the heart of all relationships is in an invitation to the mystery and wonder of life, an opportunity to know another deeply and to be deeply known.

My hands are made to bless,
to offer on behalf of others,
a prayer, a touch,
inner healing and life.

It is part of my calling
part of my own healing, perhaps,
to hold another beautiful soul
and to claim its beauty and worth,
to pray from a deep place for
its safety, peace, stability,
to ask that this soul know the
ground-shifting, life-reorienting love and grace
that I have heard spoken of and
glimpsed in unexpected moments in my own life.

I feel myself a broken vessel
into which something of great
beauty and value has been poured,
and I am grateful, and humbled,
and curious how it could be.

But I know that I am also called to be courageous,
to live in this holy paradox and to
seek God’s will in it,
to ask more deeply whose I am
and who I am
and what this this precious gift of life and love
are to accomplish in this beautiful, broken world.

children and Bach

I am grateful for the ways that Jesus continues to be present to me.  This morning while walking to the subway station, a young girl, proudly pulling her backpack and walking behind her older brother (I assume), looked up at me and gave me most sincere and joyous smile that I have ever seen.  I saw contentment and freedom written across her face.   Throughout the day, she has been something of an icon.  I picture that smile again in my mind and I can’t help but smile myself!  What a gift!

And at church this week I’ve been enjoying rehearsals of the Clarion Music Society, an fine early music group that is using our Sanctuary to prepare excerpts from Bach’s Christmas Oratorio for a performance next Wednesday.  Today I happened to walk in while they were rehearsing the alto aria, “Schlafe, mein Liebster.”  Something about the music in that time and space spoke deeply to my soul.  I felt loved, held with great tenderness.  And as I left to run some errands afterward, the piece continued to work within me – a gentle reminder that I am indeed held in God’s loving arms, even as Jesus was held with great love and tenderness by his mother.  Here’s a clip from Youtube – not the same as a live performance but a way to enjoy the beautiful music. (I found the video distracting, so I encourage you to close your eyes and enjoy!)

Schlafe, mein Liebster, genieße der Ruh,
Wache nach diesem vor aller Gedeihen!
Labe die Brust,
Empfinde die Lust,
Wo wir unser Herz erfreuen!

Sleep now, my dearest, enjoy now thy rest,
Wake on the morrow to flourish in splendor!
Lighten thy breast,
With joy be thou blest,
Where we hold our heart’s great pleasure!