I am a minister, photographer, retreat leader, author and Quaker -- albeit one who's not always good at being a good Quaker. I am the author of "Awaken Your Senses," "Holy Silence: The Gift of Quaker Spirituality," "Mind the Light: Learning to See with Spiritual Eyes" and "Sacred Compass: The Path of Spiritual Discernment" (foreword by Richard Foster). This blog is a compendium of writing, photography, seriousness and silliness -- depending on my mood.
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Nativity Poem -- For Christmas Eve
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Awaken Your Senses -- Early Reviews
Awaken Your Senses: Exercises for Exploring the Wonder of God J. Brent Bill and Beth A. Booram. InterVarsity ... Modeling the best Sunday School teachers, Bill (Sacred Compass) and Booram (The Wide Open Spaces of God) get close to God via the five senses. The journey could so easily have been a skip instead of a sail; however, they truly manifest the book’s purpose: “to help more of you experience more of God.” The two ministers and workshop leaders accomplish this so well with natural sweetness from the inside, not with treacle glopped on top. Starting with the cover illustrations—a rose, a bird singing treble, threatening thorns, and a bitten pear, each image superimposing on another—the book divides naturally into five parts. ... Within each chapter, the authors alternate essays, their voices nearly indistinguishable except for Bill’s wittier bits; they touch on the personal, such as Booram’s sacred hospital smells. Each chapter includes spiritual exercises. The two cite the Bible’s raising up of the five senses, augmented with quotes from many sensate Christians. It adds up to a deeply pleasing book. -- Publishers Weekly.
Awaken Your Senses: Exercises for Exploring the Wonder of God J. Brent Bill & Beth Booram ... I had a very early version of this and was so taken with it I told a few folks this summer that it will be one of the books of the year. ... [Beth and Brent] walk us through an array of wonder-full meditations and experiences that combine a sensuous engagement with creational givens---taste, hearing, touch, smell, seeing---and ways these activities can help us know God. There are two things going on here, it seems---helping us be attentive to the world around us, practicing a sensuous worldview and embodied sort of discipleship, and the ways in which this sort of attentiveness can facilitate a deeper relationship with God. Beautiful! I'll bet you know somebody for whom this will be a godsend. It'll wow 'em, for sure. And that cover---you have to see it "for real." Splendid. Kudos, again, to InterVarsity Press. -- Byron Bolger of Hearts and Minds Books.
Awaken Your Senses is now available at local independent bookstores like Hearts and Minds and, of course, at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Powells, InterVarsity Press, and more.
Order a copy online in the next five days and I'll be happy to send you a free signed bookplate!
Holiday Blessings!
Brent
December -- A Poem for this Season of Wonder
Joyful and triumphant, a song she loves,
And also the partridge in a pear tree
And the golden rings and the turtle doves.
In the dark streets, red lights and green and blue
Where the faithful live, some joyful, some troubled,
Enduring the cold and also the flu,
Taking the garbage out and keeping the sidewalk shoveled.
Not much triumph going on here—and yet
There is much we do not understand.
And my hopes and fears are met
In this small singer holding onto my hand.
Onward we go, faithfully, into the dark
And are there angels hovering overhead? Hark.
-- by Gary Johnson. From "The Writer's Almanac"
Monday, December 19, 2011
Advent -- A Poem for this Season of Wonder
Advent
Wind whistling, as it does
in winter, and I think
nothing of it until
it snaps a shutter off
her bedroom window, spins
it over the roof and down
to crash on the deck in back,
like something out of Oz.
We look up, stunned—then glad
to be safe and have a story,
characters in a fable
we only half-believe.
Look, in my surprise
I somehow split a wall,
the last one in the house
we're making of gingerbread.
We'll have to improvise:
prop the two halves forward
like an open double door
and with a tube of icing
cement them to the floor.
Five days until Christmas,
and the house cannot be closed.
When she peers into the cold
interior we've exposed,
she half-expects to find
three magi in the manger,
a mother and her child.
She half-expects to read
on tablets of gingerbread
a line or two of Scripture,
as she has every morning
inside a dated shutter
on her Advent calendar.
She takes it from the mantel
and coaxes one fingertip
under the perforation,
as if her future hinges
on not tearing off the flap
under which a thumbnail picture
by Raphael or Giorgione,
Hans Memling or David
of apses, niches, archways,
cradles a smaller scene
of a mother and her child,
of the lidded jewel-box
of Mary's downcast eyes.
Flee into Egypt, cries
the angel of the Lord
to Joseph in a dream,
for Herod will seek the young
child to destroy him. While
she works to tile the roof
with shingled peppermints,
I wash my sugared hands
and step out to the deck
to lug the shutter in,
a page torn from a book
still blank for the two of us,
a mother and her child.
by Mary Jo Salter, from Open Shutters. © Alfred A. Knopf, 2003. (buy now)
from "The Writers Almanac"
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Karma -- A Poem for this Season of Wonder
With him, but for a few confusing flaws
In divers of God's images. Because
A friend of his would neither buy nor sell,
Was he to answer for the axe that fell?
He pondered; and the reason for it was,
Partly, a slowly freezing Santa Claus
Upon the corner, with his beard and bell.
Acknowledging an improvident surprise,
He magnified a fancy that he wished
The friend whom he had wrecked were here again.
Not sure of that, he found a compromise;
And from the fulness of his heart he fished
A dime for Jesus who had died for men.
-- Edward Arlington Robinson
Friday, December 16, 2011
Christmas -- A Poem for this Season of Wonder
Is lying in the hay, my soul may enter.
There’s need, on man of flesh, of thoughts that centre
On fleshly things today: here cryeth one.
Who’ll cry one day for us, compared to whom
A queen’s newborn is but a worthless plaything.
This child in manager will fulfil our waiting
Whenas the times are full and ease our doom.
God resteth in our flesh, here fatherless,
In heaven motherless. Word co-creative,
God, Father of the virgin and her native,
Lies in the hay. Rest here and cease thy stress,
My soul, cease rhyming without rhyme or reason.
A mute humility is here in season.
-- by Constantijn Huygens
Thursday, December 15, 2011
The Winter Is Cold, Is Cold -- A Poem for this Season of Wonder
All’s spent in keeping warm.
Has joy been frozen, too?
I blow upon my hands
Stiff from the biting wind.
My heart beats slow, beats slow.
What has become of joy?
If joy’s gone from my heart
Then it is closed to You
Who made it, gave it life.
If I protect myself
I’m hiding, Lord, from you.
How we defend ourselves
In ancient suits of mail!
Protected from the sword,
Shrinking from the wound,
We look for happiness,
Small, safety-seeking, dulled,
Selfish, exclusive, in-turned.
Elusive, evasive, peace comes
Only when it’s not sought.
Help me forget the cold
That grips the grasping world.
Let me stretch out my hands
To purifying fire,
Clutching fingers uncurled.
Look! Here is the melting joy.
My heart beats once again.
--by Madeleine L’Engle
Monday, December 12, 2011
Birthing -- A Poem for this Season of Wonder
in a world that seems to prefer the profits of war?
How can one birth hope. . .
in a time when devastation is born of poverty and pandemic?
How does one birth love. . .
in a world whose heart is captive to fear?
How can one birth joy. . .
How can one birth joy?
The plastic manger scene on the front lawn
just doesn't do it!
Birthing is so much more!
It is, and requires. . .
radical intimacy,
prolonged patience,
the coming together of pain and ecstasy,
the joining of our deepest hopes and fears.
Face it,
birthing is a messy business.
And yet this process occurs every moment of our lives:
as our bodies birth cell upon cell,
as our minds birth ideas and dreams into the world,
as our spirits birth. . .
in the midst of labor and pain. . .
as our spirits birth.. JOY!
-- by Mark Unbehagen
Sunday, December 11, 2011
The Coming -- A Poem for this Season of Wonder
A small globe. Look he said.
The son looked. Far off,
As through water, he saw
A scorched land of fierce
Colour. The light burned
There; crusted buildings
Cast their shadows: a bright
Serpent, A river
Uncoiled itself, radiant
With slime.
On a bare
Hill a bare tree saddened
The sky. many People
Held out their thin arms
To it, as though waiting
For a vanished April
To return to its crossed
Boughs. The son watched
Them. Let me go there, he said.
-- R. S. Thomas
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Friday, December 09, 2011
Expectans Expectavi -- A Poem for this Season of Wonder
Candle and cracker, needles of fir and frost;
Carols that through the night air pass, piercing
The glassy husk of heart and heaven;
Children's faces white in the pane, bright in the tree-light.
And the waiting season again,
That begs a crust and suffers joy vicariously:
In bodily starvation now, in the spirit's exile always.
O might the hilarious reign of love begin, let in
Like carols from the cold
The lost who crowd the pane, numb outcasts into welcome.
-- by Anne Ridler
Thursday, December 08, 2011
The Stable -- A Poem for this Season of Wonder
Passing by;
And gathering Angels
Wondered why
A burdened Mother
Did not mind
That only animals
Were kind.
For who in all the world
Could guess
That God would search out
Loneliness.
Monday, December 05, 2011
Ecce Puer --A Poem for this Season of Wonder
A child is born;
With joy and grief
My heart is torn.
Calm in his cradle
The living lies.
May love and mercy
Unclose his eyes!
Young life is breathed
On the glass;
The world that was not
Comes to pass.
A child is sleeping:
An old man gone.
O, father forsaken,
Forgive your son!
--by James Joyce
Sunday, December 04, 2011
Stay Awake -- A Poem for This Season of Wonder
-- by Catharine Phillips
Follow Catherine's poetry/meditations at http://allwillbewellperiod.blogspot.com/
Saturday, December 03, 2011
Prophets -- A Poem for this Season of Wonder
When I was walking down
A narrow street
I met a flock of children
Who all came running up to me
Saying that they were prophets
And for a penny they
Would prophesy
I gave them each a penny
They started out
By rummaging in trash-cans
Until they found
A ragged piece of silk
It’s blue, they said
Blue is a holy color
Blue is the color that
The mountains are
When they are far away
They laid the rag
On a small fire
Of newspaper and shavings
And burned it in the street
They scraped up all the ashes
And with them decorated
Each other’s faces
Then they ran back to me
And stood
In a circle ‘round me
We stood that way
In a solemn silence
Until
One of the children spoke
It was the prophecy!
He said that long before
The pear tree blossoms
Or sparrows in the hedges
Begin to sing
A Child will be our King.
--by Anne Porter
Friday, December 02, 2011
Mary's Poem -- A Poem for This Season of Wonder
whispered in her ear, did the flashing
scissors in her fingers gall
to the wooden floor and the spool unravel,
the spider's sly cradle
tremble with love? Imagine
How the dry fields leaned
toward the news and she heard, for a moment,
the households of crickets --
When she answered, all things shifted, the moon
in its river of milk.
And when she wanted to pluck
her heart from her breast, did she remember
a commotion of wings, or the stirring
of dust?
-- Kathleen Wakefield, from Divine Inspiration: The Life of Jesus in World Poetry
One Leaf
David Ignatow
One leaf left on a branch
and not a sound of sadness
or despair. One leaf left
on a branch and no unhappiness.
One leaf left all by itself
in the air and it does not speak
of loneliness or death.
One leaf and it spends itself
in swaying mildly in the breeze.
Source: Earth Prayers From Around the World
photo by Brent Bill
Thursday, December 01, 2011
The God We Hardly Knew -- A Poem for this Season of Wonder
a genuine Christmas
without being truly poor.
The self-sufficient, the proud,
those who, because they have
everything, look down on others,
those who have no need
even of God- for them there
will be no Christmas.
Only the poor, the hungry,
those who need someone
to come on their behalf,
will have that someone.
That someone is God.
Emmanuel. God-with-us.
Without poverty of spirit
there can be no abundance of God.
--by Oscar Romero
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Into The Darkest Hour -- A Poem for This Season of Wonder
War & tumult of war,
a horror in the air.
Hungry yawned the abyss-
and yet there came the star
and the child most wonderfully there.
It was time like this
of fear & lust for power,
license & greed and blight-
and yet the Prince of bliss
came into the darkest hour
in quiet & silent light.
And in a time like this
how celebrate his birth
when all things fall apart?
Ah! Wonderful it is
with no room on the earth
the stable is our heart.
-- by Madeleine L’Engle
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Antiphon for the Virgin -- A Poem for This Season of Wonder
Mary Virgin,
drenched in the speech of God,
your body bloomed,
swelling with the breath of God.
For the Spirit purged you
of the poison Even took.
She soiled all freshness when she caught
that infection
from the devil's suggestion.
But in wonder within you
you hid an untainted
child of God's mind
and God's Son blossomed in your body.
The Holy One was his midwife:
his birth broke the laws
of flesh that Eve made. He was coupled
to wholeness
in the seedbed of holiness.
-- Hildegard of Bingen
Monday, November 28, 2011
Noël -- A Poem for This Season of Wonder
Noel
by Anne Porter
When snow is shaken
From the balsam trees
And they’re cut down
And brought into our houses
When clustered sparks
Of many-colored fire
Appear at night
In ordinary windows
We hear and sing
The customary carols
They bring us ragged miracles
And hay and candles
And flowering weeds of poetry
That are loved all the more
Because they are so common
But there are carols
That carry phrases
Of the haunting music
Of the other world
A music wild and dangerous
As a prophet’s message
Or the fresh truth of children
Who though they come to us
From our own bodies
Are altogether new
With their small limbs
And birdlike voices
They look at us
With their clear eyes
And ask the piercing questions
God alone can answer.
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20503
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Thanks for a Bounty of People
Let us give thanks for a bounty of people:
For children who are our second planting, and though they grow like weeds and the wind too soon blows them away, may they forgive us our cultivation and fondly remember where their roots are.
Let us give thanks;
For generous friends...with hearts...and smiles as bright as their blossoms;
For feisty friends, as tart as apples;
For continuous friends, who, like scallions and cucumbers, keep reminding us that we've had them;
For crotchety friends, sour as rhubarb and as indestructible;
For handsome friends, who are as gorgeous as eggplants and as elegant as a row of corn, and the others, as plain as potatoes and so good for you;
For funny friends, who are as silly as Brussels sprouts and as amusing as Jerusalem artichokes;
And serious friends as unpretentious as cabbages, as subtle as summer squash, as persistent as parsley, as delightful as dill, as endless as zucchini and who, like parsnips, can be counted on to see you through the winter;
For old friends, nodding like sunflowers in the evening-time, and young friends coming on as fast as radishes;
For loving friends, who wind around us like tendrils and hold us, despite our blights, wilts and witherings;
And finally, for those friends now gone, like gardens past that have been harvested, but who fed us in their times that we might have life thereafter.
For all these we give thanks.
******
Let us all give thanks, this holiday time, for friends no matter their type and God’s graciousness in giving them to us. People who are made in God’s own image, come to bless us. I am grateful for you!
-- Brent
Thursday, November 17, 2011
What Would THIS Jesus Say? A Caption Contest
"I tell you, Trump, it is easier for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God than to find a place to park my Rolls in Manhattan..."
Add your contribution as a comment!
Thursday, November 03, 2011
Wednesday, November 02, 2011
The Sacred in Each Other
Rabbi Michael Lerner
When people have learned to de-sanctify each other, to treat each other as means to our own ends, to not feel the pain of those who are suffering, we end up creating a world in which...terrible acts of violence become more common. This is a world out of touch with itself, filled with people who have forgotten how to recognize and respond to the sacred in each other because we are so used to looking at others from the standpoint of what they can do for us, how we can use them toward our own ends.
Source: Tikkun magazine
Add your thoughts at inward/outward
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Monday, October 24, 2011
Monday, October 17, 2011
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Lost Quaker Journals: #9 -- John Greenleaf Whittier
WALT WHITMAN, on a summer's day,
Lolled ‘round the meadows sweet with hay.
Singing, of himself in his merry glee
Whilst worthy men crafted poetry.
Leaves of grass shall soon turn brown,
While other poetry still resounds,
'Tis songs sung of heroic human quest
Not some nameless longing filling WW's breast.
From whence do his strange thoughts bubble up?
Perhaps too much soma in his small cup?
He speaks of the grass and flowers and trees,
But never leaves his dingy cities
And low of cattle, and song of birds,
Are sounds his ears have rarely heard
Alas for poetry that’s a bunch of fudge,
I’d rather be a rich repiner than such a drudge!
For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: "Whitman wrote again!"
Ah, well! for real poets some sweet hope lies
That his work be greeted by a printer’s denies;
And, in the here and now, angels may
Keep his “poems” from the light of day!
I hope, if I ever have some institution named after me, that nobody finds this journal of my really heartfelt poetry. Alas, that would be sad.
-- JGW, Ninth-month 19, 1860
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Lost Quaker Journals: #8 -- Walt Whitman
Ninth-month 19, 1860 --
I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
not Vermonters,
And rejoice that I do not write,
Rhyming poems like JGW -- Moll Pitcher, Barbara Fritchie, Maud Muller, bah...
The saddest words of tongue or pen are not "It might of been" but are
"It not ought to have been" but Whittier penned it anyway.
I loafe and invite my poems,
I lean and loafe and brew my soma, but not for some churchly-hymn.
My poems, every poem of my poems, form'd from this soil, this air,
Not some rhyming dictionary or nights spent playing Scrabble,
Creeds and rules of poetry I hold in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but should be quickly forgotten,
I freeform my lines, no slave to format, I permit myself to speak at every hazard,
Poetry without royalty check (unlike that other Quakerly poet), filled with original energy and my own self!
-Walt Whitman,
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
On Being Attentive -- Two's by Two
As I brushed my hair (yes, I have some hair that still needs tending) in front of Nancy's dresser, I looked down and noticed our senior pictures sitting on her desk. No, not senior as in the age we are now, but senior as in seniors in high school. Two very earnest looking teenagers looked back at me from their formal professional black and white portraits. I said a prayer for those teens as I thought of how their lives were turning out to be far different (speaking for myself at least) than they imagined they would as seventeen year olds. I wished God's blessings for and on them.
As I moved to my chest of drawers to pick up my wallet, keys, and superfluous comb, I saw another set of senior pictures -- those of my sons Ben and Tim. I see those pictures (and another just behind them of the boys as very young boys) every day. But today I saw them afresh and as a possibility for the primary speech of prayer. As I reflected on their lives (Ben as business man, husband and father in Japan and Tim as good, kind Hoosier fellow), I prayed silently -- God knows the words I would speak could I really name the longings of my heart for these young men.
Spotting -- and praying for -- twos has been a bit easier than I thought. Two women just jogged by my office window. Two strangers that I was able to bless with a little prayer, though they, I am sure, will never know that they were being prayed for. Nor do they need to.
The prayers and attentiveness benefit me (singular) as much as them (twos), I am sure. The act of being attentive throughout the day is opening me to a richer prayer life than my usual "Thank you" or "Help me" or other simple prayers. It also feels more "me" than when I try to pray the hours (which is not my tradition) or try some other prayer practices that just don't quite fit the Bill (so to speak).
I wonder what other twos God will place before me to notice this day?
-- Brent
Monday, September 12, 2011
Stay for Pay: Church/Meeting Growth -- The Bad Friends Way
But, of course, those writings are very deep and thoughtful and practical. Not much fun, I guess. Association of Bad Friends co-clerk Jacob Stone and I (with help from our Bad spouses) have come up with some other ideas in the past -- such as the inclusion of the Quaker Whoopee Cushion as a way to enliven Meeting and perhaps attract a more fun-loving bunch of Seekers.
Whilst those earlier ideas were great, the newest one from the Research and Development Sub-committee of the Advancement and Outreach Committee of the International Association of Bad Friends for Meeting Expansion and World Domination (Corporate motto: "We see a great people to be snookered") is simply stupendous.
We call it "Stay for Pay."
Simply put, Quaker meetings will begin paying people to attend Meeting for Worship.
Brilliant, isn't it?
Instead of taking an offering during or after worship, local meetings will pass out cash to attendees. Below is the proposed payment schedule:
Action | Payment |
Attend Meeting for Worship (entire service) | $10 |
Give good vocal ministry (5-7 on clerks’ scale) | $5 |
Give great vocal ministry (8-10 on clerks’ scale) | $7.50 |
Give outstanding vocal ministry (leaving people crying, laughing, ready to march on DC, etc – without mentioning anything about God or Jesus or John Woolman)* *unprogrammed meetings only | $10 |
Give outstanding vocal ministry (leaving people crying, laughing, ready to go door to door on evangelization campaign, etc – without mentioning anything about how God or Jesus is your best Friend and made you rich)* *programmed meetings only | $10 |
Vocal ministry (other than the outstanding category, which has obvious criteria) would be rated Olympic style, with three or four clerks holding up signs with their scores for the message.
It's a win/win situation. Meetinghouses will be packed and a family of four will walk away with enough money to go do something enjoyable on Firstday afternoon! Who could ask for more?
And the best part -- it's not going to cost any money! That's right. Every Friends meeting seems to be sitting on some stash of endowment cash that they can't spend. Here's an opportunity to put the proceeds that have been piling up for the past one hundred years in the Phoebe Ann Mosley Memorial Straight Shooters and Outreach to Indigent Orphans of the Spanish American War Fund to work. The legal team of Stone, Bill, Stone, Stone, Stone M O'Gwynn will be glad to help with the details of modifying the conditions of the endowment.
For more information on this amazing program and how your meeting can franchise this opportunity for its use, contact us at 1-666-BAD-QUAK.
-- Brent