DahRev Discusses

Christmas Eve Sermon

2009-01-16T08:51:00.000-05:00

Sermon Christmas Eve, 2008
“Welcome the Child of the Mother God”

Yes, the Mother God. My message tonight has a serious tone to it, as well as joyful. As I look about our world both religious & secular, I see that we are a world divided, & our own nation divided at times. Christmas “Christ’s Mass,” is, by it’s very nature, a Christian celebration, but God never meant for us to be so strict in our understanding of what divine love means.

God’s love is meant for us all, whether we are Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, or maybe even no religion at all. Christmas can be a way
for all of us to share our joy with everyone, even those we have been sadly taught to call our enemies. It is a time of peace, a time to set aside differences & celebrate our diversities. Christmas is a time of joy & also a time of sadness. It is a time of looking forward with hope & a time of looking back with longing for times that were—or times that never were.

I would like to begin this evening’s message with something I wrote years ago about the loss of the dreams of being young.

It’s called “Stolen Innocence” & begins with a quote from William Wordsworth's "Intimations of Immortality"--

"There was a time
when meadow grove and stream,
The earth, and every common sight
To me did seem Appareled in celestial light"

”When I was a child I used to walk with Jesus.
We would walk through paths in the woods
that had always been there.

Sometimes me and Jesus and Saint Francis
would sit by the trunk of a favorite tree for hours
just listening to the water go by in the brook,

watching the minnows in the little pools
and delighting in penny-doctors skipping and skimming
across the clear water.

We would build tiny villages out of twigs and dead grass
and trace tiny irrigation ditches with pointed sticks.

Sometimes we would climb the nearby hill to the meadow.

Jesus liked it there, and Saint Francis liked it there,
and I liked it there.

We would chase after grasshoppers and hold them in our hands
and then let them go to see how far they would jump.

We would eat stolen rhubarb stalks from the garden.
We would roll down the side of the hill through the tall grass
to the rutted tractor tracks below.
.............................
And then one day they were gone.
Jesus was taken by the adults and put into a golden box.

Jesus was changed from a man into a wafer and something in a golden cup.

Jesus had to stay in the Church and the only way I could talk to him
was through the prayers we learned in Catechism

I don't know whatever became of Saint Francis.
I saw him once a few years later at a Retreat I went to with my father.

He was sitting on a stone bench in a formal garden;
He looked like he was part of the stone bench.

There were stops all along the path in the garden that showed
how Jesus was stoned and whipped and nailed to a cross.

Saint Francis didn't look happy anymore.
He looked sad. It was a sad place
all filled with flowers and silent men.”

Our Christmas stories, our Nativity scenes as we call them, are tales of the miracle of birth, which will always remain a miracle no matter how much we learn about the process. I think that it is no stretch of the imagination to say that every birth is a miracle. Our Christmas stories are tales of Nature stepping aside allowing the miracle characters of God to step onstage.

Matthew tells us of a miraculous star that suddenly appeared in the Heavens
to guide wandering Magi to the Holy City of Jerusalem. Heaven & Earth touched each other as never before. Angels, no longer restricted to Jacob’s Ladder, now have wings & filled the skies with messages of joy—& they also found ways to enter into our dreams as well. Luke tells us that these messengers entered the dreams of Joseph, of Mary, & of her cousin Elizabeth. Even Matthew’s Magi found themselves just as affected by these angelic figures as that mysterious fleeting star.

These people listened to their dreams. Our dreams are our angelic messengers & we should pay closer attention to our dreams & visions than we do. Listening to & heeding dreams is becoming a lost art, sad to say. Where would our Christmas stories be if Mary refused to listen to the Angel Gabriel, or if Joseph & the three kings chose not to heed the warnings in their dreams? We certainly wouldn’t be here tonight celebrating the answer to all of our unconscious dreams, the Messiah among us.

Have you ever noticed, though, that aside from the brief appearance of Elizabeth as the mother of John the Baptist & the obedient manner of Mary in response to her Guardian Angel & her God, that all the major characters in this Nativity scene are male? The authors of our two birth stories, Matthew & Luke are male. The poor shepherds on the hillsides tending their flocks by night are all men as are the obviously wealthy kings bearing gifts
fit for yet another king. And were you aware that the angels all have masculine names like Michael & Gabriel? Even God is considered by many to be male. As a young Irish-Catholic boy growing up in Connecticut, I knew that Mary was the Mother of God, but I was never sure about Joseph. What confused my young mind was the phrase “Holy Family.” There was also a statue inside Saint Francis Church that showed Mary & Joseph looking over the crib of Jesus, looking very much like what we call a “nuclear family.”

Over against all of this was the complex story we heard in Catechism about the Virgin Birth occasioned by the Holy Spirit. In the spirit of Christian mysticism, the Sisters of Mercy never really explained the whole story & how Joseph & the Holy Spirit both seemed to be fathers of Jesus—& of course, none of us dared to question ‘Sister’ this mystery!

Ever since I became a Protestant, & fairly soon afterwards, a minister in the United Church of Christ, I wondered about the feminine aspects of Christianity. As a Catholic, Mary was revered & elevated to a high position in our understanding of God’s family, but here in the Protestant way of looking at things, the Trinity holds sway.

So, where do we find the feminine? I remember one theologian who came to speak at the Seminary said that since the Logos in the first words of the Gospel of John refers to Wisdom, known as “Sophia” in Greek, then Jesus must be the bearer of the feminine as well as the masculine energy that calls us all to be fully authentic human beings. “In the Beginning was the Word (Logos, Sophia) & the Word was with God and the Word (Sophia) was God.” This is about as close as the mystical writer of the Fourth Gospel was willing to come to a birth story!

I really do like the feminine aspect of Christ being found in the Wisdom aspect of God that we find in Proverbs. It presents us with a well-rounded divinity that isn’t trapped in a masculine persona. These fully developed traits are symbolized in the candles we lit tonight; hope, a spirit of faith
to live in the here & now & into the future; peace, a sense of connectedness
with the all; love, the stuff that holds us all together; joy, the warmness we project to all we meet; & the Christ Candle, especially the Christ candle
which symbolizes the constant & continual birth that gives usa centering prayer-place, & lights up that divine spark in all of us. Let us pray that these lights burn continuously & illuminate any dark days that may come our way.
We ask this in the name of the newborn Jesus & the Risen Christ. So be it.

Weddings

2009-01-09T08:50:00.000-05:00

here's a photo of a wedding i did this summer in a barn loft, of all places. josh, the son of pat's friend sheila, my friend, too actually, is a real easy-going kinda guy. molly is an art teacher & the whole design of the wedding was quite striking-- goats & all--

Happy New Year

2009-01-01T08:49:00.000-05:00

HAPPY NEW YEAR! yes, it is quite apparent to me that i posted little or nothing in the tumultous year of 2008. i'm going to try & rectify that over the next week or so by compiling events that have been large in my life over the past year-- with photos when possible. welcome back! denis
this is dana cunningham at one of the monthly writer's & muscian's performances at the effingham, nh library. great event!

Nunc dimittis to nanao

2008-12-30T08:48:00.000-05:00

i learned the other day from gary lawless that nanao sakaki has gone to walk among the stars-- he will be missed by all poets & lovers of freedom & nature-- but he will always be with us because he expanded the universe to a circle at least ten billion light years large-- thanks, nanao-- i wrote a little eulogy for you-- hope it gets to where you are!

nunc dimittis
to nanao

the fog clings

to the trees on the mountain—

it could be japan; it could be new england

the sun appears now & then

through the wandering clouds

but deep snow

breaks the mirror of burnt meadow pond.

nunc dimittis—

your servant has departed in peace,

free to roam the bright desert stars.

djd 12.28.09

Happy Holidays, oops, I mean Merry Christmas!

2007-12-26T18:31:00.000-05:00

I hope everyone had a satisfying Christmas & that you've all settled into planning what to do for the new year. It's going to be an election year & a hotly contested one. After much inner-debate (the most reasonable kind), I've developed enough audacity & hope to support Barack Obama-- I hope that he will stay close to his promises & get the United States out of Iraq & Afhganistan as quickly & as safely as possible. It was a shock when the Democratic controlled Congress allowed President Bush an almost limitless allowance to play with all of his war toys at the expense of so many loyal American soldiers & innocent Iraqis. I took part in a reading of the names of Iraqi & American "casualties" of this horrible war a few weeks ago in Brunswick at the UUA church. I wish that more churches & more clergy were speaking out more against the carnage. Our little group of protesters continues to garner support on the Bridge Between Porter & Parsonsfield in Kezar Falls. Anyone who would like to join us, call me at 625-4411 or e-mail me at dahrev@psouth.net or just show up any Saturday @ 10:00.

On December 23rd, we had a little "Lessons & Carols" service at our church in Brownfield & then took part in the larger one in Fryeburg. They were both great & spiritually meaningful. I'd like to express my deep appreciation to the Girl Scouts & Brownies who helped to decorate the church's Christmas tree. Thanks!

yet another doug

2007-12-03T09:59:00.000-05:00

This is Doug of Hendrick extolling the virtues of an earth jurisprudence-- he brought with him that night a copy of the foreword to "Wild Law" by Cormac Cullinan written by Thomas Berry (bless his still living soul!) who critiques the constitution by saying that this venerated document provides a detailed list of the rights of individual persons, thus, "Humans had finally become self-validating, both as individuals & as a political community." What is left out, according to Berry, is the rest of the natural world, "...the difficulty is no exactly with the rights granted to humans, the difficulty is that no rights and no protections were granted to any non-human mode of being." This reminded me of something that has been in my mind ever since i first heard it at Bangor Seminary long ago: We need a new myth. Berry, the "geologian" provides one: "It's time to replace our arrogance toward the Earth with a becoming humility, to replace our fear of Earth with a grateful response to a benign & gracious mother; yet a severe & demanding mother, a mother who will at times starve us with famine, assault us with storms, drown us at sea, yet will provide us with a world of endless excitement & infinite meaning..." it reminds me of Yeat's wild beast slouching towards Bethlehem to be born...

Thanks to gift-givers

2007-12-03T07:40:00.002-05:00

Thanks to all the members of the Brownfield Community Church & people all over the area who donated gifts for kids around here in need. This is the time for generosity (not that generosity shouldn't be all the time!) & I'm sure that the kids who receive this gifts will appreciate them.

welcome to the old coots club!

2007-12-01T09:47:00.003-05:00

doug, now that you're 62 & eligible for the benefits of social security (we won't discuss how secure that is!), i'd like to welcome you to the "old coots club," of whom ken kesey of merry pranksters & "one flew over the cuckoos nest" fame said, "stand out at the edges of culture pointing the way" or words to that effect. even tho it is 16 degrees out with a wind howling on your birthday, we'll stand out there on the bridge from the old age to the new age & "howl" when the wind dies down! happy birthday, doug!

on the bridge

2007-11-24T19:18:00.000-05:00

each saturday we stand out on the bridge spanning porter/parsonsfield or york/oxford counties from 10:00 - 11:00 for peace in the middle east. even tho the temps are afallin' we're still out there & we would love for you to join us. this is the season when we will be seeing signs all over the place calling for "peace on earth." it won't happen unless we insist on leadership that can lead rather than violently react & it won't happen just because we stand out there on a bridge-- but-- we are wearing our hearts on our sleeves & more & more people are expressing solidarity with our peaceful point of view. join us & help us to do our tiny part to change hearts & minds.

2007-11-24T17:58:00.000-05:00

2007-11-24T17:52:00.000-05:00

not bad for a novice photographer, huh?

respect the names-- read them all--

2007-11-24T17:16:00.000-05:00

i'll be there! i'm slated to be a greeter (not walmart style, i trust) @ 2:00, but i also plan on being there earlier to visit gulf of maine bookstore & later to read names. A SERVICE OF REMEMBRANCE: READING THE NAMES OF THE DEAD on SATURDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2007 at UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST CHURCH - 15 PLEASANT STREET in BRUNSWICK, MAINE. The Reading of the Names of the Dead will be a reverent remembrance of Americans and Iraqis and other unnamed but remembered emotional and physical casualties of the invasion and occupation of Iraq who still suffer in life what others have been spared in death. All life is sacred. The times of the service will be from 9AM to 6PM, or until the last name is read. There will be two short services: One at 12 Noon - A 15-minute service will be conducted by Deacon Frank Semancik of St. Charles Borromeo Church, and one at 5PM – A 15-minute service conducted by Rev. Sylvia A. Stocker of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Brunswick. All clergy are invited to announce this service to their congregations and any others whom they believe will benefit from this service of remembrance. For more information contact Dexter and Gretchen Kamilewicz at 207 833-5125 or Email: Dexkam@aol.com

i don't wanna be a "blogger slacker"!!!!

2007-11-23T10:51:00.000-05:00

jeez, just cuz i don't post every 2 days they call me a slacker! they forget that with dial-up it ain't so ez to just post when the spirit moves-- especially with photos! had a great thanksgiving, even considering that the divorce decree was modified a bit-- good seeing you after all these years, janice-- wish i coulda stayed longer-- wanted to take jess shopping, but not @ 3:00 in the morning! thanks for taking a few pictures with my camera, christie! & liz, the mashers were just right-- lumps are the true blessings of home cooking!

2007-11-12T14:50:00.000-05:00

We’re All Veterans Here

One of the lines in a James Russell Lowell poem reminds me that war is not just a matter of marching off to foreign lands with guns & tanks—it is a matter of choice, a matter of choice for individuals & nations.

“Once to every heart & nation
comes the moment to decide,
in the strife of truth with falsehood,
for the good or evil side.”

There is a war that is always & continually going on in every heart & in every nation; it is commonly called the “culture war,” & we are all scarred veterans of that war, especially church-goers

Church is not all that important to people in this day & age. The vast cathedrals of England & Germany are sparsely attended & times have changed. We, as people in the church, are all wounded veterans of this war— We are here today on Veterans Day,which is not a day of celebration—but it is a day of remembering those
who’ve made great sacrifices for their homes, their families, & their country.
Looking back & remembering is a good thing if it helps us to look forward.
We can’t change the past & constantly looking backward, “remembering when” doesn’t really help anyone. Many are haunted & deeply scarred by what happened in the war. Some are so deeply affected by what the war did, whichever war it was, that it’s always foremost in mind.

We all have things that have scarred us in the past, & we all know that it is difficult to let them go, but we also know that it is the best thing we can do for ourselves & for our loved ones.

So—as veteran Christians what can we do to let go of some of the things of the past that no longer work & to look forward to the future? We need to adopt a sense of renewal; we need to form new ways of attracting people to our church.
Because our church is connected with the United Church of Christ & the Unitarian-Universalist Association, we are by definition a progressive church with a liberal theology. This means that we are, more or less, hopefully more, open & affirming in our theology. Both of our “parent” denominations accept people regardless of age, race, gender, or sexual orientation. Both the UCC & the UUA ordain men & women, gay or straight.

Church should be a place that challenges us to think about the important questions of our lives. Church, our church, should be a place that calls us out of ourselves & challenges us to respond to the ethical issues of our day & age, based on the teachings & stories we find in our faith tradition.

The very first teaching of Jesus came from the Prophet Isaiah, not the law-giver Moses. Jesus was someone who taught like the prophets, not like the lawmakers. Jesus sought to educate & enlighten his followers, to excite their minds & enliven their curiosity, Jesus, like Isaiah & Micah before him & like Gandhi & Martin Luther King after him, looked at the ethical issues of his day with an eye towards harmony & compassion, not conformity & submission.

The time of our church renewal might well be now—or it might well be never.
It’s up to us—we are the church; the health of this faith community depends on us.
Let’s exercise our spiritual muscles. So be it.

the shorter version of my abortive retreat

2007-11-03T09:29:00.000-04:00

after the retreat

a lot of processing to do,
but not as much laundry
as i expected!

djd 10.29.07

run away! run away!

2007-11-01T07:04:00.000-04:00

Zennist gone AWOL

AWOL from a retreat, how bad is that?
How can you run from silence & ever expect to escape?

On a spiritual journey
from the coast of rural Maine,
An unlikely place to find a Buddhist Zendo,
to the mountains of Eastern New Hampshire,
the quiet ruralness of Tamworth,
with a touch of Boston money here & there.

The harshness of a Zen monk,
a Viet Nam Veteran who began his dharma talk(?)
by introducing himself as “a murderer, an alcoholic & a drug addict.”

Lessons learned:
recovery is possible; forgiveness is necessary.
Karma rules: you aren’t what you were,
but what you are comes from what you were
& not only that,
you are not what you may become,
but what you become is determined by who you are now.

Once Anshin was a killer;
now he teaches peace with a touch of vengeance.
Once Anshin was a junkie;
now he is a walker as Gandhi once was
& told us of trekking the length of the border between Texas & Mexico.

He said that we cannot change the past
but he vowed to never repeat the wrongs he once committed.
If his actions caused some young woman to spit on him when he returned from the war, he vowed to never go to war again.

His stories, all but the intensely violent ones, the gory ones,
mirrored my own checkered past—
perhaps that’s what sent me AWOL
Perhaps the whole thing was just too Thomas Wolfe-ian in tone
except that I thought I was heading home,
a place I fled long ago.

Anshin was my mirror, too clear,
& he scared me, or I scared myself—hard to tell.

In sentry terms, your mirror is your opposite
across the “no-man’s-land,”
that strip littered with land mines.
“All Along The Watchtower,”
you had to keep your wits about you.

While we sat, I watched him,
waited for him to mirror my soul,
like a mystical Harpo/Lucy routine,
or worse, crawl in, a tunnel rat,
& dispatch my essence with extreme prejudice—
but it didn’t happen—it didn’t happen.
Not much did.

Anshin would look into your eyes,
not with fabled Zen clarity
but the way a professional listener with pad on lap would.

Anshin taught me to gessho & bow properly;
always gaze into the eyes of the object of your prostrations—
but he never saw me & I never saw him.
Lucy & Harpo didn’t meet at the Morgan Bay Zendo.

djd 10.28.07
a little "btw" i loved the book & strongly recommend it-- i think the connection was just too close & brought up too much old stuff that i thought i'd buried--

2007-10-14T06:51:00.000-04:00

SAVE THIS DATE & TIME!
OCTOBER 21, 2007, 7:00 P.M.
SACOPEE VALLEY FORUM FILM FESTIVAL
HORIZON’S BUILDING PRESENTS…
In a testimony to the power of tolerance, filmmaker Menachem Daum, his wife, and their sons travel to a Polish town where his father-in-law and his two brothers hid from the Nazis with a non-Jewish family for 28 months. After many years, the Muchas find the expression of gratitude they seem desperately to have desired, and the Daums tearfully piece together their history. Ultimately Daum's journey begins to heal wounds between the two families and provides a solid foundation from which to increase interfaith tolerance, within his own family and the world. to raw emotion.

Refreshments will be served & a time for discussion will follow. FMI: Denis at 625-4411 or dahrev@psouth.net

2007-10-14T06:35:00.000-04:00

Remind them of this, & warn them before God that they are to avoid

wrangling over words, which does no good but only ruins those who are listening.

So says whoever wrote the instructions to new pastors in 2^nd Timothy—

Avoid wrangling over words… Hmmmm… Isn’t that what writers & other thinkers do best? As both an avid reader & a compulsive writer I find that words are far & away our best means of communication. God’s first act of creation was to speak & the world burst into being. What were God’s thoughts in that eternal silence before all that we see about us came into being? There’s a concept in Chan Buddhism called huatou. Quoting from “Attaining the Way: A Guide to the Practice of Chan Buddhism,” Chan Master Sheng Yen says this: “The term huatou literally means ‘source of spoken words before they are uttered,’ or, ‘before the spoken word.’ This is an indirect way to point out that which is beyond language & concepts. This source is variously referred to in Buddhism as buddha-nature, self-nature, no-self, no-mind, & intrinsic wisdom,” --but you get the idea.

i was just thinking of the term "party line." when i was a boy, & yes i can remember that far back!, we had a 4-digit phone number & a party line we shared with a neighbor down the street-- luckily for us she was an elderly woman who didn't use the phone much, but i can remember times when my mother would want to call someone & hear her say, "well, i guess we'll need to wait until she's finished-- won't be long now..." when the woman died we didn't get another party. now party line is something one must hew to, adhere to. we need someone who will not want a party-line in the house, someone who is a maverick, but i'm afraid we'll get another party-liner-- probably hilary-- we need a dennis or a barak-- but they just don't hew--

jack wept

2007-10-09T18:58:00.000-04:00

someone asked me where those three little guys at the top of the blog came from & who they were. i drew them to go along with a poem i wrote after purchasing the boxed cd set of kerouac's readings.

Wholeness Be Damned

I would have been happy

just listening to Jack read haiku

with Al Cohn & Zoot Sims

but I went ahead & read the liner notes

The notes told me that Sims & Cohn

just picked up & left after the set—

like just another gig, man.

And Jack set in a corner.

And Jack wept

thanks to colleen

2007-10-08T11:00:00.000-04:00

i want to thank my daughter who helped me, no, who actually set up this web page for me. she said that blogging is easier than e-mailing. i'm not sure that's accurate for an old fool like myself, but i'll give the old college try!

has anyone read ferlinghetti's 'poetry as insurgent art' yet? "after a poetry reading, never submit to a question-and-answer session. poetry gets the listeners high. a q&a brings it all down to prose. do they ask a folk singer to explain his [or her] songs?

now that motorcycle seasons is drawing to a close in maine, it's time to edit our manuscripts!

for the next poetry reading in effingham, nh

2007-10-07T13:56:00.000-04:00

The Last Time I Was Here

the last time i was here, this podium was pushed back

so that a guitar would fit up here

& i wondered how, in my motorcycle clompy boots,

lugging my considerable girth,

i wondered how, without turning red of face,

i would get to the reading place—

i thought i would be called next—

i noticed that one of the graces of arriving late

is that the first slot is always open,

with 18 or so others to follow.

i mumbled some silly platitude like someone

caught in an odd light.

katie McCarthy quietly said, “just push it forward,”

i do so & lo & behold, it rolled! it slowly creaked forward

like monty python’s trojan horse on an empty mission

i wondered at the devilish genius of it all.

what a marvelous weapon! a podium on wheels!

more formidable than the panzers of egypt & europe,

words for wheels, like ezekiel’s wheels of eyes within eyes,

all seeing, sadly rolling to exile.

more maneuverable, more stealthy

than the thunderous transports

we rode in ‘nam, i was impressed.

then i remembered—

words are the ultimate in maneuverability;

they last longer, run faster, & can change meanings,

in the twinkle of an eye, those very eyes within eyes;

‘in the beginning was the Word…’ everything follows the verb,

no wonder it’s on wheels.

djd 09.26.07