I especially appreciate reading your take on the religious angle on politics and world issues (since I am in a scripture study, Reading Between the Lines)
Thank you, Diana. Your spiritual direction gives me reassurance, hope and wonderful new perspectives that help me understand ways in which I can find and see God in our world. Looking forward to this new year at The Cottage.
A prose poem I wrote last week for my poetry group and it does demonstrate how meaningful The Cottage is. “Names of God” was our assignment.
& Thanks, Diana!!
Names of God
When I sit down to read Diana Butler Bass’s Substack writing
I enter the light and the light enters me.
I’m so thoroughly at home in myself then and so comforted by the Spirit. The Comforter.
I trust her and her take. She’s the disciple who ministers to me.
Open and learning, in dialogue
with other Spiritual thinkers and writers, a doctor of Christian history.
She says we need to write the history of Jesus in our lives so that it becomes the full story written by all who know him. That the disciples who seem so famous to us now, did not see themselves as famous but just as ordinary people seeking light, the meaning of the world, the word.
She tells us Early churches were like fan clubs, dinner clubs organized around their enthusiasm for Jesus and his teaching and work. Fans learning together minus dogma, homey gatherings.
Comforter. Light.
Jesus and Diana Butler Bass.
Yes, and then my local comforters and lights.
My closest loved ones part of my daily life.
Then artists like the Paul Winter Consort filling me
going through me like a Wind!!
Hearing the songs from Solstice Gems. Nature Divinity intertwined inseparable.
Beauty.
Cohering me to all life and forms and elements.
So I no longer tremble in my perceived separateness, with apprehensions of my utter vulnerability to almost anything.
The Fulfillment of longing and desire.
All peoples All creatures All cosmos
All my home.
Homey
Sweet
And Homey.
The Divine as my homey.
Such Comfort
Such Light. What a friend we have.
What friends we have.
See how they enlarge us, how big
and capable we are,
what we are able to bear with such strength and power.
Wonderful
Counselor
Comforter
Light
Friend
Comforter
Light
The “Word” as naming -
Meaning itself.
Each name grows us -
-grows our love.
Here am I Loving that love
that holds all the cosmos, its names and claims.
You and I are the pudding and the proof of this
storied, storied, storied
Storied Love.
(From Paul Winter Consort SOLSTICE GEMS)
youtube Duet for the Longest Night Solstice Gems - Google Search
I absolutely love the Paul Winter Consort-but have not heard these pieces because I was into their playing in the Taj Mahal, etc. long time ago---will check out the ones you mention, but in the meanwhile, I would like to like to tell you about a recent musical discovery I made on YouTube which is Kiya Tabassian and the group ensemble, Constantinople, out of Montreal. They are the musical equivalent of what people like Diana and Martin Shaw are doing on the spiritual level, healing the planet and ridding one of separatist thinking. The most profound piece is Metamorfosi but there are dozens of pieces/music to pull from and listen to.
In your book, Christianity for the Rest of Us, you listed ten practices of vital congregations uncovered by your research. The #1 most common practice was the practice of hospitality, which you wrote you found in almost every congregation alive with the Spirit of the risen Jesus. I think you wrote something to effect of: hospitality is first and there is no second.
I do have a vague memory though of an interview you did where you were asked what was the second most important practice for growing congregations? Your answer (in my memory) was the practice of discernment. I loved your answer so much that discernment became a cornerstone in my ministry for years. (I retired this summer).
Please consider writing more about the practice of communal discernment in 2024. Congregations are not well versed, nor do they want to be, on “waiting” for God, as discernment takes too long and often does not maximize, optimize or worship efficiency and spiritual production. My sense that discernment’s importance is increasing in Charles Taylor’s “secular age,” with God’s voice muted by the speed of change, our hyper-individualism, our fast pace of life, our need to control and our fear of what is uncontrollable (which is so often the context of divine encounter).
A couple of questions or writing prompts:
• In a culture that moves too fast, carries too much stuff, and that fears to readily, how does any person or congregation live joyfully and purposefully?
• How do we teach people to parse it out, our energy, our devotion, our powers of concentration? How do we teach people how to deploy their awareness? To discern together in a hyper individualistic age?
Thank you for seeing with historical eyes the grand movements of God in the American faith life.
You write much for all of us to think (discern) about in your posting.
A question: How, in this age of TOO MUCH can we have/make/get time for discernment.
Easy enough to do in an agricultural/pastoral/long-ago-and-far-away time and in a (village/tribal) community of "knowns." However, this globalized, economically divided, technologically connected (connected?) and more-more-more driven (I choose driven thoughtfully) NOW is not that time or place.
To find a real antidote to acceleration we’ll need a very different form of action, a different way of relating to the world. We’ll need a form of action that is not tied to the systems of acceleration. The richness of time is not found in maximizing or optimizing it. Time resonates with us when it is bound in events of encounter, in actions of address, in ways of being heard, seen, and felt.
To live in time differently/deeper we can:
1. Practice Sabbath - a rhythm of rest and action. Every soul needs some space for solitude and silence.
2. Teach people to pray together. Prayer as an opening of our attention, a deploying our awareness with intention on the world around us, looking for what God is already doing.
3. Be dis-satisfied with the status quo. Try to remember the last time you were positively touched by something. What made this moment special? Was it something that you expected to happen? Was it something you were in control of? Probably not. We are most happy when we respond to the world in an open manner, without feeling the need to control it entirely. A good life requires something in between controllability and uncontrollability, that is, a resonance with time. Something akin to the poet’s question: “Did you set a straw parallel to the river, and let the flow carry you downstream?” (Jean Lohmann, Questions Before Dark)
4. Finally belong to a community that sees God in you and practices a resonance with time.
Diana, I am so very grateful for you-your words, your explanations, your inspirations and all the things that keeps me looking forward with hope. May 2024 be filled with blessings for you.
Thank you as well for such wonderful writing but also, the music, the poetry, the photos, always included which makes your blog so lovely. Having discovered substacks in 2023, I have learned so m much in the last 10 months. Have been wanting to know, Diana, if you are familiar with the House of Beasts & Vines, a blog posted by a Dr. Martin Shaw who founded the dept of mytho-poetics at Stanford Uni., but now back in England, writing books (18) and still teaching. I always say he reminds me of a JRR Tolkien, Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung as he covers all those ideas. Phenomenal website; comes out every Sunday morning; so with you, him and Wendy Macs drawing class? This has made Sundays rather special w/o even attending a service; kind of glorious and I call it the church of rewilding, cause it's doing my own thing--freedom...
So, yesterday, walking in the woods, the
woods gave me a lesson
on memorial
days. We die quietly, the trees
murmured, without fanfare
without eulogy,
& yet our memorial
goes on for days,
for years,
you are walking through it. Without
eulogy?
I asked. What is language
for then? & there was all around me a kind
of mirth.
You are walking through it, the hawthorne
bushes shyly exclaimed, the meandering
brook.
Conscientious Objection
There are no parades for us, no salutes,
none of the vocabulary of jingoism
marshalled into sonorous odes or empty
platitudes. No. For us history’s silence.
And yet, oddly, we are the patriots.
What do I want? I want a three-legged
stool to sit on with my grandchildren & my
neighbors. Three sturdy legs: economic
equality. Environmental sustainability.
Equity. Big words for simple things. Enough.
Green. Justice. Enough, & not more, okay.
*
It is good, it is very good, on Memorial
Day to be reminded of amazement.
We remember such questionable things
otherwise on this day, & trot out such
wornout vocabulary, such ‘european’
nonsense. I went for a long walk in the woods
yesterday. The trees taught me a long lesson:
Die, as you lived, quietly, immediately
turning over, as you did all your life,
all your assets to the common good. Remember.
Thank you!!
Dear DBB....Thank you so much for this insightful/insiteful message....especially " and a renewal of courage to face what lies ahead."
This is going to be one of those historically important "infection points" you spoke bout late last (less than a week ago....amazing!) year.
I especially appreciate reading your take on the religious angle on politics and world issues (since I am in a scripture study, Reading Between the Lines)
Indeed, let it be so!
Diana, All the best in 2024. D
Looking forward to seeing you on St. Simons Island in two weeks. The Southern Lights Conference is an important part of my refocus for the New Year.
Thank you Diana ❤️. Love to be a member of the Cottage. And thank you for the Göran Persson quote, I had forgotten that 🥰
Thank you, Diana. Your spiritual direction gives me reassurance, hope and wonderful new perspectives that help me understand ways in which I can find and see God in our world. Looking forward to this new year at The Cottage.
A prose poem I wrote last week for my poetry group and it does demonstrate how meaningful The Cottage is. “Names of God” was our assignment.
& Thanks, Diana!!
Names of God
When I sit down to read Diana Butler Bass’s Substack writing
I enter the light and the light enters me.
I’m so thoroughly at home in myself then and so comforted by the Spirit. The Comforter.
I trust her and her take. She’s the disciple who ministers to me.
Open and learning, in dialogue
with other Spiritual thinkers and writers, a doctor of Christian history.
She says we need to write the history of Jesus in our lives so that it becomes the full story written by all who know him. That the disciples who seem so famous to us now, did not see themselves as famous but just as ordinary people seeking light, the meaning of the world, the word.
She tells us Early churches were like fan clubs, dinner clubs organized around their enthusiasm for Jesus and his teaching and work. Fans learning together minus dogma, homey gatherings.
Comforter. Light.
Jesus and Diana Butler Bass.
Yes, and then my local comforters and lights.
My closest loved ones part of my daily life.
Then artists like the Paul Winter Consort filling me
going through me like a Wind!!
Hearing the songs from Solstice Gems. Nature Divinity intertwined inseparable.
Beauty.
Cohering me to all life and forms and elements.
So I no longer tremble in my perceived separateness, with apprehensions of my utter vulnerability to almost anything.
The Fulfillment of longing and desire.
All peoples All creatures All cosmos
All my home.
Homey
Sweet
And Homey.
The Divine as my homey.
Such Comfort
Such Light. What a friend we have.
What friends we have.
See how they enlarge us, how big
and capable we are,
what we are able to bear with such strength and power.
Wonderful
Counselor
Comforter
Light
Friend
Comforter
Light
The “Word” as naming -
Meaning itself.
Each name grows us -
-grows our love.
Here am I Loving that love
that holds all the cosmos, its names and claims.
You and I are the pudding and the proof of this
storied, storied, storied
Storied Love.
(From Paul Winter Consort SOLSTICE GEMS)
youtube Duet for the Longest Night Solstice Gems - Google Search
youtube Wolf Eyes Solstice Gems - Google Search
Wonderful "poem".
I absolutely love the Paul Winter Consort-but have not heard these pieces because I was into their playing in the Taj Mahal, etc. long time ago---will check out the ones you mention, but in the meanwhile, I would like to like to tell you about a recent musical discovery I made on YouTube which is Kiya Tabassian and the group ensemble, Constantinople, out of Montreal. They are the musical equivalent of what people like Diana and Martin Shaw are doing on the spiritual level, healing the planet and ridding one of separatist thinking. The most profound piece is Metamorfosi but there are dozens of pieces/music to pull from and listen to.
I will check into that. Sounds like sound healing.
Dr. Bass,
In your book, Christianity for the Rest of Us, you listed ten practices of vital congregations uncovered by your research. The #1 most common practice was the practice of hospitality, which you wrote you found in almost every congregation alive with the Spirit of the risen Jesus. I think you wrote something to effect of: hospitality is first and there is no second.
I do have a vague memory though of an interview you did where you were asked what was the second most important practice for growing congregations? Your answer (in my memory) was the practice of discernment. I loved your answer so much that discernment became a cornerstone in my ministry for years. (I retired this summer).
Please consider writing more about the practice of communal discernment in 2024. Congregations are not well versed, nor do they want to be, on “waiting” for God, as discernment takes too long and often does not maximize, optimize or worship efficiency and spiritual production. My sense that discernment’s importance is increasing in Charles Taylor’s “secular age,” with God’s voice muted by the speed of change, our hyper-individualism, our fast pace of life, our need to control and our fear of what is uncontrollable (which is so often the context of divine encounter).
A couple of questions or writing prompts:
• In a culture that moves too fast, carries too much stuff, and that fears to readily, how does any person or congregation live joyfully and purposefully?
• How do we teach people to parse it out, our energy, our devotion, our powers of concentration? How do we teach people how to deploy their awareness? To discern together in a hyper individualistic age?
Thank you for seeing with historical eyes the grand movements of God in the American faith life.
Warmly,
Mike Woods
Mr. Woods,
You write much for all of us to think (discern) about in your posting.
A question: How, in this age of TOO MUCH can we have/make/get time for discernment.
Easy enough to do in an agricultural/pastoral/long-ago-and-far-away time and in a (village/tribal) community of "knowns." However, this globalized, economically divided, technologically connected (connected?) and more-more-more driven (I choose driven thoughtfully) NOW is not that time or place.
Great question! (How to get time?)
To find a real antidote to acceleration we’ll need a very different form of action, a different way of relating to the world. We’ll need a form of action that is not tied to the systems of acceleration. The richness of time is not found in maximizing or optimizing it. Time resonates with us when it is bound in events of encounter, in actions of address, in ways of being heard, seen, and felt.
To live in time differently/deeper we can:
1. Practice Sabbath - a rhythm of rest and action. Every soul needs some space for solitude and silence.
2. Teach people to pray together. Prayer as an opening of our attention, a deploying our awareness with intention on the world around us, looking for what God is already doing.
3. Be dis-satisfied with the status quo. Try to remember the last time you were positively touched by something. What made this moment special? Was it something that you expected to happen? Was it something you were in control of? Probably not. We are most happy when we respond to the world in an open manner, without feeling the need to control it entirely. A good life requires something in between controllability and uncontrollability, that is, a resonance with time. Something akin to the poet’s question: “Did you set a straw parallel to the river, and let the flow carry you downstream?” (Jean Lohmann, Questions Before Dark)
4. Finally belong to a community that sees God in you and practices a resonance with time.
What a wonderful and empowering reply/response to my very real question.
MUCH thanks for taking the TIME to thoughfully and informatively respond....and I sooooooo hope that dozens of people read your posting, too!
Thank you! Looking forward to more poems, insights, conversations with you this new year!
Looking forward to this new year with you and all you share with us.
Diana, I am so very grateful for you-your words, your explanations, your inspirations and all the things that keeps me looking forward with hope. May 2024 be filled with blessings for you.
Thank you as well for such wonderful writing but also, the music, the poetry, the photos, always included which makes your blog so lovely. Having discovered substacks in 2023, I have learned so m much in the last 10 months. Have been wanting to know, Diana, if you are familiar with the House of Beasts & Vines, a blog posted by a Dr. Martin Shaw who founded the dept of mytho-poetics at Stanford Uni., but now back in England, writing books (18) and still teaching. I always say he reminds me of a JRR Tolkien, Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung as he covers all those ideas. Phenomenal website; comes out every Sunday morning; so with you, him and Wendy Macs drawing class? This has made Sundays rather special w/o even attending a service; kind of glorious and I call it the church of rewilding, cause it's doing my own thing--freedom...
Inspiring, thank you 🙏 I particularly appreciate the poem.
"Behold, I make all things new" every day.