Staying In Tune

I want to a concert last night, billed as Shawn Colvin (most familiarly of the hit "Sunny Came Home"). She came out for the first few pieces, which were really great...and then started talking about how she was nostalgic for the days when she played with Mary Chapin Carpenter, and all of a sudden Chapin was on stage with her! They finished the set together, alternating back-ups and solos and each playing a few signature pieces.

The concert was great, and I was especially taken with the way the energy changed when Mary Chapin Carpenter came on. Of course partly that's because she's a big star, and people were really excited, and surprised, to see her.

But partly it was because all of a sudden a solo act became a duo, and frequently a duet. The prep times were longer--both women spent a fair amount of time getting their guitars in tune, and joking about how long it took them--and sometimes they had to remind each other of the lyrics. So it one way, it could seem that the solo act was more polished, more together. I was so struck, though, by the special experience of seeing two musicians perform together, and especially two musicians who had known and played with each other for so many years. They had great stories to tell of acts in Colorado and Paris and everywhere in between, and they listened for each other's note and knew just when to come in.

It made me think about the people we go through life with: partners, friends, members of our congregations, family, colleagues. And the special joy of experiencing a whole lifetime of work and play with someone, the way that makes the time we spend tuning worth it.

It was a really neat evening. And it prompts me to say thank you to the people in my life who have been singing with me for a while.

Why I'll Wear a Hoodie

Like many faith communities, the Washington Ethical Society is inviting folks to wear a hoodie this Sunday to our regular 11am service. I've been following other communities making this call on Facebook, and have seen people having some of the same wonderings I had when I first thought about a show of solidarity like this. I thought I'd share my thinking a bit here.

When I first saw news anchors and public figures and little kids showing up in hoodies, I worried that we were reducing a human being--Trayvon Martin--to his article of clothing. And frankly, I thought that I, as a white woman, might look a little silly in a hoodie, as though I were pretending that I knew just what it might be like to be a young black man in America, when obviously I don't have a clue.

Then I saw the clip from Geraldo Rivera. Suddenly I got it. The hoodie wasn't about Trayvon's death so much as about the idea that America's young men of color were supposed to dress a certain way for fear of intimidating white folks. That if they didn't dress that way, then they were partially to blame for violence perpetrated against them. Just the way women are to blame for rape if their skirts are too short.

On Sunday morning, we'll talk about why we're wearing hoodies to our children, who join us for the first part of the service--and of course because some of the children are very young, we'll be cautious about our words. But in some ways, what I'll say to them feels as important as the more adult conversation we'll have later. That we're wearing hoodies because we believe that everyone deserves to be safe and protected, no matter the color of their skin and no matter what clothes they are wearing.

That's why I'll wear a hoodie on Sunday morning. I hope you join me.

For the Beauty of the Messed-Up Earth

I was talking with someone about our early spring the other day and she used a phrase that hit me squarely between the eyes: essentially, that she was really enjoying the flowers and beautiful weather in the few moments when she could let go of her fear for the planet and anxiety about the climate crisis.

That's me, too. I am torn, daily, between celebrating the beauty around me and lamenting the reason we have it in mid-March. And this seems, to me, to be part of a larger tension that we hold in our lives, the tension between enjoying the bounty we have and remaining aware of the problems in the world. As a parent, I am so happy to have relatively healthy children, and to have the resources to be able to provide all they need and more. But how do I reconcile that true feeling of joy with the knowledge that so many children don't have all they need? Does it make the joy less real? What responsibility does it mean I hold?

I'm thinking about a platform address on this topic in early May. What do you all think? Is this something you struggle with, too?

Religion: Combine at Your Own Risk (and Reward)

Like many folks, my imagination has been captured by the story of the woman who was denied communion at her mother's funeral, reportedly because she is a lesbian. Now there's a new twist to the story, saying that she is also a Buddhist--or at any rate that she is interested in Buddhist philosophy and practice--and that her religious leaning may also be a reason she was denied communion.

I actually don't much care why she was denied communion; every pastoral bone in my body says that a funeral is not the place for a theological conversation and is the place to offer grace and love as freely as humanly possible. I'm not Catholic, though, and I do understand that different traditions carry different rules about communion.

What I'm really interested in, though, is the conversation that emerges from this new piece of information, the idea that this woman is a Buddhist-Catholic or a Catholic-Buddhist or just someone who resonates with both traditions. There's enough for a whole platform address in there, but I'm curious about how and when religious traditions have encouraged syncretism (the blending of different beliefs) as well as how and when they draw a line. And how about us individually? In the multi-religious marketplace are we free to combine at will? Must we do within a community in order to do so responsibly? What are the risks, and the rewards, of finding our own religious paths?

Beauty Around Every Median Strip

This has been the week, in Washington, DC, when springs has popped into bloom.

Now, there may be an important conversation about why this is happening the first week of March, and what this says about the state of the planet--actually, I think there's definitely an important conversation about that. But flowers are flowers, and this week I have just been enjoying them.

And they are everywhere! Trees budding--red buds, early cherries, especially the magnificent magnolias--and every kind of bulb pushing up from the ground. I'm enjoying them in people's yards, including my own, grateful for the way we adorn our houses so that they bring us and others joy.

This morning I was grateful for them in the median strip on Georgia Avenue, too. The strip was just packed with daffodils, the very light yellow ones that seem almost white. Sometime, someone planted those bulbs. And I am strangely warmed by the fact that someone in the road maintenance world knew that seeing beautiful flowers--or the red buds planted along the middle of 16th Street--or the azaleas planted in other parts of the city--that seeing beauty in the middle of asphalt would make people happy. Would make me happy.

Thank you. It's so nice to know there's beauty everywhere.