Practicing Deep Community, Deep Hope, Deep Belief

On April 16, 2023 I had the honor of sharing my reflections with my church community. Below is a slightly extended and updated version of what I shared. Even with the small additions and updates, there is still so much more to say.

from the left a hand holds a lit match next to a short lit canlde in a flower-shaped candle holder. The background is all black.

Second Sunday of Easter, Sunday of Divine Mercy

Acts 2:42-47; 1 Peter 1:3-9; John 20: 19-31

Good morning. It is so good to be with you all today. What a week it’s been. I have talked to many people who feel heart-broken, despondent, angry, frustrated, helpless, hopeless. Perhaps you are feeling these, too. We bring this collective pain, as well as our individual struggles, into this second Sunday of Easter. Today’s readings show us practices of deep community, invite us to root in deep hope, and encourage us to practice deep belief in the Christ of transformation, the Christ that has been with us for all time and was embodied for us through Jesus’ resurrection.

In our first reading we hear how the community of disciples shared all things in common and allocated resources according to need. In the second reading from the first letter of Peter and the gospel reading from John, we are invited into hope, into the practice of believing. To be sure, believing and expanding our hope are practices. If you are like Thomas, if you are like me, hope and trust in renewal and resurrection fluctuate and waver, particularly in times like these, when there is so much to grieve.

If you ever struggle to believe in what you cannot see, I offer a simple, but not always easy invitation: broaden your perspective. Orient yourself in another direction. Practice patience. We only need look to our yards and gardens to see that Life is stronger than death. Resurrection is the way of Creation. This isn’t to say we should ignore the pain and harm in the world, but rather to remember that it is only a part of the picture. Then we can seek the places where in the midst of it all, people are taking steps toward care, healing, and restoration. Ask yourself the question: What do I want to see? And then keep your eyes open for it.

I want to see a world of vibrant community in which meeting needs is prioritized over unfettered accumulation. I could easily look around and not see this. AND there are places where people are operating differently from the dominant cultural norms.

Here at St. William we are strengthening our interconnected community through small groups and community retreats. When members of the community express a need, others step up, offering resources in ways that support individual and collective well-being within and beyond our church community. When our LGBTQ+ siblings are hurting, when our Black and Brown siblings are hurting, when our immigrant and refugee siblings are hurting, our leadership makes public statements affirming that they, you, we all are worthy of care; individual community members write letters, rally in Frankfort, collect resources, and otherwise tend to needs. When members of the St. William community saw that free trade did not mean fair trade, Just Creations was born, now 33 years ago. These are just a few of our works of community. These are acts of seeing the Risen Christ and recognizing that we play a role in its joyful fruition. This is believing in the value of salvific acts, even when we’re not sure of outcomes.

What is the world you want to see? I want to see a world in which all people feel safe enough and supported enough that they don’t turn to guns to protect, defend, or avenge. I want to see a world in which violence is not seen as a viable and desirable strategy to meet needs. We are 106 days into 2023 and in the United States there have been at least 161 mass shootings, in which at least 4 people were injured or killed with a gun. I suspect that since the 146th such shooting happened Monday at Old National Bank in downtown Louisville, many of us have been feeling the impact of this ongoing violence particularly strongly. Last night at Chickasaw Park, Louisville experienced another mass shooting- 2 dead, 4 injured- the 158th in the country, the second in a week for our city. This was one of 7 mass shootings that happened on April 15th in the United States, the largest being in the small town of Dadesville, AL, where 4 people were killed and 20 injured at a Sweet 16 party. These are only the mass shootings, not even counting the other injuries and deaths from gun violence.

I do not put my faith in guns or violence. Guns are not part of the story of the Risen Christ. I do not put my faith solely in gun legislation. Stricter gun laws are a stopgap, but they’re only one step toward creating greater collective safety. I put my faith in the multi-faceted and creative expression of people power.

Two and a half weeks ago, I was one of a few hundred people from around Louisville who participated in an anti-violence summit with the guiding question, “What if Louisville were the safest city in the world?” I believe in the people who were in that room- the violence interrupters, the mental health professionals, the restorative justice and conflict resolution teachers and practitioners, the elders who have shown us the efficacy of nonviolence.

I have seen the power of nonviolence on the streets of Louisville, at Standing Rock, in Palestine, in Colombia, in Guatemala, and other places in the world. Erica Chenoweth’s extensive and ongoing research on nonviolent and violent movements gives any doubters evidence to show that nonviolent social movements for change are twice as effective as violent movements and all such movements that have involved just 3.5% of the population have succeeded. 3.5% Echoing the second reading, there is cause for rejoicing here.

The world I wish to see is one in which we are so bound to one another that we don’t need laws to restrict guns because no one has used them to hurt others. I dream of a world in which we don’t have prisons or police forces because we choose other ways of addressing and repairing harm. Beyond St. William we also have models of these, places where small pockets of people are practicing care-filled community.* We can see them. When we struggle to see and believe, may we turn toward one another and lean into the love-filled creative potential of Christ in our midst.   

We shall be known by the company we keep
by the ones who circle round to tend these fires
We shall be known by the ones who sow and reap
the seeds of change alive from deep within the earth

It is time now
It is time now that we thrive
It is time we lead ourselves into the well
It is time now, and what a time to be alive
In this great turning we shall learn to lead in love
In this great turning we shall learn to lead in love

(Listen here to “We Shall Be Known,” by MaMuse, performed by thrive East Bay Choir)

*In future writing I will name some of the places and people that help me hold onto hope.

Naming and Releasing Shame

Dear friends,

In the second edition of Cards for Remembering, one of the new cards reads, "I practice naming and releasing shame." Despite having created it, it's not a card I enjoy encountering. Most often, I take some deep breaths, preparing myself for the work ahead. 

During my 50 days of birthday celebration, a friend used Cards for Remembering to do a reading for me: 

I treat my fear, anger, anxiety, and overwhelm with care and I ask for help when I struggle to do it myself. 

I accept the messy, beautiful flow of LIFE. 

I practice naming and releasing shame. 

To share it with me, she made a photo puzzle at a nearby Walgreens. I picked up the reading/puzzle just after a really difficult meeting that left me feeling demoralized and, quite frankly, ashamed. I was fighting tears when I walked into Walgreens.

To receive these cards in this way brought on a slew of emotions. I was grateful for the unique presentation of the reading- my predicament definitely felt puzzling! I felt self-conscious because these cards touched on exactly what I was experiencing and I wasn't too keen on others seeing those difficult emotions and knowing their source. I was relieved for the validation of my experience.   

Shame is a sneaky bugger, often masquerading as or hiding behind other emotions. Shame may forcefully or subtly appear in messages of "how dare you," "should," "have to," "supposed to," "shouldn't," "can't." We might respond to shame with avoidance, denial, or projection in order to shield ourselves from the pain of shame. 

What would our world look like if we grew our capacity to name and release shame?

I was recently at a presentation in which Hannah Drake, author/activist/co-founder of the (Un)Known Project, was talking about the importance of uncovering and grappling with our history, in this case, personal and collective ties to slavery. She said something that wasn't new, but still really struck a chord: "Shame doesn't set us free. The truth sets us free."

Knowing or discovering certain truths (whether personal or collective) may elicit shame. If we don't allow the shame to the surface, it festers within us and will likely either come out in unexpected and damaging ways or erode us from the inside out, also causing harm. 

Unfortunately, shame (and its close counterpart blame) is baked into the dominant cultural framework. It's hard to get away from the finger-wagging judgments. We may even hold a belief that shaming someone (including ourselves) can bring change. We sometimes confuse shaming with holding someone accountability. They're not the same.

Naming and releasing shame is a counter-cultural and liberatory act. It's also uncomfortable, sometimes reeeeeeeeeeeally uncomfortable. But no one ever said growth and healing were comfortable.

A persistent self-judgment I have worked with over many years relates to my ability to create and maintain order. To the best of my knowledge, no one has rejected me because my desk, my office, my house are messy and sometimes dirty. Even so, while I work in the realms of emotional messes and creative messes and feel (mostly) comfortable sharing those spaces with others, I am not keen on allowing people to see my physical messes. The cultural assumptions and judgments about people who can't or don't maintain orderly spaces don't help. In this, I've been working to release the shame and practice self-compassion. 

I know I'm making progress because recently I shared the following on Facebook: 

Dear Louisville friends- you may or may not know that, while I am skilled in many ways, creating & maintaining physical order & cleanliness isn’t my great strength. When life is full and/or when I’m stressed, I have even less capacity for it.

My hope was to have my house & yard cleared & cleaned out by my birthday. Life has been so full that that won’t happen and I’m ok with that.

However, I do want to do this work & am wondering who I know who LOVES to organize & clean (and/or work in the yard) & who has capacity & willingness to share 1-2 hours with me in March or April & can do so with the awareness that getting into my physical mess with someone else feels scarier to me than some circumstances in which I am in actual physical danger.

I am putting the request on FB because the work is big &, I believe, easiest when shared. Also I know y’all love me and that’ll be true whether I can keep my house & yard clean or not.

Respond if sharing time in this way would bring you joy- and LMK if there are particular cleaning/organizing tasks you especially love.

People I know well and some I've never met in person responded both with messages of solidarity ("I have the same struggle") and offers to help me. The outpouring of love was beautiful. Though I've barely started the actual cleaning and organizing work, I feel confident I now have the support I'll need to do it. That wouldn't have happened if I hadn't taken the risk of naming my messy truth. 

I realize that there are truths much more painful and riskier to name than the one above. So again I ask: 

What would our world look like if we grew our capacity to name and release shame?

Can we practice doing so more in our relationships of trust and care?

Can we step into courage to do so in more public ways and also honor those who speak difficult truths? 

What do you think?

I'd love to know.  

~~~

It is thanks to Compassionate Communication, that I am able to name my difficult truths without collapsing into puddles of shame. This is why I love sharing it. Starting tomorrow, March 9, my 4-week online Compassionate Communication class, Meeting in the Field of Connection, begins. There are still spots open. Come join us!


Also my two birthday offers are happening through this Saturday, March 11:
Offer 1: Buy two 2nd edition Cards for Remembering Decks, get a third for 50% off- that's $24 in savings! Go here and use the coupon code BIRTHDAY when you check out. Or come see me at Saturdays with Spirit this Saturday!

Offer 2: OR when you spend $40 or more on decks, prints, and/or original art, use the code BDAYFREESHIP to get, you guessed it, free delivery or shipping. All of my available art isn't up on the page; you can also see some of it on Instagram or Facebook. 

I also have this request: If you have taken a workshop or class that has been valuable to you, if you have a Cards for Remembering deck that gives you just the messages you need, if you have a Heart Portrait or Heart Sketch that you love and that loves you, if my writing speaks to you, please tell someone(s) about my work- forward this email, share my Facebook or Instagram pages, or tell them in a good ol' regular conversation. Thank you so much for considering this request!  

In gratitude, 
Cory

Entering Mystery Through Imagination, Trinity Sunday Reflection

This morning, Trinity Sunday, I had the honor of sharing my reflections with my church community. It is ever humbling to have the task of offering my limited understanding. Still I offer what I can and hope that it will invite you into reflection, whether your understanding is similar or different from mine.

Hildegard' of Bingen’s Trinity: a blue masculinr figure in the center with gold and then yellow rings around him. The image is squared off and blue is in the space between the central circles and flowery border. Hildegard didn’t make it into the homily, so I offer this image.

Proverbs 8:22-31, Romans 5:1-5, John 16:12-15

I was walking with my neighbor a few days ago and she pointed out a slime mold. My neighbor is an environmental educator and I learn something new from her every time we walk together. On this particular walk she told me how slime molds are single-celled organisms, often too small for us to see, but when food is scarce, these little beings come together to find food to ensure their survival. Presumably the big blob we were looking at was one such coalition. I think I said something like “Community organizing, single-cell style.” And then I starting thinking about how slime molds might fit into a Trinity Sunday homily. I’ll come back to that in a bit.

Preparing for today I learned a few things about Trinity Sunday, like that in the 4th century, an Alexandrian priest named Arius started spreading the word that Christ was not fully divine. In order to counter what was called the Arian Heresy and reaffirm the trinitarian doctrine of God as three equal persons, and Christ as fully divine, the bishops created a mass dedicated to the trinitarian doctrine, though there wasn’t any set time in the liturgical calendar for the celebration. It was centuries later that Trinity Sunday was set permanently as the Sunday after Pentecost. Apparently, that Sunday was “vacant.” Because many ordinations happened on the Saturday after Pentecost, Church official decided to address the “vacancy” during such an important time by setting this Sunday as Trinity Sunday.

Trinity: the mystery of the three persons/beings/elements of the divine that are at once distinct and all one. I will never fully understand the Trinity, I’m certainly not going to try to explain it today. Instead, I invite us to open our imagination to new ways of understanding our Triune God and consider how this belief might inform our human actions.  

In our first reading from Proverbs, Wisdom Sophia speaks of her relationship with God Creator, Mother who gave birth to her. We see the interrelation between two persons of the Trinity. Wisdom claims her place as the first child of a birthing Mother God, before Creation took physical form. Wisdom, Sophia, Spirit played like a child, was Mother God’s delight and she delighted in humankind. I think she still does. My heart swells with gratitude when I remember three years ago when Wisdom responded to St. William’s communal invitation to play by delighting us with the miracle on 13th Street, relieving us of the burden of a priest and deacon who would not have honored the charism of our community.

In the second reading and the gospel we see the play between the three persons, unitive, working through, with, and in one another, but let’s take a little time with the one most often called the Son. Through Jesus, we experience the divine incarnate, but this second person of the Trinity does not begin and end with Jesus. Richard Rohr writes “The first and cosmic incarnation of the Eternal Christ, the perfect co-inherence of matter and Spirit (Ephesians 1:3-11), happened at the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago. Christians believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the human incarnation of that same Mystery a mere 2,000 years ago, when we were perhaps ready for this revelation.” He goes on to say, “This Christ is much bigger and older than either Jesus of Nazareth or the Christian religion, because the Christ is whenever the material and the divine co-exist—which is always and everywhere.” Christ is more than Jesus of Nazareth. Our Trinitarian God exists always and everywhere.   

Fundamentally, the Trinity offers us a model of interrelationship, interbeing, community, three as one, a model of stability. The names of the persons often describe both the relationship of one member to another as well as God’s relationship to us. In many Catholic churches the identities of the three persons of the Trinity are only ever referred to as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. While labels can help us understand, they also limit understanding. When we’re talking about mystery, why limit ourselves? As we make the sign of the cross at St. William in silence, we allow ourselves to name the Trinity in the way that best reflects our current understanding. Perhaps many of us think the words “Creator, Redeemer, Spirit Sanctifier” as we sign. Let me offer a few other names that might expand our imagination, too.

I wonder if we might use Paul’s words of perseverance, character, and hope as a way of understanding our triune God. I have a ring on my finger with three words: strength, courage, wisdom. Might these words help us understand the three aspects of the Trinity?

Doctor of the church St. Catherine of Siena experimented with many different names for the Trinitarian persons. According to Mary George-Whittle, some of Catherine’s descriptions include “remembering, understanding and desiring; power, wisdom and tender clemency [mercy]; O eternal Truth, O eternal Fire, O Eternal Wisdom.” We might also look to Julian of Norwich who named the Trinity in multiple ways, one being “God the Father, Jesus our Mother, and our good Lord the Holy Spirit.” Or what if we used these words: Creator, Liberator, Advocate or Source, Being, and Return to Being.

How might we understand our relational God if we choose no words, but instead simply allow images? Or textures? Or smells? Imagining into the mystery of the Trinity helps us to stay in creative relationship with the divine. As God is relationship, so God calls us to be in relationship, creating, loving, and delighting through and with one another.

And this brings me back to the slime molds. Like those single-celled slime molds, we often act as individuals, trying to survive on our own. We live in times of disconnection, sharp judgment, solid barriers between people or groups of people. Even though our God offers a model of intimate connection, shared empowerment, and permeable boundaries, we isolate, we compete, we cut ourselves off from one another and sometimes even from ourselves. Slime molds seemed to have learned a lesson from our God as coalition, God as community.

We humans sometimes get it right, too, when we come together on Sundays, when we serve our most vulnerable neighbors, when we stand up and speak out for justice, when we believe there is enough for all and act accordingly. Other times, when we most need each other, and I would argue that now is one of those times, we turn away from one another, believing the only way for our singular, or perhaps our particular group’s, survival is through competition, survival of the fittest, guarding what is “ours” rather than leaning into abundance, relationship, and cooperation.

Our God is ever-transforming through relationship. Slime molds, in their single-celled intelligence, seem to have gotten that message, too: “Hey, stick together. You need each other to live.” May we expansively, creatively, and delightedly do the same.