Lotus and Lily Field Notes

I have been getting all riled up the last week or so, thinking about the first anniversary of this blog, when in fact it’s been almost 13 months.  Innocuous beginnings captured here.  However, time being a construct within the context of relative reality, it’s still worth an about-this-blog muse.  There are a few things I’ve learned since I started, about blogging and about myself:

1. It’s fun!  There have been many times in the last year+ when it’s been just wonderful to sit down and confide in, share thoughts with, spin ideas to, and occasionally whine at this little box on my screen.
2. It is certainly hard to keep up, especially in a meaningful way, especially when the carefully nurtured balance of my multi-faceted life is challenged by one or another form of intensity.  Looking at that list of Blogisattva award candidates (and other excellent blogs I read, including those on this blog’s list of links) I’m struck by how many are authored by academics or students or others who have full-time religion-spirituality oriented gigs.  Don’t get me wrong, I am generally very happy not to be embroiled in “the life,” as we might as well call it.  But one of the consequences of being a tiller-of-the-soil as well as a spouter-off-about-the-inner-life is that there is often just less in the well at the end of the day than I’d like there to be.
3. I thought this medium was somehow going to start providing seeds for lengthier and more thoughtful pieces of writing (you know, articles, books, encyclopedias…).   In part because of #2 above, in part because of the way I’m blogging, and in part because of the nature of the medium, this has proven less true than I’d hoped.  I am a little frustrated about this, a little resigned, but fortunately still curious and open to whatever possibilities might yet unfold.  The plain truth, so far, is that thoughtful sustained writing takes even more time than I have to devote to the fragmentary sketches I post here.
4. I am also puzzled by the question of audience and readership.  For a long time I paid absolutely no attention to who and how many my readers are; a few months ago I took the plunge and enabled Google Analytics.  That gave me some information that I have acted on to some extent, and ignored to some extent.  I can’t say thinking about this doesn’t make a difference, but as yet I don’t believe it’s pushed me in any particular direction.  Nor has my resolution to “blog better.”  This has, like most resolutions, built up a certain back pressure of expectation without any particular tangible results.

The upshot is that I am very much still finding my way, hoping to find a useful music here, but meanwhile just continuing to bang away on randomly chosen pots and pans, hating the cacophony much of the time, thinking sometimes that maybe it sounds a bit like music, and hoping that at least those who stumble across this venue will at least think I’m attempting to cook up something worth eating.

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I just stumbled across the candidates for the Blogisattva Awards (maybe not the most felicitous name)–a good list of Buddhist blogs, only some of which I have seen before.  Good stuff.

In particular this interview with Jeff Wilson of the Unitarian Universalist Buddhist Fellowship was a nice discovery.  Kinda-sorta Buddhist-Christian, but not really.  It sounds like a really good group, but…maybe just a hair too post-Christian to scratch my own itch.

Anyway, it’s great to see the blogosphere, Buddhist-style, is really heating up.  Critical mass in these matters can make a huge difference, and it looks like the community is starting to get there.

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Last night I saw the outstanding film about Leonard Cohen, I’m Your Man.  In addition to many other delights in this combination documentary/tribute concert (the inimitable Antony Hegarty’s version of “If It Be Your Will” for one, and the incredible Rufus Wainwright and his equally incredible sister Martha on several numbers, including the almost-but-not-quite overdone “Hallelujah”), there was a beautiful excursion into Buddhist territory, with Cohen saying of his zen roshi (I’m paraphrasing), “He cares for me.  No, that’s not it: he *doesn’t* care for me.”  A brilliant description of what the teacher is for: not to take care of our limited conception of ourself, but to help us see beyond it.

I have never had much of a handle on Leonard Cohen or his music or his poetry; after watching this film I am dazzled by the grace and wit and clarity he projects in his work and his person.  Very, very pleasing stuff.  Sometimes you witness a genius at work and you just want to give up; Cohen seems to inspire the opposite feeling: I really can write, I really can find a way to express the churning yearning–even in pop songs, if it comes to that.  Thank you Leonard!  And thank you Lian Lunson for making this gorgeous and inspiring film!

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A couple of weeks ago, I almost acquired a Blackberry.  My jet-setting library world colleagues (believe me, before I had this job I had no idea library-world jet-setters exist.  They do.) all carry them, and they are all plugged in all the time.  I was able to overcome the temptation this time around, and just a few days ago I was reminded why I am glad I made that choice.

Stuck in O’Hare airport with one of the afore-mentioned jet-setters, I watched her tap away on her Blackberry to fill in the spare moments of our conversation.   She’s a smart person, a good person, someone I really respect.  But as she jokingly said at one point “more communication is better communication!”

I’ve been thinking about that comment, and about Blackberries.  Sitting in meditation a day or so later, this thought popped into my head: “Is what I am doing communication?  Or something different?”  In one sense, meditation is a vertical communication, or maybe a communion.  On another level it is a communication with the self.  But it is also something different, something outside the domain of communication (language, concepts, intention, ego).  Something wholly other than communication, wholly other than information.  To my day-job, web-enabled, information-professional self, that’s just utterly shocking!
A few years ago I heard a prediction: “Someday there will only be two kinds of businesses: web businesses and anti-web businesses”–meaning, I think, businesses that make money off of what people do when they’re not online.  While there may not be much money in it–at least for me–maybe meditation is the anti-Blackberry.

And maybe that’s why I’m glad I don’t carry one of those seductive little fruits.  At least not yet…

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Here are my wife Victoria’s notes on the first of a series of Lotus & Lily meetings on how we organize ourselves for the future.  Politics *is* spirituality, and the organizational aspects of religious life are fascinating and revealing: the perfect dance of incarnation as finite human beings attempt to embody their visions in the context of social interaction and group dynamics.

There are lots of interesting nuggets in the following; I present it here for whatever spiritual merit it might offer, but also to provide an insight into the ways one group is exploring what it means to be together.  Pretty wonderful, actually.

(Parenthetically, I am just back from a good week working in Ohio.  It was very, VERY COLD (-1) and snowy; I am deeply grateful for 45 and rainy in Seattle.  It feels just like Hawaii.  But my workgroup feels more and more like a sangha–precious precious to see new people joining us and to feel the energy start to coalesce.  Not clear how stable it will be, but I welcome the pleasant sensation of growth and health there as well.  Is it something in the stars?)

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Yesterday marked the beginning of our self-examination and rethinking of Lotus and Lily as a group.  This discussion is happening through a series of Lotus and Lily Steering Council meetings scheduled for Spring 2007.  We started the series by dedicating this first session to looking at the big picture–the purpose and vision of Lotus and Lily.

I volunteered to take notes on the conversation, which you’ll  find below

May the compassionate beings of Buddhism and Christianity smile upon and bless our efforts,
Victoria

We started promptly at 6pm and by staying on schedule we had enough time for all our regular activities, besides a planning meeting from 7:15-8pm.

We started the discussion by reviewing the written statement that appears on the opening page of the Lotus and Lily Yahoo Group website.  Then we each took turns commenting on the statement and describing our hoped for vision of Lotus and Lily.

The idea of Lotus and Lily being a group that equally embraces Buddhism and Christianity was affirmed.  A number of people—but not everyone–even went further and said that they would like to have a greater integration of Christian and Buddhist practices, rather than keeping them equal but separate. 

There were calls for us to use time at our gatherings more efficiently, energetically, and creatively.  If we’re not always having Steering Council meetings at future gatherings, then there could be some time available for additional activities.

Clearly, members want Lotus and Lily to be a place for their own Buddhist-Christian spiritual practice, and for support of that within a group setting.  But mention was also made of several ways in which the group can be a resource and offer service to the larger community.  We can contribute to peacemaking and societal healing by simply letting the larger community know of our existence.   With so much of the contemporary world being affected by inter-religious polarization and conflict, we can raise society’s consciousness about greater possibilities for interfaith harmony.  By offering a welcoming and open environment we can help make Buddhist practices (especially meditation) more accessible to the Christian community.  Also, we can contribute to the healing of American ex-Christians who have become Buddhists.

Several people said they’d like to see the group’s prayer practice become more intentional and focused in terms of growing the varieties of prayer practices, and clearly invoking sacred Christian and Buddhist presences during the course of prayer.

Three areas of general agreement clearly emerged from the discussion:

1)      We’d like our mission statement to more clearly state that people can elect to be members of Lotus and Lily and still maintain membership(s) in other churches and places of worship.  We invite people to creatively explore how to fit Lotus and Lily into their lives.  Participation in Lotus and Lily is not necessarily to the exclusion of other religious/spiritual affiliations.  It’s up to the individual.

2)      We’d like to grow the group and to have more members.  This would bring more energy to the group, allow the work of running it to be more fairly distributed, and to keep it afloat when some members are sick, traveling, or are otherwise unable to attend or participate.

3)      The group does not currently miss or feel the need for a spiritual teacher or leader.  We are happy to define Lotus and Lily on our own terms, rather than having the shape of the group be defined by, and be a function of, the character of a specific teacher.

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Here is a more pleasing representation of the new Peregrine CD. Right now it’s available from the Center for Sacred Art; tomorrow it will be at the St. Mark’s Cathedral bookshop in Seattle, soon thereafter at St. James Cathedral and eventually on Amazon. Who knows where else? Making a CD is a lot of work, and just when you get it done there’s all this distribution stuff. Well, we will do what we can.

I’m really very pleased by all the good chant work going on these days, with more good stuff coming up. We just scheduled today another beginning workshop on September 8, and much more good stuff between now and then. The CSA website has just been updated with the details.

There is absolutely ex-PLODE-ing energy coming from my workplace, rich with opportunity and plenty of chance also to look for spaces to take deep breaths! That’s a good thing! Among the many consequences of this is a trip to Ohio for me all next week, with likely little blogging going on.

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Over on the Christian-Buddhist Yahoo group there’s a nice little conversation going on between a couple of grad students discussing their study plans.  Nice to hear that the Catholic University of America has a Comparative Theology degree; though this stuff is a bit dense for me (or maybe I’m a bit dense for it) to me it’s a good sign that it’s happening.  Encouraging.

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Over the past four years or so I have periodically investigated the relationship between Gregorian chant and a variety of “sound healing” activities, including these:

• Music for Healing and Transition (I attended a conference in 2002 at Seattle University)
• Chalice of Repose (several of my students are graduates; I led a workshop for alumni a year or so ago)
• International Sound Healing Conference (haven’t attended–does it count that I have been very tempted?)
• Sound Healers of Washington (there continue to be various personal and conceptual connections between what I do and this very active local Northwest group)

My efforts with chant in recent years have been focused on singing and teaching and exploring connections with religious tradition, spiritual practice in general and meditation in particular.  When I was invited to give a workshop at Bastyr University several months ago, in the back of my mind was the notion that doing a session at such a top-rank natural medicine facility would reconnect me with this thread.

It seems intuitively obvious that there is some sort of healing properties to Gregorian chant; however, with the very significant exception of the Chalice of Repose, which makes explicit use of chant in its training for harpists providing vigils for the dying, the evidence is very scanty and out-of-focus.  I don’t know how many times I’ve heard the story about Alfred Tomatis and the monks who fell ill when they stopped singing chant after Vatican II–then recovered when they began singing again.  It really is a great story–but why is it the *only* story?  And then there are statements like this one:

The Gregorian chant is not a measured music and does not have a regular pulsation but comes close to the rate of respiration. It contains the frequencies of the human voice, allows a quiet and pleasing breathing and is appeasing, with a state of serene vigilance.

That seems right to me, but as one who is intimately familiar with the diverse moods and forms and possibilities of chant–I know there is a deeper, more complete and more precise story than this.

My workshop at Bastyr was yesterday, and I was delighted to encounter a number of students who are indeed involved in healing work.  In conversation with one particularly articulate and passionate student, a nurse with deep ER experience, a little light bulb went on for me.  Until now I have felt that *I* was somehow responsible for connecting the dots between Gregorian chant and healing–and I have felt overwhelmed both by a lack of expertise and a lack of time to take on such a monumental task.  What clicked in for me, most obvious now but not before (though “aha” experiences are like that), was that I can keep right on with my work of being an advocate and resource regarding GC as a thing, and connect with others who understand the healing process, and work together with them (or, maybe more accurately, be available to them) to develop a deeper understanding of just how, and why, and *when* chant heals.
Sometimes letting go of ego fixations is a huge relief.  Consider me relieved.  And newly open to possibilities.
Singing together all day with this wonderful group of dedicated and focused students in the sublimely beautiful chapel at Bastyr, was a profound blessing.  All the more so as one more piece–the healing aspect–of my journey with chant received a bit more illumination.

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Another ferocious, exhilarating, consuming week of work, followed this evening by an extremely satisfying concert of chant by Peregrine at Bastyr University–over 200 people in attendance, which in my performance world is just *huge*.  We had a little reception afterwards, which had its own satisfying component of buzz and conviviality  Very pleasing all the way around.

I have had little opportunity to stretch the Buddhist side of my soul lately, apart from (mostly) daily meditation, but there is nevertheless a sense of wellness through this whole recent series of rather intense events.  I credit the dharma for much of this newfound and somewhat surprising sense of happiness-within-stress.  An unfamiliar combination, for which I am most grateful.

And deeply grateful for the profound beauty and mystery of Christian chant, which despite piles and piles of philosophical quibbles just beguiles the hell out of me, every time.

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