Long Live the Storytellers: A Reflection on Pete Seeger and Philip Seymour Hoffman

The passing of Pete Seeger and Philip Seymour Hoffman, both in the space of just a couple of weeks, really hit me hard. On the face of it they are two very different men, with very different biographies. But as I listened to some of their old interviews on NPR, my sense of what we have lost just felled me. At first I couldn't quite name it, but then the full weight of it emerged in one word--storytellers. These men not only told stories, they embodied story.

The interview with Pete Seeger was a kind of banjo workshop. With a group gathered outside, and the seagulls punctuating his pauses, he talked about picking. His tone was characteristically soothing and kind, with a lyrical lilt that made you feel like you were a child on the carpet at story time. He shared some of the techniques he discovered, all-the-while demurring. He said that his books made it seem like he was an expert, when really he just experimented and shared it because people had asked. As he demonstrated each technique he sang examples of the kinds of songs that paired well with each combination of notes and cords. With each song he told the story of its place in history, and the experiences of the people who lived it. By the end of the interview it felt as though everything in the world was going to be okay. Not because everything was okay, but because this gentle man had collected all of the threads of so many heartaches, struggles, injustices, and sorrows and weaved them into songs. His songs danced onto the strings of his banjo, leaped off of his strings, and took us up into the melody of hope. He didn't tell stories, he lived them, breathed them, wrestled with them, and transformed them. Through his art he invited us in, making banjo picking and activism seem one in the same, and like something any of us ordinary humans could do.

Philip Seymor Hoffman bore a more painful countenance. Written on the lines of his face, in the asymmetry of his self-effacing frown-smile, and in the half-forgotten shadow of his beard, were the stories of struggle. While we don't know what it is he struggled with, we do know that he brought every atom of that struggle to the stage. In each of the characters he played he looked physically transformed. Not just the way some actors put on a few pounds or dye their hair. Hoffman incarnated the characters, transfusing their stories with the emotional DNA of his own story. His scripts seemed to dissolve as every line, expression, gesture and word became bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. His storytelling pulled us out of our complacent, self-absorbed heads and commanded us to see and feel deeply into the soul of all kinds of people, even those whom we thought disgusted and repulsed us. He forced us to acknowledge that in the "other" we could actually find pieces of ourselves. He didn't just act the story, he put blood and sinew on the bones of the story. He made dry bones rise up and dance before our very eyes.

As we reflect on the passing of these two very different but equally astonishing men, I hope we will accept the invitation to read more; to listen to others more attentively; to take in the details of stories that seem totally unlike our own. I hope that we will take up the call to consider our history, rather than just googling things pertinent to us in the moment. May we truly appreciate the value of sitting on the shore, with seagulls cawing, picking a banjo--learning for the sake of learning. May we immerse ourselves in poetry and plays, symphonies and film, seeking to understand for the sake of learning empathy. These two men called us back to our humanity and invited us to live into it more fully. Long live the storytellers!

Remember (based on Matthew 2:13-23)
Amy Cox
December 29, 2013

Last Sunday we approached the manger through our children. In the innocence of youth, and the fabulous spontaneity and silliness that comes with it, we met the Holy family at the manger and basked in the warmth of divine starlight, serenaded by voices of hope.  We watched as they laid cloth in the manger, one by one, preparing a place for the Christ child. With each offering of cloth, they brought so much more than mere fabric. Layer by layer the manger was lined with the fabric of a new Divine reality: Christ, born to an unmarried peasant girl and her carpenter fiancé; Christ born in a feeding trough in a stable while ordinary people dined by candlelight in well-appointed rooms; Christ, the King of Kings, called upon by humble shepherds while the VIPs bowed before Herod; Christ, surrounded by an army of angels announcing God’s glory, while Herod’s armies announce darkness and destruction.  

Pageants and carols are powerful ways of remembering our traditions, our history, the great cloud of witnesses who have gone before us—all that is constant and beautiful about the story of God’s coming. We need to sit in awe of God’s mystery and beauty—to let it wash over us like a balm for our tired, busy, torn-in-too-many-directions selves. We need remember that we are part of a narrative of hope that is written on our hearts through the song and laughter of our faith community gathered. We need to kneel together by candlelight and remember that we are taken care of and surrounded by steadfast love and grace. When we pray, listen to scripture, sing, and share in the Holy meal, we remember not only who we are, but whose we are. We remember that we belong to a God who takes the risked disarming completely in order to reside among us and be here for us—a God who put his fate in the hands of Joseph, a simple man, who wasn’t a VIP in any way, but simply faithfully got up and went when and where the angel of the Lord commanded.  

Remembering is some of the most important work we do in a community of faith.  In today’s gospel, the story we are asked to remember is not an easy or comfortable one. Today we are asked to bear witness to a Holy family who have become refugees, fleeing from a cruel and violent King bent on the child’s destruction, and who will murder countless innocents to insure that he is eliminated. This kind of remembering unsettles us. It asks us to carry our hope into the painful territory of suffering, loss and evil. It asks us to journey where there is weeping, reminding us that “A sound was heard in Ramah, the sound of crying in bitter grief. Rachel was crying for her children. She refused to be comforted because they were dead.” On the face of it, this gospel reading is something we would frankly skip over, thank you very much. But, like Joseph, we are asked to remember—to get up and go, following Christ even into the treacherous places where lamentations become the fabric of God’s story.

It may seem easier to avoid lamentation and skip ahead to the joy. But as people of faith we can’t do that, because God does not do that to us. The journey of our refugee God calls us to remember the whole story. For that’s what makes it Holy—not that it’s clear, perfect, and easy. It is a Holy story because it is the whole story— the pain and the fear, the doubt and the weeping, the praying and the pleading, the mess and searching, are where God goes. God will not abandon us in our anxiety, loneliness, grief, fear, addiction, or our sorrow because God is at home right in the midst of where we are. Even as we struggle, weep, or cry out in anger, God never leaves our side. 

Throughout Advent, we have a special way of remembering the whole, Holy story of who God is. From Dec 17th to Dec 23rd the O Antiphons are sung at Vespers, which is evening prayer.  Each of the 7 antiphons contains a name for the messiah given by the prophet Isaiah. They are thought to have been composed in the seventh or eighth century when monks put together texts from the Old Testament, particularly from the prophet Isaiah, which looked forward to the coming of our salvation. Through powerful scriptural images, they point to the very character of God. They  became very popular in the Middle Ages when it became traditional to ring the great bells of the church each evening as they were being sung. They go like this:

"O Adonai and leader of Israel, you appeared to Moses in a burning bush and you gave him the Law on Sinai. O come and save us with your mighty power."

"O stock of Jesse, you stand as a signal for the nations; kings fall silent before you whom the peoples acclaim. O come to deliver us, and do not delay."

"O key of David and scepter of Israel, what you open no one else can close again; what you close no one can open. O come to lead the captive from prison; free those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death."

"O Rising Sun, you are the splendor of eternal light and the sun of justice. O come and enlighten those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death."

"O King whom all the people’s desire, you are the cornerstone which makes all one. O come and save man whom you made from clay."

"O Emmanuel, you are our king and judge, the One whom the peoples await and their Savior. O come and save us, Lord, our God."

The first letter of each of these antiphons in Latin, when read in reverse spell the acrostic "ero cras" which means "Tomorrow I will be there." These do not talk about a distant God, abstract and apart from His people. Rather they name a God whose very being is intricately interwoven with our being; a God who is as close as a burning bush and yet is the light of nations. As people of faith, we know that we have a God who is our advocate. We know that our God will follow us to the ends of the earth, into remote stables, into the treachery of war-torn streets, into the battles we fight in hospitals and the battles we fight in our own souls. We know how important it is to bring all of who we are and all of what we face before God, because God has already set up a tent there in the midst of it all. When we weep for those we have lost, God weeps. When we cry out in righteous anger at the broken systems that allow children to go hungry, God cries out. When we find ourselves homeless, God makes His home beside us. When we find ourselves broken and traumatized by war, God climbs into the trenches of isolation with us.

So as we move forward into the season of Christmas, which in liturgical time has only just begun, let us remember, as K. Mulhern notes, that “our God is not just one of divine transcendence, but a God who stands both outside and inside. A God who raises the dead, but not before he weeps at the graveside. A God who is the very divine gift of Living Water, and yet is desperately thirsty.” For when we remember the whole of our history and our lives before God, we encounter true holiness—not because God makes terrible things into good things, but because makes a home in the midst of us and won’t leave our side. So let us remember that even our laments are holy, because they speak of a God who disarmed himself to live among us. Who didn’t turn away from suffering, but entered into it on our behalf. Just as the children prepared the manger with swaths of cloth, let us take the fabric of Christ’s disarming love out into a broken and hurting world, embodying promise of the God who has always been with us, who is among us, and who will be there tomorrow. Amen.

Innocence, and Other Spells

Innocence can't be lost, it just has to be maintained. --Jewel

My daughter is headed to middle school in a week. In just days she'll move from the comfort of one classroom and one teacher into the sometimes mayhem of many classes. It's the stuff our anxiety dreams are made of: a mad rush to open a locker, knowing you're one minute away from the tardy bell and your class is on the other side of the school; the vast sea of tweens, all pushing past one another in the hallways, wrapped in a mix of smells that seems cauldron-concaucted--one greasy hair, one bottle of fruity hairspray, one stale gym sock, and two tubes of sparkly lip gloss. Can't you just see the wart-nosed witch clacking her eerily long fingernails together and laughing? "All together, here comes trouble. Watch my cauldron boil and bubble. Everything is different now. You're all mixed up, now go learn, POW!"

After the witch's big green spell-cloud clears, we're all left feeling a bit disoriented--kids and grown-ups alike. We Moms wake up in the middle of the night, heart pounding, convinced that our sweet, innocent baby is going to be swept up in the undertoe of this new environment and pounded by wave after wave of pressures. "They'll lose their innocence!" we worry. The truth is, they will be swept up and pounded by pressures from time to time. It's not easy being tween. They will hear and see things that aren't nice: nasty words, cruel bullying, occasionally exhasperated teachers, and those dreaded moments of being left out. It's enough to make a Mama's stomach hurt.

The great good news, though, is that awful cloud of anxiety, that hangs over our consciousness in times of big change, is not the last word. The witch's cauldron-vision seems so powerful because it's plays into our fears. But just because something feels powerful doesn't mean it's true. The truth is, while our kids may hear new words and see new hard things, they don't have to lose their innocence. Innocence has little to do with what happens to us, and almost everything to do with the lens through which we interpret what happens to us. True loss of innocence happens, not when someone calls us a mean name, but when we believe that name is who we are. True loss of innocence happens, not when we see someone get bullied, but when we witness it but do nothing about it. True loss of innocence happens, not when we're left out, but when we turn around and leave someone else out later on. 

In middle school, high school, or adulthood, maintaining innocence is the most  important work we can do. It's the work of preserving what is best in our souls, and in the souls of one another. We must choose wonder over efficiency; we must choose love over always being right. We must choose awe over cynicism. Ultimately, we must teach our children to look for the best in people, stand up for themselves and others in kind ways, and to surround themselves with people and ideas that nurture kindness and creativity. Maintaining innocence is the work of nurturing a supple and resilient heart--not allowing our hearts, or the hearts of our children, to harden in response to life's challenges. The witch is right, "everything is different now". We must go and be innocent. That's subversive, against-the-grain stuff. POW!

Search Criteria

Suppose that a warrior forgot that he was already wearing his pearl on his forehead, and sought for it somewhere else; he might search through the whole world without finding it. But if someone simply pointed it out to him, the warrior would immediately realize that the pearl had been there all the time. --Huang Po

We search. That's what we do. We search for the right answer, the best solution to a problem, the best value for our dollar, the best place to live, and the the best information on how to raise our children. We are good at searching. We have Google and Pinterest at our fingertips--access to a wealth of free information. Our  smartphones allow us  to search for anything, anytime, anywhere, in an instant. This is revolutionary in so many ways. We can be connected, enlightened, informed, and guided in the touch of a button--unless we have AT&T...In all seriousness, though, searching for something has never been easier than it is right now. In fact, it has become so easy that we rarely consult our own consciousness anymore. The famous painting "The Thinker" might now be rendered with a smartphone in his hand. We rarely just sit in undistracted quiet and think anymore. Our knee-jerk tendency is to search first, reflect later...if there's time...unless it's our turn on Words With Friends...or after we have played a few rounds of Angry Birds. That time we used to spend being "bored" (which neuroscientists will tell you is actually when the creative parts of your brain are lit up like skyscrapers) has been held hostage by our need to be constantly stimulated.

So while we are communicating with several hundred people a day, pinning to Pinterest, posting to facebook, launching virtual bombs onto bird's nests, and finding the latest top-rated item in Consumer Reports while we wait at the drive-through, we are definately stimulated. We are definately informed. We are definately searching. But what have we found? In a constant pursuit of information, we may have run away from ourselves-- our hopes, our longings, our regrets, our priorities. We spend so much time checking in with the outside world, that we have forgotten to check in with ourselves. This is easy to do. In the moment, it often feels better. Reflection is not always an easy thing. It can be fraught with the pain of lost opportunities, broken relationships, and unfullfilled hopes. But pain is not always a bad thing. When we build muscles in our bodies, we are literally tearing muscle tissue so that it can repair itself. It's the repairing of itself (the scar tissue) that is stronger than it was before it was torn. Pain isn't bad in and of itself. It's what we do with our pain, and how we build ourselves back up after the pain that determines whether it will give us strength. This how is the most important part.

The how is not about the individualistic, pull-ourselves-up-by-our-own-bootstraps, need to be perfect and take control of our own destiny. The how is about surrender. For myself, I surrender to God, knowing that Christ's Grace surrounds me and upholds me, and intercedes with sighs and groans too deep for words even when I can't find words. One of the most important ways that that Grace finds me is through the hands, and eyes, and mouth, and ears of people whose hearts are softened by and attuned to Love. I can surrender, and let go of the "shoulds" and "shouldn't haves" on my journey, because my faith and my community are my companions on the journey. Falling down, messing up, letting others down, and letting myself down are not the last word. There is a wonderful book entitled Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart.  I love this title, because, for me, the deep-in-our-bones knowledge that we can do this when we have the right support, completely redefines my search criteria: Hope, Meaning, Relationship, Peace, Joy. We search. That's what we do. Let's not search through the whole world without finding it, because we are searching somewhere else. The pearl is right there on our forhead.

Peace Be With You (reflection on John 20:19-29)

I stand among you--
you who hide,
you who retreat
behind your bolted doors.
Peace be with you.
I am with you.

Under the weight of oppression,
bearing the pain of scars,
entombed in your fear--
Peace be with you.
I am with you.

Walk out of the cage
they have made for you.
The door is open.
Bear your scars,
Fear no one.
Even death is not the last word.
Peace be with you.
I am with you.

I stand among you
when they shut you out,
dividing you up into
colors, binding you with
their categories,
fencing in your welcome table.
Forgive them,
They don't know what they do.
Peace be with you.
I am with you.

The breath of the Spirit encircles all colors,
touches all in its path,
moves through fences.
Take. Eat. My table is open.
My bread is life.
My cup is poured out for you.
No one will be refused.
I stand among you.
Peace be with you--

Yes, even you Thomas.
Bring your doubt.
There's lots of doubt around my table;
I'll never shut it out, but come!
Touch my hands. Touch my sides.
At this table, no one hides their scars.
I stand among you.
Peace be with you.

No, it's not a feast of perfection here.
Take. Eat.
The food I offer makes you whole,
not perfect--
wholly kind, wholly merciful,
wholly welcoming, wholly present,
wholly forgiving. Take. Eat.

I stand among you, but I send you out!
Go out and stand among them--
ALL of them.
I will go with you.
Peace be with you.

Remember to Let Go

On my trip to California this summer, I spent part of a day walking up and down Redondo Beach. As I walked past the Lifeguard Tower, topped with a beautiful little clay-tile roof, I noticed the peninsula that stretched out between the tower and the ocean. It was made of stones, piled together organically, strewn into a path that just disappeared at the water's edge. When I took the photo, I just loved the way the stones led the eye out toward the water. As I have looked at it over and over again, though, I love it for what it teaches me about the creative tension between our plans and life's mystery.

We spend much of our time designing the architechture of our lives, planning for our safety, security, and adventure. We want to do the best we can to build a life that can weather the storms, stand out, and is expansive enough to hold the things that are important to us. We would all love to have a room with a view--one with windows that look out over rolling hills, crashing waves, or a sea of flowers. From atop the beautiful Spanish-style lifeguard tower on Redondo Beach, you can catch a glimpse of that kind of beautiful view. If we leave the tower and follow the stones to the water's edge, the path becomes less clear. Behind us stand the constructs of our best-laid plans. Before us lie forces we cannot control, a depth we can only plumb with great caution, and a sense of infinity that no man-made construct could ever provide. Mystery. The stones draw our eye out to the water's edge, reminding us to pause in our planning; suspend our striving; gaze out into wide-open space, and face forces beyond our control. Sometimes it's unsettling, but we need to be unsettled. Listen to the waves crashing around you. Feel the salty mist rise from each wave and reach your face. Breathe. Suspended there, between plans and mystery, just breathe. We must return to our tower, to our plans, to our lives...but the stones remind us to always return to the water's edge and remember to let go.

The Poetry Of Place: A SLO Journey

I heard a segment on NPR not long ago about the increasing homogeneity of cities and towns in the U.S. Where cities and towns once had personalities characterized by particular cultural, linguistic, culinary, and architechtural elements, now there is an ever-increasing trend toward suburban developments, strip malls, and franchise food. Toward the end of the segment the author made a remark I'll paraphrase, rather than quote. He said, in essence, that a place isn't really a place until it has a poet. He clarified saying that he doesn't just mean this in the literal sense, but also in the larger sense; that it posesses regional particularity--qualities that you can't find in quite that same form someplace else.


I had the amazing gift, these last 7 days, of being able to visit San Luis Obispo, California, the town where I lived the first 22 years of my life. I had not been back for 13 years. Since I flew in to Los Angeles and drove up the coast and back, I had hours to just let the landscape wash over me. This landscape that I had taken for granted as a younger person now held me in an overwhelming sense of captivated awe. I couldn't stop noticing the subtle golden hues and varied textures of the hills, the gentle way the waves turned to white foam as they met the shore, unfolding themselves at the foot of the jagged cliffs that rose in front of them. I found myself taking huge deep breaths, hoping to be utterly present with all of my senses so that the landscape, and the memory, would not only be a memory, but a transfusion...a permanent part of the fabric of my being.


I spent the first two days in SLO just walking all over downtown with no itinerary or particular expectations. Just my camera and my flip flops. What started as a visual journey, quickly became an olfactory one. Everywhere I walked I smelled the Jasmyne. I don't remember ever noticing it before. But as soon as it's sweet, rich aroma caught my attention, memories I had stored away in some dormant part of my consciousness just flooded my mind. I remembered every side street, and recalled every storefront's former incarnation. As I walked on rocks accross San Luis Creek, I could picture myself with childhood friends, laughing as we tried not to fall in. As I passed the little Sidewalk Market I could picture my ten-year old self in there buying a Snickers and a Dr. Pepper before youth group. As I walked through the crowds on Higuera St. for Farmer's Market, the smell of BBQ and garlic bread was a time machine. I remembered many fun nights sitting on a curb, eating my ribs and laughing with my friends. Studying literature, one of the profound truths I learned is that time is not linear. The fabric of our memory gets knit together and rewoven again and again. In an instant, a taste, a smell, or a particular place can transport us back in time. Sometimes that journey can be painful. Other times, like this week for me, can be nothing less than healing and transformative. The particular cultural personality of SLO just wrapped it's arms around my soul and held me tight. It spoke the kind of welcome home to my spirit like that of a doating grandmother who cooks up a feast of familiar favorites and scoops up her grandchild saying, "My precious! Oh how I have missed you!"


Each of these moments are poems to me. My childhood home is forever part of me and I am forever part of it because of the poems it has inscribed on my heart, and the way those poems have directed me to live my life. As I reflect on my trip, though, I have decided that there is not only a poetry of place, so to speak. There is a poetry of friendship. Even beyond the geography of place is the transcendent geography of friendship. I spent time with several people, all of whom were very close friends, and each of whom I had not seen for over a decade. I hoped ahead of time that it wouldn't be awkward or forced. Every single encounter was transcendent. We talked, shared stories, laughed, and caught up about our families and lives as if no time at all had passed. And yet the time that had passed made it that much deeper--a kind of full-circle encounter where the past merged with the present, making all of it more meaningful.


San Luis Obispo is definately a place with a poet. William Wordsworth said that poetry is "the spontaneous overflow of powerful emotions recollected in tranquility." This week my cup has been running over with the "spontaneous overflow of powerful emotions". From the authentic, generous, and thoughtful encounters with wonderful friends who remind me of who I am at my best, to a landscape that cherishes and nurtures beauty and a relaxed, open sensibility, I have been given a precious gift--a gift that has nothing to do with material things, and everything to do with love. I love my hometown, and I love the people in my life who have written, and continue to write beautiful poems on my heart.