In March 2022, I declared a New Church Jubilee at the Cambridge Swedenborg Chapel, feeling a call I could not ignore to re-evaluate how we were and were not living into the fullness of Swedenborg's vision of the new church. This led to a sabbatical during which time I wrote a series of letters to my church, i.e. all of you. Needing to ground what I wanted to share in real life, and real relationship, I composed these letters to Martha Richardson one of the beloved matriarch’s of the Fryeburg New Church, allowing the love I feel for her, and I know she feels for me, and that I pray and hope we all share, to guide my words. Martha and I have shared them and now I share them with all of you. I pray they may be received in the same spirit of love and hope that they were written. Much love, Rev. Sage Cole

Dear Martha,

I hope so much that this letter finds you well, and that sitting down to hear from me is making you smile. I know that your health is up and down and that you may not be here on this physical plane of existence all that much longer. In some ways I fear addressing this letter to you, like I am tempting fate just a bit. Will I complete it in time for you to read it? In time for you to respond?

But I’ve decided that you would agree that in the scheme of eternity it doesn’t really matter all that much. That one way or another, if I write you a letter, you will read it. Whether you are here in this world sitting in your recliner on Stanley Hill or galavanting about in heaven, you will get the message. I know this because I know that you love me, and I know that love is stronger than death.

I believe that a lot of other people love me Martha, but with you I know it. There is something that we have shared, a common presence, an unconditional acceptance, an honesty. Your willingness to ask me how it was facing life in the small town of Fryeburg, ME as a single lady pastor, gay divorcé, living alone in that huge parsonage, and your loving confidence that I would find the love, the connection that I yearned for. And your willingness to be honest with me about the joy and confusion of your own walk through life, the imperfect perfection of the journey.

Martha I know you know me and I know that you love me, and our shared knowing is grounded in our common enterprise of being the church together. I am writing this letter to you Martha because I need to say some things to you and to our church. I need to share some things that I have come to know, that have been exalting me and weighing on my heart and that there hasn’t been space to share in the current structure of this organization, in the forms of expression available to me.

I need to write this letter to you, maybe in the same way we needed Jesus to be here in the flesh. I need to share some things that have been going on with me. Some spiritual regeneration things. From many perspectives Good News things but from the inside, things messy and scary and uncertain. I feel like I am seeing and experiencing things about myself, about the world, about creation and existence itself that I haven’t known before and more importantly that I haven’t lived before. I am feeling real love Martha, like I have never known before. AND I am seeing, painfully, how much not-love, I and my friends, and my family, and my church and the world are living in and it is breaking my heart open to the point where I am not sure if this process will end in regeneration or mental breakdown.

So I’m scared Martha. And I’m excited. And I think you will understand. I am writing this letter to you first, and then with your permission I plan to share it with our larger church family.

Martha I am aware that in addressing this letter to you I am right from the get go breaking one of the first cardinal rules of ministry etiquette; to single out or favor any one member of the church. This is a no no.

I want to take my boys down to Plymouth, MA and have lunch with one of the members of a church that Ted used to serve, who has made her way up to Cambridge several times to attend our Taizé services at the Swedenborg Chapel, who I have now befriended. She’s so kind and we want to take the boys to see Plimouth Plantation, and maybe eventually I’ll convince him but he feels it is complicated, that it would break this ministry etiquette rule of not favoring a member of the church.

I totally understand the foundation of this rule of course. It’s a good rule. As a new pastor you don’t want to have the old pastor of a church maintaining strong emotional bonds with those who are now your parishioners. That can be very messy. But rules or no, while this letter is really for the whole of my church family, it’s helpful for me to address it to you because I don’t want what I have to say to float away from the earth into preachy theoretical concepts. I want to speak directly to you and through you to my church. My church is not a set of bylaws or theological suppositions but people, fleshy people like you Martha who try to love one another and God and this ‘thing’ we define as church that we do together.

I feel a desire, a need, a calling, to report in completeness what I have experienced over these last tumultuous years, within which God ordained I would enter midlife, while raising small children, in the middle of a Global Pandemic while serving a church that is near death.

Martha, it has been a time. And I am changed. Like our fair Seer Swedenborg, I feel compelled to share “What I have seen, what I have heard and what I have felt.” I feel moved by the invitation of the latest great one of our tradition the Rev. Dr. George Dole who reminded us in what would be his farewell address “The New Church,” submitted to the Messenger just six days before he made his full transition into the spiritual world that there “can be no pretense in the new church, no ex-ternal that is at odds with its internal.”

As you know Martha, one of the essential messages Swedenborg sought to convey about the new church was that this would not be about a new form of understanding or practice or dogma, but a new way of living life. That becoming a member of the new church would be an inner experience of coming into the light, living with integrity, authenticity, where our internal experience and external expression would be unified, where what is internal is exposed for all to see.

There is a kind of exposure happening all over the place in our world at this moment, as we create Facebook pages, and as influencers video tape and expose a version of their life, an edited version certainly, but with much more information and detail than we ever would have known about another person before.

This movement towards exposure, towards truth telling, while sometimes (maybe often times) shallow, seems to me to be in line with what Swedenborg prophesied was going to come to be. And it is a movement that I feel compelled to take part in, and that I feel is vitally needed in the collective enterprise of being the church that we are engaged in. That the only way to reclaim the truth of our oneness, of the common life that we share, is to be more honest in sharing the diverse ways we experience this oneness. That keeping things hidden, or believing that there is one certain way of being that we are all meant to conform to is totally off base in our efforts to enter the new church.

What is becoming clearer to me is that everything is the same at heart. That “life,” that which pulses through the universe, that which lives between us as love, is in its essence one substance, a substance that is filled with potentiality and power and relationship and creativity and love. That this is at the heart of all of the universe and all people, that we are each simply the most externalized form of this larger power, cells in a larger organism, totally at one with the whole. That we each carry an essential sameness, and the differences that we experience, that we often see first and focus on are only the most external level of things, hardly real at all.

Martha I believe we have known, and continue to know each other on this most essential level. I believe you are one of the wise ones, who has known and loved most if not all of the people and life that has intertwined with yours in your journey of life on this essential level. Sure you have rolled your eyes, you have been furious, and off put, and deeply confused, but only at the actions on the surface, never degrading the ultimate value and worthiness of anyone.

I’m writing to you Martha because I am coming to awaken to this essential oneness, this realm of love and aliveness that is always okay. This beating heart of “life” within which there are no such distinctions. Where all of the labels, all of the stories of distinction, of past and future, of right and wrong, holy and profane, fall away, and I’m just this being alive, awake, free, free to respond to the moment in freedom as I wish.

In the beating heart of life, I’m no longer Sage Cole, no longer minister or white lady, no longer an American Citizen, or a member of Gen-X, no longer someone who is educated or someone having a bad hair day. I could add so many adjectives to this list of descriptions and roles that I use to define who I am, descriptions my sense of self seeks to hide from and descriptions my sense of self seeks to take pride in. And yet there is a growing awareness in me that none of these descriptors are solid, they don’t fully describe or effect who I essentially am. Should just a few circumstances change, or a zombie apocalypse unfold, all of the measures by which I judge my value and the value of others, what and who is useful, who deserves respect, would all change in an instant. The framework of my self understanding would totally collapse and need to be rebuilt for different circumstances. What a wonder that we can do that?! And when our sense of self is in this process of being rebuilt, what still essentially remains?

My sense of self has been collapsing Martha, over these last three years. My confidence in the way I believe things “should” be done has gone right out the window. All my righteousness, all my surly critiques have exploded in the face of what is. My mid-life turn towards the downward slope of this ride of life, COVID, and being charged with spiritual leadership of a dying institution has left me with not much to hold onto. And I believe I am not alone. I believe many others are coming to see that the stories we tell about ourselves and each other, the categories we draw, are really quite malleable, only powerful because we believe in them so strongly, like the believing little children that power Santa Claus’ sleigh.

I am becoming aware that I have been controlled by a whole slew of beliefs and stories that are not real. That are not only not real but incredibly violent and destructive to my well being and the well being of all those whom I am in relationship. I am also becoming aware of how the church structure that we belong to and serve, while not central to perpetuating these false and violent narratives, doesn’t always contradict them either, is often instead complicit.

Martha as my experience of God has deepened and grown I want everything I do to be grounded in the truest fullest most expansive view of the Holy I can muster and I fear that too many of the narratives of our church organization are pointing to smaller versions of God that I now see as obstacles to real spiritual growth, for myself and I imagine for others. I fear that our theology, as expansive and transformative as it can be, is held back in chains, in structures too small, beliefs and practices ineffective at conveying the fullness of the power, the abundance and the rebirth that we are invited into.

So Martha, and all of you, my beloved church family, I offer up my words to you as they are, seeking to speak the truth I have come to know to the best of my ability, hoping that in being honest about my story you might see the holiness of your story more clearly, that I might help point the way to the Holy City that I want so much to gather in with you.

Love, Sage

Pay Phone

I had a dream last night that I think might be telling me what I have to say to you next Martha.

I dreamt that I was headed to a baseball game with my parents. Before going into the stadium we were standing in this long winding line, trying to hook up my parents cell phones to the internet at these pay phones. There were two phones and I had the sense that we were holding up the line as my parents furiously worked to hook their cell phones into the payphone, using a mess of connecting wires. The reason for this, as I understood it in the dream, was that their seats for the game were so far in the back that they were afraid they wouldn’t be able to see the action and so they wanted to be able to watch the game up close on their phones.

After their connection has been made, I make my way to my seat which is high above the game in a small room furnished like a funeral home or a hotel lobby. In the middle of the room are four seats set up a bit like a baseball diamond and I realize my seat is one of them, where first base would’ve been. There are two other men sitting in what would be second base and third base, friendly, my age, we joke and talk a bit and the fourth seat where home plate would be is empty. When I take my seat I realize that I can only see the smallest bit of what is happening on the field through a tiny window in the front of the room, and I decide this isn’t good enough. I think about making my way to the concession level so I can walk around, get some fresh air and see the game closer up. But before I can make my way there I connect with my old friend Karen, who it turns out works at the stadium. She takes me down into the basement where she works. There are dark winding, narrow, passageways but food, good food, and I am hungry.

There are a lot of pieces to this dream but overall I believe this is a dream about ‘wanting to get into the game.’

Martha, I want to lead a thriving, growing healing, playful, joyful life. I want to lead a thriving, growing, healing, playful, joyful church. I want to live a life where love is being exchanged and expressed, where new connections are made, where people are challenged and given space to grow, where everyone’s full self is welcome, where the holy is recognized and celebrated within everyone, and where it’s not just me standing up front in a thin white robe, trying, somehow to hold it all together. I don’t wanna be alone anymore. I want to be in the game and a member of a team.

So that, it seems to me, is the overarching theme of the dream. It’s showing me what I want in all its fullness. It’s showing me that I’m on my way, but I’m not there yet, and it’s giving me some pretty interesting details about what is keeping me from the field.

I want to talk to you about the payphone, Martha

I have a great picture of a payphone on the Fryeburg Fair grounds with a bird’s nest built on top of it. While I was pastor of the Fryeburg New Church I would take walks on the fairgrounds, and I remember delighting in this discovery. Perhaps that picture will be included somehow in this letter. But payphones are no longer a useful form in the world as it is today. Everyone has a cell phone, in developed nations and in developing nations. No one is now going to do the work of installing pay phones in any other part of the world any time and they may already be completely extinct. But some do still exist, like the one on the Fryeburg Fair Grounds. (Well it existed in 2011, it could well be gone by now.)

It also so happened that in 2011 there was a thriving Swedenborgian Church in Fryeburg, ME. My time in Fryeburg was such a gift, three of the most fulfilling years of congregational ministry that I have been blessed to experience. Somehow like a payphone with a family of baby birds nesting on top, the Fryeburg New Church continued to attract people who were excited and happy to be alive, grateful to have a space to connect and co-create in, happy to sit in pews their loved ones long gone used to sit in, happy to go to the effort to get their kids or more often their grandchildren dressed on Sunday mornings to get them to Sunday school.

The Fryeburg New Church, like that one last payphone on the Fryeburg Fair Grounds, making home for baby birds, somehow was still bringing joy even in its struggles. And there were struggles, and I know you know them. You are one of the matriarchs, the pillars of the community, who has long worked so hard for the life of the church as you have watched that life change. You have lived with the tension of there being too much to do and too few of the next generation taking over the work as nearly every facet of life has changed. The “church,” as in this case the community that gathers at 4 Oxford Street In Fryeburg Maine, is no longer at the center of the community’s life as it once was. For many there is no longer a belief that this form of church is essential to a full and complete faithful life. There are still of course those that enjoy the services and community, find the experience perhaps quaint but full of love, show up, and yet still the primary ways of communicating and connecting with one another and with God for the most part, for most people, happen outside of this demarcated space. Attendance dwindles, budgets are stretched and the question looms, “How much longer?”

The pay phone in my dream is a metaphor that works in a lot of different areas of my life, old forms of living, of being human, that my grandparents, and my great grandparents were committed to, that worked for them, that were vital to them. Forms that my parents have rebelled from and also sought to uphold, and tried, tried to stay connected to. And yet somehow all this trying has just made things very very complicated, like this convoluted set up to use a payphone to get online. Complicated in a way that is actually distracting those involved and keeping them, us, from getting out on the field and into the game.

I see in that payphone my own outdated assumptions about perfection and performance. I see my grandmother Claire and all of her confident determinations of how things “should be.” We all probably can find payphones still hanging out in our psyches, in our homes, in our communities, and some maybe have found a way to host a new family of birds, perhaps have been there to still help make one last connection, one last phone call, but these little gifts these little blessings don’t actually make payphones useful again, important or vital to the network of life that actually exists now. They are quaint, they’re fun to spot from time to time, they help us to think of a different time, but sitting around and contemplating how to make them more useful or attractive or vital to society once again would be a big waste of time.

It’s time to get out on the field

That’s what I want to do, but somehow I’m not quite ready yet. Something in me still needs to be fed, healed, prepared. I’ve been given this new perspective as to what’s going on, this high vantage point but it’s not yet complete, it’s only insight, it’s not yet action. It’s giving me something but not quite enough yet, only a small window where I can take in only the smallest bit of what is going on, maybe it’s a transient place like a hotel lobby, maybe it’s a death place like a funeral parlor. My husband reminds me of course that even in the small upper room in the dream the template of the field existed in the set up of our chairs, so the ‘game’ the fullness of experience I am looking for is of course, already where I am. A great nod to the beautiful paradox of life that is always full and complete AND also taking us on a journey. Both things are always and perpetually true at the same time.

And I’m on that journey and I’m hungry and thankfully, my good friend Karen has brought me into the basement to give me something to eat. You of course must remember Karen. She came and worked in our New Church Fair Booth for several years. I think she even worked one year after I’d left as pastor of the FNC. Karen and I became friends working together in hotels, restaurants of hotels. She was a baker and I was a waitress and so she was always the person I would go to for something to eat, she was and is a good friend and of all of the things I’m grateful for to her, what I learned most from her, and from her loving hilarious generous family as well, was how to accept and be fully yourself. How to drink vodka and diet orange soda unapologetically, to bring McDonald’s cheeseburgers into the movie theater. When we worked together at a resort in Florida Karen would sometimes come in and clean my room because she’d get tired of how messy I was. If she wanted to play she would play, if she wanted to veg out and watch Real Housewives she would do that. If she loved you she’d do anything for you. She’s one of the most fully present and alive humans I know. Karen doesn’t sit around in fear and self-doubt, she has her way of doing things and she does them, without apology, without complaint, without much story. Damn I love her.

During these last three years I have become quite convinced that being able to accept and find joy in who you are is possibly the first and most necessary step on the spiritual path. I think it’s possible that we almost can’t even begin the journey to God, to holiness, to creativity, to join the game on the field until we have that. To be able to just stop and accept who we are, where we are, who we are with, the mood that we happen to be in, everything as it is. To let ourselves rest when we are tired, play when we are playful, cry when we are sad, swim and dance when our bodies need to move, eat when we are hungry. Karen did that, she does that, she showed me that, and I’m finally starting to really catch on. And now in this dream she’s giving me a snack, thank you friend.

It’s funny because what I see in Karen, what she lit up in me, I’m guessing I light up for other people. I know I do, I’ve been told that. That people feel inspired by the way I move in the world, the self acceptance I exhibit. We spark this knowing in each other when we act in freedom, and as much as I am aware of having been fighting an ongoing inner battle between self acceptance and self hatred, I have not been laying down in defeat, I have been fighting everyday and on some days self acceptance has won, and others see that.

While I’ve been fighting this battle my entire life, seeking to be authentic and real, to accept myself and others, still I have clung to the voices of inner doubt, judgement and criticism, believing these voices to be important to heed, an inner compass edging me back to the straight and narrow. Over the last three years I have started to to see the hubris and pride in this inner critic, the way it sets me continually at odds with myself, with others and with the present moment. I’ve started to experiment with not listening, and I’ve been discovering the great freedom that lives behind all of the “shoulds” and “oughts.”

And to be in this space, in this field that makes room for not knowing, for the great fullness and mystery of being alive, I need, I need to step away from the payphone. Its time to step away from this convoluted connection to a tiny electronic version of the game, so I can actually play the real game. It’s a perfect metaphor for the spiritual life, for the difference between the external and the internal church.

A payphone connected through wires to a smart phones so that a person can watch a baseball game on a tiny screen.

Actually being on the field and playing a game of baseball. The sun on our faces, the attention, the use of our bodies, the skill required, the mutuality of working with others on a team.

That is the difference between trying to understand the spiritual life, and living the spiritual life. That is the difference between external ritual, and internal transformation. Swedenborg wanted us all to get on the field. He said this church business was going to be NEW! Worship would be life and life would be worship! Nothing external would be practiced that did not have an internal.

And yet as clear as that is, and as convoluted as this smartphone payphone internet access set up is, I realize that on many levels it’s still easier, easier than actually getting out on the field. That actually playing is hard, requires effort, attention, risk and exposure. Sitting back as a passive observer, even with all the difficulty involved in getting connected, even with the limitations of this view, on some level may feel like a much easier stance.

But while it may be easier, and while I have limited experience playing baseball, I still want to try. I’ve got to try, I’ve got to get closer to the action. I’ve got to make this spiritual business real for me and real for others. It’s time to let go.

Now saying this to my church family is very difficult, which Martha I think is also why I’m writing this letter to you. I want to say it to you first because I believe that you might be able to hear these words with the love that they seek to convey.

As much as you have given your life to the Swedenborgian Church, to teaching Sunday school, to serving on church councils and boards, to representing the church to the denomination, as much as you have given your whole self to this work, I think you know that the real work you have done isn’t diminished in any way if the forms of the church must change. You’ve watched them change over your lifetime. Your beloved daughter is now serving the church in your stead as your energy wanes but you also see and understand that the way she is serving the church is bigger than what happens in the church building on Oxford street, that the way she serves the “church” is the way that she lives her life , the fullness of who she is. I think Martha that you know that as many pies as you have baked, and as many children as you have helped learn about the Bible, I think that you know that the true gift you have given is bigger, and more substantial than any of the details of that story. I think that you know whether the Swedenborgian Church of North America exists in the next two generations, whether your grandchildren take part, I think that you know that the church will be just fine, that the substance of the life you have lived, the blessings you have given to others, have been expressed in a form that we have called the Swedenborgian Church but the form called the Swedenborgian Church has not ultimately been the point.

I write this letter to you, Martha, because I hope that when I tell you that that which we call “the church”, the many forms that we use to understand what it is to be a part of a church, the building, the bylaws, the liturgy, the Sunday school lessons, the language, the potlucks, the ceremony, that all of it taken together, all of these external forms, are like the payphones in my dream. They were forms that had a lot of traction for a long while, that helped people, brought people together, inspired people, helped to be a link between our human and divine nature. But these forms, now, for the most part have become relics, no longer occupying spaces of vitality and life. And as long as we sit about focusing on reviving this old form, we are going to be wasting a lot of time. And I don’t really think we have that much more time to waste.

It is so hard for me to write these words because I know that many of us, maybe even you, are still identified with the external forms of the church and so what I am saying may feel like a threat, a condemnation. This is not in any way surprising as I have still been very identified with it. I’ve been experiencing the pain of this realization too. I love the church, I have devoted my life so far to it. The church, like a payphone, has been really useful for a long time. It’s been a space where beauty and transformation has occurred and I have been blessed to be a part of.

From my happy memories singing protest songs at the Portland New Church as a teenager, learning to sing harmony with Missy Sommer at the Urbana New Church as we sang along to “The City of God” by Peter Shaw, Betsy Coffman’s sausage balls. The women of the Michigan Women’s Alliance who loved me all up in my first internship, trusting me and turning to me, encouraging me. The beauty, the absolute perfect artistic beauty of the California churches, El Cerrito, San Francisco, Wayfarers Chapel. Where when you enter you are immediately transported, feeling so special that these sacred spaces are part of ‘my church.’ And then since being ordained I have discovered this fun thing they called preaching where I get to stand up for 10 to 20 minutes each week and people listen to the things I want to say, I love it, I have loved it. And the way we made church together in Fryeburg was miraculous Martha! Greg Huang-Dale and Jed Wilson and the incredible choir, how did we get so lucky? We were like that one payphone with the bird nest on top because man for those three years so much new life was coming in. I was happy to stand up there in my white robe to lead the liturgy and the ritual. Very happy to spend that 10 to 20 minutes, sharing what I had come to see and understand about myself in the world and this ultimate reality, it was all so fun, even as it was getting harder and harder.

The thing is there is no reason to get rid of a payphone. They can be useful, very useful, until they’re not. So they should be kept up, they should be cared for, then, almost in a blink of an eye, you will find you no longer need them, and that’s okay because new forms are being made possible. But for those of us left with all of these good memories that we associate with this payphone, all of these great conversations and relationships that we’ve had over the years, how can we walk away? How can we let that go?

If I had managed to find another pastorate after Fryeburg that had had at least the same amount of energy and commitment, I quite likely could’ve spent the rest of my days tending to another payphone, hoping that more families of birds would came to roost. I really enjoyed it. I’m kind of built to be a pastor, the public speaking, the socializing, the meaningful conversations, the public witness. Holy moly it’s fun, it’s the best job in the world… until it’s not.

My seven years at the Cambridge Swedenborg Chapel have forced me to recognize this payphone for what it is and it’s funny because my life could’ve gone a very different way.

As you remember after I left Fryeburg, after marrying Ted, I got a job in the Episcopal Church, where he served, as the Family and Children’s Minister and spent two lovely years, while having our first child, working together with him. We made a great team. For a while I considered becoming an Episcopalian. This community welcomed me, honored my Swedenborgian perspective, gave me space to serve, and community to serve with. I knew that if Ted and I were going to keep working together eventually I would need to be the boss. If I was ever going to be hired as the senior pastor of an Episcopal church I would need to hold my ordination in this tradition. I prayed about it a lot while I was pregnant with my first son and wondering about what our next steps would be professionally.

During that time of pondering I made a trip down to the Center for Swedenborgian Studies in Berkeley, to visit my good friend Anna who was a student at the time, and while I was there I took the time to talk to the Rev. Jim Lawrence, Dean of the Seminary, about my consideration of switching denominations. It also so happened that just shortly before this trip the Cambridge Swedenborg Chapel had just put out a call for a new minister. And so I was weighing things. Here was an opportunity to serve the Swedenborgian Church, where I could be geographically where I wanted to be to raise my family. And here was this larger potentiality that I could step into by pursuing ordination into a larger church that could open up many new possibilities. I laid this all out to Jim and his response, bless his good heart, was to suggest that I might do quite well in the Episcopal church, that that might be a real good opportunity for me. He could see, like I could a little bit, that the Cambridge, Swedenborg Chapel was going to be a very difficult post, that it was not going to be a place that would be lively, experimental, growing and joy filled. That its history as a chapel for the seminary gave it an academic edge, a seriousness that Jim likely knew would be difficult for me. I’m thankful for Jim’s advice, I believe he gave it to me from the best part of his heart, AND it succeeded in motivating me to do exactly the opposite.

Jim and I have a long history. When I was 13 he was the minister who picked me up for my first Swedenborgian Church Youth League Retreat, at Blairhaven in Duxbury, MA. Driving down from Fryeburg, where he was serving at the time, with Ruben Bell III and Shelley Dolley, two other teens well formed in the church and Shelley’s friend Jenn. As an awkward newly minted teen who didn’t like staying away from home all that much I’m still shocked that I made the choice to go only on the recommendation of a flier that my mom had found on Rev. Ken’s desk at the Portland New Church. But this weekend would be the reason that I would pursue ministry so many years later. The weekend where I would learn about love, and presence, and acceptance and “the church.” Jim was then also there when I made the leap into seminary, shepherding me into this next new thing. And now he was here at this moment, I realize loving and supporting and guiding me into being just as he always had, but now in a direction away from what I understood to be ‘my church family.’ He knew the church was bigger than this organization and so this was not a conflict for him. (I appreciate this about you Jim. And I’m excited that you are now our denomination’s president. It feels meaningful to me to have you again right there as I again enter into a new relationship with this church of ours! )

On that day in the spring of 2014, very pregnant, I left Jim’s office a bit incensed. Of course I can see that he was thinking quite holistically and lovingly of me. He knew the state of things. He knew the struggle ahead of me to find sustainable, joyful work within this church. But I am stubborn, and I suppose as much as I was accepted into the Episcopal Church, given space, as much as I probably could have interpreted my understanding of the holy into the liturgy and teachings of this community, at the time I just felt committed to serving the Swedenborgian Church. I think I knew that I would never have gone directly to becoming an Episcopal priest, that the doorway to ministry, the doorway to faith for me had to be this quirky, pluralistic, misfit of a church. I knew there were others out there like me, misfits that would not be finding their way to God through Episcopalianism or Lutheranism or Catholicism, or any of the other mainline isms that I learned about from the good people who I studied with at seminary, who were fabulous and weird in their own way, but not quite, as I perceived it, as weird as me. I wanted to serve the church that could find and make space for people on the edges, and I still do.

So anyway, I’m stubborn and I think Jim telling me to become an Episcopalian sealed the deal on my pursuing the call to serve the Swedenborg Chapel in Cambridge, MA. Martha you know this post has been very challenging from the start, no question. Things were, and in many ways still are, a mess for the simplest reason that there aren’t enough people to pull off the pageantry and performance of church. These bylaws with their committees and officers don’t work, don’t make any degree of sense when you have only a handful of people. There aren’t enough people to play all the parts, to fill all the roles and so there’s just a couple of people holding it all together with duct tape, and faith. And from one perspective they are doing a remarkable job. They are maintaining a payphone that is still from time to time connecting people in powerful ways to the holy. This crew of people charged with caring for this particular payphone have built community and connection with one another. God is still present certainly, but it’s exhausting to a new level than what we struggled with in Fryeburg. So often it is just me, the one person being paid, holding the reins, standing up front in my thin white robe trying to pretend like this all makes sense. I knew it didn’t make sense on my first Sunday and have sought to do my best to play my part while listening and imagining with God what new life could break into this place? What life could come into this incredibly sacred beautiful chapel, on this busy corner of the world, if only we might allow it?

As hard as it’s been, I have lasted at the Swedenborg Chapel for this long by the grace of God and for several identifiable and measurable reasons. First off during the first three years, I was half-time, devoted equally to the church and my growing family. I was pregnant and then birthing my second child Zachary. I had little squishy, cute boys at home to snuggle with and give me a sense of purpose and meaning and grounding in the real. I also had this incredibly strong, faithful husband, supporting me and encouraging me, understanding and honoring the challenges I was facing, congratulating me on all of my tiny wins. I had a lot of external support while my professional life was in turmoil. While efforts were made to oust me, meetings, long and tiresome with hardly any space at all for joy, not no space, but not a lot.

I carry a lot of fear about naming this truth, especially for those who have been serving on the front lines of payphone care for many years. I need to emphasize that none of this is anyone’s fault. But it is the truth. The first three years in Cambridge were very, very hard. I couldn’t have done it without all of the support of my home life. I couldn’t have done it without incredible colleagues who I leaned on and enlisted regularly. I couldn’t have done it without a therapist, antidepressants and a great deal of stubbornness. But I stayed and things got better and I started to see that maybe something new was possible. Then the vision for the Helen Keller Center came. This vision is not mine. I feel quite strongly that it is a vision that has been given to the church in part through me. It's not a strategy on how to fix and fancify the payphone. It’s a vision of something that could be possible, something that could be born, something that could be new, that could embody the deeper life of the church that has given me joy and life all these many years and I believe perhaps you too Martha. Different types of people coming together in relationship, telling the truth, telling their stories, seeking to learn, seeking to heal, seeking to work together to bring about a new world.

Helen Keller is one of our great Saints, a lifelong devotee of Swedenborg who never felt the need to join the church but unquestionably lived it. She might just be the guide that could help us step into something truly new.

I’ve been dwelling in this space in Cambridge for over seven years now. Marrying and baptizing and burying people who will never join the Swedenborgian Church but need help honoring the sacred in the transitions of life. Hosting musicians and creatives looking for a space to share their gifts. Interacting with students, colleagues, seekers, being a pastor in the community to whoever shows up. I have watched all the life that swirls by and around and sometimes within the Chapel. This is a payphone perched in a beautiful holy place, a holy structure that is healing and inspiring, just by being, just by existing. Those who have been caring for this space over the years have been performing a sacred and holy use. And I know that God has been present. And yet the team, the “church” that has charge, authority, over this space is dying. I’m sorry that this is the stage of life that we find ourselves in now, but it just is, and it’s no one’s fault.

I want to get out on the field. I want to spend the second half of my life, however many years I have left on this planet on the field in the game. I want to feel the sun on my face. I want to celebrate with my teammates after victory, and after defeat. I want to leave everything I have on the field. I want to keep being a minister of the New Church until the day I die and I want that role to look nothing like what it looks like now. I want to be totally surprised by what I might be called to do. I want to enter into new territory. I want to face confusion. I want to stop living in fear of death, stop feeling penned in and limited by old forms that no longer carry life within them. I want try lots of new things, make lots of mistakes and then keep trying again. I want to be my full self and I want to invite others to be themselves, to be the church in the highest sense, the connection between the human and divine, the meeting place where we all gather together, all the tribes with all our differences, honoring the light within and among us.

So Martha it was a pretty good dream, a good start. It’s gotten into me and done its work, helped me to see, for the first time in a while, all that it is that I really hope for and want. And I’m not there yet, I’m getting a snack with my friend Karen in the basement. I still need a little more strength and a little more confidence perhaps but I’m making my way.

I think this might be enough for today. While I’m trying to write this letter to you, to share the insights and hopes and dreams I have for the church that we share together I’m also trying to sort out the things I need, how to take care of myself in a day and my children and my husband, how to rest and work and play, what stories what payphones still hang out and mess with my daily living. So as much as I’d like to finish this thing all in one sitting I know I need to learn how to stop, perhaps this is enough for you to read today too more later.

Your friend, Sage

January 6th

Good morning Martha. It’s January 6th 2023 today. The day we celebrate Epiphany, the arrival of the Wise Men at Jesus’ birthplace, and as of the last couple of years the day we remember when American citizens violently tried to stop the transfer of power and take over the Capitol building. Did you watch it unfold on the news?

I wonder what living through that event was like for you in Fryeburg?

Fryeburg is a town where people know well how to love and care for one another directly. I’ll never forget spinning out into a ditch during a particularly brutal snowstorm and waiting hardly a few minutes before a kind stranger with the equipment to pull me out drove by and took care of me. But like any other town in America when people aren’t right in front of you they somehow lose their humanness. I’ll also never forget seeing the men set up at the end of Elm Street with a poster suggesting President Obama and Hitler were one and the same. When I candidated in Fryeburg you might remember Maine was voting on same-sex marriage equality and I remember many lawn signs in Fryeburg against this effort. I personally never felt rejected for my lesbian leanings but of course I didn’t go out of my way to make them public. Perhaps had I gone about decked in rainbows more often or had a girlfriend things would have been different.

Martha, what is it in the human heart that feels the need to blame, to judge, to act against and to condemn one another?

I’ve been spending a lot of time these last few years contemplating this question. I’ve been doing my best to consider it as closely as possible, not trying to analyze history or politics, but watching my boys grow up and seeing how they fight, and just as often looking inside myself for the inclination to blame, judge, act against and condemn others. It is an intrinsic human impulse, this I am sure. My boys fight every day. And sleep. And eat. It’s just what they do. It’s often playful, but it gets violent quickly and when you don’t expect it. Playful wrestling becomes painful and then retribution must be sought. They fight over control. In their tiny bodies and minds they already have strongly developed ideas about what they want and any infringement on that wanting requires action against. Every single time.

It’s so exhausting Martha. (I’m so glad I got the chance to become a parent, but oh my goodness it’s a lot of work!)

But there is a lot to learn from the experience and watching my boys and their need to blame, judge, act against and condemn each other, I feel like I am getting a glimpse at the core need that all of us humans are born with, that played out on January 6th, and that is being played out in nearly every human heart beating on this planet.

It seems we are at our core just animals trying to survive. And as our physical survival has become more secure it seems we are shifting our concerns to our emotional survival, our political survival, the survival of our ideas, our ways of being, our institutions, our perspectives. My boys are fighting for dominance, playing out instinctual patterns to show themselves as powerful, to claim their spot in the community, to get more than others so they will not have less. That is what we humans seem to have learned to do over these many millennia and we are great at it and seem to just find more and more reasons to do it in new and increasingly destructive ways.

The need to claim and then defend a particular identity seems to be the foundation of human life, and what human civilization for the most part has been built on for some time. Building up our defenses, puffing out our chests, declaring our primacy, divine right, and then declaring all others expendable, enemies, other. As physical survival depended on being included in whatever particular group, identity, culture you were born into there was hardly any space to rebel, to seek peace, to let down barriers, that was not even a potentiality in human consciousness. People saw life as a negotiation of their inherent personality, likes, strengths and gifts and the expectations of the culture, finding their way to fit into that frame as best they can, accepting the enemies prescribed to them. There was no other option.

This was true for so long Martha, but I dare say it may not be true anymore, and that is part of what’s made everything feel so mixed up and chaotic as of late.

Martha, now that the internet is everywhere and nearly every human being on the planet has the ability to peek into and observe the way other humans live, the illusion of otherness is being broken down. A child may get a lot from their parents, from their local ‘tribe’ but ultimately the world is at their fingertips and they will find themselves, if not in their local community, online. The argument that there is only one right way, that we must be defined totally by the culture we are raised in doesn’t hold anymore.

There isn’t one way to be good. One religion. One way of doing our hair. One way of gaining respect. One way of anything. There are myriad ways. The external structures that have held society together, determined our values, our friends, our enemies are either breaking down or have already been broken down completely. They can’t be relied on to tell us who we are.

And Martha, this in my estimation is what makes this moment in earth’s history so important. This is what gives me a sense of urgency. Because as the hardened identities that have shaped human society for so long start to break down I see a huge new era of human freedom dawning. Maybe that will look something like a Holy City coming down out of the clouds, with twelve gates that are never shut, where the tribes will all meet and gather within!

I believe we are moving in this direction and yet there are birth pangs, so many birth pangs. As our tribal identities break down people are becoming scared. Who am I if I am not this?

The chaos and groundlessness of change is very difficult to navigate. (This is such an understatement.)

It seems some people are coping with this chaos by doubling down on differences. Latching onto a ‘tribe,’ blocking out all contradictory information, re-establishing enemies, and then even acting out with violence, like what happened at the capitol.

Others, (this is what I’ve been attempting for the most part) are trying to be open-minded, open hearted, taking in all the new stories and possibilities, and somehow trying to find their way in the midst of them. This strategy, while less prone to outer violence, can for some (as I know it has for me) create an inner violence. A desire to “do the right thing” in a sea of competing narratives can become impossible, leaving the most earnest among us always with the sense of not doing enough, always aware of the narrative that a choice didn’t satisfy.

Thankfully what the tumult of the last three years has taught me finally is that there is a third way. As the stories swirl, as the institutions break down, as the choices expand, we can start to see beyond them. We can trust in a level of life that is more real, that rests under the surface of all of this turmoil. We can stop the search for ourselves in anything external, any tribe, any identity, any group, any measure, anything. It’s become too noisy out there anyway. Perhaps the noise is part of the process, part of what will eventually call everyone to just stop for a second and take a peak inside, and remember, remember their life, that is real, and lasting, and not defined by any of the human drama that we like to play at.

This is the way I want to live. And I believe this is how the New Church is called to live.

Martha I believe this is how you have long lived. I believe you have come to understand your essential nature and are not too concerned with finding stability or dominance through clinging to any particular story. I think you are among those on the baseball field Martha. You may be picking daisies instead of at bat but you are in the action. Your spiritual life is not abstract, you are present in your life and the lives of others, you know who you are at your core and can walk in the light no matter where you are or who you are will.

I think Swedenborg’s vision of the New Church, his insistence that the New Jerusalem as depicted in Revelation is the state of things we are after, creates a model for how to live in this post-story, post-tribal world. It’s all there. All of the tribes, all of the cultures, all of the people of the world entering through their own gate and then when they arrive in the city meeting one another. We are called to meet one another. To not be lost in all of the opinions and assumptions we may hold based on our tribal identity as to what someone else’s external presentation means about who they are. It’s time to have a new identity as children of God. It’s time to mingle and be together in our differences.

It seems we human beings, in coming to believe ourselves to be so unique and special among creation, have created a problem that has become exponentially worse, and that it’s time to fix. And the only way, in my estimation, to fix this problem is to allow everyone to fix it in their own way.

We have to trust and know that we are bound together and that while we all may present as incredibly different and often off putting to one another, that within there is a light, a light that we share, a light that can bring us back together. A light that never goes out, just like the Bangles song “Eternal Flame,” on the first cassette tape I ever purchased when I was 11.

We have to find that place within us where the light always shines, that we recognize is always standing there keeping vigil over us, in us, as all the human drama, all the experiences and feelings and thoughts come and go, so we are finally free and not being possessed, carried away by whatever thought or feeling arises. This light can be fanned with our attention and our love, it can grow to shine brighter so that we can get closer and closer to a perpetual day. Where the ups and downs of this temporary existence do not cease to be experienced but cease to convince us that their story is more important than this light, that which is most real, the inherent worth and belonging and wholeness that we are born into.

We have to find that place within us where this light always shines and we need to look for this light in one another. Trust that it’s there. Finally heed Jesus’ words and love him, through loving each other. No more enemies. To make enemies with each other is to be at war within ourselves. It is to live an illusion of separateness that is destroying us.

I can only serve a church that has enough space in it, enough breath, enough life that it fosters this light more than it dampens it.

To foster this light we have to participate in the rhythms of life, watch and learn and respond to the changing needs of people and communities, emotions and ideas, as they are seeking to be born, as they live and as they die. This is one thing we know for sure about how life works! All life on this planet is born and then dies. We do not create anything that stays. The only thing that stays is this mysterious uncreated force, the unfashioned part of our human experience that we cannot comprehend or describe in any kind of complete way that could ever stand for all people and all time.

All the ways any one of us or any religious institution has sought to describe this uncreated substance, this impulse that manifests as the universe is limited. The words are all pointers to a deeper Truth/Reality that when not used as a tool to get at a deeper lived experience, becomes an idol, a hardened edifice of “belief” that you put your trust into, make up stories about, cling to for dear life, and ultimately serves to exacerbate the illusion that is keeping us all at war with one another.

For a time it is quite likely that the ritual and beliefs and practices of different spiritual traditions and communities had a lot of meaning, that the externals and internals were more aligned. But over time for many they have become very empty and worse for some destructive. Continuing to exist not because of passion, devotion, and acceleration on the spiritual path, but because of the influence that these kinds of systems can have over people who cling tightly and only to the external authority of their faith and do not feel it within.

I’ve experienced such love in the church. And I’ve experienced such not-love. Sometimes it feels that there is more freedom, more space to connect within, to connect with others, to be whole, outside of the bounds of the church. As the external forms of our church rapidly decline could this not be an opportunity to ask why this is? To ask if there are stories of separation, of fear, of materialism, of otherness, that we are perpetuating, that we might be able to finally release for good? If the church is dying perhaps it’s because it’s time? Perhaps death isn’t actually the worst thing?

I for one don’t think it is. It’s sad, sure. It’s scary, yes. It’s stepping into a great, great, great unknown. But it’s stepping in the direction of trust and love. It’s the path that Jesus walked. It seems to me to be the path towards the Holy City.

Who might we become if we let who we have been pass away?

In hope, Sage

Navigating dinner time

Good evening Martha. I’m attempting something risky by sitting down to write in the midst of many other demands. It’s an experiment I suppose like everything else right now as I seek to live, as God’s beloved child, and not a super computer that believes its task is always to compute the perfect next move. I want to sit and write to you now, when any minute Zach will be ready for his bath, when Ted is down AGAIN with a horrible cough turned 102 degree fever and isolating, when the dishes from dinner remain undone and bedtime routines lay ahead. BECAUSE it is in this mess where some of what I’ve been sharing with you is most coming into being. This whole idea of worship being life is starting to make a lot of sense. I’m realizing that life requires a certain degree of vigilance.

It all played out in the span of 3 minutes. Ted’s sick. Isolating sick. I had made spaghetti and meatballs for the boys and I. Elbow macaroni for Theo. Cut up vegetables for the boys and a salad for me. I was ready to invite them to the table, and bring a tray up to Ted. Then as I announce dinner Zachary announces he’s also not feeling well and thinks he wants to eat by himself.

I began to have a reaction. I felt upset and didn’t know what to do. Instead of jumping on the strong emotions that were encouraging me to react one of two ways. 1) Of course, it’s a weird night, everything breaks down without Daddy. Or 2) No you have to come to the table. We can't let everything break down without daddy. Either response filled with annoyance and frustration, a desire to be good or an acceptance of being bad. Neither choice was going to be made in freedom. So I valiantly said, “Give me a second to think about it.”

I sat down and thought about how I was feeling. I let each feeling, each belief, each inner experience have its say.

“I’m feeling really put out by Ted still being sick.”

“I’m feeling really scared that Ted is so sick.”

“I’m feeling irritated that Ted is still sick.”

“The evening routines are important, dinner at the table is an experience that is important to me, that feels good and is good for our connectivity as a family.”

“When there is sickness in the house it's okay to let things be more relaxed, it would probably feel much nicer to sit and eat peacefully alone. If Zachary really isn’t feeling well shouldn’t he get the same slack?”

“What if we all eat dinner on our own tonight and Ted never gets better and I can’t manage the routine on my own?”

In all of this swirl of feelings I heard lots of loud voices about what I “should” do, maintain the tradition, be relaxed and accepting of others needs and requests. I kept playing out my decision in these ridiculous future timelines, Ted dies and we never eat at the table again. Zachary in therapy because his mother wasn’t sensitive to his needs when he was sick.

I sat there watching this all play out and eventually it got funny. I was able to see the meaninglessness of all the stories of what should and shouldn’t be, and focused on what is. Along with all of these feelings and thoughts, what am I actually in fact dealing with at the moment.

I have made a nice dinner to share with my family. I am hungry and looking forward to enjoying it. I have set the table, planning to bring Ted up a tray and then gather the boys together at the table. I bring Ted his food and then I receive Zachary’s request.

And then all of what I’ve written above ensues, and now how do I feel?

Fine. And I didn’t have the energy for a fight, and I wanted to sit down and enjoy my meal. So I asked Zachary one more time if he might feel up to coming to the table, it would be nice to sit together, and when he insisted I said okay, and I told Theo he could eat on his own as well. And I enjoyed dinner by myself.

Now the outcome to this story isn’t really the important part. And maybe if you are not as neurotic as me you won’t be able to see the great success, for me, of this moment. This moment would have been a success for me had I ultimately responded in any number of ways if the essential process that I’m describing unfolded.

Where I chose what to do, and I did it. And I didn’t fulfill any expectations, or fail at any, I wasn’t the best or the worst, but just living, choosing, looking at the scene, what I had in me, what I wanted, and choosing. And it was fine.

This is how I want to live my life. I think this is freedom.

And I think this episode, this moment is the place where spiritual regeneration occurs. These are the moments I want to talk with others about. The actual experiences, of being present to ourselves, present to the moment. Of stepping back just enough into the essence of who we are, the space of awareness, of being, of stillness, so we can watch all the edges of the movie of our lives play out.

This evening in the 3 minutes that I sat still I watched the movie. And then taking all that into consideration, accepting it all as it was, I made my choice as to how to respond. This isn’t rocket science, but for my little slice of consciousness and being this was nothing short of a revolution.

Feeling grateful, Sage

Corned Beef Hash

Martha, as I sit down to write to you this morning I am picturing a scene from my time in seminary. I see my fianceé and best friend at the time, smiling and laughing, belly laughing, tears in their eyes laughing as they read through a journal of mine from my pre-teen years. As they read through all the depictions of every event, every inner longing, laughing at the mundane details that I felt important to report, like the Puffin cereal and Lipton tea I had for breakfast that morning, the New Kid on the Block that was most on my mind, and the side ponytail and blue eyeshadow that I chose for that day of 6th grade.

There was love in their laughter, yes, but I also heard in it, felt in it a bit of laughter at my expense, a mocking of what I identified as important, or a mocking of the importance I sought to give to my little life. Perhaps one day I can ask them what was in their laughter.

But I see them now, as I prepare to tell you that I am sitting down to write as I finish preparing a warm plate of corned beef hash with two poached eggs on top. (This is the kind of detail that I believe would have elicited their laughter. And perhaps it is eliciting yours right now?) I’ve recently become a good egg poacher. And corned beef hash is a longtime comfort favorite, enjoyed a few times a year when it’s cold outside, and when I have the time to make and enjoy it.

The boys are finally both at school after recovering from the flu, Ted is headed back to sleep for a bit. I have time to sit and enjoy this meal. And so I am. And I am telling you Martha about it, because, even in this plate of food there is a story. Many stories. Many conflicting stories that I can see almost floating up above the steaming eggs, in the salty smell of the corned beef.

Eggs have gotten so expensive? You may not have noticed, as I imagine you have a flock of chickens up on Stanley Hill, but here in Boston the cheap eggs, the ones raised in affordable housing, stacked on top of each other in a life of darkness and misery, a dozen of those eggs is usually at least 5$ and then if you want eggs with slightly happier or actually happy chickens they might be 8$. And now that I have a family, an 8 year old son who can eat 5 hard boiled eggs at a time sans the yoke, this cost weighs even heavier. I actually got upset with Ted last night for hard boiling extra eggs, more than Theo wanted, because of this pressing cost, fearing they would go to waste, that I wouldn’t have any available to poach today, to have on this can of corned beef I knew was waiting for me in the cupboard.

And corned beef hash, which elicits positive memories and feelings of sitting at the little Cafe in Portland, ME after morning Svaroopa Yoga class with an espresso feeling fed and free, or being in high school and cooking food outside with my Civil Air Patrol troop, it is also food in a can filled with preservatives and fat that is sure to kill me. It’s made out of the flesh of a cow. A creature not so unlike me. A creature bred and fed for my enjoyment, living in large muddy smelly spaces. Growing up in Maine I always got to visit happy cows, the ones at the farm where we would get ice cream. While in seminary in California I had the chance to drive down to LA from Berkeley and see the stretches of smelly cattle, with no grass in sight, just mud, and manure. I imagine the cows that are in my corned beef hash did not grow up on a happy farm in Maine.

All of these stories exist on my breakfast plate. And there are certainly other stories that I am leaving out. Where was this plate made, China right, I imagine that was a happy factory….

I wanted to tell you this morning about my plate of corned beef hash and poached eggs Martha because one of things I want to tell you about what I’ve experienced of God/Truth is that this invitation to love, to peace, to the Holy City, to this space of perpetual light within, is an invitation that must exist within the tension of beautiful and terrible stories. That if we wait to respond to the invitation after we have created a perfect or beautiful story, we will be lost forever waiting, forever outside the gates. That in fact, by our efforts, all attempts to make our stories more beautiful, to cut out all of the ugly dimensions of life, this effort becomes the ugliest effort of all, this effort will become the cause of the bulk of our human suffering. The effort to make things as we would wish.

If we are to welcome one another into the Holy City, if we are to help each other to grow in wisdom and love, we have to accept that each of us is doing the very best that we can within the mix of stories that have shaped and molded the life that we have lived so far. We need to accept ourselves in this way, and we need to accept one another in this way. Brené Brown has been a powerful messenger for this truth with her research on shame. She has declared it from a social scientific perspective, that life is better if we all believe that everyone is doing the best that they can, that if we inhabited the shoes of our parents or our neighbors or our enemies we would have behaved exactly as they did.

So if you were me, at this moment, you would enjoy this delicious plate of food as I did. My husband would have chosen differently. Many of you reading would have chosen differently, maybe you would have wanted toast, maybe only one egg, maybe fried instead of poached. Maybe you would have looked for organic corned beef hash if that is actually a thing. Maybe next time I will do it differently. My good friend Lewis Randa, founder of the Peace Abbey in Sherborn, MA is the first to start to plant a seed again for vegetarianism in me. He is a warm and kind and loving man who has built this incredible monument to peace in this quaint New England suburb and the central two statues in the memorial are Gandhi and a large cow. But I’m just not there, the pull to familiarity, to trying to simply feed myself and my children in an overfilled life has kept me unmoved. And that’s okay. It’s what is right now. It need not always be.

I’m actually right now about a third of the way into the Autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi on my Kindle. I’m enjoying reading the details of his journey to becoming a human, to fulfilling his role, which of course we all know will be exceptional, in life. I’ve been surprised and pleased by how much of the book is about vegetarianism and sorting through other personal intimate aspects of how he chose to live. He calls his book “The Story of my Experiments with Truth.” I love this. He’s sharing how he chose, how he made his way. He’s not preachy about it. (Well maybe a little sometimes.) But clear.

All we can all do is make our way, make our decisions. We can’t do it all right. And we also can’t do it all wrong. As life flows from life, and we are all shaped by our ancestors and the values of the place and people to whom we are born, much of how we live is built in, not for a second questioned or considered. Things like language, the necessity to wear clothes and poop in toilets, are just “what is done.” And it used to be that many more dimensions of life were just “what is done.” The last 300 years in particular have been a time of slowly questioning these edifices, wondering about if this must be the way it is done, or if there could be other ways. The last 300 years have been in many ways an era of rebellion. “Ah you say that this is the way it’s done? Well I say it’s done this way!” Rebelling, reacting, ping pong balls flying in a million different and new directions, each of course however always starting from the foundation of the initial narrative.

The moment that I believe we are in now. This moment of the New Church, that Swedenborg was given a glimpse of, is a time to finally recognize that we can actually step back far enough that we need no longer be entirely controlled by any stories any more, whether by being complicit or reactive. This primary story that for most of the world, certainly for me, is this story of the strong, fit, powerful, smart, holy, white, male figure, that I must primp and seek to perfect myself for. When we discover the light within, the space of life and acceptance and love within, and see ourselves as this, then we can step back from this narrative and see it for what it is, see it’s effects, see what it has been keeping hidden, ask that guy to take a seat for a second to be quiet for a while so that others, long silent, can speak. Not so we can blindly follow what they have to say either but so we can get a fuller picture of the stories, all that is possible in our human psyche, the full range of choices that are available to us.

We are in a moment where we no longer need to be totally dominated by one ideal, one idol of perfection meant to guide and give meaning to our lives. We need not be dominated by this ideal by seeking to fulfill it, or seeking to rebel from it, we can just ask him to sit, and look around at who else is in the room. And observing all that is before us, all that is inviting us, all that is challenging us, all that is, we can choose, from in the midst of it all. We can choose freely. We can choose freely, maybe for the first time.

And this choice. This ability to choose, instead of to be possessed or compelled by any one of the myriad of personalities, of beliefs, of compulsions, of traditions that roam around inside of us, I think this is actually the spiritual freedom that Swedenborg was describing as the aim of the spiritual regeneration process. This process begins by us living out the stories of others, then starting to weave our own, and ultimately looking back and seeing the impermanent nature of all the stories, that these stories can be put down on paper, set aside, held at arm's length, and then experienced as we choose.

We can be free. We can be reborn in the spirit. We can escape the Matrix. We can stop getting triggered by our families. We can let go of old stories. We can do hard things as Glennon Doyle’s podcast is titled. We can grow up. We can find each other again. We can find ourselves again. It’s time. It’s not too late. It’s not something for later. It’s something for now.

I needed to tell you about my corned beef hash and two poached eggs Martha because we all live in compromised positions. We all live with choices that we make and feel proud of and choices that we make and feel badly for. And those we make because we really don’t have any other choice. We all are just doing our best to allow our lives, to allow the fullness of who we are to manifest, and it’s a process. And it’s never going to all get set right.

Utopian communities and spiritual traditions have often sought to declare the details of the “good life,” the ways of living that would be most conducive to peace and harmony. The rules, the practices that will help life be set right.

In the New Church I believe that ultimately we all need to determine for ourselves what these rules and practices will be, how we will live. And more than that we need to be willing to abandon rules and practices that begin to feel at odds with the inner pull of who we are. I believe that as we awaken to the ultimate freedom that each moment holds, behind the stories of should and ought, we can become endlessly creative.

We can then decide how, in the midst of the story that is mine, the places of influence that I hold, the privileges I enjoy, the limitations and hardships that I struggle with, how I will live. How I will eat, and create and share, and enjoy and be present to this one precious life. I believe that we will get to this freedom more quickly if we can learn to accept the full range of human difference. I think it’s quite possible that we are just touching the edge of what true human freedom could be and do once unleashed. Once there is a collective agreement that no one really has any idea what the “good life” is and so we can finally each go within and consider what it is in fact we each most want to do?

That’s what I’m trying to discover. And that’s what I’d like to devote my life to helping others discover. And that’s where I wonder if the church could be a place where we make these collective discoveries, where we find shared wantings, and build and grow together.

For me to accept myself fully, and others, I need to ask my big, efficient, strong, punctual, emotionally stoic, hard working, ambitious, always right man to sit his white ass down. I am getting to know the quiet sad young women in the corner, the dark wise crone, the playful child, and many others still arriving. I am coming to listen for whispers instead of demands, to watch the clouds, and to trust that which brings stillness. I am starting to uncover something that rests secure amidst and beyond and behind all the noise. That cannot be tampered with and can be expressed in many ways that have as of yet not been discovered.

Can’t the church be a place where we find ways to watch and discover this deeper reality together? Was the church that for you? Can it be again?

Yours, Sage

The Bible, Jesus & Tradition

Okay I am going to make a sharp pivot now Martha and tackle some of the primary religious forms that our understanding of church centers on. Because when I start saying things about how what is real, eternal, lasting is beyond all forms, beyond all stories, inevitably those who are most eager to primarily identify with that eternal realm will get caught by… “Well yes, but certainly that form, that story, that one will last, that one will stay, that one is important to hold onto.”

What about the Bible?

What about Jesus?

What about this tradition that claims to contain the imprint of this eternal realm, made holy by generations of human involvement?

What about these prayers, and practices, these beliefs and statements of faith?

What about the sacraments?

What about Swedenborg’s revelation?

Aren’t we charged with protecting these ‘holy’ forms? Isn’t that what it means to be the church? (And this is where we are going to dive deep into paradox because there is no other way to the truth.)

I do not believe we are in fact charged with protecting these ‘holy’ forms. I don’t think that’s the right way to think about it. The essence of these forms, these teachings and practices, and stories, is Divine, they are inspired, as everything of value is. And these forms provide a way to gather and seek to make connections with the divinity within. And in the course of time, in this course of time that we are all sharing together, fellow travelers on the ship of time, MANY of the forms that have served people in their efforts to find meaning and purpose and spiritual wholeness in life, are no longer expressing the wholeness that they began with. They have worn out for people on the whole, because the truth that Swedenborg declared, that life was worship and worship was life, is now true for people. Very few people locate their primary spiritual connection at a church. It’s now within or it's nowhere. That’s just true. It’s true for every Swedenborgian I know, as involved as any of them are in a church. They meet God just as often at the beach, caring for their children, in nature, as on Sunday at 11 am. They find God at church too, yes, but not only there. Everything has changed for everyone.

I meet people ALL THE TIME EVERY DAY, who have a deep and abiding faith and yet feel no need to live out their faith through involvement in a local church. Many see the life and practices of the church as having no bearing on their “real” spiritual life. Or they may hope to be involved in a spiritual community but see the effort involved to be too much, the barriers too great, and the payoff too uncertain.

Like the dream that I shared in the beginning of this letter Martha, we are all carrying around our own cell phone, our own access to God, we don’t need to find a payphone to talk to God, to access that connection. We can and we must access it for ourselves.

We need God all the time, and so the best place to carry God around, to carry the church around is in our pocket, in our breath, in our cells, our own awareness, the temple of our inner and outer body, and all that transpires there. What happens at an annual church convention or in the sanctuary of the Chapel, those are lovely things, but they are not the fullness of the church. The Bible stories that we read and seek to explore and understand can help point us back to the experiences we ourselves are having, but it is attention to our own actual lived experience that must be primary.

And while I believe in the power of the Bible’s narrative to help us on our journey I also worry that it may perpetuate tired plot lines, rehash stories that are changing with us, that need to change. I wonder if for our spirits to grow and expand there may come a time when we will need to set the Bible stories down for a bit, they have been speaking loudly and for a very long time.

What I am finding in my own experience, is that I have needed to set all the stories down, imagine the possibility, that even the Bible, with all its beauty, all its incredible and rich detail and insight into the spiritual life, is only an appearance and not essential to the spiritual life. Swedenborg likens the Word to the clouds passing in the sky, helpful for the sun to pass through, to bring rain and help move water through its cycles to enrich the earth with life. So beautiful, so important, but not essential, instead part of the created realm. That the essentials of faith are beyond the clouds, deeper than any story, and in this way we can meet one another there. But we have to come out in the open. We have to be willing to let go.

And the great paradoxical mystery is if we can let go of the idea that any story, any prayer, any profession, or belief is the essential truth, is full and complete and unquestionable, then, once we have stopped holding onto anything, now everything is available to us again, and we find truth in every story, every practice, every poem. We don’t have to lose the Bible, we can keep enjoying the mystery of it, but only if we remember that IT is not GOD, and that as Jesus reminded his disciples when he left, “You will do even greater things than me.”

Now my suspicion is that most of the members of the General Convention of the Swedenborgian Church have to some extent already gone through this process. That most of us are willing to stand with our Muslim, Hindu, Atheist friends and family and know that we all have equal access to this essential wholeness. If we didn’t believe this we’d be more intent on proselytizing our friends! So there is a deep openness already in our community and it is expressed more centrally in some of our communities than others.

At the Portland New Church, where I was first involved as a teenager, they had a beautiful candle lighting ritual that right from the beginning named the Bible, as A sacred book, and not THE sacred book. An important distinction. Other communities I have worshiped with and led would have not been comfortable with that language, and maintained an elaborate opening of the Word with a liturgy rebound with biblical phrasing. Many communities include a mix of language, some designed to lift up the central unity of Swedenborg’s Christianity, and others to place his revelation in the context of other traditions.

Cambridge is of the more traditional ilk, its tagline before I arrived “Traditional worship with a progressive outlook.” Or something like that. But I am wondering if you really can be progressive and traditional at the same time? Perhaps it would be fine if I could be assured that everyone in attendance had let go their firm hold of the language, and was now just enjoying it because it was familiar, and elicited their sense of holiness. But I am not convinced of that at all. Instead, as our community grows smaller and smaller, as many Swedenborgians feel quite content living their faith without regular attendance in “church,” the external forms feel less and less important, and sometimes actually reinforcing false understandings of what the church is. We need to teach people to be free, to let go, to hold lightly. Saying these words in the same way every week for all time is reinforcing the idea that these forms are what we believe in.

How do we use forms to point to the formless Martha?

I suppose this is why Swedenborg spent so much time describing the way that churches are born and die. That the formless must be expressed through forever changing forms. This is true for all of life that is continually being born and dying and this is true for the church if it is to be a living entity.

Can we let the forms of the church die, that are dying? Can we see that this is not the end of the church, but simply a necessary falling away, so that a truly New Church can come to be?

I hope so. Sage

A death in the congregation

I just found out that our most prominent patriarch in the Cambridge Society the New Jerusalem died yesterday afternoon Martha. I think you knew him and his wife, that you have likely spent time with them over the years. They have been the matriarch and patriarch of the Cambridge Society for many decades.

I am heartbroken. For pure and also complicated reasons.

One of the most straightforward, unquestionable parts of the role of minister that I have come to understand, is that ministers show up at deaths, during illness, at moments of tragedy and loss. That is our terrain, the holy moments when we shine, when we are needed, relied on. In a world where the role of minister is less and less vital to the functioning of society, tragedies, deaths, times of grief are the one remaining space where we get to be the hero, the needed one, the bringer of calm and meaning and hope.

In the seven years that I have served in Cambridge I have not once been invited into such a moment. Aside from the gift of accompanying two church members through the loss of their beloved cat no deaths have occurred. Illnesses and hospital stays are often shared after the fact. I did go and visit one church member once at the hospital, but I wasn’t invited but made my own determination to go. And now in the midst of my Sabbatical the death of our patriarch occurs. The proper order of things in this circumstance is to allow Eleanor and Susannah, who are covering for me while I’m away to cover this. They are more than capable. And if a funeral is planned during my Sabbatical I will attend, but not in a leadership role.

I will not get to shine in this moment, show up and declare my usefulness, my importance. I will have to sit back and struggle through the sadness of loss and death like everyone else. I will also have to sit with the burden of fearing I am disappointing others by not inhabiting the role that I have been called to inhabit. That respecting the boundaries of this Sabbatical time, trusting in the leadership will not be understood and there will be a feeling of betrayal and hurt felt by all those reeling with this loss.

And Martha, he wasn’t very happy with me this past year. While over the years we had developed a fondness, and I sensed a respect and appreciation, he didn’t quite see the problems in Cambridge that I did, and was not very interested in any changes I might like to bring to the liturgy, the language or the way of things.

He loved the church, and served it faithfully, tirelessly for decades. I can only imagine that he had come to experience the church as this steady, solid, something in his life that was where he experienced a connection point with the divine. While I know he had experiences of God outside of the Cambridge Society, in his own devotional life, in his study, and in quite intense experiences of insight that he himself would dare to describe as divine revelation, still something about the Chapel, the persons gathered there, the theology of the New Church, and the specific experience of worshiping in the sanctuary at 50 Quincy Street in Cambridge on Sunday mornings at 11 am meant a great deal to him, perhaps functioned as his primary connection point to the Divine. His tireless labors for the church were a natural outpouring of the love he experienced in this place. It is not surprising that the best way to express that love, in his opinion, was to protect the continuation of the church as he had known and loved it. Even as he had witnessed decline, as he had lived through contentious times of dispute and dysfunction, these external troubles did not dissuade him, did not lead him to doubt his faith in the preciousness, the sacredness that he had discovered at Swedenborg Chapel.

I wish I had had more time with him, to learn about what exactly it was that he had discovered of God in his years at Swedenborg Chapel. Hear more from him directly about the love that bound him so devotedly. I wonder if he’d had a chance to share more about that love with me, if we’d had a chance to dwell in that love together more often, if maybe we would have found a way to move forward together. I have to wonder if he’d had a chance to really share the essentials of that love, if he could have been assured that I shared that essential love, assured that I wanted to nurture the essential church just as he had for so many years, if maybe he would have been able to allow change to the church’s external form.

Before the pandemic, when we were all walking around acting normally, in the early stages of the casting of the vision for the Helen Keller Center he was very supportive, excited by the idea of a new and perhaps quite effective church outreach. And before that we had joined together for one meeting of the worship committee where I had proposed several changes to the gendered language in the church’s Statement of Faith, which were I believe, half accepted and half rejected, which by many measures could be considered a success. Before the pandemic I moved with mostly ordered patient steps and this built, I believe, a foundation of mutual respect.

After the pandemic of course was a different story. The pandemic broke me. I have a lot to say about how (enough to fill another letter addressed to my Generation X siblings who have shared with me in this most special mid-life ‘growth opportunity’). But for my purposes here I will just say that in addition to all of the personal tumult and challenge of the pandemic, getting the opportunity to stop doing church as we had always been doing it, was a special and well timed (depending on your perspective) opportunity. It was not all bad. I connected with more people during the pandemic, more seekers, more fellow church members from other geographical locations than ever possible when in person. And the online preaching. While I know my husband and other clergy who usually have a significant community gathered on Sundays struggled with preaching to a camera, I kind of thrived in that environment. Much less intimidating than standing at the front of a large sanctuary preaching to 5 people, 1 sitting in the very back row.

These opportunities, coupled with the existential strain of the pandemic, and entering midlife left me changed. As I tried to figure out how to return from the pandemic, how to pick back up the vision of the Helen Keller Center and to return to in-person worship, something just short circuited. I couldn’t do both, and found myself unwilling to jump back into performance of the older forms of church, that while precious to some were beginning to feel inauthentic, empty, to me. It felt the only thing I could do was declare a Jubilee, declare that nothing was fitting quite right together and that we just couldn’t, we just couldn’t go back to the way things were. Not when we’d seen we could do things differently.

While before the pandemic I was cautious, plodding, intentional, after the pandemic I was a woman possessed. Driven from within, uncompromising. I felt the call of the New Church like a trumpet blast awakening me from the slumber of the status quo. The world needs the New Church, I need the New Church, and what we are doing can’t yet be it! Not for this generation. Perhaps it was for a time, now there must be some way to use this Chapel, this space, these resources to declare more boldly this incredible vision of the New Church, so much more radical, more potentially transformative than what the Cambridge Society of the New Jerusalem had thus far been manifesting. Is it not our responsibility to wonder, to listen, to let things slip into confusion for a bit, that something truly NEW might emerge?

This felt necessary to me. Just as it likely felt necessary to this particularly important church elder to advocate for a return to our traditional liturgy mid-way through the Jubilee. This was and is creative tension, how all new things come into being.

Perhaps I had no right to declare a Jubilee. Perhaps in seeing that I did not have the heart to return to maintaining what was I should have brought this immediately to the officers, resigned my position, left the church and sought other employment. That would have perhaps been the more reasonable thing to do. The more upright thing to do.

But the confusion lay in the question of what in fact the church actually was. Was it these 12 people whose names were in the membership book, who voted to hire me, and that voted each year to rehire me? Or was the church this larger mysterious entity that Swedenborg articulated, that I was called to harness, to make spaces to receive? Was the church the larger life of the Chapel, the Harvard Chaplaincy, the wedding couples, the Taizé services and concerts, and the small sprawling group of souls starting to be lit up for the vision of the Helen Keller Center? Was the church, people as of yet to arrive, who would resonate with what might be revealed in a time of creative confusion, that would want to co-create something new together? Up until this moment my understanding was that the church I was serving was all of these things and perhaps even tilted more in the direction of those not yet to have arrived, than those 12 who on an external level held, and continue to hold all of the decision making power. Up until that moment, I had somehow held all of these constituencies in balance, in tension really. But the tension could no longer hold.

So I did what I did, and here we are. Some have been baffled. Some have been inspired. Some have been bothered. I’m sure all of those reactions continue to exist in various degrees. One of the goals of this letter is to try to explain in as much detail as possible what this Jubilee has been all about, to clarify the questions that I have and that I want desperately to ask with others.

And to get at the proper questions, in any situation, you have to first tell the truth as well as you can, describe the situation at hand. This is why I have sought to be as honest as I possibly can. One of the other difficult side effects of a dying church, is that it is often believed that it is not an okay thing to admit. We can’t admit we are dying, we can’t admit that we are tired, that our membership is in decline, that we don’t have a budget, that one of our church officers has taken up residence in the building. It’s strange but this habit of lying about death is not just something the church does in regard to itself but something I see fellow clergy doing and church elders, being dishonest about an illness somehow in a belief that this is proper and noble to keep our suffering, keep our decline a secret.

I’m so tired of secrets, for whatever noble aims we may believe they hold.

I mentioned it before but I have to say again that I think George was really on to something in his last message to us, naming the danger of all that we hide in shame. That this is not the way of the New Church. That in honestly accepting ourselves and everyone else, as we are, that this is a New Church act, a New Church degree of wholeness, that may not be as scary as we all imagine, that may bring about the transformation that the New Church promises.

Our patriarch has just died, and I am sad. I feel an ache in my heart for him, and for his family, but also for our little church family, for all those who loved him and were loved by him. He was a giant. He will not be forgotten.

Just like you Martha.

Just like you and so many elders of our church, faithful ones, who have held the church so long.

While on some level we were at odds, not in agreement about the form the most external level of the church must take, on the deepest most real level we both love the same essential church. We want to save the same family. Our church is telling the same generational story being told everywhere.

I hope you have seen it Martha, but I am convinced that the Disney film Encanto is one of the best depictions of this story of generational change. I am Mirabelle. For our family to survive, our Encanto cannot just be added to, it needs an entirely new foundation! As Disney’s Encanto so beautifully depicts, things often must be totally destroyed before anything new can come to be, death must precede new life.

AND as our fair patriarch liked to ascribe to small pins that he would distribute to church members and visitors “Life is a permanent condition.”

Death precedes life in an unending stream. We must die to ourselves in every moment that we might be alive! Life and death are the ultimate false polarity, two sides of the same coin, two points in time of the very same organism. Perhaps this is where it is important to be more precise. Birth and death are two sides of the same coin. In between, the substance that moves between and amidst this false polarity that we use to describe two different processes that are inherently joined, is LIFE. LIFE is a Permanent Condition. Life is not opposed to some substantial dark force called death, some nothingness, some evil. There is only ONE LIFE, and that LIFE is total, and that life moves through stages of birth and death, continual, ongoing, spiraling cycles of spiritual evolution, of expansion, of creation, of diversity, of LIFE. Life is a permanent condition!

Those of us left in this tiny denomination that I have been so blessed to be church with over these 30 years or so now, we don’t always agree on the details, but I must believe we share something, some goodwill, a common presence, a common desire to serve, to share, to learn, to play, to welcome, to belong. A common experience of oneness of community, of life, of God. A common understanding of the deep meaning at the heart of life, the deep meaning in nature, in the Bible, and in the stories of our own lives. We have shared a form in common, and that form is dying. Can we find together that LIFE that doesn’t end, find that which doesn’t change so that we can be less attached to the details?

The details of the world have changed. As a member of Generation X I see it perhaps more clearly and closely than most. I was born in 1977 when there were 3 television stations, typewriters and rotary phones. Now I carry around a super computer in my back pocket and my children spend all day watching YouTubers play video games. Everything has changed. Nothing makes any sense. Any attempt I might make to try to give my child a childhood anything remotely familiar to what I experienced is swimming upstream against a tidal wave. The externals don’t fit, they don’t match up, they are fights not worth having. The only thing that will save any of us is a return to what is internal. A decision to see our children and ourselves as whole and complete and beloved, doing the best we can to find our way in the environment that we find ourselves in. Maybe someday we will collectively evolve to the point where we intentionally create a world that is more nurturing to the human spirit, but for now we need to just look around and accept what we see. Accept what toxins we are swimming in at the moment. Stop trying to force these toxins to conform to some earlier version of life that we remember and feel is superior. Not to focus on the externals. But to decide if there are common internals that actually do carry forward from generation to generation. Common essentials, that we can agree upon and that we can protect. What are the essentials of the church that we have always followed and that we might follow still?

This is the conversation I’d like to have with my congregation in Cambridge and with everyone throughout this Swedenborgian Church Movement that we are all a part of. What are the essentials of the New Church? Is there a thread line, a simple core that could lead us forward? Tie us together past to future. A remnant. That can allow the next generation to move forward with blessing and actual support, without the burden of continual suspicion and questioning if what is happening is “actually the church.” Can we dig down, can we be honest?

Maybe what’s rising in me is only for me, and I will see it’s time for me to move on. Maybe my bold assertions will lead to conversation about what is essential but it will be too hard, people will be too tired, too conflicted. Maybe there will be strong disagreement on what is essential and we won’t be able to find common ground. Maybe it’s time for another schism? Maybe we will find what is essential and agree but we won’t be able to find new modes of expression? Maybe we will die anyway?

But for my money, whatever the future brings, telling the truth now, getting clearer on who we are, who we most essentially are, can’t be a lost effort. I believe this inquiry will be inherently useful to all involved, personally, collectively, globally, universally. To me ultimately there is no down side. The truth will set us free.

The only perceived downside will be facing the inherent fear of looking closely at ourselves. It won't always be pretty. But it might ultimately be the beauty we are all looking for. And for many of us who have no more time for bullshit it is the only way.

I wrote this poem as I was preparing for this sabbatical. It’s for me, but perhaps it’s for all of us.

Sage, don't be afraid. Even as fear taunts and yells, as it comes too close. As it tries to suffocate you, destroy you, keep you forever frozen in the moment.

Sage, this fear is not you. It rises up from your DNA, a millennia of your ancestors, human and otherwise. To keep you safe, to stay like them, trapped in their accumulated emergencies. This fear is a threshold, a doorway, a passage that only appears powerful. It is the echo of a thousand stories told long ago, told incompletely.

Sage, don't be afraid. Sit with the fear but don’t believe that it is real, that it’s you, that it has any power over tomorrow. It is the fleeting cries of warnings no longer applicable. Warnings that may have been useful to your ancestors but will not serve you.

Sage, don't be afraid.

Love, Sage

So many things can be true at the same time.

Martha I’m hoping that I’m coming near the end, that if there is more to say, I am ready to say it and then finish this thrust of communication. It’s time for my words to actually be shared so that I can be still and hear what calls to be said in response. But at the same time, before I can end this letter I know, I know I must offer at least my best understanding of what could emerge next for the life of the New Church, something concrete, something constructive. It is not just enough to name all that is dying around me, that is no longer the living form of the church, surely.

I was able to spend some time this week speaking with my fabulous peer ear and friend, pastor of another one of our beautiful and struggling congregations, a fellow minister mom, and wonderful colleague who has become a good friend. I could hear in our conversation how supportive she was of the questions I was asking, and yet a concern that if these questions don’t lead to any new direction for the church, do not lead to answers, a way forward then what’s the point of asking them? This desire in her is part of what drives me to want to keep digging until I discover some jewel, some, something that could be lifted out of the rubble, and lead our church community in a new direction. But at the same time I feel hesitant, because it seems to me that until we, together dig, into the questions, dig into the truth of who we have been, of who we have wished to be, and who we truly are now, all new forms, new directions will just be reformulations of the same thing, will not offer up anything truly new.

Somehow what I want to do in this letter Martha is to bring us back to the roots, the depths of our collective faith, so that we can bravely ask these questions without yet knowing what the answers will be. It seems to me that our essential faith, in a God and a spiritual realm of existence that can never be fully defined by anything that we would say about it, would lend itself to a certain confidence, a certain willingness to be confused, to acknowledge all that we do not yet know fully, that we may be able to understand this choice not as dangerous but as the height of wisdom.

And yet while I believe our faith points us in this direction, I know that in actuality we are not often that brave. That to operate on this human plane we feel the need to hold onto many forms, to be defined by many words and ideas and roles, institutions and communities, and that this is sometimes even more true within the “church” that seeks to mediate between the unknowable and the knowable realms. Even as we look to the “church” to expand our view of life, to help us to look up and beyond the mundane and selfish, it seems that we can only stand to look up so high, out so far. That we often seek to rest, to stop, to say “yes, that’s the truth, that’s enough,” with the language and practices, and formulations that we receive from the church as we understand it, as we experience it, as a solid, consistent form. The church in its current form has been a comfort to us so how can we risk losing it? And so this language, these practices, these formulations, while meant to point us beyond, become the focus of our gaze and our attachment and the prospect of questioning them becomes incredibly difficult.

This just seems to be the way we humans are wired. I imagine it has always been the case. I know it’s true because I feel it within. I want to project strength, confidence, assurance, especially if I am encouraging change. There is almost no earthly benefit to acknowledging confusion. To intentionally enter a time of questions without ready made answers is terrifying. Not only that but it is an act that is in opposition to the strivings of our human conditioning, it is an admitting defeat, it can be perceived as irresponsible, destructive even, not anything I, or I imagine many others, want to have any part of.

External experiences of course thrust us into situations of confusion all the time. The Covid-19 pandemic has been such a collective situation that has forced nearly the entire population of the planet into a time of questioning, of confusion. As the pandemic started to wane and we were charged with “returning,” I declared that we needed to not waste this collective confusion, but to stay with it a bit longer, to choose it, to dive intentionally headlong into it, and see, see what we might discover. In Cambridge I declared a New Church Jubilee, a time to meet head on the confusion and aimlessness we’ve been in for decades as our organization has slowly dwindled.

For me the pandemic peeled off the last layer of denial that “everything was fine.” That in fact everything was not fine, inside and outside of the church, and that as people of faith, as a minister of this bold faith pointing to a new heaven and a new earth, a new configuration of reality inside and out, we must be missing something! What is stopping us from stopping, from looking, from trying to discover this new reality that we proclaim and have been formed for? What is stopping us from wondering where and in what way the Lord has been and is seeking to provide a New Church? A new life for us as individuals, and a new collective life? As many wonderful experiences as I have had thus far in the church, I can see that while lovely, they have not yet led to this kind of total transformation that Swedenborg’s vision seems to invite us into. And worse than not yet affecting transformation, what I have begun to see is the possibility that some of what we have been up to, how we organize and understand ourselves, has become an obstacle to transformation for me, and I have to believe for others as well.

I think of so many beloved colleagues who have had to “step away,” mostly and for some entirely from our common project of being the Swedenborgian Church. I think of the small group of us left behind so committed and determined, and struggling to persist under the massive weight of buildings, by-laws and budgets. Who has time for discovering spiritual freedom in all of this?

But how to say this?! How to speak this truth?! Without breaking every promise, every vow that I have made, to serve, to care for, to protect, to administer “the church?” People don’t come to church for confusion, for groundlessness. As a minister in the church my job is to bring comfort, peace, confidence, hope. My job is to help people through difficult times, not to create difficulty. How could inviting the church into a period of uncertainty, more uncertainty, increased uncertainty possibly help anyone, possibly fulfill my duty of spiritual leadership? It will instead push us over the brink! I know this is true because it’s what I’m experiencing. I am being pushed over the brink as I follow the path of truth that seems to lead me further and further away from the forms that have given me security and constancy thus far. I am being pushed over the brink, forced to trust in something that offers no job security, no immediate clarity or answers.

And yet. I cannot do otherwise. Not without losing my integrity. Not without abandoning the call of God. Not without an effort to again thrust my head deep in the sand and to forget what I have seen. Not without actively refusing the invitation to deeper wisdom, to spiritual regeneration, to this process of growth that God/Life is orchestrating.

As much as I am scared, as much as I am terribly scared that answers won’t come, that new forms won’t come. As much as I am scared that what I see others will not, that I will be cast off, excommunicated, shown to be somehow outside the bounds of this New Church that we are seeking to be. As much as I am scared about my livelihood, how I will be employed, how I will care for my family, all of this fear, all of this very real natural human concern, cannot have the final say. It cannot! I cannot lose myself to it. I cannot lose my call to it. I cannot lose my integrity, or my faith in these concerns. This to me is all that is clear.

While I find that asking questions breeds confusion, for me it has also started to reveal that which cannot be questioned. It has brought me home to myself, brought me home to the gift of aliveness, the gift of being able to observe and experience all that is, confusion or not. It has brought me home to the swirl of voices, the thoughts that we Swedenborgians identify as input from another realm, helped me to differentiate between what is steady, what is real and this swirl, this noise, these many shoulds and oughts. It has helped me to discover that which doesn’t move, that part of my experience that is steady, that is lasting, the space within. Within and also between. I feel this spaciousness not only when I am alone, but often more acutely when I am able to be fully present with others.

I have begun to experience this space, to see it as the ground of my own being, and it seems quite a simple leap to understand it as the ground of everyone else’s being too! When I get to this space I am not Sage, set apart, alone, burdened with all of the markers of identity and personality that I have layered on over the years, sought to curate and perfect. When I am in this space, set just back from all the noise, all the thoughts, all the feelings, all the forms life takes, in this still space I am free, I am nothing, I am everything, I am the whole universe. This space is so simple, so ever present, that it has taken me 4 decades to forget about it and then to discover it again.

I am confident that it was this space, this depth of being that Swedenborg finally discovered, once he stopped his frantic scientific search for the soul, and settled into his breath, into the inner space of his own being. Because of who he was, this discovery lit up all of his intellectual powers and he devoted the second half of his life to exploring this inner space and to extensively describing it and translating the religious texts and practices of his Christian tradition through his experience. In seeking to describe his discoveries he offered us one of the most beautiful complete records of the inner dive, and powerful new insights into the deeper meaning of the Bible and the sacraments of the Christian Church.

The insights he brought back are so powerful and so true that we continue to see them emerging everywhere. The truth of correspondences, the way the deeper spiritual realm seeks to communicate through the natural, through language, story and phenomenon. The unity of spiritual traditions, the oneness of God that calls us all home regardless of where we have been born or what teachings we have been offered. The inherent rhythms of the spiritual path, of growth, of forgetting and remembering, of becoming and being, of leaving the Garden and making our way to the Holy City. The freedom that we are all being invited to, “to enter into the mysteries of faith,” on our own, apart from a reliance on external authority. The fact of Oneness, of love as the substance of all of life, all of creation, manifest through wisdom as form. I could go on and on. He wrote SO MUCH! He saw so much. He experienced so much. And it is all there, and it is pointing us all home. And yet, like all words, like all previously laid paths, like all external forms, we can become lost in what he shared, we can get lost in his experience so that we don’t take our own seriously.

I believe in Swedenborg’s vision. I believe that he is seeking to communicate the truth. I believe that he is seeking to communicate something essential, to himself and to “the church” as it existed in his time and place. Much of what he shares is radical and timeless. Much of what he shares is specific to his human conditioning as an 18th century educated western male. All of this is not surprising, and in the time and place that we live in now, we know that all truth emerges in this dance of the specifics of a person’s conditioning and their access to a deeper collective truth. It is not that we no longer believe in objective truth, but that we understand it does not fall from the sky or the untainted intellect in any kind of pure state. We understand that truth emerges through life, through experience, through our embodied nature, through story, through dreams, through struggle, through shared “ah ha,” moments of recognition and knowing. When we name who we are, what we have experienced, the story of our human conditioning AND what we have come to know we are the most powerful, the most real, we are not belittling our access to the truth or glorifying it. This, to me, is where there is a path forward for us. If there is a way for us to be a New Church, this is what I believe we are called to make central. To affirm and to nurture the spiritual life of persons. And guess what, as I arrive here I realize, at one point this was in our denominational mission statement?! Was it not? Is it not?! Perhaps what I am seeing, what I am yearning for, and seeking to break through to is not in fact anything new, but what many within our tradition have already sought to express, already sought to manifest. Perhaps my part is only a continuation of this expression, perhaps what I am desperately seeking to communicate is not that we need to go a new way, but that we have to keep going , keep going deeper into what we already know to be true. That it is time to dive further into this awareness of the Divine ground of all being, of all people, the integrity of the spiritual path that we are all on, to not stop, to not stop exploring, to not stop listening, to not get caught, snagged by any preconceived notion of what the external forms of this process must look like.

What I am concerned with, one of my questions, is if the Swedenborgian Church of North America, in seeking to be humble, in seeking to acknowledge that it is not yet the fullness of the New Church that Swedenborg declared has become complacent with existing in the same form as the Old Church that Swedenborg declared was on its way out. That we have stopped wrestling with the bigger, deeper, harder questions of what it will take to truly be a New Church, to exist in this mysterious Holy City with its many gates and perpetual light. That the vision is just too darn big to contemplate, so we have settled for what we know, what has some ground underneath it, the structures of church that our society accepts, even as we watch these structures crumbling around us.

What I am concerned with is that the Swedenborgian Church of North America has become a book club, a circle of friends, a tribe, a faction, just like all other factions. While we proclaim a New Church that will welcome all people of the earth, where all tribes will come together as one, we function instead as one particular tribe, with many quirks, many particularities, and many mandates for belonging.

I found my way to belonging in the innocence of my teenage years. I am a part of a large contingency in the church that was drawn in through friendship, through retreats and camp, through play and the joy of community, not through Swedenborg’s writings, not through the sacraments and rituals of the church. And so my belonging thus far has come easily, naturally, unquestionably. As my call to ministry moved me closer to the center of the church and its operations I have watched how difficult this belonging has been for others to discover. Colleagues in seminary who have been drawn to the community, drawn to the ideas, even pursued ordination but then often quickly fallen away from the life of the church, found no hold, no space to belong. As a congregational pastor I’ve watched newcomers be grilled about “where they come from,” what right to belonging they hold. In some instances the only acceptable answers are a familial connection or a love of Swedenborg.

Now humility is of course not a bad thing. And if we truly are just another tribe, perhaps that too is not inherently a bad thing. Perhaps it can be no other way? Perhaps what I am yearning for is too subtle, too universal. Perhaps we must exist within the particularities of what we have been. Perhaps we are meant to serve this small band of humans that wants this particular experience, to spend their days immersed in Swedenborg’s spiritual life, to maintain the practices of “church” that we have known, and with the safety and familiarity of this family we have created.

But…..for me…..now…..at this moment in our collective life as a species, the call of the New Church, the call of the Holy City is too vital, too needed, too potentially transformative for what we have been so far to be enough. I feel concerned that while the vision of the New Church has permeated human society, inspired and infused with life great visionaries and thinkers who have changed the world, like William Blake, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Carl Jung, Helen Keller, that those of us involved with maintaining the institution of the church meant to embody this great inspiration have been stuck, stuck perpetuating Old Church life, stuck spiraling around in Swedenborg’s insights and not boldly claiming and seeking to embody any new insights of our own.

I believe we exist at a pivotal moment in the evolution of our species. I believe we exist at the pivotal moment that Swedenborg was pointing to when he declared the emergence of a New Church. I believe this evolution is happening, and will happen whether the Swedenborgian Church of North American continues to exist or not. I believe, if we choose, that the Swedenborgian Church of North American can play a useful role in allaying the inherent suffering of this evolutionary process, in pointing humanity towards its essence, towards the higher more essential life that will remain steady and lasting as most old forms break down, as we face the cataclysm of this moment of global political, environmental and spiritual crisis. I believe we have been created for this moment, and I for one want to devote the second half of my life to attending to it.

Everyone is looking for a New Church. The external authorities that have provided the human community with direction for centuries no longer hold. The stories of what is possible are so multitudinous, so diverse that we cannot find purchase in them. We must, we must look within. We must find that space, that steadiness that is the ground of our being, if we are not going to be swept away into oblivion or drawn into an unthinking allegiance with an authoritarian power. Human kind is headed towards destruction, all of our efforts to organize ourselves, to determine who is right and who is wrong, who is friend and who is foe, have led us to just a swirl of beauty and ugliness. The dream of continual progress, continual perfection through civilization has been shown to be an illusion, a project of repression that has not led to peace but instead to deeper and deeper perversions and violence.

The hope of this moment is that we all for a second might be willing to stop, to stop and discover the obvious and essential truth that we have been ignoring for far too long, that we are not independent actors at war with one another, but different points within a collective body. That we are all one. The illusion of separateness has gone on long enough. Our instinct to self protection, to gather in tribes, to identify friends and enemies, has served its purpose and must now be transcended. We have seen earth from space. Scientists have discovered the quantum realm. We know, we know that we are one. It is time to not just know this oneness intellectually but to live it, to let it transform everything about who we believe ourselves to be, and how we live as a network of collective life. It is time now, for worship to be life and life to be worship. It is time to release our idol worship. It is time to know God as we know ourselves, as we know each other. It is time to step out of the web of separation that defines our choices, that spurs our fears and reactivity. It’s time to rest in the One essential life and see what comes, see what we choose when we are free.

It is time to be free. Jesus showed us what freedom was like. We can continue to look to him to discover this freedom, but making him into an idol will not get us there. We have to walk as he walked, love as he loved, listen and pray and understand ourselves to be one with the father as he did. We need to experience this oneness for ourselves, as we are.

Martha I’ve written this letter to you, but of course it's for all the members of my church family, and perhaps for all people seeking to be church in this changing world. As I prepare to sign off I see before me like a flash so many beautiful faces, so many moments of love. I feel so grateful for the life I have so far lived, the church we have so far been together. My longtime mentor, the pastor in the church who I did my first internship with as a seminarian, reminded me this past summer that it was within the “church” as it is, that my understanding was deepening. That “the church” had been holding me, and perhaps could hold me still. I pray that is true.

And in fact I know that it’s true. As Swedenborg asserted, the Lord always provides a church. The forms will change. But that which is essential is always there, the light always on, the invitation home ever present.

With much love,

Sage

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Dear Martha: Letters to My Church

Dear Martha: Letters to my church