Tikkkun Olam

Tikkun Olam. “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life.”  John 6:54

Talk about mis-reading a text. Or, better yet, domesticating it. To the sacramental Christian ear this sounds like: Take communion and you will go to heaven. To non-Christians it sounds like this: Take communion with us or you will not go to heaven. Or, If you want to get to heaven you better do what we do and become like us. Or else.

All of these construals miss the mark, and as such create much mischief. For all such interpretations mean to draw a line in the sand: either you are on the bus or you are off the bus as Ken Kesey used to put it. Either you are with us or you are against us. Become just like us or you are flat out of luck. Even a moments reflection on the whole narrative of John and the other three gospels would suggest that Jesus is not about such mischief.

Let’s review: this part of  John 6 began by feeding 5,000 people with a few loaves of bread and a few fish supplied by a young boy. People are impressed. Blown away. They want more of this. Jesus says you really don’t want more bread, fish or manna, you want to eat my body and drink my blood. Do what? they say! That’s a long way from bread and fish and manna. And offensive to our religious sensibilities as to what we should or should not eat and drink. And blood is at the top of the list of what ‘thou shalt not drink.’

To provoke them further, Richard Swanson suggests the text literally says something more like this:  “The one gnawing of me, the body, and drinking of me, the blood, has aeonic life.” [Swanson, Provoking the Gospel of John, p 356, et al]

That’s right. John’s Jesus says “gnaw” not “eat”. As Swanson points out, such a distinction exists in German as well as in the Greek: essen means eat, whereas fressen “describes a noisy slurping, gulping, gnawing, complete with growls and other noises appropriate to an animal…The use of this word is a signal: expect disgust and offense.” [Ibid 232]

And so we read, They kept fighting with one another asking just how does he give us his body to eat and his blood to drink? A more than reasonable question to be sure. And the natural question to ask. And any and all answers having to do with “he is instituting Holy Communion or Eucharist” are really no more than our, the Church’s, domestication of what appears to be an intentionally provocative text.

Further, I suggest that, as my old father used to say, we are putting the accent on the wrong syll-ABLE! The longer I wrestle with this text, and it has been decades now, I am only beginning to see that all this gnawing and slurping of body and blood is aimed at the final words, “eternal life.” Which Swanson translates more literally as “aeon,” or “aeonic life.” Aeon. Not a word we often use any more. And when we do we usually render it “eon.”

This becomes interesting when one learns that the Koine Greek of the New Testament uses the word “aeon” to render the Hebrew word olam. Aeon itself originally meant life, vital source, being, a period of time, or an age, forever, timeless, eternity. Olam can mean world or age. Olam haba can mean afterlife or world to come. More to the point, however, tikkun olam means to repair or heal the world, or repair and heal the present age, the present world, the present aeon. That is, we are not talking here about heaven as much as what we should be doing here and now.

Tikkun Olam. Consider that John in chapter six portrays Jesus shocking the crowd with what sounds like cannibalism and the kind of drinking of blood or wine that was common in nearby Dionysian temples and other dens of debauchery and idolatry – that is, those places abhorrent to Jews like Jesus himself and those with whom he is debating.

There is no question that chapter 6 appears to be using metaphors for Holy Communion or Eucharist. It is odd, however, that chapters 13-17 depict in five long chapters the Last Supper with no mention of bread or wine; no mention of body and blood. Not one mention of these common elements of our ritualistic rendering of the Last Supper on Sundays throughout the ages.

Instead, in chapter 13 John describes Jesus on his hands and knees washing feet. And insisting, as he does in chapter 6, that if you are to have any part of him and his life for your life you need to do the same for others – all others. You need to serve others. And he also gives a “new commandment”: Love one another as I have loved you.” “Love” in the Bible most often means to behave and act constructively and beneficially on behalf of others and the olam, the world. Tikkun olam: to repair or heal a broken world, a divided world, a world that hurts and itself is hurting. We don’t have to like others. We do, however, need to Love them in this Biblical sense.

Is it possible that John’s Jesus uses such jarring and provocative language to turn our attention not to the act of receiving bread and wine, body and blood, on a regular basis, but rather to focus our attention on why we are to do that: to remind us that like Jesus himself, we are to be fully engaged in the repair and healing of the world rather than contributing to its divisions and destruction?

Simply stated: Holy Communion, Eucharist, Last Supper is a time to gnaw on the most pressing challenges facing us as a people and the very world itself so that we might fully engage in tikkun olam. The Eucharist John’s Jesus describes is not polite and pious and well-mannered. It is a time for gnawing on the big questions and big challenges for our aeon, our age, and get up off our knees and do something about it. About all of it.

Is it possible that we have had this all wrong all this time? Are we meant to emerge from Holy Communion feeling better about ourselves and the world about us? Or, like those with Jesus, and Jesus himself, are we meant to get fired up, and yes, even angry enough, do go out and deal with the world’s, the aeon’s, challenges and do our best to Love others as Jesus and God loves us?

These are the kinds of questions that we gnaw on in our sleepless nights as we struggle to support a loved one who is struggling to stay alive. These are the kinds of questions we need to gnaw on as we see an overheating world literally going up in flames in some places and being drowned in floods elsewhere. These are the kinds of questions we need to gnaw on as we see ourselves being hopelessly further and further divided against one another? This is what it means to be a Eucharistic people: those who gnaw on the big questions, align themselves with Jesus and engage in continuing his work of tikkun olam in and throughout the world. Tikkun olam.

This is what I hear once I dig deeper into this text in the sixth chapter of John’s gospel. What do you hear?

This Is A Problem

So the Jews grumbled about Jesus, because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” [John 6:41] This is a problem. This is the text given for consideration in churches around the world on the very Sunday that groups of White Nationalists, White Supremacists, Anti-Semites, Neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klan and others gather in our nation’s capital for their Unite The Right rally. This is a problem, as passages like this in the Gospel of John have been cited throughout the Church’s history as justification for anti-Semitism and all claims of White Christian Supremacy, which includes justified misogyny and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and actions.

Most English translations render the Koine Greek οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι as “the Jews” 67 times throughout the Fourth Gospel. This is a problem. Sermons making “the Jews” appear to be enemies of Jesus has been used to justify anti-Semitism from the earliest days of the Christian Church, through to the Holocaust and in Washington DC today. The writers and editors of the Gospel of John would have no idea how this could have happened. For the word translated as “the Jews” probably means “Judeans” – those who lived in and around Jerusalem and Judea during the time of Jesus. This was a cosmopolitan mix of peoples from all over the ancient world, alongside those who worshipped in Jerusalem and lived in the regions of Judea and Galilee, and who knew themselves as Israelites. Further, arguably what we refer to as “the Jewish people” did not really exist until after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple by Rome in the year 70ce, which was the advent of today’s Rabbinic Judaism. Long after the time of Jesus.

Even if we accept the translation “the Jews,” then one needs to understand that every single person and crowd depicted in John then are Jews. Jesus himself is buried as οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι, “a Jew,” and he is portrayed as saying, “Salvation is from the Jews.” This is a conversation within Israel.

So this grumbling, or murmuring, or complaining crowd with Jesus is not some group of “others.” In the world of John, they are all descended from the mixed crowd of Israelites depicted in Exodus chapter 16: “And the whole congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness.” Like the crowd with Jesus, they too are complaining and grumbling. In both cases the issue revolves around food – and specifically manna, or bread that comes down from heaven. Bread that falls from the sky.

In John chapter six they are grumbling because inexplicably Jesus claims that he is the bread that falls out of the sky. But we know your parents, they say. You have brothers and sisters, they say. You could not possibly have fallen out of the sky! You are flesh and blood and got here the same way we all got here – from your mother and father. From the very beginning to this day, this is what the Jewish people do. Israel, as we all know, means “to wrestle with God.” Wrestling with God often means “wrestling” with one another. Discussing, debating and working over things like this is the very nature of what it means to be Israel! Murmuring, grumbling and complaining is all part and parcel of being in the community of YHWH’s people.

Note, John, like Mark’s gospel, does not know anything about a ‘virgin birth.’ John’s and Mark’s Jesus has a mother and a father. No doubt the crowd is also grumbling about the very fact that Jesus keeps appropriating God’s name for himself: “I Am.” This also is a unique feature of the Fourth Gospel – Jesus always saying, “I Am”: I am the bread of life; I am the light of the world; I am the door of the sheep; I am the good shepherd; I am the resurrection and the life; I am the true vine; I am the way, the truth and the life.

As much as claiming to have fallen out of the sky like David Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth, all Jesus’ compatriot people hear is “I am.” All the rest like Bread and Light and so forth may as well not be there because once they hear the words spoken to Moses at the Burning Bush as the name of God, that’s all there is to hear. And let’s face it, in this gospel John is making a fantastic claim from the outset that the Word, the Logos, was with God in the beginning. And the Word, the Logos, is God. And the Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood. God comes to dwell among us. And the people in the crowd are just having difficulty wrapping their faithful to YHWH’s heads around all this “I aming” all the time! How can God be flesh and blood like us? That’s absurd! So they murmur, and grumble and complain, and, as we progress through the sixth chapter of John, Jesus pushes right back. This is how Israel does theology.

Just as we are meant to read ourselves as “the disciples” in the other three gospels, we are “the Jews,” or better yet “the Judeans” in the fourth gospel. John and his community of Jews who followed Jesus would be appalled that his story of Jesus would be used to justify the kind of hate-speech, racism and anti-Semitism that have all misconstrued the quite natural and important debate going on this gospel. We have all been wrong to read any and all of this as the foundation of justified division. The crowd’s response to Jesus is blocked by a common-sense logic that takes on the character of certitude. It is honestly difficult to easily absorb what Jesus in John asserts. Yet, it is this kind of “certitude” on all sides of all such discussions that sows human discord and disunity. Such certitude is the enemy of true faith.

Would that generations of Christians would heed what Jesus really says here: it is God who attracts and invites people to this new way of being God’s people that sets about to dissolve barriers and differences between peoples. Everywhere we look in the gospels, Jesus announces that the world is no longer to be divided into us and them, clean and unclean, pure and impure Gentile and Jew. The very name of God at the bush is a form of the verb to be: I am who I am. Or, I will be who I will be.” And this name is not to be pronounced – ever. Scrolls from the time of Jesus even write the tetragrammaton YHWH in a different form of script as a reminder: do not pronounce God’s name out loud. No wonder the people are disturbed at hearing Jesus saying “I am” all the time! For it sounds like that which is not to be spoken out loud.

The assumed pronunciation of the letters YHWH are believed to be an imitation of human breath – Yah – Whehh. If this is the case, God’s name is the first thing we say when we come alive at birth, and the last thing we say as we breathe our last breath. There is no Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Taoist, Buddhist way of breathing. There is no White European, African, Asian, Indian, or Latin American way of breathing. There is no young or old, male or female or LGBTQ way of breathing. There is no religious or scientific or agnostic or atheistic way of breathing. The very name of God levels the playing field. All living creatures on earth breathe that same name, just as we are all made of the same stardust that has been recycling itself throughout the known universe for nearly 14 billion years. From cave dwellers to astronauts, from one continent to another, we all breathe the same way the same breath.

It is a scandal and tragedy how the Church and others have used these stories in the Bible to divide rather than unite us as we already are united by simply breathing. And just this week the Department of Justice has announced a Religious Liberty Task Force. At its unveiling its task appears to preserve conservative Christian Values rather than those of all citizens and religious groups most under attack in the US: Muslims and Jews – both of which are Semites – and the greater LGBTQ community. Much of which stems from poor choices in translation and interpretation of The Bible like we see in John. This is a problem, and judging from what is happening in our nation’s capital on Sunday, and at DOJ, it is a problem for us all.

Where Is Your Mind?

“Where is your mind?” she would say as we lay on our backs on our yoga mats at the end of an hour session of yoga. Sally Rich would repeat the question every few minutes as we were silent, still, and focusing on what we had learned about ourselves and life through our bodies. How often I hear her voice repeating over and over again, “Where is your mind?”

There is so much competition for our minds. We live in a narcissistic environment in which everyone, every product, every politician, every news service, every entertainment option, compete for our minds every minute of the day. Estimates are that we see 300 to 3,000 commercial messages a day besides all the other stuff. We allow ourselves to be walking billboards with every item of logoed clothing we wear so people can see that my shorts are made by Lee, my sandals are Teva’s, my shirt is Ralph Lauren, and the list goes on and on and on.

We ought to be thankful that while he was in prison in Rome the Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Ephesus, a community of early Christians with whom he had spent time. “I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” [Ephesians 4:1] Paul gives us an awful lot to think about. Where is your mind, he seems to say? On your calling?

One can imagine a modern-day Nathan the prophet, who confronted King David on his adultery with Bathsheba and arranging for her husband to be killed in battle, addressing the modern-day Church, the Body of Christ in all its multitude of divisions into denominations, non-denominations and every imaginable variation in practice, let alone non-practice of the very things Jesus orders us to do, like, say, love our enemies. Nathan might as well say to us, as he did to David, “There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor. The rich man had very many flocks and herds; but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought. He brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children; it used to eat of his meager fare, and drink from his cup, and lie in his bosom, and it was like a daughter to him. Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was loath to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the wayfarer who had come to him, but he took the poor man’s lamb, and prepared that for the guest who had come to him.” [2 Samuel 12:1-4]

Let us suppose Jesus, who had no place to lay his head as home, who had little to sustain himself and his companions and depended on the generosity of others, is the poor man in this story, and the solitary ewe lamb is his Body, the Church, sometimes called “the bride of Christ,” and that ewe lamb has been snatched up, slaughtered, divided into pieces and scattered to the far ends of the earth with each part in violent disagreement with the next part through centuries of argument and even warfare against one another. Who among us would not agree with David’s response, “As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die; he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.” To which Nathan replies, “You are the man!” Most likely among the most important four words in all of scripture. They are meant for us. We are the man! Have we read, marked and inwardly digested Paul’s word to the Ephesians? Where is our humility? Where is our unity? Where is our patience with one another? Have we made every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of Peace? Not some efforts, not a lot of efforts, but every effort? Lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called. Don’t act like David! Or else, you too are the man!

Where is your mind, she says? What efforts are we making? “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and untried. Even watered down, Christianity is still hot enough to boil the modern world to rags.”  [GK Chesterton]

Then there is Jesus in the sixth chapter of John. After feeding 5,000 people, off he and the boys row across to the other side to get some peace and quiet. But still the crowds chase after him and badger him with questions, because, we are told, they want to “take him by force and make him king.” [John 6:15] Jesus, of course knows the history of his people and knows that kings are not what they need and not what God wants for them. Just ask David as Nathan confronts him.

When did you get here, they say? What must we do? What sign will you give? What work will you perform? What work must we do? They talk about bread. They talk about the manna in the wilderness. Manna, which literally means, “what is it?” Jesus talks about them needing to “be faithful into the one whom God sent,” not the bread. That that is him is obvious to us. The literal sense of the text means to “be faithful into him,” which is different from the translation, “believe in him.” The Bible is not interested in belief, it is interested in faithfulness to God and God’s ways. And Jesus seems to say, to live in God’s ways we need to “live into” him. That he is the bread. “For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”  Not just the church, but the world. They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.”

The sense of it seems to be that he is doing what he does and saying what he says all as a way of asking, “Where is your mind?” Is it on bread? Is it on spectacular miraculous feats? Do you want some kind of party tricks?  Where is our mind? To which Jesus says forget about the bread; forget about the 5,000; forget about kings; forget about Rome; forget about Herod; just focus on me; I am the manna; I am the bread. Be faithful into me. Lead a life worthy of your calling.

According to Richard Swanson in his book, Provoking the Gospel of John (p 225), when the rabbis “burrow into the significance and implications of the bread that was given to faithful Israel in the wilderness, they note that the manna is described as having many flavors: it tastes like honey, it tastes like bread, it tastes like cakes baked with oil. The rabbis argue that these different tastes are possible because the bread is miraculous bread, created by God in the heavens to meet the particular needs of anyone who eats it…in keeping with each [person’s] particular need – to young men it tasted like bread, to the elderly it tasted like wafers made with honey, to sucklings it tasted like milk from their mother’s breast, to the sick it tasted like flour mingled with honey…From the crowd’s reaction to the miraculous feeding in John’s story, it would appear that they found the sustenance suited to their own needs in the bread Jesus gave them, which makes them to be Israel (he who struggles with God) in the wilderness, fed by God upon whom they rely.” I am the bread. Lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called.

“Where is your mind,” she says to me over and over again when I find myself distracted by all the other competing voices trying to drown out the knowledge that this bread is given; this bread is eternal; and this bread gives life to the world. Something all other voices and bread cannnot do. We must live into this bread if we are to bear one another with humility, gentleness, and maintain a unity of Spirit in a bond of peace and shalom – justice and peace for all persons. Sir, give us this bread always! It is ours for the taking. If only we might stop listening to the cacophony around us, be still, and listen to the one voice that asks, “Where is your mind?”

Val Camilletti - Music's Angel

Val’s Halla: My Musical Education

Reflections by

The Reverend Kirk “Chief” Kubicek

In the beginning there was Little’s Music on Lake Street. Bins of 33rpm albums and 45 rpm singles, and listening booths where you could throw them on the turntable and listen. It was there that I first slipped Kinda Kinks out of the paper sleeve and gave it a spin. Step into the fantasy world of Ray and Dave Davies! The birth of fuzz guitar from the now infamous “green amp.” Little did we know then that to get that sound they had taken a knitting needle and ripped the speaker cone. “Who’ll be the next in line,” “I need you,” “Tired of waiting,” and the mind-bending and genre-bending “See My Friends.” I had to take it home and to this day I listen to all those songs and the entire Davies songbook every day. It should not go without mention that Chicago’s own Flock did a definitive cover of Tired of Waiting For You – and played at our Junior Prom at OPRFHS. Ray’s recent releases, Storyteller, Kinks Choral Collection and See My Friends are all worth running down to Val’s right now to get them all.

Meanwhile, my uncle Lee was schooling me on early Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, The Weavers, Woody Guthrie, Cisco Huston, Leadbelly and more. I would spend the night at my grandparents, sleeping in his room while he was away at Northwestern. There were those old pocket copies of Sing Out! And the Folk Box on Folkways (now from Smithsonian), a virtual seminar in American folk music. Lee kept introducing me to new music throughout his life, including the likes of Michelle Shocked, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Art Tatum, Bill Evans and more.

Soon there was a new game in Oak Park – Discount Records on Ridgeland under management by this amazing woman with a big Italian Fro. The albums all had “Demo” stamped on them, or had a hole cut in the corner. I am thinking my first purchase with Val was Dylan’s Blonde On Blonde, with a hole in the corner. The price was right – and who knew I was getting my first taste of Robbie Robertson and Rick Danko for whom I would be manning the follow spot when The Band played Trinity College in Hartford, CT! It also featured Al Kooper on organ (!), and the solid time keeping of the incomparable Kenny Buttrey, Nashville session drummer extraordinaire. Discount Records was just the warm-up act for what would become the legendary Val’s Halla.

During the Discount Record years, since I was already spending lots of time near Adams and Wabash for Frank’s Drum Shop (“Franks for the memories”), we would sometimes stop in Rose’s Records to find something new. One afternoon a few of us Cellar Dwellers went home with The Mothers of Invention Freak Out and Jefferson Airplane Takes Off in our hands – totally changing our understanding of what the possibilities of what rock music could be!

Then it happened! Life changed forever. Val opened Val’s Halla. No need to dwell on the Elvis Shrine –that is something you had to experience first-hand, on your own. First I bought all the Vanguard Chicago Blues Today volumes. Then it was John Mayall and early Buddy Guy and Junior Wells discs. Eventually Val would steer me toward some vintage Limelight recordings of Roland Kirk:  Rip, Rig and Panic and I Talk With The Spirits (with the original Serenade To A Cuckoo). Saw Tull open for Kirk, then Kirk came out, furious at having had to wait for what really did seem like forever, and then he blew the night away, and Ian Anderson with it! I first knew Kirk’s music thanks to Val. (How does a person get all those reeds into one mouth at the same time?) I also picked up the entire Siegel-Schwall catalog, including their collaboration with the CSO on the 1973 William Russo Three Pieces for Blues Band and Orchestra. And my mom would eventually give me the Corky Siegel Chamber Blues CDs for Christmas, also purchased at Val’s. And all of the “singing mailman” John Prine’s output, Steve Goodman, and Bonnie Koloc; those white Dylan underground releases; endless Grateful Dead underground releases; the Who, early, middle and late Clapton, anything with Mick Taylor, Harvey Mandel (The Snake!); and my first recording of the Mahler Ninth, a two disc box-set, under the baton of Sir John Barbirolli (Angel Records) that has sent me on a yearly Lenten discipline of listening to every Mahler Symphony (including the Baribirolli Ninth!) at least once during the forty days. All this and more could all be had at one place and one place only – Val’s Halla.

Let’s face it, Val has been my longest term and most important music teacher. She schooled us all, effortlessly, and at the same time promoted every single local musician who passed through her door. Mimi Betinis, Cliff Johnson, Jimmy Z, Bob Eul, Corky Theusen, John Pazdan, Dave Spence, Jim Erickson, Peter Constantine Cutsivitus. More than just a music store, it became a community gathering place, that long, narrow, barely more than a door’s width shop that might easily have fit inside an El car – how cool that would have been! A rolling rock and roll emporium making its way out of Oak Park downtown, rounding the Loop and back again all the day and all the night!

Val also led the first wave of selling used, that is “previously listened to” LPs, cassettes, 8-track carts(!), and eventually CDs, thus leading the way for the current vinyl revolution. Any serious collector could start right there, especially when the shop expanded into the room next door to house an entire universe of the history of music!

We all kept coming back for more. And the more was not more music. It was to be able to spend time with Val herself. She and Loki were Val’s Halla. The merchandise was just a front. Val is the main reason for going. She took and continues to take a personal interest in each of our lives. She not only wants to know how I am doing, what I am doing, always offering encouragement, always offering affirmation for budding young music careers, but she would ask how my mother and father were doing every time I came back to River Forest to spend time at home. She would ask about my sister. See, the whole family used Val’s Halla as the go-to spot for serious music.

Throughout my 40+ years playing with The Outerspace Band (“the band that played the East Room in the White House” for Susan Ford’s Senior Prom) in New England, Val was interested in every twist and turn of our time on the road, recording, where we were living, what was it like out there in the east. She always wanted to know. She always remembered to ask. At Val’s you are not a customer, you are a part of her life – she is a part of yours.

If it was not in the store Val would thumb through Swann catalogues until it could be found. Eventually the books of endless listings would give way to internet searches. You only needed the sketchiest of information before Val would nail-down what you were looking for and get it. “I heard a cut on the radio – a country singer – doing Christian music he had written – I think his name was Marty something…..” “You’re probably looking for Marty Stewart. Let’s see….here he is. How about Soul’s Chapel? Would that be it?” His singing Move Along Train with Mavis Staples, with Marty playing Pops’ Staples guitar, is a Gospel must to hear at least once in your life time.

When it hit the news that Val’s was closing, I first got word from my mother, who clipped a story out of the paper and sent it along. How could that be, I wondered? Forty-plus years of time returning over and over again to Music Mecca, forty-plus years of walking up and down that narrow aisle surrounded on both sides by everything one could ever want to hear, surrounded by promo posters, hand-lettered signs, a virtual history of music covering every available inch of wall space. I still have some hand-lettered signs on day-glow orange cardboard from Val’s announcing Beatle Tickets – 5$. Kirk Jr. has them hanging on his bedroom wall alongside a smiling picture of Bob Dylan off the cover of The Chicago Seed, an early  underground culture journal of the emerging hip music scene in the City Of Broad Shoulders that could be picked up bi-weekly at, yes, Val’s Halla. I had to make one last visit. I photographed the store inside and out, taking pictures of Val seated at the counter as she has greeted every one of us countless times throughout the decades, Val in front of the window on the street, “the Aisle” of music, the used LPs.

It seemed the end of an era was really upon us. She had weathered the competition of the big-box stores, the invading chains, to the point that when a customer at Barnes and Noble at the corner of Lake and Harlem could not find what they wanted, the staff at B&N would simply say, “Have you tried Val’s?” Val’s had withstood every commercial trend and all the competition, only to be driven out of her iconic location beside the rumbling iconic El track by some silly development scheme which itself would founder on the rocks of typical suburban red-tape and protest. Despair had set in for every girl and boy, mom and dad, sister and brother who had made the pilgrimage, the hajj, to music Mecca over and over and over again.

But then! Turns out the obituaries were premature. And I of all people should have known that, yes, there is Resurrection! There is New Life! There is another chapter to be written in the history of music. Joining the emerging Arts District in South Oak Park on Harrison, Val’s Halla was to be reborn! With O What A New Look! Wide open spaces to roam. Light, light endless light to replace the cozy womb-like darkness of the original store. A performance stage in the front window! Kirk Jr. and his indie-pop sidekick Sarah Fridrich played that stage summer of 2011! Vintage Vinyl is now the Rage. The trends have caught up with the leader of the band that was made for you and me - Val Camilletti. It may be a new look, but the heart and soul of Val’s remains, because she remains one of this Earth’s most wonderful people. She has been the Musical Mother for us all – the true Mother of Invention when it comes to musical knowledge and musical love - which is the operant word to describe Val’s – love. It shines through her endless smile. It is Val’s love for all things music, all things Chicago, all the things we would grow up to be – she wants to know us, has known us, in our many incarnations, and has been the mid-wife for so many of those of us who call Val’s home. For Val’s Halla is not the covered-over alley-way that defined the physical presence of the Val Universe in Oak Park for so many years. Val’s is not the endless rows and stacks of merchandise – if one can call music merchandise at all. Val’s in the end is Val – and her trusty sidekicks Halla and Loki – loving what she does and loving all of us who continue to make Val’s Halla our home away from home. We are all thankful to be a part of one of music’s great stories. To quote the incomparable late Sonny Bono, “The beat goes on….” Thank you, Val!

Epilogue: None of us ever considered the possibility, but of course it was bound to happen sometime. Last night, July 23, 2018, Val Camilletti moved on to join the Pantheon of musicians she had loved, mentored, promoted and archived for most of her mortal life. Thousands are in mourning. Yet, we rejoice in having our lives enriched by a true living legend. Val wrapped us all in her love for music, for all God’s creatures, and for humanity. We are grateful for all the moments she generously shared with us all. She brought us and will continue to bring us all closer to the light, dispelling all darkness the rest of our living days. Every note I play on my drums and guitar have been informed and infused with the life and spirit of Val Camilletti. She is now, as always, an eternal and foundational part of the history of music forever and ever. Amen.

Speak Truth To Power

Look At The Plumb Line - Live for the Praise of His Glory

To make clear once and for all that Jesus is NOT John the Baptizer, Mark gives us a detailed account of how John loses his head (Mark 6:14-29). It is a story drenched with all the political and religious intrigue, scandal and backstabbing violence as any that commands our attention in today’s social, political and pop culture scenes.

John had simply done what needed to be done: he spoke Truth to Power. As always, Power does not like be reminded of what it is doing that is wrong. He reminds Herod it is not lawful for Herod to have married his own brother’s wife. And yet, we are told that this particular Herod, for reasons unexplained, somehow enjoys listening to John. He likes having him around. Herodias, his current wife, formerly his brother’s wife, however, is tired of listening to John and employs the charms of her own daughter to have John’s head delivered on a platter.

All in the name of keeping a scandal quiet, although it rarely works to kill the messenger. The word is out, and reputations are already discredited.

The Prophet Amos is a prototype for John (Amos 7:7-15). After seeing a vision of God with a plumb line in his hand, Amos is sent to deliver a series of messages to King Jeroboam II, messages that are not at all encouraging. The message is that not only is the King going to die, but all the people of Israel”s northern kingdom, Samaria, will have to pay the price of his unfaithfulness. This unfaithfulness includes over-reliance upon military might, withdrawing the ten northern tribes from the Davidic alliance, a growing disparity between the very wealthy and the very poor, and a return to idolatry, setting up temples devoted to the Golden Calf in the northern kingdom. It is Amos who declares that what YHWH the God of the Exodus cares about is doing righteous deeds for those in need, not extravagant or correct worship, let alone idolatry.

One has to love the comical depiction of the King’s own advisor/protector and priest, Amaziah, as he attempts to head off disaster by running Amos out of town. Amaziah suggests that Amos could make more money back in the southern kingdom of Judah by issuing his prophecies there. That’s always the temptation: to follow the money.

Amos says, “Nothing doing. I’m not in it for the money! I am no prophet, nor am I a prophet’s son. I am a shepherd and a dresser of sycamore trees. The Lord took me away from my flock and told me to bring this message to you and your boss.”

Speaking truth to power: Amos and John the Baptizer, two of an endless series of such prophets in the Bible – and forerunners of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus: sent to speak truth to power.

God shows Amos a plumb line, after which Amos and John become the plumb line. God says, just put this plumb line next to the wall I have built – the wall being a metaphor for Israel and Judah, for God’s people, and as far as we are concerned, for the Church. Does it look plumb to you, Amos? Are the walls still as I built them? Or, are they out of line?

It interests us that between these two lessons lies the letter to the Ephesians. Ephesians might be said to describe the plumb line. It talks about our sole purpose: that we might live for the praise of God’s glory and to serve others.

That’s it. The rest is all about God’s doing, not ours. And what God does is substantial.

God blesses us with every spiritual blessing. Not some, not many, but every spiritual blessing.

God chose us as His Beloved before the foundation of the world. Before “In the beginning…”

God destined us for adoption as his children according to the good pleasure of his will!

God freely bestows his glorious grace making us his beloved!

God forgives us our trespasses.

God makes known to us the mystery of his will set forth in his prophets and in Christ.

God has a plan to gather up all things to himself, things in heaven and things on earth.

In Christ we have also received an inheritance, as we are marked with the seal of the Holy Spirit in Baptism.

God does all this so that “we might live for the praise of his glory.”

With cases like Herod, Herodias, Jeroboam and Amaziah, like all the well-publicized cases of our own time, it is easy to see when things are out of plumb; things are out of line. Hang the plumb line in the midst of our world and what do we see? Are we as a nation, as a community, as a church in line with the God who does all this for us without our asking? Do we live for the praise of God’s glory? If yes, Alleluia! If not, what needs to be done? Who among us is like Amos and John the Baptizer in speaking Truth to Power? Do we grasp God’s concern for alliances among the various tribes of God’s people? Do we grasp God’s concern for the growing disparity between the very wealthy and the very poor? And if so, what do we do about that? Do we yet grasp that it is right behavior every day that praises God, not some notion of right worship? Or, worse yet, turning to idolatry, which in the end is only religion cast as money?

We say we believe that everything we say and everything we do will proclaim the Good News of God in Christ. We say we will seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as our selves. We say we will strive for justice and peace for all people and respect the dignity of every human being (BCP 305). We pray that we have a reverence for earth as God’s creation, and that we will use its resources in the service of others and to God’s glory and honor (BCP 388). Our catechism says according to the gifts given to us we will continue Christ’s work of reconciliation in the world (BCP 855). Not in the parish, not in the church, but in the world. Does our encounter with Christ and engagement with the world show that we are a people who live for the praise of God’s glory? Dare we look at the plumb line, repent and follow Jesus?

As Paul writes elsewhere, the world is on tiptoes in anticipation waiting for us to speak truth to power and work to make the world right-side up again. Amen.

Dodrupchen Rinpoche

Dodrupchen Rinpoche. Following my time at Trinity College, and serious consideration to convert to Judaism (forever grateful to Rabbi Stanley Kessler and Bernice Saltzman who encouraged me to remain a Christian and to embrace my religious tradition), I began to explore some Eastern religions and philosophies. In particular, I had come across the writing of Sri Aurobindo who at the time (mid-1970s) led a community in India in Auroville. Sri Aurobindo incense was also widely available in those days when I would travel into Cambridge, MA with the Outerspace Band to play, most frequently at Jack’s on Massachusetts Ave, and Club Zircon in Somerville.

Space was living in Wendell, MA, a small town of about 700 people and half a dozen rock bands. Eric Weiss was our main manager and booking agent. One day Eric asked me to drive him to what we discovered was a small temple of devotees of he Tibetan Lama, Dodrupchen Rinpoche. Eric was going to purchase a car that was for sale in the paper. When we got there we discovered, much to our surprise, that Dodrupchen was visiting along with a companion, Lama Jingtse at The Mahasiddha Nyingmapa Center, in Chesterfield, MA at the time. Before buying the car we were introduced to the two Lamas, sitting in a circle on the floor in the meditation room. After a lively discussion, Dodrupchen taught us the Om eh ah hum vajra guru padma sidhi hum chant sitting in front of a shrine decorated with Christmas tree lights! I have used the chant throughout my life for over 43 years. It remains the primary focus of my mindfulness practice, and I am forever grateful for this chance encounter that has so enriched my entire life in ways that are simply inexplicable.

The meditation room in Conway

As we sat in the circle, Dodrupchen would ask what we did, while Jingtse would interpret. When I said I played drums, Dodrupchen seemed perplexed, so Jingtse began to wildly wave his arms and legs in the air, while still seated on the floor, making some noise to demonstrate! The Rinpoche nodded in understanding. Before purchasing the car, an Oldsmobile as I recall, we were invited to watch the Rinpoche eat his noonday meal, which we did. Such a chance meeting, occasioned by a classified ad for an automobile, resulted in one of the most important episodes in my spiritual journey. The chant is a fixed part of my very Being, and reconnects me with Dodrupchen and the eternal spheres of the divine every time I employ it.

About the same time, we met a young woman in Cambridge who went by the name P Susan, Susan McCaffrey, who was the first of several devotees of Meher Baba I would meet back in those days. It was Baba who coined the phrase, Don’t Worry, Be Happy, which later became, of course, a Top 40 hit with a bullet by Bobby McPherin. P Susan gave me a book of Baba’s teachings, and another devotee gave me a photograph of Baba playing a drum! Baba did not speak for the last several decades of his life on earth, but rather communicated with hand gestures and with a letter-board. It would be Pete Townshend of the Who, however, who would be perhaps the most famous of the Meher Baba devotees. And it was Baba who inspired much of the Who’s music, just as George Harrison was advancing the teachings of ISKON, the Society of Krishna Consciousness, and the guru Srila Prabhupada, through his music and that of the Beateles. Oddly, when Space moved out of the Big House in Wendell on the Green, the Hari Krishnas moved in! Since they shaved their heads, and I still had the barber kit my father, Robert A Kubicek, used to cut my hair through my high school years, and at the time I had not had me hair cut for some seven or eight years, I gifted the electric shears and scissors to them as a house warming gift of sorts. Although considered a nuisance at airports and on the streets at the time handing out copies of the Bhagavad-gita, years later I would find myself teaching the girls at St. Tim’s from that very same book of Hindu wisdom, which itself is a portion of the longer poem, The Mahabarata. In the Gita, Lord Krishna shares much of the same wisdom as our own Lord Jesus in conveying a message that we are all together and individually the Lord’s Beloved.

The Jesus Movement Continues

Another Sabbath in his hometown synagogue, and the Jesus movement continues. At first the people are astounded at his words. Then the arguments break out regarding the wondrous things he does and says, but how dare he? He’s just one of us they say. We know his relatives they say. Yet, all this is exactly the sort of faithful response one should find in a faith that is named “Israel,” which we recall means “he wrestles with God” after father Jacob who spent all night long in such wrestling resulting in a life-long limp. To refuse to argue, to debate, to question, would be a sign of disrespect. The synagogue congregants honor Jesus with their arguments.

But still, it ends badly. They “take offense.” Jesus chews them out: “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.” Then we are told he could do “no deed of power there, except to lay hands on a few sick people and heal them.” That’s all. For the rest of us to heal anyone would be a pretty good day’s work!

Then just like that, off they go to other villages. But not before Jesus calls them two by two and commissions them to do the work he has been doing: he gives them authority over unclean spirits. He also gives instructions: “Take nothing … except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts… wear sandals and not to put on two tunics… If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.” So they went out and proclaimed that all should repent. “They cast out many demons and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.” [Mark 6:1-13]

Altogether this can seem somewhat bizarre to us unless we remember what’s going on in Mark’s gospel and what is going on in Israel at the time. For the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ the Son of God is a call to action. There is no cozy birthing scene of a wandering family among animals in a cave like stable as in Matthew or Luke. No shepherds and angels. No star in the heavens pointing the way for a caravan of Magi making pilgrimage to welcome the tiny baby who was born to reintroduce God’s shalom for and die at the hands of Rome in the process.

The good news begins with John baptizing outside Jerusalem, outside the corridors of power, issuing a call to action: Repent, for we have lost our way, the way, the way of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Our own people like the Herod family, the priests and the aristocracy, our historic leadership in the city of peace, the city of shalom, no longer are interested in working God’s purpose out, but have sold out to the brutality of the Empire, of Rome, of those who claim Caesar is God. The people are over-taxed, over-worked, and forced to worship and serve only the regime instead of the living God who had brought them out of bondage in Egypt. Now Israel is become Egypt and they are once again slaves of an Empire. The Empire. John says it is time to turn it all around, to repent. It is time to turn the world right-side-up again.

Thus it is in Mark the very opening scene is an adult Jesus making his way down to Jordan’s stream to sign on, to join with those answering the call of John. Thus it is, in Mark we find Jesus and his companions portrayed as a resistance movement to Roman pagan domination. His conflicts are with the those who have been chosen liaisons to the Romans: The Temple, the priesthood and the aristocracy in Jerusalem are on the payroll to keep law and order in the land. Against all this Jesus and his companions are portrayed as living out a deeply Jewish program of return to the life of the covenant with their God. A life of God’s shalom for all.

There’s a rabbinic saying: “A person’s representative is as the person himself.” Unlike Jesus who “could do no deed of power” in Nazareth where the force to repent and resist is not strong, the disciples are sent out two by two and they “cast out many demons” and “heal many who are sick.” They have been sent to fight against the forces that have been arrayed against Israel and humanity. Although it is not an overtly political mission, in Mark’s story demons are portrayed as allies of Rome, while diseases are foes that weaken the body of Israel. They are sent out to canvass the villages and towns to urge people to repent and join the resistance movement. It is a bold move. But business as usual will not get the job of God’s shalom accomplished.

We need to be reminded that this Jesus movement is no volunteer organization. This is a community called and commissioned by Christ himself. His representatives are to be as Jesus is himself. That is who we are: called and commissioned to be as Jesus himself, those people sent by Jesus to cast out the demons of the Empire and build up the body of the faithful.

Jesus’ instructions are for a lean and unencumbered corps of representatives. The call not to be burdened with an excess of clothing, money and food is a call to simplicity. As one commentary notes, traveling light leaves them free from bearing unnecessary burdens and free from the temptation to turn the journey into venture for profit. His instruction is worth reflection in these days when the church faces its own loss of status and power and struggles to know how to position itself for the future. Travel light and nimble; travel swiftly to recruit as many as possible into the Jesus movement. The mission is one of extreme urgency. Carry no excess baggage.

And finally, we are to take the reality of rejection and the dangerous nature of the mission seriously. There is no promise that people will want to listen as the disciples bear witness to the good news and echo John’s and Jesus’ challenge to the Empire. Not everyone will repent. So, don’t get bogged down in endless debate and chatter. Move on and shake the dust off your feet.

Feet. Such action with feet in the face of danger and rejection can still be seen in today’s middle east. Recall the Iraqi gentleman who hurled his shoe at President George W. Bush for starting a war in his land over the flimsiest of excuses. Or, those Iraqi men who took off their shoes and pounded them against the statues of the former rulers. Jesus is directing his representatives to insult those who do not receive them and their mission using their feet. Who knows, such a bold response to complacency may wake people up and rouse more people to the cause! And after all, as we have seen, Jesus received similar rejection from the religious officials, the people of his hometown, and even his own family.

The successes we hear of in the casting out of Roman demons and restoring the health of the nation Israel are set in stark contrast in the verses that follow in the sixth chapter of Mark, for they tell of the beheading of John by Rome’s stooge-in-Chief, Herod. And we listen closely as Herod ponders whether or not Jesus is the Baptizer come back to life. John’s body lies a-mouldering in a tomb, but his spirit marches on. Jesus and many of his followers will meet the same fate as John for their attempts to wake people up and spur them to action. Yet, we are those people who know the rest of the story. How after three day’s rest Jesus rises again from the dead. The Jesus mission of shalom for all people cannot be stopped and will not rest until there is justice and peace for all people, and respect for the dignity of every human being, every creature under heaven, and for creation itself. And the people say, Amen.