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The night is as bright as the day; for darkness is as light to You.
Psalm 139:12 Click here to download this year’s Alternative Advent and Christmas Calendar here . (I think it’s #25!). Print it on pretty paper if you have any (I love gold vellum), stick it on your fridge, and give yourself and anyone you live with an EASY way to kindle a Christmas spirit every day, from the First Sunday in Advent through Epiphany. I’m borrowing from the UCC Stillspeaking Daily Devotionals for which I write, because I love the theme so much: GLOW. The lambent Vince Amlin wrote these words for the introduction of our beautiful little devotional book (print copies sold out, but you can buy the digital download for 3 bucks!): “Last Christmas in Seville, I was introduced to Nuestra Señora de la O, Our Lady of the O. Hers is the Feast of the Expectation, December 18th. She got her name because, in some religious communities, after vespers that night, a long, loud “O” would arise from the choir. A vocalization of creation’s yearning to be made whole I like to think that this year’s Stillspeaking Advent Devotional, Glow, is spelled with that “O.” Like Isaiah, the glow we’re thinking of arrives from above and below. It is the dawning of earth-shaking liberation, which we expect to break through the clouds at any moment. And the throbbing embers of a watchfire beside which the faithful have warmed themselves for generations. It is light and heat. The glory of the Lord that shone round about them. And the flush of a pregnant body coursing with 50% more blood than usual. It is the beauty of candlelit faces singing “Silent Night.” And the roiling of protesters turning up the heat on the latest Herod. It is spelled with the “O” in “O Come, All Ye Faithful” and the ones in “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” It is a call to gather round, to come in out of the cold. To watch and wait. The glow of lamps trimmed and burning. It is the angelic glow-up those dusty shepherd faces receive, reflecting the splendor swaddled at the center of their circle. It is spelled with the “O” their lips form as they gasp, finally grasping the meaning of all this light and heat: that everything has changed.” In one of the devos within, the luminous Quinn Caldwell (aka my congregation’s favorite devotional writer ;) teaches us about the ancient practice of smooring the hearth. “Smooring a fire means covering it with ashes before bed. This keeps the embers burning gently all night; the fire can be easily resurrected with a few breaths and a little fuel in the morning. A smoored fire doesn’t burn bright; it just sort of glows a little. It doesn’t light the room and boil the water and keep everybody warm. But it’s not dead, either. It’s just waiting, letting you rest without worry until you have the oomph to tend it.” Are you feeling a little buried by this year, Beloved? You maybe thought your soul had gone dim. Your light not just hiding under a bushel, but snuffed out entirely. You were wrong: it is just SMOORED. Banked against the night and the elements, waiting to be restored to crackling power when morning comes, when your oomph returns, when God the holy Tender breathes on you in just the right way. I’m taking the Glow theme for this year’s calendar and giving it a little kickline. This Advent & Christmas, I invite you to glow in the dark, under the ashes–not by trying with all your might to shine brightly, but rather the opposite. Turn down the lights. Go deeper within. Let your eyes adjust to the darkness. The thing about glowing is: you can only see it in low light or even complete darkness. You can only feel it when things are quiet, as they are during the insomniac’s 3am sojourn with God. We often use light and dark terminology as a stand-in for good and evil, which is, well, racist, and also wrong. Good things happen in the dark: intimacy, and growth of all kinds. Think of the mycelial network under the forest floor, disseminating information and sustenance in the dark. Night, or the absence of light, can be scary and disorienting. We can’t get our bearings, we are ignorant and deprived of an important sense. “In the dark” is a metaphor for cluelessness. But it’s also where life begins, and can begin again. That first little spark, that banked ember flashing into fire again. So this season, don’t deny the darkness. Enter it more fully. It will not claim you or maim you. Once there, use all your senses to look for what and who is still aglow, lit from within, not a dying ember but a secret glow that can’t be snuffed, biding its time, waiting for the right moment to return to fullest power. Rest in that stable place, keeping company with the Holy Family by night, dim except for the light that seems to come from mother and child themselves. Let it set you afire from within, as well, to know that in spite of all, God keeps choosing to dwell with us. Love, * Molly *
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They say that there is no such thing as other people’s children.I am blessed with *at least* 3 children who I feel primary responsibility for: Rafe, Carmen, and our foster son Junior, now age 23, who has been a part of our family since he moved to Boston from Haiti when he was 13.
This parenting gig is relentless but usually delightful (I know you feel me). Last Sunday, I got to take Carmen and five of her best friends to Church of the 8 Wheels in San Francisco, a defunct church-turned-roller disco, for her birthday. The girls laced up old-school rollerskates with light-up wheels and held hands as they balanced, rolled and boogied in big circles around the wooden floor. They screamed their joy and hugged Carmen when the DJ dedicated ABBA’s Dancing Queen to her (“young and sweet, only 17”). My favorite part was when they fell down, laughing, often in a 6-kid-pileup. It’s a beautiful thing to watch young people–make that any people–willing to fall (and laugh! And pick themselves up!) in the process of trying to do something they are not very good at yet. A few days earlier,Junior had Facetimed me. He was coming to visit and I thought he was calling to make plans for our week together. But no. He was being detained by the police and needed a witness. Here’s what happened: He was at the front door of his longtime girlfriend’s apartment building, waiting for her because he had forgotten his key. A white man nearby, who claimed to be the property manager but whom Junior didn’t recognize, asked Junior for his name, implied he was up to no good, and eventually called the cops on him. Junior was understandably upset, refused to show the police his ID since he had done nothing wrong, and when they didn’t let him go inside (his girlfriend was there by now and advocating for him), called me. I asked him to hold the phone up to one of the police officers, introduced myself as Rev. Molly Baskette, and said “this is my son.” “This is your son?” the cop said incredulously. He tried to take Junior’s phone away. He mocked him, admitting he was violating Junior’s civil rights. He mocked me when I asked him to stop baiting Junior. I was breathless and terrified, afraid the cops would keep provoking and escalating, and next thing Junior would be falling to the ground dead, and I would be helplessly 3,000 miles away. A few minutes went by and a police supervisor arrived, assessed the situation, and told them to let Junior go. He was safe–for now. But racial profiling happens to Junior ALL the time. What if the next time is fatal? We are all grieving young ones this week.At Covenant Presbyterian Elementary School, three sweet 9-year-olds fell to the ground, along with adults who cared for them–falling not in silly joy like Carmen, but because they were mortally wounded by gun violence. Three children who unlike Carmen will never have another birthday. Three children who will not live to young adulthood like Junior has (so far anyway). Jesus said, “let the little ones come to me and do not hinder them; the Kin-dom of Heaven belongs to them.” Some children come to us by birth or adoption or extended family-ing. Others fall into our lives by accident or a holy nudge or a good strong push from God. Not all of us are kid people (even those of us WITH kids), but all of us who are full-grown have a responsibility to some kids specifically and all kids generally. In 2020 gun violence overtook car accidents as the leading cause of death for children under 18. We know all about the escalating mental health crisis amongst our youngers. Child labor protections are being gutted as the capitalist machine hungers for more cheap (brown, immigrant) labor. Trans and queer kids and those who love them are under attack in 34 state legislatures, school boards and their very own neighbors (why, read all about my amazing brave friend Rev. Casey Tinnin-Martinez who is being targeted by both the Proud Boys AND Project Veritas this week. Then send his church and his non-religious queer youth group some money and some prayers. This is happening in California, not in the Bible Belt). It’s never been easy to be young and relatively powerless. But too many of our kids are falling down and failing and fricking DYING on our watch. Things are moving in the wrong direction on multiple fronts for them, and it’s preventable, and the grownups in the room have a responsibility to them. Including me. Including you. We may not do enough, and we may not get it right 100% of the time, but who do they have if they don’t have us? What can you do?Check in more often with your nieces and nephews and niblings, particularly about their mental health. Join an ONA church and be a bonus grandparent to a queer family. Fight for gun reform, or gun abolition (there, I said it. I give not one turd for the Second Amendment. Cure our warring madness!). Get more fierce about the climate crisis so the planet we leave our kids isn’t entirely broken (start by reading my friend’s really good book about youth and the climate). We’re on the cusp of Holy Week. At my church we’ll celebrate Palm Sunday with giant puppets and parades and all-you-can-eat donuts. We’ll also bring homemade protest signs to give Palm Sunday back its edge and give the people back their voices. We are living through perilous times, particularly for the generations coming after us. They need us INVOLVED, loving, giving, taking their right to live and thrive seriously–to catch them before they fall. Christlove, Molly <3 I’ve had an intense, wonderful few weeks travelling. I went road-tripping to SoCal with Carmen, college-hunting through some of the worst storms in a generation. My sister Emily and I talked my dad into coming to CA even after he said he would never get on a plane again after his strokes last summer, but he did! And we had a marvelous long weekend with 3 generations ages three through 79 in two cities for four days.
Now I’m in Portland OR helping with my sister Sam’s kids while she is away. This morning as I was helping the 7-year-old get ready for school, he informed me that the scab on his knee was from a fall on the playground yesterday. “It bled,” he said, “which you can tell because of the scab–the skin broke and it punctured some blood vessels. A scab is good. It protects a wound from bacteria getting in.” (he is an exceptionally learned 7-year-old). “You must be a fast healer–it already looks about a week old!” I said in reply. My goddaughter texted me a Mary Oliver poem this morning. We’ve been trading them since her longtime boyfriend broke up with her. She is 20 years old, and they’ve been together since she was 14. Theirs was a real love, one that matured them both, made them kinder, braver, more compassionate and wise. Even the reason he broke up with her was wise: so they could both continue growing, and find out who they might become as single people. Her heart is broken. It will mend. I don’t have to tell her that. She is wise enough to know she will someday love again, and it would scoff at the legitimate pain she is in right now to hurry her there. My heart hurts for her hurt. And I look at her and see only beauty and possibility, resilience and hope. I can’t wait to find out what lucky human will get to be her next true love, and her next. A lifetime of Love School. I’m 52. One of the things about being 52: when things break, they don’t heal so quickly. The bruise sticks around longer, the scab grows tight and clings harder to the wound. The literal pangs in the heart are more frequent and more worrisome, and don’t always resolve. This week I had a small blow of the kind that happens more frequently in middle age: I got sick. The last night in Joshua Tree with my family, I was roiling with fever and pain and ache and exhaustion. It wasn’t a cold and it wasn’t COVID. My kind doctor diagnosed me with diverticulitis, an infection of the descending colon, of the little pockets that can develop in it over time. She ordered a CT scan and my first colonoscopy ever (yay!) to rule out anything more dire. The first time I heard of diverticulitis was when I was a baby minister and Wilbur Andrews of treasured memory went into the hospital for it. Parish ministers know a lot about old people ailments–-we are lay diagnosticians just based on the sheer aggregate hours we have spent next to gurneys and hospital beds, praying for the people we love who have things going wrong inside of them, particularly when those bodies have been around a while. Entropy is real. It was curious: I was relieved to get a clear diagnosis (and the antibiotics), but ended up crying about 4 separate times that first day. I was strangled by a tangled knot of feelings: grief that my body seems to be falling apart sooner than I expected, particularly while I still have children living at home and am working such long hours and haven’t yet had a chance to have a real midlife crisis or even a long, sensible, planned midlife adventure. Shame that there was something wrong with my body, with my pooping parts no less. Frustration that I couldn’t be more productive at a busy time because I felt so shitty. Anger at feeling shame and frustration, because both are so clearly a byproduct of misogyny (women are supposed to be clean and dainty and beautiful and not have broken poop parts) and hypercapitalism (humans are cogs in the great machine that is never supposed to break down). Is this what life was going to be from now on? A new and unrelenting side gig in Deterioration Management™ that will eventually become a full-time job, without a break to actually, you know, travel around the world without a colostomy bag, or hike the Tahoe Rim Trail, or learn how to hanglide? Am I Wilbur Andrews? Will my greatest joy in life soon be the Tuesday scrod special at the Cabot Street Diner? (which is, admittedly, delicious–or was in 1998 anyhow) I’m not going to rush myself out of this grief. If there’s anything I’ve learned about grief (and most feelings), it’s that it will have its due, and denying it just prolongs it. But a bit of my rational brain is already talking back to me. Reminding me that I felt this way during early cancer treatment, but that disability turned out to be temporary, and this one may well, too. Urging me to believe my own theology: that bodies are good, every one of them, and not because they can perform or produce–just because they are. And our wounds and ailments, with the right set and setting, angel messengers and practical supports, can be a Holy Spirit portal–-the place where God gets in. We’re 2 weeks into Lent. As in other recent years, as Ash Wednesday approached and I thought about what my Lenten practice might be, I felt a bit of petulant irritation: “haven’t I already given up enough in recent years? And if I really believe the spiritual life is not a grim-lipped self-improvement campaign, what’s the point?” But growth is the point, and growth means change, sometimes even change actually voluntarily undertaken. Since a life-altering trip around the world is not on the books for this spring, God put it into my head to go on an “inner trip” for Lent. I’ll save more about what this means to me for the next issue, when I hope to have some biggish good news to share, but in short: I’m not to pass up a chance to go down any wormhole into my deeper consciousness. God was clear: this is not about navel-gazing (or even chakra-gazing). Any inner work I do is for the purpose of not only knowing and healing myself, but of shaving down the callouses of compassion fatigue to renew my feeling for others. Anything might be such a wormhole–the fancy Wim Hof cold plunge with holotropic breath work I did at a spa in LA recently, or sitting in a mini redwood forest with my sister Em and Dad. But things I initially think are bad might be wormholes too. The flood that grounded us in LA the day after the cold plunge (a very different sort of cold plunge…), in which our car got stranded and we were saved by 2 Mexican construction workers. My dad’s strokes last summer, his getting older a lot faster, which has strained but also blessed our relationship. Even–-especially–-an unexpected illness of my own may yet turn out to be a blessing. Lent means hurtling toward Good Friday–-a flogging, public humiliation and gruesome death, followed by not just miraculous swift healing of superficial wounds but radical reversal of the death-blow itself. Jesus mimics our own life and pain. Blessing follows breaking. Especially for those of us with naturally optimistic outlooks, there is depth and growth in having our sunny spirits challenged on a regular basis. This Marge Piercy poem is in my mind this morning. It found me again and again during cancer treatment, and finds me again today. "Attention is love, what we must give children, mothers, fathers, pets, our friends, the news, the woes of others What we want to change we curse and then pick up a tool. Bless whatever you can with eyes and hands and tongue. If you can't bless it, get ready to make it new.”Bless you in your ability and disability, your youth and age, your illness and wellness, wherever you are. May your grief not be too great. May your besties call at just the right time. May whatever you are feeling be a wormhole into your own depths, a Holy Spirit Portal into the divine. ~Molly Things bringing me joy and/or growth rn: Collaborating with Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg to bring a Christian lens to a discussion of her incredible book, On Repentance and Repair. Use with your book group/Lenten church group! A new book about faith and finances, Serving Money, Serving God: Aligning Radical Justice, Christian Practice and Church Life (which I am going to read and ask my Finance Team at church to read too) by the wonderful Sheryl Johnson The Many’s beautiful Lenten resources (it’s not too late to start a meaningful Lent!) Chef Tanya’s Vegan Kitchen in Palm Desert, CA – hands down the best vegan restaurant I’ve ever been it. O the fries! Dipped in chipotle aioli OR an oat-milk ice cream Desert Hurricane! Jumping pads, like this one at the Palm Springs/Joshua Tree KOA – you can catch way more air than in a regular bounce house! Someone explain the physics of that to me: My various nieces and nephews, ages 1-7, who make me laugh and think (and jump and skip and sing and dance)--love you Ollie and Isla and Will and Owen! And a p.s. We are up to 61 reviews of How to Begin on Amazon! I love even the negative reviews from disappointed evangelicals, which I think probably help me even more than the beautifully written ones by friends. I noticed a real shift in attention when the book passed the 50 review mark.100 reviews is another famed benchmark. If you have bought it from from Amazon, will you review it there? And if you haven't bought it yet, would you consider buying, reading and reviewing--then donating it to your local library so others can find it too? And a p.p.s. This will be the last issue I send out from Mailchimp. They want to charge me since Doomsday Dance Party is over 1,000 subscribers strong! And I want to keep it free for you and for me. So next month-ish look for this lil email to arrive via my new Substack account. <3 
Download this year’s Alternative Advent Calendar here ↑! Print it out on pretty paper, stick it on your fridge. Make the prompts your daily spiritual practice, or do 4 in one day and be forgetful for a week. Share with a friend who needs slowing down, and solace.
Before you can see it, you can hear it. It begins as a single chirp. It’s called the Dawn Chorus, the hour before sunrise when one bird, then two, then dozens break into song, warbling the world awake, singing the sun to its appointed duty. It’s a symphony that signals us, the audience: whatever you are going through, however bleak, however broken your situation seems, however stuck you may feel in a dark loop that never ends, stumbling and lost, a new morning will dawn eventually. And there is a herald for that dawn. All we have to do is listen for that first chirp. That chirp sings, delightedly “I know something you don’t know. Listen first. Then, in a bit, look for the light.” For some of us, the night has been all too long and the songbirds flown far south for winter. We might be living through a Game of Thrones kind of winter–the eternal threat that “winter is coming” but never seems to actually arrive. Let’s get it over with already! Or it might be, as in Narnia, always winter and never Christmas, always the cold dim waiting of Advent and never the birth of Jesus, bursting onto the scene with warmth and light, the cosmic saving, God coming home to humans. Some of us have been living in a dark night of the soul for so long: mental health struggles, complex grief, anxiety about our country and our loved ones, fear that we have broken the Earth beyond repair. Others of us keep the lights on all the time and never truly experience darkness, which means we don’t rest deeply, sleep during which our bodies repair cellsb and grow, and our brains convert memory. Metaphorically speaking, we won’t permit ourselves to experience night, the shadows, and our own shadow side completely. But that also means we won’t get to experience the gifts of night, and the mystical splendor when dawn follows, as it always will eventually. Salt Project, from whom I first learned about the Dawn Chorus in their wonderful Advent devotional, says: “Advent is the church’s dawn chorus. It starts in the silence, in the shadows, and looks to the light. Each week, we gather together to listen and sing (sometimes quietly at first) straight into the deepening darkness, proclaiming that in the end, the night will give way to the day; winter will give way to spring; despair to hope, war to peace, grief to joy, violence to love – and God will come again, like the morning star in the east, or a mother hen gathering in her brood.” From dusk to dawn and into clear cold sunshine, God is with us. God is often more able to draw near to us in the night, when the world is quiet and our minds less busy and defended. I’ve been more insomniac than usual this season: awake at 2am in one ER with my father (multiple strokes), at 3am in another ER with my daughter (appendicitis)--and sometimes just awake with my mind manufacturing the emergencies. In those moments, I try to give my neural pathways an offramp: “Hey God. I’m listening. What do you want to tell me?” Join me in the close listening this Advent and Christmas, as you lie awake in the dark and journey through the day. The simple prompts in this year’s calendar will help you hear what you’ve been missing–and raise your own birdy voice in song. Stop scanning the horizon until your eyes hurt, hoping to catch a glimpse of your heart’s desire. Tune in to another sense, that will tell you what you need to hear even before the light returns. Christlove, Molly Hello Beloved!
It’s Election Eve and I’m about to get on a plane and fly from Boston back to San Francisco after an epic weekend of book launching. I’m usually a news junkie, especially during the election returns when I love nothing better than to steep myself in liberal jubilation or distress, but this time is different. I’m going to read Middlemarch and maybe watch a bad romcom and eat chocolate instead of driving myself crazy holding out hope and rehearsing despair. The truth is, we may not know which way our corner of the world is tipping for days, weeks…or a decade. Whoever “wins” (I put that in air quotes because we know how the Republican party has gerrymandered, lied, cheated, propagandaed, sued and especially this season: bought elections) in the midterms, we will have to keep fighting for our democracy, loving our enemies and standing with/speaking up for our most vulnerable friends and family. In the meantime, in my own little world, life is pretty sweet! I just did 4 events in 3 days, had a little time with my dad who seems to be doing better and better after surviving 5 strokes this summer, and am now heading home to gear up for the big West Coast Book Launch/Disco Party this Sunday at 5pm PT! The crowd at Brookline Booksmith was amazing! All but 3 of them were people I personally knew and *that’s ok.* Some were folks I hadn’t seen in 20 or 30 years! And they came from all the parts of my life, hugged me hard, and bought the book. It meant the world! There's something about seeing people who have known you since your callow youth, and looking in your eyes, and affirming you that is like a fairy tale key going into the lock of a rusted-shut cabin or castle, and turning with a satisfying clink, opening to treasures long unseen. Co-author and interviewer extraordinaire Ellen and I then hit the road and went to see church camp friends at their house in the woods overnight, then I preached and we gave a parenting talk about Bless This Mess–about how it’s a basic human need to feel like we have mastery over our worlds, and that need for control can make us controlling…even fascistic, and regress us to the morally infantile position of turning the world into good guys and bad guys. Sound like something makes sense in other arenas of our life than parenting? Ok, time to shlep from South Station to Logan, so I’ll leave you with some links and some calls to action: Come to the BOOK LAUNCH this Sunday! You won’t regret it. You can RSVP here. If you’re not in the Bay Area, it will livestream. Click here at 5pm PT. Amazon is shipping the book early! You can have it in your hot little hands by this weekend. As a reminder, BOOK REVIEWS REALLY HELP authors who aren’t already famous, like me. Please review the book at Goodreads and Amazon (even if you didn’t buy it from Amazon. Sometimes you have to try more than once), and then post your review on your favorite social media or email it to a few friends who you think might enjoy the book too. There are two more spiritual snack mini-concert/book readings coming up, including one with progressive Christian pastor/rapper J.Kwest tomorrow. You can watch them (and see the ones that already happened) on my FB. Favorite thing this week: this conversation between Anderson Cooper and Stephen Colbert made me laugh and cry. We really don’t know how to grieve in our society. These two will help. Promise. Alternative Advent Calendar: if you love and look forward to the advent calendar I make every year, get ready! It’s coming late next week, via this newsletter. Now is a good time for friends to sign up if they need a good grounding ritual to keep them from flying off into the outer darkness where there is much weeping and gnashing of teeth in these sometimes terrifying times. Finally, go and vote! If this adorable guy named George Phinney who is 79 and just had a whole bunch of strokes can go in person to vote, what’s your excuse? Love, Molly  Winston the Corgi is sad that he never learned how to read. The audible version is coming on November 28, Winston! EEEEEEEEEEEEeee I can’t believe it’s almost time for the book to be born! It’s only been, what, 11 years since the cancer that started me writing, and 15 months since I handed in the manuscript? Luckily, the world is still a hot mess and might still be interested in a book called How to Begin When Your World is Ending. Some of you (thank you wonderful Book Launch Team folks!) have already finished reading it, and have been telling me privately and publicly how much it is helping you navigate grief, anxiety, health issues, weltangst. One such example: my friend Mitch posted this review on Goodreads–bless you Mitch, for keeping it real! “As a cancer survivor who has struggled to find faith, Molly's voice is a clarion call to 'how to' find joy in the midst of struggle. She speaks with piercing honesty about the challenges to faith, the challenges of chemotherapy, and the challenges to finding peace in our unfair world. A clergyman once told me that the meanest thing that can be said to a person who is in despair is 'have faith.' If it were easy to 'have faith,' the person would not be in despair. Molly's book does not tell people 'have faith'; it describes how to take action that will lead to finding meaning, purpose, joy and (perhaps) faith.” ~ Everybody who’s not on the book launch team–thank you if you have pre-ordered the book! If you haven't yet gotten it, you can buy it here, or here if you don’t want to give Jeff Bezos any more money. It'll arrive right around November 15. Roundup of All The Fun In Person and Online:
And catch me and musical friends at one or more of 6 Facebook live mini-concerts starting this Friday at noon Pacific Time! [see below] That's all for now...please please send up a prayer that COVID keeps its distance so we can have all this fun for the next few weeks. Keep Dancing , Molly  Hieeeeee Beloveds!
TL:DR–I need your help! It’s almost How to Begin book-launch time! If you want to be on the super-exclusive (not really), totally rad (fer sher) How To Begin Special Ops Book Launch team, click here and fill out this form! YOU, dear reader, can make a BIG difference in helping my book get some traction. So thxthxthx for helping out! ~ I’m so sorry I haven’t written since, what, June? I promised I wouldn’t spam you, and I sure am keeping that promise! It’s been…a time. Mostly good stuff. I spent a lot of the summer seeing people I love and jumping into every body of water I could find, unsurprisingly. I also got to take 5 incredible kids from my church to work camp in Smith River, California, so far north it’s practically Oregon, to spend a week in service to others and the earth. We worked on making the local tribal community center firewise by tearing out invasive blackberry brambles, painting a Head Start and washing dishes wayyy up in the woods and off the grid where we were staying in Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park. But the summer wasn’t all fun and games and pooping in compost toilets in the dark. When we were back east visiting family, literally an hour after we arrived on the Cape where my dearest dad was supposed to meet us the next day, he had a stroke at his home in Plymouth, MA. My sister Emily, an extremely capable RN, was visiting him and very likely saved his life. That meant I was able to be close while he made a complete recovery and went home. We all tried to put the terror behind us–surely this was a warning shot, a nudge to him to take more beach walks and shift his potato-chip-heavy COVID diet. Wasn’t my dad the youngest 78-year-old any of us knew? Fixing his own roof after a storm just a few months ago? Surely he had decades left on the planet, to cook for us and fix annoying things in our houses and regale us with bad puns and intricate explanations of weather phenomena. But a month later, as I was packing the van to bring the girls to work camp, he had two strokes in a row. I had to decide, in the space of a moment and with very little information, whether to drive the luggage car north for a youth trip we’d been planning all year–or find another adult to step in, and fly to Boston. I tried to get quiet and wait for a holy nudge, to stay or to go. One of the youth group moms dropping off her kid took me aside and prayed for me. Suddenly, my through-the-roof anxiety and distress unfurled itself like an ancient scroll, and I knew what to do. God said, “follow the girls up there. Get them settled. If the situation turns more dire, you can tag someone else in.” I got in the luggage car packed to the gills with sneakers and sleeping bags, and cried on and off the whole ride up on my solo journey. I was not ready for my dad to die. Or even get old and feeble all of a sudden. I was not ready to try to help my sister manage care for him from 3,000 miles away, and frankly, he was very resistant to being cared for. When my mom died at age 64 of emphysema, depression and anxiety, she’d been old and frail for a very, very long time. Death came as relief and release. But this threatened death–this death felt like it would take me with it. My dad was the parent who did most of the nurturing, was the steadiest and most reliable presence in my chaotic early life, the one I’d return to again and again after young adult adventures, the one whose love I could count on. As a pastor, I’ve accompanied many people through gutting griefs, and of course, I’ve lost many people I love as well. But I’ve never yet experienced the kind of loss that unravels you irrationally. I was ugly crying and trying to stop so I wouldn’t careen off the freeway when, deus ex machina style, my Spotify jogging playlist turned itself on. It’s hard to sob when Bruno Mars or Janet Jackson are inviting you to duet with them. I sang ridiculous pop songs, and cried, and sang, and cried, through 400 miles of California wilderness. My dad stabilized in the ICU, so I decided to see work camp through unless something changed. In the middle of the week, the young spiritual leaders of Sierra Service Project led us on a Spirit Walk through a coastal forest and out to the ocean. I put my feet in the surf, stood with the sun setting in the west and a insane end-of-the-world full moon rising in the east, and hollered at the sea. “Please, please, let my dad stay a little while longer–and let him live with dignity and joy. But if you have to take him, take him gently.” I flew to Boston as soon as I could after that, tended my dad in the hospital, celebrated his 79th with tubes coming out of multiple parts of his body, and eventually took him home to adjust to his new, radically altered life. I talk a lot about prayer in How to Begin: how it changes things, primarily us. How prayer is God giving us a toehold, showing us the next place to push off from as we scale a rockwall that seems impossibly smooth and steep, our arms growing weak and our legs start to shake from the effort of holding ourselves upright, afraid we will plummet to our deaths. When I was at work camp, waving my phone around in the air trying to catch a signal and a medical update, I posted about my dad on Facebook, and hundreds upon hundreds of you prayed for him. I couldn’t be with him, so you showed up in force. He lived. Coincidence? Good medical care and good advocacy? Or the efficacy of prayer? Does it mean God was grudgingly moved by your hundreds of petitions for my dad, but knocked off the lonely schlub next to him in ICU who didn’t have a social media platform? I really don’t know. I know it brought me inexpressible comfort when I couldn’t be in two places at once. I know that when we show up in love and in service to one another, year in and year out, as my dad has for me and so many others, it has a ripple effect. My prayer life is changing a bit these days–even from when I wrote the book. It feels more feral, keening and wild. I still pray the Ignatian Examen in bed at night, but I also holler at the ocean. A few years ago, I met a psychic in New Orleans who read my cards. She suggested I pray not to “Big God” but to seek out a more specific god who I felt a connection with, who I could ask anything of, however trivial. I did some feeling around and Yemaya came to mind, an Afro-Caribbean goddess of the ocean I’d learned about from my storyteller friend Valerie. Yemaya feels somehow warm and approachable and also not to be trifled with. I’m at the ocean a lot these days, and if you want me to whisper or holler a prayer at Yemaya on behalf of you or someone you love, just poke me and tell me who and what to pray for. Ok, more book launch brass tacks. My book is coming out in 2 months! Finally! I have a whole fun series of events: I will be at Brookline Booksmith in Boston on Friday, November 4. I’m doing a tiny-desk-concert-style virtual series on FB live with a bunch of musicians I adore. And I have a big book launch on the left coast at First Church Berkeley with the amazing Aisha Tyler and a disco dance party on Sunday, November 13 from 5-7pm PT! It’ll be live and virtual. PLEASE come and bring friends if you live in the tri-state area! Ok, maybe not the tri-state area. Tri-county? Come for the Earth Wind and Fire and the snacks and bubbly (and to meet the gorgeous and brilliant Aisha, who happens to be an atheist, and hear us argue about God the way we have since we were freshmen in college). Here’s where you come in! It is VERY HARD to get noticed in the crowded, noisy marketplace of books. Publishers don’t have a lot of resources to push the books of people who aren’t already famous. One thing that REALLY makes a difference is loyal readers who 1) post reviews early and 2) tell their friends about books they love–good old grassroots whisper campaigns to help books get to the people who need them. You can sign up here to get an early copy of the book–the first 30 of you who complete the form will get an old-fashioned hard copy delivered into your hot little hands! After you read it, you commit to posting a review on Goodreads or Amazon or both, and then saying something nice about it on your favorite (or at least, less-loathed) social media platform. That’s it! That’s all I need. [Also, if you happen to know Oprah, can you put in a good word for me? I have a slot open to guest on Super Soul Sunday ;)] Thank you, best readers/friends/fam in the world! Love you so! Molly I wrote in the new book, How to Begin, that I went into ministry at least partly because I wanted to be a witch, but nobody will give you a salary or benefits to be a witch.
Ministry, it turns out, often makes me feel more like an administrative elf rubber-stamping arcane scrolls. There are weeks or months when I feel like I have lost any magick I ever had–was it all a dream, after all? But then, magical moments surface. Like the way the afternoon light limned the hospital room last week when I was visiting a young(ish) dad from my church after his new cancer diagnosis. We joked and cried in turn about how much it sucks when a rogue cell misdivides and then keeps on acting up until lo and behold, you have cancer. Or the way I randomly reached out to a woman from my church who works with incarcerated youth, and she said my text came at weirdly the right moment to land a God-nudge that she had been dodging. Or how the signal dropped on the Zoom committee meeting from purgatory as I was walking along a reservoir, leaving me with nothing to do but hold my 16-year-old’s hand (a miracle in itself, that she still lets me) as the California towhees swooped for supper and the sun slipped behind the hills. ~ I was so mad at this world we have made (again) when the SCOTUS decision leaked last week. “God dammit!” I yelled. “It’s gonna be time to march again, and I’m tired of marching! We march and we march and it makes no difference because the minority rule will not be shamed by massive numbers of people in the streets, nor even by Gallup polls! They just lie and cheat and steal to get power, and do whatever they can to keep it as long as they can, for their warped, nefarious white nationalist ‘Christian’ ends! Domestic supply of infants, my ass. Are people with uteruses nothing but baby factories? What about all the meticulously catalogued collateral damage that happens when abortion is illegal and social safety nets are weak? And whose rights are they coming for next? What CENTURY is this?” I do what I usually do when I’m upset. I remembered my baptism by climbing into our backyard hot tub (I’m not much of a thing person, but our hot tub is one thing that I really, really love. I want the next stimulus plan to include a hot tub for everyone in America. It would solve so many problems). I floated, and drank up the crescent moon squeezing moon-juice onto me. Low scattered clouds scudded by at speed, occasionally obscuring the winking moon in their race east. My palms faced up, and energy filled me from above. I felt magick pouring back into me. God took my by the ankles, and pulled me up into a full float, and said “Protests are important–especially so that people can find each other and find their courage when lives are on the line. But I also need people to stand still, anchored in the earth on two strong feet, to pull down Good energy, to pull it down and direct it into the world.” It sounded just woo-woo enough that I knew it was God and not me, because I’m really a pretty practical person, for all my witchy longings. One of the chapters of How to Begin is about everyday mysticism–you know, when God breaks through the banal practicalities of life with a message whispered in your ear, and/or rends a hole in the time/space continuum to send you in an entirely new direction, and/or sends you a dream that is OBVIOUSLY NOT “just” a dream. Here’s a quote from the book: Oddly, even though I’m cautiously open to all things mystical, it turns out I’m also a realist who is shocked pretty much every time God makes Herself noisily known. God’s dramatic entrances have happened often enough in my life that you would think I would start to expect it. But I’m grateful for my own surprise. Every time God talks directly to me, either with words written on my heart, a clear-as-a-bell voice that is wiser than I am, or through a sign smoothing my travels through this sticky-wicket world, it feels like an astonishing gift. Those moments of God’s almost embarrassing personal attention give us a chance to claim the magick afoot in the world for the good of all. I do think there are corrupt principalities and powers at work in the world. I believe we need to take to the streets and the ballot box to stop them, and to do our best to awaken those spellbound into fearmongering by the Powers that Be–by remaining in loving connection to them even when their political convictions piss us off. And I also believe we need to attune ourselves to supernatural energies directly. To root ourselves, to float, to drink the moon, to ritually dance and sing in order to banish evil energy. So, Loves, if you’re feeling like me, and you don’t know what to do next, first, remember your baptism: image description: Carmen and I swimming Walden Pond at sunset in Sept 2015 (courtesy Boston Globe) Then read this piece by Jay Kaspian Kang, which reminded me why we march. Then read this piece by Jill Filipovic, who is always so clear about the bad things that are happening, and especially clear how we can act to preserve the lives of those whose rights are being robbed. And if you want a really good theological and biblical grounding in a theology of God letting us be decisionmakers about our own bodies, listen to yesterday’s incredible sermon by my colleague Rev. Kelly (here's the ms. if you want to read it). Then take to the streets, and to a redwood grove, a pine ridge, the crashing ocean, the pocket park down the street from your house, and drink the moon. You’ll need all that juice for this journey. ~ Hey! My book went to the printers on Friday! You can still pre-order here or here or here, and it will magically arrive in your mailbox in 6 months. Why does it take 6 months? Beats me. Maybe it has to go to the moon and back. Things I am excited about: I’ve applied to the UC Berkeley Center for the Study of Psychedelics, a brand-new certificate program for clergy and others who want to be trained as spiritual guides to people have high-dose psychedelic trips for the purposes of healing from addiction, depression, trauma as well as for spiritual and emotional wellness–please pray that I get in! Later this month I have plans to jump into this river and this river! And maybe this lake! I think you should go jump in a lake, too. I am newly re-enamored of the Gottman Institute, which has a long track record of helping couples stay vital and tender in their relationships. Peter and I went on a retreat recently and came back with “love maps” cards and “open questions” cards that we have used at the family dinner table with our kids, and even with our Supper Club to deepen warmth and trust! The inimitable Alice Walker was at my church a couple of weeks ago, with a new book–excerpts from 30 years of her journals. I love reading words from the young, brilliant, impetuous, sometimes insecure, still-becoming Alice. Alice Walker–she’s just like us ;)! I think I invented this recipe for vegan oyster mushroom “bacon” (see below). You may never eat bacon again. I realize what a throwdown that is. Get a pound of oyster mushrooms, brush off loose dirt (don’t wash), tear the big ones in half the long way. Put 1/4 lb. Trader Joe's vegan buttery spread (the new one that comes in a brick...so good...it even browns) in a big cast iron pan and melt. Put one layer of mushrooms in with room between them, and put another smaller cast iron pan on top of it to weight them. Cook on medium heat until the mushrooms are beautifully caramelized. Throw some salt on the top (I like Maldon smoked salt for everything), flip them with tongs and replace the smaller cast iron “press.” When the second side is browned, turned off heat and eat! them! all! slowly and with joy. Abracadabra, Molly  Hi lovelies! How the hell are you? Sorry I’ve been MIA. A combination of day job/some mild depression I’ve been working through (feeling much better, thanks)/our dog dying/travel/generally stick-a-fork-in-me-I’m-done-late-pandemic vibes. But I’m super excited to share some things with you, including the cover of The Book!!! And: a peek inside the first chapter. The other week, Carmen and I arrived at SFO at midnight after flying home from visiting family on the East coast. I was tired and cranky. It was 3am to my body, and I had to preach early the next morning, and also figure out how to shape the prayers of the people after a week of multiple emergencies in the headlines: Russia had started a war of aggression in Ukraine. The Texas governor ordered social workers to bring parents up on child abuse charges for seeking lifesaving gender-affirming care for their trans kids. The Don’t Say Gay bill was advancing in the Florida state legislature. And even more Trump shenanigans made the news, shenanigans it didn’t seem he would face any repercussions for, ever. Why do the wicked prosper, oh Lord? Our luggage took forever to come down the chute. My darling husband who had come out in the middle of the night so we wouldn’t have to Lyft helped us wrestle suitcases into the car, but before he was even pulling away from the curb he started to tell me about all the emergencies back home. “There’s drama inside and outside our house. Rafe had a bad accident at work; he just got home. And there are cops in front of our house arresting some guy.” I blew up. “Can I get one goldurned minute please? I literally just landed.” I pride myself on my executive functioning in times of distress–I’m good in a crisis. But when too many crises pile up, my executive functioning goes haywire. You can almost see the springs sproinging from my head and the smoke pouring from my ears as my eyes become pinwheels. That is when I need to remind myself: what is the emergency here? Are any of the things happening really emergencies? Is it actually my emergency? What is the next right thing to do? Usually the answer is: drink a glass of water. Possibly: brush my teeth. Then: pray for what I can do to be revealed (which might be: nothing at all). These three things have rarely led me astray. As of next week, it’s been a solid two years of sirens going in our hive-mind. We’ve been in emergency mode more or less the whole time, the various risks and threats blobbing into one big red DANGER sign flashing on and off. But with mask mandates rolling back and falling caseloads, it might be hard to talk our brains into coming off high alert. There’s always a new emergency to take the place of the old ones and keep us adrenalinized and fretful. The opening chapter of my new book is called There Are Very Few Emergencies. It’s something I actually believe on my best days, and repeat to myself on all the other ones. One of my favorite book characters ever is a minister from a Robertson Davies novel, who is called to the scene of a murder in the middle of the night. He doesn’t race to the scene wild-haired with his PJs peeking out of his raincoat. He takes time to dress, wash, and compose himself before he gets there. He knows that whomever he meets at the other end will need his composure—even if he would have to fake it in the face of the calamitous. The last couple of years have called on us all to show up as that solid someone-for-others (and in many cases, show up for ourselves) in the middle of the night. And really: when we look back on many of the things we thought at the time were emergencies, 20/20 hindsight reveals that they were actually emerge-and-SEES. Ruptures with a status quo that wasn’t working. Opportunities to step into growth. I ask you: What is one emergency you have survived in the past couple of years that turned out to be an emerge-and-see? What did the calamitous reveal, even heal? You can answer that question here on my Facebook page (look for the entry linking this newsletter) or on my Insta page. Get into the chat and teach, comfort, support one another. Let’s form a little community of Emergers who can give each other courage to keep going through life as it unfolds and astounds us. And now, are you ready for the book cover for How to Begin When the World is Ending? Drum roll please…. TADAAAAAAH!!!! I love it! I hope you do, too. Hey guess what? How to Begin won't publish till November but it is already available for pre-order on Amazon. It’s barfy but true that Amazon pre-order numbers REALLY matter to how willing smaller book retailers are to pick up a book. So will you think about going ahead and ordering it? If your conscience prevents you from giving Jeff Bezos even more filthy luchre, you can also pre-order directly from Broadleaf Books. If you are wanting even more Molly morsels here are some clickable things I have been up to lately:
Ok, that's enough for now. Remember to go here or here and tell us all what your latest emergency was, and how you emerged-and-saw. And/or post this newsletter on your own social media with your personal story. We’re here to help each other home. Christlove <3 Molly ps you made it to the very end! Here are some bonus photos, of Carmen and her friend M. puppysitting our friend Jennifer's new service dog in training, Dana. You're welcome. Our lovely, ancient dog Boston went home to God a couple of weeks ago, and what is better when you are grieving than a reminder that life is always beginning again?  Here is this year's Alternative Advent Calendar, with all-ages-friendly daily prompts to help you experience this sacred season with more mindfulness and joy. Print it out on pretty paper and stick on your fridge. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good in practicing your Advent.
As always, church peeps: feel free to print/share/use this for your communities, with attribution. It all belongs to the Holy Spirit, but it's nice if people know where it comes from so they can sign themselves up for future offerings from me! CLICK HERE FOR A PRINTABLE CALENDAR! {and read on for a little essay on this year's theme} [Caveat lector: if you read the words "The Divine Feminine" and you are tempted to move on and not read further, ask yourself why. Call yourself in. See that there might be something good for you here, especially if you ID as male. If you don’t feel it immediately, try a little harder. Stay with this practice through Advent. See what happens, and let me know. I’m so curious!] TW: sexual assault and The Patriarchy in General Something broke in me just about two years ago, when I couldn’t tear myself away from the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, his petulant tears contrasted with Christine Blasey Ford’s quiet, steady, halting strength in telling how he had sexually assaulted her while his friend watched. “Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter...the uproarious laughter between the two. They’re having fun at my expense,” she said. Whatever broke open in me, stayed broken. The fact that I am raising a girl child who has to worry about sexual assault, who experiences/witnesses sexual harassment in high school every day, and who knows she is growing up into a professional world still stacked against her is also fuelling my fury. I haven’t been so on fire since my freshman year in college, when I first took feminist theory and began to understand that patriarchy was no accident. It was intentionally funded, built, and has been meticulously maintained by steady infrastructure spending over almost the entire length of homo sapiens’ career so far (with the exception of a few remote mythological islands and tribes where women and nonbinary people got to experiment with executive power). And patriarchy’s crowning achievement was to convince us that God is male. Christians have been the best at fomenting this fiction--because, frankly, Jesus being male-bodied gave them a head start. [I always assumed God-as-Jesus, being a pragmatist and seeing how things were, chose a male body to avoid a few headwinds on an already difficult task.] A while back I started invariably using She pronouns for God, just to put a thumb on the scale of patriarchy. I figured I’d do this for 2,000 years or so. [More recently, I also started using They pronouns, which makes the most sense--the book of Genesis has God speak about Themselves in the plural. And if God really is in everything/everyone, including all of what it might mean to be male or female or nonbinary, They covers it. But just for this month...let’s talk about She.] Wendell Berry wrote in his marvelous poem, The Mad Farmer Liberation Front: So long as women do not go cheap For power, please women more than men. He goes on, in a seeming non sequitur: Ask yourself: will this satisfy A woman satisfied to bear a child? Will this disturb the sleep Of a woman near to giving birth? But it’s not a non sequitur. Think of Mary, belly round, trying to sleep through the din of the stable before the pains started. Think of her singing the Magnificat, another non sequitur--what, after all, does being pregnant have to do with “tearing down the mighty from their thrones?” Think of every woman who has taken her own life in her hands, handed over her body (not always willingly) to grow another human inside of her. Think of what childbearing costs a woman physically, emotionally & economically. Even in the 21st century, in the United States of America, women still regularly lose their lives giving birth. Especially Black women. And yet women keep being willing to give birth, even into a world such as this: climate chaos, racial terror, extreme gerrymandered income inequality. They do this because of the Life Impulse. The Life Impulse is the desire to create, protect, defend (without weapons! but with our own flesh) all that is vulnerable and tender and beautiful and possible. You don’t need a uterus to be fueled by the Life Impulse. Any of us can give birth, in the grandest sense. All of us contain divine feminine energy (even you, straight men!), which we can each define as we like (because, honestly, what the hell even is gender?). For the purposes of this calendar I want to name feminine energy as the Life Impulse: protective, procreative Big Structural Mom Energy. It is fierce. It does not violate the integrity of bodies, but grows them, nourishes and feeds them. It is not self-sacrificing, but symbiotic. It has strength, but knows when to yield; it has flexibility and “give.” Think of the epic stretchiness of belly skin, the wonder of a tiny cervix that can pass a baby watermelon. But don’t mistake its flexibility for hypocrisy or meekness! Here’s an except from Bess Kalb’s recent hilarious op-ed on paid family leave that is in a larger sense about the fierceness and flexibility of the Life Impulse: “Imagine the following medical hypothetical: DOCTOR: We ran some tests and there is a watermelon growing inside you. PATIENT: How do we get it out? One of two ways. We either perform major abdominal surgery while you’re awake and hold your internal organs in front of a room of strangers that includes your romantic partner … WHAT’S THE OTHER WAY? It comes out a hole in your body the size of a gumball. How long does it take to recover from that? For the surgery? Best case, six weeks. You bleed and can’t walk up a flight of stairs. Longer if anything goes wrong. Downtime is shorter on the gumball path. What could go wrong? Among other things, hemorrhage, pre-eclampsia, cardiomyopathy, thrombotic pulmonary embolism …. Then there’s the odd seizure and —-- OK! OK! Then it’s over? Life goes on? Not really. The watermelon casts one of two spells on you. What are the spells? The first is the good spell: You will be willing to sacrifice your life to the watermelon and tend to its every need (it is a watermelon and can’t do anything) and if you don’t, it will die. You also cannot sleep more than three hours in a row because the watermelon needs to eat. And it eats your body. What’s the bad spell? Everything in the first spell plus you spiral into depression. What are the chances of that happening? About one in seven. OK. So … what do you expect my employer to say about this? Congratulations! See you Monday!” ~The Life Impulse is the willingness to have the “good spell” cast upon you. It strives, but never for itself alone, always for the good of all Creation. It draws power from the Divine Feminine and thrives in darkness, gestation, moontime. It stays hidden and protected in the early stages necessary for germination, but explodes outward at the right moment. The Divine Feminine knows how to morph, waxing and waning across the month, and changing across time from maiden, mother, queen, crone, each mode with its gifts. The Divine Feminine knows it will die, as will all created things. And at its best it is not afraid to die. It knows that its death, in fact, will give life to others. This year’s Advent calendar invites you to put the thumb on your own God-gendering scale, to spend time with the Divine Feminine, the Life Impulse in all of us. Some of the prompts are about doing traditionally “female” tasks; others are about gender-bending and gender-busting. You will read lost stories about women heroes, do activities that invite deep embodiment, spend time in the dark to germinate and spark your own Big Structural Mom Energy. From my Life Impulse to Yours, Beloved, Rev. Molly |
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