A Week of Goodbye: Journal Entry #2
Final Sermon: Murmuration of Starlings
June 30, 5:30pm: Kaleo
All I know is this: My final sermon, which was actually my second final sermon (the first final sermon will turn into a future post, so stay tuned or subscribe!), has me reminiscing and grieving like a Starling murmuration blown eastward by a spirit-filled breeze. I am lonely, but never alone.
So, without further ado, here is my final sermon at Kaleo (slightly edited for readability)…
Final Sermon: Murmuration of Starlings
Hi Kaleo fam. It is, and always has been, an honor to be with you, pastor among you, and preach over all these years. As you might know, Kaleo creates space to practice the ways of Jesus together as the multiethnic family of God, and today will be no different… except that it is.
I love you all.
Let me pray for our time together so that we might turn our focus from me and align ourselves with the liberating love of the Spirit of Jesus.
Let’s pray.
MVMT1- A Love Affair: Barry Lopez
– While preparing to leave Kaleo and the city of Phoenix, I developed a surprising love affair. His name was Barry Lopez. He was a prolific writer who passed away on Christmas Day, 2020. His words began to enthrall me, delight my grieving heart, and remind me that the natural world is well acquainted with transition.
And then, in a fateful twist in which my heart has been rendered to pieces, Kate and I put down our beloved dog, Maia, just this morning. Another startling reminder that nothing lasts forever, and love binds up our wounds.
Yet, in this moment, on this day, I volunteered to speak. Perhaps it is my fascination with last words, or last breaths as the case may be, but regardless I have strung together some words that have been soaking in my spirit. My hope is that they have mingled there with the Spirit of God.
MVMT2- Desert Notes: Jesus in the Desert
– The first collection of writings that resonated with me from Barry Lopez were the companion books titled Desert Notes: Reflections in the Eye of a Raven and River Notes: The Dance of the Herons.
In Desert Notes Lopez begins the introduction with a quote from Thomas Merton, a monk and writer who died in the late 1960’s. The quote reads,
“With the Desert Fathers you have the characteristic of a clean break with a conventional, accepted social context in order to swim for one’s life into an apparently irrational void.”
This describes the heart of Kaleo, the sweetest of irrational voids, and also the future Kate and I are stepping into. But later, Lopez writes this in the first sentence of the first essay:
“I know you are tired. I am tired too. Will you walk along the edge of the desert with me? I would like to show you what lies before us.”
Maybe you are tired like me. But maybe, also like me, you long to see what lies before us… as individuals, as friends, as a church.
– So it is, following Lopez’s lead, that I directed my eyes to follow a Jesus story in reverse. I started in the desert with Jesus, in search of the river. Jesus, as you may know, began in the river and was launched into the desert.
For today I decided I could begin by following him “along the edge of the desert.”
– The story goes like this:
Now Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wild. For forty wilderness days and nights he was tested by the Devil. He ate nothing during those days, and when the time was up he was hungry.
– The three temptations of Jesus follow these verses, but I am most interested in these first two. Jesus is camping in the desert, tired like you, me, and Barry Lopez. This image fascinates me. Jesus is filled with the Holy Spirit, the very One who led him into this rewilding campout, and for the next 40 days and nights he doesn’t eat. Some Gospel accounts say he was tempted during the 40 days and some say after but either way he met some wily visions attempting to convince him he was something other than who God declared him to be.
In my time as a pastor I have also suffered from many such visions and have sat with many of us who’ve also suffered so. The “Devil” does not arrive wielding a pitchfork all clothed in red. The “Devil” comes as the lies that tell us, again as individuals and as a community of people, that we will be satisfied with something other than the humble, mercy-loving, justice-seeking ways of Jesus.
– Later in Desert Notes Lopez has a short essay titled, “Conversation.” It reads like this:
– No, I will not be offering commentary on the essay. Don’t get too think-y about it!
*grins real big*
MVMT3- River Notes: Jesus in the River
– As we continue following the story of Jesus in reverse, maybe we’ll be born again (check out John 3). But for our purposes today, we’ll end up submerged in the Jordan River.
Like Jesus, I want to be submerged in a river for a season of time. Baptize me with a fly rod in hand, in the middle of the Rio Grande.
Luke 3:21-22 goes like this,
After all the people were baptized, Jesus was baptized. As he was praying, the sky opened up and the Holy Spirit, like a dove descending, came down on him. And along with the Spirit, a voice: “You are my Son, chosen and marked by my love, pride of my life.”
– So it goes. This is the only thing I ever want to say as a preacher. It’s the only thing I want to know as a person, as God’s child. You are God’s beloved, chosen, and marked child. And dammit, God is proud of you.
I can use all the swears because it’s my last day.
– Now, the very first sentence in the introduction of Lopez’s River Notes reads like this,
“I am exhausted.”
The funny thing is that they were published three years apart. He was tired, and three years later he was exhausted. Life is tiring, I guess. I know. You know. And yet, merging such thoughts with the story of Jesus, the reminder always seems to be:
We are never alone. You are not alone.
– Lopez writes of a river in an essay called “The Bend” that makes me think about the way Jesus might have been familiar with the Jordan River before he was beckoned below its surface. The concept of being intimate with the natural world is intriguing to me, and I think it is likely an element of Jesus’s existence that we tend to overlook.
We know next to nothing about how Jesus interacted with the desert wilderness for forty days and nights, just that he did. It’s not as if he simply stood in one place glowing in prayer.
The same goes for the river. Had Jesus swam in this river? Crossed it? Drank from it? Played it in? Did he know where it would bend, or the best rocks to nap on, or the places where his feet couldn’t touch the bottom?
– Lopez writes, “In the evenings I walk down and stand in the trees, in light paused just so in the leaves, as if the change in the river here were not simply known to me but apprehended.”
I love that word. Apprehended. It seems like Jesus was also apprehended by the river, by the Spirit, by the Voice calling him loved.
At the conclusion of this essay, “The Bend,” Lopez remarks about taking in the bend of the river.
He writes, “I have lost… some sense of myself. I no longer require as much. And though I am hopeful of recovery, an adjustment as smooth as the way of the river lies against the earth at this point, this is no longer the issue with me. I am more interested in this: from above, to a hawk, the bend must appear only natural and I for the moment inseparably a part, like salmon or a flower.”
And then he concludes with this final line:
“I cannot say well enough how this single perception has dismantled my loneliness.”
– As Jesus stands in the Jordan River and the Spirit descends like a hawk, and the voice of Creator love-whispers, I can’t help but imagine that it was at this moment that the loneliness of Jesus was dismantled.
And maybe this is a vision for us too. We, my friends, are not alone.
MVMT4- Murmurations of Starlings
– It seems love affairs can suddenly turn into stalking, so it is no surprise that I kept searching for any and all interviews with Barry Lopez, longing for a chance to hear his voice. During the long drives between Phoenix and Taos I listened to interview after interview.
Lopez had a penchant for, and philosophy of, paying attention. He practiced the art of noticing. I think Jesus embodied this same attentiveness to the created world around him.
Like any spiritual teacher and wise voice, Lopez was often asked what he thought the solution to the disparaging decimation of our world might be. With a winsomeness that paralleled the parables of Jesus, Lopez began to wax poetic about Starlings (the bird).
He said one unique behavior of a flock of Starlings is what we need to implement as people seeking the greater good. Or, as we might say here at Kaleo, we need to be a group of people who walk humbly, love mercy, and do justly along with our God.
– So here’s the image Lopez provides. He invites us to imitate a Starling Murmuration:
My low-brow research brought me to the pivotal work of National Geographic Kids. They describe it like this:
“Murmuration isn’t just a fun word to say – it’s also an incredible natural phenomenon!
Imagine yourself standing out in the countryside, perhaps by a reed bed, near the sea on a large pier, or even on a tall hill in a city. Suddenly, you spot thousands of starlings, all flying together in a whirling, ever-changing pattern. The flock moves together as one, as smooth and fluid as running water. They fly as one huge mass that twists, turns, and changes direction at a moment’s notice!
That’s what seeing a murmuration is like.
A beautiful image, to be sure. But to grasp the fullness of the metaphor of being, we ask why such murmurations of Starlings take place. “
– They go on to note that Starlings murmurate for safety. It makes sense that it would be difficult for speedy predators like the peregrine falcon to single out a particular bird when they’re all flying together.
However, even within the murmuration, Starlings move around, without bumping into one another no less! No bird wants to be at the edge of the murmuration for too long because there will be most vulnerable to predators. Do you see it? A community cannot allow the most vulnerable to consistently exist at the margins.
Starlings also gather together to keep warm and exchange important information… the communal dynamic is life-saving and life-giving.
But it's not all about function. The term murmuration is used specifically to describe groups of Starlings, because of the elegant way the flocks move, and the beautiful sky art that they create.
– At the end I say: thank you for allowing me the gift of murmurating with you, friends. We have flown together, protected one another, shared the most basic of needs, staved off unjust enemies, and also created a beautiful and beloved community.
– As our little family flies (or drives) East, minus one, we know the murmuration of Kaleo will continue murmurating.
This is the final metaphor I’m leaving you with, a parable of the sky to balance out all the parables of the ground I’ve shared in the last six years of growing. Keep soaring, my friends. I love you. Kate and I will be murmurating in the state next door.
So as always, let’s pause and pray, giving the Spirit of Jesus the final word.
