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Writer's pictureLivinginbetweenall-Terry
Sep 54 min read

The Essential Thing

"Reverence's Essential and Human-making Place"


"We think in categories given to us by our language and culture.

Theology is not a culturally neutral act.”  Doug Pagitt


I first met Walt at a most inconvenient moment; as the last of our Native American friends gathered in our Sanctuary to honor the life and memory of their tribal member, his Creator's Spirit (God) and this now "sanctified" space; having been properly prepared by the smudging rituals of a native minister. I now realize that what was once a mysterious and in my narrow prejudice, possibly demonic practice (Smudging)1 was actually sacramental; giving these urban First Nations people the ability to walk back in time from the polluted over-populated, concrete noise of urban America and into the spacious green grasslands of their tribes dwelling. Whether highly successful in modernity or marginalized by prejudice or poverty or alcohol, all were transported to the quiet dignity of being co-equal, a space where reverence for the sacred, rules.


In this moment, as I write—a rye smile bleeding through—it dawns on me that the enticing smell of burning sweet grass that filled our sanctuary may have been what drew my now 58 year old neighbor and wanderer in. He is my friend now, but my dogs enemy. More on that later.


Walt is an innocent hippy type child whom time has captured and stilled; his brain fogged by something. I've always assumed it was actually too much of something many years before. Within a few weeks of this, my first encounter with Walt, I would receive, with a couple of hundred neighbors, an email inquiring as to whether this homeless wanderer was a danger. "He's neither, homeless or a danger I could affirm. He's a lover of bikes and coffee." '..and money'. my mind added, which thank God he has precious little of, or it would all go up in a puff of smoke in another kind of smudging, less reverent.


It's midnight and I'm having my first quiet moment in four days. For me that's rare and potentially dangerous; as I'm only 670 days into a sustained sobriety from the only addiction my obsessive/compulsive anxiety prone brain can too easily fall into. The scripture text for today's lesson have all centered on "reverence" as the essence of the Divine/human and human/human experience 2.


In this chaotic world with real inter-national and national dangers to our communal American experiment in Republican Democracy, "I'm too easily frightened by an economy on the edge of debt collapse, a body politic hostile to itself and enemies who would love to take out our electric grid. These fears drive me too easily to power-centric answers in both the spiritual and physical world. Were it not for Walt I might too easily succumb to American spiritual, economic or military-industrial-political prophetic voices.


Five hours ago Walt came by for his ritualized coffee request. My dog, who cannot hear and barely sees starts barking, intensely, as she always does in Walts presence. She had no idea Walt was at the door when her panic set in.


It hit me, maybe two days ago, that it was the smell of marijuana that triggers her insecurities; having been rescued from a life of verbal and physical abuse when under the careless, though loving care of her former owner, then homeless. We took her to provide a peaceful, food rich environment to her increasingly fragile body. So, for her sake and my own selfish convenience, I cut Walts coffee visit off.


So, as I listened to Isaiah, writing in equally troubling times, I was again reminded of the importance of of "reverence" toward both God (humility) and my neighbors (acceptance and dignity)—of Walt.


"Is this the kind of fast (religious acts/rituals) I choose, a day of self-affliction, of bending one’s head like a reed and of lying down in mourning clothing and ashes? Is this what you call a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD?


Isn’t this the fast I choose: releasing wicked restraints, untying the ropes of a yoke, setting free the mistreated, and breaking every yoke? Isn’t it sharing your bread with the hungry and bringing the homeless poor into your house, covering the naked when you see them, and not hiding from your own family?


Then your light will break out like the dawn, and you will be healed quickly. Your own righteousness will walk before you, and the LORD’s glory will be your rear guard. Then you will call, and the LORD will answer; you will cry for help, and God will say, “I’m here" [Isaiah 58: 6-9a NIV (parentheses added for context)].


Walt. ..I really do have a dilemma. Now that I know that my Bella is triggered by smell to relive her own traumatic fears, what am I to do with Walt?  Her fears are real. We had spent a great deal of time comforting her in the first days of her coming into our home. "Okay Lord, I can't simply draw a line around Walt that you took down a very long time ago. But help me? Nor can I inflict pain on Bella"?


Then I remembered. On that first day as Walt walked into my side office speaking rather loudly about his fear of not being able to go home, I sat him down. I told him, "As soon as the service is over, I'll get you some coffee and we'll talk." An hour and twenty minutes later, after the prayers, drumming, singing I walked into my office. Walt was there. He loves coffee.


Blessings! Terry


1 A Tribal ritual that acknowledges Sacred Space. Traditions vary, but usually involves the use of Sweet grass , Native Druming, singing and prayers.






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