Jennifer and I recently returned from a road trip to Kentucky. We traveled to Cincinnati, across the state of Kentucky down to Louisville, and over to Lexington. We stopped at bourbon distilleries, and I learned from these expert distillers about how transformation actually works: taking raw ingredients, and through care and attention making something pleasing and welcoming, a work of art. They showed us the raw ingredients which are readily available and have special properties: first the water. In Kentucky, the ground is full of limestone water, the limestone giving the water a special quality that is available to everyone in the state. Then there are the grains which come from local farms: corn, rye, and a mashbill which is a mix of grains that are used as a starter. Once the right percentage of these grains is mixed with water, it’s put into a still which heats all the ingredients creating the first important step of transformation, melding all these ingredients into 1 essence.

I learned that moonshiners at first thought that this was the final process, and would drink the liquid after this, causing blindness and even death. What took time for distillers to learn is that through the process of transformation, there are impurities or poisons expressed as methane. If you drink it as is, it’s poison. Distillers realized there needed to be another step of transformation. They developed a system that is now called separating the heads, hearts, and tails. The heads is the methane gas that is pure poison – they developed over decades a way to remove the poison, the heads. The hearts is the good bourbon – that’s the good liquid that people enjoy. They developed a way to protect the heart, and keep that intact. The tails is the mashbill which can be used as the starter of the next batch, so they save that, for future distillations. You might think after all of that, that should be the end of the process. And some distillers stopped there, and they called their product moonshine or whiskey. That’s as far as they felt they needed to go.

But bourbon distillers came to understand that was the easy part – there was an unpredictable journey that promised even further transformation. They put the hearts, the good liquid into charred oak barrels that were made from oak trees that were used as the boundary line of farms and properties. They poured the liquid into these barrels and stored them in a secure area where they discovered something by accident. Kentucky has all four seasons, and when the liquid in these barrels were allowed to experience at least two years of all four seasons, you had an entirely different liquid. During the Winter months the wood of the barrels would contract, and in the Summer the barrels would expand. This caused the liquid to merge and soak up in the barrel during the colder months and expand and come back out of the wood in the warmer months. The process of this transformation guaranteed a certain loss. Liquid would evaporate out of the barrel, lost forever, and this was called the angel’s share.

And some of the liquid would soak up into the barrel and never be able to be retrieved, usually 2-3 gallons. The liquid that stayed in the barrels was called the devil’s cut. Both the angels and the devil would get more or less depending on the weather cycle. They discovered through tasting that the liquid that remained transformed after two years of different weather cycles into something unique and distinct with a depth of flavor, which became called bourbon. For it to be called bourbon, it has to be aged into these oak barrels for at least two years, going through loss and transforming into something distinct and delicious. The journey of transformation can deepen if one keeps the liquid in the barrels for multiple years, allowing the liquid to mature and gain complexity over many different kinds of seasons.

I heard the news about the shooting in a suburb of San Antonio, an elementary school, while we were in Kentucky. I was driving when Jennifer shared with me the news. We just drove in silence for a couple minutes. I had no words, and a flood of feelings and thoughts. I felt shocked, and then angry that a part of me didn’t feel shocked.

I felt overwhelmed, and I could barely imagine being a family member, a parent of one of these kids, and I felt a repulsion at recalling the recent other shootings, one just recently in Buffalo. All of this happened inside of me so fast, that I just felt heat in my body and a vague nausea. I also felt the strangeness of being on vacation at a time when people are going through the worst experience of their life. And the lingering question: What does this experience that I’m having in Kentucky have to do with that? And the reality that this event in Texas, in a state I’ve visited once, was now inside this car, inside my body. And then I recalled what I learned from these distillers about transformation – about the art of letting things settle, and discerning what is poison and what is the heart, and learning to throw out what is not good for us, without throwing everything away. Part of that process of transformation comes intuitively, and some it comes through trial and error, gleaned from the wisdom of those who have found a way to transform something poisonous into something of value.

For me music is another example of that transformation. Of letting the great breath that is common to all of us come in contact with our throats, our mouths, with an instrument, transforming the sound and vibrations in a room, creating a harmony, finding melodies hidden in disharmony. Musicians like all of us are familiar with the pain of living, the reality of loss, and the struggle to preserve the heart. Artists know the wisdom that for a heart to have life, it has to be open to life, it needs to hurt sometimes, it needs to break sometimes – the heart needs to be mixed in with everything else for a while. But then transformation is crucial, and music is one way that is done. John Coltrane was a sacred musician. He understood that music was a gateway into the spiritual realm, the depth of our lives, and he understood that sound and vibration had a way of bringing out a persons’ presence, a person’s heart, and that certain sounds and vibrations could heal that heart, certain notes could bring healing, hope and comfort to that person.

Coltrane had long years of struggle with heroin addiction, and spent the early part of his life looking for relief. He searched in various world religions: Hinduism, Islam. He learned sacred chants and meditation, and through his journey of yearning for transformation, wrote “A Love Supreme” as a poem. He then played the notes of that poem, a note for each syllable, mirroring the pattern of breath and speech, creating the last piece of the album.

To listen to “A Love Supreme” is to travel into the deepest realms of reality, a reality of unbroken connection, peace, and mysterious vitality. The power of the music brings a person into the moment of peace and endless possibility, a deep presence of goodness, benevolence, care and concern. Music for me has a lot in common with prayer. I never think of prayer as a particularly religious act. It is a creative act. Like music, prayer is an act of the imagination. It is far too easy nowadays to live in narrow mindsets, and then to act upon those mindsets without noticing other possibilities.

 

Music and prayer open up different pathways for us to exercise seeing beyond our usual selves and our usual thinking. Both music and prayer start with yearning, a yearning that is raw and inarticulate, a yearning waiting for expression. Over time, we can trust that yearning and let it teach us something. And it’s very basic: it comes from our body, from our breath, sometimes through sound, vibrations coming to touch our vocal cords.

There is a vulnerability to jazz. Luke was telling me that playing this way brings a person into the moment. It invites a person to listen to what’s around them, to listen to their own rhythms and impulses, to invite you to contribute something to the room you’re in. There is a sense of welcoming and becoming friends with not knowing, of allowing something to unfold, seeing what you can offer.

I think our church has a lot to offer in the times we are living through. Speaking for myself, I feel invited again and again to feel how I am part of the world at any given moment.

Whether I’m in the pulpit or on vacation, or having a cup of coffee, I feel more and more the deep connection I have with all of you, and how I am part of everything that is happening. I’ve learned how to listen a lot more before responding, and I’ve learned the importance of having a response, to not let cruelty and tragedy have the last word. I’ve learned there are endless ways to respond, and that a simple, humble response is usually best. I’ve learned to start with being kind to myself, and trusting that kindness will spread outward. I’ve learned the great power of not making things worse, whether that is overwhelming ourselves unnecessarily past our threshold, or adding bitterness and cynicism onto tragedy. There is a great power in avoiding those temptations.

I’ve also learned that a way of life is more important than a single solution or outcome. Of course we all have a sense of what might be some good solutions, and we will do what we can to live into those. But that is a way of life, not a single outcome.

It’s much bigger than that. Nonviolence as a way of life can be expressed through our unique individuality, in our unique circumstances, in the places we find ourselves. Nonviolence as a way of life will include advocating for nonviolent policies, and it includes our whole life. It includes the way we treat ourselves, the ways we treat our families, the ways we treat strangers, our neighbors. It includes how we move in the world, how we talk, how we eat, how we spend our time and energy. It includes everything. And this is good news in a sense. Because it means we can start where we are, right now, in the place we’re in. We can start with ourselves, recognizing what’s going on in our bodies, our minds, our spirits. Showing compassion to ourselves, and trusting that will translate outward. We are very much like those oak barrels. We’re porous – what happens in the world gets into us and becomes part of us, and who we are and what we do flavors the world. Showing compassion for ourselves is not just for us, it translates to the entire world.

If one tragic event can reverberate throughout the entire country and world, the opposite is also true. Goodness, one act, reverberates impacting the entire world. One act of kindness toward ourselves reverberates throughout the entire world. That understanding gives us options. It gives us options of how we might respond, and the options are endless. I think we come to a place like this to be reminded of that when we forget, when we get overwhelmed, and when we feel small and helpless. We come to be reminded of our vastness, expressed in particularity, through our very body and life in the circumstances we’re in. No one is in the wrong circumstances to exercise compassion and nonviolence as a way of life. You can be a child, you can be an elder, you can be married, single, every life circumstance is perfect. And the good news is it won’t take any more time than what you have. Because being kind is not something on your to-do list for your life, it is your life, it is your whole life, every single aspect of it, nothing left out.

Each moment we are in is a moment of transformation, or potential transformation. A time to discern our heart. A time to let go of what is poison, and to make use of the raw ingredients of our life, all of our life without fear or regret. There are many ways to enact this transformation, endless ways. John Coltrane found a way. We can too. Transformation is always a team sport – all of us are part of that process, whether we’re aware of it or not. Each of us is creating the world as the world is creating us. That mutuality is another way of describing love. We create one another, thus we love one another. Let’s offer our thoughts, words, and actions as an offering to each other, an offering of love for ourselves, for the whole world.

Topics: Transformation