[Dialogue] Christmas greetings

[David Dunn]

Christmas 2006

Dear Friends,

We¹ve been delighted to hear from many of you this year and are pleased to
be writing at last. This greeting wouldn¹t have been written yet if we
hadn¹t been snowed in two weeks in a row.

Burna. A recipe for no-knead bread and a Dutch oven have nurtured my desire
for healthier eating. Since living in Sarajevo we have been looking for some
really good bread and this is it. (See 1 below.) It also connects me with
all those memories of my mom's bread baking that she continues to this day.
Piano camp and a new choir director have nurtured my desire to make music.
My delight in finding a group of folks who are as obsessed about the piano
as I am is actually quite reassuring and our new choir director has
stretched both the choir and the accompanist (me). Continuing work with
refugees and communities has nurtured my hope to be useful. It is still a
privilege and a delight to meet and work with people from all over the
world.

David. I've been thinking about oral history recording for several years and
the ICA¹s "Living Legacy Project" gave me an excuse to start learning. I
bought a digital recorder, mic and cable, began to practice and was
immediately bitten by the "field recording" bug. Recording the church choir
and the grandchildren are shaking out the bugs in my skill set and some
standard works on oral history have gotten me acquainted with the niceties
of securing permission to record and use what others have to say. New
learning has been fun and a great source of light.

2006 was The Year of the Great Layoff; this fall the ICA laid off or
announced the layoff of virtually all of its senior program staff. It was
profoundly discounting and distressing to be dismissed by one¹s colleagues
without so much as an exit interview. I've written elsewhere about the
experience from several different angles. (See 2 below.) Here, I offer a
simple reflection. In the thirty three or so years between the birth of
Jesus that we celebrate at Christmas, and his death, that we remember on
Good Friday, this son of a carpenter who became an itinerant teacher and
healer learned how to forgive and how to offer forgiveness. I have become
acutely aware of the challenge of both, I have a far deeper respect for
Jesus and the man languishing on the mat by the pool whom Jesus invited to
stand up and walk. I'll keep you posted on my progress.

I continue to serve on a task force called Spiritual Direction Colorado that
supports spiritual directors and promotes awareness of spiritual direction
as a path for deepening one's spirit journey and as a profession open to lay
persons as well as clergy. We're becoming broadly ecumenical (Roman
Catholics, Presbyterians and Lutherans in addition to Episcopalians). You
can take a look at an early version of our new website at
<www.spiritualdirectioncolorado.org>.

Family. Steve Dunn and his partner, Lynn Rodenhizer are alive and well in
Boulder, Colorado. Ruah Dunn and her four children‹Tierra, Nia, Tony and
Terrance‹are alive and well in Detroit. Ruah, who has been working for Home
Depot for a couple of years, has just gotten a great personnel review and a
new raise. Bill, Jenny, Audrey, Madeline, Will and Bennett Sides and Tyler,
Sarah, Emma, Grace and  Matthew Roth are all thriving and blooming where
they are planted‹Elmira, Michigan for the Sides and Goshen, Indiana for the
Roths.

Recommendations. "Too Hot to Handel" is a jazz rendition of Handel¹s
Christmas Oratorio Messiah, faithful in spirit and filled with the power of
the original words. The Messiah is given new life in a work commissioned by
the former musical director of the Colorado Symphony, Marin Alsop. You can
buy the CD at http://www.toohot2handel.com.

We just finished an amazing book called "Passionate Marriage -- Keeping Love
& Intimacy Alive in Committed Relationships" -- not a book for the timid or
faint hearted. The author, David Schnarch, PhD, does for sexuality what RS-1
did for theology--grounds the promising words in life experience. It is an
amazing witness to the brilliance of Kierkegaard¹s insight that ³the self is
a relationshipŠ² and a fairly shocking invitation to discover the depth of
mature spirituality in intimate self-disclosure with our partners.

Remember Dag Hammerskjold, "For all that has been, thanks; for all that will
be, yes." Blessings to you and yours in 2007.

David and Burna Dunn

Notes:
1 Do a Google search on: Recipe: No-Knead Bread and follow the link to the
nytimes.com

2 Point your browser at
http://twiki.wedgeblade.net/bin/view.cgi/Main/LettingGo

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