Catching Up

Blessed Ascensiontide.  My favorite season.  The Resurrected Christ is gone.  Caught up into “heaven” whatever that is.  The Holy Spirit has not arrived.  We practice extreme ambiguity.  The Dark Night of the Soul.  “Do not leave us comfortless.”

Meanwhile, in community at Bluestone Farm we’re digging, planting, sowing, transplanting, tending seedlings, hardening off.  Singing the Ascension responds and antiphons.  Praying to birdsong. 

Blogwise:  Goodness, where have I been?  Mostly busy not only with the garden, but with preparing materials for the Christian Education Conference at Kanuga in June.  Designing the worship for a week and a workshop I’ll give twice. 

Before I went to Cornell, I was working on a kind of prayerbook for beginners of all ages.  The book contains seven books of hours, a prymer, exercises for preparing for reconciliation and for Eucharist, and other spiritual exercises.  My hope is for an illustrator to create borders full of hidden pictures and symbols and puzzles and references.  Perhaps it is a coloring book - so that you can enter your own pages viscerally.  Perhaps different “hours” might be illustrated by different artists - or there would be different versions you could download from the internet. 

I’m working diligently on the project again - catching up! It’s huge, so I’ve had to be singleminded about it.  Anyway, I created a “coloring book” using the “Morning and Evening Hours” for the Kanuga Conference.  I’m not an artist so … its a struggle!   Anyway, this way an artist or publisher might get a hint of what I’m trying to do beyond the texts.   

The workshop is called, “Inhabiting Your Prayer: Creating an Abbey of the Imagination.  By placing your prayers (the books of hours, for example) into the context of an imaginary cathedral-like church with gardens and guesthouses, cloisters and towers, participants design a balanced interior life.  Based upon the medieval use of “memory palaces” the Abbey of the Imagination reclaims a playful and traditional tool for growing in depth, breadth, and prayerfulness.  

I’ve been studying and inspired by the work of Mary Carruthers.  (The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400-1200, and also The Medieval Craft of Memory . )  I’m also studying Gothic architecture, sacred geometry, Books of Hours, etc. floor plans of cathedrals and monasteries. 

So forgive my bloglessness. 

Tomorrow I leave for a 10 day trip which will include a full week at New Camaldoli Hermitage in Big Sur California.  I’ll be connecting with the monks there - I’m an oblate of the Camaldolese Benedictines, and staying in a hermitage overlooking the Pacific Ocean.  Then I’ll go to Berkeley for Trevor’s PhD graduation ceremony.  (See Trevor on The Colbert Report - go to his website paglen.com)

Enjoy the mystical possibilities of praying in Ascensiontide.  Sit in the ambiguity and tension of loss and possibility, confusion and hope.  It’s a good practice for the times life gives you similar confluences.  Amen. 

Altar of Repose

snowdrops, strong winds, silence, haunting chants of Tenebrae looped in my mind like a continual prayer

I never understood the practice of creating a garden for an “altar of repose” for the Maundy Thursday vigil.  I served in churches where parishioners lovingly brought flowers in pots and vases, arranging them in such a way that when you sat at your “holy hour” you were surrounded by beauty.  ”Can you not wait with me one hour?” Jesus asks the disciples after the Passover supper and before his arrest.  Jesus, praying from his anguish of body and soul begs the Holy One, Abba, to “remove this cup from me” knowing he will be tortured to death in a few hours.  Why flowers while commemorating such a terrible event?

Church people sign up to take “hours” of that night, to be with Jesus at Gethsemane, staying awake.  If the Lord’s Supper was instituted at the Passover, my guess is that the disciples were “heavy with sleep” because they had just consumed great quantities of wine.  I always got delightfully giddy at friends’ Passover meals, drinking the required glasses and more.  I always identified with the indolent disciples, for whom “the spirit is willing, but the flesh weak.”

I didn’t understand making a “garden” for the reserved sacrament in which to sit and watch during prayer.  Visiting the Holy Land only reinforced this prejudice.  The Mount of Olives is a dry, dusty place. Olive trees thrive in this arid environment, but “gardens,”  at least flower gardens, take water; too precious and rare and structurally complicated.   I believed my parishioners created these gardens to distract their minds from the horror at hand.   Wouldn’t simplicity, starkness more honestly evoke the prayer of Jesus? 

But recently I found this prayer by Padre Pio:

O Jesus, how many generous souls … have kept Thee company in the Garden, sharing Thy bitterness and Thy mortal anguish… How many hearts in the course of the centuries have responded generously to Thy invitation … May this multitude of souls, then, in this supreme hour, be a comfort to Thee, who, better than the disciples, share with Thee the distress of Thy heart, and cooperate with Thee for their own salvation and that of others.  And grant that I also may be of their number, that I also may offer Thee some relief.

In prayer, sometimes you come close to the boundary of the soul and the boundary of time.  I have put the energies of meditation into situations long past, particularly with sorrowful events in my children’s lives and my own.  I have re-lived past traumas in order to comfort my young self, to urge her on, and to take heart.   And so I understood Padre Pio’s prayer immediately.   I, too, can to some extent, go as far as my soul will allow, to join the witnesses surrounding Jesus in prayer in that olive garden.  Then, why not create a space here and now of beauty, not starkness, to travel through time as prayer, as offering, as comfort? 

The sisters suggested setting the garden of repose in the Great Room where I’d already made a winter garden of house plants, forced bulbs, and generously blooming geraniums.   I asked them what their tradition had been, (and, of course, why a garden of repose in the first place?)  Mother Ruth established  a tradition of a single white freesia blossom near the reserved sacrament to remind the sisters of the scent of nard with which Mary of Bethany anointed Jesus.

In addition to the existing garden and pots of herbs banished from the seed room since the pre-planting has begun, I added large vases of forced forsythia to form a garden background.  Pots of pansies, ready to go outside (they tolerate cold well) frame the center of the library table in front of the winter garden.  With the vow of poverty, we try to make do with what we have, but I did search for white freesia so that the “garden” scent would evoke prayers past for the sisters, and I could not resist a handful of white broom which flowers in the Negev desert spectacularly and might have pleased Jesus in his time, who noticed the “lilies of the field.”  I gathered some snowdrops, the only flower blooming at Bluestone Farm at the moment.  And one small bunch of daffodils from the grocery store.  I also placed a small cystal dish of nard oil next to the sacrament.  We’d used the oil at our foot washing earlier in the evening.   

And so, we each took our vigils on Thursday night in the fragrent garden by the light of the reserved sacrament candle, and the candle of Tenebrae on the fireplace mantle, while full moon-light flooded the Great Room.  I need to move much of that garden into the chapel this morning, for the great feast is at hand.  Holy Saturday - a day of emptiness, except, unlike the disciples, and Mary Magdalene and Jesus other friends, the faithful and the unfaithful, the watchful and the indolent, we know what will happen.  

And so we prepare the next space for our prayers with devoted anticiptation for a mystery of splendid beauty.  

Sunday of Branches

musty Tenebrae books with Sisters’ careful notes in the endpages, red fabric draped on cross, black fabric, crown of thorns, white fabric waiting just out of sight in the closet, soggy ground, cold, tips of bulbs pushing up from the ground

You shall take the fruit of majestic trees, branches of palm trees, boughs of leafy trees, and willows of the brook; and you shall rejoice before the Lord your God.  Leviticus 23:40

Keeping with our “local” and “seasonal” manifesto and specific practice in Lent, I explored the sisters’ acreage for anything we might use for “palms.”  Even the pampas grass, soaked and limp and dirty seemed unworthy of the liturgy.  Finally, I gathered the most beautiful of the dried vegetation available: fern pods, artemisia, grasses, hydrangea, with forsythia I forced, placing them in vases around the dining room at St. Aidan’s so that we could each design and bind our own assortment of branches, tied with red ribbon.

We began the liturgy at St. Aidan’s, singing and praying, and then proceeded throughout the farm to bless and be blessed at each “gate” of the heavenly Jerusalem, that is, the stations of our working, our praying, our living.  After mucking through the fields, I celebrated mass in my wellingtons.

“Assist us mercifully with your help, O Lord God of our salvation, that we may enter with joy upon the contemplation of those mighty acts, whereby you have given us life and immortality; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.”  At these words, I wept.

A sister offered one of the best sermons I’d ever heard.  She contrasted vahana, the animal vehicle upon which Hindu deities ride, with Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem.  After all, he usually walked.  She imagined the Roman dignitaries riding magnificent Arabian horses through the city gates.  But Jesus borrows a humble donkey, and comes through the back gate through the poor neighborhoods.   She imagined what onlookers might have thought and felt in this spontaneous act of Jesus, coming purposefully, not furtively, into Jerusalem.   She opened the metaphors into a discussion of “the field” Lynn McTaggart’s concept of influences and intention.  The cultural, political, social, spiritual ” field” of Jerusalem within the oppressive powerful “field”of the Romans.  And Jesus, coming through the back gate, bringing his own “field” of influence and subversive power, which, indeed, changed everything.

I’m happy we decided to save the passion reading for Friday.  This is the first Palm Sunday in which there is time to contemplate the “triumphal” entry into Jerusalem. 

It is ourselves that we must spread under Christ’s feet, not coats of lifeless branches or shoots of trees, matter which wastes away and delights the eye only for a few brief hours.  But we have clothes ourselves with Christ’s grace, with the whole Christ - “for as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ” - so let us spread ourselves like coats under his feet.        Andrew of Crete   (8th century)

     

Repenting, Returning

Spring songs of chickadees.  Soggy earth.  Melting snow piles.  Twenty six fuzzy black baby chicks with white bottoms in our store-room.  Sprays of forced forsythia, deep yellow.  Metal buckets full of sap.  The sweetness of the air by the evaporator.  The distinct clarity - liquid purity - drinking a glass of pure sap fresh from the tree.

Returning.  Re-turning.  Turning again.  And again.  Again and again.  All day long.  From the first moment, putting my feet into my slippers, Open my lips, O Lord, and my mouth shall proclaim your praise! And shuffling down to the kitchen to make coffee.  Stumbling down the road to the chapel by starlight.   The outside bell calling us to meditation in the dark.  Already, I’ve returned dozens of times in my attention.  Bead by bead.  Breath by breath. 

The lights come on for Lauds.  Finding my place in the books.  Brought back by the Lauds bell: three short gongs, three long gongs.  Returning from thoughts between the bells.  Squawking out those first sounds of chant, sounding like adolescent roosters.   Concentrating on the texts and the tones.  Coming back, coming back again to attention.

Repenting, not in a vague way, oh, it’s Lent, and I’ve got some repenting to do, I’d better make an appointment with myself to say some prayers and see my therapist and get ready a little self-examination for confession.  Rather, everything, things done and left undone, promising to rake the kitchen garden , feeding the new chicks from the palm of my hand, drinking the cool sap, getting lost in work and then, coming back.  Coming back, returning to awareness of the Presence.   

 How many people over the years have said to me, “Lent is my favorite season!”  I think it’s because of all the opportunities we have to repent and return.  And each time, a thousand times a day, that old man in the icon scans the landscape from his lonely tower, watching for his beloved son, the very son who shunned him, as if he were dead, “give me my inheritance, old man!”  The son squanders the inheritance, casting away the virtues so carefully tended, as well as the money. 

A thousand times a day, the patient father declares a feast.   

   

Praying in Southern France

Golden mimosa blossoms along the azure sea and in vacant lots on hillsides.  Grey-green olive trees, ancient twisting trunks.  Cork-oaks.  Almond blossoms at the edges of dormant vineyards. Cyclamen in window-boxes. Confetti scattered on pavements , residue of local festivals in the local villages.  Elaborate creche scenes in every little church.  Fresh catches of fish at the market still squiggling, then seared and served for supper.  Cheese plates.  Marron (chestnut)  spread stirred into thick rich yogurt.  The Mistral wind pulling at my shutter-door.  Intense starlight waking me in my bed.

The prayer-highlight of my trip to Provence: climbing Sainte-Baume to the cave where Mary Magdalene lived as a hermit. 

According to Provencal legend, Lazarus, Martha, their servant Maximin and Mary Magdalene fled Bethany after Jesus’ death and resurrection and arrived Marseilles in 42 C.E.  They evangelized southern France (and indeed, Christianity did come very early through that port-city.)  Mary’s bones (or some Mediterranean woman of the first century) are entombed in a reliquary beneath the church of St. Maximin.   

After preaching and teaching, Mary chose the ascetical life, living in a cave in the cliffs of the still remote mountains of Sainte-Baume.  Each day, angels lifted her from the grotto to the mountain-top at the hours of prayer.  She died in Maximin’s arms, who lovingly preserved her remains.  We say, “The church is built on the bones of the martyrs.”  More than a mere Christian adage in Europe, churches literally grow around relics.  And every church seems to have a bit of St. Martin or a thread of St. Therese’s hair or a photo of Padre Pio along with other treasures in their stores both old and new.    

Mary Magdalene exemplified that living-martyrdom so popular in the desert and later the monastic tradition.  My favorite image of the Magdalene is the late 15th century Giovan Pietro Birago’s painting from The Sforza Hours (British Library). Mary, clothed in her hair, hovers above the rocky mountain, the sea, the city, the road, carried by four handsome angels as she prays the Hours, oblivious to the action below her.  She’s oblivious of the studly angels as well.

In our party of friends, competing claims made conversation interesting.   One position clung to the historicity of the family from Bethany settling in France.  The other equally literal position expressed a desperate need for the rest of us to acknowledge the legend as a cynical invention.    

To me, hearing ”Maria!” “Rabbouni!”  sends chills through me whether Mary subsequently went to Marseilles with Lazarus, to Ephesus with John, or disappeared into obscurity in Jerusalem.   Her power surfaces even through conflations of the various Biblical Marys with Pelagia the Harlot and Gregory’s fifth century layering of the woman with the alabaster jar over Mary as a model of repentance.  It doesn’t matter to me whether she came from Bethany or from Magdala, whether Magdala means Migdol (fortress/tower/) or ”the great” or whether her name signifies a place or a title, or whether she was Jesus’ wife, mistress or financier.

To me, the liminality of prayer breaks down boundaries of time and space making the inner experience of companionship in the communion of saints fruitful, whether in a grotto in France, a cave on Patmos, a tourist marketplace in Jerusalem or my fuzzy brown chair at St. Aidan’s.  Mary’s encounter with the risen Lord in John 20 illustrates the progress of contemplative mystical life from darkness to apostolic union in eighteen verses. 

Of course, my kinds of observations just frustrated everybody.

Monks have tended the grotto set into the cliff in Sainte-Baume since the fourth century - first Cassianites, then Benedictines, and now Dominicans.  The monastery clings to the cliff like a swallow’s nest.  Benedictine sisters run a retreat and guest house at the base of the mountain.  After lunch at the hostel, we climbed to the grotto.

I knew the hike might be a struggle physically, so I chose a prayer of reparation to keep me going.  Like many people, I find it easier to do things for other people than to bother to do those same things for myself.  Reparation is the offering of a sacrifice, a suffering, pain, a difficulty on behalf of someone else.  I dedicate my ordeals in the dentist chair to a specific person or issue on my intercession list.  I’ll scrub at the stubborn baked-on muck on a cooking pan praying against a friend’s cancer tumor.   Perhaps I’d just think getting my teeth fixed or scrubbing the pot was a waste of time without good works attached.

A close friend of ours suffered a trauma just before our trip, and her anguish affected all our experiences during our vacation.  So I dedicated my hike to the healing of my friend, step by step up the mountain to the grotto. 

I mention this only because prayers of reparation seem to be a lost art.   I recommend this practice if you are used to an active intercession life.   I can imagine abuses, exaggerations, and excesses - and of course the key to any practice is always balance, always moderation.   

Reparation gives you something to do when you are helpless to help, impotent to solve, bereft of resources to rescue, and your own words and deeds offer no comfort.  Perhaps in that strange economy of the kingdom,  reparation in one soul touches the soul of another.  At the very least, this kind of intercession widens the inner landscapes of empathy.

I loved praying in Southern France. But I’m also happy to shuffle through the snow to our little round chapel at Melrose as the bell rings.  This place of prayer opens to the communion of saints as surely as the ancient and holy shrines of our fathers and mothers in the faith.  I’m grateful to be home.   

theophany

In the form of a dove the Holy Spirit was seen; the voice of the Father was heard, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him.  It is the Lord that commandeth the waters, it is the glorious G-d that maketh the thunder, it is the Lord that ruleth the sea.   Respond, First Vespers of the Baptism of Jesus 

Cleansing, beautiful snow.  The scent of foundation honeycomb as Bill assembles the bee hives.  Garlic and soybean sprouts with sesame oil.  My friend Suk-Hui, here on “vacation” she’s calling it,  recovering from cancer treatments.  She taught me to make KimChee the way her grandmother made it.  We watched The Way Home, a Korean movie about a little boy from Seoul who has to stay with an elderly grandmother far in the country over a summer.  A lovely movie offering images to treasure in the mind.

The Baptism of Jesus.   At the Eucharist on Sunday we used several orthodox sources found in Liturgy Training Publications Christmas book.  “In the feast foregone, we have seen you as a babe, and in the present feast we see you as a perfect man, 

today, the grace of the Holy Spirit, in the likeness of a dove, come down upon the waters; today there shines the Sun that never sets, and the world is sparkling with the light of the Lord; today the moon is bright, together with the earth, in the glowing radiance of its beams; today the brilliant stars adorn the universe with the splendor of their twinkling; today the clouds from heaven shed upon us a shower of justice;

Twenty three “today” ’s. …

We also took LTP’s adaptation of the Great Blessing of Water from the Byzantine rite, and addressed the prayer intimately to “you” rather than a detached  ”him.”  So that instead of “The angels serve him …” we prayed, “The angels serve you.  The archangels adore you. The many-eyed seraphim veil their faces before you.“  We circled a bronze bowl on a stand at the center of the chapel, filled with rose scented water with an added splash from the Jordan river.   I’d be surprised if passers-by did not see a glimmer of prayer-light glowing from the octagonal chapel - one man, two dogs, and we ordinary middle-aged women in work clothes praying and trembling with awe. 

Like last week at this time, I’m preparing Thursday’s children’s chapel service.  Saint Anthony? Confession of Peter?  Christian Unity? Baptism of Jesus? This Epiphany is the shortest one I can remember … and I’ll be in France one of my chapel days.   Maybe I should talk about the two theophanys that hold the season in a powerful parenthesis.  The theophany at the Baptism and the theophany on the mountain, and the Voice from the cloud, interrupting the ordinary prayer. 

This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him.  

Lord, they shall walk in the light of thy countenance.  

Oh, my, let us walk in the light of G-d’s face!  Let us walk with the light of G-d’s face reflected in us.  Oh, my.  Such light.  Like the glistening snow on this bright diamond day!

The Day after Epiphany

Three are the precious gifts, of divine and mystic meaning, which the wise men offered to the Lord as upon this day: gold the power of the king betokeneth, mark ye how incense the high-priest sheweth, and myrrh the Lord’s burial.  Our salvation’s Author did the wise men worship in his cradle, and of their treasures they offered im gifts of mystic meaning …     -   Respond at Second Vespers of Epiphany Day 

After a quiet two weeks the school playground across from Saint Aidans rings with children’s voices.  ”Children’s voices ringing” is a cliche but the pitch of children laughing and calling and shrieking and chattering actually sounds like bells to me.   I love bells, I love the Melrose change-ringing bells, and I love the sound of the kids on the playground.  I loved the quiet of school vacation but I’m excited that school is in session again.

In an almost-waking dream this morning I realized I need to provocatively “decorate” the chapel today so that on their way to the cafeteria the kids will wonder what worship will be about this week.  So I’ll drape the very long gold cloths (20′ curtain swags) over the altar and lectern, and maybe find three interesting boxes to represent the Magi’s gifts over purple, gold, and black fabric.   A homily began forming in my dream, evoking the Jewish mystical idea of the “sparks” dwelling within us, longing for the Source, the One.  Before time began, the Holy One withdrew into himself, creating space and then with a divine bursting forth of light, not unlike the Big Bang, that light rocketed through space, breaking into infinite shards throughout the universe.   Those divine ”sparks” dwell in each of us, inciting that unspeakable longing to return to the One.   Whether this thought experiment will evolve into a children’s sermon for Thursday’s Eucharist, I don’t know.  I love having the relative leisure to watch thoughts develop and lead to other thoughts.  Nothing is ever wasted, even if an idea does not bear fruit.  It’s at least compost.

So the thought of compost made me think of farming, and farming to the unseasonable weather.  After bitter the cold over Christmas, it’s near 60 degrees today threatening the maple sugaring.   Sap pours from a few injured trees.   Bill is busy with the new bee hives and planning the chicken coop.   We’ve been eating brussels-sprouts and very sweet parsnips pulled out of the frozen ground.  And enjoying sauerkraut, frozen vegetables, beans, corn, jams and jellies put up in the summer and fall.     

All day today, a left over glow calls to mind yesterday’s Epiphany celebration.  At the Eucharist we processed from the kitchen to the chapel with the projects we’d worked on during creativity week, (part of the bee hive, office book, dream work and drawings, a crochet picture, a knitted prayer shawl, a knitted blanket, a calendar of photos, a book of recipes, a drum, a sermon,  a writing project, a flower arrangement) placing them at the altar.  Before the offertory hymn we presented the story behind our work to one another. 

After brunch we played “In Cahoots,” and rested until Vespers when we sang the gorgeous antiphons and Respond of Second Vespers of Epiphany, and a faux-bourdon Magnificat.   Then we gathered in the Great Room by the fire. 

We talked about the day, the offices, updates to the very silly murder mystery serial we’re posting to one another, finished off the marzipan Twelfth Cake, each of us hoping we’d get the gold coin planted inside so that we’d win a “treat” of our choosing redeemable at a time of our choosing.  The second to last piece of cake held the coin, and the sister who got it threatened a sabbatical for herself as her ”treat.”  “Hey, it’s supposed to be a treat for the community,” someone protested.  “My sabbatical WOULD be a treat for the community!” she mugged.

Bill and I were also celebrating our “church wedding” anniversary.  We have a “justice of the peace anniversary” in October, so we celebrate twice a year.  We had no intention of having a church ceremony unless it was a quiet monastery wedding.   But at the time I was serving a cluster of parishes, and when a wheel-chair bound little girl of the parish heard I was just married she sighed, “No one will ever let ME be a flower girl.”  So Bill and I had a church wedding after all so that we could have an “open cast” for flower girls.  A bunch of girls answered the call, and made flower crowns and wore pretty dresses and the wheelchair looked like a float at the Rose Bowl.  

One of our sisters described her reservations about being at that wedding twelve years ago although she’d overcome her insecurity about driving in the snow and getting lost in order to appear.   During the priest’s admonition, “If any of you can show just cause why this couple may not be joined in holy matrimony, speak now or forever hold your peace” she resisted jumping up to say, “She’s one of ours!” as she watched me marry this handsome stranger.  Now, in the “strange economy of the Holy Spirit,” she said last night, “we didn’t lose a sister, but we gained a brother!”  And we are all quite happy with the present arrangement.

We played a poetry writing game, heard a few more poems and stories ( including one about a rabbit that saves a baby mouse from the cold and the heroic bunny’s “carcass” is found the next day), we sang The First Noel and placed the camel and camel driver and the three kings in the creche. 

A stunningly beautiful sermon was preached yesterday morning at the Eucharist which many of us referenced the rest of the day and into the evening.  (We’re putting up a sermon blog and that will be the first sermon.)  And while the sermon yielded gems throughout the day, I had also played with a sermon by Saint Bernard in my own preparations for Epiphany Day.  

Bernard admonishes the wise men for being fools: looking for a king, a Deity, in a wretched cave among poor people!   But the wise men had become foolish in order to become wise.  ”The Spirit has taught them in advance what later the apostle preached, ‘Let him who would be wise become as a fool, that so he may be wise.’” And, “He, Who urged them on by means of the star without, has Himself taught them in their inmost heart.”

Maybe Bernard inspired the morning’s dream image of the “sparks.”  The guiding star within draws us away from the transient glitter of all kinds of worldly achievements and distractions.  At first, the wise men assume that they should go to Herod’s palace in Jerusalem.  Quickly, they see their mistake, and proceed to the shepherd’s outpost of Bethlehem.   The star guides us toward the humble comfort of home, and, the extraordinary wonder of Divine Love hidden within ordinary life. 

word made flesh

While all things were in quiet silence and that night was in the midst of her swift course, your almighty Word, O Lord, leaped out of your royal throne, alleluia. 

     -   antiphon on the Benedictus, Christmas Day

                                                

Quick summery of Christmas celebrations:   We celebrated mass early on Christmas eve, not long after Vespers.  We sang first at the creche and processed through the house and out the kitchen door and to the chapel: greens and red berries and incense and music.  After mass we sat by the fire and told funny stories. Two of my sons and a future daughter-in-law were with us for Christmas so our celebrations were very jolly indeed.  Finally, as we were about to drop, the infant Jesus appeared in the creche scene as we sang one more hymn, and we all went to bed.  Other guests joined us for Christmas Day dinner: homemade tamales from our own corn, beans and rice (our own beans) our own cheese, our own tomatillo sauce and various assortments of other good things, including the strawberry dessert mentioned in a previous post - from our own strawberries.  On St. John’s Day we all went down to the city to visit the sisters there.  More singing and fun and free time. 

Now it is the “second Sunday” of Christmas, and it is quiet here. 

As we prepared to listen together to the Prologue of John’s Gospel (John 1:1-1 before mass, more than one of us thought of the “Cosmic Walk” the sisters do for retreats and conferences.  A reader unfolds the history of the universe according to the Big Bang theory, while a masked ”dancer” moves through a maze lighting candles at appropriately measured milestones, for example, “14 billion years ago. That explosion of energy slows down, cools, differentiates;  with primal stars, light erupts and galaxies take shape.  Enormous stars made of the original hydrogen and helium consume themselves to create the other heavier atomic elements.”  And much later, “4 billion years ago. Gradually, within the oceans, more complex molecular arrangements take shape.  Amino acids form and finally, proteins.  The first simple cells are formed.  Earth awakens into life.”  And so on until humanity appears just at the slightest hair’s breadth at the end.

 

The effect of observing and then walking the candle-lit path is a sense of the vastness of time and the fragility and exceeding briefness of human existence and awe and wonder of human consciousness.  During the Gospel reading and sermon I played the ambient CD we use [Noisegate:Suspended Animation by Trevor Paglen] evoking all our past meditations and experiences with the Cosmic Walk. I also had leisure in the morning to think of my meditations on the “Tsefirot,” the divine emanations of G-d’s self-unfolding, described in Jewish mysticism. 

So the sermon came out something like this:

The Spheres of Reality Unfold.   

That unknown Love beyond that which is beyond

That unknowable Love behind that which is behind,      

       beyond and behind and before and after time and space:     

              in the sphere of the Holy One.  

In the beginning was the Word;

  The Word was in the sphere of G-d’s presence,

  And the Word was G-d.

The Word was present with G-d in the beginning.

 The Dark Love at the heart of Reality withdraws, contracts, unfolds, gives birth to the universe and light and the sphere of creation. 

Through This One all things came into being,

  And apart from This One not one thing came to be.

In the Word was life,

   That life will be humanity’s light.

This light shines on in the darkness,

   And darkness from the world will not overcome it.

 Now the sphere of creation unfolds itself, emanating the Divine Reality, giving birth to the Word in the world.   

The Word was coming into the world,

  The world was made through This One;

     And yet the world did not recognize it!

To his own he came;

  Yet his own people did not accept him.

But all those who did accept him

  He empowered to become G-d’s children.

That is, those who believe in his Name,

   transform …

   As if begotten not by blood, nor by carnal desire, nor by sin and human power,

        Rather, born of G-d!

 Those who recognize This One, turn toward the spheres emanating from beyond and behind.  They are born again, born of Reality and respond to the invitation to share in the Word made flesh. 

And the Word became flesh

   And tabernacled among us.

   And we have seen This One’s glory,

      The glory of an only child emanating from Divine Reality,

       Filled with enduring love.

 Each of us, in our own flesh may enter this sphere of invitation, into the unfolding Reality of grace upon grace . 

And of his fullness

   We have all had a share –

    Love in the place of love. 

 Enduring Love.  Empowering Love.  Love meeting us in our own body and soul,   drawing us with our sisters and brothers through the undulating, unfolding spheres  

    within the spheres of G-d with us in the Word,    

      through the spheres of the World,     

          the spheres of Creation,      

             the spheres of the Universe, 

                       we come to the Sphere of G-d and beyond into the beginning,           

                           the hidden realm of One.   

Thou art That.

On Today’s Collect

The image I used for meditation this Advent was the icon (actually, several different images of this icon) of Our Lady of the Sign, or Platytera Ton Ouranon “More Specious Than the Heavens.”  Mary, surrounded by stars, stands in the orans prayer position and within her is a circle containing the Christ child. 

At first …

When I see this icon, I hear old Elizabeth, in the sixth month of her pregnancy.  She carries  the child who will grow up to be a holy man living in the desert, calling people to repentance, preparing the way for the One who is to Come.  Elizabeth is surprised to find her young cousin from the far north at the door of the house.  The girl has come alone.

In a flash of insight, Elizabeth intuits the truth: her cousin is also pregnant.

Elizabeth’s own pregnancy is somewhat of a miracle.  Barren for all these years, a disgrace for a righteous woman, with her husband, Zechariah, an old man himself, the couple are beyond the age of hope for such miracles.  But [one day, when it was ] Zechariah’s priestly turn to serve in the Temple at the hour of incense an angel of the Lord appeared to him in the Holy of Holies.  The angel foretold the birth of their son John, and that even before birth he would be filled with the Holy Spirit.  “He will turn many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God.  With the spirit and power of Elijah he will go before him, to turn the hearts of parents to their children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”

Because he questioned, the angel struck Zechariah dumb and he remained so until the day of the naming of his son, nine months later.

Zechariah still could not speak when young Mary showed up at their house.

When Elizabeth saw Mary, her son leapt within her womb.  

 “And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.  And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me?” 

This is what I hear when see this icon.

 And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? 

Why, me? 

I can think of some pretty good reasons why Mary came to stay with Elizabeth during her pregnancy.  For one thing, she wasn’t married, and even a vulnerable young girl could be stoned for adultery.    

But “why me” is the wrong question – a distraction, a diversion.  The icon does not invite me to gaze upon Mary.   I know why I thought so at first.  

Praying this icon, and imagining the advent of the Christ from Elizabeth’s point of view  is easier than embracing the mystery of Christmas: that is, that the Christ comes to me.  And tabernacles within me.   That my heart and soul and body and mind should say “yes” as Mary did, to eternity dwelling in my fragile flesh. 

The icon of Our Lady of the Sign is not an invitation to look upon Mary.

This icon is meant to be a mirror.

I am looking at myself, bearing the Christ in my souls’ womb.

This is the mystery of Christmas.

                                    *                     *                  *                       *

We present an offering to the one who is himself an offering.

At our simple meals, and at our Holy Communion,

   we invite “both Gift and Giver to dine.”

Donne writes, “ Ere by the spheres time was created, thou

Wast in his mind, Who is thy Son, and Brother;

Whom thou conceiv’st, conceiv’d; yea thou art now

Thy Maker’s maker, and thy Father’s mother;

The whole of the poem is this.

 Salvation to all that will is nigh;That All, which always is All everywhere,Which cannot sin, and yet all sins must bear,Which cannot die, yet cannot choose but die,Lo, faithful virgin, yields Himself to lieIn prison, in thy womb; and though He thereCan take no sin, nor thou give, yet He will wear,Taken from thence, flesh, which death’s force may try.Ere by the spheres time was created, thouWast in his mind, Who is thy Son, and Brother;Whom thou conceiv’st conceiv’d; yea thou art nowThy Maker’s maker, and thy Father’s mother;Thou hast light in dark; and shut’st in little room,Immensity cloister’d in thy dear womb.  

Immensity, eternity, compassion, the Prince of Peace

  Asks for room

     How many times have I turned him away?  My heart is too full !  My life too complex.  I have enough problems, but do come back another time …

 This year, I’m a bit braver.  I pray … 

Purify our conscience, Almighty God, that your Son Jesus Christ, at his coming, may find in us a mansion prepared for himself.

Preparing …

A few thoughts leaning toward this coming Sunday’s collect …  

 At the Eucharist I asked the children of the Melrose school – how many of your are athletes?  If you are getting ready for a big event, how do you prepare? They answered:  I practice.  I scrimmage with my team.  I stretch.   I run laps.  I eat lots of spaghetti the night before.  I get enough sleep.  I eat a good breakfast.

And how many of you are musicians?  If you are getting ready for a concert, how do you prepare?   They answered:    I practice a lot.  I learn the words.  I learn the music really well.  I play lots of scales and arpeggios.  I stretch my fingers.  I exercise so I can breathe.  I go to bed early the night before – and I eat a good breakfast.

The two great mysteries – the Incarnation and the Resurrection, requre an athletic-like preparation.  A thorough music-like training.   Not to prepare for these events of the soul, is to ask for an injury, the pain of  too much light burning and blinding heart and mind and psyche.

All of our advent meditations and prayers lead us to this final collect of the season:

                          Purify our conscience

                              Almighty God

                          by you daily visitation,

                             that your Son Jesus Christ,

                             at his coming

                            may find in us a mansion prepared for himself.

What an awesome and terrifying prayer!  For if Jesus Christ at his coming finds a dwelling place for himself in me, there will be no peace, at least not the kind of peace I crave: my own little comfortable quiet in my own little world of temperature-controlled order and stability.  For what will the Prince of Peace bring to me if he makes my inner being his throne?  Iraq and Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, Sudan, the Congo, Indonsesia, slavery, famine, displacement, disease and death, the delicate ozone layer, poisoned soil, polluted oceans.   From refugees to coral reefs, the Prince of Peace will trouble my soul like the prophets over Israel and not give me a moment’s peace.  

If I thought the floating anxiety of unquenchable desire felt awkward, unquenchable world-sized compassion must be worse. 

Thomas Merton said in The Sign of Jonas “There is no wilderness so terrible, so beautiful, so arid and so fruitful as the wilderness of compassion.  It is the only desert that shall truly flourish like the lily.”

Ah, we hope so, that this desert will flourish like the lily. 

Just not in MY garden, please.

Because for compassion to flourish, so much of me has to change and die.   So much selfishness  must be purified, tried in the refiner’s fire: the ever-accumulating dross of fear and pride, sloth and weakness, ignorance and craving and anger, all those things that make me so lovable!  … must be transformed. 

What a thankless, yea verily, what a hopeless task! 

Okay okay I get it.

I’ve been working up to this my whole life.  Like the young Augustine writing about mere lust, “Make me chaste, but not yet…” I have been saying, “Make me compassionate, but … not yet.”

Well then, when?

Why not this Advent?

Advent is like an initiation rite.  In Christianity, we baptize initiates, but most of us do not remember this event, and even so, it is only the first of many stages of consciousness we must enter and  pass through toward union with Divine Love.  Baptism signifies a dying to sin and rising to new life in Christ.   The purpose of any initiation rite in any religion is to once and for all overcome the fear of death.  Dionysius, Osiris, Mithras, were Mediterranean gods who died and rose again from the dead.  The initiation rites in these religions preceeded Christianity and offered the same reward:  to live no longer for ourselves, but for the one who died and rose again.  The rites simulated death, so that the initiate would fear no more – indeed, the adept would live into a full, mature human experience.  

Christian baptism also brings us to full humanity, and this sacrament is sufficient for the soul.  But  how many labyrinths does life  put in our way – how many distractions draw us from the path of perfection, how often do we stumble and fall and hurt others – and sometimes because we mistake our being saved for being right?   And how many of us have so thorougly embraced the truth of our faith so that we no longer fear death?   For death is conquored by Christ, that’s the whole point.  Death is conquored, so we can live with compassion, to heal and help this broken world, to bring about the kingdom of heaven on earth.

And so every season of Advent the church teaches us again the apocalyptic sayings of Jesus, so that we tremble, imagining the end of everything.  And every year we hear John the Baptist in the desert calling to us to repentence, conversion, turning from sin, to purification to prepare for The One who is coming.

Purify our conscience, Almighty God

That your Son Jesus Christ

At his coming …

And Christians find this time, this advent initation rite useful, because each of us each year acquire new habits of distraction and distortions, and have to find our way back to the initial vision and calling implicit in our baptism.  We find, that, after all, we are not ready for our own deaths, let alone death on behalf of our friends:  for no greater love hath any man than to lay his life down for his friends.

Is this what I want?

Yes. 

Yes.

What else is there?  

What other possible meaning could life hold?

The Love that came into human life, the Incarnation,

Waits … like a refugee

Where there is no room in the inn. 

Except my own heart.

May he find in us, at his coming, a room, a mansion prepared for himself.