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 1:1-18) 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.

   

A Vist from St. Nicholas

Drop down, ye heavens, from above. And let the skies pour down righteousness; let the earth open, and let them bring forth a Saviour. (Respond, First Week in Advent)

Saint Nicholas visited the Melrose school, the sisters’ chapel, and the convent last Thursday, December 6.

Already in an Advent mood, the children received the visit with peculiar maturity. The children understand Mystery.

Why no drumming? No whistles, bells, clacking rattles, no dancing for our prelude? Why intense quiet? Because liturgy intensifies the mode of relationship to the Holy. We practice modes of relationship to the Divine.

Why so quiet? Because we are alert. We are watching. We do not know the day or hour. (Matthew 25:13)

What are we watching for? A mystery in a form so ordinary, surely we’ll miss it if we don’t pay extraordinary attention.

So these fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth graders quiet down, focus, concentrate. I won’t make any snarky comments about how church adults just don’t “get it.” Surely, the Reader thought it already.

Saint Nicholas came into chapel in a magnificent damask cope, and gave out golden geld filled with chocolate, to help us remember the secret generosity of that long-ago Bishop discretely saving three girls from prostitution by placing bags of gold in their window. I also mentioned that in the Nicholas legend he restored three boys who had been turned into sausages. I heard a murmur from the corner where the boys sit together in chapel. But the answer about mystery also came from that section. I love these children!

I am restraining myself from giving out marzipan eyeballs for Saint Lucy’s Day. But I amuse myself imagining the sound that might come from the sixth grade boys if I did. But I also imagine horrified parents, so … I won’t. Some people are just not religious enough to enjoy liturgical humor.

Geld appeared at our seats at Vespers in the sisters’ chapel. And the sister cook that day made “the Greek version of a Turkish mousaka” for supper, setting the table with the good dishes and the burgundy tablecloth. Before dessert, (made with our own sweet strawberries from the summer!) she gave us each a basket with presents wrapped in a holiday cloth napkin: handy office supplies, candy, and a Christmas tree ornament peculiar to each sister’s interest. Much laughing over a “fleece Navidad” sheep with a chili necklace, a “moo-ey Christmas cow,” a horse, a tractor, a singing angel, and for Bill, a Saint Nicholas himself. Bill made scrolls with a gift certificate for KIVA (see kiva.org) for each sister to administer personal loans to participants in developing countries. Much excitement over that, in the spirit of Nicholas’ generosity.

Advent I

Newsie Bits:  It’s bitter cold.  Saint Aidan’s is coming along, looks very pretty inside, the guest rooms not only habitable, but charming.  Tomorrow (Saint Nicholas Day) a staff member at the Melrose School will appear as Saint Nicholas during chapel.  After the school Eucharist, a sister and I will drive over to Holy Cross to take apart the cresh scene:  boxes and books covered with fabric and river stones from the Hudson that we set up in the crypt this year.  The cresh was the “pilgrimage” destination on the Advent Retreat Brother Bede and I led this past weekend.  DO look at Bede’s blog about Jake the dentist’s dog this week at holycrossmonastery.com (which references our retreat.)

Here’s the Friday night address I gave.  Bede also gave an address about holy longing, and both our addresses  were preceded and followed by cuts from Prana, a meditative cd of beautiful singing voices producing overtones. 

I’m not just being romantic when I cite ”telling stories by the warm fire” in the following address.  The sisters really sit around the fire telling stories.  For me, this is one of the joyous gifts of this community.

Friday Night Meditation:  Longing

Holy is your name, holy is your work, holy are the days that return to you.   Holy are the years that you uncover.   Holy are the hands that are raised to you, and the weeping that is wept to you.   Holy is the fire between your will and ours, in which we are refined.   Holy is that which is unredeemed, covered with your patience.   Holy are the souls lost in your unnaming.   Holy, and shining with a great light, is every living thing, established in this world and covered with time, until your name is praised forever. 

                                                                                         Leonard Cohen

                                                                                         The Book of Mercy  p. 89

  

Every autumn, when darkness comes so suddenly, when maples shed their deep golden leaves and the oaks turn sienna and burgundy-red, when a sudden wind catches and scatters the fallen remnants of once verdant foliage, a primal fear comes upon me.  My heart remembers every heartache.  A dormant corner of my mind awakens to remind me of every loss.  The aging joints of my once-lithe body ache in anticipation of the cold.     

 

Awareness of how fast the transcendent beauty of autumn passes, evokes in me an irrational sadness and an unquenchable longing. 

 

I know this sense of impending loss is not unique to me.  The human body must adjust seasonally to darkness.  The human brain remembers instincts basic to survival of the species against the primeval winter dangers.  Our psyches hold fast to that mythic sense of bereavement expressed in the story of Persephone and Demeter, life going to the underworld, perhaps forever, unless some deal is struck with the gods. 

 

I also remember that the cycle of the season does not end with my sense of unquenchable longing.  In a short time I always embrace the winter.  I smell a storm coming and I thrill to the sense of silence and the stark beauty of the snowfall.   I lovingly trace with my eyes complex patterns of the bare arms of trees against a charcoal sky.  I admire frost crystals on the window pane.  I scan the forest floor for treasures I can’t see in summer: ground pine, wintergreen, berries and ivy and lace-veined skeleton leaves. 

I dress to huddle against the cold wind, I unpack the old chewed-up winter quilt from my childhood.  I look forward to evenings telling stories by the warm fire.  I love the comfort foods of winter: potatoes and Brussels sprouts, apples and turnips, cabbages and Indian pudding.   

 

And every year I smell the spring deep in the earth long before any sign of new life.  I know where to look beneath the oak loam to find one pale promise of a blade which will strengthen and transfigure into a crimson blossom some summer day.

 

After these many years, I know now that the cycle of seasons gives me a template of something I’m supposed to learn and then let go.  After all,  when a hand points to a wondrous scene on the horizon, it makes no sense to stare merely at the hand. 

 

Seasons teach me the cycle of suffering and death, of resurrection and new life.  I know that time heals.  Just as time causes suffering, time heals suffering.  This knowledge never lessens the pain of life, but puts pain in context.  I know we have to live in time, and even the most intense prayer can’t rescue us from this most fundamental truth of human existence.

 

I also know that my unquenchable longing is a holy Sign.  

 

Still, there’s always work to be done sorting out the confusion of craving and fear, the sins that mask the holiness of longing.  But I also know, only through the steady practice of sacred cycles, that my sins are the stuff of sanctity.  By following the way of prudence, I learn that my weaknesses are veins of gold folded into the rock.  “Holy is the fire between Your will and ours, in which we are refined.”  (L.C. above)

 

In this refining fire, I discover again that when I pray my longing, my longing is fulfilled by the longing itself.  The longing is a gift.

 

Each season unfurls its signs.  The oak loam, the skeletal leaf, the crimson blossom, each sign in itself is gift. Each gift holds the secret revelation of that unseen sphere beyond its material nature.   Something sacred tabernacles within my own frail flesh.       

I know that when I pray my longing, I gaze beyond time, if only for a moment.  Yet that moment is enough to see beyond the cycle of seasons …  into eternity itself. 

   

O Wisdom, you came forth from the mouth of the Most High,

And reach from one end of the earth to the other, mightily

And sweetly ordering all things:

         Come and teach us the way of prudence. 

If you are visiting this blog …

If you are visiting this blog, welcome.  Please know that we’re still working on the picture, heading, corrections to “Come to My Garden” and I still have a number of pieces to polish and post :  Michaelmas, The Octave of All Saints, and Martinmas.  So you are seeing a sort of draft!  This week I’m giving retreat addresses for the Community of the Holy Spirit for their long retreat and preparing for my Advent Retreat at Holy Cross this coming weekend, so check this site again after next week.  The Edge of the Enclosure ought to be in better shape by then.  Thank you - Suzanne

Come to my Garden IV

Jacob’s Cattle

Let my beloved come into his garden,
to eat of the fruit of the trees that are therein.

Veniat dilectus meus, Antiphon on the Psalter
Second vespers, Celebrations of our Mother Earth

I’ve been shelling beans: pinto, kidney, lima, black turtle, black coco, Vermont cranberry, cannelini, limelight, Montezuma red. The sisters ordered many more varieties from Canada but the boxes arrived empty except for a pre-printed note of confiscation from U.S. Customs.

I love shelling Jacob’s Cattle beans because of the story in Genesis.

Jacob tricked his brother Esau out of his birthright (with a simple bowl of pottage cooked in a timely way) and his blessing (with a disguise smelling like Esau devised by their mother Rebecca ). Jacob is a hero for his guile. He instinctively values the worth of the patriarchal covenant in a way his brother does not. Nevertheless, Jacob runs away from the wrath of Esau, heading north to Haran, to his mother’s people. On the way he dreams the ladder of angels, confirming the covenant relationship with God, even though he cheated his twin brother to receive it.

When he arrives in Haran, Jacob sees the “beautiful and lovely” Rachel, his cousin. He kisses her right then and there. In exchange for her hand in marriage, “Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her.” On the morning after the wedding, Jacob wakes to find he has shared the nuptial bed with Rachel’s older “dull-eyed” sister Leah. In a rage he complains to their father Laban, who replies glibly that in his country it’s not customary for the younger to wed before the older. So Jacob serves another seven years for Rachel.

Leah produces many children but the beloved Rachel seems to be barren in that Biblical way of anticipating extraordinary children. After a scene of sisterly trading of aphrodesial mandrakes for tent-time with Jacob, Rachel eventually bears Joseph, beloved of his father, (who, in later chapters, will save the whole clan from starvation after his jealous brothers sell the boy into slavery in Egypt.)

After years of service to his father-in-law Laban, Jacob proposes taking his family back to Canaan. Guile for guile, Jacob meets his match in Laban. Jacob proposes that he take the “speckled and spotted sheep and every black lamb, and the spotted and speckled among the goats.” Laban agrees, but sends Jacob away on an errand and in the meantime removes all the male spotted and speckled among the sheep and goats from the flock. So at mating season, Jacob creates a clever visual incentive,

“… rods of poplar and almond and plane, peeling white streaks in them and exposing the white of the rods. He set the rods which he had peeled in front of the flocks in the runnels, that is, the watering troughs, where the flocks came to drink. And since they bred when they came to drink, the flocks bred in front of the rods and so the flocks brought forth striped, speckled and spotted.”

After further machinations by Laban, Jacob and his wives have a family meeting out in the field. Jacob says, “You know that I have served your father with all my strength; yet your father has cheated me and changed my wages ten times …” Yet everything Jacob touches prospers, for God is with him, even though he has fallen out of favor with Laban. Leah and Rachel note that their father has spent their dowries on himself so that they don’t feel obliged legally toward him. And so they agree to run away with their company of slaves and servants and children, and their flocks and herds, striped, speckled and spotted, back to the land of Jacob’s birth.

I love casting the characters of Genesis in my imagination. One day I might imagine CNN’s Christiane Amanpour as Rebecca, Peter Stormare, the actor who plays the blond sociopath in Fargo as Isaac, Harrison Ford as Jacob, Clare Danes as Rachel. I cast James Gandolfi (in his Tony Soprano persona) as Judah with Glenn Close, or Nicole Kidman, or Deborah Kerr as Tamar. On another day, in another mood, alternate qualities of character emerge, perhaps voices of my own subconscious, or maybe Isaac himself through his own profoundly troubling silences, Rebecca in adventurous cunning, Jacob’s unique and unrenderable complexity, and bright-eyed Rachel, luminous, petulant, manipulative. They come to me as real and complete as anyone I might encounter at a family reunion.

I owe them something. They know me. I belong to them. I have to visit this family often, or I lose myself. And I think about them while I’m shelling Jacob’s Cattle: the dry white beans mottled with burgundy stripes, speckles, and spots.

 

Come to my Garden III

 Meditation Retreat at Holy Cross

Wake, O northwind, and come, thou south wind:
blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow.

Surge, aquilo, Antiphon of the Psalter
Second Vespers, Celebrations of our Mother Earth

The very first week I did not have parish responsibilities, I suddenly realized I could take a weekend meditation retreat at Holy Cross Monastery. Brother Bede! I said. Can I…? Do you suppose …? Is there room for me on the meditation retreat this weekend?

Why, yes. So I spent the first weekend of my new life at Holy Cross.

Lo, the very dry bones of my brain! The atrophied sinews of my silence, the weakened flesh of awareness, the porous skin of my interior chaos absorbing exterior chaos. And no breath at all. So all weekend, bone to bone, sinew to sinew, muscle, flesh and skin of my soul coming together in tortured measure, quickened by breath, breath not from four winds, but my own steady and boring inhaling and exhaling.

I learned about the kind of “thoughts” that float by in meditation which I characterize this way:

The Oil Tanker. Piloted by a drunk with a cargo of deeply entrenched dependencies and odious guilts, the erratic tanker swerves, in continual danger of hitting the abutments of the major commuter bridges of your brain straight on, spilling all its sticky contents upon the fresh water, killing birds and fish and spoiling the natural beauty of your mind.

The Tug Boat. The pretty little tug busily pulls and pushes you back from your costly, hard-won detachments. Hey! Here’s what you’ve forgot! I’ve got it for you! Long lost emotions you thought you’d gladly given away years ago. I’ve saved ‘em for ya!

The Clipper Ship. A cargo stowed with good ideas, buoyed along by brilliant, sun-lit sails, full with speeding winds of insight. You might miss this silent wonder if you don’t run along the shore shouting, How beautiful, unique, singular, how glorious you are!”

The Ocean Liner. The observation deck is crammed with all the people displaced by your meditation, throwing confetti and streamers, drinking champagne, wrapped in their best furs and hats and shoes, waving good ‘bye. We’ll send you a post card saying “We wish you were here,” they promise. Penned in that hostile script you know so well. Sorry you chose to open to The Other and not to … Us … says the post card between the hollow lines.

The Shrimp Boat. You can smell the The Shrimp Boat of Sin from far off shore. Decades of shrimp carcasses pressed by the weight of illegal and undocumented catches rot between the boards of the deck, baked in heat, the odor intensified by humidity and emboldened by time. All the old sins, rotting and pungent, coat every plank of the vessel, and new ones appear with the day’s catch, hauled up in the nets with swirls of plastic bags, dead fish, deformed crabs, and the odd tin can or old boot.

The Pirate Ship. Then there’s the Pirate Ship, disguised as an oil tanker, a tug boat, a clipper ship, an ocean liner, or a shrimp boat: anything necessary to hijack you from your meditation.

 

Come to my Garden - II

Cabbage Meditation

I went down into my garden, to see the fruits of the valley,
and to see if the vines had flowered,
and the pom’granates were in blossom,
Return thee, return thee, O Shulamite,
Return thee, return thee, that we may look upon thee.

Descendi, antiphon after the Psalter
First Vespers, Celebrations of Our Mother Earth

The day begins and ends with corporate meditation in the chapel. We enter in the dark, sit in silence for half an hour. We sing Lauds as the light increases through the four long windows of the chapel. The workday begins. At night, after singing Compline, the day ends with meditation as the night deepens. Someone blows out the candles and we go silently to bed.

During one of those first days in early September, during meditation I heard a voice without timbre and pitch, that is, a voice but not a voice, unexpectedly and spontaneously from the prayer, not in spoken words but almost words, saying these precise words:

I called you into My garden.

And I saw in my mind’s eye, suddenly, a cabbage-head in a garden, and a fully mature blue-gray leaf ready for harvest, cradling the cabbage head.

Later, in the little garden by the side of the convent, I saw a cabbage-head similar to the one in my meditation.