living into the circle of life...

We celebrated precious Anna's second birthday yesterday morning with our dearest family. Then, while some headed off for a country fair, Di and I returned home to pack for our holiday. We have not walked or "flâneur-ed" together for over three years. A  variety of family changes, demands of new work, and a commitment to the community of L'Arche Ottawa has kept us from doing so for far too long. It will be delightful to visit with our friends at Diese Onze for jazz and Beaufort Bistro for exquisite Quebecois cuisine again. When we return home, I have chosen a new level of engagement with L'Arche that will bring me back into community more often. Both Di and I will also be adding some online tutoring of Syrian refugees in English to our lives. And we will be organizing a late fall music and poetry concert to raise funds for the local sanctuary movement. It will be delightful to pause, breathe, walk and rest together.

Two recent postings from very different sources spoke to me as we gave thanks to God for Anna's ripening and our time away. The first is from the reflections of the late Henri Nouwen who wrote:

I know how great a temptation it is in times of anguish and agony to look away from our painful center and expect peace and a sense of inner wholeness to come from some external source. But I am increasingly convinced that, at times of anguish and agony, we have to choose a contained life where we can be in the presence of people who hold us safe and bring us in touch with the unconditional affective love of God. Do not get involved in experiences of living that will lead to dissipation. What is so important is to have a deep sense of inner safety, of being held by a love that is in no way using you, manipulating you, or “needing” you.

One of the reasons we keep returning to cherished musical and artistic friends here - and beloved colleagues in community at L'Arche - is to combat dissipation and manipulation. Our culture is currently saturated in an ugly obsession with using people for selfish, short-term goals and then discarding them like used tissue. Every week I read notes from friends who are exhausted and anguished, wise and sensitive souls who seem to be at wits end, staggering about without hope or emotional/spiritual reserves. 

It is not my place to judge why or how this is so - the climate in these United States is mean-spirited and vicious - so it is no wonder many feel brittle. I often wonder though if my friends who ache for peace and justice but feel unmoored have found redemptive, renewing allies or communities of faith to help them live through this hard journey? We can't make it by ourselves. We cannot live into our best selves or most compassionate convictions as solitary entrepreneurs negotiating the ravages of a bottom line culture/economy of greed without encouragement and spiritual nourishment. It simply cannot be done. Brother Nouwen's words and experience rings true to my own reality: "I am increasingly convinced that, at times of anguish and agony, we have to choose a contained life where we can be in the presence of people who hold us safe and bring us in touch with the unconditional affective love of God. Do not get involved in experiences of living that will lead to dissipation."

One of the truths I have learned in conscious communities of tenderness that deserves comment given these harsh times is that there is a rhythm to grace just as there is a rhythm in nature. We tend to forget this and get lost in our feelings. Yet all around us in these parts the evening air is becoming cool and the leaves are threatening to change color. We are clearly on the cusp of something beautiful, but is not quite here. The more I pay attention, however, the more I know it is true. The second posting that spoke to me is this poem by W.H. Auden called, "Musée Des Beaux Arts."

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or
just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the
torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Brueghel's Icarus, for instance: how everything
turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

In the midst of suffering, Auden reminds us, there is often the presence of beauty and hope right next door. Wherever there is true life, stagnation is impossible. Summer does not last forever, but neither does winter. The green in the wetlands behind our home is now becoming yellow and brown - soon it will be barren. But just as God intends, then there will be new life. And new hope. And a host of shades of green that I cannot yet imagine. 

Anna is now two. Before I know it, she will be 20 - and I may even live to see it happen, but probably not much more. That is how it is supposed to be, truly beautiful yet sobering all at the same time. Louie will start first grade in a few weeks; that is marvelous as well. The cycle of life is active all around me these days - and within myself, too. I give thanks to God for it all.