On All Hallows Eve - the ancient Samhain or Sauin on the Isle of Man - is unfolding well in our wee Berkshire hills. We walked in the late autumn sun after being greeted by frost on the pumpkins. I edited my reflections and practiced Carrie Newcomer's "All Saints Day" for tomorrow, Face-Timed with the little ones in their cat-wing costumes (and mama attired as Ursula Le Guin no less!), the fairy lights are dressing the bodhran and Celtic harp in the front room. And now my shepherd's pie is nearing readiness for the oven. Di is preparing soul cakes and Altan is blasting on the sound system.
Thig Oidhche Shamhna thig agus cuir fàilte oirnn
(Come, Halloween, come and greet us!)
We had our first wee trick-or-treater just a moment ago. Given the lack of side walks in our neighborhood and the relatively old inhabitants, it is rare for little ones to join us. And given the pandemic I was certain no one would come round. But a true little princess and her mom, both appropriately social distances as good citizens of the Commonwealth, and well-masked, too received our mandarin oranges with grace and a big THANK YOU!
Earlier today I read a post by one of the new monastics re: Halloween and All Hallows Eve. It wasn't particularly deep and the author's history could use some tweaking, but his point was well-made: this ancient ritual gives us all a chance to playfully consider our own deaths, honor the deaths of those who have gone before us, and learn a measure of depth from measuring whatever time remains. As expected, however, a somewhat self-righteous evangelical started carping about the dark, evil and malicious pagan roots of this trifecta. It brought to mind a novel by one of Israel's most popular writers about an ultra conservative Talmudist who, as a widower, falls in love with a young woman convert to the faith. The novel highlights all the cultural bigotry and prejudice alive in Boro Park, Brooklyn despite the tradition's commitment to radical hospitality. As the faithful wrestled with this love, one wise old woman taught the community that the father of the tribe, Abram, came from pagan parents. Same, too for Moishe's in-laws, mother, and wife. So often we know the words of part of our various traditions but not its soul. With beheadings in France, religious white supremacists in the US, violent Buddhist nationalists in India it is clear that no one religious group holds a monopoly on cruelty, stupidity, or vicious violence towards outsiders.
A wiser and more historically appropriate approach to our various spiritual pre-histories is gratitude and critique/correction when needed. St. Paul noted in the opening of his letter to the small church in Rome: "What can be known about God is plain, because God has shown it to us. Ever since the creation of the world God's eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things God has made." My Celtic relatives who came to embrace the way of Jesus used to say that "creation is God's first word" and that everything God ever wanted us to know has been revealed in nature." So, while hardly a Druid, I bask in my heritage tonight and give thanks to the way my kin deepened it as the centuries have passed. There will be time for making amends and doing deep justice, too but tonight is the feast!
Shortly before heading to bed last night, an unexpected FB post from six years ago popped up on my IPhone: a variety of black and white photos from my late father's memorial service were on view along with comments from my siblings and nephews. It was a bittersweet moment. My father was a complicated, broken man with a big heart, a sharp intellect, more than his share of demons along with an abiding shame that was only partially resolved when he died. I loved him deeply. Like many first-born sons, we had our share of conflicts - some became physical - and they always turned cruel whenever fueled by alcohol. Paradoxically, we shared a robust respect for one another, too on our six decade roller coaster relationship.
Small wonder I awoke at 2:00 AM awash in feelings and memories. As is often true for me in these moments, I try to breathe into them. Feel them thoroughly. And, in time, bathe them in a quiet prayer. Contemplating his death took me on a journey through other significant deaths: my beloved Aunt Donna, my sisters Linda and Beth, my mother as well as a few cherished congregants including Dolores Brown, Kathy Arzt, Michael Daniels, and Don Wooton. I felt a churning anxiety in my chest concerning the enormity of eternity. And then the spiritual fog burned away as I became aware that this was just what I had spoken about in my Sunday reflection: the visitation of my loved ones in my own intimate All Souls Day.
The Celts believed that this time of year was a "thin place" - a porous and alive season that encouraged visitations from beyond our realm - a unique intimacy between the living and the dead. Before heading to bed last night, I sang the song I offered at my father's memorial service - and wept again. Driving down to Maryland in a mean storm, Tom Waits' "Hold On" came over the radio, and I felt that it might be the right one for Big Jim's farewell. After his passing, that same feeling washed over me again so I used it in the context of the love he shared for my mother. I now know that Waits' song massaged my psyche in ways I cannot explain except to say I was somehow now ready for another encounter with my departed ancestors.
As I visited with them in my heart last night, sensing the vastness of their current journey and the shortness of my own, I prayed that they were accompanied by God's love. And, without hesitation, asked that when my time to go comes, as it surely will, that I might journey in that love with them. Then, without any residual anxiety, I quietly returned to sleep. Here are my live-streaming notes from Sunday's reflection as well as the FB recording.
REFLECTION: ALL HALLOW’S EVE, ALL SAINTS DAY, ALL SOULS DAY, AND DAY OF THE DEAD
Psalm 148 Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord, all the angels; praise the Lord, all the hosts! Praise the Lord, sun and moon; praise the Lord, all you shining stars! Praise the Lord from the earth, you monsters of the seas and all deeps, Fire and hail, snow and frost, stormy wind fulfilling God’s commands! Mountains and hills, fruit trees and cedars, wild animals and cattle, Creeping things and flying birds: let ALL creation praise the Lord! Matthew 22: 34-40 When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered and one of them, a lawyer, asked a question to test him. ‘Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?’ Jesus replied, ‘“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’
I am a Johnny come lately to some of the smaller observances of my Christian
tradition. Having been raised in staid, proper, and resolutely Protestant Pilgrim New England, my baptism into the balanced beauty of feasting and fasting – celebrations and silences emanating from the ebb and flow of God’s first word in nature – occurred relatively late in life. It has been said that when the student is ready, the Buddha will appear – and Gertrud Mueller-Nelson showed up as a bodhisattva for me in her masterwork: To Dance with God: a Guide to Family Ritual and Community Celebra-tion. Other wisdom-keepers like Kathleen Norris, Fr. Richard Rohr, Sr. Joan Chittister, and the Rev. Frederick Buechner met me along the way, too. But it began with the words of wisdom Dr. Mueller-Nelson crafted in To Dance with God:
We mark the major moments in our human existence with a rite or a ceremony. Sometimes even the small events in our lives need the recognition of a celebration or the consciousness that a ritual brings… in this we draw a circle around that place and that event so that we can be more fully awake to the magnitude of the moment…(throughout time we often remember, celebrate, and sanctify our lives) in conjunction with the moon and sun cycles or simultaneous to the changing seasons in nature. Each day we experience a little birth, life, death, and rebirth. Every day gives us the opportunity to engage the routine rituals – rising and dressing, eating and leaving, relating and working, recreating and sleeping – with greater care and awareness. (To Dance with God, pp. 46/48)
Well after my years in seminary I learned to name this sacramental spirituality, the awareness and practice of seeing the eagle within the egg, a deeper trust that God reveals the sacred inside the commonplace. It’s what Chittister calls a wisdom distilled from the daily: the infusion of the extraordinary into the ordinary, the living, spiritual presence of Christ encountered in bread and wine, depth and integrity at the core of creation even as culture is riddled with the superficial and tinny. What Dr. Mueller-Nelson wrote about Advent continues to shape my soul. bringing solace and strength to my faith: We are invited, she writes, to become vulnerable about our longing and open about our hope. Here we learn to practice a sacred waiting – the blessings of the feminine in our overly masculine culture – in a manner much like a spiritual pregnancy:
… for waiting will always be with us. Advent invites us to underscore and understand with a new patience that very feminine state of being: waiting. Our masculine world wants to blast away waiting from our lives. Instant gratification has become our constitutional right and delay an aberration. We equate waiting with wasting.So, we build Concorde airplanes, drink instant coffee, roll out green plastic and call it turf, and reach for the phone before we reach for the pen. The more life asks us to wait, the more we anxiously hurry… But waiting mysteriously reveals, as in pregnancy, that nothing of value comes into being without a period of quiet incubation: not a healthy baby, to a loving relationship, not a reconciliation, a new understanding, a work of art, never a transformation. Rather, a shortened period of incubation brings forth what is not whole or strong or even alive. Brewing, baking, simmering, fermenting, ripening, germinating, gestating are the feminine processes of becoming and they are the symbolic states of being which being in a life of value. (p. 62)
Trusting this insight was the key that opened the door to a host of additional wisdom-keepers – particularly sages from the Celtic realm – who encouraged cherishing equanimity, revering the rhythm of the sun and moon, the seasons and the sacred sense of balance they honor, so that spirituality became a passionate, earthy dance of humility, devotion, and creative. Joy Mead, from the Community of Iona in Scotland, puts it like this in a prayer/poem she calls Bread Time:
Because bread won’t be hurried we have to learn to let be, to do nothing, to be patient, to wait for the proving. Because bread won’t be hurried and is a life and death process, we find out in its making that time is not a line, but a cycle of ends and beginnings, rhythms and seasons, growth and death, celebration and mourning, eating and fasting, because bread won’t be hurried. Remember: in a pyramid in Egypt a few grains of wheat lay surrounded by death – dormant for thousands of years. They waited quietly until the time was right, until the life impulse was awakened by the good earth, warmed by the sun and ready to dance in the bread of tomorrow.
This sacred rhythm of creative waiting infused with feasting and fasting, this dance of life driven by sound and silence, is how the three feasts of next week with roots in Celtic Christianity ask to be engaged because they have largely been trivialized and neglected in our culture. All Hallows Eve, All Saints and All Souls Days are rich with blessings. They animate our love of God and embolden our kinship with all of our neighbors – two legged and four, flora and fauna, air, soil, fire and water – so that we might rest into the unforced rhythms of grace even in this damnable and escalating pandemic.
David Adam, vicar of the holy island Lindisfarne, has observed that one of the many reasons why our politics and economic priorities have become ugly, vapid, and increaseingly cruel has something to do with contemporary culture’s disconnect from the sacred rhythms the One who is Holy breathed into creation in the beginning. Everyday there is “betrayal, rejection, crucifixion, and death woven into our streets, homes, and jobs” he writes, “yet the redeeming love and salvation of God is still at work in the world. I believe in the resurrection of the body,” he adds, “for it is an on-going fact” that I witness every day in the “mysterious, joyful, sorrowful, glorious” ebb and flow of real-life.
To have eyes to see, however, takes practice – something modern folk have forsaken and forgotten. In the middle of the Great Depression of the 1930’s, T.S. Eliot articulated a truth in his poem, “The Rock,” that has only been magnified over the years.
The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven, the Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit. O perpetual revolution of configured stars, O perpetual recurrence of determined seasons, O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying: The endless cycle of idea and action, Endless invention, endless experiment, brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness; Knowledge of speech, but not of silence; knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word. All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance, all our ignorance brings us nearer to death, But nearness to death and no nearer to GOD? Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries bring us farther from GOD and nearer to the Dust.
Without familiarity with the way of wisdom, without a sacred vocabulary and a spiritually awakened imagination that we practice regularly, we are indeed tossed to and fro by ideology, fear, grief, and exhaustion like St. Paul writes in Ephesians 4: “We must no longer be as little children, beloved, the apostle says, blown about by ever wind of doctrine, human trickery and their deceitful scheming… no we must ripen and mature as Christ himself did by listening and practicing grace-filled love.”
The soul of Celtic spirituality in general, and the heart of next week’s three feast days, offer an alternative to the dust and chaos that reclaims a sacred vocabulary and renews our awareness of creation’s salvific rhythm. You see, the ancient Celtic Church did not cast off as inferior or heretical the numinous insights of their Druid ancestors. Patrick, Brigid, Columba, Deirdre and all the rest embraced them, carrying them into the emerging cadence of their sacramental spirituality. As the days grew darker in the North Country, the old souls sensed that the veil between heaven and earth – the living and dead – was becoming more porous. Christopher Hill writes in his wise, Holidays and Holy Nights, that: “In traditional cultures, the important turning points of the year – solstices and equinoxes, or the changes of the pastoral seasons when the heard or flock was let out into summer pasture and the brought down for the winter – were understood to stand outside of time.”
In the more sensuous awareness of time that people had in the absence of precise measuring systems, it was apparent that at these moments, one ‘time’ had ended and another time would start again in the new season. But between the end of one cycle and the beginning of the next was a gap. At these points, it was believed, the world reverted to the way it was before time began – in the beginning, at the birth of creation, a dreamtime as the Australian aborigines say. Our world became continuous with the timeless world and all the beings and powers, things seen and unseen, inhabitants of the world, before, above, and outside of time – gods, angels, ancestors, and spirits – became present… This human sense of time is so deep and apparently universal that it has found its way into almost every religious tradition – including our own. And is the root of most holy days. This sacred sense of time and timelessness can break through at any moment but is celebrated in the sacraments of our holy days. (pp. 50-51)
… so that we can practice reclaiming eyes to see and ears to hear. Next week it’s going to get really, really dark in these parts as we give up the warm evening sun for the refracted, diminishing glow of Eastern Standard Time. I don’t recall any significant differences in the way light looked when we lived in Arizona or California, but here in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts it becomes murky and dense by 4 o’clock in the afternoon. So, even without this modern manipulation of time, this darkness that creeps into being at this time of year is one of the reasons our pre-Christian Celtic kin created the festival of Samhain.
It marks the birth of winter as most of the leaves on our trees have fallen, frosts begins to appear, the fields lay fallow and “autumn looks like nature’s end.” The old way insisted that as one season closed, it must be acknowledged with a sign of finality so that our souls might open to receiving new possibilities. “With the death of summer and fall, the dormancy of nature” readies us for the inwardness of winter.” (Mueller-Nelson, p. 222) In the way of wisdom ritualized in sacramental spirituality, the “mystery of apparent death, finalities and rest before new life returns” is rehearsed liturgically so that we might practice recognizing the holy as it arrives beyond our control in real life.
First there is All Hallows Eve – Halloween for us – the Holy Night that prepares us
for Holi-Day of All Saints and then All Souls day. October 31st was Samhain, the celebration of the year’s death in anticipation of a new year’s birth. Just like the creation story in Genesis, there is evening and there is day with darkness setting the stage for the cycle of illumination still to come. Christianity chose to appropriate the energy of this Celtic ritual – borrowing the colors, symbols, and feelings of the season – but adding new insights, too. No one is fully clear how the pagan Celts practiced Samhain, but “the persistence of some things now offers us clues: bonfires as well as fortune-telling took place, feasting and dancing was robust, as was guising or mumming (going to one another’s dwellings in a variety of costumes with songs and ritualized begging.” (Hill, p. 53) It’s likely the bonfires included some type of sacrifice on this night – probably human and/or animals deemed evil – before these rituals became symbolic. Fear of ghosts and wicked curses filled the darkness “as demons went wild playing tricks on the innocent and needing to be placated with treats and sweet food.” Gertrud Mueller-Nelson adds:
What is unseen and unknown is often rendered evil or dangerous.” As the light vanished at the close of the year it was believed that the night became saturated with the spirits of the departed dead. Some of those spirits were troublesome, but others were beloved and were “invited to return to their old homes to sit by the fireside, be warmed and fed, and respected once more in the land of the living. (Mueller-Nelson, p. 223)
The Celtic Church before the 4th century transfigured this fire festival maintaining many of its outward rituals but filling them with sanctified meaning: sweet foods and candles were now taken to the graves of the departed where stories and memories were shared and passed down from one generation to the next as the living communed with the dead. Soul cakes were baked and passed out to children – and beggars, too - as some in the community playfully dressed as witches, ghosts, and goblins to honor the fears of the past. And the whole community sometimes gathered to carve pumpkins and gourds and dunk for apples. These evening festivals set the stage of two holy DAYS of remembering: All Saints Day was a reflection on those from within the tradition who brought new life to the world, while All Souls Day was a chance each year to honor our own loved ones who are now part of that great cloud of witnesses.
I have found that the way Gertrud Mueller-Nelson AND Frederick Buechner talk about All Saints Day helpful: “All Saints Day is the celebration of those who have contributed successfully to the creation of God’s community in history. The saints were not perfect, but they were whole, holy, and very human. They lived their fate with creativity and participated in the evolution of human consciousness” and compassion. Frederick Buechner amplifies this insight writing:
In God’s holy flirtation with the world, God occasionally drops a pocket handkerchief – and these handkerchiefs are called saints. Many people think of saints as plaster statues, men and women of such paralyzing virtue that they never thought a nasty thought or did an evil deed their whole lives long. As far as I know, real saints never even come close to characterizing themselves that way. On the contrary, no less a saint than Saint Paul wrote to Timothy, ""I am foremost among sinners"" and Jesus himself prayed God to forgive him his trespasses. When the rich young man addressed him as ""good Teacher,"" answered, ""No one is good but God alone.” In other words, the feet of saints are as much of clay as everybody else's, and their sainthood consists less of what they have done than of what God has for some reason chosen to do through them. When you consider that Saint Mary Magdalene was possessed by seven devils, that Saint Augustine prayed, ""Give me chastity and continence, just not now,"" that Saint Francis started out as a high-living young dude in downtown Assisi, and that Saint Simeon Stylites spent years on top of a sixty-foot pillar, you figure that maybe there's nobody God can't use as a means of grace, including even ourselves. The Holy Spirit has been called ""the Lord and giver of life"" and, drawing their power from that source, saints are essentially life-givers. To be with them is to become more alive.
Returning thanks to God for those who have brought YOU more life is at the heart of this feast day. I don’t believe they have to be Christians – or famous – or necessarily dead. But that’s my generous orthodoxy speaking. Going backwards in time to discern and give thanks to those who within my experience have been life-givers and wisdom-keeper for me has been soul food. Among this pantheon are St. Mary Magdalene, St. Francis and Clare, St. Ray Swartzback, St. MLK and St. Rumi. Each have illuminated my heart with love and tenderness. The once Irish priest turned secular saint, the late John O’Donohue, wrote of the blessings we have received from our saints like this:
I imagine the eyes of Jesus were harvest brown, The light of their gazing suffused with the seasons: The shadow of winter, the mind of spring, the blues of summer and the amber of harvest. A gaze that is perfect sister to the kindness in his beautiful hands. The eyes of Jesus gaze on us, stirring in the heart’s clay The confidence of seasons that never lose their way to harvest. (Those who have gazed upon us with this blessing have shared) The artistry of emptiness that knows to slow the hunger Of outside things until they weave into the twilight of the heart A gaze of all that is still future…
And then, after a night of darkness and fire – songs, silence and mystery – and a day given to recalling in gratitude the saints in our days – comes All Souls Day when we remember those in our families who are among the dearly departed and now a part of that great cloud of witnesses. We didn’t do much with All Souls Day when I was young and it has taken me some time to learn why it is holy. But what I grasp now is simple: it is a time to be humbled by the folk who have birthed and shaped us and are now gone. Some were wonderful. Others… not so much. All were human – and most, to paraphrase Brené Brown did their best with what they were given. I no longer want to conflate All Saints with All Souls as that diminishes their unique wisdom. Rather, why not give over two full days to consider those who brought us to life and gave us new life even as we grieve and honor their passing?
Last year at this time I made a small family altar using pictures and poems of those who have gone before me: my parents, grand-parents, sisters, friends, colleagues, mentors and congregants who have touched my life. It was sobering. And sad. Some were those I cherished. Some hurt me deeply. Both were true. Doing this also helped me remember some of the stories long forgotten. How my people hailed from Scotland and Ireland: on the 25th anniversary of my ordination, we visited the wee town of Lumsden outside of Aberdeen, Scotland. Remembering that trip helped me recall that among my kin here and there were loving servants and mean-spirited scoundrels. There were patriots and traitors, probable slave owners as well as sea captains, factory workers, scholars, clergy and cooks, mechanics, business executives along with drug addicts, alcoholics and friends of Bill.
My family, much like yours I imagine, were and are a motley crew: returning thanks for them all has become a simple way of nourishing a bit of inner humility. And one more thing, All Souls Day put me in touch with some incredible stories about ordinary people who have lived into the blessings of God and shared them even while surrounded by the worst human behavior. Richard Rohr reminds us that a great deal has happened among us since the beginning days of the pandemic – and there is much more to come.
Yet the fundamental reality of humanity’s interconnectedness remains as true now as it has been at every moment in our history. Pope Francis said in his recent encyclical All Brothers and Sisters: If everything is connected, it is hard to imagine that this global disaster is unrelated to our way of approaching reality, our claim to be absolute masters of our own lives and of all that exists. Humanity, you are all One. You are one beloved community and you are one global sickness. You are all contagious—and always have been, unconsciously infecting and yet able to also bless one another. There are no higher and lower in this world. There is no smart or stupid; no totally right or totally wrong. The only meaningful division now is between those who serve and those who allow themselves to be served. All the rest is temporary posturing.
Many to whom you look for power and leadership have shown themselves to have empty hands, minds, and hearts. We are bereft of all satisfying explanations, all ledgers of deserving and undeserving. There are no perfect answers or absolute heroes. We must all wear a mask to protect the other from “me.” So don’t play the victim! Victimhood is always a waste of time—God’s time and yours. Instead, try to learn the important lessons. We are all in the same elementary school now. Here, we must learn to stand in two different places and to change places often. The served must also be the servants, and the servants must also be the served. Just stay in the eternal circle of the Suffering and the Servants. Christians call this the Body of Christ. We are not the first or the last generation that gets to suffer and to serve on this earth.
Next Saturday is All Hallows Eve – next Sunday and Monday All Saints and Souls days – in simple but transformative ways each of these little feasts invite us to practice a humility that has a sense of humor and holiness. I am looking forward to this practice and invite you join with me if you can. Let’s take a moment of silence and then be prayerful. (go to the video here:
One of the inward insights I have gleaned over the past year of repairing our deck, rebuilding stairs, constructing raised bed terraces for our garden, building steps, and painting a great deal inside and outside our home is that I am a kinesthetic learner with an aesthetic disposition. In Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligence Inventory - a useful summary of the various ways different people learn best - I am off the charts when it comes to Musical as well as Bodily-Kinesthetic intelligence. I knew the former as I hear answers, questions, and even solutions to so much in life in terms of songs, but the later is new to me. (O Lord, do i LOVE this song!)
I knew I had an eye for beauty in my worship and home settings. It was equally clear that I am drawn to the clean lines of Zen/Mission interiors as well as the bold blocks of balanced color of Rothko, Mondrian and a host of French expressionists and impressionists. What I did not understand is that I learn best by doing. Trial and error and beginner's mind come natural to me. Di tells me this is an affinity for what business jargon calls "lateral decisions." Only after I've given a project a shot or two am I interested in reading what others have learned. Out of the box resolutions pop up first. And the lessons that stay with me for the long haul begin with trying to fix something, taking it apart when it doesn't work, and trying again. And again. And again to make it work. I rather like the way Rumi puts it the interpretation Coleman Barks shares in "The Guest House."
This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they are a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice. meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes. because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.
Today, after researching and writing about the early celebrations of All Hallow's Eve and All Saints and All Souls Days, I spent four hours up on a ladder painting shutters. I am uncertain of heights and it takes me a while to get my bearings. To be sure, for that first shutter I had a headache and I was sure I was going to puke. But after a glass of water, I kept at it - and incrementally learned how to keep my balance 17' off the ground. I knew that if I left the higher shutters brown while all the others were sky blue, I would have an aesthetic collapse. It would be so ugly and unbalanced. So, I tried. And learned how to make it work as I went along. Along the way I saw that the window sills need to be repainted, too. I will get to that after more writing about the lesser feasts born of ancient Celtic wisdom.
Funny how getting older can resolve some of the questions and doubts of my youth - mostly by pushing through fear with beginner's mind.
“We cannot become so impatient for the destination that we arrive before we are ready.”Christine Valters Paintner
This weekend I tapped into my deep longing for human connection during this season of contagion. I wrote about it, I felt it while speaking with my brother by phone on his birthday (he lives in SF), I sensed it swelling up within as we Zoomed with our sweet Brooklyn kin, and I listened to its empty aching last night before going to sleep. Looking out upon the now golden mantle of the wetlands this morning as her deep reds disappear and bright oranges fade, I caught a foretaste of the grays that await us in November. They will shimmer whenever the sun shows up and swirl across the field in nuanced silvers should the shadows prevail. Cumulatively, these sights and sensitivities send me back to words Dr. Valters-Paintner shared in The Soul's Slow Ripening: 12 Celtic Practices for Seeking the Sacred.
One way to practice peregrinatio (pilgrimage) in our lives is to follow the thread which for me means to listen to the synchronicities and patterns being revealed daily. When we are discernment... and pay attention to the other moments that shimmer, we may begin to notice symbols showing up to call us forward.
And maybe not always forward, but also deeper, too. The late James Hillman used to insist that the dominant metaphor of our culture is growth. Accumulation is one-dimensional, however, a construct of economics and adolescent ideology. It is rooted in the mistaken belief that if to have is good then to have more is better. But unrestrained growth becomes cancerous and crowds out the maturation of our soul. To become wise - and authentic - requires going deeper, beyond the obvious, into insights, stories, experiences, needs, desires, and feelings that take time to comprehend. To paraphrase Gertrud Mueller-Nelson, they must simmer and percolate before they achieve significance. Going deeper is how we grasp our purpose, our calling, our essence within our community and our role in any given season of our life. Accumulation merely gives us more of the same old shit. (I am reminded of the Different Drummer ad that prophetically graced NYC subways in the 60's in a manner beyond its creator's imagination...)
This yearning for community, my ravenous appetite for engaging others in words and songs of the soul, has clearly been heightened during the pandemic. But I know it to be a lifetime in the making as well. "The soul's ripening is never to be rushed," Dr. Paintner writes, "it takes a lifetime of work" to realize. "The gift of the contemplative path is a profound honoring of the grace of slowness." My feelings are clues: Hillman speaks of a clue as a symptom, "a compromise between an appropriate relation/action and a sick or wounded one." And like Fr. Ed Hays has taught, our feelings/clues/ symptoms carry meanings. They are the wisdom of our wounds wherein the feeling gets our attention, but our response must almost always be inverted. "When we feel like running away, we would be better served by staying put. When we ache to shout, we should be silent." Call it a revelaltion from the upside-down kingdom, the Paschal Mystery, or the spiritual wisdom of autumn, another invitation to go deeper is brewing.
We can grow impatient when life does not offer us instant insights or gratification. We call on the wisdom of the Celtic monks to accompany us (in these times) to teach us what it means to honor the beauty of wating and attending and witnessing what it is that wants to emerge rather than what our rational minds want to make happen. The soul always offers us more richness that we can imagine, if we only make space and listen. (The Soul's Slow Ripening, p. XV)
So, as best and as imperfectly as I am able, I seek to celebrate this season's call to enter yet again the acumen of silence. Not only will the stillness guide my Sunday reflections, but it will shape my personal contemplative practices, too. This coming Sunday will be an anticipation of All Hallow's Eve en route to All Saints and All Souls days. And then it is on to the quiet of the ancient Celtic Advent that begins on November 15 and runs a full 40 days. Last week I was mostly filled with Ginsberg's "Howl." And rightly so - but now it is time for emptying of T.S. Eliot's "The Rock."
The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven, The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit.
O perpetual revolution of configured stars,
O perpetual recurrence of determined seasons,
O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying
The endless cycle of idea and action, Endless invention, endless experiment, Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness; Knowledge of speech, but not of silence; Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word. All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance, All our ignorance brings us nearer to death, But nearness to death no nearer to GOD. Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries Bring us farther from GOD and nearer to the Dust.
One of the hardest and most humbling truths I've encountered involves presence:
being a presence for others, welcoming the presence of others when I hurt or know fear, and receiving the presence of the holy who is always present even when I am unperceptive. I'm not sure when I realized why it was hard - at least 30 years ago or more - but I still recall the paradox of experiencing powerlessness and value at the same time. Physically sitting with another as they suffer and/or grieve feels impotent to me for I know that there is nothing I can do to take away their pain. Any attempt to be active in those settings mostly makes matters worse. Simultaneously, sharing my vulnerability and emptiness without illusions often evokes a love and solidarity that is palpable. At least for a moment, while the anguish remains, the agony becomes incrementally lighter to bear. Having been on the receiving end of his miracle, I trust its salvific gift even if I cannot comprehend it.
The constant in experiencing, witnessing, and sharing this blessing is silence. As the moderator of the Contemplative Outreach FB group noted: "When going through a storm, your silent presence is more powerful than a million words." Silence becomes sacramental in its healing mode - and that is yet another reason why presence feels so hard - to enter, trust, and nourish silence when surrounded by pain takes practice and faith. By nature we want to help. To fix. To resolve. Deep within I suspect we know there is nothing we can do, yet "doing" gives us meaning and validation. It is the way of the world. To resist doing, therefore, is so very counter-cultural. Not only does it look as useless as Sabbath, it can feel that way in our hearts - at least for a time. Only those willing to walk through the valley of the shadow of death in silence, however, get to taste and see the goodness of the Lord. Those who pray, "How long, O Lord?" silently in their souls while sitting still in the aching quiet get to join Mary Magdalene in greeting the risen presence of the holy in our humanity. Malcolm Guite puts it like this in his sonnet to Mary Magdalene:
Men called you light so as to load you down, And burden you with their own weight of sin, A woman forced to cover and contain Those seven devils sent by Everyman. But one man set you free and took your part One man knew and loved you to the core The broken alabaster of your heart Revealed to Him alone a hidden door, Into a garden where the fountain sealed, Could flow at last for him in healing tears, Till, in another garden, he revealed The perfect Love that cast out all your fears, And quickened you with love’s own sway and swing, As light and lovely as the news you bring.
(Sounding the Seasons, Malcolm Guite https://canterburypress.hymnsam.co.uk//product-display?isbn=9781848252745)
For the last few days I have been aching for the sounds and solace of being with others in community. I've even flirted with violating my own sanity and inviting a few local people to join me on Sunday morning when I try to hold my FB live stream outside in our wee chapel. I know better. It is covid exhaustion speaking to me like the serpent in the garden. And I won't go there. What do they say about coincidence? It is God's way of remaining anonymous? Yesterday, while Zooming with our loved ones in Brooklyn, we spoke of possible Christmas visits. I am slowly working on our basement to become decent living quarters for family visits. It is a great space but will take lots of work and is a winter project. During this chat, my wise daughter said something like, "We could even put off celebrating Christmas by a few weeks so that we all are certain about the safety of our bubble. I want to be extra, extra careful about this for you, ok?" Her words echoed in my heart last night as I put to rest - at least for now - any other thoughts of sharing Sunday's Eucharist in community. On a whole other level, its time for me to befriend the silence yet again. The wise and wounded Jan Richardson wrote this Blessing for the Chaos that I am going to print out and post on my prayer wall:
To all that is chaotic in you, let there come silence.
Let there be a calming of the clamoring, a stilling of the voices that have laid their claim on you, that have made their home in you
that go with you even to the holy places but will not let you rest, will not let you hear your life with wholeness.
For the foreseeable future - at least the next nine months and probably longer - I am being called (WE are being called!) to be at peace with a lot more silence. This will come to pass. This is not the end. And within the silence are moments of conversation and presence I can learn to savor like going to vote at City Hall (momentarily) or visiting the library in full PPE regalia. And then, as I've seen posted so often recently, with the season of shared solitude is over, THEN we can embrace and rejoice and experience another layer of presence. But now is not that time...
Next Sunday, if the weather cooperates, I am going to try doing my live-streaming reflection outside in our emerging chapel. It will be the last weekend of October. I want to ready our hearts and minds for All Saints and All Souls Days and open the door for others to join me in observing the ancient Celtic Advent that begins on Sunday, November 15. (More on this as it is mirrored by the Eastern Orthodox tradition.) I will be experimenting with equipment, extension chords, microphones, etc. this week. And while it may all come to naught if it rains, I think it could be fun. Here are a few teasers I took after today's yard work. A friend posted a poem by John O'Donohue that speaks to this transitional time in the seasons and the liturgy.
Today is all reds, browns, and yellows in the wetland. The sky is gray, filled with
an insistent rain pulsating with the promises of autumn. This is the season we learn about letting go: letting go of the sun and its warmth, letting go of the garden and its bounty, letting go of simple walks without serious preparation, letting go of the leaves, the flowers, and so much of our outward lives. For those in New England, and even more so in Canada, daylight will come to a crashing close in a few weeks when 4 pm becomes nightfall. This takes some getting used to and even the natives find themselves in the throes of periodic depression as we move towards All Saints Day in November. Doctors have documented a Vitamin D deficiency among many of us as well.
In two weeks time, all the colors of the field will vanish except nuanced browns and grays as a stern starkness seizes the day. The obvious complaint with this shift is its severity. The exuberance of summer must give way to introspection as
externals are put on hold and we start to hunker down. Nature invites us to prepare for this transformation, but our eyes must stay open as this turning point moves quickly. A wise colleague captured the challenge of this upheaval well stating that when our only seasonal produce has been reduced to maple syrup, no matter how delicious, something new is coming. The autumnal equinox kicks it off. Christopher Hill writes in Holidays and Holy Nightsthat "autumn is poignant... piercing our hearts and waking us from drowsy summer... with a sharp longing for something else."
We humans see the spiritual beauty of a thing most clearly when its time is passing or passed. Nothing becomes legendary or sacred until it dies. In autumn, natures time is passing. The world is at its most beautiful and poetic because it is passing away. The natural world lingers for a moment on the bring of this transformation... with a bitter sweet beauty that we are about lose. The light turns from the clear, practical white light of summer into the mellow gold that we call antique - like the yellowed pages of an old boo, the sepia of old photographs, or tarnished brass. Old light, legends of the fall, Indian summer. Nature (already) has one foot over the threshold of eternity and glows with a slant of light
from the other side of the door.
I rarely grasp this at first. Being distracted by pumpkins and gourds, apple cider and a limited run of pumpkin chai from David's Teas, I'm consumed with the cornucopia of colors among the trees, wild grass, golden rod, asters, grape vines, and sumac. Something in my soul is dazzled by the deep, root-like hues of the countryside this time of year and I lose track of time. Only when the upper leaves of the massive wetland's oak turns red can I confess that fall is upon us. It doesn't matter how long I've been raking leaves or fertilizing garden beds, that tree is what I need to know that now it is leave-taking time. Soon there will be a chill in the air, a stripping of color from the hills, and a shroud of darkness that won't give up the ghost until late February.
Parker Palmer believes that during this time of transition nature is engaged in a paradox of dying and seeding."Faced with (the departure of summer and the inevitability of) winter, what does nature do in autumn? She scatters the seeds that will bring new growth in the spring—and she scatters them with amazing abandon." (The Paradox of Fall, Fetzer Institute) Christopher Hill adds another layer of depth to this tension:
In summer we celebrate our at-homeness in the world. Michalemas (the
Feast Day of the Archangel Michael on September 29) balances that feeling. In autumn we feel our not-at-homeness, the sense of wanting something else, something we can't name... Summer is static - in Latin, solstice means 'the stationary sun." (That makes) summer a sacrament of natural harmony with God, when we can see that 'fallen nature' is really only nature seen with fallen eyes, and that all around us paradise is still going on... Autumn is not dreaming time... and the flaming trees say it all: they are a last flare of gorgeousness before death as well as a signal fire, a wake-up call to the soul... as we encounter the conflict between light and dark.(Hill, pp. 36-37)
First, there is the robust beauty; then, the austerity arrives. September and October ask us to bask in the abundance of creation's bounty as preparation for the emptiness to come physically, emotionally, and spiritually. We not only bring in the harvest and care for the hearth, we intentionally let go of what is over, what is old, what is no longer real. For this, it seems to me, is how to embrace the blessings and wisdom of God's first word in creation. We read the signs of the time. Early autumn shows us what it looks like to release what no longer serves us. As leaves fall and blow away, so too with some "possessions, relationships, old habits of thought and behavior." (Hill, p. 42) Recognizing and naming what is complete, helps ready me for the rigors of November and the anticipations of Advent. The ancient Celtic Church, like contemporary Eastern Orthodoxy, observed Advent from November 15 - December 24. Restoring two weeks to Advent feels right to me after honoring the Vigil of All Hallows Eve (Halloween) as well as both All Saints Day and the Feast of the Faithful Departed on All Souls Day.
Perhaps it is an awareness wrought by the pandemic. It could be the damp chill in the air. Or even the slow connections I discern as I ripen into retirement. What ever the origins, I want to be ready - and still like James Wright in his poem, Beginning - to lean into my darkness.
The moon drops one or two feathers into the field. The dark wheat listens. Be still. Now. There they are, the moon's young, trying Their wings. Between trees, a slender woman lifts up the lovely shadow Of her face, and now she steps into the air, now she is gone Wholly, into the air. I stand alone by an elder tree, I do not dare breathe Or move. I listen. The wheat leans back toward its own darkness, And I lean toward mine.
So my attempts at staying grounded in community during this season of
solitude are... a work in progress, ok? Today's live-streaming reflection felt good while I was sharing it, only to find out afterwards there was a glitch and hiccup in the vocal track. It wasn't a terrible problem, but a bit of a hassle. Who know's why? I will search for solutions and try to rectify them this week.
That said, two other ideas have floated to the surface: intercessory prayer and questions. When I started this over the weekend of March 13th who knew it would still be going on? Morphing and evolving, too? A few of you have sent me notes from time to time, or left messages on the Small is Holy FB page, with encouragement and suggestions. Let me now take this one step farther because not much is going to change for most of us over the next nine months. That is, we are going to remain in some form of self-imposed or mandated solitude for health reasons well through the first half of 2021. That is according to our best medical folk and, of course, not the Virus-in-Chief.
So, what are your thoughts and needs re: intercessory prayer?Some folk call this joys and concerns - other prayer requests - but by whatever title you use, what I'm talking about is making your prayer known so that during our live-streaming time we can pray for you together by name. Thoughts? Prayers? Concerns? What I was thinking of was: 1) At the start of each gathering, you might type a word or a sentence that you would like held in prayer, either during the opening music or the introduction and Scripture. That way, when we get to the time of Eucharist at the close we can add your prayers. And/or 2) send me a note by email or FB sometime throughout the week.
And, what about follow-up questions? Given the live-streaming format, while I am keenly aware of your presence, the medium is still one-directional: from me to you. (And as you know from dropping microphones and all the rest, I am not wildly tech savvy and have no real interest in the whole Zoom phenomena (we use it with the grandchildren and at L'Arche but that's different.) What do you think? Would you ever want clarifications or sources? Are there themes you might value a series on? Or something you would like to explore more profoundly? Let me know if any of that appeals to you, ok?
Let me know, please? Drop me a note on FB or send me an email. I would be grateful to take this deeper even as I try to work out the techno bumps in the road. It is, indeed, a work in progress. Here is a recap of today's video.
Oh, my Lord, what a morning! Sweet sunlight, cool breezes, burning bushes
ablaze and breakfast on the deck in the autumn stillness. I am trying to practice what I preach - and will share tomorrow morning on the live-streaming gathering - about treasuring gratitude. And then, as if the cosmos thought I needed a gentle but real kick in the pants, I came upon this poem: "Wishing Well" by Gregory Pardlo (You can hear Pádraig Ó Tuama read it @ https://onbeing.
for it. A smoke or something. Central Park displays
the frisking transparency of autumn. Tracing
paper sky, leaves like eraser crumbs gum
the pavement. As if deciphering celestial
script I squint and purse off toward the roof
line of the museum aloof as he fists two
pennies from his pockets mumbling and then
aloud my man he says hey my man I’m going
to make a wish for you too.
I am laughing now so what you want
me to sign a waiver? He laughs along ain’t
say all that he says but you do have to
hold my hand. And close your eyes.
I make a starless night of my face before
he asks are you ready. Yeah dawg I’m ready.
Sure? Sure let’s do this his rough hand
in mine inflates like a blood pressure cuff and I
squeeze back as if we are about to step together
from the sill of all resentment and timeless
toward the dreamsource of un-needing the two
of us hurtle sharing the cosmic breast
of plenitude when I hear the coins blink against
the surface and I cough up daylight like I’ve just
been dragged ashore. See now
you’ll never walk alone he jokes and is about
to hand me back to the day he found me in
like I was a rubber duck and he says you got to let
go but I feel bottomless and I know he means
well though I don’t believe
and I feel myself shaking
my head no when he means let go his hand.”
Annie Lennox and Rumi insist that there are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the earth with a heart of gratitude. The more I listen - and practice - and honor this truth, the less fear and cynicism I know. And the more I find to be grateful for. Nothing has changed objectively in the body politic, of course, that remains a mess. But now I am living into its fullness rather than just being carried away on the surface of my feelings.
In a recent FB post, I suggested that those who choose not to watch the ethically
and emotionally complicated political debates - for whatever reasons - do so. In an earlier post I encouraged practicing self-care in this highly charged and life-threatening political season - a practice that must respect our mental and spiritual health. Others far wiser than I, have recommended only one hour a day of political "news" with lots of time for silence, nature, and beauty. That continues to be my default position.
At the same time, however, I've expressed my frustration with FB opinions that seem to conflate an individual's emotional distress with broken politics. In my experience, the two are unrelated. To be sure, those of us who hail from privileged backgrounds (myself included) and came of age after years of respectable public conversations, debate societies, dance lessons, decades of social etiquette cues, suburban religious congregations, well-manicured lawns, and all the other public advantages afforded to children of corporate America: we detest disorder. With modest variations, we shrink from shrill and boisterous arguments. We resist being caught up in aggressive altercations of any type. And we tend to believe that the world should work in a decent and well-ordered way. This is not to say that there was no stress, pain, or heartbreak in our formation. All human beings know suffering of one type or another. Nevertheless, those of us from a discrete social class despise chaos.
For the first 35 years of my life, my political engagement was fundamentally well ordered: I applied for Conscientious Objector status when I registered with the local draft board at age 18, I worked that process with the assistance of professionals at the American Friends Service Committee, my local church not only had a carefully organized way for me to declare my intentions re: ministry but also for noting my moral opposition to war, the draft board hearing in Norwalk, CT was well run by well-trained managers, my subsequent years organizing with Cesar Chavez and the Farm Workers Union included carefully planned social protest with the help of well-trained lawyers, etc. My participation in public demonstrations against the Vietnam War and Richard Nixon came with clear guidelines and expert organization. You get the picture: social engagement, even in opposition to the status quo, was conducted in a reasonable and decent way as is befitting my bourgeois background.
That bubble burst when I became involved in the rough and tumble politics of urban Cleveland. There was nothing bourgeois about winning an election in that town - or I might note in most of the rest of America. It did not work like my civics textbooks suggested. It was not well-ordered and rarely civil. Peoples' lives were at stake. So, too, their livelihoods and neighborhoods. I still recall with awe my first "debate" at the Polish Hall in Slavic Village. I was running for school board as part of Mayor Michael R. White's inter-racial reform team. We were challenging the entrenched political hacks and union bosses who had perpetuated decades of nepotism, cronyism, and bleeding the public trough for personal gain without ever advancing educational opportunity for the mostly poor, Black children of Cleveland. The budget of the Cleveland Board of Education was greater than that of the city of Cleveland so a ton of money was at risk.
I lived on the West Side of Cleveland, the mostly white, working class neighborhoods in an aggressively segregated city. There were pockets of wealth on the West Side as well as middle class neighborhoods that looked and acted like the suburbs of my youth. The East Side was mostly black, fundamentally poor, but with middle class pockets spread around that periphery, too. And in the center of town, in the old Eastern European neighborhoods was Slavic Village - a bastion of old-world culture - with all the blessings and curses of that reality. Our team was scheduled to debate their team - a cadre of old school, white ethnic pols with well-known names - and as soon as I stepped into the debate hall it was like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz: "We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto." This was NOT the Citizens League endorsement committee. The beer was flowing, the tough white crowd was pumped up and angry, and I was certain I was going to get my then skinny white ass kicked multiple times that night. The short version is we made our pitch to cat calls, yells, racial slurs, and a host of other vulgar and ugly epithets. And thanks be to God the Mayor's team was there to make sure that after the ruckus we all got to our cars safely. For me, it was trial by fire.
THIS was how politics was done outside of my bubble. THIS was how it worked when political choices mattered, not as abstract preferences, but in life and death ways. I can't say I ever learned to be at home in that world. I still preferred the bourgeois cocktail parties in the middle-class neighborhoods of Black and White Cleveland. There I could speak without interruption, make the good government case with clarity, and answer well-formed questions But I learned. I got better at dealing with the verbal sparring and the potential for violence. And I listened to the pros about how to take care of myself in the fray. Four years ago, driving through Kentucky and Pennsylvania on the way to the wedding of two friends, I felt I was back in Slavic Village. The anger in the air was palpable. The rabid support for Trump was visceral and omnipresent. And, once again, I had to hurry through most places for fear of getting my ass kicked again. There was anger, heartbreak, and fear pulsating there in ways I had forgotten about in my Western Massachusetts middle class bubble.
All of which is to say: it is OK to be emotionally uncomfortable with the rage of this era. It is unsettling and sometimes terrifying. So, too, with the political debates: if they make you upset, please don't watch them. Take care of yourself. But let's not condemn what takes place at the debates from the limited perspective of our comfortable bubbles. It is not useful to confuse our dis-ease with exaggerated moral judgment. That's been my biggest concern and critique. And, yes, I still find carping about the impotence of the moderators disingenuous. They are operating from within a bubble, too and are only now getting up to speed about how to respond to the political chaos that is normative. Have you ever watched British Parliament? It is boorish and cruel, loud, and mean-spirited as well. From my limited perspective, however, their shouting is more like what politics looks, feels, and sounds like in most of the world than what I grew up with.
So, that's where I'm coming from. The medieval monk, Meister Eckhart, once said something like: Reality is the will of God. It can always be better, but you must start with what is real. And while what I see in our politics and debates is not pretty, it is real. The debate moderators are striving for the best they can do with what is real. My hope is that we do likewise with a minimum of judgment.
