Canada Saga 2010 - September 26

"Love and compassion predominate in the world.  And this is why unpleasant events are 'news.'  Compassion activities are so much a part of every day life that they are taken for granted and, therefore, largely ignored." (Dalai Lama)

"We must be purposely kind and generous, or we miss the best part of life's existence." (Horace Mann)

 

Outside the window, I'm watching our first major fall storm announce its approach with winds gusting to 60 kilometers, shaking down branches, bending trees, sending grey clouds somersaulting through the sky and creating cacophony with my normally docile wind-chime.   Earlier this morning, Michael slept in while I walked the windy boardwalk in Parksville, and watched the sun tie-die the low hanging storm clouds orange and red shades of the 60's.  There is an electricity in the pre-storm air: the dogs race each other on the beaches, pouncing and biting at the waves; the adults chat animatedly, and the Canada Geese circle overhead restlessly, before settling in the marsh, only to rise again in unison, and with great noise, fly back the way they had come. 

 

Reports tell us that up-Island, Port Alice has had mud slides from the heavy rains, and Port Hardy is in a state of emergency with power outages and road closures.  We are expecting heavy rains tonight, but the brunt of the storm will pass us by. For us, it's a good day for Michael to do some work at his desk, and for me, reluctantly, to continue getting the house winterized.  My hanging baskets are all down, our yard toys are picked up, and the melancholy process of cleaning out cupboards and sorting clothes has begun.  It is so fitting for this to take place with the feel of the shorter days and cooler temps of a harvest season, when the fecundity of the earth is also shutting down.

 

We look at each other, and wonder where the summer has gone.  It surely must have been more than having rooms painted, and replacing the toilets, refrigerator and hot water heater.  Trips we hoped to take were thwarted by heat, smoke or rain. Michael's unexpected business in Louisiana changed some of our timing.  We've met new friends this summer, and deepened relationships with old ones. The summer becomes a dream montage, snippets of events, people, conversations, walks, landscapes, paintings, tears and laughter shared in moments that touched our hearts.  There were successful fishing trips (Michael), dinners with friends, long evening walks together.  We launched two eaglets again this summer, and felt more like residents than visitors.  Sweet and deep conversations were frequent with my visually challenged friend, with her piercing insights and questions and joy about life.  (I think Rumi had Laurine in mind when he wrote: "Anyone who asks a question already has some of the answer.")  And our lovely Mickey has given us a lesson on the trials of living with Alzheimer's, and the realities of growing older in an impatient world obsessed with youth.

 

Almost every day this summer, I've walked into 'my' coffee shop, and each time I've been greeted with a genuinely cheerful, "Cindy!" by the owners, Lori and Steve.  Every now and then, it becomes almost a comical chorus, with other customers joining in:  "Cindy!," "LORI!," "Cindy!," "STEVE!," "Phil!," "Al!," "Barb!," "Rod!" and whoever else might walk through the door.  I listen, though, as I sit there reading or writing, and observe every single customer singled out with the same enthusiasm.  People walk in heavy with fatigue, or joyful and rested, but they all walk out a bit lighter.  Some folks stay and discuss the ain't-it-awful headlines of the local paper, but somehow it all seems manageable when you've been acknowledged by name, and reminded that you have a place in the world. 

 

Many years ago, I attended a weekend retreat in the piney woods of the Solomon retreat Center in Robert, La.  After one of the silent meditation sessions, we stood in a circle, 50 or so of us, with the instruction that one of us enter the center of the circle, and say our name.  Then all of the retreatants sang the name together, in unplanned but beautifully blended voices.  The result was that often, the person whose name was being sung with such grace, would end up in tears.  How often do we hear our names used indifferently?  How often are we challenged, confronted, or berated in comments that begin with our names used unlovingly?  "How could anyone ever tell you, you are anything less than beautiful?" Shaina Noll sings, "How could anyone ever tell you, you are less than whole?" 

 

In our retreat, when each woman had a turn in the center, we were told as a group to close our eyes, and sing our own first names over and over. We started quietly at first, almost shyly, until gradually, and with increasing reverence, the harmony of the whole became a sacred chant.  We were solo and we were in chorus, we were alone and we were unified with a song that was beyond each individual voice.  This is what I think of as I watch the parade of people in the morning at the coffee shop, each one held precious in that one moment where their name is sung.

 

"I have called you by name," it is written in Isaiah,  "You are Mine."  A grammar school friend, now Episcopal priest, had a workshop on prayer years ago.  She suggested that we personalize Scripture with the names of those we pray for, a powerful way of being connected in compassion to the issue at hand, and the Source of all comfort. We pray in God's name, and hold the space for our family and friends, praying them through illness, grief, stress, in moments of happiness and joy.  So I use the Scripture from Isaiah as God might address those I pray for:  "When you go through deep waters and great trouble, Michael, I will be with you." "When you go through rivers of difficulty, Tippy,  you will not drown!"  "When you walk through the fire of oppression, Michele, you will not be burned up; the flames will not consume you."  "... you are precious to me, Jinx." "You are honored, and I love you, Tommy."  When our names are sung in Divine voice, we receive a grace in that moment; we are touched.

 

When we come up to the Island at the beginning of the summer, we hear and give that same joy as we greet friends, acquaintances and neighbors by name. Then we find ourselves saying goodbyes all too soon, with hugs and promises to keep in touch, all of us knowing, as we grow older, that nothing is a given.  This morning, Michael was out of blackberry jam, and I offered him the option of opening the jar we had just been given by our friend, or saving it for next summer.  He said, "Well, you know what I'm going to say.  Life is uncertain.  Open the jar."  So we did.

 

Cantor Ellen Dreskin observed that when the Divine completed creation it was called 'good,' it was not called perfect.  When we remember to be "purposely kind and generous," we become part of that compassion which rules the day, and moves the world closer to its good.  We sing our names from that compassion, and we sing another's when they have forgotten how to.  And if the world itself is not perfect, we are at least in perfect harmony with the Divine song.  We are touched with the inherent awe of finding the Name within each. We sing the songs of the seasons, of the winds that blow and change the world forever, of storms that bring new challenges, and new life.  And if we are especially fortunate, we hear what we've been born to hear all along: "Behold, I am with you, always."

YAY GOD

 

 

"Just sit there right now.  Don't do a thing.  Just rest.  For your separation from God is the hardest work in this world." (Hafiz)

 

 

Canada Saga 2010 September 13

"Our walls of division do not rise all the way to heaven." (St. Philaret of Moscow)

"For all that has been: Thanks!  For all that is yet to come: Yes!" (Dag Hammarskold)

 

The Celtic mythology speaks of 'thin places,' places where the separation between earth and heaven is a mere whisper-thin veil of perception, and  there is very little dividing the place or moment from the Lord and life beyond.  We each have those thin places in our lives, or have experienced those moments where the veil, separating our physical reality and our sense of something deeper, is felt.  There were those moments with infant Grace, all cleaned up on her changing table, as we lingered, my glasses off, my eyes holding hers,watching each other until we had fallen into another space and timeless time.  Although I left for Canada when she was only 10 months old, the first thing she did when we returned months later was to reach up and take my glasses off and in that gesture, return us both to that fragment of eternity in our gaze.

 

The first time I remember this happening to me was after my brother's death, when his presence felt so very very close that I felt I could SEE him if only if only that wispy ephemeral veil of soul fog would clear.  I have felt on walks in sacred places that at any moment, I could step beyond that veil, right out of this lifetime, and all would be revealed.  What that 'all' might be, I have no idea.  But at those times, I would have been perfectly content to leave this earthly life, bound by all of its constrictions and details and mysteries, and step right on over, dying 'unconfused' as the Buddhists say.

 

When we hike Helliwell Park on Hornby Island, I am blessed with those same feelings.   Last week we walked through the forest on a cushion of soft wet mulch, stepping over the occasional banana slug on the trail, as we are dwarfed by red cedars.  Ferns held the noise of the world in their tiny fronds, and we relished the cottony quiet.  It was hard to believe, as we walked out of the forest and along the cliffs above the water, that anything else was real.  Often on our walks, we watch eagles or turkey vultures or hawks on air currents, circling overhead.  A tiny patch of cloud becomes a rainbow bubble, gently shape-shifting on an underbelly of grey sky.  The only noise is the sound of the gravel beneath our shoes, and a very distant boat motor.  I spied an enormous sea lion on a large rock below us, stranded by the outgoing tide, her mottled skin bearing the marks of her encounters with life.  Michael thinks she can just throw herself back into the water.  I wonder that she may need to wait for a high tide escape.  She is clearly nervous as we watch, but makes no move from her perch. We move along, giving up the opportunity of a photo shot in order to put her at ease, and finished our walk in silence, always reluctant to leave.

 

Now, days later, a pretend rain falls as I leave for my walk, a mist that hasn't quite graduated to a drizzle, bathing the landscape and making the streets glisten.  The fog drapes a grey curtain along the curve of coastline in Rathtrevor, the Douglas firs standing tall next to the rocky seashore, hinting at the dark interior of the forest.  A low-growing evergreen shrub by the side of the trail is a pincushion with drops of water clinging to the needles. I take off my glasses to peer at one tiny shimmery wet globe getting fuller and heavier, reflecting more and more of this mystical numinous gift of a world.  It suddenly releases, and the whole world seems to float slowly and forever in a bubble to the ground, splashing its graces over the parched earth. A baby sea lion barks piteously and a raven flies overhead, her throaty cry filling the air; they call me back from my reverie, and into the world of here and now.

 

Suddenly the dead and dying branches of the woods come to life, with prisms of clear raindrops decorating their otherwise grey-brown barrenness.  In this moment, the shriveled twigs in the last performance of their season find purpose.  The forest is bedazzled with millions of dew-lights hung from every leaf, needle and frond, tiny crystals that even the fog cannot dim. This does not seem like a thin place at all, but a rich full experience and expression of the wonder of being and breathing and standing  in a joy and gratitude so great that there is nothing to do but turn slowly and take it all in. Breathe. Smile.

 

When Brett was 15 years old, we planned his first lengthy trip away from home.  He was going to Germany, to Italy, to Medjugorge with some of his high school drama club members, under the watchful supervision of his teacher and some other adults.  For weeks, he was pissy and sullen around the house, for seemingly no reason.  It suddenly occurred to me that, as excited as he was about going, he was also sad about leaving.  In our quirky and wryly amusing human way, it is often easier to express anger, then to feel and express the depths of grief and pain.  My friend's words of last night came back to me as I walked this morning: "You have three weeks left."  My petty annoyances and short patience with Michael yesterday reveal themselves as the grieving that is already unfolding as our time here gets shorter.   

 

But I am here, still - as my t-shirt says - "on Island time," and filled with blessed awareness.   I walk and see Rathtrevor with new eyes, see configurations of trees and hear complexity of sounds I never noticed before.  I think of my friend, Cris, dying with Aids, saying that he had never lived so vibrantly before.

 

These thin places are our Muses, inspiring us, and speaking to the Soul of that space where "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined the things that God has prepared for those who love."  Our Muses must ultimately be transformative, drawing us into the Love, with the whisper of rain, a gentle cool wind, a word of encouragement, a sweet embrace, a timeless gaze. 

 

There are clues here and now, that tell us over and over that we are One in that Love, sharing the thin places, praying in our own way, whether it's in a synagogue, a mosque, a temple, a chair at home or in a Church, or, as Brett told me when he returned from his trip where his class-mates were all in a chapel and he wandered the deeply wooded hills outside, it can be in a forest in Germany.  We all worship at the same altar, ultimately; we worship the Divine within each of us because, as William Willimon wrote, "Love is not a stupid unwillingness to look at the world as it is.  It is the recognition that, because the world is as it is, nothing less than love will do." (William H. Willimon)

 

 The sea lions are quiet in Rathtrevor now, the raven has flown away.  There are only droplets losing their battle with gravity, drumming the dried leaves on the forest floor and creating a soft percussion to the pianissimo waves, a Divine chant harmonizing with the eternal and timeless chorus of Life itself.

 

"How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard," Winnie the Pooh says in Milne's classic story.  My tears, of awe and wonder and joy and gratitude, mingle with the gently falling rain. Three more weeks.   I am so very blessed.

YAY GOD