Canada Saga 2013 - September 5

"All beauty of this world is wet with the dew of tears."(Theodor Haecker) "In times of joy or sorrow, blessed be my tears, the holy prayers of my heart. Amen." (Edward Hays in Pray All Ways) After my uncle's funeral a year ago, my cousins had arranged a traditional New Orleans jazz procession. We left the church, and walked slowly behind the small brass band which followed his hearse down the road along the waters of the Bay where he spent so much of his precious earth time. After the original dirge, we second-lined to "When The Saints Go Marching In," ending at the home of his daughter where we all gathered to share an afternoon of memories, photos and food. Along the way, I noticed that 8 year old Grace was holding back, a puzzled frown on her face, watching the tears, smiling and dancing, and clearly confused by the dichotomy of emotion. I put my hand on her shoulder and said that it must seem strange to have people dancing and laughing at such a sad time. She nodded, and took her Mom's hand, making of it whatever is available to a child's perceptions. How to tell her that the human heart is large enough to hold gladness and sadness together? How to explain, even to ourselves, that there is yet a spaciousness holding the heart itself. We feel an ache in exquisite joy and beauty, a longing that can bring us to inexplicable tears, just as our tears, even in the face of extreme loss, create a channel for a deeper sense of belonging. When Brett was here, we took hikes each day, delighted to share our love of the island, as Michael commented gratefully that he was able to do this with more ease. One of our adventures found us sailing through Desolation Sound, an unlikely name for such grandeur and magnificence. It is a place of mountain-views, narrow channels and rocky islands that fall off suddenly to water depths of over 2000 feet. As we listened to the naturalist on board, hundreds of moon jellies undulated ethereally in the clear waters beneath the boat. The weather was threatening all day long, and perfect for the Pacific Northwest: cloud-wrapped mountain-tops, slanted sheets of rain chasing sailboats in the distance, occasional sun-breaks sprinkling the water with glitter, and skies painted every imaginable hue of grey and blue. My camera struggled to capture a divine palette of color subtleties artists can only dream of. In the distance, three dimensional layers of islands and mainland created a back-drop to sailboats and yachts gliding past. With each gentle dip of the boat, the waves rose up in the silence with a soft chant against the hull: 'listen listen.' Brother David Steindl-Rast says that we must BE that great song that arises out of the silence. At one point as I stood on the back deck, Brett walked over and said quietly, "Thank you," an acknowledgment of this gift and blessing shared and received. All background chatter was simply filler, because we're human and our words connect us. The Captain told stories of the history of the area, with his maps and depth charts splayed out. For me, the journey was spent mostly in the silence that Barbara Brown Taylor writes about: "When we run out of words, we are very near the God whose name is unsayable...it is not because there is no more to be said. It is because the unsayable wishes to be said, and the only language is silence." We wandered from the front of the boat to the back, leaned over the rail in the lulling motion of the ocean, and watched the panorama unfold its wonder. Words drifted by ("spectacular," "amazing," "beautiful,"), in all their inept descriptiveness, like these I'm writing. Once the heart is engaged, words are as useful as a ladder in a bottomless well. It's amazing that we return to our ordinary lives after these extraordinary moments. When we got back to the ferry terminal for our trip home, we sat quietly watching the rain, which we had escaped all day. In the silence of reflection, an alchemy takes place: beauty mixed with deep emotion or pain tinged with laughter, somehow become memories, touchstones that we carry with us - of bygone days, or a loved one's laugh, or a quiet faith in the heart that holds it all. Brett was a real trooper while he was here, rising early to walk with me each morning, up for any hike we suggested - and we finally did the whole of Newcastle Island, ending with lunch at the quirky Dinghy Dock. We hiked again to Rosewater Creek Falls (still no hippie ladies), and he attempted to teach me a new computer/system - which I likened to learning to speak fluid Swahili in an hour. No doubt some of the lessons will eventually mean something, as we can say with all of life's lessons when we're paying attention. Through his teen years, he resented any talk of "when you're older, you'll understand." Now he tells me often, when I don't understand certain attitudes or changing mores, "It's a generational thing," without a hint of irony. I still want to tell him, "When you're older, you'll understand." But one of the wisdoms of getting older is that we learn when NOT to say anything - not often enough, perhaps - because we know from experience that they will, indeed, one day understand. The night before he left, he wanted to see the sunset. It was past my bedtime, but Michael was in the shower, so I walked down with him, thinking we wouldn't see much because of the cloudy evening. But when we got to the water and looked east, we saw a brilliant rainbow, book-ended by a sun setting fiercely to the West, all reflected in the waters of the rising tide. It was all there again: the joy, the wonder, the breath-taking-beyond-words gift, accompanied by the familiar pang of ache/angst, the tears and fullness that can be both ecstatic joy and deep sorrow, abiding together in the One heart. The desire to share our moments of beauty with every person we have ever loved gives us some sense of the generosity, the gift that has been given to us by One who would share creation so generously in a sunset, a rainbow, a waterfall, or the face of a loved one. Whether it is the dirge of a jazz funeral, a song of joy whispered by waves or a hymn of praise in the winds of a main sail, we remember that we are not only called to sing, but "to BE that great song," sung to each other. YAY GOD