Icons

St Gregory's Monastery.                                                                                   March, 1st 2013

A few days ago it began with a downpour, followed by freezing rain, and finally snow which came down in big clumps. Ann Arbor rush hour was a mess. The next morning I peered out the front door.  The air was filled with moist fog. Six inches of heavy white snow deadened almost all the sounds. Here at the monastery all that is left is a shiny, crusty layer of snow, pock-marked with deer trails. The squirrels glide over the top leaving no trace of their passing presence. 

There is a library of 11,000 books at St Gregory’s. It is a warm and inviting place during these winter months. At the beginning of each visit I wander down the aisles wondering what will strike my fancy. This time I noticed a whole shelf of books about Orthodox Christian icons. In the eastern tradition, icons are consecrated objects, a divine channel for grace. They are venerated for their redeeming mystery. 

According to Pasha, a peasant woman, in a small Russian village, '"Yes, it, (the icon) ceased to wander. It stayed until the church was closed for good. People worshipped it and said their most beautiful prayers to it. Well (it is) beautiful, too. There has never been such beauty." I was struck by Pasha's phrase "mercilessly beautiful". She had meant, no doubt, to refer to the "Merciful Virgin", but had gotten confused in her expression. Yet, I reflected, all beauty is power-an absolute indestructible power-which throws you at its feet or lifts you up to itself and therefore is merciless.  Yes such beauty as never was on earth'. Vladimir Soloukhin. Searching for Icons in Russia. Harcourt Press, 1972

This icon had the habit of wandering, hence its name the Wandering Icon. Three times it was found stuck in the mud near a stream. Only when the whole village processed her back to the church did she finally settle. 

In the West we are more prosaic about our icons. They are beautiful and edifying. But do we let them shatter us, throw us down or lift us up? I don’t think so. We pride ourselves with being more sensible, less superstitious than Russian peasants. Maybe in our sophistication we have lost something. Certainly an opening to prayer. 

I was 18 when I saw the black and white flickering television images of the earth rising over the moon. Our planet is a blue planet, a blue pearl glistening in glory, hanging in an endless black void. And she has risen for billions of years over that desolate lunar landscape. Something happened to me on that day, July 29th 1969.  Perhaps it was like the first time my infant son recognized the face in the mirror as his. He appeared thunderstruck and then broke into giggles, watching the mirror images change as he wiggled and waved his hands in excitement. His body was suffused with the pleasure of discovery.

I knew that millions were watching these images of earth along with me. It was like a global awakening to a new image of ourselves and our home. Our home is beautiful. She is vulnerable and she is alive. I clipped out the color photos of the Earth Rising from Life Magazine. They hung  on my  bedroom walls for a long time. I wish I still had them.

The earth rising was a shattering moment for me. Dazzling beauty, unimaginable science, and  indomitable human spirit all combined into an image burned into my heart. This is the function of icons. They break through the numbness of the familiar and reveal a transcendent truth. This earth has been rising over the moon for billions and billions of years, waiting to be known by us. Imagined perhaps by poets and astronomers but never before seen. Looking back I can see how this moment and those images from space carved a trajectory in my life. 

Here I am back at my monastery over forty years later reliving these images in the silence of the landscape. This winter blue sky, dappled with clouds that I see through the library windows, is membrane of air, a mere 60 miles thick-- the distance from Ann Arbor to Detroit. This is all that separates me, everyone and everything I love from certain extinction. This membrane of air is daily threatened by our voracious appetite for carbon fuels. Many of us have learned to give up smoking. It kills. We live with such vulnerability, like the human soul, this bubble of precious consciousness that   writes these words. Do we know this? Can we dare to know this preciousness. We are in peril if we do not.

A friend sent me this link to a video called the Overview Effect. Images from the lunar module and from the space shuttle:  http://vimeo.com/55073825

Obama's Inauguration and Deuteronomy

St Gregory's Abbey.                                                                          February 4th 2013

Obama's Inauguration and Deuteronomy. 

There was a light in the President's speech a few weeks ago. Finally he seemed to exhale and speak words he must have longed to say during the last four years. Yes there was Selma, Seneca and Stonewall and it is surely time that those three moments were linked in the longing and demand  for human liberty . But what I heard was the repetition of the phrase, 'we the people'; we the collective. Was this a call to a maturity, moving from self centered narcissism to a new consciousness? One that is emerging in the midst of globalization, the Internet, and the vision of earth as living Gaia. 

The 'me' or 'I' generation, has actually emerged over many generations. This development of the self as distinct from the tribe, the clan, the church, the kingdom  began in the Renaissance ran through the Enlightenment, and perhaps finding its fullest expression in these post modern times in the personal narrative. Or maybe it began thousands of years ago when desert prophets proclaimed the voice of “I am that I am”. This sacred call, this sacred recognition has inspired western culture for centuries, for good and bad. And although many criticize the grandiosity of narcissism, and rightly so, this evolution of the 'me' or the 'I' has been a crucial and precious development. Democratic values cannot exist without the individual voice  with its wisdom and even its crazed screeching. Healing of the individual soul needs an understanding of that soul's history, evolution and development. Psychology is a remarkable expression beginning with Freud of the vicissitudes of individual human suffering and its potential for healing and growth.   

But perhaps as we face crises of global proportions this trajectory of 'me' and 'I' has reached a certain limit. These crises require a vision of the common good. Not simply my good, but one that holds the blessings of the collective.  Are we moving from the 'me generation' to the 'we generation'? Not  a codependent we, a brainwashed we, a herd of the we, but a racially new we. A 'we' that holds and needs the expression of the individual 'I' of many. 

Well enough of the arc of history and speculations about the emergence of a new consciousness that might save us.

As I write this I am sitting in a Benedictine monastery a few miles outside of Three Rivers. And yes three rivers do meet in this small town. The river St Joseph emerges as the vessel containing the other two as it heads southward towards Indiana. Three Rivers lies close to Lake Michigan lives with lake effect weather. At this time of year  it snows all the time. Sometimes gentle puffs glide and settle.  Sometimes it seems like the mist itself is snowing. But right now it is snowing seriously. The woods around the monastery are like silent black and white statues, many tangled on the ground from the tornado that ripped through here a few years ago. The living trees rise up catching snow until the wind picks up and then they become bare and pristine again, like silent majesties. It is a landscape of searing silence, of blasting whiteness and the dark hibernation of winter. 

The solitude here is like food. It feeds and gradually claims me into a restful peace. The depths of mystery are here, as they are everywhere. But here there are fewer distractions. 

The monastic day is marked by the hours, seven of them. Starting at 4am with Matins (which I sleep through) and ending with Compline at 8pm. Seven times a day the monks renew their commitment to each other. They bless each other in the name of what is most holy to them.  And they welcome me into their collectivity. There is a 'we' here and it is sanctified over and over. And yet these monks, as I get to know them, are a very distinct, quirky, bunch of men. No mushiness here. They repent their rough edges, sin I suppose, over and over, and at the end of the day they retire to their cells under the same roof. And most of them have done this for decades.  It takes the surrender to their God that makes this mix of 'me' and 'I' and 'we' possible. Nothing fancy in their daily practice and yet it is miraculous. 

I  just finished reading Walter Breuggemann's latest book. He is one of the foremost Christian interpreters of the Old Testament. His book, 'Journey to the Common Good', has echoes of Obama's speech. Breuggemann  speaks of a journey together in neighborliness, re-covenanting and reconstruction. He calls this the promise of the common good. 

He quotes Deuteronomy 24:19-22 recorded centuries before Christ. 

       When you reap your harvest in the field and you forget a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it; it shall be left for the alien, the orphan and the widow, so that The Lord your God, may bless you in all your undertakings. When you beat your olive tree, do not strip what is left; it shall be for the alien, the orphan, the widow.

        When you gather the grapes of your vineyard do not glean what is left; it shall be for the alien, the orphan and the widow. Remember that you were a slave in Egypt; therefore I am commanding you to do this. 

This thread of the common good arose in the desert, amidst the threat of slavery, Pharaoh, disease, wild animals, hordes of locusts. They lived every day with  possible annihilation. How did such wisdom emerge from such a small group of humans.? We would be wise to remember them and their call. Our planet is calling us, our God is calling us, our science is calling us. And most of all we long to have hearts of flesh not of stone.  

more walking.

I am reading The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot, by Robert Macfarlane. This is not one of those books you gobble up but one you savor. A bit like walking; page by page, footstep by footstep.

MacFarlane writes about walks in the British Isles--Old Ways-- that go back 5000 years to the Mesolithic era. Can you imagine walking and unearthing footprints that are 5000 years old? Time compresses, collapses, past and present together in footprints. Your footprint fresh next to an ancient one captured in the miracle of geologic preservation.  Or how about walks, north of Thames Estuary,  across land the size of Wales, now under water. At low tide if you avoid the dense fog and the vagaries of lethal tides you can make out the old ways with your bare feet under water.

There is quiet mystery in walks that are invisible but knowable or walks that create time warps. There is knowledge in our feet, if we only listen.

poem

The mystery of life

is not a problem to

be solved,

but a reality

to be experienced.

~ Aart Van Der Leeuw ~

(quoted in The Soul Unearthed)

Walking

12/30. St Gregory's abbey.

For years I have been immersed in water. Longing to be close to it. Painting it. Photographing it. But the urgency of that need has dwindled away over the last year. I still rejoice when I come across its marvelous reflective gift. But now I am drawn to walk. Why did I not walk when I was young and did not suffer from the aching joints?

Finally after much dithering I am planning to walk from Winchester to Eastborne, along the South Downs this spring. The Downs are chalk hills which run west to east south of London. They are for me the essence of English. Rolling green hills, made up of deposits of the carcasses of dead shelled creatures. The cliffs of Dover are vertical cemeteries, deposited over eons of dying, and exposed by the searing action of the  sea. The Downs have been walked for thousands of years. They have been carved by our prehistoric ancestors with massive white chalk figures. The hills roll with the ancientness of the land. And they are so green!

And William Blake knew these green lands.

The New Jerusalem

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my charriot of fire!

I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.

And if you want to watch the Brits go mad with joy, watch them singing Elgar's version of this poem.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQ0oCmDXrVk

These walks are called Old Ways. Our ancestors walked them, on pilgrimage perhaps, fleeing danger maybe, or carrying commerce and knowledge from village to village, monastery to monastery. It appears there is a walking renewal all over Europe. Perhaps we are re- creating or mining the Songlines of  our lands. The Australian aborigines walked their Songlines, singing creation into existence. As our planet is threatened with  destruction are we walking in honor of the sacred earth? Are we bringing the presence of each step on this earth into an awakening so that must be done can be done? This is the work of love. The politicians, the scientists, activists have theirs to do. Mine is to step into love.

YouTube - 

beauty

I am discovering that the essence of the feeling of laziness is a warm loving kindness. No pushing, no agenda, but also no sloth couch potato either. And even though there is no direction, no movement, no drive the love is intimate and desires the simplicity of beauty.

Words can be beautiful. I hope so. And photos can capture the fleeting moment of the ordinary turned beautiful. Walking with a camera invites a deep seeing. The moment is frozen in the focus and the click of the shutter. Shadows, dense spaces, negative spaces, color, lines, blurred edges and especially light capture me. I move into position and all is narrowed down into focus.

And then it is done. Just as sensing that there is a "right" word. One that matches the silent knowing, the suspicion that something is waiting to be caught.

Indra's Web comes to mind. According to Wikipedia:

Far away in the heavenly abode of the great god Indra, there is a wonderful net which has been hung by some cunning artificer in such a manner that it stretches out infinitely in all directions. In accordance with the extravagant tastes of deities, the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel in each "eye" of the net, and since the net itself is infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number. There hang the jewels, glittering "like" stars in the first magnitude, a wonderful sight to behold. If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection and look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number. Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so that there is an infinite reflecting process occurring.


Does Indra's net catch the special words, the ones that pop out of silence and shiver in beauty? And what about the words that are duds! Do they get caught in this mysterious web too? They come out or rather leach out of the silence. They just don't sparkle like jewels. 

Perhaps the shiver of beauty, the essence of the word, is in the sparkle of the infinitely reflecting jewels hanging in the infinite eyes of Indra's Net.

Dark Poetry

Poems by Rilke.


…whom should I turn to,
if not the one whose darkness
is darker than night, the only one
who keeps vigil with no candle,
and is not afraid--
the deep one, whose being I trust,
for it breaks through the earth into trees,
and rises,
when I bow my head,
faint as a fragrance,
from the soil     (I 2, p. 32)


You darkness, of whom I am born---
I love you more than the flame
that limits the world
to the circle it illumines
and excludes all the rest.

But the dark embraces everything:
shapes and shadows, creatures and me,
people, nations--just as they are.

It let's me imagine
a great presence stirring beside me.
I believe in the night.  (I. II p. 63)


…when I lean over the chasm of myself---
it seems
my God is dark
and like a web: a hundred roots
silently drinking.

This is the ferment I grow out of.
More I don't know, because my branches
rest in deep silence, stirring only by the wind.   (I.3   p. 47)