Out of the Rolling Ocean the Crowd
by Walt Whitman
Out of the rolling ocean the crowd came a drop gently
to me,
Whispering, I love you, before long I die,
I have travell'd a long way merely to look on you to
touch you,
For I could not die till I once look'd on you,
For I fear'd I might afterward lose you.
Now we have met, we have look'd, we are safe,
Return in peace to the ocean my love,
I too am much of that ocean, my love, we are not so
much separated,
Behold the great rondure, the cohesion of all, how
perfect!
But as for me, for you, the irresistible sea is to separate
us,
As for an hour carrying us diverse, yet cannot carry us
diverse forever;
Be not impatient — a little space — know you I salute
the air, the ocean and the land,
Every day at sundown for your dear sake, my love.
A poem ahead of its time. An quantum image of interconnectiveness science has now proclaimed. An ancient idea that describes the boundaryless oceanic love of Divinity. A truth revered and expressed in many different ways in all religions and spiritualities.
Now is the time for all good people not to get hooked on what disconnects and separates us but to pay attention to what connects us. Things like love, fear, hope, grief, doubt, humor, ego, humanity, anger, sweet flesh and suffering flesh, and a sense of something greater and deeper, more powerful and able than we are.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
A House Divided
It’s the morning after the election to fill the senate seat left vacant by the death of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, “Teddy.” All I can think of is the biblical phrase in the mouth of Jesus: "A house divided against itself cannot stand.: (Mark 3:25)
Is America that house?
In a heavily Democratic state (Massachusetts), devoted supposedly to progressive liberal politics and the common good for all, the likely candidate to win this election was Attorney General Martha Coakley. She lost to conservative Republican Scott Brown. Why?
I passed a station wagon yesterday with its rear door up and open to expose a sign propped against the seat on which was written in bold black letters: “The People Against the Machine.” I wondered if the subtext was “the people against the people.” Who/what/which the machine? Who/what/which the people?
Thirty plus years ago I changed my political party registration from Republican to Democrat. I snuck into the town hall furtively watching for my staunch Republican father around every corner. I switched my party allegiance because I thought the Democratic party platform more closely aligned to my Christian values, my biblical values. I thought Jesus would have voted to the left. Moses, the liberator, too.
Now I don’t know where and in whom those values live—values that trust in the elective process to elect government officials who will carve out policies that reduce the division between rich and poor, haves and have nots, a government willing to tax in order that those with wealth will provide some tax dollars for those who have less opportunity either by chance, bad luck, illness or even sloth, a government that really does represent a people who really do believe in and respect the dignity and worth of all human persons and the whole created universe.
I do not think either candidate in this election was particularly stellar (part of the problem), but I thought Coakley more qualified to continue the legacy of Teddy who, in a lifelong effort to make amends for a life run wild resulting in part in the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, worked steadfastly with both innocence and wiliness to shape U.S. government policies in favor of the common not the particular good.
I admire President Obama though I voted for Hillary Clinton. Obama came to Boston to rally support for Coakley. He stuck his political neck out. Many say it was a bad move, one that would hurt his reputation. Why did he do it? Lots of reasons, chief among them the need for a favorable vote on his stalled health care plan. But I think he did it because he’s a nice man, willing to risk his own beloved neck. To be in politics today you have to be nasty or at least more nasty than nice and you have to be tough-skinned and bloody. Not a nice climate. What's the difference between courage and brash disregard? Dangerous spirituality.
I fear this vote was a vote of no confidence against Obama. But is it no confidence or is it fear? If so fear of what? I fear the return of conservative and exclusivizing ways that compartmentalize people and create a climate in which hate crimes can thrive. Less government is one thing; no government is another.
Government is needed just as parents are needed to guide and with benevolence guard the civilization and its citizenry from themselves. I’ve seen the movie and read Goldings book, “The Lord of the Flies.” How much freedom is too much? Freedom can run wild.
Today I mourn for what seems like our reactive, get-even inflamed polis. People are voting for change, any change. Is there thought? Is there prayer? Is there informed reading? If it is ‘us vs. them,’ who are they? Do people vote like match on flint? I weep for Teddy whose devotion to justice with compassion for all marked his career. I weep for other heroes who lived the same: Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Deitrich Bonhoeffer, Jesus, Moses, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Catherine Macauley, the biblical prophet Deborah, Rosa Parks, and frankly, every woman, man and child willing to sacrifice and give a little something so more can have a little something.
In Jesus’ day there were many parties all of them lobbying for political/religions power and all of them hawking their own particular and limited view of Divinity. Jesus came on the scene hawking a particular view of humanity—that all are sacred and all are invited into the unimaginable, resilient, inexhaustible, everlasting grace of God. He wanted us to honor that grace in each other and behave accordingly. We killed him and others like him— and forgot.
I remember. I remember that, by the mysterious mix of divine grace and human good willingness, there are very nice people in this country and in the world.
I have no answers, just thoughts, feelings, pained questions—also another remembrance: that the long slow work of God through Spirit is just that— long and slow—always moving toward greater good by passing through periods of instability, including I suppose "divided houses."
What do you remember?
Is America that house?
In a heavily Democratic state (Massachusetts), devoted supposedly to progressive liberal politics and the common good for all, the likely candidate to win this election was Attorney General Martha Coakley. She lost to conservative Republican Scott Brown. Why?
I passed a station wagon yesterday with its rear door up and open to expose a sign propped against the seat on which was written in bold black letters: “The People Against the Machine.” I wondered if the subtext was “the people against the people.” Who/what/which the machine? Who/what/which the people?
Thirty plus years ago I changed my political party registration from Republican to Democrat. I snuck into the town hall furtively watching for my staunch Republican father around every corner. I switched my party allegiance because I thought the Democratic party platform more closely aligned to my Christian values, my biblical values. I thought Jesus would have voted to the left. Moses, the liberator, too.
Now I don’t know where and in whom those values live—values that trust in the elective process to elect government officials who will carve out policies that reduce the division between rich and poor, haves and have nots, a government willing to tax in order that those with wealth will provide some tax dollars for those who have less opportunity either by chance, bad luck, illness or even sloth, a government that really does represent a people who really do believe in and respect the dignity and worth of all human persons and the whole created universe.
I do not think either candidate in this election was particularly stellar (part of the problem), but I thought Coakley more qualified to continue the legacy of Teddy who, in a lifelong effort to make amends for a life run wild resulting in part in the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, worked steadfastly with both innocence and wiliness to shape U.S. government policies in favor of the common not the particular good.
I admire President Obama though I voted for Hillary Clinton. Obama came to Boston to rally support for Coakley. He stuck his political neck out. Many say it was a bad move, one that would hurt his reputation. Why did he do it? Lots of reasons, chief among them the need for a favorable vote on his stalled health care plan. But I think he did it because he’s a nice man, willing to risk his own beloved neck. To be in politics today you have to be nasty or at least more nasty than nice and you have to be tough-skinned and bloody. Not a nice climate. What's the difference between courage and brash disregard? Dangerous spirituality.
I fear this vote was a vote of no confidence against Obama. But is it no confidence or is it fear? If so fear of what? I fear the return of conservative and exclusivizing ways that compartmentalize people and create a climate in which hate crimes can thrive. Less government is one thing; no government is another.
Government is needed just as parents are needed to guide and with benevolence guard the civilization and its citizenry from themselves. I’ve seen the movie and read Goldings book, “The Lord of the Flies.” How much freedom is too much? Freedom can run wild.
Today I mourn for what seems like our reactive, get-even inflamed polis. People are voting for change, any change. Is there thought? Is there prayer? Is there informed reading? If it is ‘us vs. them,’ who are they? Do people vote like match on flint? I weep for Teddy whose devotion to justice with compassion for all marked his career. I weep for other heroes who lived the same: Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Deitrich Bonhoeffer, Jesus, Moses, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Catherine Macauley, the biblical prophet Deborah, Rosa Parks, and frankly, every woman, man and child willing to sacrifice and give a little something so more can have a little something.
In Jesus’ day there were many parties all of them lobbying for political/religions power and all of them hawking their own particular and limited view of Divinity. Jesus came on the scene hawking a particular view of humanity—that all are sacred and all are invited into the unimaginable, resilient, inexhaustible, everlasting grace of God. He wanted us to honor that grace in each other and behave accordingly. We killed him and others like him— and forgot.
I remember. I remember that, by the mysterious mix of divine grace and human good willingness, there are very nice people in this country and in the world.
I have no answers, just thoughts, feelings, pained questions—also another remembrance: that the long slow work of God through Spirit is just that— long and slow—always moving toward greater good by passing through periods of instability, including I suppose "divided houses."
What do you remember?
Monday, January 18, 2010
Boundaryhood and Brother/Sisterhood:Temple Tears
It was my oldest daughter’s birthday recently. She is forty-seven, beautiful, brilliant, political activist and feminist and mother of two daughters, thirteen and ten, who are equally winsome. I love them all.
I remember my nervousness about being a new mother, feeling scared of her infant power, adoring her with equal zeal. I remember wondering: Who is she? Who am I? Today I give thanks that most days I know who she is and who I am.
Boundary issues abound.
I also remember when a second daughter was born just 14 months later. I watched the intensity with which the sisters drew boundaries, staked claims and marked territories. They grew up and into a world of love, rivalry and boundaries—just as we all do.
It was also my oldest grandson’s birthday recently. He is seven, beautiful, sensitive, bright. I watch him and his little sister, four, do their boundary dance balancing war and peace with amazing grace.
Nations do no less than families and are still warring about territories and properties and who owns what. If you want someone else’s property you have to conquer it, or steal it. Just watch small children with their toys. Fierce.
In most churches, families and communities we teach and model compassion, sharing, brother and sisterhood more than any other values. We also teach the importance of having good boundaries so we can tell where we leave off and another begins and just how much personal space each needs for self and allows for the other. Life is demarcation and détente over and over.
Do we ever wonder about thinking, acting, living, loving outside the boundary?
In Hebrew legend there is a question: How did God choose the particular plot of land in Jerusalem where the Temple would be built? This parable is told.
There were two brothers who grew up together on the family farm. They lived there as adults, partners in the farming of one large field and sharing its produce. One brother we'll call A had a large family. The other brother we'll call Z had no family. A decided that Z had no family and should get more than half of the share of the resources from the field. So each night he went out after midnight to move the boundary of the field after the harvest so Z would have a bit more. Z, realizing he had no family responsibility had decided that A had so many responsibilities he should have more than half the crops, so he went out each night just before midnight to move the field's boundary so A would have more. This went on for a while but neither brother received more of the produce. They were puzzled at the mystery. One night A went out earlier and Z went out a little later so they arrived at the field to move the boundary at the same time. When they realized what had happened they fell weeping on each other's shoulders. The Temple was built on the spot where their tears fell because the essence of Temple is the ability to expand your boundary to include your wider self which includes everyone and everything else, and the width, breadth and depth of God. Tears wash away boundaries and therefore where Temple is built shows that all compassion and kindness are rooted in our radical interconnection.
Do you have a boundary you would like to move, seek to dissolve, strengthen? In yourself? With a neighbor or loved one? with Godde?
I remember my nervousness about being a new mother, feeling scared of her infant power, adoring her with equal zeal. I remember wondering: Who is she? Who am I? Today I give thanks that most days I know who she is and who I am.
Boundary issues abound.
I also remember when a second daughter was born just 14 months later. I watched the intensity with which the sisters drew boundaries, staked claims and marked territories. They grew up and into a world of love, rivalry and boundaries—just as we all do.
It was also my oldest grandson’s birthday recently. He is seven, beautiful, sensitive, bright. I watch him and his little sister, four, do their boundary dance balancing war and peace with amazing grace.
Nations do no less than families and are still warring about territories and properties and who owns what. If you want someone else’s property you have to conquer it, or steal it. Just watch small children with their toys. Fierce.
In most churches, families and communities we teach and model compassion, sharing, brother and sisterhood more than any other values. We also teach the importance of having good boundaries so we can tell where we leave off and another begins and just how much personal space each needs for self and allows for the other. Life is demarcation and détente over and over.
Do we ever wonder about thinking, acting, living, loving outside the boundary?
In Hebrew legend there is a question: How did God choose the particular plot of land in Jerusalem where the Temple would be built? This parable is told.
There were two brothers who grew up together on the family farm. They lived there as adults, partners in the farming of one large field and sharing its produce. One brother we'll call A had a large family. The other brother we'll call Z had no family. A decided that Z had no family and should get more than half of the share of the resources from the field. So each night he went out after midnight to move the boundary of the field after the harvest so Z would have a bit more. Z, realizing he had no family responsibility had decided that A had so many responsibilities he should have more than half the crops, so he went out each night just before midnight to move the field's boundary so A would have more. This went on for a while but neither brother received more of the produce. They were puzzled at the mystery. One night A went out earlier and Z went out a little later so they arrived at the field to move the boundary at the same time. When they realized what had happened they fell weeping on each other's shoulders. The Temple was built on the spot where their tears fell because the essence of Temple is the ability to expand your boundary to include your wider self which includes everyone and everything else, and the width, breadth and depth of God. Tears wash away boundaries and therefore where Temple is built shows that all compassion and kindness are rooted in our radical interconnection.
Do you have a boundary you would like to move, seek to dissolve, strengthen? In yourself? With a neighbor or loved one? with Godde?
Friday, January 8, 2010
The Woman Who Named God by Charlotte Gordon
I recommend HIGHLY a book by Charlotte Gordon. The Woman Who Named God. It is biblical scholarship at its best and also story at its best—a rare combination.
Gordon blends exegesis ( biblical text analysis and interpretation,) narrative (just plain story and literary analysis,) and midrash ( a Jewish method of using creative imagination to plum a biblical story for its hidden meanings, its emotional nuances and its spiritual and theological significance, often buried in the words themselves.) The author weaves these three approaches together seamlessly with beauty and skill.
I love this book and plan to read it again. Of course the Bible is my thing. I love it for its wisdom and its story. The Old Testament is a particular favorite, not just because of my partial Jewish heritage, but because you’ll never find better more complex lusty stories than these. Probably every human experience ever visited on humanity is there and all of it is sacred.
The invitation to and definition of my professional pastoral counseling and spiritual direction practice is: “All Human Experience is Sacred.” The Bible tells me so. I give my heart to that truth and try as much as I’m able to live it as if I believed it.
Gordon’s vision and what she attempts to do, and I think does, is to make this book an instrument of peace. The book shows that there is no scriptural justification in the Hebrew texts for Jewish/Christian/Muslim animosity or warring. Quite a remarkable achievement I think.
Charlotte Gordon lives in Gloucester, MA. She grew up as an Episcopalian. Her dad was Jewish and converted. As an adult Charlotte became fascinated by the Jewish faith and converted. (See how we all are one!) Gordon learned Hebrew and Aramaic just to do this book. I'm impressed with her commitment, patience and zeal, to say nothing of her intelligence. She is also a lovely speaker, talking with wisdom and piercing clarity about her passion for the Bible and for religious peace.
The chapters and not long or ponderous and they are titled. Notes expand on certain texts for the nosey or diligent among us. The prose has an easy but not unsophisticated flow. There's even a chapter on Jesus coming for dinner in the desert! The book follows the ancient call and vocation of Abraham, no easy faith his. The woman who names God is Hagar. The Abrahamic family dynamic is the psychological lens through which scripture works out the nuances of overt animosity and comes to peace. God is a character in the story, an active player on the stage.
Gordon’s style is light, humorous, her prose not polemical or with "attitude." This book is clothed in compassion and has the potential to convert even the most stubbornly partisan to a more wholistic inclusive but spiritually grounded point of view.
Which reminds me of a quote I heard and know not from whence it comes. Something like, I know the voice of God in my head because it is the voice which is abundantly compassionate to everyone concerned. That is one way to describe this book.
Gordon blends exegesis ( biblical text analysis and interpretation,) narrative (just plain story and literary analysis,) and midrash ( a Jewish method of using creative imagination to plum a biblical story for its hidden meanings, its emotional nuances and its spiritual and theological significance, often buried in the words themselves.) The author weaves these three approaches together seamlessly with beauty and skill.
I love this book and plan to read it again. Of course the Bible is my thing. I love it for its wisdom and its story. The Old Testament is a particular favorite, not just because of my partial Jewish heritage, but because you’ll never find better more complex lusty stories than these. Probably every human experience ever visited on humanity is there and all of it is sacred.
The invitation to and definition of my professional pastoral counseling and spiritual direction practice is: “All Human Experience is Sacred.” The Bible tells me so. I give my heart to that truth and try as much as I’m able to live it as if I believed it.
Gordon’s vision and what she attempts to do, and I think does, is to make this book an instrument of peace. The book shows that there is no scriptural justification in the Hebrew texts for Jewish/Christian/Muslim animosity or warring. Quite a remarkable achievement I think.
Charlotte Gordon lives in Gloucester, MA. She grew up as an Episcopalian. Her dad was Jewish and converted. As an adult Charlotte became fascinated by the Jewish faith and converted. (See how we all are one!) Gordon learned Hebrew and Aramaic just to do this book. I'm impressed with her commitment, patience and zeal, to say nothing of her intelligence. She is also a lovely speaker, talking with wisdom and piercing clarity about her passion for the Bible and for religious peace.
The chapters and not long or ponderous and they are titled. Notes expand on certain texts for the nosey or diligent among us. The prose has an easy but not unsophisticated flow. There's even a chapter on Jesus coming for dinner in the desert! The book follows the ancient call and vocation of Abraham, no easy faith his. The woman who names God is Hagar. The Abrahamic family dynamic is the psychological lens through which scripture works out the nuances of overt animosity and comes to peace. God is a character in the story, an active player on the stage.
Gordon’s style is light, humorous, her prose not polemical or with "attitude." This book is clothed in compassion and has the potential to convert even the most stubbornly partisan to a more wholistic inclusive but spiritually grounded point of view.
Which reminds me of a quote I heard and know not from whence it comes. Something like, I know the voice of God in my head because it is the voice which is abundantly compassionate to everyone concerned. That is one way to describe this book.
Friday, January 1, 2010
New Year. New Resolve. Choose Life
Bare bones life itself can be terrifying—bad enough to die for, good enough to choose.
Martha Mason spent her life of sixty-one years in an iron lung. Stricken with polio in 1948 at age eleven, Mason, who had watched her brother die from the same disease, decided to outrun it. She was confined to an iron lung and given a grim one year’s prognosis.
The disease captured her entire body, turned her into a quadriplegic, confined her to a draconian contraption that looked like a rocket ship going nowhere, outfitted with pumps that inflated and deflated the lungs keeping her alive—after a fashion— and seemingly defeating the child’s decision to outrun this affliction.
I saw one of those full body tubes when I was about eleven. All you are is a head sticking out forced through a tightly sealed hole for your neck, worse than the snuggest of turtlenecks. I saw a young boy, Robin, a bit older than myself, the son of friends of my parents, in an iron lung. I had thought lungs were small but his substitute lung was monstrous. I didn’t know Robin well but ever since I saw him trapped in there with only his small frightened white face showing I have lived with a fear of being squished alive. Breathing though vital isn’t all there is.
Robin died. I was relieved thinking him better off but also glad I didn’t have to see that sight again. But it lingered in my dreams and even now is easy to conjure.
Would I have the fortitude, the cool to choose life under these circumstances? How would God be in this with me? I’d rather be crucified—I think.
But Martha Mason could talk, think, love, eat and read. She had a mother who stayed by her side, a college degree honestly earned, and friends who enjoyed her mummy-like company.
Reading about her recently in the NYTimes Sunday Magazine (112/27/09) evoked terror and admiration for this woman’s spirit so dramatically in love with bare bones life that she chose it.
Besides her inside and outside gifts, she had an unexpected grace left to her she pretended by her dead brother. It was a copy of Marcus Aurelius’s “Meditations.” In it she read this life-choosing, life-saving thought: “Take away the complaint, ‘I have been harmed,’ and the harm is taken away.”
It would be easy to chalk this wise thought off to the stereotype of stoicism—lots of denial and no fun.
Marcus Aurelius was a second century Roman Emperor, a good one in fact, and also a Stoic philosopher who proposed a government of duty and service. He also thought that every human being could participate in the beauty of good and the ugliness of evil though they often were unable to tell the one from the other. He wrote that all partake of this same mind and all possess a share of the divine.
This attitude, not of glib positivity fueled by denial but of wise appreciation for the mixture of life’s circumstances and choices, distinguished this thinker. It isn’t so much about stop your whining, suffer in silence as it is about choosing to embrace the life you have after you have grieved not having the life you want, and to do so with humbleness of heart and valor of spirit.
The Old Testament writer of Deuteronomy put similar words into the mouth of God: “See, I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you may live . . .” (Deut. 30:19 paraphrase)
In 2010, resolve to choose life!
Martha Mason spent her life of sixty-one years in an iron lung. Stricken with polio in 1948 at age eleven, Mason, who had watched her brother die from the same disease, decided to outrun it. She was confined to an iron lung and given a grim one year’s prognosis.
The disease captured her entire body, turned her into a quadriplegic, confined her to a draconian contraption that looked like a rocket ship going nowhere, outfitted with pumps that inflated and deflated the lungs keeping her alive—after a fashion— and seemingly defeating the child’s decision to outrun this affliction.
I saw one of those full body tubes when I was about eleven. All you are is a head sticking out forced through a tightly sealed hole for your neck, worse than the snuggest of turtlenecks. I saw a young boy, Robin, a bit older than myself, the son of friends of my parents, in an iron lung. I had thought lungs were small but his substitute lung was monstrous. I didn’t know Robin well but ever since I saw him trapped in there with only his small frightened white face showing I have lived with a fear of being squished alive. Breathing though vital isn’t all there is.
Robin died. I was relieved thinking him better off but also glad I didn’t have to see that sight again. But it lingered in my dreams and even now is easy to conjure.
Would I have the fortitude, the cool to choose life under these circumstances? How would God be in this with me? I’d rather be crucified—I think.
But Martha Mason could talk, think, love, eat and read. She had a mother who stayed by her side, a college degree honestly earned, and friends who enjoyed her mummy-like company.
Reading about her recently in the NYTimes Sunday Magazine (112/27/09) evoked terror and admiration for this woman’s spirit so dramatically in love with bare bones life that she chose it.
Besides her inside and outside gifts, she had an unexpected grace left to her she pretended by her dead brother. It was a copy of Marcus Aurelius’s “Meditations.” In it she read this life-choosing, life-saving thought: “Take away the complaint, ‘I have been harmed,’ and the harm is taken away.”
It would be easy to chalk this wise thought off to the stereotype of stoicism—lots of denial and no fun.
Marcus Aurelius was a second century Roman Emperor, a good one in fact, and also a Stoic philosopher who proposed a government of duty and service. He also thought that every human being could participate in the beauty of good and the ugliness of evil though they often were unable to tell the one from the other. He wrote that all partake of this same mind and all possess a share of the divine.
This attitude, not of glib positivity fueled by denial but of wise appreciation for the mixture of life’s circumstances and choices, distinguished this thinker. It isn’t so much about stop your whining, suffer in silence as it is about choosing to embrace the life you have after you have grieved not having the life you want, and to do so with humbleness of heart and valor of spirit.
The Old Testament writer of Deuteronomy put similar words into the mouth of God: “See, I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you may live . . .” (Deut. 30:19 paraphrase)
In 2010, resolve to choose life!
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Are We All In?
Are we all in? A question either thought or asked when one is concerned if the family is safely gathered—in a home, a bunker, a shelter, a stable or a mountain cave, even a palace, a corner on a heated grate in the city, or the vehicle that is home when there’s nothing else.
It’s a good question.
Are we all in?
I am thinking in a spiritual way, thinking of all the diversity of religious practice and story, diversity we need in order to grow, diversity that may provoke conflict and tension, also necessary for growth.
Paradox: the more healthy diversity we have the more resistant to its benefits we get. It’s like those peas your mother said you had to eat to grow—or at least to get dessert.
Hanukkah and Christmas come at the same time of year. Both celebrate liberation with light ( so does Solstice.) We tell of a new start free of war and desecration of precious traditions, places or people. For Jews Hanukkah marks the re-dedication in 165 BCE of the Jerusalem Temple by the Maccabees. The Temple had been destroyed by the Syrians. The Maccabees, the family of Judas Maccabaeus led a religious revolt, fought a kind of guerilla battle from caves and hideouts in rugged lands and ousted the enemy to secure the safety and survival of the Jewish people.
Hanukkah lasts eight days and today is marked by lighting successive candles or lamps, gifts, parties and special foods cooked in oil, sometimes gifts and games. Hanukkah in Hebrew means consecration—dedicated to a divine purpose, holy.
Christmas celebrates the birth of the Christ-child Jesus. The story-picture is romantic and beautiful: the new young homeless mama and papa gathered in a stable with the newborn babe in a manger mow, surrounded by cattle, sheep, probably a few barn rats and a cat or two—and plenty of stinking manure. But no matter! Angels adorn the scene and stars glitter against the navy blue sky, the brightest shedding light into the humble scene. The sight enchants most Christians, evokes warmth and peace and promise. Liberation, hope. This child can surely heal rifts, melt hard hearts and help the most down and out or dysfunctional among us to make a new start.
Christmas is celebrated today with decorated trees, lights, parties, special foods, and gifts—a time to gather in. Christmas can be lonely for those who don’t have anyone to gather them in. Christmas means Christ Mass, devotional worship dedicated to a divine purpose, holy.
Both festivals gather in all our hopes and fears and tell us to start again, to bring light into inner and outer darkness, to renew even the worst of circumstance with new life and consecrate it all, for it is all divine.
Our little differences and sweet spiritual nuances begin and end in the same place—all consecrated. All holy-days are zoom lenses for divine grandeur.
But Godde is also panoramic, does all of it at once as the poet proclaims. We’re all in!
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1884-1889)
It’s a good question.
Are we all in?
I am thinking in a spiritual way, thinking of all the diversity of religious practice and story, diversity we need in order to grow, diversity that may provoke conflict and tension, also necessary for growth.
Paradox: the more healthy diversity we have the more resistant to its benefits we get. It’s like those peas your mother said you had to eat to grow—or at least to get dessert.
Hanukkah and Christmas come at the same time of year. Both celebrate liberation with light ( so does Solstice.) We tell of a new start free of war and desecration of precious traditions, places or people. For Jews Hanukkah marks the re-dedication in 165 BCE of the Jerusalem Temple by the Maccabees. The Temple had been destroyed by the Syrians. The Maccabees, the family of Judas Maccabaeus led a religious revolt, fought a kind of guerilla battle from caves and hideouts in rugged lands and ousted the enemy to secure the safety and survival of the Jewish people.
Hanukkah lasts eight days and today is marked by lighting successive candles or lamps, gifts, parties and special foods cooked in oil, sometimes gifts and games. Hanukkah in Hebrew means consecration—dedicated to a divine purpose, holy.
Christmas celebrates the birth of the Christ-child Jesus. The story-picture is romantic and beautiful: the new young homeless mama and papa gathered in a stable with the newborn babe in a manger mow, surrounded by cattle, sheep, probably a few barn rats and a cat or two—and plenty of stinking manure. But no matter! Angels adorn the scene and stars glitter against the navy blue sky, the brightest shedding light into the humble scene. The sight enchants most Christians, evokes warmth and peace and promise. Liberation, hope. This child can surely heal rifts, melt hard hearts and help the most down and out or dysfunctional among us to make a new start.
Christmas is celebrated today with decorated trees, lights, parties, special foods, and gifts—a time to gather in. Christmas can be lonely for those who don’t have anyone to gather them in. Christmas means Christ Mass, devotional worship dedicated to a divine purpose, holy.
Both festivals gather in all our hopes and fears and tell us to start again, to bring light into inner and outer darkness, to renew even the worst of circumstance with new life and consecrate it all, for it is all divine.
Our little differences and sweet spiritual nuances begin and end in the same place—all consecrated. All holy-days are zoom lenses for divine grandeur.
But Godde is also panoramic, does all of it at once as the poet proclaims. We’re all in!
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1884-1889)
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Mary and Me
I chose for my ordination day the Feast of the Annunciation, March 25, officially Mary’s day, but this year, 1988, my day too. I had chosen my day hoping it would fit the bishop’s calendar which takes precedence over all other calendars on earth, or so it seems. I was lucky.
Mary was a woman like me, a mother of children like me. One of her children was Jesus who, according to biblical accounts of his growing up, was more difficult to raise than any and all of my four, the same four who through no fault other than their tender existence, had been the chief reason for my rejections in the ordination process. To sexism, misogyny, gynephobia and other labels, add mother-ism, the irrational fear that your own or someone else’s mother, if given enough liberty, might just take over the world.
The Church exalted Mary, raised her Motherhood to near-divine status, surrounded her with stars and crowns and haloes and called her blessed. Blessed by divine touch she was, however in time the patriarchy of religious tradition and biblical interpretation neutered her and turned her into a virgin, for which there is no clear prophetic substantiation and whose politics of control wasn’t even subtle. They stole her sexuality, her femininity, her courage and stamina, and her alliance with God’s politics. It’s no accident that the biblical mandate for justice, the Magnificat we hear read and sung at Christmas time, is placed on the lips of the woman Mary whom God chose to be a prophet— as well as quite a mother. However, the more heavenly Mary became, the more her influence spread and the more difficult it was for earthly girls, women and certainly mothers to find a place for their humanity in church and culture.
Thought not immune from this disorder, I had grown up Protestant, untaught, so when I went to a Mass with my college roommate and spotted a woman up front—a statue and bad art, yes, but unmistakably female, I had strained to get a better look. Virginity didn’t matter as much to me as it had in high school and motherhood was a distant goal, so I’d fallen in love with Mary and with the liberating idea her prominent presence represented. I could be up front too.
I quickly identified with Mary because God had asked her to do a hard thing—be an unwed pregnant young girl risking shame and even death for the sake of God’s big new project. It happens all the time in the bible, written as if God said and presto it happened. But I knew better. I knew how to read between the lines. I knew these ancient men and women were real, their stories my story, their experience archetypal, their bodies as vulnerable as mine. I knew because I knew how God could be; I knew because I never forgot my own childhood spiritual experience.
Angel Gabriel or no Angel Gabriel, I had trusted my own annunciation and call to priesthood, which fortunately did not make me pregnant.
Mary was a woman like me, a mother of children like me. One of her children was Jesus who, according to biblical accounts of his growing up, was more difficult to raise than any and all of my four, the same four who through no fault other than their tender existence, had been the chief reason for my rejections in the ordination process. To sexism, misogyny, gynephobia and other labels, add mother-ism, the irrational fear that your own or someone else’s mother, if given enough liberty, might just take over the world.
The Church exalted Mary, raised her Motherhood to near-divine status, surrounded her with stars and crowns and haloes and called her blessed. Blessed by divine touch she was, however in time the patriarchy of religious tradition and biblical interpretation neutered her and turned her into a virgin, for which there is no clear prophetic substantiation and whose politics of control wasn’t even subtle. They stole her sexuality, her femininity, her courage and stamina, and her alliance with God’s politics. It’s no accident that the biblical mandate for justice, the Magnificat we hear read and sung at Christmas time, is placed on the lips of the woman Mary whom God chose to be a prophet— as well as quite a mother. However, the more heavenly Mary became, the more her influence spread and the more difficult it was for earthly girls, women and certainly mothers to find a place for their humanity in church and culture.
Thought not immune from this disorder, I had grown up Protestant, untaught, so when I went to a Mass with my college roommate and spotted a woman up front—a statue and bad art, yes, but unmistakably female, I had strained to get a better look. Virginity didn’t matter as much to me as it had in high school and motherhood was a distant goal, so I’d fallen in love with Mary and with the liberating idea her prominent presence represented. I could be up front too.
I quickly identified with Mary because God had asked her to do a hard thing—be an unwed pregnant young girl risking shame and even death for the sake of God’s big new project. It happens all the time in the bible, written as if God said and presto it happened. But I knew better. I knew how to read between the lines. I knew these ancient men and women were real, their stories my story, their experience archetypal, their bodies as vulnerable as mine. I knew because I knew how God could be; I knew because I never forgot my own childhood spiritual experience.
Angel Gabriel or no Angel Gabriel, I had trusted my own annunciation and call to priesthood, which fortunately did not make me pregnant.
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