2014.06.29 All Things New AND Old

Our society and church tend to celebrate all things new because that’s what the biblical God is into— creating, recreating over and over.  New, in spiritual terms, means renewed, not young.

Some days I do wish we could celebrate all things old, that is, aging—like me and my beloved spouse and so many friends. One day we will be memories, but I’m celebrating us now, and giving thanks for our health, faith, and vitality.
 
Here we human oldies are reclaiming the Holy Name, a very ancient name. We are wearing it on our T-shirts, recently purchased at the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, NYC. Godde is still creating new things we notice every single day. We feel wonder and recognition and joy, and say: Oh, my God.  (Note the period—no need for an exclamation.)  It’s a faith statement, not a bit of slang.


Here are other wondrous new things that touch our lives right now:

New Graduate................ Gillian B. Colbath, high school grad off to Lyndon State College in VT. college in the fall.

New hair color to match a bright new mood..................Isabella B.Colbath.

New grandson, Dylan Robert Brakeman, born Thursday June 26, to John and Emily Brakeman.

 New Bishop for the Diocese of Massachusetts, Bishop-Elect, the Rev. Alan Gates from Ohio. He will be consecrated September 13th, 2014.
 
And always a sign of hope in our family: a wee lady bug who appeared the day before Dylan was born. John, Dylan's dad, spotted a lady bug the morning of one of his major surgeries, the one that nearly cost him his life, but didn't. Lady bugs signify the presence of holiness. Who knows why.

2014.06.22 All Is Lost?

The silent films have returned with a blast— not comedies, not slapstick, not in black and white. Yet they have no dialogue, only music to carry the action along. Recently we watched “All Is Lost,” starring Robert Redford. His facial expressions do all the "talking."

“All Is Lost” dramatizes eight days in the life of a damaged sailboat, captained by one older (78) man, lost in the vast Indian Ocean, 1700 miles off Sumatra (Indonesia.)

That’s all. The main character is really the sea, or the contest between the man and the sea.  Water is both alluring and full of unpredictable danger as most of us know. It’s like God. We can’t stay away from it, and we can’t manage it, though we try.

The almost 2-hour film opens with the classic note in a bottle. It’s a note of apology from the sailor. He has set out on some quest or other and he anticipates his death. The note is obviously to loved ones. “I’m sorry,” he reiterates as if it were punctuation.

Every single second of this enormously ambitious film is full of suspense. I didn’t even get up to get more cookies, and I disciplined my bladder. You can’t tear your eyes away from this stupendous and wordless struggle between Humanity and Nature. 

The overarching theme of the film is Hope. The man never gives up. (I would have thrown in the towel by day #2, but then I wouldn’t have been out there in the first place. I take risks to pursue other dreams.)

How is this film spiritual? I learned from a seasoned and wise Jesuit that a sound spiritual life is spent discerning Godde’s spirit and moving with it. Such discernment required three things, no matter what your circumstance: awareness, sensitivity and action. All three!  Exercising all these together, one gets closer to knowing and loving oneself—and also God. God-knowledge and self-knowledge are correlative.

The sailor asserts these three gifts consistently, repeatedly, and in the most minute, often startling ways.

Examples: 

This story is not about a casual leap into adventure for the sake of a testosterone high or simply to prove oneself. This man is more prepared than the best of Boy Scouts. He has learned uncanny skills, such as training his lungs to hold air far longer that most of us can. His craft has every single bit of equipment imaginable. It is stocked with every provision, and then some. The man is an accomplished sailor, and, though aging, has obviously worked on physical fitness.  He is strong in every way.

As the film moves from crisis to crisis, the man uses all his resources, natural and learned. I knew the F-word could be a prayer. I just never saw it on film. “God” is uttered softly, once. We see his prayers on his face. I think of the Hebrew psalmist’s bold prayer when in dire distress:  “I am my prayer to you, God.” (Psalm 69:13, Greenberg translation)

The man raises awareness to an art form, paying attention to everything. For example, he notices the huge plastic container of water, not potable. It’s useless and a painful reminder that he is dying of thirst. (I thought of one of Jesus’ remembered words as he was dying: “I thirst.”)  Suddenly he sees the discarded water container in a completely new way. He is alert, sensitive to its new meaning. It can help him desalinate sea water, a skill he learned in preparation for this journey. Despite exhaustion and being near death, he leaps into action to create a desalinating apparatus. Go figure! 

In one imaginative moment he stares attentively, apparently aimlessly, at an empty tuna fish can—useless, empty, trash.  Yes, in one way, but the man scrutinizes it, contemplates it really, and it leaps into new focus. He bores a hole in it and rigs it to use as bait to lure swarms of small fish to follow it. Their movements create a current to push his raft along. 

In the end all is lost and the man makes a decision to jump into the inimical sea. The ending twists and turns in naked but not sentimental ambiguity.

All is lost, isn’t it?  

2014.06.15 Trinity? What's That?

Who knows? I try, anyway.

It’s an early Christian stunt, not to divide Divinity up into equal parts like ancient Gaul, but to describe distinct spiritual experiences of the one living God, important enough to name each separately yet to assert that each never exists apart from the whole. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. God is both. Godde as dynamism creates all life, ignites all life, and connects all life—all the time, all three. Trinity is the Christian name for God. Here is a lorica, a Celtic symbol associated with St. Patrick and the hymn we sing to the Trinity.

A lorica was a breastplate, armor that covered the chest. Today we might call this a bulletproof vest. Biblically, it is symbolic of the armor of Christ, an internalized protection against temptations to succumb to maleficence. (Ephesian 6:11) Here it is, according to Augustine of Hippo.

Each in each, and all in each, and each in all, and all in all, and all are one.

Say this very fast and you might feel dizzy.  What might it have been like to come up with  this idea?

The small group who knew Jesus well didn’t come up with doctrines immediately after Jesus died. They had no ritualized funeral, no rich collation. I bet they did what we do: sat around and talked about the one who had died, shared memories, cried and laughed. Time passed. Like us, they didn’t forget. You don’t when you really love someone.

Eventually, I guess someone came up with a strange idea:  What if Jesus the Christ was divinely human? After a silence, they all chimed in at once.
   
    Are you kidding? There’s only one God. 
    Yes, but . . . 
    Crazy heretic!
    Well, he was kinda special, healing and all. A mensh (Yiddish: person of integrity and honor.)
    Who asked you, woman?
    All his oddball teaching, too. Oi vey!
    The authorities killed him for that, so shut up already.
    Holy maybe, but not divine, not God. 
    I’m going home. Come on. Why are you all sitting there like stones? We’re all meshugga. (Hebrew for idiotic, nuts.)
    Or, it’s a miracle.
    Sheesh!
    Wait. Listen. If Jesus was divinely human then so, just by being human, are all of us.

They sat motionless. If Jesus was a divine human, then so are we?

With a staggering degree of imperfect simultaneity, this tiny band breathed: O, my God.
             (This is what you say when you recognize God in something.)
                                               

Still, who, in fact, would sign on to such an idea? Some did. Some ran like hell. It’s the same now.
   

Yet these beginners kept breathing their idea. The news spread, as all good gossip must, spirit-motioned or not. We could say that’s how the Trinity got going and took off.  

OR, we could stay with St. Augustine who later identified this idea as something they’d always intuited: God is simultaneously Lover, Beloved, and Love itself. 

OR, we could ask the beasts. Remember Moley from The Wind in the Willows? Here's a Trinity/God story.






Mole and his best buddy Rat cruised the river in a small boat on an errand of true mercy. Their good friend Otter, despite strenuous efforts, was unable to find his lost baby son, Portly. Despair possessed Otter’s heart. Rat and Mole instructed their friend to sit on the river bank and wait. The two entered treacherous waters pulled along by the sounds of piping. Rat was transported by “this new divine thing that caught up his helpless soul and swung and dandled it, a powerless but happy infant in a strong sustaining grasp.”

Mole, more empirical than Rat, heard nothing and rowed on, Rat all the while exuding rapture. Then Mole heard and was transfixed. Soon “the clear imperious summons that marched hand-in-hand with the intoxicating melody imposed its will on Mole, and mechanically he bent to his oars again.” They moored at a small island patch. “Then suddenly Mole felt a great Awe fall upon him, an awe that turned his muscles to water, bowed his head, and rooted his feet to the ground. It was no panic terror—indeed he felt wonderfully at peace and happy—but it was an awe that smote and held him and, without seeing, he knew it could only mean that some august Presence was very, very near.” Mole is smitten.

In summary, the two followed the music and met a demi-god piping a panegyrical lullaby. Nestled asleep between the hooves was the round pudgy little baby otter. They awakened him and returned him to Otter who had waited “in dumb patience.” (Now ain't that a truth?) Otter gave a joyous bark and ran to embrace his tiny “prodigal” son.

The rescuers struggled to understand what happened, exactly. The Vision had vanished, the music replaced by bird songs. “For this is the last best gift that the kindly demi-god is careful to bestow on those to whom he has revealed himself in their helping: the gift of forgetfulness.”

But what does this mean?”asked the exhausted little mole. Silence. His friend, the weary Rat, was fast asleep.

The grace of Jesus Christ, the love of Godde, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you, each and all, all ways. Amen.

2014.06.08 Pentecost Birthings

Most Christians today remember the role of God Holy Spirit. We wear red, because God as Holy Spirit traditionally comes in on a blaze of fiery red. Red’s a tricky color. Spirit red is pure—no purple, pink, orange or lavender. Red is the best color for the experience of “a world flamed into life.” (Barbara Ehrenreich’s phrase from Living With a Wild God.)

I could go on with a lot of good church-talk and risk boredom or adulterating the redness of red. Instead I will write about my four children. When each was born, the world flamed into life. Quite incongruous with the mess my body was in: blood, sweat, pain—no gore.

In an instant, childbirth turned into Creation. Fireworks. I remember feeling very close to Creator-Godde—not “Father” but Creator.  The great American poet William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) had a day job delivering babies in Paterson, N.J. One of those remarkable spirit-flukes, no?  He was regularly present to transcendence and immanence at once. When a woman carries and births a baby she puts her body in the way of creation.

I didn’t think my children were miracles. I knew how babies were made. And no, I don’t believe God sends kids in answer to prayers, even though I prayed to get pregnant, not to get/be pregnant, and for knock-out drugs—none of which God did.

Not  being as eloquent as Ehrenreich, I’d just say that the internal presence of a new life and the emergence of each tiny black head made me sure that this was exactly how Creation happened, how Holy Spirit ignited and ensouled the cosmos, similar to a great work of art.  No bigger explosion of life could be possible; no greater awe could be felt. Love follows immediately, but is not first.

My adult children would cringe at my excesses. O Mom! Nevertheless, despite the many failings and forgivings we’ve all experienced, they are spiritual mentors. They still flame my world into life.

Bev (b. 1963) one day listened patiently to me make amends for my errant midlife abandonments, overdoing it really. She was worrying about her own mothering. It triggered a spate of mother-guilt in me. She listened, then interrupted: “Mom, stop apologizing!”

Jill (b.1964) once mentioned something about prayer, or maybe God. It was good theology. “Where’d you hear that?” I asked. “From you.”

Rob (b.1967) was in a serious car accident about 10 years ago. He and his younger brother were on the way home from a concert when a truck swerved into their lane. Rob was driving. It wasn’t his fault but they are lucky that neither of them was hurt. When Rob called to tell me, I tired to comfort, saying they were lucky, blah blah.  But he kept repeating, “I could have killed my brother. Mom, I could have killed my brother.”

John (b.1970) recently confessed in the course of a phone conversation that he was nagging at himself, putting himself down, angry with himself and his stubborn habit. At my mothery/pastoral best, I was supportive, understanding, giving him a reason why his self-critique made sense in relation to a circumstance.  “Nah,” he said, “it’s in my nature.”

You might say they put me in my place, reddened my cheek. (Oh, they know better than me.) These are small examples but such things have happened many times as the body-remembered umbilical attachment stretches thin and finally falls gently away, replaced by an even stronger, freer bond.

Maybe that’s what being born again—and again—is like.  Ya think?