Little Retreat - 4: Identity

This morning, as I was shaking hands outside the sanctuary, someone addressed me as "Reverend" for the first time.

As in, "Good morning, Reverend."

Something to think about.




(Image: Iona Abbey, 2006)

Oh, Why Not a Friday Five on Sunday?

Here's what Sally over at RevGals had for us:

1. Getting ready for summer, do you use the gradual tanning moisturisers ( yes gentlemen you too can answer this!!!), or are you happy to show your winter skin to the world?

I did not know there was such a thing as a gradual tanning moisturizer. Always contemporary and trendy, that's me. And actually, given my risk for skin cancer, I cover up as much as possible.

2.Beach, mountains or chilling by the pool, what/ where is your favourite getaway?

Why do these people always ask us to make impossible choices? I choose beach and mountains and pool. And as you can see above, I am perfectly willing to share my beach with cows, provided that the beach is on Iona.

3.Are you a summer lover or does the long break become wearing?

I've always loved long, lazy summer days. When the kids were little, a group of us used to take them all to a nearby lake for long days that ended when the park finally closed at 9:00 pm. Some of my favorite memories include those evenings as the shadows lengthened and we convinced little ones to come out of the water and got them changed from swimsuits to jammies for the hour drive home.

This summer, with CPE starting at the beginning of June and running till mid-August, and the Lovely Daughter transitioning between her summer job in North Carolina and her senior year of college in Oregon at that point, and a busy week-end retreat for my spiritual direction program followed by a niece's Labor Day wedding, the best I can do for a break is my four or five day retreat in Michigan at the very end, right before I go back to school

4.Active holidays; hiking swimming, sailing, or lazy days?

ANOTHER one? I choose all four, plus all the other travelling things I like to do.

5.Now to the important subject of food, if you are abroad do you try the local cuisine, or do you prefer to play it safe?

I'm not sure what "play it safe" entails here. We go to cafes and we eat. Although I have to admit that, when the kids were middle school age, we found a fabulous pizza and pasta place in Paris and ate there four or five nights in a row. The Lovely Daughter was having a difficult time with the local cuisine concept. I believe that this past semester in Praha she's had to learn to adapt.

No bonus this week unless you can think one up!!!

OK: If you could fly to any city in your own country for a long week-end this summer, where would you go?

ANOTHER choice? Since I made it up, I guess I have to choose. I haven't been to the Southwest in way too long, so I chose Albuquerque.

Iona Music

Columba's Beach, Iona (July 2006)

Yesterday I went to the memorial service for a young man in our congregation who died at the age of 22 last week. I did not know him, barely know who his parents and sister are ~ but three of his cousins were long-ago Montessori preschool classmates and friends of my own children, and I wanted to let those girls and their parents know how much they had been in my thoughts all week. We ended up in the balcony, and I looked down on the pew in which they were sitting and was filled with memories of very small children racing around the playground and building the pink tower and sharing picnic lunches in my backyard ~ how can it be that more than 15 years have passed, and have led to this terrible sorrow, the one that all parents fear more than any other?

We sing a lot of John Bell/Iona music at our church, and I want to share a piece from yesterday's service. I can't find it online, but it was obviously a perfect selection to honor the memory of a young man who was just emerging into adulthood:

Here Am I

(John Bell)

In the warmth of the womb I met you,

And I called you to life through the love of man and wife;

In the warmth of the womb I met you, saying, "Here am I."

As a baby in arms I met you,

Wrapped in linen and care, watched and weclomed everywhere;

As a baby in arms I met you, saying, "Here am I."

In the tensions of youth I met you,

Whether shy or uncouth, always searching for the truth;

In the tensions of youth I met you, saying, "Here am I."

In the quiet of your home I met you,

When the door opened wide, strangers came and out went pride;

In the quiet of your home I met you, saying, "Here am I."

And wherever you go I will meet you,

Till you draw your last breath in the birthplace known as death;

Yes, wherever you go I will meet you, saying, "Here am I."

A Protestant Girl and Her Saints

Today's Friday Five asks:

There is so much going on this weekend that I thought I'd provide an options Friday 5!!!!
.
First Superbowl ( someone explain to this Brit the significance)- love it or hate it?
5 reasons please!!!!!
.
Second Candlemas/ Imbloc/ Groundhog day/ St Brigid's day- all of these fall on either the 1st or 2nd February.
.
1. Do you celebrate one or more of these?
2. How?
3. Is this a bit of fun or deeply significant?
4. Are festivals/ Saints days important to you?
5.Name your favourite Saints day/ celebration.

*****************************

I know nada about the Super Bowl. Is the Super Bowl this week-end?

But Brigid: oh, I like Brigid. It just so happens that I have a photo of her window in the Abbey on Iona, along with some photos of oystercatchers, the birds associated with her, also from Iona. I love to imagine Brigid, wise and strong-willed church leader, standing on the beaches of Iona looking for oystercatchers 1500 years before I did.

My favorite saint is, of course, Ignatius of Loyola, that 16th century genius of The Spiritual Exercises, which transformed my life. His feast day comes around a couple of days after my birthday, so I can actually remember it. I've been reading, off and on, James Martin's My Life With The Saints. I can't recall his exact words, but he says, as a Jesuit, that Ignatius seems somewhat distant, austere, and demanding to him. Not my experience ~ I think of him as an affectionate older brother, writing to me from Rome and saying, "This will help you out."


And, by the way, My Life With The Saints is an engaging read: a blend of autobiograohical Wharton-corporate-executive-becomes-a-Jesuit and narrative introductions to a smattering of saints, some officially canonized and some not, some whom anyone would recognize and some far more obscure. You don't have to be a Catholic to find plenty of interest and inspiration in their lives.

Iona Community: Cloth for the Cradle

When the world was dark

and the city was quiet,

you came.

You crept in beside us.

And no one knew.

Only the few who dared to believe

that God might do something different.

Will you do the same this Christmas, Lord?

Will you come into the darkness of tonight's world;

not the friendly darkness

as when sleep rescues us from tiredness,

but the fearful darkness,in which people have stopped believing

that war will end

or that food will come

or that a government will change

or that the Church cares?

Will you come into that darkness

and do something different

to save your people from death and despair?

Will you come into the quietness of this town,

not the friendly quietness

as when lovers hold hands,

but the fearful silence when the phone has not rung

the letter has not come,

the friendly voice no longer speaks,

the doctor's face says it all?

Will you come into that darkness,

and do something different,

not to distract, but to embrace your people?

And will you come into the dark corners

and the quiet places of our lives?

We ask this not because we are guilt-ridden

or want to be,

but because the fullness our lives long for

depends upon us being as open and vulnerable to you

as you were to us,when you came,

wearing no more than diapers,

and trusting human hands

to hold their maker.

Will you come into our lives,

if we open them to you

and do something different?

When the world was dark

and the city was quiet

you came.

You crept in beside us.

Do the same this Christmas, Lord.

Do the same this Christmas.

Amen.

*******************

Read at our Lessons and Carols Sunday night.

Image from the Vatican Collection.

Intersections 1

I have been trying to decide what to do about blogging for the upcoming year. I thought about creating a new blog dedicated to my seminary/spiritual direction training life but, as some of my readers know, I have tried to maintain separate blogs before and failed rather dramatically. Way too ADD. I thought about going somewhat public, but for a myriad of reasons that seems to be a Very Bad Idea. I thought about what I might want to blog about with respect to my new ventures, and realized that I feel no compulsion to address via blogging the current divisions, political and theological, in my church, at least not beyond those occasional references that emerge naturally through my own experiences.

I thought about not blogging at all. Time is, after all, about to become a bigger issue for me than it has been of late. I could go cold turkey.

As I was considering my options, a longtime occasional reader from the AOL days left me a lovely comment, to the effect that reading the blog can be like a retreat at times. Hmmm, I thought. Maybe that's the focus. I suppose I will continue to ramble through my daily life in my entries, reduced in number through they might be, which means that all of the subjects listed in my sidebar will continue to show up from time to time. But the religious stuff? Maybe more reflection and less minutiae? Or not? The spiritual does have a way of making its appearance through the trivial.

I guess we will have to see. What I have concluded for the time being is to try to set the more focused "new life" entries aside, however haphazardly they appear, into a series entitled Intersections, a word which reflects the locus of my life right now. There is a place about half a mile from our home where five streets come together in one massive intersection, necessitating five different crosswalks and a confusing computerized system of signals for cars and pedestrians. I am feeling a bit as if I am standing in the middle of the entire conglomeration of pavement, lights, cars, and people. Peacefully. And hopefully. (The gelateria is, after all, right there.)

So ~ Intersections it is.

The photo marking the series is from Iona.

Summertime Miscellany

Last night I went with the Lovely Daughter and two of her friends to see the Harry Potter movie. I found it a bit tedious at first, but we were all mesmerized by the end. And then a bizarre experience on the way home unfolded as a young boy dashed frantically into the street right in front of the car ahead of us, followed by a furiously gesturing man who looked to be in his twenties, who was himself followed by a prancing little dog. Two other boys stopped themselves on the curb, and we all gasped in relief as we saw that neither boy nor man nor dog had not been run over. We called the police, and drove back after dropping off one of the girls to find four squad cars lined up at the corner.

The dog was the most bizarre element of the rather unnerving scene.

Between yesterday and today I've had maybe five seminary related conversations, with administrators and other students, on topics ranging from the practicalities of moving in to some of the more esoteric challenges ahead. Just as it took several weeks for the reality of leaving my teaching job and Jewish community to sink in, now the realization that I am beginning new work in a new community is washing over me with increasing momentum.

I called the Ontario Jesuit center today and made my final deposit on my eight-day retreat, which is only three weeks away. I've never done this before and, while I'm really looking forward to it, I'm also having trouble imagining a large community of people spending a week in almost complete silence together. I suppose that by the time it's over, I will be struggling to imagine people spending most of their time in conversation with one another!

I find that I am increasingly perturbed by the Pope's remarks earlier in the week about the Protestant churches. They have been well analyzed elsewhere; all I really have to note is my personal distress. I know that he hasn't said anything new, and I knew that most of my own Catholic friends are probably more unhappy about the situation than I am. Of course, we have all had our own contribution to make. When I have taught the Reformation to my Jewish high school world history students for the past several years, I have presented it as follows: a day on the social, economic, and religious climate in which frustration with the church fermented; a day on Luther, Calvin, and Henry VIII; a day on Luther's anti-Semitism, distasteful and horrific as the topic is, but to me seemingly mandatory in the interest of full disclosure and honesty toward Jewish students; and the usual final day wrap-up of ask-whatever-you-want-about-Christianity.

It's been a long 500 years.

The photographs are of the ruins of the Iona Nunnery. I took them exactly one year ago this week, and I think most of them enlarge pretty well with a click or two. Before I went to Iona, a good friend of mine, a nun in her seventies who has spent most of her life in that rural convent I described a few entries earlier, told me how powerfully the Nunnery had resonated with her on her two visits there. "I imagined those women," she said, "working there, out on that isolated island, eight hundred years ago, and thought: they were trying to do exactly what I try to do!" The Nunnery is in ruins thanks to the Presbyterian Reformers of the sixteenth century. Enough of it remains that it is easy to imagine those women at work, at prayer, at dinner, stopping to stare out the window toward the sea -- and painful to imagine the disruption of their lives by those who thought they had a clearer vision of the will of God.

And so today my own life feels unsettled ~ by the man chasing the little boy into the dark and busy street, by the prancing dog who followed them, by the unknown future, by the persistent voices claiming power and supremacy of vision.

I do need that retreat.

Making Note

In his wonderful little book The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality, Ronald Rolheiser argues that the nonegotiable pillars of the Christian spiritual life are as follows:

private prayer and private morality

involvement within a concrete community

committment to social justice

mellowness of heart and spirit.

We all have our areas of strength and our areas of challenge; none of us is a perfectly balanced composite of all four elements. And at different times of our lives, one or another strength may rise to the forefront. But my personal observation, for what it's worth, is that the individuals I would be most likely to describe as holy, or deeply spiritual, or having encountered God in profound ways, all exude a consistent mellowness of heart and spirit ~ a sense of interior peace and open-hearted acceptance of the mystery that is God's Kingdom.

I'm just saying.

Oh, and the image is from Iona ~ photoshopped for fun.

A Gift for the Preachers: Iona Sheep Sunday

Happy New Year!

Irish Sea from Iona ~ July 2006

May the light of your soul guide you.
May the light of your soul bless the work that you do
with the secret love and warmth of your heart.
May you see in what you do the beauty of your own soul.
May the sacredness of your work bring healing, light and renewal
to those who work with you and to those who see and receive your work.
May your work never weary you.
May it release within you wellsprings of refreshment, inspiration and excitement.
May you be present in what you do.
May you never become lost in bland absences.
May the day never burden.
May dawn find you awake and alert,
approaching your new day with dreams, possibilities and promises.
May evening find you gracious and fulfilled.
May you go into the night blessed, sheltered and protected.
May your soul calm, console and renew you.

John O'Donoghue
Anam Cara -- Spiritual Blessing from a Celtic World

A Year of Churches

I've been thinking about that "Why church?" question that I want to address in the new year, and I've taken a look back at where I've been this year. It's been rather an amazing twelve months. (Most of these images enlarge reasonably well with a click.)

December 24, 2005: The United Methodist Church to which we belonged for many years and where we still spend Christmas Eve. When the congregation raises its 500 candles at the close of the service, the sight from the balcony is awesome.

The Chapel of the Martyrs, Paris, July 7, 2006: I spent an hour in this place where St. Ignatius and his first companions made their first vows together, thereby creating the Society of Jesus. I was nearing the end of my year long Ignatian Retreat-in-Everyday-Life experience, and I count that as the most moving hour of my personal 2006.

St. Chappelle, Paris, July 7, 2006: We visited in the late afternoon and returned for a Vivaldi concert that night. Listening to The Four Seasons in St. Chapelle was the perfect ending to a moving day.


Chartres Cathedral, France, July 2006: I posted many of my Chartres images last summer. Each time I look at them, a different one captures my imagination. I've already noted that one of the things I love about a great cathedral is the way in which it incorporates everything. Look at all the different forms stone takes in this one corner on the south exterior!

Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris, July 2006: There are few experiences comparable to spending a day in the shadow of this extraordinary building. Of course, Notre Dame de Paris is awfully symmetrical, in contrast to the glorious conglomeration that constitutes Notre Dame de Chartres.

Iona Abbey, Scotland, July 2006: A completely different encounter with the sacred. From the Druids to the Celts to the Benedictines and Dominicans to the Calvinist Reformers to the Iona Community ~ we have all been there and it seems that we all still are.


Glasgow Cathedral, July 2006: Another day in the company of Catholics and Protestants, with an afternoon spent in a solitary walk around and through a cemetery full of Celtic crosses and Reformation proclamations. A rather exhausting place to be, actually, for someone whose idea about differences in belief is that we are called to handle them graciously and generously.

Ursuline Convent Chapel, southern Ohio, September 2006. I was there for a reunion with my boarding school classmates of 7th~9th grade. Who could have imagined the journey that I was beginning there, that sullen Protestant girl sitting in the pew and glaring at the priest through the endless Latin of pre-Vatican II masses?

******

Oddly, the one church of which I have no photographs at all is the one to which I belong and where I spend so much time! I'll have to rectify that situation this year, now that I have smashed the travel bank to smithereens.

It's Coming! (Dedicated to Kathryn)

Tonight.

The longest night.

My last name gives me reason to believe that my love for Celtic voices is lodged in my DNA. And last night I discovered a delightful example of the bridge between contemporary and long-ago Celtic expression here, thanks to a blogger who is able to claim a much closer and more distinct connection than the one I imagine.

Turn up your sound, take a few moments, and enjoy!

The days will begin to lengthen and the dark will recede ~

(Images: Iona, July 2006)

Advent 2

OK, now I'm behind. Not on my interior Advent, but on writing about it. I got so engrossed in the plaster-and-paint issues yesterday ~ which only goes to make the point. Advent occurs in the midst of all the muck.

Some brief notes from yesterday, illustrated via the Iona nunnery, gone since the Reformation:

I was glad when they said to me,
"Let us go to the house of the LORD!"

~ Psalm 122:1

(from yesterday's Lectionary)

Much that was is lost. For none now live who remember it.

~ Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Rings

(from yesterday's Celtic and Nature Advent Calendar)

A lot of my friends are mystified by the church thing in my life. Maybe I will write about that at some length after Advent. For now (since I am a day behind!) I will just say that it's a mystery to me, too. I do not have my friend Lynda's string of pins for thirteen years of perfect Sunday school attendance. I do not look like Mrs. Osteen in a pink suit and pearls. I schlep around in my jeans and clogs, nails always breaking off ~ and I have a life hugely full of the light of faith.

The church, whether you are thinking in terms of buildings or community, concrete or ineffablility, long ago past or paint-splattered present, is a repository for that light.

Barbara Brown Taylor has a wonderful sermon in which she speaks about a visit she made to the ruins of a church in present day Turkey (I think), and about her understanding of what can happen to a building and its community. A community and its building.

I can't entirely explain it. But tending that light is a good thing. And remarkably, even when the buildings turn to ruins and the community vanishes, the light remains.

Iona Revisited

This coming Sunday at church we are celebrating our Iona pilgrimmage with an Iona-centered service and Iona music in the morning and a program in the evening complete with Iona food and a ceilidh. I, sad to say, won't be there because, not sad to say, we're leaving tomorrow for Oregon to visit the Lovely Daughter, but I did write a contribution
for the evening Powerpoint:

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil...

Gerard Manley Hopkins

I reached Iona as I was concluding a year-long journey through the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises and just following a week of intensely interior spirituality in France. It was a challenge for me to plunge into a place of equally intense community. I often retreated to one of the many places of refuge scattered across the island ~ wandering across the rocky beach with the oystercatchers in the early morning hours, sitting among the stony ruins of the nunnery to journal on sunny afternoons, trudging down the dirt roads late at night as the sheep shuffled around and the corncrakes issued their rusty calls. Iona is a good place to be in community,
but it is also a good place to walk in solitude with God.

World Communion Sunday

Bread from Around the World
Pitcher from Iona

Ten Things This Week

1. Teaching Chinese philosophy to ninth graders. Talk of Daoism led to talk of ecology which led to talk of other "ologies" which led to one young lady asking, "What is gynecology, anyway?" I provided a definition and then asked, "Is there anything else we need to clear up today?"

2. I saw five deer, all together, when I was out walking the other evening. One of them was very small, obviously pretty new.

3. I really don't like living in a house where no cat lies curled up anywhere at all. Today I thought I saw her lying on the pile of papers on the dining room table. But, of course, she wasn't.

4. I'm spending Yom Kippur visiting Steel City Seminary.

5. Some people said some really wonderful things to me this past week. And one person said something really, really terrible. Win some, lose some, I guess.

6. I am struggling to upload pictures today ~ but here's one from Iona that suddenly popped right up. It's a view from what's left of the 13th century nunnery.

7. I've been listening to Vivaldi all week. Everyone should hear Les Violons de France play the Four Seasons in Ste. Chapelle on a summer evening but, barring that, a car CD player will do. (Yes ~ three links there ~ the second one is the music.)

8. Christina Yang has always been my favorite Grey's Anatomy character, but this week Miranda Bailey grabbed that slot.

9. The eighth graders brought a cake to class to celebrate the birthday of one of their number. It was a very large cake.

10. I saw the first juncoes of the fall yesterday. Regular readers know that I do NOT consider that to be a good sign. I know that Theresa loves winter, but I most emphatically do not.

Iona VI - Older Stuff

OK, so no one liked the newer botany and bird sculptures.

I did.

But the Iona Abbey Cloister has lots of things in the realm of hundreds of years old, too. Chief among them are the gravestone slabs, unfortunately removed from their original locales but easy to see as they are displayed on the cloister walls.

Anyone who has read this blog for long knows that I am enamoured of the Celtic stonework in the nearby cemetery where I walk several times a week. It's pretty astounding to see Celtic carvings hundreds of years old on their original island home. These reflect the intricacy of traditional Celtic design and the combination of war (the sword, second from bottom image), sea (the ship, bottom image), and nature inherent in the island life of the last millenium.

They say that Macbeth is buried on Iona, and Duncan, too -- along with a series of Scandanavian kings who sought a holy resting place. No one knows where they lie. No one knows what stories these stones tell.

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Macbeth (V, v, 19)

Iona V: Contemporary Cloister Art

The Iona Abbey Cloister may have risen from the ruins of the Reformation, but the capital carvings are decidedly contemporary. I can't identify the botanical ones myself, but I was entranced by the birds ~ especially, of course, the gannets.

Transportation (Round Robin Photo Challenge), or. . . Iona V

OK, so I'm cheating, just a little. The subject of the current Round Robin Photo Challenge is Transportation, and a ferry is, indeed, one of my favorite forms of transportation ~ because the destinations that require ferry transport are my favorite destinations. Hence the first photo, of the ferry that runs between the Hebrides islands of Iona and Staffa.

The reamining images are of Staffa as one first sees it (it's actually much longer than it is wide); the volcanic rock formations that many visitors go to see, formations mirrored across the sea on Ireland and, therefore, the basis of a story involving a mythological Giant's Causeway across the Irish Sea; the most important residents of Staffa; and the seals who watched us come and go. Most of the photos enlarge reasonably well with a click.