Little Retreat - 11: Cemetery

The fall color is almost gone, of course, and these images are several years old. But some exact same things happen year after year, and the yellow around this particular monument happens for about a week three-quarters of the way through October.

Some things change. Soon there will be a new memorial bench in the cemetery. I stopped by on the way home from church today and concrete has been poured. Maybe the bench next week?

Today I assisted at my first baptism, and remembered the baptisms of my children, and then I went and stared at the concrete among the faded leaves on the cemetery ground.

Little Retreat - 3: Prayer

"Ironically, one may have great trouble praying after going through an especially beautiful, consoling experience. Such experiences often imply considerable unconscious threat to self-importance in spite of their overt beauty. One's reaction to this may sometimes be to turn away from prayer for a while, and one may be mystified as to the reason."

~ Gerald May, Care of Mind, Care of Spirit (1982)

(Cemetery Image, 2004)

The Hereafter

I've been thinking a lot about a woman I met early in my CPE program this past summer. Privacy considerations preclude me from providing many details, but I can say that I was called for a withdrawal of care (life support), that the initial phone call gave me the impression that the family had made the decision, and that that impression was far from accurate.

The final decision involved most of my afternoon and much of the evening of the on-call chaplain, and included a consultation with a Catholic colleague who carried around a little book outlining the Catholic position on extraordinary life support measures and the cessation of same.

At one point the anguished woman asked me whether I believed in heaven. "I do," I said.

"What is it like?" she asked, with that intensity that you only encounter in these situations, an intensity that demands absolute honesty.

"I don't know," I said.

I am not consoled by a belief that we will meet our loved ones in heaven, that life there will somehow maximize the good things of life here. (It seems that C.S. Lewis and I are in agreement on this one -- he mentions cigars as a would-be desirable feature.) I am not by any means a Biblical inerrantist, but I tend to believe that when the Bible says we shall be changed, it means that we shall be changed in a way we cannot imagine as long as we are still here.

I was intrigued when I spent an afternoon summer before last walking in the cemetery behind the Glasgow Cathedral and picked up a guidebook, from which I learned that the great cemeteries founded in the second half of the 19th century (like the one in which I walk at home) were designed on the basis of a fairly new-at-that-time development of sentiment surrounding death. The park-like atmosphere was meant to foster opportunities to "visit with" the dead, and certainly many people continue to derive great comfort from the sense that they are doing just that.

And maybe they are.

I don't know.

Can You Tell What It Is?

It's been so long since I've posted that I had a hard time remembering how to upload a photo.

But I have been walking in the cemetery. So: mausoleum stained glass window, two angels ~ the one in the back is shielding her eyes with her hand. Kind of works for Pentecost.

Two days and two weeks left in my school year, but who's counting? It's been a very good year, but it could have been a month shorter. I'm just about out of steam, and I still have a presentation, four papers, and two tests. I might have a lot to say about the whole experience if I ever get my head above water.

In the meantime: anything you want to know about John 21? Anything at all? No? So just enjoy the window!

More From The Lovely Daughter

St. Kevin's Cross at Glendalough

Y'all know I love to walk in the cemetery, and one of the reasons is that, no matter how well I think I know it, I can almost always find a window tucked away in a mausoleum that I haven't noticed before.

I remain astonished by the labor and creativity put into artistry that almost no one sees. I mean, if I don't know about a given window, what are the chances that anyone else does?

They aren't easy to photograph -- sometimes I find them but at the wrong time of day. The sun, obviously, needs to be behind the window and at the right place and angle on the horizon, so often my new discoveries require return trips. And some people have put vases of flowers on the ledges in front of the windows -- most of which are on the back walls of mausoleums -- and left them there for, oh, I don't know, maybe the last 50 years? The dried-up stalks are something of a distraction.

The only distraction I found here lies in the Nordic characterization of Jesus. I kind of expect him to be calling a reindeer rather than a sheep. But it's still a gorgeous window.

Happy Easter

Easter Vigil with the Catholics.

Sunrise Service with the Methodists.

A rousing morning service with the Presbies.

He is risen, indeed!

Hope

It's Maundy Thursday.
It's the first day of spring.
I saw a fox streak through the sparkling cemetery snow this morning.

Cemetery Yellow

Mother's Day Prayer

I began a long and rambling entry early this morning about my inadequacies as a mother. And then I ran into a friend at church and we laughed and commiserated over our mutual and apparently profound deficiencies in that particular arena of our lives. And then I went into a class where I was verbally reminded of God as Mother. And then I went for my first walk as my restored and mostly healthy self and was visually reminded of God as Mother. And then words like "inadequate" and "deficient" no longer seemed appropriate at all.

It's called a Red Buckeye Tree.

More Glass

A few days ago, I posted about the statues on one of the cemetery mausoleums, and a nice little discussion ensued, resolving little but offering some interesting information.

Then I began obsessing over stained glass, and decided to go back and peer inside the mausoleum with the Greeks to see whether it had a window on the far wall, too. Sure, enough -- and it seems that someone decided that the archangel Gabriel trumpeting Judgment Day was needed to balance the Golden Age of Athens.

Another hidden gem. Not too many people go behind this particular mausoleum, although they are always delighted when they do, as curving armchairs have been built into the concrete and overlook the deep ravine in the middle of the cemetery. It's a beautiful and serene place for an autumn meditation time. However, you can't see the window back there -- it's up high and covered by a heavy and dark grating. You have to go back to the front door to get a look at the colors and glass. It looks like a Tiffany piece to me; I will have to investigate further.

PS: To see more cemetery Tiffany designs, search "Tiffany" above where it says "Search blog."

My Favorite

I'm guessing from the dearth of comments that people think that taking photos of cemetery stained glass is sort of, well, weird.

I am always struck by the beauty I find hidden away there. Those two mausoleum windows? The mausoleums are way at the bottom of the hill in a fairly new and seldom visited part of the cemetery, well off the beaten path from the usual circle where you encounter runners and other visitors. I almost never see anyone down there. And yet there they are, two little nondescript buildings with windows in the back, covered by shrubbey. You have to walk right up to the doors and peer past the darkened tombs to see the artistry tucked inside the far walls.

I've written about the stone above before but, in honor of Lent, I'll do it again. For a long time I thought the "Pax" meant "Peace" and that the marker had been placed on a little hillside as a personal gift to me for those days when the sun shines through it at a perfect angle. Then one day I saw some family members there and went over to talk with them. "Pax," it turns out, refers to Mrs. Pax, who was a stained glass artist and aficionado of bonsai trees. She made this piece herself during her final months, and her family incorporated it into her gravestone. Her husband and daughter were visibly pleased to learn that someone appreciates it so much that she makes it a point to take frequent walks along the road below the hillside.

Such care that people put into the artistry that memorializes their loved ones, so seldom appreciated by anyone else.

(My personal plan for this cemetery involves an angel, HUGE glass wings, a Celtic cross, and an Irish blessing. My ashes will be out in the ocean, in a lake, and on a mountain, but I want to leave a gift for the cemetery walkers.)

The Other One

Lent ~

A couple of weeks ago I discovered some fairly contemporary mausoleums in the cemetery, with windows by, obviously, the same artist. I could see the windows sparkling in the sunlight, but I couldn't reach them across the snowdrifts.

Yesterday, trudging through the mud and water that remain of February's wintry weather, I was able to peer through the front doors and photograph the windows on the back walls. Click to enlarge and see the sparkle.

Expert Assistance Requested

Readers of this blog know that much of my walking takes place in a magnificent nearby cemetery.

These four statues grace the front of a rather large mausoleum and I need help identifying them. You can probably enlarge them with a click.

The furthest to the left carries a staff around which a snake (s?) entwines itself and seems to be topped off by wings ~ which I believe makes him Hermes to the Greeks, Mercury to the Romans, messenger of the gods The next carries a cornupcopia (Demeter ~ goddess of agriculture?), and the third, a vase. The fourth (to the immediate left), with his scroll, helmet, and thinker's pose, appears to me to be Moses.

Those of you claiming literacy in western classical and Biblical traditions, feel free to weigh in!

Cemetery in Winter

Late Afternoon in the Cemetery

I've photographed this particular mausoleum many times, but I had to stop again yesterday afternoon; the light was spectacular. Or maybe just the fact that there was light?

On Fridays we get out of school (Jewish school, and Shabbos starts early in winter) in the middle of the afternoon. I had plans to get some work done, but I decided to go and look for the foxes first, and that took the rest of the day! No foxes, and not many other photographs either, despite the ever-lenghtening shadows ~ every time I tried to step off the roads, I sank into snow above my knees.

A New Gray Day

I have been OUTSIDE. For a long walk, a three-mile walk through the cemetery. It's cold, but it's not unbearable. And I looked at little things. I paid a lot of attention. I have been starving for that outdoor pay-attention time.

I didn't take the dog, who is also desperate to get outdoors, because I hoped to see the foxes. I didn't. But I found their prints stamped into the snow all around the hollow tree where I photographed the five kits last spring. So I am hopeful that the female lies nestled in her underground den and that the next months will bring new life there again.

I was inspired not only by the mellow temperature (15!) but by the following poem, which appeared Friday in the exquisite blog Abbey of the Arts:

I am Going to Start Living Like a Mystic

~ Edward Hirsch

Today I am pulling on a green wool sweater

and walking across the park in a dusky snowfall.

The trees stand like twenty-seven prophets in a field,

each a station in a pilgrimage–silent, pondering.

Blue flakes of light falling across their bodies

are the ciphers of a secret, an occultation.

I will examine their leaves as pages in a text

and consider the bookish pigeons, students of winter.

I will kneel on the track of a vanquished squirrel

and stare into a blank pond for the figure of Sophia.

I shall begin scouring the sky for signs

as if my whole future were constellated upon it.

I will walk home alone with the deep alone,

a disciple of shadows, in praise of the mysteries.

PS: For whatever reason, the image of the door won't enlarge. But, with a click, the other four will. The tendrils of ivy are actually over the rusted door of the mausoleum, and the bark belongs to an Austrian pine.

21/365: Cemetery III

17/365: Cemetery I