YOU WILL BE THE LIGHT

Image by Alison

A line from my reading about Chiara of Assisi stopped me early this morning. My eyes went back and back to it. "God loved everything into being." Well, of course. I knew that. Did I? With my mind I did. But with my heart? Back again the line of words pulled my vision, and back again. Everything. But some things seem so dark. Some things I don't want to look at. I want them outside my line of vision. I want to close my heart, close my mind, close my door. But I couldn't deny it: God's imagination is infinite, and everything God imagines is loved and love actualizes it. During John's and my morning contemplation the thought kept returning. During contemplation I want my mind quiet and open so that the Eternal Spirit can work in me. I tried not to pay attention to the flood of words--distractions. A river, even an ocean of words flooding my mind, then thoughts of the computer, thoughts of songs. that great song by Delores Keane, "You'll Never Be the Sun." I heard the melody in my mind. Such an inspired song. Such a fine artist. "Even on the deepest ocean, you will be the light."

OH. Now how can I say this? I'll start this way--here's what I saw. I saw all those "distractions" shimmering with light. I saw them dancing through my mind on a light within me. I saw that everything, no matter how dark it seems to my own judgment, can shine in that light. It's a way of looking and a way of surrendering. I don't have to try. I don't have to get rid of anything. I don't need to chase away what I don't like. I can simply sit there and let it come and go and be bathed in that light I don't cause, that both isn't me and IS. What a relief! Everything, every unique thing, every material, mental, emotional, physical, psychological, spiritual thing in all of the created universe has been loved into being--and all any of us needs to do is let light shine upon it.

So -- I give you a lovely contemplation of Delores Keane's song along with Teri Gower's photographs that shine light into the deepest dark.

Contemplation of Light

TREE OF LIFE

Ancient-Tree-Love by Alison Scott

Holy Lent begins today. I'm thinking of trees, of this tree, of the tree of the cross, of the Tree of Life. The tree from the movie, Avatar, comes to mind; how could it not? And I'm also thinking of violence, and who is not? I'm thinking of Mother Earth and how we humans in North Korea stuck a shaft of metal inside her and then blew it up. That's not the first place we did that. How we have shaken her. I'm thinking of the random shootings, violence of all kinds. Violence of word, of action, of avoidance. Stupid, meaningless, avoidable violence. I'm angry and my anger makes the violence feel personal, and I want to kneel, I want the to be marked with the earth's clay, I want to cry out FORGIVE!

Just look at dear Alison's tree. Look how old she is, how wizened, how amputated of limb, and yet how she is still alive. Look at the green.

I feel wild. I want to rant and rave, to dig in the dirt, to smear it on my face, to confess my sins, to throw my illusions on the fire, to burn all my false hopes, to turn them to ashes and turn again, and turn.

Be converted (turned again) and live is the watchword of this time, a Wednesday of Ashes. Can I? Can we?  Chiara tells us that the tree of the cross is a mirror. She says to look in that mirror until we see ourselves. OH. MY. GOD. The one I see has submitted to and become the violence of the world simply for the love of everything that is. I pray to understand. I pray to know how to turn the whirlwinds of violence within myself into love, into the fire of love, a roaring consummation of all that hinders life.

"This is what Clare asks us to consider in the mirror--are we willing only to look on suffering from a distance or to shut it out from our lives or control it by whatever means possible? Or are we willing to enter more fully into the suffering of the other to know God and ourselves in a deeper way?...Discovering who we are--our identity--in the mirror of the cross empowers us to embrace ourselves despite our brokenness and flaws and, in turn, to embrace others with their brokenness and flaws. In the mirror of the cross we discover what it truly means to be loved by someone greater than ourselves." (CLARE OF ASSISI: A Heart Full of Love. By Ilia Delio.)

We Rise in Darkness

First coffee comes at 5:30 this morning. The quarter moon has already set and except for the brilliance of stars, the hermitage wakes in darkness. The nights already grow shorter, however. Since the December solstice we’ve gained a half hour of daylight in the morning and another half hour in the evening. With midday temperatures in the sixties, the itch of spring already teases our afternoons. And already, I’m missing the winter.

We are creatures of the dark. We are conceived and our bodies form in darkness. We protest with all the strength of our newbie lungs when we are pulled into the light of birth. Our vital organs function in the darkness of our shells. Thoughts smolder in the darkness of our minds until we breathe them into daylight. Darkness, even though it has come to represent danger or evil, is our most natural element and, during the winter months of introspection, is the actual condition in which we spend most of our hours.

No wonder the spiritual masters insist that Spirit can lead us to the Godhead only in obscurity, that we can glimpse divinity in this life only as “through a glass darkly.” John of the Cross wrote of the dark nights of the senses and spirit, “To reach a place that you know not, you must go by a way that you know not.” No wonder, then, that our deepest inclination is to plunge ourselves in darkness, like plants that in their botanical wisdom root themselves in the rich underground.

The message of winter, the message Christin’s sister Liz received during her final weeks, is “Be still and wait.” Endurance is all in the “bleak midwinter” until we are led once more to the annual renewal of spring.

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.

To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,

and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,

and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.

-Wendell Berry, "To Know the Dark"

~John

Hermitage Cat

Shiku, the Hermitage Kitten

Julian of Norwich shared her hermitage with a cat, a small presence that must have had great import for her, as icons of the saint include her feline companion.

At Casa Chiara we have the blessing of many animal companions--wild ones as well as Mo, the hermitage dog. Visiting us each day are a herd of at least four deer, two foxes, a flurry of birds, a covey of quail, and in summer, helpers such as our lizards and tree frogs.

The day after Christmas I was in working in the kitchen when I heard a strange sound. Turning to the window I saw a kitten holding for dear life to the screen. By the time John and I got outside she was hiding under the thorn bush. He fed her. At that moment, says the vet, she claimed this as home. I went for two weeks refusing to give her a name because while the wild ones may have whatever access they have always had to this place; I insisted I do not want a cat in the house. But I ought to have learned by now that I don't always get to have things my way! The vet said she probably would prefer living outside because she showed the social behaviors of a feral cat, probably learned from her mother. Oh good, I thought, she can be another of the wild ones. Yesterday the sun shone brightly and Shiku sat on the deck railing grooming herself. I took thirty pictures of her.

Not more than two minutes later, while we were still watching her, John saw a shadow. Shiku turned her head to the left. Suddenly a hawk swooped in on her. Wings, feathers, so close--I've never seen a hawk in flight so close. A flurry and a tumble and two humans yelling NO. The bird flew away but Shiku barely missed being in those talons.

She's still very small. Three pounds. So today we will fix the garage for her. She's part of us.

"Nature is red in tooth and claw," I know. It applies to all of us, all the wee things, all the giants. Sometime before we lay our separate selves aside, we learn participation, and spend the remainder of our being here in passing back and forth, inhabiting the souls of this and that from all of which we learn the extent of what we are and are called to be. Shiku (the lion) is with us now as a teacher. May we learn well.

A Hard Time We’ve Had of It

 

There is one thing I ask of the Lord.

For this I long:

to live in the house of the Lord

all the days of my life.

—Psalm 27

 

(From the Vigil prayers for the Feast of the Epiphany)

 

The energy of prayer can fill not only the space set aside for it, but an entire house, and out into the surrounding neighborhood and the cosmos beyond. We sense when this happens and can say with all sincerity that we live now and will live always in the house of the Lord.

This is a constant theme in the Psalms because many dangers awaited the singer outside the Lord’s tent. The journey to the safety of the temple was long and arduous, as is the life journey for each of us. We see this reflected in T. S. Eliot’s poem, “The Journey of the Magi.” The journey can be long, the weather sharp, the trek punctuated with regrets and misgivings that the trip could be folly. And yet, in the end we have arrived at our destination, bearing such gifts as we have to offer, here at the small house where the babe rests in the arms of his mother.

We know now that our wish has been granted, that we may remain in this sacred space until our days end, acolytes in the temple of the Lord.

 

-- John

DAYS OF CHRISTMAS

Snow on Spanish Moss at Casa Chiara

The days of Advent have passed and the days of Christmas have begun. I think of these days from December 25th to January 6th as being secret days, days of intimacy, such as families celebrate with infants before the crowds of relatives and friends begin to gather with gifts, kisses and hugs. As a feast of the heart, Christmas has many facets--silence and awe, singing and rejoicing, generosity and graciousness, awakening to the Divine Child within each of us and in creation as a whole. The Christ of God has a threefold coming--historically among the Jewish people, individually to each person, and universally as the Cosmic Christ beyond all time and space.

My life's elder, Mother Ann the Mistress of Novices, used to tell us that the Days of Christmas lasted until February 2nd, the Feast of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple at Jerusalem. The twelve days of Christmas end on January 6th, the Feast of Epiphany, the "showing" or "manifestation."

We see and we receive when we are poor in spirit. Meister Eckhart reminds us in his Christmas sermons that it means nothing that Christ was once born in history if he is not born now in our hearts. And to receive such a Divine Gift, the heart must be poor, empty, open and accepting.

It can take a lifetime for the human heart to let go enough to receive the Gift of Christmas. This very day a woman told me she no longer observes Christmas because she's just too tired of creating festivities and giving gifts that no one appreciates. (not what they wanted, not expensive enough, not stylish enough). So she's given up on it altogether. She's very close now to being empty, perhaps, and her disappointment and resentment could crack open at any moment to let a New Light of reconciliation enter through a yet unexplored openness in her own heart. The Gift, after all, is not a new smartphone--it is Divine Love passing through us, one to the other, unconditionally.

I can't stop looking at the photo I took the other day, the day it snowed. It's only an oak branch covered with moss, covered with snow. But look how it shines! Look at those little droplets of gold! What are they? Do you see the stars in the snow? The light in the flakes? The flakes themselves still falling in front and onto those already balanced on the oak limbs? I can't stop looking. I can't stop opening to the beauty of it, the promise.

Lift the Fog

Art by Alison Scott

Fog obscures the mountains this morning. Mo, the hermitage dog, called John and me to prayer. I lit the candles and stood for a moment, still thinking about the children and their teachers who were victims of such violence as has been repeated in various places and times even during my own short span of life. We began singing our plainchant prayer. Ave Maria...Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen. "Hail Mary...Mother of God, pray for us sinners now, and at the hour of our death. Amen."

Powerfully, then, a sense of Holy Motherhood flooded me, along with a realization that this is what we desperately need in our culture and around the world. A mothering of God within our souls and towards the Divine Child that resides in everyone and everything.

We are limited creatures, and most often it takes a lifetime (and possibly more than one) to comprehend the eternal value of what our existence means and how we are to live. The Sandy Hook massacre brings me to my knees...that human beings are capable of this. We are capable. There is a frightened, often angry child in the depth of the human soul that needs the embrace of love, the compassion that accepts, the mother in all of us: woman, man and child. (I wrote first about this yesterday at Sunshine Hill)

After chanting the psalms, after a deep contemplation of the presence of the Holy One among us, we prayed for those who have died as victims of violence. May violence be rooted from our hearts. May the fog of our blindness lift. May the Mother of our souls comfort us. May the Holy Spirit of Life transform our fear and anger and bring us to an experience of our oneness.