On this first Sunday of Advent I put on layers of warm clothing and set out for my annual harvesting of green boughs from the generous pine trees who share my homespace. One large bough of red pine leans precariously over the river, offering easy access to its lower branches. I choose four branches of abundant pliant pine, asking the tree's permission. Indoors, I arrange the boughs around the metal advent circle, place four tall green candles in the holders, and feel the first breath of Christmas Spirit. Why green? Well, first because they're the only new candles I have! But on another level, they are the best colour for a season so full of hope. Advent awakens each year fresh longing in our lives for love and gladness. As Jean Houston teaches: Christmas is about yearning for something to come into the world. It's the story of the birth of love, of hope, of a Holy Child in huge danger of being destroyed, bringing a new order of possibility into the world, needing to be protected and nurtured so it may grow into a free and luminous, numinous being.
Let the longing begin!
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Friday, November 26, 2010
Rupert Brooke and Mysticism
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by her rivers, blest by suns of home.
Ebullient, loved, the poet Rupert Brooke was twenty-eight when he died in 1915 in the Aegean. His poetry, which I've been reading from an ancient volume found in Otawa's main library, is a celebration of life which he already felt slipping from his grasp. ( He refers to himself in a letter to a friend as "middle-aged".) For Rupert, life was awash in beauty, and his mysticism which he said had nothing to do with religion, was his secret defense against despair. He wrote to a friend:
"(Mysticism) is just looking at people and things as themselves -- neither useful nor moral nor ugly nor anything else; but just as being....What happens is that I suddenly feel the extraordinary value and importance of everybody I meet, and almost everything I see....
when the mood is on me, I roam about places ...and sit in trains and see the essential glory and beauty of all the people I meet.... I tell you that a Birmingham gouty Tariff Reform fifth-rate business man is splendid and immortal....
"It's the same about things of ordinary life. Half an hour's roaming about a street or village or railway station shows so much beauty that it's impossible to be anything but wild with suppressed exhilaration. And it's not only beauty and beautiful things. In a flicker of sunlight on a blank wall, or a reach of muddy pavement or smoke from an engine at night, there's a sudden significance and importance and inspiration that makes the breath stop with a gulp of certainty and happiness."
This man whom I did not know, who died before even my mother was born, has touched my life. When I regret the passing of time, I think of his short life, which he lived to the hilt, and know that we have both been offered the same gift: this now, these eyes, this openness to see the beauty and wonder all around us. We have no more than this. But we need no more than this sacred moment.
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by her rivers, blest by suns of home.
Ebullient, loved, the poet Rupert Brooke was twenty-eight when he died in 1915 in the Aegean. His poetry, which I've been reading from an ancient volume found in Otawa's main library, is a celebration of life which he already felt slipping from his grasp. ( He refers to himself in a letter to a friend as "middle-aged".) For Rupert, life was awash in beauty, and his mysticism which he said had nothing to do with religion, was his secret defense against despair. He wrote to a friend:
"(Mysticism) is just looking at people and things as themselves -- neither useful nor moral nor ugly nor anything else; but just as being....What happens is that I suddenly feel the extraordinary value and importance of everybody I meet, and almost everything I see....
when the mood is on me, I roam about places ...and sit in trains and see the essential glory and beauty of all the people I meet.... I tell you that a Birmingham gouty Tariff Reform fifth-rate business man is splendid and immortal....
"It's the same about things of ordinary life. Half an hour's roaming about a street or village or railway station shows so much beauty that it's impossible to be anything but wild with suppressed exhilaration. And it's not only beauty and beautiful things. In a flicker of sunlight on a blank wall, or a reach of muddy pavement or smoke from an engine at night, there's a sudden significance and importance and inspiration that makes the breath stop with a gulp of certainty and happiness."
This man whom I did not know, who died before even my mother was born, has touched my life. When I regret the passing of time, I think of his short life, which he lived to the hilt, and know that we have both been offered the same gift: this now, these eyes, this openness to see the beauty and wonder all around us. We have no more than this. But we need no more than this sacred moment.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Earth Now and Evensong
Today the poet Rilke has the words I seek. A feather pillow of snow has shaken itself over the summer picnic table, the brown leafstrewn earth. The lawn chair where I used to sit for morning coffee has been commandeered by a red squirrel. Too cold now to be outdoors, the autumn shift from riverside to fireside is already complete. Yet I feel happiness surging up from within me. Rilke understands: "Summer was like your house: you know where each thing stood. Now you must go out into your heart as onto a vast plain. Now the immense loneliness begins. The days go numb, the wind sucks the world from your senses like withered leaves. Through the empty branches the sky remains. It is what you have. Be earth now and evensong. Be the ground lying under that sky. Be modest now, like a thing ripened until it is real, so that he who began it all can feel you when he reaches for you."
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