Waiting—“Triduum at the Monastery” edition

Triduum has been a most blessed time here at the Mount. And now, “This is the night.” Here is a bit of a photo log from the past few days.

The tables waiting for Holy Thursday dinner...

The fog waiting to clear on Good Friday morning...

This year’s Good Friday Peace Pilgrimage focused on the climate crisis. Cherylann was a beautiful Mother Earth, waiting to begin the Stations...

Processing down State Street to Dobbins Landing, waiting at the crosswalk...

The Vigil candles lit walking into chapel, waiting for the day to break...

The Tenebrae candles ready for prayer, waiting to be lit...

Flowers waiting to be placed...

The Easter cloth unfurling over the balcony, waiting to be seen...

The Easter fire, waiting to ignite us into “Alleluia”...

The Exultet waiting to be proclaimed...

A chickadee feasting at the window, waiting for me not to look...

How I’ll feast tomorrow!

The wait is over. Gone is the night.

Happy Easter everyone!

Let us walk in the Holy Paschal Presence.

A Weekend of Wonders

This past weekend held much magic and wonder:

• An early-morning bike ride in which the day slowly revealed itself
• The first hammock sit/read of the year
• An incorporation of Mary Oliver poetry into a Lenten reflection
• A pitch-perfect Passion Sunday Liturgy
• A gearing-up for Holy Week via practices and anticipatory Spirit
• A birthday celebration gathering/garden blessing/friend sing-along

It was just lovely. 

Private Lives

Allan Peterson

How orb-weavers patch up the air in places
like fibrinogen, or live in the fence lock.
How the broom holds lizards.
How if you stand back you will miss them
afflicted by sunset,
the digger bees mining the yard,
birds too fast to have shadows,
the life that lives in the wren whistle.
You will see moth-clouds
that are moving breaths
and perhaps something like the star
that fell on Alabama
through the roof of Mrs. E. Hulitt Hodges
and hit her radio, then her.
No, you must be close for the real story.
I remember being made
to stand in the corner for punishment
because it would be dull and empty
and I would be sorry.
But instead it was a museum of small wonders,
a place of three walls
with a weather my breath influenced,
an archaeology of layers, of painted molding,
a meadow as we called them then
of repeatable pale roses,
an eight-eyed spider in a tear of wallpaper
turning my corner.
The texture. The soft echo if I talked,
if I said I am not bad if this is the world.

Let us seek and find the smallest of wonders in this holiest of weeks.

Let us walk in the holy presence.

Interculturality

This past weekend we enjoyed an inter-community formation gathering in Villa Maria, PA, as we do a few times each year. Fr. Tony Gittins, CSSp was the presenter; he spoke on intercultural mission, and he was quite a fine presenter at that. Tony used the sessions to help define for us interculturality, distinguish it from multiculturality and crossculturality, and incorporate these ideas into the Christ life and discipleship.

Tony even admonished us to never put our race on a form; always write in the word "human," as is the truth of our shared life. This made me think of these words from Joseph Campbell, this week's poem for National Poetry Month.

The divine manifestation is ubiquitous,
Only our eyes are not open to it.
Awe is what moves us forward.

Live from your own center.
The divine lives within you.
The separateness apparent in the world is secondary.
Beyond the world of opposites is an unseen,
but experienced, unity and identity in us all.

Today the planet is the only proper “in group.”
Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world.
We cannot cure the world of sorrows,
but we can choose to live in joy.

You must return with the bliss and integrate it.
The return is seeing the radiance is everywhere.
The world is a match for us.
We are a match for the world.
The spirit is the bouquet of nature.

Sanctify the place you are in.
Follow your bliss...

Let us walk in the holy presence.

total bliss imbibing the gift of morning in the natural world

Poetry, Again...Or Always

It's that time of year again; April marks National Poetry Month—a rather joy-filled time for all of us lovers of verse. So, in keeping with tradition, I will exclusively post poems this month.

Naturally, I begin with Mary Oliver. This selection, Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches?, is a bit longer than usual, but it came to mind during some recent conversations I've had about showing up as our whole self—a not-so-often-easy thing to do. First we must discover the truth of who we are, and then we must live that truth with integrity. From my young understanding, it takes a lifetime. Read about Mary Oliver's own journey of discovery.

Have you ever tried to enter the long black branches
     of other lives—
tried to imagine what the crisp fringes, full of honey,
     hanging
from the branches of the young locust trees, in early summer,
     feel like?

Do you think this world was only an entertainment for you?

Never to enter the sea and notice how the water divides
     with perfect courtesy, to let you in!
Never to lie down on the grass, as though you were the grass!
Never to leap to the air as you open your wings over
     the dark acorn of your heart!

No wonder we hear, in your mournful voice, the complaint
     that something is missing from your life!


Who can open the door who does not reach for the latch?
Who can travel the miles who does not put one foot
     in front of the other, all attentive to what presents itself
     continually?
Who will behold the inner chamber who has not observed
     with admiration, even with rapture, the outer stone?


Well, there is time left—
fields everywhere invite you into them.

And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away
     from wherever you are, to look for your soul?

Quickly, then, get up, put on your coat, leave your desk!

To put one's foot into the door of the grass, which is
     the mystery, which is death as well as life, and
     not be afraid!

To set one's foot in the door of death, and be overcome
     with amazement!

To sit down in front of the weeds, and imagine
     god the ten-fingered, sailing out of his house of straw,

nodding this way and that way, to the flowers of the
     present hour,

to the song falling out of the mockingbird's pink mouth,

to the tiplets of the honeysuckle, that have opened
     in the night

To sit down, like a weed among weeds, and rustle in the wind!

—

Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?

While the soul, after all, is only a window,
and the opening of the window no more difficult
than the wakening from a little sleep.

—

Only last week I went out among the thorns and said
     to the wild roses:
deny me not,
but suffer my devotion.
Then, all afternoon, I sat among them. Maybe

I even heard a curl or two of music, damp and rouge-red,
hurrying from their stubby buds, from their delicate watery bodies.

For how long will you continue to listen to those dark shouters,
    caution and prudence?

Fall in! Fall in!

—

A woman standing in the weeds.
A small boat flounders in the deep waves, and what's coming next
     is coming with its own heave and grace.

—

Meanwhile, once in a while, I have chanced, among the quick things,
     upon the immutable.
What more could one ask?

And I would touch the faces of the daises,
and I would bow down
to think about it.

That was then, which hasn't ended yet.

Now the sun begins to swing down. Under the peach-light,
I cross the fields and the dunes, I follow the ocean's edge.

I climb, I backtrack.
I float.
I ramble my way home.

Cheers to poetry! Cheers to the journey!

Let us all ramble back home.

Let us walk in the holy presence.

Feasting During Lent

There’s really nothing we can do about the Liturgical calendar...except embrace it.

On March 17th we celebrate St. Patrick. (He is the patron saint of our diocese.)

On March 19th we celebrate St. Joseph.

On March 21st we celebrate St. Benedict.

It makes for an interesting Lent with so many major days interspersed. You feel like you’ve just caught your breath, and then you hear people asking people to read Scripture at Easter Vigil.

True story.

In feeling overwhelmed by the pace the past few weeks, today we heard a nice homily from our presider, reminding us to simply be. A welcome Lenten reminder, indeed.

Here are some reminders from nature “to simply be” that I’ve glimpsed the past few days:

A shamrock that I had to re-root...Happy Feast, St. Patrick!

The sun glistening on Seven-Mile creek:

A wonderful Lake Erie sunset, taken at 8:14pm! (Hoorah for lengthening days!)

Let us walk in the holy presence.

Lingering with Mary

Oh do you have time
     to linger
          for just a little while
               out of your busy

and very important day
     for the goldfinches
          that have gathered
               in a field of thistles

for a musical battle,
     to see who can sing
          the highest note,
                or the lowest,

or the most expressive of mirth,
     or the most tender?
          their strong, blunt beaks
               drink the air

as they strive
     melodiously
          not for your sake
               and not for mine

and not for the sake of winning
     but for sheer delight and gratitude—
          believe us, they say,
               it is a serious thing

just to be alive
    on this fresh morning
          in this broken world.
               I beg of you,

do not walk by
     without pausing
          to attend to this
               rather ridiculous performance.

It could mean something.
     It could mean everything.
          It could be what Rilke meant, when he wrote:
               You must change your life.


Last Thursday a group gathered at The Writing Studio at St. Mary's to celebrate the life of poet Mary Oliver, who died in January. There were readings of Oliver's poems, stories about the ways that she affected lives, and anecdotes about the power of the late poet's words to make us think, reflect, and pay attention.

All in all it was a joyful evening, giving us an opportunity to relax and enjoy each other's company while sharing--a real gift of community. I have been thinking about this poem of Mary Oliver's, Invitation, as I continue to spend extra time with her words following her death.

To be attentive to the simple gift of life, all around all the time, always available to us when we stop. Yes, the world aches, and yes, the world is beautiful all the same. This Lenten season calls me to let go of my own agenda for myself a bit, with its self-created demands for personal growth, and to attend to the "rather ridiculous performances" which bring me out of my self daily--feasts for the heart and soul.

Thank you, Mary, for the reminder. And thank you to those who gathered to celebrate her.

Let us walk in the holy presence.

Patience Obtains All Things

My friends and I spend a lot of time wondering how we can speed along the process of becoming patient people. (Yes, we understand the inherent issue.) We spend a lot of time looking for answers. We spend a lot of time doing things that only come with faith in the Holy Mystery.

Having this poem (The Secret by Denise Levertov) show up in my inbox last week was an answer.

Two girls discover
the secret of life
in a sudden line of
poetry.

I who don't know the
secret wrote
the line. They
told me

(through a third person)
they had found it
but not what it was
not even

what line it was. No doubt
by now, more than a week
later, they have forgotten
the secret,

the line, the name of
the poem. I love them
for finding what
I can't find,

and for loving me
for the line I wrote,
and for forgetting it
so that

a thousand times, till death
finds them, they may
discover it again, in other
lines

in other
happenings. And for
wanting to know it,
for

assuming there is
such a secret, yes,
for that
most of all.

Let us walk in the holy presence.

staring at starlings