Kirkepiscatoid

(Painting: Rembrandt, Simeon with the Christ Child, 1666)

Canticle 17 The Song of Simeon Nunc Dimittis Luke 2:29-32

Lord, you now have set your servant free *
to go in peace as you have promised;

For these eyes of mine have seen the Savior, *
whom you have prepared for all the world to see:

A Light to enlighten the nations, *
and the glory of your people Israel.

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit
as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be for ever. Amen.

Continuing on with the traditional meanings of the weeks of Advent, the second week of Advent is about "peace." That is a hard topic for those of us who watch the news at supper time. An hour with the daily news pretty much confirms that the world has no inclinations to be at peace. War, violence, and hatred still seem to be pretty hotly traded commodities in how the currency of the world works.

The theme of "peace" in this week has a tendency to flare my emotions at a local level, too. My own thoughts often turn to wondering how many families in my town will be affected by domestic violence. I sometimes imagine how many family members are turning themselves out in the cold and fleeing from violent acts in this "season of peace." My local news channel ran a story last week about a man who was arrested for beating his wife with the branches from an artificial Christmas tree! I could imagine that story in my mind's eye--a family trying to have a classic happy time putting up the tree, and maybe liquor or economic hardship sparked a harsh word or two and next thing you know, decorations are flying and the lava from the volcano of anger burns everyone at the scene. Some of the things related to my own family of origin, unfortunately, allow me to imagine this scene quite vividly.

I sometimes wonder if Simeon in the Luke 2 presentation story wasn't a little bit this way. History doesn't tell us much about Simeon, which allows me to imagine a little. (I actually like it when we don't know much about Biblical characters--maybe that is how teaching through parable stories works, eh?) What little legend about Simeon is out there, is that he was a "just and devout" man; I wonder if he wasn't one of the "odd old ducks that hung out at the temple." You know, kind of like the older folks you might know in your parish that have "been there forever," and won't leave until they die. Sweet and a tad odd all at once.

I wonder if Simeon saw the world with world-weary eyes, as I sometimes do--which allows us to make things that are really good stand out. I think about a little boy I met Saturday. I had gone to town to support two of my friends that were ringing the bell for the Salvation Army. I had been teasing them that I was going to stand out front and sing the old "Salvation Army" song that was often done on high school bus trips:

"Salvation ARRRRMY! Salvation ARRRRRMY! Put a nickel in the pot, save another drunken sot! Salvation ARRRRRMY! Salvation ARRRRRRRMY! Put a nickel in the pot and you'll be saaaaavvvvvved!"

When I got there, I saw they had a little boy with them; he was the son of a co-worker. I was totally struck by his "exuberant sweetness!" Rambunctious, eager, a little hyper, but incredibly sweet and good-hearted." My day was better the rest of the day for meeting that little guy.

Yesterday, I had gone to the early service at another church where another friend is in the handbell choir. When I got there, I ran into other friends and their daughter, who is another incredibly bright, eager, smart little girl, whom I've been struck by for years. I was thrilled to death she wanted to sit with me and not with her parents, and I was more than happy to oblige.

When I see these kind of children, well...I know them when I see them, and all the pain of a weary world melts before me in the time I spend with them--and the experience lasts the rest of the day. I can't totally explain it except "I know these children when I see them."

I wonder if that wasn't what happened to Simeon that day in the temple. World-weary, crusty old Simeon, who felt the pain of the world enough to work hard at living a "devout and just" life in the middle of war, violence, sickness, and pain, came to the temple that day and saw a little guy that just bowled him over with the honest love that literally leaked from the child's pores. He knew it when he saw it--and wasn't about to let the moment pass without saying so in the temple.

May each of see one of those "holy children" this week.

(Painting: Master Bedroom, by Andrew Wyeth)

From the translation of Psalm 4 in the Compline service of the Breviary of the Companions of St. Luke, OSB:

"Tremble; do not sin: Ponder on your bed and be still."

Every now and then, I find myself needing to observe "The Great Silence." In the monastic sense, keeping the Great Silence involves being silent from Compline to Matins, with the last words you speak being to God, and the first words spoken as the silence is broken to God.

I've personally found that keeping the Great Silence now and then is very rewarding to me...especially after a hectic, busy day. It's especially rewarding during Advent--a time when "watching" and "listening" become even more important in the church year.

If you've never kept silence, it seems daunting. I remember the first time I was preparing for my trip to the monastery. I had no idea what or when I would have to be silent, but I knew that there was going to be silence somewhere. So I sort of practiced by having a few "silent Saturday mornings"--just being quiet, reading, not using the Internet. I had expected it to feel like quitting cigarettes cold turkey. But instead, it was strangely pleasant.

What I've discovered, in occasionally keeping the Great Silence is...well...it's not very silent. Silence, at least for me, seems to be neither dark nor empty. I've come to realize that when I temporarily remove verbal expression, another form of expression enters into play...the expression of my soul in ways that do not require words. I become more visually aware of my surroundings, and I find my mind actually racing with thoughts and concepts, but not at "high RPM's." It's like a transmission thrown into overdrive--the engine of our soul running fast, but smooth and unburdened.

Compare that with the stresses of a busy day where those transmissions in our mind are constantly being shifted from one gear to another as conversation starts, stops, interrupts, and we are often in a gear where we might be trying to "go fast" but the RPM's are much higher, unable to shift into that next gear smoothly. Anger and frustration grinds the gears as we shift, and sometimes reaches a point where we smell the smoke of burning transmission fluid.

I often dream vividly on the nights I keep the Great Silence, and oddly enough, in the dreams, many voices speak, but I mostly listen. What I often "say" in those dreams are a single thing, over and over--the thing that most matters.

Time becomes an odd player in my nights of silence. It does not seem to move at the "expected pace." Sometimes it moves more quickly, sometimes it seems to almost stand still. It's never the same in any two silent periods. Insight and creativity seem to spring forth from it. Silence is actually a very busy place for me, but a productive one. Not in terms of quantity, but in quality.

As Robert Persig said in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:

"We want to make good time, but for us now this is measured with emphasis on "good" rather than "time" and when you make that shift in emphasis the whole approach changes."

So, this Advent, as we spend our time "watching and waiting," take some time to discover what a planned period of silence unlocks within you. You might be surprised how "not empty" it is!

Last night, as part of my Advent meditation process, I sat out by my chiminea fire, took a walk back and forth on my road a couple of times, and hung out by the fire some more. I have been thinking a lot about the whole "pregnancy" aspect of Advent this year, and have decided to consider it week by week in the manner of what the four weeks of Advent represent--Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love. This first week I have been cogitating on what is it like to be people "pregnant with hope?"

As I sat back down by my fire to contemplate this in the cold, crisp, moonlit night, my fire at my front, cool wind at my back, a very "non-wintery" image came into my head--a germinating seed.

I thought of all these seeds resting below the dark ground. It's a dark place, but it is just a tad warmer than the air above it. Dark but yet enveloping, nurturing. Much like the womb is a dark, wet, nurturing place for a fetus. Some of these seeds will never germinate. Some will, but at the wrong time, and they will die. But some germinate and live.

Those seeds actually germinate in the dark, but they can't stay there. Once they've germinated, the dark is no longer a nurturing place. It's a toxic place, because they need the sun to grow and bloom. So they pop their little pale shoots up and crane their little shooty selves towards the sun. The dark is still there, at night, and in its roots. But the important thing is the dark is a temporary place and a grounding place, not the existence of its being. They MUST turn to the light to live.

As those shoots sprout leaves, they come to learn in their own way, (however plants learn) to grow towards the sun and to crane their leaves so as to get the maximum amount of sun. They come to expect a certain amount of sun. They don't always get it on that day, but there's always tomorrow. They may grow "crooked" because of the best angle of the sun, maybe are not as "perfect" as the prizewinning flower, but they grow and thrive and bloom just the same, in their own beautiful way.

So it is with the hope that lies within our bellies.

Some of the seeds of our own hope, we might not even be able to bear to allow them to germinate. But some of them do anyway, despite any delusions of control we think we have over the process. When they throw that little shoot out, they WILL rise up and lean towards the light. We can't stop it, any more than we can stop the Mississippi river in a rowboat. We are powerless, but it's not to a raging force of nature, it's to a tiny, almost imperceptible force of nature. Who ever notices a single shoot coming forth from the ground, unless we are specifically looking for it?

To me, that is what this first week of Advent is all about...this tiny shoot of our own hopes, barely imperceptible to ourselves, arising from the darkness...just as how the hope of the world arose in this tiny newborn package we call Jesus.

(The painting above is "The Visitation" by Jocopo Pontormo)

For some reason this Advent I am really obsessed with the notion of Mary as theotokos (literally, "God-bearer.") The Greek word does not exactly translate in English. It implies a "bearing forth of truth and goodness" in literally an obstetric sense.

I think about my rotations on the Labor and Delivery floor in my training years. No two births are alike, yet all births are alike. All births--even the most routine ones--involve drama, expectation, fear, pain, fluids, and blood. The magic moment for me on that rotation was watching that baby's head pop out before the first breath is taken. The baby seems to be a mannequin of life, but once the baby is out, he or she takes that first breath, and all hell breaks loose, crying and wiggling and probably thinking, "Put me back where I was! It was warmer back there!" There is no going back at that point!

It's messy and beautiful all at once, and it actually felt kind of satisfying to be bathed up to my elbows in the wetness and smells of it all. I LOVED deliveries. I loved being the first person to catch and hold and cradle that baby before handing him/her off to the pediatrician. I wanted to believe that part of me would rub off, somehow. (It was the "gyn" part of OB/GYN I didn't like.)

I have thought a lot this week, how each of us, within ourselves, has a "holy child" of sorts, growing within us, but there is no time frame for when it's "due." The pregnancy could take months or decades. When we sit still, we might feel it "kick." Some of them occur in those of us who felt "barren" spiritually. Some of us, we might be "pre-pubertal". Some of us might be "of reproductive age." This pregnancy has no barriers as to sex--men can be just as spiritually pregnant as women.

This "holy child" within us comes with all the fear and anticipation real babies do. Will we be a good parent? Will we know what to do when it gets here? Will it have ten fingers and ten toes and be 'normal'? What will it grow up to be?

I kind of imagine God as the great baby-catcher in all this, like a father stuck birthing his own child in a taxicab. Maybe God is nervous and excited too. Maybe he sees this child take its first breath and says to us, "It's perfect! It's beautiful!" Or maybe it's maternal God who takes the baby and cuddles it for the first time, like a good midwife.

I don't understand why I am feeling this in middle age. I just know it's good. I know it has changed this month of Advent how I look at everyone in the street. I see pregnant people everywhere. Do you?

Well, in my mind it is not truly Thanksgiving until one sings the Rosannadanna Family Thanksgiving Prayer, the anthem for all of us who are accustomed to Thanksgiving being "not normal."

Long before Martha Stewart was a gleam in anyones TV eye, my mother, year after year, struggled desperately to have a Thanksgiving "like TV families have." In her mind, that was what families were supposed to be like. The problem was, she was dealing with a cast of characters for this production that ranged from James Dean to Don Rickles to Granny Clampett.

In other words, it just wasn't going to happen.

All the turkey printed napkins, matching plates, Butterball brand turkeys, and Better Homes and Gardens Holiday Decorating Hints were not going to change the fact that Thanksgiving in my family was going to be a collection of drunks, rednecks, antisocials, and smart-alecks eating a meal together, in a house not big enough to hold them all, and chairs enough not to feed everyone, with football constantly in the background, and a cloud of cigarette smoke in the air. I remember most vividly my constant need to go outside and get fresh air and "get away from all the people," and the constant pressure to "be nice" so as not to be named as the instigator when it all DID hit the fan.

One of my favorite stories was one year when my mom was simply tired of all of us, and wailed, "It's just not FAIR! Why can't we have Thanksgiving like NORMAL people? Why can't just once in my life, I can have a Thanksgiving where I am loved and appreciated for how hard I've tried to make this holiday special?"

My grandmother just looked at her and said, matter-of-factly, "Well, it's because we're NOT NORMAL."

I was about 12 or 13 at the time, and I remember the urge to laugh so hard I had to go outside to do it!

Well, and maybe that in itself is the miracle.

I'm going to be totally up front here. I don't do particularly well with either Thanksgiving OR Christmas. It is very important for me, on both days, to have some degree of "quiet alone time." I simply was not trained to learn how to enjoy large gatherings of people in a setting where the societal pressure is to "experience a day set aside for a particular purpose." I do great in impromptu large gatherings of people, where there are no expectations. In those settings, I can more or less let the joy evolve of its own accord.

But I admit Thanksgiving Day puts pressure on me to feel "thankful, or else," and if it doesn't look like the TV shows, to immediately go, "What's wrong with me? Am I a bad person because I don't enjoy this? Is something wrong with me because my first thoughts are not about my own happiness, but about the pain of those who are separated and alienated from this day of thanks because they are homeless, alone, or in pain?"

Thanksgiving Day has been a constant evolution in me in the past decade. I spent a lot of years simply trying to "be nice" and imploding. Most of the players in my immediate family are now dead, or divorces have estranged them, so that part of my family is now simply "my mom and me," and we have vastly different ideas on How This Day Should Be. It's also interesting that we have Vastly Different Memories of Thanksgivings Past. Hers are of a "day that never was"; mine are of "a day that probably wasn't as bad as it seemed to me at the time."

But what these various pieces of broken stuff have done, is forge a new, and good, role for me for this day.

I've discovered in the past few years, that I can earnestly and wholly fit into the role of Someone's Funny and Charming Thanksgiving Orphan. All the messed up stuff of decades past makes me the perfect flexible house guest for anyone's "Within two standard deviations, but not quite ordinary" Thanksgiving.

Why is that?

1. They're not MY relatives. I don't have to have a dog in the hunt when sides are chosen, and in fact, my indifference sometimes leavens the potential for conflict in others.

2. If my mom accepts the invitation, the presence of a room full of non-relatives gives her a lack of "hooks" on which to hang old patterns of difficult behavior (and my hooks, too, for that matter.)

3. I am generally very helpful and flexible about doing things like helping with the meal prep, bringing drinks and snacks to others, taking the various dogs out, and keeping an eye on various infants/children.

4. I get to hear different family stories, and enjoy the sharing and tag-teaming between their stories and my own. I'm a good storyteller, and people seem to enjoy me contributing in this fashion.

5. The expectation is to only hang around a few hours, and once the meal is over, and the cleanup finished, there's no pressure to hang out any longer than what I can stand to do before my, "Ok, this was all good but I'm ready to go home and be by myself" gene will allow.

I am incredibly grateful for this niche. So incredibly grateful, I barely have words to describe it. It is a spot in time and space where I can live and move and breathe, and both feel the joy of the season in a healthy way and the sense that I am contributing to a better holiday for others. I am grateful to God that I had the guts to try out this role for the first time a few years back, rather than be stuck in a rut of expectations in which I knew I could never live up. I have both the peace of part of this holiday alone, to reflect and pray for those who are alienated and alone, and be grateful at the same time for my own solitude, but not "alienation" or "loneliness," and the fellowship of others. Others whom I care for deeply, and care for me, and my presence fills their need to "do something nice for others" in this season.

It is all so very, VERY good.

May each of you claim your own special blessings on this day, unusual blessings blown your way by Ruach, the holy wind. She blows by all of us and leaves different things in our yards, doesn't she?

Well, we did a "provocative word" exercise tonight in EFM, and I want to take it a little further.

Here is the word they stuck in front of us...a very typical "Advent" word, since we are "preparing for the birth of Christ" in Advent:

PREPARE

We were then asked to reflect and describe on the word as it was shown to us.

Good old "geometrical me," I noticed first that the red "P" separated "Pre" and "are" into two equal halves. "Pre" as in the past, and "are" as in the here and now. The middle "P" is a "red letter."

Then this huge profound thought came over me. How in my life (and I imagine, in the lives of many others), there are all these things that move us from the "past" into the "present". They are often "red letter things." Red like how blood might be shed, in a psychological sense. How in our spiritual lives, as we move closer to the realities of God, we have to face old ghosts, shed old habits, and leave things behind on the journey into the reality of "now" that are not needed for this part of the trip. It's very much like when the pioneers went west. First they had to shed themselves of the possessions they would not need. No room for sentimentality. Then sometimes, on the journey, they discovered there was even more they did not need and left it on the trail.

How many times in our lives must we face "red letter days" to push us into the "reality of now?" If not for those "red letter days," we would never have faced "now." They are painful, but they are necessary. They allow us to turn our face forward, to face light instead of dark.

Then I thought about how that red "P" not only SEPARATES the word, it JOINS the word. Red, like the Blood of Christ. I thought about the Eucharist (one of my favorite things to think about). How the Eucharist joins what was, what is, and what will be. When "pre" and "are" seem so far apart in our lives, like two different planets, that red "P"--the Presence of Christ--can join them. They are never really separate when the Presence of Christ is in the middle of it!

Wow, that is a lot of interesting stuff all stuffed into one little red "P"!

I think I'm going to concentrate this Advent on that "red P". I think I'm going to spend the next few weeks looking for that Presence in all of the mess that I loathe about "commercial yuletide." I bet I find it behind the tinsel all over the place.

WARNING: Don't watch if you are easily offended by religious satire. Just remember, though, that if God is offended by this, He'd have to be pretty doggone thin-skinned. I just don't think He worries too much about this stuff!

Hat tip to my friend Bosco for the link.