the tide in the affairs of men: midsummer, beginning to breathe in

"stay in your cell, and it will teach you everything."  i am of course aware of these famous words of a desert abba, but i don't always follow them.  i blame it (it's always convenient to have something to blame) on my welsh ancestry.  nearly all of the welsh saints i find so fascinating were wanders.  today, for instance, is the commemoration of s. mewan, who wandered first over the bristol channel into cornwall and then over the english channel into brittany.

  so most summers i wander off to the northwest corner of washington state, where there's a great inland sea and even a real ocean.  i do it because i like to visit the people there, but also because i spent three of the most important summers of my life there, paddling around the whulji in a skin-on-frame kayak named for s. brendan the navigator.

it was wandering around on the face of the deep that i learned about tides.  any fool can learn about tides in a kayak, and if he pays any attention at all, he learns to use them rather than to fight them.  i am happy to say that i learned mostly to paddle with them, although occasionally i would have a larger-than-necessary adventure on purpose by going against or across the tides, and once i had a very strenuous adventure indeed because i accepted an invitation to a leisurely lunch with a friend who, although observant for the most part, is a land-lubber who ignored my protests that i needed to make the tide.  the incoming tides on a full moon in the straight of juan de fuca are not to be ignored.  fortunately i found a place to camp after two miles of fighting, and started again the next day towards neah bay with more favourable seas.

this summer, however, started with a trip to austin, texas, a place about a different as possible from the san juan islands.  i went to visit some friends at the seminary of the southwest, and it was very good to see them.  then i stayed with their cat while they wandered off, and i read a lot of wonderful books from the library there, and met some great trees and creeks, and found a few good coffee spots, one of them next to a creek where a night heron was kind enough to share vespers with me several evenings.  i also found out how much of a country mouse i have become.  but there were two half-price books stores in austin, and i made an embarassing number of purchases.  one of them was the rhythm of the christian year by emil bock, an important leader of the the christian community renewal movement.  it was an unexpected gift.

bock's book is a collection of "festival meditations" he wrote over the years, which are reflect an profound understanding of the cosmic implications of the incarnation of christ, an event which includes the redemption of all of nature.  he describes the period from the nativity of jesus to the nativity of john the forerunner as the time the earth breathes out, and the period from midsummer to christmas as the time the earth breathes in.  and he says that this pattern is repeated in our own lives, if we but notice it.  the first part of our lives, we breathe out, we expand our motion and our knowledge, our spirits are at high tide, embracing the shores of the world.  but in the second part of our live, we breathe in.  our spirits are incarnate in our own bodies.  we become one within ourselves.

i recognize that the pattern bock describes, i am feeling and desiring.  i no longer need to travel to the ocean to know the tides.  the water of the ocean is my own blood, the tides are always moving:  we need only to be aware of them.  i remember very vividly the afternoon, in june, 2000, paddling across the largest part of puget sound, just north of the kitsap peninsula, a part of the sound for which  i have never found a name, when i realized this.  a friend sent me a letter today in which he mentioned bjork's song "oceana", which ends with the wonderful line, "your sweat is salty, i am why."

so i rejoice to sit at my cell this s. john's even, watching the waves break on the bark of the pine trees, while the ravens swim in the currents of the earth's spirit, and breathe in, absorbing, hopefully, some of the gifts of the first half of the year and of my life.

but i know myself well enough that i would not be surprised if i were at the whulji again this fall.  and for those of you who do not know the word "whulji," don't be surprised.  not even google knows it.  it's coast salish for "this sea that we know."

s. brendan the monk

few saints have been so influential on my life as has brendan.  as jennifer kennedy dean writes, "as we conform our lives to our stories, we find we are transformed."

it was, not surprisingly, the story of brendan the courageous navigator that caught my attention first.  i had been taking some "time off" from my "job" as a missionary bishop to the wilds of fayetteville, arkansas, to take care of my ailing mother, and when she became well enough for me to leave again, i thought a kayak trip would be just the thing.  so, i bought a beautiful red saxon boat, broke a bottle of guiness on the bow and called her "brendan."  off i paddled, on what would be a life-changing trip.  along the way, i became an accidental hermit. my little r&r trip stretched over three years, paddling more than 9,000 miles, and completely enjoying being bounced about on the sea, protected by the prayers of s. brendan--and of course also of s. nicholas.

in the years since i came to shore, i often feel nostalgia for that time, for the nights when the sea receives the red sun to the chant of ravens at vespers, for the mornings veiled in the cloud brooding on the face of the waters as another day is created.  evenings and mornings are certainly beautiful where i live now, in a small apartment in the ozarks, but it's easy to feel that my life is not very courageous.

it is that context that two bits of wisdom from the church have helped me this s. brendan's day.  the first is a word from abba isaac of the desert--i fondly call my little apartment s. chad's disseart  "the person who recognizes and overcomes his passions is greater than the person who raises the dead."  certainly recognizing and overcoming my passions takes more courage than floating on the surface of the sea.

the second is the ikos for the feast at matins:
"putting forth from the coasts of thy homeland, o holy one, thou didst set sail in a boat of skins, traversing the tumultuous waters of the sea, guided by the providence of the almighty.  yet in vain didst thou search the watery realm for theisle of the blessed, for their abode is not within the confines of this world.  wherefore, thou didst return to dry land, to the monasteries thou hast founded; and losing the life of thy body, thou didst find the realm of bliss which thou hadst sought.  o venerable father brendan, divinely wise and most holy, entreat christ god that our souls be saved."

amen.

my lenten koan: what did you get in your lenten basket?

i grew up in the southern baptist south.   we called the sunday before easter palm sunday, but we had no idea why, really.  the sermon was likely to be from the book of kings.  our pastor had a fixation on jezebel.  on easter we all wore new clothes, and there was usually a "contata," although not always.  it was easier to get enough voices for the real holiday, christmas.  we didn't celebrate it, but all of the theology of redemption we had was centered around good friday, so easter was left to the super market and department stores.  we got easter baskets.

when i began to enter the "big church," at all saints' episcopal in memphis, the membership entertained a wonderful mix of theologies:  some were catholic and prayed through the church year with great devotion.  some were evangelicans who thought the church year a bit too pappish.  some thought easter baskets were the work of the devil.  some "gave up" something for lent.

as i have come to appreciate the breadth of traditional christianity, i have come to look at lent not as a time of giving up anything, but as a period of particular grace.  we let go of some things so our hands and hearts will have more room to hold more.  fasting, alsm, and prayers are gifts given to us so we may more closely participate in the life of our lord.

many of the desert saints wove baskets as they prayed.  it kept their bodies occupied so the would not be distracted, and they sold them to support themselves.  so i have come to think of lent as the time of baskets, more than easter.  and i encourage you to join me in thinking of what has been given us in our lenten baskets this year.

my koan of this year has been how to understand the land in which i live as holy ground.  this was an amazingly koan in that every day in the office or the liturgy there were comments on it.  this morning, for instance, from the reading for the epistle:

"who is among you tht feareth the LORD, that obeyeth the voice of his servant, that walketh in darkness and hath no light?  let him trust in the name of the LORD, and stay upon his god."  (isaiah 50)

somewhat to my surprise, the biggest gift in my lenten basket has been obedience.  walking requires listening.  this does not seem a popular virtue these days.  the american episcopal church has excised from psalm 95 the verses which seem to me to distill my "solution" to my lenten koan:

"today if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts
as in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness;
when your fathers tempted me,
proved me, and saw my works.
forty years long was i grieved with this generation, and said,
it is a people that do err in their hearts, for they have not known my ways:
unto whom i sware in my wrath,
that they should not enter into my rest."

the lenten koan: moses and the burning bush

there is not shortage of material to help me with my lenten koan of coming to know this land, the land which i find myself "given", as holy land.

not that there aren't plenty of distractions. i easily find distrations. so i read s. basil, who encourages me to simple clothes, and s. david, who encourages me to simpler simpler, and they help me to see that much of what i might think of as my struggle is itself a distraction. "my struggle;" mein kampf: i should think more of how destructive "my struggle is." but when i see it as just a little part of the struggle of the saints, the part i have been given like the little "parts" we hard to read in sunday school as children at walnut street baptist church, then it seems both doable and nothing special.

but most often the struggle for me is a struggle for family as much as place. my lenten koan: to walk on and know the holy ground. in my readings this morning moses encountered the holy one in the burning bush, who introduced himself as "the LORD, the god of your fathers, the god of abraham and of isaac and of jacob. this is my name for ever, and this shall be my memorial unto all generations." the place is holy because the holy one is in it, as jacob had found at beth el. but the line of generations has been broken, it seems, for me and for many of my contemporaries, and so i seek, prior to the god of my fathers, my fathers. moses had no vision of the holy one so long as he felt at home--settled--among the egyptians. so i sit here in the spring sunshine on the edge of this ozarks holler reading robert van de weyer's celtic fire: the passionate religious vision of ancient britain and ireland (new york: doubleday, 1990), looking for my forefathers in wales. but i cheat. i am expecting in the mail a book by donald nicholl on the russian religious visin, triumphs of the spirit in russia. i find my fathers, it seems, on the edges, on the fringes, on the outskirts, never in rome or constantinople.

the temptation of wheels

the day after i was given my lenten koan, this bicycle was pointed out to me as being for sale at the local bike shop. i had admired it last summer, but hadn't seen it out front and had assumed it had been purchased while i was wandering around the northwest and southwest and texas and such.

but no. it's there, and a very real temptation? so, i'm wondering just how literally to take all the admonitions to "walk." is this little wheeled wonder "just a little one" as was the city to which lot retired after the destruction of sodom? it seems probably a small decision. but life is made up of the results of all our small decisions, far more than of the big decisions. pray for me, my friends.

jeremiah, john donne, and my lenten koan

be careful what you ask for. never send to know for whom the bell tolls: it tolls for thee.

when i started lent with the koan of how i might find the place where i live to be holy ground, i had no idea how much help i would have. and again and again the help says the same thing: "be obedient."

now obedience is one of my vows: poverty, stability, chastity, obedience. poverty, at least by american standards, is pretty easy on social security. i find i have enough money to be mildly generous. stability is also pretty easy, because of my poverty. sometimes i think i would like to move back to the ocean, but i don't think i can afford it. and i find that my lot has fallen in a goodly place. chastity was actually not one of my vows at first, but i have come to understand how important it is, and don't find it so much trouble. but obedience: that's the hard one.

i like to blame my objections to obedience to the general american rebelliousness that started when the trouble-making bostonians dumped tea in the boston harbor and blamed it on the indians. but it is really of course mostly my own pride.

one of the things the rule of st. chad emphasises is obedience as listening. but listen to what? it is so easy to listen to entertainments. even as i type this i am listening to psalm 72 on youtube. and if i listen to the readings of lent (psalm 72 was this morning's prime reading), i am caught short again and again. walking, one can hear. the epistle for the second sunday of lent says, "we beseech you, and exhort you by the lord jesus, that as ye have received of us how ye ought to walk and to please god, so you abound more and more." it is easy to think of walking as a way of hearing bird-song, and so it is. but is also a way to hear the motorcyclist's motor-screaming as they try desperately to find happiness.

this past sunday, the third in lent, came the epistle that is the motto of the order of st. chad: "walk in love, as christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to god for a sweetsmelling savour." again, walking is more than only enjoyable. (the old testamnt reading that sunday is deuteronomy 6: it's hard to find a stronger encouragement to listen and obey than that.

and now this morning, jeremiah: ". . . if ye throughly amend you ways and your doings; if ye oppress not the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, and shed not innocent blood in this place, neither walk after other gods to your hurt; then i will cause you to swell in this place, in the land that i gave to your fathers, for ever and ever, saith the lord almight."

so: i must listen much more carefully, not just to the wonders of creation but to all the parts of it which, as the anglican collect for ash wednesday reminds us, god does not hate, but which i all so easily "tune out."

psalm 51 and the grace of lent

the psalms are the heart of christian prayer, and no where and at no time has this been more true than in celtic devotion. often the celtic saints would pray the psalter with their arms held out in a cross, sometimes for so long, as in the case of s. kevin, that a bird built her nest in his outstretched hand. others would pray standing in cold water. s. cuthbert's feet are shown in the window above, being warmed by otters after a night praying in the cold waters of the ocean.

celtic christianity is notoriously physical, involving the body in ways we in our more cerebral or "spiritual" times might find a bit silly or even repugnant. even though we do sometimes pride ourselves on an "incarnational" theology, our understanding of incarnation often means we give money to the food bank.

but i suspect our celtic forebears in the faith would not have recognized the differences we make between the spirit and the body. they were not at all "spiritual" in the way that is so popular today. their lives, all of the many trinities that made up their world, were one. and they recognized, i suspect, the nature of sacramental living, outward and visible, as developing inward grace.

it is in that context that i find the centrality of psalm 51 to our lenten devotions so intriguing. often lent is a time when we "give up" something: chocolate, perhaps, or wine. then at easter we "get it back." what a waste! lent is better a time when we open ourselves to receive more, to recognize that our sins are not nearly so often overindulgence in chocolate or alcohol, but aiming at the wrong things in life. (the greek word for sin so often explained as "missing the mark" really means more to "aim away from the mark.")

so, i want to consider some of the lines at the heart of psalm 51:

. . . lo, thou requirest truth in the inward parts,
and shalt make me understand wisdom secretly.
thou shalt purge me with hyssop and i shall be clean;
thou shalt wash me, and i shall be whiter than snow.
thou shalt make me hear of joy and gladness,
that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice.
turn thy face from my sins,
and put out all my misdeeds.
make me a clean heart, o god,
and renew a right spirit within me.
(italics added)

the goal of being purged with hyssop is not to make us, as jesus in the gospels is recorded to have described some of the spiritual people of his day, as white-washed tombs. it is to have a right spirit within. this is the grace of lent. again and again the collects of the season pray that the outward activities will result in our entering the kingdom. and, the kingdom is within, a gift waiting to be received, and worth making room for.