joining the 21st century at the edge of the ocean

how is this photograph different from all the other pictures that have appeared in all my blog-posts over the past half-decade?

i 'took it' rather than finding it on the internet.

and, it was 'taken' on the beach at port townsend, just a few feet from the cold waters of the beginnings of puget sound. it marks a sort of double turning-point in my life.

since moving to the olympic peninsula from the ozarks, where i had thought i would be buried and resurrected, i have bought several electronic 'devices' as they tend to be called: a laptop computer, a copier/printer/scanner, a kindlefire tablet, and a 'smart phone'. now, these are not of course unusual things for someone living in the u..s.a. to have these days, but they seem odd to me, since i have spent half of the past decade without electricity, using the hardware at the public library, and proudly holding up my black papermate flair pen as my 'wireless device.' i confess the price of flairs has gone up until they are nearly as expensive as 4-g connexion, and they are harder to find.

and i confess i have found all these new-fangled contraptions mighty convenient. for years i have read on sunday afternoons a chapter from bernard of claivaux sermons on the song of songs,* but the four volumes of that set were part of the more than 3,000 books i gave away when i left the ozarks. for the past several months i have read st. bernard on the already-seemingly-trusty laptop, and now i can read him even down along the creek on the telephone. so i'm spinning all these new gadgets as a sort of un-cluttering of my life. i really could live in a tent now, although i would want an extension cord. (alright: i confess. i do still have 'real' books, but not nearly so many of them, so i could keep them in a nice dry box.)

i'm also trying to understand the change to non-print media as no worse a thing than the change to written media and then to print media. of course all of these things were huge changes, and our little brains seemed to have changed to adjust to them. i'm hoping my old brain isn't too calcified to make the change, and that i won't lose the ability to read real books. but i hope the change will help me to listen more easily to people with all sorts of brain patterns for using information.

the ocean: well, that's a bit more of a personal lark. i just missed the sound of it. i'm moving in a week to a little cabin in the woods (so i will have room for 3,000 books again, should i live so long), and it is only about long city blocks from the water. i can walk to town right along the waterfront. of course part of me wonders if i'm not just influenced by the romance of the old celtic saints who stood in the water and prayed the psalms, but i don't think that would be a bad practice even if i did adopt it for romantic reasons. i wonder, though: if i droped my samsung in the water, would an otter be able to retrieve it for me unharmed?

*http://www.pathsoflove.com/bernard/songofsongs/contents.html

the song of all creation

i wish i were a better listener. if i were, i could hear he song of all creation where ever i might be. but since i listen poorly, i have left the coziness of my little cell in the ozarks, where the song of the sea is captured in layers of limestone, for the newer shores of the pacific northwest, where the ocean beats still incessantly against the rock.

i love that in greek the nicene creed speaks of the father as the ποιητὴν, the poet, of heaven and earth. i never really came to appreciate all that meant until i spent several years mostly in a small kayak, bouncing on the rhythyms of the waves. there is a basic beat under it all, a beat that is perhaps best understood in the notion that john the beloved disciple 'listened to the heartbeat of god'. j. philip newell has a wonderful book with that title, which i recommend.* but out on the face of the deep, the waves often seem much more complicated than that. rhythym piles up on rhythym, and sometimes it all seems very violent. i well remember one noon off point wilson, where the pacific ocean has to decide whether to north to vancouver or south to seattle, and fights about it, that i thought 'this is a good day to die'. but instead, i just rested in the waves and recognized that there was a pattern, even if i did not see all of it, and that i did not need to see all of it. but to fight it would have meant almost certainly a cold death.

it is because of that experience, particularly, that i am always interested in people who see the world in terms of waves. particles are fine, in their place, but it is the waves that seem to make their places. so, poems such as psalm 96, 'o sing unto the lord a new song; sing unto the lord all the whole earth' seems to me not so much a call to write new music but to listen to the new song that the holy one continues to write, so that we may 'learn it by ear'.

it was this joy in the song of creation that made me happy to find an essay by frank a. mills about the song underlying creation in his understanding of celtic creation, so happy i thought i should share it.**

*http://www.amazon.com/Listening-Heartbeat-God-Celtic-Spirituality/dp/0809137593/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1326749554&sr=1-1

**http://www.christianityceltic.com/pdf/The_Oran_Mor%20_A_Song.pdf

a footnote to my apocalyptic summer, in the depths of winter

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ce1bvAu8s60&noredirect=1
(embedding disabled)

christmas morning

it is 9:30 on christmas morning, and i probably should be napping. last night, at midnight, amidst the songs of angels and archangels and all the company of heaven, the word became flesh on altars around the world, as eternity broke into our time. "when all things were in quiet silence, and night was in the midst of her swift course, thine almighty word, o lord, leaped down from heaven out of the roal throne, alleluia.'

and he who abhored not the virgin's womb condescended even to my tiny oratory. i was up 'til 2:30, some of the time wandering under the stars, which only occasionally peeked through the clouds which covered the sanctuary. then at 6:00 i was up again, for vespers and lauds and the shepherd's mass, the mass at daybreak. and it is in the gospel of that mass that the text which keeps me pondering, which keeps me awake, occurs. it is one of my favourite lines in all of the gospel: 'mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.'

there is a tendency, it seems, to assume that once mary said 'let it be to me according to thy word,' all would be clear to her. but apparently not. i suspect her life must have been like psalm 119, which i pondered for a while last night before the night was half spent, a long song of continual witness and supplication, hoping to understand this word that had been made flesh within her. i wonder if she is still pondering these things in her heart.

for another tendency we have about mary, it seems, is to make her our lady, the queen of heaven, some of us even calling her mediatrix, while forgetting she remains the maid of galilee. her story is the stuff of madeleine l'engle and charles williams, the story of a poor girl from a backwater town who gets swept up in the salvation of the world in a way that absolutely requires her full involvement.

pondering these things reminds me of what an entirely amazing event we celebrate at this time of the nativity of our lord. it is indeed the beginning of the recreation of the world, and in a way we mortals would probably never expect. for god takes flesh, while remaining very god of very god. in that flesh, the gift, the substance, as the preface of the feast says, of his mother, he will return to the right hand of the father. the holy one is forever changed by this event.

and mary, too, is forever changed. an humble maid is overcome by the holy spirit, becoming the first of the living stones in which the temple of emmanual is built. that is a lot to ponder. if the pious opinion that she was taken bodily into heaven is correct, then it is, as job says, in our flesh that we shall see our redeemer. and this wonder is possible, not because of some great thinking of the likes of augustine or ambrose or gregory (any of them) or aquinas in some great university, but because of the cooperation of a young girl from the poor countryside.

the days were accomplished, that she should be delivered

Like the dawning of the morning

On the mountains’ golden heights,

Like the breaking of the moon-beams

On the gloom of cloudy nights;

Like a secret told by Angels,

Getting known upon the earth,

the Mother’s Expectation

Of Messiah’s speedy birth.

Thou wert happy, Blessed Mother,

With the very bliss of Heaven,

Since the Angel’s salutation

In thy raptured ear was given;

Since the Ave of that midnight,

When thou wert anointed Queen,

Like a river over-flowing

Hath the grace within thee been.

On the mountains of Judea,

Like the chariot of the Lord,

Thou wert lifted in thy spirit

By the uncreated Word;

Gifts and graces flowed upon thee

In a sweet celestial strife

And the growing of thy Burden

Was the lightening of thy life.

And what wonders have been in thee

All the day and all the night,

While the angels fell before thee,

To adore the Light of Light.

While the glory of the Father

Hath been in thee as a home,

And the sceptre of creation

Hath been wielded in thy womb.

And the sweet strains of the Psalmist

Were a joy beyond control,

And the visions of the prophets

Burnt like transports in thy soul;

But the Burden that was growing,

And was felt so tenderly,

It was Heaven, it was Heaven,

Come before its time to thee.

Oh the feeling of thy Burden,

It was touch and taste and sight;

It was newer still and newer,

All those nine months, day and night.

Like a treasure unexhausted,

Like a vision uconfess’d,

Like a rapture unforgotten,

It lay ever at they breast.

Every moment did that Burden

Press upon thee with new grace;

Happy Mother! Thou art longing

To behold the Saviour’s Face!

Oh his Human face and features

Must be passing sweet to see

Thou hast seen them, happy Mother!

Ah then, show them now to me.

Thou hast waited, Child of David,

And thy waiting now is o’er;

Thou hast seen Him, Blessed Mother

,And wilt see Him evermore!

O His Human Face and Features,

They were passing sweet to see;

Thou beholdest them this moment,

Mother, show them now to me.

Fr. F. F. Faber (1814-63)

a review before the nativity of christ

the eve of the first sunday of advent, i received a text message from a friend. he had a bible at work, but not a prayer book. what should he read for advent? isaiah. isaiah is the prophet of advent, perhaps even more than john the forefunner. so for the past weeks, readings from isaiah have filled the offices and the liturgy. they have been challenging and poignant. desperate and hopeful.

two years ago i wrote in my journal that, contrary to the school of scholars who search for some past- historical sitz im leben for isaiah, now, as ever, is his sitz-im-lebem. not much has changed in two years, except fear seems to be growing.

it is hard to know where to begin to discuss isaiah's work. he after all is the prophet who saw the glory of the lord even before the shepherds of the gospel according to luke. as the actual feast of the nativity draws near, in the time the eastern church calls the forefeast and the english church calls sapientiatide, the words of isaiah come even thicker, for instance, in the great 'o' antiphons* at vespers in the western rite.

so, as a sort of review for the nativity, i have been re-reading the whole of the book of isaiah today. it's a powerful read, especially in the jerusalem bible, which is made to be read but which does not so easily slip, in my mind at least, into the music of handel yet remains challenging poetry.

here is a sample, from chapter eight:

'. . . Yahweh spoke to me like this

when his hand seized hold of me

to turn me from walking in the path

that this people follows.

Do not call conspiracy

all that this people call conspiracy;

do not fear what they fear,

him you must dread.

He is the sanctuary and the stumbling stone

and the rock . . . .'

the temptation is to go on further. but instead, i invite you to make your own forefeast/sapientiatide review in these last remaining days before christmas. Isaiah's vision of the glory of the lord both resonates with that of mary, the mother of god, and with that of the shepherds, who were sore afraid:

'The mortal man will be humbled, man brought low;

. . .

'Human pride will lower its eyes,

the arrogance of man will be humbled.

. . .

'Human pride will be humbled,

the arrogance of man will be brought low.

Yahweh alone will be exalted

on that day,

and all idols thrown down.

'Go into the hollows of the rocks,

an ino the caverns of the earth,

at the sight of the terror of Yahweh,

at the brilliance of his majesty

when he arises

to make the earth quake' (2:9, 11, 17-19)

* http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7315A1D2C76F0BAC&feature=mh_lolz

these things i command you, that ye love one another

about three years ago, a friend enticed me to facebook.  i signed up with trepidation, fearing it would eat my life.  there is always that possibility, but mostly i have found it a good thing.  i have become 'friends' with a wonderful variety of people, not only those i know from physical meetings, but also others, with whom i am now 'virtual' friends and with whom i share interests, and also books and music and prayers and real matterial-through-the-post-office correspondence.

but facebook has also made me even more aware of what a broken and sad world we find ourselves in these days.  yesterday, the fourth sunday of advent, as we 'prepare' for the coming of our god and king, a friend shared the above picture with me.  there are many ways we continue to slaughter the innocent.  alas, much of our preparation for the advent of the creator of the stars of night consists of getting and spending.

also yesterday the longest discussion amonst my facebook friends consisted mostly of a group of 'christians' telling other 'christians' that 'their' church as bereft of the spirit, or lacking in sacraments, or invalid.  i was reminded of the collect from the american book of common prayer which prays, 'open our eyes, o lord, to see thy hand at work in all creation.'  surely all creation must include all of the church, whatever a pope and a patriarch of constantinope said to each other a thousand years ago.  i mean, how were the people in tintagel to know that in 1054 they must decide whether the holy spirit was now acting through leo or michael.

and i was also reminded of a hymns by one of my favourite if sentimental poet, christina rosetti:  love comes down at christmas.  the link is to a setting by reginald o. morris, sung by the choir of king's college, cambridge.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAjB0GVpleg