Anam Cara

Waiting...in Ashes...

 

Ashes of paper, ashes of a world
Wandering, when fire is done:
We argue with the drops of rain!

Until One comes Who walks unseen
Even in elements we have destroyed.
Deeper than any nerve
He enters flesh and bone.
Planting His truth, He puts our substance on.
Air, earth, and rain
Rework the frame that fire has ruined.
What was dead is waiting for His Flame.
Sparks of His Spirit spend their seeds, and hide
To grow like irises, born before summertime.
These blue things bud in Israel. 

The girl prays by the bare wall
Between the lamp and the chair.
(Framed with an angel in our galleries
She has a richer painted room, sometimes a crown.
Yet seven pillars of obscurity
Build her to Wisdom's house, and Ark, and Tower.
She is the Secret of another Testament
She owns their manna in her jar.) 

Fifteen years old -
The flowers printed on her dress
Cease moving in the middle of her prayer
When God, Who sends the messenger,
Meets His messenger in her Heart.
Her answer, between breath and breath,
Wrings from her innocence our Sacrament!
In her white body God becomes our Bread.

~Thomas Merton

 

*Photograph by Rong Rong and Inri

A Hymn of Thanksgiving...From Prison

I first encountered this Akathist last year, as I prayed the words, in tears, with the brothers and sisters of my parish, on the eve of Thanksgiving.  I did not learn until afterwards that they were the words of a condemned man.  Condemned for his faith.  And that he was choosing gratitude in the most dismal of circumstances.  I begin this day here.  And I offer it to you, my friends.  I am thankful for you.

This Akathist, also called the "Akathist of Thanksgiving," was composed by Protopresbyter Gregory Petrov shortly before his death in a prison camp in 1940. The title is from the words of Saint John Chrysostom as he was dying in exile. It is a song of praise from amidst the most terrible sufferings.

Glory to God for All Things

Kontakion 1

Everlasting King, Thy will for our salvation is full of power. Thy right arm controls the whole course of human life. We give Thee thanks for all Thy mercies, seen and unseen. For eternal life, for the heavenly joys of the Kingdom which is to be. Grant mercy to us who sing Thy praise, both now and in the time to come. Glory to Thee, O God, from age to age.

Ikos 1

I was born a weak, defenseless child, but Thine angel spread his wings over my cradle to defend me. From birth until now Thy love has illumined my path, and has wondrously guided me towards the light of eternity; from birth until now the generous gifts of Thy providence have been marvelously showered upon me. I give Thee thanks, with all who have come to know Thee, who call upon Thy name.

Glory to Thee for calling me into being
Glory to Thee, showing me the beauty of the universe
Glory to Thee, spreading out before me heaven and earth
Like the pages in a book of eternal wisdom
Glory to Thee for Thine eternity in this fleeting world
Glory to Thee for Thy mercies, seen and unseen
Glory to Thee through every sigh of my sorrow
Glory to Thee for every step of my life's journey
For every moment of glory
Glory to Thee, O God, from age to age

Kontakion 2

O Lord, how lovely it is to be Thy guest. Breeze full of scents; mountains reaching to the skies; waters like boundless mirrors, reflecting the sun's golden rays and the scudding clouds. All nature murmurs mysteriously, breathing the depth of tenderness. Birds and beasts of the forest bear the imprint of Thy love. Blessed art thou, mother earth, in thy fleeting loveliness, which wakens our yearning for happiness that will last for ever, in the land where, amid beauty that grows not old, the cry rings out: Alleluia!

Ikos 2

Thou hast brought me into life as into an enchanted paradise. We have seen the sky like a chalice of deepest blue, where in the azure heights the birds are singing. We have listened to the soothing murmur of the forest and the melodious music of the streams. We have tasted fruit of fine flavour and the sweet-scented honey. We can live very well on Thine earth. It is a pleasure to be Thy guest.

Glory to Thee for the Feast Day of life
Glory to Thee for the perfume of lilies and roses
Glory to Thee for each different taste of berry and fruit
Glory to Thee for the sparkling silver of early morning dew
Glory to Thee for the joy of dawn's awakening
Glory to Thee for the new life each day brings
Glory to Thee, O God, from age to age

Kontakion 3

It is the Holy Spirit who makes us find joy in each flower, the exquisite scent, the delicate colour, the beauty of the Most High in the tiniest of things. Glory and honour to the Spirit, the Giver of Life, who covers the fields with their carpet of flowers, crowns the harvest with gold, and gives to us the joy of gazing at it with our eyes. O be joyful and sing to Him: Alleluia!

Ikos 3

How glorious art Thou in the springtime, when every creature awakes to new life and joyfully sings Thy praises with a thousand tongues. Thou art the Source of Life, the Destroyer of Death. By the light of the moon, nightingales sing, and the valleys and hills lie like wedding garments, white as snow. All the earth is Thy promised bride awaiting her spotless husband. If the grass of the field is like this, how gloriously shall we be transfigured in the Second Coming after the Resurrection! How splendid our bodies, how spotless our souls!

Glory to Thee, bringing from the depth of the earth an endless variety of colours, tastes and scents
Glory to Thee for the warmth and tenderness of the world of nature
Glory to Thee for the numberless creatures around us
Glory to Thee for the depths of Thy wisdom, the whole world a living sign of it
Glory to Thee; on my knees, I kiss the traces of Thine unseen hand
Glory to Thee, enlightening us with the clearness of eternal life
Glory to Thee for the hope of the unutterable, imperishable beauty of immortality
Glory to Thee, O God, from age to age

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For My Beloved Son, Who is Seventeen Today

I watch his face.  It is more intriguing to me than any of the works of art hanging on the walls at the Pompidou Center.  It seems to me that an invisible cord binds him to them.  A dialogue, an exchange, a deep knowing.  And I see the works anew.  Through him.

He picks up a pencil, and his hand begins to dance across the page.  Forms reveal themselves to him.  What was inside is outside.  He has liberated it.  It is the work of a moment.  No hesitation.  No erasure.  It is magic.  I am in awe.

His music flows to me through our home.  First he is working out a song he loves.  Fingers searching for the chords.  Not quite...almost....ah, there it is.  Lovely.  Now....a new tune.  One I have never heard.  His own.  It comes from that same mysterious place where the drawings live.  A piece of himself...singing its way out.

He is across a table from me.  He takes a bite.  His eyes close.  A rapturous look spreads over his face and there is a deep sigh.  The same euphoric sigh that greets a warm, starlit summer evening, a glorious sunset, a staggering vista.

I am standing at the sink, washing dishes.  He walks up behind me, wraps his arms around me, and says, "I love you mom."  For no reason.  My heart melts.  And I wonder why I was chosen...to be his mother.  How did I get so lucky?

He is hurting.  He gives his heart away too easily.  He loves too deeply.  I would protect him.  I would tell him not to give so much of himself to those he loves.  To hold something back.  But I know.  This is the one thing he cannot do.

To my beloved son who drinks more deeply of life than most, who fills the world with beauty, and who loves extravagantly:  a poem for your seventeenth birthday...from Rilke, who I think would have liked you.

You see, I want a lot.
Maybe I want it all:
the darkness of each endless fall,
the shimmering light of each ascent.

So many are alive who don’t seem to care.
Casual, easy, they move in the world
as though untouched.

But you take pleasure in the faces
of those who know they thirst.
You cherish those
who grip you for survival.

You are not dead yet, it’s not too late
to open your depths by plunging into them
and drink in the life
that reveals itself quietly there.

Dearest Daughter....

Dearest Daughter,

On this day, nineteen years ago, my life changed forever.  I remember driving through the pre-dawn darkness to the hospital.  I remember terror and delight battling it out in my stomach.  I remember longing for the moment when I would see your face for the first time, and hold your soft body in my arms.  I remember, too, a gentle sadness that I would not feel your tiny kicks inside me any more.  My precious little secret.  I remember wondering if I would be enough.  If I would know how to be your mommy.

How do I say to you what it has meant to be your mother?  How do I describe moments when you would fall asleep on my chest and the joy of it was so deep that I was afraid to breathe for fear of breaking the enchantment?  How does one explain the dizzying glory...and fear...of knowing that to one darling little person, you are all the world?  How can you imagine, until you hold your own little one, the fieceness of my love for you, and the terror of failing you?

Thank you...  For stories.  Your two-year-old telling of Davit and da Bid Diant is still my favorite.  For all the times you stood on top of a piece of furniture and made up songs or told us all what to do. :)  For playhouses, and Arabia, and mysterious Islands.  For hours spent on the couch with books.  For dress-up and tea parties and duplo towers and American Girls.  For shopping and crazy hair colors.  For seeing people that no one else sees...and loving them.  Sometimes that someone was me. 

Thank you for letting me see the world through your eyes...and through your lens.  Thank you for music and movies, candles and tea.  Thank you for showing me your Africa, and for an unforgettable romp across Europe.  Thank you for forgiving me when I have failed you.  I have failed you a lot.  Thank you for secrets, and giggles, and tears.

Thank you, most of all, for always letting me be part of your life.  Even when it has been hard.  It means more than I can say.

Nineteen years ago, you launched me on the greatest adventure of my life.  Soon, you begin an adventure of your own.  I look forward to the unfolding of the next chapter of your story with great anticipation.

Happy Birthday!! 

I love you.

Always.

Rhythm....

It is sometimes my very favorite part of the perfomance.  That vibrant silence that hangs in the hall just after the last note.  The collective breathlessness in which we drink in all it means to be in that place in that moment.

Any musician worth his salt will tell you that the silences in music are at least as important as the sounds.  It is the interplay of the two that makes the magic.  Poets know it, too.  The best of them create silences within the words, controlling the reader's breaths like a puppeteer.  The breathing is an integral part.  The words do not receive their full resonance without it.  A writer or musician who is afraid of silence will create works that are frenetic and cluttered.  And lifeless.
 

Rhythm.  Ebb and flow.  Crescendo and decrescendo.  Work and rest.  It is a crucial pattern in art.  It is a crucial pattern in life.

Sometimes it is imposed on us without our consent.  The seasons bring their changes whether we will it or no.  Some will feel them more keenly than others, but all will feel them.

Other rhythms invite, but do not demand, our participation.  Each January, we are handed a brand new year.  Some of us will use this opportunity to reflect on the year past and dream of the year ahead.  It is a time of self-searching and goal setting.  The seasons of the Church also invite us to experience death and renewal, longing and celebration, each in their turn.

Some rhythms we create for ourselves.  Each time I participate in a running event, I sit down...within a day or two, and begin to plan the next.  It may be weeks before I begin training in earnest, but I need to have that goal out there...giving shape to the months ahead.  On Sunday afternoon after Ragnar, I spent a couple of hours researching ultra marathons...browsing training plans, reading up on the two or three events in which I am most interested.  Training will not officially begin until the first of March.  But knowing where I am headed helps me to revel in this season of recovery, anticipating its restorative benefits.

Rhythm.  Ebb and flow.  Crescendo and decrescendo.  Work and rest.  It is a crucial pattern in art.  It is a crucial pattern in life.

Do you find that life is more managable, more inviting, when there is pattern and shape?  How do you create rhythm for yourself?

*Painting: Autumn Rhythm by Jackson Pollock

Preparation....

I was not expecting guests.  On Friday morning.  When I left to run Ragnar.  I had spent the week shopping and cooking and decorating for the women's retreat at church, arranging care and transport for my children while I was away, and grabbing last minute items for the run itself.  Needless to say, the condition of my house had been the least of my worries.

When I learned my parents and my brother's family were coming to Nashville to see the finish of the race, and would accompany us home afterward, I was thrilled!  Then, as a big white van carried me further and further from my home, I began to try and reconstruct in my head exactly how scary my house had looked when I left.

I have no particular giftedness in keeping house.  My sister-in-law Lori does.  It is a beautiful thing to watch her move through a kitchen...like a little dance...and when she emerges, it glistens.  Nobody has been yelled at or gotten hurt, but she has made it a place where you want to be.

I suppose that's what I'm after.  I will never receive my value or worth from keeping a pristine house.  But I do want it to always be an inviting place where people feel comfortable.  Where they are not distracted or frightened by clutter, or by green stuff growing on the dishes in the sink.

Two days later, my Bible study ladies met at my house.  When they arrived, doors were thrown open to the warm sunshine, everything was clean, candles were burning, coffee was brewing, hot gingersnaps had just emerged from the oven and were giving their sweet scent to the whole house.  And I felt I had given them a gift.  I had prepared for their visit.

Today is the beginning of a season of preparation in the Orthodox Church.  We also prepare for a guest.  We prepare to receive Messiah.  In the same way that my family loved me, did not judge me, and was glad to be with me even if my house was a wreck, Christ will come even if I am unprepared.  But that is not what I want for Him.  I want Him to find a place that is warm and inviting, where He will want to sink in and rest.  A place that says to Him, "I have been looking for You."  A place where neither of us need be distracted by things that are out of place and undone.

The Church will help me.  A season of fasting will help to unearth dust-bunnies that lie hidden.  I will read a couple of favorite books for this season: The Winter Pascha and Watch for the Light.  And I will pray.

This week, as I commence, I am endeavoring to memorize this prayer, given me by a dear friend.  It is meant to be prayed during Divine Liturgy, just before receiving the Eucharist.  I prayed it yesterday.  It is my heart's cry as we enter this season.  Perhaps it is yours as well.

Open, O doors and bolts of my heart,
    that Christ the King of Glory may enter!
Enter, O my Light, and enlighten my darkness;
Enter, O my Life, and resurrect my deadness;
Enter, O my Physician, and heal my wounds;
Enter, O Divine Fire, and burn up the thorns of my sins;
    ignite my inward parts and my heart with the flame of Thy love;
Enter, O my King, and destroy in me the kingdom of sin;
    sit on the throne of my heart and alone reign in me,
O Thou, my King and Lord.

—St. Dimitry of Rostov

*Artwork used in the post: The Scream by Edvard Munch

Run. Eat. Sleep? Repeat.

I am running down a tiny country lane just north of Lynchburg.  The road undulates like those ribbon candies they sell at Christmas.  Up and down gentle slopes.  A donkey is braying somewhere.  Far away.  Coming to me almost like an echo.  The familiar scents of hay and manure fill my nostrils.  My flashlight occasionally falls upon a bovine herd, tranquil, at rest. 

The air is crisp and clean.  And cold.  I can trace the course my breath takes inside my body.   Funny how cold feels like fire inside.  The night sky is pinpricked with starlight.  Like a treasure chest of diamonds, of infinite variety, has been flung against the sky.  I am too much entranced.  I almost lose my footing, more than once, because I cannot stop looking at them.

I am glad it is dry.  Earlier, in the afternoon, as I ran across the top of Monteagle, there had been sleet and rain.  Pieces of ice pelting my face.  It had come up suddenly, the water soaking my shirt before I could get  my rain jacket on.  When that run was over, I exchanged wet clothes for dry, but my skin still throbbed.  Blood coursing to my extremeties to protect me against the cold.

Up ahead of me a van waits with 5 of my 11 teammates.  We are engaged in a great game of leap frog from Chattanooga to Nashville.  We will travel 195.5 miles in 30 hours, visiting historic towns like Winchester (where we have amazing barbecue at John T's BBQ on the square), Manchester, Lynchburg (where Mike runs across the grounds of the Jack Daniels Distillery), Tullahoma, and Shelbyville.  We will enjoy a few silent moments of reflection inside the magnificent All Saints' Chapel on the grounds of the University of the South in Sewanee.  On Saturday, we will travel picturesque backroads in and around Franklin and Brentwood, and experience the gentrified grandeur of Belle Mead Boulevard.  And the sunshine will finally thaw us out.

We average 2-3 hours of sleep, grabbed in snatches here and there.  We eat more than necessary.  We begin to laugh at things that are not funny.  A lot.  And the van, which has only 300 miles on the odometer when we pick it up, does NOT smell new anymore.  We see friends at almost every exchange.  And we make new friends.  Each runner encourages the others.  We are many teams, but we are one.  We are in this together.

Around 2pm, runner number 12, my cousin Chris, begins his last leg at Belmont Boulevard.  As he is running down Music Row, we are racing to the finish.  The whole team will join him to cross the finish line together.  I have family waiting there.  It is the first time in four and a half years of running that I have ever had family at the finish line.  It feels really good.

Some of my friends think I'm crazy for doing things like this.  Maybe they are right.  But here is how I see it.  Life is full of things that seem too hard.  There are opportunities every day to quit.  But, most of the time that which costs most is worth most.  And quitting is not an option.  So I practice.  I practice doing things that are too hard.  I practice not quitting.  I surround myself with a team.  We look after one another.  We forgive one another when we stink.  We encourage one another.  And we laugh.  A lot.  And somewhere, down the road, we will park the van, and all join hands, and cross the finish line.  Together.

To my Ragnar teammates:  Mike, Monty, Chris, Jonathan, Heath, Chatty, Chris, Carissa, Troy, Todd & David, thanks for an unforgettable weekend.      

Sett Forth Gorgeouslie...

It can't be helped.  Allow a poet...a musician...to write about language...about rhythm...about words...and you end up with a delicious etude; a sweet ebb and flow of language fitted to the tale.  Allow an eccentric to limp a few miles in the shoes of one of the most colorful, most perplexing, most misunderstood kings ever to wear the English crown, and you find yourself enchanted, intrigued, captivated.  The pairing of David Teems with King James and his Bible constitutes a literary match made in Heaven.

"...the times were alive, effervescent.  English was in the throes of discovering itself.  The late Elizabethan age was an age of linguistic sizzle."

Into this age is born a baby of questionable paternity.  His mother, the Queen of Scots,  will be imprisoned shortly after his birth.  He will be manipulated and plotted against all through his tender years.  And yet, despite all that, there is greatness in him.  An inexorable, ineffable presence.  Majestie.

Teems tells his story with compassion, insight, and good humor.  He tells of the Bible which bears the king's name;  of its origin, its translators, and its sumptuous language.

The Bible was meant to relieve us of the burden of ourselves, to hold up a mirror that is clear, articulate, accessible, and above all beautiful.  And to do so with rhapsody.  It should be stately, elevated, fluid, other.  How are we to set ourselves adrift otherwise?  There should be a certain amount of reach involved.  It should touch us to the very quick, if indeed we are penetrable.

He plunges us deep into this extraordinary season when voices like William Shakespeare, John Donne, Edmund Spenser, and Christopher Marlowe were shaping the English language into something robust and expansive.  A golden age of sorts.  And he helps us understand the role our unlikely hero plays in the mix. 

I confess, I was prepared to not like James, despite the fact that I knew he had an ardent defender in David.  I just couldn't do it.  By the end of the book I was in tears...and rooting for this most complex and surprising luminary who somehow managed to call out greatness in others.  It was the final paragraph that did me in.  I share it with you here to tempt you.  Because I know that when you encounter it in the book, after living with His Majestie for a while, you will read it anew.

And that's it.  That's James.  Pan Pacificus.  More the artist than the administrator, more the visionary than the clerk, more the dreamer than the shopkeeper;  where he dreamed he dreamed big, rather like a king.  Where he loved, there were no half measures.  Where he failed, he was absolutely magnificent.  As only true greatness does, he offered the power of flight to those who, like him, had flight within themselves.  In the end, it is always a matter of belief.  Always.

 

*The title of the post is drawn from King James' directive to the translators that the Scriptures should be "sett forth gorgeously".  It is also an apt description of the book.

**All quotes in the post lifted directly from Majestie