Goodbye, 2016

Dear 2016,

Damn, you were brutal. We should have known what was coming when you took David Bowie 10 days into the year, with Alan Rickman to follow 4 days later. You certainly started as you meant to carry on, because 3 months later, we lost Prince.

And just when we caught our collective breath, you'd strike again. Two months after that, Brexit, a month later, a deeply insecure, unknowledgeable, shrill, mean-spirited PM took over from a rather thick, self-absorbed one.

Then, the US campaign: filthy, mean-spirited, hate-mongering, feeding the rabid hatred of those - on the left and right - who blindly wanted to tear down the (granted, broken) system with no thought of building another.

Surely, we thought, surely, restraint and moderation would win. Surely, experience, the steady hand, the imperfect yet qualified candidate would win.

But oh no, 2016, this was your 'hold my beer' moment par excellence, wasn't it? No moderation here. YOU, who took our legends and gave us Brexit, were certainly not going down the middle road. Extremism won.

Hate trumped love.

And in 2017, we are going to have to clean up the devastation you left behind.

But I have one thing to say to you: thank you.

Yes, you read that right, thank you. You hurt like f*** right from the beginning in the places where it would hurt the most: you took those who stood for and exemplified diversity, who spoke loudly that diversity was our strength, that we may be many parts, but we were one human body, and you left us those like Theresa May and Donald Trump who screech like harpies in favour of hate, division, a smaller mind and a smaller world. You were one fucking cunt of a teacher.

But though I'm going to tell you to get the hell out and not let the door hit you on the way out, I am grateful for you. You were our true mirror. Theresa May, Donald Trump, the Tories, GOP, Putin and his ilk - they didn't arise in a vacuum: they are who we have become.

They are who we become when we allow our points of view to dictate facts, rather than facts to inform and challenge our points of view. They are who we become when we are afraid of those not like us, when we are afraid of change, when we are afraid to move past what we know. This is who we become when we are only for ourselves, forget how to serve, and harden our hearts against those in desperate need. When we choose style (Dale Carnegie has a shitload to answer for) over substance, appearance over character. When we do a little learning, rather than drinking deeply of the Pierian spring. When we resent and deny expertise. When we no longer take the time to listen to stories: each other's, our cultures', the archetypal.

Had we been on track, had we allowed minor corrections, had we been looking at what was true rather than looking away, you would have been an altogether different year.

But we weren't. So you had to be our prophet and our massive correction to give us a chance to return to the dynamic balance, the homeostasis, that defines the universe.

So again, thank you. Thank you for opening our eyes. For showing us that we have strength and fierceness we never thought we did. For shaking us out of our torpor and complacency into full wakefulness to know and fight for what we hold dear, for those things so much greater than us: love, compassion, true freedom, unity. We will always be stronger together.

You reminded us that growth needs resistance - and often demands that we ARE that resistance. We will heed your clarion call, and we will fight. Because in the end, love WILL trump hate.

You have given us clearer sight, more open - if more scarred - hearts, renewed our profound commitment to love, truth, justice, mercy. You have brought us a chance to Deepen (see Madeleine L'Engle) at last.

We stay awake and stand ready at the Gate of the Year. It may be dark, but day WILL break. Let it open.

We release you in love, with thanks - and move fearlessly into 2017, whatever it may bring.

Fare thee well: we may have cursed you from here to the Eagle Nebula, but we couldn't have done without you - much as we hate to admit it.

Sincerely,
Me

To America, after last night in Dallas

Dallas.

Sorrowful, yes. Shocked, no. Where justice is denied, vengeance will follow. Everyone should have seen this coming - the officers guilty of every incident of police brutality; police departments that don’t train officers properly, then mindlessly protect them for wrongdoing; the Internal Affairs sections, lawyers, and grand juries that let murdering police officers off the hook; policymakers. Everyone. This was the natural consequence of a series of actions and lack of a fair, just response to them. This is the consequence of denial.

But perhaps we didn’t expect THIS. Perhaps we expected the police officers known to be guilty in notorious cases of brutality to be executed. More likely, we expected a mass shooting or a bomb at a police station, or police killed by angry demonstrators. Typical American style, thoughtless violence. Terrible one day, forgotten the next.

This was something completely different.

This was horrifyingly elegant - in its timing, in its execution, in its symbolism - using police and military tactics against men in uniform. There was intelligence behind this: resourcesful, strategic, patient, coldly angry. Not the hotheaded anger one expects of Americans that lead to many incidents of one-off violence.

Cold rage. One that recruits men who can lie in wait for hours, picking off their targets. One that may have placed a number of bombs around Dallas - and even if they haven’t, a member (one trapped by police, no less) had the presence of mind to say they did, so police are wasting resources trying to find those bombs after the chaos. One with members who escape in a black Mercedes. One that can wait for the right time and place to execute its plans.

Welcome to a homegrown terrorist cell.

Because you see, where there is a large reservoir of swirling, unresolved emotion, eventually an organising mind, a seed crystal, will emerge and draw that reservoir to it, creating a structure. A structure with a function. And that function will, for good or for ill, channel that emotion to a particular purpose. Whether it’s Martin Luther King or Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, that mind will come and draw like ones to it. That mind is here, and the energy it draws is the endless, deep rage of those who have been done wrong and who have not been heard.

You are coming to the last exit off this highway, America, the last chance to come off, turn around, and deal with this before it is dealt with for you. Because you ignored all the earlier exits, this is going to be incredibly painful, long, and difficult, but it must be done. To paraphrase a favourite song: you missed the stop sign, took a turn for the worse. Then you went rushing down that freeway, messed around and got lost, you didn’t care…

…and now too many of you are dying to get off.

Stop dying. Start living. You are a country with a beautiful dream that has turned into a horrible nightmare. Wake up, America. Wake up and face your demons. Because only then can you become the Republic for which your flag stands, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Do you really want to live forever - forever young?

Not sure why this crossed my path recently, but I’m glad it did. I’ve always loved its melancholy, yearning, plaintive essence...I’ve never understood those who think of it as an upbeat paean to youth - even when I first heard it, it made me want to cry.

I mean, you’d think the first verse would give it away, right:

Let's start in style, let's dance for a while, 
Heaven can wait we're only watching the skies.
Hoping for the best, but expecting the worst, 
Are you gonna drop the bomb or not? 

The essence of youth in the 80s, near the end of the Cold War - though no one knew that of course. 

Released the year before Gorbachev took office, five years before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Forever Young captures the mix of hope and terror during the intense, taut period of increasing tension and decreasing DEFCON (look it up) just before, caught by movies like The Day After and Threads.

This year, the one in which we’ve already lost David Bowie, Alan Rickman, Victoria Wood, Prince, Terry Wogan, Ronnie Corbett and others, this verse didn't pull its punch:

Some are like water, some are like the heat -
Some are a melody and some are the beat.
Sooner or later they all will be gone...
Why don't they stay young?

I wish I knew.

But the part that grabbed me the first time I heard it and has never let go is the second part of the chorus:

Forever young, 
I want to be forever young.
Do you really want to live forever?
Forever young.

Now, the standard understanding has never been how I’ve heard it, though I would say the phrasing supports it. I’ve always heard:

Forever young, 
I want to be forever young.
Do you really want to live forever -
forever young?

Which layers it differently, giving it a different meaning and tension - and to me, it’s one of the core questions of our search for meaning. I think the only reason I saw it was because of one of my favourite childhood books: Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt. (Read the book - don’t touch any of the dramatisations.)

When I first heard the question sung by Marian Gold (Hartwig Schierbaum), my answer to both versions was a heartfelt, unqualified ‘Yes’ - because, like the singer, I was terrified of leaving life not having lived it to the full, and I wanted all the time possible in which to do that. 

Years on, my answer is - as it is to so many questions I once had unequivocal answers to - I don’t know. Maybe I understand Angus Tuck better now. Maybe I understand better what it would be to outlive everyone I love. Maybe it’s that some part of me feels that death, in making life finite, also makes life precious. 

 Or maybe, like Rabindranath Tagore, I see death differently:

Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come. 

And that is a dawn that, one day, I hope to step into and discover what lies beyond.

It is finished: Τετέλεσται

It is finished. Consummatum est, as proclaimed on status after status of Catholic students finishing their exams. Or the single word in the Greek – Τετέλεσται, ‘It is finished,’ which also has echoes of fulfilment. The verb tense is significant – the perfect tense in Greek, meaning that a completed action has continuing consequences – in this moment, this word, the sacrifice of Our Lord, now completed, continues to redeem humanity today.

The perfect tense applies to our lives as well. All that ends in our life - school, jobs, relationships, ways of being - has continuing consequences in the present, finding a way to new beginnings in the future.

But in this moment, beneath a darkened sky, as G-d hangs on the cross, speaking a word of utter finality, no new beginning seems possible – simply an endless, bleak emptiness into eternity. But even so, this end must come.

Our endings must come too: we lose people we love. We lose jobs in a world that identifies us by what we do, rather than who we are. We can no longer live in a way, in a story, that is now far too small for us: ‘I was abused.’ ‘Nothing good ever happens to me.’ ‘I am a Christian, so the world will always persecute me.’ Those stories may no longer suit us, but they have become our identity, the only way we know ourselves. And so, even though we know the ending must come, we hold on tightly to what we know, fists clenched, arms wrapped around ourselves, keeping the known old in and the mysterious, frightening new out – frozen like Lot’s wife: desperately unable to hold on to what must – or wants to - leave, and with closed hands, desperately unable to receive the grace we need, to trust that a new beginning will come.

We are in good company: in Gethsemane, Jesus too, tries to hold on, depicted vividly in Jesus Christ Superstar:

I only want to say if there is a way
Take this cup away from me
For I don't want to taste its poison
Feel it burn me, I have changed
I'm not as sure as when we started

In Our Lord’s agony, we find echoes of our own journey when endings come upon us: betrayal, anger, doubt as He bargains for things to remain as they are: 

Listen, surely I've exceeded expectations

Tried for three years, seems like thirty

Could you ask as much from any other man? 

As he progresses to contemplating the ending – ‘BUT if I die’ – he begs for the certainty that we seek in our lives:

Can you show me now that I would not be killed in vain?
Show me just a little of your omnipresent brain
Show me there's a reason for your wanting me to die
You're far too keen on where and how and not so hot on why

Before finally accepting the ending that is coming:

Why then am I scared to finish what I started?
What You started, I didn't start it

God, Thy will is hard, but You hold every card
I will drink Your cup of poison

Or as we know the more traditional, acquiescent line from the gospel, not my will, but thine be done. Our Lord, fully human as we are, wants to cling to what He knows: bargaining, raging, grieving, but finally accepting, because He knows that to do more, to carry on when it is time to move on, will have grave consequences for the future. This sacrifice does not just end something: it consummates a marriage between Him and His bride, the Church, consummatum est – ending one story in preparation for a new, larger one. It is not just finished, it is fulfilled: Τετέλεσται.

For us too, in ways large and small, Τετέλεσται – though we so often cannot see the seeds of fulfilment through our devastation at the finishing – and the fulfilment may be some way in the future. We may resist finishing because we are afraid that the end means that the love, the joy, even the difficulties of the situation will vanish from our lives – but the perfect tense reminds us that life is not so; even if the situation is ended, its essence has woven itself into our being. Or we may try to make an ending sharp, short, surgical, denying it matters, pretending it never happened, locking it away. Both keep us bound, but Our Lord shows us the way to live an ending that sets us free: a way of grieving, of unfolding our arms and opening our hands through intimacy with the Father, sharing with Him our darkest, deepest, most uncomfortable feelings at this loss, from resistance to rage to abandonment, asking ‘Why hast thou forsaken me?’

After the storm, in that barren, uncertain place where we thirst, when we finally know the truth, accepting that it is finished – even feel ourselves unravelling as we open our arms on the Cross with Our Lord and let go – let us remember that though the relationship, job, time that is ending may be the stuff of our lives, it is not our lives – it did not form us in our mother’s womb, breathe life into us, it does not know the number of hairs on our head. Our lives are elsewhere, and every single one of these smaller acts of letting go prepares us for the ultimate act of surrender, where we give up our lives – Τετέλεσται - so that we may truly live, through the words Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit.

Ash Wednesday chapel reflection

A sermon given at OCMS (my work) chapel on Ash Wednesday, 18 February 2015

As a Catholic working in an evangelical Protestant institution, I’ve often wondered how my Catholicism is seen when it becomes visible at work, as it does this morning. My suspicion has always been that most of you think that last night, decadent papist that I am, I looked like this: 





and that today, I’m going around looking like and thinking this





The first is somewhat wide of the mark, the second, less so.

There’s little doubt that Grumpy Cat could be considered what many these days might refer to as ‘my spirit animal’, especially if anyone has heard my delicate opinions on religious observance and behaviour: from the stiff high church my-rubrics-are-better-than-your-rubrics ‘More lace is grace’ crowd to the oft zealous bonhomie and non-ritual of many a low megachurch, few have escaped my lifelong tendency to snark.

So it may come as a surprise when I say ‘Ritual matters.’ One might wonder how someone who believes that can relentlessly mock those who take ritual so seriously? On the surface, holding both positions may seem untenable. Look beneath the surface, and it begins to make sense.

Ritual is utterly human; we all engage in it – for those who would claim that low churches don’t, just observe the unspoken rules of when and how to react within the ‘unstructured’ service, or ask them to change the Bible Study time by 15 minutes. But we often forget that ritual is a vehicle, not a destination. When we obsess about its appearance or form, or proudly deny its necessity, we have made ritual a destination, an end in itself, where it becomes meaningless, even destructive – the latter being seen most starkly in the lives of those with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, or OCD, where an anxious need for ritual for its own sake, to ward off some deeply felt impending catastrophe, can make it impossible to live in the world.

But ritual as a vehicle is something else altogether: it leads us to something larger, to a deeper reality, even if on the surface, it may seem trivial. For example, every morning when I come in, I ask Rachel if she wants me to put some water in the kettle for her. 9 times out of 10, the answer is ‘no’, but the point of asking is NOT to get a ‘yes’– it is something larger – a way of connecting at the beginning of the day.

If the small rituals – ‘Do you want coffee?’, the goodbye kiss for a loved one, the lighting of a pipe – matter, how much more the large ones that mark the moments where we cross thresholds, caught in that liminal space where we have one foot in each of two worlds, unsure how to leave one and enter the other? Moments where we make the choice to die to our old lives to be resurrected into a new – baptism; coming of age; marriage; ordination?

Ritual as a vehicle leads us into new, necessary, often difficult places – but they are needed, and what unfolds there is holy. Here, ritual becomes an outward sign of inward process, of inward grace, even though that process may not unfold as we expect, or even as we hope. Less dramatically, ritual guides us through liminal liturgical days of the year: Jewish Yom Kippur; the Muslim Lailat il Qadr; and yes, today, our Ash Wednesday. Ritual matters. Ritual is sacred.

It is for that reason that every year, on this liminal day when I take my first step into Lenten twilight, I wake up an hour early, travelling down the road, entering the dark, pre-7.30 mass hush of the Oratory to the faint, ever-present smell of incense, so still that the rustle of the brethren’s thin breviary pages can be heard through church. The confessional door opens and shuts, doing brisk trade for a weekday morning, the church slowly filling as those of us ready for work in this world make time for the other. After a while, several distinctive treads converge on the sacristy from favourite pews, and out of the silence, we move into the rhythm of the mass: collects, responses, readings, the imposition of ashes with the stark words, ‘Remember that thou art dust and to dust thou shalt return,’ communion, then out into a world where Ash Wednesday is just another work day, where one no longer quite belongs. Tonight, I will attend the longer solemn mass, allowing me to re-enter and anchor in the Lenten world.

‘But why?’ you may ask. What matters about Ash Wednesday, about Lent? If I had 50p for every time I’ve heard, ‘I don’t do Lent,’ I’d never have to work again. Given the post-mass coffee conversation in January, which sounds like parrots echoing, ‘What are you giving up for Lent?’ – my usual response being, ‘Church or being nice to people, not sure which’ – anti-Lent sentiment is easy to understand. Too often, Lenten abstinence becomes a matter of secular goals and pride – I should know, I still brag about the year I gave up curry – rather than spiritual practice.

If not with giving up teaspoons of sugar, or sweets, or even curry, where do we begin? As with all ritual, by going back to its roots, to what it is meant to symbolise or re-present: Our Lord’s 40 days fasting in the desert before beginning his public ministry, where He was tempted by Satan. Here is where we begin.

How then, do we model our Lent on our Lord’s time in the desert? What can show us the way? First, from the story of Jesus’ temptation, we learn that He was led by the Spirit– this withdrawal was no capricious decision of his, but divinely mandated and led, and so should ours be, through praying that G-d’s will be done and by making space for the Spirit to lead us.

He was led into the desert: that starkest of environments where nothing can be hidden, where all things are stripped back to their essentials, where resources must be drawn up from hidden depths, places that may not even be known to exist. Too often, we build our identity and our faith from the outside in: based on how we think it should look; on what others, particularly the given culture, see as ‘good’ or as ‘success’; our need for approval, which we mistake for love. So our Lent must be about stripping this false identity back and rebuilding it properly from the inside out: connecting with and coming right with ourselves and with G-d, allowing that to emanate outward to permeate the world, stripping back the barriers that keep us from fully being in our life in Christ: our defences, our need to control, our need for approval, our desire for power, our need to grasp – all the things that arise from fear which drive out our ability to live in perfect love.

He was tempted by and engaged with the devil. Giving something up or a glib 'I'm not going to be negative' is often a way of avoiding engaging with anything of substance, an avoidance of looking at ourselves unflinchingly and confronting our demons head on. We cannot ignore Satan when he tempts us: we, like Jesus, must answer. To truly enter Lent, we must search every corner of ourselves, opening every door, entering our darkest places. If we note where he tempts us, engaging him there with Christ, who has also been tempted, beside us, Satan cannot help but live out his angelic name, Lucifer – bringing light to bear on what was once in darkness, which can then be brought before G-d to be transformed.

Afterwards, Our Lord was ministered to by angels. G-d is always with us, offering support in many forms: through prayer, friends, Scripture, even through things we may consider our weaknesses. Even when He seems absent, because we must find our way to Him in free will, we must have faith that He is with us and allow Him to be with and minister to us in the ways He chooses to do so.

Our Lord's temptation in the desert is an initiation – a dying to the old and rising to the new, foreshadowing his crucifixion and resurrection in Holy Week and Easter. He was led to the desert, fasted, was tempted by Satan, and ministered to by angels – and when He emerged, he was no longer the private man He had been, but the Son of Man who was to heal, preach, and die on the Cross for our sins. So too must Lent be an initiation for us: a dying to that which keeps us from G-d and rising to new life in Him.

In this desert time, this Lenten twilight, let us not mistake stripping back to the heart of things, following in Christ's footsteps, for becoming less human. Too often we see our humanity as something to struggle against and excise rather than something to grow into and make whole. In few places is this mindset clearer than in the ubiquitous Christian question: "What would Jesus do?" – a purported attempt to help, but really a spiritual bypass to cut off another's very human mess so it doesn't bring us too close to our own. It’s not a question that makes any sense, at least not in the answers we offer. If you’d asked my father what I would do when he suggested an arranged marriage, he’d have said, "She’ll be upset, she’ll fight, but she’ll do it.” Never would he have dreamt of saying, “She’ll fill two bin bags with clothes, leave us a note on the fridge, and move out, never to spend another night under our roof.” I couldn’t have said that. And if we don’t know what those nearest us – or even we - would do, how much less do we know what our Lord & G-d would do? As I like to remind people when they ask that question,







Jesus got angry and...







...Jesus gave into doubt, agony, and fear in Gethsemane.

As our creed states, Christ was fully human as well as fully divine: in becoming man, He sanctified every aspect of our humanity: our hunger, our thirst, our joy, our love, our pain, our rage, our doubt – and therein lies the real answer to WWJD: Jesus would live the mess and help others live theirs. To follow Him, we must do the same: we must become more human, not less. To do otherwise is to deny the Incarnation and the goodness of G-d's creation, to make the grave error of mistaking wounded for evil. Our humanity needs inhabiting, not avoiding; healing, not destroying. Lent is about stripping back down to and coming into right relationship with our humanity and with G-d.

So often, I find that literature pulls everything I want to say together in a beautifully succinct, layered narrative, and today is no exception. I close with a passage from The Summer Tree, the first book in Guy Gavriel Kay's Fionavar Tapestry. In this trilogy, 5 Canadian university students are suddenly transported to the first world from which all others were born, Fionavar, each finding their vocation as the story unfolds. 

In this moment, Paul Schafer has offered himself as sacrifice in place of the High King of Brennin, whose refusal to undertake the required three days hanging on the Summer Tree has brought drought to the land: showing that when we refuse to carry our cross, refuse to become more human, we are not the only ones who suffer. Paul offers himself as a way to punish himself for the car crash in which his girlfriend, Rachel, died. We join him on the third day, after many trials, a divine visitation, and support from a mysterious grey dog who has stayed with and fought a battle for him:

And he understood then, finally: understood that it had to be naked, truly so, that one went to [G-d]. It was the Tree, stripping him down, layer by layer, down to what he was hiding from...

He was the Arrow now. The Arrow on the Tree, and he was to be given naked or not at all.

And so, on the third night, Paul Schafer came to the last test, the one that was always failed, the opening. Where the Kings of Brennin or those coming in their name, found that the courage to be there, the strength to endure, even love of their land were none of them enough. On the Tree, one could no longer hide from the living or the dead, from one's own soul. Naked or not at all, one went to [G-d]. And oh, that was too much for them, too hard to be forced to go into the darkest places then, so weak, so impossibly vulnerable.

And they would let go, brave Kings of the sword, wise ones, gallant Princes, all would turn away from so much nakedness and die too soon.

But not that night. Because of pride, of pure stubbornness, and because, most surely, of the dog, Paul Schafer found the courage not to turn. Down he went. Arrow of the G-d. So open the wind could pass, light shine through him. Last door.

As Paul's heart finally broke, as his tears for Rachel finally fell, so too did the drought of Brennin break and rain fall, bringing promise of new growth to a land long barren. When we choose to carry our cross, enter fully into our humanity, engaging with both our light and our deepest darkness, we are not the only ones who are blessed.

May we who step into the desert this Ash Wednesday, following in Our Lord's footsteps, find the courage to be led by the Spirit, rending our hearts and not our garments, allowing ourselves to be stripped down, coming before G-d naked and vulnerable through that last door: so open that the Spirit's breath passes and G-d’s light shines through us, emerging into new life with Christ, Our Lord, on Easter Day. Amen.

San Juan de la Cruz, meet Gaudete Sunday

Last week, I was on Facebook chat with a friend when this happened:

Clerical friend: The Czech church impressed me immensely. The archbishop is a hugely impressive man - spent time in prison under Communism but still full of joy.

Me, thoughtfully: But you know, sometimes I think that only people who have been through really hard things can experience joy. Everyone can experience happiness, but joy is too deep, too much a creature of light AND shadow, to be part of the life that has had no darkness in it.

Clerical friend: I think there is some truth in that. He was just full of joy. He reminded me in that respect of your great clerical crush... :-P

Me: Because joy has to underpin everything we go through. Denis Hurley, THAT clerical crush? Or Oscar Romero? Or our current pope who I am totally in love with? :-P

Clerical friend: Tutu.

Me: OMG. YES.

Clerical friend: I forget you have so many. :-D

There it was. Not the bit about clerical crushes, we all know that. No, the part where I finally articulated something I've felt for a long time about joy out loud outside of a very small circle (say, 2) that I don't believe that people who haven't suffered deeply are capable of joy.

And so today's meeting of the feast day of San Juan de la Cruz, the mystic saint of the dark night of the soul, and Gaudete Sunday, that Advent Sunday of joyful expectation in the midst of a penitent season, felt like the perfect marriage to me.

It doesn't seem a likely pairing, does it? The dark night, the night of 'darkness and concealment', and the Sunday in Advent that gives us a glimpse of that day which is 'like the dawning of the morning on the mountain's golden heights'.

But that's just it, isn't it? There would be no dawning without the darkness from which it emerges, no joy without sorrow. We may be able to see that, but we may still feel the tension of apparent opposites. Reading San Juan's La Noche Oscura (preferably in the Spanish, but if not, there are plenty of wonderful English translations) helps us bridge it:


ni yo miraba cosa, 

sin otra luz ni guía 

sino la que en el corazón ardía. 

Aquésta me guïaba 

más cierta que la luz del mediodía.

And I saw nothing,
With no other light to guide me,
but the one that in my heart burned.
It guided me,
More surely than midday light.

When it is dark, when nothing lights us from without, we suddenly realise we are lit from within by a flame that that may blaze brightly or be banked, but is ever present. Then, it is the light burning deep within us, the one placed in us - our light - that must guide us, burning away the dross, the masks, the non-essential, leading us to do what we would would never imagine ourselves capable of in the comfort of daylight.

That inner light, not lit by us, but burning within us since our birth? Our joy. It is often the dark night of the soul that brings us to it.

San Juan de la Cruz, meet Gaudete Sunday.

Why is this? Because joy, unlike happiness (or at least the current understanding of happiness as pleasure), resides at depth. Think about how we express our sense of it: 'I am brimming with joy,' 'I am full of joy,' as if joy were something welling up from deep within us, from a spring we were not aware of until it overflowed into our consciousness and onto those around us. And so the foundation of joy must be sought in the depths, not the turbulent shallows, not the noisy sunlit topside, but in places of stillness, of light and shadow, in the place where we feel most deeply, the place that often only shows when life rips our outer persona from us through catastrophe, sorrow, the dark night of the soul.

Perhaps Gibran expresses it best:

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?

And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?

As we approach Christmas, we get a hint of that understanding of joy as something deeper in one of my favourite carols, The Seven Joys of Mary. We glide through it until we hit the dissonance of the penultimate verse:

The next great joy that Mary had, 

It was the joy of six.

To see her own son Jesus Christ 

Upon the crucifix.

Wait, WHAT? Excuse me, songwriting dude, but are you on the medieval equivalent of CRACK? 

Perhaps. But perhaps too, he had an understanding of joy that we have lost. Perhaps he understood that Our Lady remembered that she had been told that a sword would pierce her soul also, and that she had been pondering it in her heart ever since her son was in swaddling clothes. Perhaps he knew, too, that as she looked up at Him on the cross, the depth of her pain was equalled by the depth of her joy in having been His mother, having had that closest of relationships with Him, as Gibran reminds us:

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

If that last example was too theological, let's look at a secular one from a fortnight ago - Michael Clarke's eulogy for one of his closest friends, Phil Hughes:

He'd definitely be calling me a 'sook' now, that's for sure.

[snip]

I walked to the middle of the SCG on Thursday night and I felt those same blades of grass beneath my feet, where he and I and so many of his mates here today have built partnerships, taken chances and played out the dreams we had in our heads as boys.

The same stands where the crowds rose to their feet to cheer him on and that same fence he sent the ball to time and time again.

And it’s now forever the place where he fell.

I stood there at the wicket, I knelt down to touch the grass. I swear he was there with me, picking me up off my feet to check if I was OK. Telling me we just needed to dig in and get through to tea.

Telling me off for that loose shot I played. Chatting about what movie we might watch that night, and then passing on a useless fact about cows.

Only those closest to you, those who take the greatest joy in your presence and whose hearts will break into a million pieces when you go, know exactly when you'll be calling them a sook and that you pass on useless facts about cows. 

In the midst of his deepest sorrow, Michael Clarke remembered and spoke of his deepest joy.

Joy is that light in us anchored in authenticity, intimacy, connection - with ourselves, with G-d, with others.

In the end, joy is rooted in that deepest & truest of all things: love. 

Whilst joy is constant, its form is not: it can be the quiet contentment of a sleeping babe in arms; the fierce exultation in a friend's accomplishment; the gratefulness for the chance to sit with a friend in their darkness; the sense of rightness about our current path; being unexpectedly brought alive by beauty whilst gripped by the most ferocious depression.

Joy is not external trappings, though it can be expressed by them: candles, vestments, incense (which always takes me back to childhood summers at Anarkali bazaar),  jumping up and down, squees, song, fizzy happiness. The touchstone is this: are those external trappings a way to hide, a way to maintain external order over internal chaos, to keep a death grip on the sunny topside, desperately avoiding the descent to the depths you can feel coming by the increasingly strong tug on your ankles? Or are they in consonance, in harmony, in order, with who you are and what you are feeling and how you want to express it?

As you wear those beautiful trappings and gravely celebrate or loudly dance and proclaim your happiness about G-d and saviour, do you ignore those who reach out to you in pain because it provokes panic and anxiety, fear that their pain will drag you under?  Do you desperately hope that they will take the hint from your silence and never come to you again? Or, if you find yourself able, do you go up to them and say, 'I'm sorry I didn't say anything, I didn't know what to say,' - the reaction that will make me want to cup your face in my hands, look you in the eye, and say, 'I know. You can't even be with your own pain, how could I expect you to sit with me in mine?'

If you're avoiding sitting with pain, honest connection, even though you paint a beautiful picture, hug everyone around you, dance and sing, smile and laugh, tell everyone how happy the good news makes you, that's not joy.

If, no matter what you wear, how you celebrate, you come towards me when I express my pain, reaching for connection, if you have the courage to stand up and talk about the dark night of the soul you experienced as a curate in a sermon on Gaudete Sunday, that is joy.

Joy insists that we go where we would often rather not - to our deepest places, where our oldest, most essential pain, sorrow, and darkness reside. But amongst these sit our truest essence, our brightest light, our surest guide - because all these things: light and shadow, joy and sorrow, woundedness and healing are true. And all of them are born of love: lost, rejected, given, and received. Joy will always insist on our truth and, like the chrysalis forcing the butterfly to beat its wings against it, on our growth.

Joy doesn't promise us ease - those days that we can only take one breath at a time because the pain is so intense will still come. But it does promise us the light that will guide us step by step, more certain than the light of midday, until...

and from the darkness we have light,
which make the angels sing this night

And if you think the angels will sing one iota less joyously for your step into love and freedom than they did for the birth of the saviour, I suspect you have another think coming. I think San Juan might agree.

May you ever hear them sing as you follow your light through the night to join with your Beloved.

Gaudete.

Ten books which have changed my life (FB challenge)

So, the Northern Lights are reluctant to make an appearance here, which means I will be doing the 10 book challenge I've been nominated for several times over. With the usual disclaimer that so many more than 10 books have changed my life, and in no particular order except the one in which they come to mind:

1. The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan: it articulated so much about being a child of immigrants that I had felt, but had been unable to express. I couldn't put it down, I couldn't stop crying, and it may be time to re-read it.

2. A Wrinkle in Time and all related books by Madeleine L'Engle. To this day, I use Echthroi, Deepening, kairos and chronos to explain things. I was talking to a friend the other day about another friend I'm worried about, and I said, 'You know, he reminds me of Charles Wallace under IT.' L'Engle's theology helped me articulate mine, and I lost myself in her stories. I still do. And I still cry when Progo...oh, go read them!

3. Goddesses in Every Woman by Jean Shinoda Bolen. My introduction to archetypes and Jungian psychology. Need I say more?

4. Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola-Estes. I got a copy in 2003 when a Catholic acquaintance was giving hers away. I owe her the deepest thanks: not only did it fill my love of fairy tales and my need for diving deep into the psyche, it was so beautifully written, it read like poetry. Bliss.

5. My Grandfather's Blessings (and its companion, Kitchen Table Wisdom) by Rachel Remen. H/T Alison Porter for this recommendation. Rachel's stories of her family, her practice, her life, entwined with her reflections on the deeper significance are absolutely soul-restoring, and food for spiritual hunger. She is one of my heroines, and I actually have 2 copies - one I lend and one that doesn't leave the house.

6. The Wizard of Oz & associated books: These were the first books I remember being able to completely lose myself in, to escape from here. The irony being, of course, that I collected the whole set because they were the books my uncle bribed me with so I wouldn't tell my parents about the sexual abuse. Several years later, he asked for him back, and I said, 'No.'

7. The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran: I discovered this on a bookshelf in my father's office when I was 11ish, saw it had been given to him by one of his brothers (NOT that one, but Ambereen and Saira's dad, whom I absolutely adore), and my curiosity was piqued. I took it upstairs to my bedroom and was immediately entranced. Even then, though I didn't have the depth of experience to fully understand and appreciate it, I knew I'd found MY spirituality, MY prophet - and his name wasn't Muhammad.

8. The White Dragon/Pern series by Anne McCaffrey: I found it in the Holton library when I was about 11, and it was the first Pern book I read (I later went back and read the series in order, along with the other trilogies I could get my hands on). I identified deeply with Jaxom and fell in love with Robinton - and later fiercely identified with Menolly in the Harper Hall trilogy (but I wanted to Impress a dragon!).

9. The Shack by William P. Young: Blew the doors off my understanding of G-d and the Trinity. My entire relationship with G-d shifted profoundly after reading that book, because I finally began to trust that I was loved. I have a hard copy, but I suspect it's one I'll want on my Kindle for easy access.

10. Train to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh: I knew my parents had been through Partition - and for some reason, when I was young, I'd assumed it had been a very orderly transition, not recognising much of my parents' behaviour for what it was - the result of extreme trauma. It was only when I stumbled across a documentary here on Partition, sitting through it horrified, that I truly understood. A friend recommended Khushwant Singh's book - a gripping, harrowing read that made me finally understand what my parents had been through and why they were who they were.

Persephone, Ogboinba, Cybele, Oya: or, What Samhain can do for you, pt II

(If you missed Pt I, you'll want to start here.)

And fell for the longest time.

Persephone. Ogboinba. Cybele. Oya.

With the exception of Oya, who wasn't drawn, but jumped out of the deck, not a single one of those goddesses was mine. 

Persephone was where it began. I sat back, curious to see how she had been interpreted:

Persephone, the Maiden. Find ways to use your innocence as your strength.She is for innocence, and you had yours taken from you much earlier than it should have been, and I think she is here to point out that you need to explore your relationship with that. But there's something else here, something about how you've felt towards that self, maybe? I'm not sure, but I get this feeling that she's here to point to an anger, or even something darker, that you feel to the part of yourself that is vulnerable.

So easy. It would have been so easy to pull back from that, tell her she was wrong whilst acknowledging that 'Yes, I do need to tap into my innocence and vulnerability to be stronger as per Brene Brown, blah blah. Thank you for this, but I might be just a bit angry about it all, but really, I'm just fine.' *Good Mother Demeter airy handwave*

But to do that would have been to continue the lie, to deny the tidal wave of feeling emerging, to make the choice to continue my parents' work and remain disconnected from others. The time had come to make a different choice and speak the truth. But as it always is when I lose myself in writing, I'm never sure what that truth is till I read it back:

Fuck. YES... I am SO angry. Yes, you're right. I've hated Persephone since I was a child, because she pranced around picking flowers doing girly shit FEELING SAFE and HA! LOOK WHAT HAPPENED TO HER, SEE, YOU STUPID NAIVE BITCH???? And then she tried to trick her way out OF WHAT SHE DESERVED BECAUSE SHE WAS TOO STUPID TO KEEP AN EYE OUT. As far as I was concerned, she was weak. I wanted NO part of her in Jean Shinoda Bolen's book, NONE. SHE was weak. *I* was not. Fucking Kore.

And that's how I've felt about my vulnerability: not just ANGRY at it, but repelled by it. At some level, part of me thinks that vulnerable child got exactly what she deserved because she wasn't looking. Like Persephone.

I typed out the full comment, not fully aware of what I was saying till I sat back and read it. Again. And again. 

Horrified. Shaken. But finally knowing the truth: 

I'd always blamed Persephone for her rape, because of her innocence, her freedom from care (which I equated with irresponsibility) and her lack of vigilance. And in the same way, I blamed the child I'd been, her vulnerability and lack of vigilance, for her parents' emotional abuse and her uncle's sexual abuse.

MY. MY PARENTS. MY UNCLE.

And yet, I'd rip the throat out of anyone who dared suggest that a child was in any way at fault for any abuse that befell them; that a woman was at fault for being raped. But somehow, it was ok to blame the child I was for not being stronger, more vigilant, for not acting.

I'm just starting to cope with that. As I continued in my comment, 'Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I knew it was bad, but.'

And in the moment I realised what I'd done, I finally understood the truth about innocence, which I'd conflated with naivete and wilful ignorance:

[W]hat strikes me about innocence is that it is a NATURAL state. Like Cybele's wildness. And in my rage at my NATURAL innocence, twisting it into a reason for being abused, I cut myself off from my NATURE as a whole. That's why I don't know who I am outside this identity of helper; what my gifts are; what my intuition says for ME; why I'm not in touch with my wild side, as it were - why it's only the responsible, CONTROLLED side that shows.There's so much in my nature I'm not even aware of, such primal, passionate, wild side - Cybele, who Persephone really needs to grow into, not her more controlled mother (hence no Demeter in this reading, because she is very much part of my persona, and this reading is about who I REALLY am underneath it all, the parts I don't know).

In my vulnerability, my innocence, is my wildness - and my way. As Clarissa Pinkola-Estes put it, 'The wild has a vast integrity to it.' And that is what I have cut myself off from - and why I find it so hard to move.

It is why I have never found this - which I desire more than anything - because to have that intimacy - emotionally, spiritually and sexually - one needs to be able to truly surrender, to truly let go - to become vulnerable and trust. To be wild, natural. And I can't. I'm not easily held, even - perhaps most especially - in the deepest pain and despair. 

But perhaps yesterday made a start. Time will tell. 

Persephone and Cybele, anchoring the reading because they were the overarching theme: innocence, nature, wild, integrity. 

As my friend pointed out, we ALL start from the Kore. For me to deny the Kore, yet accept Persephone, Queen of Hades and conveyor of the dead, is to deny my process, my wholeness, and in the end, myself.

That should have been enough, might have been, but Ogboinba appeared in the reading. I had a hunch she would, and she has always been the one I'd rather not see. The short version of her story is that though her powers grew and she became the most sought-after healer and prophetess, she could not have children, and travelled seven kingdoms to seek a way to become able to bear a child and become a mother.

The warning against discontent is too close to the bone, as is the desire for children - both of these make her an apparently easy read when she shows up for me. 

But as I fell into that literal reading, I felt an intense resistance. This wasn't right, and I knew it wasn't just avoidance. I sat with it for a while, asking Ogboinba what she wanted to say here. When the answer came, it shifted the ground under my feet, which will never be the same again:

I could see that [about the child], but I thought, 'Yeah, we know that about me. But this isn't quite about that.'

And then I realised - in this case, the child Ogboinba is looking for is ME. Me as a child who grew up in a happy family; me the undamaged child, the child who was allowed to BE a child. In essence, she is me, travelling over the world again and again, searching for that halcyon childhood I wanted so desperately, the only way I ever believed that I would find out who I was. Searching for the safety, the love, the time to become who I was, to have that group, those people who loved me unconditionally, in whom I could rest.

In my hands were all these gifts born in the crucible of my family - the ability to see, the ability to heal, the ability to know, the incredible strength, problem-solving, the empathy, the ability to use anger as a tool - my arms were overflowing with gifts.

But *I* wanted home. I was FURIOUS at having these gifts; furious that I would HAVE TO USE THEM, be a COMMODITY to the DIVINE, like I was a COMMODITY to my parents. I KNEW, when I asked you last night, that Ogboinba was going to show up; I knew it.

And when I read what you wrote about Ogboinba, this RAGE filled me; this UTTER FURY worthy of Oya. I thought, 'HOW DARE YOU. HOW DARE YOU DEMAND OF ME WHEN YOU GAVE ME *NOTHING*. NO PLACE TO REST, NO PLACE TO BE LOVED, NO SANCTUARY. HOW. FUCKING. DARE. YOU. I REFUSE. YOU *OWE* ME. WHY? WHY SHOULD I PUT MYSELF OUT FOR YOU?

"I WOULD HAVE GIVEN BACK EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THESE GIFTS TO BE LOVED. TO FIND MY BESHERT AND BE MARRIED AND RAISE CHILDREN AND HAVE A QUIET LIFE. EVERY SINGLE ONE. BUT YOU GIVE ME NOTHING AND HAVE THE NERVE TO DEMAND SO FUCKING MUCH. I HATE YOU. I DON'T WANT THIS AND I WILL NOT USE IT OF MY OWN ACCORD. YOU WANT ME TO USE IT, YOU'LL HAVE TO FUCKING PULL IT OUT OF ME."

THAT, for me, is the essence of Ogboinba here. I want what I can never, ever get back; what I can never ever be. I hold all this given me, all that I've made out of it, but I want to be able to be that laughing little girl; that girl who walked into adulthood certain of love. That girl who grew up playing with fashion, clubbing, experimenting, loving college and forming lifelong friendships even through the angst. And I haven't seen that I've gotten so much, but not in the way I wanted.

Finally, finally, years after I should have done, I did what I tell everyone else they should do. I told G-d the truth, no holds barred - everything that was in my heart, everything raw and wild, not pre-processed and analysed in a neat little 'Yes, I know I'm upset about this, and this is why, so it's ok' package. It wasn't okay. It still ISN'T ok. It may NEVER be ok.

But you know what? That's ok.

Because as all that was ripped out - my solar plexus STILL feels sore - and released, something else took its place.

Connection. I finally FELT G-d. And I finally felt ME.

I did one more long overdue thing: I wept. I wept for the little girl I was, the one I wanted to be, the woman I'd wanted to become, the woman I am. 

At long last, I was home.

Black and White

An example of how laterally my brain works: last night, something outside sounded like a bullfrog ==> so I posted on FB that he might be called Jeremiah ==> Three Dog Night ==> my favourite song by them.


In fact, one of my favourite songs of all time.


It was decades after desegregation that I first heard this as a child, and even then, I felt its power: I stayed stock-still to listen - and cried, falling in love with it years past its heyday.


I sang it as I watched Nelson Mandela walk out of prison on television, wanting to ring it out over South Africa in joy and pride.


Today, after SCOTUS' Voting Rights Act decision of a few weeks ago, after Trayvon and George Zimmerman, even the furore around the biracial couple in the Cheerios advert, the sense of Martin Luther King's dream dying makes it even more powerful and poignant, especially as I learned today, whilst hunting it down, that the original 1954 version opened with this verse:

Their robes were black, Their heads were white,
The schoolhouse doors were closed so tight,
Nine judges all set down their names,
To end the years and years of shame.

The Warren Court. The Court I so desperately wish could have been immortal; and if not them, then the Burger Court that followed them, the Court of my childhood.

Three Dog Night dropped the verse - and why not? It was 18 years after Brown v Board of Education; 8 years after the Civil Rights Act. They thought we'd won. How wrong they were.


My heart hurt - I'm not sure how many more times it can break.


And just like that first time, the older me wept, for different reasons - for the hope in the song, the certainty we were going to be there soon, surely in the 28 years that would mark the millennium. They could never have imagined the SCOTUS decision in 2013 that would be so different from the 1954 one. 

The world is black, the world is white, with so many of us so many shades in between. And together we learn to...do everything.


Perchance to dream that one day, all the colour of one's skin will mean to anyone is how much melanin it contains.

A love letter to Boston

Dear Boston,

I have a confession to make: though I've never set foot in you, I've been in love with you for most of my life. Crazy, right?

I'm not sure how or when it happened, but I was slightly taller than knee-high to a Shetland pony, I think. I hadn't run into 'We're all marching to Pretoria' yet, so nowhere in South Africa had entered consideration. I was already in love with London after a brief stop in LHR on our way to Pakistan (the chips were really good, what's a girl to do?). I hadn't met NYC yet - but that was never a contender. DC was nice, beautiful during cherry blossom season, Bawlmer was lovely, but...

...it was always you.

I think it was Social Studies class, really. You know, THAT story. The Tea Party. The little Muslim girl I was secretly loved your rebellious spirit; your heart to fight for what you believed in. (And TEA, seriously? Who drinks that stuff? I just KNOW you wouldn't have done the same with perfectly good cawfee.) Then, I heard about your winters - and I LOVE snowy winters (Ok, a lot of it is cold rain, I hear, but...). And what politically minded young girl didn't kinda sorta fall head over heels for the young JFK? AND OMG, the OCEAN. Finally, I saw your skyline. That was it. YOU were it.

But I never got there. My parents only let me apply to Harvard and MIT, and we totally knew that wasn't going to happen (because MY rebellion was underachieving) - but if I'd applied and gotten into BU, BC, Brandeis, Tufts or Wellesley, the DC metro area wouldn't have seen me for dust. 

And somewhere in my heart, I suspect south of the Mason-Dixon Line would never have seen me again as a permanent resident. I was even willing to forgive THAT 'a' - you know, the one where people pahk their cah. How's that for true love?

But it never happened, and life - and my preference for sleeping and pottering during time off - got in the way of my even flying into Logan to visit and meant that I only loved you from afar through glimpses and your natives.

From those glimpses of your city and your people, I built up a picture: warm and welcoming - if reserved at first before opening your heart; intellectual; down-to-earth; scrappy; the only people outside Poland able to pronounce Yastrzemski; stubborn enough to refuse to recognise the letter 'r' as part of the English language; hardy; people who put their shoulder to the wheel when the going gets tough - or even when it doesn't. 

Yeah, my crush on you is a big one. And I swear, if we'd found each other, I would never have cheated on you with London.

So, when I heard the news yesterday, my heart broke - even more when I had to tell my friend, Phil, who had spent his university/graduate years in your city, what had happened. I don't have the right to claim any kind of deep grief: that goes to your own and those who have known and loved you over the years. Nor can I claim any understanding of how you feel: the only inkling I have is from how I felt when I saw pictures of Washington on 9/11 or when I heard about London on 7/7. But that is only an inkling. 


All I can say is that my heart is with you - and so are my prayers, my sorrow and my deepest condolences.

Grieve. Weep. Stop. Take all the time you need to get back on your feet. We've got your back. And hard as it is, don't close your heart. Stay Boston - that will be the ultimate triumph.

Boston - we love you and we need you - as much as we did in 1776.

We always will. 

Love, 
Me