29. The beauty of the unconscious

The beauty of the unconscious is that it knows a great deal—whether personal or collective—but it always knows that it does not know, cannot say, and dare not try to prove or assert too strongly; because what it does know is that there is always more—and all words will fall short. The contemplative is precisely the person who agrees to live in that unique kind of brightness (a combination of light and dark that is brighter still!). The Paradox, of course, is that it does not feel like brightness at all, but what John of the Cross calls a “luminous darkness,” or others call “learned ignorance.”

In summary, you cannot grow in the great art form, the integration of action and contemplation, without 1) a strong tolerance for ambiguity; 2) an ability to allow, forgive, and contain a certain degree of anxiety; and 3) a willingness to not know and not even need to know. This is how you allow and encounter mystery. All else is mere religion.

Fr. Richard Rohr

22. Aesthetic and Religious Experience

Although I'm continuing to post my "found" small stones and an occasional photograph every day this month, I wanted to leave this post at the top of the blog for a few days to try to encourage more of you to leave a comment and to read the ones that have been left so far. I've spent a lifetime trying to develop my own "natural aptitude" for music and art and self-expression, but also for spirituality — and trying to explore the connections between these areas, which I find self-evident but I realize many do not. However, I'd argue that everyone is born with the potential for creativity and spirituality — some with more natural aptitude, to be sure — but life (often in the form of teachers and institutions) destroys our joy, dulls our senses, and undermines our confidence. Unfortunately that often happens at such an early age that people can never find their way again. This happens, I would argue, with gifts of the spirit just as much as with gifts of creativity, and is even more problematic in societies where spirituality is confused with organized religion, difficult to speak about, and where "masters" are rare or unrecognized because they don't necessarily go around wearing robes or clerical collars…

 

 "His kind of faith is a gift. It’s like an ear for music or the talent to draw"
Crimes and Misdemeanors, Woody Allen

Profound aesthetic experiences, no less than the religious experiences of which James wrote, deserve to be thought of as gifts to the spirit. They may engender a sense of awe and mystery, and of the sublime; they may provoke a feeling of being privileged and so of gratitude. The experience may be at once elevating and humbling. These represent important points of contact with religious moments.

The points of contact are not limited to such reactions. Artistic and religious virtuosity both involve, even begin with, natural aptitude, as noted in the quotation from Crimes and Misdemeanors. Some are more given to these things than others. And in both domains, hard work, genuine focus — at times single-minded — is essential if one is to approach one’s potential. We are less apt to think this way about the religious domain than the artistic. But a religious giant, a Mozart of the spirit, is a rare find; she is (certainly typically) one who has labored strenuously in pursuit of excellence.  And just as one who is tone-deaf can appreciate the musically gifted as responding to something of substance, one who is less able than another in matters of the spirit can recognize the latter’s accomplishment. Needless to say, being tonedeaf is a rare condition in either domain. Ordinarily people occupy an intermediate position within a wide spectrum of which being tone-deaf is at one extreme.

from "The Significance of Religious Experience" by Howard Wettstein, Professor of Philosophy, University of California, Riverside.

What do you think?

 

 

8.

Resolve to Live a Life of Great Love

We must learn to be able to think and behave like Jesus, who is the archetypal human. This becomes the journey of great love and great suffering. This journey leads us to a universal love where we just don’t love those who love us. We must learn to participate in a larger love—divine love.

If we remain autonomous, independent, self-sufficient, we cannot know God nor can we love God. St. John of the Cross says: “God refuses to be known; God can only be loved.”

Any journey of great love or great suffering make us go deeper into our faith and eventually into what can only be called universal truth. Love and suffering are finally the same, because those who love deeply are committing themselves to eventual suffering. Those who suffer often become the greatest lovers.

Fr. Richard Rohr

I hope you aren't too put off by the religious words in this quote, because there's so much to think about in it. The main point, as Rohr says in his title for this meditation, is to "Resolve to Live a Life of Great Love." That resonated with me because it's what I've tried to do for a long time, without having heard it put quite this way: to love more and more deeply — and more and more selflessly — all other beings, the earth, the beauty of own creations, and whatever we call the force that connects us: that force Paul Tillich called "the ground of all being." A life of great love means loving yourself, too. Giving your heart to loving greatly means taking a lot of risks, but I think the rewards are worth it.

(Richard Rohr is a Franciscan priest and founding director of the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He writes regularly for Sojourners, Tikkun, and the Huffington Post.)

 

 

Thoughts on the Shortest Day

Solstice. At 7 am, I rise in near-darkness and go into the front room. I open the  louvered blinds, and peer out, to the south, at an overcast, dim morning. The weak and greyish light reminds me of the day three months ago when we landed in Reykjavik, where it is now dark all day long. Here, inside the room with me, is a green spruce tree, bare except for hundreds of sparkling tiny lights that have been glowing all night long. I close my eyes and smell its fragrance, and open them to see again its incongruous beauty.

Yesterday, though, was clear, and in the early morning I watched the sun itself trace a low arc behind the trees. I left the house at 1 pm, wanting to do my shopping in the brightest part of the day, but even so, walking down boulevard St-Denis, I could only feel a faint warmth on my face. It’s no wonder we in the north feel bereft now, forgotten.

In spite of science, all my life I’ve thought of the sun as the wanderer. He begins to leaves us in August, becoming as neglectful as a distracted lover, and travels south  to where he is right now – Patagonia perhaps – standing on a mountain peak gazing toward Antarctica. Later today he’ll slowly come down the path he climbed, pack his things, and once again turn his face toward the north.

Northern pagan people spent these weeks in anticipation, and celebrated the solstice with joy.  Because the sun seems to stand still at solstice, the Roman astronomers waited for a few days before definitively declaring its return journey; therefore they placed the date of Christ’s birth on December 25. The clever placement of Christmas, a few days past solstice, conflated the new religion with the existing festival.

Oriens, the Latin word for East, also became the morning star – Venus when seen at dawn — the dayspring, dawn of heaven, even the rising sun itself, and these became epithets for Christ. For weeks we’ve been singing O Dayspring from on high appear, and calling on the brightest and best of the sons of the morning to dawn on our darkness and send us his aid. Christ died and left us, goes the theology, but he returns at Christmas to renew us, and will eventually come again to reign.

I’ve been even less enthusiastic than usual about Advent this year. Anticipation, yes; bringing life and light inside our cold, dark homes, yes — but focusing on my own unpreparedness, forgetfulness, sins and weaknesses, no. Only western Christianity would create a penitential season at a time when people are already depressed and starved for light. But I’m not a pagan, for all my love of the natural world, and my awareness of the way its rhythm beats in my heart, and always has.

What do I believe then, what do I believe? Not in Christ’s return, except metaphorically. I believe in now, and so, I think, did he. I know from experience that times of obscurity are often followed by insight, darkness by light, and that the two are necessary for each other, but that wisdom comes from being observant to this very moment: the weak light, the clarity of ice.  Today that paper-thin edge of duality — that single but two-sided coin — turns its face, but neither one is better than the other. I believe in long journeys, the persistence of love, and the value of endurance: my face in the stinging cold, my feet that want to slip on the ice but find their balance, the sun’s eventual return.

Remembrance and Renewal

 ("The scars of September 11")

Our cathedral community includes a number of Canadian-Americans, many of whom came up during the 1960s and never left. We are the odd ones who came recently, driven by a different war and a different set of national paranoias and persecutions. Each Sunday there is a place in the liturgy for "the Prayers of the People" – a lay-led set of intercessions, fairly freely composed as a litany, in which we pray for the world, for our local community, for the Church, and for each other. It comes right before the general confession, which precedes communion.

J. and I were asked to lead these prayers on September 11, and although I rarely include prayers here, I thought this time I would, since I wrote them for this occasion and they express pretty well my feelings about this day — and I also thought some of you might be interested in this part of what we liturgy-besotted Anglicans actually do. Constructing and writing liturgical text is a challenge that I like; I've done quite a bit of it but most often for groups of mixed faith traditions. Liturgy is like drama – or perhaps I should say, it is drama — there must be ebb and flow; beauty and rhythm akin to prose poetry; a build-up of tension and release; and an overall control of the flow of emotion and content. It can be very effective and meaningful, or it can fall flat. In our tradition we have a pretty high standard of writing and language, and that's both challenging and helpful.

When I address "God" here I am speaking not to some omnipotent deity "out there" seated on a throne from which he (of course, "he") manipulates us like puppets, but to the force for good that I believe exists not only in the world but inside each of us — what Paul Tillich called "the ground of being" — that we can access when we reflect deeply and are motivated in our decisions and actions by love.

–

On this tenth anniversary of September 11, 2001, let us pray for our world.

Dear Lord, today we remember. We each remember where we were ten years ago, our shock and horror. We remember the strangers whose deaths we witnessed, those we knew who were affected, and those whose heroism saved others. We remember the families of the victims, and the survivors. And we pray for all of them.

(all) Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer.

Ten years ago, a friend wrote:

Another week has come to an end. Some of the people in my neighborhood are able to move back. There is only access by foot and many police checkpoints. People are trying to get back to some kind of normalcy. Our building isn’t open yet. Another, around the corner, may need to come down – the fire damage was extensive from the plane parts that hit and are still in the building. I have concern for the children in the neighborhood who will have to return to this. We, along with the rest of the country, are waiting to see what happens next. I can’t imagine the type of war people are suggesting. Someone wrote on a sidewalk nearby, “An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.”

Dear Lord, today we mourn. We mourn for our lost innocence, and for a changed world – a world which has become more fearful, and, as a result, more extremist, more paranoid, more violent and oppressive, and much less secure. We mourn our inability to reach toward one another, and our perpetual human tendency to turn to violence because we cannot believe strongly enough in love. We mourn our failure to embrace difference, and our missed opportunities for humility, self-examination, and peace-making. As Christians, we mourn the fact that you have told us again and again to turn away from hatred, and to love one another — and still we have not heard you.

And so, Lord, today we bring to you our sadness, our frustration, our fears for ourselves and our children. We bring our uncertainties, and we bring our hope. Help us to know who we are meant to be, and what we are called to do, and to act with courage and faith for justice, truth and peace, always remembering Jesus’ commandment: love one another.

Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer.

We pray for our country of Canada, and for our unique city of Montreal, home to so many people from all over the world, living in relative harmony. We pray that our country and city may continue to be beacons of peace, freedom, and opportunity, and that our leaders may heed these words from the First Book of Kings: “A multitude of wise men is the salvation of the world, and a sensible king is the stability of his people.”

(all) Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer.

 

Let us pray for the Church

(specific prayers are said for our parish and diocese, and our prayer partner, the diocese of Masasi and this week's prayer cycle-partner, Myanmar.)

Dear God, we pray for the Church. Imbue our leaders with the courage to preach the Gospel as your Son intended: to be peacemakers, to champion the oppressed and the weak, and to stand and speak for peace, justice, and honesty against the powers and principalities of the world. Inspire in all of us faith in your grace and in your presence working among us, and help us to remember these words of Archbishop Oscar Romero: “Do not worry about whether or not you are effective. Worry about what is possible for you to do, which is always greater than you imagine.”

(all) Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer.

Let us pray for members of our own community:

(a list of names follows of those in special need) 

And let us take a moment to pray for those closest to us, and for those we love who have departed from this life. (silence)

(all) Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer.

And so, let us bring ourselves before God, asking his forgiveness and renewal:

(all) Have mercy upon us, most merciful Father; in your compassion, forgive us our sins, known and unknown, things done and left undone, and so uphold us by your Spirit that we may live and serve you in newness of life, to the honour and glory of your name; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

A)    On this tenth anniversary of September 11, 2001, let us pray for our world.

Dear Lord, today we remember. We each remember where we were ten years ago, our shock and horror. We remember the strangers whose deaths we witnessed, those we knew who were affected, and those whose heroism saved others. We remember the families of the victims, and the survivors. And we pray for all of them.

Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer.

 

Ten years ago, a friend wrote:

Another week has come to an end. Some of the people in my neighborhood are able to move back. There is only access by foot and many police checkpoints. People are trying to get back to some kind of normalcy. Our building isn’t open yet. Another, around the corner, may need to come down – the fire damage was extensive from the plane parts that hit and are still in the building. I have concern for the children in the neighborhood who will have to return to this.

We, along with the rest of the country, are waiting to see what happens next. I can’t imagine the type of war people are suggesting. Someone wrote on a sidewalk nearby, “An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.”

 

Dear Lord, today we mourn. We mourn for our lost innocence, and for a changed world – a world which has become more fearful, and, as a result, more extremist, more paranoid, more violent and oppressive, and much less secure. We mourn our inability to reach toward one another, and our perpetual human tendency to turn to violence because we cannot believe strongly enough in love. We mourn our failure to embrace difference, and our missed opportunities for humility, self-examination, and peace-making. As Christians, we mourn the fact that you have told us again and again to turn away from hatred, and to love one another — and still we have not heard you.

And so, Lord, today we bring to you our sadness, our frustration, our fears for ourselves and our children. We bring our uncertainties, and we bring our hope. Help us to know who we are meant to be, and what we are called to do, and to act with courage and faith for justice, truth and peace, always remembering Jesus’ commandment: love one another.

Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer.

 

We pray for our country of Canada, and for our unique city of Montreal, home to so many people from all over the world, living in relative harmony. We pray that our country and city may continue to be beacons of peace, freedom, and opportunity, and that our leaders may heed these words from the First Book of Kings: “A multitude of wise men is the salvation of the world, and a sensible king is the stability of his people.”

Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer.

 

 

B) Let us pray for THE CHURCH

In our Cathedral Parish, we pray for Paul and Rhonda, our clergy; we pray for the ministry team and servers, for the vergers, for the greeters, for all those involved in our music ministry, for the support and office staff, and for the members of cathedral Forum and Corporation.

We pray for the renewal of commitment to Christian Life in our community; for our ecumenical fellowship with neighbouring churches; and for La Communauté du Rédempteur, and we pray for a new spirit of interest and cooperation with those of other faiths.

We pray for our Diocese, especially for St Mary’s Church in Kirkland, and their priest, The Revd Lorne Tardy, and for our bishop, the Rt.  Rev. Barry Clarke.

We pray for The Anglican Communion – for our Prayer Partners in The Diocese of Masasi, and especially this week for Sittwe in Myanmar and its bishops, The Rt Revd Barnabas Theaung Hawi, and The Rt Revd Sein Aung, and for Rowan Williams, the Archibishop of Canturbury

 

Dear God, we pray for the Church. Imbue our leaders with the courage to preach the Gospel as your Son intended: to be peacemakers, to champion the oppressed and the weak, and to stand and speak for peace, justice, and honesty against the powers and principalities of the world. Inspire in all of us faith in your grace and in your presence working among us, and help us to remember these words of Archbishop Oscar Romero: “Do not worry about whether or not you are effective. Worry about what is possible for you to do, which is always greater than you imagine.”

 

Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer.

 

 

 

Let us pray for members of our own community:

For those In Special Need: Scott Harding, Swanne Gordon, Andrew, Christopher Marlow, Joshua, Barbara Smith, Tobias, Gerry

 

Continued Support: Nancy Gilbert, Carolyn Edmonds, Duncan Peter, Lisa, Christopher Coolidge, Alice Knewstubb, Gloria Hall, Nathalie, Roger, Alain, Marie-Claire, Jonathan Fleming, James

 

And let us take a moment to pray for those closest to us, and for those we love who have departed from this life.

 

 

And so, using the form printed in the bulletin, let us bring ourselves before God, asking his forgiveness and renewal:

 

Have mercy upon us, most merciful Father; in your compassion, forgive us

our sins, known and unknown, things done and left undone, and so uphold

us by your Spirit that we may live and serve you in newness of life, to the

honour and glory of your name;

through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

On Suffering (3)

Why did so many people die in the Haitian earthquake? Because for these poor black descendants of slaves who have had a history of corrupt rulers, economic justice doesn't exist.

What does their suffering have to teach us? Certainly not that this was a punishment that they somehow deserved, as the fundamentalists have hatefully intoned. But I also don't buy the stupid platitudes of Anglican bishops: "God is suffering right along with them." This is infantile.

I stopped believing in a theistic God – an omnipotent being "out there somewhere" who has the ability to intervene (positively or negatively) in our lives and decides whether to do that or not based on his (definitely male, this God) judgment about our worthiness – quite a long time ago. I don't see how anyone who has observed the arbitrariness and unfairness of suffering can possibly accept, let alone pray to, this kind of God, and once you let go of that, then a great deal of religious dogma becomes meaningless.

When I look out at the Montreal skyline and all those spires above the empty churches, I remember what a Quebec friend, a former Roman Catholic, told me recently. He said that he has a sister who is quite poor. When she asked a priest why she was poor, when other people were much richer, the priest told her, "It's God's will." "She accepts that!" he said. "And for a long while in my own life I accepted it too. But not any longer. That's the way the church was, here, for centuries – keeping people docile, like sheep, with these kinds of statements." Is it any wonder that when people finally woke up and realized this sort of teaching was not only insupportable but deeply damaging to them and their society, they deserted the churches and abandoned the clergy? But equally empty are the words of religious leaders who refuse to go deeper than "God shares our suffering" and really grapple with the teachings that made Jesus  the radical he was and, in the end, got him killed. If religion can't say anything meaningful about suffering, then, frankly, its temples deserve to be empty.

Jesus' parables about economic justice are at the very core of his teachings, and they basically say that all people are equal and the rich need to wake up. There would be a lot less suffering in the world if the resources and wealth were more fairly distributed, but we, like the rich young man in the famous parable, are incapable of giving completely so that that might come to pass. My $100 or $500 to Haiti is essentially meaningless; it may make me feel better, it may help a little bit, but in a larger sense it does almost nothing to address the fundamental inequality between my life and the lives of the poor and struggling. Responding to suffering with a gift that doesn't change me in any real way is too easy. If suffering has any "meaning" then it's to transform us from people who go around with a shell on, sticking a hand out now and then with a few coins in it, to people who are willing to see things as they really are, to be vulnerable to life and to others, and to change over time as a result into people who believe in justice and equality and live that out in our lives – not perfectly, probably, but as best we can. This thing we call "God" — what I might prefer to call Love, or the "Ground of all Being" — isn't going to produce change in the world, except through us, and the "eternal life" where suffering "shall be no more" isn't a paradise to come, but right now.

And if we think we're protected by our wealth, our education, our geography, our whiteness, our youth — it's an illusion. Suffering comes in some form to all of us. Watching my completely undeserving mother die of cancer rid me of any vestiges of Theism. But I did experience, as I have before in my life, moments of interpenetration where "she" and "I" ceased to exist as separate; I know with complete certainty – not just intellectually – that we're all interdependent, all connected, and all equal. I've seen that Love is the most powerful thing there is, and that we all hold it in our hands, never more so than when we're stripped of everything else. Going through suffering with others has the potential to teach us a great deal; maybe we'll be able to help the next person, or go through our own illnesses and death with a little less fear and greater wisdom. But I think for most educated and religiously-skeptical people today, this requires meditation, reading, and a lot of work and preparation that takes place mainly in solitude. I wish Christianity had done better job of preserving (other than in monasticism) its own mystic tradition, where meditation is at the heart. But that's never been seen as the way to preserve the institutional hierarchy and power, or to fill the pews and the coffers. Nor is it a way to keep the faith separate from the others, whose mystic traditions blur all the distinctions between them and neutralize the fear of "doing it wrong and risking damnation" which has been religion's (not just Christianity's) most powerful means of keeping people "inside" the rules.

So, descending from the roof-top view, where this kind of theorizing is so tempting, let's come down into the street. That's where I found the image in the photograph at the top of this post, one grey day when I wandered into a snowy alley and was stunned to find paintings like this on all the surfaces of the sheds and garages that backed up onto it. Seeing these light- and color-filled paintings, in the dead of midwinter, moved and mystified me: who was this life-filled painter? Why here? What did these images have to teach me?

On Suffering (1)

We leave our warm beds, get dressed, and drive to our studio in the early, grey morning. It's as dark at 8:30 am as it will be in the late afternoon; this is the long dark trek through deep winter. Our boots clatter up the metal staircase and we unlock the loft; I make coffee and do some exercises and stretches, and then run up several flights of stairs, walking quickly down the long hallways. On the far end of the building a grimy window looks out over the city: white snow creating a rectangular patchwork of roofs; centre-ville in the distance; smoke billowing from industrial chimneys, and everywhere the tall verdegris spires puncturing the low grey sky, silent exclamation points rising from the hollow chambers of the enormous, nearly-abandoned churches that define each parish of the city of Montreal.

To the northeast of here, in a direction I can't see from the window, is a community of Haitians; I know one family, from the cathedral; the father is an Anglican priest, born in Haiti, who ministers to the French-speaking Anglicans in that part of the city. There are a lot of immigrants from the French West Indies here, and a number of them are Anglican. Today, looking out over these cold roofs in the opposite direction, away from the immigrant poor and toward the wealth of the city center and, further to the south, the United States, I feel their despair and sorrow like the brath of the incessant arctic wind on the back of my neck. I have read the deluge of predictable comments on Twitter and Facebook, tried to absorb the headlines and the awful pictures: "7,000 people have already been buried in a mass grave." I write a note to the person I know best in this family. Mostly, though, I'm numb.

People are asking why. They always do, when tragedy strikes, but it's a lot easier to package the story and wrap up our feelings when we read the biography of a deranged or angry killer and say to ourselves, "yes, I can sort of understand, he was traumatized, he was crazy, he went off his head because he lost his job and felt the world was against him" than when the perpetrator is the very earth under our feet.

Of course some have a ready answer. In Handel's Messiah, a few weeks back, I listened to the bass soloist singing words from the prophet Haggai, instructing the Jews to rebuild the temple after their return from captivity, and warning about the consequences of his wrath:

"Thus saith the Lord, the Lord of Hosts; Yet once a little while and I will shake the
heav'ns and the earth, the sea and the dry land: And I will shake all nations; and the
desire of all nations shall come."

The Book of Haggai was composed in 520 B.C.E., after King Cyrus of Persia had decreed that the Jews could be released from their captivity in Babylon and return to Judea. Handel, writing his oratorio in 1741 (the libretto was actually by Charles Jennens) knew little more than the ancients about the cause of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, or violent storms; "Divine Providence" was to be thanked for safety and victory, and "Divine Retribution," meted out to nations in the form of natural punishment or defeat in war, was to be feared. Even though we know now that we sit on shifting geologic plates, whose movement causes these natural disasters, self-righteous preachers still claim God's wrath, prophesy the apocalypse, and infuse believers with a conviction that the victims somehow deserve their "punishment." It makes me crazy, especially so because the worst offenders are Christian fundamentalists, who have managed to tar the entire faith and, incredibly, still influence politics and education — even in the supposedly fact-based, "modern," and developed world — with their misguided, retrograde, unscientific and often hateful beliefs.

There is a clear scientific "why": it's because Haiti is located in a region of active tectonic activity that results in earthquakes, tsunamis, and violent volcanic eruptions. But the spiritual "whys" – "Why have so many people died there?" "Why have they died instead of me?" "What can I do to understand and respond to such human suffering?" -  which ought be at the heart of religious teaching and practice, have rarely been so since the time of Constantine, when the Church first became aligned with the power of the State.

More on both of these subjects in the following posts.

Twelve Days of Christmas

"Twelfth Night" by David Teniers the Younger (1634-40)

Yesterday was officially the twelfth day of Christmas, though we'll be celebrating Epiphany on this coming Sunday, and I guess J. and I will leave our tree up until then. In honor of the actual day, here's an explanation of the origin of that litany of numbered hens and leaping lords we sing about this time of year, which has always puzzled me. I have no idea if this explanation is accurate, but it sounds plausible to me, considering the realities of religious persecution and fear. What amazes me is that the Church of England was really not all that far from Catholicism in its beliefs, and the ideas in this mnemonic cipher, if that's what it was, are not things that were unfamiliar or taboo in Anglicanism. However, as British history (and Irish history down to our own times) reveals, the tension between Catholicism and Protestantism (mainly Anglicanism, the official state religion) was intense and much blood was shed over it; what may have been at stake (a deliberate use of that word) here was the memorization and recitation of a Roman Catholic catechism, something that perpetuated the belief system and the faith among young people and was therefore almost certainly forbidden.

(and no, I haven't searched the internet to find alternate explanations, but would be glad to hear them.)

There is one Christmas Carol that has always baffled me. What in the world do leaping lords, French hens, swimming swans, and especially the partridge who won't come out of the pear tree have to do with Christmas?
This week, I found out.
From 1558 until 1829, Roman Catholics in England were not permitted to practice their faith openly. Someone during that era wrote this carol as a catechism song for young Catholics. It has two levels of meaning: the surface meaning plus a hidden meaning known only to members of their church. Each element in the carol has a code word for a Christian
reality which the children could remember.

1. The partridge in a pear tree was Jesus Christ.
   
2. Two turtle doves were the Old and New Testaments.
   
3. Three French hens stood for faith, hope and love.
   
4. The four calling birds were the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke & John.
   
5. The five golden rings recalled the Torah or Law, the first five books of the Old Testament.
   
6. The six geese a-laying stood for the six days of creation.
   
7. Seven swans a-swimming represented the sevenfold gifts of the Holy Spirit–Prophesy, Serving, Teaching, Exhortation, Contribution, Leadership, and Mercy.
   
8. 
   The eight maids a-milking were the eight beatitudes.
   
9. Nine ladies dancing were the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit–Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness,Goodness,Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self Control.
   
10. The ten lords a-leaping were the ten commandments.
    
11. The eleven pipers piping stood for the eleven faithful disciples.
    
12. The twelve drummers drumming symbolized the twelve points of belief in the Apostles' Creed.

And here's a bit about Twelfth Night, gleaned mostly from the Wikipedia:

Twelfth Night is a holiday observed on the
evening before the twelfth day of Christmas or the Epiphany celebration,
which commemorates the adoration of the Magi before the infant Jesus.

In Tudor England, the Twelfth Night marked the end of a winter
festival that started on All Hallows Eve (Halloween.) An appointed King or Lord of Misrule governed the Christmas festivities, and the Twelfth Night was the end of his period
of rule. The common theme was that the normal order of things was
reversed; masters waited on their servants, and so forth. This Lord of Misrule tradition can be traced back to
pre-Christian European festivals such as the Celtic festival of Samhain
and the Ancient Roman festival of Saturnalia.

After Twelfth Night the Carnival season starts, which lasts through
Mardi Gras (literally, "Fat Tuesday," the day of feasting and carousing right before Ash Wednesday and the beginning of the fasting season of Lent.) In some places such as New Orleans, the night of
January 6 with the first Carnival celebrations is called Twelfth Night.

In some places, Twelfth Night celebrations include food traditions such as the king cake or tortell. (Note: this is a big tradition in Quebec, as well as in French-inspired New Orleans, where bakeries sell "Gateaux de Roi," special cakes with a prize baked into them. The person who gets the prize hosts the next party.)

The Shakespeare play Twelfth Night, or What You Will was originally written to be performed in celebration of Twelfth Night; its first performance was on February 2, 1602, at the feast of Candlemas which marked the formal end of Christmastide in the liturgical calendar.In many English-speaking countries, it was historically considered bad luck to leave your Christmas decorations up beyond (depending on what source you consult) Epiphany, or Candlemas, which comes 40 days after Christmas. My grandmother always took her tree down the day after Christmas; my own tradition is to leave things up until Epiphany but here in cold, dark Quebec many people leave their decorations up for another month or more! I found it fascinating to read that any edible decorations on wreaths were also consumed on Epiphany, for here they would have been frozen solid for weeks, and completely unfit for food!

All the Many Colored Saints

The baristas speak Arabic behind bottles of colored Italian syrup with French labels: rhum, gingembre, pamplemousse. I often come to this cafe for a quiet half hour before the rehearsal for Evensong; they recognize me now and are very kind, and I like listening to their voices. The coffee is always good, the chairs are comfortable, and I find can write or read calmly in the company of these sympathetic semi-strangers. I’ve begun to wonder, too, if this place represents a sort of way-station between my identities: the Anglican and very English choir-singer, and the girl who’s always been drawn to cultures other than her own.

This weekend has been more steeped in Middle Eastern culture than usual, because my brother-in-law and sister-in-law are visiting. On Friday we went to Akhavan, the Iranian market in Notre-Dame-de-Grace and then to Adonis, the Arab supermarket I’ve written about before, but not before having lunch at Achtarout – fresh-baked flatbread with zaatar, garnished with tomatoes, pickled beets, mint, onions, and hot green peppers, then heated and rolled in paper, all for 3 or 4 dollars and utterly delicious. We came home from these shopping trips laden with food that we began preparing that evening and haven’t finished yet. The next night we saw a new movie, Amereeka, about a Palestinian woman and her son who leave their home in Bethlehem and settle with her sister in a Midwestern city. The movie was in Arabic (and some English) with French subtitles, and conveyed very well the claustrophobia of the occupied territories, the desire for opportunity represented by America, and the profound disorientation of coming here. Set at the time of the Iraq invasion, it also depicted the prejudice faced by Arab Americans in school and at work, but was strongest, I think, as a love song to Middle Eastern culture and family life. The whole audience laughed knowingly, for instance, at the bag of cucumbers the grandmother gives her departing daughter and grandson, and how, when the family gets depressed, they go shopping for ethnic groceries in a nearby town or go out for Middle Eastern meals – food, always food for comfort and connection!

And it’s also been the Feast of All Saints. In a podcast over at qarrtsiluni, Dave and I reflected on the origins of All Hallow’s Eve and All Saints, and other cultures’ attempts to keep the spirits of the dead contentedly at rest, not wandering around in our world creating mischief. As I read up on All Saints’ Day and the Roman’s pagan festival of Lemuria that it replaced, I realized had forgotten that in the Catholic tradition, today, November 2nd is observed as All Souls’ Day, specifically for prayers for those who are dead but haven’t yet made it to heaven – not wanting to leave anyone out, among the living and the dead.

I sit in the cafe slowly drinking my latte, with “O Quam Gloriosam” running through my head – the text that is the antiphon for All Saints’ Day:

O quam gloriosum est regnum, in quo cum Christo gaudent omnes sancti,

amicti stolis albis, et sequuntur Agnum, quocumque ierit. Alleluia.

O how glorious is the kingdom in which all the saints rejoice with Christ,

clad in robes of white they follow the Lamb wherever he goes. Alleluia.

It’s so much not my image of the afterlife – being part of a countless throng in white robes, following Christ the Lamb “whither he goeth,” but I admit to the beauty of the mystical vision: a heaven where there is no time, no sorrow, no tears, just an unearthly, never-ending music, as William Harris so wondrously depicted in his motet for double choir in eight parts, to a text by John Donne, that we’ll also be performing at Evensong – take a moment and LISTEN.

Bring us, O Lord God, at our last awakening

into the house and gate of heaven,

to enter into that gate and dwell in that house,

where there shall be no darkness nor dazzling,
but one equal light;
no noise nor silence, but one equal music;

no fears nor hopes, but one equal possession;

no ends nor beginnings, but one equal eternity,

in the habitation of thy glory and dominion,
world without end. Amen.

(Here is another version, a motet by Healey Willan, which was our introit for the morning service today.)

The music part would be OK, but I’d prefer, I must say, a heaven filled with small cucumbers and baklava – the afterlife my father-in-law wistfully and unbelievingly talked about sometimes – served by soulful, dark-eyed, bearded waiters who’d sometimes have time to sit down and keep me company on my couch. I’m clearly culturally confused!

And then again, maybe not. What I really like so much about this feast day is its insistence on the saintliness of all of us, especially the anonymous ones. Today, before going off to sing, I find myself reflecting on the fact that the original texts (which formed the basis for much of this English lyricism on which my own poetic ear was probably formed) were written by Jews, Palestinian Christians, and Greeks who looked very much like my husband, or the man who just made my coffee. Yet in the secular world of 2009, we seem so divided, so ignorant and fearful about one another, in contrast to the symbolism I feel is at the heart of this vision: the possibility of an undivided throng of humanity, united in love, free of suffering, equal in the eyes of one another, and before whatever we see as the Divine. It’s as impossible for me to believe in a heaven for some and not all, for the “elect” of one religion or another, as it is to live that way on earth – which, it seems to me, may be the point of all these stories after all.

Missa ex machina

Our choir year started up with a roar – of jet engines, explosions, city crowds. Sunday morning we sang Robin Davies' "Missa ex machina," a composition he wrote for the cathedral choirs and prepared electronic tape. In the afternoon we performed his Magnificat and Nunc, and in the evening held the first of two recording sessions to put this remarkable music down in digital form.

I'm a bit worn out today, as I'm sure my fellow singers are too – not vocally as much as in my shoulders and neck and legs: lots of hours of standing and concentrating. It was exhilarating to work on this music and then perfect it during the recording sessions, but what I found most remarkable were the comments from parishioners after the morning service. All of the parts of the mass are scored for voices alongside the sounds of urban and modern life, whether those are street sounds, bird calls against traffic, or the sounds of technology, conflict, and stress, skillfully blended with the words of the different parts of the mass. It's impossible to describe this music, and to put it the way I just have is an oversimplification – the music is subtle. In another month, when the CD comes out, you'll be able to hear it… the listeners on Sunday said things like, "I wish we could hear this more often – maybe it could become our cathedral 'signature' mass!" People who never comment on the music at all said how much they appreciated it.

I think what they were responding to was the fact that the music expresses very well how spiritual life often feels to us today, in the midst of a world in great conflict, pulsing with technology and complexity, especially for people trying to maintain a sense of the spiritual in modern, increasingly secular cities. The door to our cathedral, in the absolute center of Montreal's downtown, opens on St. Catherine Street with its traffic, homeless people, constant noise, sex shops and computer stores. Our recording sessions of this piece filled with traffic noises were,
ironically, interrupted many times by local traffic sounds and sirens -
at one point one of our tenors went outside to ask an idling tourist
bus to please turn off its engine or move elsewhere… Literally beneath us lies the underground city, an interconnected subterranean mirror-city filled with restaurants, stores, salons, and kiosks threaded by the subway. When we sing Evensong from the chancel, we look down the central aisle and see McDonald's. The quiet cathedral undercroft, where the choir practices, opens onto an escalator heading down into that vast underground mall. Stepping back and forth between our world of Palestrina and Sanford, and brightly-lit consumerism, concrete and steel, is something we all do without the benefit of transition or interpretation.

So how welcome it is that contemporary composers are taking risks like this, creating post-modern liturgical music that attempts to express something real about the internal and external worlds of our daily habitation. At the conclusion of Davies' mass, the Agnus Dei, that great plea for forgiveness that precedes communion, ("Oh Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world, have mercy upon us…have mercy upon us… grant us thy peace") ends with vague sounds of distant war, and the music never resolves into a platitude, or even, for that matter, anything resembling an answer.