There He is!

Until I read the article below, I didn't know that anyone considered the Bethlehem star to be something other than a "dead astronomical body." I copied here a rich kind of Advent food, from our recent church bulletin, a meditation on light and stars.

One of the pictures I found was of a "variable star," which I had also not heard of before. That name got me thinking about how constant our Light of the World is by contrast, and never waning.

Though the stars we see in our skies are only dead shadows of the living realities, they too have their glory, which is only faintly conveyed by these pictures, though they do decorate this post nicely. We often hear that God is the True Light; this is not theoretical or a mere intellectual fact. Fr. Artemy exhorts us to know a taste of that Reality even in this life, in prayer.

The closer we come to the end of the [Nativity] fast, the brighter the wondrous Bethlehem star is enkindled above our heads, proclaiming to the Magi the time of the Infant's birth, and the place where He lay...The rays of this rational star (according to the holy fathers, this star was actually an angelic power, and not a dead astronomical body) illumine with their incorruptible, unfading light the twilight in the Cave -- the rib cage encasing each of our hearts...

variable star

The rays of this star bring the soul, which has but scarcely touched it, to inexplicable trembling and joy, the likes of which we shall not find here on this sinful world with its sensuous, quickly passing pleasures, disappearing like smoke.

 I am...the bright and morning star (Rev. 22:16), testifies the Lord. And he that overcometh, and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give...the morning star. He that hath an ear to hear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches (Revelations 2:26, 28-29). 

Ye do well, repeats the Apostle Peter, that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts (2 Peter 1:19). The morning star is hidden prayer of the heart! It is made not with lips or fingers, but with the mind and heart; it turns all of man's existence to the Lord, and places the disciple before the most radiant face of his Teacher...

Illumined by the unwaning light of the Nativity star, let us pass...under the canopy of the very cave in Bethlehem...There He is, the Angel of Great Counsel, the King of the world, the Father of the age to come, as the "Old Testament Evangelist," the Holy Prophet Isaiah, exclaimed in prophetic, sober inebriation. There He is, the Yearning of the nations, the Expectation of all peoples, the Great Light that has come into the world to enlighten those sitting in darkness! Already celebrating the Forefeast of the Nativity night that is bright as day, let us sing...with the whole Church, "Christ is born, give ye glory...Christ is on earth, let us be exalted. Sing unto the Lord all the earth..." [Nativity hymn].

--Father Artemy Vladimirov

Bridges and Streams

Great-grandparents

Last week was filled with historical talk and images - even theology. First there was the cemetery where we had buried my father-in-law in January. We checked to make sure that the gravestone had been cut and set properly, and then we visited the graves of Mr. Glad's great-grandparents and grandparents on both sides of the family, and several aunts and uncles.

At left is one set of the great-grandparents whose graves we visited, people born in Cornwall in the mid-19th century. They came to California to work in the New Almaden quicksilver (mercury) mines near San Jose, where the wife Eliza gave birth to my husband's grandmother and several other children.

When I look into the bright eyes of that face I just wish I could hug her. Why do you focus on her and not him, my husband asked? Because she's a woman and I'm a woman, I answered. I feel strangely connected to her across the years and in spite of the fact that I never knew her nor are we even related by blood. I wonder if she is praying for her descendants, including my children and grandchildren? I can't see and touch her right now, but (Matthew 22) "God is not the God of the dead, but of the living." She is a real living person, not an idea.

New Almaden Englishtown

The novel Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner tells the story of a miner and his wife who lived for a time there in Englishtown, with tales involving Mexican miners in the camp's "Spanishtown." The Cornish people attended the Methodist Episcopal Church on the hill and Eliza is remembered as loving to read her Bible.

When her children were grown and the parents had moved into San Jose, she still prepared a large spread every Sunday afternoon and expected all the children and their families to come for Sunday dinner. She was especially fond of her grandsons.

Many of the women those days kept chickens and cows but Eliza was the only one in her family who had the gumption to kill a chicken. When any of the others wanted chicken for dinner they would take their bird to Eliza to chop off its head.

A mother and father not ours

On the first night of our trip to these forbears' old stomping grounds we had dinner with a dear cousin who also is linked and indebted to them. We came bearing gifts of photographs of some relations who have passed on, and we talked about our family -- and of course, our own childhoods.




Next day the Mister and I ate a picnic next to the Felton Covered Bridge in the Santa Cruz mountains. It's the tallest known covered bridge in the country, built of redwood in 1892 to span the San Lorenzo River. No one knows why the builders made it so high.

I started thinking about bridges as a metaphor, as in "Bridges to the Past"....What would be the thing to be bridged, the gulf over which we can meet on a bridge? If we are on this side of the bridge, what or who is on the other side?

burned redwoods at Henry Cowell

The bridge lies near the Mt. Hermon Christian conference center, where my husband from his earliest days enjoyed the creeks and paths and sleeping on the porch of his grandmother's cabin.

He and I spent our brief honeymoon in that cabin, and strolled dreamily around the redwoods of Henry Cowell park nearby. It was drizzling that day in March 41 years ago and we had the park to ourselves, no doubt breathing the same woodsy, cold and moist air that we drank up on this trip.

Our marriage has endured to the present; it's a continuing thing, so the bridge idea doesn't exactly fit in that case, but it was pressed back into my mind a few more times anyway.

 

Mr. Glad and "The Giant" redwood tree

Our Cabin in the old days

From the covered bridge and the park we drove up a hill to the neighborhood of the old cabin where we'd spent so many happy times with several generations sleeping in nooks and corners and beds tucked into closets. Another cousin and his wife live around the corner in a cabin that's been in his family for many decades, too.

We two couples walked up and down all over the place remembering the fun and family going back 60 years. Mr. Glad and I hadn't visited "his" cabin since 23 years ago it passed from our family. We saw that trees and ferns and birdbath have been taken away, to make space for parking trucks.












That's too bad. Well, let's keep going downhill toward the kind of landmarks that don't change so easily.

Two Cousins on New Swinging Bridge

The natural beauty endures - some of these redwood trees have been around for hundreds or thousands of years. The unnamed tall tree above looked to us as large as The Giant we had seen a few hours before in the state park. We were gazing up at it from the Swinging Bridge, a suspension bridge that still sways when you walk on it, though it has been improved from what it was in Mr. Glad's younger years.


Cabin Cousin named this scene "Stumphenge." People are always making structures and arrangements that are symbolic of the most meaningful things in their lives. Some of those structures, as I was to reminded the next morning, are intangible.

It's obvious I love a good bridge -- some of them are majestic works of art, and even the less dramatic show the human need and desire to go from here to there on the earth, to interact with the natural landscape in practical and artistic, and sometimes playful, ways.

I am often more comfortable on a sturdy bridge than I am down in the canyon or river below. Two creeks come together on the Mt. Hermon property. This confluence of Bean and Zayante Creeks is just about The Most Favorite Spot from the Mr. Glad history files. I have waded in the creek here too, with our children, and have sat picnicking on lovely warm summer days. We looked down from the swinging bridge and sighed our contented memories.

At this time of year we didn't want to be down there in the chilly water. From the bridge, wearing our cozy jackets, we could get a wide view. You feel that you know where you are, and there's no sand or pebbles scratching between your toes.

The next day as we drove home Mr. Glad and I listened to a discussion about a famous theologian who is now acknowledged to be a BRIDGE between East and West, Pentecostals and non-Pentecostals, and other disparate groupings. If I tell you his name many of you will feel an immediate urge to click away to another blog, because the Unitarians have done that to you.

When they controlled the educational system of this nation Unitarians worked hard to steer young people away from the Puritans, and one small tactic in this program was to inoculate them against a man who preached a lot on themes like humility, beauty, and the sweetness of the Love of God. They did this by making sure that schoolchildren had in their curriculum one of his worst and least representative sermons.

In our usual intellectually focused condition we search for these rational bridges to connect us to our roots and to each other. I'm afraid the Unitarians were trying to keep us on a platform without even a good view of the life-giving stream. If I stay in my mind and only think about God, it is like looking down from a bridge at the river, when what I am dying of thirst to do is splash and drink and be refreshed by the Living Water.

But in the presence of God, living our theology by prayer and love to one another, we can be part of a continuum, like the earthly water that over the millennia constantly comes back to us as rain into the streams and snow on the mountains, evaporates from the oceans to make clouds that float inland again....

If Jonathan Edwards and I both live in Christ, who said, "Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you have no life in you," then we are in the same vital current. And that's the important thing.

One of my dearest and most influential friends, Anne, gave me a copy of Edwards's Religious Affections more than twenty years ago, and I spent a while this morning becoming re-acquainted. But I don't think it's likely that I will read much more of the works of this brilliant thinker who is for some people a bridge. I already spend too much time standing on and studying bridges and platforms.

Instead I want to live in communion with God and with His people -- including my distant-but-near relations from the 19th century, the 18th century -- even the Holy Apostles, and all of that Cloud of Witnesses who (I Corinthians) "did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ."

San Lorenzo River

Grief in its corner

Maria posted this poem recently. I am putting it here for the sake of my friend Mrs. Bread and anyone else who is dealing with a loss. Whatever person or gift or intangible that has been taken from us, the reality of it needs to be faced and known in the light of the goodness of God -- even in the presence of God. May all our hurts bring us to Him, and may we experience the comfort St. Paul writes about in II Corinthians:

Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God. For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ.

TALKING TO GRIEF

Ah, Grief, I should not treat you

like a homeless dog

who comes to the back door

for a crust, for a meatless bone.

I should trust you.

I should cast you

into the house and give you

your own corner,

a worn mat to lie on,

your own water dish.

You think I don’t know you’ve been living

under my porch.

You long for your real place to be readied

before winter comes. You need

your name,

your collar and tag. You need

the right to warn off intruders,

to consider

my house as your own

and me your person

and yourself

my own dog.

~ Denise Levertov (1923-1977), English-born American poet

Gardeners and Bells

 

I prefer to write about beautiful things, so I don't want to tell about the mess I made this evening of staking a tomato plant about two months too late. It is a robust Juliet cherry with branches 2-3 feet long that had started to send down roots where they were sprawled on the damp ground. I gathered up the legginess as best I could with gardener's tape, around three splintery stakes. In spite of the chaotic result, I expect there will be fruit, thanks to the rain and sunshine that falls on the gardens of the just and the unjust, the diligent and the lazy.

Beautiful tomatoes from the past

A few days ago I ran across Leonard Cohen's verse (below) that has been singing itself in my head ever since, making me notice many ways that our earthly lives fall short of the ideal, often in more significant places than the garden. We fail to do our best, others fail to love us, the banks and the corporations do us wrong -- we populate this list day by day.

It's an aspect of reality that can only be denied at the risk of one's sanity. The humbling we experience when contemplating the "streets filled with broken hearts" and other destruction that Bob Dylan sings about in "Everything is Broken" is the best start toward mental and spiritual health.

Then the Gardener, the Physician of our souls, the Light of the World, can do His work, and give us grace to keep working at repairing the bad jobs we've made. He also gives us Himself as the rejoicing of our hearts -- and nothing is more Real than that.

Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack in everything

That's how the light gets in.

    --from "Anthem" by Leonard Cohen

A Dream of What's Real

It was about 40 years ago I had a dream that I know was from God. I don't remember any since then about which I felt such assurance. Many dreams I have are mild nightmares of household disasters, though I have also experienced dreadful nightmares that left a cloud over the first hours of the day.

This dream was of a garden. I was walking in a lush and green garden, where birds were singing and flowers were blooming. Cool lawns stretched between all the most fitting tall trees and flower beds, everything breathing with new life. The air was warm and balmy -- it was obviously Spring or early Summer. As I followed the paths and took in the beauty I felt very happy and peaceful, but I didn't think of taking a nap on the grass, because the atmosphere of the place made me feel too alive and awake. Then, the words were spoken, "This is your heart." And I woke up.

I can well recall the sweetness that filled me as I lay in bed in those few minutes after waking, knowing that God had given me a taste of His presence. That lovely feeling stayed with me all day. I told a few people about the dream, and was often encouraged by it in a vague way. There was no clear doctrine to hold to; it was more like a promise.

This morning when I woke I got to thinking about that garden, and how it might still have something to teach me about prayer. It is possible, the fathers teach us, to always live in the garden of the heart, where God and His love are constantly available to us, even when our minds are required by the everyday cares of life to be busy elsewhere. We can live in that garden even when our earthly houses and treasures are in ruin from earthquake, or when we walk in the front door to find that thieves have stolen us blind. The Life that we absorb through our pores in that place can energize us to do the necessary work of repair and healing.

In the last week I've been hearing a bird song in the backyard in the mornings, but it was not my robin whom I wrote about before, a messenger of comfort from just a few years ago. I strained to hear that robin's chirp that means so much to me now, but he was not on the airwaves. Lo! this morning before I got out of bed there he was, and he started in. God sends birds like angels.

"The kingdom of God is within you,"  said our Lord. The robins and other angels are there, nearby where He makes us to lie down in green pastures under heavens that declare His glory, and where nothing can separate us from the Love of God.

Chartwell, Kent

Sweep away all false things...

St. John the Forerunner

"The sweet work of repentance that is set before us as followers of Christ, is nothing other than the return to reality."

"How we feel about many things has this same make-believe quality. We find certain styles of clothing and certain products (cars, houses, etc.) attractive and desirable, but often with little more than subjective reasons for our desires. The power of this make-believe is so great that it is well-known that many people “go shopping” to battle depression. It is a strange therapy."

Read the rest of the article by Father Stephen Freeman here -- about the real cause of so much of our grief and misery in everyday life, "a ceaseless struggle with things that have no true existence."

When I look around his blog I always find plenty to provoke my thoughts in a good direction. I'm assuming his book Everywhere Present that just came out will put a lot of this food for the soul together in one nourishing bowl.