You never know what we'll churn up in cleaning a stall
For many people, worship – or even spirituality – is a way of escaping everyday life and conflict.
For Friends, in contrast, worship is a place and time to embrace it, face it, transform it, find harmony and appropriate action.
Not that I would have said that before. In fact, for years the high I felt in the hour did provide me a weekly respite.
Rather than what the French call la petite mort – little death.
Even with the big grin or two.
My choir has been singing a joyous Renaissance piece that translates, in Allen M. Simon’s rendering, as:
Today Christ is born:
Today the Savior appeared:
Today on Earth the Angels sing,
Archangels rejoice:
Today the righteous rejoice, saying:
Glory to God in the highest.
Alleluia.
I first heard it in the second classical concert I ever attended, around age 12, with the velvety Roger Wagner Chorale on tour. Never, ever, did I imagine I’d be part of presenting it myself.
Still blows me away, all around.
We’re well into the annual Nativity Fast now, and that means going without alcohol.
I’m not bound by Greek Orthodox discipline, even though one year we did try to follow the Advent diet, which is largely vegan. It will be a while before we do that again, admirable as it is.
For me, the big challenge is in admitting just how much I enjoy martinis. Very dry, gin, with an olive. Some fellow Quakers would definitely look askance at me on that count, though I did have a good Friend who was a definite exception.
Alas, he passed over before I ever got to sample one of his legendary concoctions.
Growing up in a teetotaling household does throw a curve on my outlook. I’m repressed enough as a result, even after hippie liberation. But then came the yoga, which frowned on both meat and alcohol even before any tipsiness.
More recently, here on Moose Island, I’ve found myself indulging come late morning rather than closer to bedtime. OK, I’m usually up and working on the keyboard before sunrise, too, so there are some adjustments in the daily schedule, especially when I get an afternoon nap in.
So, to keep me in control of my imbibing, rather than the other way around, I haven’t touched a drop since November 16, apart from a glass of Cotes du Rhone on Thanksgiving, a nod to the Orthodox relaxations on designated feast days.
Drinking is, after all, something that can become habitual, and there are good reasons to break certain habits or to strengthen one’s self-discipline.
But still, I am counting those days till Christmas.
Cheers!
Suppose I lost everything I had packed in a car fire.
My meds and dental retainer likely the biggest loss.
Didn’t bring my laptop, and my cell phone’s in my messenger bag.
Everything else could be readily replaced.
Well, including those. Even the phone numbers I had stored there.
Maybe it’s a good thing we didn’t have selfies through most of it. Most of those shots would have no doubt been embarrassing now.
So here’s how my life’s shaken out in terms of lifestyles.
Looking at the multitude of stars and pondering infinity.
The origin of God, even.
The realm of religion can certainly express our highest aspirations as well as manifest some of our darkest fears, as I feel I’ve examined in my new book Quaking Dover.
In my research of early New England, for instance, I see too clearly how often the differences between the Calvinist Protestants known as Puritans led to violent clashes with the French Roman Catholics to the north, as well as the other way around. (Not that I’d expect it to have differed if the Anglicans/Episcopalians had been in charge rather than the Puritans.)
Through their mindsets, the English, in their negotiations with the Indigenous tribes, crudely failed to acknowledge intricacies of decorum or ceremony that included food and dancing. Not so the French, whose missionaries to the Natives established bridges between the Native and Christian faiths. The priests even lived in tribal villages.
More critically, the English failed to impose the moral standards of their faith in their transactions with the Natives. Fair trade rather than widespread cheating would have been a start.
~*~
Where I’m now living, reciting the rosary is an important ritual among the local Passamaquoddy, especially at wakes and funerals. One late tribal leader was also a deacon and has left notes of his efforts to his blend Native religion and his Roman Catholic teachings. I’m hoping that some of this will find publication.
What’s the hold?
Are there comforting commonalities of rosary with chanting or even drumming? Or, from my end, might something connect to the long-lost art of Quakers who preached in “tones,” otherwise called sing-song?
Considering a young cousin’s ability to mimic one minister’s exhorting preaching style I encountered among Ohio’s remaining Wilburite Friends, I’m left wondering how much of the Quaker’s messages was formulaic and how much original, either way an emotional outburst not found in academic sermons and homilies delivered from a pulpit.
I suspect there’s a lot to be learned through what Quaker Douglas Steere called “mutual irradiation” when we do what’s sometimes called “listening in tongues” here.
It doesn’t always have to be about religion, either, though it may underpin much of the historical thinking.
One fascinating new voice from the Indigenous view is Lisa Brooks, author of The Common Pot: The Recovery of Native Space in the Northeast. Her websites – lbrooks.people(dot)amherst.edu/thecommonpot/ and ourbelovedkin(dot)com/awikhigan/index – continue her presentation.
I believe we can all be enriched by participating in such sharing.
As an editor on newspapers where, in an attempt for excellence everyone was giving of themselves totally (many unpaid hours of overtime, etc.), I was always appalled by the charge of “elitism,” which comes to mean “give me mediocrity – not the truth, but pleasantry” – from the same people who would not accept such standards in their professional football quarterback or automobile.
In many religions, however, the “world” of common subservience and society or what some today are more accurately seeing as “empire” is ultimately a mortal trap. In spiritual practice, then, only total effort is acceptable in seeking a holy transformation of this life. If only we can rise to even a portion of it.
As an ancient New England hymn reminded, “Broad is the way that leads to death / and many trod thereupon / but Wisdom shows a narrow way / with here and there a traveler.”
I see that lyric, by the way, as the root of Robert Frost’s road less traveled.
When I ask what’s wrong with being elite, I’m not talking about social status or wealth but something more elusive – something much more humble and loving.
Jnana's Red Barn 