Blog #34. July 31st

Reflections on a Golden Thread of the Journey

Return to Home, on Icelandic Airlines, and 9 hours of jet lag

Lourdes was such a return to the spiritual womb for me, triggering so many memories and yearnings from my early childhood spiritual training and initiation, as a Catholic. Being in Lourdes was also a real pilgrimage, as I seek to become an elder, one of the “grandfathers” of my community, seeking mercy and healing for my own mental and spiritual pain and confusion. I am beginning to realize further the internal spiritual split that the millennial crisis of Western Christian story, myth, and symbol has imprinted within me. The Father/Mother, Masculine/Feminine, Yang/Yin, Mind and Spirit/Body and Soul is an imbalance, a crack, in which the world is broken. This split extends in so many directions, like splintered glass both within me and our world culture. I believe it is clearly a, or the, critical source of violence and runaway exploitation of the earth and all of its people, including ourselves. The more that I practice inner observation and awareness, the more that I realize how I do violence and exploit myself, and am prone to do so to others. This is a multigenerational brokenness or split. It is most fully realized in western Eurocentric civilization, but attempts throughout the world, in other cultures to imitate us and/or react against us, have made the split extend to nearly every culture on the planet.

I return to memories of my own early spiritual imprinting, as a Catholic. My mother was an Irish Catholic from New York City. My father, from Texas, was a non-practicing Southern Baptist, which was an obvious split in itself. My writing trail is returning me to narratives that I received in my Catholic training, that has been reawakened by my pilgrimage to Lourdes.

Another story that fascinates me now from those early days, fourth grade or so. I was in catechism class preparing for the sacrament of my first communion, a very important occasion in my life. We were carefully instructed in the spiritual mystery of the Eucharist, the wafer of unleavened bread, that was transubstantiated into the actual body of Christ. Transubstantiated, that’s a mouthful for a 10 year old, but I was skeptical, curious, and naughty. I had fantasies of taking the host out of my mouth after receiving it and studying it, scrutinizing it for what made it special. It tasted like cardboard. The nuns heard some of us mischievous boys murmurings and told us this story. Once there was a curious boy who did not respect the mystery of the Eucharist. He held the host in his mouth until he could remove it and take it home. Then, he stuck a pin in it to see if it was really the Body of Christ. It started gushing blood. It bled and bled and it would not stop. I had visions of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Disneyland version, with the room and the whole house filling up and sloshing with blood, flowing out of windows and down the street. I dared not mess with the host after that story, which I remember vividly to this day.

Being in Lourdes was like being back in the Catholic world of my childhood, still skeptical and rebellious, yet daring also to suspend disbelief, and allow myself the experience, to hope from a place beneath my rational mind. And I approached my journey there as a faithful pilgrim, noticing, taking in the details, the spiritual atmosphere and valuing the encounter. My experience in Lourdes, while peaceful and penetrating, was not comparable to the unexpected shuddering spiritual seizure that I bathed in at the Chartres Cathedral that recent morning when the unseen organist broke through the veil of my commonplace world.

All around the world, in every race, gender, culture, nationality, level of education, wellness or lifelong disability the search and striving for such an encounter with the holy, in every era of human development has mobilized and motivated us in ever new ways, as well as the traditional. The wonderful, awful, painful, now distorted Christian myth and symbol is my tradition. I do believe “there is something afoot in the universe”, and that we humans always anthropomorphize. We need stories and images, and myths that are truer than surface reality, even while they are place holders for the invisible, unknowable, inscrutable, “Ground of Being”. As I write this, I feel a burning of tears about what these myths, my Western tradition Christian myth means, the mystery that it holds, the spiritual heights and depths it has reached for, found, fought over, lost, and in small pockets around the world, regained.

Carl Jung deeply respected and saw the amazing power of the Christian myth for the first 1800 years after Christ. The art, music, architecture, poetry, mystical writings, monastic life, and community coherence, the symbolic, held the zeitgeist of the west for millennia. But Jung saw that the Christian myth had lost its power, its salience. Writing from Switzerland, Jung saw that Europe, particularly, had become secular, and it’s massive legacy of ancient cathedrals stood largely empty, the metaphor no longer providing the necessary spiritual container for the individual or the collective psyche. He saw the world wars, the holocaust, the nuclear bomb as evidence of humanities’ need for a new, more comprehensive myth, a spiritual verity, that could provide the coherent container for our civilization’s science, wars, capitalistic juggernaut, population explosion, and ecological crisis.

As I have visited 11th to 15th century, soaring, Gothic cathedrals in a number of French towns, I am repeatedly struck that the beautiful orate church in each town is named Notre Dame. And in each church, the statue of the virgin Mary and her various images, myths, and stories filled the stain glass windows, the many altars in the front and sides of the church, and its separate chapels. I couldn’t understand why the name, Notre Dame, was so widespread. I looked up the translation on the Internet and found that it means “Our Lady”. The great Chartres Cathedral is dedicated to Mary and there are several Black Madonna statues, holding a black Christ child. It would be heretical to say, though perhaps true. Much of the “Christ”ian church, unspoken, could be said to be Maryians, disciples of Maryism. The Catholics, with all of their tired and painful patriarchy preside over a vast underground worship and devotion to Mary, the Mother of God. She is the nurturing, gentle, approachable, image of God(dess), to whom real and broken people can come. I think of her as holding divine feminine archetypal qualities as Kwan Yin, in the Buddhist tradition, or Durga, in the Hindu faith.

Just as Celtic Christianity (and Native American and other indigenous religions) and it’s strong balanced focus of Masculine and Feminine, invisible, transcendent, sky father and immanent, earth/material/embodied earth mother has been making a comeback, and feminism, and the rebalancing of gender power and ideals, the feminine face of God is showing up everywhere. And none too soon, if the earth is to survive. I was always a spiritual seeker and I was raised in the patriarchal, masculine image of God. Jesus was a man. All priests and most pastors were men. Buddha was male as was Mohammed. The Hindu yogis seemed to be mostly male as I learned about them in the 1960s and the 1970s. In college, at Baylor, the preachers were all men. As I studied the Bible and became a Protestant, Lutheran, Missouri Synod, the pastors were all men. For me, there was something important missing in the Godhead.

Perhaps fifteen years ago, I read a book called The Feminine Face of God. It was eye opening, a kind of “of course”. Within my self, within our culture, within the Christian and most other religious communities that I knew about, this “of course” did not translate into my lived inner or outer experience. I talked about it, studied it, wrote, promoted, and sought spiritual community where it was real. Perhaps, because I could not extirpate my entrenched masculine God programming, in my primary world view, all of the secondary world view learning and seeking about God’s visible, earthly, somatic feminine face seemed weak. I could think it and feel it but not live the experience fully enough to buy it, at the cost of my life, temporal and eternal. There was always the shadow of my childhood punitive, God who could consign me to eternal hell, fiery torment and oblivion, if I didn’t stay within “the lines”. Besides, heaven never attracted me that much as a kid, but hell sure scared and deterred me.

My sabbatical pilgrimage, began in Ireland, the source and wellspring of Celtic Christianity, where also Saint Bridget and Mary are powerful images of light bearers, giving birth to the light, mother’s of God. I proceeded to Iona, an island of Celtic Christian prayer and pilgrimage for a thousand years, where I had heard that the ground, the dirt itself, was permeated with prayer and holiness. I did not receive any lightning bolts or divine encounters there. Then, I visited Fionn, the Anamcara, in my Ceile De’s wee monastery, in Scotland, keeping and cultivating the flickering candle of the continuous and ancient Celtic Christian tradition, in which the feminine face and reality of God was a given, not a new idea or a grafted on compensation. Fionn holds or “channels” some lovely aspects of the goddess archetype. It still felt too heady, not in them, but in me. The cold wind and the monastic prayer schedule were difficult. I am afraid that I have developed reflexive inner resistance when I am asked to color within the lines, even when it’s my own choice…..

So, I went to Crete, to one of the earthiest places that I knew, where the elements are fiercely present, and where I reflected on the elements of mother earth and father sky, in my blog, highly conscious of the dangers of the masculine sun, and the balm of my daily swims in the feminine ocean. Crete was also the seat of the Minoan civilization which was matriarchal, had women priestesses, held the Dolphin in esteem, and did not make war with its neighbors as far as we know. I did not know about the feminine in the Minoan civilization when I chose to go to Crete.

However, I still am a child of my tradition as a Western Christian, raised Catholic and educated as an adult in Protestantism. I will never escape God the Father, and if He somehow can also be a She, I believe the human race has not found a better model or Godman reconciler, human face of love and grace, compassion and forgiveness than His son, Jesus the Christ, and the Holy Spirit. I appreciate Buddha and believe that he is of the same mindset as Jesus but he is not the western anthropomorphized intersection of the divine and the human, invisible and visible divine that lives in me.

My visit to Turkey was a return to a place that held great spiritual energy for me at age 19-21. (Crete also had been a safe, earthy, healing place for me then as well) I smiled to learn, while in Cappadocia, that Anatolia means “Land of the Mother”. I did not know this when I chose to go to Turkey. Visiting the magnificent AyaSophia Cathedral, mosque, now museum, was another unexpected exposure to God as the Woman Goddess, Wisdom or Knowledge, which is the meaning of Sophia. In Cappadocia, I found myself exploring caves of hermit monks and monasteries hidden in cave from the 1st through the 4th century and learning about the Eastern Orthodox tradition about which I knew very little. The Eastern Orthodox tradition is also very patriarchal. However, during my journey, I have been reading translations of the stories and writings of the “desert fathers” and come to discover that there were also recluse and monastic “desert mothers”, reknown, holy women anchorites as well. My 9 days in Dalyan were more like my time in Crete, a mental and spiritual intermission, earthy, embodied, snorkeling and swimming in the warm Mediterranean Sea.

I still do not know really how or why I chose to spend the last two weeks of my sabbatical pilgrimage in France, though Chartres and Lourdes had been calling me. I considered many other countries, but none seemed to beckon me. I did not think about why, when I decided to immediately drive to Chartres upon landing in Paris. I did not know that Chartres was dedicated to the virgin Mary, when I chose to go there, or that so many cathedrals that I would explore in France would be named “Notre Dame”, Our Lady. I had a somewhat vague idea about Bernadette and Lourdes, being associated with apparitions of the Virgin Mary. I am always intrigued to notice what and where I end up when I allow myself to be spontaneous, to wander, to be nonlinear, and receptive. So, this process of internalization and real embodied integration of the dark, underground, lunar, earthy, physical, chaotic, playful, creative, destructive, abundant, nurturing, seductive, receptive, oceanic “feminine”, yin, with the all powerful, transcendent, terrifying, assertive/aggressive, invisible, spiritual, solar, light filled, creative, overpowering “masculine”, yang is a paradoxical unity in duality. These opposing polar aspects of the divine were calling me, a work in progress. Throughout this pilgrimage, without really intending it, I was synchronously drawn to the divine feminine. How do I realize this “conjunction” in the aspects of God, as Jung called it?

After leaving Lourdes, the last 6 days of my time in France have been a wrap-up. I have been traveling along the Atlantic Coast to Royan and La Tremblade, during an intense heat wave for several days. On my last day in Lourdes, the temperature scale hit 35 degrees and more (95 degrees Fahrenheit). The air and the car were very hot as I drove north and west to the Atlantic Ocean. My first night along the Atlantic, at La Tremblade, the hotel was without air conditioning and the 98-100 degree heat was accompanied by high humidity. Leaving the window open to allow some air movement and hope for cooling during the night, let in a myriad of bugs, mosquitos, flies, gnats, tiny biting “noseeums”. Drenched sweating outline on the sheets and the, skin crawl and prick of insects and humidity, made sleep difficult. I was groggy and exhausted in the morning, with some insect bite wheal and flare reactions. I had wanted to go exploring on the Isle of Oberon, the wild coast of a slender island, just a few miles west, over a span of bridge.

After breakfast, I wrestled with the idea of staying through another sleepless miserable night, there, as I had reserved for 2 nights. I listened to my inner dialogue, old stoic pattern, “you can do it one more night, it will be a hassle to move and find another hotel, right now, in the peak of the French vacation season. You’ve already paid for it; you don’t want to lose the cost for a room you don’t use, etc. it will cause ill feelings with the management and it is really a comfortable and friendly, well located hotel other than the heat wave and lack of air conditioning”. However, a new thought entered my mind, a way of thinking that I have been seeking to cultivate. “I don’t have to be miserable, I can be good to myself, listen to myself and make a compassionate choice”. I don’t have to suffer this . Many things that are beyond our control do cause me to suffer unavoidably. Acceptance of legitimate suffering is healthy, I believe, the things I cannot change and the wisdom to know the difference. Gratuitous suffering, however, is not a virtue…. It is masochism.

I spoke with the proprietress and she understood, despite her only French and my minimal French. My room was on the western side, and the heat wave was a tough spike lasting only a few days during each summer. She suggested that I contact booking.com, through whom I had reserved for two nights, to see if I could cancel the reservation at such short notice, without being liable for payment. After calling and talking frankly with the booking.com guy, and then asking the proprietress to call him, they agreed that I could cancel the reservation without charge. The hotel lady made a few calls for me and found a hotel within about 10 km, with air conditioning, that had a room available. It was a win, a significant change in my pattern. I was grateful to my self for advocating compassionately for myself and not merely enduring unnecessary suffering. The following day, I drove north again along the Atlantic Coast, through Nantes, and into the Breton peninsula, under hot, brilliant, leaden skies.

I enjoyed my final 3 nights, As I wandered a few days in Brittany, exploring ancient Celtic standing stones, dolmens, menhirs, and stone circles, around Carnac and swimming in the Atlantic Ocean, around the Gulf of Morbihan, and the small Breton city of Vannes. Heavy squalls and marine weather washed over the peninsula, as I drove out to Quiberon, cooling the torrid heat, and greening the dry fields. Those last couple of days, I stayed in a cheap but comfortable hotel upstairs from a bar, in a town 10-15 km away from the Gulf of Morbihan and its beaches and neolithic sites. I visited a museum of prehistory during the worst of a downpour. Later in the afternoon, it cleared up enough to go swimming on a sandy stretch of Atlantic Beach.

I began my sabbatical on April 1st, and my pilgrimage to Europe on April 12th. I write this blog as I am flying home on Icelandic Airlines, July 31st, somewhere over central Canada, en route to Seattle from Reyhavik, Iceland.

I Believe in All that has Never been Spoken Rilke

I believe in all that has never been spoken.

I want to free what waits within me

so that what no one has dared to wish for;

may for once spring clear

without my contriving.

If this is arrogant, God, forgive me,

but this is what I need to say.

May what I do flow from me like a river,

no forcing and no holding back,

the way it is with children.

Then in these swelling and ebbing currents,

these deepening tides moving out, returning,

I will sing you as no one ever has,

streaming through widening channels

into the open sea.

What Hurts the Soul? Rilke

We tremble, thinking we’re about to dissolve

into nonexistence, but nonexistence

fears even more that it might be given human form!

Loving God is the only pleasure. Other delights

turn bitter. What hurts the soul?

To live without tasting the water of its own essence.

People focus on death and this material earth.

They have doubts about soul water.

Those doubts can be reduced! Use night

to wake your clarity. Darkness and the living water

are lovers. Let them stay up together.

When the merchants eat their big meals

and sleep their dead sleep,

we night-thieves go to work.

The Journey. Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice…..

though the whole house

began to tremble

and felt the old rug

at your ankles.”Mend you life!”

each voice cried.

but you didn’t stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations…..

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice,

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world

determined to do

the only thing you could do….

determined to save

the only life you could save.