Since my house
Burned down, I now own
A better view
of the rising moon

Masahide

For three nights the moon has been a crisp white disk shining in dark, blue skies. Cold clarifies the air and the sight stops my breath before it escapes in tiny white puffs. At such moments I could live on sky.

I think of Masahide and his burnt down house. The tragedy held a blessing: he had a better view of the moon. Perhaps so beautiful that he forgot he had no place to sleep, and gave thanks that the building no longer hid the rising moon from his sight.

I hope for Masahide’s acceptance of life’s unexpected hardships and his willingness to discover that sometimes, whatever is lost is not as great as what is revealed by its passing.

I love teaching, even a late class after a night of no sleep. I drag myself out of bed in the morning and wonder how I will ever teach a three and a half hour evening class, but teaching energizes me, and teaching the first of eight classes on “Sacraments” to thirty-some students was exhilarating. I have written a column for over twenty years sharing my experiences in the hope of encouraging others to experience the Sacred in the midst of and through life’s quotidian activities. Tonight’s class allowed me to share my wonder at the reality of God’s Loving Presence constantly poured out on all that is and my conviction of the importance of taking time to be mindful of it.

In many of my classes, I use videos by Fr. Michael Himes, theology professor at Boston College, to add variety to a long evening and to give my students the opportunity to hear the material from another point of view. I am never disappointed and tonight was no different.

After we explored the idea of sacrament in its broadest sense and discussed the fact that everything can be a sacrament, an opportunity of encountering God, I popped in the video on “Grace.” Students listened, took notes, and nodded as something Fr. Himes said connected with something in their lives.

When the lights were back on students offered their comments. One felt affirmed in her conviction that quiet times by herself could be times of encountering the Sacred. Someone else was struck by Fr. Himes’ statement that Catholic Tradition “could be called a training in becoming sacramental beholders.”

“What was the Principle of Sacramentality that he talked about?” a student asked.

“That which is always and everywhere true must be noticed, accepted and celebrated somewhere, sometime,” Father Himes had said. “If God is everywhere, somewhere we have to stop and notice…If God is with us at all times…we set aside sometime to notice.”

“We don’t meet God in the past,” I said. “We don’t meet God in the future. We encounter God in the present, but being present to the moment can be difficult.”

“Yes,” said another student. She mentioned Fr. Himes’ reference to Gerard Manley Hopkins who had been walking home one evening in Wales, worried about the coming winter and grieving the end of summer. He was so preoccupied with the past and future that he was unable to appreciate the wonder of the moment. The experience gave rise to one of his most quoted lines of poetry from “Hurrahing in Harvest”: “These things, these things were here and but the beholder/Wanting;”

We are called to be “beholders,” to slow down and recognize Divine Presence that is everywhere and always; to “take off our shoes” because “…Earth’s crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God…” as another poet, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, wrote in her poem, “Aurora Leigh.”

Thorton Wilder got it right in his play, “Our Town” when the character Emily, returned from the dead to relive one day of her life, could no longer bear the exquisite beauty of every moment. She was distraught by the living who seemed to have no appreciation of the glory of life:

“Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it–every,every minute?
Stage Manager: No. (pause) The saints and poets, maybe they do some.”

I read that line for the first time when I was a sophomore in high school, and resolved at that moment to become either a saint or a poet so I would not pass through life unaware of the Grace that enveloped us all.

Well, I have not become either, yet…But I try. and tonight, filled to overflowing with God’s gift of self in the students, the conversation, the warmth and wisdom of Fr. Himes, the poets and people who had become part of the evening, I decided to celebrate: I stopped by the pizza shop at the end of my street, bought the best pizza in town, and shared it with my brother when I got home. It was the Sacramental Principle, after all.

LINKS Redwoods Monastery Holy Cross Abbey The Abbey of Gethsemani Books by John Howard Griffin
PBS special “Soul Searching: The Journey of Thomas Merton

Today is the birthday of a good friend, Father Maurice, or as I knew him first, Hugh. Hugh is a Trappist monk and priest who is chaplain for a small community of Trappistine nuns in northern California. While at Gethsemani, Hugh worked with Thomas Merton, helping at his hermitage and welcoming guests that came to spend time with the famous monk, writer, and poet. Merton had thoughts of founding hermitages in Alaska, and Hugh had plans to accompany him when he returned from a conference in Bangkok. He did not return. Merton’s unexpected death by accidental electrocution in his room was devastating for many including then Brother Maurice.

He took a leave to discern what direction to take and that is when we met. I sat behind him at a parish workshop and decided that I had to meet this intriguing person with a very short haircut (not in vogue at the time) who wore white socks and sturdy black shoes. It was the beginning of a friendship that has lasted forty years.

Along with a mutual friend, we drove to the Black Hills, camping our way west to pray on Harney Peak where the Oglala Lakota holy man, Black Elk, sought his vision. We visited the Rosebud and Pine Ridge reservations and marveled at Badland vistas.

I rode his motorcycle and enjoyed looking at the sky through his handmade telescope. Hugh introduced me to the Abbey of Gethsemani where I once spent an incredible evening at Thomas Merton’s hermitage, the guest of John Howard Griffin, author (of among other titles, “Black Like Me”), photographer, and gourmet cook. John was working on a biography of Merton, but he took time to prepare a wonderful dinner on the hermitage’s two hot-plates and took pictures far beyond monks’ betime as my sister and I played guitars and sang the October night away.

Hugh decided to return to the monastery and later became an ordained priest. He became a friend to our children and it was on the grounds of Holy Cross Abbey in Virginia where each of them got behind the wheel of a car for the first time, driving with Hugh through the windy roads of the monastery.

On his yearly visits back to his home monastery we usually manage a visit. Besides that, phone calls and letters keep us in touch. When I was at the Collegeville Institute last year, Morgan Atkinson, director of the PBS special, “Soul Searching: The Journey of Thomas Merton,” and editor of the companion book of the same title, came to Saint John’s University for a screening of the special and to answer questions.

I called Hugh.

“Are you in this special?”

He laughed. “Well….Yes.”

That was all I needed to know. I enjoyed the special and while waiting to talk to the director I heard a man ask him if he had any connections at Redwoods Monastery.

“I would really like to get in touch with that Father Maurice. His comments really spoke to my heart.”

I smiled, tapped the man on the shoulder and offered to put him in touch with my friend.

Friendship is a gift. One that lasts over forty years is unusual in a time when school and jobs keep people moving. Today I give thanks for Hugh, Fr. Maurice, and the friendship that, with good health, promises to last another decade or two.

LINKS Sky and Telescope: The magazine’s sky observation news Spaceweather: Information on all types of “sky events”

Photo: Pierre Martin, Ottawa, Canada

After having a birthday dinner with my sister and brother-in-law, I drove out of town to spend the night with a friend who lives in the country. She has an unusual home built of concrete and partially covered by a grassy mound of earth that forms part of the roof. That is where we would spend the night: meteor watching.

The Orionid meteor shower is the result of the earth moving through the tail of Halley’s Comet. This year the show coincided with a cloudless autumn night and Melanie and I were going to enjoy it.

She made some popcorn and I opened a bottle of wine to share. We talked until 12:30am came around, and when it did, we walked upstairs and out the double doors that led onto the roof. The sky was magnificent. Even without meteors, the sight was breathtaking. The absence of light from a big city enabled us to enjoy tiny bits of light that covered the sky like luminous dust, a backdrop for familiar constellations. We sat in silence, our necks bent back against the cold aluminum frames of the lawn chairs, waiting.

“I think we might be a little early,” I said after a half-hour had passed. Some clouds were beginning to move in.

“Why don’t we go to bed for a few hours and get up around 4:30?” Melanie suggested.

We did, and when the alarm rang I slowly pulled myself out of bed, put on a jacket and hat Melanie had laid out for me and walked back out on the roof. She was already there, and her dog, Maddie, resting at her feet, looked up at me with eyes that seemed to say, “What are you two doing on the roof at 5am?”

I settled into the chair and Melanie handed me a blanket.

“I love these big old wool blankets.”

So do I. Unlike newer synthetic ones, their weight as well as their warmth is a comfort. I looked at the sky. Orion had moved and was standing straight, looking as if he were guarding the house. I smiled. Orion was my friend, the one I looked for when I went to bed late or got up on a sleepless night. No matter where I was, he was there, a nighttime companion.

Only a few minutes passed before we saw our first meteor, streaking across the sky from Orion’s direction. They came every few minutes. I thought about the grassy roof under my feet and the small planet that held us. We were a speck, hurtling through space and pushing our way through the dust and debris of a comet’s tail. I pulled the blanket tighter.

“It’s colder out here,” Melanie said.

I looked up. Not a cloud in sight. We marveled at the difference clouds make, holding heat closer to our planet.

Eventually more time passed between meteor sightings. We were colder. Unwrapping our blankets and folding up the chairs we made our way back into the house. Melanie brewed hot tea and served toast slathered with jam she had made from berries that grew wild on her property. We shared a pear picked from a tree in her yard.

Earth. Sky. Friendship. Bountiful Presence. It was more grace than I could hold.

Yesterday, between grading stacks of tests and reflection papers, I took a walk around the neighborhood. The sky was October blue, and the stunning orange sugar maple leaves brought me to a stop. Overwhelming beauty moved my heart to reverence and thanksgiving for such gifts. Perhaps this prayerful interlude made the intrusion of tacky plastic Halloween decoration more jarring than they would have been if I had come upon them first.

House after house displayed an array of “decorations.” Strings of plastic ghosts and pumpkins that light up at night strung over bushes, along porch overhangs, and between branches; a variety of creatures looking as if they were struggling to emerge from their graves; headstones, gauzy fake cobwebs in a variety of colors; witches and ghosts swinging from trees.

I was reminded of a similar blight on the landscape while driving thougth a small town. A giant inflatable spider hovered over an assortment of ghosts, zombies, and skeletons. On the left of the yard was a small pool and fountain of questionable taste at its best. For Halloween the water is died red and gushes out of a skull’s mouth.

What happened to Halloween? Is it card companies or manufacturers of cheap plastic throwaways that drive this excess? Occasionally, between “Halloweened houses” a porch would be decorated with pumpkins or gourds, nature’s contribution to the season. But on the street I walked, natural displays were the exception.

I am reminded of a professor who taught education courses when I was studying to become an elementary teacher. She had been a British Headmistress of an infant school in London. She was always amazed at the American fascination with holiday decorations and themed work she observed in our schools.

“Every year, turkeys, hearts, ghosts and witches,” she would muse. “Why? There is no ‘meat’ in them for study. Year after year students can count on doing the same thing.” She shook her head. “Only in America.”

A victim of breast cancer, she passed away a number of years ago. She would have shared my dismay at the trend of draping one’s home with plastic and lights, in your face tacky that distracts from the true beauty of the season.

Why not take time to marvel with a child at the exquisite artistry of a spider web or the wonder of changing leaves? Why are we such eager consumers, willing to buy the silliest things that will end up in a landfill in a week or two? It is easy. It is fast. Faster than making homemade costumes, carving jack-o-lanterns, reading stories and poems, or taking walks through a pumpkin patch.

We are a drive-through consumeristic society and gullible enough to think supporting more disposable junk somehow makes a holiday more fun and exciting. We are on clutter overload and so are the children. Enough plastic lights and headstones and no one takes notice.

What if the money spent across this nation on holiday gewgaw was spent instead on food, schools, or dare I say it…taxes…that might make a positive difference for someone? The thought entered my mind but left as I turned a corner to see yet another Frankenstein emerging from someone’s lawn.

With positioning desk, table, file cabinet, and bookshelves, the metamorphosis is complete; the freshly painted “bedroom” has become my office. Despite a long day moving, I woke up ready to work. Just standing in the hallway and looking into the new space was energizing. Spaces where we live and work have such power.

While I was in Minnesota last year, I had the opportunity to create my own space for the first time in many years. In the past our family created the spaces in our home. That is how it should be. We had places for art projects, “inventions,” and science experiments. An old van der Graff machine sat in the dining room, and an upright piano rescued from a bar squeezed into our living room making music lessons possible.

We were a creative bunch and kept a couple boxes of dress up clothes handy for impromptu dramas. Juggling balls and pins mixed with favorite stuffed animals and a handmade dollhouse that sometimes held little people and other times was populated with small woodland animals. The house spaces changed as we all did.

In the midst of this, a space for writing was difficult to find. At first, a comfortable chair was my “place.” After everyone went to bed I curled up in the chair with a journal and pen and wrote away. Eventually I moved into the dining room where first the table and later a small desk moved into the corner served the purpose.

One Christmas my husband cleaned out a small room off the living room that had been a storage place for stuff that had no other place to be. It was a wonderful Christmas present: it even had a door I could close.

Finally, at the Collegeville Institute, I had an apartment and an office to arrange. Housework is not high on my priority list, and I surprised myself with how I enjoyed keeping the rooms neat. I had brought a few things from home to make the apartment “my own:” Shells and stones from Cape Cod and interesting fossils that sat on window ledges, photographs of family and friends, books, two throw pillows, and an afghan.

It was a quiet place where I could work as well as a place to share tea and conversation or an impromptu dinner with friends.

Moving into the transformed bedroom at my Dad’s house imparts a similar feeling: I am surrounded by carefully chosen things that have become part of my life: a monk bowl from Thailand, a modern soapstone carving of someone lost in reflection, an ivy plant started with cuttings from a plant at the Institute, an Ethiopian cestrum. A light blue crock that has held pens and pencils since I was in high school and a new pen holder made by a retired photographer from the Catholic Times. And of course, lots of books.

I have a special place for my Bible and a candle, and this morning I resumed Lectio Divina, something neglected in the upheaval of settling in to a new way of life.

Sacred Spaces can be anywhere; An office, a kitchen table, a comfortable coffee shop, or park bench. They allow us to more easily open ourselves to receive the Presence that is always being poured out. I am thankful for this space and for the people who helped make it a reality.

October has traded her blue skies and sunshine for grey clouds and rain. Driving down the highway I noticed tree limbs soaked black holding up their orange, yellow, and salmon crowns as if challenging the elements to quench the flaming foliage. It hung on with surprising strength, surrendering few leaves to the cold wind.

Colors have a depth and saturation on wet, grey days that they lack at other times. I enjoyed seeing bleached grasses and weeds running along the top of a grassy green strip and against the wire fence threaded through with remains of trumpet vine and poison ivy.

Beyond the fence in a low-lying field, a splattering of white Queen Anne’s lace blooms mingled with purple New England asters. Further in the distance red and orange sugar maples dotted nappy hills that remained predominately green.

I passed the small white shed of a roadside stand. Its eves were hung with bunches of Indian corn and bittersweet. Between the shed and farmhouse, orange pumpkins of every size lined up, shiny and wet.

Even in the rain, I love October days.

While driving I have to keep an eye on the speedometer since my foot is heavy on the pedal. It wasn’t heavy enough for some this morning, though. Waiting for a car to pass in the opposite lane before I turned left raised the ire of two drivers behind me. One passed on the right, gunning his engine and giving me a hard look.

“He must be in a hurry I thought,” keeping my eyes on the approaching car. After it passed, I turned into the church parking lot, but not before hearing an angry voice shout at me from the other car: “Get moving, old woman!” she yelled.

I felt sick, but not because she called me “old woman.” While I don’t consider fifty-nine worthy of the “old woman” tag, I know age is relative. What disturbed me was the tone in her voice: anger, almost rage. I wrote about shared responsibility for bringing peace into the world as I reflected on Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize, but how can the world know peace when so many people are filled with hostility?

A couple of weeks ago I heard peace activist John Dear S.J. speak about contemplation and living peace. He quoted Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh: Peace in every step. Peace in every breath. We must respond to others with peace in our hearts.

I thought of that when the woman screamed at me this morning. What in her life made her quick to react with hostility to such an insignificant wait? What pain or hurt has she endured? I thought of others around the globe: young people trained to hate “the enemy,” bigots afraid of anyone different than them. I thought of those who have a right to be angry: people suffering discrimination merely for being who they are; those enduring physical and mental abuse, innocent people living in fear and watching loved ones die in war torn countries, the starving, and those impoverished in the midst of plenty?

As I entered church and found a seat, the list had become overwhelming. Peace must start in the heart, I thought. Who can follow a leader calling for peace when their hearts are filled with anger and hate? Jesus knew that was impossible. So did Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. They both insisted on nonviolence and love in response to brutality. Many thought these two men of peace were crazy to confront oppression with no weapons but nonviolence and trust in innate ability of the human soul to eventually recognize evil and choose good instead.

I looked at the altar. Jesus lived peace. He promised to help us do the same. I prayed for the woman in the car, and hoped wherever she was going, someone would meet her with a heart filled with peace.

LINKS:
2009 Nobel Peace Prize Citation Obama’s remarks: Christian Science Monitor “Common Misconceptions about the Nobel Peace Prize” “Gasps as Obama awarded Nobel Peace Prize” AP article by Ritter and Moore President Obama’s UN Speech

News of President Obama receiving the Nobel Peace Prize energized me for the day. “Hope” is the word I would use to describe my reaction, hope for the possibility of change in the political climate of the world, and in this country. Hope for “the common good” becoming a guiding principle in policy and decisions.

In the citation awarding the prize (see link), the spokesperson for the Nobel Committee said Obama was chosen in part “…for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” He was also recognized for creating “…a new climate in international politics,” and his call to those who listened to his U.N. speech in April (see link) that “Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global problems.”

Some people are saying that this is too early in Obama’s presidency to award him such an honor. “He hasn’t done anything yet,” they say. Others think the Nobel Committee’s choice cheapens the prize. “It is usually given to a person who has achieved something concrete,” they say. In an article by the Associated Press, Geir Lundestad, the secretary of the Nobel Committee, said that is not true, and that more often, it is given to encourage the recipient to continue their work, sometimes at “critical moments.” (see link: Common Misconceptions)

Surely, this is a critical moment at home and abroad. The issues we face are momentous: arms control, climate change, wars, terrorism, poverty, and genocide, to name some. As Obama has said, these challenges cannot be met by a single person or nation. They require the cooperation of all nations, of all peoples.

That is what I found hopeful about the Nobel Committee’s choice of President Obama. They have put the prestige and international stature of the prize behind Obama’s efforts to rally leaders of nations and ordinary citizens to accept responsibility and become involved in making a difference in our world. The committee members see the promise in Obama’s vision. Awarding this prize to the one they see as “the world’s leading spokesman”(see link, Citation) for such an approach, sends a message to the world: This is possible. Let us put aside differences, see what binds us together, and move forward to bring peace and justice.

A surprised and humble Obama said as much when he spoke to reporters in the Rose Garden this morning: “I will accept this award as a call to action, a call for all nations to confront the challenges of the 21st century…Let me be clear, I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments, but rather as an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations.”

I send my congratulations to President Obama for engendering hope and providing leadership in the worldwide search for peace. My prayer is that people of this country and the world will be encouraged anew to work for peace in their hearts, their families, their cities. Peace is a “bottom up” endeavor. It ripples out from individual efforts no matter how small, and makes a difference. Such efforts, multiplied millions of times over, will be what enable Obama and world leaders to achieve this goal. In the end, they represent us and our commitment to justice and peace.

Neither detractors nor supporters of Obama and his policies can sit back and wait to see whether he succeeds or fails. That would be an abdication of responsibility. As the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committe, Thorbjoern Jangland, said, “If everything goes wrong, then one cannot say that this was because of Barack Obama. It could be that it is because of all of us, all the others, that did not respond.” (see link, Gasps…)

The possibility for the success of Obama’s call for cooperation and action based on shared human values lies not only in his hands and the hands those in positions of power, but also in the hearts of ordinary people in the United States and around the world who make known by word and action their desire for it.

“I think October is a month of reminiscing,” a friend of mine said yesterday after we shared some laughter over memories of a backpacking trip I had taken across western Europe. I wasn’t sure how the topic had come up and said so.
“There is something about this time of year that leads us to sit back and remember. I don’t know what it is, but I do believe that.”

I think she is right. Perhaps the October tendency to muse out loud has to do with our agrarian past. After the harvest had been gathered and winter cold was yet to come, our ancestors could savor the fruits of their hard work.

Then there are smells. They can transport us in an instant to an experience from the past, Fall air carries its own set: decaying plants, fallen leaves, and smoke from burning wood; sweet aromas of apples, hot chocolate, and cider; the smell of new books, packed lunches, and newly sharpened pencils.

Or could the tilt of the earth and its path around our fiery star that bathe everything in autumn’s softer light encourage our eyes to linger and our thoughts to wander?

Maybe the clear, dark skies that show off stars and the bright, white moon at night make those who gaze into it thoughtful as they become aware again of their small footprint in the vastness of creation.

Even in a world far removed from one in which people used position of heavenly bodies rather than digital readouts to tell the time and order their days, nature’s deep, enduring power seeps through barriers of glass and steel, and overloaded schedules. It stirs our souls and sends memories floating to consciousness.

October is a delicious time to savor. And that reminds me of making pies from butternut squash we grew in the garden instead of pumpkin that comes in a can.