Isaiah 65:1-9
Psalm 22:18-27

Galatians 3:23-29
Luke 8:26-39

Living in the Graveyard

An old friend of mine used to say, “People will walk a thousand miles to kill a peaceful man.”  Most of the time I bristled at my friend’s never deigning to use inclusive language but I learned a lot from him and I still think about him a lot.  Maybe he in turn was quoting Tolstoy or Shakespeare, his two favorite referents, although maybe it was Jesus, who was gaining on first place near the end.  I kept hearing Mr. Lange say this about the peaceful man as I read and re-read today’s lessons. 

Here the obverses are operating, however, as in both Isaiah and Luke the peaceful man is, in the first instance, shunned by rebellious people and in the second begged off.  The point is that rebellious, demon-infested people don’t want to have anything to do with do-gooding peaceniks.  Sometimes this phenomenon will take a violent tack and we end up with the peaceful person being murdered like Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., or being imprisoned like the thousands of peaceful dissidents languishing in jails the world over, a current prominent example being Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma whose “crime” was winning a democratic election.

No, people who sacrifice in gardens, offer incense on bricks, sit inside tombs and spend the night in secret places, eat swine’s flesh and toss it down with abominable broth, who run around naked and rattle their chains do not like it one bit when their tormentors, even if they are well intentioned, approach.  Who would?  I don’t know if you’ve ever felt this way, but I have plenty of times, when I am so out of sorts that the last thing I want is a helping hand or helpful advice or a shoulder to cry on.  I can hear myself saying, “I wish everybody would just leave me alone.”  I think we all realize this is the last thing anybody ever really wants but at this miserable time that I’m talking about, it seems to be the thing.  If people would just quit nagging me, pestering me, let me do what I want, I would be alright. And I don’t want to hear anything about duty or responsibility nor love or God or Jesus neither.  God never did nothin’ for me and so forth and so on. 

It’s at this point that someone comes along and shows compassion—loves us—and we are healed—clothed and put in our right mind.  Most of us don’t have to go down as far as the Gerasene demoniac before we get it that healing love is a reality.  But what if this story is not so much about Jesus and the demoniac but about us as observers of the scene, the bystanders, the people in the city and the country who ran to see what happened?  Remember, these were they who were seized with a great fear and begged Jesus to depart from them.  Twice now in this story Jesus is begged to depart—by the possessed and the not-possessed.  Who does he listen to?  “Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them, for they were seized with great fear.  So he got into the boat and returned.” 

What Jesus is showing us is that it is the love we love with, not the love we get, that is the healing love.  While on one level, the personal, we may identify with the demoniac, it is on the broader, deeper level of society that we can see our whole way of life condemned to the graveyard.  We try everything-wars and prisons on the one hand and endless distraction and self-indulgence on the other, and still it’s the graveyard.  What is the way out?  Compassion.  Not only does Jesus have compassion for the possessed person—he, unlike the rest of us bystanders, does not propose more, other, new, different chains—no he simply engages the demons (asks their name) and then, of all things, accedes to their wish not to be cast into the abyss, but sends them where they think they want to go.  More than casting them out or overcoming them in any manner, he dispels them, gives them permission and then they leave.  In this story and unlike conventional wisdom, it seems that Jesus loves not only the sinner but the sins as well.  Jesus, the absolute embodiment of compassionate love, is completely unruffled in the face of a legion of demons.  Love, simply, conquers all.  What if we, the bystanders, the city and country folk, were to love instead of always and ever trying to “guard with chains”?  (Such a curious expression…) 

I think we would all get out of the graveyard.  We would all be clothed and in our right mind.  We’d all be begging Jesus to take us with him.  Who, after all, in their right mind asks Jesus to go away?  Only graveyard dwellers like the ones who eventually condemn him to death and execute him at the place of the skull; only people whose fear of peace outweighs a natural sense of well-being and reason; only those who refuse to see a broken one made whole, who will not participate in forgiveness or healing or whatever we want to call restoration—but lucky for us the name for that process is legion too. 

Let us live in the garden instead of the graveyard—we have nothing to lose but our chains…

Carol Bernice, CHS
Chapel of the Holy Spirit
Melrose

June 20, 2010

I misread the clock and leapt out of bed at 5:30 today, thinking I was way late for harvesting. The good news is that Simon and I made it outside in time to catch the "second sunrise" (the one we see from the west side of the hill).

Along with the lovely sunshine, there were clouds of fog rolling up the hill. This always presents wonderful camera opportunities and plenty of fodder for my meditation time a few hours later.

I stood still for a few minutes and watched the fog slipping through our gardens, past the house and into the low-angled sunrays, which illuminated it briefly.  It was a constantly changing display of light, color and texture.

This is so true of life itself.  Stilling ourselves — not the easiest in our over-busy lives — enables us to see so much that would otherwise slip by unnoticed and unappreciated.

The world is filled with amazing sights and wonderful people. Mostly we miss them because we are too busy to stand still for a few moments and allow all the blessings to fill us with awe.

Standing still; it's free, it's easy, it's life-giving. 

Good God, Creator of the world, draw us into prayer and celebration as we gather to remember the gifts of Earth that you have entrusted to us as tillers and tenders in your garden.

Help us to know that in the gathering of the people, power is present among us: your Holy Spirit stirs and moves and gives us courage to engage the Great Work that lies before us.  Help us to so love Earth that our very lives will heal the soil and refresh the air and water.  Inspire in us the ambition to add our happy voices to the chorus of praise that daily rises from the rest of all your creatures.   Mitigate our heavy, noisome, oppressive presence on the blighted patches that are strip mine, clear cut, slurry pond and cafo. 

We pray in the name of your Anointed One who taught us from seaside and river, grassy plain and mountain top, grain field and vineyard that Your Presence is at hand, not even a breath away, beautiful and holy in all respects, and that in your presence Earth rings with Alleluias.  Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia. 

The somber, subdued nature of the week goes with the black and gray imagery of “Relativity.”  The figures in the drawing seem to be going about their daily lives much as we do.  It involves journeys that take us in directions that we may have not thought possible and seeing things we couldn't imagine beforehand.   All the characters seem caught up in the present, and if we observe Holy Week in a thoughtful and meditative manner, we, too, will be more aware of the present moment. 

Singing Tenebrae requires an alert attention to details, yet also, a listening to and meditation on the words themselves.  This year the lessons in the 1^st Nocturn of every night are taken from Jeremiah's Lamentations, and at family meals on Tuesday and Wednesday, we will be listening to music based on Lamentations performed by Nordic Voices.  On Maundy Thursday there will be the celebration of the Eucharist with foot washing in our refectory with a festive meal followed by silence and vigil in the great room at the Altar of Repose.  Our Good Friday liturgy will include a prayerful listening to and reading of Bach's St. Matthew Passion.  Bach was so far ahead of his time theologically and musically that it seems he should have been born in our age.  All of these “timely” observances of Holy Week will culminate in the great Vigil of Easter, which will have gained dimension and depth from our keeping of the week before.

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I was thinking about that syrup business again this morning. It’s hard not to, when your kitchen table is full of gorgeous amber bottles and folks stop by for a bottle and a chat all during the day. This is a whole new phase of the Magical Sugaring Season.

But that’s not what grabbed my attention this time. It was the finishing process. That’s the time when the quality of the bubbles in the sap begins to change, and the surface looks a little bit different, and if you leave it right now you’ll have candy for sure.

Batch after batch I stood there, watching the bubbles blow up clearer and slower, gradually spreading across the pan. Every time this began a delightful excitement built inside of me. The syrup and I were communicating directly. I was in awe; it was telling me when to cut the heat and praise the miracle of syrup.

Thermometers are just fine, but I finally realized that it was one more piece of technology stuck there in between we two communicants. The sap and I, two different expressions of the Earth, talking with each other. We were right there in the same room. We didn’t need a telephone. And when I began to listen to the sap, and pay attention to my own ability to “hear” it, magic happened.

Every batch was just a hair different from the last as the days passed. This I never would have known if I’d stuck with the gadgets instead of letting the sap teach me. I find myself resisting the temptation to buy “more professional” doodads so we can produce more syrup so we can make more money so we can … hmmmm, what was it we wanted that money for again?

We are all teachers for each other, we marvelous amazing creations of God-through-Earth. What happened to us humans that we cut ourselves out of that great communion and began to rely on our own devices?

This morning we had a rare treat as one of our long lost celebrants joined us again. Over a year ago he left New York, retired, on sabbatical, checking out life in a warmer climate… but to our surprise and joy, he's baaackkk! (At least for a year.)

His preaching style is legendary, yet this was my first opportunity to hear him. How one person can pack so much meaning into so few words boggles my mind... no wonder he is a legend.

The gist of his homily was the understanding of vocation. He used a quote from Parker Palmer: "It's not the life I want to live; it's the life that wants to live in me. I can relate. Although my family and friends were stunned, nobody was more surprised than I when I ended up in a convent.

The Gospel reading for today (Luke 13:31-35) describes the interchange between the Pharisees and Jesus, where Jesus tells them, "I must be on my way." ... that imperative to continue on the path that God had chosen for him, to be absolutely true to the vocation of who he was born to be… the Messiah.

Jesus was human, like us, with all the temptations, the weaknesses; yet as it is written: he did not sin. The crux of his sinlessness, then, could have been, must have been that willingness to be obedient. I never put much stock in obedience until I had to take a vow of it. Woot!

May, 2009

We just returned from the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, where we attended a spectacular service in honor of Bishop E. Don Taylor, who is retiring as suffragan bishop of the Diocese of New York. It has been a long time since I attended a service at the cathedral, perhaps the five and a half years since I moved to Melrose, and I had forgotten what it was like. I was completely overwhelmed. Sitting in the choir of the cathedral, close to the high altar, I was surrounded by the pipes of the massive Aeolian-Skinner organ, and was seated perhaps fifteen feet from the St. Thomas Boys Choir. As the service began, I found myself lost in the complex and magnificent texture of sound emanating from the forest of organ pipes on either side of me, some as long as thirty-two feet, some as short as a few inches, with the occasional fanfare of the state trumpets at the other end of the world‘s largest Gothic cathedral. When the choir of boys and men began to sing a cappella music from centuries past and present, the sound-scape transformed into layers of the most exquisite and haunting harmonies piling on top of each other and hanging in the air, suspended in this voluminous sacred cave with its reverberation time of seven seconds.

Enveloped in these sounds, while light filtered dimly through the stained glass of the rose window and the smoke from incense left the air thick, I felt as if I had been transported to another dimension. I felt tears begin to well up, and tried to hold them back, but they wouldn’t; soon they were streaming freely. They flowed in response to the beauty, they flowed for Bishop Taylor as he prepares to leave us for his native Jamaica, for this city with its vast needs, for our Community as we have endured the losses of the past few years, for the suffering of a broken world.

When, finally, Bishop Taylor arrived at the high altar, turned to the congregation in his resplendent chasuble, and announced, “Alleluia, Christ is risen!” I felt as if my heart would burst. It was as if he stood in for the living Christ, radiant with hope, as if he was a symbol of the very ground of our being. It was a moment in which truth seemed very clear.

The whole service hit me like a ton of bricks. After it was over we had to leave right away, so I didn’t have a chance to personally greet the bishop and thank him. But I feel so grateful for his service to the diocese, for the greatness of our liturgy and its power to transform, for sacred spaces like the cathedral, in which one can be lifted in a moment from the baseness of human nature to the pinnacle of hope and realization.