Christ Victorious

From the altar of St. Andrews Episcopal Church, Birmingham, Alabama.  Thanks once again to "The Anonymous Photographer". 

Hair, Long Beautiful Hair

Gimme a head with hair, long beautiful hair
Shining, gleaming, steaming, flaxen, waxen
Give me down to there, hair!
Shoulder length, longer (hair!)
Here baby, there mama, Everywhere daddy daddy...HAIR

Hair is more than a physical part of the body.  Clearly in the Western world, where we enjoy great freedom of expression, hair is a feature of personality identification.  I don’t know if we can even help it; hair and ego are inevitably braided.  As a brunette child dazzled by hair the color of the sun, I longed aloud to have “yellow hair” – up until the time I discovered the mysteriously powerful effects of the sultry.  Powerful effects.  Hair has power.  Samson knew that.

But hair holds more than ego identification.  There seems to be a soulful element to it, a  spiritual significance I have tangibly felt my whole life.  There was a knowing without knowing that nurtured my fascination with hair before my generation adopted hair as the symbol of rebellion.  When I was a child and Mama would cut my hair and make me get a permanent, I cried.  When I finally cut my long pony-tail, I saved and wrapped it in paper for years, as if a limb had been extracted that I could not bear to discard.  When I played the role of Heidi in a school play, for one day I got to wear my hair down and go barefoot.  I have never been more beautiful, powerful and free than on that day.

I did not know anything about the mystical properties of hair found in the Kabballa then, and I am not Jewish, but something mythical or mystical must have been implanted in the virtual DNA of my soul.  Maybe I was influenced by Numbers 6 outlining the “otherworldly” vow of asceticism: 

All the days of his vow of Naziriteship there shall no razor come upon his head; until the days be fulfilled, in which he consecrateth himself unto the LORD, he shall be holy, he shall let the locks of the hair of his head grow long.

Who knows what influences a kid?  More likely I thought control over my own hair was a symbol of freedom.  Little did I realize then that the Kabballa saw women’s hair and men’s hair differently, requiring a woman’s hair to be completely covered.  No Heidi of the Alps in that culture.

Whatever the influence, I never outgrew my love of hair.  I don’t want to make too much of it, but when my hair is short, I am somewhat a stranger to myself; when it is longer, something eternal suddenly appears.  Is it a crown, symbol, holy or just plain sultry?

Self Portraits...Me and Van Gogh

I should like to do portraits which will appear as revelations to people in a hundred years' time.
-- From Vincent Van Gogh's June 3, 1890, letter to his sister

Besides the luminous glory of the night sky, Vincent van Gogh painted many images of the eyes that beheld that night - his vulnerable, intense eyes revealed in self portraits.  What is so interesting about these self portraits is that most (22) were painted during two years from 1886 through 1888 shortly before he killed himself in 1890.

Study some of Van Gogh's self portraits at Jason Wu's Princeton blog.  I see a fatigued longing, almost pleading, in his eyes; I wonder what feeling resided behind those eyes and what he was trying to reveal ("revelation to people a hundred years' time").  Did Van Gogh know he would choose to embrace death shortly?  Was he capturing the eyes of a creator who would soon unite with Creation?  Is this the face of the end of struggle, the face of resignation, or the face of ongoing struggle in which a man looks for a reason or the strength to continue fighting the pain of life?   Are these the eyes of the stranger on earth, the subject of Van Gogh's 1876 sermon based on Psalm 119 : 19.  That sermon included the following:

"Much strife must be striven
Much suffering must be suffered
Much prayer must be prayed
And then the end will be peace." 

Anyone who has ever stared into a mirror and wondered who they are and what self resides behind those eyes, might glean an understanding of  Van Gogh and his self portraits.  .  . musings of another  stranger on the earth longing to be at home somewhere, wondering if it was time to find the peace of repose, balancing that need against the vibrant passion to continue integrating the light, color and form of this brilliant world.  Was this the struggle we see in those eyes? 

With no further clarification than the images, I suppose Van Gogh accomplished his goal.  Each will see a different revelation, but most all will agree that these eyes haunt almost 117 years later. 

I am in the process of beginning a self portrait for an upcoming Call.  I am deciding if it will be acrylic, watercolor or digital.  But regardless the media and more importantly, what will my eyes reveal 100  years from now?  What will yours reveal?

The Story Behind "Same Old Lang Syne"

Dan Fogleberg's song “Same Old Lang Syne” (see the post below) is a haunting tribute to lost love. I seems that it is also based on a true story.

Christmas Eve 1975, while home visiting family for the holidays, Dan went out in search of whipped cream for Irish coffee and ran into his high school sweetheart, Jill Anderson, who was likewise home for the holidays and on a mission to find an open store to purchase egg nog for her mom. After graduating from high school in 1969 the two had gone to different colleges. Lo, they ran into each other at a convenience store, bought a six pack and sat in the car to catch up and reminisce. The only artistic liberty Dan took with the song was changing Jill's green eyes to blue since it would rhyme better and changing the occupation of her husband (who kept her warm and safe and dry) from PE teacher to architect. Jill will not reveal whether she told Dan that "she would have liked to say she loved the man, but she didn’t like to lie.” God bless her, she says, “I think that’s probably too personal.” She was divorced from that husband by the time the song was released in 1980. After Fogelberg's death Jill revealed that she was the girl in the song, remaining quiet until now because she knew Fogelberg was such a private person.

Cool song, cool time, cool story, and the snow really did turn into rain...

Thanks to my friend, Dan Hardison, who sent me a copy of  Phil Luciano's story for Gatehouse News Service.

Peace on Earth, Good Will To Men...and Women

Here's some more Peace on Earth, Good Will for you.  The Standing Committee of the Diocese of Fort Worth is bent out of shape over the Christmas card sent by our Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori to the bishops of the Episcopal Church, including Fort Worth's Bishop Iker.  In fact, they got so upset about Janet McKenzie's image of three wise women, they had to do something with all that upsetness.  So they spread the good cheer with their clergy and delegates as follows:

 To the Clergy and 2007 Convention Delegates,

The members of your Standing Committee thought you should be aware of this.

The Presiding Bishop has done something which defies explanation. This is the Christmas card she sent to Bishop Iker and presumably other TEC bishops. Given the increasing polarization in TEC (and the Anglican Communion) today, the only reason we can see for her to make this choice is that she is only interested in pushing the polarization just that much further.

The Presiding Bishop is an intelligent woman, so this reinterpretation of Scripture to exclude masculine images must be intentional. This card illustrates in many ways the core problem of the General Convention Church. Scripture cannot be made to conform to us, we must conform our lives and our faith to Scripture. We will continue to stand for the traditional expression of the Faith.

The Standing Committee of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth

Commentary on this silliness can be seen at Lisa Fox's blog entry Fort Worth Outraged at My Manner of Life which provides links to some other very entertaining articles.  Be sure to check out  Danger! Wise Women Ahead! by Andrew Gerns at Andrew Plus and Katie Sherrod's hilarious joke Can't Even Swim at Desert's Child.

Shocking as it may be, Fort Worth is a diocese that does not ordain women.  It would appear that the image of a female magi sent by the female head of the Episcopal Church drove these guys into a tizzy.  You have to give it to Bishop Jefferts Schori.  She has spunk.  So does the thought provoking image of the artist lost in this frenzy.    

Bumper Talk

I don't usually get into vanity tags or bumper stickers because I figure most people on the road don't really care who I am or what I would rather be doing.  This one, however, is too good to pass up.  I would imagine that it will not be very popular at my small town Roman-Baptist Episcopal church (that would be an Episcopal church where the national Episcopal Church is not really honored or, for that matter, recognized as existing; rather a quasi-fundamentalist attitude rears its head occasionally discouraging diversity and encouraging leaving your brain at the door under the quise of orthodoxy). 

Alas, I am proud to be a disobedient Episcopalian.

To Grok/ To Stand Under

It would appear that most of the masters and mystics advise us to seek understanding rather than control. Anthony de Mello says that when you understand something, it changes, and to some extent I can see that.

Seeking to understand rather than change a situation might appear to require passivity, but that is a false illusion. Nothing, but nothing, requires more activity than seeking to understand what baffles us. Usually seeking requires a degree of physical activity; moreover, a tremendous mental energy goes into such a venture. The brain fairly smokes from the friction required to think, stop thinking and re-engage enough, and at the right time, to come to a place of understanding, also known as Reality.

I am a lawyer, paper-chasing and immersed in the language contained on those papers. Recognizing that all language is symbol, I often use the mindsmithing device of definitions and word origins to comprehend meaning and make arguments (e.g. a brief should be short or else we would call it a long; I even understand Bill Clinton's "it depends on what is means"). Of course Black's Law Dictionary is where I go for legal definitions, but for non-legal terms I often use World Wide Words.

Understanding is a hard word to pin down.  According to WWW the word was first recorded in the ninth century, but its origin is a little vague because it seems to have originated in a figurative subsidiary (to beneath) sense which is now lost to us, rather like the word undertake.  Now I tend to agree with Thomas Edison who thought that the concept of understanding comes from the two simple words, under and stand, which did not pose much of a problem for him.  I have not seen it anywhere I have looked, but understanding (standing under) looks like a foundation, or foundational, to me.  This makes sense to me and reminds me of how in law school I had to take good notes so I could thoroughly comprehend a concept before I could build on it with new concepts.  The foundation was the underpinning (there we go with that under business again).

I always loved the Martian word grok, from Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, one of several books that changed my life.  While the word literally meant "to drink", its meaning expanded "to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes part of the observed—to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience."  This expanded definition comes from how we drink water and the water becomes part of us.  While I am not much of a "group experience" type of person, I am able to comprehend this concept when I say "War Eagle" as an Auburn graduate.  I merge into the group experience and thoroughly enjoy it.  Along with fellow parishioners, I sing "O Come Emmanuel" with great feeling during Advent at my church which is named Emmanuel.  I have a wistful fondness shared by Southerners when I hear Dixie.  I have particular friends with whom I have shared experiences we "get" in a way no one else possibly could.  And at those moments and in those settings, I grok it!  I stand under or am part of a shared foundation!

The mystics and masters do not tell us to grok, but I suspect that they would approve when we are our gardens (I'm the hydrangea, Daddy is the rose, Mama is the impatien, Granny is the geranium, my sister is the Daylily, and so on),  and when we merge with the wind and feel it blow through our hair and sparkle in the sunlight soaking into our skin.  I grok all of that.

So searching for reality is, to me, searching for the foundation, what you can count on and what really exists, not an illusion of what I want my world to be.  I do know that understanding transforms any experience.  Most likely because understanding transforms me. 

Same Old Lang Syne

Dan Fogelberg

08/13/51 - 12/16/07

Met my old lover in the grocery store
The snow was falling christmas eve
I stole behind her in the frozen foods
And I touched her on the sleeve

She didnt recognize the face at first
But then her eyes flew open wide
She went to hug me and she spilled her purse
And we laughed until we cried.

We took her groceries to the checkout stand
The food was totalled up and bagged
We stood there lost in our embarrassment
As the conversation dragged.

We went to have ourselves a drink or two
But couldn't find an open bar
We bought a six-pack at the liquor store
And we drank it in her car.

We drank a toast to innocence
We drank a toast to now
And tried to reach beyond the emptiness
But neither one knew how.

She said she'd married her an architect
Who kept her warm and safe and dry
She would have liked to say she loved the man
But she didn't like to lie.

I said the years had been a friend to her
And that her eyes were still as blue
But in those eyes I wasn't sure if I saw
Doubt or gratitude.

She said she saw me in the record stores
And that I must be doing well
I said the audience was heavenly
But the traveling was hell.

We drank a toast to innocence
We drank a toast to now
And tried to reach beyond the emptiness
But neither one knew how.

We drank a toast to innocence
We drank a toast to time
Reliving in our eloquence
Another auld lang syne...

The beer was empty and our tongues were tired
And running out of things to say
She gave a kiss to me as I got out
And I watched her drive away.

Just for a moment I was back at school
And felt that old familiar pain
And as I turned to make my way back home
The snow turned into rain...

Saint Andrew

Window from St. Andrews Episcopal Church, Birmingham, Alabama, thanks to a guest photographer.  Isn't it exquisite?

St. Andrew seems to have "a unique light" shining "forth from the individual". 

Doodles in Progress