Last Walks

It is a beautiful day in Opelika.  The sky is blue, the sun at an autumn angle, and the dogwoods are beginning to change ever so slightly.  I am not completely up to speed today, but I found the speed to take my dogs for a walk.  First Jessie, then Abby, and, finally, Wolf.  

Jessie ran around like a nervous nelly marking everything he saw.  Abby, the least disciplined of all the dogs, walked politely next to me and stopped before crossing streets.  Wolf, the failing Alpha Dog who is probably 17 years old, made it only around the block on which the house sits, his black coat looking so rusty in the sun, his sweet little tail wagging, panting and easing along.  As we walked side by side I thought "remember this, remember this, don't ever forget how this feels."

I believe that loss teaches you to treasure the smallest of moments.  You never know with a dog Wolf's age if it's your last walk together, so such an ordinary event becomes...yes...a sacred moment. 

Unexpected loss is harder to bear.  One cannot help but struggle to remember the last walk. 

Southern Treasures

For several years Being Dead Is No Excuse by Gayden Metcalfe and Charlotte Hays has been a staple in Southern homes.  Why?  Because we recognize ourselves in the stories.  We take funerals very seriously and put on the dog with great old Southern recipes like those included in this book.  I was particularly fond of the comparison of Episcopal and Methodist funerals Down South and found hilarious truths in the descriptions.  I also found the perfect coconut cake recipe there which happens to be my Mama's favorite.   

I am thrilled to report that Metcalfe and Hays have moved from funerals to weddings with Somebody is going to die if Lilly Beth doesn't catch that bouquet.  I haven't read it yet, having only found it today in Atlanta.  But if it is anywhere near as good as Being Dead, I have great expectations of  laughs and more good recipes to come.  

Nothing...but nothing...beats a good laugh, a good recipe and "doing thoughtfulness right" in the South.

ECVA Call: Light of the World

           

As director of exhibitions for Epsicopal Church & Visual Arts (ECVA) I want to share the latest call with you.  Traditionally the Advent exhibition has been one of the most beautiful exhibitions we have all year, and it was during Advent 2001 that I discovered and first submitted work for the ECVA exhibition entitled Out of Darkness.  It was a beautiful time of my life when I was discovering the Episcopal Church and all its lovely Advent tradtions. 

I created the image above as a header for the call.  The cross is one I found at an antique shop years ago and bought for almost nothing.  I wish you could see the beautiful natural designs on it - it reminds me so much of a celtic theme of birds and nature and makes me think of St. Francis' Canticle of the Sun (All Creatures of Our God and King).  I occasionally wore this cross on a short black velvet ribbon for awhile until I gave it to my Sweetie to be used as a verger's cross.  It reminds me of many happy times when light flooded our life and nave; it is an appropriate symbol of the warmth of Advent or any time our souls call for Light:

" I am the light of the world. If any man follow me, he shall not walk in darkness but shall have the light of life ." John 8:12

Advent, the beginning of the church year, occurs during the darkest days of Winter when the lush beauty of nature has disappeared and our souls long for warmth. During this season we prepare for the coming of Light from Light through treasured rituals of greening naves, lighting advent candles, lessons and carols, reflection and meditation. These Advent traditions serve as symbols for our search in darkness for the mystery of life-giving light.

How do we find and manifest that light? Lux Mundi, the Light of the World .
ECVA calls for images that give vision to longing for light in the darkness and growing anticipation of the birth of Christ.

How do we find this light in our inner landscapes? How is His light manifested in your heart? During this season of darkness how do you imagine the coming light of life for all to see?

Exhibition Publication Date: November 30, 2008
Submissions Deadline: November 1, 2008

Symbolic Diabolic

               

In a church I have loved with all my heart I recently went on sabbatical from taking the Eucharist in an effort to find substance over form.   When the liturgy becomes theatre I still enjoy the show, but what I long for is love.  Love does not come from waifers we order from Almay or wine bought on Base and stored in sticky jugs in the sacristy cabinet.  It does not even arrive with the proper placement of these elements. 

I love the symbols of my church.  I hate the meanness of my church.  The opposite of symbol is the diabolic.  Symbols integrate; the diobolic disintegrates.   As we move toward Advent we prepare for the next disintegration, the yearly fight over greening the nave.  Who, By God, will get their way this year?  Yet this and all fights are not about greening naves.  The fight is about who owns the church, who can take back their church and who keeps undesirables outside the gate. 

What are the crosses of my church?  Different expressions of the same Truth, alike but different; beautiful forms disintegrating under corrosive fear; form seeking to unite, yet disintegrating in substance.  Because of me.  Because of you.  Because tensions are too high, and we keep on crucifying and know not what we do or do not care what we do. 

Violence continues to unite us in a primitive form of "us and them" bonding at my tiny church beautifully placed in the Southern landscape in the home of the brave and the free.  But we know not freedom of soul.  Rene Girard's Scapegoat Theory is played out year after year in a 150 year old stone church, and its crosses and membership disintegrate while nestled in the arms of dogwoods and hollies, two of nature's lovliest symbols of love.  The potential will break your heart; the meanness will break your spirit.

I do not think that my church is so unusual.  I think it is this way everywhere.  It is more common than unusual to hear stories of people destroyed in churches where they went in search of love and found fear instead.  The symbols disintegrate before their eyes, and they tentatively, if at all, re-enter houses of worship seeking theatre and a private form of worship that seeks first to do no harm or suffer no harm.

Faith looks to the past.  Hope looks to the future.  Love is right now.  It may be the greatest of of these, but only if we have eyes to see.    

If the Eucharist will not resurrect me, maybe avoiding it will. 

What Remains

Never confuse the importance of heart or intellect.  They work in sync with the soul and are equally important for true perception.  We know that in the South, a soulful land that knows the painful struggle of holding on to identity when all causes appear lost.  In the middle of destruction we have been taught to ask what really matters, a question that can only be answered by use of heart and right thinking (as Jesus would say, thinking with the heart). 

Lately I have been thinking with the heart and asking some questions about the passing of time.  Inevitably, seasons change and we do, too.  We may wonder what lies beneath who we are today.  What have we lost, and what have we kept?  We generally keep the same eyes as windows to the soul.  The same laughter; the same tears.  The same heart; the same mind.  The same light; the same dark, and many, many memories born of each.  

All in all, the same soul remains - tethered, free or freely tethered. 

My generation has freely given way too much heart and intellect.  We have shared our thoughts, opinions, emotions, sentimentalities.  We have shared our bodies like salted peanuts in a bar.  We have socialized, fraternized, intellectualized, compartmentalized and idealized.  We have all given, taken, used, abused, amused ourselves and begged to be excused for all this sincere fun.    

But has another soul ever really known yours? 

Southern Women

"Despite their cattiness, Southern women often get along beautifully and enjoy each other's company in a way that other women cannot manage.  They are the only American women who, bereft of their men, once stood alone together and faced an invading army.  This makes for a special closeness in the descendants of those not-so-fragile flowers who greeted a battalion from their front porches with a frigid bow." 

~Florence King, Southern Ladies and Gentlemen

Mockingbirds

Kymulga Grist Mill near Childersburg, Alabama

A Southern classic, Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird is required reading in the South. Published in 1960, the story is a vision of the summer of 1936 when the Alabama author was ten years old. A brother and sister, Jem and Scout, along with their friend, Dill, run around a small town in overalls, playing the hardy imaginal games taught by freedom to roam in the heat of a Southern summer, learning the lessons of injustice and mercy. Southerners always seem to identify with one or other of the characters, and, like the characters in Gone with the Wind, they might as well be real people who live down the street since their actions and inactions are discussed accordingly.

When the children’s father tells them that it would be a sin to kill a mockingbird, a neighbor, Mrs. Maudie, explains why. A mockingbird is one who

“…don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us.“

A mockingbird was revealed to the children in the form of a reclusive, downright odd neighbor, Boo Radley, the town spook, so to speak, with a tragic past, a man scorned and feared. Boo watched over the children without their knowing. Unable to relate to the children, he loved them nonetheless, and left them presents in the hollow of a tree. Treasures left by Boo included: two pieces of Wrigley's Double Mint Gum; two scrubbed and polished pennies; one ball of gray twine; two “almost perfect miniatures of two children” (Scout and Jem); one whole package of chewing gum; a tarnished spelling bee medal; and “a pocket watch that wouldn’t run, on a chain with an aluminum knife.”

Ultimately Boo’s greatest gift was saving the lives of the children and bringing them home. Boo was, in the end a mockingbird, doing no harm, giving without expectation, singing his heart out in his own odd way.

Boo wasn’t such a strange man. I would imagine that many people make containers similar to tree hollows in which they give others their druthers.  Love is seldom melodramatically grand. Often its symbols are little, unpretentious, tentative, yet faithful. Gum, pennies, twine…that’s the stuff with which we sing out our apprehensive, worn out hearts.

Hovering Healing Wings

The meaning of love is lost in any relationshiop that looks to weakness, and hopes to find love there.  The power of love, which is its meaning, lies in the strength of God that hovers over it and blesses it silently by enveloping it in healing wings. ~ A Course In Miracles

Regift

A Light So Powerful

The only judgment involved is the Holy Spirit's one division into two categories; one of love, and the other the call for love.  You cannot safely make this division, for you are much too confused either to recognize love, or to believe that everything else is nothing but a call for love.  You are too bound to form, and not to content.  What you consider content is not content at all.  It is merely form, and nothing else.  For you do not respond to what a brother really offers you, but only to the particular perception of his offering by which the ego judges it. 

The ego is incapable of understanding content, and is totally unconcerned with it.  To the ego, if the form is acceptable the content must be.  Otherwise it will attack the form.  If you believe you understand something of the "dynamics" of the ego, let me assure you that you understand nothing of it.  For of yourself you could not understand it.  The study of the ego is not the study of the mind.  In fact, the ego enjoys studying itself, and thoroughly approves the undertakings of students who would "analyze" it, thus approving its importance.  Yet they but study form with meaningless content.  For their teacher is senseless, though careful to conceal this fact behind impressive sounding words, but which lack any consistent sense when they are put together. 

This is characteristic of the ego's judgments.  Separately, they seem to hold, but put them together and the system of thought that arises from joining them is incoherent and utterly chaotic.  For form is not enough for meaning, and the underlying lack of content makes a cohesive system impossible.  Separation therefore remains the ego's chosen condition.  For no one alone can judge the ego truly.  Yet when two or more join together in searching for truth, the ego can no longer defend its lack of content.  The fact of union tells them it is not true. 

It is impossible to remember God in secret and alone.  For remembering Him means you are not alone, and are willing to remember it.  Take no thought for yourself, for no thought you hold is for yourself.  If you would remember your Father, let the Holy Spirit order your thoughts and give only the answer with which He answers you.  Everyone seeks for love as you do, but knows it not unless he joins with you in seeking it.  If you undertake the search together, you bring with you a light so powerful that what you see is given meaning (emphasis added).

~ Possibly the words of Jesus from The Equality of Miracles,  A Course in Miracles