Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday, February 22, 2012

 

Begins again this Springward journey;

rebirthing all that once lived.

Trickle again once fickle brook and stream

sickle sighs yet in repose, sleeping still.

Earth, sore and Winter-stiff, seeks, sighs

stretches out skinny arms of want.

Her cold, hard bosom births not what soon will come

e’er the Sun’s hungry mouth suckles,

fills his lusty gut on hopeful barrenness

feasting on milk of timeworn, weary passage.

 

She forgets not the suddenness of late

and sooner dark, splayed upon a fine, greenness

come for to spite the buds of transforming light

bidding death where life has yet to emerge.

Warmly insistent she speaks, sharing her story

poured out over the long-shadowed land.

Bring such bothersome beauty to branchier speech,

fall around us, spilling, foaming such fury

and fermenting our soon-drunk wine of promise;

earthen spirit’s Eucharistic prayer.

 

Hush now, silence yourself bold coldness and spare not

freedom’s great gift only taken this once year’s-life.

Steep instead in warmness, worried not for lack

but bubbling and birthing bold words lightly spoken.

Remind us, refresh and reframe what is still rooting,

routing sad night-hood to don the new, the now, the never again;

only to return, restored and restoring,

regenerated, reborn.

Give us again your beauty for our ashes.

 

Wednesday speaks your secrets.

 

There was this dog

Faced with the disturbing reality that, to end the painful, troubled life of the family dog is somehow still better than watching a once remarkable animal descend into incontinent, sorrowful chaos, to wit…

There was this dog

For Skittles

 

Sullen cries, all joy despise

when blind even All-Seeing eyes –

there was this dog.

 

Turbid seas, invited see

what men in better times might be –

there was this dog.

 

Gathered moss, a grey-green toss

of silt and muck and sun-less loss –

there was this dog.

 

Darkened days, all hope a haze

delight could spare no time or trace –

there was this dog.

 

When fortune called, new joy installed,

instead of dark, did grace befall –

there was this dog.

 

Unnerving sounds, made still hearts pound,

her swift, sharp sound brought courage found –

there was this dog.

 

Children’s songs, if one or thronged

her faithful joy to them belonged –

there was this dog.

 

Days alone, unwelcome won,

kisses, wet, when we got home –

there was this dog.

 

Time has come, when pipe and drum,

ne’er fully celebrates this one –

there was this dog.

 

There is this dog.

Of life, love and bagpipes – continued

At a Highland Games sometime last summer I was piping for the Highland Dancing portion and wrote some reflections. This is the continuation of that story…

I jump ahead forty years in order to share one of many piping stories accumulated over those years. Since the age of fourteen I have played bagpipes as accompaniment for highland dancing. Typically, a piper or pipers are hired to perform this task, doing so throughout the day trading off dances for breaks from the delightful tedium. Yesterday was one such day.

One walks onto a damp field, humming with the possibilities of the day, newly arrived but yet in infancy. The sun, undecided as to its welcome, insists on playing peek-a-boo through gently swaying trees overhead. The heady, morning air gradually yields to the all too familiar squawks of bagpipers keen to tame the beast before their competition debut two hours hence. Ahead of me is a small army of doting Moms preening little girls; perfecting hair, fluffing ruffles, smoothing wayward eyebrows, tightening dancing shoes, blowing young noses and assisting people like me with the whereabouts of the necessary coffee, fuel for a long, noisy day of piping for Highland Dancing – the reason for this morning scenario…

It’s almost imperceptible how one’s surroundings, interactions – experiences in general, help to build a reality around our lives that is immediately recognizable on reentry. Smell pot once and you’ve pretty much got it memorized. Conversely, smell, if only for a moment, the fragrance of a particular perfume, and one’s whole world of first love reopens complete with vivid pictures, achingly familiar emotions and the intoxicating remembrances of love won and lost.

For bagpipers this occurs whenever the tangled auditory mess that is a competition field of peacock pipers strutting their craft before one another, feigning non-chalance, makes itself known. And yet, there’s a certain calming effect the uproarious clitter clatter of competing non-harmonies has had upon me for more years than I can count. As a competitive piper for decades, to walk onto a fresh competition field ripe with the smell of dew mixed with wet leather shoes, cigarette smoke, and the smell of bad food was nothing short of transcendent. If I’d hit a winning streak, this strut was accompanied by a rush of a please-notice-my-statuesque-entrance-onto-the-battle-field-and-be-afraid posture. Ah yes, the overly confident swagger of youth.

Today is not a competition day however. This is a day devoted to the craft of Highland Dance accompaniment. To the uninitiated it is the realm of piping masters whose melodies, lilting one minute, scorching the next, endear themselves to those intent on seeing kilts bounce up and down for six to eight hours in 90 degree heat. To those of us in the biz it is the bottom of the bagpipe food chain so to speak. To stand in one spot under a lovely shaded canopy while waited on hand and foot with coffee, water and sandwiches is a far cry from the blistering heat on black tarmac upon which competing pipe bands fight to maintain a most unwieldy instrument against the ravages of the waterless landscape. While I play simple, crowd pleasing melodies over and over again to constantly appreciative audiences, each pipe band must battle under much more extreme conditions not just for the crowds but for the stoic and feared judges lurking just beyond the competition circle.

No, my job today is considerably simpler. And, I’m OK with that.

I’m now closer to 50 than 15 and the sheer number of times I’ve had this experience of Highland Games participation complete with youthful swagger and passively boastful demeanor have been replaced by the gently glowing embers of gratitude. It is thankfulness for having even been introduced to this oddly mystifying instrument and its associated sociological accoutrements.  Now, I can’t help but think as I stroll past these young pipers intent upon nervous preparation for the perfect performance just how glad I am that they, now, have their chance and, second, that I no longer need it to enjoy all that it offers. I’m gonna watch them sweat for awhile.

Again, I’m OK with that.

Finding my way with words

Finding my way with words…

What a strange thing, this struggle finding something to write. Life is never empty and always full of at least enough interest to fill a paragraph or two. It continually amazes me when someone can render readable jewels from the dungish fodder life tosses their way. I suppose such narrative prowess belongs to the realm of poets, novelists, troubadours and storytellers. I’ve been a willingly geeked-out participant in their literary entourage my entire life. Perhaps only as admiring onlooker, but from time to time venturing into their territory – cautiously, with reticence, but always possessing an eagerness to be acknowledged in their illustrious company.

Many journeys have I keenly undertaken as some writer, deft of phrase and swift of word, has led me into places both simple and strange, dark and macabre, airy and transforming. My own meager, quaint words are a stuttering effort toward unlocking similar doors for others to enter.

As I’ve stated elsewhere, I’ve had a love affair with language since I can remember anything at all. Words, like the clink of ice and water in a frosty glass, assuage my gnawing thirst for the beauty, passion, or meditative pause they offer. As chilled water rushes down a parched gullet cleansing and renewing along the way, words nimbly used bring similar rejuvenation to my spiritual throat.

I’ve had friends along the way who have helped nurture this love for language. The great poets have helped seal the deal in my pursuit of words and their meanings. John Donne with his inimitable “three person’d God” or the unforgettable Wordsworth, whose Romantic era pontifications opened to us the rooted origins of wisdom brought us
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be bound each to each by natural piety.
Emily Dickson holds second place to no preacher with such prophetic words as these:
Behind Me — dips Eternity –
Before Me — Immortality –
Myself — the Term between –
Gerard Manley Hopkins takes first place for me. It’s hard to top such lyrically perfect sentences as “He fathers forth whose beauty is past change” or “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.” Closest to many hearts might be “the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want…”

I’m well aware that I’m not alone in this love. Many fellow writers and bloggers share the giddy, geeky excitement of a well-turned phrase, well-placed modifier, well-spoken sentence and well-written story. I am always challenged and delighted by the work of these friends on this journey of words (prepare for shameless plugs). Barbara Lane, whose approachable, touching and personal tales always delight, Lesley-Anne Evans, a fellow poet and Canadian, Christianne Squires, who writes deeply on the spiritual life, and Seymour Jacklin, poet and master storyteller introduced to me by Barbara, to name but a few. All of these and more have provided a backdrop full of letters, words and sentences that have moved me beyond all reckoning.

Marilyn Chandler McEntyre proffers intentional steps in reclaiming and reinvigorating language from its present morass in her book Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies. She asks all the right questions, premier among them being, why worry about words? Her answers have had me glued to this book as she butters my lexical toast with rich, creamy goodness (should I have chosen a different metaphor here?).

The reclarification and reinvigoration of language is necessary in order for it to once again communicate, heal, unite, instruct, and draw us into mystery. She even goes so far as to suggest that our protection of language is a moral issue in that it has become so entangled in corporate and war-speak as to be largely impotent in regular conversation. Language has been effectively retrofitted to serve the causes of dominance and conquest. Good conversation is like wool on the spinning wheel, creating something of warmth and substance, drawing us to comfort and community.

I will save the rest of my thoughts on Ms. McEntyre’s wonderful book for another time. Suffice it to say, words are my friends, or at least acquaintances with whom I hope to be on the waiting list to be invited into that great feast of letters, subtleties, and the whirling dervish of dancing metaphor – a veritable stew of yummy lingual goodness.

If I can get in the door, I’m hoping to get an autograph.

Haiku for you

Obviously, I’m on a big poetry kick right now. I suppose one strikes while the iron is hot creatively speaking. Lately, I’ve enjoyed the peacefulness and contemplative depth available through the simple little Haiku. For those unfamiliar with the Japanese poetry form it is composed of three lines, five syllables followed by seven followed by five. It is a seventeen syllable delight. I try not to think too long in writing them since the stream of conscious approach is so liberating and, well, fun really.

I give you, Haiku.

Here I sit, alone

Caged in public solitude

We are together

 

Never ending one

Sees what no one else can see

Subtle intrusion

 

Practicing sublime

Music, foraging in sounds

And every note counts

 

Dis-entangling

From places, wild, forbidden

Re-integrating

 

Come, save me, O God

Release me from my prison

That I might praise you

 

Severed like a limb

From life-giving tree and branch,

Awaiting our death

 

Felicitation

Birthing deeper happiness

Blest awakenings

 

Learning to reveal

What lies hidden and asleep

Reveals our learning

 

Now, with hearts, strangled

We wait, disembodied, blanched

Look, our tombstone rolls

bathroom mirror conversation

Tags

Poetry, Robert Rife, spiritual formation

Wait. What are these words

etched so blatantly in this fog-ged mirror

beside the shower

curtain of immodesty;

before me yet beyond my senses,

in ears endampened, engrossed, entombed-

like my murmuring heart?

Skin awash, adazzle;

insides asleep, awaiting…

There, there I see on glass, smeared,

perhaps by finger, nose, or shoulder –

condensation wiped from misty mirrors

word for word what I most misunderstand

and least fathom.

Traces left, glances of a face

revealed yet indeterminable; known, un-strange;

but surprising now, and terrible

soft and fearsome, lithe but

too big to hide even

in the darkest corners of my indirection.

Droplets dive to swim and speak

the intangible peace of this lilting voice.

Like an eyeball widget

refusing to stand still, darting to and fro,

never seen straight on,

just out of focus,

you write this tale, shrouded

in the vagueness of a loving stare,

adroit and sharp, a repeated repetition,

repeating yet again the same words:

“I have made you clean.”

Still, I know this face.

It is yours, subtle One.

It is mine.

It is ours.

of winter

Tags

Poetry

perforate my insolated heart

with rock and stone and bits of branch

that scratch the earthen sky

with its insistent icy gaze

latch yourself rock, stock and thicket,

the budless arms of winter, skin and bone

wrap themselves around the icier heart

of my discontent

cry with wonder at my lack of wonder

this chill stream of unconscious boredom

alive in its deathly hold

we, together, sleep.

where once I stood

brazen, half alive but sure

of my surety finding

none but rockbed nourishment

in place of deeper food

but I refuse to dig.

in this time, non-colored

void of spring’s lithe dance

or summer’s lazy strolls,

only still

lonely, stilled,

stillness alone.

so be it,

come, sweet winter

come, bid me bid goodnight to my childish fears

hypnotize me, embalm and embranch me

let the stark, new life of death

feed this wafer-thin soul.

kiss me with frozen resurrection

till snow becomes dew

and we both

ascend

Why the world needs the Celts

Tags

Celtic

When one thinks of the term Celt or Celtic what images spring to mind? Is it the Pictish war-paint donned by William Wallace in Braveheart as he prepares to take Scottish troops into yet another conflagration with England? Is it the Military Tattoo at Edinburgh Castle where hundreds of overly plumed peacock pipers and drummers march to and fro in a celebration of Scotland’s warring past? Is it the drunken party at the local pub as it becomes abundantly apparent that you’ve walked into some secret society, all of whom are experts on their instruments, can drink more than any human should be capable of but with whom you feel completely welcome? Is it the great standing crosses of Ireland? Is it Larry Bird?

Whatever one may think of the Celts, one thing is sure: they were a people absolutely unique in history and centuries ahead of their time. They were an aural culture, a bardic people of story, song, poetry and mythology. As such there exists a great deal of misunderstanding regarding their exact history. In fact, they seem quite simply to have passed out of existence like a fisherman’s boat sailing into the morning mist.

One example of this relates to something I play on the bagpipes: Piobaireachd. Let me tell you how that is spelled: P I O B A I R E A C H D. It was never their intention to leave any letters for anyone else. Piobaireachd is the comingling of 2 Scots Gaelic words: piobaire, or piping with eachd meaning music. Hence, piped or piping music. Piobaireachd is the classical music of the highland bagpipe and is loosely based on the musical idea of a theme and variations. It was most likely developed by a highland clan dynasty of the MacCrimmons. But since there remains so little written evidence of the clan and their history, many believe them and their development of piobaireachd to be the fanciful fabrications of folklore.

There is plenty that we do know that can benefit us, however. The Christianity that emerged in Ireland, Cornwall, Brittany, Gaul, Isle of Man, Scotland and Wales possessed some valuable gifts. I list but a few.

The Celtic Christianity that thrived, undivided, from roughly the fifth through the twelfth centuries, is as deeply influenced by the culture in which it was birthed as the culture that was transformed by it. It is the child of the pagan culture that preceded it. We rationalists squirm a little at this idea.

We need the Celts because of their love for the poetic imagination and artistic creativity, building on a rich tradition of bards who sang the shared stories and exploits of her kin.

We need the Celts because of their similar love for kinship, relations and the warmth of a hearth. Their love of hearth and kinship translated in spiritual terms to what they called “anam cara” or “soul friends”, those with whom they shared their deepest joys, fears, sins, hopes, dreams.

The Celts were forever at odds with Mother Rome. To my mind, this equates to a paradox or at least to a willing suspension of seeming opposites. On one hand they were as profoundly Catholic as any other sect of Medieval Christendom. They yearned to be part of the larger Christian family. That is the Celtic way. On the other, they ever marched to the beat of their own drum – a Catholicism swimming in the quasi-pagan, swarthier style of the brooding Celts. They were both in and out.

We need the Celts because they insisted on the equality of all people in the eyes of God. They celebrated an egalitarianism in everything even allowing women to perform the Mass, a heresy of the first order even in contemporary, post Vatican II Catholicism! While worshippers throughout Europe frequented any number of great cathedrals, the Celts preferred smaller, homemade altars around which they would celebrate a deeply intimate Eucharist. Especially irksome to Rome was their liturgical calendar taken more from Druidic astrology than the accepted Church calendar. They were rogue in every imaginable way!

We need the Celts because of the monastic communities that flowered in Britain and elsewhere that became centers of classical education and learning, even possessive of literature outlawed by the Holy Roman Empire. As such, it can be said without exaggeration that the Celts kept knowledge alive and growing throughout the Middle Ages.

We need the Celts for their great love for the natural world and for preaching a God who loved it, too. They attached particular significance to particular animals, numbers, places and natural objects. Their spirituality was mystical in character, bathed in silence and solitude but rooted squarely in the everyday. It was a rich blend of the immanence and transcendence of God.

We need the Celts because of their unquenchably adventurous spirits, well known as explorers and/or missionaries to many places. Some have suggested that they may have been some of the earliest explorers to South America where Peruvian artwork mimics Celtic knot work.

We need the Celts to broaden our sense of time. They had an understanding of time that was less chronological than kairotic. In other words, they were not especially linear in their approach to life, love, faith and relationships. They valued the cyclical dimension of time, believing that by immersing themselves in the seasons of the year and uniting their lives with the liturgical seasons of the church, they could more effectively celebrate their journey through the sacredness of time.

We need the Celts for a further distinctive, related to their concept of time; their appreciation of ordinary life. Theirs was a spirituality characterized by gratitude, and in their stories we find them worshipping God in their daily work and very ordinary chores. We, as they, can see our daily lives as a revelation of God’s love.

We need the Celts since their spirituality has great ecumenical value, transcending the differences, which have divided Christians in the East and the West since before the Reformation.

We need the Celts because, unlike we who are often more interested in what to believe than Who to follow, their Christianity was a way of life, a spirituality lived gratefully each day, one day at a time.

Finally, we need the Celts because they give us reason and opportunity to party in the presence of the God who loves us. I’m in.

Glimpses – awakening to the indescribable

Early in a new year, and a leap year at that, I want to take a stab at describing what cannot adequately be described. As a contemplative and a musician, I have met, from time to time, with mystical experiences that beggar explanation, categorization or temporal understanding. In order to do so, a short preface.

At the foundation of Christian spirituality is the very basic principle of awakening or awareness. It comes in many different packages, under numerous ideologies, representative of a host of approaches each with practices that lend themselves to one’s emerging spiritual life.

To become aware is to wake from some form of slumber, sleep or sloth. One of the mysteries of spiritual awareness is that one does not awaken naturally. We are prodded awake by the loving work of God upon the sleeping soul. It requires this nudge of God upon our shoulder before any meaningful process of receptivity and relationship can occur. In order for us to ‘awake to our awakening’ we must receive the whisper of God speaking grace into the spiritual ear of our understanding.

I do not speak so much of the prophetic proclamation to “arise, shine; for your light has come.” No, before we can be so attuned to the prophet’s voice calling us to faithfulness and righteousness, we must first hear the voice of the Lover calling us to succumb to this wooing upon which our only response can be, “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.”

As comforting and romantic as that sounds, however, upon awakening to the first primal strains of the song of God, there comes a dissonance amidst the lilting notes. We awake to beauty and begin to see that which we have always yearned after but of which we were unaware, blind. This, however, can often be a fearful and groggy experience. Cobwebs yet invade our minds unaccustomed to such sharpness of color. Ears that have been plugged up suddenly pop as our inner altitude changes. It is as disorienting as it is invigorating…

I remember places, glimpses into…something; an awareness that hints at a proximity to the indescribable, numinous presence of God. These are never easy things to describe, but there is a delight in the attempt for, in so doing, I am taken back to some of those places. Not always, but for me it is often some dusty, old church or monastery; most often at night, alone. Yet, not alone. As I have since come to believe, they were, as the Celts called them, thin places where a barely perceptible sheath surrounds the holy otherness of God and where comes a mystical awareness of God so immanent that one feels he can literally smell God’s breath, touch God’s skin. These experiences have often made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

Ironically, they used to happen often when I was a boy, long before I had any faith lexicon or tidy systematic theology with which to scrub them up and describe them away. I recall one particular time as I lay on our living room floor. I was probably eight or nine years old and, as I did every year, was watching the first snowfall of winter as flakes danced past the streetlight that stood outside our house. In that moment, I became curiously aware of a haunting peace that arrested my sensibilities and held me spellbound in what I can only describe as ‘rightness.’ In that moment, the cosmos and I were one. God, as I now understand God, was laying beside me on the living room floor that night, whispering wordless words to me, convincing me of my place in it all, be it ever so miniscule.

Another such thin place for me was an Anglican Church sanctuary in Nelson, British Columbia where for a number of years I taught at a Highland Bagpiping School (a place where other strange souls like myself learn to tame a five-legged creature destined to arouse suspicions and rouse neighbors). Connections in the community opened the door, figuratively and, in this case, literally, to spend as much time as I wanted in the church sanctuary after everyone else had gone home. I was given a key and carte blanche run of the place.

Most evenings after a long day of bagpipe students, some whiny, some lazy, all of them noisy, I would retire to this sanctuary with my pipes. For an hour or so I would simply play, enjoying the epic reverberance of the sound bouncing off the hard stone walls and floor. It was, for me, the closest I had yet been to what I might have then described as heaven. At times it was 2:00 am before finally getting back to my room.

A third such place was the hospital chapel in the same city. I was falling apart after a recent break-up with a girl to whom I had been engaged. My shattered interior was gradually reintegrated in that little chapel where I would weep and pray for hours, listening to John Michael Talbot, or the Monks of the Weston Priory sing beautifully doleful refrains. It was for me, through gallons of heart-crushing tears, the perfect requiem to my dying peace of mind. It would become the Introit to a new place of healing and restoration, albeit gradually. This is a story best left unfinished…

Journal vs. Blog – why less is more

As I’ve written elsewhere, I love to journal. I’ve been doing so, poorly, since about 1985. As such, it has not been an uncommon thing to receive new journals at Christmas or for birthdays. It’s especially meaningful when my boys buy new journals for me. My younger son, Graeme, bought my last one. It is now full of my life; spillings of poetry, life musings and assorted literary brick-a-brack. I used a bookmark he once made for my wife that, along with his delightful pre-pubescent picture on it also contains the words “I love you Mom!” How could that not be life changing?

What follows is a typical example of what I might write in any given journal, especially a new one. And, as you shall see, there is no small irony in the sharing thereof.

“I wonder how many times I’ve had the experience of pen on paper, the brand new journal? Most notable is that both my sons have purchased new journals for me; Graeme a few years ago and now, this Christmas, mere hours ago, my older son, Calum. It is beautiful, leather bound and handmade in India (I guess, in the interest of appreciation for the thoughtfulness of my son, I’ll temporarily suspend my moral suspicion as to who may have constructed it!).

My spotty, irregular journalling discipline would be a poor picture indeed of how deeply meaningful it is for me. Yet, in spite of that fact I know so little about the art of creative chronicling one’s life journey. The greatest benefit of journalling is also its greatest challenge: slowing down long enough to consider, carefully and lovingly, one’s pilgrimage with God and others. It is one thing to write about life events. It is quite another to probe and record one’s thoughts assiduously, faithfully, prayerfully.

Even blogging, something else I enjoy immensely, is fast-paced by comparison, hampered only by the pace of my not inconsiderable typing skills. The sheer number of available words per minute on computer may in fact be counter-intuitive to the deeper interiority asked of me in writing out those same words.

What is it about our contemporary, Western mindset that demands such unsustainable productivity? Even as I write this I find myself thinking how much less efficient it is to write these words only to type them again an hour later for the benefit of my blog. Moreover, I can only surmise at the diminished capacity for memory and ongoing, dynamic interaction with my own interior life because of the ease of a ‘save’ button.

To sit quietly for long periods of time with small things, few words or simple thoughts is vanishing quickly from our cultural milieu. For our experience of time and space to provide enough interest it must be liberally peppered with constant stimuli, a veritable banquet of over-the-top sensory memorabilia. We are both products and victims of our own infantile detritus.

Anyway, I must now move on as this entry has taken much longer to write than the length of time it would take me to mindlessly watch a sit-com, fast forwarding through the commercials….”