Advent Credo

My friend Jonathan posted this on Facebook, and it was a bell-clear call to me this morning. I’m listening to one of my mentors talk about identity, the state, and faith. How is it important for me to be my-self, from my own place of faith, as I move through the world? And, it’s the first week of Advent–I find this Credo beautiful and powerful. Thanks, Jonathan.

“It is not true that creation and the human family are doomed to destruction and loss—

This is true: For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life; 

It is not true that we must accept inhumanity and discrimination, hunger and poverty, death and destruction—

This is true: I have come that they may have life, and that abundantly.

It is not true that violence and hatred should have the last word, and that war and destruction rule forever—

This is true: Unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, his name shall be called wonderful councilor, mighty God, the Everlasting, the Prince of peace.

It is not true that we are simply victims of the powers of evil who seek to rule the world—

This is true: To me is given authority in heaven and on earth, and lo I am with you, even until the end of the world. 

It is not true that we have to wait for those who are specially gifted, who are the prophets of the Church before we can be peacemakers—

This is true: I will pour out my spirit on all flesh and your sons and daughters shall prophesy, your young men shall see visions and your old men shall have dreams.

It is not true that our hopes for liberation of humankind, of justice, of human dignity of peace are not meant for this earth and for this history—

This is true: The hour comes, and it is now, that the true worshipers shall worship God in spirit and in truth.

So let us enter Advent in hope, even hope against hope. Let us see visions of love and peace and justice. Let us affirm with humility, with joy, with faith, with courage: Jesus Christ—the life of the world.“

[From Daniel Berrigan S.J., Testimony: The Word Made Flesh (S.J. Orbis Books, 2004).]

The image is from part of a mural at Youth Speak Collective, an incredible organization that empowers young people to change their own world.

Oh, October

I love October. My birthday month, cooler weather, and (at least in the Midwest), blue, blue skies. I have many memories of riding my bike and noticing those skies, and feeling they were particular to my month.

I keep thinking it’s the first week of October, because we’ve been so busy, but really, we’re nearly half-way through. I also keep thinking it’s the beginning of the school semester, but really, I’ve already turned in multiple assignments. I had a great visit with my mom and sister, and I have a new nephew. The world is full.

In the past two weeks, our school had an Ahimsa Day, in which I was in a play/dramatic sharing, and participated in a panel on forgiveness–I was representing the Christian perspective. (Tough to do, in one single-spaced page!) I published my brief remarks here.

Last weekend, I was the on-site events coordinator for a dialogue conference. Big ideas, great professors and leaders, me running around making sure catering, welcoming, materials…everything in order. Thank goodness for Matt, who takes some of my load with grace and aplomb. Dinner parties and a bridal shower thrown in for good measure.

I’m also finishing work on a project for the Jains, it looks like I’ll be going back to India this summer, and helping shepherd the Journal into more growth. AAR next month, plus Thanksgiving/Christmas with family.  We’re re-booting the community garden.

So many good things. I find myself in a lot of “spontaneous thankful” prayers– just walking around thanking God for everything I have. As fall comes on, though, I am thinking about Advent, and the need to be a little more intentional about my prayer life.

Other notes: I’ve started reading the Game of Thrones series. Not great, but pretty good. I started using an app on my iPhone that tracks how deeply you are asleep, and only starts the alarm when you’re coming up out of a deep sleep. You have to keep the phone on the bed near you. It’s working, and kind of cool to see my “sleep statistics” every morning–the graph of when I was in deep sleep, dreaming, and when I was not. I’ve been driving more, with the manual transmission; it’s okay. Serving as a Teaching Assistant is going well, as is my work in the Writing Center. We’ve had Remy for a year, and I can’t imagine our life without him.

We housesit for two friends and they came back from a mini-vacation with so many beach stones. While we caught up, I played with the stones, organizing them by color and shape. Pleasing.

Some amazing Chihuly glass I saw while visiting my sister. Oh, the color. Oh, the abundance.

Cool old bricks in “Bricktown,” in Oklahoma City. I love how each one is stamped with the maker’s name. Again, pleasing texture.

May we continue to set the world on fire

When I titled this blog, I turned to a group of women, and two saints, who have been most influential on my own spiritual growth as an adult. I became an Associate to the Dominican community of religious women, in Racine, WI, in 2004.

The Dominican charism, “Committed to Truth; compelled to Justice,” has informed my teaching, studies, writing, professional work, and how I encounter challenges and possibilities in my life. Today is the Feast Day of St. Dominic. Before he was born, his mother dreamed of a black and white dog, carrying a torch in his mouth– this would be her son, carrying Truth and God’s message to help bring light to this world.

Today I received by e-mail a sermon by one of the sisters, a powerful theologian and preacher. I share her words below. I am struck by her call to “enter into what it means to be human.” I am challenged by examining how I might live out my calling in everyday life, in all of my work, and not keep it for Sundays or “holy” occasions or settings.

“Proclaim the word; fulfill your ministry.  And remember I will be with you at all times. 

It is a phenomenon of life that as we get older, time seems to speed up.  Has it really been that long since we last saw each other?  It is hard to believe my youngest grandchild is graduating.  Is my hair turning that gray?  Am I now on the list to receive Medicare and social security?  Time is fleeting.  Where have the years gone?  The sense of life moving on can haunt us.

But the more important question is how have we spent those years?  How are we willing to spend our lives, so more life may evolve?  Suddenly we could arrive at our last day not believing that that was it.  And so we strain to find a way of living and being to harvest the short time of our life on Earth.

We know that our brother Dominic demonstrated a focused way of life.  The words of scripture heard today: Proclaim the word; fulfill your ministry.  And remember I will be with you at all times, unmistakably reflect Dominic whose feast we celebrate this week.  Dominic, the preeminent disciple and itinerant preacher left us an incredible legacy, using his time on Earth announcing peace and bringing good news.

Dominic set himself to preaching and attracting others to preach.  Heretical teachings dangerous to the faithful, led him to see a great need for educated, zealous preachers who would enlighten hearers and lead them to the truth.  He proposed an order dedicated to preaching at a time when no one but bishops regularly preached.  Designated by the Pope, he was to be the preacher to the world.  Dominic was concerned that preachers should know their faith thoroughly and be able to expound it competently.

Biographers tell of how cheerful and companionable Dominic was.  His intense devotion to prayer and preaching led him to demonstrate that both should be full time occupations.  You may recall from any studies about Dominic that he exhorted his brethren to ‘talk always about God or to God’.  Dominic spent five years as head of the Order.  Five years of his charismatic presence was enough to gather an Order that in its first hundred years would count nearly 30,000 members from the European countries.

Catherine of Siena is to have said: ‘The voice of Dominic’s preaching is still heard today and will continue to be heard’ in the preaching of his followers.”  It is quite in accordance with his own temperament that Dominic should live on in the church, not as a striking individual, but in the work of preaching the gospel.  Indeed that is why he gathered the brethren.

We have inherited this profound Dominican legacy, so in the same way, today’s scripture should speak to us.  Proclaim the word; fulfill your ministry.  And remember I will be with you at all times.  As Christians we have been called.  The call comes from a voice inviting us to be the persons we were born to be, to fulfill the original selfhood given us at birth by God.  Vocation is the place where my deep gladness meets the world’s deep need.  Every journey honestly taken stands a chance of moving us toward the place where we make a mark in the world.

The nature of the call can change over time, taking a person down pathways never anticipated.  Friends, guests celebrating with us today you have each answered a call.  Those of you who were more formally connected with the Racine Dominicans as aspirant, postulant, novice or professed, we express gratitude for the gifts you shared with us, gifts that are immeasurable and lasting.  We hope that what you received during those years of special connecting have been valuable and have enhanced your life and outreach for whatever path you have taken.  We hope your Dominican connection has made you a better person.  Many of you have testified to a deepened spirituality, a stronger faith, and gifts of lasting relationships when sharing your thoughts for the Booklet of Memories.

As you have grown and moved on so have we.  In 150 years Racine Dominicans have never remained stagnant.  Change has been a mantra.  It happens to be quite visible today with the claws and jack hammers seen on the property.

Mother Benedicta began our community and we have always been a little chaotic as time unfolded, as social conditions changed, and the church changed with Vatican II.  While we changed our wardrobe, more significantly we changed our classrooms.  The world has become our classroom.  We strive to think through the questions of faith in dialogue with the world; attentive to the signs of the times, listening to the call of the Spirit, seeking the bigger picture, knowing God is at the heart of it all.  In the Jubilee ad booklet you received today, we invite you to read the two pages listing the Corporate Statements we have adopted.  We encourage you to endorse them with us.

And so to proclaim, to fulfill our ministry, to be a follower of Jesus is to reach out, to enter into what it means to be human.  It starts with loving a people so much we work to change the structures that violate human dignity and hold people in bondage.

As the Albigensian teachings challenged Dominic, as this week we remember the atomic bomb attacks in 1945, as immigration laws cause division, as trafficking enslaves, as Earth cries out for respect, as power is abused, we must strive to restore just relationships and bring peace to our messy world.  With Dominic as our motivator and mentor, we are companions on this journey, remembering we have a greater opportunity to make a path if we do it together.  Time is fleeting.   There is an urgency to proclaim the word, to fulfill our ministry with the assurance that Jesus is always with us.

Jesus came to teach us that God’s presence is as close as our next act of kindness, our decision to go the extra mile, our willingness to be inconvenienced, and our attentiveness to real needs, keeping in mind that the most powerful influences are often the invisible ones.

As we prepare to be nourished at the Eucharistic table, let us continue to be faithful followers of the disciple and itinerant preacher Dominic.  And let us carry on this celebration in a spirit of joy and heartfelt gratitude for all of us who have answered and continue to answer the call.

May the God in you meet the God in me with each encounter?” (by Sharon Simon, OP)

Image from “Telling the Stories that Matter.”

 

“…one time one was in India…”

Last night, I started re-reading The Little Princess. I had finished The Wind in the Willows and My Antonia, and have a stack of library books, but was just falling asleep and wanted something softer. As in A Secret Garden, Hodgson Burnett’s young heroine is returning to her parents’ England after an early childhood in India. The narrator captured some of what I’m feeling as she mused, in her eight-year-old brain:

“Principally, she was thinking of what a queer thing it was that one time one was in India in the blazing sun, and then in the middle of the ocean, and then driving in a strange vehicle through strange streets where the day was as dark as the night.”

In cool Ontario, I read, swim, drink wine, and generally partake of the luxuries of a green, lush, well-tended and underpopulated world. Already it is hard to remember what was so daily and striking only last week.

*

I am tired of talking about the Burning Place. When people want to know, I now want to say, “Here is something I wrote about it once.” I don’t want to try and describe it, I don’t want to hear the “Gross,” or “Real bodies?” or “That’s so unreal.” I don’t want to try and use up the memories to help others understand; I fear that the more words I try to use to describe, the more actual pieces of the memory will disappear. The experience becomes what I say; I don’t want to forget the heat, the dry ashes as they fell, the torn garland in the water, the gravity of all around.

You know how if you talk about a memory, repeatedly, the memory itself becomes what you have said about it, and not what you actually experienced.

If you think about your high school prom, for example, you will remember the things you’ve talked about while talking about it all these years. The smaller things—the pollen from the stamen of your lilies falling onto the dusty velour of the car seat between you and your date, the awkwardness of seeing your gym teacher’s bra strap in her dress-up dress, the strangeness of driving to school as the sun sets, and parking in a familiar place, but in utterly unfamiliar clothes…

If I keep trying to talk about the Burning Place, I will lose the actual impressions. Like wet tissue paper pages—once color-saturated, they will dry up and leave me with rasping slips of brittle blank paper.

*

I kind of like being sunburned. Not on the tender parts, like my shoulder and that soft doughy bit between my swimsuit strap and my torso—that’s too much pain. But my legs, my feet. I like feeling the discomfort, the constant reminder, as I move my feet inside the sheets. It’s like: I can still be reached by the sun, even all this way away.

*

I still find myself working to keep water out of my mouth when I swim or wash my face. I keep forgetting that the water here—all of the water, every drop of it—is safe and will not make me sick. This is incredible.

I went to church last Sunday, an Anglican parish in small town Canada. It was an outside, casual service, the kind I hate. Lawn chairs, a jocular sermon, kids wearing baseball caps. No processions.

And even still, I needed it and loved it. The great thing about the BCP is that even in a lackluster service, you hear these prayers and phrases that gild the whole thing. It’s like seeing a red thread that you’ve previously only seen against green velvet, and here it is against denim: look how red and strong it is. Feel how inspiring and comforting the words. And so once again, I received the Body and Blood, and tried to use the tiny sliver of silence during the Prayers of the People—I have so many prayers. Of thanksgiving, of names of all those I wish to remember, to be thankful for, to send God’s Grace and Presence and Care to, for forgiveness (for privileges known and unknown, privileges seen and unseen.)

Bells from all over town are background for the readings. I keep my hands open, as if to receive, as I did so many times in India, and pray that I might keep my posture of openness just a little bit longer.

A hidden temple, a very small prayer

Getting to the Golden Temple is impossible. Like truly: impossible.

The streets and pathways of Varanasi, up the steps from the river towards main roads, are labyrinthine and full. More steps lead up to temples, and dozens–countless–tiny, personal idol grottos are carved into the walls. Someone–many anonymous someones, probably–keep the idols freshly painted and anointed, and bedecked with blossoms.

Merchants: bangles, flowers, dry goods, water and soda, sweets, breads, idols, garlands, perfumes, oils, scarves, fabric, bamboo stretchers, tea, spices, pipes, incense. Children, both naked and clothed, buy and sell, run and play, beg and scamper.

Monks and female religions wind through the alleyways. Every so often, you hear chanting and a family of men carry the body of a loved one past. You scrunch up against a damp stone wall to let them pass.

The Golden Temple is a major pilgrimage site, a major attraction, of Varanasi. I have been there, but I haven’t actually seen it, inside or out. The passageways are so heavily built up around the Temple, and so narrow, that you can never see it when you’re approaching it. Suddenly, everyone walking in one direction comes to a stop. A walking traffic jam. Police presence increases.

I notice that all of the women and men are carrying something. Either small containers of water, or containers of food and flowers, or bigger baskets with bigger quantities.

Foreigners, or non-Hindus (I’m not sure which) are not allowed in. A few police guards asked if we had our passports. We did not. Matt bought me a leaf-bowl of flower offering to take in, and I went ahead and stood in one of the lines winding towards an entrance. Over the stone wall, I could see carved spires. I could hear amplified chanting prayers, and voices. Through an open gate I caught a glimpse of women in a line, and movement around a circular center.

I had hoped one of the guards at the gate would let us in, but they did not. We were talking about it earlier, imagining how we would feel in the following scenario: We are going to pilgrimage to the Cathedral in St. Louis. Only 1,000 people will get a bit of the Host. We have been driving for days, from Montana. We are hot, and exhausted. I have promised a dying relative I will take the Host and pray for her. The area around the Cathedral is impossible to navigate. We stand in line for hours waiting, waiting.

I’m okay with the fact that tourists aren’t allowed into the Temple. There is only so much space, and only so many feet can pass within. Hundreds of thousands of faithful come long distances, every day, to get a glimpse of the linga of Shiva within.

Near the Temple, somewhere (again, I passed it, I saw it, I have no idea where it is) is a mosque. Again: people are waiting in line, heavy police presence guards the opening. I think I am one of the least-threatening looking people I know, but when I tried to stop walking and peer through a chain link fence at the mosque (I just wanted to glimpse it!) the guard blocked me with his body. I said, “I just want to see,” and he moved closer to the opening, ready (I think) to move me along if need be. It’s hard to understand; I’ve never experiences community violence or religious violence. Some places of worship in NYC have armed guards, but I’m still allowed inside.

So instead, I took my offering down to the Ganges. We stood on a step, I said a prayer, and then set it afloat. Prayers always look so small and insubstantial alone, untethered, in the water. You just have to let them go.

*

Forty-two days

The course is over; my classmates left yesterday, and I left PV to go to the guesthouse where Matt and I will stay for the next week. I still haven’t really processed the fact that our six-week journey is over, so I’m trying to articulate a very small bit of it here, in photos.

A treat, a refreshment, a small icon of our days: Mango Sip.

*

Garland with hand-hammered ornaments in a temple.

*

A small statue in the terra cotta museum. Will forever remind me of my visit to the Lanka Police Station.

*

The Lok, the physical representation of the Jain cosmology. Hellish beings at the bottom, we’re all in the middle, heavenly beings in the top level before they reach moksha and ascend. This is in Jumpudweep, the strange Jain “creationist Disneyland” we visited. You can go up in this Lok in an elevator.

*

Mother Matiji, at Jumbudweep.

*

We pay homage to Mother Matiji with dance.

*

A tirtankara, in Hastinapur.

*

Silver plates and cooking utensils, left out to dry in the sun.

*

A heavily decorated temple in Hastinapur. My kind of decorating: more is more.

*

Hand-carved bells.

*

On the bus to the Taj, singing.

*

At the Taj.

*

A fantastic hotel in Jaipur. We had a wonderful tea service here.

*

Lovely baby at the Fort, in Jaipur.

*

The Fort and Palace grounds.

*

Strange dolls for sale near the Fort.

*

One of the elephants.

*

Street food.

*

During the taping of the Indian talent competition.

*

At the Indian wedding.

*

Naan at the wedding.

*

Ganesh at the Monkey Temple.

*

One of the temple priests, preparing to anoint us.

*

An open air temple, under Jaipur sky.

*

Street food: fried spicy patty, with yogurt. Delicious.

*

Chai at the most famous chai house in Jaipur.

*

A BBQ joint “our” tuk-tuk driver, Rishi, recommended.

*

Block-printing by hand at the textile factory.

*

Our first open-mic night. Tarot card reading, singing, recitations, two ghost stories, journal sharing, and a sing along.

*

The Holy Ganges, before a Puja.

*

One of the card catalogues at the library at VP.

*

Nelda with a giant savory, crispy, pancake filled with a spicy potato mixture.

*

“When the Meadows on the Body Turn Gray,” by Hafiz.

*

The view from Open Hand, one of our luxurious haunts, with good coffee and AC.

*

Me, at Open Hand.

*

The view from my berth before I left for Delhi.

*

A strange wind storm sweeps over the ghats.

*

Sunset in Varanasi, our final night together.

*

I devised a system for our last open-mic: we all wrote a sentiment, thought, or note to each classmate on slips of paper, and put the slips in corresponding envelopes. I handed them out right before our departure; we’re to open them on our own, when the time is right.

*

He’s carrying my luggage through the market place and to the guesthouse. I’m on my own for the time being, for one day until my love arrives.

 

 

 

And the sweetness

detailing inside a tuk-tuk…like our own personal fortune for the ride

All is well.

The head chef/driver took me to Varanasi Railway Station last Sunday afternoon. It had been raining; not only was there no electricity in the station, or in the trains, but the station was flooded. I followed him through the dark, through the crowds, through ankle deep water into the waiting room.

He doesn’t speak enough English for us to talk, so he just sat with me, in silent solidarity, while we waited for my train. I am finishing _Anne of Green Gables_ on my Nook/iPhone, which I probably haven’t read in twenty years. As I sat next to him in the crazy waiting room, uncertain what the next day–trip to Delhi to try and get a new passport and visa–would hold, I read the part where Matthew dies. He has been so good to Anne, and done the best he could in his taciturn way.

I was struck by this man, a near-stranger to me, and the fact that he prepares all of our food. Every morning, he comes up to the rooms and says, “Breakfast,” to wake us up. He is proud to show us when there are special treats, or sweet.  He sat with me for more than an hour. I felt tears come to my eye and I couldn’t tell if it was from the book, or from being helped.

When my train came, he used his phone as a flashlight on the dark train, taking me through the cars to my seat. He gave me his phone number, and tried to explain that he would pick me up on Tuesday morning. We said good-bye. I was in an un-AC car, so my window was open. A few minutes later, his face appeared in the window. He stayed until my train departed.

***

In Delhi the following morning, I was met by Prof. Rahul, who also made himself known by appearing in my window. I guess they just walk down the length of the train cars until they see my white, blonde head. Rahul took me to the Embassy, and then worried when they wouldn’t let him in. I told him I would be fine.

The Embassy was a marvelous place, full of American accents, strong AC, peanut M&Ms, and kind helpfulness. I actually had a new passport (an “emergency passport”) within the hour.

The Indian Foreigners’ Registry Office as trickier. Much more chaotic, fewer computers (I saw none), and many more desks heaped with paper files. I had little hope that I’d have a new visa before my night train back to Varanasi left.

And yet– everyone was kind, helpful. I had to get a new passport-sized photo for the visa application, and found a pack of school boys running a soda and tobacco stand with a sign that said “photo stat.” I had no idea how they were going to take a passport photo; even when they whipped out the digital camera I doubted. They had me climb over the stone wall into their hole-in-the-wall shop, and sit in front of the soda cooler. Then they produced a white piece of board, and placed it behind me. Voila! I laughed, and primped and tossed my hair for the photo, and gathered quite a crowd of children. They used a small digital printer, and four four rupees, I had four small photos.

My number one travel tip is to have a copy of your passport and visa– that battered photocopy of my original visa was like gold; it proved that I had had a valid visa, and gave the IFRO a starting place to trace me back to the airline, and verify I was legal.

After four hours, and many vague reassurances, I finally got called back to the official desk. The gentleman stamped once, stamped twice, filled in the stamped squares, and used a tiny piece of string to “staple” my papers together. Then he handed my my stamped passport. I said, “My visa? I have? I can leave okay?” He said, “yes, yes, this is your new visa. You are okay.”

I was so surprised, and so grateful, that my eyes filled up. I hope and pray that government offices in my homeland treat foreigners as well as I was treated. I did the traditional show of respect I’ve seen Jain and Hindu scholars and supplicants do for their gurus and teachers– I kissed my fingers and touched the ground in front of their desk. They laughed and clapped their hands in their surprise.

I said, “Thank you so much! I wish I could back you a cake.” The head gentleman said, “Your affection and gratitude are thanks enough.”

I paid $135 for the new passport, the visa was free, and my train tickets were bought by another professor here because I had no debit cards at the time.

Rahul was catching the same train back up to Varanasi, and so made sure I was settled in my car before we departed. An elderly Indian, retired from British airlines, told me about the books he is writing–on the eight wonders of the world he’s seen, and on India threw his own eyes–during the first part of the train ride. Then, I climbed up into the top berth, right underneath the AC, under a clean sheet and wool blanket laundered by hands I’ll never see, my new passport safely in my backpack under my head, and fell deeply asleep.

***

The next morning, the chef/driver picked us up (in the car! what a treat!) and drove us back to PV. When we parked on campus, he turned to me and said, “Breakfast?” He was not satisfied with my only taking tea, and insisted I take two bananas.

Today, we had our last day. Yesterday I finished my paper (really a four-week curriculum and full teachers’ guide, with resources) on a Jain-based–emphasizing compassion and perspective-taking–for secondary school students.) Today I presented my project, and we had our last lunch. Our last mangoes! We’re about to venture out onto the ghats… tomorrow my classmates will leave. I’ve planned another “open mic” for tonight on the roof, a chance to share moments that have struck and stayed with us at some point during the trip. I can’t wait to hear what we’ve all found.