Troll The Ancient Yuletide Carol!

Benedicamus Domino!

Well, today is as near as makes no matter to the date of the Winter Solstice, when the sun is the farthest away from the earth, causing both the shortest day and the longest night of the year. I have celebrated it in my time as the ancient fire-festival of Yule. The yule-log was burned at this time during the longest night to keep vigil and to wait for the new day's dawning, for if the sun returned after this longest of nights, then people knew that spring would indeed come again. Of course, when I celebrated it, we had no fears for the longest night as often did the ancient Germanic peoples, for instance, but we still met in fellowship and in good cheer and toasted the new birth of the sun. We spoke our hopes and cast our fears and past sorrows into the fire. We looked forward to the lengthening of the days and the coming of the new spring. It was wonderful!

It is often said that the feast of Christmas was instituted at a similar time of year in order to eclipse Solstice festivals like Yule and to stamp out idolatry and demonic worship. I do not doubt that the timing of Christmas was not a mere coincidence, but was it truly an attempt to stamp out idolatry? First, I'm not completely certain of this, but I believe that when Christmas was established as a feast in the Christian calendar, no Christian could ever have moved the Roman state to do anything in favour of Christ and against its own religion. Christians were being killed at this time and were also being relieved of their careers and ranks and such if they were openly Christian. The Roman religion too at this time was little more than a public observance, and denying it would have meant that you were in revolt against the state. It was a citizen's civic duty to attend the various ceremonies.

And what about the Germanic and Celtic and other people for whom their worship was more than public formalism? Well, Christians did go among them, it's true, but except in very rare cases (St. Boniface cutting down sacred trees comes to mind,) they tended not to simply uproot the peoples' beliefs and plant their own in their place. Anyone who's done that has ended up with a pretty dead religion and very little faith among those they have tried to convert whole-cloth. Instead, a slow process went on, where Christianity and the indigenous faiths were sort of adapted to each other. I don't exactly mean syncretism, but it was amazing how so much of Christianity seemed to be the fulfilment of the beliefs of these people, and I only say this because I myself have experienced this firsthand! The problems come when everything that is not Christ is ipso facto demonized and made to be evil! How can an honouring of the seasons be evil? It isn't Christian, perhaps, but it is people trying to make sense of their world. I have come to the belief that Christ's birth is the fulfilment of the dawn after the longest night of the year, but does that mean that I demand that others believe this too? No! That sort of belief can only come by experience. I will say that it came to me almost against my will, though. It just came and washed over me and that was that, but that was God's doing and did not come at my or any other's asking. For me, though Christ is the baby in the manger, He is also the uncontainable and uncircumscribable God come in the form of man to bring new light to our darkened world. Surely other Pagan people had this same experience! Surely they were not simply herded into churches and made to abandon their bonfires and evergreen boughs! Surely not! Surely they themselves brought their boughs to be blessed and to honour the infant Christ, having sensed Him as the Truth even as I did.

I know that it is difficult for those of other faiths to deal with this season called Christmas. I've heard people describe a "war on Christmas" going on. They cite Christian privelege in the face of their own beliefs, but at least they live in a land where they aren't being killed or taken from their families and imprisoned for what they believe. This must be remembered! As for me, I think that much of Christmas has become about family and gifts and not about Christ, but do I think that all this should be banished? No. It is what it is, and though I wish the consumerism was less, it isn't likely to change any time soon. It is our new public religion, after all, and Santa Claus is our new Sol Invictus! Ah well! So goes the world, I suppose.

However, the light still burns in many forms. There is still hope left. So, on this night of Yule and for this season of many holy days, may all have the best things in life and truly experience hope and joy!

Deo Gratias!

Unexpected Joys!

Benedicamus Domino!

I had a very different entry planned for this evening's musing, but something small has just happened in the last few minutes which simply demands treatment in this blog. It all began with iTunes and a search for a long lost album which I once charished though I never owned it. This album was the original cast recording of Amahl and the Night Visitors, an operetta staged for television in the 1950s and composed by Gian Carlo Menotti. It tells the story of a young shepherd boy somewhere in the east who encounters three strange visitors at his door. They turn out to be kings bearing gifts to a mysterious child for whom they are looking. It is a rather simplistic tale, somewhat moralistic but also miraculous, and well, when I was ten and heard this music and those words, I began to know a little of the true nature of Christ and of His Incarnation!

To have this album is a true joy to me, though it seems but a small thing. It brings back a little of the wonder I always used to feel at this time of year, and though that wonder was tinged with expectation of presents under the tree, once I had heard Amahl, it forever broadened into a deeper kind of wonder: the wonder of a babe born in a manger who contained within his small body the vastness of the Creator of all things!

Joys do arise in very unexpected ways at times, and for this small fount and many larger springs which have arisen in my seemingly barren and thirsty heart of late, I say a fervent and heartfelt,

Deo, O Deo! Gratias!

Thoughts upon The Feast of St. Catherine!

Benedicamus Domino!

Today on the Julian Calendar is actually November 25, the feast-day of St. Catherine of Alexandria. She is one of the saints whom I take as a model, for though she was educated in the best Roman fashion, she was also a devout Christian and was able to outwit some of the finest philosophers in Alexandria with both her intellect and God's grace. Of course, one could say that her intellect was also a kind of grace which, when leavened by the Holy Spirit's wisdom, became a true force to be reckoned with. Our treasure is hidden in earthen vessels, as St. Paul says, but I think it is for us to make sure that this treasure does not remain hidden. Whatever talent we have should be nurtured and used for the betterment of our fellow-beings and should always be used, as far as possible, in truth and love.

For me, this was the day, seven years ago, when I made the decision to enter an Orthodox church as more than a casual observer for the first time. I began to make travel-plans for the following Sunday, and I can recall even now the joy which welled up inside me when I realized that things in my life were coming full circle in what could only be a God-inspired and blessed way. While I was contemplating my coming pilgrimage, (from Kitchener to Hamilton by bus on a Sunday morning really was a pilgrimage!) I also read the story of St. Catherine, and I realized then and there that I could be what I was: an educated woman of my own time, but also a pious Christian, and from then on, I worked very hard to achieve that goal. I've had a few setbacks over the years, and these were due to my own zeal occasionally pushing me to let go of things unnecessarily, but I think I am finally learning to be who I must be. I don't think I could outwit philosophers or anything, but I do hope that I have the courage to speak truth to power or even to another human soul when it is needed.

December has often been a time of realization for me. In December of 1999, I found myself a Pagan hardly knowing how I got there. In December of 2005, I literally fell in love with Orthodox Christianity. I recall walking around my university campus actually day-dreaming about what it would be like to be in an Orthodox church with all the music and the swinging of the censor and such. I had experienced Orthodox churches before though only in a limited way, and it's true that I didn't even really know what to expect at the church I was going to attend, but I still was captivated by the thought that something which had been on the edge of my life off and on for so many years was now coming closer to its centre. I've written before about this so I'll not go into it now, but suffice it to say that I have a really good friend who is Orthodox and it was really because of her that I found my way there too eventually, and on that long-ago Feast of St. Catherine, I remember being in sheer awe of how life had led me, little by little, to what I had always wanted but had never seen clearly.

Now, I am having a similar time of realization and I am again planning a trip, but this time, it is a trip not to a church, but to someone's house. I am going in a few days to see someone who has very rapidly become important in my life, and our connection seems equally God-inspired and circular. I have long held a belief about my life that there are things in it which conform to its true pattern and there are other things which are just not right. This doesn't always have to do with whether the events are positive or negative, for there have been some negative events which I cannot help but view as being right and proper for me to have experienced. Well, just as Orthodox Christianity showed up in a very right and proper way, so this man has done, and to whatever end our new connection will lead, I feel it necessary to explore it to its fullest potential. For me to say this takes a great deal of courage, especially since there is a long-distance aspect to things which can be a little problematic, but I do find that being online allows for a more ongoing contact than used to happen when one only had the phone.

I'm writing about this here because it was my intention when starting this journey toward joy to open up more and to connect with people, to allow people to impact on my life in a more meaningful way rather than closing myself off to all drama and all danger while at the same time closing myself off to happiness. I have lived a rather solitary life even among crowds, and I know that this is pretty much all my doing. The time has come to fix that, to venture beyond the narrow limits of my money-changing hole, as Marley's ghost would have it, and to make mankind and certain members of that strange and wonderful collection of personalities my business once again. While I hope I could never become so jaded and cynical as Scroodge, I certainly have been known to walk through the crowded paths of life with my eyes cast down, but that is not what I'm called to do as a Christian or even as a person living among people in this world. So, here goes nothing! I'm lifting my head and looking about me, and you know what? Even with all its sham and drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world, not least due to the fact that Mike wishes to see me just as much as I wish to see him and that we are both completely open to the possibilities that life may afford for a deeper and more lasting connection. For this and for so many things lately, I say:

Deo Gratias!

Surrendering to Divine Synurgy: The Art of Saying "Amen!"

Benedicamus Domino!

In Orthodox Christian thought, much is made of the word "synurgy." God's working in the world is called "synurgistic" by many of the great philosophers and thinkers of the church, by which they mean that He requires a response from us in order for His will to be accomplished in us and in the world. This word literally means "working together," and when compared with some of the more recent ideas posited about God, say in the last three or four hundred years for instance, it presents a radical paradigm-shift when encountered by the modern western mind, or at least it did when encountered by this modern western mind. There was a time when the notion of submitting to God's will was abhorrant to me. It seemed to mean that I had to lay all the most interesting parts of myself aside in favour of a very narrow and circumscribed existance. I was to be a good little child and do what I was told. I am uncertain as to the origin of this idea in my life, but it stood there, stark and unmoving, like a gaunt and terrible spectre which sought to cast its shadow over my dreams, hopes and imaginings in a manner which would render me nothing more than a simple and dutiful pawn in some game of cosmic Chess. Indeed, God was for me in those days something of a tyrant, a guardian of moral absolutes which seemed untenable in the world in which I found myself.

These thoughts were with me at the time when I was rediscovering my need for Christ while at the same time being repulsed by what seemed a necessary act of submition in which I must cut away parts of myself simply because they seemed not to fit the ideal model of Christianity that I saw around me. A part of the reason for this repulsion had to do with the fact that I was returning to a faith which I had abandoned out of a sense that I was unworthy of it. I had left Christianity in favour of earth-based spirituality because I felt that I was unable to conform to what God was asking of me. I felt that perfection of belief was imperative and that if I doubted too much, then I obviously was doing something wrong, and therefore I had to find another way to live in this world. I knew that God existed on some level, but I felt that He was too high and far away for me to reach. How I could do this given my belief in Christ is unimaginable to me now, but we shall come to why it is so unimaginable later. Suffice it to say that I am now a committed Christian and cannot--simply would not be able to--change this commitment for anything!

So, there I was, a woman caught between two seemingly opposing forces: myself and what I perceived as God's will. It is true that there are times when our selfish desires do oppose God's will. In fact, this is the story of fallen man and the reason why Christ was needed to help us find our way home. However, what I had failed to take into account was the notion of synurgy as expressed in the teachings and worship of the Orthodox Church. To reiterate that notion then, I will state that before God's will can truly be accomplished in us and in the world, there must be a willingness on our part to assist and to say "amen" to God's desire, because that is what His will is until we agree to allow it to prosper: a desire, a wish, a hope that we will go in the direction that He sees will be right for us. He, of course, is quite willing and capable of letting us have our own desires. He can bring good out of those as well, but what He seeks from us is an openness, an acceptance that He is wiser than we are and sees more of us than we can see at present. Of course, there is fear which comes with this kind of acceptance. What will He turn us into? Will we lose ourselves? Will be become unrecognizable to our family and friends? Should we not be cautious and careful, preserving ourselves whole and intact before the consuming fire of God's love and transforming power?

I've had all these thoughts and continue to have them, but I have come to a realization, thanks to the concept of synurgy, that God does not want robots for His people. It is true that our initial response to Him is something like that of a servant, but He wants His servants to learn in their servitude to be more like Him and to eventually participate fully in His unique and boundless being. This does not mean being subsumed into a vast ocean of consciousness, but it does mean waking up to the cosmic reality that we are not separate and individual beings. "No man is an island, entire of itself," wrote the poet John Donne, and this would seem to be true from my experience, so that my journey toward God must necessarily affect others, even if it does so on a quantum level which I am incapable of perceiving. For an explanation of this, I turn to the example of Mary, the Mother of God. She was a simple girl who, according to traditional lore, spent much of her life secluded in the holy temple at Jerusalem and was betrothed to Joseph, a widower much older than herself and with children of his own. His thought, presumably, was that she would be an excellent wife to him and could bear him more children, but before this happened, an angel appeared to Mary and told her that God's will was for her to miraculously conceive and bear Christ, the incarnate Word of God. In a sense, we might say that Christ is the incarnate Will of God, since through God's word, His wil is enacted. Now, Mary had two options. She could have said no. She could have gone on her way and refused the angel's summons. However, being who she was and being open to God's presence in her life, she was able to say: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord. Be it unto me according to Thy Word!" She was, in fact, saying "amen," which in Hebrew simply means: "So be it." This set in motion a chain of events which led to Christ's death and resurrection, which in turn had a profound effect on the entire world, whether people see it or not.

I had often read the passage in Luke's gospel which recounts Mary's meeting with the angel Gabriel, and I had always simply looked at her action as a submissive and meek bowing to circumstances beyond her control. However, after I learned of the importance of synurgy, I reexamined this passage and realized that Mary had no idea what would be coming from this assent, whereas she knew quite well that if she had said no, her life would have proceeded presumably normally as most womens' lives did. God would have allowed her to have her desire, but it was only at her agreement and by her consent that the conception took place. She, therefore, was not a victim of spiritual rape, but a willing participant in something unknown and wonderful. In short, she was a very courageous woman who allowed herself to be the mortal mother of immortal Truth. She gave Christ the way to descend from His own mode of existance and to be with us. She is revered therefore in the Orthodox church as the uniter of earth with Heaven, the reconciler of humanity to God, the vessel containing the Creator. She, in essence, can be called in poetry the Holy Grail, because through her flesh and blood, Christ gained His flesh and blood and was able to show us the pathway to salvation.

This is another point on which I would like to touch. I spoke before of the perceived need to remain a whole and intact person in the face of God's demands upon us. I felt this very strongly at one time, but through the notion of synurgy, I realized that God's very purpose is to make me whole. It may take a lifetime and beyond to do it, but His ultimate plan is to mend me and to repare the broken and scattered bits of my soul, so that eventually this newly-healed soul may take its rightful place as sovereign over my brain and my body. The mind is a very wonderful thing, and it must be nurtured, but it can very easily be led astray and assume too much power over the whole person. This is also true of the body and its senses. I perhaps have less cause to fear my senses, since I lack the sense of sight and it seems to have the most immediate affect on one's moods and perceptions of all the senses, but my senses are still scattered and give me conflicting information, while the ideal is that all the senses should act in concert and under the direction of a soul in which God's will is freely flowing in synurgistic accord: a soul which perceives itself as a willing and glad handmaid of the Lord.

As God chose Mary to bear Christ, so He will cause to be born in us something wonderful and beyond telling if we are able to lay ourselves open to his guiding influence. As C. S. Lewis writes in The Screwtape Letters, "He (God) cannot ravish. He can only woo," and this is what God does. He whispers to us in a thousand little ways and in a million voices, and at every turn, we have the choice either to accept what He gives and what He wishes us to do, or to deny His will and to go our own way. But I believe that though parts of God's will for us may seem arduous and difficult and even incomprehensible, and though the imperfect world in which we live will continue to trip us up, God's will for us is that we experience the fullness of His boundless joy, a joy which cannot fade and which is not based on mere pleasure. Having tasted the tinyest bit of that joy, I know now that I cannot go back. I cannot view Christianity as something for the mind to wrestle with and to pin down in some logical framework. It is a thing which seems as lovely and as delicate as gossomer to the casual observer. It seems easily assaulted and brought to its knees, but to me, though it entered into me as beauty and wonder, it has stayed and grown into something strong, so that even if I fall, I know that God is there. Even if I doubt my faith, I know there will be a way out of that doubt. This is precisely because I know that I am unworthy of God's gifts to me. I cannot ever repay Him, but I know that He loves me, even as I am, and that His love demands that I scrape away the dust and debris of sin and self-satisfaction which clouds my soul from understanding Him. I know that my Redeemer liveth, but if asked how I know it, I cannot readily give an answer which would satisfy the human mind. I can't even satisfy my own mind as to how I know of God's presence, but I do know it. It is not a story I tell myself. It is a truth which I have come to see. It is not only the way that I make sense of a crazy world. It is not a mere sociological experiment or necessity. It is simply and solely true. God is God. I've seen nihilism. I've been through post-modernism, and that way lies madness and despair for me. Some say they find solace in the randomness and meaninglessness of events, stating that everyone's individual interpretation of what they see around them is always valid, simply because it is held by one person or group or culture. However, the world does not work like that. If it did, we wouldn't care that oppression went on. We would respect it as a valid way of living in the world and we would defend others' rights to practice it. Of course, most people don't defend what they perceive as injustice, and the moment they draw that line in the sand, they are imposing their sense of the world on another group of people, thereby defining what they think should be accepted and what they hope will become universal truth.

So, don't talk to me of post-modernity and the need to break the chains of some outmoded system or other, because in breaking those chains, we invariably create new ones. We are who we are. We have egos and are prone to passions which make it very difficult to truly accept each other as we are. Even those who talk about accepting homosexual people as they are and not trying to change them can at times be guilty of hypocrisy when a homosexual person or couple chooses to be less vocal and to simply live their lives without putting themselves on display to make a point. (I chose that example at random.) The point is that I have discovered that I need God in some fundamental way which has nothing to do with conforming to the standards of any societal norm. Indeed, my being the kind of Christian that I am makes me anathema to the prevailing culture, because while I do not believe that other faiths are simply evil for not being Christianity, I do believe that Christ is the fulfilment of all the truths I have learned during my life here. He is the clarification of everything that has gone before for me, though it would be impossible to convince anyone else of that simply by saying it. It is simply something that needs to be experienced, needs to be known as one might know the voice of a friend, and it can only be known by surrendering, by participating as wholly as possible in what God wants for us. Our lives must be a continual effort to say "amen" at every moment. That is what people we call holy do. They have developed an intimate relationship with God so that He is not now the angry and terrible moral guardian of the universe. Neither is He mushy and gushy, but they have learned to see Him as both mighty and power but also as a person, as a loving and just person who cares about the world which He has made and who weeps when injustices are done, and they have been able to put their trust in Him, to give their hearts to Him in a true and unreserved way. For the rest of us, there is a long way to go, but it can start with the simplest turning of the soul outward to help our neighbour, for if we cannot learn to see Christ in our fellow men, then we will never see Him truly as He is. Till next I write,

Deo Gratias!

Dreams and Desires

Benedicamus Domino!

This night I find myself sitting solitary and pondering the dreams and desires we build for ourselves. Whence do these airy castles of gold and silver come to us? Do we construct them brick by brick and tower by tower, or do they somehow exist already and is God, who knows all things He has made, simply point them out to us? Well, as with most things, I believe that it is both. There's a saying in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings which states: "Go not to the elves for advice, for they will say both 'yes' and 'no'." I, in a lot of ways, tend to think very elvishly. Usually, my answers to life's questions involve a 'both-and' construction rather than an 'either-or.' It's just how I'm made. Perhaps it's because I'm a Canadian; I really don't know, but this kind of elf-think is a part of me from way back and is not likely to leave me any time soon.

So, getting back to the subject of our dreams and desires in life, I believe that there are some that we construct for ourselves, but actually, I believe that our dearest and deepest dreams and desires are shown to us by God, and when he shows them to us, we know them for our own because they were made specifically for us by Him. For instance, I used to dream of a very special place. It was a meadow in which a swift stream flowed and where the grass was soft and the air was cool, and it was very peaceful. Why I would dream of such a thing, considering I had never been in a meadow of any sort, I really don't know, but that place has come to represent rightness and goodness and purity in my life. The dream was that of a child, and I no longer have it as an actual vision of the night, but in another way, that dream is still a dream. The land has become a metaphor for something grand and beautiful, but also something simple and dear to the human heart. It is, in short, the peace that passeth understanding.

However, let's take the kind of dream I am really talking about here: the kind of dream that we build for our future selves. When I was sixteen, I felt what I thought was a very strong vocation to the religious life; I wanted to become a nun. This persisted and has continued to persist even till now, so that last November, I took three months to test out what it was like to live in a small womens' convent attached to a men's monastery and church in Hamilton. I love the Benedictine life. I think that I will always be a Benedictine Christian in some way. I loved the prayers we did there and I still pray them in my own life. I loved the philosophy upon which Benedict's monastic rule was built, and for me it seems a sure and steady way to follow that straight and narrow path which we as Christians are all called to follow. However, what I chiefly loved was the communal aspect of things. We shared meals. We each took turns cooking. We helped each other as and when we could. We were not alone, even though great emphasis was placed on private reading, prayer and study. The whole monastic life is built on charity and mercy, and is based on a mutual self-offering to one another and to God. It is the Christian life in microcosm but also intensified by this minuteness. The little day-to-day things become tests of our character and lessons for us, but all the while, there are others with us doing the same things and following the same process.

In the spring, after some time back here to reflect on my experience, I had every intention of returning there at my earliest convenience. I thought I had found what I was lacking. I thought I knew at last that I had a vocation and that I had to answer it. Of course, there were circumstances which intervened and which were beyond my control. To go into them here would take too long, but suffice it to say that it seemed very clear that God was letting me know that this life was not possible for me at this time, if indeed it would ever be possible. So I began questioning again. I began wondering if I really wanted to be a nun or perhaps just wanted to belong somewhere, to be needed and useful. This particular monastic community is really the only option for Benedictine monasticism in Orthodox Christianity, but there are other monastic houses of a more Greek or Russian or Romanian or Serbian (etc) stripe, and they're still Christian and still monastic, so why was I not willing to keep investigating? I felt this very irresistable pull to remain in this part of the world. Many of the women's houses I might have considered trying out are in the US. I felt a certain affirmation that I would know what all this was about in time.

You see, I had come to a suspicion that my monastic desire was more about beating back a certain emptiness I have felt in my life for some time. I live with my family now, and I am not physically alone very often, but there is still an aloneness which lingers and will not let go. I am a Christian in a household whose basic attitude to my faith is that it's something that they don't understand, and I have built a life here which is based primarily on my creative pursuits and not a whole lot on social interactions. In other words, I live in my head more often than not, and this can be a very strange place to be. We're not meant to live in our heads, to build castles in the air which block us from our fellow human beings: and it's this sort of dream or desire that I feel comes from our egos, our unsatisfied and ravenous egos. We wish for money, so we get a high-paying job that forces us to work insanely-long hours and we forget our friends and neighbours because of this. We wish to accumulate status-symbols for ourselves and we begin to alienate people who do not have these hallmarks of 'the good life.' I wish to create something truly beautiful, which in and of itself is not a bad thing, but there are times when this wish becomes an obsession so that I block out anything or anyone which might distract me from it.

What I have to come to terms with and to accept (and this is very difficult to do!) is that I was never happiest than when I had a partner in life: a man to love. I find myself minimizing this fact at every turn. In terms of my late fiance, I do this so that I don't rose-tint what was a very human and very falible relationship between two very human and very falible people, but even if we lived in separte houses, I knew that he was still with me. I knew we each thought of each other all the time. I mean, I would record a track for my album and I'd be thinking: 'what would he think of this?' It was glorious! It was also difficult, because anything worthy the winning is difficult, but it was all worth everything. We did offer ourselves to each other. We were, of course, two separate people, and had no intention of blending into each other to become one non-entity, but it was the dynamics of the interplay between our personalities that was so fascinating. So what am I really saying? I guess I thought that if the vocation died, there would be a hole where it had been, and now, well, that isn't the case. I have renewed confidence in myself because I tried to live a dream I had, and now, I think that the true dream that lay behind what may have been my own need to be different, to be someone out of the ordinary, may finally be surfacing. It may be that love--a thing both simple and yet in some ways beyond comprehension--is what I'm truly seeking, or what I am being told to seek. All I know is that if this blog has helped me to sift through all the debris which has kept me from seeing this truth, then glory to God for all things! There is a way that I have to go. I've known that much ever since I can remember. There is a right pattern to my life and some reason why I did not simply give up the ghost when I was a premature baby. I've had incredible bounty as well as unbelievable pain to sift through, and I'm not through living yet. It's time to go and see where life is going to take me, and I intend to do that! Perhaps it will not be 'the road less traveled by' that I take, but the worn and well-peopled road has its advantages as well. Still, it's in the yellow wood I stand and gaze at the choices before me, and while I stand thus musing, I will send up a grateful prayer to Him who knows all our roads, and say:

Deo Gratias!

Thoughts Upon the Passage of Time

Benedicamus Domino!

November is a month for reflection and taking account for me. It was on November 11, 2005 when I found myself suddenly open to Christianity again after years of looking elseware, and it was on the same day in 2006 that I was baptized as an Orthodox Christian. The strange thing was that we had scheduled the baptism originally for another weekend entirely, but circumstances beyond our control conspired to make it necessary that the service should be performed on November 11.

November has traditionally been a spiritually-active time for me. It was in November several years ago that I found myself beginning to embrace Pagan beliefs. It was in November of last year that I went for a three-month sojourn to a small Benedictine Orthodox monastery in Hamilton to test what I thought might be a vocation to the religious life, and it is in November of this year that I have come to a decision, and that decision is that I cannot hide myself away any longer. I can't just sit on the shelf. I have to have friends and intelligent conversation in my life. I have to commune with people where possible and to develop relationships of depth and meaning.

I have often defaulted to a strange and solitary existance throughout my life, but this is just no way to live if one can help it! To isolate is harmful most of the time. To consistently be alone and to disengage with life can cause very negative results. It is true that my occupations (writing, blogging and music) can draw me into solitude and that this solitude is necessary for the doing of said occupations, but they need not take up my entire life. I just had a lovely late-night conversation with a friend whose voice I'd never heard though we had talked on and off for about ten years via the internet. This led me to wonder why I am so reticent and reserved. I mean, this friend and I have shared many intimate thoughts via our blogs and such, but for some reason, I never took her up on several invitations she made to converse. This is a failing of mine, because I love conversation!

In fact, during another November, I recall a very memorable conversation between myself and a friend. This friend and I had not spoken for years, but as soon as I knew her number, I called her and we talked and talked and talked! I'm sure that some of the news I told her was less-than desirable for her to hear, but we just talked as though we'd never stopped. That's really the definition of a true friend. If you can just start talking after a long dry-spell as though you'd never ended the former conversation, then you know that you've got something special and that you are, as Anne Shirley would say, 'kindred spirits.'

I have been fortunate to have a few of these kindred spirits in my lifetime, and the best part is that I'm still meeting others! I maintain a wonderful relationship with the Abbot of the monastery where I went last year, for instance. We both share a similar outlook on life, and we're forever trading interesting Youtube finds or poetic things or the like. It's lovely!

I really don't know where this entry is going, and I ought to get some sleep. So, as Rachmaninov's Vespers (Vespers and Matins really) wends its musical way onwards, I suppose I'll bid those who read this experiment in introspection adieu for now and give my tired body and soul a rest.

Deo Gratias!

Thoughts Upon the Festival of Samhain

Benedicamus Domino!

Today is, of course, Halloween. Children in many parts of the world are dressed in costume and will be going door to door to obtain candy from generous neighbours, and if the neighbours aren't so generous, the children may play pranks upon them. I used to indulge in this time-honoured tradition of "trick-or-treat," but I never stopped to think of what lay behind it. All I knew was that Halloween was a magical time which could set my imagination soaring and indulge my creative spirit. It always felt right and proper to celebrate it, and even after I was deemed too old to go trick-or-treating, I still dressed up in costume and enjoyed reading or hearing ghost stories and generally made merry and scary with the best of them.

Then, I found Pagan beliefs, and I researched the origins of Halloween. On one hand, it was said to be a time of unpredictability when the veil between the living world and the "other" world, the world of spirits and undying things, was thin. The celts certainly believed this, and the tradition persisted into Christian times, when those of the "other" world became evil. People had to dress in costume in order to fool the evil spirits so that they wouldn't take them away.

Still, I was certain that even more lay behind this idea than was on its surface, so I probed deeper. I still found the theme of unpredictability running strongly in the traditional stories, but what I also found was that this was a night to honour the dead and to acknowledge the coming of winter. Of course, to a farming and hunting culture, winter was seen as a very difficult time of year, but it was also seen as a time when the land would rest from its labours, and as Samhain (pronounced "sow-win") was said to be a night out of time, when the living and the dead could mingle, it was rife with magic and divination rites. Here, on the eve of the hardest time of year, people would seek counsel of their ancestors and of the gods. Priests would wear the skin of a ritually-slaughtered bull and would allow it to shrink in the heat of a bonfire, and as it shrank, they would go into a trance and would prophecy. This sort of thing was done in many parts of the world, as Pagan beliefs tend to follow similar lines. They take their beliefs from the world around them, and the world as we know it has many similar themes repeated in all its continents.

So here, at last, I felt that I had come to the truth of why Halloween had intrigued me so much. Every year, I felt (and still feel, I might add) a build-up of something--let us say excitement for lack of a better word--surrounding this day. Even though I no longer participate in the getting of candy or even dress in costume, it is still a very interesting time. The feeling in the air shifts and blurs, and one feels that anything is possible. Don't misunderstand me! I am a committed Christian, but it is on days like today when that old feeling returns and I revel in the wildness and the freedom it seems to afford.

When I became a Pagan in name, (I'm more than convinced that I had been one in spirit for many years,) I began to acknowledge Samhain as a time for honouring the dead and for interesting portents and signs. It was on Samhain one year that I and a friend saw two deer performing what we figured was some sort of a mating dance in a local park which had a petting zoo in it. They pranced and pawed and made noises, and not even our proximity would stop them. Well, two months later, I met the man who later became my fiance. What was a Pagan girl to think? It confirmed Samhain in my mind as a blessed and sacred time.

Then, the first Samhain that I celebrated with others was also the first Samhain after my fiance's passing. So, I had a very real reason to honour my dead that year, and it came at a time when I needed a catharsis. It was a beautiful ritual, and I'll never forget it, but the one I will truly never forget came three years later. Someone had brought some water from Chalice Well in Glastonbury. Glastonbury has become a place sacred to both Christians and Pagans, and it has meant a great deal to me, even though I've never set foot within its bounds. Well, so here was some water actually drawn from Chalice Well! I was awed and fascinated, and I decided to place some on my forehead. This is where one's "third eye" is said to reside, the point on the body which corresponds with the faculty of "second-sight." Well, I placed the water on my forehead, and then I got an insight. It was an epiphany, though till some days or weeks later, I didn't know what it meant. I remember thinking: "I am Glastonbury," only those words, but I kept it to myself and we went on with things.

Then, in November, came my realization that Christ truly was who He said He was. I've written of this before in this blog, so I won't dwell on it now, but I began to realize what I had meant when I had told myself that I was Glastonbury. Here was a land (probably an island at the time,) sacred to a people who had worshipped on it for centuries. Then came Joseph of Aramathia who planted his staff which blossomed into the holy thorn. More importantly, he may have been the first Christian to bring knowledge of Christ to these people, and he came as a tradesman. They mined tin thereabouts at the time. Here was I, suddenly having a knowledge bloom and blossom that I had sought for years, but I learned something very important that day. Sometimes, you have to go back to the beginning before you can go forward, and sometimes, your path will lead you where you least expect to go, but if it is a path of truth-seeking, then truth will find you and meet you on the road.

So, in some ways, I still honour Samhain. I cannot call it a day of demonic powers or Satanic rites as some of my Christian brothers and sisters do. For me, the door between the worlds was a doorway into truth, and I will never repudiate its importance or deny its sacred nature. No, I do not celebrate it now as once I did, but I honour those who do, and I stand with them in the knowledge of what it is and what it means. To betray that would be to betray something deep within myself, and it would also mean betraying my own journey. "I am a part of all that I have met," as Tennyson wrote, and I will never deny that I was once a Pagan and a Witch. That path saved me from despairing, gave me comfort and confidence when I needed it, and perhaps most importantly, gave me some wise people to learn from and to bond with. I have sought, ever since I became a Christian, to forget all of this. I have felt that it was necessary to completely divorce myself from my Pagan past. Now, however, I don't feel that way anymore. I am who I am, and I can't pretend to be anyone else. To do so or to minimize that time in my life and call it a mere phase would be petty and mean. Nothing short of Christ's own self could have made me leave Pagan beliefs behind. I was committed and had thought I had found my spiritual home. Then, of course, as He will do, Christ changed everything. Of course, He had been preparing for that day for a long time. I think it would have come in some way even if I had not left Christianity before. It's a day that everyone must have, perhaps even several times in life. It's a day when one's faith becomes less a matter of the intellect and more a matter of the heart and soul. It's a day when one knows who one is, fully and completely, for one instant of time. Everyone has their journey in life, and no one can judge another's path, and so I say: blessed Samhain to all who celebrate it! Here's one Christian who stands with you!

Deo Gratias!