Arising

Today is St. Patrick's Day,
and
I have no ritual, no essay. 

What was his story again?
Something green, about snakes
and the Christ.  The only interest
this holy day holds for me
now is the Breastplate, the invocation.

I arise today
Through the strength of Heaven 

My stories are dissolving, fading out,
like the last scene of a movie
when the landscape goes
out of focus until all is golden light
filling the screen. 

Light of the Sun

My stories are riding into the sunset,
they are getting married, and I am
giving them away,
they are dying in their sleep
of old age.

Radiance of Moon

I am turning
to poetry.

Splendor of Fire

The question has been posed:
Your desert island book?
For me, a very large anthology
of sacred poetry spanning
all times and places.

Speed of Lightning

My back is to St. Francis and my stories
go down with the sun behind him.
I am facing Sister Clare, and even she
has nothing to tell
but Shine.

Swiftness of Wind

All the stories are a trick of mirrors
and light.  Forget the mirror -
who needs it, when you have the source?

Depth of Sea

I have told the story of why
I joined the church,
of the horrors of self-made religion,
wrong-headedness and failure, the need
for cleansing.  Yes.
But this is only the part
that happens in front
of the audience, there is
also the backstage,
the fear of glimpses
of utter reality, absolute freedom
and emptiness, which sitting
in a church soothed for a while.
Four walls, a safe structure,
a place to lick wounds,
a well-lit path at the edge
of a forest that can never stop
inviting.

Stability of Earth

Now
I see the forest and the trees
as I stand among them
with no exposition,
no tale of bread crumbs, bears, or witches
to frighten, console, or instruct,
with in fact nothing
but an endless poem
that both does and does not
need me to get itself heard.

Firmness of Rock

The Slow Waxing of Light and Life

This is such an awkward time of year. I'm tired of winter, being housebound, being cold, and I'm still immersed in the inner world of contemplation, to the point that I am fairly grumpy with anyone who wants to distract me from it, which is mainly my children, of course.  Rumi said, "My worst habit is I get so tired of winter I become a torture to those I'm with."  I relate to that bear in hibernation.  Just leave me alone and let me dream.  Let me focus on my sap rising, but don't ask me for any of it yet. 

Alas, that is not the way it works in Real Life, is it?  It's hard to slow down when the world doesn't want you to.  And we don't get days off for Tu Bishvat, or for Imbolc and Candlemas, the other two holidays that have occurred recently:

January 29/30 - Tu Bishvat (I discussed this here.)

February 1 - Imbolc.

A day to celebrate the Celtic Brigid, who is goddess or saint, depending on your tradition.  In typical Celtic fashion, the goddess and saint stories blend; she was said to be the foster-mother of Jesus.  I adore her; she is my divine soul-sister, associated with poetry, the hearth-fire, metalsmithing, midwifery, bees, and sacred wells.

February 2 - Candlemas.

A Christian celebration of the return of the light, involving the blessing of beeswax candles, and officially ending the Epiphany season.  Traditionally, people would leave up their Christmas greenery until this day.

All three of these days celebrate the return of life to the earth, the very beginning of spring's return, the waxing of light.  The planting of seeds is a common ritual for all three celebrations.  Imbolc and Candlemas are closely associated and the focus is on purification and renewal of vows, rededication to the Path, refocusing, taking new action.

This ties in nicely for me with Yesod's emphasis on actualizing spiritual concepts.  My sap is rising up the Tree, from Malkuth to Yesod, but I needed a jumpstart.  These holidays provided me with it.  However, the not getting days off really irked me.  I ended up spreading my celebrations and rituals out over an entire week, just to fit it all in around my schedule.

My plans were elaborate; I was going to:

• burn my Christmas tree which has been standing forlornly in my backyard since Epiphany
• take a meditative orange-tinted salt bath for purification (using kosher sea salt and the Elmo fizzy bath colors Eliana got for Christmas - one yellow and one red)
• begin my Svadhisthana exercises
• bless the orange beeswax candles I bought at Cid's
• then fill the whole house with candlelight, while I 
• thoughtfully write out and then recite my spiritual vows for the year
• plant an indoor herb garden with the kit I bought, focusing on the meaning and fruitful fulfillment of my vows (Basil - for love, exorcism, prosperity; Rosemary - for love, purification, and faithfulness; Thyme - for courage, health, and strength)

The first day I tried to do all these things, I had to begin by cleaning the house, which is obviously part of the purification process.  I mopped all the floors, which was a wonderful way to start, but by the time I had wiped down all surfaces, picked up everything off the floors, then swept and mopped, half the day was gone.

I then went through my new exercises for the first time, while listening to The Bee Priestesses, which was remarkably energizing and empowering.  After that, I took my ritual bath, which was also a powerful experience, but by then, the day was winding down to the time when the kids come home, so I had to stop there.

Then the boiler that powers my baseboard heater system went out.  And I became very aware that elaborate rituals and celebrations are a luxury when you're too cold to function.   I was forced to slow down, then.  One day I was so cold all I could do was take a bath and get into bed.  I slept all afternoon, which was a luxury in itself, and one I haven't indulged in since I can't remember when. 

During that period without heat, I thought about homeless people in cold places like New York and Chicago, and I thought about people who don't have any time to themselves because they're too busy surviving, and I felt that strange tension between gratitude and guilt that seems to be a characteristic of citizens of western industrialized cultures.   

Am I being frivolous, self-indulgent by doing these things when I "should" be working?  This was the question I kept pushing away when I started my celebrations.  But after the heater broke, the question was irrelevant, because I was involved in a more basic existence issue.  Even being able to ask questions like the one above is a luxury.  A privilege, a freedom.

But no.  It is not frivolous to do these things if they help me to center and be healthy and grow.  It is, however, a luxury, a privilege, a freedom - not to feel guilty about, but to be grateful for.  And so, the heater breaking factored into my vows, which hadn't been properly written yet when it happened.  I made several vows related to different areas of my life, but the most important one, resulting from my heater ordeal, was to offer gratitude and praise for everything, not in some vague general way, but for specific individual things and people and events as they come into my field of vision, and thus to grow in my awareness of them.  Even when they're unpleasant and I don't like them.

So with the burning of the tree*, I let my guilt becomes ashes to feed the earth.
With the blessing and lighting of candles, I awaken my awareness of blessing and light.
With the burying of seeds into earth**, I plant my intentions, and as the seeds die out of their form and grow into something new, I will express my gratitude for the death of my old shell and limits of perspective, and I praise the earth and light and water and struggle that bring forth new life.

Amen.

The unexpected completion to my celebrations:

Jenny Stevning posted this drawing as a page to print and color

in response to my mention of her in this post.

Thank you, Jenny.  Coloring this was most fun!

*The tree burning actually didn't go too well.  I had forgotten how long it takes wood to dry.  I did manage to singe it a bit,  after a half hour involving a lighter, copious amounts of newspaper, very cold hands, and more starter fluid than I care to admit.
**I mixed the body of the dead bee I found at Epiphany into the soil.  It just seemed like the thing to do. 

Found In Translation

I'm a research junkie and a total word nerd.  In the icebreaker game of a discussion group once, I had to pick an adjective to describe myself that started with the same letter as my name.  Just call me "Searching Susan."  I once took an online I.Q. test that titled me "Word Warrior" based on my score.   

When I was in graduate school, I spent an absurd amount of time researching and writing about one of the earliest Old English poems, "The Dream of the Rood."  Two semesters' worth of research and writing, actually.  I could have turned it into a thesis, as one of my professors kept suggesting.  When I first started the project, I was supposed to do a lexical analysis of the piece for my History of the English Language class.  I was trying to show that there were Celtic as well as Anglo-Saxon influences on the poem.  So I got an Old English dictionary and eventually ended up doing my own translation of the whole 256 lines.  Yes, you read that right - two HUNDRED and fifty-six.

The Ruthwell Cross,

on which part of "The Dream of the Rood" is inscribed in runes.

Dumfriesshire, Scotland. Photo by Peter Mattock

on Flickr

What I discovered was that certain words had multiple senses to them, and that none of the available translations emphasized this.  Granted, it's a difficult thing to do, but I, being the word nerd warrior that I am, took on the task.  It was immensely rewarding to find ways to unfold levels and layers of meaning.  And I was able to support my claims of Celtic influence pretty darn well this way.

More recently, I've read a couple of books by Neil Douglas-Klotz, in which he translates various words of Jesus into the Aramaic that Jesus would have been speaking in when he lived, and from there into English.  The result is quite poetic and illuminated.  For instance, here's his translation of the Lord's Prayer:

O, Birther of the Cosmos, focus your light within us -- make it useful
Create your reign of unity now
Your one desire then acts with ours,
As in all light,
So in all forms,
Grant us what we need each day in bread and insight:
Loose the cords of mistakes binding us,
As we release the strands we hold of other's guilt.
Don't let surface things delude us,
But free us from what holds us back.
From you is born all ruling will,
The power and the life to do,
The song that beautifies all,
From age to age it renews.
I affirm this with my whole being.

When I first started studying the Bible with a Strong's Concordance handy, you can probably imagine how ecstatic I was.  I would spend whole afternoons looking up every word in a single verse, and feel like I was digging up ancient treasure.  Word archaeology.

I wrote two full pages in my notebook about the name "Jesus."  I don't remember the whole rabbit trail now, but the general gist was that it means "open, wide, and free."  At least that was what I took from it.

I began to see an analogy between words and computer icons.  The way you can click on something and it opens up a whole new world that you couldn't have imagined when you were just looking at the icon.

 

Why is she going off about all this? you might well ask.  Well, the other day, I was doing my evening prayer with the book a friend gave me for Christmas, Celtic Benedictions, by J. Philip Newell.  This radiant little book of morning and evening prayer is decorated throughout with images from the 7th century Lindisfarne Gospels.  Anyway, I looked up the verse featured that evening:  "I commune with my heart in the night, I meditate and search my spirit" (Psalm 77:6). 

In my New Revised Standard Version Bible there was a note about "I commune," an alternate translation of it, which I read as "My music spirit searches." I found this odd, but poetic and inspiring.  It took me a minute to realize that because of how these notes are laid out on the page, I was actually reading it wrong.  The alternate translation for "I commune" was simply "My music," and for "search my spirit," it was "my spirit searches."  So the verse would then read, "My music is with my heart in the night; I meditate and my spirit searches."  The New International Version actually translates this verse as "I remembered my songs in the night.  My heart mused and my spirit inquired."

Maybe all of this doesn't excite you like it does me, but it's this kind of stuff that brings the Bible alive for me.  For some, it's this very thing that confirms their rejection of the Bible as scripture, but for me, it emphasizes poetic truth as what's valuable over hard fact.  There's grace and mystery in it, not fixed formulaic answers. 

Much has been made of what gets lost in translation, but I'm here to say that a lot can be found.  I research and explore this way because it's fun, and makes me feel like I'm peering into a divine kaleidoscope.  My music spirit searches, and finds communion in and with the words.