Graffiti and Roses

Today is the Summer Solstice, and what that immediately conjures in my mind is Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and a vague longing for romance and the ocean.

But I am single, and nowhere near the ocean.  I was hoping to visit the west coast this summer, but chose instead to put money into a writer's conference that will be happening here in Taos.  (Have I mentioned that I'm writing a book about my relationship with the San Francisco de Asis church?)  My heart right now is very much with the Gulf Coast, and so at this Solstice time of great light and life, I am permeated with the awareness of darkness and death.  I feel it in my own body.

Today is also Honoring Sacred Sites day, and so I send my light and life to the Gulf Coast, the sacred ocean.  And I turn, as I do every day, toward the San Francisco de Asis church, the sacred site right outside my door.

Taos is a tourist town, and each summer a theme is chosen to center activities and events around.  Last year it was "The Summer of Love," and the focus was on Taos' strong and enduring hippie culture.  Dennis Hopper came for the opening of his art show.  This year the theme is "Return to Sacred Places."  In fact, the newspaper held an essay contest for Taos residents around this theme, and I got an honorable mention for my essay about the church.

Because of this theme, there has been a lot of focus on the St. Francis church, with talks given and three art shows around town.  I missed the talk that was given at the public library on June 5, but was lucky enough to catch it on the radio the other night.  The thing that most struck me in this talk, given by David Maes, who is a lifelong resident of Ranchos de Taos and member of the church, was in his introduction.  He spoke of how the church belongs to anyone who experiences its sacredness, and how even the air around the church feels holy and refreshing.

I did not participate in enjarre, the annual remudding, which is now over.  There is a variety of reasons for that, but one of the most unexpected ones was the sense of loss I've been experiencing over the cutting down of trees in the grove by the church.  It left a bad taste in my mouth and made me want to stay away from the church altogether.  It was several days after seeing all the stumps before I could go back, and when I did, the stumps had all been overturned so that the whole space resembles a twisted wasteland.

The next time I went, a few days after that, I discovered that the entrance to the grove between the gift shop and rectory was now defined with edging and filled with gravel.

I have to admit I'm having trouble with these changes.  A little bit of wildness has been tamed.  I don't think the birds are happy about it either.  The doves have been completely silent and the crows have sounded so angry lately.  They've been congregating and having screechfests in my yard.  I know I've mentioned the birdlife at the church before but I want to give you a clearer picture of this.  It's really only been in the past month or two that I've realized how central the church is to the bird communities of Ranchos de Taos.  There are more birds in this part of Taos than any other, and what I finally realized is that the church is their crossroads, their center.  They fly back and forth, in and out from that hub.  Maybe it's my imagination, but it seems like there's been less bird traffic since enjarre began.

And I can't help but wonder how St. Francis would feel about all this.  One of the things he was famous for was going around and restoring rundown churches, but I wonder how far he took that, balanced against his intense reverence for Mother Earth and her creatures.  Sigh.  Well, what's done is done, and there is nothing for me to do but accept and integrate these changes, and continue to simply observe them.  One thing I do like is the new sign that marks the entrance to the grove from the church side:

The grove is still in flux.  Orange fencing surrounds the area near the adobe ruins that borders the grove, and certain spaces are marked out in a way that suggest something is planned.  Perhaps I've never mentioned the ruins before.  It's hard to give you the scope of it with my simple camera, but here's a try:

It's not the Parthenon, but there is still something sacred in this to me, even or perhaps especially in the graffiti.  There is a sacredness in the way we leave our artful marks on things.  I love the way recent generations have come up with ways to do this even in urban landscapes.  Graffiti, skateboarding, and parkour are all ways to use and add to the mundane and manmade in elevated ways, turning the utilitarian into the artful, for the sheer joy of it.  (I must mention here that I love the concept of Tess' blog, Sacred Graffiti; I highly recommend you visit there.)

After some inquiry at the gift shop, I discovered that the activity around the ruins is because an archaeology group is doing excavation.  When the church was first built, it was surrounded by a fort, and the buildings later became private residences, many of which are still occupied.  Since those buildings hold a lot of history, it makes sense that an archaeology group would be interested in the ruins. 

On the other side of the ruins is the church lot, a deep contrast in its manicured beauty.  Now that things have calmed down a bit over there, I've been able to settle in and enjoy it again. Today, a man was revarnishing the benches in the courtyard.

I love to see the seasonal changes over there.  The flowers that the hawkmoths come to aren't blooming yet, but the rose bushes are in full bloom, something I missed last year because I didn't start walking to the church until after the blossoms had faded.

Clare, the Virgin of Guadalupe, and their roses.  Notice the ruins in the background.

I'm thinking about the pruning metaphor again in terms of manmade changes versus "natural" ones.  I once had a student who wrote an astonishing paper using Emerson's ideas about nature to back up the claim that everything humans do is natural.  Is the grove-clearing and throwing down of gravel as natural and beautiful as any seasonal change of the flora?  My instinctive resistance to this idea is based on the fear that if we believe that, it gives us license to do all kinds of real damage, just the way that verses from Genesis about mankind having "dominion" over Creation have been used to justify all sort of horrible nonsense.  And yet, partially thanks to that student's paper, and also Byron Katie's teachings, I can't help but wonder:  If we consciously saw things in this way would it not ultimately give us a greater, not a lesser, awareness and sense of responsibility in our interactions with the natural world?  In fact, we would no longer see ourselves as being separate enough to have "interactions with" the natural world, but would know ourselves to be part of the organic whole.

I don't know.  If I've learned anything in my four decades here on Earth, it's that it's a long road from ideology to integration.  But on this Solstice day of honoring sacred sites, it feels like an appropriate rumination.  Graffiti and roses, skateboarding and birdflight, excavation and pollination, pruning, enjarre, restoration, decomposition - my former student would say these things are equal to each other, equally natural.  What has always appealed most to me about the St. Francis church, which is the most sacred place in the world to me, is the dance among nature, culture, spirituality, religion, art, tradition.  And the paradoxes in all of it, the paradox in my relationship to it as an intimate outsider.

What better way to honor the seasonal changes of nature and sacred sites both "natural" and manmade than to perceive ourselves as fully integrated with and responsible for them the way we are responsible for our own selves?  This is also National Prayer Day, and the only prayer I have is for this, and then to rest in the holy paradoxes, the mysteries to be integrated within and beyond our ideologies.   

We Are All Spiritual Leaders

The following was forwarded to me from the pastor of the Presbyterian church I've attended here in Taos.  I pass it along to you for your consideration, and I would like to suggest, especially in response to Jennifer's comment on my last post, that we pray together, in whatever way is meaningful to each of us, in the spirit of what is written here.  Chief Arvol speaks of World Peace and Prayer Day/Honoring Sacred Sites Day on June 21.  I propose that any of you who feel called to do so, honor a site that is sacred to you on your blog that day.

May 12, 2010

 

A Great Urgency:  To All World Religious and Spiritual Leaders

My Relatives,

Time has come to speak to the hearts of our Nations and their Leaders.  I ask you this from the bottom of my heart, to come together from the Spirit of your Nations in prayer.

We, from the heart of Turtle Island, have a great message for the World; we are guided to speak from all the White Animals showing their sacred color, which have been signs for us to pray for the sacred life of all things.  As I am sending this message to you, many Animal Nations are being threatened, those that swim, those that crawl, those that fly, and the plant Nations, eventually all will be affect from the oil disaster in the Gulf.

The dangers we are faced with at this time are not of spirit. The catastrophe that has happened with the oil spill which looks like the
bleeding of Grandmother Earth, is made by human mistakes, mistakes that we cannot afford to continue to make.

I asked, as Spiritual Leaders, that we join together, united in prayer with the whole of our Global Communities. My concern is these serious issues will continue to worsen, as a domino effect that our Ancestors have warned us of in their Prophecies.

I know in my heart there are millions of people that feel our united prayers for the sake of our Grandmother Earth are long overdue.  I believe we as Spiritual people must gather ourselves and focus our thoughts and prayers to allow the healing of the many wounds that have been inflicted on the Earth.

As we honor the Cycle of Life, let us call for Prayer circles globally to assist in healing Grandmother Earth (our Unc¹I Maka).

We ask for prayers that the oil spill, this bleeding, will stop. That the winds stay calm to assist in the work. Pray for the people to be guided in repairing this mistake, and that we may also seek to live in harmony, as we make the choice to change the destructive path we are on.

As we pray, we will fully understand that we are all connected.  And that what we create can have lasting effects on all life.

So let us unite spiritually, All Nations, All Faiths, One Prayer.  Along with this immediate effort, I also ask to please remember June 21st, World Peace and Prayer Day/Honoring Sacred Sites day. Whether it is a natural site, a temple, a church, a synagogue or just your own sacred space, let us make a prayer for all life, for good decision making by our Nations, for our children¹s future and well-being, and the generations to come.

Onipikte (that we shall live),

Chief Arvol Looking Horse
19th generation Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe
http://www.Wolakota.org

Chief Arvol Looking Horse, by indeed_2006

The Ruthless Gardener

Bell near St. Clare's statue in the San Francisco de Asis courtyard

As I continue to practice dropping out of my mind and into my body, several interesting things have been occurring.  One is that my normal state of intense study and research is becoming less normal.  I simply don't have the same intensity of thinking, which also means less writing.  I've been finding myself at a loss to even comment on all of your blogs.  Even this post is more like an eruption than a coherent thought process.

At the same time, my level of physical activity has accelerated quite a bit.  As I'm spending more time in my body than my head, really listening to it, I hear that it wants to move and work, for the sheer joy of it.  I have taken up running with a zest I didn't know was possible.  For most of my life, physical activity was something I thought about doing, felt like I should be doing, but didn't actually want to do.  Now I look forward to it, and find myself having to temper my enthusiasm so I don't OVERdo it.  I've also been working in the yard, gardening.  I planted pumpkins, and they sprouted!  My arms are sore today from pulling up weeds.  There is an incredible level of satisfaction in all of this.

But nothing stays the same.  I simply don't know from day to day what my perspective will be.  It's as though things are shaking loose within me, swirling about, uprooted.  I worked hard on trying to let go of a thing I wanted.  That didn't work.  So I started praying earnestly for that thing, something I'd never tried before.  I prayed specifically and articulately every day with all my heart.  Until I discovered I didn't really want what I was praying for.  What a paradox - when I tried to not want it I wanted it more, and when I gave myself over to wanting it, I stopped wanting it. 

Now the loud voice of wanting in my head is shrieking with rage because I've abandoned it and it doesn't have an anchor anymore.  It's desperately trying to seek one, and I'm just watching and listening.  Not judging, not giving in to its ludicrous demands, just seeing.  Just hearing.  Go ahead and rant and rave, I can't stop you anyway.  I will just wait here in the quiet you can't touch until you diminish, which is already happening and is in fact the reason you're being so obnoxious, trying to cling to life.

Nothing stays the same.  Everything shifts and sometimes that looks "wrong" or dangerous.  "To enjarre or not to enjarre" got pushed way into the background this week because I got very sick.  I won't go into the details, but I was showing exact symptoms of a pretty serious condition.  However, by the time the doctor looked at me, the symptoms were gone and my tests came back fine.  I'm convinced that I made myself sick by listening to the shrieking voice.  I let it take me over for a couple of days, and became unguarded enough that the tumult of emotion that accompanied that rotten thinking caused something like an oil spill in my body.

When I finally felt better physically, and could listen to the shrieking without being taken over by it, I was eager to go for a run.  It had been days since my enjarre encounter.  I waited until evening so there would be no crowds at the church, since I was still not quite ready to deal with that challenge. 

Nothing stays the same.  Have I mentioned how very much I love the little grove by the church?  Well, they cut down most of the trees.  They only left the ones around the perimeter, but essentially, the grove is no longer.  It's just an empty lot full of tree stumps.  They took down the tire swing my son and his friend strung up with an old garden hose; in fact the tree it was hanging from is gone.  I'm welling up with tears as I write this, as I did when I first saw it. 

Nothing stays the same, but everything outward is reflected inwardly with an eternal tint.  I think of the metaphor of pruning in John 15.  Some prunings are bigger than others.  Sometimes life is pruned so radically it's alarming, and doesn't fit my idea of how things "should" be.  Do I really ultimately know what "health" means?  Do I really know what is for the ultimate good of myself or the world?  

Oil spills, sickness, destruction of trees.  All ranting and raving is a wall of nothing against such things.  These things happen, and I see them all together.  I see in them meaning and connection that suggest a story I cannot fully tell.  I hear in them only the call to awaken, the thunder of tremendous bells. 

Backstory

As it turns out, I have given up church for Lent. 

Will I go back once Lent is over?  I don't know.  I have no idea what's going to happen next in any area of my life.  I'm out of control.  (I looked all over for it - I'm definitely out.)  Hurray!

Giving up attachment to stories.  Surrendering all goals except awakening, the paradox being that to awaken, even that goal must be surrendered.

Learning to say Yes to everything.  As someone very wise once pointed out, Yes is surrender.

I started out by giving up bitching for Lent.  That was the surface goal, but I recognized that to truly do this, I had to give up the negative thinking that leads to bitching in the first place, otherwise it would just be a sorry attempt at control.

When I announced my intention on my blog, Dan recommended Byron Katie and The Work.  I began to explore that website, then mentioned what I was discovering there to Jennifer, who suggested I also read The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle.  From there began an amazingly rapid process of unraveling:

To give up bitching I had to undo negative thinking.  To undo negative thinking I had to look at my beliefs, which led to examining the stories I tell myself, which led finally to seeing that all stories are untrue.  Even the good ones.

I came to the edge of this forest once before, a long time ago, but I wasn't ready to enter then.  There were still stories I wanted to believe, and I didn't understand that one doesn't come to Reality by denying the body (or the world) and its stories, but by fully entering into them with an alert and embracing yet questioning mind.

To see the world as illusion or Maya is not to blow it all off and sit in your head.  It's merely to perceive the deeper Reality that is the Source.  (I feel like A.A. Milne, using all these caps.)  That was one of my biggest stumbling blocks when I tried to come to this before, and I ultimately found myself lost.  That's when I turned to the Bible and church.

In adopting a biblical worldview, one of the greatest joys was in experiencing the earth and myself as Creation, as real.  (Now I'm thinking of The Velveteen Rabbit.)  Reading the Bible, especially some of the beautiful nature imagery in the Psalms, and shifting my worldview this way turned me into an environmentalist and a social activist, because I finally had permission to care, to love Creation and all of its creatures.  Before that, when I saw the world as illusion, as something to be transcended, I didn't see it at all let alone feel that I wanted to care for it.

And so I entered a new paradigm, one in which there was a true Presence and Creative Intelligence who loved the earth, who made it and continues to make it in every moment, and who - could it possibly be??? - loved me.  Forgave me.  A Being who I didn't have to keep trying to climb some endless ladder to get to, who was instead reaching down to me, just where I was with all of my flaws.  I spiritually relaxed for the first time in years, maybe ever.  I accepted the gift that I now saw was always being offered, and realized that this was all I'd ever had to do to be with God.  In Christianity, that gift comes in the form of Christ.

I had spent so much time and energy trying (and failing) to connect with a formless, distant God, that it was an immense relief to embrace the incarnate version.  So much more accessible.  The Son became for me the access point to the Divine and to my own incarnation, the intersection of the ineffable and the tangible.  This is one of the most important symbolic meanings of the cross for me.

It makes perfect sense to me that if there is a God that God would take the form of a human to be able to communicate in a language humans can hear and comprehend.

Now, as this most powerful and unexpected Lenten journey winds down toward Easter, I find myself considering anew the Resurrection.  There are those who never seem to get to that part of the story.  There are others who try to jump straight to it and miss the point of the way of the cross, which is about surrender, the ultimate Yes.  Without that Yes, resurrection is impossible.  However, the Yes can only happen because it sees the deeper Reality that makes resurrection not only possible but inevitable.

Asking if (or stating that) Jesus and the Resurrection really happened loses all importance when one comes to the point of view that nothing has ever really happened, no story is true except in the telling.  Anything with a beginning, middle, and end necessarily falls into the realm of illusion because the present moment is the only ultimately real thing, and the Being within it.

And so, as I contemplate the Jesus story during a time in which all stories are dissolving, what I see, the true beauty of this and any good story - which is any story rightly perceived - is that the point is to go beyond the story into the Yes, the surrender, the all-encompassing Now that is eternal reality.  In that Yes are both the crucifixion and the resurrection; in this one moment they occur simultaneously, and are seen for the stories they are. 

Gradual change occurs in an instant.  And now, all that's left is love.

Ghost Ranch Gathering: Into The Heart of the Desert

A time to gather
myself to myself.

A time to gather sacred life
into silent landscape.

A time to gather heart to mind
and back again.

A time to gather in the heart
of the high desert
with twelve brilliant women,

contemporaries and ancients.

My home for the next three days

is Casa del Sol,

a hacienda,

the spiritual heart

of Ghost Ranch.

 My room is small and simple.

Some previous visitor

has left seven-day candles

in the hearth.

We begin each day walking

the labyrinth.

Mornings

and evenings,

we study

the Desert Mothers.

In the 300s,

when Constantine made Christianity

the state religion,

many rebelled, saw it as sellout.

They retreated to the desert,

against the status quo.

Some, especially men,

became hermits.

But often the women

created communities

where they shared
and prayed
and taught.

Syncletica
was considered very wise.

She taught about living
an authentic life.
She said,

It is possible to be a solitary in one’s mind 
while living in a crowd, 
and it is possible for one who is a solitary 
to live in the crowd of his own thoughts.

Mary of Egypt
was a probably a prostitute
or at least quite promiscuous.

She left that life
and entered the wilderness
where she lived
to the end of her days.

Macrina was the woman
behind the famous brothers,
St. Basil and Gregory of Nyssa.

She was compared to Socrates

for her wisdom.

Gregory said she was:

A woman who raised herself by philosophy

to the greatest height of human virtue.

Mary C. Earle,

in her book, The Desert Mothers,

 says the lesson of these women is:

Daily practice, 

focused on what matters 

in the long run, 

shapes each of us

into true human beings,

marked by the glory of God.

  

My practice,

afternoons at Ghost Ranch,

is solitude and silence.

Just me

and the desert.

This huge silence is

the Word of God,

living and active,

listening, alert;

not even a bird

breaks into it.

 

Unadulterated sunshine

holds hands

with a breeze,

and they both

hug the rocks.

 

A single plane

passes over

the daymoon.

 

I crawl on my belly

up soft windswept mounds

of red dirt,

 

immediate geology,

cracked

like an old elephant.

 

In this overflow of solitude,

I think, What if

my longings

are God's longings?

That could be my soul

turned inside

out,

these monuments

of rock,

 

 

these fractal branches,

 

this perfect pentagon

of white stone.

Resting with this Earth,

I receive

her healing.

She is the greatest

Desert Mother

of all.

No agenda but to love

this self

in this body,

on this earth,

my own monastic cell.

The Desert Father, Abba Moses said,

Go to your cell

and your cell

will teach you all. 

Nothing that isn't,

nothing to escape,

when there are no walls.

The final morning

brings first snow,

a perfect symbol

of renewal,

purification,

 

an unexpected alteration

from beauty to beauty,

movement

from earth to earth,

home to home.

Naked in the Town Square

And before him no creature is hidden, 

but all are naked and laid bare to the eyes of the one 

to whom we must render an account. 

~Hebrews 4:13

Unio Mystica
A. Andrew Gonzalez

You're a song
Written by the hands of God...

Underneath your clothes

There's an endless story

~Shakira 

         

I mentioned in an earlier post that St. Francis once stripped naked in the town square.  This scene in the movie, Brother Sun, Sister Moon is worth watching, even if it is a bit corny.  Well, ok - a lot corny.

I've been pondering the meaning of nakedness, especially the way that St. Francis used it.  He was making a statement against materialism and superficiality, but more, he was expressing his movement toward a deeper reality.

Since I started this blogging business, I've sometimes felt like I'm naked in the town square.  While this can be uncomfortable, it's also freeing.  I feel more like myself.  I feel more of myself.

The epithets that I started this post with remind me that nakedness is the default state.  We're always naked underneath our clothes.  I've been realizing that the key to feeling free in nakedness lies in the last part of that bible verse - asking myself, To whom must I render an account?  Why am I rendering an account? 

In other words, whose judgment of my nakedness should I really be concerned about?  If I worry about the judgment of my readers, I will find myself in fear, but if I hold my purpose to a higher authority, to the expression of something authentic and spiritually valuable, then I am paradoxically freed to simply let it move through me.

I'm pleasantly surprised that this is how it works.  I feel as though the universe is rewarding me for my efforts, especially in the sense that the more I focus in my writing on the connectedness I see in the whole blooming  world, the more ubiquitous that connectedness becomes, and the more illuminated I find these connections to be.

While I've been pondering this nakedness theme, on Sunday I went to the Presbyterian church I attend, and the sermon was about this very issue.  The verse from Hebrews was one of the texts for the day.  A couple of verses later it talks about "approaching the throne of grace with boldness," which spoke very clearly to my recent experiences.

I used to be extremely arrogant.  I genuinely thought I was smarter and more enlightened than everyone else.  I eventually went through a life-shatteringly humbling process, which has resulted in my being very cautious about falling into arrogance again.  But balanced with that caution must be a recognition of my gifts, and a proper use of them, and this does require boldness.  It just means giving credit where credit is due - which for me means to the Creator, and to other people and creatures and places  that are my collaborators, my cross-pollinators.

(There's a lovely post by Delwyn on this metaphor of cross-pollination, here.  What she says in that post expresses my blog's whole reason for being.  And the fact that someone else said it, a new friend I've connected with through this medium, beautifully illustrates the principle we're both addressing.)

So what is this "throne of grace" that we're encouraged to boldly approach?  Dictionary.com defines grace in several ways.  Here are the first three:

• elegance or beauty of form, manner, motion, or action.
• a pleasing or attractive quality or endowment.
• favor or good will.

In theology, it means:

• the freely given, unmerited, favor and love of God. 
• the influence or spirit of God operating in humans to regenerate or strengthen them.
• a virtue or excellence of divine origin.
  

I think the common thread between the theological and "regular" definitions of grace has to do with the concept of "freely given."  When we experience a moment of grace, there's something surprising about it, it feels like a gift out of nowhere.  If a throne is "the chair or seat occupied by a sovereign," we can think of that sovereign as grace itself.  Approaching this throne, it seems, means being naked.  To receive moments of grace, we must be open to them, not trying to control every little detail of existence, not clothed in fear or worry or narcissism.

Another way of saying this is that we have to be like children - unselfconscious, free of guile, and in a sense, unquestioning of the value of what we have to share.  Kids will run up to you and excitedly tell you what they just discovered or played with or thought about without ever worrying if you're going to be bored or judgmental.

To be naked is to be uninhibitedly enthusiastic in expressing what interests you.  And if you say it wrong or incompletely, or not everyone gets it or cares to get it - oh well; they're not the ones to whom you must render an account.  It's only the source of grace within you that is entitled to such rendering.

I got to test all this out last Sunday.  I left church, pondering all these things, and as I was turning onto my street, I saw this sign.

     

I had not heard anything about this event, and was very curious.  I went in my house, changed my shoes, grabbed my camera, and headed over to San Francisco de Asis.  Alas, the parking lot was empty and the church was locked.  But I could hear drumming coming from somewhere, so I walked back through the little grove, out to the street, and looked up and down.

I followed the drumming, passing a few other pedestrians on the way, until I came to the end of the street, where the church school is.   I knew I was now in the right place.

As I walked into the parking lot, passing a long line of mostly kids waiting to drive go-carts around a winding course marked by orange cones, it hit me that I was probably the only non-Hispanic person present.  Not only that, but I was still dressed in the red sweater and colorful skirt I'd worn to church, while everyone else was wearing  jeans.  I felt grossly out of place.  I might as well have been naked.

The culture surrounding the San Francisco de Asis church has existed for over two hundred years and is of a very close-knit, traditional, New Mexican Catholic flavor.  I've rarely felt like such an outsider as I did as I walked through the bazaar.

It was a small, simple affair.  There was food both in the gym and lined up in booths outside - tameles, frito pies, roasted corn, burgers, snow cones.  In the gym, along one wall, was a long table set up with religious figurines, prayer cards, rosaries and some artwork and books with the San Francisco church as the subject.  The rest of the gym was being used for bingo and raffle winner announcements. There were standard fair-type games going on outside, and also a performance area set up in the parking lot.

I wandered around for a bit, wishing I 'd brought some money to spend on food or a poster of the church.  I thought more than once about leaving. The drumming had stopped, but there was another act about to begin, so I figured I'd at least see what it was.  As it turns out, I got to witness an amazing performance by a dance group.  I'm not sure "performance" is even the right word, because they introduced their danzas by saying that each one is a prayer.

After the performance, I approached the dancers and asked if I could post the photos I'd taken of them on my blog.  They took my contact info and said they'd get back to me by the end of the week.   So once I hear from them, I'll share more about this experience in another post, either with or without photos.

But for now, I will just say that I'm very glad I stayed to watch the danzas, because I found myself so caught up in the grace of them, I forgot to feel naked.

A Full Moon for Francis

The Prayer of St. Francis 

Lord make me a channel of thy peace;

that where there is hatred, I may bring love; 

that where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness ; 

that where there is discord, I may bring harmony ; 

that where there is error, I may bring truth; 

that where there is doubt, I may bring faith; 

that where there is despair, I may bring hope; 

that where there are shadows, I may bring light; 

that where there is sadness, I may bring joy.

Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted; 

to understand, than to be understood ; 

to love, than to be loved.

For it is by self-forgetting that one finds. 

It is by forgiving that one is forgiven. 

It is by dying that one awakens to Eternal Life.  

Amen. 

Today is October 4, the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi.  Last night, Sister Moon put on quite a show for him.  As I sat on my porch and gazed at her glorious fullness, I heard bells from the San Francisco de Asis church.  They rang for a long long time.  I suppose there was a mass celebrating St. Francis, and I'm sure they're doing it today too.

This blog will have to serve as my little tribute to Francis.  I just adore him.  Such a rabble-rouser, such a poet, so much compassion.  A great combination of qualities, if you ask me.

Nowadays, he's considered patron saint of the environment, because of his great love for all of creation.  I think the feast of St. Francis should be widely celebrated as a second annual Earth Day.  The rate things are going in this world, we could use at least two.

When I was in San Francisco for the first time, I had a major blonde moment (and I'm not even blonde).  I wandered into one of the cathedrals (don't remember which one) and was surprised that there was so much stuff in the gift shop about St. Francis, until I (DUH) put it together:  San Francisco = St. Francis.  (Believe it or not, I actually have a master's degree.)

Anyway, I bought this poster.  I'm pretty picky about art that I like enough to look at every day, but I love this and have it up in my bedroom:

Il Transito di san Francesco alla Porziuncola

(St. Francis Dying at Porziuncola)

by Gerardo Dottori

I never get tired of looking at it.  It' so vivid and meditative at the same time.

At the San Francisco de Asis church here, in addition to the statue of St. Francis that I mentioned in my previous post, there's also this little alcove about two feet high, built into the western well surrounding the church. 

 

I love that Francis is holding a dove here, since there are actual doves that live in the bell towers of the church.  I even managed to capture this photo of a dove and a pigeon hanging out:

I think it's pretty neat that there's so much animal and plant life at a church dedicated to St. Francis of Assisi.  It's like they know they're welcome there.  The Canticle of the Creatures is perpetually whispered on the breeze.

What is truly glorious about the Canticle (also known as the Canticle of the Sun) is that he wrote it on his deathbed.  Apparently, he was lying there, tempted to feel sorry for himself, questioning the fairness of his pain and infirmities.  But in that darkness he chose gratitude - for the opportunity to soon leave the world and move on to the next, but also for the world itself, and all he had loved in it.

I think this is very similar to the way the book of Job ends.  I've always thought that God's speech to Job is about loving the creation as the answer to suffering.  It's like God is saying the way to deal with suffering is to be amazed, to realize how little we actually know and understand, but then go out into the creation and see and know and love the creatures, and by extension, the Creator.

Francis, I think, knew this best of all.

The Canticle of the Creatures

Most High, all-powerful, all-good Lord,
All praise is Yours, all glory, honor and blessings.
To you alone, Most High, do they belong;
 no mortal lips are worthy to pronounce Your Name.

 We praise You, Lord, for all Your creatures,
especially for Brother Sun,
who is the day through whom You give us light.
And he is beautiful and radiant with great splendor,
of You Most High, he bears your likeness.

We praise You, Lord, for Sister Moon and the stars,
in the heavens you have made them bright, precious and fair.

We praise You, Lord, for Brothers Wind and Air,
 fair and stormy, all weather's moods,
by which You cherish all that You have made.

We praise You, Lord, for Sister Water,
so useful, humble, precious and pure.

We praise You, Lord, for Brother Fire,
through whom You light the night.
 He is beautiful, playful, robust, and strong.

We praise You, Lord, for Sister Earth,
 who sustains us
with her fruits, colored flowers, and herbs.

We praise You, Lord, for those who pardon,
for love of You bear sickness and trial.
Blessed are those who endure in peace,
by You Most High, they will be crowned.

We praise You, Lord, for Sister Death,
from whom no-one living can escape.
Woe to those who die in their sins!
Blessed are those that She finds doing Your Will.
No second death can do them harm.  

We praise and bless You, Lord, and give You thanks,
and serve You in all humility.