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 Epiphany Chronicles IV: The Intolerable Shirt of Flame

Morning of January 11

If you came this way,

Taking any route, starting from anywhere,

At any time or at any season,

It would always be the same: you would have to put off

Sense and notion. You are not here to verify,

Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity

Or carry report. You are here to kneel

Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more

Than an order of words, the conscious occupation

Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.

Who then devised the torment? Love.

Love is the unfamiliar Name

Behind the hands that wove

The intolerable shirt of flame

Which human power cannot remove.

We only live, only suspire

Consumed by either fire or fire.

~T.S. Eliot, “Little Gidding”

After much deliberation about the meaning of "integrity," and with Justin's permission, I've decided to go ahead and post this.  Because things are what they are, and the integrity of these chronicles requires it for completion.  And because I truly think of you as my friends.

Fact is, as they say, stranger than fiction.  In the biggest unexpected twist of these chronicles, especially since they were already mostly written when this happened, I experienced the following.

I went early to bring my beloved his mail from the box we share, and discovered him with another woman.  Please bear in mind that we live apart and with no commitment to monogamy.  But still.  I was devastated.

This was the day I started to run.

I returned to my house after this shocking epiphany, shaken to the core, physically vibrating. And said to myself, I'm done.

I'm done.

I'm done.

I fired the censor and wrote every outrage of my incensed heart, and it was not the black sludge, it was the guileless child incarnate at last, that neglected stranger welcomed in.

It's done.

I'm done.

And then I said to myself and to God:  Now what? What do I do with myself? I was still physically shaking. There was no way I could work like this or go pay bills or eat breakfast.

I had been thinking the night before that I'd like to start running. I had mentally plotted my course to and around the St. Francis church and then home a different way. Just like the Wise Men.

I've been reading The Way of the Beloved, and one of the recommended exercises for generating more love is to practice being grateful for “negative” things, to find something in them to be grateful for.

I am grateful for this heartbreaking epiphany because it impelled me to start running.

I walked down the street a bit, then broke into a run, crossed the board over the acequia into the little grove, through the grove, next to the graffittied adobe ruins, into the church parking lot. Something was going on at the church. A funeral. How fitting.

I ran a circle around the church, the hands of the saints reaching out to caress me through the adobe in which they forever live, back through the grove, stopped at a tree to stretch. My mind was graciously blank. The shaking was no longer trapped inside, but suspiring through my flesh.

Back out to the street, past my house, through the post office parking lot. I slowed to a walk down the highway, ran back into the church lot from this different direction. Around the courtyard again. Clare. Oh Clare, please pray for me. Mother of God, pray for me. Mama. And I'm not even Catholic. But it felt right and was medicine.

This running, this writing, are prayer and liberation.

Even in failure,

even in fear,

even in sorrow,

I have and am

- am because I have -

everything I need. 

The light shines

in the darkness,

and the darkness

has not,

will not,

can not

overcome it.

I have and am

my whole

light in the darkness

self.

Thank you.

The Epiphany Chronicles II: Menaced by Monsters

Night of January 5/6

We are only undeceived

Of that which, deceiving, could no longer harm.

In the middle, not only the middle of the way

But all the way, in a dark wood, in a bramble,

On the edge of a grimpen, where is no secure foothold,

And menaced by monsters, fancy lights,

Risking enchantment...

...The chill ascends from feet to knees,

The fever sings in mental wires.

If to be warmed, then I must freeze

And quake in frigid purgatorial fires.
~T.S. Eliot, "East Coker"

I am in a dismal psychiatric hospital with dingy yellow stained walls and seizured fluorescent lights.  A variety of infirm people are milling about in a commons area.

I'm not a patient, and I have some kind of purpose here, but I don't know what it is.  I'm trying to leave but patients keep detaining me, trying to tell me their stories.  I need to get back to my children, I say.  I've been gone too long.

Something is amiss, there's some sort of threat being announced.  Someone is attacking.  I begin to move out of the commons area into the hallway, and they're saying it's a lock-down, that no one can leave.  I have a growing sense of the presence of evil, and of being trapped.  I must escape.

As I move into the hallway, chaos is building, and there are more people, all rushing in different directions.  I'm trying to move past them, get to the doorway at the end of the hall.  I notice a figure to my left.  She's skinny, blonde, and ugly, with gaping pale blue eyes, and she's carrying a small black to-go box containing an iceberg lettuce salad.  She's not human.  She's an evil creature; I can feel it, and I'm terrified.  She seems fake, like she's made out of heavy rubber.

She's inching up behind someone, sniffing at the back of their head with horrible intent.  She catches me looking at her, and then throws some of the lettuce toward me.  I'm doomed.  She moves toward me and I know I will not leave this place alive.  I know she has the strength to do with me what she will, and there's no point in fighting it.

I say something to her, how I know that she can throw me against the wall and kill me in an instant, and she says, "I don't have to."  Just then, I notice  huge rusted pipes, the thickness of barrels, lining the wall of the hallway.  They begin to creak and rumble, and I realize that they're filled with water.  They're about to send a force of rushing water through the building that will quickly drown everyone there.

"Here it comes..." she says.

And I woke up.

The evil black sludge had filled my bedroom, it was a tangible presence, and I was frozen.  I haven't had a nightmare like this in a very long time.  There have been times when I've sensed the presence of evil on the perimeter of my awareness, and deliberately pushed it away, but now it encompassed me, and I couldn't even get out of bed.

My first rational thoughts were that a) It's the night before Epiphany, and I have had an epiphany of evil, and  b) if evil has actual substance and presence, how much more does God have, the divine love and goodness.

I made myself get up eventually, and I went to the living room to ponder and pray.  I wrenched myself away from the sludge enough to turn my thoughts and heart toward God, toward the quiet love I have avowed myself to.  I thought of a scene in Paulo Coelho's novel, Brida, in which the heroine must spend the night in the forest alone.  At first she is terrified with the sounds and the shadows of the night, but then she realizes that she has the CHOICE of how to feel, that if she turns her mind and heart toward love and beauty and goodness and joy, then that is where she will be.  Because it's real.  She eventually falls asleep in peace.

I also thought of Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown, who witnesses a manifestation of evil among his fellows, and can never embrace them again, even though he's not sure if it really happened or if he dreamed it.

Sitting here now, several days later, in the comfort of distance and day, it's easy for me to see how I manifested the nightmare in response to the events of the day before.  The deep fears and pain that I had given up trying to control were leaking out.  Threatening to rush out, in fact, as if from huge rusty pipes, and drown me. I have had several insights into the meaning of this dream just by writing about it here.  But I can't write it off as merely "psychological."  It was a manifestation of evil that was not merely within me.  It had a presence of its own.

I don't want to get into armchair theology of evil just now, because that would diminish the actual experience and what it meant to me.  Besides, I don't even know how to distinguish between "within" and "without" when an issue comes to this level.  The sludge was definitely in the room, but isn't the room "in me" in the most profound sense? 

As awful as this experience was, it showed me my spiritual growth, because I didn't just run and turn on a light and try to externally comfort myself.  I never even looked at the clock.  I also didn't sit and try to analyze it, to think it away.  I immediately went to God, to divine love for that comfort.  I leaned into myself to the source instead of outwardly to some illusion of control. And this deliberate invocation of divine love was much more effective and comforting than turning on a few lights and telling myself it was nothing.  It didn't make the sense of evil "go away," but rather came into that evil and illuminated it.  Experiencing the substance of evil confirmed for me at a deep level the substance of God.  The light shone in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.

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.        

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.

The Dance of Teonantli

**This is a repost - Somehow I managed to delete it from my published posts when I was trying to view it.**

I've been doing some reading about the San Francisco de Asis church. It's surprising to me how little literature is available, but I checked out the two books that they had at the library, one of which features many different artists' paintings and photos of the church, and the other of which focuses on the restoration that occurred in 1979.

I've discovered a few interesting things. First, there's some controversy about when the church was actually built. It could have been as early as 1710 or as late as 1810 - a hundred year discrepancy that even the church records don't clarify. Neither book acknowledges the statues of Clare and Francis that I so adore. I went into the church gift shop and the woman at the counter said the Francis statue has been there maybe ten years, and the one of Clare only for four or five. She didn't know who made them. An online search for this information brought me to my own blog.

In the book about the church restoration, titled simply Ranchos de Taos, I learned that the annual remudding of the church was traditionally done by the women. In recent decades, it seems this has changed. I'm not sure they even make it an annual event anymore, but for a long time, it was a ritual as sacred as any that took place inside the building.

As I mentioned in another post, I'm inspired by the fact that the energy of many hands is infused into the walls of the building, giving it a quality of aliveness. That most of those hands have been women's is very interesting to me. It just makes sense. The shape of the building, with its rounded edges, and the velvet look and feel of the adobe both suggest femininity, a softness embodying strength. Catholics refer to "Mother Church," and in the case of the Ranchos church, this is especially fitting.

The feminine aspect of the Ranchos church has also come to me in another way recently. When I went to the bazaar held at the church school, I was completely enchanted by the performance of a dance group made up of five women and a teenage boy (the son of one of the dancers). Once I can figure out how to do it, I'll update this post with the video that I took of them dancing.

One of the women introduced the group as Teonantli, which means "our godly mother" in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs. She said that with this name, they "give honor to Mary, The Mother of God; Our Mother Earth; and to all mothers." She said that each danza is a prayer, which is why they begin by forming a cross with their feet. They also form a cross in the offering of sage and copal, with smoke rising out of a ceremonial cup.

The danzas were riveting. As one of the dancers told me later, their purpose is to create "powerful, kinetic, spiritual prayer." They were accompanied by flute, a large standup drum called a huehue, and a small hand drum (teponatzli). While three men drummed, the dancers performed intricate, harmonized movements, enhanced by the use of a variety of items.

They began their danzas by blowing through conch shells (caracols), which reminded me of the Jewish tradition of the shofar.

They do this to honor the four winds or compass directions, and also to ask permission of the Animas (souls of ancestors) to open the circle. They do it again at the end to give thanks and ask permission to close the circle.

The headdresses that you see are called copilli, and the ankle bracelets (ayayotes) are actually rattles. Each of the costumes is uniquely decorated with elaborate designs and images in the Aztec style.

I apologize for the fuzzy quality of the photo below left, but I really wanted to show this costume detail. The woman on the right is holding a sonaja, a hand rattle.

During the danzas, the buildup of kinetic and spiritual "charge" was tangible, and the dancers sometimes spontaneously shouted, "El es Dios," meaning "He is God."

These are ordinary women. One works for a judicial district office, another for the Department of Public Health. As you can see in the photos, this performance took place in a cracked parking lot surrounded by orange construction barrels. And yet, through their inspiration, devotion, and intention, the dancers created an electric, mesmerizing experience, fascinating in its blend of Aztec and Catholic elements. As one of the dancers put it:

For centuries the Aztecs honored many gods: the god of rain, fire, wind, war, healing, and many others. The danza has incorporated into it many aspects of the Catholic faith brought to the new world by the Spaniards. Each step (paso) is a prayer.

It was primarily the Franciscans that brought the Catholic faith to Mexico. Ironically, this order, of the lineage of the gentle and respectful St. Francis, forced Catholicism on the Aztecs, sometimes violently. What resulted has been seen in many cultures, a hybridization of religious belief and practice. One of the primary manifestations of this was the incorporation of the Virgen de Guadalupe into the Catholic faith of the Mexicas. The Aztecs could not accept a religion that did not venerate both a male and a female deity. But the Franciscans could not accept a non-monotheistic religion. Interestingly, in pre-Christian Aztec religion, women played important priestly roles, and in at least one festival, women priests led dancing rituals.

The world has historically operated from such an us-against-them position. But ever so slowly, it seems to be changing. Many people are examining their collective pasts, synthesizing traditionally disparate elements. Where there was once a battle, there is now a dance. Teonantli is a glorious example of this. This group - in blending Aztec and Catholic, dance and prayer, reverence for the Father and the Mother - creates a seamless collage, a beautiful enigma, and ultimately, redemption and healing.

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.

 

The School of Joy

According to many Native traditions, hummingbird medicine encompasses joy, which my recent experiences confirm.  The best part is that I've realized I can access joy whenever I want.  Actually, I've discovered this then almost immediately lost it several times in my life, but it's finally sinking in.  The first time was at a party when I was in college.  I was utterly miserable, had partaken of at least two mood-altering substances that seemed to sort of cancel each other out, and was frozen to a couch in sensory and emotional overload.  All I could do was watch everyone having a good time and feel incredibly self-conscious, even though no one was looking at me.  Then I suddenly noticed that underneath all that angst and anxiety was a feeling of pure joy that I could listen to instead of the clamoring of critical voices in my head.  The ability to do this only lasted moments, but it was enough to make an impression, one that I've returned to over and over.

The next significant milestone in this lifelong lesson was when I was about ten years into a miserable marriage, and kept praying for relief.  I wanted God to either change my husband, take away my pain, or show me a way out of the marriage.  This one particular day, I was balled up on the floor, wretched, emotionally starved.  I felt like an empty cold bathtub.  I kept praying the same tired prayer to be taken out of the pain.  Something shifted; I stopped desperately straining to look up and out, and found myself embraced from the inside.  The pain was still there; in fact, it was intensified in a way, but I relaxed into it, stopped desperately treading water and floated, and discovered that there was a gentle warm current of comfort just right there, in the center of the suffering.

What's happening lately is not as dramatic as all that, but that's why it's more effective I think.  Joining with that current is just becoming habit.  A few months ago I read this little book by Pema Chodron:

The subject of the book is Tonglen practice, which is a very simple discipline of breathing in the bad and breathing out the good:  embracing all your angst and anxiety and then breathing out peace.  It was nice to discover that my experiences in this realm have a basis in Buddhist teachings.  Reading about this practice there in a book, put so simply, I was surprised and confirmed.  It struck me as such a reversal of pop spirituality, where you're taught to breathe out the negative and take in the good.  In this sense, Tonglen seems very Christian to me.  It's what Jesus would do.   In fact, it's essentially what he was getting at when he told the Pharisees that it's not what you take into the body that makes you sick, it's what you put out.  And then the whole taking-on-the-sins-of-world thing - well, I don't suppose that requires much explanation.

So I've been doing this Tonglen practice.  Badly, irregularly.  But it works anyway.  And ever since I started seeing and contemplating hummingbirds, I've been hearing this little voice in me that tells me daily that I'm happy.  Not the whole livelong day.  Not yet and maybe never.  But it's enough.  There have been numerous occasions when I could have followed my lethal mind down its dark familiar rabbit hole, but instead I listened to the hummingbird voice, the whirring hum of iridescent wings, erasing my scrawling brain like a whiteboard.  And dare I say it - this way of being is becoming second nature.