yet another new year: advent in the western church

for the orthodox church, the new year began in september, following the jewish calendar, more or less.  for the celtic church, it began on all hallows' eve, the beginning of november.  the western church too is beginning its new year, on the sunday closest to st. andrew's day.  although it may seem there is quite a big of disagreement among these calendars, what they have in common is starting the new year as the time of darkness comes upon us.  the beginning of the new year has that in common with the beginning of the day, which also begins in the evening, as darkness comes upon us.  this understanding is more clearly kept in the jewish calendar and the with the (at least ancient) celts, but it still shows up in the great feasts of the church, which have proper celebrations for their first eves. 

with this beginning of the new in darkness is an understanding of the mystery of birth and of growth.  the seed must fall to earth and be buried in the darkness in order to sprout and yield fruit.  the human being begins life in the darkness of the mother's womb.  the resurrection of the christ comes after burial in the tomb and descending into hell. 

my winter's task is to explore what r. j. stewart calls the underworld initiation,* the time one must spend, in the celtic (shamanic or) poetic tradition in darkness, sometimes literally in a cave or burial chamber, in order to find the light, or enlightenment, or to give birth to a poem.  it is difficult, particularly in this loud world.  there are 'christmas'--more truthfully anti-christmas concerts--all around, and many other distractions.  i have been gifted with a very quiet and secluded space in which to spend the winter's darkness.  and i have been gifted the richness of stewart's long meditation on celtic myth and song which has influenced me to try to accept this gift of the winter.

for many people with less leisure and more demands upon them than i have, at least the western church gives them a four-week advent.  (the celtic and orthodox churches have a full forty day fast before the feast of the nativity.)  it can be for all of us a time of new birth, or new seed planting, of finding new poems and stories to guide us in our imrams, our journeys in life.  let us take advantage of it, and be quiet, slow down, and listen to the heartbeat of the christ within the womb of the virgin that we all are called to be. 

as gertrude mueller nelson says, 'it's advent, and the whole world is pregnant.'**

*(http://www.amazon.com/Underworld-Initiation-journey-towards-transformation/dp/1892137038/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1322363543&sr=8-1)

**in to dance with god (http://www.amazon.com/Dance-God-Family-Community-Celebration/dp/0809128128/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1322364225&sr=1-1)

equal opportunity extinction

i wandered into town last week and checked out from the library wade davis' the wayfinders,* and picked up at a free table some old copies of the latin mass,** publications which at first might seem to have little in common.  davis' book describes the loss of wisdom to the world from the loss of  marginal cultures and languages, the sorts of pockets of tribalism that are described with subtle arrogance by the national geographic society in its television shows and publications (and which is the source of  much of davis' income, oddly enough).  the latin mass is a defense of the pre-vatical ii roman catholic liturgy and culture, the sort of culture that is usually described in the popular press as superstitious and limited to a few followers of some rabid french bishop who include mel gibson.

and yet i think the two publications illustrate just how subtle the modern intolerance is.  the changes of vatican ii, which were quickly adopted by large parts of the non-roman christian establishment, were far more than a mere translation of the same meanings and doctrines into the language of 'the people'.  they were a victory of scholarship over tradition that was very common in the wonderfully victorious and bloody twentieth century.  with a few encyclicals the last compilation of the traditional wisdom of the western church was declared obsolete.  with the latin of the mass was also discarded the lectionary of the mass and the breviary, which over the centuries had been developed as a wonderful tapestry of scriptural teachings and imagery, which one who has not experienced would never suspect existed.  the victory was, as much as anything else, a victory over the priesthood, the whole idea that priests are necessary to a living society.  we have already reduced the notion of prophets to the wild man on the street corner with the sign saying the end of the world is near, and kings hardly ever happen.  again and again we have been told how ignorant priests have been and are. 

alas, we scholars, bless our little hearts, tend to be idiots, a sort of precocious children, and those who look to us for wisdom are misguided.  wisdom is far more likely to be found in the accumulated knowledge and experience of the elders.  the little old grandmother who spent years kneeling with her beads as the priest did his part of the liturgy and she did hers knows 'the meaning' of the latin mass at least as well and probably much more profoundly than any number of scholars such as josef jungmann.  there is a wonderful description of how the elders, the grandfathers and uncles, in a traditional society, pass on tradition in  kenneth brower's a song for satawal:***   the priests at the official school think they are preparing their students for the world, a word which at best would make them low-paid hotel employees at some polynesian resort, while in the boat house the old men are quietly teaching the young men the ways of the ancestors.  if the official schools knew what was happening, they would probably try to abolish it.  but they official schools are run by scholars, who don't recognize education when they see it.

so, i am hopeful.  despite the efforts of modernity to wipe out anything 'superstitious', our version of  'pagan', real education does continue.  earlier this fall i was in santa fe, new mexico, and i had the previlidge of attending the latin mass at the church of san miguel, perhaps the oldest church in el norte.  the priest was a doddery old man whose voice, even when the rubrics call for a loud and clear voice, was faint.  but he was attended by two young men, still in their teens with their acne and tennis shoes, who were hanging onto every word of the dead language the priest spoke.

*http://www.amazon.com/Wayfinders-Ancient-Wisdom-Matters-Lecture/dp/0887847668/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1321227913&sr=1-3

**http://www.latinmassmagazine.com/

***http://www.amazon.com/song-Satawal-Kenneth-Brower/dp/0060150939/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1321228050&sr=1-1

samhain/all hallows eve/all hallows

it's been a while--<a href="http://cyclesofpraise.blogspot.com/2008/02/19-fall-into-winter-all-saints-spring_08.html">three years</a>--since i wrote about al hallows, i think, and it seems a good time to reflect again on this holiday, considered by some to have been the most important to the celts, one of my favourites, and certainly one that is widely celebrated in pop culture with very little understanding of what's going on.  yet for all of us it is clearly some sort of hinge time, a doorway between the the last autumn harvest of summer's growth and the deep cold and dark of winter's threat of death.

in his insightful book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Underworld-Initiation-journey-towards-transformation/dp/1892137038/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1320031121&sr=1-2"><i>the underworld initiation</i></a>, r. j. stewart makes a strong argument that primary truths do not disappear, even when they are suppressed, and that there is not necessarily any 'original text' of sacred story.  but mainly what he writes about is the necessity of death, of going into the ground, for one's soul to develop, to let go of it's attachment only to the body so that it may come under the influence of the spirit.  (this is one of the the really basic truths that i suggested in my <i>cycle of praise</i> essay three years ago.  for the christian church, all hallow's with it's darkness and bonfires in the evening, is intimately related to pentecost, with its tongues of flame in the morning.

but we are not comfortable with that understanding.  shamans throughout the world are initiated by a death--indeed some say that they die every night.  in christianity this understanding is very clear, but often ignored.  the canticle of going to bed, the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucgV0CjFl9M&list=PL2E0F1C4269301714&index=30&feature=plpp_video"> <i>nunc dimittis</i></a> recognizes is.  it is recognized in the apostles' creed with the statement 'he descended into hell', even though  many protestant sects disavow it.  stewart recognizes that this necessity for the authentic man--the christ--to undergo this initiation is a recapitulation of all the various ways this understanding is expressed in all times and in all cultures. 

ah, but there's the rub:  if we, too, are willing to live authentic lives, we too must lose our lives.  ' except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.'  the feast of the fruit of the earth, samhain, is also the time when we enter the death of winter that we might participate in the feast of the fruit of the spirit, beltane (or as christians call it, pentecost).  we must face the darkness and embrace it, even if we do it in bizarre costumes of the underworld which we don't understand but which we would not abandon.  (well, we do abandon them these days, with our total avoidance of death, dressing up as cartoon characters or actors or whatever.  but even then there is perhaps a veiled recognition that this everyday 'me' is not the eternal 'me'.  the candy that we give out probably originated in the soul cakes that were fed to the dead.  the bonfires we light were once bonefires, in which the bones of the dead were burned to help their transition from the land of matter to the land of spirit. 

so, let us not just celebrate this wonderful holy day of halloween but explore it, mining its riches.  we need it for our salvation.

the birth of the mother of god

how does the eternal one enter time?  how does the creator participate in the creation?  much, perhaps, as a builder of a house enters that house:  through a portal, a door.  the image of the door is one of the many ways of  understanding the mother of god.  it is through the mother that the holy one enters time, and becomes an actor in time.

the first festival of the church year is the nativity of the mother of god.  much of  the post-renaissance western world  has lost this festival and the understanding of the primacy of the mother in the world, although it was certainly part of the understanding of the culture that built, for example, the cathedral of our lady of chartres.  since then we have adopted an athena-sprung-from-the-forehead-of-zeus image of the goddess, making the head and, although perhaps unconsciously, the phallus, our most important images of creation.  the eastern church has never lost an appreciation for the centrality of the heart and womb in the theosis of the world.

and so the celebration of the acts whereby the the holy one reconciles the world to 'himself.' starts with the birth of the mother.  it is an act of synergy.  as i sat in a coffee house this morning watching the creation of the light of a new day, a recording of the beatles' 'let it be' was playing:  'sometimes in my hour of darkness, mother mary comes to me, singing songs of wisdom, let it be.'  for the reconciliation of the world, the mother must say, 'let it be.'  then the holy one, beyond sex and gender (think of the words of genesis,  'in the image of god made he him, male and female made he them.' a sentence that is syntactically odd, reflecting both the limits of language and the ineffability of the holy one), became the father of the son.

and so it is throughout the world.  the mother, whether called 'goddess' or not, precedes the son, who becomes one with the father.  the son of mary, the mother of god,  is the one who is, in the words of the creeds, 'god of god, light of light, true god of true god, begotten before all worlds, by whom all things were made,' but he remains always the son of mary. 

there is nothing strange, therefore, that the iconography of mary and jesus should reproduce the iconography of isis and osiris.    what the christian creed proclaims about mary and her son is what is called sometimes 'the scandal of particularity.'  the things it describes happened 'under pontius pilate.'   the events, the situation, described by the isis and osiris myth is always true, but became history with mary and jesus.  truth became fact; it was always true, because the holy one is always true.  in religions throughout the world and throughout time  the 'godhead', to use a clumsy term common in western theology, is beyond sexuality, beyond identification with any one 'god' or 'goddess,' and enters the world through the 'goddess,' and then of 'god the son' it can be said, 'thou art that.'

there is also nothing strange therefore that in the history of religions we find images of the goddess that are very ancient, that 'goddess religion' predates 'god religion.'  this is a precognition that the holy must have a womb through which to enter the world,  a 'virgin womb' reserved for the holy alone.  what is strange is that we have so often forgotten that ancient understanding in our modern, 'scientific' hour of darkness.  may we listen to the words of wisdom when mother mary comes to us.

eternal life is knowing god

'god loved the world so much that he gave his only son,
so that everyone who believes in him may not be lost,
but may have eternal life.
. . .
and eternal life is this:
to know you, the only true god,
and jesus christ whom you have sent.'
(the holy gospel according to john, 3:16, 17:3)

i will not be looking for common threads in all religions in this blog.  i think that to do so, despite the popularity of such searches in the writing of people such as, for instance, karen armstrong, belittles all the religions involved.  it is a sort of replay of the last temptation of chirst, that all women are the same.  the wonders of individuals, either of women, or of men, or of religions, is in their differences.   to reduce them to their lowest common denominator is to reduce them to absurdity.  it is in their differences that one finds their richness.

at the same time, i am assuming that the desire, the most profound end, telos, of all religions is found in jesus christ, who has been sent by the father.  i realize this is a position somewhat unpopular today with many who consider themselves christians, because they find other religions somehow not just lacking or incomplete but evil, and from many who do not consider themselves christians because it assumes that christ is necessary for their religions.

to my christian brothers and sisters i offer no apologies.  i merely suggest that they consider what they might learn about the one lord of us all from what others expect of him.

to my non-christian brothers and sisters i offer this apology:  if you do not find that jesus christ is indeed at the center of the desire of your belief, then please excuse my looking at your belief as a way of understanding the one i consider the center of that desire.  i do not expect to understand all of the complexities and subtleties of all beliefs; i only seek to see how they at least begin to enlighten my own belief.

and so, with thanks to robert lentz for his icon of the celtic christ as lord of the dance, foretold by cerunnos, i am bravely starting my search.