Vain Amours

Memory: a golden bowl, or a basement without light*

2010-03-25T11:26:00.004-04:00

Last night I dreamed I was in some sort of internship program under the U.S. Secret Service helping to provide security for the White House. Neither I nor the half-dozen or so members of my internship team carried weapons or were assigned any sensitive duties. Instead we were issued uniforms resembling those worn by mall security guards and were assigned tasks like guarding the property’s flower beds – which were populated mostly by pastel-colored peonies and enclosed by old chain-link fences painted white – and watching over the presidential kennels, which were filled with friendly dogs of every variety.

The members of my team included a middle-aged, heavyset African-American woman, two older men, two young women, and a young guy who was the spitting image of the lead actor from the film, ‘The Hurt Locker.’ All were strangers except for the two younger women, whose identities constantly shifted so that they would resemble first one pair of friends from my waking life, then another, then another. Hurt Locker Guy was an actual veteran of the Iraq conflict. I commented on the amazing similarity between him and the actor and I asked him what he thought of the film. His response was measured and neutral: “It had its moments.” As for myself, I looked the way I do in waking life, but my dream self was originally from upstate New York.

I felt a great deal of affection and respect for all of my team members. We ate meals and played cards together. We talked argued about politics and discussed classical music and good places to eat. I explained the sport of parkour to one of the older men. During lunch, we heard a crash and saw federal officers swarming around the White House gates. Soon they were coming in through the windows of our break room, assault rifles at the ready. We stayed low until they were gone. The highlight of my time there was when I got to hold the door to Marine One for the First Lady and her daughters. I was surprised to find myself suddenly wearing Marine-issue olive drab fatigues from the Korean War era, with that peculiar peaked ball cap common to the branch at that time.

One night K came to pick me up from work. The parking lot was full, so I could only hear her voice calling my name. I was overjoyed at the thought of seeing her. I knew she was parked at the far end of the lot, on the other side of a small hill, so I was going to walk toward her in a normal way. But remembering what I had told my coworker about parkour, I started running. I was practically weightless. I bounced across the tops of the cars in my way, dodged pedestrians, barely touched the hill as I glided over it, to where she was waiting for me. I jumped into the car and we both began talking at once. We were so happy to see each other. We both looked the way we did when we first got together. It seemed as if we had been separated for an eternity, and we couldn’t wait to share our respective stories. We were grinning and giddy.

I woke up, excited to tell her about my crazy dream, and I was puzzled to find her not in bed. For a couple of seconds I didn’t know where I was; I thought I was back in our bedroom in Catonsville, that it was 15 years ago.

But it wasn’t. It was now, and it was Greenmount Avenue, and it was only a dream of something that had changed and gotten sick and gone away.

*Mary Oliver

and the clouds flew around with the clouds

2010-03-22T21:14:00.002-04:00

The pleasures of merely circulating

Normally I love rainy days, especially in the spring, when I am awakened by a small gust that rattles the venetian blinds, a breeze weighted by moisture and city smells: asphalt and motor oil, the feathers of pigeons and crows, earthworms, mulch from the little flowerbed where the season's first jonquils and crocuses just bloomed two days ago. And behind all of these, the sense of high, whipping clouds that look down somberly yet tenderly on the rowhomes and the jagged circles of umbrellas.

The awareness of the clouds wheeling above the city brings to mind other streets and other skies, ones that I've walked among and nearly forgotten, or else ones that I know only through old songs and favorite books, yet which are so familiar and therefore so real that it takes a moment to remember that I I've borrowed the memory of them from someone else.

These are the days when I like nothing more than to be by myself, to watch television and smoke cigarettes and drink tea and read books. Forget housework and taxes and office deadlines, I just want to sit on the couch and listen to the radio and edit a few photos before making a late breakfast.

Today, though, is Monday, and those options were unavailable to me. I had a morning meeting in Dundalk, where the men are squat and stoop-shouldered, with close-cropped white hair peeking out from under meshback baseball caps emblazoned with military insignia; or else they're rangy and blond, with ruddy cheeks and rough hands and a drawn, haunted, belligerent wariness in and around their eyes.

My car is increasingly becoming a source of anxiety. The wiper blades need changing, so all they did was smear the oily drizzle all over the windshield. The oil needs to be replaced. The brakes are spongy. When the window is down I can hear a high rattle, probably a timing belt or something equally expensive. I have no money for repairs, so I'm trying not to drive anywhere far away, which is one of the reasons I didn't go to Massachusetts a couple of weeks ago.

April 15 is fast approaching and I haven't done the taxes, mostly because I'm worried that I'm going to owe the government money, rather than the other way around. I need new shoes, new shirts, new trousers, new sportcoats. I feel threadbare and lumpy. At my job, I'm doing the work of three people; I had to come into the office both Saturday and Sunday, and I still got e-mails from people demanding to know why they haven't received what they are expecting from me.

And there is the ongoing death of my marriage. We've been separated now for over seven months, the divorce becomes final in just a couple of weeks, each of us has found another partner, and yet those mooring lines, though frayed beyond repair, refuse to give way entirely, which would allow the boat to drift safely away from the pier. It's like a loved one with a terminal illness whom you never wanted to see die, but it's progressed to the point where death would be welcome, and yet he keeps hanging on, the organism clinging to life.

I know that relationships as deep and longstanding as ours was never really go away. Even so, I harbor this hope that once everything is done, once the lines are finally snapped, once that boat gets taken by the current at last, that it will be easier. That the memories won't be such constant companions. That each of us will be free to create new memories, find new anchorages and new berths.

So the rain continues, and I bounce from meeting to meeting and I wince at the amount of unanswered e-mail on my screen, silently chiding me for my lack of response. And I miss the one I love, and I feel alone.

And yet. I'm helping to plan a surprise shower for two friends who are getting married, thanks to Washington D.C.'s recent acceptance of marriage license applications from same-sex couples. And yet I met good friends this past weekend for a night of gonzo burlesque. And yet this evening my coworker and I attended a reception celebrating artwork by young people in Baltimore's criminal justice system, boys who found support and understanding and possibilities in the midst of hopelessness and trauma. And yet I am surrounded by love and friendship. And yet there are spring flowers blooming amid the plastic shopping bags and soda cans and cigarette butts along Greenmount Avenue. And yet the scent of the high, wheeling clouds overhead, brisk and surprising, calls me to other times in other places under other skies.

Mary

2010-03-19T12:03:00.001-04:00

Mary
Originally uploaded by mobtownblues

Earlier this week, Rev. Mary Glasspool, Canon to the Bishops in the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland,, cleared the final hurdle to being confirmed as Bishop Suffragan of Los Angeles.

As soon as the news was announced, the Bishop of Maryland and his staff hastily convened a service of thanksgiving and prayer. Mary, who delivered the closing benediction, choked up as she thanked us all for coming on such short notice, and she led us in a round of applause for her partner of 22 years.

Mary is a dear soul whom I have come to know a little through the midweek contemplative Eucharist at Baltimore's Cathedral of the Incarnation. While I will miss her warm smile, prophetic preaching voice, and heartfelt singing on Tuesdays, I wish her all joy and success in her new post.

Solvitur Ambulando

2010-03-14T16:09:00.010-04:00

We leave Baltimore just before dawn, wheels up as the sky lightens from black to indigo. Now we are over the Rockies, white peaks topping the brown, crinkled slopes that shift in and out of the flotsam of cirrus clouds floating between the airplane and the ground. We are racing the sun westward. It is gaining on us, traveling at over 450,000 miles per hour, turning clouds and snow into a shifting ocean of white and gold.

From up here, the mountains are indistinguishable from one another, nothing more than creases in the earth's fabric, like wrinkles in the striped dress shirt that so stubbornly resists my best attempts to iron it. On the ground, though, the topography commands attention. Each hill has a set of distinguishing characteristics, a pattern, a face. Some may be now, or may have been regarded by people in the past, with religious reverence. Some might be imbued with personal meaning: that's where I went camping for the first time; she lives on the other side of the mountain; when I see that peak from the highway, I'm halfway home. Age and duration and immensity, encountering the fleeting, the subjective, the individual.

I'm reminded of Gary Snyder's 'The Mountain Spirit,' in which the poet contrasts human time with geologic time.

And the Mountain Spirit always wandering
hillsides fade like walls of cloud
pebbles smoothed off sloshing in the sea

old woman mountain hears
shifting sand
tell the wind
"nothingness is shapeliness"

Mountains will be Buddhas then
when-bristlecone needles are green!
Scarlet penstemon
flowers are red!

Mystics and theoretical physicists contend that there is no time, that the division we perceive between one moment and the next is illusory. To the Ultimate, each moment - even each possible moment - is sempiternal. I am sitting on the runway in Baltimore: so it was, is, and ever shall be. I am 30,000 feet above the Rocky Mountains: so it was, is, and ever shall be. I am eating tacos with Linda in the Mission tonight: so it was, is, and ever shall be. I overslept and missed my plane. Linda can't meet me because she has to work late. We decide to get pho instead of Mexican food. The plane crashes. I survive the wreck. I die on impact. So it was, is, and ever shall be. All moments are one moment. There is only the flow.

So goes the theory, at least. I've only had a direct experience of it a few times in my life, usually on a spiritual retreat. Once in rural Connecticut, when Adam sounded the gong to end the zazen session, and the reverberations rang through everything, through me, became me, lasted forever, had always been. Once walking the grass labyrinth in Croton, when the night sky opened like a window and the starry void hung before me, closer than my eyelashes. Once at the Claggett Center near Frederick, when the whole world became nothing more than windblown sunlight moving amid the grass. Once at 3:00 a.m. in the chapel at Holy Cross, as monks broke the Great Silence with the versicle of a psalm.

Otherwise I remain trapped in time, and usually not in the present. Like most people I know, I take vacations in the past and try to catch sneak previews of the future. Right now, this moment, slips away. Now. Now. Now. My left ankle hurts because of an injury I sustained 25 years ago. When I get that raise, I'm going to buy a better pair of dress shoes, which support my ankle better. Right now I'm thinking about the raise I might get.

To my conscious mind, I am moving forward along a straight line from left to right. Its beginning is 37 years, seven months, and twentysome days ago. Its end is occluded to me. The red plastic fire truck my father bought for me when I had the measles. The acrid smell of my father's breath as he railed drunkenly at me. The sound my father's ashes made as they poured out of the black plastic bag onto the forest floor. All are coordinate points that can be plotted along that single horizontal axis.

But perhaps our experience of time is more like walking a labyrinth, like that one in the Hudson Valley I stepped into so many years ago. The pattern is already there and we are in the midst of it. In order to remain in the tracks of the maze, we keep our eyes downcast, just a few inches beyond our toes. But the design is whole. There is no journey from point A to point B, because there is no point B: point A is all there was, is, and ever shall be.

If that's the case, though, then what is it that does all this chopping up of existence into time? What is it that gets excited about spending a weekend with John and Kelly on the farm? What is it that exults at the prospect of seeing Jessica? What is it that dreads? What is it that grieves?

Less than two hours out of San Francisco now. The mountains flicker in between clouds, brown and white, brown and white, ringing out in peals of gold.

An Accounting

2009-11-22T11:07:00.002-05:00

Hello, dear, disused blog. I apologize for letting you collect dust for so long, but I've had a busy few months. Since you are, among other things, a compilation of lists, here is a list of what I've been up to since we saw each other last.

Separated from my wife
Traveled to San Antonio for work
Traveled to Denver for work
Traveled to NYC to sing and visit Rachel
Traveled to Pennsylvania to sing (twice)
Performed at the Patterson Theater
Read Kent Haruf's Eventide, Leif Enger's So Brave, Young, and Handsome, Marilynne Robinson's Home, Greg Rucka's A Gentleman's Game, Robert Pinsky's Gulf Music, Jacqueline Carey's entire Kushiel's Legacy and Imriel series, and Mary Oliver's Evidence
Initiated attempts to raise over a million and a half dollars for a work project
Began advocating state legislators again
Caught the flu (not sure if it was "The Pig," as a colleague terms it, but it was definitely something)
Talked to a roomful of lawyers about philanthropy
Went on a contemplative prayer retreat led by the Bishop of Maryland
Attended a chili tasting at the World Champion Punkin Chunkin festival in Delawaer
Euthanized my elderly and infirm cat
Photographed my coworker's wedding
Scoped out potential new singing spaces in the Northern Shenandoah Valley
Hurt
Leaned on my friends
Fell (deeper) in love

I've had, in short, just a few things going on. But I'm gonig to try (my perennial resolution) to be more faithful about posting here.

2009-08-23T00:20:00.003-04:00

Did I actually write earlier that smoking was my last vice? What an asinine thing to say. And untrue. If patience is a virtue, then surely gluttony, avarice, indolence, and the rest of the seven deadlies count as vices, and I struggle with those constantly. I lost battles with most of them today as a matter of fact, as evidenced by the now-ravaged pint of Ben & Jerry's Peanut Butter Cup ice cream sitting in the freezer right now.

The lentils turned out delicious. I over-salted them somewhat, but was able to salvage them with the addition of some stock and steamed jasmine rice. What really brought the dish together, though, were the cumin seeds sauteed in ghee with asafoetida, the flavors of which harmonized brightly with the lemon juice and the garlic.

Time for bed. Coming up tomorrow: church with Patty and Chad in the morning, a benefit for the Ronald McDonald House in the evening.

A day of tranquility and indolence

2009-08-22T18:13:00.004-04:00

I slept until nearly 11:00 a.m., which is unheard of for me. I said the morning office and fed the cat and listened to 'Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me' while making breakfast: refried beans, scrambled eggs, tortillas, and a full pot of coffee. After washing the dishes I sat out on the porch and read Thomas Merton and exchanged a friendly word with my landlady, who was out gardening. I edited a few photos, listened to 'This American Life,' and watched an episode of the BBC-America sci-fi series 'Torchwood,' which I found entertaining, if not spectacular. I answered a couple of e-mails. I chanted the midday office. Then I chatted with a friend until she grew sleepy and lay down for a nap, and that was all very good.

I haven't taken a shower yet, which is also unusual for me. There are ten thousand things that need to get done, but I don't feel motivated to do them. My car got towed on Thursday because I was stupid and I had to spend nearly $300 to get it out of the impound lot, so now I have almost no money until I get paid next Friday. There are things I want to buy -- two area rugs, a plant stand, some plants, supplies for container gardening, a couple of prints -- but they can wait. I do need to purchase some staples: bread, milk, cheese, cereal. Otherwise I am well stocked. I have rice and legumes of various sorts and tea and, most important, good coffee. I'm broke right now, but I'm not poor.

Now I'm cooking lentil soup and jasmine rice and listening to the rain while I update my long-neglected journal. After I hit post, I will go say evening prayers. That reminds me of another thing on my immediate-needs shopping list: incense. I've been burning pine incense at prayer times since I moved in, and now I need some more. Maybe I'll buy frankincense this time, although I don't want the apartment to smell too much like a cathedral in Advent.

After prayers, then dinner. After dinner, perhaps more chatting or perhaps another episode of 'Torchwood' or perhaps one of the 'Simon Schama's Power of Art' DVDs I rented. If I go out at all this evening, it will only be for more cigarettes, my last remaining vice.

The simmering lentils are filling the apartment with the aroma of cinnamon and tumeric and garlic and cumin and asafoetida. I am a little lonely, but not much. I am a little sad, but not much. I am a little guilty, but not much.

All in all, a good day.

In Memoriam

2009-06-30T21:35:00.002-04:00

A pause now from my retreat ramblings to remember Leon Faruq, local community activist, ex-offender advocate, Muslim leader, and personal acquaintance who died last week from complications due to kidney disease.

I met Leon years ago, when I began doing advocacy work on behalf of inmates and former prisoners. A large man, he cut an imposing figure with his djellaba and kufi cap and his salt-and-pepper beard. Yet he had a gentle demeanor and I never heard him raise his voice above a quiet murmur.

Until I read today's obituary, I was unaware of the details of his history with the criminal justice system. Even among people who are very comfortable discussing correctional standards, re-entry programming, and criminal history record information policy, the details of one's own record are a delicate subject. As someone who has never been incarcerated, it would have been disrespectful and rude of me to ask about the criminal history of someone who has. In any event, the subject never held any curiosity for me. One thing that working with former prisoners taught me is that while we can never forget the past, we can't change it, either. All we can do is pay attention to where we are now and look ahead to where we might be going.

Some of Leon's sad and violent early history is recounted in the obit. I find it of interest only because the young man described in those paragraphs contrasts so markedly with the man I knew professionally: a mentor, a nonprofit leader, a man of deep faith, someone who was respected and liked by some of the most powerful people in the state. Leon was proof of the still-radical idea that people can rise above their circumstances and embrace hope and healing over pain and despair.

Just as I never would have wished to cause Leon offense by inquiring into his past, so I will not affront his religion by quoting directly from its traditional funeral prayer. Instead I will, with humility and respect, paraphrase it just enough to say: God, forgive your servant Leon and have mercy on him. Cleanse him of all sin. Give him a mansion in your house that is better than the house he had here. And fill with light the grieving hearts of those he left behind.

Retreat Weekend: Interlude - On the Porch

2009-06-27T00:11:00.009-04:00

I purposely neglected to bring any books with me this weekend. This proved to be a more difficult choice than I might have guessed. Since the age of about nine, I've always packed at least two books whenever I go anywhere for more than one night.

I return the two books I borrowed from the Guest House library yesterday. Thomas Merton's treatise on contemplative prayer proved a little heady for me, and I found myself growing increasingly annoyed at Chesterton's ostentation. I want to stick with Merton, though (this is a Trappist abbey, after all), so I'm pleased to discover a slim volume by the late Basil Pennington about a week's retreat he undertook at Merton's hermitage in Kentucky.

I take the book out to the sun porch and begin to read, listening to the rain scour the valley. To my amusement, the first words of Fr. Basil's that I read are, "I am sitting on a porch. A whipping storm has just passed..."

...the clouds are still low and running, with sun from the west breaking through the layers. The evergreens are catching the harmony of the wind. There is a freshness in the air but yet a tingliing chill, just enough to make a coat comfortable. The blue is winning out as the clouds continue running to the east. The view from the porch!--I wonder how Tom ever wrote anything, or anything but poetry. Each season, each day, must have its own unique beauty. Right now it is the changing sky that commands all. The distant knobs are lost in deep shadow. Bird calls, unfamiliar to my ear, come through when the trees are quiet. This is indeed a place which the Lord has made.

The thought that this priest, this monastic contemplative, experienced much the same on his retreat that I am experiencing on mine delights and consoles me, as does the fact that the ghost hovering over his retreat is that of Thomas Merton. After all, the fact that I now consider myself a Christian is probably more Thomas Merton's doing than anyone else's.

When I began practicing zen over a dozen years ago, it was with a group formed by two elderly Catholic nuns. I felt a bond with Merton because of his own affinity for zen and other Asian contemplative practices, his friendships with Buddhist monastics like Thich Nhat Hanh, the thoughtful manner in which Merton outlined similarities and differences between zen and Christian mysticism. I read his Mystics and Zen Masters and Thoughts in Solitude before plunging headfirst into The Seven Storey Mountain, which remains the most profoundly affecting spiritual memoir I have ever read. In it, Merton describes his conversion, his ordination, his passions, and his doubts so vividly, so plainly, that the more I read, the more he became something like a friend, rather than some distant, long-deceased spiritual master.

Years later, as a Quaker, when I began feeling myself increasingly drawn to Christian teachings, Merton's reflections on prayer, compassion, and action were my touchstone and my guide.

Retreat Weekend: Vigils and Lauds

2009-06-24T20:51:00.011-04:00

I am content that these journal pages show me to be what I am: noisy, full of the racket of imperfections and passions and the wide open wounds left by sin, full of faults and envies and miseries, full of my own intolerable emptiness.
- Thomas Merton

The quiet trill of the alarm clock wakes me at 3:00 a.m. Drawing on my clothes, I grab a flashlight from the lobby to illuminate the dark path to the church. It is long before dawn, but already some birds are singing, their sleepy chirps mingling with the waning symphony of crickets and peepers. Leaves rustle in the light breeze, my shoes crunch against the asphalt, yet the Great Silence is undisturbed. Silence, I reflect, is not the absence of sound, but the absence of frivolous noise. Silence in the middle of a forest is so profound it is almost palpable, yet the sounds of a living forest never cease.

I cross myself with holy water and bow, Cistercian-style, as I take my pew. The monks begin the liturgy of vigils in low, murmuring voices, husky with the residue of night. O Lord, open Thou my lips and my mouth shall show forth Thy praise. Unlike the other offices, the liturgy of Vigils is spoken, rather than sung. For the monks, there will be no sleep until after Compline, but I return gratefully to my bed after the service for a couple more hours of shut-eye.

The church bell tolls at a little before 7:00 a.m. to announce the start of Lauds. O God, come to my assistance, the cantor chants, O Lord, make haste to help me. The prayer was a favorite of the cenobitic desert abbas and ammas of fourth-century Egypt. It was already old by the time that Benedict of Nursia got around to codifying the rules that govern most Catholic monastic communities to this day.

As the Trappists sing the psalms and canticles, I wonder how they keep the liturgy fresh. George Fox, the eminent early Quaker, inveighed stale ritual and rote recitations, arguing for a dynamic and mostly formless relationship with God. Yet these monks sing the same songs, the same intercessions, the same verses, day after day, month after month, year after year, for the rest of their lives. Surely they must experience periods of spiritual tedium or flatness, times when the familiar words become insipid and inert on their tongues. Looking at their faces, though, I think perhaps not. The elderly brother who uses the walker has tilted back his head slightly as he sings, his eyes closed, his face rapt. Perhaps for him and the other monks, praying the hours five times each day is like returning to draw from a spring: the source remains constant, but the water itself is always changing, clear, bracing, new.

Breakfast is corn flakes and toast with almond-infused creamed honey made here at the monastery. The coffee is not the hoity-toity stuff I've spoiled myself with at home, but I gulp it down greedily anyway. Every retreat center I've ever visited, regardless of its religious affiliation, runs on an ever-flowing river of coffee. Cookies, too. Any retreat center worth its fee has to have cookies on hand at all times. The sugar cookies here in the Holy Cross kitchen are also made on the premises, and they're delicious.

I spend some time kneeling in the chapel of the Guest House. I pray for the clarity to discern God's will, the wisdom to understand how to carry it out, and the courage to act on it. Outside, rain is coming down in torrents. I am strangely comforted, as I have always been, by the sound of it striking the windows and the roof. I kneel and listen, straining my ears and my heart to hear God's voice speaking to me through the downpour. I remember sitting in worship through a shower such as this one years ago at Gunpowder Meeting. An elderly Friend rose creakily to his feet and declared that the love of God was so boundless that it had overflowed the heavens and burst the clouds.

Someone enters the chapel and sits in a pew across the aisle. Dimly, through the sound of the rain, I hear the laughter of crows.

Retreat Weekend: Compline

2009-06-22T19:59:00.005-04:00

I will travel to You, Lord, through a thousand blind alleys. You want to bring me to You through stone walls.
- Thomas Merton

Supper is a silent affair. We stand behind our chairs while the guest master welcomes us and gives a brief orientation. We say the Lord's Prayer as our meal blessing. Including myself, I count 15 retreatants, eight women and six men. The guest house has 16 rooms, the last one reserved for the "traveler of the roads" who shows up unexpectedly on the abbey's doorstep. All of my fellow retreatants are white, with the exception of one African-American woman who enters the dining room late and looks sheepish as she takes her seat at the lone remaining table.

The meal consists of a thin mushroom and rice soup, a simple romaine salad, bread, and cheese, all washed down with cold water. Each of us is responsible for busing her or his own dishes and setting the table for the next meal.

After supper I spend some time browsing in the library and end up borrowing two books: Thomas Merton's Contemplative Prayer and G.K. Chesterton's Essential Writings. My selections in hand, I retire to my room to read until Compline.

On the path to the church, in the shadow of the mountains, I am suddenly conscious of the way I walk. Years ago, Kim and I took a few classes in Alexander Technique from a local dance instructor whose choreography we admired. The first thing she had me do was walk across the room, so she could get a sense of my gait and my posture. After I had obligingly padded across the the carpeted floor a couple of times, the instructor asked me if I had ever worn casts on my feet.

I was amazed. I was born with clubbed feet, and had to undergo a series of operations between birth and the age of six, during which time I was outfitted alternately with casts or heavy orthopedic shoes (what my best friend in high school used to refer to as "Herman Munsters"). I told the instructor this, and she nodded knowingly. She told me I walked as if I was wearing concrete boots. She taught me the correct way to walk that day: head up, back straight, shoulders squared, leading with the knees, heel to toe, with full articulation of all the joints in my feet. I felt like a child learning his first steps, trying not to fall.

The clarity that comes with being on retreat causes many thoughts and memories such as these to surface. One is suddenly conscious of the way one walks, the way one breathes. It is a strange thing, to have to be mindful of breathing correctly. "As easy as breathing," the saying goes, yet I habitually forget the proper way to do it. Time and again, I catch myself breathing rapidly and shallowly from the chest, rather than slowly and deeply from the diaphragm.

Compline: the monks enter silently, dip their fingers in holy water, and cross themselves. Before taking his place in the choir, each one bows toward the altar. It is a deep bow from the waist, palms flat on the legs just above the knees. Orthodox monks call this style of prostration 'little metania.' The Trappists are still and austere in their white robes and black scapulars cinched at their waists with wide leather belts. After invocations, psalms, and hymns, Compline ends with a hymn to the Virgin Mary, illuminated in her niche above the altar.

The abbott is the last to leave. Before exiting the darkened church, he walks over to sprinkle us with holy water. I make my best imitation of a Cistercian bow as the cool droplets strike my face and head. The retreatants walk back to the guest house in the gathering dusk. The Great Silence, which is observed from the beginning of Compline until the end of Lauds the following morning, rolls over us and around us and through us like a billowing wind.

Retreat Weekend: Vespers

2009-06-21T21:15:00.009-04:00

Tribulation detaches us from the things of nothingness in which we spend ourselves and die. Therefore, tribulation gives us life and we love it, not out of love for death, but out of love for life.
- Thomas Merton

I arrive at Villa del Re at 12:30 p.m. To my surprise, E. is there, having stopped off at the farm on her way to North Carolina for a short residency at Penland. L. is also there, home for the weekend from nursing school. K. lays out lunch for us -- toast with mustard and slabs of sharp, white Cabot cheddar, steamed snap peas from the garden, fresh raspberries, and black tea. E. has brought strawberries. J. is away at a job site and will be returning later.

L. leaves to visit her boyfriend, and K takes E and me on a walk up the driveway to inspect the new cottage and the vegetable garden. K and E talk animatedly of planting and gardening, of the movement of the seasons and of the strange alchemy of grafting pear trees. It all goes over my head. I am no gardener. E. is beautiful as always, in a black and white dress, her eyes blue and bright. The cottage has come a long way since K and L and J started building it a little over a year ago. It gets the best morning light I've ever seen.

K and E pluck mulberries right from the tree -- I'd always assumed they came from a bush, because of the nursery rhyme -- and tell me that the best ones look grayish, almost as if they're spoiled. The taste is sweet and pleasant, but bland. I've never tasted a mulberry before. E says that a friend of hers has a recipe for mulberry and rhubarb pie, but that it would take forever to pick enough mulberries to make it.

After E gets back on the road, K and I sit in the living room drinking iced coffee until J returns, wet and sweaty and muddy from pointing a slate patio for a judge. We talk about The Missouri Harmony for a while before the conversation turns to the difficult topic of my personal life. K and J are compassionate, attentive, candid, and helpful. I was nervous about opening up to them, but now I'm glad that I did. I take my leave reluctantly, promising to come back on Sunday after the retreat.

When I arrive at the Holy Cross Abbey retreat house, I am greeted by the guest master, a cheerful bald man in his fifties who, with his tight black jeans and snowy white mustache, would not look at all out of place on Bleecker Street or in Dupont Circle. He goes over the weekend's schedule and shows me to my quarters, an appropriately spare (if not quite monastic) looking room with a single twin bed, a chair, a desk, a bible, and a wooden crucfix hanging from the white cinderblock wall. I splash water on my face and hastily change so as not to miss vespers.

The church is dark. The smell of incense hangs heavy in the air. The bell rings, and one by one the monks enter, dip their fingers in holy water, and cross themselves as they take their places in the choir stalls lined up on either side of the altar. They are older men, these Trappists, some of them very old indeed. Two use walkers, one with his back hunched with scoliosis and his hands gnarled with arthritis.

After a period of silence, one of the monks begins to chant in a low baritone. His brothers join in, and soon the dimly lit sanctuary is filled with the rising and falling of their quiet voices. The chanting gives way to singing and I begin to doze. I enter a liminal state, caught between wakefulness and dreaming, the soft drone of the deep voices lifting me and carrying me, a dark current on which my consciousness bobs up and down. Time passes unnoticed as I float, and then we are saying the Lord's Prayer, my lips forming the familiar words automatically before I am even fully awake. Do I whisper? Is my voice too loud?

The service ends and the brothers file out as soundlessly as they entered. The church falls silent. I am the first of the retreatants to rise. I walk back to the guest house, listening to the calls of mockingbirds and cardinals and sparrows and swallows and other birds whose voices I don't recognize.

it's a beautiful world, in places, sometimes

2009-06-16T10:09:00.006-04:00

"The WDL [World Digital Library] makes it possible to discover, study, and enjoy cultural treasures from around the world on one site, in a variety of ways. These cultural treasures include, but are not limited to, manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, and architectural drawings.

"Items on the WDL may easily be browsed by place, time, topic, type of item, and contributing institution, or can be located by an open-ended search, in several languages. Special features include interactive geographic clusters, a timeline, advanced image-viewing and interpretive capabilities. Item-level descriptions and interviews with curators about featured items provide additional information.

"Navigation tools and content descriptions are provided in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. Many more languages are represented in the actual books, manuscripts, maps, photographs, and other primary materials, which are provided in their original languages.

"The WDL was developed by a team at the U.S. Library of Congress, with contributions by partner institutions in many countries; the support of the United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO); and the financial support of a number of companies and private foundations."

Some Treasures

2009-04-01T21:13:00.008-04:00

Dire one and desired one,
Savior, sentencer -

In an old allegory you would carry
A chained alphabet of tokens:

Ankh Badge Cross.
Dragon,
Engraved figure guarding a hallowed intaglio,
Jasper kinema of legendary Mind,
Naked omphalos pierced
By quills of rhyme or sense, torah-like: unborn
Vein of will, xenophile
Yearning out of Zero...

Here are some little treasures -
A sheep skull, literally coming apart at the seams, that I found in a pasture at Villa del Re. "Our kids grew up surrounded by death," Big John told me.
A trolley token given to me at a bus stop by an old man who claimed to have been the first African-American trolley driver in Annapolis.
A seashell from my former supervisor, picked up by her daughter on a beach in Mexico.
An 1812 copy of Isaac Watts' Psalms of David, given to me by Kim for my birthday.
A glazed porcelain bowl from Bavaria, another gift from John, the words "US Occupied Zone" stamped underneath the maker's mark.

A tiny clay pot from Sky City, the Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico where John spent time as a boy.
A drop of congealed candle wax collected from the dirt floor of a makeshift Vodou temple at the end of an hours-long ceremony in Washington, D.C.
A sugar death's-head, decorated with beads and spangles, which Kim made for Dia de los Muertos some years ago.
An origami crane made by Carly, one-thousandth of the senbazuru of Sadako Sasaki: "I will write peace on your wings and you will fly all over the world."

A dried cone from the magnolia tree that grows over B.F. White's grave.
A piece of lava that Rachel brought back from Iceland.
A small figure of Avalokitesvara, Regarder of the Cries of the World, protected by a dragon. I don't remember where I got it. I gave it to Kim as a talisman over 15 years ago.
A yarmulke from Jason's father's memorial service.

...Absence,
Or presence ever at play:
Let those scorn you who never
Starved in your dearth. If I
Dare to disparage
Your harp of shadows I taste
Wormwood and motor oil, I pour
Ashes on my head. You are the wound. You
Be the medicine.

- Robert Pinsky, from 'Ode to Meaning'

[235] Stars

2009-03-24T22:32:00.007-04:00

The Pleiades. Altair. The evening star. Shooting stars have a certain interest. They'd be even finer if it weren't for their tail.

- Sei Shonagon

The Pleiades. A star cluster in the constellation of Taurus, designated as "Object M45" in 1171 by the French astronomer Charles Messier. When my family moved from Austria to Malawi in 1981, I was devastated. I loved Vienna, I loved the woods, I loved my friends, I loved winter, and I was leaving them all behind. Africa was the vast unkown, no reference points to help orient me, nothing familiar except my parents. But one night, shortly after we arrived, my father and I looked up at the sky over Lilongwe, where the silver track of the Milky Way hung like fog, sparkling like the train of a wedding dress, and I saw the Pleiades. Along with Orion, they were they only star formation I could identify by sight. They looked small but somehow important amid all that brilliance, undimmed by light pollution or smog. I fixated on the Pleiades as a sailor might, something recognizable and reassuring, a guide.

The Seven Sisters, daughters of the titan Atlas: Maia, Electra, Taygete, Alcyone, Celaeno, Sterope, Merope. Ladies-in-waiting to Artemis, the night huntress, goddess of forests and hills, of fecundity and birth and moonlight. Maia, the oldest, mother of Hermes, whom Robert Pinksy calls "quick one, little thief, escort of the dying, / and comfort of the sick." Merope, the youngest, who was loved by Orion, but whose heart belonged to Sisyphus, who defied Zeus and deceived the god of death. Tennyson describes the sisters glittering "like a swarm of fire-flies tangled in a silver braid."

One of the things that always fascinated me about the Pleiades is that I could see them most clearly in the periphery of my vision; they seemed to disappear when I looked at them straight on. My father told me that this was because they had died long ago, but their light was just reaching earth. I always accepted this as fact, but upon reflection, it strikes me as one of those fanciful things that parents tell their children. M45 is approximately 440 light years away, and as there have been documented sightings of the cluster going back thousands of years, it seems unlikely that they no longer exist. But there's something appealingly melancholy about the idea that when we look up at the night sky, the corners of our eyes are touched by ghost light.

In Hindu astrology the Pleiades are called Krittika, the Cutter, lunar mansion, one of the 27 divisions of the sky described in the Vedic texts. Their lord is the god of fire, their symbol is a blade. Gary Snyder wrote a poem called 'Anuradhapura, City of the Pleiades,' but it turns out to really be about his girlfriend and the title is prettier than the poem itself. According to Chinese astrology, the cluster forms the head of an enormous white tiger made of stars. In Japan they are Subaru, hence the design of the logo on vehicles of that make.

These days I see the Pleiades most clearly in the northern Shenandoah Valley, at Villa del Re. I crane my neck and search for them in the sparkling dark and find a trace of the old consolation in the thought that the same cluster of ghost light above me shines also on Vienna, and Lilongwe, and on every place I have ever loved.

Things to Do Around Seattle

2009-03-23T21:15:00.003-04:00

Hear phone poles hum
Catch garter snakes. Make lizard tails fall off;
Biking to Lake Washington, catch muddy little fish.
Peeling old bark off madrone to see the clean red new bark
Cleaning fir pitch off your hands
Reading books in the back of the University District Goodwill.
Swim in Puget Sound below the railroad tracks
Dig clams
Ride the Kalakala to Bremerton
See Mt. Constance from the water tower up by the art museum
Fudgsicles in Woodland Park zoo, the eagle and the camel
The mummy Eskimo baby in the University Anthropology museum...
- Gary Snyder, from "Three Worlds, Three Realms, Six Roads"

Take the ferry to Bainbridge Island; get dazzled by the afternoon sunlight that ripples across Puget Sound.
Listen to a street musician sing Mexican folk songs outside the world's first Starbucks.
Take in the expanse of the city from the observation deck of the space needle with your friend's eight-year-old daughter. Smile uncomfortably when she asks if you were ever in love with her mother.
Step out of a long, hot shower and into a cool white robe; take a nap before dinner.
Attend a small-group discussion hosted by Barbara Ehrenreich.
Walk to Chinatown in search of lo mai gai; eat it out on the street, using a mailbox as a table.
Decide on a sudden whim to travel to Vancouver; remember at the last minute that you didn't bring a passport.
Learn how to play drums in a sound booth at the Experience Music Project after hours.
Wander the streets of downtown in the late-night drizzle after being dropped off at the hotel.
Get caught up in song at an interfaith prayer service with Pastor Pat Wright and the Total Experience Gospel Choir.
Feel nauseatingly lonely and homesick amid 500 chattering people in Benaroya Hall.
Reconnect with old friends over expensive drinks at a trendy Pine Street night spot.
Hear a speech on philanthropy by Melinda Gates.
Look for Quaker meetings that are accessible by public transportation on Sunday morning.
Get into a conversation near Chukar Cherries in Pike Place with a Native American man walking his pet ferret.
Marvel at how everything seems silvery-blue: the wind, the water, the mountains, the skyscrapers, the fog.
Assure the fretful concierge that, being from Baltimore, you have nothing to fear from walking the streets of downtown Seattle in broad daylight.
Watch the Cascades until they fade out of sight.

The taste of long ago and far away

2009-03-22T18:15:00.000-04:00

Whether it be plants, trees, birds, or insects, I can never be insensible to anything that on some occasion or other I have heard about and remembered because it moved or fascinated me.
- Sei Shonagon

Pomelo, pummelo, shaddock. When I was 12 and 13, in Rangoon, our maid Dolly would peel one every day and leave it for me in the refigerator so it would be chilled when I came home from school. I would sit down at the dining table or on the couch and devour the segments slowly, breaking them apart with my fingers and tongue.

Citrus maximus, citrus grandis. A good pomelo tastes pink. Not the pink of Florida grapefruit or the too-sweet, artificially colored grapefruit juice that you can buy in bottles at the gas station, but pink like the early morning sunlight over Inle Lake in an interval between thundershowers, before the rainy season heat becomes unbearable. Not as sweet as an orange, not nearly as tart as a lemon, refreshing without being so juicy that you're forced to mop your chin after each bite. The outer skin varies from bright yellow to dark green, and the tree that produces it can grow to over 50 feet. The white pith within is thick and spongy, rich in bioflavinoids, and bitter. Dolly would strip every fiber carefully from the sweet inner flesh. Now I do the job with my hands and teeth.

Chinese grapefruit, Lusho fruit, jabong. Cultivated from the Phillipines to South Africa to Cuba, whenever I tear one open, my nostrils fill with scent molecules that recall steaming streets, the sewing machine sounds of tuktuks, the skin of my arms browner than it has ever been or ever will be. Anglo-Saxons are better in the tropics, they chant in 'The Year of Living Dangerously,' and it's because of all that pink sunlight, the proliferation of green, the coffee hues of skin and of curry, the feeling of being on permanent holiday, the privilege. Law! wot do they understand? / I've a neater, sweeter maiden in a cleaner, greener land! I was just another spoiled child of post-colonial privilege, an Anglo-Saxon-Cherokee-Mexican acting like he was better in the tropics. Now, when I buy pomelo at Whole Foods, it comes from California.

Jeruk bali. Day trips to Cimaja, weekend trips to the Pulau Seribu and Kuta. One afternoon at the Bogor Botanical Gardens with my parents, our guide caught a flying fox for us and held its wings open so that we could pet it. It whimpered and licked my finger with a long tongue. A puppy with wings, with a fondness for pomelo and other fruits.

Limau besar. Pompelmous. In Thailand, pomelo is used in salads; in Vietnam, fish dishes. The rind can be candied or used to flavor soups. My favorite way to eat it remains the simplest: cut it in half, tear the peel off, strip away as much of the pith as possible. Hook my teeth into the seam of the carpel and pull at the membrane to reveal the juice-filled locules glistening within. Bite eagerly into the moist ovarian flesh. Hold pink sunlight on my tongue.

Dinner on the Grounds

2009-03-21T11:56:00.006-04:00

Five years ago, Carly established a weekly shape-note singing for Baltimore-area Sacred Harp-ers. Every Thursday evening, a small group of us would gather in her Bolton Hill apartment for a little over two hours of singing from The Sacred Harp and other tunebooks, with a break partway through for snacks and socializing.

The size of the group fluctuated from week to week. Some Thursdays it would just be Carly, Nora, Erin, and me, with Erin singing bass an octave up the scale. Other weeks, we would have out-of-town visitors and friends of friends packing into the apartment, and the noise of our song would spill out of the window and out into Eutaw Place.

For me, the highlight of the singing was the meal. What started out as a snack break involving chips and salsa expanded to a full-on vegetarian dinner, usually involving salad, a rice dish, fruit, and several desserts. Initially, we would stand around in the kitchen or in the living room with paper napkins cupped under our mouths to catch crumbs while we munched and chatted. But as the weeks and months went by, we began to gather around the dining table and eat off actual plates and use other utensils besides our fingers. Pass the couscous, please, Owen. Nora, I can't believe you made these cupcakes. Is this candied ginger, Andy?

Over time, the core group of six or eight of us that gathered week after week came to know each other quite well. Not that we all became the best of friends, of course; some close relationships formed, but there were always those who remained at the periphery of the circle, either by choice or because of the vagaries of group dynamics. Nevertheless, those Thursday meals came to resemble more of a family gathering than a grip-and-grin church coffee hour.

At the center of the singing has always been Carly. It was she who started the sing, and she who welcomed friends and strangers alike into her home each week. It was Carly's table we gathered around, and Carly who sent the reminder e-mails every Tuesday. One year for her birthday, we all chipped in and bought her a cake from Charm City Cakes before it had ever attracted the attention of Food Network executives. Another year, one singer presented her with a beautiful oak bench which he had made by hand. When she finally moved from the Eutaw Place apartment and a couple of the regular singers moved away, we lost more than a permanent singing space. In a subtle and mysterious way, the sense of family that had grown so quietly and organically over the years was disrupted.

In the couple of years since, our tribe of singers has turned nomadic, wandering from Fells Point to Remington, from Quaker meetinghouse to UCC church, from office space to living room. Lately we've been gathering at the home of two newer singers who are on extended vacation in South America. This past week there were few enough of us that instead of arranging chairs in a hollow square in the living room, we gathered around the dining table and sang and ate there.

At the dinner break, I looked around at our tiny and characteristically motley gathering. A couple of us were the same people who had trudged up the stairs to Carly's old apartment years before. Others were newer additions to our small singing community. The sense of family that I had come to love at Eutaw Street is not entirely gone and is not irretrievable, but it is different than what it was before. That's the way of things. But for a moment, it was pleasant to step back and listen to the conversation and the clink of silverware, and feel its presence, hovering faintly in the air like the echo of a song.

A hummingbird in a forest fire

2009-03-15T23:08:00.004-04:00

A few weeks ago, I had the chance to attend a lecture by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dr. Wangari Maathai, environmental and women's rights activist and founder of the Green Belt Movement. Her address was primarily directed to the college students in the audience, young people who have a leading to do something meaningful in their lives, but who are skeptical about their ability to make any sort of difference as individuals.

Dr. Maathai told a story she said she had learned as a child in Kenya. I wrote it down as best I could remember (I will admit to paraphrasing when I couldn't remember her exact words) and e-mailed it to a friend as a birthday gift.

---

Once there was a little hummingbird who lived in the midst of an enormous forest. One day during the dry season, a dead branch caught fire, and soon the forest was engulfed in flames. Animals ran, crawled, slithered, or flew in terror, seeking only to escape the conflagration and save their lives.

Alone among all the panicked animals, the hummingbird stopped in midflight and regarded the quickly spreading fire. She took only a second to make up her mind, and then she flew to the sparkling river, where she filled her tiny beak with all the water she could fit. This she carried, despite her own fear, back to the forest and dropped it into the flames. Then, without pausing, she flew back to collect more.

The other animals stared at her incredulously. "Hey, what do you think you're doing?" asked the mighty lion. "Your beak is too small! It can't possibly hold enough water!"

But the hummingbird made no reply. Instead, on wings moving faster than the naked eye could see, she gathered another thimbleful of water in her mouth and flew back toward the inferno.

"Give it up!" jeered the tall giraffe. "That little bit of water you're dropping on the fire won't make a bit of difference!"

Still the hummingbird made no reply. Dropping the little bit of water on the fire, she headed back to the river for more.

"It's hopeless," screeched the baboon, bouncing on its haunches in agitation. "The fire is too large! What do you think you're trying to accomplish?"

Finally the hummingbird paused in her flight. Hovering, she regarded the other animals for a moment. Her small body was nearly black now with soot and ashes, but her eyes were bright and her voice clear as she replied.

"My beak may be small," she said. "I may not be able to put out this fire by myself. But I'm doing the best that I can."

Saturday before the Third Sunday in Lent

2009-03-14T22:30:00.000-04:00

Lenten Quiet Day at St. James Episcopal Church in Monkton, hosted by the Center for Spiritual Development. Taize chanting, prayer, and a reading, followed by more chanting and a period of silent meditation. Then a labyrinth walk and the stations of the cross.

The 14 stations are posted along a winding track that encircles a playground, tennis courts, a soccer pitch. All the ingredients are present: air crisp and gray, drumming of woodpeckers, harsh shouts of crows and jays, bluebird's flash of azure. Dozens of swifts flit and swoop over the field. One lights on the eighth station, where Jesus meets the daughters of Jerusalem. We stare at each other for a long moment, the bird and I, while my fellow retreatants press on, crest a small ridge, and pass out of sight. Even the buzzards participate in the commemoration. They wheel languidly overhead, marking the charnel spot, the potter's field. Golgotha. Rajagriha. Memento mori. The gravel crunches under my shoes like bones.

Yes, ev'ry secret of my heart
Shall shortly be made known;
And I receive my just dessert
For all that I have done.
We are passing away, we are passing away, we are passing away...

Prayer does not make me a good person. But neither do I have to be a good person in order to pray. All these years of facing the wall, and still I get lost and have to return to the beginning. This is not a spiritual insight; it is stark reality. I fail again and again at those activities which should come naturally: breathing, seeing, letting go. We practice not because it is a virtuous thing, but because it is a necessary thing. If we got it right, we would not need to practice.

Back at the labyrinth, an unexpected conversation with the parish priest. We talk about art, about money, about community. I tell him he is a fortunate man, that his parishioners are fortunate.

So am I.

[22] Dispiriting things

2009-02-04T20:33:00.005-05:00

A dog howling in the middle of the day. The sight in spring of a trap for catching winter fish. Robes in the plum-pink combination, when it's now the third or fourth month. An ox keeper whose ox has died. A square brazier or a hearth with no fire lit in it. A scholar whose wife has a string of daughters...
- Sei Shonagon

Cat hair on a light colored carpet.
The stretch of Baltimore National Pike between Ingleside Avenue and Route 29: Russell Toyota, where they check your credit and shake their heads in disapproval; Old Country Buffet; Brown's Motel; Brunswick Bowling Lanes; Catonsville Jewelry and Pawn, where I sold jewelry to make rent.
Snow turned to sooty slush, the damp seeping through your shoes.
You wake to discover that you overslept and half the day is gone.

You walk into an airport and walk out again without having gotten on an airplane. As you climb into your car, you catch the faint scent of jet fuel.
You're at a party or work function where the few people you know are talking to strangers.
You're in an unfamiliar city on a business trip and you're walking the streets because you can't sleep. It's too late to call anyone, and all the stores are closed.
You walk into a rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike after having spent a week on a Zen retreat. Everyone looks pasty and glassy-eyed. You pay for your fried chicken and take a seat at the plastic table under the fluorescent lights.

Ten songs that drive away darkness

2009-02-03T20:56:00.008-05:00

"Allah," the first of Youssou N'Dour's Egypt song cycle, in which he expounds on his Mouride Sufi beliefs and makes you fall in love with God.

"People Get Ready," by Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions. Because we sing in Baltimore it every winter solstice for the National Homeless Persons' Memorial Day candlelight vigil, and because Mayfield's guitar is like a bell, welcoming us all home.

"Sweep Down Early," by the Innocence Mission, like staring out of an airplane window as the ground falls steeply away.

"Fanfare No. 4 a due, " by Heinrich Ignaz Franz Von Biber. Billowing clouds and deep blue sky shot through with sunlight.

"Coyote," by Caleb Stine. Because "the great Dizzy Issie's" might be called The Dizz now, but many are the things that are still great about this country, and this song is among them.

Sam Amidon's take on "Pretty Saro," which conjures up every bittersweet memory of everyone you've loved and had to say goodbye to.

The Evening Birds singing "Mbube." The low trees with flat tops stand stark against the sky over the veldt, children in blue school uniforms smile, the morning air smells of woodsmoke, and Solomon Linda, in a smoky club in apartheid-era South Africa, suddenly points his finger and reminds his audience in a shout, "You are the lion! You are the lion!"

"The Stars Their Match," by Tim Eriksen. Cracking ice and wind through bare branches. A silhouette on the ridgeline. A clearing of the throat.

"Brandenburg Gate Revisited," by Dave Brubeck. Echoes of the Cold War, the mingled smells of dark coffee and cigarettes and pastries and diesel fumes and rain. My father, in Kierling, trudging up the hill in the snow, icicles forming on his Russian fur hat and his mustache, his haunted eyes.

"Now that the sun hath veiled his light (an evening hymn on a ground)," by Henry Purcell, as sung by Carolyn Sampson. Then to thy rest, O my soul / And singing, praise the mercy that prolongs thy days, and then the song climaxes in sixteen quietly glorious hallelujahs, a melismatic cascade that peals like laughter, like meeting an old friend in the center of the city on a snowy day, like your first kiss.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009: Midweek Eucharist and Centering Prayer

2009-01-27T19:02:00.006-05:00

The guest preacher at today's midweek Eucharist was the Right Reverend Michael Lewis, Bishop of the Anglican Archdiocese of Cyprus and the Gulf, a large province that includes Cyprus, the United Arab Emirates, Yemen, and Iraq. Bishop Lewis spoke of Jonah, the obstinate, angry, fearful prophet who fled from the summons of God, whom sailors tossed into the sea in order to quiet a storm, who spent three days and three nights in the belly of a fish, and who, upon his deliverance, was charged by God to go to Nineveh and proclaim its imminent destruction.

This Jonah promptly did. Yet an unexpected thing happened. In an age when bearers of such gloomy tidings were regularly ignored, scorned, persecuted, and even killed, the people of Nineveh listened to Jonah and repented of their wickedness. Seeing this, God changed his mind about destroying the city, and instead spared it and its 120,000 inhabitants. Amazingly, this sign of mercy enraged the prophet, who huffed off into the wilderness, grousing about his ill use by his Lord and asserting, like some sulky teenager, that he wished he were dead.

In his sermon, Bishop Lewis spoke of this story as a cautionary tale for all of us who resist a divine leading, then relent and follow it, only to complain when it doesn't lead us where we expected. He said that Jonah's mistake was to cast God in his own image, and then to get upset when that image failed to comport with the reality of God's love. The story of Jonah, according to Bishop Lewis, is an illustration of God's capacity to change his mind, time and time again, because he can't help but love us.

It was an affecting sermon, especially since ancient Nineveh lay just across the river from what is now Mosul, in the country that we know as Iraq. I got the sense that Bishop Lewis identified to some degree with the truculent Hebrew prophet who was called to preach in a troubled land.

Following the celebration of the Eucharist, a few of us gathered, as we do every Tuesday, for centering prayer. Bishop Sutton talked about what St. Teresa of Avila called the "consolations" of prayer, those experiences in which the contemplative feels herself particularly close to God, when everything seems charged with the divine mystery. Yet even these positive experiences, she warned, can prove dangerous and unproductive if we cling to them, if having them is the reason that we engage in contemplative prayer.

Someone asked, what is the point of meditative practice, if not to have these experiences? Bishop Sutton replied that the point of prayer is not having an experience or receiving a reward, but entering into a relationship. He compared to an adult child who visits his mother; the son doesn't expect his mother to give him anything, necessarily, but visits her out of love, simply to be in a relationship with her. If we cling to specific types of experiences in prayer, he explained, then when we stop having them, we think that God has abandoned us, or that we're doing something wrong.

As the Quakers say, that spoke to my condition. One of the biggest impediments to my meditative practice over the years has been a desire to return to "peak experiences" of the kind described by Maslow. When they've eluded me, as they so often do, it's easy for me to let the practice fall away. But Bishop Sutton compared a regular practice to a marriage, in which the euphoric highs of the honeymoon period invariably fade, but can, in the best of circumstances, be replaced by something deeper, richer, and more enduring.

Like Bishop Lewis' message about Jonah, Bishop Sutton's remarks about centering prayer were, in the end, about love.

Love is hard.

The Union and the Constitution Forever

2009-01-20T11:13:00.003-05:00

And these things I see suddenly, what mean they?
As if some miracle, some hand divine unseal'd my eyes,
Shadowy vast shapes smile through the air and sky,
And on the distant waves sail countless ships,
And anthems in new tongues I hear saluting me.

- Walt Whitman

An afternoon at the Freer

2009-01-18T18:05:00.015-05:00

When you visit the Freer Gallery, your last stop should be the Peacock Room. Its claustrophobic ornateness is really too much, a gaudy burst of dark greens and golds, laughable in its excess, yet somehow sepulchral, like the mausoleum of some operatic diva who couldn't bear to leave the stage, even in death. You stand in the center of the room and take it all in, repulsed by its gaudiness, yet impressed despite yourself. That's when you nudge the leg of the person next to you and come to the consensus that it's time to leave.

The Freer is famous for its Whistlers and Homers, and notable for its collection of art by other Americans who were entranced by the landscapes and calligraphy of the East. You can have them. I prefer to bypass the Saint-Gaudens and Singer Sargents and head straight for the source, the statuary and painted screens of China and Japan, the Korean ceramics, the illuminated manuscripts from early Islam.

In the main lobby of the museum is a breathtaking mosaic, tiles arranged in concentric circles, a golden sun. Closer inspection reveals graceful inscriptions in black on each of the tiles, which, the placard informs us, comprise "The Song of the Reed" by the 13th century Sufi poet Jalaluddin Rumi.

The sound of the reed comes from fire, not wind -
What use is one's life without this fire?
It is the fire of love that brigs music to the reed.
It is the ferment of love that gives taste to the wine.
The song of the reed soothes the pain of lost love.
Its melody sweeps the veils from the heart.
Can their be a poison so bitter or a sugar so sweet
As the song of the reed?
To hear the song of the reed
Everything you have ever known must be left behind.

Images of ukiyo-e, the "floating world," Hokusai's magnificent waves and landscapes, scenes of Edo street life with colors so vibrant, expressions so vivid, that you can almost hear the sounds of oxcarts and the cries of laborers, smell the woodsmoke from the smith's forge.

Museums are themselves floating worlds. They are transportive; they exist outside of time and lift us out of ourselves. The Freer contains multitudes and epochs, yet the space creates an intimacy between the objects and the viewer. Cultures and periods flow together as one gallery leads into another. Here is a 17th century cup, a sepia spiderweb of cracks casting a delicate veil over the cobalt landscape beneath the glaze. Here is a scene of sensual opulence from Iran, rendered in muted jade and sparkling blues. You move as if through a garden, every so often calling your companion's attention to something brilliant that caught your eye. We are suspended in beauty.

In one room, Shakyamuni reclines on his deathbed, surrounded by his disciples as he prepares for his Parinirvana. "And then I feel the sun itself/as it blazes over the hills," writes Mary Oliver,

like a million flowers on fire –
clearly I’m not needed,
yet I feel myself turning
into something of inexplicable value.
Slowly, beneath the branches,
he raised his head.
He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.

In 1575, on the Shitagahara Plain near Nagashino Castle, the troops of Oda Nobunaga, one of the "three great unifiers" of Japan, defeated the invading forces of Takeda Katsuyori using firearms, forever altering the course of Japanese military tactics. That incongruous combination of ancient and modern, of laquered wooden armor and European guns, is gloriously rendered in a handscroll where banners seem to snap and flutter in the wind, and soldiers with lances squint through clouds of cordite.

In classical Chinese landscapes, perspective is reversed. Human beings and their signs of habitation are frequently closer to the viewer, yet they are inevitably dwarfed by the looming mountains that rise in the background, the soft curves of their slopes hazy and indistinct in the mist.

Descending into the concourse that connects the Freer with the Sackler Gallery, one encounters Lord Ganesh, the Remover of Obstacles, son of Shiva and Parvati. He is magnificent in repose, gentle, all-accepting. Here the museum, the product of the academy, of the West, has been transfigured into shrine, coins left at the feet of the deity by visitors moved to lift up prayers in that quiet alcove. I add my own offering and place my palms together, silently ask on behalf of my friend safe passage and a speedy return, for the rough roads before our feet to be made straight.

Climbing the stairs, we find ourselves in the hallway that winds around the courtyard at the center of the Freer and we end our visit in the Peacock Room. We walk out of the museum, re-enter time and the world. The streets rush by us like rills and streams, like radiant spokes of a great wheel: Constitution Avenue to the north, Independence to the south. The headwaters of Pennsylvania Avenue empty out into 7th Street, which flows without a break into Georgia Avenue when it reaches Howard University.

Irving Street, Morton Street, New Hampshire Avenue. Upshur, Crittenden, and Dellafield. Gallatin Street, named for a Swiss immigrant who served as U.S. Treasury Secretary from 1801 until 1814. Ingraham and Jefferson, and on past Walter Reed Medical Center, liquor stores and Ethiopian restaurants, faces in all shades of brown blurring past as I make my way north, carrying the memory of beauty with me on the journey home.

176 feet of Baltimore marble

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George Washington was an man of strong convictions and extraordinary commitment to democratic ideals. In 1783, as Congress assembled in the Maryland State House in Annapolis, then-General Washington resigned his commission as commander-in-chief of the army, thus setting the precedent that the supreme executive authority in the United States would reside in civilian, rather than military rule. According to legend, if not necessarily to the verifiable historical record, Washington later refused entreaties by his supporters to assume the mantle of monarch, instead choosing to leave office in a peaceful transition of power. Whatever the truth of that particular story, one only has to visit Mount Vernon to learn of the first president's abhorrence for pomp, grandeur, and the trappings of royalty.

One can only imagine how distressed he would be, therefore, if, while strolling through downtown Baltimore on a sunny Sunday afternoon, the great man chanced to raise his eyes to the great white obelisk that dominates the intersection of Charles Street and Monument Street, and see perched atop its spire a figure that looks remarkably like him, only draped in a toga and with its hand thrust out imperiously southward toward the harbor. Most likely he would be less than pleased to see himself immortalized in marble, depicted as Caesar, and encircled by wrought iron spikes and stylized fasces.

So Baltimore's Washington Monument isn't exactly reflective of the spirit or the principles of its namesake. So it's smaller than its younger and more famous cousin just down the road on the National Mall. So its appearance is rather egregiously phallic. It's nevertheless a source of civic pride for the Baltimoreans who gather at its base each year for the Book Festival, various arts and crafts events, and the Flowermart, which has attracted ladies in fabulous hats for nearly a century. And let's not forget the Monumental Occasion that takes place each December, when the monument is set ablaze by lasers, Christmas lights, and the best fireworks display of the year.

George Washington may not have cared for it, had he seen it. But it sure lights up pretty.

[196] Buddhas

2009-01-12T18:07:00.007-05:00

Nyoirin. Senju. All six Kannons. Yakushi. Shaka. Miroku. Jizo. Monju. Fudo Myo-O. Fugen.

- Sei Shonagon, The Pillow Book

One of the Buddhist prayers I still remember by heart is the Enmei Jukku Kannon Gyo, or the ten-phrase sutra to the bodhisattva of compassion, which to this day I recite on takeoffs and landings:

kanzeon namu butsu yo butsu u in
yo butsu u en bu po so en jo raku ga
jo cho nen kanzeon bo nen kanzeon
nen nen ju shin ki nen nen fu ri shin

Yakushi Nyorai, or Bhaishajyaguru, the Medicine Buddha, is special to me. The Great Master of Healing, he is aided in his works by two attendants: Nikko, the bodhisattva of sunlight, and Gakko, the bodhisattva of moonlight. When Kim and I took the Buddhist precepts years ago, we were given dharma names that meant "Compassion-Sun" and "Compassion-Moon." At our wedding ceremony, I recited Gary Snyder's "The Blue Sky," a poetic meditation on Yakushi Nyorai.

There are two conflicting stories about the enlightenment of Shaka (Shakyamuni), also known as the Historical Buddha. In one, he was a simple human mendicant who came to a great realization under the branches of a fig tree. In another, he was a metaphysical being who contested with the lord of hell and all his armies, and who was sheltered from the rain by the flared hood of the cobra god. Both of these stories are true.

Miroku, or Maitreya, is sometimes called the "future buddha." In one of his aspects he is known as Hotei, a sort of Santa Claus figure who carries a sack and gives candy to children, and is usually depicted as overweight and jolly. Hotei is well known to anyone who has been a Chinese restaurant or heard the phrase "buddha belly."

Jizo (Ksitigarba) is another friend of children, as well as travelers and the lost. He has taken a vow not to attain buddhahood until all the captive souls in all the hells have done so. He carries a carries a staff with jangling rings to frighten evil spirits and a great jewel that drives away darkness. I think of him whenever I hike in the woods.

A statue of Monju (Manjushri), the bodhisattva of wisdom, should be found in every zendo.

These are the waters in Maryland that I have seen with my own eyes

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The Anacostia (Algonquian: "stream, current"); Antietam (Algonquian: it is thought to mean "swift water") Creek; the Blackwater; Budds Creek. Cabin John Creek -- Hammill Kenny in Place Names of Maryland: Their Origin and Meaning speculates that "'Cabin' in Cabin John is evidently a folk corruption of "Captain"). Catoctin ("speckled mountain") Creek; the Chesapeake ("great shell-fish bay") Bay; the Chester, which first appears in the written record in 1667. The Choptank, where my late father in law watched his own father, a waterman, die while out fishing. My father in law brought the boat back to shore alone, his father's body scant inches away, and how long must that journey home have been? The name Choptank, incidentally, is Algonquian for "it flows back strongly."

Deer Creek; Gunpowder Falls; Gwynns Falls; Herring Run; Indian Creek; Jones Falls, which I drive over at least twice every weekday. Licking Creek; Limekiln Branch; Little Falls Branch; the Magothy, where Kim learned to sail. The Nanticoke ("people of the tidewater"). The Patapsco ("point of rocks"), where kami dwell in the rapids and eddies. The Patuxent ("at the falls or rapids"); the Pocomoke ("pierced or broken ground"), where I learned to kayak. The Potomac ("where one comes in"), where I went water-skiing one weekend with a friend's boyfriend and his friend, whose names I can't remember now. One morning I took Anne-Marie to Georgetown Harbor and we ate brunch on the banks of the Potomac and watched the Georgetown University crew team scull past. I arranged all this in an attempt to impress her, but in the end it turned out I was trying too hard.

Rock Creek; the Severn, which used to be known as the Anne Arundell River; Sideling Hill Creek, hard by that striated scar on the face of Washington County; Sligo Creek, halfway around the world from its namesake in Connaught. The Susquehanna ("smooth-flowing stream"), dammed at Conowingo in northeastern Maryland; you pass it on the road to the bimonthly Brandywine Valley Sacred Harp singing, just south of West Chester, Pennsylvania. Many of Kim's Pennsylvania relatives - solid, decent Methodists and Mennonites of English and Pennsylvania Dutch stock - still live along the river, as they have for the past two centuries. Tom's Creek; the Wicomico ("pleasant dwelling"); the Wye; the Youghiogheny, which could mean either "four lands" or "dirty stream," and in any case is difficult to pronounce.

Under various names, I have praised only you, rivers!
You are milk and honey and love and death and dance.
From a spring in hidden grottoes, seeping from mossy rocks,
Where a goddess pours live water from a pitcher,
At clear streams in the meadow, where rills murmur underground,
Your race and my race begin, and amazement, and quick passage.

- Czeslaw Milosz

Baptism

2009-01-11T13:27:00.004-05:00

We celebrated a baptism at church this morning. In his sermon, Ben linked the baptism that was about to take place with John's baptism of believers in the Jordan River, and that with the senseless murders of three young people on the streets of Baltimore this past week. Three candles were placed on the children's altar today, the first candles of the new year. Ben, quoting Rachel Naomi Remen quoting her rabbi grandfather, asked, at what point do we grow too old to be unconditionally forgiven? At what point in a child's development do we forget that she or he is a child of God?

Ben rejoiced at the baptism that we gathered to celebrated today. And for the children who died, he recited a Bahamian lullaby that I know as 'The Christian's Goodnight:'

Sleep on, beloved,

sleep and take thy rest,

Lay down thy head

upon thy Saviour's breast;

I love thee well,

but Jesus loves thee best:

Goodnight, goodnight, goodnight,

Lord, I bid you

Goodnight, goodnight, goodnight.

Baptism, Church of the Immaculate Conception, Towson, March 2007

At previous baptisms I've attended, the babies tend to become fussy and upset, especially when they're sprinkled or dunked in cold water and brandished at a bunch of solemn strangers. But the little girl this morning took in everything with wide-eyed delight, and seemed to love the water. Squirming in the priest's arms, she leaned out toward the baptismal font, making what appeared to be swimming motions. When she was carried down the aisle during the passing of the peace, she seemed to look each person in the eye, as if saying hello.

[I] In spring, the dawn -

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when the slowly paling mountain rim is tinged with red, and wisps of faintly crimson-purple cloud float in the sky.

In summer, the night...it's beautiful when fireflies are dancing everywhere in mazy flight. An it's delightful too to see just one or two fly through the darkness, glowing softly...

In autumn, the evening...oh how inexpressible, when the sun has sunk, to hear in the growing darkness the wind, and the song of autumn insects.

In winter, the early morning - if snow is falling, of course, it's unutterably delightful, but it's perfect too if there's a pure white frost, or even just when it's very cold, and they hasten to build up the fires in the braziers and carry in fresh charcoal...

- Sei Shonagon, The Pillow Book; Meredith McKinney, trans.

Zuihitsu

2009-01-11T00:37:00.009-05:00

This blog is inspired by Makura no Sōshi ("The Pillow Book"), a collection of anecdotes, observations, lists, stray thoughts, and gossip jotted down in the 10th century by Sei Shonagon, an imperial court functionary during Japan's Heian period. The Pillow Book was an early example of what came to be known as the zuihitsu ("random jottings") style of Japanese writing. The genre comprises short essays, musings, observations, and idea fragments, many of which are concerned with the fleeting, transitory nature of existence.

Hence the title of this online pillow book. The phrase "vain amours" is from a poem by the late 17th/early 18th century preacher and hymn writer Isaac Watts:

I'm tir'd of visits, modes and forms
And flatt'ries paid to fellow worms;
Their conversation cloys,
Their vain amours and empty stuff,
But I can ne'er enjoy enough
Of thy best company, my Lord,
Thou life of all my joys.

Because all things are ephemeral, all amours are ultimately vain. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't pay attention to the ephemera as they flicker by, and then are gone.