HAUNTED BY THE HOLY GHOST

the world split in two

 It was all supposed to be so simple.
We had it all planned.
When the time came, Protestant roots dead and rotted,
we would walk away together,
destination: Rome.
All is ready, trunks packed, passage reserved,
And the wind is beginning to fill the sails.
Very soon, we are to board the ship;
But, to my grief and confusion, I cannot.
I stand on the store and watch as all is made ready.
It sails soon, in the eve, at vespers;
towards the sunset.
Another ship waits for me.
It has been waiting patiently.
It also sails soon,
at dawn as the star rises
towards the sunrise.
It's a long road of repentance.
Repentance is the only journey
that has a destination.
My heart tells me that the route may differ,
yet we have the same destination;
it is not a place, but a Person.
The same One who guides our courses.
I try to shut out the ugly warnings;
words like shipwrecks, storms,
those who go down in ships amid
chartless crossings angry seas.

I look to the sky for the guiding Star;
I listen only for the still small voice.
I fight, I calculate, I predict, I pray;

I , I , I  overshadow the very thing I seek;
Once I started listening to the cacophony,

even adding to it with my own voice.
His voice was drowned out.
Wanderers, angels, demons, all my selves
shouting to be heard, attended to, believed, affirmed.
This is what comes of sitting down
on the throne of your heart.

How many night have passed since
since I woke to find Him gone.
"I have been going through the streets and broad ways,
seeking Him  whom my soul loveth?
I sought Him, but found Him not."
They have taken away my Lord
And I do not know where they have laid Him."
Me thinks she dost protest too much.

He never left me, it was I who chose to wander.
Though the path was clearly marked, well travelled;
complete with a guide and shepherd,
it wasn't the path I wanted to travel,
sacrifice, doubts, uncharted, and alone?
But in truth,  I forgot my First Love
Suddenly, when it came to it,
I had faith, only because another
had faith for me, when he found me beaten and left for dead on that Jericho road.  32 years was long enough for the paralytic to lounge  at the pool, and maybe the waters are stirring and I need to find out what it means to be whole.
But I want it all, and easily:
My First Love, my earthly loves, my comforts, my easy life.

I cry foul; changing the rules, the entire game that I worked so hard to learn, even master. We followed the rules,
Searched Prayed and infromed  Him of our plans; there was nothing in the rules about seperate plans. cowardice can hide under the guise of submission, as much as rebellion  can masquarade as courage.

It is a fearsome thing to fall into the hands of a God  who will not let you settle for less than perfection. It is a mercy that God allows one to have enough faith for two.  It is an indulgence to expect it.

Mark this: One flesh doesn't equal one soul
We will stand before God alone;
And the way to salvation is unique as each soul,
We all pass through Christ,
but he loves us in a thousand ways
We would have no hope, if He didn't.
I must repent a thousand times of the something
a more pliable soul gets the very first time.
So, it's time to trust our Maker,
And for the first time, without bitterness,
we look at our maps together.
We look and cry, laugh, and smile and cry some more.
His leads to Rome, no mistake about that.
Mine passes first through to doubt and grief,
but that part is almost finished;
and then on to the East
to the Brightest Joy I will ever know.
We can accept this only because we know
there is One who loves each of us more
than we love each other.
Oh, dearest wife of Lot, you deserve much more mercy than history has shown you.

For two years now
He has been leading me toward the Orthodox Church.
For my part, I did not seek it;
I ran in any direction
that kept the Orthodox Church at my back.
But He kept on, ever so gently, unbidden, kept leading me back.
And when I resisted He turned up the heat.
The Roman Catholic "Hound of Heaven"
may be large, fierce, relentless, and sharp in tooth;
but the Orthodox version is a small puntable yapping furball
that would rather die from being kicked away
than cease nipping at your heels
For awhile, I thought I could stand still,
remain in my old protestant home church, and wait.
For clearer guidance,
for Godot,
for courage....
But there is no going back, and no standing still,
and the direction on my compass has four E's.

He sails West on the Vigil of Easter, maybe before;
and he will sail alone.
My choice, as if there is one,
is to let that ship wait a bit longer,
retrace a few steps, finish one thing yet unfinished,
and then to sail East.
Two ships sailing in opposite directions
to the same destination.
And the future may yet hold a long sought blessing;
"That they may be One.."
and we hope and pray with all our heart,
that the World is truely round.

Photos:

window: angelray
ruins: btsergio
ship: COMRADE
dress: JUDE
doors: luza
sail boat golden BOAT/SEA/SUNRIS E 303346973_c890bf851d.jp

She took the blue right out of their cynical eyes...

For Bea: today,any day, every day.....do you know how amazing you are?


angel, originally uploaded by linus_lohoff.

"Tell the man who repairs the wings for angels
That one has fallen among the mortals on bleeker street
I lent a hand, she looked up at the steeples
As if to blame them for the pavement beneath her feet
She said, I never much liked flying, but the job requires trying
The hard part's avoiding buildings and concrete."

Ellis Paul
Angel in Manhattan

Vive la difference, Tales of Prince Vladimir, and the first quarter Ecumenical Report Card

While sitting at the breakfast table this morning, before going to Mass/Divine Liturgy,  I was finishing the post below (writing, not eating, because of the different fasting rule), and was listening to the Lecture recording on Eliot.  My husband was  eating his cereal, and caught the last 10 minutes of White's speaking about Little Gidding, the last quartet. He is describing how Eliot uses the falling of B-1 rockets raining down on London in WWII as an analogy for the descending fire of the Holy Spirit and that we are all destined to perish in fire, which, by our choice, can be a fire that purifies and leads to life, or a fire that consumes, and  ends in eternal death.  Not really fare for an early morning empty stomach.

Then he starts to giggle and I say "it's poetry, it's supposed to be dramatic......"  He replies he is not laughing at the lecture.  He hands me this: and says "this is more my kind of theology:

;-)

Balance.

The key to any good team.

-------------------------

Disclaimer: The Lecturer, Dr. David Allen White, an is an  excellent  Roman Catholic Literature Prof, and I found it at the Catholic site Keep The Faith. Lest you think the Orthodox are always serious and have no sense of humor, check here and here.  Or just keep hanging around HERE.

And the reason there is no post about the Feast Day of Saint Vladamir, is because I couldn't keep a straight face (and neither could Saint Vladamir, I'm sure) after reading 3 versions of his life and conversion:
Orthodox:Equal of the Apostles and Enlightener of the Russian Land;
Roman Catholic: But it must not be forgotten that when St. Vladimir had his people baptized, although of Greek rite, they were in union with the pope...this sort of “command baptism” is certainly not the ideal approach;
Evangelical: The Russian prince, a cruel and lustful playboy... Vladimir's conversion seems to have been real. He took a genuine interest in Christianity and gave evidence that his heart had changed. And he himself prayed over baptismal candidates.

I decided I wouldn't touch this one with a 10 foot pole (no pun intended).

God can laugh, we should tremble

_____________________________________

And with that: What you have all been wondering about:

Report Card on household Ecumenical Relations : Serious miscalculations in anticipated Learning Curve (Def2  the relationship  between the rate at which knowledge or a skill is learned and the time spent acquiring it).
Not surprised; but somewhat surprised at being surprised at how typically human we both are.  We always overestimate how merciful and forgiving we will be, forgetting that onl God's mercy and forgiveness can be quantified in advance, and it is infinite.
The only human mercy and forgiveness that can be quantified is what has been accomplished so far.
Back to Bea's old favorite Maxim: God is God and we are not

Dissonance between expectations of the everyday realities of our respective Faith Traditions: Not much.  Any surprised here would have been a surprise.

Regrets or Second thoughts: Not a single one.

We are only undeceived Of that which, deceiving, could no longer harm

photo: silence by Nikaa

 

The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That questions the distempered part;
Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
The sharp compassion of the healer's art
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.

    Our only health is the disease
If we obey the dying nurse
Whose constant care is not to please
But to remind of our, and Adam's curse,
And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse.

    The whole earth is our hospital
Endowed by the ruined millionaire,
Wherein, if we do well, we shall
Die of the absolute paternal care
That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere.

    The chill ascends from feet to knees,
The fever sings in mental wires.
If to be warmed, then I must freeze
And quake in frigid purgatorial fires
Of which the flame is roses, and the smoke is briars.

    The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood—
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.

FROM LECTURE T. S. ELIOT AND THE FOUR QUARTETS BY Dr. David Allen White:

This part of East Coker was savaged by the critics
They came down on Eliot ( him) like a ton of bricks
How dare the Great Poet, the Great Intellectual,  write a lyric like that...
But the final part of East Coker, here he has a sense of his own dis-ease with what he was doing and his inadequacy as a poet...

So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years—
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres
Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate—but there is no competition—
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

A wonderful  nod to all those Great poets who came before;trying to do what we can in a time, unpropitious in every way, for poetry, religion, philosophy....But his own sense of inadequacy, learning to late, learning to little...and then these lines are hugely important:

But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

If we are talking about the connection between time and eternity, we cannot hope to know the long vision....it's beyond us.  What we do is try in the here and now...being truthful; doing what we are supposed to do; and leaving the rest with the Divine Judge.

Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated

The full text of "East Coker", the third quartet Here:

YOU ARE THE SPACES THE SOLIDS LEAN ON

INTERIORS

DEEP CALLS TO DEEP
AND I SIT HERE IN SILENCE
I LISTEN
THE MUSIC IS STRANGE TO ME
BUT MY HEART BEATS IN THE SAME
PROLATIO PERFECTIA
HOW CAN I KNOW?
HOW CAN I NOT KNOW

DEEP CALLS TO DEEP
AND I LONG TO LAY MY HEAD ON YOUR SHOULDER
THAT LONGED FOR RESTING PLACE
I REMEMBER IT'S EVERY CONTOUR
COMFORT COMFORT I CRY
BUT YOU ARE ALREADY HERE
HOW CAN I KNOW?
HOW CAN I NOT KNOW

DEEP CALLS TO DEEP
AND I LONG TO SING THE WORDS WITH YOU
MY TONGUE CANNOT FORM THE WORDS
YET THEY LEAVE YOUR IMPRINT
ON MY VERY SOUL
AND HEAL THE WOUNDS THAT ARE ME
HOW CAN I KNOW?
HOW CAN I NOT KNOW

DEEP CALLS TO DEEP
AND I SIT HERE IN THE STILLNESS
IT HAS TAKEN SO LONG TO LEARN
THAT YOU ARE IN THE SILENCES AND SPACES
"YOU ARE THE SPACES THE SOLIDS LEAN ON"
YOU ARE
HOW CAN I NOT KNOW

photo:Long Standing Blue by A.Guandalini

INCOMMUNICADO: I would give all metaphors in return for one word

Tales From The Rice Bowl by 3amfromkyoto.

I Would Like to Describe   

                                                 Zbigniew Herbert

I would like to describe the simplest emotion
joy or sadness
but not as others do
reaching for shafts of rain or sun

I would like to describe a light
which is being born in me
but I know it does not resemble
any star
for it is not so bright
not so pure
and is uncertain

I would like to describe courage
without dragging behind me a dusty lion
and also anxiety
without shaking a glass full of water

to put it another way
I would give all metaphors
in return for one word
drawn out of my breast like a rib
for one word
contained within the boundaries
of my skin

but apparently this is not possible

and just to say - I love
I run around like mad
picking up handfuls of birds
and my tenderness
which after all is not made of water
asks the water for a face
and anger
different from fire
borrows from it
a loquacious tongue

so is blurred
so is blurred
in me
what white-haired gentlemen
separated once and for all
and said
this is the subject
and this is the object

we fall asleep
with once hand under our head
and with the other in a mound of planets

our feet abandon us
and taste the earth
with their tiny roots
which next morning
we tear out painfully

Wrecked and Redeemed

There is life behind all the Silence, but it has been too complicated to write about.
On the bright side, The Glen and Santa Fe are coming.  My manuscript is already 10 days late, but that is not unusual.
I have been writing and rewriting things from the past year concerning Church, Life, Love, Conversion, and it’s a painful but, in the long run, will help sorts things out.
I may post some of my submissions, but I have been keeping it a rule of thumb to keep most of those things private, but there are a few peripheral pieces that still may make the cut and appear hear in the next few week.
I am fortunate to have my Editor living at home in the next room.
Today she wanted to know what percentage of the manuscript is complete.  I am beginning to understand why publishing houses assign Editors to writers, otherwise we would never be able to call a thing “finished”.  But probably closer to the truth, writing is like looking in a magnifying mirror, and it takes a special kind of dedicated masochism to confront things that you would just rather not  know about yourself.  It’s kind of the process of conversion with spellcheck.  But as with carrying out the work of our Salvation with fear and trembling, if your courage doesn’t fail, Grace carries the day.  Darkness is a prelude to light, sorrow to joy, and the experience of the absence to leads to deeper a deeper intimacy with Christ, and  with those who travel the road with me.

“This was a day when I did nothing,
aside from reading the newspaper,
taking both breakfast and lunch by myself
in the kitchen, dozing after lunch
until the middle of the afternoon. Then
I read one poem by Zbigniew Herbert
in which he thanked God for the many beautiful
things in this world, in a voice so absurdly
truthful, the entire wrecked day was redeemed.”

Harvey Wednesday, July 11, 2007 7:13 PM

The Sights Along the Harbor:
New and Collected Poems
Wesleyan University Press