the cassandra pages

Shavuot, Beltane, Pentecost and Whitsun: the evolution of traditions and language

Icon of the Pentecost, Russian, 16th century.

 

“The king stablished all his knights, and gave them that were of lands not rich, he gave them lands, and charged them never to do outrageousity nor murder, and always to flee treason; also, by no mean to be cruel, but to give mercy unto him that asketh mercy, upon pain of forfeiture of their worship and lordship of King Arthur for evermore; and always to do ladies, damosels, and gentlewomen succor upon pain of death. Also, that no man take no battles in a wrongful quarrel for no law, ne for no world’s goods. Unto this were all the knights sworn of the Table Round, both old and young. And every year were they sworn at the high feast of Pentecost.” (Le Morte d'Arthur, pp 115-116)

Yesterday was Pentecost, a major feast day in the Anglican Church. It falls on the seventh Sunday after Easter, and commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit on the disciples after Jesus' death. In Greek, Pentecost means "the fiftieth [day]" and originally refered to an ancient, historical Jewish festival commemorating the giving of the Law to Moses on Mt. Sinai. In modern Judaism this festival is called Shavuot.

 As had happened with the Jewish festival, in early Christian England, the theological observance of Pentecost was conflated with already-existing pagan ritual of Beltane. In the Arthurian legends, not only did the King have his knights swear their most solemn oaths on the day of Pentecost, he also refused to go into the dining hall until he had seen some miracle or wonder; it's one of the ways that Arthur's other-worldliness and spiritual leadership is shown in the legends, in contrast to Lancelot and Guinevere's adultery, as well as some of the other knight's acts.

In later England, though, Pentecost was more often called Whitsun, or Whitsunday. The Wikipedia has a good entry on the possible etymology of the name "Whitsun", or "White Sunday", in the late Middle Ages, and on the possible conflation of "whit" (white) and "wit" (understanding) :

"The name is a contraction of "White Sunday", attested in "The Holy-Ghost, which thou did send on Whit-Sunday" in the old English homilies, and parallel to the mention of hwitmonedei in the early 13th-century Ancrene Riwle. Walter William Skeat noted that the Anglo-Saxon word also appears in Icelandic hvitasunnu-dagr, but that in English the feast was always called Pentecoste until after the Norman Conquest,  when white (hwitte) began to be confused with wit or understanding. According to one interpretation, the name derives from the white garments worn by catechumens, those expecting to be baptised on that Sunday. Moreover, in England, rather than the more usual red, were traditional for the day and its octave. A different tradition is that of the young women of the parish all coming to church or chapel in new white dresses on that day. However, Augustinian canon, John Mirk (c1382 - 1414), of Lilleshall Abbey, Shropshire, had another interpretation:

Good men and wimmen, this day (Dies Penthecostes) is called Wytsonday by cause the holy ghost bought wytte and wisdom into Crists dyscyples, and so by prechying after in all Cristendom and fylled him full of holy Wytte

Thus, he thought the root of the word was "wit" (formerly spelt "wyt" or "wytte") and Pentecost was so-called to signify the outpouring of the wisdom of the Holy Ghost on Christ's disciples."

However, today the liturgical color for Pentecost in our tradition is red: red for the "tongues of flame" that supposedly showed the presence of the Holy Spirit. Lots of parishioners, too, wear red on that day. Yesterday we had a liturgical dance by the kids, carrying trailing "flames" of yellow, orange and gold transparent cloth, three baptisms, and we sang a lot of special music - more about that later. I've never been too keen on the idea that the "Spirit" only appeared in the world at that time, and only to these early Christians, so I was happy that our Dean preached about the Spirit being present to all human beings, of all creeds and none, from the beginning of time. He also made a point of calling it "Her."

--

For our part, we had two services filled with music, much of it for eight-part double choir. In the morning we sang a terrific unaccompanied contemporary mass setting, the Missa "Cantate," by Bob Chilcott (unfortunately no recordings or videos of this that I could find.) It ends with an Agnus Dei written with aleotoric sections: that's where the singers are some instructions but then asked to improvise or repeat it individually and freely according to certain restrictions: these may be a set of notes or a specific phrase, and a time period. We then "gather" on a specified note at the director's instruction, and move on to the next section, which may be written out conventionally, or proceed to another set of instructions.

The effects created can be absolutely mesmerizing: murmuring sound clusters, voices emerging out of a cloud of sound, repeated words, created musical "atmospheres" in a less defined progression than usual, that invite a different type of listening experience: sometimes meditative and minimalistic, sometimes surprising, sometimes eerie, often emotional. I had never seen scores like this before joining this choir, and was really intimidated when I first had to perform them but quickly became fascinated. It was, as you can perhaps imagine, perfect for Pentecost.

We also performed another aleotoric piece, this one written by our own director, Patrick Wedd, for a Vancouver choral festival, on the Pentecost text (and one of the oldest hymns of the Christian church), Veni Creator Spiritus. Patrick's piece is almost all aleotoric, with certain voice parts singing the hymn, while others improvise on sets of given notes in the key of B-flat major. But in addition to the voices, the piece also includes a score for handbells: in this case, all the bells in the key of B-flat major. We have a beautiful multiple-octave set of Whitechapel handbells at the cathedral, and use them every week for the psalm chants, but not so often as part of other music. I like playing them (being an old instrumentalist at heart) so I had fun trying to coordinate my bell, the hand-written score, and my improvisational vocal part, while keeping an eye on the director and trying to turn pages and not drop anything -- my expensive bell in particular. Maybe one day we'll have a recording of this piece that I can share with you; I think it came off pretty well.

Drawing #15, Meditation Space

On the second and fourth Tuesdays of the month, I facilitate a meditation/contemplative prayer group at the cathedral. This particular chapel is normally used for weekday eucharists and the 8:00 service on Sunday mornings; the altar is to the left of this picture, and usually there are about two dozen chairs set up in rows facing it. On Tuesdays I go in early to rearrange the room -- we move the heavy iron kneelers with a hand truck, and put down a plain white cotton carpet, set twelve chairs around it and move the others to the sides, and place a large candle - I bought this one from nuns in Mexico -  on a low table in the center. After the daily office of Evening Prayer is finished at 5:45 pm, we turn down the lights and gather in this room; I usually give a brief talk or a reading or a guided meditation, and then we sit in silence for two periods of 20 minutes, with a brief break so that people who want to sit for a shorter period can leave. At the end we leave in silence, with a few people staying to help me put the room back into its normal configuration.

This week I had a little extra time beforehand, so I sat down and made a sketch, and then added some color later. One thing I'm discovering during this month is that I simply don't enjoy detailed, careful architectural sketching. Catching the feeling of a place is one thing, but I don't have the patience, inclination, or interest to do it perfectly. More power to those who do! (I didn't think I did, but now I know it for sure!) In fact, I'd like to try a charcoal or pastel drawing of this same space, to try to get the dusky ambience of it as the sun is setting.

During our meditation this week we had so many interruptions! There are the inevitable sirens and honking horns and loud voices from the street outside;  the verger mistakenly turned the lights up when they should have been turned down; then there was a businessman, with briefcase and cellphone, who came into the church from the side door opposite us, couldn't get through the passageway to the back that leads to the diocesan offices, and proceeded to make a loud phone call expressing his annoyance and frustration to whoever was on the other end. Apparently he didn't see, or didn't look to see, that people were silently meditating across from him. One of us got up and helped him, gently ushering him outside and pointing him where he needed to go. In spite of all that, this week's gathering had a very good feeling: calm and deep, with a sense of the collective peace that sometimes comes from a group meditating together.

Interruptions are, as the Buddhists would say, "grist for the mill." They are the weeds in our practice, and one learns to be grateful for them, and for what they teach us. When I was beginning my own meditation practice, back in Vermont many years ago, it used to drive me crazy to hear the neighbor's lawn mower, or children's voices playing in the street. Now I'm rather glad that we don't meet in a retreat center set far away from "the world," but rather right in the middle of it, on the busy main street of a major city. Meditating in this sort of place teaches us that we too are part of the world, and the world is part of us. As Thomas Merton wrote: "One does not go into the desert to escape others, but to learn how to find them."

 

Happy Easter

It's Easter Monday and spring has finally started in Montreal. Most of the snow is gone, the sky is brighter, and the first shoots are poking up through the soggy earth. Yesterday, as I arrived very early at church to begin a long day of singing, I was greeted by a patch of purple crocuses in the lawn: not open yet, but unmistakable. Even color might make its way to this grey northern city before long!

During Holy Week I struggled with resistance to the focus on tragedy and suffering. Some years the difficult part of the story is actually fruitful for me, but this year that wasn't the case. It took all the way through Saturday before I figured it out -- and for that I had to go back to Mexico.

On Good Friday, I sat in the baptistry, trying to meditate between our musical responsibilities, and -- bizarrely, I thought -- all that came to me was the image of people dancing in a park in Mexico City. We had gone to visit the handicraft market at La Ciudadela, where I took the picture at the top of this post. I walked around the entire vast market, looking at pierced tin stars and embroidered blouses, blown glassware and painted tiles, whimsical painted wooden animals from Oaxaca, colorful sombreros and woven rugs. Finally I returned to this young woman's stand, drawn back by the colors and careful Indian handwork and unique embroidery styles of the bags she was selling. After we talked with her and bought a few pouches to take home as gifts, we walked out into the nearby park, where salsa music was playing.

The park was full of people, from babies in arms to the very elderly. A lot of them were dancing. And not just fooling around: these were people who knew how to dance, and looked like they'd been doing it their entire lives. It was a neighborhood event. The atmosphere was completely relaxed; everyone was out, enjoying themselves. Was it a special day, we wondered? No, we found out - this happens every Saturday in this barrio. Other neighborhoods do it on different days or evenings, so if you are really into salsa, you can go around and dance just about every day!

The feeling was so happy, it was infectious. J. wandered around with his camera, and I stood on the edge, smiling, moving in time to the music, watching the joy of the people dancing so beautifully under the violet jacarandas.

There was a shrine of flowers and an image of the Virgin that had been put up in a tree (see the arrow at upper left). This, we found, is pretty typical. Religion is everywhere; it's as much a part of ordinary life as air or food. Homemade shrines with figures of saints, candles, flowers and sometimes incense are just as likely to be found on a streetcorner or near the entrance to a shop as in a church or park; as people pass by, they notice, and some cross themselves. The Virgin of Guadaloupe, in particular, seems to hover over the daily life of the city, protecting and watching the dance of life.

I had been standing there for fifteen minutes or so when this elderly gentleman appeared in front of me, holding out his hand. It took me a moment to realize he was asking me to dance - the last thing I had expected to happen, though maybe it had been obvious that I really wanted to try! I smiled and lifted my shoulders and eyebrows, miming to him that I was pleased but didn't know how. He shrugged, an elegant and eloquent Latin shrug, and swept one hand toward the dance floor: Don't worry, I'll show you. I smiled and took his hand. We danced: I clumsily, he delightfully; his friends on the sidelines clapped and smiled encouragment as I looked over, laughing and happy. When the dance finished he bowed to me and I thanked him, and then his friend took my hand for another dance, their warmth and generosity something I won't forget.

My former rector and friend, the Rev. Canon Henry Atkins, had a number of colorful souvenirs from his years in Latin America on the desk and walls of his office. He had worked as a priest in El Salvador during some of the most difficult years; he had known Archbishops Oscar Romero and Arturo Rivera. I asked him about these tokens once, thinking he must have some tragic memories. He smiled. "You know," he said, "I went to Latin America thinking the people there would teach me about suffering. In fact, they taught me about joy."

--

When we returned home and got on the airport bus to ride back to Montreal, I looked around at the snow and ice, and the grim silent faces of the other passengers, dressed in their black and grey coats. Across from me was a Mexican woman, about my age; I overheard her son-in-law explaining to someone that he was picking her up for an extended stay here, where he and her daughter and their children lived. The woman had on a warm coat in a beautiful shade of aqua, and she too was looking around, bewildered. I thought about the Mexican equivalent: a crowded and noisy bus or metro car, filled to overflowing with color and music and people selling things, a natural extension of the vibrant, chaotic, and entirely real life on the streets. By comparison, she -- and I -- had just landed in a frozen, monochromatic, silent world. It felt so ridiculous I almost burst out laughing. What are we doing to ourselves?

So, yes, in the affluent north, we do need to be reminded of the suffering and poverty and violence of much of the world. Actually, though, we're pretty good at feeling guilty and miserable. We have a lot more to learn about how to be truly happy, about how to live fully, how to appreciate the simple beauty that life presents every single day, how to embrace each moment and each other -- especially each other. This week, as I sang, I knew in every vibrating part of my body the joy that comes not just from the arts but from giving your best effort, and from doing something with other people for a greater goal. That makes me so happy - in spite of the fatigue, the concentration, the late nights - that I experienced joy as the dominant emotion, joy in the midst of a story of immense suffering.

And that's the thing. The ultimate Gospel message isn't one of death, but resurrection. Whether you interpret that literally or symbolically, the point is not to stay at the foot of that cross, or the crosses that we all bear, but to live and to love, learning to see that new life can happen, in spite of great difficulties, every moment of every day.

Saturday

The Black Christ at the Metropolitan Cathedral, Mexico City

 

Holy Saturday
hangs suspended: poignancy
played by an oboe.

Holy Week 2013

(Note: potentially disturbing image below.)

I don't yet have my head around Holy Week.

On Palm Sunday, during the Mass, there was a dramatization of the passion story - a Passion Play -- instead of a sermon. It was beautifully done, and very moving while it was happening.

Tuesday night I led the contemplation group, giving a talk on the various faiths' uses of, and resistance to, bowing, and prostration. (Our priests prostrate themselves on the altar on Good Friday, and at no other time during the year.) I talked about what those practices mean in a mystical sense, and that was followed by forty minutes of silent meditation. Then I joined the choir to sang Compline -- it was a service using Orthodox chant, ending with the Russian Kontakion for the Departed.

Last night, Wednesday, was Tenebrae: the church lit by one candelabrum, one candle extinguished after each psalm, after the Lamentations of Jeremiah, after yet another psalm, until we were all in darkness. Silence. Then a sudden noise, to represent the earth quaking at the death of Jesus. And finally a single candle in the darkness, by whose light we departed.

And tonight, the mass for Maundy Thursday. But still, I am not "in" Holy Week.

How many years have I been doing this -- attending most of the services, singing, listening to the story over and over, presented in different ways, in words, music, dance, drama? As an adult, at least twenty-five. Sometimes it happens: something breaks through the numbness and repetition and locks its fingers around my heart, and when the grip slowly releases, there's a new insight, connecting this story of suffering and acceptance to my own life or the world at large in a new way.

And sometimes it's like this year so far: an intellectual and artistic engagement that remains detached in spite of my desire for it to be otherwise.

Perhaps my Holy Week came earlier in the month, when I was in the cathedral and smaller shrines and churches of Mexico City, astounded by a much more visceral and literal expression of faith and of Christ's agony: in every one of those churches there is a lifesize, lifelike Christ, beautifully carved and painted, with open eyes that look at you, and wounds that drip with blood: He is Everyman, your son - father - lover - husband  - who was killed, and who now gazes at you with sadness and compassion. In Latin America those connections are unfortunately easy to make; not so much here in the north, where we can argue with ourselves and with theology about the nature of this kind of suffering, sometimes for an entire lifetime, without much first-hand experience. And yet violence, imprisonment, oppression and killing because of politics, religion, outspokenness against authority, and all kinds of Otherness, go on in our world every single day. These statues shocked me with their realism. It would be much easier to look away -- but you can't.

Christ holding a stalk of corn, in the Catedral Metropolitana, Mexico City

During these three days that is what I feel not just called to contemplate, but to face. Holy Week and Easter are not so much about faith for me -- faith in the Resurrection, or literal faith in accounts of ancient events. Those are other matters that I think about a lot all year long. Nor is it, as for many Christians of a more evangelical bent, primarily a time of sorrow and catharsis about the death of one particular man. Holy Week, for me, is more about justice, and my own complicity in the systems of power and repression, of militarization, rampant capitalism and globalization. But even more than that it's about my forgetfulness the other 362 days of the year.

Usually a moment comes when I drop my defenses, and I'm there, fully there. It hasn't happened yet. Maybe tonight.

Celebrating Epiphany in Music and Words

Sassetta, Journey of the Magi, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1435

This Sunday we'll be singing our third and final Lessons&Carols service of the season, in celebration of Epiphany.

Sunday's Evensong will also include familiar hymns and readings, both of the relevant scriptural passages and some innovative poetry selections. I will, in fact, be reading Gerard Manley Hopkins' "That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the Comfort of the Resurrection" -- a rather daunting prospect for which I am practicing! Here's a link to an audio recording I made of the poem:

Download Heraclitean fire_2

Jan Brueghel, Adoration of the Magi, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg

A man in our parish keeps a music calendar for the cathedral's services, and publishes it on the web; it includes beautiful art appropriate to the time of the liturgical year, and a full list of the music to be performed with links to online audio, and information about composers and writers of texts. I know it is his labor of love, but I appreciate it so much, and doubt think he gets the recognition his effort deserves! Anyway, here is his listing for Sunday's music, which will be streamed live on Radio Ville-Marie at 4:00 pm Eastern Time (for listeners in the UK, we are five hours different, so that's 9 pm your time.) I hope the whole service will fit within the one hour limit of the broadcast, but if not, you will still hear most of it. (Click the arrow in the blue band at the bottom right of the screen banner, where it says "Nous écouter en direct.")

Stravinsky's Protest

The Evangelist Mark Seated in his Study, Byzantine manuscript from Constantinople, c. 1025, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. (CC)

I'm heading off in a few hours to sing Stravinsky in our choir's annual fundraising concert, and looking forward to it very much. We are performing all the movements of his 1948 Mass, with a wind ensemble, and, a capella, the Three Sacred Choruses (Lord's Prayer, Credo, and Ave Maria), plus the very difficult Anthem, sometimes known as The Dove Descending, set to a text by T.S. Eliot and dedicated to him. The vocal parts of Anthem are so independent that there is really no way to find your note from what others are singing; the best way forward has been for each of us to memorize each interval, and engrave the musical lines of our parts in our heads so that we can sing them confidently and individually.

Yesterday I read the latest essay, "The Strangers," by Teju Cole, in The New Inquiry, in which the author muses about "pre-secular" art: the art from the ages we call Middle, Medieval, and Gothic. Teju has another, apt phrase for it: "God-regarding" art. We tend to think of all art after the Enlightenment as "better", he says, because it is art that reminds us of ourselves. But what if we turn that notion upside down, and consider what we have perhaps lost, or fail to see now, from our "modern" perspective?

In working on these musical pieces, by one of the most iconic modern composers, I've been particularly struck by the Credo in the Three Sacred Choruses, which has insinuated itself into my head and won't let go. Like the Credo in any mass, this creed is very much a chant, and it proceeds without major variation, as "spoken music," with the choir chanting the words on similar notes throughout. But - and this is the testament to Stravinsky's genius - there is an internal rhythmic structure that actually does vary, and a subtle emotional movement that follows the text. As a result, this Credo, while stark and seemingly simple, contains worlds. I have found it more and more moving the longer we've worked on it.

Together with the other two Sacred Choruses, these three rather sombre pieces have felt like a statement to me, quite different from so much of Stravinsky's other work, but I didn't know exactly where they were coming from. Today I found part of an answer (posted with a video performance on the Wikipedia.) In his Chroniques de ma vie, Stravinsky wrote that he had seen a performance of Wagner's Parsifal in 1912, and been outraged at what he saw as the sacreligious presentation of "art as religion, and theatre as a temple." He had been moved to write the Three Sacred Choruses in response, attempting to connect his own present with his memory of the traditional,  chanted Russian liturgical music: stark, modal, plain, and "medieval in their clarity."

I find it fascinating that the composer of the dazzling, audacious Firebird, and such completely atonal and difficult works as "The Dove Descending," which seems like a comment on modern individuality and separation itself, felt compelled to draw a straight line connecting himself back through the centuries to a much earlier, almost forgotten musical expression of faith. While the present-day listener may find it easier to see herself in the ecstatic resurrection dance of The Firebird, these other works are God-regarding in an entirely different way, emerging out of the great silence into the human stillness that reflects it, if we can stop long enough to listen and look.

 

 

The Noisy Protests, and a Silent Vigil

Tonight, our cathedral is holding a silent candlelight vigil as our first response to the impasse between the protesters and government here in Quebec. Negotiations broke down recently when the goverment walked out. This past weekend, Montreal hosted its annual Grand Prix Formula 1 race, and as a symbol of wealth, excess, and sexual exploitation, it became a focus of the latest protests; demonstrators against sexual exploitation of women joined the students.

Some of it was humorous -- I can't stand the Grand Prix, and appreciated the symbolism of naked andnear-naked students marching along streets thronged with the "beautiful people" who follow Grand Prix events -- but the riot police were right there too. Obviously the city and merchants don't like this economic disruption, especially as we head into the season of summer festivals. There were many arrests and a number of clashes with police, who continue to overreact, using tear gas and pepper spray and beating some protesters, and residents were kept awake into the early hours by the police helicopter; several of my choir frends said they'd been unable to sleep, which happened to us earlier when the helicopters were in our neighborhood.

It's a tense situation, and not getting better. A lot of older people have joined the protests because they're appalled and anger about the hastily-passed Law 78, which prohibits demonstrations or gatherings by more than 50 people without prior permission, ; the issue is no longer tuition hikes but mroe of a generalized, Occupy-Movement-related outrage about systemic problems and not being heard. Other people are getting really fed up with the protests and disruption. Everyone is tired and the groups seem increasingly polarized rather than moving toward a solution.

So here we are, holding a silent vigil. A friend of mine who's been very upset about police violence and Law 78, wrote to say that he doesn't think the vigil will do much good and that the church, as usual, lacks courage. The fact is that our cathedral community is divided, just like the rest of society, but we've issued a statement that came out of our group discussions, written by a small group I was part of, and now formally adopted:

We at Christ Church Cathedral [Montreal] are greatly concerned with the current social crisis. While this crisis began with the question of university fees, we are now faced with a larger question. What kind of society do we want and how can we build a future together based on equity and respect for all?

As a faith community and as citizens of Québec, we at Christ Church Cathedral call for a society:

· Where the dignity and equality of each person is respected,
· Where the voice of every human being is heard, and
· Where the principle of non-violence prevails and where power is not abused.

Therefore, we urge for negotiations to take place in a spirit of genuine cooperation and compromise, with the aim of finding a just and equitable solution to the present crisis that articulates a shared vision for the future.

Our Dean was on the CBC yesterday morning, talking to a respectful but questioning interviewer. I liked what he said.

And this is what I wrote back to my friend; not just a letter but a chance for me to try to conslidate my own thoughts:

Dear ___:

I hear you. At the beginning of this conversation within our community, I had hoped we could make a stronger statement, such as, "Violence in any form is unacceptable, and this law is unacceptable and is leading to greater polarization of our society." When I saw how much division there was in our community, I realized we couldn't do that, certainly not right now. In fact, the statement we're making is closer to it than I had expected. We are saying that violence is unacceptable, we're saying that we must listen, hear and talk to one another, we're saying that we have a different vision of how society can and should be.

No, one candlelight vigil isn't going to change things very much, but as a witness in our city it is actually something people haven't seen. It's a space of silence in the midst of a great deal of noise and confusion, and that is powerful. I think it will actually get some attention and make some people think. And it also moves us forward as a community -- without doing violence to one another in the process. We have to see it as a first step for us, too.

I don't agree that we're living in a military society now. Syria is a militarized society, as are many totalitarian regimes around the world. We're far from that here, and even the U.S. -- which I've criticized for decades -- is far from being truly militarized. I do strongly agree that laws like Loi 78 are the first step toward the erosion of freedom and liberty, and they must be opposed right at the beginning, and removed like dangerous weeds. If the church isn't ready to say that, then people like you and I need to look for other places where we can express our opinion -- and there are plenty of those -- and still work within our church community with love and patience.

The church's initial position has been very frustrating to me at different times in my life -- it has often seemed timid and "behind" on important issues. But as I get older I realize that God's time is not like ours. During my lifetime the North American church has moved from opposition to strong support for civil rights, for women, and for gay people, finally embracing the role of blacks, women, and openly gay people in every sacrament and in every role within the church. That is huge, and it gives me hope.

The issues that young people are pointing out in the Occupy Movement -- economic disparity and lack of equal opportunity, environmental degradation, the role of extreme wealth and greed, and lack of true democracy, militarism and erosion of personal freedom and civil rights, and incessant global warfare over ideologies, religions, and resources, to name just a few -- are not new (as the Gospels tell us!) but are presenting themselves today with greater and greater urgency because now we can see that the whole planet is an interlocking web of systems in danger of collapse. The church is really only just beginning to grapple with how it can respond, and first it has to see and disentangle itself from its own complicity in the systems of power, oppression, and fearful maintenance of the status quo.

That's a long, difficult process. I think Jesus understood that very well. He had the fire of an angry young man, but his sadness tells me that he also understood human nature: how slow we are to "get it," how fearful we are of losing what we have, how quickly we judge and persecute. That's why, I think, in his most famous teachings he didn't leave us with a revolutionary message about fighting and overthrowing the powers, but with the words, "Love one another" and "Blessed are the peacemakers." He realized that the only way toward lasting change starts with love and must always be animated by love. It starts with God in the heart of one person and spreads outward. Non-violence is one expression of that love. Standing together tonight, in spite of our differences, is another.

Each of us has a different role in these processes. Part of what we need to pray about and work on now is discerning those roles, I think. I'm grateful to you for your honesty about how the protests have affected you and I know it's helped us get to this point. I'm absolutely confident that over time we will see movement and greater courage within the church on these issues, just as we have on others. Right now, this small step may feel like it's too little in the face of big problems, but I think if we remember, "Where love is, God is there also" a way will open.

love,
Beth

An Ordination, and Some Memories

The clerical procession

Last Sunday, three of my friends were ordained at our cathedral: one to the diaconate, and two to the priesthood. I was in the loft, singing with the choir, and had a bird's-eye view of the processions and the proceedings (but unfortunately, only my camera phone in my pocket.)

An ordination is a momentous occasion, representing and celebrating many years of discernment, struggle, study, training and preparation. In liturgical traditions such as ours, the ordinand is taking solemn vows and receiving permission to do particular tasks. Deacons (the Greek word means "servant", "minister", or "messanger") are the church's eyes and ears and hands in the world; they also preach and assist at the mass. In most cases being ordained a deacon is the first step toward becoming a priest, which happens after another year, though some people feel called to the diaconate itself as a profession. In the case of priests, ordination means being able to perform all the sacraments such as baptism and marriage, and particularly, to "say mass" or celebrate the Eucharist.

I've known a lot of priests as good friends, and had a number of friends who have become priests during the time I've known them. Following and writing about Gene Robinson's journey from priest to his ordination as bishop gave me an additional window into the deeply personal journey this unusual and difficult path entails. Nobody takes it lightly, and an ordination always feels moving to me.

The candidate for deacon kneels alone at the altar.

The friends who were ordained on Sunday included a woman who is our present assistant at the cathedral, and two men, both of whom are openly gay and in committed relationships. Although such ordinations have been going on for some time in the U.S., this was the first ordination of an openly gay, non-celibate candidate to the priesthood in our diocese. Last year, when he was ordained a deacon, people rose and objected at the point in the service where the bishop asks if anyone feels there is "an impediment." This year, the bishop read a letter of objection he had received, but no one stood up in person , and the bishop calmly proceeded. When the ordinations were finished and the new deacon and priests presented, the congregation warmly applauded for many minutes; most of us have been involved in this struggle for years, and we recognized the moment for what it was.

The clergy gather to lay hands on the candidates for priesthood at the moment of ordination.

As I watched and listened and sang, I thought back to the time when there were no women priests -- in my childhood, women were not even allowed to read the lessons or to serve on the vestry. I thought of Gene Robinson's ordination, and his appearance at this cathedral for our first "OutMass" a year later -- of how packed it was, of the tears in the eyes of people who had never dared hope they would be accepted by a church because of their sexual orientation; men and women who had been shamed and rejected by the Roman Catholic church and denied communion, and community; people who had not taken communion for decades but did so that day as they listened, some weeping, to an openly gay bishop tell them they were loved by God just as they were, for that is how they had been created. That may have been the day, I think, that our bishop made the courageous decision to stand behind the ordination of gay men and women in our diocese, and soon formally accepted the candidacy of one of the men who was ordained last Sunday.

Bishop Gene Robinson preaches at the first OutMass, Christ Church Cathedral, Montreal, in the summer of 2006

For the most part, I feel the church and most congregations in North America, at least, are moving on. In England, there's still a huge and ridiculous debate over whether women are qualified to be bishops, and in other parts of the world the church still upholds laws that demonize and persecute homosexuals. Gene Robinson was utterly alone in the Anglican Communion for a number of years but now is no longer the only openly gay bishop to be elected. (He's also retiring this year.) The Catholic church is still embroiled in scandals over predatory, pedophile priests who did incalculable damage to children, and yet refuses to budge on the issues of ordaining women, or allowing priests to marry. I'm glad my denomination is less stuck, and tries to act with integrity, even as the church's relevance wanes, and glad I've been able to play a small part in the ongoing struggle for equality for all people.

Annunciations

Natalie d'Arbeloff did a recent take-off on a Fra Angelico "Annunciation," for her accordion book project, and asked if any of us could identify the source. I did a little research to identify the original painting, but then found myself looking at other versions of the same subject by the same artist: Fra Angelico, who lived in Renaissance Italy between 1395 and 1455.

It wasn't unusual for Renaissance artists to revisit a common subject like the angel Gabriel telling Mary she was going to bear a child, especially when they were commissioned to paint complex altarpieces (see the full example in the third image, below) which often showed scenes from the life of Christ.

What's particularly interesting, though, is how the depictions change. The gestures and attitudes of the figures may, at first glance, look similar but they often show an evolution in the artist's thinking about what was going on in the story, or they may reflect the desires, position, or status of the patron who has commissioned the work.The painting that Natalie used (at left) has a formal composition, with the figures arranged in opposition and framed by the architecture of the courtyard and the formal garden beyond it. However, those are pretty fantastic striped wings on Gabriel! Here Mary is leaning forward to receive the message from the seated angel, who points toward heaven. Though it looks earlier, this is a small painting from a series Fra Angelico did not manage to complete at the end of his life.

In the version below (Convent of San Marco, late 1430s) the figures are under the porch, and the feeling is much more intimate. They've both got haloes; Gabriel's wings are feathery and developed, but he too has his arms crossed and seems almost to be bowing before Mary. The garden at left is developed and realistic.

 

In the famous "Prado Altarpiece" (1430), painted for the Church of San Domenico in Fiesole and sold to Spain in 1611, the theology of the incarnation has been developed through extensive use of symbolism. The garden becomes the garden of Eden, with Adam and Eve being thrown out in humanity's fall from grace. These two events are tied together, indicating the reversal that Christ's birth was supposed to represent for human beings.

I spent more time studying yet another version, below, from Fra Angelico's Cortona altarpiece (1432-1434). The figures are fluid, realistic, and arrested in their motion; the perspective is complicated; there's a lot of gold being used -- look at those gilded wings and coin-like haloes -- and the decorative details everywhere in the painting are very developed and elaborate. Gabriel even speaks golden words toward Mary, and there is a lot of nuance in her gaze and their gestures.

Ultimately, inspired by Natalie's example, I began thinking about making a relief print based on this painting. I did a sketch, looking at the painting on the computer screen, and then worked on tracing paper with pen and ink, simplifying the poses, exaggerting some features, and adding heavy ink margins to my drawing. Then I cut out the figures, making deliberately rough outlines, and moved them around; then I glued them down and did some more drawing, cutting and glueing.

I was interested in what the placement said about their relationship, but also in the more abstract issue of how the shapes fit together and interacted, even before the addition of haloes and any background structures. I decided to zoom into the scene to concentrate attention on the actual encounter. It seemed like I wanted Mary to be definitely seated, and lower than Gabriel, but I don't like her downcast eyes; her crossed hands are submissive enough. In the next iteration I'll change the gaze so she's looking up at him, and change his eye so that it looks down.  I do like what's happening now in the negative shape between the two of them, and want to go further with the positive/negative shapes and overall abstraction. This is all very preliminary, but it seems like there are still a lot of ways to go with this, 600 years later, so stay tuned for further developments!