the cassandra pages

Hermit Diary 39. Deer and Nasturtiums

Like everyone I know, I've been thinking a lot about Ruth Bader Ginsburg: saddened by her death, immensely grateful for her life, concerned about the future. If there's one legacy I'm sure she wanted to leave with us, it is that we must be just as courageous and determined as she was, and never give up, even in the face of enormous obstacles and opposition.

As 2020 continues to throw challenges at us, both in the world sphere and in our personal lives, how do we keep going? It all felt like too much several months ago! But keep going we must. For me, that means going back to the wells that nourish me. My wells may be different from yours, but they include music, art, books, and nature, all of which have an aspect of contemplative practice. Being with people is also nourishing, and like you, I've had to adjust the ways in which that can happen. It's not ideal, but cutting myself off from friends and family doesn't work at all, so I've gotten used to seeing people (mostly) online, and am grateful for it. I've decreased my social media activity a great deal, and it's definitely had a beneficial effect on my mental health and equanimity, slowing and quieting my mind as well as giving me more time.

The first leaves are beginning to turn here in Montreal, though it will be another month before they've fallen. The air and especially the nights are chilly, but the sun is bright and warm. Spending some time with these nasturtiums cheered me up. I look at my cat and realize she is just living in each moment; the nasturtiums, like the lilies of the field, "neither toil nor spin", and they certainly have way less awareness than the cat, but are simply beautiful for their brief lives. The other day, during a visit to a national park near the city, we had an encounter with a doe grazing in the forest: she reminded me of the deer on this little Greek pot.

Obviously we must try to protect the life on our planet, and each other, and work toward governmental responsibility and change, but we also need to take care of ourselves and find ways to take breaks from the spinning, obsessive anxiety that is so pervasive right now. No one can live, and certainly not contribute to solutions, within a constant barrage of negativity and anxiety. So I need these moments, which remind me how much of life is still beautiful, graceful, and quiet.

How are you doing, and where do you find some solace these days?

 

Hermit Diary 38. The times are out of joint: Seamus Heaney, Ballymurphy, and Kenosha

Yesterday I was reminded by Teju Cole that it was the anniversary of the death of Seamus Heaney.

This morning, as I sat with the cat and the peaceful light, I took down my copy of Heaney's North (1975), which is both about the idea of North, and Northern Ireland. Opening the book at random, I read “Whatever You Say Say Nothing”

The poem begins:

I’m writing just after an encounter
With an English journalist in search of ‘views
On the Irish thing’. I’m back in winter
Quarters where bad news is no longer news,

Where media-men and stringers sniff and point,
Where zoom lenses, recorders and coiled leads
Litter the hotels. The times are out of joint
But I incline as much to rosary beads

As to the jottings and analyses
Of politicians and newspapermen
Who’ve scribbled down the long campaign from gas
And protest to gelignite and sten,

Who proved upon their pulses ‘escalate’,
‘Backlash’ and ‘crack down’, ‘the provisional wing’,
‘Polarization’ and ‘long-standing hate’.
Yet I live here, I live here too, I sing...

and it ends:

O land of password, handgrip, wink and nod,
Of open minds as open as a trap,

Where tongues lie coiled, as under flames lie wicks,
Where half of us, as in a wooden horse
Were cabin’d and confined like wily Greeks,
Besieged within the siege, whispering morse.

--

This morning from a dewy motorway
I saw the new camp for the internees:
A bomb had left a crater of fresh clay
In the roadside, and over in the trees

Machine-gun posts defined a real stockade.
There was that white mist you get on a low ground
And it was deja-vu, some film made
Of Stalag 17, a bad dream with no sound.

Is there life before death? That’s chalked up
In Ballymurphy. competence with pain,
Coherent miseries, a bite and sup,
We hug our little destiny again.

 

Then I opened the precious book to the page with Heaney's inscription (to the original owner, a man in Toronto), my left hand holding the curl of the facing page flat, and thought: his hand held this book just like that, before his pen touched the paper, on a day in March 1986 when he was still very much alive.

I hadn’t read the news yet; I wanted a few more minutes of the soft light on the oxalis and spirea, the seeping red of the begonia blooms, the slightly heavy lift of coffee to lips. Better, I thought, to listen to the poet speak of humanity’s endless appetite for conflict, while he manages, genius that he is, to work in Shakespeare and the Greeks, the Russian camps, the endless clamouring for news on the way to Ballymurphy or Kenosha, and have his company this morning as I “hug my little destiny.”

I copied out the poem and wrote this far. Then I looked up the details about “Ballymurphy.”

Eleven civilians were killed in the Ballymurphy massacre in August, 1971, by members of the Parachute Regiment of the British Army, which had already been in Northern Ireland since 1969. Britain had just launched “Operation Demetrius” which had the objective of interning without trial anyone suspected of being a member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army.

Members of the regiment said that as they entered Ballymurphy, they were shot at and returned fire. An account by Mike Jackson, who later became head of the British Army, stated that those killed in the shootings were Republican gunmen. This account was emphatically denied by the Catholic families of the people killed, all of whom were civilians. They included a Catholic priest, Father Hugh Mullan, who was trying to aid a wounded man, reportedly waving a white flag as he did so, and a woman, Joan Connolly, who was standing near the army base and then was left lying in a field for hours without medical attention, where she died.

None of the soldiers were held accountable and there was no investigation at the time.

45 years later, in 2016, an inquest was requested by the Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland. Funding for the inquest was “deferred” by the ruling party, and hearings did not begin until 2018. The last witnesses were heard in March 2020 after 100 days of testimony. A report is expected “in the coming months.”

--

Now, I’ll summon the courage to turn to today's news.

Hermit Diary 37: Beginning Again, and Again, to Draw

Red ochre on my hand, Anatoliki, Mani Peninsula, Greece.

 

This week, thanks to a link from Jean Morris, I read an essay by David Farrier at LitHub, titled "On John Berger and Rediscovering Drawing during Lockdown." Some of you might connect with the personal story he relates:

When I was younger, I used to draw. Not particularly well; enough to gain a little praise from adults and peers, although it wasn’t praise that interested me. There was a stillness in drawing that I didn’t find anywhere else. Paul Klee famously called drawing, “taking a line for a walk.” In a way, like walking, it gave me a sharper sense of how my own body occupied space. The close attention to shape and space was grounding. It made me feel both more distinct from my surroundings, and at the same time more a part of them. Knowing that I could draw was a talisman I carried with me, like a pebble in my pocket.

And then, without any clear sense of why, I stopped.

It’s now nearly 20 years since I have drawn out of habit. When my children were small I did plenty of scribbling and doodling with them; twice, I have painted my wife a picture for her birthday. But I have rarely sat down to draw for the sake of it. On the few occasions I have picked up a pencil I retreated after a few sketches. The line was broken. I felt guilty for letting it go, and unable to pick it up again.

As he remarks, the initial appeal of drawing was not in seeking praise, but in finding a sense of groundedness, that he defines as "stillness" and a different sense of self, as both "distinct from his surroundings" and at the same time more connected.

During the lockdown in Edinburgh, he kept thinking about drawing.

Thinking too much about the sudden disconnection from the life I knew before, or about how dramatically the future I had anticipated had changed, brought on a kind of vertigo. Lockdown left me feeling unmoored, and my mind turned often to drawing. I needed the old feeling of being grounded by the line. But still, as the weeks of lockdown went by I didn’t draw.

Instead, I read John Berger’s essays about drawing.

Berger compared the drawn line to music, saying that the line emerges from somewhere and leads you on to someplace new. As a musician, it's always been helpful to me to remember that music is never static; it's always coming from somewhere and going somewhere. As an artist, I agree with Berger too: the drawn line arises and moves forward, and so do I, the draughtsperson. Each drawing takes me somewhere I didn't anticipate, and in some very subtle way, changes me. But during the time when I'm drawing, everything except the line is very still.

“Each mark on the paper is a stepping-stone,” Berger writes, “from which you proceed to the next, until you have crossed your subject as thought it were a river.”

After all those years of not drawing, Farrier finally pulls out an old sketchbook and some charcoals and goes out into the garden. He makes three sketches, and describes them all as "clumsy" but in the third, a branch of tomatoes, he says he "feels something shift."

But then, as Berger wrote, real drawing is both “a clumsiness” and “a constant question.” I realized that drawing is not a pause, but an entry into the complexity and open-endedness of any given moment.

I too felt something shift as I read this essay. It reminded me that drawing is not just something I do, but a place where I go. It's a human activity nearly as old as our species itself. Yes, some of us have greater facility and perhaps greater innate talent, but drawing always improves with practice. I've been fortunate to draw almost continually, all my life, and it's been a great help to me during this period of time. But from what many of you have told me, you're more like the author, who "for years, ... had shied away from drawing because I regretted breaking with it, and as more time passed the gap seemed ever more difficult to bridge."

Regardless of where we begin, or begin again, the place where drawing happens is accessible to everyone, and doesn't need to involve a great deal of self-consciousness or self-criticism. Sometimes all it takes is the courage to makes some marks.  The hand, the eye, a stick of charred wood taken from a fire or a lump of ochre picked up from the ground -- this is all we need to take a line on a journey, and be taken by that line to somewhere new.

Basil and Tomatoes, fountain pen on paper, 9" x 6".

 

 

Hermit Diary 36: Out of the City

For someone who loves the countryside and nature as much as I do, staying in the city this summer has been a real stretch. Usually we would go to the U.S. to visit my father and spend time at the lake, but the border is closed to non-essential travel, and even if we did it, such a trip would mean a month of strict quarantine - two weeks on either side. Staying in hotels or B&Bs seems risky, so overnights away haven't really been considered. I've never been so grateful to live near a large city park, or to have a fairly private terrace that I could fill with plants.

For several weeks, we've been working very hard to clean our studio of everything we're not going to need. This has meant sorting through possessions, tools, supplies, equipment, and the work of our whole professional and creative lifetimes. It's a huge, heavy, and sometimes emotional task that felt almost overwhelming at the beginning, but after steadily putting in several hours a day, day after day, we're getting there. We've sold or given away a lot, recycled or thrown out the rest, and are gradually getting down to the core of what we want and need to keep for the next period of our lives. As you can perhaps imagine, doing this in the middle of a pandemic, very hot weather, and the current worldwide political and social crises has contributed to a roller-coaster of moods, from frustration to encouragement, that we've managed with as much equanimity as we could. However, we've really needed some breaks, and those are coming now in the form of day trips out of the city.

One beautiful day this past week, we decided to drive south toward Vermont and visit a favorite farm that used to be a perennial stop when we were making that trip every fortnight. Earlier in August, we had driven to our favorite fromagerie, Fritz Kaiser, where we bought cheese made from the milk of his herd of Brown Swiss, goats, and something new: water buffalo, which was delicious. Then we swung back to this same farm to buy the first sweet corn of the season.

We love seeing the flat fields of southern Quebec, filled with hay and corn and soybeans; the blowsy summer clouds; the blue skies.

At the farm this time we bought corn, strawberries, and field tomatoes, and then sat at a picnic table beside the barn, eating local ice cream from little paper cups that came with a wooden stick -- when was the last time I'd had one of those?

Then we went into the barn to find the source of the deafening crowing that had punctuated our snack. It was this magnificent Plymouth Rock rooster, who continued to crow while we visited the ducks and geese and chickens...

the rabbits...

...and the sheep and the goats. Watch the video and at the end, you'll hear him too!

 

Hermit Diary 35: Proud

 

It's Pride Week in Montreal, and although there won't be the usual city-wide festivities, the cathedral held a virtual version of our annual "OutMass" on Sunday evening. The link above is our choir's offering of hope and love, with photographs from last year's Pride parade. This piece of music was written by the British composer Will Todd and made available to musicians worldwide. It was originally written to celebrate the NHS in the early days of the pandemic, and offer some hope and cheerfulness with the rainbow as a symbol, but we felt it was just as appropriate for a dual purpose, acknowledging that the coronavirus is still with us, making events like these as well as the usual closeness between friends impossible, and also as a symbol of Pride.

Just as the service began, our gathering -- which had been advertised and was open to the public -- was Zoom-bombed by a group of anonymous men, who spewed homophobic hate in the most vile way possible. Thanks to the quick reactions of our hosting team, they were removed and the "room" was locked, but of course it was a shock, and distressing. However, the service resumed under the calm leadership of our music director, Jonathan White. The incident was unable to mar the beauty, love, and solidarity of the hour that followed, which was filled with music, spoken word, prayer, reflection, and shared purpose. In fact, I think all the positive qualities of the gathering were actually augmented, and burned into the memories of the people who were present.

When I think of the courage, gentleness, openness, honesty, and calmness of the people of all ages who were gathered, representing all aspects of LGBTQ+ expression as well as their straight allies, and compare it to the cowardice of those who tried to disrupt this beautiful celebration of pride in our human diversity --  and the sanctity of that diversity -- there's really little to say. It's so obvious. Love triumphs over hate.

I'm proud of our community, and extremely proud of and grateful for the friends who planned and prepared this service, and all those who came and stood together on Sunday night. Your strength makes all of us stronger, and I'm glad to be able to help salute you in music and join with you in working for a better, kinder, more just world.

The full service is embedded below. I'd like to call your attention particularly to the section from 26:16 - 32:10, where members of the community offer a litany asking God to "walk with us, grieve with us, and rejoice with us," interposed with Jonathan White singing a Kyrie.

 

 

Hermit Diary 34: The Transformative Power of Color

A few posts back I wrote that I was struggling to do art. Although I'm not back to my former productivity, it's getting better, and what's helping is color.

When I participate in or host zoom chats, I've tried to be conscious of what kind of visual impression I make. Though I'm not a person with a closet full of bright colored clothing, I've worn a lot more of it this spring and summer. Color always lifts my mood -- most of us respond that way. For some reason, human beings seem to echo or take cues from their environment, and while people in the south have no trouble wearing tropical colors, we northerners are notorious for wearing black, grey, brown and white in the colder months, just when everyone needs color the most. (But we're Canadians -- wouldn't want to stand out too much!) Anyway, all I'm saying is that I've been conscious of the effect of color on my spirits during this pandemic, and when I was trying to get back into doing some artwork, it wasn't linework that drew me in, but pure color.

After these still lives of fruit in straight watercolor, I did the piece below, which began as a drawing and ended up with the addition of watercolor.

Still life with Mycenean cup and Mycenean snail shell. Pen and ink with watercolor, 9" x 6".

 

I felt better after doing these, and I hope they cheer you, too. What helping you these days? Have you have had any thoughts about color during this time?

Hermit Diary 33: 50 Years of Ministry

 

On Monday I did this interview with Michael Pitts, former Dean of Christ Church Cathedral in Montreal, author of the newest book at Phoenicia Publishing, and a good friend. The next two days were spent on editing, resulting in the video shown above. Michael is a very progressive thinker and theologian who has written a lot about the issues facing the world and the Church -- and he's not someone who's afraid of change. I hope some of you will watch this, even if you're not a religious person, since we talk about issues of justice, the pandemic, doubt and uncertainty, and how mystery and science need to co-exist, not negate each other.

Here's a preview, in case you want a taste of the longer version:

 

I have to say that I love doing this kind of work, and that learning more about the technical side of video editing has been a pleasure, not a chore. My mind is racing with ideas of how to use live online events and recorded video for effective and creative communication: it's one positive and exciting outcome of our present situation.

 

 

Hermit Diary 32: Sketches from a Greek Roadtrip

 

Come along with me on the road in Greece, as I try to sketch quickly from the car and during brief stops in-between destinations. (Headphones and full-screen viewing recommended, but it's also fine without.)

And please tell me what you like or don't like about this experimental video, because I'm hoping to do more of them. My videos so far are collected on a new page at my artist website, Studio Cassandra.

Thanks for watching!

 

Hermit Diary 31: Struggling with Art

Olive grove near Thebes, stormy day. May 18.

Since the pandemic and self-isolation began, I've been able to write, to work on publishing projects, to study a language, to practice the piano and sing, to get some daily exercise, to cook. But for some reason, it's been really hard for me to draw or paint, and what was a nearly-daily habit has dwindled to near-nothingness. I want to change that, but I also want to understand why it's been so hard.

Memorial bouquet and drawing for my mother, May 23.

Some of it may be emotional. I've never been someone who does art in order to work out my unhappiness, anxiety or other troubling feeling; that's when I turn to writing or music, or sometimes to repetitive or meditative pursuits like knitting, quilting, or bookbinding. I tend to draw or paint when I feel positive, creative, and focused, as well as when I know I've got a stretch of a few undisturbed hours. I've been surprisingly busy, partly because I've been hosting three Zoom groups each week and participating in several others, and also because of supporting and/or keeping up with many more people than before. But I don't think it's just that. I think most of the time I simply haven't felt I was in a zone where I could, or even wanted to, draw. And that in itself is troubling, and may be an indication that on some psychological level, this thing is taking a toll. Most of my art comes out of a feeling of joy or delight in the natural world or visual characteristics like color and form. I'm in the same small apartment all day, every day, and because we've had such a large number of cases here in Montreal, I keep moving on my early-morning walks; I don't feel particularly comfortable sitting in the park for hours with a sketchbook while lots of people go by. There's not a lot of visual inspiration, but that's just an excuse: there's always a subject to be found.

On the terrace, pen and watercolor (detail)

Beneath it all there's a feeling, both with the pandemic and the heightened awareness of Black Lives Matter, which does matter to me a great deal, that making "beautiful" art in this moment is frivolous, superfluous, socially-irrelevant -- and, at worst, white, privileged, and clueless. This is a dilemma into which many artists in all fields fall at some time, and I can talk my way through it to some extent: art and beauty are always relevant, but especially at difficult times, because the human spirit needs them, and because art affirms who we are at our best. But, oddly, it's a lot easier for me to participate in making a virtual choir video than in filling sketchbook pages with color and line and form. It's not just about me, it's collective, and even though we're singing European classical music, I know from comments received that the performances are a comfort that are appreciated by listeners well beyond our own congregation. It also doesn't feel problematic to write a blog post like this or keep my journal or write letters, where I'm trying to figure things out and to communicate.

Toward Corinth (detail). Pen, ink, gouache on toned paper. May 31.

As for art, though... I appreciated a line that my friend Teju Cole wrote in a New York Times collection of essays about the pandemic: "In these bruising days, any delicately made thing quickens the heart."

In a letter of response to him I wrote:

"I worry that all the delicate things are endangered, frivolous, or irrelevant, and that makes me sad, because I feel we need them more than ever when our hearts are so battered. Recently, inadvertently, I saw a set of collaged photographs of the youngest Black person to be executed in the United States -- it was a 14-year-old boy who looked like a child, being strapped into the electric chair -- I don't remember the year. His eyes were open, frightened, but somehow uncomprehending; it was the most horrific series of images, and I can't get them out of my mind. The cruelty of this country has been, and is, limitless."

Perhaps that is the crux of it: we have all been seeing images and videos that are deeply disturbing, and somehow this affects our visual/mental/emotional processing in general, particularly for those like me who are somewhere on the empath spectrum. I'm able to write about how I feel, I'm able to put my emotions into music, but I'm not willing to make dark, disturbing, or violent art -- and "pretty" art feels superficial -- so instead, I don't make much of any at all.

Loneliness. Still life, pen and ink.

It's been impossible not to notice that some of the blogs and social media feeds I follow seem to ignore current realities entirely. Because we need art, I am 100% in favor of people continuing their practices and their work as much as possible. Many musicians and performers cannot work at all, which is crushing. I realize that many people are just barely coping with day-to-day life right now. Others are, frankly, just as self-centered and self-serving as always. But my own position is less precarious than many, so long as neither my husband nor I get sick. John Kennedy famously said, "To those whom much is given, much is expected," but the original quote is actually from the Gospel of Luke: "From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded". I'm thinking hard about balance and integrity: awareness of -- and rethinking -- my own privilege; willingness to learn and change; compassion for others; leadership and speaking out; re-ordering my life to do what I can to help.

Life is not normal right now. It hasn't been normal, in terms of the pandemic, for at least the past four months: it has been a field of death, suffering, anxiety, grief -- and sacrifice on the part of a great many essential workers. The future, by any measure, looks very difficult. And for people of color, who have been disproportionately affected, and whose historic and present oppression and inequalities are now finally in the public's attention, life has not been what we white people call "normal", perhaps ever. I'm reading Ibram X. Kendi's How To Be an Antiracist and highly recommend it. It's time to learn more, no matter how enlightened or allied we think we already are, and the shift in thinking about race that Kendi presents is crucial. Frankly, that's just the beginning of what we need to do.

So how does my art fit into this picture? I know I'm helped by a regular drawing practice. It centers me, and uses a different part of my brain and spirit; as a meditative practice it's good for me. Likewise, if sharing my drawings and paintings creates a bright spot in someone's day, or encourages someone else to keep a sketchbook, then that's good. For all these reasons it's worth keeping at it. Being an artist is part of my identity, but not all of it -- and maybe it needs to take a back seat for a while. I don't want to be represented exclusively right now by pictures of flowers and gardens, landscapes, or harmonious still lives, unless I have worked to imbue that still life or landscape with additional meaning. It's not who I am, and it's not where I'm at.

Hermit Diary 30: Spiritual Inheritance

This entry is cross-posted from the Daily Bread blog at Christ Church Cathedral, for which it was written.

 

Psalm 92

The righteous will flourish like a palm tree,
    they will grow like a cedar of Lebanon;
planted in the house of the Lord,
    they will flourish in the courts of our God.
They will still bear fruit in old age,
    they will stay fresh and green,
proclaiming, “The Lord is upright;
    he is my Rock, and there is no wickedness in him.”

 

Today, June 19, is my maternal grandmother’s birthday. Born in 1900, she would be an impossible 120 years old today, but actually she did live a very long life, to the age of 92, “still bearing fruit in old age.” If I have an “Anglican” forebear, who somehow gave me my faith and also a willingness to be involved with, and work for, the Church, it was my grandmother.

I grew up my grandparents’ big Victorian house in a sleepy town in rural central New York. They lived downstairs, and my parents and I lived upstairs, but it was essentially one home so far as I was concerned, extending outdoors onto the porches and into my grandmother’s gardens. We lived across from the Episcopal rectory, and the church was next to it, across a street, so in addition to being parishioners, we were neighbors and friends with the priests and their families, who were also in and out of our house all the time. Behind the white-clapboarded, New-England style church was an extensive, centuries-old cemetery where my mother taught me to read the inscriptions on the tombstones, before I ever started school.

My father came from a musical Methodist family; my paternal grandfather was a Methodist minister and my grandmother a devout, white-gloved, conservative minister’s wife who never touched alcohol or played cards but loved music and dramatic reading. My tenor-voiced, irrepressible father had been the wild black sheep of that family of four children, and though I inherited the musical gift, their rigid spirituality didn’t have much appeal.

My maternal grandparents, by contrast, were liberal, worldly, expansive people. I guess you could call them “pillars” of the church: staunch supporters and consistent attendees. My grandfather was a frequent member of the vestry, my grandmother was active in the Episcopal Church Women and the altar guild. I grew up singing in the choir and my family always went to church, but I dropped out of Sunday School after a year; I was constantly questioning what was being said and taught, and having a smart but agnostic mother probably didn’t help.

But somehow, my grandmother’s steady faith became an example. She was outspoken and opinionated; a feminist; a longtime teacher; an avid reader; skilled cook, gardener, and seamstress; and a matriarch who ruled the family from her armchair, knitting basket and New York Times Sunday paper at her side (she did the crossword each week in ink). But also tucked away next to that armchair was her 1928 Book of Common Prayer, and a copy of Forward Day by Day, which she followed and prayed from daily, though I never saw her doing it. Her faith was a private matter, and I don’t remember discussing it with her very much, but even as a little girl, I sensed that it was what guided and steadied her strong ship. I spent many years away from the church, but I never completely stopped believing. I always felt that something from my grandmother had taken hold of me and was stored away inside; when I came back, it was clear to me that it was not only her faith, but her broad, inclusive Anglicanism with its love of language, ritual, and music.

After my grandmother died, my mother approached me one day with something in her hand. “I thought maybe you should have this,” she said, handing me my grandmother’s well-worn prayer book. She was right; of the various things I inherited from her, that little book is the most precious. Inside the cover are three simple prayers written in my grandmother’s Palmer-method handwriting: two for preparation for worship, and one for after: “Grant O Lord that the lessons I have learned may take root in my heart, that I may remain faithful to the confession of my faith, and that I may put my faith to practice in my daily life. Through Jesus Christ our Lord.” And I just noticed today that she had left the frayed black ribbon for marking pages at Psalm 139, my own favorite: “O Lord, thou has searched me out and known me,” which contains perhaps the most beautiful expression of God’s constant presence in all of Scripture. In the most difficult moments of my own life, I’ve often thought of my grandmother, and gratefully felt her strength and steadying presence -- which is, of course, simply feeling God through her.

This pandemic has made us all more aware of age, and the aged among us. It has made older people feel more vulnerable and isolated, and, to some extent, expendable; it has brought the pain of separation from loved ones and the fear and reality of dying alone. Western society is particularly good at discarding rather than respecting its elders and seeing them as a source of strength and wisdom. Navigating life’s challenges from a spiritual perspective really does boil down to “forward day by day”, as trite as it sounds; those who have done it have a great deal to teach us.

I love the image in today’s psalm of the human being flourishing like a palm tree, or a cedar of Lebanon, still bearing fruit in old age and staying fresh and green. So, on the positive side, perhaps this crisis could cause us to consider the ways in which we segregate by age, and how we could do more to encourage spiritual mentorship and friendship, as well as youthful companionship, within our own congregation.