the cassandra pages

Update

My mother died at 7:30 am today. It was much faster than we expected, but relatively peaceful and very merciful; my father, husband and I were all with her, talking softly to her and holding her, and she was very aware of our presence. Thank you to all of you who have left comments or simply visited here and thought of us; I really do know that I have many friends here who care about me. I'll be back to talk with you pretty soon.

Letting Go

Light after the storm, Madison County, New York, May 21, 2006. The storm was SNOW in the higher places, like Paris Hill. (click on the image for a larger version)

I've been reluctant to write here about my mother's illness because of wanting to respect her privacy -- and because reading my blog has been something she did faithfully. But it seems clear that she probably will not be reading it again, and so I can tell you a little more about where I am and what I've been doing and feeling.

My mother has had ovarian cancer for the past three years. She had surgery when it was diagnosed, and then had chemotherapy, and she has had a very good quality of life for almost all of this time. Around Christmas, the chemo started to be less helpful, and its effect on her body mroe extreme; she began to lose a lot of weight and to get weaker and more easily fatigued. There have been a number of crises in the past couple of months: a blocked bile duct that caused jaundice and was managed with a temporary stent; a serious infection that landed her in the hospital a few weeks ago. After that, her health has declined pretty rapidly, and she has refused any additional treatment other than palliative care. I was here for ten days during and after that hospitalization, then went home, and we came back yesterday. She was glad to see us when we arrived last night -- and today is the first day when she has not gotten up at all. We're expecting a visit from the hospice nurse later this afternoon.

As I wrote to some close friends, this is a very sad time, but it is also beautiful, and strangely peaceful. I remember, lying next to her while she semi-sleeps, holding her hand, the times she was the one next to my bed when I was sick as a little girl. And I am aware, more than ever, of what a great circle life is and how it is both a simple biological pattern, making perfect sense, and a mystery we cannot begin to understand.

I have no idea how much time this process will take, but I will be staying here...I'll write occasionally, when I can. We're all grateful for your thoughts and prayers and love.

Looking at Immortality

For some reason, Andru's posts at oncaesura haven't been updating on my Bloglines list, but today I went there anyway and found a treasure-trove of recent links and writing. I'd like to call your attention to two in particular. First, an article from Harvard Divinity Bulletin by Karen Armstrong, Is Immortality important? Religion is About Inhabiting the Eternal in the Here and Now. I was lucky enough to hear Karen Armstrong speak at McGill University recently, and she included some of this material in what she said that evening. I was very impressed with her in person; she was much warmer and funnier than I'd expected, though her piercing intelligence was exactly as I had thought it would be.

Second, the former blogger Abdul-Walid of Acerbia has contributed a memorable essay, Vertigo, which I will not ruin with a synopsis, but merely commend to your reading.

Bistro Evening

Green Plums

Tonight we got on our bikes and rode through the park as the sun was setting. It was the first dry, partially sunny day for a long time, and people were out, looking happy: an elderly woman, red-haired and smiling at nothing but the beauty of the day, drove her motorized wheelchair down the bikepath, and a young couple strolled along the lake, the man attentive and ahndsome, the woman cheerful and very pregnant, wearing a tight black top with a wide bright green band around her round belly. We headed down Duluth all the way to the Portugese section, near St. Laurent, and stopped at a favorite bistro, where we ordered a half carafe of red wine which came with warm bread and a small bowl of tapas: glistening little black olives and succulent marinated fava beans. After that, a bowl of tomato-y seafood soup, with pieces of mussels and clams; then seafood penne for me and fried calamari for him. By the time we ordered coffee and a piece of apple strudel, we had struck up a conversation with our waiter, who told us he had lived in Florida for five years while he played baseball in the American minor leagues, but then had come back to Montreal, tired of having knee operations  -- and also of the racism he had encountered in the south. "Toronto is more like that, frankly," he said. "More like a big American city. But in Montréal, and especially in this area here," -- he gestured toward the window -- "you have French, English, Portugese, Asians, Moroccans...everybody...and they all make an attempt to speak the language and to get along together." he shrugged and grinned. "I like it,"he said, simply. We lingered over the last of the wine, watching the other diners and the large platters of seafood and chicken coming out of the kitchen with its big charcoal grill. Across the street, blooming pink and orange bougainvilla trailed across the window of a small store selling plants and horticulture supplies. Two women near us talked non-stop, and polished off a delicious-looking plate of caramel custard, and we offered to take a photograph of a family of four at the next table when we saw the father struggling with a new camera: the parents and sister had come over from the U.K. to visit their son, who was a student at McGill. "Can you do it , really?" they asked. "It's a new camera and we don't even know how to work it." J. said he'd try to figure it out. He took a picture and handed it back to them. "This is wonderful!" they exclaimed in surprise. "You might have a new career!" J. raised his eyebrows at me and laughed.

After we paid our bill we walked to the end of Duluth, where it runs into Park Mont-Royal, and looked out over the city, alight, before heading back to our bikes. A friperie (used clothing shop) displayed knotted scarves in all the colors of the rainbow, and In the window of one of the Portugese bakeries rectangular white wedding cakes slept like snowfields next to round layer cakes with dolls set in the middles, the cakes frosted to look like the doll's skirts.It was still cool, but in some of the restaurants the windows were open and people sat on the terraces, their tables lit by candles. Voices drifted from the apartments above; a young man sat on the sill of an upstairs window, using his laptop;  I looked around, a little wistfully. "I'm not sure I'll ever be able to relax enough to really and truly be a Montréaler," I said. "Oh, I think you have a better chance than I do," said J. He took my hand. "We'll try."

Wet

We're wet here In the northeast; the rivers are overflowing, the ground sodden, the sky teeming. One's normally dry condition is impossible to maintain. All of which reminded me of last Sunday at the cathedral, where there were two baptisms.

Now, I have to preface the following remarks by saying that I have a problem with baptism in general. As a way of welcoming a brand new person, infant baptism is an understandable ritual in the life of a religious community. I just have serious problems with the way all religions mark one's "inside" or "outside" status through some ceremony and taking of vows which may be totally sincere and reasonable - even (if we really listen to the promises we're making) binding the person to a way of life that is inclusive rather than exclusive of others - but which serve much more often to divide those who share the ritual anointing from everyone else. And I have really serious problems with the idea that baptism "saves" one person as opposed to another who hasn't been baptized. I think that is absolutely ridiculous.

Be that as it may, baptisms tend to be a happy thing at the cathedral, partly because the woman priest who usually performs them just loves babies, and is incapable of making the event into a formal or repetitive ritual. On this particular day – la fête des mères, or Mother’s Day – the two families, both quite extended, filled the first two or three pews on each side of the sanctuary, and two white-robed babies were passed from arm to arm of various smiling relatives. As it turned out, it was quite a Montréal-esque occasion as well. When the priest went to the pulpit for the sermon, she began in French: one of the couples, whom she had married, was francophone, and the other anglophone, so the baptismal liturgy went back and forth between English and French in  typical Montréal style. One of the couples was also of mixed race, a fact that most people in the city don’t seem to even notice.

(The New Testament lesson for the morning was the story from the Book of Acts in which the disciple Philip comes upon a eunuch reading the Hebrew scriptures in his parked chariot; the eunuch invites Philip to climb up, and asks him to explain what he’s reading. The two ride along, discussing, and when the chariot passes by some water, the eunuch suggests that they stop so that Philip can baptize him. Afterwards, the eunuch goes “on his way rejoicing,” but Philip disappears, and finds himself deposited in a faraway town, where he goes on preaching and teaching.)

After the presentation of the two tiny candidates for baptism, the service moved from the main sanctuary of the cathedral to the eastern transept (better known as the baptistry) where the font stands in the middle of the floor. Members of the congregation joined the families and clergy around the font, as water was poured from a great height, with much flourish, into the font. The first baby, a little dark-haired girl of a few months, looked around quizzically and never uttered a peep as water was tipped from a scallop shell onto her head. The second baby started whimpering before her mother ever handed her to the priest, and the crescendo built into a microphone-shattering wail that had us all laughing.

Is baptism like marriage now in Québec – an outmoded ritual, considered unnecessary and old-fashioned – or do most people still bring their children into the church at least that once, in a nod to the faith many people say they still have but don’t necessarily practice? I wonder. I had never seen any of the members of those two families in church before, but they certainly knew what to do, and most of them got up later and went to receive communion, looking quite at home.

Two Dark Continents

In today's Washington Post, an article about South African Archbishop Ndungane - the successor of Desmond Tutu - and his courageous and progressive views on homosexuality and faith.

Calling homosexuality a "pastoral, secondary problem," the archbishop of the Church of the Province of Southern Africa estimates that 70 percent of the world's 77 million Anglicans have grown tired of discussing the divisive topic and wish to return to the "life and death issues of this world."

Included in Ndungane's fundamental issues are alleviation of severe poverty, the HIV-AIDS epidemic and educational inequalities.

"Of course, you will always get people who are disgruntled, but nowadays, because of technology, minorities can make the loudest noise and tend to confuse people," he said.

Not to be outdone by their African colleagues, U.S. Episcopalian conservatives are calling for an ecclesiastical trial of the Rt. Rev. Gene Robinson and the 42 bishops who participated in his consecration:

The lay group, organized this year, presents five "distinctions" that make charges against Robinson and his consecrators "uniquely different from allegations in all past presentments."

The church members say their purpose is to determine the meaning and validity of church law, doctrine and practice, and to punish any bishops who have violated their ordination and consecration vows or committed other "grave offenses."

Last month, the group asked Robinson and his consecrators to "recant, repent, resign or retire" but received no response.

The traditionalist group has launched a petition drive that will continue at the Episcopal Church's general convention exhibit in Columbus, Ohio, in June.

Incredible.

Trillium

Here's the sea of trillium - see the whitecaps? - mentioned in an earlier post (click on image for a larger version).

Jung 2.

"Children react much less to what grown-ups say than to the imponderables in the surrounding atmosphere. The child unconsciously adapts himself to them, and this produces in him correlations of a compensatory nature. The peculiar "religious"ideas that came to me even in my earliest childhood were spontaneous products whcih can be understood only as reactions to my parental environment and to the spirit of the age. The religious doubts to which my father was later to succumb naturally had to pass through a long period of incubation. Such a revolution of one's world, and of the world in general, threw its shadows ahead, and the shadows were all the longer, the more desperately my father's conscious mind resisted their power. It is not surprising that my father's forebodings put him in a state of unrest, which communicated itself to me.

I never had the impression that these influences emanated from my mother, for she was somehow rooted in deep, invisible ground, though it never appeared to me as confidence in her Christian faith. For me it was somehow connected with animals, trees, mountains, meadows, and running water, all of which contrasted most strangely with her Christian surface and her conventional assertions of faith. This background corresponded so well to my own attitude that it caused me no uneasiness; on the contrary, it gave me a sense of security and the conviction that here was solid ground on whcih one could stand..."

Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections

Being with my parents this week - for the longest time alone in years and years - and in a setting so steeped in memories of my childhood and youth - makes me read a passage like this with new eyes. I'll have more to say about this when I have more time to write, but this is just one of many questions I've been thinking about in this environment and this time of reflection on who I was, and what I have became. And it brings me to ask the question - how did your parents' approach to religion influence your own spirituality, or lack thereof?

One and Only

An article on people like me - only children - on today's BBC. Like the author, I've always been sort of annoyed about the stereotypes, and hope I don't fit the negative ones!