the cassandra pages

+Gene Robinson and the Church of England: Calling it Like it Is

One of the privileges and fascinations of being the biographer of a living person is observing, close at hand, how that person changes over time. If the relationship is open and forthright, which mine with Bishop Gene Robinson has always been, you come to know them and learn how they think and react, but you never know exactly how that person is going to grow and change after the book is written and their life goes on. You, and the people close to the subject, can make educated guesses about future behavior, but human beings are fallible under pressure: some break, and some grow stronger.

In my book about Gene, I tried to show, especially in the final chapters, a man was not only accepting the particular role he has been called to by God, or history, or fate, but who was growing daily in willingness both to serve, and to lead. The pressures on him have been enormous, and they have certainly taken a toll. Seeing him recently I was struck by how much older  -- healthy and energetic, but older -- he looks than when we met.

Around the time of his election, he used to say how much he looked forward to the day when he could "just be the bishop of New Hampshire." That day never arrived. Instead, he has chosen to adjust his entire life to the fact that he has been called to serve both as the Bishop of New Hampshire, and as a worldwide symbol of hope, courage, and integrity -- or sin and division, depending on who is doing the judging.

Gene has had to draw upon everything that has made him -- his education and training, his past experience and challenges, his close relationships with family, friends and colleagues, and especially his prayer life -- to find the strength to shoulder his place in history. He's grown from someone who made the hopeful and naive statement I just mentioned, to an outspoken worldwide religious leader who is unafraid to call it like it is, and to challenge the institutional church to literally practice what it preaches - a Gospel of love, integrity, inclusion, forgiveness, and honesty. People listen to him not because he is a "great man" but because he is so clearly a humble human being whose story contains elements of their own. Like many great men, he has come to realize that by risking everything, he has nothing to lose -- and it's given him the courage to take on the "powers and principalities" - which of course include his own institution, the Anglican Church.

Our cathedral in Montreal is hosting its annual OutMass tonight, as part of the city's Gay Pride celebration. Last year, Gene was the preacher at the first OutMass; tonight, the Anglican Bishop of Montreal, Barry Clarke, will be speaking. I'm very sorry I can't be there. But I was thrilled to read an article this morning in the London Times quoting recent remarks Bishop Robinson made while in London, calling on the Church of England to end their two-faced attitude toward gay clergy:

Speaking in an interview in London, Bishop Gene said: "I have met so many gay partnered clergy here and it is so troubling to hear them tell me that their bishop comes to their house for dinner, knows fully about their relationship, is wonderfully supportive but has also said if this ever becomes public then I’m your worst enemy.

"It’s a terrible way to live your life and I think it’s a terrible way to be a church. I think integrity is so important. What does it mean for a clergy person to be in a pulpit calling the parishioners to a life of integrity when they can’t even live a life of integrity with their own bishop and their own church? So I would feel better about the Church of England’s stance, its reluctance to support The Episcopal Church in what it has done if it would at least admit that this not an American problem and just an American challenge. If all the gay people stayed away from church on a given Sunday the Church of England would be close to shut down between its organists, its clergy, its wardens.....it just seems less than humble not to admit that."

Isn't this exactly what needs to be said? I'm proud to call this man my friend, and to pray for his continued health and strength along with all the people who work for justice and compassion in this unjust and often cruel world. Those of us in the laity need to repeat his message; speak out and insist upon progressive change in our parishes, dioceses, and society; and strongly support the clergy who agree but are often in a more difficult position than we are to press for change.

Dieu des arbres

Forest path on the mountain, in Parc Mont-Royal

Ever since we lived with a Quebeçois family for a month, prior to buying our place in Montreal, we've laughed about, but come to really appreciate, the French attitude toward nature. Think Jacques Cousteau waxing rhapsodic about (and anthropomorphizing) the migrating salmon, or the incredible journey of the eels to the Sargasso Sea; think "Winged Migration;" think the movie about the penguins... The woman we lived with was a great lover and protector of all living things, and one of those was a big tree in her back yard, which leafed out during the month of May that we were there. When we admired it, she told us that she had had quite a time with the man in back of her, who wanted her to cut a big limb because it was shading his hot tub. "I don't consider that I own the tree," she said. "It's on my property, but that just means I am its caretaker. The tree belongs to all of us who live here, but it has its own rights." This became a favorite phrase of ours, and now whenever we see the "horticulture" signs and the city trucks going around doing pruning of street trees - sometimes meeting resistance from the local residents - we smile and repeat, "Trees have rights!" I love it that people in the city feel that way, and that many of them are such staunch defenders of greenness. One of the best parts of living in the Plateau are the tree-lined streets, with their combination of young and old trees of many species, each with their own personalities and quirkiness, many planted around with flowers or other plants by the nearest neighbors.

So when I told J. what I had written about in the last post, he said, "I forgot to tell you. You know the big tree in our neighborhood that got hit by lightening and had to be cut last week?"

"Sure,"I said. "I saw that the city had cut it - I stopped to look at the stump and count the rings - there were way too many. It was a really old tree."

"Well," he said, with a little wistful smile on his face, "the other day when I went up the street, there was a woman standing there next to it, and when I went by I heard her saying a prayer in French for the tree."

A Gentle Revenge in the Hollyhocks

Coming back to a garden after two weeks away, at the height of summer, can inspire both dismay and frenzy, and in my case it has at times done both. By now, though, I am mostly an observer of the way in which nature takes over a once-cultivated place. Earlier this spring I made an attempt at planting a few things in the once-vegetable garden: some nasturtiums, a tomato plant, a few sunflowers and nicotiana. After a couple of weeks away I saw it was hopeless; the weeds and grasses that had become established in the past two seasons were so much more vigorous than anything I planted that they spread into the newly-dug areas immediately. I gave up and left them alone; daily attention was required, and I no longer could come close to that. Now, a month and a half later, the nasturtiums are buried in tall grass but their variegated, round leaves look gorgeous as a contrast. A few sunflowers are reaching above the mallows and touch-me-not; they'll bloom in mid-August. The hollyhocks are covered with bindweed, which twines between the stalks in intricate, dancing knots, and today they were pulsating with bumblebees, landing heavily on the strong blossoms and their powdery pollen. At the base of the hollyhocks, the tomato plant looks like it will produce some fruit, but it would like a little more room.

Letting go is being made easier by our neighbors. Today I saw that the people uphill from us have sprayed a huge swatch of the once-wildlife-rich underbrush separating our properties with weedkiller; the ground is scorched, bare, and ugly; the wild grapevines and sumac that sheltered a cardinal family every year are now gone, ready to be replaced by lawn which will be mown by the lawn service they hire. They are idiot suburbanites masquerading as "outdoors people" with their canoes and offroad vehicles, and they're symptomatic of every reason I no longer feel like living here in the village. Our quiet and beloved Icelandic neighbors left at the end of June to begin the next phase of their life; the next week direct-TV dishes were installed on the house's front, and the backyard filled with plastic play equipment; a radio now plays all day long. On the other side of us, a white-painted tire planted with bright pink impatiens has been placed on the stump of the huge maple that used to tower over our street; those neighbors to the west have been singlehandedly responsible for cutting the two oldest, tallest, and loveliest trees in the neighborhood.

Nature and I are patient, however. The honeysuckles, pin cherries and hemlocks we planted on the border of our property with them are thick now and full of birds; beyond them is a big stand of Jerusalem artichokes, six feet tall and covered with blooms in the fall. When we abandoned our vegetable garden, I carefully left a volunteer maple tree that had come up in the middle from seed shed by the very tree the neighbors had cut down. It's been growing for several years, and this year has really shot up; it's much taller than I am now, and growing strongly. I'm hoping that by the time we finally leave this house, it will be a nice enough tree that the new occupants will want to leave it. Before long, it will shade the back of our yard -- and the neighbors' as well.

And as around every old New England foundation, I think there's a good chance that there will be old apple trees and hollyhocks here, with their oblivious and busy bees, long after we're gone: reminders that a gardener once lived here.

Insomnia

At two am the revelers pass infrequently,

their foreign phrases broken by the cars

that stream on rainy rue Rachel

for me to count in lieu of sheep:

one…eleven…twenty-seven….

shadowy impatiens creep upon the shades,

a maple glows beneath a streetlamp, bright as day.

 

Perhaps the décafiné was not?

The bedtime reading, too intense?

 

Heel-clicks on the trottoir, then

a woman’s laugh, a man exhales and sighs --

while my unsleeping eye

blinks through its own eternity,

roams the dark internal skull of night,

considers finite days that rose and disappeared

like cars on rainy rue Rachel.

(note to English-speaking readers: this poem needs the French pronunciation of Rachel - as in "ra-SHELL")

Urban Wilderness

These days I’m trying hard to get more exercise. It’s better for my mood, sleep, and of course makes me feel better physically…In the mornings, after a brief meditation, I do yoga stretches. Then in the middle of the afternoon I go out for an hour of biking, half of it sustained uphill, which is having the added benefit of getting me some relative solitude in nature. Lately I’ve been riding up the rue Rachel bike path to Park Mont Royal, and then continuing up the mountain. The goal is to keep my heart rate between 105 and 140 for at least 30 minutes, as I was advised a couple of weeks ago by an exercise therapist – what feels natural right now is 120-130. I can already feel myself strengthening with this more focused practice.

But the surprise is how lovely it is up on the mountain. The woods are quite thick and there are paths one can take and get totally away from the other people on the road, though there’s never a crowd and people are extremely quiet and respectful of everyone else’s privacy. Yesterday I stopped on the way down and went off into the woods and was standing by a big outcrop of granite and quartz, considering sitting there for a bit before heading home. A young man came down the path, and seeing me there, changed his course so as not to pass directly by me. This sort of thing happens all the time. The first time I went up, I stopped and sat for a bit in an out-of-the-way place, looking into the trees. Immediately three chickadees – which I never see in the park near us, dominated by sparrows and pigeons and gulls – flew into lowest branches directly over my head, and chattered at me, bouncing from branch to branch. That one simple thing did me so much good! I’m looking forward now to discovering more about the park and finding special places I especially like, and also to seeing what it’s like in the different seasons.

I had been kind of disdainful, or at least skeptical, about J’s claims that I would like its wooded areas; to me it was still an urban park (a beautiful one, for sure) and no substitute for wild nature. Of course it is in the center of the city, but Olmstead knew what he was doing. The sheer size of the park and the population’s insistence on large parts of it remaining completely undeveloped means that the deep woods are really quite wild and natural, and still hospitable to birds and animals – I’m anxious to see how many species reveal themselves. Right now most of the running water seems to be dried up, but in spring it’s cascading off the mountain... and the map indicates intermittent wetlands in the interiors of some of the wooded area. Obviously, I’m just beginning…

Deployment, Quebec Style

In the Montreal Gazette on Monday, big headlines about the first of 2,300 Quebec troops shipping out to Afghanistan, accompanied by large photographs of tearful farewells between the soldiers and their girlfriends.  Another front page article, about a recent poll, was titled: “In Quebec, only 3 in 10 support the mission.” These photographs - surprising and refreshing for this American reader - illustrate the typical Quebeçois insistence on emphasizing the human side of most issues.

In Canada as a whole the population is fairly evenly divided about sending troops, but approval has been dropping since the recent deaths of seven Canadian soldiers, who were mourned across the country. Parliament has approved the mission – mostly reconstruction, and security at the Kandahar airfield – until February 2009.

The Van Doos are the Royal 22nd Regiment, based at CFB Valcartier, north of Quebec City. They'll be in Afghanistan between six and nine months. A series of video interviews with individual soldiers by a Gazette journalist are being posted at the paper's website.

What lasts

Brief the time of having, brief the time of home,
Brief the time of family, brief the time of friends.
All the works of this world lose their worth.

So he said to himself, sitting apart in thought...*

I sat under the canopy of leaves, at the foot of the tree. The water, nearly still at the shore, sparkled out beyond the shallows where it was stirred by the breeze. We were hidden from sight by the low overhanging branches and shrubbery and the bank at our backs, the catbird and I, but we could both see clearly. The bird hopped above me from branch to branch, a sleek grey shadow with an intelligent eye.

I sat and thought, as I had in this particular place, since I was a little girl. And then I stopped thinking and just was, breathing with the slow air, the little waves, the rustling leaves. Later it came to me that I'd found this place nearly a half century before, and never brought any adults there, nor told anyone about it. All those years, so swiftly gone! Brief the time!

In the tangle of ivy and crown vetch and lilies-of-the-valley on the bank, where I lingered before going back to the house, I saw the arching stems and red caps of my grandmother's alpine strawberries, ready to be eaten. I put a few into my mouth, and picked some stems to take into the house. She had planted a half dozen or so, tossed carelessly onto the bank with a pailful of lily-of-the-valley roots and ivy cuttings, and here they were still, hardier than any of us, multiplying like Abraham's stars.

When we came to the lake, before the houses and road, and first dug deep into the earth on this bank, we found the remains of old firepits, and freshwater clamshells, bleached white as bones. Later, in the garden, my grandfather found two perfect Iroquois ax-heads, which I've always carried with me. Maybe someday I'll re-bury them, with their memories of looking out over the water and its gentle, erasing hand.

* Dale has just finished posting his beautiful translation of The Wanderer, an Old English poem from the 10th century, written, I'd like to think, by some distant ancestor of mine. These lines are from the last part of the poem.

Canopy

Crossroads

Lakeshore, early morning