Tag Archives: Christina Rossetti

Gaudete Sunday

Posted on December 14, 2014 | Leave a comment

???????????????????????????????The heavens opened early Thursday morning, and rain poured upon our California soil, slaking the thirst of the earth but soon bursting gutters and filling low places with floodwaters. In drought-plagued California, we didn’t dare complain, but were thankful.

We live in the foothills of Mount Diablo, and while our house is on bedrock, our northern hillside falls steeply into a ravine. Friday morning we noticed part of the fence was missing, and it had taken some of the landscaping with it as it slid to the bottom of the hill. I thought, as I have thought many times, how suddenly nature makes short work of man’s efforts to tame her, shattering our pride.

The earth is drying out now, and this morning we headed for church, bundled up for temps are in the low fifties (cold for us). The skies had changed from threatening to sudden beauty, with white clouds scuttling against brilliant blue patches, the low sun clarifying the air as though trying to fit more light into shorter days.

And in this winter-scape we prepare for the light of the Incarnation, to me always a stunning event, one repeated in a different way on humble altars in glorious Eucharists. It is Advent, and we prepare for Christmas, the coming of the Christ Child, God becoming one of us, with us, Emanuele. We celebrate the love, sacrificial and humble, of a God who loves his creation so much that he would do such a thing, that he would be born in a manger-cave, among animals, to a poor, devout Jewish couple who believed in his angel messengers and obeyed them.

And so, stepping into the warm nave of our parish church, the symbols of the space textured this story of miraculous birth. The Virgin Mary and her holy Child stood to the left, Gospel side, a bank of votives flaming at her feet. Three of the four Advent candles in their bed of greens had been lit (two purples and one rose). The American flag stood proudly, a testimony to our freedom of worship. Against the red brick apsidal wall, the white marble altar was draped in purple, and six tall tapers burned on either side of the purple-tented tabernacle. A crèche set in greenery, to the far right, Epistle side, told the humble story of glory, this huge contradiction, one of many fascinating ones in our faith, of glorious humility. Somehow true glory can only be found, we are told, in true humility. Somehow true joy can only be found in true sacrifice. Somehow the Creator must become part of his creation to save it from itself.

I love Advent III, called Rose Sunday, Gaudete Sunday. We light the rose candle along with the first two purple candles. Today is Gaudete Sunday because of the opening prayer, the Introit: Gaudete in Domino semper, or Rejoice in the Lord always… Rose Sunday is a break in the penitential purple of Advent, and this is the only Advent Sunday we have flowers on the altar. We emphasize the joy of anticipating Christmas rather than the penitence of preparing for Christmas.

In the daily readings of the Morning and Evening Prayer offices, the mood is definitely one of penitence and preparation. Most of the readings have been Old Testament prophecies, warnings, and judgments in Isaiah and the Psalms. We read the early chapters of the Gospel of Mark, of the beginnings of Christ’s ministry, but not the Christmas story, not yet. But most fascinating are the chapters in Revelation, or The Apocalypse, the great vision given to St. John on the Island of Patmos, detailing the end-times, the last days, the Second Coming of Christ.

We have been immersed in these daily prayers, not reflecting the coming of Christ to Bethlehem but reflecting the Second Coming of Christ in Judgment. We are “woken up” with these future realities, these warnings and visions, given a “heads up.” Are we ready for Christ to come? How will we fare when judged? Have we loved enough? Have we cleaned out our hearts to receive him? For he will not enter a cluttered heart fettered with sins, the detritus of selfishness and pride, envy and greed. There will be no room for him in such a heart. We need to make room for him.

So Advent, often called “Little Lent,” reminds us of the four great events, the adventures, to come to us: Death, Judgment, Heaven, Hell. How will we – our lives – be measured?

This morning I entered the nave of our warm parish church and knelt in a pew, giving thanks for the clergy, the people of the parish, and the freedom to worship. I asked God to clean out my little heart, to remove all the obstacles to his advent in my soul. My gaze fell on the purple-draped tabernacle and knew that this weekly ritual, this rite, would set me right with God. I knew that the habit of confession would serve me well in the time span of my life, would ensure that I have the time of my life, ride the waves of glory in this great adventure. I knew that, encouraged by the words of the liturgy – confession, absolution, the great action of the Mass, Holy Communion – I would unite once again with Christ, in bread and wine placed on my tongue. I knew that each Eucharist prepared my heart and soul, mind and body, for the great Feast of the Lamb that would await me in Heaven. And I wanted to be ready. I wanted as many Eucharistic feasts as I could manage before then, readying my heart and soul. I want to sing with the angels and the saints.

I also love Advent III because we usually practice (after Mass) for the Christmas Pageant. Young and old gather together to portray our story of redemption, beginning with the Fall of Adam and Eve and ending with the Nativity of Our Lord, the beginning of our salvation, the antidote to the Fall. Lessons are read and carols sung. We rehearsed today; next Sunday we don costumes and prayers and wings (I get to be an angel, and yes, even with wings…) We have a five-year old Mary and an eleven-year old Joseph.

The days are wintry and short. We prepare to celebrate Christmas, the year of our Lord, Anno Domini, A.D.  Some of this sense, this pairing of season with humble glory, has been captured by the poet Christina Rossetti:

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,

Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;

Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,

In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

 

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain;

Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign.

In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed

The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.

 

Enough for Him, whom cherubim, worship night and day,

Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;

Enough for Him, whom angels fall before,

The ox and ass and camel which adore.

 

Angels and archangels may have gathered there,

Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air;

But His mother only, in her maiden bliss,

Worshipped the beloved with a kiss.

 

What can I give Him, poor as I am?

If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;

If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;

Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.

 Christina Rossetti (1830-1895), “In the Bleak Midwinter”

 

 Yes, Advent is a time to give him our hearts: clean, ready, and open.

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A Sunday Poem

Posted on November 17, 2013 | Leave a comment

Perhaps it was my vision of music heard in a forest, piano notes calling someone up the path through the front door of a historic mansion to a salon where a young man was playing Beethoven; perhaps it was my recent meditation on poetry and prose and what the difference was, my wondering as to what art was, what spirit was, what man was, thoughts triggered by Jacques Barzun’s The Culture We Deserve; perhaps it was the unique “audition” in church today, the listening and comparison of a new electronic organ and our old pipe organ, the latter long in need of repair.

Perhaps it was all these things, and even as well it might have been the smooth ride, flight, through the new Caldecott shiny silver tunnel, the spanking fourth bore, our wheels spinning along as though we passed through a bullet chamber and shot out on the other side; whatever the reasons, I sensed this morning in church a sudden coming together of beauty, goodness, and truth, a vivid moment of heaven as the priest said, approaching me along the altar rail with the golden chalice, “The Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was shed for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life…”

The sense of intense beauty could also have been our coming in from the cold outside, coming into the warm nave with its red carpet leading to the great marble altar with its medieval Christ above, the giant flaming candlesticks framing the tented tabernacle. It could have come from the shimmering images of red, green, and blue stained glass that filtered the outside light, pulling it, transformed, into the inside. I was in the beauty of all of it, part of it, for I was kneeling with the Host, His Body, in my ordinary fleshy open palm, waiting for the priest with the chalice.

Being a participant in a poem, particularly a real and true one, is no small thing. But it seems to me that we are all poets, that a poet is a person who sees life, or simply desires to. The desire itself opens the door to seeing, noticing. The expression of what is seen (felt, heard, even learned in sudden epiphanies) we call a poem if the words are arranged in a distilled fashion, a closely knit pattern of images sculpted with care, with love, images colorful, powerful, and perfectly chosen. The reader of poetry often says, “Yes!” or “Aha, that’s it!” or “I couldn’t have said it better, she has it! She gets it! She sees life. She has shown me myself.”

Simon Humphries, in his introduction to Christina Rossetti’s Poems and Prose, seems to separate her faith from her poetry, as though such a surgical operation were desired or necessary. He writes as though apologizing for her. He admits we really can’t separate these things, and of course he’s right. But more to the point, faith is poetry and poetry is faith. The spiritual impulse is the creative impulse. Believers are poets. Religious man is artistic man. A poem with Christian themes and symbols weaving through its stanzas is no different in this sense than a poem with agnostic or Muslim or Hindu themes and symbols. Every poet has many aspects that make up his or her character, his or her spirit. Everyone has a belief system of some sort, and if not Christian, then pantheistic or nihilistic or often despairing. These aspects are not separate layers informing the poems, to be peeled away, but are intrinsic to them.

So the more I work with words and writing and images and the creation of characters, the forming of human beings on pages, the more I realize that all of it is spiritual, all of it is poetic. Which is why all forms of art are spiritual expressions of some kind, expressions of the inner desires of man (and woman). We are spiritual beings. So I want to explore musical art in my writing a bit more, explore the sound on the ear, the enormous pull of the heart made by not just the melody, the beat, the instrument, but the words too. Hymns entrance me for they are poems set to music, and not just any music, but Beethoven, Hayden, Mozart.

And then there is the organ. Yes, I said with my eyes as I glanced at my husband sitting next to me, I can hear the difference between the pipe organ and the electronic one. But even so both sounded spectacular, filling our warm nave and sanctuary, bursting upon the rows of pews and the ears of each of us, the electronic notes bundled and funneled through the speakers, the pipe organ notes singing through each pipe and meeting in my ear. The Mass was over and it was serious listening time, serious comparison time. We listened. We compared. And we sat with one another together, the Body of Christ, bathed in this moment of glory, bathed in the creative and artistic love of God pouring through those notes.

Dorothy Sayers wrote a book called The Mind of the Maker, in which, as I recall, she describes the artist as being a creator as God creates, and in this sense, full of a inspire-ation.  I think we all have this seed in us, we all desire to create, to impact our world with ourselves. If we are Christians, we desire to create beauty, truth, goodness. If we are not Christians, we desire to create something else, something that might have these things or might not. If we are Christians we want to reflect the love of God, if not preach it; we desire to distill themes of selflessness and sacrifice; we seek to give order to the chaos around us, to provide meaning where confusion corrupts.

So my vision of a pianist playing Beethoven in a forest, the jeweled and poignant notes calling me to follow the path to the open door and into the salon of sounds, remains. In the meantime I shall enter the front doors of our parish church, kneel against the shiny oak pews, pray alongside the walls of shimmering stained glass, and fall into the color and song of worship, a beautifully real Sunday poem in which I can reside for an hour.

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Armistice Day

Posted on November 10, 2013 | Leave a comment

The leaves have turned in our valley. Splotches of russets, golds, burgundies burst from yards and hillsides, lining lanes, dotting the landscape. On a day like today, when the dome of blue seems to shelter our land and the sun is still warm in spite of the crisp air, it nearly seems magical. Days are shorter as darkness falls early, making the time between the later sunrise and the earlier sunset more precious.

So when we drove to church through this autumn world of oranges and yellows and reds, the piercing sun upon the leaves outlining each one in my memory, I was thankful. 

I had a quiet week, forced quiet, once my back went out after reaching for something at an odd angle, once I hobbled home from the chiropractor, once I arranged my ice packs and wound tight my elastic brace. I sat gingerly in an armchair before a blazing fire and read Jacques Barzun, The Culture We Deserve. Also in my stack was Girls on the Edge (Leonard Sax), and Paul Among the People (Sarah Ruden), among others. The first two books were for research purposes, homework for my next novel. From time to time I scanned my Kindle’s collection of poems and prose by Christina Rossetti, for I wish to include her work in my work as well. Sarah Ruden reminds us in her book on St. Paul to read Holy Scripture in the context of the cultural setting, something not often done, especially in the feminist world. 

I cancelled appointments and lived with my pain, hour to hour, pain which subsided gradually. I was given renewed admiration for those who live with pain day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute. I was also forced to bracket a few days and create a mini-retreat. It made me more dependent on God. 

We are fragile creatures in a fragile world, yet live as though both (creatures and world) were stable and strong and predictable. Perhaps this delusion is a form of self-protection, for how else could we arrange our human affairs? I believe this overabundance of confidence is also a reflection of the real world to come – God’s eternity – a vision, sometimes hidden, sometimes not, that colors our imagination and longing and deep desire for beauty, truth, goodness, love. 

And so, in church today I was glad to recall Armistice Day which we celebrate officially tomorrow, on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, when the truce was signed on the eleventh hour that ended the First World War, the “war to end all wars,” the “great war.” I was glad to give thanks for the brave men and women who fought then and who defend our country today, who protect its fragility, who shore up the shores of our land. I gave thanks for peace in our time, relative peace, having lived through Vietnam and listened to the tales of my chaplain father who served in the South Pacific in World War II. Those other wars weren’t supposed to happen after the “war to end all wars,” but happen they did. And wars continue to scar the land, the people, the world. 

My father couldn’t talk much about his wartime experiences, but we have large glossy black-and-white photos of his ship, the Phoenix, and he described once the terror of the kamikaze raids, the planes diving into the sea on either side the ship. I have his Bible, signed by General MacArthur, tucked away in my glassed-in portion of my bookcases. 

War continues, for the seed is planted deep in our hearts. Our preacher today spoke of the necessity of prayer to end wars, that only through prayer can hearts be changed, can nations’ hearts be changed, can laws that govern our land be true and just, laws passed by such renewed hearts. So today I prayed especially for humility and penitence and then, perhaps when my own heart is scrubbed clean of all ill feeling, all grudges, all resentments, all, all, all… only then can my heart be filled with wisdom to choose, only then can it be filled with God, only then can I pray for my country and its leaders, and only then pray for the world’s leaders. 

I am so thankful for the men and women who protect our beautiful country and our fragile people, our delicate democracy. I am thankful too for St. Martin of Tours who shares this feast day, November 11. Did the generals who set the date for the armistice choose St. Martin’s on purpose? I think so. They would have had a choice, and in 1918 they would have known this day was St. Martin’s Day, one of the more widely known and celebrated saints days in Europe, one said to be even trans-European. 

Martin (316-397) was a Roman soldier, a Christian, who gave half his cloak to a poor beggar who had none. He then had a dream in which Christ appeared to him saying that when he gave the cloak to the beggar he gave it to Christ himself. When Martin left military service, he took holy orders. He established a Benedictine monastery, traveled the land preaching, and became Bishop of Tours, France. 

His cloak was soon a relic housed by a cappella, a covering for the cape, and from this came our word chapel. Such a cloak came to be worn by clergy in the military, those who ministered on the battlefield and at sea, and these clergy came to be known as chaplains. Our own priest wears a cope when he celebrates the Holy Mass. My father, being a chaplain, was in this sense a descendant of St. Martin. 

The sun is setting now, the dome of blue no longer cloaking our world with its bright beauty. The darkness approaches. But we have memory and we have the saints and we have the brave men and women who protect us today. God provides these shelters, these human chapels, and I am thankful, thankful to be covered by the cloak of his incarnate love.

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