|
ActorShuensha
|
read my profile
sign my guestbook
Name: Nathan
Gender: Male
Interests: The great and terrible numinous presence that fills sacred places; glorious communion with He Who Is; the baptism of the wonders and terrors of the pagan imagination; the frustrating, powerful, beautiful church through the ages; abounding grace, love, hope, and joy; waking sleeping giants; wrestling with angels through the long nights; and light in the darkest places.
Expertise: Complicating matters
Occupation: Student
Message: message me
AIM:  ActorShuensha
Member Since:
6/14/2004
|
|
| "And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, 'Fear not: for behold, I bring unto you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the City of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.'" -Luke 2:8-12
"The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee tonight."
-O Little Town of Bethlehem
"Afraid? murmured the Rat, his eyes shining with unutterable love. Afraid! Of Him? O, never, never! And yet -- and yet -- O, Mole, I am afraid!" -The Wind in the Willows
I haven't blogged in ages, and I offer no apology for that. But I couldn't quite abstain from my annual Christmas post; honestly, writing about it is the only time I sit to think on it. And it should be thought on, this holy night, this silent night, this midnight clear, thought on till the last of the Christmas wine is gone and we are left senseless either by the drink or the paradox of it all. So let us take up all our hopes and fears, for if we enter into Bethlehem, if we are indeed to walk that path, such are the things we shall meet.
Because I do think the old carols say it best, those lilting relics of English poetry that we've pummeled into irrelevance by our most devastating weapon: cultural ubiquity. Every year we are cheerily reminded over supermarket speakers that "the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight," and here in the late hours of Christmas I marvel that anything could ever be so apt.
It would be easy to gloss over the text, to say that it is simply condensed for the sake of meter, that the verb means something different for each noun, that hopes are met and fears are assuaged, and that's not a bad reading. But then I'm reminded of the shepherds, sore afraid, as the King James so rightly puts it, afraid till the body is weak, and I wonder.
Not that it's so unusual; lot of scoundrels that we are, we're always fearing angels, and why shouldn't we? Sometimes I think western art has it all wrong, inferring that if angels are good and graceful they are demure and blond; better the living creatures of Ezekiel, looking upon us with their four faces and that ever-turning wheel of eyes. Some days I think nothing is so strange to us as that sort of goodness.
I confess, I'd be terrified if I were one of those shepherds, probably caught unawares in one of their most venial moments, bearing at once the full weight of angelic glory. Let us dispense of our phobias and our momentary fears; sure, there are nights when I'm afraid of violence, afraid of Los Angeles' notorious criminal element. But I'll tell you what I'm always afraid of, every waking moment, and often enough in my slumber as well: I'm afraid of being shown up. I'm afraid of being not nearly as valuable and virtuous and valiant as I imagine myself to be. People talk about religion as a comfort, and it is. I think most everyone needs something to wonder at, an altar to feel small before, but then I think we have a place, and if we're not going to make headway towards it, we'd best be put in it. But its being good for us in the long run doesn't make it any less painful, and it doesn't make a host of angels with glory of God shining round about them any less terrifying.
Now, we modern Christians are always in a hurry to explain away the "fearing God" part of wisdom literature as a synonym for respect, and that's not entirely untrue. But often enough I think we'd be better off starting with genuine fear, a real terror of the holy, the kind the angels seem to evoke. The numinous is a strange thing throughout human history; our keen awareness of the ineffable Other brings us as much concern as relief. The haunted cave and the cathedral nave are not wholly unlike one another-- nor mythologies and ghost stories. And all in all I think the Holy Ghost does his fair share of haunting.
This I take to be Adam's lot; our greatest fear and our fullest comfort lie in the same thing: that for all we've done to be as gods, we are not, and so our most profound joy and our most profound terror lies in our trembling apprehension of those gods that yet linger on our minds. If there is more on heaven and earth than is dreamt of in our philosophy, then so be it, but we shall not take it blithely.
So when it comes down to it, and a babe is born underneath those silent stars, when that Everlasting Light comes to Bethlehem, it is no passing remark to claim the hopes and fears of countless generations as the child's birthright. And yet there it is: that lingering presence which so diminishes us as it comforts us, that presence which stirred ever behind the holy of holies came close, closer than that multitude of angels, for he came and he wore our flesh, breathed our air, so close even that we should take his body and blood into our own; how little we wonder that our meager bodies should survive the experience. Is there anything more greatly desired and yet more greatly feared?
And yet the angel comes and he says, "fear not, for behold, I bring unto you good tidings of great joy," and then, then, "which shall be unto all people;" not just unto the pious and prepared, not just to the eager , but to all of us, who many Sundays would just as soon cocoon ourselves in our blankets as go forth and face our Lord. To you, who are sore afraid, and oh, friend, I am afraid, there come good tidings of great joy. The fears of all the years are brought to their utmost, and here we find them transformed; God With Us may still be our undoing, he may tear from us our props of power and prestige, but so he shall be our Savior. If those are the most terrifying tidings of comfort and joy imaginable, so be it; they shall also reach the deepest. For all our most potent hopes and fears are intertwined, and tonight, at last, they are met. | | |
| Last Sunday was World Communion Sunday, and it's always a day when I'm left thinking about all those with whom I'm in communion but with whom I don't have the privelege of actually breaking bread with.
If not for my instinctive inability to cry in front of strangers, I probably would have cried in church. I just about did, anyway, coming back from the communion cup.
It was a strange, temporally disconnected moment, a rush of sights and smells and that inexplicable feeling of times long past, and as I walked the aisle I walked Hallsville First United Methodist and all my UM Army church sanctuaries and Ceta Canyon and my living room from that moment-- one of those I treasure-- that I brought the bread and the wine to our little devotional menagerie.
I hope you were taking communion with me last Sunday; even if you weren't at the altar I hope you were sharing a meal with friends, I hope you were savoring a glass of red wine, I hope there was a warm oven in your kitchen, some shadow at least of Christ's table. Most Sundays are about God's presence in the church where I am; World Communion Sunday is about God's presence in all of you.
I spent Sunday afternoon, as I spend most Sunday afternoons these days, at the Barnes and Noble down at the Grove, curled up in a corner and reading devotional literature, homework and E-mail and Yearbook at least 45 minutes' bus ride away. But I wanted some of you to join me, to sit down for coffee, to share something tangible. I hereby apologize for how horrible a conversationalist I am over the phone: I need all those physical signals of when people are going to talk or I run all over them; I need to see people's faces to know what they're saying. I needed you there, I wanted you there, and I'd have talked about how much I'm loving Lauren F. Winner's books and how much I needed a Sabbath and how, on a day like that, LA isn't so hazy, and you can see straight through to the mountains. And mostly I'd whisper the one thing that is always on my mind: I want you to stay.
I am a senior now, there, I admit it, I am a senior now and this phase of life comes to an end come May. I'm buttressing myself with my friends, and I love them, and I'm glad to live here, live now, but the one thing I can never tell them, the one thing I can never ask of them is that which is always on my mind. I want them to stay. I have no right to ask it; they have every right and privelege and reason to scatter across the world, and yet-- nonetheless-- I wish they'd stay. I wish you'd come. I wish this, my house, my home, my hobbit hole, my Anatevka and my Star's Hollow, were not so in jeopardy.
And yet there is still a day to remind us, you and you and you and I, we are all in communion, wherever I go and wherever you go, one loaf and one cup, that is still our portion. And when you arrive-- you all need to come someday-- maybe I will bake bread and we can taste it like we know it. | | |
| It's striking, somehow, that the thing that quieted all my doubts about this trip was not a city, not a meal, not a museum, but the very thing I hate most about traveling: the space inbetween. It was the train ride, a long train ride across that ever-rolling Italian countryside that won me over.
Looking out over the crests of those hills into the forests and fields below, that alone quited the twisting, unfathomable abyss that which whines underneath the steady beating of my heart. The whole source of my traveler's anxiety has been that miserable feeling of lacking an anchor, lacking a place from which to stand still, a home to go back to, but in that countryside I belonged.
I reckon if man is formed from earth, made from dust, then that Mediterranean earth is in my bones, that dust is in my sking-- and I am grateful for that. It is a good land, a generous one, yielding its fruit willingly, submitting to the long rows of vineyards and the constant needs of those delicate lemon trees. But it is a wild land, too, and in the sweep of its horizon you can find the same entrancing rise and fall of the Italian language, of the Italian mood; it is not something to be found in the flatlands of the midwest.
It is a good earth from which to be formed.
I love the the houses there; they rise out of the landscape so gracefully that sometimes they seem no different from the occassional yellow cliffs that emerge from the greenery. Did the settlers see, as they surveyed that untamed land, that it would only tolerate them if they humbled themselves? Did they give their hearts to the land, take its colors into their blood until they could only act in due accord with its aesthetic governance?
It is a good earth from which to be formed.
Oh, and what light falls upon it in the evening! This dying sunlight passing through a stained glass sky! It inflames those rose-petal hues of the clustered villages, it gives a final grace to the yielding day. A world most alive in its final hours; how strange. I admit it has been on my mind, that rumored decline of Europe, of our Western World, a settled complacency which speaks of late, declining days. And yet there is more fire in the twilight than ever I would have imagined. Has Europe's evening past? Is it yet to come? Oh God, say it is yet to come!
It is still a good earth from which to be formed. | | |
| Florence is a very strange city, I've decided. I would call it the city with the world's prettiest alleyways. Those gorgeous, earthy Tuscan colors rising on both sides, glowing underneath a stained glass dusk-- all those balconies and hanging plants and enticing smells-- it really is beautiful. And yet, at some level they still feel like alleyways, cut off, enclosed, suffocating and a little unnerving. It's such an urban center that flourishes of Tuscan countryside seem almost-- almost-- out of place.
It's a city, I suppose, that exists in a tension of opposing forces-- urban and rural, classical and modern. And yet looking out over the city as I am now, seated in the Boboli Gardens, who could help but love it? Clustered in a valley beneath forested hills of greens and yellows, that array of clay roofs and stone walls seems to rise out of the landscape, fresh red earth baking under an afternoon sun. It's such a different experience even a mile from the city center. I think it's a good place. It didn't open itself to me immediately like London, but after a few days I see its appeal.
At any rate, last night a few of my friends from Cambridge passed through town. I knew before I left England that they'd be around, but I thought it might be a bit awkward to just say "let's hang out in a foreign country!" -- I didn't know them that well. But once I realized how lonely traveling is, I sought them out for at least one Italian dinner I wouldn't have to eat alone. I found out where Allie was staying from her on Facebook, and pretty much the only time my Italian has been genuinely useful was in trying to explain to the staff of Allie's very strange hostel that I needed them to give her a with a meeting time and place. ("Mia amica Allie Butss arrive a Dany House mezzogiorno! Puoi dare un questo foglio a Allie quando arrive?" is how I should have put it. I wasn't quite so collected at the time, but I got the point across).
In retrospect, I'm really glad I did. We went to a supermarket (supermercato!) and cooked dinner at their hostel. It wasn't the best meal in the world-- if only I'd had a little garlic, cream, and tomato paste-- but I was so glad to eat it in good company the taste wasn't all that important. The whol hostel, unlike mine, was very social, cooking and eating together like a family, and that-- that!-- is what Italy should be like. Allie was telling me she envied my indepence, my ability to see what I want to see when I want to see it without having to negotiate intergroup dynamics, and that has been a plus. But it was nice, at least for one night, to have people to come back to.
As I wrote while I was in England, I like people. I think they're neat. | | |
| So the other day I was in a chapel devoted to Mary-- even now I'm unsure how to refer to her (Virgin Mary, St. Mary, Mary Mother of God, Mary the Mother of Christ?)-- and I asked, rather timidly if she'd watch over me, since my own mother was rather far away. You know, if Mary didn't mind.
Now, I see no particular issue in talking to the saints. I am as much in communion with them as I am to Diane Kenney or Bob Kelsey. There is little we affirm more as Christians than that death is a weaker force than love. So the other day I told St. Michael, if he wanted to be in a novel I'm working on, he'd better offer some inspiration as to how. I see no problem with this. You may say this distracts us from praying to God Himself, but so does any conversation with the living, and I see no protest there.
That said, as much of a wannabe Catholic as I am, I've always been a bit trepidatious about Mary. Not that I don't respect her position in God's historic work of salvation, but all this business about immaculate conception and perpetual virginity and bodily assumption tends to give a good Methodist pause. If for no other reason than my sympathy with poor St. Joseph, I'd have a hard time believing perpetual virginity, much less than the stronger stuff.
And yet, here I am in France and Italy, both-- at least historically-- heavily Catholic countries, and at every museum and Cathedral I pass by the countless images of the Madonna and Child, the Annunciation, the Coronation, and the Assumption of Mary, and I can't help but think, maybe at the very least, we Protestants are not giving Mary her due. Looking at these images of Mary holding our Lord at his frailest, I wonder if anyone else in all of history has anything close to her experience. God incarnate was incarnate from her flesh, formed in her womb, nursed at her breast! Christ may be fully God, but if he is also fully man than that man, surely, is of Mary. You start to wonder if the idea of Mary's immaculate conception is not so much a prop for her virtue as a resolute belief that the very skin and bone of Christ could come from nothing less than an immaculate woman.
Could God have done His incarnational work through anyone? Perhaps. But He didn't do it through anyone; He did it through Mary, who "found favor with God." And now I wonder, what are we to make of that?
I do not mean to argue here for the full Catholic image of Mary; it is an image I understand with nothing approaching clarity. But, looking constantly into the eyes of this demure woman, present all through Christ's ministry, more faithful than all the disciples, and most clearly indivorcible from the Lord during His infancy (As if anyone would paint the Child without the Madonna!), I admit I'm struck with something a bit more than vague respect.
At the very least, if she cared for Christ (difficult as He must have been), I should like to think she could spare an eye for me. | | |
|
