Holy Week
Tomorrow Holy Week begins and as every year, I am filled
with a mixture of dread, longing and a sense of loss: dread for the
inexpressible magnitude of the events we will celebrate; a sense of loss for
the liturgy that hardly anyone bothers with any longer—the monastery spoiled me
forever in this regard; and finally longing . . . for what cannot and should
not be spoken.
It may seem paradoxical for someone who is as
"ruthlessly realistic" as one friend recently called me in a
positive, not a negative way, to want to be so immersed in liturgy and myth.
But then, the life of silence seems to the one who does not live it paradoxical. For the one who "seeks
to the beholding" silence cannot help but immerse one in the single
movement that is both realistic and mythical. For those who seek there is no distinction, no paradox.
I'm entering this Holy Week already exhausted. The first
volume of my book, Silence: A User's Guide,
has gone to the publisher; with any luck it will be out in November. This book
has been gestating for so many decades that it's almost a let-down that it is
now well on its way.
Another reason for exhaustion is that I broke my usual
pattern of not going to conferences and went to one in Durham. As conferences
go, it had the best papers and discussions of any I have ever been to. It was
well worth it. And it was wonderful to be in my favourite of all cathedrals—at
least, early in the morning. After 9 AM it was filled with far too many
officious "guides" and swarming tourists. Just to put the icing on
the cake, they were having "messy cathedral" so the place was often
filled with shrieking children. My last day the little chapel where the noon
Eucharist was celebrated was so crammed with people intent on not giving anyone
an inch of room that I had to leave. At that point I decided to bail. I had to pay double for a
rail ticket home (I had come up in a car) but given that I collapsed as soon as
I walked in the door, as it were, it was money well spent.
Now I'm transplanting tomatoes and doing other garden chores
preparatory to leaving for Devon and Cornwall for ten days. The West Country is
always restorative, and our fire on Easter Eve will go a long way towards
resurrecting this tired old body.
May all of you, gentle readers, have a most blessed Holy
Week and Eastertide.
Last night did Christ the Sun rise from the Dark,
Thy mystic harvest of the fields of God.
And now the little wandering tribes of bees
Are brawling in the scarlet flowers abroad.
The winds are soft with birdsong; all night long
Darkling the nightingale her descant told,
And now inside church doors the happy folk
The Alleluia chant a hundredfold.
O father of thy folk, be thine by right
The Easter joy the threshold of the light.
—Sedulius Scottus translated by Helen Waddell
posted by Maggie Ross at 11:51 am
15 Comments:
"Fortunate, that one, who, seeing the cherry blossom fall, does not say, 'Time is passing.'"
master basho
a blessed Holy Week everyone...
Being ruthlessly realistic does not preclude the desire for liturgy and myth, which, if well done, nourishes the life of the soul. Unfortunately, so often today, it is not well done and so one weeps.
Blessed Holy Week and Eastertide to you.
Amen, and again, Amen. yet, "All shall be well...all manner of thing..." Amen.
For a long time it has seemed to me that liturgy and myth are essential to any attempt at reality. Can I just say with much feeling - Thank God for Helen Waddell.
Barrie
Seems to me, without a great deal of this "ruthlessly realistic" clarity, in beginning, there is NO assurance that constructing or reconstructing anything will bear good fruit in good time.
There was a fig tree and Jesus, being hungry, went to it ...
mike
Read somewhere that myth can be considered as a whisper of something which was once sung aloud and that poetry is a point on this continuum.
Hi Maggie,
I went to Holy Thursday Mass this past week. During the homily the priest remarked that we should never separate the Sanctuary from the Street. I found the comment most interesting and it has been rolling around in my mind these last couple of days. Very often, when I do attend mass, I find that something is said or done (or not said or done) which opens me up a little and creates some breathing space. Sometimes I wonder whether we should attend religious services without an expectation of getting anything at all. Perhaps we should focus on what we can offer.
Your encounter, Maggie, with the shrieking children in the church reminded me of Blake's "Holy Thursday" from Songs of Innocence...
Now like a mighty wind they raise to heaven the voice of song
Or like harmonious thunderings the seats of heaven among
Beneath them sit the aged men wise guardians of the poor
Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door
Kevin
Maggie,
Thanks for your writing which I discovered through Lauren Winner's Anglican Spirituality class at Duke Divinity. 'Writing the Icon of the Heart: In Silence Beholding' is a new treasure. Excited to read your next book. Silence is such a lost art these days. And now this blog- Grateful that you're continuing to write! As an Episcopal priest, I must admit that I turn to Common Worship for additional blessings, liturgy, etc… and I long for a visit again to your country. Have found a fullness and richness in its words.
A blessed Eastertide-
Amy
So the question becomes, Are shrieking children "harmonious thunderings" or are they not?
Yes, I think the children are harmonious thunderings, if we choose to hear them as such. It is the myth/reality marrying again. On Easter, I sat amidst my grown-up, well-mannered family , cheek to jowl with fidgeting youngsters and their fussing moms and grands, listening to a wonderful and welcoming message delivered by our priest, punctuated by the screams of infants and I was utterly happy, perfectly content. This is not always the case, I confess, but the myth married the reality in my soul and bore its fruit. Blessings all. Abigail
Wondering if silence can be art or if it is just silence? Can it be lost when all sound is beheld or confronted within it?
What we call art may well be the marriage of no sound with sound; in poetry or music stop is sequenced with motion. One sees with the other. When this achieves a "deliberate" balance, art has begun and meaning is practice.
Perhaps it is useful to say, silence seems/is largely unpracticed now and to wonder just how much of a "change" historically there is in such an assertion!?
mike
Mike :Like the scripture before the spacing between words, or the dividing into chapter and verse, the silence in between is very important, very useful. Without it, we babble in endless streams of lesser meaning. However, I think we should be mindful not to make silence an idol. Silence is, for me anyway, a byproduct of stillness, and outwardly, I cannot require it of my environment in order to be still. I think we can create our own silence somehow, through our being still. It's a theory anyway. Bless, a.t.
Hi Abigail,
re: creating silence.
Have you ever been in a big cave where no light is present and there is no (other than self generated) sound at all?
Perhaps silence is fundamental to the structure of Being and we are the byproduct.
in this blessing,
mike
from A Sunlit Absence by Marin Laird.
"For the mind that is silent, noise is as direct a spoke into the hub of silence as are birdsong, wind and wave. It requires nothing more than to meet noise with stillness and not commentary."
"A practice of contemplation is chiseling away thought shackled illusion of separation from God" and (it) "does not work by means of addition or acquisition."
"because it is not I who look / but I who am being looked through. Gloria." R.S. Thomas
Thus, how can stillness, in the face of silence or noise, not be ordinary, a simple measure of respect?
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