In the Cross

Piet Mondrian, The Tree A, circa 1913

Tomorrow is Veterans Day, or Armistice Day, a day in which we remember the human souls behind world conflicts—those whom God created in love with bodies, hearts, and minds possibly broken or killed to bring resolution for the world. In turn we think of their families and friends and how wars said to have been won or dissipated long ago still show effects within our private realms.

Christians cannot think long of suffering and death apart from the cross of Jesus. In Roman-occupied ancient Palestine, the cross was a shameful way to die. The cross was reserved for criminals—those considered to be enemies of Rome. Crucifixion was death for losers, for those who did not have a chance to fight. Perhaps this has to do with why, when Pilate asked the crowd whether he should excuse Jesus or Barabbas from death, the crowd chose Barabbas—he was said to have murdered someone.

From a religious perspective, crucifixion at the hands of the enemy would appear as a death meant for someone from whom God had turned His face. Jesus, who always spoke that which gave utterance to the hearts of others, himself said what his disciples were surely thinking: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Today at Canterbury Cathedral, in Morning Prayer preparing for Armistice Day, in the garden where the orangery was lost to a bomb, in meditating on the meaning of the cross Dean Robert said “There is no hope of security except in eternity.” I feel this truth acutely as I pray for people today, some of whom are sick, some of whom are dying, while trying to not choke on the conflict in the air.

The cross, as a symbol, has been thought to mean many things. Grace to bear conflict with others and to accept cross-purposes within our own lives is one of them. The cross is two lines in opposition to each other. Some imagine the horizontal line as representing what is earthly and the vertical line symbolizing the heavenly.

In this way, the cross of Jesus, and the purpose of God in allowing it to be inflicted upon His Son and humanity, is available to all of us as a symbol which we might hold, imagine with, and make something from. It can help us face the fears of the world and lay them against what we trust God for—a line on which we can ascend and transcend.

That line might be one of thanksgiving you write in your journal, of one of a drawing that rejoices in the simple gift of the ability to make it, or words of encouragement for a friend. The cross might be imagined to be bearing this line into being, and then giving it away.

Piet Mondrian, Composition in Line, 1916-17

Join me for an Advent retreat with art on Zoom beginning on December 2. Click HERE for details or to register. Peace.

Matrix and Mother

The above painting is from the high altar in our Lady Chapel in which Mass is said daily. As our cathedral is Anglo-Catholic, and the Catholic Church dedicates October to the Rosary, it seems fitting to write about Mary before the month ends.

But this is a ruse because, as an artist and spiritual person, I find God in the gaps between things as much as I find what I am looking for in my objects of study. When I begin to write or make art about something or someone, I sooner or later realize that eyes in the back of my soul are studying something else.

As I write about Mary, Mother of Jesus, my gaze flies to the Trinity—the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—in which Jesus has his constant home. Here, by logic, I see Mary as the Mother of God. But logic is a clumsy tool for me, unlike a paintbrush I load with color. What I grasp as I write is the color that means Mary—blue. I want to show, however clearly, where blue meets God.

Cezanne is known as the the father of modern art. He is reported to have said, “Blue gives other color their vibration, so one must bring a certain amount of blue into a painting.” My painting teacher would say “Blue is the matrix of the universe,” thinking he was quoting Cezanne. (“Matrix” orginally meant “womb” and comes from the Latin word for mother.)

Through the appearance of blues that became available in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries—Prussian, ultramarine, and phthalocyanine blues respectively—we see a matrix of blue become increasingly apparent in art. Liberated from costly pigment ground from lapis lazuli—the likely sapphire of the Bible—painters spread blue paint and opened the heavens for us.

Mont Sainte-Victoire, Paul Cézanne, 1902-04

The painter Wassily Kandinsky wrote: “The deeper the blue becomes, the more strongly it calls man towards the infinite, awakening in him a desire for the pure and, finally, for the supernatural... The brighter it becomes, the more it loses its sound, until it turns into silent stillness and becomes white.” A spiritual painter and writer, in writing about blue, did Kandinsky see Mary?

Jaune, Rouge, Bleu, by Wassily Kandinsky, 1925

At a recent Zoom meeting, the Dean sat in front of a tapestry of Jesus and the Sacred Heart as I stood in front of my semi-abstract watercolor of Jesus on the sea, which is my backdrop to the chaos of the pandemic and also to hope. I was struck by how the colors both in the Dean’s tapestry and in my painting are almost the same—as if I and the tapestry-maker held the same palette of colors and their meanings.

The tapestry’s Jesus is made from browns—earth tones—and is surrounded by blue sky comprised of the blues I mention above. The Dean’s Jesus has white angels within the blue. In his sermon on Sunday, Dean Harding spoke of Jesus’ sacred heart on fire for us. The white surrounding the heart shows its constant, intense heat.

Christ on the Sea, Brynna Carpenter-Nardone

In my painting, even as a color, Jesus has taken on earthly flesh to be surrounded by water as he was in the womb of his mother, blue Mary. He emerges to still the storm and point to glimpses of the color the Church loves to end his advent with—white—which might be moonlight or the Spirit moving on the water.

At this moment in time with injustice and unrest, sickness and death, we more easily recognize our fear of chaos than we see that we also fear our own advent and becoming. Can we for a moment, through the art of contemplation, deliver ourselves to be sown with Christ as a seed for the future? Are we able to remember our home in the matrix of the universe?

 We are all meant to be mothers of God...for God is always needing to be born.

—Meister Eckhart

Blessing the Animals with Jerome and Dürer

Today is the feast day of St. Jerome who was said to have tamed a lion.

Today I write as if while looking at a series of portraits. There is the purportedly crotchety and certainly prolific Saint Jerome (died on this day in 420), depicted by Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) with a lion and dog.

I think of the lion and dog and their portraits as I look forward to drawing before our Blessing of the Animals service this Sunday, October 4. I will begin to draw charcoal portraits at 2 PM to benefit children in Haiti before the short service begins at 3 PM—click HERE for the flyer.

Dürer himself was the subject of a recent NY Times illustrated article on the self-portrait—see it by clicking HERE. The article proposes that Dürer, in his last painted self-portrait, appears as only Christ had been depicted before. This later painting bears the monogram Dürer developed from the letters A and D—his own initials, and perhaps also a reference to “anno domini,” the year marking Christ’s birth.

During his first visit to Italy, Dürer had written back to a friend still in Germany, "How I shall freeze after this sun! Here I am a gentleman, at home only a parasite." It was when he arrived home that Dürer put his monogram to use, lending stature to the job, “artist,” by making art bear the signature of its maker.

The monogram as self-identifier is itself a sort of self-portrait. It occupies a corner of a work not unlike a skull or “memento mori” that began its appearance in art in earlier times as reminder of mortality to both artist and onlooker.

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“The Ambassadors” painted by Hans Holbein the Younger in 1533, has a memento mori at the bottom made visible by viewing the portrait from close to its lower right side and turning to look to the left. Watch Dr. Kat’s video to further explore the painting by clicking HERE.

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Dürer’s monogram appears in his etching of St. Jerome opposite a memento mori—a human skull. I have always assumed that Dürer identified with the hard-working writing and translating saint whom he depicted in the medieval study with his pets at his feet.

Jerome wrote, “The face is the mirror of the mind, and eyes without speaking confess the secrets of the heart.” Perhaps Dürer thought of this as he reflected himself in Jerome. It recalls scriptural references that hearken back to the original portrait in Genesis—the man and woman whom God created as a self-likeness.

Is it this God-likeness that Dürer felt gave him authority to paint himself as Christ’s likeness in his third and last painted self-portrait? Might the entire painting be a memento mori—an integration of image and inscription which reads in Durer’s first painted self-portrait, “Things happen to me as is written on high?”

At Home with George Herbert and Sister Kitty

Last Sunday afternoon in the nave of The Cathedral of All Saints, we enjoyed reading and praying through poems of George Herbert with Sister Katherine Hanley, CSJ, PhD, known as Sister Kitty to her students and many friends, many of whom were once her students or those who know her through spiritual direction.

We called it a retreat, and so it was. I strain to describe an event that was both communal and a private experience for each who was there. George Herbert’s poems seem to also sprout from liminal space defying description. He referred to them as “a picture of the many spiritual conflicts that have passed betwixt God and my soul.”

Times being what they are, we questioned whether to have this event that was postponed in Lent in the Cathedral at all, or to have it on Zoom, as we have done with other poetry events since the pandemic shut-down. Sister Kitty, who has mastered Zoom, said she would prefer to be in the Cathedral. I found that most were willing and able to come, and I daydreamed the masked retreat as another would a masked ball.

After the event Sister Kitty wrote:

It was a joy for me to see the faces and to see people nodding, giving me thumbs-up, diving into their purses to take notes, and being there together.  I felt that we were a community even with the spacing! The cathedral was a perfect venue and Herbert would have been delighted, I think.

I think so, too, because Herbert instructed a friend to publish his poems only if he thought they would help people. A minister said to me recently, “Times are hard because ‘church’ means we know ourselves when we are together.” Herbert the poet brought us together with Sister Kitty, but I was also aware among the eyes and masks of the ministers, teachers and private persons—those who stand in the gap of spiritual conflict—of Herbert the man and priest.

Here are some of your reflections:

I was an English major in college and grad school, so going back to the poems of George Herbert was a treat. And since those school days, I've been on a faith journey as an Episcopalian, so his images, ideas, and language resonant even more. Sister Kitty is a fine teacher.

I found that the historical context and Sister Kitty's love for Herbert's poetry made the poems come alive when she read them. As a priest, I also found the Dean's reflections on the poem Aaron very thought-provoking. Thank you for hosting this event.

I would have liked to have heard a recording or performance of some of the hymns based on the poetry. Since this was a retreat it may have been nice to have some extended time for silence and reflection on the poetry.  Maybe start earlier in the day? It is always a pleasure to hear Sr. Kitty.  I was also touched by the Dean's remarks and sharing of a poem.  A great day.

It was great! Would love more Sister Kitty Time!

Thank you. It was so wonderful.

“The Collar” is the poem that spoke volumes to me! The words that jumped out to me were; “leave thy cold dispute of what is fit and not. FORSAKE THY CAGE.”

"Love (III)" ia a favorite Herbert poem, that served as inspiration for a favorite Vikram Seth poem, “Host,” written in response to Herbert's "Love (III)"  after Seth purchased Herbert's home. 

Host

I heard it was for sale and thought I’d go
     To see the old house where
He lived three years, and died. How could I know
     Its stones, its trees, its air,
The stream, the small church, the dark rain would say:
     “You’ve come; you’ve seen; now stay.”

“A guest?” I asked. “Yes, as you are on earth.”
     “The means?” “… will come, don’t fear.”
“What of the risk?” “Our lives are that from birth.”
     “His ghost?” “His soul is here.”
“He’ll change my style.” “Well, but you could do worse
     Than rent his rooms of verse.”

Joy came, and grief; love came, and loss; three years –
     Tiles down; moles up; drought; flood.
Though far in time and faith, I share his tears,
     His hearth, his ground, his mud;
Yet my host stands just out of mind and sight,
     That I may sit and write.

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Consider joining us on Zoom which is surprisingly well-suited to small groups reading poetry, for a W.H. Auden group meeting once a month October through May led by Evan Craig Reardon. Click HERE to learn more about it, and HERE for a free Zoom session with Evan on poetry on the Dean’s Forum next Monday.

In All Things

A spiritual director said to me last week, “It sounds as though you are spiritually weary.” “What does being spiritually weary look like?” I asked. “Having too many notions,” she said.

I had just told her I was looking into being an associate with the Order of Julian of Norwich, painting the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, and saying the Daily Offices. We speak only by telephone now and I wonder if she smiled as she spoke.

I smile now as I see myself struggling through the dark toward the spiritual life like a last lighting beetle of summer.

Reading poetry has helped me feel more connected to God and others lately than any new practice. Gerard Manley Hopkins, a poet and priest who I think also exhausted himself at times by excess of notions, seems to have worked his way through darkness by light of his writing.

My own heart let me more have pity on

My own heart let me more have pity on; let

Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,

Charitable; not live this tormented mind

With this tormented mind tormenting yet.

I cast for comfort I can no more get

By groping round my comfortless, than blind

Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find

Thirst's all-in-all in all a world of wet.

Soul, self; come, poor Jackself, I do advise

You, jaded, let be; call off thoughts awhile

Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room; let joy size

At God knows when to God knows what; whose smile

's not wrung, see you; unforeseen times rather — as skies

Betweenpie mountains — lights a lovely mile.

We read Hopkins in our last poetry workshop at the Cathedral. If you would like to join us for A Retreat with the Poems of George Herbert, an evening Dean’s Forum with poetry, or a journey with the poems of W.H. Auden, click on the titles to register.

“Jackself,” from what I gather, is a made-up word with which the speaker gently chides himself as a mere human who cannot, who ought not, try to wring a smile from God. “Jackself” reminds me of “Brother Ass”— what St. Francis called his body—his way of his gently embracing his human tendency toward self-absorption.

“Finding God in all things” is what St. Ignatius directed others to do. If you have lived in this world without asking yourself to see God’s presence in its horrors, and in your private misery, and you begin to prostrate your mind before these things and watch for God, it will change the way you see these things.

Holding this practice is to be as the lighting beetle of late summer who seeks the true source of light until its death. Many of us have spent much of our lives exhausting ourselves trying to find ourselves in all things. By seeking rather to find God in all things, we become free from self-absorption, and might find ourselves loving anyone.

But claiming a religion of love when we have no thirst for the font of love in Jesus Christ, God’s only perfect son poured out in death for the chronically spiritually dehydrated, is like trying to wring a smile from God. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,” Jesus says in the Beatitudes. Often the best thing we can do is to look within and name our thirst.

Where was God in this past week—from where did true life flow? I saw and heard God in a mother, Julia Blake, whose son Jacob Jr. was shot by police on Sunday. She used her tragic momentary spotlight to ask for prayer and to prophesy to the world.

As we read in Isaiah, God also talks about love when anguished over how what we do does not reflect God or God’s family. You can see and hear Julia Blake give her full statement HERE. Let us pray we recognize our thirst in her words.

Tails of Two Cathedrals

The Cathedral of All Saints in Albany, NY

Recently my prayers are most importantly that—prayers—while they often flow from a discombobulated mind and unsettled heart. For someone such as myself, sensitive and somewhat disorganized by nature, the Daily Offices of the Book of Common Prayer are effective means for steering myself toward God.

And so I am thankful that Thomas Cramner, Archbishop of Canterbury, pieced together that good English book from the Good Book and traditional prayers during his time of turmoil and reformation.

But I also have a creative mind that seeks itself to build a raft on which to float toward the uncertain future. Therefore I have an affinity for St. Ignatius, the day dreamer who discerned God’s action in his life and sought to teach others to do the same. Though I have not made a full retreat of his spiritual exercises, on most days I read a suggested passage of scripture for making the retreat. Then I revisit it, sometimes wrestle with it, sometimes draw it, throughout the day.

My first attempt at drawing an imaginative prayer—The angel’s visits to Mary and Joseph became conflated into one visit in my mind as the couple both accept the call to parent Jesus.

More on Ignatian prayer in the next blog post. Meanwhile, while I work on integrating his work, I enjoy our poetry workshops at our cathedral and listen to a variety of online podcasts and services.

A comfort to me during the pandemic has been my YouTube subscription to Canterbury Cathedral, where all prayers began to be said outside in its various gardens when it closed. All spring and summer, Dean Robert has read stories, such as The Little Prince, has begun prayers with quotes (this morning it was from Sylvia Plath’s journal), and gives homilies as the green around him becomes increasingly boisterous and shot through with blossoms.

I am no stranger to church mice and an occasional bat, but many animals live at Canterbury Cathedral. A cat is always somewhere in the frame at Morning Prayer, stealing the show. A few mornings ago, a black one ran as if chased. “It is a very windy day here,” the Dean said. “The cats don’t like it because it gets in their whiskers.”

He spoke with the same authority and inner knowledge in his voice that his homilies contain. I always listen to the liturgy rather than speak with him due to our different prayer book and lectionary. He seems aware of this as he invites me to say the Lord’s Prayer in whatever language I can muster. When I give thanks with him for anniversaries in the life of the world that he is careful to name, my private beast—my concern—jumps off the table as if to set about grooming itself straight.

A week or two ago, after Morning Prayer in a chicken coop had ended, a long series of grunts began. Hearing no prayer, I looked at my phone to see what had begun. It was a three-hour video of Clemmie the sow giving birth. Now, if I have already listened to Morning Prayer and I feel lost, I watch the videos of the growing piglets.

Grunts mean that life goes on even when cathedrals are closed and prayer has ended, even when pandemics rage. Jesus Christ is the same today, yesterday and forever. Clemmie and Winston are too busy in the piglet nursery to imagine that it could be otherwise. Dean Robert, always mindful of whiskers, the Cathedral looming above him and the sky above it, attest to the truth of these things.

Miraculous Where We Stand

Above is the second of three conversations I had with Evan, our poetry reading workshop leader. I am offering a free Zoom workshop on painting on July 25. (No experience or materials necessary.) You can sign up for that by clicking HERE.

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My daughter and I just went camping for a few days. We were not in deep woods or in a place I had not been to before, but being outdoors—both the silence and constant wind-chatter of it—was more restful than anything I could remember experiencing.

I had never camped during a pandemic before. I realize now that not only did I enjoy the sounds and the breeze and the campfires and, most of all, my daughter’s company, but a sense of safety three-days long. I remembered what feeling safe feels like.

I am one of those people for whom safety means being able to lead others to peace, something I have not felt confident of for some time. This has made it hard to write. I imagine myself praying in the early morning, standing on our little hill looking out over the scrub oaks to write this……..

Some say we are living in an apocalypse—literally a time of revealing. What I survey from where I stand is a Christian dystopia. I see the last who would be first of whom Jesus spoke moving not upstream, but down. Awareness of who has fallen by the wayside seems to result in their receding further away from me.

Where is redemption, and would I, would we, recognize it if it came? It cannot be merely in a vaccine that confers temporary immunity. There is no way to gain immunity from what is already broken. I know because I have wasted time pretending I can be immune to everything. Rather, I know now, I must try to tend others’ and my own vulnerability—both for Jesus’ sake.

Whatever help we can offer right now seems slight, like wearing a mask. Even we who are careful to wear masks since evidence they protect others has grown find that wearing masks is difficult. It can feel as though the one way we might help someone—by showing an attentive smile—is frustrated by what is supposed to protect them.

I think that, for those of us in helping professions, it can feel as though the purity and respect we carefully cultivate in ourselves as we serve others have been called into question, even sullied. I am at times painfully conscious of wearing a prophylactic on my face.

Rather than feeling glee at re-openings, I feel a sort of first-trimester nausea for the Church universal right now. In the mask-wearing and not wearing I see the very ordinary struggles of the inner life—grandiosity, denial, a longing for freedom, heavenly hope, and both disregard and concern for others, as well as bodily longing to possess glorious facial hair and also the desire to breath well that make mask-wearing difficult.

I sense growth for what my ministry is becoming blindly, while I deny it is reduced to trying to figure out who signed the sign-in sheet “Thomas Jefferson” with no phone number last Sunday. We have a sign-in sheet at services in case we have to do contact tracing as other churches do after Covid outbreaks. I pray we never need the sheets, and I know that we must have them.

Visitors come to the Cathedral often, even now. Thomas Jefferson did not believe in miracles, but maybe in these times he would visit, drag out one of our kneelers, and pray for a miracle for his country. I was angry at his impersonator on Sunday, but I forgave him because we are all created equal, however aware we are of our shared breath and the responsibility we bear each other. Mostly, I was upset because I feel called to love the Cathedral and its people, and I worry about them.

It is a very low Christology, I learned in seminary, that teaches that the miracle of the loaves and the fishes was just that Jesus got people to share. I believe in Jesus’ miracles, but now I doubt that when people exhibit such regard for each other it is much short of miraculous—I think this especially as my own capacity for concern has swelled. Only Jesus could have done that.

Who knew God would bring me here? I know that many of you stand as I stand—never quite at rest—always praying on a little hill in the mind, surveying and loving the place that is your church here or out there—the people you have been called to care for. And that this is true whether you are physically with them or not.

We are still in the wilderness together, needing God to show us the way. Until all is revealed, let us love one another however we can. Please wear a mask in your place of worship, sign in with your correct name, follow the Bishop’s and others’ guidelines, and encourage others to do the same. When at home, please look in the mirror and love the face you see for the rest of us who miss it.

Poetry and Painting in Exile

Jacob’s Ladder, by Wendy Ide Williams. Click on her name to see more of her work.

Dear Friends,

Here we are, online again, sharing God’s blessings through a screen, perhaps wondering how this post really finds each other. I am happy to write that at present I feel gratitude—something I have had to pray for lately—for the encouragement I receive through others’ online offerings to me.

Yesterday evening, Evan Craig Reardon, who leads poetry reading workshops at the Cathedral (one beginning Saturday—there is still time to register—and another in August) and I had good conversation about poetry and painting—you can hear us in the Zoom video below. (I am offering a free painting workshop on Zoom on July 25.)

And there are the thank you messages for leading Evening Prayer on Facebook as well as the workshop thank yous and queries. And I just joined the middle of a retreat on Zoom with Sister Katherine (Kitty) Hanley, CSJ, PhD, who will lead a retreat in our Cathedral with the poems of George Herbert on September 20. (It will be in the Cathedral—assuming New York stays open—in keeping with safety guidelines.)

Sister Kitty has been my teacher in spiritual direction and theology. I have found I can rely on her to bring me into God’s presence as the psalmist does—by saying what is true and sometimes terrible so that my heart breaks and, free, can rise from the ashes of what it realized toward praise. She mentioned the Book of Exodus as scripture for our times. We are in exile, she said, naming the terrible ways in which some particularly bear it, and, like the Israelites and those in the middle of a retreat, we do not know how it will end.

True, and this paints an image of us as a people connected to each other through God, I thought—sin, exile and the sometime weirdness of Zoom notwithstanding. The Rite I phrase “manifold sins and wickedness”—though these are not what I have been most bewailing lately—comes to mind along with the grumbling and nostalgia Sr Kitty reminded us that the Israelites fell prey to.

They, and I, grumbled, as though manna falling from the sky and God’s provision born of love, even through technology, are ordinary things for ordinary times—things to take for granted.

Having retreated and loosened my grip on the past, my heart can rise with praise again.

Certainly our times and also God’s grace are extraordinary things—one way is how we own them together. Not knowing how or when our time in exile will end, there is opportunity for freedom from what we thought we knew and for falling deeper into awareness of God’s total imagination and care.

At The Cathedral of All Saints, we fall deeper through conversation with each other.

As Evan always says, there should be MORE POETRY—We are planning the first Hidden Cathedral Poetry Festival for April 24, 2021 with many guests and offerings. Cathedral Arts visionary Eugene K. Garber and his friend, poet Michael Joyce, will present a workshop together. Micheal read a poem for us after we had to postpone the poetry festival until 2021—the video is below. Thank you, Michael. We also like your Kandinsky.