The Lake Isle of Inisfree #2

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

I WILL arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,	5
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;	10
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core. William Butler Yeats When I read this poem  it evokes all my associations with the Delaware River, childhood, family, and that primal awareness of the world as somehow sacramental. When I read it I am once fishing in a  boat with my sons when they were younger; or with my father,  when I myself was young. Speaking of my father, it so happens that he died on this day,  August 21, in 1981. I was with him, and few moments before  he died, he roused himself from a deep coma and cried out,  “Jonathan! The boatman!” And now, when I read of “lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore,” I am once again in a boat with him, and he is rowing while my sister and I fish, lines trailing out behind. “I hear it in the deep heart’s core.”

BIBLICAL ISLANDS: Revised

The Bible likes mountains, rivers, and deserts, but makes few references to islands.  As it happens, the Hebrew word for “coastland” appears to be the same as for “island,” which suggests that the ancient Israelites were not sailors, or even beach-goers.   Many biblical passages suggest that they were afraid of the ocean. Does the Bible say anything about an Israelite navy? No wonder they had little interest in islands.

Other than a few more passing references in the Hebrew Scriptures and in Acts, the most significant biblical island is the Isle of Patmos, where the Book of Revelation was composed. A quick reference to Wikipedia confirms my recollection that Patmos, one of the multitude of Aegean islands, was used as a penal colony by the Romans, particularly for the confinement of political prisoners. The island itself does not appear anywhere in the narrative, however, except to say, in Revelation 16:20, that “every island fled away” when the seventh angel poured out his bowl of wrath.

There is a fine monastery on Patmos, established in 1088 by a fellow named Christodoulos, known to the Orthodox Church as “The Wonderworker.”

                                                                     Holy Island

So what if the Bible isn’t interested in islands? I will take Christadoulos as my patron, along with island-hopping Irish monks like Aiden and Cuthbert, early residents of Holy Island, and having located myself in a place with water on all four sides, wait to see what happens. 

  

                      Abba Jonathan says: “An island you seek? To Coney Island

                                                                     I once went. Or was that a hot dog?"

HOLY ISLAND: RETURNING TO A PLACE I HAVE NEVER BEEN

Except that, for me, there has always been an island.

Well, almost always. From the time I was six my family spent the summer on an island in the Delaware River. It was there that I learned to “walk in a sacred manner”, as Black Elk wrote. In later years I was drawn to Christian sacramentalism because the Eucharist reminded me of the Island. It still does.

In a little more than a week Nancy and I will make another attempt to begin the pilgrimage to Britain that was precluded last summer by the need for Nancy to have gall bladder surgery. 

As before, our principle destination will be the Holy Island of Lindesfarne, on the northeast coast of England near the Scottish border. We will also visit our extended family in Duns, Scotland, and the Anglican Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham in Norfolk. There are parish churches and cathedrals I wish to visit, but this journey is basically a pilgrimage to an island, a Return to a Place I Have Never Been. 

If you have a history with such islands, or would like to have one, you are welcome to read the chronicle I plan to keep on my blog, www.theramblingrector.blogspot.com

Bella the Cat: a Demented Healer

Our cat Bella is a spirit-animal, a healer who gravitates to the person in the family most in need. Last night I dreamed that she climbed into a space between a ceiling and some acoustic tiles, and then fell through and hit the floor, injuring herself. Nancy and I watched impotently as she then dashed frantically about the room, desperately and unsuccessfully seeking relief.

I take this as a comment upon our son Jason’s having been recently diagnosed with MS. Whatever serenity we may have felt, whatever fragile sense of control we had been maintaining, has been shattered by the impact of this undeniable reality. Bella is the one with the habitual aura of dominance and control. She lords it over the other animals, and picks which humans she will grace with her favors. Now, in the dream, we behold her wounded, lost, and terrified, just like us.

In this respect Bella is like Christ, the one “in whom all things hold together,” as the Letter to the Colossians says, and “making peace by the blood of his cross.” But as yet there is no peace,  no reconciliation, no resurrection. There is only the impact, the harsh truth, the loss of equilibrium, and the fear.

It is as if we were with Christ at a time of confusion, agony, and self-doubt. We have no choice but to embrace the confusion, and the dread. We dash back and forth between the various emotions, and also the shocked numbness which is no-emotion, the forerunner of what could become a soul-killing depression, and despair.

It is that last condition from which this dream offers hope of healing. In the dream, Bella serves as prophet to “heed her warning, and forsake our sins.” For now, it is imperative that we, I in particular (because of my aptitude for detachment/intellectualization/spiritualization/etc.), feel the impact, express the emotions, live in the confusion, face the fear.

Whatever healing we are to know will proceed from there, as will whatever resurrection Christ has to share with us. And Bella, as usual, is napping on the cable-box.

    

Jon Daniels went down to Alabama * a volunteer, helping black

citizens register to vote.

He left his seminary studies back in Cambridge, * the green hills of New Hampshire,

his boyhood home.

He left the incense-haunted place of revelation, * and took magnificat to be his creed.

Guileless, he lived among the people; * their children trusted him.

Unknowing, he joined the group that went to Hayneville; * nonviolent, they spent the

night in jail.

Released in the morning, they went to get a drink, * Coca-Cola, at the nearby little store.

In the street, Tom Coleman shot him, * and Father Morrisroe his friend.

Tom Coleman, (was he a deputy?), * believing that he did God’s will.

Jon Daniels placed his body * between the shotgun and a teen age girl;

He died instead of her, * white for black, male for female, him for her.

His novice priesthood sacrificed, * his cup spilled, but covenant unbroken.

The reputed deputy went unpunished: * his jurors, twelve white men,

While, from the dust, another justice worked a silent plan * to heal the land.

Psalm 89: More than Royalist Propaganda

The first 37 verses of Psalm 89 are Hebrew royalist propaganda. They paint a rosy picture of how God chose David to be king of Israel and how his dynasty would always be upheld, even if their behavior was less than exemplary. “I will not lie to David,” verse 35 states authoritatively, and the next two verses continue in the same vein: “His line shall endure for ever *  and his throne as the sun before me/ It shall stand fast evermore like the moon, * the abiding witness in the sky.”

The subsequent verses, however, make it clear that everything preceding them has been a set-up. The psalmist has set the stage for a major lament, a recitation of the ways God has reneged on the divine promises.  “You have cast off and rejected your anointed,” says verse 38, and in the next verse “You have broken your covenant with your servant, * defiled his crown, and hurled it to the ground.”

Even so, God has not disappeared from the world. If God is not going to be manifested in the political successes of the Davidic kingdom, where else might such a manifestation occur? “How long will you hide yourself, O LORD?” asks the psalmist. For, as verse 2 asserts, “I am persuaded that your love is established for ever.”

If God’s presence and activity were truly confined to the fortunes of a short-lived dynasty in a minor kingdom in the ancient world, then there would be no reason to recite psalms, or read Bibles, or seek the presence of a hidden God. But the presence and activity of God are not so confined. The disappointments of ancient psalm-writers have expanded to embrace tragedies far more vast, and accomplishments far more significant. “Who can live, and not see death?” inquires the psalmist in verse 48. Who is it that, in verse 26, “will say to me, ‘You are my Father, * my God, and the rock of my salvation’?”

The psalms, like the gospels, are about more than what they say they are about. The same goes for our own clumsy efforts to discern the shape of the hidden God in the world. “Your love, O LORD, for ever will I sing”, proclaims verse one of Psalm 89. And we, in our fashion, take up the refrain: “from age to age [our mouths] will proclaim your faithfulness.”