Category: religious/spiritual

June anniversaries

A few days ago, B and I celebrated our 33rd wedding anniversary – separately. He is back in New York State, while I am still in Hawai’i. Before he left, we had had a delicious celebration dinner with E at 12th Avenue Grill  – on the second try, as the first reservation had to be cancelled when I became ill.

On the day, I opened cards from him that he had left here; I had left a card for him at home. Still, I didn’t feel moved to write about it until today.

E and I were at 8:30 Mass at St. Patrick Church, where E and L were married in Nov. 2012. E sings with the choir, so I have been sitting near the front on the right side of the church, where I can look over and see her. These last three weeks, I have sat behind the same couple, who are about the age of my parents and obviously filled with aloha spirit, always greeting many other congregants. This week, she was wearing a beautiful purple dress with coordinated lei and he was looking sharp in an earth-tone leaf-patterned aloha shirt and brown slacks.

Today, they renewed their wedding vows in celebration of their 64th wedding anniversary. When the priest called them forward after the homily, they first presented him with a plumeria lei. In a lovely coincidence, her name is also Joanne; his name is Guy. Guy and Joanne were married right there at St. Patrick and had also baptized their children there. No wonder everyone seemed to know them! Guy has a sly sense of humor. Joanne says the key to a long marriage is “Patience!” There were multiple rounds of applause for them from the congregation.

I hope that B and I will be blessed to celebrate a 64th anniversary someday. We are more than halfway there…

Corpus Christi in Honolulu

Flowers and cross

Aloha! Today, Catholic churches celebrate the solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, still often called by its Latin name Corpus Christi. This celebration is close to my heart because for the many years that I belonged to Blessed Sacrament parish, we celebrated it as our parish name day. Even though that is no longer my parish, I still feel a special connection to the day.

This year was special because I got to attend mass at St. Patrick Church in Honolulu, where my daughter E and her husband were married and where they serve in the music ministry. My son-in-law is away doing research for his doctoral dissertation, but I attended the 8:30 mass at which their choir sings. The assigned cantor wasn’t able to make it, so E stepped in to do it, which was a lovely bonus for me.

One of the things that drew my attention today was the crucifix, which is carved wood. I was thinking about how appropriate that the corpus on the cross is brown, because Jesus’s skin would have been brown. So often, Jesus is depicted with light skin, which a Jewish man living in the sun-drenched Mediterranean would not have had. I also noticed, as always, the colorful floral arrangement. One of the brothers at the monastery arranges the flowers from their garden every week.

Father C, who presided at E and L’s wedding, presided and preached today. I love how he can say so much with so few words. He used the image of an open hand receiving the host at communion to explain how we should be open to God’s love.

Father C has a tremor disorder, which causes his hands, especially his right hand, to shake markedly when they are outstretched. Yet, when he was praying the Eucharistic prayer and raising the host and the cup, he was able to still his hands.

I appreciated the opportunity to be there to celebrate this special day, with Beth leading us in song. I especially enjoyed singing “Draw Us in the Spirit’s Tether,” a favorite hymn which I have not had the occasion to sing for several years.  The third stanza of the poem by Percy Dreamer begins:

All our meals and all our living
make as sacraments of you,
that by caring, helping, giving,
we may be disciples true.

Amen!

Saying good-bye to a friend

Today was Peter’s memorial service.  I had written about Peter here and, this afternoon, we were all able to say our final good-byes and to celebrate his life among us and the eternal life to which he has been called.

Although Peter’s final illness was short, he was able to participate in the planning of the memorial, both musically and liturgically. The service was one of the most meaningful I have ever experienced and included some favorite Scripture passages, including 1 Corinthians 13.

The choir was made up of past and current members of the Trinity Episcopal choir and of Harpur Chorale, the most select choral group at Binghamton University which Peter had conducted since 1998. He had been organist/choirmaster at Trinity Church since 1981.  Also participating were the remaining members of Early On, a quintet that Peter helped form several years ago

Tellingly, the organ was silent for most of the service. The program explained:

 “In tribute to Peter’s many years as Church Musician at Trinity the organ will not be used during the first part of the service. The return of the organ at the end of the service symbolizes the enduring nature of music.”

The organ first played after communion for the commendation anthem, which was “The King of Love My Shepherd Is”, an arrangement that Peter had done of the tune St. Columba for choir and organ. It was so moving for all of us. You could tell that some of the choir members were struggling to go on, but together, they were able to continue.

We all sat and listened to the postlude, which was Olivier Messiaen’s “Dieu Parmi Nous” (God Among Us), the last movement of The Nativity of Our Lord.  The organ professor from the University played, but I couldn’t help thinking about how Peter played it. While the professor played it well technically, Peter played with more feeling and nuance and with a profound understanding of how to coax subtle shadings of sound from the 1960 Casavant organ. I thought about how often I had stood next to the console, observing Peter playing and turning pages for him, absorbing everything I could about service playing from him.

After the last reverberations of Messiaen died away, there was a profound silence in the full church. I believe we were all giving thanks for Peter’s years with us and feeling his absence.

Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine : et lux perpetua luceat eis.  Grant them eternal rest, Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them.

Lantern Floating Ceremony in Honolulu

My daughter attended this year’s ceremony. The combining/adaptation/re-interpretation of cultural elements doesn’t surprise me as it happens so frequently in Hawai’i. Thanks to Within the K Streets for this post and to Rowena of beyondtheflow, whose reblog brought me here.
JC

Reiko's Journey's avatarWITHIN THE K STREETS

“I’m not coming out until you promise not to float me.”

Since 1999, an esoteric Buddhist denomination called Shinnyo-en has sponsored a “Lantern Floating” ceremony on Memorial Day to create a moment of reflection and collective compassion and remember those who have passed.

The name “Shinnyo-en” means “a borderless garden of the unchanging and real nature of things,” and its principal doctrine encourages everyone to develop the ability to act with unwavering loving kindness and compassion. That’s a pretty good thing, methinks.

Lantern close upThe original Lantern Floating was a modest affair, held in a lagoon out near Honolulu Airport but grew in popularity and since 2002 it has been held annually at Ala Moana Beach Park, the major regional park adjacent to Waikiki.

How popular is it? About 40,000 people attend the ceremony. Folks stake out their positions on the lawn areas 24 hours in advance and guard their position…

View original post 732 more words

One-Liner Wednesday: truth

“If it is true, then science, psychology, poetry, and philosophy will also be seeing the same thing, but from different angles, at different levels, and with different vocabularies.”
– Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond, p. 132

Please join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesday! Find out how here:  http://lindaghill.com/2015/05/20/one-liner-wednesday-love-is/

Sunday morning thanksgivings

The word Eucharist means “thanksgiving.” Here are a few things for which I am thankful this Sunday.

* I got to attend Mass with my parents. This has been a common practice over the last five years, after they moved into their senior residential community, but it has been a rarity lately. My mom has had a string of health issues, the most recent of which I wrote about here, so she hasn’t been able to get out to church many times this year.  This spring, Dad turned 90 and Mom turned 83 yesterday. I am also thankful to still have them with us and doing comparatively well. While they have had challenges, they are in better shape than so many other folks their age – and so many others were not blessed with this many years on earth.

* We prayed for those affected by the earthquakes in Nepal and took up a collection to aid them.  I was grateful for the opportunity to help.

* During the intercessory prayers, we prayed for Sister Rose Margaret on what would have been her 80th jubilee as a Sister of Saint Joseph of Carondelet. Rose Margaret died just before Christmas. She was an amazing person – bright, knowledgeable, an expert in Scripture and theology, skilled in pastoral care, an excellent preacher, kind, generous, loving, and Christ-like – with an Irish twinkle always in her eyes. Called to the ministerial priesthood by God, she was not able to be ordained under current Catholic doctrine, but she lived out priesthood every moment of her life as a sister. She had been an inspiration to Sarah’s Circle. At her sixtieth jubilee, Sarah’s Circle members attended along with the sisters in her order, so she had two circles of women with whom to celebrate her special anniversary. Today, I gave thanks for her time among us and her lasting legacy.

* When I arrived at Mass this morning, my mother told me that the memorial service for our friend Peter had been set. After Mass, Nancy, the music director and a longtime friend, and I had a long conversation about Peter, who had been her colleague for decades. Peter was the organist/choirmaster at Trinity Episcopal in Binghamton NY for many years, as well as the director of Harpur Chorale, the most select choral ensemble at Binghamton University. As accompanist for University Chorus, he was one of my first friends when I moved to the area and became one of the few people for whom I have ever worked when I served for two years as his assistant at Trinity. (Technically, my title was organist-in-training, which didn’t fit very well as I had been playing for over ten years by that point.) Peter was one of the few people left he knew me as a professional church musician.

Peter had incredible range as a musician. He could play organ repertoire across a range of styles well. He had a profound understanding of liturgy and service playing. He could teach choral music to children, teens, college students, and adults through the age spectrum up to seniors. He composed – choral arrangements, hymn introductions and harmonizations for organ, piano pieces. He taught piano and organ; he was my older daughter’s piano teacher for almost ten years. He could play jazz piano. He was a great accompanist, even managing the nearly impossible orchestral reductions for University Chorus rehearsals. He sang bass, although we didn’t get to hear him much as he usually had to conduct or play.

Peter was also generous, as a musician and as a friend. He collaborated well and managed to keep his cool, even in tense situations. He was a good storyteller and had led an interesting life. His sense of humor was gentle, rather than biting. While he spent most of his time on music, he also loved the outdoors, especially if whitewater canoeing was involved.

Peter’s death was quite sudden and we are still all a bit shocked and holding his wife, daughter, mother, and the rest of his family in prayer. We are also giving thanks for his life among us, doing what he loved, and sharing his gifts with us all.

One-Liner Wednesday: Chittister quote

“To live is to be slowly born.”
– Sister Joan Chittister

Update:  I found out later that this quote originated with Antoine de Saint Exupéry. The interview that I saw with the graphic of the quote didn’t give the attribution so I didn’t realize that Sister Joan was quoting.

Please join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesday:  http://lindaghill.com/2015/04/29/one-liner-wednesday-aha/

Interspirituality on Sunday

Following up on my prior post about the Interspirituality Conference, I wanted to add what happened on Sunday morning.

I attend 7:30 Mass at Our Lady of Good Counsel where we were observing the Fourth Sunday of Easter, which is Good Shepherd Sunday.  Because of the conference, I was especially attuned to the references to Jesus saying that there were other sheep “not of this fold” who also follow the shepherd’s voice, which correlates so well with interspirituality and the core beliefs of religious, philosophical, and humanist traditions toward love, peace, connection, and unity. There were so many other moments during our sung and spoken prayer that spoke of “all” in the universal sense, rather than as all the assembly or all Catholics or all Christians. I am thankful to be here at this time, instead of in the pre-Vatican II days when Catholics regularly condemned those who were not (strongly observant) Catholics. I am also thankful that Pope Francis regularly holds meetings with those of many different spiritual beliefs, as well as those who are atheists, humanists, agnostics, etc., giving public witness to the dignity of each person.

I arrived early at First Congregational for the 10:00 service which was the official conclusion of the Interspirituality conference and was pleased when Jamie came to sit with me. With my daughters no longer at home and my mom dealing with a string of health issues, I most often attend without a companion, so it was nice to have a friend next to me.

The congregation, under the leadership of Rev. Dr. Art Suggs, is very progressive, open, and inclusive. I had not seen such an enthusiastic – and mobile – greeting of one another during the opening of the service since the Ecumenical Christian Church at Smith College when I was a student in the late 1970s-early 1980s.  The hymns and prayers were expansive and filled with light and love. The Scripture passage from chapter 10 of John’s gospel was a continuation of the small section that had been proclaimed at mass and referred back to the good shepherd, which was a beautiful connection for me.  In the passage, Jesus quotes Psalm 82 which says “You are gods.” This passage had come up during the weekend sessions as a millennia-old reference to the indwelling of the Divine in human beings, so it was a natural transition to Kurt Johnson’s sermon, “The Coming Interspiritual Age,” which synopsized the insights shared during the conference and gave hope that many around the world are moving beyond the rigid boundaries separating people from one another and into an emerging Second Tier Consciousness which unifies across religions, philosophies, nationalities, and all else that separates us. I again regret my inability to convey this adequately and hope that people who want to learn more will look for resources such as this website.

I wrote in my prior post about anticipating hearing the organ at First Congregational again. One of the lovely things about the structure of the service is that it incorporated the prelude and postlude within the service itself, so that one can actually listen, avoiding the “accompanied pep rally” experience that especially postludes can become. I appreciated that the postlude registration included some of the reed stops, because I so appreciate the Skinner-style reeds that are full and rich rather than thin and piercing. I managed to only tear up a little as I remembered being at the organ with Searle Wright. Had the repertoire included Franck or Dupré or one of Searle’s compositions I’m sure I would have been sobbing.

In a final Spirit-led moment, at the coffee hour after the service, I joined a conversation that Jamie was having with Heidi, one of the women of the church who had been such a great help to us during the conference. The conversation turned to the organ and I had a chance to share with her some of my experiences with Searle and the instrument. I must have had my poet hat perched invisibly on my head as I was going on about how organs breathe, but, fortunately, Jamie and Heidi were receptive listeners. As it turns out, Heidi’s husband had just been speaking about the need to invest in the upkeep of the organ, so it was particularly meaningful to her to hear me speak about Searle, the instrument, and their place in the history of the church and its ongoing legacy.  I am not sure what work needs to be done, but I am hopeful that the organ will be restored and preserved, not altered, or worse, abandoned. I believe that the Spirit moves and speaks through the organ’s pipes as surely as it does through our human voices and through all of creation.

Interspirituality conference

I’ve spent the last two days immersed in this interspirituality conference.  Kurt Johnson was our main speaker with many members of our local community participating as panelists/presenters.  It is impossible for me to condense two intensive days into a reasonable summary, so I will instead give a series of impressions, connections, and experiences.

I learned a lot from an academic/historical perspective about interspirituality. While it uses a different vocabulary, the concepts were familiar to me from studying spiritual teachers such as Joan Chittister and Richard Rohr who transcend the borders between spiritual traditions and emphasize the universal, indwelling presence of the Divine.

One of the unsettling aspects for me that was articulated by some of the women in attendance was that even at the advanced levels of spirituality and consciousness that were being discussed, the lens was still predominantly and historically male.  When there was discussion of the power of small groups and the advantages of people relating as non-hierarchal circles, I and at least several of the other women in the room were thinking, “Well, of course. This is how we have related, created, innovated, passed on wisdom, supported one another, moved forward together for centuries.”  It was a bit disconcerting to realize that the primacy of love, connection, relation, co-creativity, and the holiness of all creation that are felt so deeply in the hearts, minds, and wombs of women are only now again being re-discovered and brought out into the wider academic world and dialogue on how the world is organized.

That I was at the conference at all was due to connections through women and their circles.  My friend Yvonne Lucia, whose amazing artwork you can see here, was a panelist and passed on invitations to me and other members of sacred circles in which we have participated. I, in turn, was blessed to be able to invite and meet in person Jamie of Sophia’s Children, with whom I had recently connected in the blogosphere.  I so appreciated the enriching conversations that we had during breaks and lunches and a lovely walk along the river that Jamie and I shared after the conference ended a bit earlier than anticipated this afternoon.

The conference followed what was termed as a “loosey-goosey” model, which was fine as it led into unexpected areas and revelations. I was, however, disappointed that we did not do much discussion of ecospirituality, which is becoming increasingly important to me at this point in time.  In all my years of writing commentary on fracking, renewable energy, climate change, and environmental topics, I had to make arguments based on science and economics. Because the anti-fracking movement was being characterized as coming only from a place of emotion and NIMBY-ism, I was careful to work from a fact- basis and to not respond to personal attack. What only those close to me knew was that the energy behind all those comments came from my grounding in the values of Catholic social justice doctrine, which includes care of all creation and an extra measure of protection and care for the most vulnerable, whether an endangered ecosystem or a community left vulnerable to pollution, sea level rise, inadequate food and shelter, or other threat. Now, with the impending release of Pope Francis’s encyclical on the environment and my involvement in the newly reconstituted Catholic Peace Community of the Southern Tier, I feel that I can integrate my environmental advocacy with my spiritual values in a more public way, hoping to spread the message in our communities about steps we can take to help our damaged climate before the climate talks convene in Paris in December.

One of the gifts of the conference for me was increased clarity of my own spiritual journey as I continue through my 50s. While I am still grounded in the “big C” Catholic church, although as a progressive feminist within it, what I learned there – the elements of social justice, the sacramentality of life and relationship, the indwelling of God in each person and all of creation, God as Love, Peace, Ground of Being – makes me also and increasingly a “small c” catholic, which mean universal. That is how I am thinking about interspirituality at this point, that universal connection in which all people of good will share, whether they arrive there via a faith/spiritual tradition or through humanism, science, or some other path.

One of the other blessings was the presence and sharing of some from the Millennial age cohort. While some think of their tendency to connect with one another electronically to be a detriment, I think it is one of their strengths. While those of us in older generations were brought up largely in localized boxes, the Millennials have grown up being connected instantly to a wide circle of people. From my two 20-something daughters and their friends, I have learned so much about celebrating diversity. It is a great source of hope and comfort to me that they already know and live some of these things that have taken me much longer to discover. To know that we have their generation’s commitment, broad sense of community, energy, and love already engaged is a great source of hope and comfort to me.

I am an introvert and gatherings of people are daunting to me. In the two days of the conference, I didn’t ever rise to ask a question or speak. I also tend to need a lot of processing time – and then go on to write overly long blog posts! But I will close with one more observation that I am mulling.  There were a handful of people at the conference that I knew personally, mostly people that I met through Yvonne. There were others who recognized me as a poet, a part of my life that has been public for such a short time that it still seems like a surprise when someone identifies me that way. There were also people who knew me by sight from my fracktivist activities or by name because of my public commentary. And most of the people in the room who do not know me at all.

There was, however, a special personal connection that I had within the church in which we met.  When I was in my twenties, it was my privilege to study organ with Searle Wright. First Congregational was his home church and my lessons often took place there. I took a moment after lunch today to go visit the Aeolian Skinner organ, to sit on the bench for a moment, to remember the wonders of Searle playing it, and to recall the time when I was still able to play myself.

I managed not to cry, although I don’t know if I will tomorrow morning when I attend the Sunday service which will be the official closing of the conference.

Update:  I’m happy to share the link to Jamie’s initial blog post on the conference:  http://sophias-children.com/2015/04/28/interspiritual-its-here-its-happening-its-on-its-way/.  It gives you a much better sense of what interspirituality means and you can follow her blog for more of her insights as they come our way.

One-Liner Wednesday – compassion

“Compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind.”
– Albert Schweitzer

Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesday:  http://lindaghill.com/2015/04/22/one-liner-wednesday-like-a-rolling-stone/