Mary Unbound ~ the Fourth Sunday in Advent for Celtic Advent Day 26

Our fourth Advent candle is lit

I began writing this on Christmas Eve & am finding it hard to believe that Advent has ended already! Although I had planned to write on all forty days, this is my twenty-sixth sharing and I feel quietly proud of that, especially considering all that has unfolded, both personally and politically, during Advent. I want to thank everyone who has come along with me in this journey into the dark and thank you especially to everyone who has made lovely comments, both on line and when I've been out and about. It's such a wondeful affirmation of my work and a real encouragement. I have already begun dreaming of what I might write about next year. I am thinking of changing the name to 'Wild Advent', or perhaps 'Hedge Advent'. Let me know what you think.

I have also decided to continue writing through the Twelve Days of Christmas and the whole of Christmastide, which lasts until Candlemas on February 2nd. We are quite justified in leaving our decorations up until then so don't let anyone tell you otherwise!

Here in the hedgehermitage we have adopted a tradition of burning the evergreens from our Christmas wreaths at Candlemas, which is a lovely way to end Christmastide and wake up the year. And the period from Christmas to Candlemas is forty days, mirroring both Celtic Lent and the Lent preceding Easter. To claim this time back in any small way is part of the Beautiful Resistance. It's loss is due either to the Industrial Revolution or to the dictates of the Church-as-Institution, both of which have sought to control us for their own benefit. We can resist in all manner of ways, and what could be more symbolic than reclaiming the deep winter and decorating our homes with evergreens until the light truly returns, not just until Boxing Day or Twelfth Night?

But, first, it feels right to end Advent properly. The last week, or few days, of Advent introduces us to an intensely female space populated by Mary and, in this land, by the Welsh Mari Lwyd, both travelling by starlight. That they become more prominent now, in the dark womb of the year, seems right. We are waiting for a birth after all. And so it is meaningful indeed that the fourth candle in the Advent Crown is dedicated to Love and to Mary; she who gives birth to Hope, and to a wild and radical resistance whose light has continued burning for two thousand years.

On the night of the UK Election, when it became clear that all hope was gone, it was Mary's defiant song, the Magnificat that repeated in my head; "From henceforth, all generations shall call me blessed." To claim our blessings in such dark times is a wild resistance indeed. And, heartbreakingly, "S/he HAS filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty." This is my prayer.

Some, particularly those who know my history, wonder why I now go to church and call myself a Christian, although I still find labels divisive and unhelpful. Mary and her Magnificat are a big part of that, because here is a faith that, far from being apart from the world, embraces it, a faith that, at its best, when it finds injustice, 'goes towards' it rather than turning away. It is written almost into its atoms that it should be so. Here is a faith of 'God embodied', present in human form, and not just human but radical, subversive form, standing against Empire and oppression, standing alongside the most vulnerable and oppressed, identified with and one of them. A wounded healer. As someone pointed out on Twitter just the other day, Jesus rejected the 'worthy'; those with both secular and religious power and, instead, chose to spend his time with thieves and sex workers; homeless, victimised, shining like the sun.

And here in the Magnificat is his mother; a young woman, a teenager, declaring her defiance. This is not the Mary, meek and mild, that we have been sold by the modern institutional church. This is Mary calling for revolution; the World Turned Upside Down.

Mary by Ben Wildflower

A friend once told me that she had 'found a guru' and had been instructed to rid herself of her anger in order to truly follow her spiritual path. What does this mean in a world of injustice? I want no part of a spiritual path like that. I know that I wouldn't find Mary there.

Mary’s ‘Magnificat’, found in Luke 1: 46-55, is the longest set of words spoken by any woman in the New Testament’ and considered by many to be deeply subversive. It was Mary’s spontaneous response to being declared ‘blessed’ by Elizabeth, who at that time was pregnant with John the Baptist. One might suggest that it was subversive enough for two such strong women to take centre stage in such deeply patriarchal times, but there are so many layers to this story.

It is believed that Mary was barely a teenager when she became pregnant with Jesus, and that Elizabeth was likely to have been more than sixty years old, certainly well past child bearing years. For women of such different ages to call one another friend and confidant as equals is subversive indeed. And Mary’s song of blessing is not one of simple joy; it is threaded through with fear; the fear of a young girl, unmarried and pregnant at a time when to be so risked social ostracism and humiliation. Indeed, under Jewish law, she was at risk of stoning for adultery.

Even in that context, she sings for hope, defiant in the face of danger. It is this defiance which caused the Magnificat to become a “radical resource for those seeking to honour the holy amongst the conflicts and suffering of real life.” (Rev. Carolyn Sharp). It has often become a source of strength for those on the margins who have struggled for liberation. Indeed, from the 1970s in South America, despite the authorities presenting her as an image of piety, Mary became Maria Libertadora, Mary the Liberator, an extremely powerful and important symbol of revolution.

Mary the Revolutionary https://marcuscurnow.wordpress.com/2012/11/27/a-revolutionary-hail-mary/amp/

During British rule of India the Magnificat was banned from being sung in church. Dietrich Bonheoffer, who was executed by the Nazis in 1945 having worked for the German resistance movement, was deeply devoted to Mary. In a sermon given at Advent in 1933 he said, “The song of Mary is the oldest Advent hymn. It is at once the most passionate, the wildest, one might even say the most revolutionary Advent hymn ever sung.” In Guatemala in the 1980s the fascist Government banned its recitation considering it to be ‘too dangerous’.

During Argentina’s ‘war’ against political dissidents, the ‘Mothers of the Disappeared’ placed Mary’s challenging words on posters all over the capital plaza and the display of her song was subsequently outlawed by the military junta. And, of course, Mary too understood the pain of the loss of a child.

More recently, in 2012 Russian all female punk band, Pussy Riot, became famous when they invaded the Cathedral of the Holy Saviour in Moscow and sang a protest song against Vladimir Putin's re-election. The song they sang was a prayer to Mary. Part of the lyrics translate as, "Mother of God, you're a feminist, come and help us. We know you're with us in our protest. Holy Mary, drive Putin away..."

Mary sings of the ‘world turned upside down’, of a time when the “rulers will be brought down from their thrones”, “the humble will be lifted up”, and “filled with good things” as the “rich are sent away empty”. These are themes which often rise in our midwinter traditions. The Mari Lwyd, or Grey Mare, of South Wales, and our soul caking and wassailing traditions, ensure the same sharing of resources from rich to poor. We also have customs such as the ‘Lord of Misrule’, who was often a peasant chosen by lot to preside over Christmastide festivities ~ a reminder that the social hierarchy was maintained by consent, rather than by right. I think that it would be of benefit for some amongst us to be reminded of that now.

Last September I heard Jeffrey John, the Dean of St Albans Cathedral, speak on Mary. One of his subjects was 'Mary the Revolutionary'. As an illustration of the long tradition of relating to Mary as rebel he quoted his favourite Mary poem, written by Mary Coleridge in 1900.

MOTHER of God? No lady thou!
But common woman of common earth;
'Our Lady' ladies call thee now.
But Christ was never of gentle birth;
A common man of the common earth.

For God's ways are not as our ways:
The noblest lady in the land
Would have given up half her days,
Would have cut off her right hand,
to bear the child that was God of the land.

Never a lady did God choose
Only a maid of low degree
So humble she might not refuse.
The carpenter of Galilee:
A daughter of the people, she.

Mary sang the song of het heart.
Never a lady had so sung.
She knew no letters, had no art;
Yet to all mankind in woman's tongue
Hath israelitish Mary sung.

And still for men to come she sings
Nor shall her singing pass away:
He hath filled the hungry with good things -
and the rich he hath sent empty away."

( Mary Coleridge)

It seems fitting then that Advent ends as dusk falls on Christmas Eve and darkens into a night that was once known as Mõdraniht; Night of the Mothers or Mothers' Night, a vigil held by Anglo-Saxon Pagans and attested to in the 8th Century by the Venerable Bede. Although this was not a Christian festival we could choose to deepen into the way in which this night celebrating the female ancestors and the Mother Goddesses of Old Europe resonates with the story of Christmas. We might all then sit in vigil and contemplate and support those who bring light to birth in the winter dark.

And remember too that, unlike the linear ideas of Conservatism and its ilk which feed from a well that can only run dry, these radical ideas of fairness, of equality, and of justice espoused by Christ, and so many others, are reborn and renewed every year in an endless cycle. A prophet who speaks truth to power, a troublemaker, a king who refuses an earthly crown, he will be cut down until we learn to do better, until we give up our scapegoating and our crowning with thorns. And for Christ's sake, for Mary's, and for our own, I hope that we do that soon, but, for now, rejoice that the Prince of Peace has been born again, vulnerable, fragile, all too human, and luminous with Hope.

This Advent has been a powerful journey for me because it has taught me about longing (and the loss that goes with it). From singing 'O, Come Emmanuel' on a Dover roundabout to welcome refugees in a hostile world, to repeating the Magnificat as a little raft to cling to on the night of the Election when it felt that everything vulnerable was thrown under the wheels of endless greed, I have learned that longing is where hope and despair collide, and it is the hope that keeps us singing.

Advent has ended. Christmastide is here!

References:

Jeffrey John at Southwark Cathedral, 12th September, 2019.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary,_mother_of_Jesus

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnificat

https://marcuscurnow.wordpress.com/2012/11/27/a-revolutionary-hail-mary/amp/

https://www.newstatesman.com/religion/2010/12/jesus-god-tax-christ-health

https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_13854296

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mōdraniht

Molecules of Mercy ~ Celtic Advent Day 18

Hogfather stamp

We are coming to the end of the first week of traditional Advent (with the older and wilder Celtic Advent beneath it). This week I have been writing about hope, something which feels in short supply at times. And I have mentioned my feeling that it doesn't really matter if a belief has objective reality as long as it gives us hope, or peace, or joy, and harms no one. It matters so much that we have strength for the journey. Which is why I have never quite stopped believing in Father Christmas, or believing that us believing in him makes him real at least. Because I believe in us.

There is a quote from 'Hogfather' by Terry Pratchett, who I often go to for words of wisdom. It always takes me aback with its raw and honest beauty, only faintly hidden beneath Terry Pratchett's warm and wondrous humour. This quote often makes me cry, because even on my most despairing and cynical days it touches the little spark of hope in me that never goes out, the belief that if we wish for something hard enough it will come true.

In 'Hogfather' Death tries to take the place of the eponymous Hogfather, a mythical being who seems to be a cross between Father Christmas and a Norse God. On Hogswatch Night (December 32nd), the Hogfather grants children wishes and brings them presents, and he is also responsible for the sun rising. But he has gone missing, kidnapped by a group who want to stop children believing in him, or in anything, and there are plenty of people in our own world who would love to do that. Belief is a fragile thing, and Death knows that it matters just as much as the sun rising. Both would mean the light going out. Here, Death explains to his grand-daughter, Susan, why belief matters so very, very much...

"All right," said Susan, "I'm not stupid. You're saying that humans need...fantasies to make life bearable."

REALLY? AS IF IT WERE SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little ---"

YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

"So we can believe the big ones?"

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

"They're not the same thing at all!"

YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY.  AND YET -Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.

"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point---?"

MY POINT EXACTLY."

(From Terry Pratchett's 'Hogfather')

And this is why it doesn't matter to me whether our belief has an objective reality.  It only matters that we believe in something. Something that tells us that life is worth living and that we can be better than we often reveal ourselves to be. As, the ever wise, Death also tells us, MERE ACCUMULATION OF OBSERVATIONAL EVIDENCE IS NOT PROOF.

A few days ago I mentioned the belief of writer David Southwell, curator & recollector of Hookland that 're-enchantment is Resistance.' I am quite sure that Tery Pratchett would agree.

'Happy Hogswatch' by funkydpression

References:

Hogfather ~

Buy the book from Waterstones

Buy the DVD (I am not familiar with this seller but wanted to find an alternative to Amazon)

Quotes ~

https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/583655-hogfather

http://www.chrisjoneswriting.com/hogfather.html

On Hogfather as the best defence of Christmas

https://io9.gizmodo.com/terry-pratchetts-hogfather-is-best-defense-of-christmas-1747414176

Singing for Hope on a Rainy Roundabout ~ Celtic Advent Day 16

Kent Christian Peace Activist Refugees Welcome signs

I am several days adrift with my sharings for Celtic Advent and so I hope that I will be forgiven for posting several morsels today. There is so much loveliness that I want to share.

Firstly, I want to tell you a little about the Kent Christian Peace Activist 'Refugees Welcome' vigils, which take place from 7.30 to 8.30am on the first Friday of every month in Dover on the roundabout opposite the ferry terminal, which is where we found ourselves this morning.

I have been attending the monthly vigil since October 2018 and it has added so much richness, and reality, to my spiritual life. I won't say that it's always easy. Often there are only two of us and we could so easily fall into believing that our efforts are futile. But even that provokes many conversations on hope and how to sing and pray for better in the face of, what seem to be, overwhelming odds against anything ever changing. As I wrote only a few days ago, we can't say that we truly have hope until we have stood on the bitter edge of despair, and in reality in this country very, very few of us have done that in the same way that refugees are compelled to do.

And so we talk about hope; about being imaginal cells, about the promise that God will change everything in an instant ~ how then can we truly despair ~ and today we talked about the feeling that "everything is going backwards"; that the anti-life cult of Empire and patriarchy is increasing its grip, but which might instead be us sensing the death throes of a dying system desperately trying to cling to power. I have believed the latter for many years, and in that time I have watched many deaths. It has always been my experience that just before death a being shines even brighter, a last burst of flame before the light goes out and transformation comes. I am sure that its the same with outworn and outmoded systems.

The root of this thought came when I went to a talk given by author Lynne Sinclair-Wood in London a decade or so ago. She lived in Australia but over the years had spent much time in the British Isles, and particularly in London. During her talk she expressed despair that it felt that money makers and financial institutions had a stronger grip on the city than they ever had before. But I didn't agree. What I felt was that what had been underground; an alternative way of being based in sharing, compassion, love, and justice, had become stronger, was rising up to meet the oppressive systems of greed that we have all lived under for so long. And that it was this sudden clash that she was feeling. When power-over ways of being fully held sway, felt unthreatened, there was no need to stem a rising tide of justice; then we were a river, now we are the sea. The grip of greed might have tightened but, if so, it was out of fear that the systems that fed it were crumbling. The human world turns slowly. It might take a lifetime for change to come. I may never see it but I know in my bones that it's coming, that the arc of the universe is always towards justice, towards Kin-dom.

Some would say that this is wishful thinking and idealism. I say, so what!? In a despairing world it doesn't matter whether this is objectively 'true'. It only matters that it helps us to have hope. This is the work; the work of Advent. It's what we do while we're waiting.

And so, this morning at 7.30am, we were standing on a cold and rainy roundabout in Dover, as we do every month. The police used to stop; sometimes they were nice, sometimes they weren't, but now they rarely stop at all. Perhaps they think us 'safe' or 'irrelevant', but I am mindful of all those who have been thought the same but who have 'turned the tables over' nonetheless. Often we are shouted at by drivers, and quite agressively so. And often, and increasingly, we are given hoots of support. Invariably the person we now call 'sausage roll man' drives past, eating his sausage roll and waving encouragingly. He has a fine beard. He often gives us hope on our most despairing days. Last month, a man who had waved at us from his car emerged from a hotel just near the roundabout as we packed up our things to leave and told us that we were doing a fine thing, that he worked in the hotel, and that if we ever got too cold and wet we should go in for a hot drink. The universe is moving towards justice, but we might not see that from our tiny human perspective. In which case, what we can do is gather up these sweet and fleeting moments into a brew and a balm to keep us standing up for what we believe to be right.

We often say that we are an 'Easter People'; that we are living a 'Resurrection life', and so we are when we must so often be born again from the ashes of despair, and living as we do on a planet of seasons where spring follows winter, summer follows spring. But we are also an Advent People in a constant state of waiting. Holding the tension between these two sacred truths is where we find the Holy One, arms outspread.

We wait until change comes, and that could be at any moment; every breath it's own small resurrection, or it might take forever. What we do while we wait is what matters.

Today it felt that our time on the roundabout was particularly joyous. Perhaps because we are waiting, expectantly and at times impatiently, for better, but we are also close to a point when we can put our waiting aside for just a little while ~ the Peasant King will soon be born and he will Turn the World Upside Down, just as he always has. If the anti-life cult of Empire ever thought that it was safe then it has always been wrong. Here, soon, is a vulnerable child who will break their frozen places into Light.

White Cliffs of Dover

And so, we sang in the cold and the rain; 'Blowing in the Wind' ~ how many times can a man turn his head & pretend that he just doesn't see? ~ 'Jerusalem' ~ I will not cease from mental fight ~ 'O Holy Night' ~ a thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices, fall on your knees, O hear the angel voices ~ and 'O Come, O Come, Emmanuel' ~ O come, bright Daystar, come and cheer, our spirits by your advent here...

Singing, like poetry, breaks the world open, and so we did. There is hope in any voice that rises above the wind and the rain. This is the work we do while we wait; we keep our voices strong enough to rise above the storm. Whatever our faith, we find our ways to kindle hope.

The Window to the World ~ Celtic Advent Day 15

'Sacred Geometry ~ The Window to the World' by Jo Thilwind

Today, I want to tell you that magic happens. The painting above by artist & painter of mandalas of stunning beauty, Jo Thilwind of Dreamspace Art, arrived unexpectedly in the post a few days ago. I am humbled and astounded by the generosity of this gift, but when I read about it in the note she enclosed, I realised that the coming of 'The Window to the World' to the Hedgehermitage is threaded through with enchantment.

The painting was created as Jo's response to an invitation to take part in 'In All Its Glory', an exhibition inspired by the fabric of Chester Cathedral in 2016. It's based on a stunning stained glass window in the cathedral's refectory; 'The Creation Window', designed by Rosalind Grimshaw and dating to 2001.

The Creation Window, Chester Cathedral. Image: William Starkey

The window depicts the hand of God moving through the six days of Creation. William Starkey, who took the above photo, explains that the window depicts; 

"from left to right: God creates the heavens and the earth; Let there be firmament in the midst of the waters; Let the earth put forth vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit; Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night; Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky; Let us make mankind in our own image, according to our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air.

Amongst many features of interest in this wibdow are the pole or northern star and aurora borealis in the first panel, the earth viewed from space in the lower section of the second panel, and a developing child in-utero in the sixth panel. A representation of a brain scan is positioned at the bottom of the fourth panel - this actually depicts a scan of an individual suffering from Parkinson's disease.

The window's designer, Rosalind Grimshaw, was herself diagnosed with Parkinson's. What tender beauties then are held within the luminous panels of this window.

Creation Window, Chester Cathedral refectory, Mark Carline

And it was this window that Jo chose as the inspiration for her own painting; a painting which now hangs in our little house by the sea but once hung in Chester Cathedral.

Jo wrote in her letter that she thought of me as she painted it, and had meant to gift it to me for a very long time, but that it had gone into another exhibition after being in the cathedral and then went missing for two years! And then it recently re-emerged and came here.

Both the timing of the arrival of this painting and the subject matter of Jo's paintings for the exhibition have reminded me that threads of enchantment weave themselves under the fabric of the everyday in ways that we can barely imagine; Spirit on the move.

You may understand why when I tell you that her other painting was entitled, 'St Werburgh - The Goddess of Kindness to all Living Things'.

'St Werburgh ~ Goddess of Kindness to All Living Things'

At the beginning of Celtic Advent I wrote that the Advent season and Christmastide begin with a goose and end with a swan, that followers of Christ in these Isles on the wild edge have and do envisage the Holy Spirit as a Wild Goose, rather than a serene and gentle dove. And I wrote about St Werburgh, who is the protector of wild geese, in 'Resurrection, Reciprocity, and Rewilding'.

St Werburgh is also the patron saint of Chester, with Chester Cathedral as her major shrine. And here she is, appearing in a painting depicting the feminine hand of God amidst her elements, created three years ago with me in mind, exhibited in Chester Cathedral, lost for two years, and then arriving here in the midst of Advent and only a few days after I wrote about St Werburgh, who I had been meaning to write about for several years! I am in awe.

Writer, David Southwell, creator, or recollector, of Hookland, says that 'Re-enchantment is Resistance', an opinion with which I heartily agree. And the generous gift of this painting has filled me with wild enchantment. It has reminded me that we don't need to know or control everything, that we can never hope to do so. We need only to let ourselves go into the flow of Spirit, the river of God, in order to see wonders. All we need do is cultivate the ability to notice. Spirit rarely speaks to us through a burning bush or a column of fire. More often, it's through seemingly simple interactions between faraway friends, through the faint whisper of a bird's wing somehow heard above the traffic, a wildflower that won't quite leave us be; something incongruous, something everyday, something stunning, something real.

The arrival of this painting is, for me, an affirmation that Spirit is my, and our, companion in these quiet days of waiting; that the Beloved is speaking. And that gives me hope.

It will be treasured


References:

Read more about artist, Jo Thilwind here

https://www.saatchiart.com/rainbowjo

On Chester Cathedral's Creation Window

https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/3963993

On the 'In All Its Glory' exhibition at Chester Cathedral

https://www.chesterstandard.co.uk/news/15978260.free-exhibition-inspired-by-elements-of-chester-cathedral-building/

On St Werburgh

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werburgh

Uncertain Advent ~ a Poem for Celtic Advent Day 14

Ice on the Somerset Levels, Jacqueline Durban 

To hope is not blind faith or escapism. To truly hope we must stand on the bitter edge where we can sense what it would mean for all hope to be lost, to look across the dark abyss of despair and still find, and be warmed by, the light of the furthest star. This is Advent.

Uncertain Advent by Alwyn Marriage

Can Christmas this year pierce the gathering darkness,
the daily news that plays upon our fear?
Apocalyptic premonitions shape our Advent,
that, even in the throb of Christmas preparation,
war and the plots of terrorists are ever near.
Christmas may warm our hearts,
but not till wintry chill
has seeped through sinew, heart and bone
with threat of horrors yet unknown.

Stars and angels tell a different story
of unquenched light and peace and warm goodwill;
a message scattering stardust down the ages
encouraging us to trust that all may yet be well
Through darkest night a glimmer leads to morning
guiding our hope and trust and longing still.

Waiting in the dark we cannot know
what lies ahead, of war or of redemption.
What images assail us in the night,
of rape and pillage, show
of rage and might, or light,
of long lost sweet remembered love?

Through the dark hours our thoughts
are turned and tossed
we snatch at tantalising dreams
of reconciliation
gently ruffling feathers on the
white breast of a dove.

Before the morning comes,
we wait, as night
aches on. Uncertain now
what shape or form
our longing calls to birth;
knowing only that those who take up arms
will never bless this earth.

Yet even now we dare to trust our longing,
that when the first faint glow
of morning washes darkness from our eyes,
all that our hearts were longing for in darkness,
will, like a radiant Christmas morning, rise.

References:

http://www.marriages.me.uk/alwyn/writing/poetry/a-sermon-about-uncertain-advent/

Becoming Hope ~ Imaginal Cells for Celtic Advent Day 13

Human butterfly crop circle, The Netherlands, August 2009

At Advent we are waiting for a birth, and neither waiting nor birth are easy. This is a transformation; subversive, uncomfortable, disturbing. Come, disturbing God!

It takes courage to sit with this discomfort, rather than drift easily and mindlessly into the secular consumerism and distracting over the top festivity of the Christmas period. Of course, for some, the demands to spend huge amounts of money, to prove our worth through the extravagance of the presents we can afford to buy, is intensely uncomfortable. Yes, Advent is a season of discomfort but, at its culmination, everything is changed.

Which brings us to this week's theme of Hope. It isn't easy to stay hopeful whilst we wait for change to come and so it matters to have images at our fingertips to help us. For me, one of these is imaginal cells.

These are cells that 'imagine' a butterfly into being, holding all the potential for what will come to be. When a caterpillar is ready to transform, previously dormant cells within its body begin to awaken and multiply. Even as the caterpillar retreats into its cocoon there is no part of it that is recognisable as a butterfly. Inside its chrysalis the caterpillar dissolves into a formless organic gloop and this is when the, previously dormant, imaginal cells begin their work.

At first these change-provoking cells are detected as a threat and attacked by the caterpillar's immune system. But they continue with their work. Initially acting alone, they begin to multiply, connect with one another, passing information until they reach a tipping point, and then, WINGS, a BUTTERFLY! Here, is an everyday miracle, like any birth.

This is a perfect analogy for the way in which we can be the imaginal cells for the 'body' of our own species;

• Tenaciously imagining what could be, even in the midst of structures that seem to be dissolving.

• Withstanding a world that seems set on its own destruction and which sees those who speak of a different way, who are counter-cultural as Jesus was, as a threat.

• Hold onto the thread of a hope that destruction and dissolution are somehow needed.

• Connect with one another in all manner of ways, offer support, gather, tell our holy stories of better things, wait for the tipping point (and the tipping point will come).

This is our work and we were born to do it. We must imagine, and never stop imagining, because our imagining will make it real. It already is.

I find this image liberating; both because of the vision of transformation through seeming collapse, and because it tells us that we don't need to persuade everyone that change is needed. There just need to be enough of us and everyone will be brought along. Until the 'enough of us' is reached all we need to do is find and support one another in working for change in the inner or outer worlds.

We are told that we are the Body of Christ, just as all who believe are, just as all creation is the Body of Christ, or for those of other paths, sparks of the Divine. And what greater journey of transformation than that of Jesus to the Cosmic Christ? We aren't watching that story unfolding as onlookers. We ARE the story unfolding.

And so we wait, we choose unknowing, emptiness, as a space in which God and transformation can come in. We choose discomfort, because we must. Trust. Have hope. Be an imaginal cell.

Come, disturbing God!

A Still Small Point of Light ~ Celtic Advent Day 12

Lighting the first Advent candle, Wiki Commons

Today has been Advent Sunday, the first of the four Sundays in our familiar modern Advent. I have had the sweetest of days, which began at the Church of the 2,000 year old Grandmother Yew in a small village not far from here.

St Nicholas ~ Church of the Grandmother Yew

The church is dedicated to St Nicholas, whose feast day is on December 6th, & so we celebrated his generosity with the sharing of shiny chocolate coins.

Gifts from St Nicholas 

And we all wore our festive hats! Naturally I took the opportunity to put my antlers on.

And we sang one of my favourite hymns, 'O Come, O Come, Emmanuel'.

But it matters not to become too festive just yet, even after today's little flurry. Advent is a time of waiting, of allowing longing, even for those of us who have been journeying through the older Celtic Advent for two weeks already. Everything is born in the dark, and Advent starts with a seed and ends with a star, from small beginnings to an 'ending' as vast as the sky, but even then we will still be sitting in the dark. How else will the seed germinate, the star show us the way, how will we nurture the newborn spark if we rush headlong for the light? Which brings us back to the four Sundays of Advent.

One of the lovely traditional activities of Advent is lighting the candles of the Advent wreath, or Advent Crown. The wreath is traditionally made from evergreens and with four candles, often coloured violet and/or rose, or sometimes a fifth white one to act as the 'Christ candle', placed around it. One candle is lit each Sunday of Advent, and the fifth on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. This takes place in both homes & churches, the light increasing amongst us each week until the Sun & the Son are reborn at Midwinter. Until then we trust and we hope, as our ancestors have before us for thousands upon thousands of years.

The concept of the Advent Crown originated with 16th Century German Lutherans, although the wreath that we would recognise came into being in the 1800s. It seems that Johann Hinrich Wichern, a German Protestant pastor who worked with the urban poor, invented the Advent wreath as a way to reassure the children at his mission school that Christmas was indeed coming, and so encouraging not to ask for a progress report every day. This first wreath was made from an old cartwheel, turned on its side and with 20 small red and 4 large white candles around the rim. Each day a red candle would be lit, and each Sunday a white one. This evolved into the smaller wreaths with five candles that we know today.

The candles symbolise the increase of the light in the world but each also has its own individual meaning, which are Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love. There are variations on the theme, such as Faith, Prepare, Joy, and Love, or Prophets, Angels, Shepherds, and Magi. I read today, shared by author and preacher Sarah Bessey, of another theme from the ancient order of Carmelite nuns, who are dedicated to lives of contemplative prayer & who focus in Advent on Waiting, Accepting, Journeying, and Birth. This feels like a more gentle, slower movement towards the light, one which embraces the dark and the unknowing.

But, what of the more familiar theme for the first week of Advent, that of Hope? I know that many are losing, or have lost, hope in these times. Daily I hear about something which threatens to dim the stars, tumble me into a darkness without seeds. I sit with that, because even that darkness calls for attention, and then I take a deep breath and fall into hope once more. It came to me some time ago that to hope is one of our most sacred tasks; Love pervades everything, always, but hope is a spark that can be blown out, or allowed to die. I once read of humans being 'the ones who carry ochre', but we are also the ones who kindle hope. Refusing to enter the darkness where hope has gone cold prevents our longing to relight the flame of hope. Instead, we warm ourselves on shallow, surface things; materialism, greed, power. For the want of a still small point of light.

I have more to say about kindling hope, and how to nurture that newborn flame in ourselves and the world around us, but for now I will end with a quote from American writer Rebecca Solnit.

"Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency. Hope should shove you out the door, because it will take everything you have to steer the future away from endless war, from the annihilation of the Earth's treasures and the grinding down of the poor and marginal...to hope is to give yourself to the future, and that commitment to the future is what makes the present inhabitable."

And so, we kindle the flame on the first candle of our Advent Crown for Hope. The world isn't filled with light, not yet and maybe not anytime soon. But, for another turning of the year, we commit ourselves to the future, and here is a still small point for us to focus on. Let's help one another keep it shining in the dark.


References:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advent_wreath

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advent

https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/prehistoric-use-of-ochre-can-tell-us-about-the-evolution-of-humans

Sarah Bessey ~

https://sarahbessey.com

https://www.instagram.com/p/B5iYffCBaWr/?igshid=3e36r4mnnyln

Rebecca Solnit ~

http://rebeccasolnit.net

The Wild Hope of Goose Night ~ Celtic Advent Day 8

'Supposing Him to be the Gardener' by Barry Parman. Photo: Max Reeves.

I have been away over the weekend and so I am a little late with my posts for days 8 and 9 of Celtic Advent, but my journey was so full of the Wild Goose Spirit that lateness feels like a small price to pay. And that is because 23rd November 2019 was the 23rd Goose Night at Crossbones Graveyard.

Redcross Mary's shrine, Goose Night 2019

In Southwark, close to London Bridge station in one of the oldest, dirtiest, and poorest, parts of London, an extraordinary thing has happened. Where once there was only bare concrete a wild garden has bloomed, its roots threaded through the bones of the outcast dead. This is the Crossbones Graveyard, once known as the Single Women's churchyard. Here, in this most sacred earth, lie the bodies of sex workers and paupers, who were either refused, or too poor to be granted, burial in consecrated ground. From at least the 14th Century until 1853, when the graveyard was closed having become 'overcharged with dead', an estimated 15,000 people, many of whom were babies & children, were buried there in unmarked graves.

Marking the graves of the Outcast Dead

It is an irony indeed that the medieval sex workers buried there were licenced by the Bishop of Winchester, under an ordinance signed by Thomas Becket in 1161, to work in the stews, or brothels, of Bankside's Liberty of the Clink. These women became known as the 'Winchester Geese' & enjoyed a measure of protection from the bishop, who owned the land, whilst alive but were denied Christian burial at the end. The most brutal of judgements on women from whom the church had benefitted financially.

Having been closed, the graveyard was forgotten until the ground was disturbed by the building of an electricity substation for the Jubilee Line extension in the 1990s. This was when the bones of the outcast dead began to return to the surface of both land & memory. It was at this time that the lost history of the graveyard also returned in the visionary work of John Constable, revealed by the Goose to John's alter-ego, urban shaman John Crow, on the night of 23rd November, 1996.

A ritual drama, The Halloween of Crossbones, based on John's book, 'The Southwark Mysteries', and ending with a candlelit procession to the gates of the Crossbones people's shrine, was performed every year from 1998 to 2010. Since 23rd June 2004, a vigil to renew the shrine & to honour the outcast, dead & living, has been held at the gates every 23rd of the month at 7pm. Each November, in honour of the anniversary of the Goose's appearance to John Crow, the vigil is known as 'Goose Night'. You may wonder who 'The Goose' might be but the answer will perhaps be different for each person who stands at the gates; a muse, the spirit of a medieval sex worker, the Goddess incarnate. She is all these things & so much more.

"Oh, you don't know me yet, dear.
You will dear I promise you.
I am a tricksy tart.
My aim is to astonish you!"

(from 'The Southwark Mysteries' by John Constable)

And so, last night, we gathered once more in good company for Goose Night on the 23rd anniversary of her first meeting with John Crow. Black Swan border morris danced for us, John performed the 'Book of the Goose', and Frank Turner sang his song inspired by Crossbones, 'The Graveyard of the Outcast Dead'. How far her wild wings have taken us!

And, most tenderly and touchingly, after 186 consecutive monthly vigils, this was the last one to be personally conducted by John Crow. From now on a 'magical collective' will take the vigils into the future. Crossbones has always been about more than one person, and yet John Crow, and his 'ground control', Katy Kaos, have been fierce protectors of, & advocates for, the dead who had no voices; an extraordinary act of devotion. A completion.

And, what of Crossbones, her dead, and her wild garden? The people's shrine, hung with ribbons and other offerings, has been in existence for many years, and we have stood beside them imagining a garden as a permanent memorial to the Outcast Dead, sung to the greenman & to the spirits of the future children who might play there, perhaps never quite daring to believe that it would happen. The site belongs to Transport for London and is worth millions to developers. How could a tiny group of strange, raggle taggle, edge people, singing by some rusty iron gates to the spirits of medieval sex workers and the poorest of the poor, ever hope to stand up to that?

And yet, slowly, slowly, over many years, Crossbones began to appear on official maps, Southwark Council placed planters trailing ivy on the gates, a plaque was attached informing passers by that;

 'This is the Crossbones Graveyard. In medieval times this was an unconsecrated graveyard for prostitutes or 'Winchester Geese'. By the 18th Century it had become a paupers' burial ground, which closed in 1853. Here, local people have created a memorial shrine. The Outcast Dead R.I.P'.

Even that is extraordinary but, behind the gates, something truly astonishing was happening. A security guard, living on site in a caravan had begun to create a guerilla garden from building rubble & findings, decorated with oyster shells, once the food of the poor, discovered there. And it was beautiful.

Then, slowly, slowly, Transport for London offered to lease the land for three years so that a 'meanwhile garden' could be created on site. It has been there for five. Hawthorn, crab apples, borage, pink yarrow, mugwort, foxgloves, mistletoe, hollyhocks, toadflax, and thyme, grow there. Dragonflies, honeybees, bright-eyed mice, and tiny, fierce wrens, make it their home. A meadow of flowers has bloomed on the bones of the Outcast Dead. And, in the summer, children play there, just as we inagined it.

I often ponder on what the geese would think if they came by. I wonder if any of them ever saw anything so beautiful. They certainly couldn't ever have imagined that it would all be there for them.

One day several years ago, a few of us were standing at the gates and a homeless man walked by. He asked why we were there and we explained who was buried there and that many people were working hard for them to be brought back to memory and honoured, for who they were and who they might have been. And he replied, "but they were just like me!", and then he cried, and we all cried, and then we hugged. Crossbones offers healing in all worlds, especially in the lost, lonely places of our raw and ragged world.

And each year, on Mary Magdalene's Feast Day, the Dean & clergy of Southwark Cathedral come in procession to perform a 'Service of Regret' for the way in which the Church treated the dead of Crossbones. We might stop and read those words a few times, reflect on them, let it sink into our own bones how astonishing that is.

Often I think that the spirits there have healed us much more than we have ever healed them, or the holy earth they lie in. I hope that the Church has found some forgiveness and been offered grace. This is a mending and a medicine for us all, much sweeter than honey, more precious than gold.

I share this for Celtic Advent because, for me, Crossbones, my favourite place on earth, offers incredible hope that the extraordinary, the unimaginable can happen when the Spirit of the Wild Goose is allowed to do her work, to spread her wings, to fly free.

Here is Mary's revolutionary Magnificat made real, no longer a call to what might be, but a praise song to what is. On a grey side street in Southwark the rich have been sent away empty and the poor filled with good things.

Redcross Mary's shrine

If that can happen at Crossbones, have hope that ANYTHING can change.

And remember...

For more on Crossbones Graveyard visit www.crossbones.org.uk, or
https://linktr.ee/crossbonesgraveyard, where you can also sign a petition to protect the graveyard for future generations.

Hoping for a Sea-change ~ Celtic Advent Day 7

Image: Jacqueline Durban 

Today's offering is another favourite, a poem of waiting from Seamus Heaney; an excerpt from his much longer poem, 'The Cure at Troy'.

The word 'advent' is from the Latin, 'adventus' & the Greek, 'paraousia', meaning 'coming'.      This is a time of preparation & expectant waiting for what's coming, for something new and better to be born. Seamus Heaney's words provide the perfect meditation for this time. And quite appropriate as we await the General Election too!


History says, Don't hope

On this side of the grave...

But then, once in a lifetime

The longed-for tidal wave

Of justice can rise up,

And hope and history rhyme.


So, hope for a great sea-change

On the far side of revenge.

Believe that a further shore

Is reachable from here.

Believe in miracles

And cures and healing wells.

(Seamus Heaney)



Register to vote (by 26th November) at https://www.gov.uk/register-to-vote


References:

On Seamus Heaney

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seamus_Heaney

On 'The Cure at Troy'

Buy it at Waterstone's

https://www.topangaauthorsgroup.wordpress.com/2015/06/08/junes-poem-pick-from-the-cure-at-troy-by-seamus-heaney

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cure_at_Troy

And so we come to Lammastide

Yarrow, July 2019

 A very happy new moon and Lammas to us all!

These seasonal celebrations of Midsummer and Lammas are especially tender, carrying within them, even as the sun feels to be at its height, the whispers of the waning of the year. I love those days when we can feel, almost beyond our surface consciousness, that the year is turning, that soon it will be autumn and time to turn to the dark. I imagine that this is how wild beings, both plants and animals, live; completely present in the moment but with an awareness beyond awareness of what is coming. We often mourn that we have lost that perception but I'm not sure that it's true. Perhaps we have just lost our ability to notice what our skin is sensing? Our disconnection, from ourselves and from the earth is great, but both these festivals of high summer offer us an opportunity to reconnect & remember; to learn again to taste the dark on our tongues.


There is a sadness that these days of grace carry with them, that we are somehow losing something. But, of course, the same awareness that tells us that frost is coming and that the dark is gaining a hold also tells us at Midwinter and Imbolc that the light is returning and that the promise of the first flowers of spring are just under the surface of the cold earth. This is where we find our hope. If we are wise, we walk always with both grief and gratitude in our pockets, because this is Life.

And so, we come to the time of the first harvest, of gathering in, & of beginning to contemplate what has been lost and gained since the first shoots grew as we turned to the light. Lammas, an Anglo-Saxon, & perhaps earlier, festival whose name comes from the Old English hlaf, 'loaf' and mæsse, 'mass', may have been the day when loaves of bread were taken to church to be blessed. For the Anglo-Saxons, harvest and the coming of autumn were the same thing, hence the beautiful 10th Century verse which tells us that;

"And after seven nights
of summer's brightness Weed-month slips
into the dwellings; everywhere August brings
to peoples of the earth Lammas Day. So autumn comes,
after that number of nights but one,
bright, laden with fruits. Plenty is revealed,
beautiful upon the earth."

Lammas grassses, July 2019

And, as for loss and hope, it is good to contemplate that there is such a thing as ‘Lammas growth’; the name given to the habit of some trees, such as oak, ash, beech, and hawthorn, to experience a period of renewed growth and tender spring-like green leaves at Lammastide. It’s thought that they do this to compensate for leaf damage due to insect activity in the spring; yet another example from the wild that loss can be harnessed to provide energy for the new. Life with death, death within life. Always.

And so we are turning to the dark and I am beginning to contemplate my own harvest. It has been a hard year in many ways and I will spend these days breathing into what I had hoped might grow and hasn’t, but I am also aware that I am entering this season much stronger than I was as the light came in; then I was full of hope but I had not properly prepared the ground in which those hopes would grow. Now I feel that much has been ‘dug over, and that I will plant more carefully and with more possibility of success. I put much of this down to my ever-deepening relationship with the green people, especially my journeys with the Lilac Being in May and with Blackberry in June. I am looking forward to exploring the ways in which Mugwort and Yarrow will support me in working with my boundaries; something which I desperately need. It is all such magic! I wasn’t consciously aware that I needed them but they have certainly brought me back to myself in the most magical of ways and I am quite in awe of the threads that were woven between the wild green and my knowing-beyond-knowing to make that happen. This season my harvest will be trust and I am grateful.

Ragwort & Yarrow, July 2019

Anglo-Saxon poem and Lammas inspiration to be found at:

https://aclerkofoxford.blogspot.com/2017/08/a-little-history-of-lammas.html

And my favourite Lammas thing; ‘This is a Prayer for the Resistance’ can be found at:

https://hecatedemeter.wordpress.com/2017/07/27/this-is-a-prayer-for-lughnasadh-this-is-a-prayer-for-the-resistance/

Long Man of Wilmington, Lammas 2014

Flowers and Blood and Mercy and Miracles, and Repeat

Thank you to Teri Windling for this quote and image

Today, I lift many prayers and offer deepest love and sorrow to the victims of the horrific terrorist attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. An attack on one people of Spirit is an attack on all people of Spirit, and on all people. It is hard to find words, or the right words, in a world which often feels so full of horror for yet another horror. Only that I stand in solidarity with my Muslim brothers and sisters in New Zealand, the UK, in all lands.

Salam (peace) to the dead.

Salam to the injured.

Salam to the grieving.

Salam to all who are afraid.

Knowing that the last words of the first Muslim man to die were to the gunman; "Hello, brother", salam to all who walk with prejudice & hatred that their wounds might be healed and their hearts opened.

Salam be with us all.

I wrote this two years ago about another horrific act for which there were really no words and I will share it again and again, because we have to keep breathing somehow, and on some days it is very hard to breathe.

Flowers and Blood and Mercy and Miracles

Cherry plum. Image: Jacqueline Durban

...and today, as on so many days, many are weeping for their lost brothers and sisters, and for the seeming loss of hope and love and compassion, none of which is ever truly lost because we are human and humans hope and love and care, in spite of and because of it all.

And everywhere humans are at this moment lighting candles and lifting prayers to their God, or Goddess, or gods, or no god, and will care all the more fiercely because of a day like today, and some will hate and call it care and not the fear that it really is, and some will lift up weapons and some will lay down their weapons because they are sickened by it all. And no doubt tomorrow, somewhere, more will die needlessly and more candles will be lit and so we go on in our broken and bewildered way. Because this is what life is, or part of it anyway. It isn't worse than it has ever been. It just is.

And we don't have to say that 'they' won't win, because there is nothing to win and there is no 'they'. There is only us, spinning around on this messy, precious little planet filled with flowers and blood and mercy and miracles, and we have to make it work. And we might not know much but what we can know is that we are all going to die trying. And we don't have to say that we aren't afraid, because we are allowed to be afraid. And I won't be looking at images of people bleeding and dying on Westminster Bridge, or of a man lying dead because how it 'just is' twisted his heart into this act of violence. I will be thinking of the candles and lighting my own. And there are just too many words, and never the right ones, so I will just say that this is how it is. It isn't going to stop, or not any time soon, and so we must find a way to love life and one another all the more because of it. There is nothing else.

Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji'un

Arabic: إِنَّا لِلّهِ وَإِنَّـا إِلَيْهِ رَاجِعُونَ

English Translation: "Surely, we belong to God and to Him we shall return."

Sura Al-Baqara Verse 156.

Thank you to Fr. Rod Bower of Gosford Church, Christchurch for inspiring the 'salam' prayer.