Laurel Massé

All shall be well: Julian of Norwich

And in this vision, God showed me a little thing, the size of a hazel-nut, lying in the palm of my hand, and to my mind's eye it was as round as any ball. I looked at it and thought, 'What can this be?' And the answer came to me, 'It is all that is made.' I wondered how it could last, for it was so small I thought it might suddenly disappear. And the answer in my mind was, 'It lasts and will last forever because God loves it; and in this same way everything exists through the love of God.' In this little thing I saw three attributes: the first is that God made it, the second is that God loves it, the third is that God cares for it.  Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love

Julian was the first woman to publish a book in English (in what we now call "Middle English"). In it she tells of the visions she had in 1373. In it she describes Christ as a mother. In it she assures us that "sin is necessary, but all shall be well. All shall be well; and all manner of thing shall be well."

Today the Episcopal Church celebrates dear Julian's feast day. Eat something wondrously good, with gratitude. She would like that. Remember that C.S. Lewis said her book was dangerous. I think she would like that, too. Stories about her suggest she had a cat. I like that.

There is more information about Julian here , and here is the podcast of a talk (the transcript's there, too) given by Rev. Mimi Dixon, Presbyterian pastor, about her experiences of Julian.

This extraordinary icon was written by Mihai Cucu. This, and his other exquisite icons, can be seen here.

It was Madeleine L'Engle who introduced me to the writings of Julian; for that, and for so much more, I am always grateful.

Have a beer with St. Brigid and God!

 Brid agus Muire dhuit!

Today is the feast day of St. Brigid of Kildare, to whom I have a special devotion. Patron saint of poets and brewers, of healers and midwives (and, along with Patrick and Columba, of Ireland itself), she was strong and gentle, prayerful and practical. St. Brigid worked miracles: my favorite is the healing of a blind Sister so that she could see the beauty of a sunset. To ease the thirst of lepers, she once turned a tub of bathwater into a tub of excellent beer. She was called Mary's Nurse, meaning that she helped Mary with the infant Jesus (a Time Lord!). Like so many of the great saints, she was as earthy and real as soil and water, and as wild as fire and air.

The following 10th century poem has been attributed to her:

I'd like to give a lake of beer to God.
I'd love the heavenly
Host to be tippling there
For all eternity.

I'd love the men of Heaven to live with me,
To dance and sing.
If they wanted, I'd put at their disposal
Vats of suffering.

White cups of love I'd give them
With a heart and a half;
Sweet pitchers of mercy I'd offer
To every man.

I'd make Heaven a cheerful spot
Because the happy heart is true.
I'd make the men contented for their own sake.
I'd like Jesus to love me too.

I'd like the people of heaven to gather
From all the parishes around.
I'd give a special welcome to the women,
The three Marys of great renown.

I'd sit with the men, the women and God
There by the lake of beer.
We'd be drinking good health forever
And every drop would be a prayer.

 

In my mind's ear, I can hear this woman laughing, and singing, her voice husky, her eyes shining. How could I keep from loving her?

For my solo album, Feather and Bone, I adapted traditional prayers collected by Alexander Carmichael in Scotland in the 1800s and composed Radiant Flame of Gold, a prayer to Brigid. Here is the track, with the sorely-missed Layne Redmond, and Tommy B on frame drums. I pray it in my times of trouble, and for others in theirs: Download 09 Radiant Flame of Gold

I am under the shielding of good Brigid each day,

I am under the shielding of good Brigid each night.

I am under the keeping of the nurse of Mary

Each early and late, every dawn, every light.

 

To learn more about St. Brigid, start here. To purchase Feather and Bone, send me a Facebook message here.

 

Open the gates

Some people are scandalized by the abuse of power in the church. Some people are scandalized by gay clergy. Some are affronted by female clergy and by the very idea of female bishops. And some don't want homeless folks coming into a church.

A few days ago, I ran into something that scandalizes me: a locked church. It was 8:20 AM. Fresh from a four-day retreat at a monastery, I went to a nearby church for Morning Prayer (Monday through Saturday at 8:30 AM, followed by Eucharist at 9, as the sign on the door says). I have been there before. Daily services are something of a luxury in these times - what a gift to have them available in a small town! But on this morning, the door was locked. I knocked. "Knock and it shall be opened," I breathed, and waited. Then I rang the electronic door bell (though I do not know a bell verse). I heard it chiming inside.

Nothing. I was early. Maybe people arrive closer to the last minute on Saturdays.

I returned to my car and waited, listening to birds singing, watching cars roll by, cleaning the inside of my windshield, and then rang again. Nothing. Maybe the sign is wrong. Maybe something has happened in the parish since I was last here. I decided to go home. Then, with the church bell ringing above my head - ghost hands pulling a ghost rope, perhaps - I started the engine and drove away.

Locked churches seem rather gospel-contrary. Yet, many are locked until just before Sunday services, and relocked just afterward. I don't think there is a church in this town that is not locked every day but Sunday. In fact, I know of only one church in the area (an Episcopal church, as it happens) that is always open, always unlocked. There may be others, but that is the one I know, and it is not in the big city. It's not even in a town, really. It is more of a wayside chapel between places on a map. But that door is never ever locked. It is not a wealthy parish, and I cannot help but wonder if that helps keep the door open; that, and the rector's compelling vision of the Kingdom.
 
When we lock our churches, what exactly are we protecting? God? Jesus? Because perhaps there are things they can't handle? No. We're protecting stuff. Our blessed stuff. Our Holy Accessories. We are giving stuff room at the inn, and telling people there is no room for them because of the stuff. No resting here, move along. You might mess up our stuff. You might steal our stuff.

Meanwhile, except when we are here to use our stuff, the door is shut. In winter, the heating system is keeping the stuff from getting cold. Outside on the street, the homeless can freeze to death. How do we get in? How do we reach out?

In fairness, it's not just the churches. I know of universities that are walled like medieval cities. On one side of the wall is the wisdom of the ages, and uncountable wealth. On the other side, the hungry, the mentally-ill, the drug-addled, the just plain mean. The wall is maybe a foot thick. Only 12 inches of stone stand between there-but-for-the-grace-of-god (and of course my own endeavors/talents/inheritance/hard work/appearance/righteousness) me, and you, o lazy bum, defiler of Stuff.  

I have seen robbed and trashed churches. I have seen the pain on parishioners' faces when, out of sheer malice, treasured objects have been defaced beyond recognition. In some churches, even the visible presence of security staff does not prevent loss. The first time I attended noontime eucharist at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, I set my purse on the chair next to me as I closed my eyes in prayer; when I opened them again a moment later, it was gone, and the man who had been sitting behind me was walking very quickly toward the exit. And I have, we all have, things in our homes that we love dearly, and we do lock our doors and windows.

Even so, locked churches feel wrong to me. But I don't have a solution. Just an ache. We really do need to let God make all things new.

To the Christians in the House

I once had a manager who thought he was John Galt. Or at least a John Galt. Even though I adored him, I knew he wasn't. And when he went on to embezzle a substantial sum, it bore out my literary instinct.

I knew, though, who he was talking about because I had read Atlas Shrugged as a younger girl. So much younger, in fact, that my mother had taken the book away from me, saying, "You don't need to read that. You're selfish enough already." But I eventually read through to the end.

So when Ayn Rand's writings came back into public notice with the advent of and media attention to the Tea Party and the Libertarians and Paul Ryan's Randian Catholicism (an oxymoron), I did not have to run out to buy the book to understand that there would be trouble ahead for women, immigrants, and the poor from anyone who followed her precepts. Which are horribly, horribly selfish precepts, and idolatrous, and about as far as one can get from the teachings of Jesus.

A group of Christian faith leaders (Faithful Filibuster) gathers every day Congress is in session across the street from the Capitol  building to read scripture out loud, especially the 2000 verses that tell us how to care for the poor. This is both a protest, and a public education service. Obviously there are a few folks in the government who have clean forgotten that the Bible has any use other than as a weapon with which to bludgeon people.

Those same forgetful folks have also forgotten their Ayn Rand. For it is not, in Atlas Shrugged, the heroic capitalists alone who bring down the government, and with it, the entire culture. It is the giddy, greedy, cruel Wesley Mouches, out for themselves.

You have changed the rules in the House so as to prevent any change in direction. You bark about the Constitution. You would edit out the uncomfortable bits of Jesus' words. Show me how you are not a Mouch.

Listen up, House. You dance yourselves into a tunnel of an ever-shrinking width. It is not the narrow path to heaven. It is a death trap. You will soon lose the ability to turn around. You are worshipping power, and money, and individualism. You are throwing other people's children into the fires of Moloch, in the belief that wealth and particular interests will take care of you if you legislate the sacrifice of others. They will not take care of you. They will use you, and devour you, and fail you, and forget you. They are false idols.

Relent. Repent. Come back into the daylight. Help save our country by saving its people. The Lord, which you claim to proclaim, said to love God, and love our neighbor, to heal the sick, and raise the dead. 

It's time to take Him seriously. It is time to turn around. Come back to your senses. We need you. Come back to us.

 

It's the little things

My local PBS station shows Downton Abbey in a most helpful way. Every Sunday, the preceding week's episode runs an hour before the current episode, so I get to see each one twice. This really works for me, because I can watch once for the story, and once for the craft of of how the story is presented (acting, direction, set dressing, costuming, and most of all, the writing). I often notice small details I missed in my first enthralled swoon.

The same thing sometimes happens with books. You may know that I reread Little Women every year in Christmastide. I am too embarassed to tell how many repetitions it took before I noticed all the homeopathic remedies the March family used, or that Marmee was "a born singer".

I miss things all the time in scripture, even though I've read the Bible more than once over the years, and in different translations. I have a strong sense of the arc of the stories, but bits I could swear were not there the last time I looked keep appearing, little word-bomb epiphanies.

(Which is why I don't have a Kindle. With that kind of inattention to detail, when would I notice that They have changed what Jane Austen wrote?)

And hearing the story is so necessary to me that I have taken to solitary reading aloud, coming full circle 'round to the kids to whom I used to feel so superior in elementary school because they moved their lips and whispered when they read. Mrs. Peel stares at me. My comeuppance is here.

It's when I hear it "for the first time" that I notice what I missed.

For instance: on at least three occasions. recorded in the gospels, Jesus is goes away from or ahead of the crowds and of most of the disciples, taking with him only Peter, James, and John. They were the witnesses when he raised Jairus' little girl from the dead, they were the witnesses to his mountaintop conversation with Moses and Elijah, and they were with him in the garden at Gethsemane, where they gained their reputations as the sleeping guys, because when he said "stay awake," they fell asleep, and not just once.

Last Sunday's gospel reading we Luke's account of the Transfiguration, that meeting of Jesus, Moses and Elijah. I noticed two things. First, the same guys who were later going to sleep through Jesus' deepest despair almost missed his transfiguration because they were "heavy with sleep". I had not caught that before. Second, there is a pretty big difference in translation between the RSV (Revised Standard Version) which is what I read at home, and the NRSV (New RSV), which is used in The Episcopal Church and others.

Here is the RSV: And as he was praying, the appearance of his countenance was altered, and his raiment became dazzling white. And behold, two men talked with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was to accomplish at Jerusalem. Now Peter and those who were with him were heavy with sleep, and when they wakened they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him.

Here is what I heard in church: Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him.

Well, then! They got sleepy, and either did or did not fall asleep. I rather think they did. Getting sleepy would not be such a big deal, but falling asleep is worthy of mention. Either way, their heavy-liddedness in the garden was clearly not without precedent. I love Luke for including this detail (even if it didn't happen that way) for what it gives to the story.

Putting belief aside, as a writer I am often taken by the stylistic differences between the four gospels. Matthew is almost professorial, Mark is immediately-suddenly-at-once breathless, Luke inserts little details the way Madeleine L'Engle puts the making of peanut butter sandwiches into her stories of interdimensional travel, and John is swept away by light. In fact, one of the reasons I prefer the RSV at the moment is that these differences seem less smoothed-out in translation.

And translation is always the rub, isn't it? Events translated into memory, memory into words, words into different languages, languages altered by time. Add cultural differences and editorial slant, and wow, it's amazing any two people sitting next to each other on a church pew can agree on anything about scripture. We don't even need non-believers in order to get into arguments and have schisms. I once lived in a small country town that had a First Baptist Church on the main drag, and an Independent Baptist Church up the hill.

It doesn't take a historian to figure out what happened. Some little thing, I'm sure, that hadn't been noticed before.

 

 

 

 

A song in my heart, and a cold in my nose

Gustave Doré, Angelic Host (because, sometimes, singing with a choir feels like this).

One might think that, living in a more isolated area as I do, and staying in a lot while my arm heals, as I have done, that I might not catch (or be caught by) any of the foul cold contagion that has been swooping through grocery stores and malls. But alas, whatever little I did out there in the populated world was the wrong thing to do, and I have spent this day with chills and sniffles and sneezes. Tired of hearing all that, I have been listening to music of all kinds. Here is today's favorite.

In February two years ago, I flew to Chicago to be part of one of the most deeply moving projects of my career, a live recording session for Roman Hurko's choral Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. This Ukranian Catholic work is the first in that tradition to be written in English (rather than translated into English). The work was premiered in New York two months later, and again I was privileged to be in the choir.

I cried a lot over this music, and still do, though not because of its complexity. In fact, it is disarmingly simple to sing. Any congregation with the habit of singing in parts could manage the choral pieces. But it touches something very profound in me, deep in the bright dark place from which I say, "Lord, I believe!" and then right after that, "and... help my unbelief." The rising, swirling Alleluia is particularly beautiful. The whole liturgy is sung without accompaniment, and, as one reviewer said, "From the very first “Amen,” one knows that the Kingdom has come in power (see Mark 9: 1)."  

This is one of several recordings I turn to when I need to feel stronger, more hale, hearty, and human; even when the music soars,  it has the unique earthy quality of mortal voices, and it reminds me I am not alone.

You can read more about this music and the rest of Roman's work, listen to some tracks, and order the CD, here.

While you do that, I'm going to make tea.

 

A different epidemiology

On December 16th, two days after the horror of the Sandy Hook shooting, I took a fall while away from home. Some very kind folks picked me up from the pavement, and the good monks at the monastery put me up for the night. I drove back north the following day, jaw set in determination against the pain of what turned out to be a broken arm.

In the following days of forced inactivity, I noticed on Facebook that a friend had broken her collarbone. Another, his ankle. Another, her wrists. Suddenly there seem to be gravity vortices everywhere.  A bronchial thing is going around, too, a virulent strain that lasts for weeks. Many of the people I know are sick, coughing, sniffling, wheezing. Others have been felled by a stomach bug. And I read last night that there are already a record number of flu cases reported.

I am not a doctor, and I'm not a scientist and I can't prove what I am about to say. But I have a feeling about all this. I believe that, because of that happened to those children, our collective heart broke, is broken, and with God-given wisdom, our bodies have refused to continue with "business as usual".

Sometimes the show cannot, must not, go on.

Many religious and cultural traditions allow (or even require) the mourner to step away from chronological time for a set period. The Jewish custom of sitting shiva comes to mind, as does the true Irish wake. Both practices - and I know there are countless others - surround the mourners with community, helping hands, and memory keepers.

I pray that those who lost their loved ones, their precious jewels, the light of their lives, had such rituals and help. I am sure they did, at least in the immediate days and weeks. But the rest of us, gut-punched yet not killed, may not have taken full stock of the personal damage. Loosed from traditions of faith or ethnic origin, as many now are, we try to go on as if, like Shane, we can handle everything on our own. I think the lone hero is a particularly American vision and ideal. We feel empathy with and sympathy for the parents, the teachers, the children of those who were killed, without recognizing the magnitude of our own wounding. Falling down or being taken ill can be explained by ice on a step, germs in the air. And yet, I am certain there is more: the contagion of grief, inhaled. The heart so heavy that trying to lift it alone makes you stumble.

There have been several shootings and other large tragedies since then, and small ones beyond counting, as there always are. "Blows upon a bruise", as Evelyn Waugh once wrote. There is nothing we can do to prevent all such events. But we need to consider, thoughtfully, prayerfully (if we are of that mind) what we can do. And to truly accept the notion that no one of us can carry these burdens alone.

Epiphany

Manifestation.

Three great kings upon a journey going,

 

... some more slowly than others.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And some already on their way back...

                                                                                           ... by a different route.

Jesus and the woman

I had a chance to give a talk based on scripture a few days ago. Here is the gist of it, minus the vocal inflections and occasional waving about of hands (not to be confused with laying on of hands).

Jesus and the Woman: John 7:53, 8:1 - 11                  

One more week, and one more day, and the election ads will cease, the polls will trail off, the pundits will... well, they’ll keep spouting, I guess, but the volume level might come down a bit. for as long as 10 minutes. I hope so. I am tired of being yelled at, especially tired of hearing about myself and other women as a specific slice of female torso, with no other body, no mind, no life, and not even a wallet to consider. And most especially tired of being told (mostly by men) what God’s will is for me, my sister, and my nieces.

Telling me about contraception. Abortion. And rape. Legitimate rape, forcible rape, emergency rape, false rape, God-intended rape and easy rape, with never any comment on the responsibility of the man, and, in the case of rape, the rapist (the actual criminal).

“There is nothing new under the sun”, says The Preacher in Ecclesiastes.

When the Pharisees haul a woman over to Jesus - one woman, no man - claiming “she was caught in adultery and Moses said we should stone her, and what do you say?”, something’s a little suspect. a little off.

The gospel writer says the scribes and Pharisees were testing Jesus, and hoping to be able to bring charges against him should he say the wrong thing. “Moses said to stone her. What do you say?” Since under Roman law, they had no power to execute anyone for anything, they must have thought they had him, coming or going. Yes to Moses equals no to Rome, Yes to Rome, no to Moses. Either way, that trap is sprung.

But that’s not the whole of it.  The law of Moses says both parties are to be put to death, adulteress and adulterer. Not only that, it says so twice, once in Leviticus, and once in Deuteronomy. It’s very clear. So why are the Pharisees showing up with only the woman? Was she really caught in adultery? Perhaps she was innocent. Perhaps she was an “easy rape”. They wait for Jesus to say something in response.

But he doesn’t. He doesn't say anything. They didn’t see that coming. He leans over and writes in the dirt. When they fuss at him, he says “Let whichever one of you who is without sin throw the first stone,” and writes again. They obviously didn’t expect that, either, and to give them credit, they knew they did not meet that standard. Or they knew their colleagues knew they didn’t, and one by one, they slip away. With them gone, she has no accusers. There is only Jesus,  only love, only forgiveness; there is only Jesus and the woman.

How many times in the gospels do we see this same picture, Jesus and a woman, speaking as equals? At the well in Samaria, in the nard-scented dining room of a house in Bethany, in the crush of a crowd near Capernaum, outside Lazarus’ tomb, and certainly in the garden on Easter morning - even though there may be men around, they often recede into the background as Jesus speaks directly to women, and women answer him with equal directness in speech and gesture. It is not to his female followers that Jesus has to explain and explain and explain himself. They get it. First to proclaim the gospel - the Samaritan woman at the well, first to see and proclaim the risen Lord - the Magdalene - the women get it. There is no gender inequality when the man in the room is Jesus.  When Jesus is present, there is no inequality of any kind.

If, as Christians, we reach back to Leviticus for our guiding principles, forswearing haircuts, wearing only one type of fabric at a time, insisting that women submit to their fathers, their husbands, because the Bible tells us so.... Well, yes, it does, because before Jesus, that’s how things were. Women did not own property, they were property, and breeding stock. And centuries later, when the Church took some parts of Paul’s letters as the absolute last word on how women should behave - be quiet in church, and do not teach, for instance - women again had to submit, submit, submit.

But that’s not the only thing Paul said.  In his letter to community at Galatia, he wrote:

... for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith.  As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female [social structure]; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. (Gal 3:26-28).

Throughout Jesus’ brief and intense three-year ministry, and for a while after the resurrection, the poor, the sick, the grieving, and yes, the women, were seen, and heard, and honored, and equal, just as we were in the first chapter of Genesis, in the Garden, made in God’s image.

Nowadays, when people talk about “biblical womanhood”, that’s the part they leave out. When I hear them use the words “biblical womanhood”, I wonder why they omit the good news of the gospel? Who edited out all the red words?  Some very vocal Christians seem to believe and proclaim a lot of wacky things about women, things that include some very bad science, and none of the words and actions of Jesus. You’d think Jesus never lived.

But he did, oh yes, he did. And he does. And in him we are one, and we are free.

Amen. Alleluia.

I sing because

...it is in my DNA. Both my parents had fine voices, and though as a teenager I was embarassed in church because they sang so loudly, theirs were the best voices in every choir they were in.

But the singer line runs primarily through my mom. Her father, Leonard Kranendonk, is the man standing on the right in this photo. From him, my mother and my uncle (on the left) inherited their voices; from my mother, my sister and I inherited ours.

Mom was a coloratura soprano of astonishing range. She now sings tenor with her choir. My Uncle Bob, a true musician-singer, has a rich smokey baritone voice, and my sister's is a contralto as sweetly dark as buckwheat honey. But we did not all become professional vocalists; only my grandfather, my uncle, and I followed that path.

My grandad was for many years the lead baritone of Fred Waring's Pennsylvanians, an internationally-renowned glee club that started in the late 1930s. My uncle also sang with them for a time. You may not have heard of them, but there would be no Glee TV show without them (and possibly no Robert Shaw Chorale, since that's where Shaw got his start). Waring had a weekly radio and then television show, and they are considered, I learned last year, to have been the original Show Choir. English was my grandfather's second language (he emigrated from The Netherlands), but his own perfectionism and Waring's Tone Syllables, a diction technique, resulted in what you will hear on this opening track from his only solo album.

Leonard Kranendonk The Lord is My Light

My grandfather and I did not agree on the role of improvisation, but I think he was proud of me, and I feel him with me every time I sing in church. And because he sang sunrise Easter services on a mountaintop, and blessings at the Thanksgiving table, I reckoned I could, too. Singing anytime, anywhere, without accompaniment was normal.

It's autumn in upstate NY. As winds tug at the leaves of gold and flame, the trees simply let go, and drop them (you want lessons in attachment and non-attachment? Look to the deciduous trees). It's getting colder. Both my grandparents lived into the 21st century, and I lost them only 11 years ago, my grandmother Elsie (who sang alto) in October 2011, my grandfather the following spring. I feel them, and feel the pull of the old songs that are my my most valuable inheritance, and the voices that carried them. All these years later, I'm the one singing loudly in church. But really, whom then shall I fear, when I never sing alone?