Through all the contradictions

Christ in Majesty from the Lorsch Gospels

Image via Wikipedia

"The four animals thus signify men who recount the holy, saving riches of Christ."
(My translation of the inscription above. "Men" used because it reads "viros" and not "homines.")

There was definitely a "What??????????" response--from me; I cannot vouch for others--to Padre Mickey's naming me for the Manny (see, no respect, already). In my response to him, however, I wrote: "I give thanks that God is the fixed point around which all I am and all I experience dances."

This remains true, through all the contradictions, the gross impiety and the yearning for holiness. I rely on that fixed point and my relationship to it. I do not rely on myself, or hopes for human progress, or my chums for that deep certainty, though I do rely on them in countless subsidiary ways and in the faith that we are all grasped and held and cherished and assured by that same still point. Those who might think of me as a secular humanist (my conservative family, perhaps) thus miss the mark. If I believe in my fellow humans (and I do) it is because I profoundly believe that God believes in us. And I put far more weight on God's belief in us than in our belief in God.

So there, at the crossing point, in the center of the Medicine Wheel sits Christ enthroned. From each cardinal direction goes out a voice to proclaim the Word that all the world may hear God's eternal Word, God's eternal Yes.

If, in any sense, I am faithful to that Word and its proclamation, my life is well spent.

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor
towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.

—From T. S. Eliot, “Burnt Norton,” stanza II, in Four Quartets

My acrostic poem using the last line and a half of that passage is posted below (for any newcomers).
--the BB

At the end of the year

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

It is early evening, a cold and dark November evening, and at sunset the day after tomorrow one Church year will end and another begin.

The hinge of our years, the center of our days and nights, is the ineffable Word spoken into the void, the Light that darkness never understands and cannot overcome: Christ.

Since I have explicitly stated that this is a pagan-friendly site, one may assume my vision of the Christ is a cosmic one. This is also a Muslim-, Hindu-, Buddhist-, Taoist-, indigenous-friendly site as well. I have been formed in one tradition and I have questioned and redefined but never left it. Like a banyan tree, I may have grown from one root but have since put down others. I am nourished from many traditions, as the title of this blog indicates.

My own tradition is betrayed and distorted and misused. And which faith has not been? Yet I believe within it and live from it. I seek its deep truths, not its shallow betrayals. I hope to live from the heart of the Holy, not from some rabid sectarianism. So one need not feel excluded here if I speak from within my own conceptual framework.

I just want to share a little tale, one that has been mentioned here before.

In summer of 1997 I spent two weeks in Durham, living in the University dormitory that was once the Bishop's Castle, and walking across the Green to Durham Cathedral and the shrine of St Cuthbert and the tomb of the Venerable Bede. One day we met with the Cathedral Librarian. he took us to the Muniments Room where treasures are kept and allowed us to carry some of the manuscripts from the vault, through the cloister, and into the library. There we could examine them. Being the largest person in our group I carried the largest book, one that was in a wooden box. Mother Columba and I chanted the Te Deum because it seemed the thing to do processing through a cloister.

When I opened the box I saw a manuscript bound in white goatskin. I opened it. It was the Durham Gospels, one leaf of which is pictured here. I had seen photos. I knew what I held in my hands. This was a book from which the Holy Gospels had been proclaimed in the worship of the community at Lindisfarne, the Holy Isle. I felt a tangible link with that worship, those years of service, that bastion of holiness, that island of saints.

While websurfing today I came across this photo and wanted to share this with you.

Blonde and blue-eyed because depicted by Saxons, I am guessing. So long as we don't consider Saxons normative there is nothing wrong with this. I have written an icon of a Cambodian Christ who looks, well, like Buddha. We must not limit Jesus but we must also meet him in our own place and time. He takes flesh, as the Word has ever taken flesh, in our midst.

So this is my pre-Advent meditation. May the Word surprise you, startle you, exalt you, bless you, overturn you, raise you up again, and transform you. You never know what you may find as you turn a page.
--the BB