It's time for a little fun. Here's our annual visit to Santa's private reserve, designed and curated by a talented elf named Kevin at the Cambria Garden Center.
It has been a kind of healing. It's as though we settled upon an island of how it used to be. And for those few hours in the National Cathedral we saw again the America that aspires to greatness. We experienced again the temperament, tenor and a sense of the essence of America's better self and soul. The very nature of the George HW Bush observance has been a picture of a better nation. Dignity, decorum, tradition, respect, honor, devotion and service has filled the days. The formality is out of the American handbook. The stories have been from those who knew him and from the historians who have studied and documented his life. The point here is not to see the late President Bush as anymore than he was, but to see in him the qualities of what has accompanied the American journey. Loyalty, friendship, humility, service, courage, love of family, and a guiding faith. Certainly there have been other men and women who also displayed these qualities. Given our recent history it has been good to remember who we can be, who we really are. What has been on display in our Capitol is a core sample of the dignity of a nation, a government larger than mere mortals, the yearning, maybe even the dream to transcend the human stain to be something truly great, something that helps America lift the human condition to something noble. One need only to look at the images of the front row, the men and their mates who are part of an exclusive American echelon. It was telling, very telling. Maybe nothing more dramatic than when the creed of belief was being read. Almost everyone in the Cathedral read or recited a belief, but one President scowled and glowered. Was the Bush mourning, memorial and observance enough to shock this nation out of its toxic mood? Can those few brief hours of class, historic symbolism, and evocation of the hallowed work of trying to live full to the reach of a democratic republic, and the ghosts who made it so, bring us to our senses? Perhaps, but perhaps not. It has been, however, a cleansing, re-charging and hopeful spring in this winter of a pernicious and virulent administration. By the very comparison on display we may understand we all have a hand in the job to form a more perfect Union, to establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility...to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.
seasonal visitations
faces from the sparkle shop
celebrating new days
photo of sunrise in Cambria by Karen Dean-a good neighbor
Suddenly it is December. So out of context in this profane and destructive time. There has been so little motivation to bow to the manger and the "Prince of Peace." Our psyches have been in combat, armed with anger, despair, and disbelief. But Christmas whispers, it is coming.
And so in winter's dark chill we climb the hill, to the Chapel, to enter a portal, to go home, to Christmas, again.
It was in the calm of the candle light, as Molly Pasutti with the voice of an angel, from the back of the chapel illumined only by candle began with O Come, O Come Emmanuel. As she paced forward she opened something in time. My eyes moistened. Our hearts stirred in unison.
Somewhere as Eric William's guitar and Jill Poulos' Celtic Harp wove into the voices of Wayne Attoe and Steve Dowling in Oh Come Let Us Adore Him, I was drawn into a timeless flow where my boyhood and those of the century and half of Christmases in the Chapel and those of Dickens, and nights where Angels sang and shepherds quaked and nights of watching and waiting, for ever, seemed to meet, quietly, peacefully, blissfully.
I was home.
Judith Larmore's annual reflection further wrapped the gift. Yes you can go home, she said, though it will be different, it can provide different memories, and give you a new appreciation for your cherished deep memories.
She shared how she returned to her Bluffton Indiana home, a different place than her childhood. Buildings gone, boarded, a beautiful bank now a smoke shop, the 5 and dime a failing dollar tree. It was especially poignant as I know that town well, it was my mother's home.
In Judith's telling I was home again, with my mom and with all my Christmases past.
Christmas is like that, a kind of current in the alchemy of our lives that never goes away and never ends, and waits for us to enter it again.
As I have written in this space before, Lana says the Concert in the Chapel is her Christmas delight.
The sweet music and tender sentiment was precisely the magic this old boy needed.
Selections from Suite No. 3 by J.S. Bach, John Williams Some Where In My Memory, Leroy Anderson's Jazz Pizzicato and Jazz Legato, Praise for Christmas, Sleigh Ride, all performed by the marvelous string quartet filled us with even more magic. Brynn Albanese 1st Violin, Bill Alpert 2nd Violin, Drew Van Duren Cello, Peter Jandula-Hudson Viola.
Eric Williams vocal and Mandolin, Molly Pasutti Vocal and Brynn Albanese Violin brought extraordinary life to A Down Home Christmas Medly. Then, selections from Vivaldi's The Four Seasons, Winter. It was stunning.
We all joined our voices for Hark The Herald Angels Sing and Joy to the World. And Bruce Black did his annual recitation of "T'was The Night Before Christmas."
To the refrains of We Wish You a Merry Christmas, we left the historic old Chapel on the hill and descended into the world again, but we were filled with a new hope, an anticipation of light. Just like it has always been we dwell in a broken, frightened, hurting and needful world, a world awaiting an advent. So it was in 2018, but we left with Christmas in our hearts. We had been home.
Children are at the center of this season, the holy infant at its nexus and millions of dear ones in families. But there are places where the festive lights are dim or gone.
Photo by Meredith Kohut for the New York Times
Children in Venezuela are dying because they can not get infant formula or food. In the scene above a mother mourns her three month old, who died for lack of food in a modern nation.
Many of us will spend these days feasting, celebrating, enjoying home and family. Not everyone is so fortunate. I hope you will take a couple of minutes during the holidays to watch these very short videos. They will move and they will inspire you.
This first short is heart warming. I call it Newborns in a Basket
There is a beauty in the faces of children, a true gift this season. Listen to Liam Neesom as you watch.
Storms and fire have devastated the lives of US children this year. War and displacement is at historic levels and the greatest victims are the children. The baby who's birth Christians celebrate would later as a rabbi say one of the greatest offenses possible is to harm a child. Ignoring children in need does great harm. The singer Pink takes up their case-What about Us?
Children are indeed the center of this time, but that rabbi also reminded us about the downtrodden and heavy burdened.
Photo by Jae C. Hong, AP
Share your joy. Even a word or a smile can be a gift.
What about them? What about them all? Charles Dickens said it well when he had Tiny Tim close the Christmas Carol, "God bless us, everyone!"
In that moment when Patti Smith missed a lyric, apologized, nervously began again and was met with a warm applause that grew even warmer upon completion of A Hard Rains A Gonna Fall at the Nobel literature presentation the love of this season was personified. Sincerity, compassion, tenderness, love and joy were all in that moment.
The grand spiritual and philosophical architecture of this epoch of human habitation on this planet is constructed by singular acts, one at a time. They exist and in fact they abound if only we will see them, or create them.
Regardless of your most intimate and deepest belief please allow me to wish you and yours Merriment at this Christmas season. May you all experience joy, peace and the light of love.
The ability to change is a great human skill, perhaps the most powerful tool to survival. Intellectual growth, physical strength, psychological, emotional or spiritual maturity are necessary for the person and for the tribe or culture. Change is a constant, a process.
Reminders of that came in a recent series of things; the passing of a brilliant mind and public servant, seeing a film, thinking about the changing of the guard in America and the power of this time of year.
Bill Hudnut who served as Mayor of Indianapolis longer than anyone in history, who also served in Congress, as Mayor of Chevy Chase, as the senior Pastor of major Presbyterian churches and as an academic passed recently.
As his health devolved and his heart failed over the last couple of years I was among those who read and responded to his reflections on a gifted and serving life. One cannot watch the demise of another and not reflect on your own temporary lease on life. Great and profound understandings can be found along that ridge line on the edge of the great mystery.
Bill wrote in his valediction-"I leave this earthly life at peace, with
faith and trust in a future that will carry me beyond the bourne of space and
time, but also with wariness of plotting the furniture of heaven or the
temperature of hell. There is much I cannot fathom about the afterlife. Will
there be recognition? What part of me, if any, survives? Forever, or just until
I am forgotten? A little reverent agnosticism seems to be in order, because “now
we see through a glass darkly.” More positively, “we walk by faith and not by
sight.”
...by the sea...
Kenneth Lonergan's elegy to grief, love and family, Manchester By The Sea is brilliant clarity. His film is so honest you find yourself between the characters in a reality that beats with your own heart. Much has been said about Casey Affleck's performance. There are insufficient superlatives to give him his due. Lonergan's directing makes film making, logistics, acting and all of that disappear and he gives you more than 2 hours worth of honesty that crawls into your mind and heart.
...by his words...
It comes late in his life though the President-elect needs to learn the power of truth and the measure of words.
The trouble with big talk and obvious lies is that it diminishes the worth of words. He must be made to realize that his behavior up until now is not suitable for the role he will assume. Hype, overstatement, lies, ego enhancement and predatory behavior may have been condoned in life before, but his life is no longer his own. Words matter. Context of words in a complicated world of diplomacy and subtlety and subtext are tools and strategy.
Those who voted for the man do not like to read this type of analysis, but they must know it matters. If they voted for him, they must own what they bought.
...by the light...
Those of Jewish faith will soon move into Hanukkah or the festival of lights. It is a time of reflection and re dedication.
Christians are deep into Advent-awaiting light in the darkness or peace in chaos. The heart of Advent is the Christmas story, the birth of pure innocence, the Christ child, the Prince of Peace. The object of the season is to prepare room in the heart for the Christ to be born and dwell.
These celebrations of light come as the cosmos dances its annual move of deep darkness, followed by the winter solstice, the shortest day and longest night. Then days lengthen and nights shorten. A natural cycle. Faith traditions see it as cosmic poetry. In light there is hope.
Transformation. Change, alteration, metamorphosis, modification, evolution, conversion, progression. And it seems an implication on the purely human scale is that we adapt and evolve or we perish.
...forbidding mourning...
As my friend Gary Pedigo says, "No one gets out of here alive." More transformation work to come.
In his Valediction Forbidding Mourning Bill Hudnut wrote-
"I would not have chosen a long, slow
slide into complete heart failure, but I tried to cope with it with “gaiety,
courage and a quiet mind,” to borrow from my mother who in turn was quoting
Robert Louis Stevenson."...I depart this life believing with St.
Paul (I Cor. 13): “Love can outlast
anything; it still stands when all else has fallen.”
As Cardinal John Henry Newman wrote, “O
Lord, support us all the day long, till the shadows lengthen, and the evening
comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our
work is done, and then in Thy great mercy, grant us a safe lodging, a holy
rest, and peace at the last. Amen.”
The real Christmas season arrived, carried on rich strings, voices and delivered in a "conversation that turns back the clock."
From its hill side perch over looking Cambria's east village the historic Santa Rosa chapel was aglow, as it has been over more than 140 Christmas seasons. It is a special night, a "homecoming" that blends more than a century of lives, hopes, meditation, music and the unique poignancy of Christmas.
Each year is special, in its own way. We were accompanied by Jack who only recently lost his beloved Lydia, a dear friend. Jack is a masterful Viola player and has performed in Strings in the Chapel, but on this night he could enjoy and be soothed by the wonderful sounds.
As frequent readers will recall a special moment of the evening is when Judith Larmore reads a Christmas Reflection. They are beautiful and vivid nostalgic gifts that weave the magic of memory and heart felt moments into a kind of garland symbolic of the season's emotional glow.
This year she began with an apology. The very recent loss of her sister, the passing of Leonard Cohen, the emotional division of post election America, and other stresses left her depleted. So she went to the "archive" and presented a letter home she wrote a few years ago. As her work is, that letter was timeless. Given the losses, setbacks, worries and fear of of so many it was the perfect gift.
Judith said even when people are gone and times change we can "go home again," in our memory. She said we can see people who are "older but more beautiful" and we can experience a "deep love." This is a season where time "stands still with people we love." And as change is on the wind Judith noted our remembrances allow us to "look back before moving ahead."
Bruce Black's humorous tales of adventures with his grandmother and his recitation of Twas the Night before Christmas, the extraordinary music in the candle light and the gathering of friends filled me with a great cheer that has been recently absent. Christmas time has arrived. In its way it is a light from darkness, a joy amidst loss in hearts and life. Specific thanks follow below.
searching for life
Some of the brightest minds on the planet are gathering in Irvine California this week to discuss Searching for Life across Time and Space.
The National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine has convened in advance of pending missions of exploration to discuss what is life, what does it look like, how would we know if we have discovered it in some distance from our home planet? The curious can examine the agenda here.
They are good questions. No one knows what life may be like away from earth, under different conditions and dynamics. In 2018 the launch of the James Webb space telescope signals the beginning of examining planetary atmospheres. We'll be more "hands on" when we launch a probe to Europa, a moon of Jupiter to examine what we presume to be water.
better late than....
Finally the federal government has acted with something close to honor. The Army Corps of Engineers refusal to permit final approval of the Dakota Access Pipeline shows respect for native nations and first citizens. The Obama administration was slow to act, but the refusal is a temporary victory for those who gathered at Standing Rock to protect water, sacred land and Sioux tribal rights.
The Sacramento Bee said it well in an editorial:
"The about face is miraculous and rare. Throughout history, various arms of the U.S. government have shamefully dismissed the rights of tribes, usually siding with those seeking to make a profit."
Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/editorials/article118836913.html#storylink=cpy
"Shameful" indeed! Nothing can make up for the illegitimate birth of our nation by invasion and thievery but this small gesture is important though the Trump ascendancy remains a menace. Trump has financial interests in DAPL.
going to be watching you
A warning to elves--someone maybe watching you back!
well done
Thanks to Jill Poulos celtic harp, button accordion, Justin Robillard guitar, Eric Williams guitar, William Alpert 1st violin, Mario Ojedo 2nd violin, Peter Jandula-Hudson viola, Grant Chase cello, Helene Robillard vocalist, Lyra vocalists, Jan Callner, Mary Anne Anderson, Diane, DeMarco, Rebecca Hendricks, Barbara McDonough, Lorna Mumpers, Nancy Taber, Vocal Quartet-Wayne Attoe, Steve Dowding, Ted Key, Ken Dunn.
