Contemplative Haven

Normally when I use the tag “Canadian” on a post, it is with a sense of joy and a feeling of pride.  Sadly, this is not the case today, on our country’s 141st birthday. 

Today, to our eternal shame, the Order of Canada, the highest honour Canada awards to anyone, was presented to Henry Morgentaler (I refuse to use the misnomer “doctor” in front of his name), Canada’s abortionist/abortion-rights crusader par excellence and the dead-man-walking epitome of the culture of death. 

The Order of Canada “is the centrepiece of Canada’s honours system and recognizes a lifetime of outstanding achievement, dedication to the community and service to the nation. The Order recognizes people in all sectors of Canadian society. Their contributions are varied, yet they have all enriched the lives of others and made a difference to this country. The Order of Canada’s motto is DESIDERANTES MELIOREM PATRIAM (They desire a better country).”  Well, apparently not anymore.

The Order of Canada was awarded to Henry Morgentaler (despite a huge outcry from a cross-section of Canadians several months ago and also over the last forty-eight hours) by Governor General Michaelle Jean (who herself just a few short days ago attended the 49th International Eucharistic Congress).  Is there a stronger word for shame?  It just doesn’t seem to cut it.

So much dishonour.  Dishonour to the voice of the people.  Dishonour to Saint Joseph, our patron saint.  Dishonour to the millions of murdered babies.  Dishonour to thousands of other worthy recipients of the Order of Canada for promoting a culture of life through their efforts in all walks of life, including the sciences, the arts, and heroic efforts to save the lives of complete strangers.

Where shall the word be found, where will
the word
Resound? Not here, there is not enough
silence
Not on the sea or on the islands, not
On the mainland, in the desert or the rain
land,
For those who walk in darkness
Both in the day time and in the night time
The right time and the right place are not
here
No place of grace for those who avoid the
face
No time to rejoice for those who walk among
noise and deny the voice.”
[An excerpt from T. S. Eliot’s Ash Wednesday]

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The Prayer (by Jones Very.  American poet, 1813-1880)

Wilt Thou not visit me?
The plant beside me feels thy gentle dew,
And every blade of grass I see
From thy deep earth its quickening moisture drew.

Wilt Thou not visit me?
Thy morning calls on me with cheering tone;
And every hill and tree
Lend but one voice, - the voice of Thee alone.

Come, for I need thy love,
More than the flower the dew or grass the rain;
Come, gently as thy holy dove;
And let me in thy sight rejoice to live again.

I will not hide from them
When thy storms come, though fierce may be their wrath,
But bow with leafy stem,
And strengthened follow on thy chosen path.

Yes, Thou wilt visit me:
Nor plant nor tree thine eye delights so well,
As, when from sin set free,
My spirit loves with thine in peace to dwell.

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Then a woman said, Speak to us of Joy
and Sorrow.

And he answered:

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.

And the selfsame well from which your
laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your
tears.  And how else can it be?  The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

Is not the cup that holds your wine the very
cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?
And is not the lute that soothes your
spirit, the very wood that was hollowed
with knives?

When you are joyous, look deep into
your heart and you shall find it is only that
which has given you sorrow that is giving
you joy.

When you are sorrowful look again in
your heart, and you shall see that in truth
you are weeping for that which has been
your delight.

Some of you say, “Joy is greater than
sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is
the greater.”

But I say unto you, they are inseparable.

Together they come, and when one sits
alone with you at your board, remember
that the other is asleep upon your bed.

[Excerpt from “The Prophet”, by Kahlil Gibran] pgs. 29-30

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In her book, “This War is the Passion” [1943], Caryll Houselander writes:  “The modern world has opposed poetry.  A mechanized world, a world of greed, a world at war, hard youth, art itself soulless and hard, all this is against poetry, the wonder of life.  Christ keeps poetry alive in the world, in its essence and in its outward form.  The Liturgy of the Church is the form in which Christ, God’s word of love, is sung continuously.  There is the rhythm of Christ, the Christ-voice, the continual utterance of the Word on earth.  Rhythm is not mere repetition.  It is the gathering of energy to the culmination of its own intensity.  It moves in a cycle, spending its life only in renewing it.  The rhythm of Christ is love moving on a circle of light from birth to death, from death to resurrection.” 

Many decades later, we find ourselves in an ever-more mechanized world, overwhelmed by technology, still filled with greed and war; but the cycle of life continues, and the wonder, the soul, is there for all who have eyes to see and ears to hear.  Christ’s poetry is ever-present - His rhythms, His cycles, His circle of Life.  Christ’s poets, in tune with His rhythms and cycles, with His very Life within them, restore our wonder, refresh our spirits, and replenish our souls. 

One such poet is fellow-blogger Ann, of Poetry, Prayer, and Praise.  Ann’s poetic gift is well-known to her readers, inspiring reflection, meditation, and the simple joy of soaking in the beauty of her imagery.  Much to our delight, Ann has recently published a book of her poetry entitled, “The Blueness Above:  Poetry, Prayer and Praise“.  All proceeds from the sale of her book are generously being donated to worthy causes, so from Ann’s poetry, we have blessings all around.  After months of reading Ann’s poems on her blog, I would be hard-pressed to choose a favourite, but let me leave you with a small sample (readers may see several of the included poems by clicking on the preview button at the Lulu site to which I have linked).
 
A Time for Praise

There is one God, 
One who loves and goes on loving
One whose love abounds.
He is here and near
As He once was yonder and hither,
He breathes life into the day
And warmth into the darkness.
His is the light that floods the heavens,
His strength is in the tides
And His mercy streams from age to age,
His is the voice of the bleating lamb,
The beauty of a hillside trapped in light,
The river in its rage;
There is a God
And now as ever is a time for praise.

[The second picture is Ann’s back cover.]

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The peace of great doors be for you.
Wait at the knobs, at the panel oblongs;
Wait for the great hinges.
The peace of great churches be for you,
Where the players of loft pipe-organs
Practise old lovely fragments, alone.

The peace of great books be for you,
Stains of pressed clover leaves on pages,
Bleach of the light of years held in leather.

The peace of great prairies be for you.
Listen among windplayers in cornfields,
The wind learning over its oldest music.

The peace of great seas be for you.
Wait on a hook of land, a rock footing
For you, wait in the salt wash.

The peace of great mountains be for you,
The sleep and the eyesight of eagles,
Sheet mist shadows and the long look across.

The peace of great hearts be for you,
Valves of the blood of the sun,
Pumps of the strongest wants we cry.

The peace of great silhouettes be for you,
Shadow dancers alive in your blood now,
Alive and crying, “Let us out, let us out.”

The peace of great changes be for you.
Whispers, oh beginners in the hills.
Tumble, oh cubs - to-morrow belongs to you.

The peace of great loves be for you.
Rain, soak these roots; wind, shatter the dry rot.
Bars of sunlight, grips of the earth; hug these.

The peace of great ghosts be for you,
Phantoms of night-gray eyes, ready to go
To the fog-star dumps, to the fire-white doors.

Yes, the peace of great phantoms be for you,
Phantom iron men, mothers of bronze,
Keepers of the lean clean breeds.

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Not long ago I posted the words and music to Leonard Cohen’s beautiful song, If It Be Your Will, which touched our hearts in many different ways.  Recently I came across something closely related that I would like to share with you here.

In the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) archives, I found a series entitled, “Leonard Cohen:  Canada’s Melancholy Bard”.  Number Six in the series, “Cohen at 50″, is an archived radio broadcast from 1984, in which he is interviewed just after publication of his, “Book of Mercy”.  The whole interview is wonderful; about one-third of the way into it, spiritual mercy is the focus of the discussion.  Cohen describes what he simply refers to as a “wipe out”, but in the way he speaks of it, and of course, with “Book of Mercy” as the outcome, my feeling is that we are listening to him speak about something more akin to the dark night of the spirit rather than a burn-out.  Just to give you a little taste of the conversation (forgive me if I did not transcribe it perfectly - I hope you will listen for yourselves if you are interested in this topic) here is a bit of what Leonard says: 

Re the writing of the book:  “…where there’s no other form of expression possible… and you can’t speak, and the only thing you can say is a prayer, then this is the kind of work that follows.”

Re the experience he went through:  “…something like being stopped, something like walls, something like not being able to function in the way that you have been accustomed to, something like that.  Just the point where all the laws of necessity and relativity no longer make sense and you want to address the absolute source of things if you can locate it, and you try to locate it.” 

When the interviewer, Peter Gzowski , comments to Leonard that the book resulting from this experience is “not necessarily the work of a believer, this is not…a demonstration of faith or conviction, is it?”, Leonard responds:

“Those kinds of questions - I believe or I don’t believe - those belong to the mind, and, appropriately to the mind…but…when you find yourself in that landscape where the only thing you can do is prayer, it doesn’t matter whether you believe or not, because you’re not using that faculty that evaluates the reality of faith or the reality of God or not - it’s a completely different landscape; it is a cry, and there is an object of the cry, and it’s a certainty in that place.”

“One is not interested in proving or not proving the existence of the object; if you address yourself to the source of mercy, you might have the good luck to discover that there is a source of mercy… There is a source of mercy as I experienced it, and these poems are the document of that address and that kind of deliverance.”

Leonard Cohen’s, “Book of Mercy” is a collection of fifty psalms.  I do not have the book myself, but here are two of the psalms that I found online: 

Number 1:
I stopped to listen, but he did not come.
I began again with a sense of loss.
As this sense deepened I heard him again.
I stopped stopping and I stopped starting,
and I allowed myself to be crushed by ignorance.
This was a strategy, and didn’t work at all.
Much time, years were wasted in such a minor mode.
I bargain now. I offer buttons for his love.
I beg for mercy. Slowly he yields.
Haltingly he moves toward his throne.
Reluctantly the angels grant to one another permission to sing.
In a transition so delicate it cannot be marked,
the court is established on beams of golden symmetry,
and once again I am a singer in the lower choirs,
born fifty years ago to raise my voice this high, and no higher.

Number 50:
I lost my way, I forgot to call on your name.
The raw heart beat against the world,
and the tears were for my lost victory.
But you are here. You have always been here.
The world is all forgetting,
and the heart is a rage of directions,
but your name unifies the heart,
and the world is lifted into its place.
Blessed is the one who waits in the traveller’s heart for his turning.

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The Falling Leaves (Sir Charles G.D. Roberts, Canadian Poet, 1860-1943)

Lightly He blows, and at His breath they fall,
The perishing kindreds of the leaves; they drift,
Spent flames of scarlet, gold aerial,
Across the hollow year, noiseless and swift.
Lightly He blows, and countless as the falling
Of snow by night upon a solemn sea,
The ages circle down beyond recalling
To strew the hollows of Eternity.
He sees them drifting through the spaces dim.
And leaves and ages are as one to Him.

Why do Ye Call the Poet Lonely (Archibald Lampman, Canadian Poet, 1861-1899)

Why do ye call the poet lonely,
Because he dreams in lonely places?
He is not desolate, but only
Sees, where ye cannot, hidden faces.

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In case anyone was scandalized or confused by the choice of love songs in the previous post, let’s take a brief look at the mystical language of love, a language I’m sure was very familiar to Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque’s soul.

In, “Fire Within”, Father Thomas Dubay tells us that, “the divine invasion leading to the consummation of the summit is indeed a fusion of unimaginable light and unspeakable love.  Hence, John [St. John of the Cross] speaks of the frequent experience of an intimate spiritual embrace.  This divine clasp or hug…can be so wonderfully overwhelming, notes John along with other mystics, that the soul needs an infusion of special strength to endure it….He remarks, for example, that the praises and endearing expressions of love which frequently pass between the two are indescribable….It is in this spiritual marriage of the summit that ‘the soul kisses God’…”  

Even if the summit of love has not yet been reached, the soul’s longing and desiring for a complete love-union with God has always been expressed with the language of passion.  Fr. Dubay writes, “The saints know what it is like to be in love, a love immeasurably beyond what worldlings label as love.  The delight is intense because the love is intense.  Teresa [of Avila] is a woman so keenly in love with her Lord that she must proclaim:  My King, I beseech You, that all to whom I speak become mad from Your love….This soul would now want to see itself free - eating kills it; sleeping distresses it…nothing other than You can give it pleasure any longer…and I would desire to see no other persons than those who are sick with this sickness I now have.” 

Sufi poet, Rumi, knew this love language well.  We will hear much in this video that is also at the heart of our own Catholic mystical tradition - Divine Love expressed in passionate poetry - the love that St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila and so many other saints have described:  the love that annihilates the ego, and brings the soul to Divine Union. 

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This is just a little reminder to my bloggy poet friends.  Now don’t make me list you all!

It’s time to head over to The Merton Institute for Contemplative Living and print yourselves off a copy of the contest guidelines for the Merton Prize for Poetry of the Sacred. 

I’m serious.  Go.  Go. 

Go now.

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We’ll be heading out in a couple of days for our summer vacation (we left it a tad late, didn’t we) and then it will be right back into the school year and those glorious autumn days. So this post will wind things up at the Haven until sometime in early September. Your intentions will be travelling with me, and I’d like to leave you with a heartfelt wish, that you will “let nothing disturb you”. Ah, easier said than done, you say. Absolutely. But let’s all give it our best, with His grace.

The direct link to YouTube is: HERE for a beautiful interpretation of St. Teresa of Avila’s, “Nada te turbe”.

Let nothing disturb you;
Let nothing frighten you;
All things pass away;
God never changes.
Patience attains all
that it strives for;
He who has God
Finds he lacks nothing.
God alone suffices.
(St. Teresa of Avila)

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