The Essence of Absence

Forebearance in the face of loss requires courage. Courage in the face of continued, repeated, cumulative loss requires love.

If love is a creative process - an act of will and time - then the loss of memory, of experience, is the reversal of that process. The object of affection becomes a symphony scored by a lifetime of love from which, every day, a few notes disappear, so that the notes which remain, temporal and threatened, are present only as foreshadowed void. Love in the face of loss such as this requires something other.

Or perhaps what needs be faced is not loss, but absence. Proximal presence stripped of history, of context, of meaning. Of both past and future. What remains is an eternal present, defined by what is missing.

Or perhaps, as the universe contracts, for a while at least, the years reduce to moments of uncorrupted clarity, flashes of love eternal necessarily bounded by the borders of a nation of two. Not absence, but presence; for once and forever.

Or perhaps I have no real idea what I’m talking about. Perhaps the essence of absence is so personal, so shaped by the nature of history conjoined, that speculation is just that. Perhaps my own view is so corrupted by hope, by faith, by guilt, by my own brush with absence last year, as to be nothing but tracings.

"The loss of a thing affects us until we have lost it altogether."
Antonio Porchia

a single leaf

Still on the road to Canterbury. But I've noticed this little stream running alongside.
(Is there such a thing as an Anglican-Buddhist? Maybe a Zen-Anglican? I know - a Zanglican.)

http://singleleaf.blogspot.com/

Oppression

"The ultimate evil of oppression...is when it succeeds in making a child of God begin to doubt that he or she is a child of God." Desmond Tutu

Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola addressed the Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON) in Jerusalem the other day. His speech, as I read it, was meant to serve a number of functions. Firstly, it serves as a pre-emptive strike directed towards Lambeth: an attempt to discredit the process and dialogue which the Archbishop of Canterbury hopes will focus on that which binds us together in Christ’s name, as opposed to being an exercise in wrangling over who represents the True Church.

Secondly, Akinola is rallying the troops: he is on a “rescue mission” to save the church, and is at great pains to assure his followers that “the Lord our God is firmly in control of Gafcon,” and that Gafcon is “God's gift to the Anglican Communion and to the world.” Of course, a time-honoured tool of sabre-rattling is vilification of one’s enemy, so Akinola’s high-minded assurances are accompanied by repeated references to the “revisionist” Anglican leadership and the “apostates” in our midst. Those whom, in honest faith and good conscience, hold views which do not coincide with those of the Archbishop of Nigeria are explicitly compared to the 19th century slave-traders and 20th century colonialists who held millions in “bondage” and “enslavement.” It is an evocation of oppression which is offensive in its implication.

If opposition to Akinola’s vision of Christianity is apostasy, then fit me for a large, scarlet A. Interestingly, it is a full declaration of what that particular vision entails that is conspicuously absent from his address. He asserts that he has spent much time and energy “urging for a listening process while assuring people with different sexual orientation of God's love and our pastoral commitment to them.” He then states in the very next sentence (with unintended irony) that “human memory is very short.” I’ll say. He conveniently has forgotten his own Church of Nigeria’s commitment to “the total rejection of the evil of homosexuality which is a perversion of human dignity,” and he is on record as defending new Nigerian legislation that makes "cancerous" (his word) same-sex activity punishable by up to five years' imprisonment. As pastoral commitments go, this one seems a little thin.

Even as I write those words, I recognize that it smacks a little of “my own righteousness,” something which I declare each Sunday to “not trust in.” I pray, however, that I am motivated not by malice, but by love. By a true desire to strengthen and preserve my new home, and to contribute to its continued presence as a source for good in our broken world, by whatever means God gives me, and in whatever form that presence eventually takes.

I’m left with feeling that I have both said too much, and said too little. Which, if I’m lucky, should make it just about right.

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” Martin Luther King

A toast

And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity. 1 Corinthians 13:13

Last September, Elizabeth found herself between the ICU and the physical rehabilitation center, between crisis and recovery. It was a time of much uncertainty, of far more questions than answers, of our increased dependence on others for even the most basic of needs. After the intense, personal attention of the ICU, we felt ourselves abandoned to the exigencies of a medical system which deals best with the most critically ill, and often not so well with the "merely" very sick. It was a very difficult time.

This past week, we had the unforeseen opportunity to connect with one of our lifelines from during this dark period. A young resident, whose empathy, compassion, and commitment to both Elizabeth as a patient and to our needs as a family, far exceeded the bounds of her professional responsibilities. I stated early in my journey to Canterbury that I wished to give testament to those whose example and humanity have placed me on this road, and Svetlana is one of those people. She is a gentle soul, and her charity touched us at exactly the right moment.

This is also a day to recognize the charity of older friends (not older than us, mind you – rather, friends of long standing.) On the occasion of their 20th anniversary: For acts of kindness, generosity, and comfort. For laughter, encouragement, and commiseration. For the example of their family, their fidelity, and their faith. To Wilson and Kathy, our abiding love and friendship.

In His silence

"A thing, until it is everything, is noise, and once it is everything, it is silence." - Antonio Porchia

In an earlier posting, I wrote about wishing "to dim the clatter that I may hear my voice." I find that to give expression to my journey, to articulate a grammar of focus and intention, requires quiescence. When the ambient noise is minimized, when distractions are removed, I hear what I take to be myself. My self. Although, sometimes, I am not so sure.

When I read back over these Tales, these missives from my road to Canterbury, I sense, if not two voices, then certainly two sets of hands at work. The passages which labor, where the idea and its expression appear yoked together by force, I recognize all too readily. I hear the words read in my tongue, see the phrase settled for, the reaching and the falling short. While the sentiment may be true, there is a fundamental dishonesty in the expression, a reliance on habit and artifice.

However. There are other passages – brief flashes of inevitability – which surprise me every time I read them. I see in them poetry and I hear in them music, and I can state as much only – only – in the full measure of assurance that any credit for their elegance lies not with me.

Kindly think this neither ego unchecked, nor false modesty. I know, I know – my fingers, my mind, my words. But I cannot claim, I am coming to realize, authorship. If there is anything of value in these words, if they would have any reach at all, it is not of my doing.

Every Sunday, on my knees : "Glory to God, whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine." That power has been made manifest to me in the last year in ways large and small. Life restored, faith renewed, trust rewarded. And, perhaps, purpose revealed.

I offer my silence, and am rewarded with a voice. I leave space, and it is filled with meaning. I yield and am uplifted.

In His silence, the meaning of every sound is finally clear. – Thomas Merton

Space-making

I smell books. I don’t do it all the time, and I don’t do it with all books, but it is something I do. I don’t know enough about the craft of book-making to know exactly what I am inhaling – it is likely some combination of ink, glue, and bleached paper. But the sensory experience helps establish for me the autonomy of the object, its existence as a thing in this world.

Blogs are not a thing in this world. They are provisional, hyper-textual, pixelated simulacrum. They do not reside on your bookshelf, fall off your night-stand, make the journey with you when you move to a new house. They are phantoms. For the most part, you do not read a blog laying in a hammock, or in the bathtub, or on the beach. You do not fall asleep with it on your chest, and if you are feeling poorly no-one, no-one, suggests that you go home, make yourself a nice cup of hot chocolate, and curl up in bed with a good blog. The medium is hot, fast, and obviates against reflection.
So why blog?

I read two things yesterday which gave me particular pause. The first was a blog post of some renown, as these things go. It was fresh, and very funny, and it oozed urbanity and contemporaneity. The transitory nature of its cultural references (Kate Spade handbags, Kopi Luwak coffee, David Archuleta – whoever he is) is immaterial. No-one is meant to be reading it beyond next week anyway, and its deftly articulated hipness functions chiefly to establish a pact with the author’s ideal reader (clearly not me.) At the bottom of her posts, where one normally finds a "Comment" button, hers says "8 (or 12, or 42, or whatever) people love me." If there were any lingering doubts as to my foreignness in this particular corner of the world, they should be dispelled by the fact that I don’t know whether to read this solicitation as ironic or not. The entire post was shining surface and electric, it was very good, and it made me a little sad.

The other thing I read yesterday was the novel Andy Catlett : Early Travels, by Wendell Berry. It is the story of an old man remembering a trip he took to visit his grand-parents as a nine year old boy in rural Kentucky. Nothing much happens, at least in the conventional sense. There is very little dialogue, less action, and I am certain there is no bidding war underway for the movie rights. (Mind you, I would have thought the same thing about Blindness and Fugitive Pieces, two of my favourite books, both of which have been adapted as movies to be released shortly, and neither of which I will go to see.)

What does happen in Andy Catlett is that Berry creates a transactional space which his reader is invited to traverse. He does not want you to admire his technique (or even take note of it), to evaluate his work on the basis of commonality of experience, or to "love" him. He wants, I think, for his reader to consider what is of value in this world, and to take the requisite time and means to treasure it. He wants to leave a space between his words which his reader can inhabit, where we are at leisure to rest, and reflect. He does not want to dazzle us, he wants to affect us.

Philip Glass, in discussing his approach to scoring the music for Koyaanisqatsi, talks about how in advertising there is no "space" between the sound and the image, they happen right on top of each other. He talks about how in composing for Godfrey Reggio’s films, he is trying to create a space between the music and the picture on the screen, and it is there that dialogue occurs (not conventional dialogue, but interpretive speculation.) This space-making, this relational engagement between author and reader, is something I think about.

I once read someone who spoke of "the work of transcendence." I think the work of transcendence takes place in the "spaces" we create. Between the notes in music, between the image and the sound, between the words on the page, between our hearts. Can such spaces be created in the pixelated glow of a computer screen? In a blog? On the road to Canterbury? In my more optimistic moments, I think it’s worth a try.

To my wonder

"The Holy Spirit has the power to disturb, to delight, and to deliver."

Fond, as I am, of both tripartite constructions and alliteration, Andrea’s words from the pulpit last Sunday held a particular appeal for me. In the midst of a wonderful sermon on Pentecost, the age of Miracles, and employing one’s gifts, her reference to the Holy Spirit and its potential to transform in ways unexpected had me turning her phrase over in my mind until, at an appropriate point in the service, I could reach for my pen and scribble her words on the back of my bulletin, lest I forget them. My road to Canterbury has had some unexpected turns, and I have spent the days since Sunday reflecting on the degree to which I have been disturbed, delighted, or delivered in the course of my journey.

Not unexpectedly, "delight" is the easiest to discern. The new aquaintances we have made, the desire to be of service, the sense that that hour on Sunday morning is the pivot on which my week revolves, and the fact that the messages and the feelings generated therein resonate beyond that time and place are all a source of great joy. I take pleasure that since we started attending St.Matthias in January the snow has disappeared from the ground and our walk to church is now accompanied by bird-song; that the quality of light through the stained glass windows has evolved with the changing of the seasons; that Elizabeth now has hair on her head where before there was none, and can kneel and rise where before she could not. Private pleasures certainly, but they co-exist with the sense of community, responsibility, and intellectual honesty which has been fostered in me. If the Spirit has done nothing else, it has given me peace and repose in large measure.

As for "deliverance," for me, now, it is the twin of my delight. If my joy is where I have been led, then my deliverance is from that which has been left behind. One engenders the other. I have been delivered from solipsism into fellowship, from resentment into gratitude, from fear into hope. I feel I am painting on a new canvas, with a palette bequeathed to me from who knows where. The power of the Holy Spirit? The prospect unsettles me a little, and perhaps that’s where the "disturbance" comes in.

I am fearless on this road, its "rightness" for me is self-evident. But, as Ambrose Bierce opined, self-evidence is "that which is evident to one’s self, and no-one else." At this point in my journey, all I hope is that my faith is not a threat. I ask of others to recognize that to even use the phrase "my faith," and to do so in a specifically Christian context, is a large step. I am not claiming a previous incarnation of apostasy, but everything in my liberal, recovering-Catholic, product of the Enlightenment background would normally preclude such a blatant declaration of belief. To recite the Nicene Creed on Sunday morning in the company of the faithful, and to try to get inside the words, is a far cry from declaring that same faith in the world. If the Holy Spirit is offering me delight, and providing me deliverance, it is equally challenging me to walk my road with pride and humility in balance. To my wonder, in my submission, I am finding strength.

Give me of the True...

I traffic in noise and approximation. I scratch out words and pour my experience into metaphor that I may say one thing true. I am drawn to the authentic voice in others, and am compelled to find my own.

If Canterbury is my destination, then what is behind me? If I am going someplace, is it not necessarily true that I am leaving another? The British literary scholar Ian Robinson (whose work I am only passingly familiar with) was quoted in The Atlantic as having written "If this is the world, I live somewhere else," a sentiment which I increasingly find myself resorting to when faced with, well, pretty much everything. Technology whose generational life-span is measured in months; an entertainment culture predicated on humiliation and irony (Borat, American Idol); the denigration of reasoned discourse as "elitist" and the veneration of celebrity beyond all reason. The sheer ubiquity of it all.

Grey(er) heads may say that it has ever been thus, and perhaps it has. But the authors I most admire are those who have stepped out of the world, to one degree or another : Thoreau, Thomas Merton, Wendell Berry, Basho. They have fed my monastic impulse, my desire to renounce, divest, forsake, abjure. To pour more and more of my energy into fewer and fewer "things." To dim the clatter that I may hear my voice.

There are others, I know, whose voice does not require so much silence. Whose writing is informed by the weight of their intellect, or the potency of their youth, or the fluidity of their expression. And I can but read them with joy and envy. But I require space between the notes. To strike these tones of faith and fear and possibility, and make of them a chord, I require respite, intervals of stillness. To see the road before me, to trace the arc of my journey, to make a companion of the True, I need to slow...things...down.

Give me of the True, of the True Vine
Whose leaves and tendrils curled
Among the silver hills of Heaven.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Thoughts on Antonio Porchia

"The condemnation of an error, is another error." Antonio Porchia

I am trying, as best I can, to articulate a vocabulary of forgiveness. I have done more than my share of condemning in the last year. Some of it was silent, much of it was very vocal. There were withering stares, vitriolic rants, and oaths of retribution. I wielded my righteousness with a vigor fueled by fear and uncertainty, by too much coffee and too little sleep. Enemies, large and small, filled my landscape and betrayals, personal and professional, vied for my attention. Elizabeth and I were aggrieved parties, and my resentment and anger threatened to define me. My new years' resolution boiled down to six simple words : This year I go to war. It was not my finest hour.

"A full heart has room for everything and an empty heart has room for nothing. Who understands?" Antonio Porchia

But this year, this year I seem to have room for everything. It seems that with every step on my journey to Canterbury I lay another burden down. The forgiveness I spoke of is not a grace I am presuming to dispense, it is a blessing I am hoping to receive. I look around me and see fellow travellers, pilgrims trying as best they can to live their better natures and to bring a little light into the world we share, and I wish to do the same. When I was welcomed into St.Matthias, it was not conditional. I was not asked to enumerate my sins, to expose the dark places of my heart. Instead I was offered sanctuary, and the only thing that was asked of me (unspoken at the time, but becoming clearer as I make room for it in my heart) was that I go out and do the same. That I recognize that the souls I encounter on the road may be dealing with their own trials of which I am completely unaware, and that my judgement of them benefits neither of us. And I am trying.

"Before I travelled my road I was my road."
Antonio Porchia

Passages

Yesterday, my cousin let me know that she would be participating in the Relay for Life in Alberta in May. It prompted me to post some thoughts that I wrote down just after Elizabeth and I took part in our first Relay for Life last year.

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There are too many candles to count. They ring the football field, a thousand of them it seems. And in the bleachers perhaps another five hundred, spelling out the word HOPE. Each one is in a little paper bag, and on the outside of the bag is fixed a piece of paper with a person's name on it and a tiny message beneath. The writing on the piece of paper is illuminated by the light of the candle shining through from the inside.

Elizabeth and I are up in the bleachers. We are searching for the three candles that have been sponsored by her colleagues at work. One for Elizabeth, one for her friend Simon, and one for her father, Ed, who died six months ago. The first one I find is Elizabeth's. The dedication below is too small to read, as are the words written above her name. At this distance I can't tell that it says "In honour of" rather than "In memory of," and it stops me short. I should not be seeing this. This candle with my wife's name on it in a sea of the departed. I don't know what to do. I know Elizabeth is but a few feet away, but it seems small comfort for a moment at least. I lean forward to read the words above her name, and let out an involuntary sigh of relief. "In honour of." Not "In memory of." Of course.

And yet. Just before I call out to her that I have located her candle, I feel the weight of the future on me. How many years from now will it be before the candle does not say "In honour of"? I lean in and I am in the present, Elizabeth a few feet behind me, our lives in mid-journey. I lean back and I am in the future, alone.

I call out to her, "I found it." I need her to come over to me, to reassure me by her presence. To anchor me in the now, that we may hold the future at bay together.

At first she is disappointed that it is not Simon's or her father's candle. Then she stops for a moment and the two of us just stand there looking at her name. I don't know what she is thinking, and I am afraid to ask. "It says 'In honour of'," I tell her. I don't know if I am trying to reassure her or myself. But it remains that for Elizabeth, all of the candles with her name on them represent life. If she can read her name, it means she has survived another year. But, for me, the pain is in the impermanence of the "In honour of."

We turn away, and go in search of the other candles.

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As I re-read these words nearly a year later, I am struck by a couple of things. One is the overwhelming sense of fear and uncertainty that I was clearly feeling that night. The irony, of course, is that at the time I was unaware that things would shortly get very much worse, very quickly. But nearly a year has past, and as adrift as I felt that night, I am equally assured now that Elizabeth and I are indeed mid-journey, that we have much more life to live, together. The other is a sense of shame over my self-centeredness in the midst of it all. My pain, my fear. I know, however, that I am not alone on this road, and I can but hope to rise to the example set for me.

"In honour of" indeed.

Signposts

"Short prayer penetrates heaven."
- anonymous 14 th c. monk
The Cloud of Unknowing

Today, as she does each Sunday, Joan, our pastor, moved from behind the lectern to the top step of the altar to deliver her sermon. Today, as she does each Sunday, she began by reciting an invocation: "May only the truth be spoken, and may only the truth be heard." If I were asked to sum up why I feel that I have found a home in the Anglican church, and at St.Matthias in particular, I think I would point to Joan's weekly prayer, for I take it to be a prayer.

As I write this, my desk is piled high with texts, guidebooks for my new journey. Diarmaid MacCulloch's history of the Reformation; books on the doctrine and practice of Anglicanism; lectures by Rowan Williams downloaded from the internet; the Windsor Report, St.Michael's Report, the St.Andrew's draft for an Anglican covenant. My faith is nothing if not thorough. And yet......as I struggle to locate myself in this landscape, as I consider perspectives in this internecine debate (the existence of which I was blissfully unaware prior to my first crossing the threshold of an Anglican church in December), I keep coming back to those two unassuming phrases. "May only the truth be spoken, and may only the truth be heard."

There are many, many things which draw my steps back to St.Matthias of a Sunday morning, but it is the hope, humanity, and humility of that simple prayer which speak most directly to my heart. I hear it as a supplication in recognition of the common fallibility of both celebrant and congregant, and it never fails to move me. It both posits the existence of eternal truths, and cautions against our assuredness of possessing same. In it, I find the majesty of the quest and the modesty of the pilgrim in equal measure, as well as reassurance that I am on the right road. It is one of my signposts on the road to Canterbury.

Thin places

Good Friday past, the Venerable Susan Churchill-Lackey spoke to those of us gathered about "thin places." Her metaphor was passionately and eloquently painted, and evoked those places and moments when the earthly and the divine are separated by the thinnest of membranes, when we catch passing glimpses of the sublime and the eternal. Elizabeth and I have found ourselves in some very thin places in the last year, and her words helped give shape to my understanding and direction to my steps.

As I erect this tiny cairn, stone by stone, I wait for a natural shape to emerge. Some stones which come readily to hand I set aside, for fear that placing them too early will force my expression in a singular direction. They are different shapes and sizes, and some say Cancer, or Church, or Anxiety, or Ego, and if I place them too soon, if they take place prominent in the foundation of my structure, then someone coming upon it may say - oh, I see; that's what he is on about. But it's not about any of those things at all. It's about consolation and communion, recitation and absolution, pilgrimage and purpose. It's about discernment and calling and voice, and the days I have been given.

John Berger wrote that "Art, it would seem, is born like a foal who can walk straight away. The talent to make art accompanies the need for that art; they arrive together." Perhaps, in all humility, that is what I am doing here. It is not easy for me to write these entries. Less so to publish them. But the means of expression and the need for expression have arrived conjoined. In the past year I have been transformed by compassion and example, and I feel compelled to give witness to that humanity. I feel it not as a responsibility, but as an opportunity. A blessing to be shared in a voice evolving.

Thin places. I awoke at 2 a.m. this morning remembering a room. It was the room at the hospital in which they had asked me to wait, while they worked to save Elizabeth's life. I was alone. I remember looking around at my banal surroundings and thinking, this is where they are going to tell me. This is where I will receive the news that I cannot receive. Alone, I spoke out loud, to Elizabeth. I told her again and again that I was holding her, that I had her in my arms. I told her, I implored her, I practically commanded her, to keep breathing. And she did. In that room I spoke, and where she was, she heard. How does this happen?
A thin place.

So it goes

Though I did not know this road existed, I have wanted all my life to be on it. Though I spent a long time as an armchair buddhist, imbuing myself with the notion that "the journey is all," at my core the lack of a destination, even a metaphorical one, has always been the pebble in my shoe. Though I am not in need of an answer, an assurance, or a future purged of doubt, I do feel more than a measure of comfort in the solidity of the ground beneath my feet as I walk the road to Canterbury.
Self-definition has always been for me one of the fundamental aspects of existence. I write that in full knowledge that there are people who never lose a minute's sleep over who or what they are. But that is not me. When I read of someone who is an expert in the history of typography in 19th century Germany, or when I become aware of the existence of The Lute Society Journal, or when one of my friends takes up the banjo, or learns to build a canoe, or begins to grow Bonsai trees in his basement, I am moved to do the same. And the problem is not that I am unable to do any of these things, it is that I am unable to do all of these things. My interests are instant and ephemeral. I envy the dedication to craft, the commitment of time, the assuredness of purpose necessary to forge an identity from limitless possibility. Marathoners and model railroaders, bird-watchers and blues guitarists, Hassidic Jews and Hell's Angels - I have envied them all. Not, in all cases, for the specific nature of their pursuits, but for the fact that, either through the circumstance of their birth and heritage or by conscious choice, they have achieved both self-definition and membership in a community.
So what is it that has placed me on the road to Canterbury? Nathaniel Hawthorne's wife, Sophia, wrote that "Man's accidents are God's purposes." Actually, she didn't so much write it as etch it into the window of Hawthorne's study with a diamond. In any event, last year one of the few passions in my life which is not instant or ephemeral was nearly lost to me. The three signature events of that year - Elizabeth's diagnosis, the fact that she very nearly died, and the fact that she didn't - cannot be separated from each other or from the reason I believe I am now on this road. Through no conscious effort on my part, the twin imperatives of definition and destination are being satisfied. As Kurt Vonnegut would say, "So it goes."

On the Road to Canterbury

Somehow, against all odds, I find myself on the road to Canterbury. Granted, at present it is principally a pilgrimage of the spirit, a journey neither anticipated nor sought, but there you will. As this long, long winter comes to an end, and April with his showers sweet approaches, I find myself called upon to raise my voice, to find my voice. And as I come hard upon 50 years of age, and I look back upon the grace and courage which I have been witness to in the year past, I find silence a heavy stone to bear.

Through a confluence of crises and circumstance, I find myself already on the road to Canterbury. I do not know when I began this journey, certainly some time in the last 14 months, but in the end it doesn't really matter. What matters is that I am here now, and I know that I am here now. Nudged along by events and fellow travellers, I let go of the silence and in so doing discover a place that is at once absolutely new and absolutely familiar. Whatever it is that is compelling me to describe the view from here, I do not wish to question it.

In describing the experience of playing the music of Tigran Mansurian, the violist Helmut Nicolai said that "truthfulness leaves few options." That is what I want to do for myself here - leave few options. I want a place untainted by the paths I chose not to take, and untrammelled by what may lie beyond the next hill. I want, for a time, to live on the road to Canterbury.



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