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."