the cassandra pages

micropoem

Cathedral baptism:
a family of forty
in high heels and suits
takes vows, provides a cake --
but they'll be gone
before the icing
is licked from our fingers.

Lavabo

From a letter to a friend. She had been talking about ways to read literature more closely and deliberately - by copying parts of it, for instance - and was musing about the other arts, and how much time pianists must spend examining the structure of each piece they play. I replied:

You're right about close readings - it's the same reason for drawing things in order to see them better.  Pianists, though, don't necessarily read that way when they're engaged with the sheet music. If you are a good sight-reader you can simply move through the music without thinking much about the structure at all. I'm finding this with the choir: churning through music at such a fast pace with professionals and experienced amateurs, your goal is to get it into performance shape as quickly as possible. But that may mean you barely read the text, don't think about the keys or harmonic structure; you make sense of the shape and feeling of the music by fitting it into what you already know about the period, adjust the breathing and the rise and fall of the lines according to your developed musicality, and perform it. Then it goes back onto the shelf for another six years. But you certainly haven't "lived inside it," and I miss that - it is not, in other words, study.

Last night, along with a mass setting by Herbert Howells, we sang a Thomas Morley motet - absolutely beautiful - a sustained contrapuntal exploration for five vocal parts of this text:

Laboravi in gemitu meo.
Lavabo per singulas noctes lectum meum.
Lacrimis meis stratum meum rigabo.

I am weary with my groaning
Every night I make my bed to swim
I water my couch with my tears.

How terrific an Ash Wednesday text is that? But it was in Latin, and we had only fifteen minutes of rehearsal time allotted for putting it together. The performance was very good, but I felt my own experience of the music had barely begun...I did laugh inside as it went by, though, thinking how "lavabo" is a word I first discovered in IKEA  -- that's "bathroom sink" in French-Canadian stores. (I discovered later, from the New Advent Catholic encyclopedia, that "lavabo," Latin for "I shall wash," is "the first word of that portion of Psalm 26 said by the celebrant at Mass while he washes his hands after the offertory, from which word the whole ceremony is named." From the liturgical rite, the word came to mean a basin for the washing of hands.)

Last night the Dean, who's retiring this year and getting even more forthright than ever - which is saying something - preached an excellent sermon about how difficult faith is in the 21st century when the God we were taught about is simply impossible to believe in anymore. But he talked about the "thin places" which were important in Celtic spirituality, and where we might find them now. Music and poetry of course were two of the places important to him, and he quoted a long section of Eliot's "Little Gidding" while I sat there with Howells and Morley on my lap, watching the reflective face of our director as he too listened, looking off into the chancel. I felt fortunate -- though rather like a rare bird that knows it's being kept alive in a hot-house -- and somewhat renewed after a few weeks of not being in the best frame of mind. Caring for one another, and finding time to spend in these thin places, is about all we can do in the modern world, I think.

O Magnum Mysterium

Side door of old parish church, rural Quebec

The sun has set on this Christmas day, but the roast is yet to go into the oven, the fire to be lit, the small pile of presents still to be unwrapped. It's quiet here in the late afternoon of a much-needed restful day. I didn't get to bed last night until 1:45 am, after singing two services with rehearsals that began at 2:30 in the afternoon. I was tired but exhilarated, and although my shoulders and back still ached this morning from standing many hours holding my music folder I felt happy to have this aspect of Christmas back in my life. We're glad, too, to be celebrating the holiday here in Montreal for the first time. Although we miss the three parents who are no longer with us, there's a sense of relief and release at not worrying about a mother or father who is declining or ill - which has been a constant reality for us this entire decade. My father drove up last week to meet us in Vermont, and we visited some of our old friends who've also known him now for many years. At 84, he's absolutely remarkable, and for the first time since my mother died he is starting - cautiously - to date a little bit. And while there is some sadness in the letting-go and change that that entails - for both him and me - there's a lightness and spirited hopefulness in him that I haven't seen for years.

In his sermon at the midnight service, the Dean, who is nearing the end of his formal ministry career, spoke about his disappointment in the institution of the church - still so invested in power and the preservation of a formal structure - and so resistant to change. But in reflecting on what this night can mean to us, beyond the traditional stories and the pagan rituals of solstice they incorporated, he suggested that it was a time to think about what needs to be born in each of us, as we pass out of darkness into light, with hope. Of course I thought about my father, and other family members who seem to be emerging from long difficulties, and the way that - later in life - you can't return to a former untouched innocence, but instead go on somehow holding the darkness and light in both hands. I also looked around at the red-robed choir members around me in the organ loft, some listening to the sermon, some reading or reviewing their music, some leaning their heads back, eyes closed, trying to catch a few minutes of rest after a long day, and felt a surge of affection for all of them. What has needed to be born in me again, and what I felt so grateful for last night, is music.

At the end of the midnight service, we sang a setting of "O magnum mysterium" by Malcolm Archer, organist and choirmaster of Wells Cathedral. This text, which tells of "the great mystery" of Christ's birth and is taken from the Christmas Day responses for the service of Matins (morning prayer), has been set by many composers through the centuries. Malcolm Archer had this to say about his own composition:

O magnum Mysterium is a very still and homophonic setting of arguably the most inspiring of Christmas texts, a text which I have wanted to set for some time. The piece was not a commission but a response to a feeling of the moment, where I wished to create a timeless mood where pulse loses significance and where the harmony unfolds slowly and voices are held in suspension rather than urged forward. It has always struck me that the great settings of Victoria and Poulenc managed this, in their own way, with consummate success and I wanted to try and achieve the same effect using my own language. These great words transport you from earth and give, for a moment at least, a glimpse of heaven.

We had sung the piece earlier, at the 4:00 service, and it went very well. But in the night, after communion, our choir stood in the baptistry - where the acoustics are best both for the audience and for us to hear one another - and sang Archer's beautiful music again. I don't know, of course, what the composer means personally by "a glimpse of heaven", but for me, it is the experience of unity, and that is what happened during O magnum mysterium last night.

I've made music with other people all my life, for the challenge and enjoyment of it, but also because it affords an opportunity for those rare moments when a group of people and the conductor become one organism, all our attention and preparation and skill centered on a single experience. Breathing together, feeling one another, and - most of all - entering with heightened awareness into the music, the group moves together through a final door that has before been closed, or only partly ajar. You feel it happening - all of you feel it - but there is a suspension of conscious thought, akin to meditation, where you know but aren't distracted. And the gift you are receiving becomes a gift you are also giving, so the unity - that momentary glimpse - expands to the listeners, if they are open to receiving it.

O great mystery: seen in the dark eyes of a well-dressed middle-aged woman that met mine during the recessional, and in the clear blue ones of the homeless man in camouflage fatigues who had come inside for the service and who would later go out to sleep not in a stable but on the stone steps of an inner city cathedral.

---

I couldn't find a performance of the Archer setting, but here is one of the Victoria Magnum that inspired him, along with a modern setting by Morten Lauridsen, somewhat similar to the Archer but better known. (headphones recommended.) Happy Christmas to all of you!

Phos hilaron

I had a strange new experience today.

At the cathedral, the daily office - Morning and Evening Prayer - is said at the times when there is no Eucharist. Lay volunteers usually do this. Last night, at the annual fund raising concert for our music program, my friend S. asked me if I could fill in for her at Evening Prayer today, because she had a conflict. I said I could, and at 4:30 this afternoon I bundled up, got on my bike, and rode downtown. There was a lot of traffic, and the huge Christmas wreaths encrusted with little red lights had just been put up at La Baie, on the other side of Union Street from the cathedral. In the courtyard, a newly-erected Christmas tree was also alight, but the church itself seemed dark. I went in the main entrance and found George, acting as assistant verger today, waiting in the back. I explained why I was there, and asked where the service books were kept, thinking I would read the service in the small side chapel where a few people could gather, if indeed anyone showed up. A lot of the time, no one does, or people wander in and out as they do all day long.

"Al has the books all ready for you," George told me, and I followed him down the side aisle into the baptistry, where he unlocked the big red door and motioned to me to follow. We went into the sacristy - the room where the communion vessels and all the other service supplies are kept and prepared - and he showed me a stack of books with markers in them, left by Al, the verger. "There you are," he said.

I looked at the books - all the readings for today were noted and carefully marked, and the leaflet with the cathedral's intercessory prayers for this week was behind them. I had brought the readings myself, not expecting this level of help. "Shall I do the service in the chapel?"I asked.

"Usually she does it here in the choir stalls," George said, opening another big door that led out onto the nave, near the altar. I followed him with the books. "You see, here by the microphone." There was indeed a small microphone on the last stall, already turned on.

"And it starts at 5:15?"

"Yes. I'll ring the bells for you, and you can get settled here. I usually stay in the back by the doors."

"OK," I said. George walked out, and above my head, the cathedral bells began tolling. I sat down, reviewed the readings and the service order, which is a little different from the American liturgy, and waited, feeling quite small and alone under the tall buttresses and in the dark wooden choir stalls, built for bigger people than I am. The whole length of the marble altar, at my left, was already covered with red crepe poppies, for Remembrance Day this coming Sunday. I looked at them, and at the names of dead soldiers carved above the altar. I looked out into the empty church. George sat at the back, and one other man, wearing his coat, was seated two-thirds of the way toward the back.

At 5:15, I stood up, said a few words of welcome, and began reading: "O gracious light..."

The service went quickly. Psalm 74 is long, and the Gospel was the horrible passage about the beheading of John the Baptist, but the second reading was the passage for All Saints' from Ecclesiasticus that I quoted here a few posts ago. It felt good to read it aloud, like the poetry that it is, in the resonance of the cathedral, and as I did, I felt the sudden warmth of connection with all of you. I read the creeds, the intercessory prayers for the diocese, the world, the city and the parish, the Lord's Prayer, and the closing sentences, and was done. I knelt down for a few minutes, and then went out into the sacristy and filled in the service book for November 8, 2007: Evening Prayer. Name of officiant. Number in congregation: 3. George came in, I put on my coat, and he let me out the side door and went around to lock up the building for the night. I went outside into the crisp cold air. People were still going in and out of La Baie, where big color posters advertised animal-print silk camisoles for Christmas, worn by pouting, sultry-eyed girls in the arms of several men.

"Does it make any sense at all anymore?" I wondered as I rode over to University and up to Sherbrooke. We have become such a remnant. On the one hand it is ridiculous, insane. But then: people still come in, sit down, listen, think, light candles. Who was the man who came to the service? Why was he there? It's possible that he wanted to sit and listen to a pleasant voice reading prayers and scripture in complete anonymity. But I'm uncomfortable with the distance and the formality - not the old words, so much, as the removal from eye contact, from sharing a book that we could all read from, the impossibility of lighting a candle together or extinguishing it at the end. Up in the choir stall, I felt very much like the man behind the curtain, and that even if a brave pilgrim dared make her way all the way to the front, as I had invited visitors to do, she might be disappointed in what she found.

Would I do it again? Perhaps - but not this way. I have changed, and my faith has changed, a good deal over the past few years. By crossing this northern border, I've also entered a spiritual life that is entirely different than in the United States, and here is precious little heat left in these embers. It's time for new thinking and new connections, and voices that aren't afraid to come out from the shadows, into that gracious light.

Many Saints

It was great to see a friend of mine featured on the TypePad home page today - her blog, Third House Journal, is a personal blog which has been a steady presence in my online world; she's a fellow New Englander and very good writer and poet, though she doesn't often post her poems. And a very good person, if not yet a saint - though with all the stuff she's been through this year she's well on her way.

Another good friend writes today that she's taken up the challenge of NaBloPoMo and committed to try to post something every day in November. I'm tempted to follow suit, but not sure I can do it with the amount of work coming up, plus my duties at qarrtsiluni, where there's an intriguing new theme starting. When TheCassandraPages were young, I always posted daily, but for the past couple of years that's been pretty close to impossible, except for stretches when I had a series going. Last November was one of those times: I wrote a post every day for a month, exploring my memories of my mother -- speaking of saints -- and the maternal side of my family.

--

Tonight I went with my friend B. to the High Mass observance of All Saint's at St. John the Evangelist  across Av. President Kennedy from Place des Arts. Known locally as the Red Roof Church, St. John's is Anglo-Catholic and tonight was filled with what we Anglicans call "smells and bells" - incense, tall candles, Sanctus bells, chants, and a sung mass by Tomas de Vittoria. The prayer books and hymnals are the small ones, bound in red and green, virtually the same as in Anglo-Catholic churches I've attended in England, with the old rites and prayers I remember from my childhood, barely preserved now in the Rite I liturgies in the American BCP. At one point B. leaned over and said, "As you see, the service moves along at a good clip here," he was right. I know most of these prayers "for all sorts and conditions of men" by heart, and although this is not where I feel most at home spiritually or politically, there was something beautiful and comforting in listening to the well-sung chants, watching the slow dance of the three priests moving in unison at the high altar, and repeating Thomas Cranmer's poetic words while gazing up at the five sanctuary candles burning in their elaborate brass chandeliers hung from the ceiling or following the tracery of the wrought iron and wooden rood screen separating the nave (and the people) from the chancel (the altar, the priests, the mystery.)

It was cold, too, and there was an Advent feeling in the air. After coming back from the communion rail, where I studied the very old, intricately-patterned colored tile floor, I decided it reminded me of being back in England at one of the old city churches, like St. George's Bloomsbury, with its grey-haired congregation wrapped in coats throughout the service, and that rather dour inwardness dissolving into a cheerful, plucky atmosphere afterwards, with red-waistcoated or woolen-skirted greeters pressing mince pies and mulled cider into a visitor's hands on Christmas morning. The kinship with St. John's is not only in the British heritage, but the fact of a small congregation saddled with, and rather dwarfed by, a large, dark, drafty building of stone and brick and dark wood.

This evening there was a casserole supper after the service, so I stayed and ate in the bright parish hall, talking to two Greek Orthodox men, my friend, a McGill professor, and the jovial rector, who had taken off his robes and now wore a floor-length, fitted, Jesuit-style black cassock buttoned down the front with many tiny buttons.

Although St. John's doesn't seem quite ready for women priests at the altar, a female Anglican priest did give the sermon, taking us on a thoughtful journey into the catacombs of Rome where many early saints of the church were buried, along with that cloud of unknown Christian witnesses who we remembered, along with our own dead, on All Saint's Day. My friend B. pointed out, over dinner, that there is a fresco in one of those catacombs that shows five women presiding over a table spread with loaves and fishes. Were they, perhaps, female priests, and this was a first-century Eucharist? It could certainly be so, but the Catholic Church, of course, explained the painting away as an agape supper, a ritual house supper that was shared by early Christians but didn't qualify  - in the absence of sanctified male priests - as a Eucharist.

Tonight, the priest on his right listened, raised his eyebrows, smiled, and didn't say anything; B. smiled a bit more broadly, enjoying ruffling the feathers. The question is actually timely: while traditional Catholic and Anglican parishes all the province are emptying, groups of young people are forming their own house churches, sharing bread and fellowship, prayer, meditation, and community. The hunger for meaning and the questions of faith and spirit are still there, but the churches have failed to read the signs, failed to connect, and failed to adjust: I think the warmth may have left the sanctuaries and gone elsewhere, looking for the next generation of anonymous saints.

Probably should have happened back in 1776...

A good op-ed about the likely break-up of the Anglican Communion, ostensibly over the issue of homosexuality, but more accurately about the North Americans' refusal to toe the "duty" line with their former rulers, the British.

I am, personally, incredibly weary of this debate, and it's affecting my feelings about the church a lot. Why do any of us need this? We're called upon to love one another, no matter what our differences. It's really very simple. If the church gets in the way of that, then I want no part of it, and I can't accept a hierarchical structure that puts a greater emphasis on unity than on love.

Anglicans Really Alive

 

Anglicans Really Alive is the name of the new blog and associated website of a group of progressive Montreal Anglicans. Ostensibly, we're concerned about the future of the church in the light of the current international controversy, but most of us are also interested in the future of religion in general. We want to explore how religion and science can not only co-exist in a post-modern world, but how they can inform and enlarge each other. We're interested in new forms, in dialogue between traditions, in personal spirituality and growth, and in outreach and change.

The blog -- directed by the thoughtful, perceptive and often humorous Very Rev. Michael Pitts, Dean of Christ Church Cathedral, Montreal -- exists for ongoing discussion; the website will contain continually-updated resources on a variety of topics: Institutional Politics; Sexuality; Peace and Justice; the Environment; Theology and Scripture; a Book List; and a weekly "In the Media" page.

I've helped design and launch the two sites and will be maintaining the website for the time being; we hope that some of you will visit and leave a comment or two; and if any readers would consider linking to us or mentioning the existence of these resources on your blogs or to organizations you belong to, we'd appreciate it a lot. In particular, those of us thinking about and working for change in the Canadian church want very much to interact with people in other parts of the world -- Anglicans, Episcopalians, and those of other denominations and traditions -- we look forward to hearing from you!

Can We Please Put the Women in Charge?

This week, as the 2007 United Nations Commission on the Status of Women conference ends in New York, the Anglican women delegates responded to the all-but-one-male Anglican archbishops who met in Tanzania and issued a stern ultimatum to the American church and its progressive attitude of gay rights: do it our way, or you will be exiled from our communion. Unlike the men, the women pledged "to remaining always in 'communion' with and for one another" as a model for reconciliation. The report is from the Episcopal  News Service:

In the view of the Anglican women, the Primates' warning is inconsistent with the Christian mission of reconciliation and compassionate ministry, and a decidedly male approach to struggling with difference. All of the Primates are men of power, they note, except for Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori.

"The women of the Communion have, I believe, moved from bewilderment to outrage at the ways in which a small cabal of leaders have continued to insist that the issues exercising them alone over human sexuality are inevitably to preoccupy us as well," said Jenny Te Paa, an Anglican UNCSW delegate and ahorangi, or dean, of Te Rau Kahikatea, the College of St. John the Evangelist in Auckland, New Zealand.

"The arguments are all a male ancient power play for territory and ownership of space, be it physical or theological," agreed Phoebe Griswold, a UNCSW delegate from the United States. "The women's ways forward have to do with working for the welfare of creation and the full flourishing of humankind."

Griswold is the wife of the just-retired presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, Frank Griswold, and she has traveled all  over the world with her husband on Anglican matters; she was a strong and consistent voice for justice for the Palestinian people during her husband's tenure as presiding bishop.  She helped found Anglican Women's Empowerment (AWE), an international grassroots movement which promotes gender equality and women's voices for humanity and justice. AWE was behind the effort to bring women from all provinces of the worldwide Anglican Communion to the UNCSW.

What the Primates have failed to realize, Te Paa said, is that "the priority focus for Anglican women always has been the pressing issues of life and death, which are daily facing too many of the women and children of God's world. How can we compare the needless horrific suffering of women and girls being brutally raped when collecting firewood or water with the endless hysteria of male leaders wanting to debate whether gay men have full humanity or not?"

It's interesting to read their statements in light of the earlier, Ash Wednesday reflections here about taking on repentance "for the whole community."

...For the Anglican women, the mission to work together to heal God's world takes precedent over their theological differences. In their statement, they pledge to live out reconciliation for the sake of a suffering world.

"This sisterhood of suffering is at the heart of our theology and our commitment to transforming the whole world through peace with justice," the statement says. "Rebuilding and reconciling the world is central to our faith."

How proud I am to be an Anglican woman in their company.

AIDS and Anglicans

How far will the African churches go "on principle" - and what is morally right? Observers continue to discuss the fact that if Africa's Anglican churches split from the North American branches, and refuse to continue to take support from them, it could have a large impact on aid flowing into Africa to combat AIDS. Two stories in The East African cast further light on this. In "Aids orphans in firing line as Church fights over gay priests," Paul Redfern writes about Bishop Mdimi Mhogolo of Central Tanganyika, who has continued to accept support from the New York branch of the US Episcopal Church, unlike the rest of the Tanzanian Anglican church. His view is very much the exception among African church leaders:

“We have no qualms about it in my diocese,” Bishop Mhogolo told Reuters. “(If) a gay person has felt: ‘I want to help an HIV orphan to go to school,’ and you say: ‘No, I'm not going to receive that money,’ you are rejecting the person and you are rejecting an answer for the HIV person.” Around 1,000 Aids orphans are benefiting from the US church’s “Carpenter’s Kids” programme in Tanzania and such a project is typical of the support given to the poorest people in East Africa by generous donors within the United States. “Let the judgment be done by God, not by me,” he said.

There's a related story in the newspaper's sidebar: "Activists angered by Gambian President's AIDS-cure claim." In January, president Yahya Jammeh announced that he had perfected a cure for the virus that works within ten days; people he has purportedly healed have been appearing regularly on state-run television.

The cure’s secret ingredients, according to [government Health Minister] Mbowe, are Jammeh’s “family knowledge of traditional medicine” and “the teachings of the Holy Koran.”

While many citizens believe that the president has divine power to heal, and an increasingly oppressive political climate stifles overt criticism of his claim, even by medical officials, one newspaper editor, Sam Sarr of Foroyaa, has spoken out:

“A lot of people are sceptical, they have doubts, especially in urban areas,” said Sarr. “In a society where a lot of people are fetishists, their lack of knowledge leads them to believe that the president used supernatural powers to find a cure,” he said. An editorial in Foroyaa warned that President Jammeh’s claim could be a threat to the fight against HIV/Aids in Gambia, where the disease prevalence rate is estimated at 2.1 per cent."

A Letter to The Times

A letter I wrote, about the disconnect between the recent meeting of Anglican primates in Africa and what is actually going on in American Episcopal churches, was published in Friday's issue of The New York Times.

I was also very happy and grateful for this review of Going to Heaven by Dave Paisley - who I don't know at all - under the title "Read This Book!" on his blog, Disaster Area. He says some very nice things about the book, including that he found it even-handed in dealing with the opposition while being, obviously, sympathetic to Gene Robinson - and since I tried very hard to be fair, that's a particularly gratifying comment to receive. Dave is also, very generously, offering free copies to the first three people who request them, so if you've been wanting to read the book and perhaps haven't had the money, there is an offer for you.