The Silent Joy of Advent

Today is Advent, the day in the Christian calendar which is the first of four Sundays which look forward to the coming of the Christ child. But need we view this day as exclusively Christian? The word advent simply means an arrival – any arrival which we might view as significant. In this broader sense the word advent also contains the idea of anticipation, and that anticipation in turn contains a sense of joy and wonder. We wait in joyful anticipation, which could mean the coming birth of any child. 

Those of us who have children, who have borne children, will know that once that expected child has arrived into the world then it is impossible to imagine our world without the presence of that little soul in it. The universal period of advent is not four weeks, but nine months – although the sense of anticipation quickens, becomes more keenly felt, as the expected time of the birth approaches. During this time of advent we make preparations. We decorate the new nursery, we acquire the necessary furnishings – the cot, baby bath, and suitable decorations in the form of mobiles, cuddly toys and other items. We, as it were, prepare the nest. And this becomes another aspect of our advent: it is also a time of preparation. We lay the way for the expected new arrival.

But while advent implies all of these things, and whether we have children or not, it still is a term, a state of being, which can apply to us all. In our hectic world we constantly face a barrage of distractions, from the chattering voices of social media with which we constantly keep in touch via our ubiquitous smartphones, from the pressures of commercialism which urge us to buy, buy, buy, at the very time of the year when we should be retreating into ourselves in silent contemplation and reflection. For this also is an aspect of advent: it is – or should be – a time of quiet reflection.

If only we can manage to be silent in ourselves, to still all those chattering voices which distract us, then we allow the true spirit of advent to reveal itself. That sense of expectant wonder is always present. Advent is in every moment. And that moment is universal. “Peace, be still.” were the words we are told Jesus spoke to calm the storm on that far Sea of Galilee. If we allow those words to echo in our hearts, whether we are Christian or not, and whether we celebrate the Christian day of Advent or not, we allow the true spirit of a universal advent to emerge, and we find ourselves filled with a renewing spirit of anticipation, wonder and silent joy.

Detail of Joseph the Carpenter by Georges de la Tour

The Knight in Gold

Clad in armour of shining gold, an elderly knight carries two children across a river on the back of his black charger. Both children are barefoot: the little boy who clings to the knight carries a bundle of firewood almost as large as himself, the girl fearfully clutches her crimson shawl, yet trusting that the knight will carry them both to safety. This haunting painting, set in a peaceful rural landscape by Sir John Everett Millais, is very much a product of the late 19th-century when such evocative narrative paintings were the fashion of the time. The full title of the painting, ‘A Dream of the Past: Sir Isumbras at the Ford’, provides us with the name of the knight.

But in spite of his accomplishment, Millais found his painting greeted with protests and derision. It seems that nowhere in romantic literature was there a ‘Sir Isumbras’. The suggested narrative behind the painting proved to be non-existent. This painting which so strongly seemed to tell a story actually had no story to tell, and the entire incident was, after all, a fictional fabrication. The gallery-going public felt cheated, and protested accordingly. 

But what the public of the time seemed not to have realised was that the painting was actually an invitation: it invited each viewer to create her or his own story. The artist had provided an evocative image, and the viewer needed to do the rest. The painting does not lack in suggestions: in the background, on either side of the river’s banks, we see the buttress and arches of a bridge, but the central span of the bridge is missing. Clearly this is the reason for the children’s difficulty: they needed to cross, but had no means to – until the chivalrous knight appeared upon the scene to carry them across to dry ground on the other side. So the picture is about a crossing, and the crossing is made in spite of difficulties. 

We can find another narrative clue in the obvious age difference between the knight and the two children. Sir Isumbras clearly already has a lifetime of experience behind him. It is age lending a helping hand to youth. This, then, is a painting about contrasts, and we can see a further contrast in the difference between the ornate gold of the knight’s armour and the humbleness of the unshod children’s clothing. It is not just about age helping youth, but about someone of means helping those who clearly are less well-off than himself. It is about compassion and simple human kindness.

So often in our lives we find ourselves faced with such a ‘painting’ as this. We might be able to see every detail of the situation in which we find ourselves – but the details do not form a coherent whole, and the meaning of what we are going through, and why, remains perplexing and elusive – even distressing. It is then that we feel that we ‘cannot make sense of things’. Or we might be able to see over to the ‘other side’ of a situation, but cannot work out how to get there. At one time or another we all have wished for a kindly Sir Isumbras to come riding up and carry us across to safety when the bridge is down. But faith, compassion and simple kindness do exist, and if sometimes we feel like these two poor children, we also can remember that it is we ourselves who also have the capacity to be the kindly knight in armour of gold.

‘A Dream of the Past: Sir Isumbras at the Ford’ by Sir John Everett Millais, 1857

Amen

Amen. How familiar is this simple word. Even if we might not be someone who uses it in the context of prayer, we still might use the word as an affirmation. “Amen to that!” we say, when we wish to emphasize our agreement with something. But although it is a word in general use, it still is within the context of prayer that the word most belongs. But what does the word actually mean?

‘Amen’ is from the Hebrew, and simply means ‘faith’. As the closing word of a prayer, what we mean by ‘amen’ is that we have the faith that what we have prayed for will happen: that it will ‘come to pass’. So we can say that ‘amen’ is a way of saying ‘let it be so’. The word becomes a kind of seal affixed to the conclusion of a document: a pact of faith. But as can happen with words which have become familiar through much repetition, this simple word turns out to have hidden and unexpected depths.

In Hebrew ‘amen’ is spoken as ‘AMN’, without the extra vowel – which also is the identical same name as the principal Egyptian god Amun, which also would have been spoken as ‘AMN’. It is our own modern usage which supplies the extra letter. Think of the boy pharaoh Tutankhamun, who had the god’s name incorporated into his own. Now think of the name Moses, so familiar from the Torah and the Old Testament. It sounds so typically Ancient Hebrew – until we remember the name of such a pharaoh as Thutmoses. Tradition tells us that Moses was an adept of the Egyptian mystery schools during the years of Hebrew exile. Two cultures which might at first seem remote from each other would seem to have more in common than we might imagine, and in uttering ‘Amen’ at the conclusion of a prayer we might actually be invoking the blessings of an ancient god.

But ‘AMN’ has another echo. It also is very close in sound to the Sanskrit word ‘AUM’ (also written as ‘OM’ or OHM’). ‘AUM’ is not so much a word as a sound, an expression of the soul, of the Self, and apart from its use in meditation, also is affixed as a written symbol at the conclusion (and sometimes also at the beginning) of a passage of sacred text. To package up these ancient cultures, to imagine them sealed off from each other, is to ignore the flow of ideas and beliefs that travelled the trade routes of the Ancient World as much as did the spices and other material trade goods. 

When thought of as a sound, this simple word AMN/AUM would seem to be a powerful affirmation indeed: so powerful that the mere voicing of it could in some mysterious way actually help to call into being that which we wish for. And what we wish for, in the end, is simple peace of heart. We wish for something, whatever that ‘something’ happens to be, to ‘turn out right in the end’. To open our hearts to a sacred sound is in a way to enter sacred space, to open the door to possibilities provided to us when we make ourselves receptive to them. And when ‘amen’ is spoken from the heart, then what is spoken before it takes wing, and all shall be well.

Have faith. Let it be so. Amen.

The Stone Ape

Once, when the world was not as old as it is now, there lived a stone ape. This stone ape lived in a forest, because endless forests were what this young world mostly consisted of. It was rumored that somewhere far beyond the forest, at the very rim of the world, tall cloud-shrouded mountains nestled together. But no one was sure, because no one had ever journeyed quite that far.

The stone ape was a rather arrogant creature, but this did not bother anyone because there seemed to be no one else around to bother. Until one morning. While swinging through the forest the stone ape suddenly saw in a clearing below a figure. The figure looked human enough, but the stone ape seemed to sense that there was somehow something different about this one. Curious as to whom the figure was, the stone ape swung down to the ground and asked the figure’s name.

“I am Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha.” Replied Buddha. The stone ape had heard of the Buddha, and dimly remembered hearing that he was some kind of great being. 

“You are great, Lord Buddha, but I am greater still.” replied the stone ape smugly. “I am stronger and faster, and can cover more distance in a single day than you could even dream of. In fact,” he added with a flourish of bravado, “I will! I’ll start out this very moment and journey to the very edge of the world. I’ll leave my mark there and meet you back in this clearing before the sun has set on this day!” The stone ape had hardly finished speaking before he had whirled around and set off, but Buddha merely smiled and settled beneath a tree to meditate. 

How vast the forest was! The stone ape had never been so far from his own territory, but the forest seemed to go on forever. Still the stone ape journeyed on as the bright sun climbed higher in the sky towards noon. For the first time the stone ape passed great rivers, leaping over them with what seemed to be a new-found strength, bounding along with the exhilaration which comes from knowing one’s own powers. The forest was at last giving way to more hilly terrain, and still the stone ape journeyed on with a speed which even he had not imagined himself capable of. Now the afternoon sun began to be shrouded in mist and clouds, and the stone ape sensed that ahead must be the mountains at the world’s edge. 

As if growing in power, the stone ape now reached up and grabbed hold of a cloud, swinging from cloud to cloud above snow-covered mountains and frozen rivers of ice. And when he saw ahead of him the tallest mountains of all, he knew that the edge of the world was only a little way ahead. At the very summit of the highest peak two great pillars rose up to almost touch the sky. The pillars marked the edge of the world, and with an extra great effort, the stone ape hurled himself on high and in the red light of the sinking sun scratched his mark on the two towering pillars.

But there was now no time to lose. Even as the sun was setting the stone ape set off again, speeding back over clouds, hills, rivers and forests, at last to arrive back in the twilit clearing where the Buddha was calmly waiting for him. 

“All that I said I would do I have accomplished!” announced the stone ape. "While you have only been sitting here in this clearing I have journeyed to the very edge of the world! And I left my mark on two great pillars that stand there.”

“Oh?” said Buddha, and held out two of his fingers to show the stone ape. “You mean this mark here?”


Retold and adapted from an Indonesian folktale. 

Painting by René Hausman

Etty Hillesum's Vocation

At this time in European history, which is our own time in which we live now, we witness once more a huge resurgence in refugee migration. People are on the move, fleeing their homelands and the life which they led to seek in desperation a new life, away from the despairing uncertainties and dangers which they had come to experience on a daily basis. As Etty Hillesum tells us from her own time and circumstances of the previous century, such a fundamental uprooting of one’s very being is for so many not a matter of choice. The choice, however, is still there, in the form in which each individual chooses to cope with such change. Etty made the choice not to see herself as a victim of circumstances. But she went further. She chose to embrace those circumstances, to discover in them the opportunities for personal transformation which they also offered to her. Let Etty tell her own story:  

“People often get worked up when I say it doesn't really matter whether I go or somebody else does, the main thing is that so many thousands have to go. It is not as if I want to fall into the arms of destruction with a resigned smile - far from it. I am only bowing to the inevitable, and even as I do so I am sustained by the certain knowledge that ultimately they cannot rob us of anything that matters. I certainly do not want to go out of some sort of masochism, to be torn away from what has been the basis of my existence these last few years. but I don't think I would feel happy if I were exempted from what so many others have to suffer. They keep telling me that someone like me has a duty to go into hiding because I have so many things to do in life, so much to give. But I know that whatever I may have to give to others, I can give it no matter where I am, here in the circle of my friends or over there, in a concentration camp. And it is sheer arrogance to think oneself too good to share the fate of the masses. And if God Himself should feel that I still have a great deal to do, well then, I shall do it after I have suffered what all the others have to suffer. And whether or not I am a valuable human being will become clear only from my behaviour in more arduous circumstances. And if I should not survive, how I die will show me who I really am.”

Through her time with the palmist and spiritual teacher Julius Spier (see link below) and her writing of her diary, Etty had come to use and understand her gifts – both with people and with words. In the end, far from trying to get away from the Westerbork concentration camp, this led to her actually to wanting to go there – wanting to be at the forefront of life where people were hurting and where she could use her skills to relieve some of that pain – and tell the story of their fate. It was a twofold vocation fundamental to her identity, and in defining that identity she clearly saw, not only who she was, but who she could become.

Please see my post: The Piece of Heaven outside my Window

The painting In the Whirlwind by Jacek Malczewski symbolizes the plight of refugees (Polish, in this case) who flee their homeland, perhaps never to return.

The Sister Stars

When the goddess Diana goes on a hunt she is always accompanied by her seven beautiful attendants. These maidens are the sisters known as the Pleiades: the daughters of the sea nymph Pleione and mighty Atlas, who bears the world upon his shoulders. But once these maidens catch the eye of the great hunter Orion, the pursuers of game become themselves the pursued. 

In their frantic headlong flight to evade the advances of the amorous Orion, the youngest of the sisters, Merope, becomes separated from her siblings. What to do? Poor Merope stumbles through the woods of Arcady, searching desperately for her sisters and calling out to her mistress the goddess for help. But by now she has run so deep into the thick woodlands that her companions are no longer within earshot, and Merope is left alone and desolate.

Does this myth have a happy ending? Myths are not fairy tales, even though they share with such tales many of the great archetypes which make such retellings endure down the centuries. Fairy tales, as we know, end ‘happily ever after’, but this is not always true of myths. Myths seem to occupy a less certain reality, which perhaps ironically make myths reflect the events of our own world more accurately. Gods and goddesses in these mythic stories are remarkably human, with all-too-human shortcomings, and their illustrious immortality serves as no guarantee that they will manage to avoid the very human emotions of heartache, jealousy and anger at injustice – all of which and more are experienced by them in these stories.

But is it that we project our own human emotions onto the world of the gods? Or is it perhaps more that all the upheavals of emotions that we as mortals experience are an earthly mirror of what happens in the lofty realm of the immortals? If the gods exist then perhaps they are showing us the way; showing us that even gods can suffer heartbreak, even gods can know joys and setbacks, tears and laughter. Even for the gods there is no master plan, and no guarantees that they will live ‘happily ever after’. Like us, they just live out their lives, and cope with things as they happen. But there is a measure of trust that things will somehow work out, and the gods, for all their capriciousness, show us the way in this as well.

And what of Merope? The myth does not grant us a tidy end in which she eventually is reunited with her sisters. We are left to wonder. But there is that measure of hope. Look up into the sky on a starry night and you will see Orion the hunter still in pursuit of the six Pleiades. The stars rise and set, but they always remain the same distance from each other. However fast he might run, Orion will never catch them. And somewhere in the heavens overhead is Merope, the lost little seventh star who is still searching for her sisters. And although the story in the night sky remains as inconclusive as the myth, it also in that very inconclusiveness holds out the hope for us that a reunion with her sisters might yet be possible.

Sculptere of Merope by Randolph Rogers

Dance of the Pleiades - Picture by Mynzah from a painting by Elihu Vedder

The Seven Devils of Mary Magdalene

In the short second verse of chapter 8 of Luke’s gospel Mary Magdalene is identified in two ways: she is among the followers of Jesus, and she is the woman out of whom ‘seven devils’ had been cast. What are we to make of this strange verse? The usual conclusion is that Mary was a little insane, perhaps even suffering from fits of hysteria. Interpreted more literally, Jesus is presumed to have ‘cured’ Mary by performing some sort of an exorcism on her. Within the context of what Luke briefly tells us, both of these interpretations seem plausible enough. But to what extent can we be sure that this is what this puzzling verse actually means?

Was Mary perhaps epileptic? Such conditions were then commonly attributed to some form of possession, in which case we are asked to imagine that Jesus presumably alleviated her symptoms. Seen through the eyes of the time, those devils had been ‘cast out’ of her. In the light of our present knowledge of such conditions, this explanation is entirely plausible – but is this really what took place?

Many texts were written and in circulation before Christianity emerged in the recognizable form that we know today. For every book in the Bible there were many others, and before the Bible came into being, all of these texts were on an equal footing with each other. We do not know who wrote these texts, any more than we can be sure who wrote Luke’s gospel and the other three gospels. But if we wish to look for answers to these puzzling passages in scripture, we often enough can find these answers in the books that the early Church Fathers decided to exclude from the books that would come to be included in scripture.

The Gospel of Mary – the only known such text which has been attributed to a woman – contains a remarkable passage in which, following the Ascension, Mary relates to the other disciples certain inner mysteries which Jesus had passed on to her. This passage clearly tells us that Mary was close to Jesus – so close that he entrusted her with mystic knowledge not given to his other disciples. We now would describe her as being indoctrinated by Jesus into the inner mysteries. Whether Jesus did this as a great mystic, as an enlightened being, or as the son of the Divine is a matter for personal belief, and in itself does not affect the nature of this special knowledge given to Mary. But what is this special knowledge?

In this text, we are told that under Jesus’ instruction Mary ascended through various levels or ‘powers’. She describes encountering the power which has “…seven forms. The first form is darkness; the second is desire; the third is ignorance; the fourth is zeal for death; the fifth is the kingdom of the flesh; the sixth is the foolish wisdom of the flesh; the seventh is the wisdom of the wrathful person. These are the seven powers of Wrath.” Jesus’ action towards Mary can now be seen for what it truly is: not some trivial and all-too-literal exorcism, but an indoctrination into the inner mysteries, which Mary in her turn masters.

We know that the writer of Luke drew upon older texts for some of his material, and the ‘seven devils’ episode would seem to be a scrambled version of these older mysteries whose true meaning was lost on that writer, remembering that the Gospel of Mary would itself have been copied from older texts. So the Gospel of Mary offers us a Mary who is indeed a wise and profound teacher, and even the closest to Jesus and the most deserving of his disciples.

We already have come a long way from the Mary of Luke’s gospel out of whom ‘seven devils’ were cast. We can now see her as the Mary who, uniquely among the disciples, managed to master these inner mysteries, not so much of the Kingdom of Heaven, but of the inner Self: which in the end is perhaps the same thing. Today, July 22nd, is traditionally the day of Mary Magdalene, and what better way to celebrate this day than to shed these outdated misconceptions about her and to see her for who she truly must have been: an enlightened soul who truly was 'the disciple whom Jesus loved’.

Bass relief beneath the altar, Church of St Mary Magdalene, Rennes-le-Château, France

Ave Maria

Ave Maria

Ave Maria, ave, ave!

Who has not sung this greeting

and entreated with heart’s weakened breath

for miracles fleeting?

Inexhaustible Well of Life

Mother Immaculate, Perfect One.

Did you your own misgivings feel

as mother to the Son?

Why do I not feel compelled

to worship you in childlike trust?

Perhaps because my own life’s course

treads a different and less certain dust?

Perhaps because the mother who was mine

kept distance in her own remote belief

as in unnourished solitude

I stood in silent grief?

Or perhaps because, a mother now myself,

I cannot work the miracles I need

to save my children from their pains 

and the rough desires of others’ greed?

Do I seek my own immaculate self?

Is that what binds me to you?

That you, in spite of everything,

allow me to draw near you?

Or is it that I wonder

at your own unquestioning belief

to bear your greatest miracle,

and in turn to bear your greatest grief?

Is this why others sing your name?

That in the arms of Grace

in sweet submission you agreed

to bear that blessed Face?

Oh Sweet Surrender, oh Sweet Awe

who teaches me the way

to live and also to let go of life:

Ave Maria, ave, ave!

The Mermaid of Haarlem

The Lowlands in 1430 brought a year of terrible storms. The gales were so strong that parts of the dykes which protected West Friesland were breached, and the North Sea broke through and flooded the farmlands. But these storms were not all that were brought to the country. Among the many fish left stranded on the farmlands was (if we believe the wondering accounts written at the time) a mermaid.

A group of women gathering the stranded fish for an easy meal apparently discovered the unfortunate creature floundering in the shallow waters. Astonished (as well they might be), they somehow managed to carry the marvel to dry land, where she was eventually transported to the city of Edam, and from Edam to the city of Haarlem.

The Mermaid of Haarlem, as she became known, was provided with good Christian clothes with which to suitably cover her heathen nakedness, and seems to have settled down to this new life away from her watery home. She also seems to have adapted her diet to one of cooked meat, and was taught to spin yarn, and to pray and to make the sign of the crucifix. In short: the mermaid was provided with the essentials for a life in the Christian community in which she now found herself.

But these outward trappings of her surroundings do not seem to have erased her essential nature. Apparently she always retained a longing for her watery home, and every attempt to teach her even the essentials of human language resulted only in stubborn silence. How many years she spent as a half-reluctant member of her adopted community is not recorded, although we are told that on her death she was given a full Christian burial. Ah: if only we knew of her burial place! Would an exhumation reveal a marvel, or merely a prosaic disappointment?

Almost six centuries is a long time: long enough for us to wish that the story of the Haarlem Mermaid might just be true: long enough for us to hope that the story perhaps has a grain of substance. We seem to need mermaids and other fantastic creatures, but what perhaps touches us about her story is the notion of exile.

Let us suppose (because it is what we would like to believe) that the story is true. Did the mermaid truly have some sense of Christian reverence when she crossed herself, or was she merely mimicking the actions of those around her? And how strangely alien and awkward the wearing of clothes must at first have seemed to her. And what apparently was her resistance to human speech might have been more to do with her inability to speak at all, for who knows the ways in which mermaids communicate with each other when swimming in their watery home?

What we recognize in the mermaid’s story is the wish, however misplaced, to want to change someone to be like ourselves. We resist that ‘otherness’ which makes someone special, which makes them the unique individual that they truly are. We want someone to share our own beliefs, because that is a way of confirming to ourselves that the things in which we believe must be ‘right’. We misguidedly imagine that we can ‘improve’ someone by persuading them to believe what we believe, and to think as we think.

But is such persuasion a form of conversion, or a form of possession? We might excuse the actions of her captors towards the mermaid as belonging to the attitudes of 15th-century Catholic Europe, but such attitudes persist. Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses who come knocking on your door are in their intention no different from the goodwives of Haarlem who taught the mermaid how to make the sign of the cross. 

‘To thine own self be true’. But the mermaid was a unique being among many foreign souls, and social pressures can be hard to resist. Perhaps we can begin by recognizing and respecting each individual in her or his own right, whatever beliefs she or he might hold – whether human or mermaid.

Painting: Oceanid by Annie Louisa Swynnerton

The Spirit Descends

This, more than any other,

is the moment.

I raise my arms to the skies,

I raise my soul to the mystery
of all that is, and is to come,

and I wait.

I wait in expectation,

my hands open, ready to receive,

my heart open, ready to be filled,

my soul open, ready to be blessed

with the spirit on this, my Pentecost.

O marvelous fire
I beseech you,
fill my hands with gratitude,
fill my heart with your love,
fill my soul with your blessings,
with your sweet burning,
with your flame
which lights but does not sear,
with your incandescent grace.

O sweet mystery

you are my hands filled with gratitude,

you are my heart filled with love,

you are my soul filled with blessings,

you are all my pain, not vanquished,

but made sweet.

You are the arc of heaven

which bends with grace above me,

you are this great ocean

which I stand before

in wondering silence,

You are all that I am:

You are me.

Sacred Friend

There we sat on the beach, our hands with the playful fingers, always ready to let the sand run through them, now quietly resting on the same sand - while he was talking, and I was listening. At first he was searching for words, and somewhat reluctant to release them, to let them free in the air where they could either rise up to the light or fall silent on the sand. They fell, his words, in good earth they fell. Those words, coming from the depth of his soul.

They painted before me a man who made himself a mirror and did not shun his reflection. He looked at every incompleteness, every flaw and imperfection, and fought the fight of his life, like Jacob wrestling with his angel. It wore him down time and again, and his heart broke manyfold, but he did not flinch. He observed himself, he studied his inner and outer being. Gradually his reflection began to change form until one day it disappeared and even the mirror dissolved like a base metal in an alchemic process. 

Born again, he looked at the man that he had become - a man who had won, not only the battle, but also had ended the war against himself. The battle he had won was the victory over his small self - the victory over judgement and dualism. He had gained compassion, and more. No longer unaware, he had gained bliss. Pure bliss.

My silence was not mute. My silence spoke, while his words reached my open hands, and my heart. 

Painting by Hendrik Mesdag