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One Priest’s Wondering Beliefs. John E. Bowers
Читать онлайн.Название One Priest’s Wondering Beliefs
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isbn 9781620322710
Автор произведения John E. Bowers
Жанр Религия: прочее
Издательство Ingram
Holy Week tells the center and depth of the story, what Christianity is all about, how in Jesus’ self-sacrifice God’s redeeming of His people was worked out. This week is really the only liturgical work of the Christian year, and everything else is build-up or follow-up (or towards the end of Pentecost let-down). So this is it! How do we make it spiritually richer for people (assuming that they, like me, want it richer)?
And then I muse, “When you (Bowers, or anyone else still listening) have mastered all this (the Passion story, and the liturgy, and the Scriptures, and standard Christian theology, and all the exercises and stuff that goes with it), then do not give up, do not stop to rest a while. Do not think, “This is it, this is all I need.” Because this is only a beginning place, one foundation stone, one among several possibilities, on which to build our spiritual lives.” There are other foundation stones too: Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, naturalism. They all are reaching toward the same, toward the Eternal. And while we proclaim that ours is the best way, maybe even the only way, I’m not so sure there are not other ways, equally good, perhaps better ways, to discover the Eternal in our lives. But I am thinking that this stuff, by itself, will not do it!
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Gors Fawr
Near the beginning of my pilgrimage sabbatical in Wales I hired a guide to carry me from St. David’s at land’s end down to Tenby on the southern coast, and enroute to show me some of the more powerful ancient ruins strewn along the way. I was on my way to the Cistercian monastery on Caldey Island to write my second book, daily prayers written in the Celtic tradition (i.e., of Alexander Carmichael’s Carmina Gadelica) with a brief, opening exposition of Celtic Christian spirituality to buttress and inform the readers of my daily prayers. Terry John was my guide that day, a native of the region, well-educated, who had taught in London most of his years, but was now retired back homeward. And being a native he had the credentials to ask questions of his native elders and peers, questions about ancient lore and beliefs and traditions. So he carried within him ancient lore that is nowhere in the books. He took me past a single standing stone that on a certain night each spring is painted white. No one in the community seemed to know, or, more likely, was willing to admit, who did that. Nor had anyone any idea (or was willing to admit) why that was done. It had always been. I asked him to take me to a circle of standing-stones among other things. I wanted to experience it more than see it. I’d seen others, but always when I’d been in groups. I wanted to have quiet time alone in a circle, to feel whatever might be felt there, to sense whatever might be sensed. He took me to Gors Fawr. It is a modest circle of seventy-three feet with sixteen local stones, none being more than thirty inches tall. I wandered among the stones. He told me facts about the stones and the circle. After some time I asked him, “What was this about? I know some people claim these circles were astrological observatories, others that they were the site of religious ceremonies. What do you think they were?” He was quiet for a few moments (as though considering whether I could be trusted with his answer), and then shared that he thought the circles were multi-purpose. That they served as a community gathering place, and certainly were constructed with astrological dimensions for agricultural purposes, and were possibly also market places, might have been used for ceremonials and religious rites, perhaps for political and civic and governance gatherings. He found it significant that the circles were often within sight of other circles, so they must have had some larger-than-community purposes as well. And that all made sense to me. I did feel something at that circle, particularly at one of the stones, but I’d be hard pressed to tell you what I felt, certainly not something I’m aware of feeling in everyday happenings and places.
So these days when I find myself in church I usually am asking myself, “Bowers, this is the circle of standing-stones you have chosen, and that seems to have chosen you. What’s it about? What’s going on here today? Why are these people and I gathered here? If this is our metaphor, our circle of standing stones, what is it saying? What is it pointing toward? To what unknowable and inexpressible reality is it trying to give voice? What am I listening for here?”
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The Liminal
I need to wonder aloud for a few minutes about the liminal. A Latin word, limen which we translate “threshold,” that member of the doorway which we step over as we go in and out the house, or maybe we linger on it as we briefly contemplate the day ahead. The ancient Celts considered thresholds to be sacred places, places where we are most likely to encounter the holy, the sacred, the spirit world, the LORD. Not just doorway thresholds, but all kinds of thresholds, places of transition, when we step from one place, one time, one life into another. All primitives who live close to nature know about limens and liminality. Where the water of a spring which has spent eons underground unseen in blinded blackness, suddenly gushes forth cool, clear, fresh into the light and air for drinking and giving life. Where the river courses along the bank carrying flotsam and boats. Where the mountain top touches the sky. When the day meets the night, and night the day. Where the forest touches the open plain. At equinox when the dark of night becomes longer than daylight. Where the wilderness meets civilization, or one country warily touches another. When drowsiness slips into sleep. Where death overtakes life, and when new life is born. Thresholds, transitions, boundaries, crossings, moments when all creation seems to pause and breathe deeply, silently, watching to see.
I have learned that dusk and pre-dawn are the best times to pray; God is most willing to be present, or perhaps we are most open to Her presence. The instant when I discovered my wife dead, God held me back from tumbling down into the black abyss of chaos. When Nancy and I stood before our gathered family and friends and said “I do” to each other and to the gathered community. I have sat on the boulders at Govan’s Chapel tucked into the gap in a cliff side as a gale blew sea foam around me and over the cliff top and knew I was with God. All places and times of transition are limens, moments when, for an instant, we are in between. My dad used to talk about “Hobble-de-hoy, neither man nor boy,” in between being a child and becoming an adult. Limens are everywhere once we begin to recognize them and watch for them. And they can be very important moments in our spiritual lives, moments when we are vulnerable, and can be very present to God.
I have been in lots of liminal places. Sometimes Nancy and I make that an element, a goal of our travels, to discover and collect a few more liminal experiences. In-between places, in-between times. Places where time seems to slow and pause for a little before moving on to tomorrow. Places where the land ends, and I creep as close as I can (I’m acrophobic) to the edge of a cliff and look down eight hundred feet at the waves crashing on the rocks, and ask . . . (there are no words). Caldey Island is a liminal place where time itself doesn’t quite stop, but becomes unimportant, where the ancient and the present collapse together, and I could stand in one place and ask all the questions that had never been answered, no matter that there was no one, and nothing to answer. But there came an answer, not in words, not even in ideas or forms or images. Locked in a burial chamber in Loughcrew. Spaces for wondering. Sitting on the rocks at land’s end and watching the waves crashing for hours, and hearing non-voices uttering, perhaps in my imagination, or in the rhythms of the seas and the pounding of the waves. Places to listen—and to hear the sound of the great nothing that lies beyond it all.
The illustrating example of the liminal commonly given is of the tribal initiation rites for boys-becoming-men. The boys, about to become un-children are taken from their families and villages to a remote ritual site and subjected there to various ordeals or humiliations (sounds much like hazing rituals), trained by older men. The dark is often an integral part, as in a darkened hut, at night, in a cave. Sometimes mutilations such as tattoos or scarification or circumcision. This may go on for a few days or months or even years. There is often some encounter with the gods or the ancestors. They may be taught skills. At the end, a highly ritualistic reunion. The boys have died and are now reborn as men, sometimes with new names, sometimes needing to be taught to recognize relatives and friends. The liminal is a “betwixt and between” time, no longer boys, but not yet men. All old is stripped away, and the new is received, like recruits