Menu for February 2010
January 31, 2010
Click on my new site Jupiter Meets Uranus to find out more about
“Jupiter meets Uranus: from erotic bathing to star gazing”
” I’ve found a fascinating book by Anne Whitaker, called ‘Jupiter meets Uranus’……a special study of this powerful event that happens every 14 years….”
Jonathan Cainer, the UK’s top astrologer, November 2009
Now available!
31.1.10
To read the latest review of ‘Jupiter Meets Uranus’, click HERE
***************
Serial:
Follow weekly episodes of ‘Wisps from the Dazzling Darkness ‘
- a memoir and analysis of thirty years’ episodic paranormal experiences
for latest post (5.2.10), click HERE
***************
AND :
Articles on writing, in-depth astrology, positive ageing, experiences of oneness: Guest Slot: Book Reviews, Favourite Quotes, Cartoons….and who knows what else! Just keep dropping by - and do leave a comment now and then!
To read the latest posts, scroll down on WEBLOG
On reaching thirty – ‘forging the diamond soul’
February 9, 2010
As followers of this site will know, I went through a profoundly testing – though ultimately enriching – descent into the Underworld and slow return during the period 2001-8. During this time of retreat I had to give up a busy and successful freelance career, and simply rest, grateful to be nurtured by my loved ones, until my life force returned. Reading and writing were major sustaining gifts – as was a deepening spirituality. I had the time to draft a memoir of my emerging spiritual life up until the age of thirty; not as a continuous narrative, but as a series of key episodes.
It is my intention from time to time to publish some extracts from the memoir, provisionally titled “Swimmer in a secret sea” on this site.
In the meantime, here are some of my musings from the Introduction to that memoir, as I reflect on the great significance of those first thirty formative years in all our lives.
Those of you who are approaching turning thirty and finding it hard going, take heart! I have come across many people amongst my counselling clients, students and astrology clients for whom the period of 28-30 was very, very tough. They were certainly hard years for me. But most of us can look back and say “well, that was when I really began to grow up – life is much better now!”
The Diamond Soul
‘ We truly are unique, each one of us. Only one person can live out your or my particular story. But there are certain archetypal experiences which most of us go through in the vital thirty years where we lay the building blocks for our future development as useful adults.
Inspiring people – if we are lucky, members of our own family as well as those met along the road – appear. Experiences which wake us up to new realities come our way. There are challenges or tests which we cope with as best we can. There are questions which are seemingly unanswerable, but will not go away. The longing to feel part of something greater than ourselves tugs at many of us. Deaths of loved ones in early life mark us deeply.
Intense love affairs can turn out well or badly. Friendships are forged which can deeply sustain and comfort us, in which we can show the best as well as the worst facets of who we are. Relationships with parents are revealed in varying contexts, leading us to a more realistic perspective on both sides.
We begin to realise that our most valuable educational experiences probably take place outwith academic institutions. We develop ambitions and set about trying to fulfil them. We deal with the raw joy of being alive, as well as the depths of its pain. We encounter the love that nurtures us, and the wounds that may make us wise in time.
From this long, testing and often painful process of submerging our dreams, questions and ideals in the acid bath of life as it actually is, hopefully we emerge with a good enough balance of optimism, resilience and mature realism to enable us slowly to begin to separate out from what we are never going to become. In this way, we begin to grow more fully into who it is we actually are, having taken a step further towards what the Buddhists call ‘forging the diamond soul‘ …”
NOTE!
USA’s bi-monthly The Mountain Astrologer magazine is recognised as being one of the world’s best quality astrology publications. They will shortly be producing and selling a CD featuring the Editor’s Choice of the best articles which The Mountain Astrologer published during the 1990s. I am pleased to say that the article I wrote in 1998, which features an astrological perspective on life’s thirty-year cycles: “The Cycles of Saturn: forging the Diamond Soul”, will be appearing in that collection. Those of you readers who are astrologers or astrology students, keep checking the site for details! As far as I know, the CD should be available from March 2010.
********************************
700 words copyright Anne Whitaker 2010
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page
*******************************
Guest Slot: “Shaping the Writer” by Annie Evett
January 31, 2010
Last year I was fortunate to come across that diverse and stimulating, not to mention inspiring, writers’ site Write Anything. Our mutual love of nature, and writers’ efforts to capture its large and small wonders, brought me into contact with writer Annie Evett from that site. It greatly pleases me this month to have Annie’s account of growing up in the Australian bush and its profound influence on her as a writer. All our childhood experiences are unique. But some are more unique than others! Over to you, Annie ….
Although I dislike the pigeon holing of genre based writing, it would appear from readers’ feedback, that my writing success lies within my descriptive narrative; specifically that of a setting. Anne contacted me a little while back to ask if I might write on whether one’s earliest memories of environment influence one’s main style of writing.
In particular she was interested in my experience within the bush and my love of nature writing. Noticing minute detail is important to a writer building a realistic and believable character or scene – and to country folk relying on specific information in order to diagnose sick animals, fix machinery or identify an area in danger of bushfire. The latter are skills which seem to be ingrained from an early age.
Rural life taught me the zen of chicken taming, the aikido of sheep handling, the philosophy of cattle herding and the oneness felt between a rider and horse on a long dusty road. With our modern society bent on cotton padding every bump, growing up in the bush taught me to take and make risks, be proactive, inventive and constantly seek answers both from within and outside. Valuable lessons for any writer.
Nature writing binds characters to the natural wealth and expanse of the wilderness with words of respect, admiration, and empathy. It marries up the divorce between nature in the plastic world and reminds us in every phrase, that nature has its eventual dominant place. Growing up as I did, instilled this belief deeply within my soul.
Annie - contemplative mode
The eldest of six children, born to a shearer and housemaid who subsequently set themselves up within the fine wool industry, I lived my first seventeen years within the Australian bush on a mixed produce property . My primary school had up to twenty students enrolled; the nearest town boasted a population of nearly five thousand people. Despite only living half an hour to town, modern living and experiences such as going to the movies or having a milkshake (in fact any sort of fast food) was something I didn’t indulge until I left home and went to University in the big smoke (our capital city). I believe this extended innocence has given me the opportunity to look at situations with unsullied eyes and the ability to twist things to a different perspective.
Daily childhood experiences involving the stark reality of drought, flood and bushfires, the brutal honesty of the cycle of life and the truth in death colour my writing.
Memories cutting deeply into my psyche include droughts where the piles of carcasses grew daily. Bullets were too expensive to waste on the dying; so children were sent to cut throats and drag bodies behind utes. (Ed: a type of pickup truck) Memories, too, of bushfires devastating vast expanses of land, native animals and farm equipment – caused by the careless flick of a cigarette from a passing car, or the malicious act of bored teenagers from town. It is through these eyes I am able to ‘cut to the bone’ of a story, revealing its inner strengths without being distracted by sidelines or flattery.
Seasonal chore aged 5 - Annie plucks turkey
My childhood days would start with a seasonal chore, such as fruit or vegetable harvesting, mustering animals or milking with the children saved only by the need to get changed and catch a battered bus to go to school. Far from thinking this was a prison camp, in no way would I change a single memory or experience. Indeed, I would wish a similar childhood for my own children.
Imagine a wondrous childhood where over three thousand acres of land lay to be explored on horseback? Where it was safe to leave after breakfast and not come home till dark? Where at anytime your pet list included a half dozen chickens, up to twenty motherless lambs or calves, horses, ducks, goats and dogs?
My first paid job was as a roustabout for a shearing team when I was thirteen. Here, I met some of the outback’s true characters; a deeper appreciation for humour, regardless of the situation, was born. I feel privileged that my parents pulled us all out of school (just before my final year exams) so that we could go droving for a month. I joined the likes of Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson on horseback; those were hours of staring at the moving masses of animals ahead, and the great silent expanses of the open road. You cannot but be provoked to poetry, music or creative writing when surrounded by the palette of moving scenery and blissful solitude.
I was unaware that stories of my childhood sounded straight from a film set, naively believing that the majority of people understood the fine balance we humans hold with the land, animals and the gift we call life. Folk from the bush tend to be quieter, more reserved; but in no way should that be perceived as less intelligent. With the stillness and quiet comes a deeper understanding of and connection to the fragility of life – of the inner sanctuary of strength of character, and appreciation of friendship and community bonds.
As writers, our anthropocentrism runs deep. Blinded by the politics and theatrics of human relationships, we forget that a piece can be just as interesting without the people, as dramatic simply by utilising the environment and the landscape. Caught by the busyness and artificiality of their surroundings, many writers forget to indulge in the quiet inner space, or of the peace which can be attained by noticing the delicate details etched in any leaf, blade of grass or flower. I feel blessed to have been exposed to the harshness of the outback life, now able to harness the solitude and imagery it has gifted me as a writer.
**************************
Annie Evett
Annie writes a weekly column for Write Anything (http://writeanything.wordpress.com ) and Type A Mom (http://www.typeamom.net/mom-types/suburban-moms.html) , is coauthor of an online adventure series Captain Juan (http://www.captainjuan.com) and has written a survival guide for parents – Reclaim Sex After Birth. (http://reclaimsexafterbirth.com) Continue your discovery of her writing at her site ( http://annieevett.com)
**************************
1100 words copyright Annie Evett/ Anne Whitaker 2010
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page
Favourite Quotes: Max Planck on scientific truths
January 19, 2010
“A new scientific truth does not triumph
by convincing its opponents and making
them see the light, but rather because its
opponents eventually die.“
Max Planck
(April 23, 1858 – October 4, 1947)
Nobel Prize-winning German physicist
*******************************
As I slowly emerge from the post-Festive fug, my only resolution for 2010 is to embark on some re-reads of a few of the books which have made the most powerful impression on me in the last few years. One of these is undoubtedly Peter Russell’s “From Science to God”, from which (p17) the above quote is taken. The book is “…the story of Peter Russell’s lifelong exploration into the nature of consciousness – how he went from being a convinced atheist, studying mathematics and physics, to realising a profound personal synthesis of the mystical and scientific.”
I have had a lifelong interest in science. But my capacity to understand its paradigms is seriously handicapped by having done Classics instead of science at school – not that reading Homer in the original Greek wasn’t great fun! Thus people like Russell, who can clarify and inspire without being patronising to the scientifically uneducated like me, are a great gift to the world! If you want to find out more about Peter Russell, his website is : www.peterussell.com
New cartoon: revenge on the old guys….
January 7, 2010
Fair’s fair! Now it’s time for me to poke fun at men in mid-life
(there are several ruder ways of putting this, but I’m still recharging the brain cell from the Festive Season).
Here, therefore, is a cartoon which my husband forwarded to me recently. Normally, I HATE being sent forwards and consign them to the bin (am I alone in this, dear readers?) but this one had me laughing out loud. Regular visitors will have gathered by now that my sense of humour has a psychopathic edge to it….
An Unkind Optician’s Revenge on the Old Guys
Preparing for 2010/11: Prometheus unbound?
January 1, 2010
Astrology is a double-edged art.
It bestows the inestimably joyful gift of awareness that we are all woven into some vast, meaningful pattern – in which the tiniest of individual threads ( you, me….) is a key part of the weave. It contributes a significant lens to the many through which we limited humans attempt to expand our vision and comprehension of both the collective and individual patterns of life on this tiny, precious planet of ours.
Astrology can also raise fear and apprehension: it provides very accurate timings so that we can know exactly when certain energy patterns are coming to their peak. But our attempts at predicting precisely how those energies will manifest – both collectively and individually – have ranged historically from considerable accuracy to being way off the mark. As a critic wryly observed not long ago, if astrologers could consistently predict accurately they would all be millionaires by now.
The myth of Prometheus, who stole the gods’ fire in order to use it for humanity’s enlightenment and was savagely punished for his hubris, is a salutary one to contemplate as we think of astrology’s double edge. Fire warms us, lights up the dark, protects us – but it can also burn the hand that bears it. All illuminating knowledge, everything which takes humans a step forward into the light, also casts a dark shadow.
And here we are, as another year and decade begins, contemplating one of the astrological calendar’s most dynamic and exciting cycles. The fourteen-year cycle of Jupiter and Uranus, which last took place at 5-6 degrees of Aquarius in February 1997, is coming to an end. The new one zaps zero degrees Aries with its lightning bolt in June 2010.
Prometheus
And the myth of Prometheus, powerfully connected to the planet Uranus,
becomes once again startlingly relevant.
Now read on….
Winter Solstice Book Review: “The steps of the Sun” by Paul F. Newman
December 23, 2009
At the Winter Solstice 2009, Paul F. Newman writes:
“The winter solstice, the shortest day, is for us in the northern hemisphere the
Sun’s lowest possible point. Its declination or latitude measurement is as far
south of the celestial equator as it is possible to be. These steps of the Sun
mark out the turning phases of our year and the customs we have attached to them….“
*************************
….and Anne Whitaker reviews “Declination in Astrology The steps of the Sun” by Paul F. Newman ….
DECLINATION in Astrology
Declination measures the position of planets North or South of the celestial equator, which is the Earth’s equator projected into space. As Paul F. Newman demonstrates in this broad ranging and informed study, it is a measure which has been used at least since Neolithic times, notably in the most famous solar temple in the world, five thousand year old Stonehenge. Do we astrologers use it today? The answer to that question is probably – not much.
The blurb on the back of the book asserts, however, that declination is “an ancient art of astrology currently undergoing a vital revival” and Paul F. Newman is to be congratulated on presenting the topic in both a practical and inspiring way which should have a number of astrologers checking Norths and Souths in future!
One of the problems with astrological practice is that there are so many techniques and approaches available that the practitioner, intent on earning a living, has to prune this cornucopia to a workable minimum of personal favourites.
As one reads through “DECLINATION in Astrology The steps of the Sun”, it becomes clear that declination provides easily accessible tools, which can most definitely enhance the art of analysis.
I have two favourites from the toolbox. The first is Out of Bounds planets – overstepping the declination boundaries set by the Sun, vividly describing ‘awkward squad’ tendencies in those who possess them!! The second is planets on or near Zero declination, the equatorial point dividing the earth into Northern and Southern hemispheres, and therefore in Newman’s own words “a potent and critical position”.
Readers familiar with Paul F. Newman’s writing will recognise the quirkiness and diversity of the examples from film, poetry, soap opera and science fiction he draws upon from his own wide reading to bring the book’s theory to life. We have “Tarzan of the Apes” rubbing shoulders with that late great astrologer John Addey (out of bounds Mercury); with Liberace (out of bounds Venus, you’d never have guessed!) ; with a famous “Photo of the Beatles”; with Mickey Mouse, the Elephant Man and “The Twilight Zone” to name a very few.
My favourite, as a poetry lover, is Paul’s brilliant and haunting analysis of Coleridge’s “Rime of the ancient mariner”. It is only after the old navigator crosses the equator ( Zero declination) and sails South, that all the strange events following the killing of the albatross unfold…read on, and experience the scary allurement of Neptune’s realm….
Paul F. Newman skilfully weaves astronomical declination theory together with key aspects of mythology connected to the solar journey throughout the four seasons of the year. The artwork is his own: he has produced diagrams which are both clear, and soothing to the brains of spatial dyslexics like myself who have rather a struggle with the astronomical basis of our great art.
This is an accomplished book which deserves to be widely read, contributing as it does to the updating and publicising of a dimension of astrology which until fairly recently has been somewhat neglected.
Paul F Newman
Paul F. Newman is an astrologer, astrology teacher, writer and contributor to many journals including ‘The Mountain Astrologer‘ and ‘The Astrological Journal’, author of “You’re not a person–just a birth chart” and “DECLINATION in Astrology The Steps of the Sun”
He can be contacted at pneuma@ukonline.co.uk
****************************************************
600 words copyright Anne Whitaker/Paul F. Newman 2009
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page
NOT the Xmas Round Robin….
December 15, 2009
At Christmas time 2004, having read about a dozen round robins arriving with their respective cards, all eulogising each family’s travels and achievements in the year just ending, I became seriously fed up.
The “Not the Xmas round robin” concept was born in that moment.
Life is not all sunshine and achievement as depicted in the standard end of the year card insert, I thought to myself. So why not produce something a bit different – a piece of reflection conveying some shadow as well as light, something more honest, something offering a bit of inspiration from our common experiences of being human ?
Since then I have written a “not the Xmas round robin” piece of end-of-year reflection for inclusion in my Xmas cards every year. People like it. So this year I thought I’d share it with you – my increasing band of loyal readers here at “Writing from the Twelfth House”.
***************
“not the Xmas round robin 2009″
……a quotation from “Simple Abundance” by Sarah Ban Breathnach for 8 December states……
“ Gloom we have always with us, a rank and sturdy weed, but joy requires tending.”
Barbara Holland
As you legions of devoted fans of Anne Whitaker’s Annual Thought for the Day will be well aware by now, Ian and I have had a pretty hefty allocation of family and health difficulties in recent years although our overriding feeling continues to be one of gratitude for my full recovery from what I now think of (with a characteristic tinge of melodrama, but not that much!) as my Descent and Return from the Underworld, 2001-08.
There have been many consequences flowing from this experience, and I am very slowly beginning to appreciate what riches one can bring back from the Underworld – provided that the experience of Descent and Return is understood as part of “the stormy journey of the soul” and accepted in that spirit. (not easy, by the way!!)
Ian and me, Dartmoor, August 2009
One of the gifts for both Ian and myself – and probably the most important development of 2009 – has been a growing understanding of how vulnerable we all are behind our carefully crafted defences, how ephemeral this life is, and how quickly and brutally all that we thought we had can be taken from us.
Thus we have been learning to live as fully as we can in each day, never being too busy to stop and appreciate the many small but pleasurable moments in life therein.
The still watchfulness of the herons on the nearby River Kelvin. The delightful smile on nine month old neighbour wee Lauchie’s face, as he leans over to rub noses, his latest favourite trick. A peaceful cup of coffee whilst listening to children rehearsing carols in Princes Square, Glasgow’s elegant city centre shopping precinct, magically decorated at this time of year, during a pause in Xmas shopping on a wet and dreary Glasgow day. Having a good laugh, either at our own or the world’s stupidities (have you done your risk assessment before digging out the Xmas tree lights yet?!)
So the quotation above means a lot to me. It is easy to moan and buckle under life’s many pains great and small. But cultivating joy (if you can – I appreciate that life is simply too hard for many people in this world to be able to manage to do so) and living in the moment as much as possible has recently been confirmed by research as being the route to happiness.
So – let me and Ian confirm this truth for you for free. It works!
In conclusion, lest you are beginning by now to think I am losing my sardonic edge in the declining years, I leave you all, especially the over-50s, with this observation recently made to me by a rather cynical but witty person I know:
“Anyone over fifty who is not in pain for one reason or another, is dead!”
***************
650 words copyright Anne Whitaker 2009
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page
“ Teach me your mood, o patient stars
who climb each night the ancient sky.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
************
Definition of prediction: a thing predicted; a forecast
(p 1140, The Oxford English Reference Dictionary, Oxford University Press 1996)
************
The question of whether it is possible to foretell the future is one which has preoccupied humans ever since we evolved into self-conscious beings and began to conceptualise past, present and future – around 80,000 years ago, we now think. Prediction has thus been around for a long time. Economists do it. Weather men/women do it. Politicians do it. Physicists do it. But most of the foregoing direct scorn and derision at the people who have done it for longer than anyone else – astrologers.
(n.b. my comments in this article do not relate to popular Sun Sign astrology which is a generalised form of entertainment based largely on the position of only one planet, the sun)
Measuring the Heavens: The Mariners' Astrolabe
There is at least six thousand years’ worth of recorded empirical evidence, much of it stored on clay tablets, as yet undeciphered, in the basements of museums across the world, demonstrating that the movements of the planets in our solar system correlate with particular shifts in “the affairs of men” both collectively and at an individual level.
This empirical observation continues into the present day in the consulting rooms of astrologers across the world. For example, a number of politicians and economists consult astrologers regularly. They are mostly unwilling to admit it – though we astrologers know who they are!
What is my view on prediction, in summary, after nearly thirty years of observing correlations between individual and collective life on earth and the planets’ movements?
There is no doubt in my mind that astrologers can look at the unfolding pattern of energies through space/time, cut a section through any point or moment of the past, present or future, look at what the essence of that moment is, and speculate regarding what some of the branches manifesting in the wider world, or in individuals’ lives, may be.
However, they cannot predict on a consistent and exact basis how those branches are going to manifest. Our track record on hindsight is much better than it is on foresight, historically!
There have been some spectacularly accurate predictions made by astrologers in the public realm over the centuries; a famous one was made by Luc Gauricus in 1555 to the effect that King Henry the Second of France ( then aged thirty-seven) was in danger of death in his forty-second year, by a head injury incurred in single combat in an enclosed space. And five years later Henry duly died of a lance splinter which entered his eyes and pierced his brain. There have also been some spectacular failures, eg to predict that the Munich agreement of 1938 would lead to war.
We do much better at describing the essence of a pattern – identifying the exact branches through which energies may manifest is much more hit and miss. Personally this cheers me, since it appears to suggest a creative balance between fate and free will in the universe – chaos theory in contemporary physics also has strong parallels with the astrological paradigm. Not everything is pinned down – both the language of astrology and the language of contemporary physics tells us that!
Because of this I am very hesitant about both the accuracy of prediction and the wisdom of doing it at all, especially for individuals, in any more than a “describing the core and speculating about the branches” kind of way. Predicting that a specific branch WILL manifest, in my opinion closes down options rather than opening them up, also taking us into the realm of self-fulfilling prophecy….
I began to study astrology seriously in 1980. Until then, my attitude was not sceptical (ie willing to consider the facts in an open-minded way) but dismissive, to say the least. But in the 1970s I had an encounter with astrologers, involving an unsolicited prediction, which strongly challenged my prejudices.
I leave you thus with the rather interesting tale of how a dismissive, ill-informed maligner of a great and ancient art (me, 1980) turned into a devoted and admiring practitioner. Life sure is full of surprises!
CLICK BELOW
************
700 words copyright Anne Whitaker 2009
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page
A book for Advent: “Things Seen and Unseen” by Nora Gallagher
December 1, 2009
“ Things seen and unseen
A year
lived
in
faith ”
by Nora Gallagher
“ Faith is not about belief in something irrational or about a blind connection to something unreal. It’s about a gathering, an accumulation of events and experiences of a different order….” (pp 78-79)
**********
It was just such an “accumulation of events and experiences of a different order….” that led me in mid-life, after an odyssey of spiritual exploration, finally to take the Dalai Lama ’s advice. If you can find a corner in your own tradition, he said in one of his books, why adopt anyone else’s? So it was that I found a corner in the Scottish Episcopal Church, fifteen minutes’ walk from my house.
All the sacred stories, Christianity being one, have at their core the ability to offer humans collective ritual practice through which to affirm that persistent sense, endemic to the human psyche, that we are all tiny sparks in a great blaze of divine light. We need to celebrate that together, with humility and awe. I needed to have that celebration in my life. And to find a mode of entry, despite my innate resistance to any form of doctrine or dogma.
As I struggled with my defiant heart in the first few months of churchgoing, a friend gave me Nora Gallagher’s fine memoir to read; the narrative begins in the season of Advent. It proved a great support and comfort. Most importantly, it aided my entry into church life. A re-read followed about two years later, and again this month – for our church community’s book group.
This time, I resolved to write an appreciation for my website. This is THE memoir to read for anyone returning, as Nora Gallagher did, to a church forsaken a long time previously; anyone with spiritual needs to be met who doesn’t quite know how to go about it; anyone who is prone to sitting in the back of the church and crying without quite knowing why – as Nora Gallagher did, for the first year of her return.
Trinity Episcopal Church, Santa Barbara, USA
She writes beautifully, with stark honesty and directness at times: What is a priest? she asks a friend, a canon. “A person who is too fucked-up to do anything else” he replies drily.
She can also convey her experiences with spare and moving simplicity, for example in describing a totally unexpected encounter with the presence of a beloved friend who had recently died, Lois, at a time when Nora herself felt especially vulnerable and in need of consolation: “…. I felt, particularly, the skin of her hands. They felt dry and sunny, as if she were holding a piece of the sun….The overall feeling of this whatever-it-was was of detached kindness, without emotion, clarity without sentiment, the purity and refreshment of a sun-dried sheet.”
She is able to communicate the ordinary day to day failings and inadequacies of herself and her fellow community members as they travel together for a whole year from one Advent season to the next. The texture and turbulence of church life is rendered with forensic accuracy and unfailing humour. The despair and exhaustion of supporting terminally ill friends and, most painfully, her beloved brother Kit, through the gruelling business of dying, is not shirked.
Central to the whole book is her developing understanding that the beauty and nurturing of liturgy as spiritual practice has an inseparable partner: service to others. To this end “A couple of us started a soup kitchen in the parish hall”, which grows and develops throughout the church year, feeding all levels and groups inhabiting the underside of American prosperity – people who for many and varied reasons have fallen through the cracks. For them, the Trinity community kitchen is a lifeline.
Gallagher does not glamourise the usually thankless and occasionally dangerous business of feeding those folk upon whom ordinary society has turned their backs. She writes about the vicissitudes of such service with unfailing honesty, humanity, and just the right seasoning of humour.
The church to which Nora Gallagher returns is not the same church that she left – had it been, she clearly states, she would not be there. She is supported by wonderful women priests: realistic, humorous, humane and compassionate. In the partnership between ordained and lay ministry which is strong at Trinity, she takes on such tasks as serving at the Eucharist: “The mysterious and irrational Eucharist….that fed my mysterious and irrational life.” In attending to this task, she sees “the fallen-down helplessness in people’s eyes….” but also “….bits of hidden life, something about to emerge…. ”
A thorny contemporary issue finds central place in this vividly evoked year in the life of Trinity Episcopal church. Mark Asman, the temporary priest in charge, is an openly gay man. Should the community call him as their Rector? They love him and appreciate his strengths, especially his ability to pull the community closer by bringing out the best in people. But is this enough to cope with the controversy such an appointment would surely bring? The way the Trinity community deals with this process, and their eventual arrival at a decision – Mark was called, and said “Yes” – is beautifully woven by Nora Gallagher into the tapestry of a vital, painful, joyful, tempestuous and inspiring year.
I love the way she ends the book. She and spiritual director Ann Jaqua are lunching in a favourite cafe, discussing their latest creative project which is meeting with some resistance. Nora observes that there are times when she can’t stand church life. Ann responds that she can either put up with it, or start a new one. Just then, “a crazy man with dreadlocks” who used to come to the community kitchen strolls by. Nora can’t finish her sandwich and is wondering aloud what to do with it. The crazy man pauses, asks if she wants the half sandwich, she says no, and without a pause he takes it. Ann Jaqua grins. “Nothing is lost.”
Do choose “Things Seen and Unseen” as your Advent companion!
**********
1000 words copyright Anne Whitaker 2009
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page
