Communion: Words for Good Friday

I wrote this collection (would it be called a collection?) of reflections last summer in response to a prompt on communion.  I was reading Williams at the time [Shadows of Ecstasy] and (as tends to happen when reading Williams) my writing seems to have been shrouded in obscurity and abstraction.  

But these pieces still burn bright for me, even if they're rather inexplicable to others.  I post them today in honor of Good Friday and a dying God.  

Under the Mercy (as my dear friend would say).   

______________________

candlelight flickers

through gentle darkness, warm

mystery embraced

awash in chanted scripture

echoing soft

harmonies fall

and rise back

into the death of god

and all else fades

but the common union

between man and god and god and man

bread and body, wine and blood

as symbols and sacraments blur

and all is one and in one

and every breath

is holiness

______________________________

That which is, becoming that which it is not.  The mundane becoming sacred.  Barriers breached.  Between man and God.  The physical and the eternal.  Not union – the blurring of all into one, the destruction of difference, the swallowing up of self – but communion, the joining of that which is disparate, of symbol and reality, mystery and clarity, temporal and divine.  “Neither is this Thou, yet this also is Thou.”  Lewis states that, other than our neighbour, it is the holiest reality we will ever experience.  Yet it is holy in exactly the same way that our neighbour is holy.  The mystery of fellowship.  Of joining.  Of being one, and not one.  It is humanity taken into God, for it is a taste of the Trinity, and the sacred mystery that undergirds existence – the One that is Three.  It is real when the priest transmutes the elements into body and blood and the incarnation takes on flesh once more – expressing the lengths that Christ will travel for his beloved.  It is real when the Protestant partakes of the symbol – grape juice and saltine – and the spirit is set free to worship God in truth, deep calling out to deep.  And it is real when the Quaker rejects shadows and shells, attesting to the fullness of that which is, was, and will be – the sacred humanity of her neighbour and the God who dwells among them.  And when we are ready, it is real in the strange bright mystery of co-inherence – the bound togetherness of all things. 

______________________________

I read a book recently, in which there is a scene.  A scene in which seven siblings, standing beneath a sacred tree, link hands to pit the fullness of their spirit—their united selves—against the evil which threatens them.  There are sacred rituals that take place, sacred symbols that are exchanged, but the reality behind the sacrament’s shadows is the reality of seven hearts that beat as one.  Seven spirits who would each, unhesitatingly, exchange themselves for the other.  Seven children who feel the pain of the other as their own. 

The great horror of this story, the great and unabidable hurt, is that this circle is broken.  Evil wreaks its havoc, and the siblings lose themselves within their own isolated battles for courage and hope.  The generations turn, but nothing is ever the same.  The wholeness that was is no more. 

And I think it was this loss that broke me.  This loss that made me weep long into the night of the book’s ending.  For I had tasted—I had touched—the world as it should be, and it had been torn asunder by forces of decay.

Is it sacrilege to say that this is what Christ came to restore?  This unity of heart and mind.  This sacred circle of brothers and sister, bound by name, and blood, and every feeling of the heart.  This communion of the saints.    

my life in the sun

These last few days (and weeks) have been glorious in Oxford.  Sunshine and warmth and blossoms that fill the air with perfume and color.  I guess I've never really understood about the spring before - about why it's the season for twitterpation and first kisses.  But with a sky so blue and colors so bright it's impossible to feel anything but beautiful.  

That is, unless you're spending the day studying in the library.  Which I was - for a while.  So, in order to cope, I created a new routine: get up (with the assistance of three alarms), spend an hour saturating in the sun while eating a croissant and sipping coffee at Combibos (my new favorite coffee shop), make it to the library around the time they were opening their doors, write, saturate in the sun over a picnic lunch in the Botanic Garden, return to the library, write . . . you get the picture.   

my morning routine

lunch in the Botanic Garden across from Magdalen College

Eventually, however, I gave up on the library all together.  It wasn't helping my panic attacks, so now I just study in the parks . . . permanently.  Usually writing by hand, and then returning to my room to type up the notes at night.  But today I actually took my computer with me.

iced vanilla lattes help the writing process immensely 

the University Parks

So no, it's probably not the most efficient study plan.  And yes, the writing is going terribly slow.  But at least I'm happy while I'm doing it.  'Cause like I said, it's impossible not to feel pretty - at home with earth and sky, content, delighted, capable of flight - in the springtime.

Oxford Writing

This is a picture of me writing my first ever Oxford essay, back in 2008.  It still pretty much sums up exactly how I feel about the writing experience.

On that note, off I go to get some more writing done. 

Traveling by Train

There is a strange exhilaration in train travel. Standing on an open-air platform, under a white-cloud speckled sky, waiting for a metal monster of motion and noise to come hurtling, rumbling, trudging down rusted tracks.

There is magic in moving across country, over rivers, beside fields of flowering yellow, with no roads or cars in sight.  Just spacious glass-filled images of running horses, rugged keeps, and ancient trees.

In Scotland, rumbling down to the border city of Carlisle, we passed a train, all clashing purples and bright reds, barreling in solitude through empty fields, and I couldn't help but wave hello to the Hogwarts Express.

Holiday on the Island

I am back at Oxford, after ten days of being filled with coach travel, Scottish treats, ocean views, and the laughter of friends.

I'm hoping that all of this fullness will spill over from my spirit into my writing, and that I'm ready to hunker down to four weeks of academic rigor as I prepare my option and theory essay for submission, and an outline of my dissertation for presentation to my adviser.

But that's tomorrow's worry.

Today I am full of migraine medication, sleep, espresso, an almond croissant, and bright memories.

Amberle, one of my good friends from undergrad (though how exactly we became friends is a bit of a mystery), flew in the Wednesday before last, the day after I sent off a rough draft of my theory essay to my supervisor.

I went to Heathrow to meet her, brought her back to Oxford, and then proceeded to drag her on a several mile walk through the city, and out to a country pub that (rumor has it) Lewis used to love.

We were attacked by a goose on the way.

Day two involved a visit to the Bodleian, and a very long walk around Magdalen's dear park, into the fellows' garden, pictures on their bridge, and more attacks by rabid killer geese, who flew at us, proceeded to follow our every move, glared daggers, and only allowed us to pass if we hid behind groups of elderly women.

I know he looks innocent, but don't be fooled.

Such excitement.

We also ducked in to Univ (University College), where Lewis did his undergrad, to pay our respects to the Shelley memorial.

And, of course, we paid homage at the Eagle and Child, the Inklings' pub.

Day three was an early morning into London, a stop by Leicester Square to purchase theatre tickets, and a London Walks tour of Westminster Abbey and the changing of the guard.  A Pret lunch at St. Paul's (somewhat of a tradition at this point), a meander across the Millennium Bridge, and a tour of the Globe, as well as a rather exciting hunt for the location of Shakespeare's actual theatre.

They were rehearsing Twelfth Night while we were there, and I couldn't help thinking, That's my play, when I heard the monologues.

Dinner back in Leicester Sq., and then on to The Phantom of the Opera, my third time seeing it, but the first time in nearly eight years.  We were in the last row of the highest balcony, but the singing was wonderfully powerful, and the actress who played Christine gave a uniquely shattered performance – this was not an enamored singer, horrified by a view of ugliness (as Christine often seems to be played – the horror and resistance coming after the phantom's face is seen, not before), but a manipulated and vulnerable child, caught, from the beginning, in waking nightmares she can't escape.  The perfection usually required of Christine's voice gives her character a false sense of control, I think, but this Christine allowed her anguish to affect, and even distort, her music, so that, while she rose to tremendous heights (sometimes despite herself: sing my angel of music!), she also faltered and broke.

And hearing the music sung so well, I was reawakened to the reality that the movie, while a fun celebration of color and pageant, simply falls horribly short on vocals.

Back late, late, late to Oxford, and then packing, getting one hour of sleep, and returning to London to catch the coach to Scotland.

Visiting Kohleun in her beautiful house, with gardens and windows and flatmates with whom to drink coffee, and exploring St. Andrew's with tea crawls and trips to the sea.

Then, on Tuesday, a day in Edinburgh before heading to Cumbria for walks in the Lake District and time with the Doubs – dear friends from days in Egypt.

And I left my heart in a used bookstore where 80-year-old copies of Virginia Woolf's books dwell – but despite painfully cheap prices, there is no room in my suitcases to indulge my adoration.  But I did purchase a 100-year-old calf-skin bound copy of Milton's collected works, using my dissertation as an excuse.

Then back on a Megabus coach (crowded and stinking of urine) to trek down the country to London, and then home to Oxford.

And now I am alone again, with my books and my laptop, preparing to throw myself into research and writing, and wondering if the day will ever come when I have a home to fill with beautifully aged books, and long hours to write for joy and not for degrees, and days to see friends who do not live half a world away.  How I envy Wordsworth his sister and his Coleridge and his writing cottage in the Lake District, yet we must each live our own journeys, and mine, I am afraid, will always be torn between countries and continents and missing faces until the day when all things are made new, and wholeness swallows up the jagged separations.

Until that day I must, with the king and queen of Perelandra, bid my farewells until we pass out of the dimensions of time, and wish the splendour, the love, and the strength upon us all.