Advent Journal: Together We are Briefly Heavenly

The moon was impossibly bright this morning, a few fingers above Arunah Hill. The clarity was shocking in the still-dark kitchen; I brewed coffee with the lights off, finding my way, in order to keep the moon and its uncompromising light in focus. There are moments when the confusion subsides and identity settles and an interior vista opens that is not other than the cosmos. We are in this together, and nothing is missing.

What I mean in this essay (which only came together once I agreed to make nine sections of five paragraphs each, writing is weird!) is that fulfillment is personal – my happiness, my contentment, my peace. It’s not a crime against God or nature but there is a way in which that happiness, contentment and peace – that coherence – can be extended to all Creation, rather than this or that briefly priviledged part. We really have to care more about others, their survival and their fulfillment, and that care has to sugar out in material ways. Illusions are no excuse for passivity or indifference; indeed, passivity and indifference are means by which illusion gains and sustains its stranglehold on our capacity for justice, truth and love.

I come back often to food. Our gardens are snowed in now, and everything is mostly put up. We are still eating fresh tomatoes though – we got lucky with temperatures in the hay loft. The fruit, while soft and a little wrinkly – you do have to do some trimming – was delightful on turkey sandwiches over the weekend. The earth, the gardener, and the food come together. Eating is the nexus of survival and fulfillment. A unique genius of Jesus’s program was its emphasis on open commensality – that is, the table that excludes no one, and the ritual that abides no hunger anywhere.

Fulfillment and survival come together in the meals we eat, and so the way we bring them forth together matters. This is not a call to drama! It is more a call to intentionality, and realizing that we can’t heal the world without making some changes in the way we live in the world. Inside and outside are related in helpful ways and pretending otherwise – especially in the name of spirituality – helps nobody. Making changes outside does point to patterns of thinking and belief systems that are fairly encompassed by the word “mind,” and which are, in a reasonable sense, inside. But does the mind change and the ass follow or does the mind play catch-up with the ass? I remember long ago being told to just show up, take a chair and eventually something good would happen. And it did and I didn’t have to wait long either. I think Jesus was saying something similar about the table in the Kingdom of Heaven. Don’t worry about the thought and don’t worry about the ass; bring both of them to service and let the Will of God do what it wills.

In the ultimate sense (this is what Grant was saying), Jesus is not about race or gender or religion but about something even more fundamental, something that can’t even really be compassed by language or signs at all. But to get there, you have to work through the fear and the famine, the war and the torture. Don’t just shelter the widow, don’t just feed the orphan. A world in which nobody suffers is possible – it is actually possible, not theoretically possible – but in order to get there we’re going to have to find a way to forget everything we think we know about love and begin again. Jesus clarifies the confusion; he transforms the heart into a light and the mind into a prism. The way is given – hell, the fellow travelers are given – but ego is masterful at making us think we have to find it ourselves, are all alone in the world, need a better walking stick before we begin, et cetera.

If you ask me how we get beyond words or signs – how we transform systems that are bigger than us, and move of their own accord (powers and principalities, sister, powers and principalities) – then my answer is, love beauty. I learned this lesson early in life and have fucked it up constantly but I’ve never forgotten it. Don’t possess the beauty, don’t perserve the beauty (those are errors to which I can speak volumes), just notice it. Give attention to it. And when it passes, great. Letting go of the one you want and the one who wants is hard work. But we’re in it now, no going back.

The moon grew faint as the sun rose, softening to a chalk-covered disc slipping under the hill. The coffee was hot and delicious, and I wrote while I finished it, sentences unfurling as the kitchen warmed and brightened. Beautiful moon, beautiful coffee, beautiful you, beautiful me. Together we are briefly heavenly, and then it subsides to something we can talk about, and talking about it how we learn that it doesn’t have to subside. Relationship, insight, careful attention. Salvation is a dialogue from which no body and no thing can be excluded. Look – there on the sideyard fence leaning over in frozen snow – a pair of chickadees fluffed up against the cold. How happy I am, against long odds! How grateful for you, and for this love we have shared since the beginning. May our Advent travels deliver us Emmaus-like to the one who shares the way, allowing us to find ourselves in relationship all over again.