The Year 2020: One Big Dark Night of the Soul

 

One does not have to be a mystic to experience a dark night of the soul. Sometimes, life's circumstances and hardships can be enough to make us feel a palpable and painful absence of God.  This past year, 2020, was a year of hardship for people worldwide because of the Covid-19 pandemic.  Millions of people suffered physically, emotionally and economically.  To say this in one sentence sounds like an understatement, because we had a year not only filled with sickness, fear, and job loss, but also political turmoil.  This blog post is not about what the world experienced at large, and it most certainly isn't about politics.  What I seek to address in this article is my own personal experience, to the extent that I'm willing to do so on a public blog, and address concepts about the absence of God and the dark night of the soul.

This past year, I went from being mildly optimistic and reflective about renewal (as you will see from my posts in January and early February of 2020 before the chaos of the pandemic hit the United States), to being almost at the brink of despair spiritually and personally.  Basically, I started out the year of 2020 watching a dear friend of the family lose his job, and seeing him and his family go through turmoil and difficulty as an almost twenty-year career ended for him.  Then, just after watching my friends go through all that, a member of the choir at the church where I worked died after about a ten-month struggle with cancer.  I was supposed to play the organ for her funeral, but my wrist was injured in a physical therapy exercise.  I had to hire a substitute organist to play for the funeral, while I still directed the choir.  By the time I recovered the ability to play the organ, the pandemic hit and the church where I worked was closed down temporarily because of the shelter-in-place directive.

To make a long and complicated story short, my husband and I lost our jobs because of the economic hardships caused by the Covid crisis.  I lost my job in April, and my husband lost his in July.  I had a brief interim job as a music director at another church, from July of 2020 until the end of November of that year. Since I had not yet found a permanent job, I was out of work again by the beginning of Advent 2020.  I fortunately got some freelance work at another church, playing harp and French horn in Advent and Christmas services that December. That successful start of a freelance business in church music gave me much hope.  By the first of the year in January of 2021, however, things were looking bleak again.

On top of all this, my husband's mentally and physically disabled younger brothers, who live with us and for whom he is the main caregiver, developed escalating health problems that rendered them even more disabled.  This, in turn, made our situation more desperate since we could not seem to land permanent jobs. My husband could not get a job at all, and as I mentioned, I couldn't get permanent work in my field either.  Other options, like teaching music at schools, were not open to me because of issues I had wearing masks and face coverings with my severe asthma. By January, our situation with my husband's brothers was worse than it had ever been.  Our Orthodox Christmas on January 7 was one of the hardest Christmases I had experienced since the death of my mother back in 1992.  By the beginning of February, exactly a year after my last blog post here, our house was an absolute disaster because of the health problems of the brothers and the caregiving issues, and we had no income at all. We were ineligible for unemployment insurance because of having worked for churches, which are exempt from paying unemployment insurance.  

I had been through almost a whole year of questioning whether God was present, whether He still wanted me in His service in church music, and indeed whether or not He wanted me at all.  Even though my faith tradition does not believe in the theology of Calvinism, I had somehow gotten Calvinistic ideas embedded in me about some sort of pre-destined calling in God, whereby if I followed His will for my life and strove to fulfill that calling, things would work out for me. The fact that I found myself continually in situations where I would build up hope, and then have it dashed to pieces when things didn't work out for whatever reason, made me in turn think that maybe I had sinned in some way and God had therefore rejected me and my gifts for His service.

Things then shifted after two Orthodox feast days: St. Brigid's Day (Feb. 1) and Candlemas (the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord in the Temple, February 2).  I asked the intercession of St. Brigid for the healing of my husband's youngest brother, who was home from a recent stay in a nursing home for rehabilitation, and who had come home without hardly being rehabilitated at all.  He was downstairs in our living room, in a hospital bed, almost completely unable to walk.  Well, exactly three days later from the day I prayed, this brother WALKED up the stairs to his room and was able to be moved back up there to his bedroom.  Yesterday, March 8, 2021, he was discharged from physical therapy by the home health PT who had been coming out to our house.  So, that was a definite miracle of God, Who is wondrous in His saints!

Shortly after that, however, I experienced another dark night of the soul in which I went through a time when I could not connect with God at all. I wondered, did I sin in some way? Did I pray the wrong way?  Was He rejecting me to show me that I had messed up?  It was a terrible feeling of being in a dark abyss without His presence.  However, at the same time, I came to know that the Holy Spirit was with me down in that abyss and that I also had more help from the intercessions of the saints. I won't go into specifics because those are between me and my spiritual father (the Orthodox Christian term for a spiritual director).  But suffice it to say that I discovered that the feeling of God's absence was just that. . .a feeling! So, I posted this on Facebook about when we think God is absent. It is worth reposting here:

At the time that you think most that God is absent, He's actually there. Sometimes, we can't always sense His presence when we pray, especially when we are praying during hard times. But He's never "out to lunch," nor is He ever really cut off from us, though at times it seems like the flow of His grace gets turned off like a water spigot. But that is just a FEELING, and feelings do not necessarily bespeak truth, nor reflect reality. God is always there. He is the God Who neither slumbers nor sleeps, and Who ever keepeth Israel. When we are blessed with the perception of His presence, it is a true blessing not to be taken for granted, and a reminder that He hears us, especially when we most think that He does not.

There was also something else that I had posted shortly after that, about surrendering to God and not giving in to our own personal ideas about how we think our lives should be. That is worth revisiting also, because by February of 2021, I had decided to quit fighting against the whole pattern of hope being built up, being dashed to the ground, and things being stable one minute and unstable the next:

Well, I think it is time to stop fighting against the tide of chaos, difficulty and unraveling of my desires for my life, this tide that has been pummeling me since February of 2020. This does not mean I just give up. It means I need to calm down, go with the flow, and let God work through all of this. Two things are immediately apparent: (1) This is part of a certain level of initiation in my life. (2) My calling in this world is shifting, and I am being asked to live that calling in fullness and truth. Will I continue to serve in church music? I don't know. I might end up getting a grant and going back to school to become something else entirely, such as a music therapist. I might end up doing both. But it is clear that I am being asked to step outside of these difficult situations emotionally and look at them on the spiritual plane. Trying to swim against this tide of everything being turned upside down, prevented and delayed is pointless. I may as well swim with the rapids, and if I get dashed upon the rocks, so be it. Sometimes, things within us have to die so that better things within can be born. Often, we are called upon to let go of the way WE think our lives are supposed to be or the things we most desire. I gave myself to Christ as a musician and singer of healing prayers and hymns! I gave my life to His service, and asked His Mother to be my model. Guess what? That means my life no longer belongs to me: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord. Be it done unto me according to thy word." So! I shouldn't be surprised or dismayed when what I want most in life suddenly doesn't work out anymore, or that I am placed upon a path not of my choosing. I wanted just to serve Him in His Church and have a house out in the woods. But maybe that isn't what HE wants. NOTE TO FRIENDS READING THIS POST: If you don't want to experience this sort of unweaving and unraveling like I have, don't give yourself like that to God. It might feel great when you first do it and you might think yourself oh-so-good for having done so, but it is in fact a sure way to get Divinely knocked down on your arse and getting the stuffing slapped out of you. Run from your calling and you'll end up in the belly of a whale. Embrace it and arrogantly say, "Here I am, I'm ready!" and you'll end up reduced to a grain of wheat fallen to the earth and ground into the dirt. The words of Yoda to Luke Skywalker come to mind: "Ready, are you? What knows you of ready?!".

Not long after I had that horrible dark-night-of-the-soul experience--and recovered from it, I got an e-mail out of the blue from the pastor of a Missouri Synod Lutheran parish who was looking for an interim music minister. I talked with the associate pastor not long after that, as well as a ministry support pastor for the Spanish-speaking branch of that congregation. I ended up in a job interview with all of them by the end of February, and immediately after the interview I signed a contract with them for three months as interim music director. After I signed the contract, I felt great peace of the Holy Spirit within me. It is definitely the place I'm supposed to be right now, at this time in my life.

Will it end up being where I'm supposed to be long-term? I don't know. With the positive experiences I have had there so far, it well may be, but this is entirely up to God.

What I have learned from all of this are the following things:

(1) God gives us gifts and callings, but the way in which those callings are fulfilled and gifts are used is not a path set in stone; it is greatly affected by man's free will and the fallenness of the world, and that includes our own choices. As I reflect upon the past year, I am able to look back and see choices I made that could have been better. I am using what I learned to make wiser choices now, as I and my family enter a period of hopefully positive change, healing and restoration.

(2) We may be called to this, that or the other at various points in our lives, and the ways in which we serve God will go through times of ebb and flow. But one thing we are always called to do, no matter what, is die to ourselves and our notions of how our lives should be. We are called upon to let go of expectations, which is deuced difficult to do. I quote John 12:24: Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain. (NKJV)

(3) The Dark Night of the Soul, while very real, is also quite often based on our feelings and perceptions.  Guess what?  We are fallen, imperfect beings and those feelings and perceptions are flawed.  God is omnipresent, which means that He is there even if we don't think He is.  Why do we sometimes feel He's absent?  Well, sometimes, like myself in the past year, we have expectations that don't work out, so we conclude He's absent. That feeling is caused by an erroneous idea about Him being some sort of big Santa Claus in the sky Who always blesses us and keeps us from suffering.  Um. . .no.  To be sure, all good things come from Him. But following Him does not mean we will be somehow protected from suffering. Even though we intellectually know this, often our hearts can fall back into the Santa mode when dealing with God.  

Other reasons for the Dark Night of the Soul can be acting or thinking in ways that cause our spiritual water faucet to get turned off. Our access to God's grace is free, but within our hearts and souls it operates like a water faucet that we can turn on or off by our own free will and responses to situations in our lives.  God's grace might be trying to get through our garden hose, so to speak, but we have turned off the spigot in our ignorance, heedlessness, self-absorption, whatever.  So, maybe I turned my spigot off.  But it's a simple matter to turn it back on by crying out to God. Psalm 130 (129 LXX) comes to mind, verses 1-7: 

1 Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord.

2 Lord, hear my voice: let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications.

3 If thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?

4 But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared.

5 I wait for the Lord, my soul doth wait, and in his word do I hope.

6 My soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning: I say, more than they that watch for the morning.

7 Let Israel hope in the Lord: for with the Lord there is mercy, and with him is plenteous redemption.

Whatever reason we may have for going through a dark night of the soul, that dark night remains a mere perception of reality.  Just because we feel like we're in the abyss and cut off doesn't mean we really are.  The other thing about the abyss is that sometimes we have to venture into the womb, so to speak, in order to be reborn. The Gospel passage comes to mind, where Jesus tells Nicodemus about the need to be born again.  There is also this passage from Isaiah, chapter 42, verses 14 through 16:

14 14 For a long time I have held my peace,
    I have kept still and restrained myself;
now I will cry out like a woman in travail,
    I will gasp and pant.
15 I will lay waste mountains and hills,
    and dry up all their herbage;
I will turn the rivers into islands,
    and dry up the pools.
16 And I will lead the blind
    in a way that they know not,
in paths that they have not known
    I will guide them.
I will turn the darkness before them into light,
    the rough places into level ground.
These are the things I will do,
    and I will not forsake them.

  I could go on about these matters for many more paragraphs, but to sum up what I've learned in this past year of 2020, a single verse of Scripture suffices: Psalm 139 (LXX 138) verse 12.

Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee.

   And one last image is worth considering as well: the wise men following the Star of Bethlehem to find Jesus.  

9 When they had heard the king, they departed; and, lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was.

10 When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy.

May God help us to find the Star of Bethlehem within ourselves, leading us to His Son as He led the Magi, especially in times of hardship and darkness.

In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

 

Why Gnosticism Doesn't Work For Me: Why I Don't Believe that God Is the One and the Same as Creation

I have had a few friends in the past who have been very caught up in the Gnostic movement, which has gained new momentum in the past thirty years or so with people who are dissatisfied with their experiences in traditional churches. Here is why I personally could not be a Gnostic: there are too many references to God being a "cosmic unity" and "life principle" with which "all is one." While I believe that we are "partakers of the divine nature" by grace through repentance (2 Peter 1:4), for me as an Orthodox Christian this refers to Theosis, the process of becoming more and more like God through grace in our personal walk with Him, and thereby living in Communion with Him. Neither I nor the Church believes that this Communion with Him means that He is some cosmic force with which all creation is one and the same. Such thinking renders Him to be no longer a personal God who loves us, creates us and nurtures us. God sanctifies creation and blesses it, and His Second Person (the Son, Jesus Christ, the Word and Logos) became Incarnate as man so that He could undo the damage to creation and most especially redeem man, who had by free will embraced the way of separation from God (sin) which led to eternal death. Christ revealed to us the personal and loving nature of God. After Christ ascended to heaven, His Father sent us the Holy Spirit, Who not only is the Giver of life (John 6:63) but "renews the face of the earth" (Psalm 103 LXX/104 KJV: 30). God created, renewed and redeemed the earth! Christ being our Incarnate God doesn't mean that God IS the river, the soil, the sun, the moon, etc. That's like saying that the Painter is the same as the Painting. Let's use the image of a painting as a metaphor for creation. The painting represents God's energies (what He does, His free gift of grace, and the myriad Divine thoughts that are part of Him), NOT His Essence. The painting comes from the Painter and is a part of Him in that sense, but He Himself is still a separate Being from that painting. And as that Being, He is a personal Father to all of us, Who loves us beyond measure. That, in a nutshell, is what I find wrong with Gnosticism: it goes against all of my experience of God as being an infinitely personal Being Who made me, loves me, and continues to create me. I see evidence of His love and beauty in His creation all the time, and I endeavour to see all people as being like Christ and even as ways in which He sometimes shows Himself to us; but that doesn't mean that I think that I myself, Gabrielle Bronzich, am the same Person as Jesus Christ. He created me as a woman named Gabrielle. God the Father is not that oak tree out in my front yard: He made the oak tree, and it shows an aspect of His imagination and beauty. . .but that tree does not share His Divine Essence. Essence versus energies: it's an essential distinction. Without that distinction, God ceases to be a personal Being with Whom we have an intimate relationship. The other thing to note about Gnosticism is that there is no repentance in it: it is a path to "oneness" with God that does not involve taking stock of oneself, being honest with oneself about one's problems and shortcomings, and striving to get rid of destructive ways of thinking and acting. Repentance is "metanoia," the changing of the mind. My experience is that partaking in God's nature by grace--becoming like God and becoming more and more able to love others the way He does--just AIN'T gonna happen without being willing to change and be changed by Him.

A Brief Word on Candlemas and St. Brigid's Day

Detail from "St. Brigid of Kildare" icon by Cheryl Ann Pituch

Dear Readers,

     A Joyous Brigidstide to you all!  This is the period of the year I call "Brigidstide," from February 1 to February 14.  Why do I call it this?  February 1 is the feast day of St. Brigid of Kildare on the Gregorian Calendar, and February 14 is her feast on the Julian Calendar.  It's a great time of year to reflect upon the promises of spring, spiritually and physically: (1) spiritual renewal through Christ and the call to re-dedicate ourselves to Him at the midpoint between winter and spring; and (2) physical renewal of the land symbolised by little shoots of new growth in our gardens, such as snowdrops, and ewes giving milk on farms at this time of year (at least according to what I've read about the British Isles and Ireland: admittedly, I'm no sheep farmer!).  

     We don't have to be of Celtic blood for the message of St. Brigid of Kildare to resonate with us.  The message of the Celtic saints is for the whole Church, whether our blood be Irish, English, Welsh, Scottish, Greek, Russian. . .whatever.

Photograph of snowdrops

     So, once again, the wheel of the Church Year turns as we transition from the feasts of the Nativity and Baptism of Our Lord, into St. Brigid’s Day (Feb. 1 or Feb. 14 O.S.) and Candlemas (the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, Feb. 2 or Feb. 15 O.S.).  Traditionally, in the agricultural, pre-industrial traditions of Ireland and the British Isles, this is the time of year when winter begins to yield a slight promise of spring.  On the calendar, it is the halfway point between the official coming of winter between December 21 and 25, and the coming of spring in March.  

     In 10^th-century Irish literature and poetry, the day of February 1 is referred to not only as St. Brigid’s Day, but also the holiday of Imbolc (also spelled variously Oimelc and Imbolg).  Imbolc is Irish Gaelic for "in the belly" and refers to ewes giving birth to lambs; the other word, Oimelc, simply means "ewe's milk." Imbolc (or Oimelc) marks a day and time of year related to the lactation of sheep, when the ewes start to give their milk.  This is (and was) viewed as a sign of coming spring. Also, milk has an association with the idea of purity, which goes along with the idea of the Purification of the Virgin Mary, another name for the feast of the Presentation of the Lord on February 2. (For an account of what happened on this day, read the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 2, verses 22 through 40).

     St. Brigid of Ireland converted many people to Christ, giving them new spiritual beginnings, so her feast day on February 1 also has the connotation of renewal.  I have referred to it in my translation of the Irish Gaelic hymn, "Ode to Brigid," as “Ireland’s spring in Jesus.”   But it’s also our spring in Jesus, a reminder to us that we belong to Him and can look forward to the Resurrectional season during the Spring.  As for Candlemas/Presentation/Feast of the Purification, called “Candlemas” because of the custom of having household candles blessed at church during Mass or Divine Liturgy on February 2, we have two things to think about: (1) the fact that the Theotokos and St. Joseph obeyed the law in presenting Christ at the Temple, and therefore we are called to present ourselves in turn to Christ in not only our physical temples, our churches and our bodies, but also in our hearts; (2) the light of the candle signifies the new life we have in Christ through His Incarnation, through His baptism in the Jordan, and in our own baptism.

Stone tile with St. Brigid's Cross

      These are the thoughts that come to me today, for at this time there are some transitions going on my life and the lives of some dear friends.  There are transitions going on at churches and workplaces. There are the often unlooked-for changes that often occur during the New Year, such as transitions in fiscal resources, transitions in health, and the passing away of loved ones who died over the Christmas holidays or during the Epiphany season.  Those who know me personally know that I have had a lot on my plate since the beginning of January, the culmination of earlier difficulties.

     For anyone who is unfamiliar with St. Brigid of Kildare's story, here is a Roman Catholic link that can tell you all about her as well as customs associated with her feast day.  
https://www.fisheaters.com/customstimeafterepiphany2a.html

      Here is the Eastern Orthodox Christian hagiography of St. Brigid:
http://ww1.antiochian.org/node/17477

    I leave you here with my translation of the Irish seán-nós hymn, "Ode to Brigid." Here is the lovely rendition of the song, sung by Irish singer Nóirín Ní Ríain (Noreen O'Ryan).  Below the link, I have put the words I used to set the traditional Irish melody to English words, for SATB Choir. (I have the arrangement as well, if anyone might want it.  But I have to put it into Noteworthy Composer and convert it to a PDF, because my handwriting, while neat, is not ideal for desktop publishing). The words I used here are based on my translation of the Irish text and an English Collect for St. Brigid's feast day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF0-lNmHo6s

Verse 1 (translation of the Irish text):

I sing praise to Brigid, daughter of all Ireland,

Daughter of the whole land, sing we praises to her.

Bright light within Leinster, flame of faith unwaning,

Of all Irish women, finest inspiration.

Comes the hard dark winter, cold and sharp before us,

But her feast day heralds Ireland's spring in Jesus.* 

(*Literal translation: On the day of Brigid, Ireland's spring is near).

I sing praise to Brigid, daughter of all Ireland,

Daughter of the whole land, sing we praises to her.

Verse 2 (based on the English Collect for her feast day):

God, Who graced Thy handmaid, Holy Abbess Brigid,

With the flame of Thy love, in the Holy Spirit;

Grant that we may also be a light to others,

a-flame with the Spirit, children of Light.

Through Our Lord Jesus, Who liveth and reigneth

With Thee in the Spirit, one God now and ever.

As in the beginning, now and ever shall be,

World without end. Amen.

Icon of St. Brigid, of the Brigidine Sisters

Postscript: There are many people who might read this blog article, and automatically assume that I'm trying to Christianise (British spelling) a Wiccan holiday, because Imbolc is celebrated also by Wiccans and other Neo-pagans.  However, the Christianisation of Imbolc already took place a long time ago, in the Church feasts I've mentioned, St. Brigid's Day and Candlemas.  Does the fact that this happened mean that the feast days of St. Brigid and Candlemas (the Presentation of the Lord) are less true or less valid?  No!  All it means is that the Church recognised the seeds of Truth within the pre-Christian holiday, and so they did what they so often have done regarding indigenous cultures: they acknowledged the indigenous custom and placed it in the context of the Gospel.  They saw that the idea of spiritual renewal at the midpoint between winter and spring was a good one, and could be practiced by people in the Irish culture whether they had converted to Christianity yet or not.  There is often the claim made by some people in Neo-pagan communities that the Church usurped the original Celtic and Saxon holidays in order to stamp out the indigenous cultures, but the archaeological evidence and evidence from written sources on this subject--which are mostly from the early Middle Ages, by the way--suggests that there was actually more of a healthy syncretism and exchange of spiritual ideas between the Irish pre-Christian indigenous culture and the Christian monks and nuns who took up residence in Ireland between the 5th and 6th centuries.

Reflections On a Couple of January Feast Days and a Welsh New Year's Carol

     Greetings, readers!  Today is the first Sunday after the Epiphany in the West.  In the East, it's the patronal feast day celebration of my Orthodox parish, St. Sava Orthodox Church.  Here is a lovely icon of St. Sava from my parish, so that you can see what St. Sava looks like.  St. Sava's feast day is actually on January 14, the New Year on the Old Calendar, but it was celebrated at St. Sava Orthodox Church today, Sunday, because more people were off work to attend the event. (I think that's why, anyway).  It can be really hard for people in today's world to get off of work for weekday festal days, especially after the Christmas season in December.

     Here is a link on the life of St. Sava, Enlightener of Serbia:

https://www.oca.org/saints/lives/2013/01/14/100156-saint-sava-i-first-archbishop-of-serbia

     Today was the celebration of the Baptism of the Lord in the Western liturgical tradition.  A few days ago, on January 6, I celebrated that same feast at St. Sava Orthodox Church.  We call it Theophany, which is a word that means a visible manifestation of God to humankind. Amazingly, that is the definition given on Google.  Who knew that Google could be anything but secular? LOL!  

     The Troparion for the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, sung in Tone 1 of the Slavonic and Greek chant tones, really sums up what it’s all about:

When in Jordan, Thou was baptized, O Lord,

The worship of the Trinity was made manifest.

For the voice of the Father bore witness to Thee,

Naming Thee His beloved Son.

And the Spirit in the form of a dove

Confirmed the certainty of that word.

O Christ our God, Who hast appeared and hast enlightened the world,

Glory be to Thee!

    I have shared this link before, but here are a series of choral performances of that Troparion from around the world, in different languages.  It’s a link worth sharing again, because the styles of music are so interesting and the church choirs so diverse. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6aWZIfOhEk

    I would like to share some thoughts about the feast days of Epiphany and the Baptism of the Lord.  The interesting aspect of these feasts is that in the Benedictine tradition, they are all linked as one feast.  The feast of the Epiphany, in the Benedictine diurnal, includes not only the visit of the Magi, but also the Baptism of the Lord in the Jordan and the wedding of Cana.  It’s interesting every year to sing those antiphons from the diurnal, and observe those events in the life of Christ together.  This is even more interesting when one considers that January 6 is Christmas Eve on the Julian Calendar.

     I have uploaded the icon of the Theophany from St. Sava here.

     As our priest at St. Sava, Father Photius, pointed out in his sermon on January 6, this icon has a very curious feature: there are little creatures in the waters of the Jordan that look like water fairies.  They are, in fact, the spirits of the water and river gods, widely believed in by ancient people.  When Christ entered the Jordan, He cleansed the water of those spirits, freeing the ancient Israelites and Greeks around Him from two things: (1) fear of the water because of their beliefs that capricious spirits inhabited them; and (2) the spiritual bondage of having to make propitiatory offerings to those spirits.  I’m not certain how widespread the practice of making offerings to water spirits was among the Jews, but their Canaanite neighbours and the local Greeks and Romans would have been coming to the Jordan all the time to drop coins, wine and other offerings into the water with a plea that the water gods wouldn’t do them any harm.  We hear a lot about the Jews in Galilee, but not as much about the pagans who also saw Christ get baptized in the Jordan.  The pagans basically did a number of sacrifices throughout the year, in the hopes that their gods wouldn’t take notice of them.  If the Roman gods noticed you, you were in trouble because they would make terrible demands of you, or give you a gift for which you had to pay a terrible price!  For example, Mars might give you glorious victories on the battlefield, in exchange for your life at a much earlier age than you would have liked to die.  The Greek and Roman gods, according to the beliefs about them at the time, never gave anything without exacting something major—and often heart-wrenching--in return.  The words from the Godfather movies come to mind: the gods made the Roman an offer that he couldn’t refuse. Hence, most Romans who believed in the gods were terrified of them.  The world for the Roman pagans was one of fear, spiritual transaction ("Do this for me, Jupiter, and I'll give you. . .") in a very legalistic mode, or agnostic cynicism.  It is interesting to contemplate that Christ, the Word Who created all things, transformed and transfigured the element of water. With Christ’s entry into the Jordan River, the worship of the Trinity was made manifest, and the revelation that those water gods need no longer be a burden or something to be feared.  Take a moment and contemplate what that meant for the average Greek who was standing there watching Jesus and John the Baptist!  Contemplate further what it meant to that Greek later, when one of the Apostles preached the Gospel to him or her, and revealed the free gift of God’s grace!  Free gifts of God with no strings attached, no propitiatory sacrifices required, and the promise of Resurrection instead of the prospect of floating around in a gloomy underworld ruled by Hades!  Imagine that.

     The next thought I would like to share with you is about the interesting lyrics of the Welsh New Year’s carol that I performed at work today:  “A New Year Carol,” arranged for unison choir by Baron Benjamin Britten (knighted and given a life peerage by Queen Elizabeth II in 1976 for his musical services to the English nation).  Here is a performance of that same piece, by the Dale Warland Singers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MB7uwzJt0OM

     What I want to talk about is the deep symbolism of the somewhat strange lyrics to this carol.  Here are the lyrics:

Here we bring new water from the well so clear,
For to worship God with this happy New Year.

Chorus (after each verse):
  Sing levy-dew, sing levy-dew, the water and the wine,
  The seven bright gold wires and the bugles that do shine.

Sing reign of Fair Maid, with gold upon her toe;
Open you the West Door and turn the Old Year go.

Sing reign of Fair Maid, with gold upon her chin;
Open you the East Door and let the New Year in.

    

     This carol from Wales is replete with old British symbolism about the New Year, Christian symbolism dating from anywhere between the 7^th to the 14^th centuries.  The water from the well refers to the practice of blessing the waters in the times of the early English Church, when the priest, on the feast of the Baptism of the Lord, would bless not only jugs of water that congregation members brought from home, but also the local streams, wells and rivers.  The people were called to a type of baptismal renewal with the annual feast of the Baptism of the Lord, which at that time took place on what would be January 19 today.  Back then, everyone was on the Julian Calendar.  Some churches in the British Isles went ahead and blessed the waters early, at the New Year.  Again, because they were on the Julian calendar, the original New Year in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland was on January 14.  Blessing the waters five days before the feast of the Baptism of the Lord would not have been unusual in England and Wales at that time.

     There has been a lot of speculation on what “levy dew” originally meant.  “Levy” could be from Welsh “llef y Dduw,” meaning “cry to God,” or the Middle English word “levedy” which meant “Lady.”  The water and the wine is referencing the wedding at Cana, per Benedictine tradition.  Early English Christian spirituality was quintessentially Benedictine, as well as being influenced by the Christian East.  The “seven bright gold wires”  could refer either to the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, or the seven wires of a small harp.  For a very long time, Welsh harps were strung with wire instead of catgut, and you had to grow your fingernails long to play the harp because the wire strings would hurt the fingertips.   If you owned a harp with gold wires, you were a probably a royal bard.  The average harpist couldn’t afford gold strings; gold was the gift of chieftains and royalty.  The harp has always been important in Welsh musical culture.

     The fair maid referred to in the carol is, of course, the Virgin Mary.  The gold at her chin and toe could refer to the gifts of the Magi.  We’re not sure what that’s about.  What is interesting to note, however, is that in the present day, January 1 is the Feast of the Mother of God in the Roman Catholic Church.  During the earlier times I mentioned, in early medieval Britain, January 1 would have been the feast day of the Circumcision of the Lord Jesus. The Virgin Mary is present in that Biblical account also, going with Joseph to the Temple for the naming and circumcision of the Infant Christ.

    The most interesting lyric in this carol refers to letting in the new year in the East, and releasing the old year in the West.  This comes from the old folk belief, common in that area of northern Europe, that the East and West symbolized spiritual reality. East symbolized new horizons because of sunrise.  The West, conversely, symbolized letting go of things because of sunset.  The movements of the sun and the moon and other natural phenomena held spiritual significance for the Celts and the Saxons alike.  These folk ideas were not alien to Christianity, since the Church had a custom of always having the doors of churches face East.  This was because the East represented the Nativity star and the Resurrection. The Church acknowledged cultural traditions that made sense Biblically and didn’t conflict with Christian doctrine.  The Church is often accused of suppressing indigenous cultural traditions.  This accusation is not entirely accurate across the board, depending on time period, whether we're talking about the East or West, and the culture in question. In most cases, there was and still is a lot of cultural syncretism in the Church.  The most striking examples of that can be found in Greece, Alaska, central America, and the Caribbean islands.

     That’s all I have for you today, folks.  I hope you have enjoyed these little reflections.  I leave you with a New Year’s carol from Orkney. Happy New Year, everyone!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9md6XPvNFQ8

A Spiritual Reflection Upon a Natural Phenomenon: the Penumbral Lunar Eclipse, 2020

     Happy New Year, readers!  I have started this new year of 2020 with being in the midst of the Twelve Days of Christmas, both on the Gregorian calendar and on the Julian calendar.  Because I belong to an Eastern jurisdiction Orthodox Church, and at the same time follow a Western Rite Orthodox prayer rule through the Rule of St. Benedict of Nursia, I have the privilege of celebrating three lovely feasts in January: (1) Western Epiphany on January 6, the feast of the three magi coming to worship Jesus; (2) Theophany on January 6, the Eastern Orthodox feast of the Baptism of the Lord Jesus in the Jordan, a feast day where the holy water for the main part of the year is blessed by the priest, and we all take home our own personal bottles of holy water to use in our homes; (3) Julian Calendar Christmas, on January 7, which means that I get an extra twelve days of Christmas from the 7th to the 19th!  Basically, I just leave up the Christmas decorations until St. Brigid's Day on February 1, and Candlemas (the Presentation of the Lord in the Temple, also known as the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary), on February 2.

     All of these feast days in January signify a type of renewal.  Western Epiphany bespeaks a new birth of faith within us, just as the three magi were born to a new faith when they beheld the Incarnate Son of God and worshipped Him.  Theophany bespeaks the renewal of creation, because Jesus transformed the nature of water with His divinity when He was baptized in the Jordan.  He sanctified the water through His Divine Nature; also, the Holy Trinity was revealed to the Israelites and Gentiles present at His baptism in the Jordan River.  Through the revelation of the Trinity, a new chapter began with their faith.  Last but not least, Nativity as a feast always leads to renewed faith in Christ our Light, Who was born to free us from darkness.

     Notice the little creatures in the water on the above icon for Theophany, the Baptism of the Lord. Fr. Photius, our priest at St. Sava Orthodox Church, talked a little about those creatures in his sermon on Monday (the Feast of the Theophany, Jan. 6): basically, those little creatures are demons in the water.  During ancient times, many people from various cultures believed that water was inhabited by capricious spirits that had to be appeased through offerings.  In this icon, Christ triumphs over those spirits and makes water something that the ancient Israelites, Greeks and Canaanites need no longer fear. That is something new to reflect upon, regarding the Baptism of the Lord Jesus by St. John the Baptist.

    God sanctifies nature.  It was always holy, in a certain sense, because He made it.  But when Jesus Christ came to earth as the Incarnate Second Person of the Trinity, He sanctified the earth in such a way that people were no longer beholden to appease nature or worship it.  Later, as Christianity spread to Western European cultures, particularly the peoples of Ireland and the British Isles, nature came to be viewed as something that allowed us to reflect on God's connection and relation to creation and our connection and relation to Him.  With that in mind, I have a reflection here upon the upcoming penumbral lunar eclipse that takes place tomorrow, January 10, 2020.

     Tomorrow is a penumbral lunar eclipse. A penumbral lunar eclipse is when the sun, the earth, and the moon are imperfectly aligned. When this happens, the earth blocks some of the sun's light from directly reaching the moon's surface and covers all or part of the Moon with the outer part of its shadow, also known as the penumbra. 

     There has long been a lot of symbolism and folklore surrounding eclipses, ranging from eclipses being flat-out bad luck to eclipses being a time to contemplate letting go of negative things (symbolised by the blocked moon) and praying for positive things to come into one's life (symbolised by the earth moving out of the moon's shadow when the eclipse is over). All of this is, of course, symbolism and folklore according to various cultures. 

     From an Orthodox Christian perspective, this is how I think of a lunar eclipse: just as the moon reflects the light of the sun, so the Theotokos reflects the light of her Son Jesus. So, full moons and lunar eclipses are a good time to pray a Paraklesis or Marian Vespers and ask that we, like the Mother of God, might reflect the light of Jesus Christ in our own lives. In the case of a lunar eclipse, the symbolism from my Orthodox Christian perspective would be the formation of a question: is there any way in which I am failing to reflect the light of Christ to others? Is there anything in my own life that I am not giving to Him, or a way in my own life that I am not allowing His grace to heal me because of blockages? These could be psychological, physical, related to behaviour towards others, not taking care of myself as I should. . .any number of situations we encounter as human beings. I therefore think it meet to use the lunar eclipse as a symbolic time for asking Jesus' help in getting rid of anything that is keeping me from loving others as I should, or anything that is keeping me from being totally His. Because of the association I mentioned with the Theotokos concerning lunar symbolism, I can ask Him that I might be more like His mother Mary in following Him. I can also ask her intercession for these things (since that's part of my faith tradition), for healing in my life, and healing in the lives and health of other people. 

     That, then, is my take on this whole lunar eclipse thing. The things that happen in nature can be a means of symbolically reflecting on our own lives, and how we live that life in God, both within and out in the world. Or, they can just be natural phenomena! But I always take a deeper look at everything, as did the Celts and Anglo-Saxons.

     Have a blessed January, and may many blessings come to you all tomorrow, whether you are viewing tomorrow as nothing more than an astronomical event, or as something deeper that warrants reflection.  I leave you with this lovely icon of the Mother of God, with the sun and moon on either side of her.

No Longer Adrift: The Boat Is Moored While I Rest for the Winter

It is December 28, 2019, the Feast of the Holy Innocents of Bethlehem.   It has been more than a month since my last posting, when I was still feeling very much spiritually adrift after having had what I considered my Western spiritual foundation torn down by unlooked-for discoveries about my background and heritage.  Well, a lot has changed and developed since then, and I am no longer adrift.  Rather, I am on a new direction in my path.  It's a good direction, but one in which I must always use discernment and wisdom, and also one in which I need to take the time to rest my mind and soul.  New demands are upon me, a new dimension of my calling to spiritual service.  I will go into that more, later in this article.

It has been a harrowing journey over the past month and a half, with lots of ups and downs, fears, and worries about whether or not Christ would be displeased with me if I re-integrated certain Anglo-Saxon and Celtic cultural ways and practices (observations of certain harvest and seasonal festivals) into my faith life.  Those worries turned out to be nothing more nor less than the error of not believing enough in the efficacy of God's grace, something which my husband helped me to see, as well as our friend who is the pastor of the church where I work professionally as an organist-choirmaster.  Why would Christ ever get upset with me, especially over something as silly as human culture? The Church has always embraced those aspects of culture that had seeds of the Gospel. There were times also, in the past month or so, when I wearied my loved ones because of the intense and consistent soul-searching in my journey. I consulted my Irish spiritual father, who helped me quite a few times, first encouraging me not to limit myself by things like heritage and blood, and then advising me to cut back and "divest," as he put it, because it seemed to him I was trying to integrate too many things in an attempt to understand the intricacy of God.  I consulted my father-confessor, the priest of the Eastern Orthodox parish to which I belong, who suggested that I might be focusing on my heritage too much and not enough on Christ.  At first, I thought his assessment wasn't fair and showed misunderstanding on his part, and got angry with him.  But after reflection upon his counsel, I concluded that he actually was right about the fact that if we focus first on Christ, the rest of what we need all comes together.  Per his advice and the advice of my Irish spiritual father, we are back to the conclusion of my previous blog article: the need to keep our eyes on the One Thing Needful, which is Jesus Christ.  All the rest has its place, but Jesus Himself will put those things where they need to be.

There are two Scriptural passages that come to mind.  They are both from the Gospels.  The first is this, Matthew 6:33, "But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you."  The second is, as mentioned in the previous article, the words of Jesus to Martha concerning her sister Mary, in the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 10, verses 41 and 42: "And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her."

The first passage, the part about all the rest being added unto us if we seek the Kingdom of God first, is the passage that has been most fulfilled in the past month and a half.  If you put Christ first, He will give you what you need and put it where it needs to go inside you.  If you put Him first and surrender totally to Him, He will be the Great Soul-Smith and forge your soul into the fine metal that it is supposed to be. He will mend the broken parts and form you into a fine new vessel to receive His Body and Blood.

There are many details about my journey of late that are too personal to write in a blog article of this sort, which would be read by a large public.  There are many details of the things I have searched and pondered that need to be kept to myself, and thus will be.  But if I wanted to basically sum things up without going into those details, I would say that I have gone through the garden of my soul and decided what plants are right and fruitful, versus what are weeds, and I have pulled up the weeds and gotten the field ready for a new crop.

These are the basics of what I've discovered:
(1) There is no need to worry about whether seasonal celebrations--harvests and such--can be part of the Western Rite aspect of my Orthodox faith, because those observances are already there.  Seasonal celebrations, such as the August barley harvest known as Lammas (Anglo-Saxon: loaf-Mass) or the last harvest of autumn known as All Hallows Eve, are already incorporated in the Benedictine prayer tradition.  They are found in the feast days of the Church, in the Benedictine diurnal, around those time periods. There are also seasonal hymns for winter and summer in the Daily Office.  In the liturgics of the Eastern Orthodox Church, there are services called molieben (litanies of thanksgiving).  For celebrating the seasons, these litanies can be inserted any time into the litany portion of the canonical hours, be those hours in the Eastern form of the Horologion or the Western form of the Rule of St. Benedict.

(2) What has often been defined as "magic" by today's earth religions is, for the Christian, simply participation in God's Divine energies through active worship and the free gift of God's grace in worship and sacrament.  With this grace as a free gift and available to all who partake as believers in Christ and members of His Church, there is no need for anything else.   We don't have to go on vision quests or attend sweat lodges, because we have the Holy Mysteries: we have the seven sacraments, a living manifestation of God's grace that physically comes to us and is available to us in our daily lives.

(3) There is no one, "right" and "only" way to practice Orthodox Christianity.  The Church is a great deal more diverse than anyone realises, and there is room for everyone of every culture and every heritage.  The idea that we have to pray only a certain way and only use _________ (insert ethnicity here) ways of prayer in order to be saved is total error and crap.  While we seek to be Orthodox--right in worship--in our faith practices, it is not this form or function that saves us.  It is Christ Himself.  It is His Divine grace.  We are saved by grace, not by how accurately we pray and practice our faith according to Orthodox tenets.  A person can do everything correctly in terms of liturgics and still fail to truly know Christ or live in His love.   It is knowing Christ intimately in a personal relationship with Him, and most of all His grace that saves us.  We do the best we can to please Him in our practice of our faith, things like our prayer life, reading Scripture daily and meditating upon it, our attendance at services, receiving the Holy Mysteries, etc.  That effort helps us towards the sanctification, the Theosis (becoming like God) to which we are all called. But in the end, it's His grace that saves us and makes up for any lack of understanding or failures on our part.

(4) Because it is Christ and Christ alone Who saves us through His grace, we must trust in Him that He will show us what to do as we practice and live our faith.  We can't go around being paranoid that this way, or that way, or this jewelry, or that jewelry, or this TV show, or that TV show, or reading this book, or reading that book, will cut us off from Him.  There are too many Orthodox converts who walk around being afraid that they'll do something wrong and God will cut them off.  This isn't helped by fanatics and self-styled "spiritual fathers" who tell wild stories about visions they had: about how so-and-so that they knew in a village once did such-and-such, suddenly died, and went to hell because of doing that thing, but then that person came back to life and learned his/her lesson.  Those types of stories need to be avoided by the faithful when they read Orthodox spiritual writings.  There is nothing that can separate us from God if we love Him and believe in Him, unless we just decide to be stupid and say to Him, "The heck with You!  I'm not listening to You anymore."  Those of us who really love Him aren't going to be that stupid.  As long as we're putting Him first and practicing His presence daily and hourly, we cannot be separated from Him.  As long as our hearts are open to Him and our hearts bear Him love as opposed to being closed and rebellious, He will always be there for us.  We must walk in trust. 

(5) God made us the way we are, fundamentally.  There are many people who believe that our personalities--preferences, leanings, tastes, etc.--are formed by our environments, families and backgrounds.  That's true to an extent, but the basics of who we each are as individuals is the creation of God Himself.  Furthermore, it is an ongoing creation that is being continually refined.  The key word here is Hypostases.  Just as each Person  (Hypostas) of the Trinity is Holy in Who He is respectively as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we are each holy as the individuals we are: we are sacred as Gabrielle, David, John, Debra, whoever.  God made us who we are, and He doesn't make any junk.  Our blood heritage and personality is a part of that sacredness of our person, which is why it can't just be jettisoned in favour of a one-size-fits-all version of the Orthodox Christian faith.  God saves us as a community, as a Church; however, as members of that community, we are sacred as individuals too.  We each have sacred Personhood, just as the Trinity is sacred in His Three Persons.  We are saved as both members of the Church and as individuals.  The idea that we are only saved as Church is lopsided, as is the idea that we are only saved as individuals.  It has to be both Church and the individual, because Scripture states that there is One Body, but many parts, and that all parts are needed (1 Corinthians 12: 12-27).

These are the basic things that I have learned over the angst of the past month and a half.  That being said, I also have discovered that I have a particular calling through the gifts that God gave me both for music and for prayer.  I am called to be a healer.  Does that mean I have spiritual powers for which I went on some vision quest?  No.  Does that mean that I think I have special healing powers?  No.  Is the word "powers" involved at all?  No.   Do I summon spirits like a shaman?  No.

It's simple. God gave me the gift to play, compose and sing music.  He also gave me the gift of word-smithing (poetry, prose, etc). I have always used those gifts in service to Christ and His Church, to help people's souls in deepening and enriching their faith through worship.  But I also have a calling to sing and pray with a focus on healing for people's illnesses.  Does this mean that I actually heal them through music?  No. That would be very presumptuous, because only God heals.  But I do have a calling to sing and pray for the sick, both the sick in body and the sick in soul.  I also have a calling to learn about herbs and natural medicines, and learn to use those in good ways for healing, within the auspices of bonafide medical knowledge.  That kind of knowledge supplements my singing of the hourly services,  in which I can insert litanies asking God to heal sick people who are on my prayer list.  If I happen to know of an herb that can help, I can share my knowledge and also give sick people the websites talking about the medical facts about that herb.

I didn't go through some sort of vision quest to recognise I had this calling.  I didn't have a vision on a mountain or some sort of dream.  I did, however, go through a very difficult time emotionally and spiritually, in the course of jettisoning non-profitable ideas and recognising that I have inherited the calling of many a Celtic Briton and Saxon lady: to serve God and His Church by helping and healing, with music and knowledge of the things God has given us in the earth that can help and heal us.

I have a lot to learn with respect to herbs.  The music and prayer part of my work, however, is something that I have been training for since a young age, through schooling and much musical practice on instruments and voice.

There you have it.  I am a musical laece (Anglo-Saxon: healer).  As such, I do this work as an Orthodox Christian.  I am not some sort of shaman or New Age practitioner. I use the prayers of the Church, singing services (canonical hours, supplicatory canons, akathists) as my regular spiritual discipline and focusing those prayer services for healing as people ask me to do so.  The knowledge I will study in the future, that of herbs and natural remedies, will be carefully checked with today's medical and pharmaceutical knowledge to make sure that nothing is ever used erroneously.  Nor will I solicit clients with this work.  I already have a profession: that of church musician.  The healing part  of my work is a calling which must be done as an act of love, and when called for by others. If God chooses to reward me for it in some way, He will do so as He sees fit.

That's it.  Simple.  Right now, I am resting and learning.  The boat is moored while I rest for the winter season.

In naman Faederes and Sunna and thaes Hálgan Gástes. (In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit).

Amen.