Category Archives: Time

Epiphany 1 day out

Epiphany, Prayers, Time

follycoveinkspots

This afternoon, I had an unexpected pause in the day, around 3:00 p.m. I was able to stop for awhile, and park near a famous cove on Cape Ann, Folly Cove.  The name came from a failed experiment of harvesting salt, or so I hear.  I thought it was named for the the “folly” structure overlooking the Cove from one of the ledges nearby, an octagonal building, in gazebo style, or perhaps a Japanese style–hard to tell at a distance, looking across the water.

It’s a quiet afternoon; very little traffic on the road next to the Cove. A few parents drive by, to wait up the street at the bus stop for their children. I think someone recognizes my car, and honks.  After several minutes, I lose awareness of the time, though the waves of the water keep pace with heartbeats.  A small flock of buffleheads, black and white males, brown females, bob in and out of the shallows; the tide is mostly out. Ice travels down the crevices of the granite ledge, and the sun shines in low on the north side.  It’s just cold enough to feel like winter, though warm enough to keep the car window open, and even to get out and wander on the rocks, take a few pictures of the afternoon. More and more I wonder what it would be like just to paint them, as so many others do, here in the warmer months. Now and again, a hardier painter sets up near the water, but usually painters paint at other times of the year.  It’s so quiet.

We are just passing into the third phase of Christmastide–Epiphany was yesterday; the Baptism of Jesus is celebrated on Sunday, and then followed by a few weeks of so-called Ordinary Time.  We’ll take down the greens, and the stars, though the memory will be strong. January weather will chill us, but so far this winter, we haven’t had any big snows. Everyone in the neighborhood is grateful for that.  I am so grateful for pauses in the day, especially after stressful mornings and afternoons, like today’s.  I’ve already driven over a hundred miles today, back and forth, here and there, my car, my monastery in motion, silence in between conversations; too many phone calls, too many emails go out, from my side, and are mostly unanswered.  I took a survey recently on pastoral work and technology. “Does technology help you feel more connected to your community?” the surveyors asked. No, not at all, I answered. It’s more distancing.  Unlike rock and water, flesh and bone.  What makes me feel closer are moments like these, when I know the sight, sound, smell, of the ocean will catch anyone who goes by, and more likely than not, we’ll remember and pause in the day, in reverent awe, even if it’s only a few seconds, of the immensity of sky and sea, the solitude of rocks, the friendliness of buffle-heads bobbing on the depths of mysteries too great to fathom.  The baby was born, the light shines, the afternoon passes, the January night draws in, the stars emerge, now, with the promise that God so loves  the world, he shoulders our humanity in himself, and from the cradle reaches toward those who will hold him near.

Time Changes

All Saints, Time,

japanese maple marblehead

On Sunday morning, in church, we prayed for people in transitions.  The person who offered it prayed for people going through job transitions, or who were moving, or entering a new marriage, or having a baby, or people who have had a change in health, or have lost a loved one.  It was a prayer that reminded us that any change, even a change we initiate, and look forward to, like the birth of a child, or a new relationship or a new job, brings some turbulence with it. A prayer for transitions seemed like a wonderful prayer, too, for a transition of the season. We’re more than mid-way through autumn, and on the far end of fall foliage; there’s less leaves on trees now, and more on the ground to rake. Today because of the end of daylight savings time, the sun rises earlier by the clock, and sets earlier, and like other animals, I’m feeling the transition, too, moving inwardly towards hibernation, and stillness. In our church, we just passed through the three-day observance of All Saints, possibly one of my favorite feast days in the Christian calendar. In Celtic spirituality, it honors the thin places and thin times, where, as they say, the veil between worlds is very thin, and the passage between them is easier. The Feast honors Christian community and its transitions through time, like birth and death, baptism and burial, the sense of generations rising, dying, rising, walking together through the ages, the extraordinary ordinary saints, perfectly imperfect, graced and in need of grace.  It honors, too, the sense of eternal in the every day; despite disconcerting practices like setting clocks backward or forward, there’s a stability in time, though time is always changing. In church, which has its own strange notions of time, we sometimes sing at All Saints a hymn based on St. Patrick’s Breastplate. While the whole hymn is incantatory and invigorating, one verse in particular speaks to me of the eternal within time, impermanence permeated with ultimate reality:
“I bind unto myself today
the virtues of the starlit heaven,
the glorious sun’s life giving ray,
the whiteness of the moon at even,
the flashing of the lightning free,
the whirling wind’s tempestuous shocks,
the stable earth,
the deep salt sea,
around the old eternal rocks.”

One of the original renditions of this hymn can be found here: http://www.ancienttexts.org/library/celtic/ctexts/p03.html

I bind unto myself today, the beauty of this gentle dawn, the fire of the turning trees, and the quiet of the leaf-fall.