Advent 2017 Journals #10 & #11: Paul Michelson Saves the World, and Instructions on How to Survive a Wolf Bite

"I am a wolf that follows the sun, and I will catch him ere day be done."

Today is Friday, December 15th, 2017, the 12th day of Advent. Yesterday was the Memorial of St. John of the Cross, who, if you ask me (and who's asking me?) is an appropriate figure to memorialize during Advent. Advent, that time of waiting, for Christmas, for God - is it real waiting? Or is it make-believe waiting? Is it something in between or is it the sort of waiting that makes us question if there even is a difference between the real and the make-believe? Christmas will come, but things will mostly be the same. We all know it.

We'll give presents and drink Starbucks Christmas blend and maybe some eggnog. We'll visit with relatives we aren't sure actually like us but probably have to love us because we've been around so damned long, doing this Christmas thing over and over, with grandma, and big dinner spreads, and sometimes snow and sometimes not, throwing wads of freshly torn gift-wrapping paper at each other until someone gets hit in the eye or a stray shot knocks over a candle or a can of Diet Coke.

Yes, things will be the same. And another Christmas will come and go, we'll all be older, and we'll do Advent again next year. Then we'll wait, through Christmastide, and Epiphany, and Lent, and Holy Week, and Easter, and Ordinary Time, until we're back here, waiting again, even older, with another wrinkle on the forehead - Advent, the waiting, shoots through all the seasons like a root. This all makes no sense to me, but it also makes complete sense and I love it with every fiber and cell and atom of whatever it is that I'm made of. I suspect that you do, too, which is why you're here.

But why St. John of the Cross? Well, if you've been reading these meditations/mediCATIONS/journals, you're aware that I've talked a bit about the Dark Night. Talked about it more than I'd like, since it's not easy to talk about. The writing gets disjointed and you're never really able to say what you've felt or experienced. The best word for it all is "oblivion," which St. John uses at the end of his well-known poem.

I remained, lost in oblivion;
My face I reclined on the Beloved.
All ceased and I abandoned myself,
Leaving my cares forgotten among the lilies.

Oblivion is the best word, but it's still not right. That's why we have poetry and song, so we don't get tripped up on the "facts" and lose sight of the truth. The best any word can do is provoke the same sorts of feelings in the reader as the writer also feels. But I am guilty, I believe, of "expressing myself with too great fullness and detail," as Thoreau calls it. "It is the fault of some excellent writers [...] They give the most faithful, natural, and lifelike account of their sensations, mental and physical, but they lack moderation and sententiousness." I'm not an excellent writer. I'd be satisfied just being a writer, but I'm not sure I'm that, either. I'm definitely not a poet. But somehow god/God/g-d saw fit to give me the gift of speech, of language, and so I owe it to my existence to use that gift responsibly, to use it well, to put it in the employment of truth-seeking. It is, in this light, a tragic thing to mistake "fact" for truth.

St. John of the Cross dug deep. He was a mystic. His preoccupation wasn't with the "facts" or the perfect description, but the life, the spirit, the creation, and the durable things behind all that. Thoreau talked about nuttiness in writing. By nuttiness he meant sentences pregnant with morals, suggestions, hints, and provocations (although you could say he was nutty in other ways, too). Back in college, my old history professor, Paul Michelson (also nutty), made us look for "snappy quotes," a punchy line from the author that really drove home the point, a sentence that did a lot with a little. Thoreau's journals and books are full of snappy quotes and nuttiness, which is an accomplishment given that he spent most of his time growing potatoes and watching bugs (or perhaps potatoes and bugs have more to tell us than we think).

C. S. Lewis had names for men who could see nothing but cold facts, who would look at the Atlantic Ocean and see only "so many millions of tons of cold salt water," or look at a horse and see merely "an old-fashioned means of transport." Trousered apes and urban blockheads, he called them. These masters of "fact," these men of "science," claim the mantle of "intellect," but in fact, according to Lewis, "their heads are no bigger than ordinary: it is the atrophy of the chest beneath that makes them seem so."

"We must dig deeply in Christ. He is like a rich mine with many pockets containing treasures: however deep we dig we will never find their end or their limit. Indeed, in every pocket new seams of fresh riches are discovered on all sides." - St. John of the Cross

The chest. The home of nuttiness. Where we mine for treasures, where search the recesses of lived experience and squeeze them like lemons, chew on them like roots, drink them down slowly like a hot, bitter cup of winter morning coffee with whiskey for grip. The chest is where we come to terms with existence, with God or Dog or Glob or Blog or god or g-d or whatever it is that made poetry and cats and Advent. The trouble with nuttiness is the same trouble with Advent. It's slow. It doesn't engineer in us politically correct reflexes or hysteria. It forms in us a different way of seeing. It is the work of St. Lucy, the patron saint of eyes. It is the work of St. John of the Cross, the patron saint of the contemplative life. There's nuttiness all around. "Pay attention to detail," as my father always says. "Details matter," as I've started saying. "Football is a game of details," as Michael Lombardi says. 

"Eustace Clarence liked animals, especially beetles, if they were dead and pinned on a card. He liked books if they were books of information and had pictures of grain elevators or of fat foreign children doing exercises in model schools." - C. S. Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader

I punched "Eustance Clarence urban blockhead" into my Google machine and clicked on the first link. Ironically (or not) it took me to a paper by Dr. Michelson (who can be seen from time to time dressed up as Bilbo Baggins). Here's how he describes the "urban blockhead."

"Your urban blockhead is a person who has training but not education or learning, whose information is technical without being real knowledge -- a person with an engineering mentality. The urban blockhead is a person who reads books, but not for enjoyment. He is usually spiritually impoverished, often stunted in imagination. He is one who has been taught to mindlessly debunk anything that smacks of sentiment or philosophy or moral reasoning. In short, he has learned to be rationalistic without being truly rational."

Last year I substitute taught for a middle-school science class, and even though it's not in the Official Education Standards of the State of Indiana, I sang to them Tom Bombadil's nutty poem. It's a poem that saunters, (if a poem can saunter).

Hey dol! merry dol! ring a dong dillo!
Ring a dong! hop along! fal lal the willow!
Tom Bom, jolly Tom, Tom Bombadillo!

Hey! Come merry dol! derry dol! My darling!
Light goes the weather-wind and the feathered starling.
Down along under Hill, shining in the sunlight,
Waiting on the doorstep for the cold starlight,
There my pretty lady is, River-woman’s daughter,
Slender as the willow-wand, clearer than the water.
Old Tom Bombadil water-lilies bringing
Comes hopping home again. Can you hear him singing?
Hey! Come merry dol! derry dol! and merry-o,
Goldberry, Goldberry, merry yellow berry-o!
Poor old Willow-man, you tuck your roots away!
Tom’s in a hurry now. Evening will follow day.
Tom’s going home home again water-lilies bringing.

Hey! come derry dol! Can you hear me singing?

The students gave me an ovation. Clapping, shouting, hooping and hollering. Something about the nuttiness connected with a piece of their souls, it settled in their chests. What the hell is Bombadil talking about? Who cares? Students need nuttiness. Human begins need nuttiness. As a young man, I needed it, and I found a blend of nuttiness, scholarship, spirit, and heart in the Huntington University Department of History. As I write this, I'm surrounded by good books, Walden and The Abolition of Man on the floor, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by my leg, Walking by Thoreau and an Orthodox Bible spread open on the table next to me, Virginia Wolf and Madeleine L'Engle by my armchair (well, not them literally, but you get the nuttiness of what I'm saying). It's taken some time, and some life, but I think I finally get the nuttiness (the richness, the flavor) of what the liberal arts is about.

I subbed again last week, this time for a reading class. I read them a poem by C. S. Lewis called "Satan Speaks," which he wrote immediately after his service in the First World War, before his Christian conversion. I informed the students that this poem has a sense of irony. It's upside down. It's not what Lewis believes, but it conveys a truth.

I am Nature, the Mighty Mother,
I am the law: ye have none other.

I am the flower and the dewdrop fresh,
I am the lust in your itching flesh.

I am the battle’s filth and strain,
I am the widow’s empty pain.

I am the sea to smother your breath,
I am the bomb, the falling death.

I am the fact and the crushing reason
To thwart your fantasy’s new-born treason.

I am the spider making her net,
I am the beast with jaws blood-wet.

I am a wolf that follows the sun
And I will catch him ere day be done.

That's a poem with nuttiness. "I am a wolf that follows the sun, and I will catch him ere day be done." With a little imagination, that is I think the best description of the Dark Night which I have ever read. You are lost. Hunted. Tracked by something ferocious, but also twisted, something ironic. A wolf that follows the sun. Folks have a life story. There's a place for that. The facts matters, but the facts don't tell the truth. For a time, I was hunted by a wolf. You know what I mean. Where the only escape is a good nap, or a sleep you hope you don't wake up from. Because when the sun rises, the wolf is there, at your bedside, smiling, licking his lips. Waiting. Like Advent, but upside down. I can talk about divorce, chronic illness, anorexia, feelings of betrayal, years and dates, names and places, and on and on. But when I tell you that I spent years running from a wolf that follows the sun, dammit if you don't know what I mean. There's nuttiness there. You know it with your chest, if you've still got a chest. because that's exactly the part of you the wolf sinks his fangs into. I am grateful tonight for Thoreau, for poetry, for the liberal arts, which produces men with chests, and plants deep within them the soulful nuttiness to move forward, to soldier through, to keep with their sauntering, even after suffering a nasty wolf bite. We are Holy Landers. No one ever made it to the promise land without a few scars.

Advent 2017 Journal #9: Paradoxology

"Our notions of law and harmony are commonly confined to those instances which we detect; but the harmony which results from a far greater number of seemingly conflicting, but really concurring, laws, which we have not detected, is still more wonderful." - Henry David Thoreau

I told my therapist once that family problems always seem to unfold with a strange, tragic sense of irony.

Years ago, my mother watched as one of her family members slowly grew to over 500 pounds. I have vague childhood memories of this extremely large woman, her floral print dresses, and her funeral. This experience, plus a joyous mix of trauma and disappointment and things I won't mention, contributed to my mom's anorexia.

Her illnesses, physical and mental, played a role in the "dissolution" (as the newspaper put it) of her marriage, and I saw this, and I was going through a mysterious, chronic ailment of my own, drowning in family darkness, and I told my (now-ex) girlfriend, "I don't want this to happen to me, to us, I don't want to become my mother." But it did, and I did.

I remember the moment when irony laughed right in my face. I was standing in my kitchen, my dad on my right, my mother in front of me, and my newly exed-girlfriend on my left. They were talking, but I was quiet, mesmerized. There they all were: my mom who didn't like my ex, my ex who hated my mom (and I certainly shared that feeling at times), and my father who was filing for divorce and had moved out and left me to clean up his mess. A matrix of broken relationships and irony howling. All the chances that I'd had over the past year to get out, dancing like sugar plums in my head (hey, it's almost Christmas). But there I was.

"How did I get here? What terrible decisions did I make in my life which lead me to this point?"

But just when it seems like tragedy and irony have had the last laugh, there's paradox. Someone or something rips open the curtains and lets the bright winter light come pouring in through the windows of your black room. The chain breaks. Your lover leaves you. And suddenly, perhaps with the help of St. Lucy, you see clearly all your shit and all your misery and your life for what it has become. And purpose and strength come surging back into your body and your spirit rises. You get a grip, you remember who you are, you stand straight, Spartan-like, and you see The Road once again.

Sometimes the best way to help those we love is to not try to help those we love. Treat adults like adults. Give back lost dignity. A little respect goes a long ways. It isn't "tough love." It's love done right. I mean, I'm no expert, and I don't know if it works, but the only time lately I can remember my infinitely stubborn, irrationally contradictory mom not challenging me on a point is when I said, "Hey, I'm going to try something new. From now on, I'm not going to ask if you've been eating. You're an adult. You have the right to eat what you want, when you want, in whatever quantity you want. You come as you are." Things changed between us for the better after that.

It's Advent, it's almost Christmas, and there's a lot of talk about Jesus and gingerbread and hope and "love." That ex-girlfriend liked to talk a lot about "love." I get it. It's an important part of the faith. But it's not the only part of the faith. The old virtues still matter. Catholic virtues, Greek virtues, American virtues. They're important! They're vital!

It's the difference between love as the only thing and love as the greatest thing. The old "cheap grace" sermons of traveling holiness preachers are jingle-belling in my ears, and dammit I won't sit here and while a mob of candle-holding, carol-singing "We are the World" minions destroy the planet by trying to save it.

When love is the only thing, it looks like sweet words, mindless affirmation, "helping people," the "humanitarian with a guillotine." Isabel Paterson's classic line comes to mind: "Most of the harm in the world is done by good people, and not by accident, lapse, or omission. It is the result of their deliberate actions, long persevered in, which they hold to be motivated by high ideals toward virtuous ends."

When love is the greatest thing, it inspires courage, compassion, rootedness of life, attention to detail, self-respect, and beautiful life-keeping. It observes the image of God in our brothers and sisters and puts their dignity first. I guess what I'm saying is this: let's learn how to love without trying to fix, save, or control everything and everyone with our oh-so-impressive mind powers and own our shit first. That's the paradox of Advent. That's the...hell, there are so many paradoxes in Advent and the manager and the cross and all the rest of it that I'll be up all night if I go any further. Just know that there's a paradox bubbling under all this.

I hope your Feast of St. Lucy was a blessed one. My apologies to G. K. Chesterton, whose picture I used for this post but never mentioned. He is the Paragon of Paradox. I'm blowing out my candle, reading a chapter from Walden, and heading to bed. Good night, Holy Landers.

Advent 2017 Journal #8: Walking with Our Lady of Guadalupe

Our Lady of Guadalupe

Come, all ye Holy Landers, Walkers, Readers, and Lovers. Come all ye who don't walk near as much as they'd like, who don't get around to reading like they should, and who want to love but find that people are much easier to stomach when they're disguised as a social cause. All ye Holy Landers, who change diapers, grade papers, and work with your hands, but nonetheless find yourself on a Road, your hearts burning within - come - and remember that Jesus disguised himself on the "oh-so-ordinary" road to Emmaus, that Our Lady of Guadalupe came to St. Juan Diego on his "usual" route. Today is December 12th. This is Advent. There are no ordinary roads anymore. We are sauntering to the Holy Land.

Come, all ye Holy Landers. We do not saunter alone. Luke and Cleopas were not alone on the Emmaus road. St. Juan Diego was not alone on Tepeyac Hill. We know this now. They did not. That is, until they did - until Jesus broke bread and Mary surprised poor Juan. It doesn't seem like we're walking anywhere when we're going about our daily chores and it doesn't seem like anyone is with us when we're so damned powerless all the damned time - but we are walking and there is someone here. When I'm at my best, I believe that, and even when I don't believe it, I believe it. Things can get a little paradoxical on the Road.

"No estoy yo aqui que soy tu madre?"

"Am I not here, I who am your mother?"

This is what Mary said to Juan on her fifth visit. It comes as a surprise to me, a Protestant turned Mennonite, to learn that I have a second mother. It's also a bit of a relief, given the tenuous mental and physical health of my earthly mother. That Maria will be here for me after my mother dies is a small comfort. Perhaps one day it will become a very, very big comfort. I did, after all, write a Day of the Dead meditation. I think I'll ask Our Lady of Guadalupe for some prayers, ask her to remember my family. I'll find some roses for my mother. They will guide Maria to this place. "Mary is a woman who fights to give flesh to the Gospel," says Pope Francis. Well, I want some Gospel flesh. We all need Gospel flesh. My mother needs Gospel flesh - literally.

Her legs hurt, especially with the cold weather. She doesn't do much walking these days. There's all different kinds of walking. Cardio walking. Woods walking. Walking on the moon. Walking for a cause. Walking across the street. Walking with a limp, which my father did for years before his knee-replacement. Power walking. Tip-toe walking. Walking the dog. Bob Seger wrote a song about strut walking. Jackson Browne wrote a song about quiet walking. There's walking this way and walking on the wild side. There's walking 500 miles, walking to New Orleans, and walking on broken glass. There's walking alone, there's walking not alone, and there's walking like a man. There's even walking on water, which I believe even when I don't believe. There's also a "cakewalk," which is what my mother called cancer.

"Cancer was a cakewalk compared with this disease."

"This disease" being anorexia. She had cancer. Now she has anorexia. The English language has a lot of synonyms for "sad." Sorrowful, mournful, harrowing, chilling, agonizing, painful, dreary, bleak, disheartening, dispiriting. All of these touch on it. But there are no words for how I feel about that line. Even my feelings can't quite register the darkness I see there. There's something so despairing, so dreadful, so terrifying about that line. Something in between our feelings and our words. Maybe this is what older writers and Jesus and Mary and Juan and Luke called the demonic. I believe in the demonic. Even when I don't believe in God or miracles or Advent, I believe in the demonic. The demonic loves paradox, but it's always sneaky, always in the most corrupt of all possible directions. That's why I'm calling on Maria tonight. To come and walk with me on my ordinary road. To help me find some unexpected flowers. To give the Gospel flesh.

Advent 2017 Journal #7: There Goes a Holy Lander

The Christmastide Vespers Office Psalm:

For you have rescued my soul from death and my feet from stumbling, that I may walk before God in the light of the living (Psalm 56:12).

During the warm months here in Bluffton I enjoy a good evening walk - usually before sunset, near the school and suburb where I live and work. There's a park nearby and it's good to see the children playing. There's a factory, too, humming and clanging and beeping, with orange lights that fill the warm, friendly summer twilight. I pass the old ball diamond where my little league team used to practice. If I keep on straight for about half a mile I'll be at my mother's apartment. If I turn right I'll pass the elementary school and some familiar teenage streets. A summer walk is good for the heart. A spring walk lifts the spirit. An autumn walk grounds a man.

Thoreau believed that Walkers were a special breed. He called Walkers "a fourth estate, outside Church and State and People." The freedom, leisure, and independence which are the capital of the Walking profession cannot be bought - they come only by the grace of God. "It requires a dispensation from heaven to be a Walker. You must be born into the family of Walkers." My work requires that I find time to myself. A lot of time. I'm at the beck and call of my customers 24/7. My phone is (almost) never off, which is perhaps the greatest tragedy of my day-to-day existence. But a good walk helps me put the work out of my mind. And when I'm really in the spirit I'll go for a saunter. These don't happen quite as much, but these are the sorts of walks Thoreau is really talking about. You get off the road, away from the sidewalks (and the phone), and you walk wherever you please - through woods and fields and over hills, free from the world. If you feel tired, you lie down on some soft grass or against a suitable tree and take a nap. You lose track of time. I'm certain that Jesus took some walks like this, and John the Baptist, too.

According to Thoreau, the word Sauntering is:

[B]eautifully derived from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, under pretense of going a la Sainte Terre, to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, "There goes a Saint-Terrer," a Saunterer, a Holy-Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. Some, however, would derive the word from sans terre, without land or a home, which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere.

Kings and rulers (and Satan) all have seats and thrones. The Jesus of the Gospels did a lot of walking. He walked into the wilderness where he met the devil, walked along the shore of the Sea of Galilee, walked into synagogues, walked up the mount where he preached, walked through crowds in Gergesenes, in Capernaum, in Cana and "all the cities and villages" (Matthew 9:35). John the Baptist was a traveling preacher, a rover, he walked the barren wilderness of Judah and lived an ascetic life, baptizing people in river water and shouting "Prepare ye the way of the Lord!"

Today is the 7th day of Advent, which according to everyone, ironic and/or otherwise, is about preparation. This time of year, walking requires some prep, some layers, some heavy socks, a hat and a scarf. But it's worth it. And if you run, put on your gear and hit the road. I've been on a handful of Advent runs this month. Some short, some longer. I don't often stop and take pictures but there's something about running down an old stretch of railroad (abandoned, I think, the one pictured above). The crossties are level with the ground and green moss and weeds grow up around the tracks. It's a soft place to run. And it's narrow and straight. It guides you, almost takes each step for you. This is how some holiness preachers would describe entire sanctification.

You won't find sanctification on an Advent run, but there may be a benediction out there, in the cold, in the glow of cheap Christmas lights. I read this once: "The ancients believed the Earth was the center of the universe. We believe that we are." A good run or a cold walk under a dark, expansive Advent sky cures the soul of this notion. "Make His paths straight." Go now, you pilgrim, you Holy Lander. Go get some repentance. I'll spare you the inspiration porn and tell you what I told you last year: You better check yo'self before you wreck yo'self.

I'll leave you with this passage from Thoreau:

So we saunter toward the Holy Land, till one day the sun shall shine more brightly than ever he has done, shall perchance shine into our minds and hearts, and light up our whole lives with a great awakening light, as warm and serene and golden as on a bankside in autumn.

I think I'll stick that atop the page. Maybe give the whole blog a little facelift. Thanks for reading, Holy Landers.

Completely Un-Ironic Advent 2017 Meditation #6: The Ghost of Guadalupe

Walking outside the city
Walking from my home
My usual path
Under the hot sun
My feet upon the sand
And unto me an apparition did appear
The Ghost of Guadalupe

I'm a man of no importance
I'm a man of little means
Tasked to build a church
To relieve the burdens of her people
Flowers she did give me
As a sign
The Ghost of Guadalupe

During Advent
We are not safe from miracles
Or ghosts
Or signs
Even an ordinary man
Walking an ordinary path

"No estoy yo aqui que soy tu madre?"

"Am I not here, I who am your mother?"

Non-Ironic Advent 2017 Meditation #5: The Legend of Saint Agnes, or How to Bury the Lede

The cold has settled in, my candle is burning, and I can hear the 11pm Norfolk Southern way out in the dark, Southwest of where I'm sitting. Today is December 9th, the day where hungry, faithful Catholics celebrate the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. I'm going to talk about that in a minute. First I want to tell you about this cup of coffee I'm sipping on. I poured in a little Jameson to give it grip. "Grip" is the best way I can think to describe what whiskey (or bourbon) adds to a cup o' joe. You take a sip and after that hot coffee goes down and you feel the liquor hit the back your throat, you squeeze the mug, your cheeks and jaw tighten, your tongue presses against the roof of your mouth. You swallow it in deep. Satisfaction.

Advent can have that same effect. "Prepare ye the way of the Lord," cried John the Baptist. "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." Translation: Get a grip. On yourself, on your sin, on your bull shit (maybe I like that Jameson a little too much). No one's ever had that Old Time Gospel Repentance without getting a grip. I asked a friend the other day, "Do you love Truth? Can you put the pursuit of Truth above everything else? Above comfort, security? Can you accept the pain that sometimes comes with Truth?" Enneagram Fours (Eric Wolfe) will recognize this as an obvious, fundamental question. Everyone else will think I'm insane or misunderstand what I'm asking.

"If you only knew what darkness I am plunged into," wrote St. Therese, the Little Flower. Here's the thing about the Dark Night of the Soul: when you're in it, it doesn't feel like a "night," the implication being that the sun will rise and "day" will come again. It feels like the end. So when/if it does end, you'll cry and celebrate and dance like you didn't know you could or ever would again. The sun came up on my Dark Night in late 2015. I remember, about that time, sitting in Sunday School, I felt impassioned, hungry for hard truth, reawakened by an "infinite expectation of the dawn." It was a transcendental moment, which has become a not-too-unfamiliar thing for me. I felt a push to "drive life into corner," to live "sturdy and Spartan-like, to put to rout all that was not life," to dispense with identity and ideology and wounds and be burned by holy fire. I sat in my chair, my eyes closed. I wrapped my fingers around the arms, I squeezed them tight. I got a grip.

A peregrino named Ben Camino wrote this during Advent 2013:

I’m talking about hope. Clinging. My vocation is to encourage clinging. With bloody fingernails, if need be, with teeth, arms, words, poetry, advent laments, late night arguments, church reform, hearing confession, the bread and wine, visiting the sick, love, especially love.

Hope's never made much sense to me. But if it involves all that, if hope is clinging, if hope is getting a grip, then maybe I'm better at it than I thought. Hope always sounded like holly-jolly propaganda, like a Macy's benediction under tinsel and glitter, but what's the point of all this preparing and repentance if we aren't, at some level, expecting God to come down remind us that life is definitely worth living, and, more than that, that's it's awesome to be alive and, maybe one day, be alive again? That’s got to be hope.

Okay, I've made you wait long enough. The Feast of the Immaculate Conception. I think highly of my readers. I believe you're all well aware that this does not refer to the virginal birth of Jesus, but rather, to Mary's being conceived without inheriting Original Sin. If you didn't know that, then get a grip. Now, because the Eastern Orthodox Church doesn't believe in a genetic or passed down Original Sin, they celebrate the Feast of the Not-Really-Immaculate-But-Still-Impressive Conception. It should be noted that this is not a commentary on Mary's status as All Holy or on her virginity. And this brings me to the point of this completely non-ironic Advent Meditation: St. Agnes of Rome, the patron saint of chastity and virgins (and many, many other things).

The details are fuzzy, but the tradition of the Church holds that St. Agnes was martyred at the age of 12 by Emperor Diocletian. She was a beautiful, wealthy girl and young men came from all over to propose to her, but she turned them down, as she believed that she had a heavenly spouse in Christ. One scorned man turned her into the authorities as a Christian. She was arrested and dragged through the streets naked but miraculously her hair grew long and covered her body. When a mob tried to rape her, the assailants were struck blind and the son of the prefect who condemned her struck dead. The authorities tried to burn her at the stake, but the wood would not catch fire. A soldier then drew his short-sword and stabbed her through the throat. Would that I had a grip on the faith as strong as this little girl.

According to a half-assed Google search, the name Agnes is derived from the Greek name Hagne, meaning pure or holy, and the Anglo-Saxon name Harnish comes from Agnes. For this reason, I can't help but feel a special connection to St. Agnes, even if she couldn't legally drink the coffee I most enjoy. Her feast day is January 21. At the risk of sounding relevant, I dare say that as the patron saint of rape survivors St. Agnes should perhaps be remembered a little more loudly these days. Maybe next year she'll contend for the cover of TIME.

I'm blowing my candle out and heading for bed. Thanks for reading, pilgrims.

Advent 2017 Meditation #4: The Jackson Browne Vespers Office, or How to Overflow with Genial Mirthfulness

The Jackson Browne Vespers Office, The Call to Prayer

Keep a fire burning in your eye
Pay attention to the open sky
You never know what will be coming down
I don't remember losing track of you
You were always dancing in and out of view
I must've always thought you'd be around
Always keeping things real by playing the clown
Now you're nowhere to be found

It's another midnight Advent meditation after another miserable game of Madden football. I read once that people need meditation the most precisely when they desire it the least. What I'd really like to do right now is fall asleep, but this is the stuff Advent's made of, fighting off tired eyes, keeping watch when you'd rather not, pushing through the angst, waiting, waiting for the oddly-real frustration of a make-believe video game to dissipate. If this all seems silly, consider: you're playing chess, and you've got a move planned, and you make it, you move your Queen across the board and suddenly, for no reason at all, she stops working and breaks and you lose her. That's what playing Madden football is like. I'm committed to the remainder of this season, but after that, I think I'll not play the game again. When life hands you an easy choice, make it and be grateful, pilgrim. There are hard ones coming down the pike.

Today is December 8th, 2017, and we here in Northeast Indiana received our first snow. Loose flakes swirling in frigid winds, but no accumulation. Tomorrow I'll go to my brother's for some welding. Right now I'm listening to Jackson Browne and thinking about time. Time is a funny thing. Time's been weighing on me heavy. I've lost some people this year. Older folks, but not that old.

Brian had cancer. He fought it for a while, a decade I think, but it finally took him this year. Killed him dead. He stored a Camaro here at the storage facility for years. He told me a couple times that building a garage addition was just too expensive, what with all the permits. His wife called me some weeks after the funeral and came and got it and I cleaned the space out for the next tenant. Unit #813, I think it was. Sometimes during the warm months he'd bring his golf club and practice his swing in the big yard to our east. He'd park his red Ford Ranger and hit wiffle balls. But not anymore.

Ralph died suddenly. Also cancer, I think. It was far along by the time they caught it and he went fast. Couldn't have been more than a month after the diagnosis. I ate breakfast with him quite a bit (and Brian, too) at a big round table with lots of other old, retired Republicans. Ralph was the GOP chair of our county and we disagreed on most things. Ron Paul, Israel-Palestine, police violence, etc. But I enjoyed drinking coffee and listening to the early morning banter. He had an infectious laugh that sort of wheezed and lifted as he smiled and his big body rocked back and forth. It's harder to hear in my mind now than it was a year ago.

The Jackson Browne Vespers Office, The Hymn

I don't know what happens when people die
Can't seem to grasp it as hard as I try
It's like a song playing right in my ear
That I can't sing
I can't help listening

Remember the last few minutes at the end of The Sandlot when the kids fade away from their old ball diamond and grow up and the narrator tells us what they went on to do? That's what it's like eating at the breakfast table with old men, only it's the exact opposite: they've already done what they came here to do (or perhaps missed their chance) and the fade-out isn't a child growing into an adult, it's an old man going to the grave, returning to the dust. Slowly, one by one, like the ball diamond in the movie, the table gets emptier.

Brian and Ralph are both gone, but I'm still here. When people die, I feel like I'm left waiting. Waiting on something. Waiting on them, maybe. Because if we're not waiting, then they're just gone, and I don't know if that makes sense. Maybe we're waiting on death to take us, too. Or maybe we're waiting on resurrection. I know don't. But we're waiting, and if there's a human being anywhere on this planet whose stuck in The Waiting, then Advent lives. "The waiting is the hardest part," wrote the recently departed Tom Petty. He knows.

The Jackson Browne Vespers Office, The Refrain

Keep a fire for the human race
And let your prayers go drifting into space
You never know will be coming down
Perhaps a better world is drawing near
And just as easily, it could all disappear
Along with whatever meaning you might have found
Don't let the uncertainty turn you around
(The world keeps turning around and around)
Go on and make a joyful sound

I said to a friend tonight that if you've had a painful life, with abuse and suffering and want and trauma, it's easy and natural to look back and mourn that these times ever happened. And if you've had a pleasant life, with friendships and family and celebrations and excitement, it's easy and natural to look back and mourn that these times are past. We've been dealt a losing hands, my friends. The best remedy I've ever found for this predicament is cliche, boring, and profoundly difficult: pay attention. To the subtle things, the nuances, the details. To the people you love, to the planet, to music. Lose yourself in it, when you can.

On October 26, 1853, age 36, Thoreau wrote in his journal, "When, after feeling dissatisfied with my life, I aspire to something better, am more scrupulous, more reserved and continent, as if expecting somewhat, suddenly I find myself full of life as a nut of meat - am overflowing with a quiet, genial mirthfulness." As if expecting somewhat. I heard once or twice or a thousand times someone preach that Advent had something to do with "expectant waiting." Something about "has already come, is coming, and will come again" (I never get that right). Time is a funny thing. So is Advent. So are Advent meditations. I don't have much of a conclusion for you. I'm just trying to make a joyful sound, trying to find some genial mirthfulness here in the middle of the night, with my cat on my lap, my candle burning, and Jackson Browne on the radio. Thanks for reading, pilgrims. I do deeply appreciate each and every one of you who share your limited time on this planet with me by reading these meditations.

The Jackson Browne Vespers Office, Closing

Into a dancer you have grown
From a seed somebody else has thrown
Go on ahead and throw some seeds of your own
And somewhere between the time you arrive and the time you go
May lie a reason you were alive but you'll never know