[Oe List ...] 12/15/2022, Progressing Spirit: Rev. Matthew Syrdal: An Advent Love-Poem to Holy Darkness; Spong revisited
Ellie Stock
elliestock at aol.com
Thu Dec 15 07:16:42 PST 2022
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screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv8621819120 #yiv8621819120templateBody .yiv8621819120mcnTextContent, #yiv8621819120 #yiv8621819120templateBody .yiv8621819120mcnTextContent p{font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;}}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){#yiv8621819120 #yiv8621819120templateFooter .yiv8621819120mcnTextContent, #yiv8621819120 #yiv8621819120templateFooter .yiv8621819120mcnTextContent p{font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;}} By Rev. Matthew Syrdal
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An Advent Love-Poem to Holy Darkness
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| Essay by Rev. Matthew Syrdal
December 15, 2022You darkness from which I come,
I love you more than all the fires
that fence out the world,
for the fire makes a circle
for everyone
so that no one sees you anymore.
But darkness holds it all:
the shape and the flame,
the animal and myself,
how it holds them,
all powers, all sight —and it is possible: its great energy
is breaking into my body.
I have faith in the night.I have always loved this poem. Especially David Whyte’s translation from the German. Perhaps it is because I love Darkness. Do you know this feeling? A momentary awareness rapt in dark night. The utter stillness of a winter-scape at dusk. The deep feeling of slumbering instincts quickening into a wild and mysterious sense of closeness to all that is unapproachable during the daylight hours. It’s almost like a hunger for me, this desire to shed form, to stride out of doors into a night of formless beauty. Out beyond sight where the imagination soars as a heron in flight, and that feathered surge of dampening sound awakens alluring depths within our limited vision.Advent is a season especially attuned to the Darkness, and it’s rhythms—not primarily the light. For the Darkness has a strange luminosity all its own, but our eyes must readjust. David Whyte picks up on this theme in his poem Sweet Darkness “There, you can be sure you are not beyond love / The Dark will be your home tonight / The Night will give us a horizon further than we can see.” It offers imaginal landscapes for the soul, we are invited to slow to hushed walking pace through deserts and moorlands. Advent is myth-time. A time to wander and wonder, to remember as a people all we have lost. All that glances back at us, eyes glimmering across the circle of light we now stand in. Darkness is a kind of memory that reaches down and in through the feeling function, it holds encoded the memory of time and origins you might say. Advent is womb-time, and what is coming we cannot see but only feel. But one thing is for certain it is here, within and among, watching just beyond the ring of firelight. For me this poem is Rilke’s Advent birth narrative whether he intended it or not—it is mytho-poetic. His words can become our words, his love-prayer—our love-prayer. If we have the courage to seek the One beyond the fire circle.“You Darkness from which I come” - Du Dunkelheit, aus der ich stamme. The direct address to the Darkness—living, intimate, and sentient—is much more than stylized personification. We are invited to listen in as the poet speaks to the dark ground of his being in the quiet watches of the night. Speaks a poem of love to the dark God beyond the firelight of consciousness.“I love you more than all the fires that fence out the world, for the fire makes a circle [of light] for everyone so that no one sees you anymore. But the darkness holds it all.”Other translations speak of the fires that “fence in the world,” "als die Flamme, welche die Welt begrenzt,” but Whyte is seeing something important here in Rilke’s vision. The World dwells in night and it is we who no longer see her anymore. The dark keeper of the fire, whose embrace holds all. All laughter, all tears, all pain and fear, conflict and war. Nothing is excluded from the embrace of darkness.Advent is a season to let ourselves be held in the peculiar way that only darkness can do. It is an ancient song sung in the meandering hollows and wells of fallow time.The eternal feminine Darkness from which we all come, that great and nurturing Power that holds it all: /the shape and the flame, /the animal and myself, /how it holds them, /all powers, all sight —The “fire” that makes a “circle” is a profound image. For me it speaks to our promethean drive to be sole creators in a self-made world, alluding to both the primal technology of fire that symbolically defines our species and to its mythic origins in the collective unconscious. A powerful driver indeed behind our history of storytelling, Empire, and constant need to expand our territories.And so I want to push back just a bit against the masculine light-cult that is Western civilization, (symbolized for example in Edison and Tesla) and the modern era’s progressive banishment of darkness, and labeling of it as ‘evil’. The endless displays of visual connection, the need to make everything visible only to expose, to extract, to define, to control. As if we could domesticate the darkness. We may have cast it from our homes and churches, but It has just gone underground. We banished it with our promethean theologies because it didn’t support and export Christendom values.The printed word is fire, but the spoken word is darkness. Oral stories move and feed just inside the edge of the wood at night. But our printed word would appropriate oral wisdom for its own and post them like memes. A little sleight-of-hand trickery, so that we don’t have to really go into the dark where wisdom can be found. Advent and Christmas can be one of the few liturgical seasons we can really embrace the dark, really cultivate storytelling as a people, reclaim our myth-telling roots to counterbalance the artificial light of corporatized cultural ways the church unwittingly reinforces.Don’t get me wrong. We need Fire too. Fire is an archetypal image of spirit, and ingenuity, and creative advancement in ways never before dreamed possible. We need both the Fire and the Darkness. But perhaps the fire we stole from the gods has grown too big, and all of our “biggering” to borrow Dr. Seuss’ term, in both church and culture is spreading this fire. And perhaps too many forests are burning, and too many of the old songs and stories have gone up in smoke as sparks reaching for the stars.For me, Mythic Christ Mystery School has been an inquiry primarily into the darkness of the deep imagination—a realm of visionary consciousness—in order to begin to reclaim what is still alive and pulsing in the heart of the Christian mythos, through experiential practices and ways of being in community. We explore more broadly the nature of myth, archetype, story, encoded in sacred place and particular landscapes, to understand the scriptures and ourselves from the perspective of oral tradition, belonging and emergence.To counteract the structural forces of injustice and inequity on so many levels, it is important we take seriously other ways of knowing and being, remembering and becoming. We explore de-centered values that are sacred and truly supportive of soulful community. There are other ways to envision justice other than through the harsh daylight of politics and faith. Other ways of being church outside the brick and mortar walls, in wooded-walls clothed with moss and meadow, hanging usnea or apple bark. Late it is, in this fourth watch of the night. The hour of God. The thief who comes might just be the deliverer we need but don’t expect. May we return for now to the slow womb-time and deep dreamtime. The Day will come, but now is the hour of imagination and the dreaming.“And it is possible: its great Power
is breaking into my body.
I have faith in the night.”Du Dunkelheit, aus der ich stamme,
ich liebe dich mehr als die Flamme,
welche die Welt begrenzt,
indem sie glänzt
für irgend einen Kreis,
aus dem heraus kein Wesen von ihr weiß.Aber die Dunkelheit hält alles an sich:
Gestalten und Flammen, Tiere und mich,
wie sie's errafft,
Menschen und Mächte. --Und es kann sein: eine große Kraft
rührt sich in meiner Nachbarschaft.~ Rev. Matthew SyrdalRead online here
About the Author
Matthew Syrdal, M.Div., is a pastor in the Denver area, a visionary, founder of Church of Lost Walls, and co-founder of Seminary of the Wild. Matt has begun a new venture called Mythic Christ, a mystery school and podcast for awakening mythic imagination and ritual embodiment. Matt speaks at conferences and guides immersive nature-based experiences around the country and his mentoring and coaching practice as a certified Wild Mind nature-based human development guide through the Animas Valley Institute. His work weaves in myth, archetype, dreams, deep imagery, and ceremony in nature as a way for people to enter into conversation with the storied world of which they are a part. Matt’s passion is guiding others in discovering “treasure hidden in the field” of their deepest lives, cultivating deep wholeness and re-enchantment of the natural world to apprentice fully and dangerously to the kingdom of god. |
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Question & Answer
Q: By A Reader
How can we work to improve religious tolerance and increase respect for diversity?
A: By Rev. Irene MonroeDear Reader,We are residing in such a polarized time. I wish the Christian Right would meet the right Christians to understand that religious tolerance embraces the fact that, as Americans, we are people of many faith traditions and are atheists, agnostics, and "nones."
More than a decade now, when the December holiday season rolls in, we can always count on a yearly kerfuffle about what the appropriate season's greeting should be, exemplifying the continued chapter in the culture "War on Christmas."
This year we can see the divide along religious and political party lines. On his "Merry Christmas USA Thank You Tour," former President Trump decorated his stages with Christmas trees. Former President Obama acknowledged other holidays this time of year - Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Yule, Saturnalia, Festivus, and Ramadan - and embraced an all-inclusive seasonal greeting symbolic of our nation's diverse religious and cultural landscape with two simple words — Happy Holidays!
According to Public Policy Polling (PPP), if you say "Merry Christmas," you insult liberals, and if you say "Happy Holidays," you vex conservatives. Also, PPP revealed that 57 percent of Republicans believe there's an ongoing war on Christmas. Truth be told, Muslims, secular progressives, Jews, and atheists have never been the folks trying to abolish Christmas. The intolerance of a multicultural theme for this holiday season has to do about a backlash toward a country growing more religiously pluralistic.
This holiday's central message is embracing and celebrating human differences and diversity. And it is with this message that I know all people — religious and non-religious, straight and LGBTQ+, black and white — can be included to enjoy and to celebrate and acknowledge this season with one simple greeting.
Happy Holidays!~ Rev. Irene Monroe
Read and share online here
About the Author
Rev. Irene Monroe does a weekly Monday segment, “All Revved Up!” on NPR's WGBH (89.7 FM). She is a weekly Friday commentator on New England Channel NEWS. Monroe is the Boston voice for Detour’s African American Heritage Trail, Guided Walking Tour of Beacon Hill: Boston’s Black Women Abolitionists. A Huffington Post blogger and a syndicated religion columnist, her columns appear in the Boston LGBTQ newspaper Baywindows, Cambridge Chronicle, and the Boston Globe. Monroe states her “columns are an interdisciplinary approach drawing on critical race theory, African American, queer and religious studies. As a religion columnist, I try to inform the public of religion’s role in discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people.” Her papers are at the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe College’s research library on the history of women in America. Click here to visit her website. |
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Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited
The Birth of Jesus, Conclusions: Part XVI
Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong
June 20, 2013Luke concludes his birth story with a series of episodes designed to point to the story of the adult Jesus. First, in Luke’s story, the shepherds depart, while Mary “ponders,” then the “Holy Family” goes through the initiation rites of Judaism to root Jesus deeply inside of the faith of his people. He is circumcised, Luke says, on the eighth day and given the name Jesus (Joshua or Yeshuah in Hebrew/Aramaic). Then he is presented at the Temple on the 40th day, at which time a prophetess named Anna, later to be viewed in mythology as the mother of Mary, and an old priest named Simeon are introduced in brief cameo appearances. Simeon proclaims that in this baby he has seen the promised salvation that will bring light to the Gentiles and glory to Israel. Next, and in contrast to Matthew, who has the Holy Family flee into Egypt to avoid the wrath of Herod, Luke has them make a rather leisurely journey back to their home in Nazareth. This episode of Luke’s birth narrative is then closed with a summary statement informing his readers that “the child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was with him.” This infancy narrative is thus completed.Luke then describes an episode that turns out to be the only story in the entire New Testament that purports to inform us about Jesus’ childhood. It is the narrative of the twelve year old Jesus being taken up to Jerusalem at the time of the Passover. It is a puberty rite story couched in religious terms, a kind of primitive bar mitzvah filled with familiar mythological content. It was designed to show just how remarkable the child Jesus really was long before his introduction to the wider public as an adult figure. It also has deep roots in the Hebrew Scriptures that we need to identify. Those familiar with these scriptures would also be familiar with the life of the prophet Samuel. He, like Jesus, was said to have had something of a miraculous birth. His mother Hannah was childless; she had been unable to conceive. In that patriarchal world, the woman was blamed for this condition and so she was called “barren.” She was one of two wives married to a man named Elkanah. His second wife, Peninnah, had children and was honored by her husband because of that. Hannah, however, felt shame at her inability to have a child and was even ridiculed by Peninnah because, as she said, “the Lord had closed her womb.” Hannah went up regularly to a “holy place,” the shrine at Shiloh. On one of those occasions, she was at the gate of the shrine weeping and praying for a child. In her prayers she stated her willingness to dedicate her child to God if her prayers were answered. In the emotional power of this prayer, she came to the attention of an old priest named Eli who thought at first that she was drunk.“How long will you be drunken?” he asks her as the conversation began. Hannah responded, “No, my Lord, I am a woman sorely troubled. I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I have been pouring out my soul before the Lord.” Hearing the content of her prayer, Eli promised her that her prayer would be answered. So he said to her: “Go in peace and may the God of Israel grant your petition.” Hannah then returned home and her barrenness was overcome; Samuel was born. It is a touching story.Luke is clearly familiar with the story of Hannah. When Hannah’s child, Samuel, was born, she sang a song of praise that began with the words: “My heart exults in the Lord.” Luke uses Hannah’s song as the model for the song he puts in the mouth of Mary that we call The Magnificat. The Magnificat begins with the words: “My soul magnifies the Lord.”I believe there is one other oblique reference to the story of Samuel in Luke’s birth narrative. In his genealogy of Jesus in chapter 3, Luke lists a person named Heli as the father of Joseph and thus the grandfather of Jesus. Heli is simply the Greek spelling of Eli. The old priest in the book of Samuel is thus related, Luke says, to the life of Jesus. Finally, when Mary and Joseph take the boy Jesus to present him in the Temple when he was 12 years old, Luke appears to base this story on the account of Hannah taking the boy Samuel “when he was weaned” to the shrine at Shiloh, where he would serve the priest Eli as the fulfillment of Hannah’s vow to dedicate her son, if she became pregnant with a boy, to the service of God. The visit to the Temple completed the cycle of Jewish initiatory liturgies. Jesus was, says Luke, circumcised on the 8th day, presented on the 40th day and dedicated at the age of 12 in the Temple at Jerusalem. The child Jesus was thus born with the destiny to serve God in all aspects of the Jewish tradition.This visit to the Temple at age 12 is also filled by Luke with hints of things to come. The boy Jesus claims the Temple for himself in his childhood, just as he will do later as an adult. In this episode, Jesus acknowledges God as his father, claiming this Temple “as my father’s house,” and stating that he must be about his “father’s business.” He is also in this narrative, said to have been lost “for three days” and when he was found, he was in the “my Father’s house,” revealing echoes of another three days in which Luke will say he was lost until raised by God into a new dimension of God’s presence. His body will then be referred to as the “New Temple.”It is interesting to note that Luke then moves immediately to the story of Jesus’ baptism by John in the River Jordan and the inauguration of his messianic career. Now Joseph disappears from Luke’s text and takes his place in the mythology of the ages, out of which he had come in the first place. With this story the birth narratives have completed their purpose. The meaning of Jesus’ life has been introduced to his followers. With this story we also reach the end of this series of columns, so it is time to summarize.There is nothing in the birth narratives of Matthew and Luke that was ever intended to be viewed as literal history. Both of these gospel authors knew that the birth narratives were designed to explain the source of power experienced in the adult Jesus of Nazareth. Both were trying to say that they had met a power and presence in the life of Jesus that human beings could not themselves have ever produced. Both picked symbols out of Hebrew history to flesh out their stories. Both knew that they were introducing a new idea into the developing Christian tradition. Both were surely aware that their stories of a miraculous birth for Jesus were unknown to Paul who portrayed Jesus as one who was “born of a woman,” as every human being is, and “born under the law,” as every Jew was. The only special claim Paul made for Jesus was that he “was descended from the House of David, according to the flesh.” God for Paul had declared Jesus to be the son of God, not through a miraculous birth, but through “his resurrection from the dead.” (See Romans 1:1-4).They also knew that Mark, whom both Matthew and Luke had incorporated into their gospel accounts, not only had no birth story, but he had also stated that God first entered Jesus at his baptism. Mark even portrayed Jesus’ mother as thinking that the adult Jesus was “beside himself” (see Mark 3), that is, “out of his mind,” when he came to his adult life. That is not the response of one who has been told in advance that her child will be holy, “the son of the highest.” No, both Matthew and Luke were not writing about the literal birth of Jesus. That will be the later agenda of the fundamentalists.Then we saw how these two evangelists developed their stories out of the Hebrew Scriptures. Matthew borrowed from Isaiah, who wrote of kings coming to the “brightness of God’s rising” and bringing with them “gold and frankincense,” to get his narrative of wise men and their guiding star. He adapted for his narrative of Jesus a Moses story about a wicked king who tried to destroy God’s anointed one at birth. He has Jesus repeat the life cycle of the Jewish nation by coming “out of Egypt.” He creates the character of Joseph, Jesus’ earthly father, out of the account of Joseph the patriarch in the book of Genesis (37-50). The two Joseph’s are all but indistinguishable.Luke also borrows images from the Old Testament to describe the birth of John the Baptist. He lifts a story from the book of Daniel to explain how John’s father, Zechariah, got the news that he was to be a father and why he could not speak. He lifts the account of John post-menopausal birth out of the Abraham and Sarah story in the book of Genesis. He populates Bethlehem with shepherds because it was the birthplace of David, the “Shepherd King.” He borrows a text from Isaiah to get his manger and a text from the Wisdom of Solomon to get his “swaddling cloths.” Both narratives are artfully crafted pieces of haggadic Midrash. No Jewish reader would fail to notice that. The two stories are deeply contradictory if one treats them literally, but both serve as overtures to the story of the life of Jesus, introducing themes that will be developed more fully in their later gospel accounts.For most people the birth stories are probably the most familiar part of the New Testament. They are also probably the most misunderstood. They are victimized by the annual Christmas pageants held in most churches. They are distorted by hymns sung, oratorios heard and sermons preached each Christmas season. They are celebrated in lawn crèches built, Christmas cards sent and store windows dressed during the holiday season. Like all birth stories, however, they are not really about the birth of the hero, but about the adult life of the hero. Once we break them out of their literal prison, they take on a new wonder, a new meaning and a new power. That is what these 17 columns over the past two years have also been designed to do. I hope they have succeeded and that the next Christmas season can be entered with open minds and hearts and without the need to defend Jesus from those who think that the only way to be true to Jesus is to literalize the words of the New Testament.~ John Shelby Spong |
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Announcements
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| Christian Mystics with Matthew Fox
Thursday, December 15, 20227
7pm/ET 6pm CT- 5pm/MT-4pm PT
The daily readings Matthew Fox shares here, quotations from Christianity’s greatest mystics and prophets of the past two thousand years, speak to the sacredness of the earth, awe and gratitude, darkness and shadow, compassion and creativity, sacred sexuality, and peacemaking. READ ON ... |
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