As those who read this blog know I live out my life within the rhythms of two spiritual communities, a church and a sangha. Taken together they inform everything I say or do, either as an expression of what they’ve taught me, or as examples of how I’ve fallen short of my ideals.
Sadly, more often for the later reason…
So, nine days ago.
Just as sesshin was beginning I learned of the death of a member of the congregation. I was involved in some communications, a few phone calls and some emails, but as per my covenant with the church I then took off to our temple in Worcester and left our lay ministers, administrator and other leaders to attend to that profound need.
Of course there is no way I could just put it down.
I sat with thoughts of the person who had died, tragically, at his own hand a lot over this past week. And of his family. And of the many communities his life touched. And among those various things that washed through my heart was how I was not going to be there at a critical time, at a major passage point in many lives, lives for which I have some responsibility, my obligations for the cure of souls…
And, haunting me all along was that motto I found engraved on my heart in my first year of ministry: death trumps.
But, also, there was a deep, deep need for me to go to the retreat. Too deep to fully describe, but I feel obligated to try.
Partially I had to go because I am a leader of that retreat. And that becomes a simple explanation for most who might ask. But, there were other teachers at the retreat, so really, at bottom, it was not about that.
Rather, it has to do with the rhythm of life, of recalling what’s what, and seeing into the depths.
I am also haunted (I live with many ghosts, some delightful, some so terrible…) by that Japanese proverb: Vision without action is a daydream. And, action without vision is a nightmare.
I know some amazing people devoted to the contemplative life who in their more or less perpetual retreat from the cares and snares of the world have achieved a calmness that is so profound, and actually, contagious; that I cannot help but bow down to the great mystery knowing their retreat somehow bleeds into the world in a way that contributes to the great healing.
But for most of us, for me, that isn’t the call.
Rather, we need the cycles of retreat and advance. We need to have our actions informed by insight and our insights confirmed in actions.
We sit.
We act.
And then we need to start again…
Today Jan and I go to visitation and burial for our friend. This service has been put together by the family who belong to another faith tradition, with help from our gang. The lay ministers, our administrator, many others in the church (and particularly one member of the congregation) all really stepped up to the plate. Early in September there’ll be a larger and more public event out of the church in which I’ll have a more engaged role.
Today is about presence.
Which I find particularly important in the wake of the long silence which still clings to Jan and me…
Fortunately, sometimes just presence, just witnessing is enough.
Or, that is, as enough as we will ever find in this world of so much need.
I can only say that these things in the back of my heart called me forth throughout the retreat, through the many hours of silence, through the cries of the heart found in liturgy and the talks and very much in those precious moments of presence as a spiritual director with those walking deep into their very being, and into the being of the world, learning and teaching.
Silence. Acting.
Vision.
Action.
And now back.
Hopefully to act informed by that great silence
out of which we came
which surrounds every blessed thing we do
and to which
in good time
we shall return…
I re-read this and feel my failure at conveying it all.
Let me try again.
Just this.
Dear ones.
Just this.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In