Five hundred and eighty years ago on this day a young woman, perhaps better called a girl, barely nineteen years old, obsessed with hallucinations of divine visitations, emerged against all probabilities as a leader against an occupying army, and as it turns out, for a while a passible general, Joan of Arc was burned at the stake, accused of various things, but principally of heresy. Of course, she was in fact mainly killed for the dual crimes of leading a losing revolt and acting and dressing like a man.
A quarter of a century after her death she was exonorated of the accusation of heresy and declared a martyr. While there was a local cult devoted to her in France for the next several centuries, she wasn’t formally made a saint until 1920.
For me this opens a question, a briefest of meditations on what makes someone holy.
Now some institutions like the Roman church have a clear, if not always observed in detail, process toward formal and official recognition of their official holy ones, saints. But even in the cases of bureaucratic installation, there usually is a rising from the people that is eventually recognized by officialdom.
And the reasons are many. With Joan we get a rebel general with a delicious twist, or, two. She was part of the whole phenomenon of martyrs, those who die for their faith, often in dramatic ways.
And, for me, right off, these aren’t what I would consider saints.
And, I think, I would be wrong.
Human life is just too complex. While I’m a big fan of the separation of church and state in our American republic, I don’t actually believe religion, faith, the matters of life and death, meaning and purpose, can be separated from the mundane, from raising families, making a living, engaging with other people. For us within our republic it is a term of art, keeping one of the religions from becoming official and exercising indue influence – an aspiration not always achievable in a country with a dominant religion. But also an aspiration we should continue to push for, for everyone’s sake.
That said.
In reality, in our bones, our spiritual traditions and our lived lives, are, of course, intertwined. So, having a cult devoted to a kid with visions who for a moment stood up to an occupying army, is okay by me.
And.
But.
One of those words.
There is something else I think that is more important.
And that is the guide who shows by example the way into and through the mysteries of life and death, meaning and meaninglessness, raising families, making a living, engaging.
In my Zen tradition the exemplars of old, the masters found in the great koan anthologies are all now the result of much polishing and selection. We don’t get a whole lot of their personalities, some, but not a whole lot. Their job is just to point the way.
And, I’m grateful for that.
And I honor them as my saints.
But, increasingly, I find myself drawn to those who I’ve come to know, or whom I’ve been able to observe over the years unvarnished. These people, in every single case, I’ve seen have flaws, shortcomings, and on occasion have made rather astonishing missteps and even violations of ethics, and once in a while of laws. Not in a crazy wisdom justifiable for the greater depth, but because they’re flawed.
And it is among them I find the real way. They are the pointers on the way that matter most for me.
They show it all.
The great mess.
The real deal.
What they do, and in particular, what they do out of having done something wrong shows it. Small or great, their actions show who they are, and who I might become.
Here I find the pointers that actually help me.
And, so today, on the feast of a girl with visions, I tip my hat to all those who, almost always without any intention of doing so, have become my guides, my exemplars, my saints.
Most of you don’t know who you are.
But, you’re there.
And I thank you.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In