4 posts tagged “pilgrimage”
Henry Carse, of St. George's College, Jerusalem, says that the earliest story about the meaning of the Jerusalem Cross is that it is a pilgrim's cross. The central, largest cross, represents the pilgrim, and the four surrounding crosses are smaller as they are community sending forth the pilgrim, standing behind, supporting with prayer.
When the pilgrim reaches the ultimate point of pilgrimage, that source of spiritual meaning for pilgrim's tradition, and turns to make the journey home, the reference of the four smaller crosses changes and becomes the pilgrim community, all those whom the pilgrim has met and with whom her soul has mingled in communion. For me, this is inclusive of the originating community, as, through their prayers, they too were pilgrims, and indeed, in some ways, have the more difficult pilgrimage, unaided by the renewing link to central places of the faith, and only journeying by naked prayer and faith.
After New Orleans, our pilgrim group was plunged into the life of the Taize' Community with about 1,800 other pilgrims, mostly from aged 15 - 30, from many countries and Christian denominations around the world. The national complexion of each week of Taize' from March through November, the period when guests join in the life of the community, varies according to school schedules. Our week had large groups from Sweden, Germany, Finland, Poland, France, Hungary, and the United Kingdom, and the United States, as well as smaller groups and individuals from many other countries.
While at Taize' we shared the life of the Taize' brothers, with three periods of prayer each day, Bible introductions and reflections in smaller groups, work for the life of the whole community, meals in common, and workshops led by the brothers, on such topics as seeing icons, and fair trade and micro-credit.
There is a tree near the Taize' church which has become, over the years I've been involved in leading pilgrimages there, our group meeting place for the meals. Over the course of the week our pilgrims brought more and more of their friends to join our little meal for checking in and companionship within the larger community. This year we were joined by Swedes, Americans, French, English, and Poles, among others. The pilgrim community was growing before my eyes, embodying the story of the Jerusalem cross.
The life at Taize' is very simple, and it is a powerful lesson that most pilgrims respond to this simplicity with real happiness. The meals are quite simple, but we relished them. We sat on the floor of the Taize' church for at least three hours of the course of each day, yet there was never a complaint about this; we were too absorbed in the prayer of chant and of silence. Our pilgrims found the work of cleaning toilets, for example, to be something to which they looked forward, done as it was with singing and in community, often involving deep discussions of their life journeys.
Leaving was tearful. Many of the pilgrims expressed their feeling that in the course of a week they had grown very close to so many others, which I attribute to the extreme liminality of Taize', a characteristic of pilgrimages and places of pilgrimage; we were betwixt and between, and thus open to the promptings of the Holy Spirit.
From Taize' we journeyed to Chartres Cathedral, to visit not only that great pilgrimage destination, but also because of the ancient labyrinth built into the floor of the cathedral, the origin of the Rev. Lauren Artress' incredibly influential work on labyrinths, and the model for not only the two at Grace Cathedral, but uncounted others across the United States and the world. We were blessed to be met at the cathedral by Lauren herself, who gave us a spirited and intelligent introduction to the labyrinth and to the cathedral.
The last evening in France, over a meal at our hotel, we shared our reflections on the pilgrimage. I the pilgrims' stories to be full of courage, awareness, love, and hope for the future. The pilgrims come back with great gifts of the spirit to share in the Diocese of California. I know you will welcome and support their visions as you supported them during the pilgrimage.
Tori Holt Blog Entry #1 06-28-07
This trip so far has been wonderfully eye opening. Everywhere I’m taking on new perspectives and realizations. I’m slowly overcoming my fear of flying, seeing new places I’ve never been, and getting to spend time with new faces. So far every one of my fellow pilgrims has surprised me in some way with their empathy, openness, and willingness to talk about where they’re from and what they are experiencing.
Today we worked with a school that has been formed to offer a safe space for children of the surrounding neighborhood to come and play and use the elements of education which are non academic (Art, Music, Sports, and Theatre) to express themselves. It was an interesting place, ironically set next door to the school deemed one of the “worst” schools in the nation. Ally and I were interested to know quite what qualifies the “worst”. Is it security? Is it the environment? Is it the academics? Is it the teacher to student ratio, which we heard was as high as 80 students to 1 teacher at one time? I found it hard to understand or fathom the real experience of attending such a school, of living in such a neighborhood.
I often find it hard to fathom any situation which calls for empathy for an intense emotional impact on human experience. I strive to be compassionate, but there are some situations which are simply impossible to fully understand. I find it hard to imagine a time when New Orleans could be underwater. I find the city thus far enchanting, and I’ve already used so much space on my camera to capture the beautiful architecture and roadways—we aren’t even to France yet!
At the end of the day, we drove through the Lower 9th Ward, right where the levees broke, and it was a completely out of body experience. I couldn’t feel anything at first. I wanted so badly to understand—to let the horrible truth wash over me…but it just wouldn’t hit me. I watched house after house pass our bus, and slowly became familiar with the X’s (keeping track of flood water, date, and bodies found), the drooping roofs, and the broken windows. I found myself searching every house for these signs, again and again, over and over. I wanted to see them, wanted to photograph them. It was aesthetically beautiful in a very strange way, but by the time we reached the Lower 9th Ward, I felt disgusting taking photos. I didn’t want to look at the destruction, I didn’t want to gawk from inside my air conditioned bus and the safety of returning home. I could not fathom the events of two years prior.
We pulled up to an intersection, and an overturned bus was lying by the side of the road. I don’t know what came over me, but I began to cry and looked away. There were empty lots on our right, and I stared out across them, and couldn’t bring myself to look at the houses on the left for about 3 blocks. When the emotion had passed I felt odd. I realized that to truly understand something, you have to let go of trying to, and instead just let yourself feel it, however that may manifest itself. Everyone reacts differently to phenomena. After I saw the bus, something clicked and I realized the sheer horror of the situation. Reality hits you when you least expect it, and you really can’t control how you will react.
My qualms were soothed when I remembered the children. The school kids are simply inspiring. After struggling to comprehend really being here in New Orleans, I thought I would also have trouble connecting with them. I felt like I would have no way to relate… but this is no way to be. We’re here to help, and we are all fundamentally linked despite our vastly different lives. The kids and a few of our group’s volunteers ended up sitting around a table playing a question game. Each kid from NO was so eager to learn about our lives, and the volunteers were equally interested in the kids’ stories. We made a great connection, and it was electrifying. I left feeling reassured, loved, and embraced by another community.
Even after the most violent storms, the sky calms and a rainbow forms. Will the help of these schools, the children can grow up to be valuable members of their communities, and will lead the way for regrowth and regeneration, which is so much what this city needs. I thank God for these organizations and schools, and for their inspiring work with the children of New Orleans.
Reflection 06/28/07
On the tail end of the day, I feel like I’ve experienced a lot of new things in very quick succession. As of yet, I am not sure what I have learned or what exactly I will take from New Orleans, but I am overwhelmingly thankful for being here.
Visiting the Lower Ninth Ward was the most striking part of the day. Over the past year, I have learned and had discussions about what happened during and after hurricane Katrina both at school and with friends. Even from a distance, it evokes complicated layers of confusion, frustration, sadness, sympathy, and anger. Seeing it in person made everything I had learned seem unnecessary. Even two years later, the physical devastation, the anger and attachment of residents, and just the monumental scale of what happened are even more evident in person as they were through a TV screen and through a newspaper. What seems silly to me is why the relief is so slow coming and why people are still living in such reduced conditions if 5,000 tourists have come through and seen it all so plainly.
Coming here makes me hope that I hang onto the initial explosive emotions I felt while being there, and constructively turn them into productivity. I am really looking forward to coming home (yes, I know, even though the trip just began) as a San Franciscan 15 year old and finding ways of somehow incorporating all of these thing into daily life. Not bad for day one. I am really excited about the rest of the trip.
Lily Moebes
The Rev. Anthony Turney has worked to bring a great gift to the Diocese of California for Easter and the Easter Season. The Keiskamma Altarpiece is coming to Grace Cathedral during that time, from its latest stop in the Diocese of Los Angeles.
The Keiskamma Altarpiece is the soulful work of a group of women and a few men, the last people left surviving the AIDS pandemic in Hamburg, a town in South Africa. The Keiskamma Altarpiece is made in layers, each one folding back to reveal another part of the reality of our incorporation of the the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ in our individual and community lives. It is patterned on the Isenheim Altarpiece, which is in Colmar, France.
I see the work of these 120 or so people in Hamburg as forwarding the truth of what Jesus proclaimed in the Gospel of John: “If I be lifted up, I will draw all things, all people to myself.” As the Keiskamma Altarpiece makes its way from cathedral to cathedral in the Episcopal Church, we are drawn into communion with these people who have been diabolically isolated by disease, poverty, and inhumanity. The nature of evil is to shatter the integrity of creation; the nature of godly creation is to redeem and re-member that which has been broken. These women and men are working with and within the energy of the Trinity to bring us into the harmony of the new creation.
Thinking about the Keiskamma Altarpiece brought to mind the Isenheim Altarpiece, a point of inspiration for the Hamburg artists. One scene on the second layer of the Isenheim Altarpiece has fired my imagination for years. Flanking the Annunciation is an Angel Concert for the Mother and Child. In the angel choir is a startling figure, a wild, rough creature, wholly unlike anything else in the scene.
In my view this wild creature, playing with the rest of the angel choir, rapt in adoration of the Mother and Child, is an illustration of what Jesus was proclaiming; that all those seen as living on the margins of the world, are, in Christ, being brought into relationship with all else, as they are related to Christ.
I used to say the marginal was being brought into the center, but I no longer think this. The threshold, the margin, is where God’s subversive, creative energy works, where we find our potential manifesting. So, it would be more accurate to say that we who imagined ourselves to inhabit a center, of privilege, are being drawn into the creative tension of the margins. But in the startling world of Christ-centeredness, the distinctions between margin and center disappear.
Our Presiding Bishop is on her way to Tanzania, to meet with the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Primates of the Anglican Communion. A woman primate who has supported the full inclusion of gay and lesbian people is apparently a de-centering experience for some. It is worth remembering, for me, the story of Nathaniel having to reconsider his preconceptions about the Messiah, who he is, whence he would come, upon his meeting with Jesus (“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”). This God we worship, embodied in Jesus the Christ, reproduced in people who follow Jesus, seems to be in the habit of meeting us where we least expect, in the lives of those to whom we have not paid attention.
In March, a group of us from the Diocese of California, joining the Pilgrimage for Peace, will travel to South Africa to be part of the TEAM Conference. There we will focus on the AIDS pandemic, especially as it is being experienced in Africa, and on the relief of global suffering through the Millennium Development Goals, and we will do some work for HOPE Africa. The forty youth, young adults, and adults who will comprise the 2007 Pilgrimage for Peace at the TEAM Conference will be taking their part in Christ’s drawing of the world into communion.
I hope you will pray for Katharine and the Primates, for the Pilgrimage for Peace, and for the TEAM Conference. By praying for us, I wonder if you might think of supporting one of the young pilgrims from Alabama, Rhode Island, Olympia or California? I have learned that prayer is all we do when our intention is towards God. The pilgrims will be carrying you with them, and will be seeking to help us, when they return, connect to the whole, as the Keiskamma Altarpiece is doing even now.
