BozeatCross

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.

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“Huge leaping flames from an exploding gasoline tanker melted the steel underbelly of a highway overpass in the East Bay's MacArthur Maze early this morning, causing it to collapse onto the roadway below and virtually ensuring major traffic problems for weeks to come.”

This was the opening of the San Francisco Chronicle article on the MacArthur Maze crash on Sunday, April 29.

Monday night, April 30, we had the Taize’ service in Grace Cathedral. The diverse, devout crowd of 240 people who chanted and prayed for their communities’ deepest concerns had come from all over the Bay Area, many from areas affected by the crash. Students from CDSP took BART; people from Walnut Creek and other East Bay communities took BART. They were all smiling about the experience.

I think this crash, expensive, terrifying, inconvenient, is what we might call a “black swan” event. The great American poet, James Merrill, in his poem “The Black Swan,” has a very Anglo little boy, in a field of white and light, see a black swan on a pond. At the end of the poem, in ecstasy the boy exclaims, “I love the black swan.”

Unintended, unimagined events, wrecking our models and our plans, can lead us to where we need to be, can be occasions of love, and produce the happiness and mode of life for which we long at the deepest level of our being.

As many of you know, I didn’t have even our low emissions/high fuel efficiency hybrid car when I first came to the Diocese. Everything was walking, bus, or BART. I re-learned some things during those months: I was happier being with humanity while traveling, than in my wondrous car (even with its six-CD changer, and the GPS); the people on the bus and BART often spoke to me about their faith, their search for God, their desire to connect with a church, and moving on the earth while leaving a smaller carbon footprint was satisfying.

We need to make an effort to reduce our carbon emissions. Maybe this black swan event is an invitation to change our way of life, to consciously maintain the forced, unlooked for change and embrace it, to say, “I love the black swan.” Try to take public transportation twice during the workweek, or to walk or ride your bicycle to work twice a week. And, if you can afford it, look into your next car being a hybrid. Or, follow the example of my friend, Marion Grau, who teaches theology at CDSP, and do most of your smaller travel by foot and bicycle, and when you need to drive use a shared car. She says that the shared car organization of which she is a member works so well that even if she requests a car the day before she needs it, she usually gets it.

The spiritual truth here is that the ways of God, humility and simplicity, are not only good for our planet, our beautiful home that is in so much trouble, but also produce happiness in us, as we align ourselves with the image of God within and among us.

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