Hi all. "Hot town, summer in the city..."
It has been a good week. I know that might be harder to say if I had paid attention to world and international news recently, but I haven't. (What a confession to make for a former Time Magazine letters correspondent whose focus was replying to reader letters on world and international events!) The benefits of staying on top of the news are way outweighed by the benefits of holding as high an "energy" as possible. Energetically, if not specifically, I know what kinds of news is inevitable right now. It's going to happen; my role, when it is humanly possible, is not to "stop" the events or trends in the world. It is ever to scout out the more loving path, and to try to hear/see/sense/speak the kinds of things the Goddess would say to us, whenever such messages come to me directly or indirectly. It's the only way I seem to be able to create an all-love and -joy and -beauty model.
During the fifteen-month COVID retreat (it really was that in many ways), not having a computer or access to the library meant virtually never playing any Choral Evensong music. I could have played some old CD's, or borrowed my friends' laptop, but I found I just simply couldn't do it. The fact that most of the English cathedrals closed completely for so many months, for the first time in history, was just so shocking. It didn't seem appropriate, somehow, to fill the void, and emotionally I was grieving what felt like a death.
So yesterday, I went online and did some searching, and realized that literally, the "landscape" of the service has changed, whether it turns out to be temporarily or permanently. In some cases, choirs are spread out somewhere in the nave, or arrayed on the steps before the choir screen. They are not singing up in the Choir, closely spaced in rows facing the center aisle, as is traditional for that service. More importantly for me, having in recent years almost always been a member of the congregation, this eliminates the option of sitting up in the seats directly behind and around the choir. That option may well return, but I found the re-placement jarring and its own kind of death. At times, I have told friends that my home is in an English cathedral's choir stalls, so this new layer of exile was painful. Still, it was a joy to hear the music again, and sing along to it. I've decided that most late afternoons, I will play some of this music, reinforcing the anchoress model I spoke of the other week. I will open the door of my heart and "attend" a service virtually. It's remarkable that this is possible, and I am thankful. I will try not to see it as a Plan B, but rather the best Plan A I can do right this minute.
Are you noticing the subtle daily changes to the light outside? I don't remember a year when I've been as aware of diminishing sunlight within weeks of the solstice. It must be something about the garden behind the house where I am staying, and the shade cast by the enormous tree in the corner. I'm also seeing fewer birds than I did in Duluth, but that's in large part because of no bird feeders. My own landscape has changed again, quite literally. And for the moment, it's OK. When a wandering mystic can feel even the slightest rootedness, it is a very good thing.
