hellfire
i’m at a loss and not inclined this week to take up too much oxygen on this earth that is thirsting for rain. or snow. or even a dense fog to begin to smolder the flames that have made for apocalyptic infernos in the land of the backyard grapefruit and avocado, the storybook land where palm trees might be outnumbered only by show runners and gaffers and star-studded trailers.
the west coast is burning like hell and, among too many tragedies to count, one beloved friend has lost his whole classroom filled with 20 years of teaching, and others whom i don’t know have lost everything that constitutes the villages they call home: from the immigrant dry cleaners where they’re known by their shirts and their preference for starch, to the grocery stores where checkers are friends who ask about the kids and how quickly they’ve grown, to the churches and temples and mosques where knees are bent and prayers are sent up, to street after street of somebody’s home, once brimming with ballast and trinkets and treasures saved a whole life long––now embers at best.
it’s the unspoken threads, the immaterial, the irreplaceable human-to-human bonds that feel forever lost. and therein is the crushingest blow.
i often am inclined to keep the big, bad world at bay here. to set the table and let us live our pensive lives in sacred quietude, paying attention to the little noticed. but over the years, the outside has rushed in when the horrors and heartache are too much to ignore. when the grieving belongs to us all.
so it is with the incineration of the city of angels.
i can’t fathom it. can’t imagine the roar of a wall of flame barreling toward the windows, walls, and roofs where Christmas trees might have still been twinkling, where menorahs were just tucked back into cupboards. can’t imagine trying to not breathe in the toxins that are sure to leave scars in too many lungs (lungs are of prime consideration in my anatomy book these days).
my best friend, a long-time california girl, texts whenever she has even a percentage of power in her phone. and begs to talk so she can be soothed by the voice of someone not looking into the distance for the billowing smoke, or the closer-coming wall of red, orange, and blue flame.
she counts herself among the lucky unlucky, she says, for her husband indeed lost his meticulously cataloged classroom bookshelves, and his reams and reams of term papers saved (from before the digital age), and index card notes, and god knows what else a superstar english lit teacher saves. tragic irony is that he spent the summer finally clearing their garage of his files, and methodically transferring all to his bungalow classroom at Palisades Charter High, where beloved colleagues have lost classrooms and every bit of their homes. so suddenly the loss of only a classroom and a lifetime of teaching accoutrements stirs my best and longest friend to place herself in the lucky-unlucky column.
one of my brothers, one i adore for a million and ten reasons, not least of which is because he takes his care for the earth so deeply seriously, walking miles instead of driving, living with the sparest of necessities, always opting for a tent and starry night over any five-star hotel, hit the nail on the head when he captured the debacle thusly:
“Long past time for blame. It’s not politicians, it’s humankind. Most avoid living as if nature matters, yet many are surprised when nature reminds us that she matters. While sad, these fires and losses are not unimaginable.”
we need to do better. we need to remember: this earth is the heart of a sacred equation. it’s ours to romp in, to delight in, to “awe” in. it bountifully feeds us and clothes us and warms us and shelters us. and brings us infinite timeless wisdoms. but it’s begging we till it and keep it. as in the beginning, and ever after. amen.
i’m turning for wisdom again to my friend and fellow pilgrim suleika jaouad, in which she further outlines her antidotes for worry and fear, two conditions that quite prominently rear their heads in CancerLand….(here, prompted by the first bird she saw this year, a little caribbean bird called bananaquit, with a common name “the sugar bird,” suleika went for sweetness as her quest for 2025…funny how intent the searching for essence becomes when life-altering diagnosis is the propellant….
Looking for the sweetness seems like a perfect antidote to the worry and fear. By looking for the sweetness, I mean seeking beauty, presence, and peace in every circumstance, letting go of my fears of suffering and death and what binds us to the material world, being nourished by what’s already inside of us—the nectar of bliss, as its called in Bhagavad Gita. It’s an ongoing practice—to stay nimble, to accept the constant flux, to find contentment wherever I am.
a simple question answered by a modernday mystic:
What do I mean by contemplation? And why does meditation lead us into this state of contemplation? Well, Thomas Aquinas defined contemplation very simply as ‘the simple enjoyment of the truth.’ The simple enjoyment of the truth. You couldn’t get anything more simple than that. It is simply finding joy in what is.
—Brother Lawrence Freeman OSB, World Community for Christian Meditation
seek joy, dear friends. and thank heaven for the peace and calm and freedom from fear that allows you to sit pensively at your kitchen table, or to look out a window, mug of hot something in hand, and dream of a kinder, gentler, more just world of our making….
arguing that loving is not some passive happenstance that wafts in like fairy dust, but rather a human art that insists we practice as a painter would daub day after day at her paints, or a sculptor with her forms and clay, the great german social psychologist, psychoanalyst, and philosopher erich fromm in his 1956 masterwork The Art of Loving makes the case: love is a skill to be honed the way artists apprentice themselves to the work on the way to mastery, demanding of its practitioner both knowledge and effort.
The first step to take is to become aware that love is an art, just as living is an art; if we want to learn how to love we must proceed in the same way we have to proceed if we want to learn any other art, say music, painting, carpentry, or the art of medicine or engineering. What are the necessary steps in learning any art? The process of learning an art can be divided conveniently into two parts: one, the mastery of the theory; the other, the mastery of the practice. If I want to learn the art of medicine, I must first know the facts about the human body, and about various diseases. When I have all this theoretical knowledge, I am by no means competent in the art of medicine. I shall become a master in this art only after a great deal of practice, until eventually the results of my theoretical knowledge and the results of my practice are blended into one — my intuition, the essence of the mastery of any art. But, aside from learning the theory and practice, there is a third factor necessary to becoming a master in any art — the mastery of the art must be a matter of ultimate concern; there must be nothing else in the world more important than the art. This holds true for music, for medicine, for carpentry — and for love. And, maybe, here lies the answer to the question of why people in our culture try so rarely to learn this art, in spite of their obvious failures: in spite of the deep-seated craving for love, almost everything else is considered to be more important than love: success, prestige, money, power — almost all our energy is used for the learning of how to achieve these aims, and almost none to learn the art of loving. —Erich Fromm
and finally, simply because i love the language and the imagery, a bit of eliot to usher us into the week to come…
Chorus X from “The Rock” by T.S. Eliot
O Light Invisible, we praise Thee!
Too bright for mortal vision.
О Greater Light, we praise Thee for the less;
The eastern light our spires touch at morning,
The light that slants upon our western doors at evening.
The twilight over stagnant pools at batflight,
Moon light and star light, owl and moth light,
Glow-worm glowlight on a grassblade.
О Light Invisible, we worship Thee!
We thank Thee for the lights that we have kindled,
The light of altar and of sanctuary;
Small lights of those who meditate at midnight
And lights directed through the coloured panes of windows
And light reflected from the polished stone,
The gilded carven wood, the coloured fresco.
Our gaze is submarine, our eyes look upward
And see the light that fractures through unquiet water.
We see the light but see not whence it comes.
О Light Invisible, we glorify Thee!
In our rhythm of earthly life we tire of light.
We are glad when the day ends, when the play ends; and ecstasy is too
much pain.
We are children quickly tired: children who are up in the night
and fall asleep as the rocket is fired; and the day is long for work or play.
We tire of distraction or concentration, we sleep and are glad to sleep,
Controlled by the rhythm of blood and the day and the night and the seasons.
And we must extinguish the candle, put out the light and relight it;
Forever must quench, forever relight the flame.
Therefore we thank Thee for our little light, that is dappled with shadow.
We thank Thee who hast moved us to building, to finding, to forming at the ends of our fingers and beams of our eyes.
And when we have built an altar to the Invisible Light, we may set thereon the little lights for which our bodily vision is made.
And we thank Thee that darkness reminds us of light.
O Light Invisible, we give Thee thanks for Thine great glory!
“The Rock” was Eliot’s play written and performed in 1934, to raise money for the building of new churches. it speaks to humankind’s relation to God, and the implications of a world lived without religion. makes me wonder what Eliot might write today, in a world where religions have wandered so far from their holy essence. the “choruses” in this 21-page play are spoken by the workers, the bands of laborers who build the churches, and is thought to be strongly pro-religion with anti-communist overtones in reaction to the “looming shadow of totalitarian regimes building in Europe and the rumblings of the coming Second World War.” apt.
as i write this, snow in fat flakes is tumbling down, birds are traffic jammed at the feeder, and all is silent save for the ticking of an old, old arthritic clock and the whoosh of a furnace. i am so deeply conscious of how blessed we are that we take our physical safety for granted here in the middle lands this morning. instead of a question, this is a morning for simple reflection, counting the blessings we so often forget to notice….
top photo above by JOSH EDELSON/AFP via Getty Images
pull up a chair 