A Candle in the Window

They say that my Celtic ancestors, in time before memory, would light a candle in the window on Samhain’s eve, so that the dead could find their way home again. For me, this day—All Hallow’s Eve, the eve of All Saint’s Day, Samhain, the Day of the Dead—is a time to remember my own dead. The faces and memories of those loved and lost. And not completely lost, for they live on in our collective memories and some of them live on in the memory of this place.

This is the day of thin places, of thin borders between the living and the dead, ever sacred to the Celts and to many peoples for its crossing of boundaries.

It troubles me sometimes to wonder if my dead have a home to which they can return. My ancestors are of a people who have wandered ever westward, searching for but rarely finding “a secure life in a land of plenty.” We moved constantly, amid landscapes both grand and marred by an industrial ideology.

My people came west for the jobs promised by a rising industrial power—to cut giant trees, to harvest fruit, to build vast cities that empty the desert of water, to mine rocks, and to lay railroad tracks. Of my great grandparents, one worked on the railroads, another build automobiles. None were every fully settled into place and thus, my ancestors’ final resting places are scattered across the entire west, from the Ohio River to Texas, from the deserts of Arizona and southern California to the forest land of the coastal west.

So, while my ancestors apparently cherished some memories of their respective homelands, by the time my generation was born, we had no idea where we had come from, nor did we have a homeland to speak of.  The memories of the borderlands of Scotland and Ireland, of Spain, or of northern France were only a faint shadow; so too were the more recent home of the Alleghany mountains or of central Canada or the southwest tip of Arizona.

And so my generation anew attempts to create home out of the transient heritage we have been given. My dead, those I personally have lost, lay scattered across several states, and yet firmly rooted in my heart. Somehow, in our random search for home, we have learned to make home on pilgrimage.

So, on this night, I will burn a candle in my window, calling my loved and lost ones home from the four corners of the west, home into my heart.

Sacrament and Desecration

My niece in the apple tree I planted almost 20 years ago.

In this corner of the world, it is harvest time. That means that, all around me, people are canning madly and harvesting the last of their vegetables. Guys and gals are standing around, talking about the salmon catch this year and how many deer they were able to bag. Having returned too late to plant a garden and being out of practice enough not to attempt hunting this year, I am an observer, though happy to sample the fruits of others’ labor.

And I am reminded of a favorite quote from Wendell Berry. “To live, we must daily break the body and shed the blood of Creation. When we do this knowingly, lovingly, skillfully, reverently, it is a sacrament. When we do it ignorantly, greedily, clumsily, destructively, it is a desecration.”

I am struck often by the reverence that those in this part of the world view the work they do. The care people take with the harvest, with the soil, with the preservation of food for the winter. The insistence that every part of a slaughtered animal be used and used well.

We cannot live without death—this is an incontrovertible fact of life. The forest would disappear if trees did not fall and die to nourish the soil and if animals did not do the same. Even if we choose to eat a vegetarian diet, we eat from plants whose life cycle we have interrupted, planted on soil that had to be cleared of forest and animals in order to grow. And, in the short growing season and long winters of this part of the world, if one were to try to live sustainably and relatively locally, the taking of animal life is a necessity.

Berry points out that, in this, we have no choice. However, we can treat this sacrifice of life for life as a sacrament. I know people who murmur thanks to the deer they have shot, honoring its sacrifice for their own sustenance. Most of us who have gardens large or small, know that such work is often deep spiritual practice, as we connect with the soil, with the nourisher of life. I remember, ages ago, long afternoons of slaughtering chickens for the winter. We would take the birds we had raised from little chicks, birds who had lived on the land, cared for and protected, and, gently and mercifully take their life. I remember an almost biblical sense of reverence on those days—a deep understanding that these birds gave their lives to sustain my own.

Or, we can take life destructively; in which case, such an act is a desecration. Factory farming is a case in point, of course. And there is also a tradition of hunting I encounter on occasion, often from people who live in cities and come out here only to hunt, that can be destructive, that goes beyond the thrill and skill of the hunt. That takes life cavalierly, without reverence. I have on occasion encountered a skinned and headless carcass left to rot.

Perhaps most of us live in between sacrament and desecration. The last hamburger I ate was likely from a factory farm. And the apples from the trees I planted in childhood taste amazing this year.

Sitting with Suffering

As I meet with people under the bridge in Aberdeen, as I minister on the street, I often think of how important it is to learn to sit with suffering. Sometimes the hardest thing we do is watch people we love suffer—be it friends, neighbors, family members, or simply another human being.

And we want to fix it. I want to get people off the street and into stable living situations—damn it, I would be ok if I could just find a few warm beds for the guys standing around in our circle with trembling hands in the cold. We are always looking for the right things to say and do, always looking for a fix. And, that is a good impulse. It is good that we are able to feel the pain of another and good that we want to fix a society where it is the new norm for a good 1% of our population to be on the street (that’s 3.5 million people in the U.S, folks!).

And, yet, sometimes our rush to find a solution, a fix, is a reflection of our own need to feel ok. Our own discomfort at suffering. An effort to make ourselves feel better. We tell our friend whose father just died nice platitudes because it makes us feel better that we have “done something.” We hand out supplies and coats and food to people on the street, perhaps even things they would not ask for or want, because we are the ones that can’t stand to watch someone else suffer. As I stood today in a little circle with a few guys, sometimes in silence, I realized again the value of just being with a person. 

I learned something of sitting with suffering early in life. I remember confronting death many times as a child, but it was when, in the course of a few shorts months, a dear 14 year old friend and my grandfather died that I learned most about grief. I was at my granddad’s bedside when he died and I sat with my dad afterwards, with his own great, silent grief between us. I got an early morning call that Ashley had died, a friend sobbing on the other line, two states now between us. Both times, I was overwhelming struck with my inability to do anything or say anything to assuage the grief of those around me—and I found myself deeply annoyed at the platitudes I was given about angels in heaven and drinking with St. Peter and God’ will.

This experience and others since have taught me that the best friends and mentors in my life have been those who have been willing to sit with me. Have been willing to feel my pain, knowing full well that they cannot fix it or fix me. Their example of selfless love has been my inspiration, because I would not be here without them.

And so I stand on the street in the cold, unable to fix anything. Unable to meet all the overwhelming needs that meet me. And the great paradox is this: in letting go of the need to assuage our own discomfort with suffering, we give our greatest gift. The gift of presence. The gift of standing with and alongside another in their greatest need. And sometimes it is the greatest gift that can be given.

The Gift of Time

My darling little niece

My years in college and seminary seemed to pass in a whirl. I never had enough time—time to do the readings or write the papers or prepare for exams or work side jobs. Sometimes I was not sure I had the time to breathe.

I was struck in an interview with Wendell Berry by his advice to young people to have patience, to be patient in emergency. Perhaps the older generations have always told the young these words. But they seem to take on special significance in our age of rushed schedules. And in our age of imperiled resources and increased fear and uncertainty in the face of change. My generation, perhaps more than any other, is a generation raised on technology and instant gratification, a generation always in a hurry but never sure where it is going, a generation facing a tremendous sense of crisis.

It was oddly comforting for me to hear Berry’s words. My crazy school schedule is over. I have come home to the harbor, home to the forest and the sea, home among friends and family, and away from the centers of power and influence. And my lesson to learn is patience. Patience in crisis, with people all around me struggling to survive, with a world in turmoil, with my own sense of call still struggling to manifest.

And in the silence of my meditations and my walks in the forest, in the in the new routine of my life and ministry, I am coming to realize that what I seek is not simply a career or a purpose, but a well lived life. A life lived in company with those I love, in relationship with a broken world, in relationship with my neighbors, in relationship with the land. Because one cannot change a world without changing oneself. One cannot find hope in crisis without being willing to change how one lives. 

I am only a beginner in living such a life. I am still impatient. I still want quick answers. But, ever so slowly, I am learning to listen and learning to be patient in an emergency.