The days are hard. Blog posts become rarer as school comes into full swing. I have been ill as well, and that limits stamina even on days off. Autumn is unstoppable, and as I am feeling older, I think more and more about dreading the deep cold and desolation of winter. A few of us are mourning in a way we cannot shake, and I think the seasons have as much to do with that as our gaping wound. Towards the end of the summer, I was at the beach one morning and it was very grey and somewhat cool and everything seemed rather flat. Looking out as far as my eye could take me, I saw the future in that ocean. Endless and colorless. Is this what lies ahead? Terminal. Endless years without relief. Oh, I tell you, the thought of that alone was almost more than I could bear. I am finding very little relief. A few days ago I called it 'a horrible grief,' but even as I typed that, I knew I should have been typing the word 'unspeakable.'
When I do speak to those I love, of course I hear of their joys and sorrows as well... one is mourning the loss of an idea she held for most of her life. She wants to know that time will help it along. At the same time, she doesn't think such mending can be done with haste. She wants my advice. All I can counsel her towards is diversion. The sorrow doesn't leave at all. You choose, when you can, to let your eyes rest on something other. Its a momentary lapse. You interrupt some neuron and stall its message. Its the best we can do for ourselves sometimes.
When I look back on the entries here, I am sometimes surprised how often sacred spaces and sacred music and the belief in the sacred appear. Although nothing here isn't true, I think some of it is somewhat surprising. I do not think I talk so much about that aspect of my thought in my everyday life.
In any case, a song came to mind several days back, and it has been making the time in between less bleak. Somewhere in the past few months I wrote that the natural world seemed flatter in grief. To that I hold. There is an odd juxtaposition at work, tho.' Simultaneously it seems like everything holds a deeper (or double) meaning. We look for meaning. Maybe we once looked in other places... now we look everywhere....
When I was a boy, each week
On Sunday, we would go to church
And pay attention to the priest
He would read the holy word
And consecrate the holy bread
And everyone would kneel and bow
Today the only difference is
Everything is holy now
Everything, everything
Everything is holy now
When I was in Sunday school
We would learn about the time
Moses split the sea in two
Jesus made the water wine
And I remember feeling sad
That miracles don’t happen still
But now I can’t keep track
‘Cause everything’s a miracle
Everything, Everything
Everything’s a miracle
Wine from water is not so small
But an even better magic trick
Is that anything is here at all
So the challenging thing becomes
Not to look for miracles
But finding where there isn’t one
When holy water was rare at best
It barely wet my fingertips
But now I have to hold my breath
Like I’m swimming in a sea of it
It used to be a world half there
Heaven’s second rate hand-me-down
But I walk it with a reverent air
‘Cause everything is holy now
Everything, everything
Everything is holy now
Read a questioning child’s face
And say it’s not a testament
That’d be very hard to say
See another new morning come
And say it’s not a sacrament
I tell you that it can’t be done
This morning, outside I stood
And saw a little red-winged bird
Shining like a burning bush
Singing like a scripture verse
It made me want to bow my head
I remember when church let out
How things have changed since then
Everything is holy now
It used to be a world half-there
Heaven’s second rate hand-me-down
But I walk it with a reverent air
‘Cause everything is holy now
--- Peter Mayer
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