Ah, Martin -- how beautiful! Good lord! There is a story from the Vyatka labor camp—part of the Soviet gulag, in the remote wilderness of the taiga—of the childlike holy elder, Father Pavel Gruzdev, serving a liturgy with other prisoners, though they had no temple, no vestments, no chalice, no bread, no wine—nothing, except for their own precious human bodies and the impenetrable forest. “As in the first Christian centuries, when worship was often performed in the open air,” the story goes, “Orthodox Christians went out into the forest and began worship in a forest glade.” For the wine, they made juice from wild blueberries, strawberries, lingonberries, and blackberries. For a censer they had a tin can, the priests' vestments were prisoners' rags, the bishop's throne nothing more than a tree stump: “High pines, grass in the glade, cherubic throne, blue sky, wooden bowl with the juice of forest berries—everyone wept, not from grief, but from the joy of prayer.”
Graham, this reminds me of Teilhard de Chardin’s “Mass on the World”. When he was exiled to China and he ached because there would be no Eucharist for him, he didn’t throw out the Eucharist, but instead plunged deeper through the map - of hammered out creeds and canons - to the very sacred heart of the world. I have celebrated a mass on the world in a room full of about 200 people, and there was the sense that our very risen and fermented selves were re-membered as the body.
This liturgy of the wild landed as I was on a train heading up to London, not to join The Queue, although I would if I'd been able as something deep had been urging me to make the pilgrimage. Not to join the Queue but to see Irish folk singer Lisa O Neill at the Queen Elizabeth Hall.
Cundrie's lace hanky, from her deep dark place of mystery and wisdom, ancient knowledge soaked into its delicate folds, jumped straight off the page. As I walked through Westminster to the river this afternoon I found myself listening for the third time, to Parzival (2018 recording) on what has unfolded into a strange, questing afternoon.
By chance I dived into Westminster Cathedral, a tremendous temple of marble and mosiac, Saints glittering on every ceiling, a holy place I once would seek shelter from the stresses of working in the thick of it up the road. With the air heavy with frankincense, a beautiful mass being sung, I joined the queue in time for a blessing. St Bernadette of Lourdes relic had passed through just the week before, probably on her way to Holywell, to meet St Winnifred's finger bone in whose icy waters I'd plunged just a fortnight ago. The divine feminine keeps showing up.
In the Lady Chapel, a glorious mosaic held a Tree of Life with Mary on one side, water pouring from its roots, its branches holding a vesica piscis with Jesus sat on a double rainbow. I was reminded of the double rainbow that had opened out over Buckingham Palace just around the corner just after the Queen died. This mandorla seemed to be the chalice in the tree. A place of origin for Grail keeper lace hankies. With that image, I walked on, accompanied by Parzival, negotiating the crowds as the old streets of Westminster filled with an anticipatory electricity. l passed my old office opposite Westminster Hall where the Queen was Lying in State. Somehow a whole portal opened up in this modern medieval landscape.
It's been a strange week, and the passing of the old era feels as though it is now coming to a head. London has changed so much even in the last five years since I left Her Majesty's Service And here was Cundrie waving her hanky, through the throngs, through the crowds setting up camp against the barriers on Whitehall, through The Queue, snaking along the bank of the Thames, with an oddly festival atmosphere, through the group of African nuns dressed all in white singing incredible harmonies as they walked, through the Pearly King with his Jubilee jacket, through the blood orange sky with Big Ben in silhouette as the sun set, through the full rainbow that appeared over the Queen Elizabeth Hall as the last rays hit the dome of St Paul's Cathedral, through the incredible songs of the evening, through the three gold coins we threw to the Thames from the middle of the bridge, marking the end of this Elizabethan Age.
Martin, I just read the following quotation in the Daily Bread. You may know it but, if not, I hope you like it and thank you again for your wonderful piece: Reflecting on the story or Moses and the burning bush, the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrore that ' Earth's crammed with heaven, / And every common bush afire with God; / But only he who sees, takes off his shoes.'
We all wrestle the god alone I suppose. Each to our own Peniel, and no sketch of that face is likley ever a neat match. But before the waters of Jabbok, before we lose trade our names for another there is always that sleep with the rock under our heads and those ladder dreams. I think maybe we gather those stones from the things said around the round table. It isn't the featherdown wellwishes that send us further on and further in but the hard lith-words with their fossils of consciousness, the fissures of hard knocks, and the bits rubbed smooth by nights at sea. If we are lucky maybe that stone comes with a bit of moss as well. These last months Martin your generously mossed stones have been the lith I have layed my head on in the dark. There is veins in the stone new enough to be strange but much of the matter is familiar and home if maybe worked with a more mastered flint. Maybe to see the ladder you need the strange, the learning from but find a place on rock for mind to rest you need a shape that is close enough to your owm skull's topography. I find myself in the middle of the river between a here and there or maybe an image and a presence. The old lion of a poet who first tipped me backward into the waters of Mandelstam and Yeats used to gravel at me some bent version of Veteshenko that you can't leap halfway across the abyss. I think you may have found a way to foot a similar chasm of questions just right and make land without betraying whatever it is in that cave we can't live without. I'd give a fair deal from a chance to talk about the footing if you ever had an hour to trade. Not many priests worth letting in the door in these parts.
Well Martin, you just got yourself a new paid subscriber :) That was a blog post after my own heart. I’ve also recently become an Orthodox Christian and wrote a little about the sense of home, the beauty of the Theotokos, the dome, the earth and the cosmic nature of the Christian story. Thank you so much for the companionship on the journey. I’m always so thrilled to find fellow travellers.
Oh I have never written anything public. Just for myself. But I can share my short paragraph on the Dome here I suppose.
“For 21 years I walked and worshipped in the place that I lived. Living a rural lifestyle, I am always confronted with various forms of embodied truth. The forms are found in sheep and goats, in the majesty of a Douglas fir as it reaches heavenward, in the hatching of an egg and the tender love of a ewe for her lamb. There is nothing that does not speak of the love of God and the pattern of Being, and His presence saturated my world and myself. Overhead is a dome.
A dome that stretches as far as I can see, a dome that shines with the sun by day, from which the long awaited rains fall,, and one in which, when the sun retreats, reveals the universe. I step out my door at night and revel in the dome that contains the Milky Way as it seems to hover right over my house.
My church is so vast that as I explored it more each year, I came to realize that it was a vastness that only expanded with my journey. Not only was it made by God, it was just like God, and as I discovered more of it, I discovered more of God.
All the while I was content, until I read one of the Early Church Fathers. It was a haphazard meeting, a chance encounter. I read about space and time, stars, sun and moon, Cosmic Liturgy, a Lamb slain before the foundation of the world, the christology of the Old Testament and I sensed that I knew this place. It was familiar to me and it was just as large and vast as the domed church I had been communing in for much of my life.
I have never been in a domed church. A domed church, where the voices raised in songs of worship, sound as if they are raining down from heaven. I don’t know if I will ever get the opportunity to visit one, but the dome still covers me. When I look up, I see Christ, I see Him everywhere.“
"When I look up, I see Christ, I see Him everywhere." Thank you Shari - from seeing to beholding the earth. I'm going to keep an eye on embodied forms today...
I love your vision of the Cosmic Church. When we disrobe from the garments of the modern scientific-reductionism which spins us into an artificial nausea, we can see that the Earth and Sky are the floor and dome of the original temple. Likewise the human and the heart contain this same map. You must have read St. Maximus' vision of the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ. If not, I highly recommend it! Truly the Church is all around us, and the stone and dome Churches of Orthodoxy are the alembic stills that condense the elements into the oil of our thanksgiving.
I haven’t read Maximus yet, although I have the book. Something told me I wasn’t ready yet, and so I waited.
Love how you said that, so very beautiful. I especially love how you landed on thanksgiving. So much of what and how we see is dependant on gratitude. I have a running argument with a friend on which comes first, gratitude or humility. I say gratitude, but maybe they are codependent.
I feel you on that. His writing is intensely compressed and I don't have the disk reader to unpack it all. Somehow, I can get the crumbs from his table, enough to feed me for weeks when I chew on them.
"Thanksgiving is, every time, apprehension of the world - apprehension of it as it was given to us by God and discovery about our very selves, as having been called by God." - Alexander Schmemann "The Eucharist"
I listened to this twice in the span of one hour. First around a small fire with a dear friend. The second time with our wives who were gathered inside. Both times, your Jesus prayer incantation brought a welcome wetness to my eyes.
Sophia. Wisdom. The divine feminine. The longing for that eternal warm embrace. I’ve sought it my whole life, in the depths of the Amazon and the ecstatic rhythms of music, yet I finally feel it emerging in the pulsing stillness of Divine Liturgy. Christianity is the only frame that can hold that cosmic vision. The Ancient Christianity that weaves myth and fact into one undeniably potent story of our entire existence.
I tremble at the thought of even being able to touch the hem of such a truth since it is one that both destroys the over-sweetened passions while granting us our purest form. “Thou lovest me more than I am able to love thee” St Philaret.
Thank you friend. I feel there is an angel watching over your journey. May she bring us all towards such a wonderful vision.
“Thou lovest me more than I am able to love thee” St Philaret. Beautiful. And when even glimpsed for a second, so devastating. Thank you for sharing my few words with your loved ones William.
Oh what perfect beautiful balm at this time when the country is trembling. My mum in her twilight time has found her ground very unsteady recently and today in the second day of our novena to Saint Cyprian whose feast day was this week. The transformation of prayer in that story is powerful for us both at this time. Today our prayers were focused on the almsgiving and charity and compassion of Saint Cyprian so feeling the presence of Robin of the wild dreaming was such a perfect gift.
The soundcloud of my mother's church was a little sparse today so this has lifted and brought much beauty to our Sunday. She needs to be extra careful this weekend with isolation but the whole morning with this lifting us and my little explanation of the grail references to my mum has lead to a discussion now on the church itself being at times akin to entering a grail along with my dear dad off on beautiful ramble of the grail significance and Gnosticism. Your readings are often a family experience! Much gratitude! It's been a long time for my mum away from physically being in her church and today something in her altered to feel the courage to break the isolation and seek solace again in the shared experience of being in her church when she is able. Maybe it's Cundrie making her presence known. Much love to you and the wild dreaming of Dartmoor and all that gather around the hearth of The House of Beasts & Vines.
My dear Martin, you have excelled yourself. This is simply beautiful, thank you. I love to be lead down a path to further explore and this is what you hve given me with your piece, Parzival and Snowy Tower.
Thank God for Cundrie, la sorcière most needed. I sometimes feel like she knocks me upside the head with the grail-stone. To much appreciation. I'm due for another knocking soon, I fear.
O Martin. I always think I am going to weave just the right words to send to you, but right now I am in Chartres after teaching a two day circle called Meeting Mary which included a private labyrinth walk for which I got to sing and flute the music, I am so full of Her— and of course her son. . her humanity is cosmic and she is speaking loudly and I am sure she would love to sit by your fire in the autumn turning woods of Dartmoor (which I once again passed in the way to Tintagel with my Avalon pilgrims just before the Queen passed)
And of course the Earth is the Grail! And .Robin Hood led your way.
Every time I read your words I am saved, much love to you!
I didn’t grow up going to church… and I still don’t go. My family went to synagogue very rarely, but I went to enough Kinderschule on Sundays to learn a few songs and a love for the good books. Church where I live in the US has the substance and ambience of cardboard. Actually a cardboard box would be infinitely more inviting than the churches I’ve been to here. I’ve had the opportunity to go while in Jerusalem and Greece a few times. But the real church is by far wherever there is water in the desert wilderness of the Holy Land. I mean, perhaps church is a tent and a Minyan, or church is wherever you are and you want it to be—but I do hope you can make it someday to the land of the Galilee. There are few things I can think of that I’d love to be there for or hear about more than that adventure!
Because the letters of the Hebrew alphabet are living, the essence of a word is contained within itself and brought to life in a very unique way when written or spoken—especially compared to English.
Within the word Water/Mayim/מים, are all kinds of water:
מ/Mem is flowing water, rivers and waterfalls
י/Yod is the single drop, and
ם/Final Mem is all contained bodies of water—lakes, ponds, and the ocean/womb of everything.
‘Mary’ comes from ‘Maryam’.
Mar/מר meaning ‘bitter’, and
Yam/ים the word for ‘sea’.
Within the word ‘sea’/yam/ים, is the single drop of water and the ocean—the bittersweet water of tears and the womb of everything.
Your name is similar: מרטין.
Mar/מר, bitter
tin/טין…. Tín is a form of silt or clay.
Shaw/שָׁעַע, to take delight in, or to be smooth of speech.
A letter Shin /שׁ, three prongs of fire
and two Ayin/ע, the eye of God
I’m just having fun though …
Your Hebrew name would probably be a little more something like מרדכי היער
Mordecai Ha’Ya’ar
But you do set fire to the heart’s eyes and make us cry with your words, turning even the roughest boulders (and lobbed rocks) into twilight walks on the sandy shore of all those wyrd places.
Ah, once again you weave mightily, such grand and mischievous strands. Among the many strands, I'm particularly struck by "the Grail is the Earth," "looking for a Christianity as huge as this forest," "the Round Table of my soul," and "let enchantment fall away and grace prevail." Throughout, grace abounds! Marvel on, my friend.... with gratitude.
Your writing is a brain-workout for me, Martin. Your oak-grounded beckoning into the scope of a Christ-shaped life. I read it twice. Cundrie overwhelms my evangelical moorings. I still don't get it but something lands somewhere that feels like room-to-move. My imagination crawls along in increments. I've mentioned before that I teach Sunday School to 10 and 11 year olds. Since paying attention to your writing I've added Gilgamesh and Ra and Persephone to the line-up of stories I tell. My young listeners are pleased with the contextualizing of Abraham and Moses and Jesus. The contrasts. The similarities. It makes the stories trust-worthy. Swimming in ancient currents. Today we stood outside and contemplated the fall equinox and the descent of our stories into darkness. Launching us on a quest for light in the underworld. So, despite the brain-workout, this is the influence your writing is having on me. Attempting in a small (modus operandi for which we are known) Canadian way to imagine with my charges a cedar-sheltered liturgy of the wild. Thank you.
Thank you Martin, your words never fail to elicit emotion and this morning's offering brings a fullness of heart and many shed tears. Quite often I don't even know what to make of your sharings and the deep connection with the Divine Mystery that results, but understand it as a gift of Grace, deep nourishment, a blessing I'm not worthy of, but one I am forever grateful for.
Martin, my heart burned within me as I listened this morning, your fidelity to Sophia witness hidden in Proverbs. This passage helped me hold on to the golden thread I found as a child in fairy tales, myths, and Rivendell. Later I struggled to find wise Christian authors. I loved Lewis’ That Hideous Strength where the mother goddess appears in a baptized vision in preparation for the stunning recognition of Jesus present. Buffy St. Marie’s song God is Alive, Magic is Afoot also broke through the barriers.
I pray for wisdom for you as you prepare to tell your long story of Parsifal, sought for many years, that all things are made new. Thank you.
Ah, Martin -- how beautiful! Good lord! There is a story from the Vyatka labor camp—part of the Soviet gulag, in the remote wilderness of the taiga—of the childlike holy elder, Father Pavel Gruzdev, serving a liturgy with other prisoners, though they had no temple, no vestments, no chalice, no bread, no wine—nothing, except for their own precious human bodies and the impenetrable forest. “As in the first Christian centuries, when worship was often performed in the open air,” the story goes, “Orthodox Christians went out into the forest and began worship in a forest glade.” For the wine, they made juice from wild blueberries, strawberries, lingonberries, and blackberries. For a censer they had a tin can, the priests' vestments were prisoners' rags, the bishop's throne nothing more than a tree stump: “High pines, grass in the glade, cherubic throne, blue sky, wooden bowl with the juice of forest berries—everyone wept, not from grief, but from the joy of prayer.”
That's it, that's an immense story. That changes the entire day, week, month after hearing such a thing. Thank you Graham and for your important work.
Graham, this reminds me of Teilhard de Chardin’s “Mass on the World”. When he was exiled to China and he ached because there would be no Eucharist for him, he didn’t throw out the Eucharist, but instead plunged deeper through the map - of hammered out creeds and canons - to the very sacred heart of the world. I have celebrated a mass on the world in a room full of about 200 people, and there was the sense that our very risen and fermented selves were re-membered as the body.
Waving a Lace Hanky
This liturgy of the wild landed as I was on a train heading up to London, not to join The Queue, although I would if I'd been able as something deep had been urging me to make the pilgrimage. Not to join the Queue but to see Irish folk singer Lisa O Neill at the Queen Elizabeth Hall.
Cundrie's lace hanky, from her deep dark place of mystery and wisdom, ancient knowledge soaked into its delicate folds, jumped straight off the page. As I walked through Westminster to the river this afternoon I found myself listening for the third time, to Parzival (2018 recording) on what has unfolded into a strange, questing afternoon.
By chance I dived into Westminster Cathedral, a tremendous temple of marble and mosiac, Saints glittering on every ceiling, a holy place I once would seek shelter from the stresses of working in the thick of it up the road. With the air heavy with frankincense, a beautiful mass being sung, I joined the queue in time for a blessing. St Bernadette of Lourdes relic had passed through just the week before, probably on her way to Holywell, to meet St Winnifred's finger bone in whose icy waters I'd plunged just a fortnight ago. The divine feminine keeps showing up.
In the Lady Chapel, a glorious mosaic held a Tree of Life with Mary on one side, water pouring from its roots, its branches holding a vesica piscis with Jesus sat on a double rainbow. I was reminded of the double rainbow that had opened out over Buckingham Palace just around the corner just after the Queen died. This mandorla seemed to be the chalice in the tree. A place of origin for Grail keeper lace hankies. With that image, I walked on, accompanied by Parzival, negotiating the crowds as the old streets of Westminster filled with an anticipatory electricity. l passed my old office opposite Westminster Hall where the Queen was Lying in State. Somehow a whole portal opened up in this modern medieval landscape.
It's been a strange week, and the passing of the old era feels as though it is now coming to a head. London has changed so much even in the last five years since I left Her Majesty's Service And here was Cundrie waving her hanky, through the throngs, through the crowds setting up camp against the barriers on Whitehall, through The Queue, snaking along the bank of the Thames, with an oddly festival atmosphere, through the group of African nuns dressed all in white singing incredible harmonies as they walked, through the Pearly King with his Jubilee jacket, through the blood orange sky with Big Ben in silhouette as the sun set, through the full rainbow that appeared over the Queen Elizabeth Hall as the last rays hit the dome of St Paul's Cathedral, through the incredible songs of the evening, through the three gold coins we threw to the Thames from the middle of the bridge, marking the end of this Elizabethan Age.
"All the tired horses in the sun
How am I gonna get any riding done?"
Lisa O Neill singing Bob Dylan
The Thames loves gold, thank you Serena - and to hear of the singing African nuns.
Wonderful
Martin, I just read the following quotation in the Daily Bread. You may know it but, if not, I hope you like it and thank you again for your wonderful piece: Reflecting on the story or Moses and the burning bush, the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrore that ' Earth's crammed with heaven, / And every common bush afire with God; / But only he who sees, takes off his shoes.'
One of my favourites! Thank you Rick.
We all wrestle the god alone I suppose. Each to our own Peniel, and no sketch of that face is likley ever a neat match. But before the waters of Jabbok, before we lose trade our names for another there is always that sleep with the rock under our heads and those ladder dreams. I think maybe we gather those stones from the things said around the round table. It isn't the featherdown wellwishes that send us further on and further in but the hard lith-words with their fossils of consciousness, the fissures of hard knocks, and the bits rubbed smooth by nights at sea. If we are lucky maybe that stone comes with a bit of moss as well. These last months Martin your generously mossed stones have been the lith I have layed my head on in the dark. There is veins in the stone new enough to be strange but much of the matter is familiar and home if maybe worked with a more mastered flint. Maybe to see the ladder you need the strange, the learning from but find a place on rock for mind to rest you need a shape that is close enough to your owm skull's topography. I find myself in the middle of the river between a here and there or maybe an image and a presence. The old lion of a poet who first tipped me backward into the waters of Mandelstam and Yeats used to gravel at me some bent version of Veteshenko that you can't leap halfway across the abyss. I think you may have found a way to foot a similar chasm of questions just right and make land without betraying whatever it is in that cave we can't live without. I'd give a fair deal from a chance to talk about the footing if you ever had an hour to trade. Not many priests worth letting in the door in these parts.
Well Martin, you just got yourself a new paid subscriber :) That was a blog post after my own heart. I’ve also recently become an Orthodox Christian and wrote a little about the sense of home, the beauty of the Theotokos, the dome, the earth and the cosmic nature of the Christian story. Thank you so much for the companionship on the journey. I’m always so thrilled to find fellow travellers.
We share a similar journey sister! Where can I read your writing?
Oh I have never written anything public. Just for myself. But I can share my short paragraph on the Dome here I suppose.
“For 21 years I walked and worshipped in the place that I lived. Living a rural lifestyle, I am always confronted with various forms of embodied truth. The forms are found in sheep and goats, in the majesty of a Douglas fir as it reaches heavenward, in the hatching of an egg and the tender love of a ewe for her lamb. There is nothing that does not speak of the love of God and the pattern of Being, and His presence saturated my world and myself. Overhead is a dome.
A dome that stretches as far as I can see, a dome that shines with the sun by day, from which the long awaited rains fall,, and one in which, when the sun retreats, reveals the universe. I step out my door at night and revel in the dome that contains the Milky Way as it seems to hover right over my house.
My church is so vast that as I explored it more each year, I came to realize that it was a vastness that only expanded with my journey. Not only was it made by God, it was just like God, and as I discovered more of it, I discovered more of God.
All the while I was content, until I read one of the Early Church Fathers. It was a haphazard meeting, a chance encounter. I read about space and time, stars, sun and moon, Cosmic Liturgy, a Lamb slain before the foundation of the world, the christology of the Old Testament and I sensed that I knew this place. It was familiar to me and it was just as large and vast as the domed church I had been communing in for much of my life.
I have never been in a domed church. A domed church, where the voices raised in songs of worship, sound as if they are raining down from heaven. I don’t know if I will ever get the opportunity to visit one, but the dome still covers me. When I look up, I see Christ, I see Him everywhere.“
"When I look up, I see Christ, I see Him everywhere." Thank you Shari - from seeing to beholding the earth. I'm going to keep an eye on embodied forms today...
I love your vision of the Cosmic Church. When we disrobe from the garments of the modern scientific-reductionism which spins us into an artificial nausea, we can see that the Earth and Sky are the floor and dome of the original temple. Likewise the human and the heart contain this same map. You must have read St. Maximus' vision of the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ. If not, I highly recommend it! Truly the Church is all around us, and the stone and dome Churches of Orthodoxy are the alembic stills that condense the elements into the oil of our thanksgiving.
I haven’t read Maximus yet, although I have the book. Something told me I wasn’t ready yet, and so I waited.
Love how you said that, so very beautiful. I especially love how you landed on thanksgiving. So much of what and how we see is dependant on gratitude. I have a running argument with a friend on which comes first, gratitude or humility. I say gratitude, but maybe they are codependent.
There’s an interesting thing I hear st silouan (great acetic) said:
That a life of gratitude bears the same virtuous fruits in the Christian as a life devoted to ascetic prayer and struggle.
I feel you on that. His writing is intensely compressed and I don't have the disk reader to unpack it all. Somehow, I can get the crumbs from his table, enough to feed me for weeks when I chew on them.
"Thanksgiving is, every time, apprehension of the world - apprehension of it as it was given to us by God and discovery about our very selves, as having been called by God." - Alexander Schmemann "The Eucharist"
Wow Martin .. thank you for this -
following Cundrie is a punk rock move .. x
I listened to this twice in the span of one hour. First around a small fire with a dear friend. The second time with our wives who were gathered inside. Both times, your Jesus prayer incantation brought a welcome wetness to my eyes.
Sophia. Wisdom. The divine feminine. The longing for that eternal warm embrace. I’ve sought it my whole life, in the depths of the Amazon and the ecstatic rhythms of music, yet I finally feel it emerging in the pulsing stillness of Divine Liturgy. Christianity is the only frame that can hold that cosmic vision. The Ancient Christianity that weaves myth and fact into one undeniably potent story of our entire existence.
I tremble at the thought of even being able to touch the hem of such a truth since it is one that both destroys the over-sweetened passions while granting us our purest form. “Thou lovest me more than I am able to love thee” St Philaret.
Thank you friend. I feel there is an angel watching over your journey. May she bring us all towards such a wonderful vision.
“Thou lovest me more than I am able to love thee” St Philaret. Beautiful. And when even glimpsed for a second, so devastating. Thank you for sharing my few words with your loved ones William.
Oh what perfect beautiful balm at this time when the country is trembling. My mum in her twilight time has found her ground very unsteady recently and today in the second day of our novena to Saint Cyprian whose feast day was this week. The transformation of prayer in that story is powerful for us both at this time. Today our prayers were focused on the almsgiving and charity and compassion of Saint Cyprian so feeling the presence of Robin of the wild dreaming was such a perfect gift.
The soundcloud of my mother's church was a little sparse today so this has lifted and brought much beauty to our Sunday. She needs to be extra careful this weekend with isolation but the whole morning with this lifting us and my little explanation of the grail references to my mum has lead to a discussion now on the church itself being at times akin to entering a grail along with my dear dad off on beautiful ramble of the grail significance and Gnosticism. Your readings are often a family experience! Much gratitude! It's been a long time for my mum away from physically being in her church and today something in her altered to feel the courage to break the isolation and seek solace again in the shared experience of being in her church when she is able. Maybe it's Cundrie making her presence known. Much love to you and the wild dreaming of Dartmoor and all that gather around the hearth of The House of Beasts & Vines.
Thank you Gemma, I appreciate this, and strength to you and Ma and the whole family in this especially deep time.
My dear Martin, you have excelled yourself. This is simply beautiful, thank you. I love to be lead down a path to further explore and this is what you hve given me with your piece, Parzival and Snowy Tower.
Thank God for Cundrie, la sorcière most needed. I sometimes feel like she knocks me upside the head with the grail-stone. To much appreciation. I'm due for another knocking soon, I fear.
I hope not! But if it comes to pass, I hope a Gawain shouts "god be with you" as you head out into the dark and the quest.
you are too too funny, a.m.
O Martin. I always think I am going to weave just the right words to send to you, but right now I am in Chartres after teaching a two day circle called Meeting Mary which included a private labyrinth walk for which I got to sing and flute the music, I am so full of Her— and of course her son. . her humanity is cosmic and she is speaking loudly and I am sure she would love to sit by your fire in the autumn turning woods of Dartmoor (which I once again passed in the way to Tintagel with my Avalon pilgrims just before the Queen passed)
And of course the Earth is the Grail! And .Robin Hood led your way.
Every time I read your words I am saved, much love to you!
I didn’t grow up going to church… and I still don’t go. My family went to synagogue very rarely, but I went to enough Kinderschule on Sundays to learn a few songs and a love for the good books. Church where I live in the US has the substance and ambience of cardboard. Actually a cardboard box would be infinitely more inviting than the churches I’ve been to here. I’ve had the opportunity to go while in Jerusalem and Greece a few times. But the real church is by far wherever there is water in the desert wilderness of the Holy Land. I mean, perhaps church is a tent and a Minyan, or church is wherever you are and you want it to be—but I do hope you can make it someday to the land of the Galilee. There are few things I can think of that I’d love to be there for or hear about more than that adventure!
Because the letters of the Hebrew alphabet are living, the essence of a word is contained within itself and brought to life in a very unique way when written or spoken—especially compared to English.
Within the word Water/Mayim/מים, are all kinds of water:
מ/Mem is flowing water, rivers and waterfalls
י/Yod is the single drop, and
ם/Final Mem is all contained bodies of water—lakes, ponds, and the ocean/womb of everything.
‘Mary’ comes from ‘Maryam’.
Mar/מר meaning ‘bitter’, and
Yam/ים the word for ‘sea’.
Within the word ‘sea’/yam/ים, is the single drop of water and the ocean—the bittersweet water of tears and the womb of everything.
Your name is similar: מרטין.
Mar/מר, bitter
tin/טין…. Tín is a form of silt or clay.
Shaw/שָׁעַע, to take delight in, or to be smooth of speech.
A letter Shin /שׁ, three prongs of fire
and two Ayin/ע, the eye of God
I’m just having fun though …
Your Hebrew name would probably be a little more something like מרדכי היער
Mordecai Ha’Ya’ar
But you do set fire to the heart’s eyes and make us cry with your words, turning even the roughest boulders (and lobbed rocks) into twilight walks on the sandy shore of all those wyrd places.
And I wonder what there is in the name ישוע!
Ah, once again you weave mightily, such grand and mischievous strands. Among the many strands, I'm particularly struck by "the Grail is the Earth," "looking for a Christianity as huge as this forest," "the Round Table of my soul," and "let enchantment fall away and grace prevail." Throughout, grace abounds! Marvel on, my friend.... with gratitude.
Your writing is a brain-workout for me, Martin. Your oak-grounded beckoning into the scope of a Christ-shaped life. I read it twice. Cundrie overwhelms my evangelical moorings. I still don't get it but something lands somewhere that feels like room-to-move. My imagination crawls along in increments. I've mentioned before that I teach Sunday School to 10 and 11 year olds. Since paying attention to your writing I've added Gilgamesh and Ra and Persephone to the line-up of stories I tell. My young listeners are pleased with the contextualizing of Abraham and Moses and Jesus. The contrasts. The similarities. It makes the stories trust-worthy. Swimming in ancient currents. Today we stood outside and contemplated the fall equinox and the descent of our stories into darkness. Launching us on a quest for light in the underworld. So, despite the brain-workout, this is the influence your writing is having on me. Attempting in a small (modus operandi for which we are known) Canadian way to imagine with my charges a cedar-sheltered liturgy of the wild. Thank you.
A pleasure, and strength to your work Tama.
Thank you Martin, your words never fail to elicit emotion and this morning's offering brings a fullness of heart and many shed tears. Quite often I don't even know what to make of your sharings and the deep connection with the Divine Mystery that results, but understand it as a gift of Grace, deep nourishment, a blessing I'm not worthy of, but one I am forever grateful for.
Martin, my heart burned within me as I listened this morning, your fidelity to Sophia witness hidden in Proverbs. This passage helped me hold on to the golden thread I found as a child in fairy tales, myths, and Rivendell. Later I struggled to find wise Christian authors. I loved Lewis’ That Hideous Strength where the mother goddess appears in a baptized vision in preparation for the stunning recognition of Jesus present. Buffy St. Marie’s song God is Alive, Magic is Afoot also broke through the barriers.
I pray for wisdom for you as you prepare to tell your long story of Parsifal, sought for many years, that all things are made new. Thank you.
Ah, thank you Lucy! I did indeed get through the telling. And I'm going to go back to That Hideous Strength...