Oneing

Today, the first Sunday of vacation, I still cannot rest in the scared, mother-womb darkness. Tomorrow is the first day of winter yet robins roost in the bare maple branches, not one or two, but 10 or more, waiting, annunciating the advent of...what? 

This Advent I signed up for a course with Matthew Fox and Mirabai Starr about Julian of Norwich.

The opening mediation was a Hebrew one, a call to "oneing" with the Creator: "Listen, oh you, who struggle with the infinite, ALL is one." That's a progressive translation for sure. The Arabic prayer, Shahada, the oneness of God, "La ilaha, illallah." While the literal translation is "only one God, Allah," not being a literalist, I hear this as God is One and one is God, panentheism, interrelational, nameless, formless intimacy with ALL. This is a call to enter the liminal mystery I so value. The unknown mystery we reside in daily now, the Thin Place, the white space we have been walking through as a result of the pandemic. Nothing is certain and very little in our control. We are called to surrender to the unio mystica, the flow, the oneing, the ecstasy of "union with reality."

This summer I hired a leadership coach who led me to design this intention for living, "How am I hyphenating the collective-self between known spaces and unknown graces into co-creative liberation and wholeness?" I am present daily with this intention purposefully phrased as a question and have found that the Covid upheaval, the racial protests, the political corruption, all of it has not been a surprise, nor has any of it diverted my flow. I feel companioned as a sister Anchorite with Julian. Radical recluse in my quarantined home, yet, one window open to people/students, to serve, and all those busy beehives, producing...and words of unity and love, liberation from God of retribution, wholeness acquired through recognition that through God we are what we are and we are ALL ONE.

Yesterday I made St Lucia Lussekatter (Swedish Saffron buns). They took all day to encourage the yeast, wait for two risings, knead and knead. I felt impatience in the time it took, having not made bread outside of a bread maker for years. The demand for patience, for waiting, for delayed gratification has been the primary challenge of 2020, with vacations cancelled, travel shut down, teaching plans rerouted, social gathering delayed. Our morning reading this vacation is Rockwell Kent's "Wilderness," about his Christmas in Alaska in 1918. We had planned to read it after our Alaska trip last summer, which was delayed until 2021. These delays and rerouting have actually sweetened the anticipation and will no doubt heighten the awe when the world opens up to a new day and I step more fully into a new way of being.

Our outdoor Christmas lights burnt out last night...the circuit blew and will not recharge...so now, we have some imposed darkness along a street of festive lights...I wait, like the robins, each day, for the wonder and awe of both the mirth and the mourning. It all matters. I write you this while listening to Gary Richardson's guitar meditations and hold thoughts of your being, your spirit, in my heart until we can safely meet again in person.