Sunflowers...

Sunflowers, offering themselves as objects of both beauty and atonement.

I started to “write” an icon today. It has been years since I have used paints or carving tools to paint or carve an icon. Lent is coming and I want to commune with a few saints. The best way I know to do this is through iconography. The attention one gives to the board brings the Saint into intimate communion. I hope to commune with St. Edith Stein and St. Teresa of Avila. My priest introduced me to St. Edith, and although I knew of St. Teresa, I was reintroduced to her by St. Edith. They have come to me as sisters in faith and I plan to honour their works with novenas.

Lent asks the faithful for three things: fasting, prayer, and alms. In attending to these askings for 40 days, one comes closer to the promise of Easter. Fasting is common in all of the world religions. Yom Kippur and Ramadan to name a few. The penitent dedicates themselves to spirit by the restrictions imposed on matter. Fasting fosters mindfulness and turns us toward source, the Creator beyond creation. It is sacrifice. Making sacred. And I am growing to believe that sacrifice is the core tenant of maturity, the core tenant of spirituality. Maybe even the core tenant of humanity?

For my Lenten fast, I intend to abstain from social media. I understand that most adults in North America spend between 4-6 hours a day on social media. I am no where near those numbers, but I do know that I can disappear down a rabbit hole of reels and memes and I don’t think it does me much good. I gave up X, formally Twitter a few years ago and I am better for having done so. Today I ascribe to FaceBook regularly and Instagram sporadically. Mostly I scroll to see and share pictures for family and friends, but the digital connection is one step removed from real relationship. We are immediately connected, but oftentimes lonely. We are the last generation that remembers life before the Digital Age. Let that sink in. We are told that the average child of the Digital Age will have spent 30,000 hours on social media before the age of 30. The same time we spent with books, or games, or real relationship contrasts the algorithmic influences of social media on our children and grandchildren. The minds and yes, even the brains of the next generation will be altered. Will they know the difference between reality and digital worlds? Will they grow empathy? Will they know how to attend? Will they mature? Will they understand sacrifice?

The 2nd asking of Lent is prayer. This is where “writing” my icons comes into play. Prayer is attention. Prayer is focus. There are many ways to pray. Iconography is one of them. My teachers, Reagan O’Callaghan and Jonathan Pageau have given me the gifts of iconography. With Reagan O’Callaghan I learn to animate the Saint with paint. The old way, with hand made gesso boards, and powered egg tempera colours. With Jonathan Pageau I learn to animate the saint with carving tools on bass wood. I am deeply grateful to these teachers. Iconography has given me a deeply meditative practice. It feels very good to be back in the studio. I invite St. Edith Stein and St. Teresa of Avila to join me.

St. Edith Stein wrote an incredible book on The Problem of Empathy. In it she discusses the need to develop conscious empathy. I am reading her work carefully. She writes of an empathy that is reflective and discerning. Out of the ashes of Auschwitz, her words rise like a phoenix. I hope to understand more deeply what she offers us during my Lenten devotion. St. Teresa of Avila wrote an incredible autobiography. It was the reading of this autobiography that instigated the conversion of Dr. Edith Stein from Judaism to Catholicity. I am reading this spiritual memoir carefully and coming to understand more deeply what mental prayer looks like. Her deep and abiding humility is what draws me closer. With the time stolen from social media scrolling, I will devote myself to intersession with these Saints and pray to live closer to their venerable example.

The 3rd asking of Lent is alms. Remember the poor. Remember the poor. Remember the poor. Time. Money. Energy. In service. Given freely without expectation of return. This is always a big ask. With the conscious empathy of St. Edith Stein, and the deep devotion and humility of St. Teresa, I will lean into their guidance and counsel in my alms giving.

As I was finishing up my icon writing today, a dear fried of ours called us on the phone. We talked about a mutual time to bring our families together. She is preparing for Ramadan as I prepare for Lent. We will try and find time to meet after ward. Share a meal. Share stories. Share laughter. Share love. I love that both these fasting times, Ramadan and Lent, are relative and their dates each year, determined by the moon. This fasting time is not governed by a solar principle but a lunar one. A reflective light that invites introspection, muted clarity, whispered voices, and deep mystery. After the sacrifices of Ramadan and Lent, the light will come on Eid al-Fitr for my friend, and Easter Sunday for me and mine. Out of sacrifice, suffering, and atonement, comes new life. Always. Out of winter comes spring. Always. Out of death comes life. Always. May all that happens during these times of fasting and prayer and alms giving, tip the axis of the world toward integrity. God knows we need more of that these dark days. As you turn toward Spring, with Lent, with Ramadan, with gardening, let this poem inspire you as it did me. The beautiful poetry of Joshua Luke Smith is a light in the darkness. Find it on YouTube and listen.

Uncle Terry’s Legacy

When Uncle Terry died, we placed sunflowers on his casket.

No children survived him, so he tithed his savings to the conservation of butterflies.

The church was called, those old stones holding the stories of thirty or so generations,

Matrimony and lament, baptism and dedication.

He was the last of his siblings, so now buried was a lineage,

Like those sunflowers that he cherished.

We printed a picture of him standing beneath one,

And decided that was how he’d be remembered.

All those memories now sunk beneath the soil,

But when spring arise and thaws the frost-bound ground, they will not rise.

Their time has come and gone.

We are but butterflies, fluttering for a day and believing it is forever.

What can I say of a life that was so weathered,

And by that I mean, my uncle lived seasonally.

How else do you plant a garden, unless you submit to both the summer and the wintering?

His calloused hands told the story of handling living things.

The bleak cold mornings and that joy of welcome spring,

The pain of mourning what could have been,

And the joy in receiving the gifts the giver came to bring.

Are we not standing in the gardens planted by our forefathers?

Are we not reaping a harvest we didn’t sow?

Are we not leaning on the limbs of an oak and standing within the shade of a forest that someone else chose to grow?

Martin Luther was asked, if you knew tomorrow the world would end and today would be your last,

How would you spend it? And he said, I would plant an apple tree.

The Greeks believed a society only thrived when people plant trees they know they’ll never live to see.

So how fickle we have been, tossed by every changing wind,

Giving in before we have become a witness.

Yes, there is the life we live, but there is the unlived life within us,

And between the two stands the resistance.

Nietzsche put it like this, it is long obedience in the same direction that brings heaven to our streets.

So summon the critic, bring me the cynic, I’ll tell him this, blessed are the meek.

Blessed is the one who still believes, childlike, impoverished, hardly able to even speak,

But who has not forgotten Solomon’s wisdom.

For it is not the lack of wealth, reputation, or esteem, but the absence of vision that brings people to their knees.

So distracted by our greed and our lust to succeed,

We have gathered into barns instead of casting out our seed.

And yet it is the backs scarred by wooden beams and the sacrifice of fools

That remind us of the actions that actually move us closer to the renewal.

The Sunflowers of Fukushima

Did you hear of Fukushima?

When the sea brewed and the earth hurled herself into the ground,

A nuclear site erupted. An invisible storm rained down,

Contaminating the land and poisoning the food.

They evacuated thousands, but for those that couldn’t move,

They stayed housed in, surrounded by elusive clouds that lingered like ghosts,

Becoming suspicious of the air that they once innocently consumed.

And yet, amongst the chaos, there was a monk, dressed in crimson hues,

Who walked through those fields planting sunflower seeds within the ruins.

And over time, they grew and they removed the poison,

Sunflowers, offering themselves as objects of both beauty and atonement.

They drew the cancer from the ground into themselves until it was broken down

And now stand where sunflowers lift their golden crowns.

We find evidence of this hope. Even in the soil of decay, something beautiful can grow.

I hear the voice of an ancient prophet speaking to a depleted people,

Housed in the walls of exile and defeat.

They are longing for a home they’ve only heard of,

A city they’re unsure of, a country where they hope to be,

And it is to them this wild man comes with fire on his tongue.

He descends with a word from the god that they have almost forgotten, and he says,

Do you want a revolution? Do you want a revelation?

Do you want to renew your vision and restate a broken nation?

Do you want to overthrow the systems that have polluted the minds of your children and your spirits?

Do you want to live in abundance and remember where you come from?

Do you want to do the will of God or at least undo the will of demons?

Do you want to see people prosper in every sphere and across every tier of meaning?

Do you want to live a life worth remembering? Do you want to leave a legacy?

Do you want to offer something to future generations only now brewing in the wombs of their mothers and the hearts of their fathers?

Do you want to be worthy ancestors?

Do you want to answer the call and stand before kings, not as princes or princesses, but as jesters,

Making a mockery of power built on bricks towards heaven?

Do you believe beauty can save the world,

That the stories told within those trenches were more powerful in the hands of the soldiers than their weapons?

Do you want to starve out the madness and restore man’s appetite for sanity?

Do you want to come back to clarity and conviction?

Do you want to build a society on the foundations of wisdom instead of self-serving ambition?

Well then, plant a garden. Plant a garden in Babylon.

Bury your seeds in the soil that you’ve battled against for so long because this is the only world to which you will ever belong.

So turn your exile into Eden and turn your sorrow into a song.

Turn your rejection into the birth pains of restoration and mine from your frustration the potential of growth.

Pull from your suffering a morsel of hope and forgive your captives.

Forgive the ones that made you bleed, let them go, for it is time for us to build.

No. It is time for us to sow. No. It is time for us to become the seed,

To live in proximity, to lay our lives down so that others one day can simply breathe.

Empty the barns in which you’ve stored.

Build a bigger table. Invite your enemies over for dinner and open up your doors.

Love your neighbors like you love yourself and love yourself like you love your neighbors and for the love of God, remember the poor.

Remember the poor. Remember the poor.

Sweep your streets like you’re paving gold because in reality you are.

How you do anything is how you do everything. Make your stand against injustice loud. No.

Make it definite. Push the needle towards integrity.

Pour Kintsugi gold into the hostage memory. Turn those ashes into confetti.

Burn down the idols and craft wedding rings,

Covenantal icons from the bedsheets of adultery

And build tree houses for your children in the garden of Gethsemane.

I don’t know if we have long left and I don’t know if they’ll remember me or you,

But we do have work to do and this may be our legacy,

Sunflower shoots in Babylonian cemeteries or how the mighty have fallen

For they have built empires out of the dust from which they came

And we have watched them fall time and again, but we will not do the same.

We have learned from their mistakes in their place.

We will build not high rise apartments or regal estates, but gardens

Because who is really in prison when steel bars become a trellis,

When roses wrap themselves around the fences of a cell,

That’s when the fires of hell are drowned in the mountain springs that come down from heaven.

When my uncle Terry died, we placed sunflowers on his casket

And we let the tears dry on our skin.

We vowed despite the powers in present darkness, we would not cower, nor would we give in.