No need to disturb the universe

Saturday, August 22, 2020     Memorial of the Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary

                                                (today’s lectionary)

No need to disturb the universe

Ezekiel’s vision falls on me as I walk through life, approach death, look toward heaven.

The angel led me to the gate which faces east

And there I saw the glory of God.

I heard a sound like the roaring of many waters.

Clarence Heller, a St. Louis artist and spiritual director, wrote of watching from his own gate in his poem, “Foresight.”

Looking up,

Lying in a casket

What will I see?

Lord, let me see it now,

That I may be free

To live my last day

Each day,

To welcome today

As my last opportunity

For reconciliation,

For my last kiss while in

This unresurrected body.

Let me speak the truth of my heart

And let me say each goodbye

With a peaceful smile.

Cyprian, a great pastor in Carthage during the plague of 250 AD when many Christians were being blamed and martyred, bolstered the courage of his congregation with these words, “These are trainings for us, not deaths. They give the mind the glory of fortitude, and by contempt of death they prepare us for the crown” (Christian History #135, p. 14).

Civil War soldiers often pinned a note to their shirts before a battle which was dated and usually with only three words. “I died today.” The soldier signed his note, loaded up with bullets and carried his musket off to the front line, waiting for the bugle call to charge.

I fell prone as the glory of the Lord entered the temple

But spirit lifted me up and brought me to the inner court.

This intimacy of God and man, weaving through life and death, relaxes me. I breathe until I don’t. My heart beats until it stops. And what in that is there to fear?

Son of man, this is where my throne shall be

There is where I will set the soles of my feet, says the Lord.

I will be here with you forever.

In the meantime, just like T. S. Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock, I grow old in the years I have been given. I will wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. I rarely dare to eat a peach, let alone disturb the universe. But really, more and more I realize the universe does not need disturbing after all. There is no hurry in this getting-old-business, no need to make waves. No doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Mark Boyle, Irish journalist-turned-farmer, wants to grow old quietly. His girlfriend treats their illnesses with plants she grows for that purpose. In The Way Home he writes:

I woke up not so much feeling ill, but not feeling full of vitality either. Kirsty makes me a pot of tea from herbs – red clover, silverweed, raspberry leaf, calendula and chamomile – which she picked and dried earlier in the year. Such teas are not intended to treat symptoms directly, in the way that we use industrial medicines; instead they aim to aid the body in the task of healing itself, something it always wants to do. While the tea is brewing, I chop and eat five cloves of raw garlic. With that I decide to put away the pencil, light the fire, grab a book, kick back and take the afternoon off. If you don’t make time for health, you have to make time for illness. – p. 232

I watch Mark rest, listening to Kirsty putzing in the kitchen. It’s easy in my imagination to enter this sweet scene. The fire crackles warm, and whether I open my eyes or shut them, there is peace.

Kindness and truth shall meet

Justice and peace shall kiss

Truth springs up from the earth

As the Lord himself pours out his benefits.

I’m awed by Mark Boyle’s commitment to living with technology, without even electricity or running water. Wendell Berry in Kentucky made the same commitment. Both are writers and speakers, and they travel sometimes in jets to faraway cities, and then come home to the shelter they have made for themselves.

The greatest among you must be your servant.

Whoever humbles himself will be exalted.

Jesus set us an example and warned us to practice what we preach. Although I am awed by Mark and Wendell’s choices, I don’t make them for myself. I embrace the efficiency and opportunity provided by technology and consequently make my own contributions to pollution and waste. I wonder if I was younger, whether I would feel more guilty. Perhaps.

Mark Boyle’s words about aging comfort me, even if unlike him, I pay for Medicare and use it, even if I like living in a modern home with bathrooms and a router.

Someone asked me about what I will do when I get old. I said that like everyone, I will die. I have no desire to be the man who made it safely to death, wearing an oxygen mask at eighty-eight, afraid of letting go, terrified of what might happen next. Our relationship with death profoundly changes our relationship with life. It’s all too easy to live a long, unhealthy life without having ever felt truly alive … I’m no longer blessed with the certainties of youth. The more I explore, the less I seem to know, and I’m starting to like it that way.” – p. 251

(Ezekiel 43, Psalm 85, Matthew 23)

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