For some reason not quite plain to me - except that it would seem to be the will of God - I have to continue with the present time and the question of kneeling - or not kneeling - during the consecration. Another weekend passes by, another exhibition of silence by the cathedral pastor, even though the latest news from the bishop's office, via our friends, is that the Most Reverend has asked for dialogue within the parishes.
The novelist in me would much rather be dealing with the latest chapter of the sequel, for now after so many months it's actually been two or three years, I have returned to that loveliest of wilderness settings, the south end of Tatlayoko Lake, there to begin Book Four. I have some definitely spiritual and cultural designs on this majestic corner of the Cariboo, so dear to my recollections, all happily augmented this week past by reading in the work of Mohan Sen, the learned Hindu writer, that the first guru schools of India were in fact forest schools. Moreover, I may be hiking tomorrow to the local Ashram, which is very much set in a forest, and that too will no doubt sweeten the memories of the spirits of Tatlayoko, and make me that much keener to get going with my fiction.
But he who relies absolutely on the Holy Spirit for his musings for his readers must be obedient to the work of the moment, or nothing stays in proportion, and I must putter on with Church politics.
So the bishop would like a discussion? Would he like what I might have to say in such a chat, especially if the Transformation showed up? Is it for such a dialogue, in fact, that the recent visible manifestations of The Man have emerged? Perhaps he would be wiser - the bishop, not The Man - if he simply took to heart what Cardinal Ratzinger has more than once suggested, and used his authority as a bishop to order the faithful to kneel. An Italian priest, visiting here once for a special liturgy for the Italian community, and seeing the Nelson cathedral full of standers at the wrong time, simply barked out the Italian for kneel. To a man, they dropped to their knees as if to avoid a sudden burst of machine gun fire. If a mere priest, and a visitor at that, could command such normalcy and common sense, why should not the resident ordinary?
But there seems to be a lot of effeminacy in the episcopate these days, for which the solution has yet to be found. Will they improve after all the nuns die off, or will some different pestilence arise to continue their condition?
* * * * *
We did make it to the Ashram, and thoroughly enjoyed every aspect of the day, especially the fact that I seemed able to stay on top of the drabness of the world that is always a threat to any substantial tour outside the monastic walls of this house. The day sparkled pretty well throughout, whether on the bus, the ferry, or in the walking the road to the Ashram, always in view of the lake, and the institution itself seemed to give back some spirit, although I must complain that what passes for spiritual music there - a tape was playing - is certainly no improvement on the self-indulgent slush that is usually served up in our parish. Not all those who sing "Lord, Lord . . . ."
In the four years we have set our steps in that direction we have undoubtedly had the angels with us, sometimes putting on quite the light show, and early on, the Transformation made a rather significant appearance, to confirm the propriety of our presence in such an avowedly neutral territory, but perhaps this Tuesday past was the first time I had a sense of a kindred spirit amongst any of those present. Only time will tell if this was a genuine resident, or merely a symbol. At any rate, I was genuinely provoked to a concentrated read in the twenty-fifth stanza, second redaction, of the Spiritual Canticle. And once again, the Ashram bookstore yielded up a perfect gem of first communion present for on of our grandchildren. This was a Tomie de Paola illustrated story about Benedict and Scholastica. It stresses that Scholastica learned by staying in one place what her brother had to tour Italy to realize. So it was from his sister that Benedict got the idea of the vow of stability! That was certainly worth the trip to find out. In my quite regular categorizing of my self as a sort-of Benedictine because I have stayed in one place in spite of all the difficulties here and the attractions elsewhere, I have always given Benedict the credit for that fourth promise. (But it is the Cure of Ars who gets the credit for making me stick to it!) How interesting to learn that a woman was the source for his genius in this regard.
In this time of non-action in the matter of kneeling for the consecration, the Yasodhara Ashram of Kootenay Bay, on the east shore of the lake, is a happy image. Last year I learned from a book written by one of the staff, Swami Gopal, that some years ago there was a battle to maintain the original standards of the Ashram founder, Swami Radha, in the matter of celibacy amongst the permanent residents. The founder had found it necessary to give a certain pair the boot. Radha had not only been decisive, she had been firmly and swiftly decisive. The Ashram is not especially Catholic, yet here is the orderly sort of behaviour one would expect of a Catholic bishop, yet in these days in so many dioceses one expects in vain. The Ordinaries do not seem to understand the root meaning of their title, which had, of course, not a little to do with the need and capacity for giving orders. In 1958, I was in perfect conscience so happy to join the Roman Catholic Church because it reminded me so vehemently of the many advantageous attitudes I had acquired from my extensive experience with the military.
I owe Swami Gopal a further debt. (In earlier years he was David Forsee, a CBC broadcaster.) There are so many things we understand only through conversation with souls with companionable inclinations. Chatting with him one day in the Ashram bookstore I think I solved a personal riddle, and learned at the same time that God can make one spiritual experience do as a sign and source of grace for more than one future spiritual consequence.
For years I had attributed a certain very keenly wounding vision, of the loveliest little corner of a forest, solely to my future at Camp Lourdes, the diocesan summer camp on the south shore of the West Arm of Kootenay Lake. The vision came in the summer of 1959, a few weeks after Shawn and I were married, and was in part a consolation for a mix-up which prevented a day's hiking Seymour Mountain with some very good friends, members of the family I had lived with for the eight months prior to our wedding. The occasion was the older daughter's return from summer school in San Francisco, for a few days only before she was off to somewhere else. It was arranged that we two Catholics would go to the early morning mass at the Cathedral, then be picked up on a nearby corner shortly afterward. But no car showed up, so after waiting what seemed to be long enough, we bused our sad way home and spent a quiet day in the Kitsilano apartment we were sub-letting for the summer.
After breakfast, I went to my typewriter and either started up a story set in the woods or else carried on with one that was already there. In the midst of it, suddenly, came this profoundly delightful little moment, too delightful to be created by anything other than God, in which I beheld, as it were through a back door of a building of some sort, the most hauntingly beautiful and charming little nook of trees, in which, as in the fairy tales I had loved so much when I was a little fellow, a most marvellous adventure must have been about to take place, although I then had no idea as to what it could possibly be. Nor was I to receive an explanation for eight years, until the summer of 1967, when I was for the second year the cook at Camp Lourdes and also, by a few months only, the spiritual director of one of the young persons at the camp. (I am writing this on February 11.) Those few souls who have been so fortunate as to have been called to perfection, to the Seventh Mansion, to the guidance of other souls to the same place, will understand and appreciate, by their own indescribably sublime experiences, not only the depth of the haunting of the original forecast, but also the unspeakable satisfaction of its proving out.
The setting at Lourdes was precise. My domain, the cook house and dining hall, all in one building, backed on a small creek - both our water supply and the cook's cooling facility at times - and thus my very back door opened on the green woods, as total a forest and nothing but a forest - except for the railroad tracks beyond a bit - as you could ask for, sweeping on up and over the mountains to the main lake twenty miles away. So, once the spiritual direction details were in place, the answer to the riddle was clear. Certainly none of my other living near or rambling in the woods - a constant since we left the city in August of our marrying summer - as naturally or spiritually delightful as it was - the dark night excepted - had solved the mystery of that haunting image, And, moreover, it solved it most wonderfully. Amazing and astounding as God might be in his promises, he is even more so in his fulfillment of his intimations.
So, once I had encountered Lourdes, even before I was a spiritual director, I was quite content with the many graces of the place, and thought they would do very satisfactorily as the solution to the riddle that had arisen from the mysterious ecstasy. It was a beautiful place, it was the Catholic fulfillment of the Salvation Army summer camp I had attended as a boy - there was Mass every day - and it was the opportunity to give my wife and children a summer on the beach.
That was in 1966, my first year at the camp, and no one could ask for a spiritually or poetically sweeter time than I had in those two very full months of July and August. Hopefully, I will be able to spell this out in more detail, in either history or fiction, some other time, thereby giving more of a due place to an institution founded by Bishop Johnson and built by the energies of a number of the faithful, but for now I have to concentrate on the chief of the spiritual advantages of the camp, as it was a sacred role in the formation of none of the most glorious vocations that to date has emerged from the diocese, that which was unfolding, so dramatically, by the summer of 1967. In contrast to the utterly satisfactory previous year, the second summer was unquestionably a prime example of what the Lord meant when He said that to those who already have much, even more shall be given, as by that time I had been granted the office of spiritual director to a young soul that was destined for the final mansions of the mystical life. The little vision of the forest could in no way under the sun have had a greater significance.
Yet, could it also have applied to a parallel development? By 1959, when I had the little vision, Sylvia Hellman - Swami Radha - had returned from India to Canada. She had gone to India from Montreal, but would try to establish a spiritual community on the West Coast, near Vancouver. This did not really take, and by 1963, I think it was, she was settled in the Kootenays, on the east coast of the north arm of the lake, at a location which interestingly enough had already been called Yasodhara, the name of the wife of the Buddha. The new location proved out, and the community not only grew but multiplied, inspiring from graduates of the yoga and meditation programmes the creation of satellites in North America and overseas. The enterprise appears to be thriving, and more and more people are being given the opportunity to find some of silence and solitude and self-knowledge of the interior life, all because Swami Rhadha found her suitable place in a corner of the Kootenay forests. And, of course, the steadily growing interest, in the West, in all aspects of Eastern culture has also contributed to the attraction, and not only in the simply meditative or spiritual sphere.
More and more people are finding Eastern medicine extremely applicable to their health problems, usually in conjunction with sensibilities they have already acquired through Western herbalists and naturopaths, and therefore it seems providentially coincidental that Swami Shivinanda, the Indian guru of Swami Radha's, was a doctor before he was a spiritual teacher. In the Ashram bookstore, Marianne finds certain items to add happily to the extensive library that began with Maria Trieben and Michael Moore, both of whom for some years have added to much delightful medicinal satisfaction and adventure to those hours of strolling through the wilderness, hours that were initially all to do with recreation, literature, and the spiritual life.
Why is Western science as much of a curse as it is a blessing? And why does Western confidence, based no doubt on innumerable profound achievements, turn so easily to arrogance and insularity? And even more puzzling, why does it turn against itself? Europe was once unquestionably herbal, and no one doubted the role of the apothecary. Yet by the end of the nineteenth century, the British had got rid of all but one of their herb gardens - and that was maintained only by a mere fluke - and, earlier, in Mother India, they had outlawed Ayurvedic medicine, just as foolishly as they had outlawed the Catholic faith at home. Sometimes I wonder at the history of the language in which, by dint of knowing no other, I am required to write.
But history, of all things, goes in cycles. What goes around comes around. The blessings of chemistry and biology turn ugly, and Man, to save himself, returns to the roots of science, to the bosom of Mother Earth in her most original self. The most ordinary plants, including the weeds we have been trained to eradicate - dandelions, plantain, Saint John's Wort - turn out to be the best of friends and utter allies in the war against ill health.
My interest in the East did not start with the Ashram. It was in fact cemented into my brain as early as June, 1955, when I had a rather profound ecstasy while reading Somerset Maugham's Razor's Edge in the anti-artillery barracks in Picton, Ontario. Larry Darrel had gone wandering and come upon a Tibetan lake, and I was myself moved, on reading this, to some spiritual wanderings of my own. This blessing lasted for some time, probably a couple of minutes. I was grateful, and not especially ego-struck, as far as I can remember. In subsequent years I came to regard this experience as a sign of three things: God's pleasure in my reading good literature; God's pleasure in my occasionally looking into the spirituality of the East - later He would get pretty insistent; and God's efficiency in giving me this standard of delight and divine encouragement in one area of study when He would not, in days to come, give the same to me as I perused my law texts.
* * * *
Since beginning the last paragraph, a rest of some weeks, while I waited for the mysterious conclusion of this unusual schedule; then when the sing of the conclusion came, it has taken a month to prove out its purpose. The Orient again, and I have become, under the most wonderful teacher, a student of Chi Gong and Tai Chi, in the manner of the Chen style.
Since be
No comments:
Post a Comment