NAVEL GAZING
We are very fortunate to live in a beautiful town. We have it all - the sea, the sweet downtown with shops, restaurants, a YWCA, a movie theater, art association, a small theater, a chamber music festival, poetry groups and a glorious walking/biking trail that rings the city. We live downtown, within walking distance of it all. We never get in the car.
I have had a life-long love affair with my bicycle, from my tricycle to every bike I’ve ever owned.
I recently gave up the bicycle I’ve had for the last ten years in exchange for what they now call a ‘step-through’ model. No more ‘boy bikes and girl bikes’. A few wobbly dismount moments on my ‘boy bike’ and a calendar that says I’m older than I thought I was, prompted the move.
Lately, I’ve taken to making the circuit of the city on my bike.
I glide along the water, past the herons and the egrets, then inland, past beautiful houses and gardens clustered in neighborhoods, then into the woods, studded with powerful sculptures of quarried stone and metal, various memorial gardens, carefully planted ‘edible’ gardens, a ‘butterfly’ garden, then on past the train station, along a straight stretch lined with more sculptures and more memorial gardens. Heaven can wait.
The news is overflowing with chaos these days and it is lovely to remember that our world is a beautiful place, full of kindness and peace and joy.
As I ride, I often listen to music with my magic ear plugs. Lately, it Jacques Loussier, whose mixture of Bach, Chopin, Satie, Ravel, Schumann and jazz knocks sends me off into a dreamspace. I grew up with classical piano lessons, but am always working on my Bill Evans jazz self. The mixture of the two is divine. Here’s a bit of Jacques’ take on Clair de Lune:
Yesterday, I stopped to read the stone in one of the memorial gardens.
Splendid universal communion. Bless you, Pope Francis. There’s a man who knows that love is the answer. And love is all around us.
Not too long ago, I jotted down some thoughts on journey through organized religion:
Who made me?
God made me.
Why did God make me?
God made me to know, love and serve him in this world.
Who is God?
God is the creator of heaven and earth and of all things.
I grew up Catholic in the 50’s in Boston. We had to memorize and recite these questions and answers (and many more) from The Baltimore Catechism in parochial school. It was the official catechism for children in the United States, based on Italian Robert Bellarmine’s 1614 Catechism. The same guy who 2 years later, told Galileo to drop his heliocentric thing. We learned a lot of stuff, like how Heaven is for winners (no sins), Hell is for losers (mortal sins), Purgatory is when you goofed up enough to miss the cut for Heaven and further bad news, you’ll be stuck there forever unless maybe your wear a scapula (a holy card on a string around your neck, or if you do enough nice stuff to offset the bad stuff or if, after you land in Purgatory, somebody back on earth does some nice things that can buy you out of there.) In our Catholic school refectory, we were always told to finish all the food on our plates for the poor souls in Purgatory. You can imagine how this messed with a lot of little kids’ heads. God sits at the head of the dinner table. The nicer you are, the closer you get to sit. Oh, and I forgot, unbaptized children go to Limbo. Forever. Limbo. That was kind of like No-Man’s-Land. Nothin’. Nada. You are doomed to a life of boredom. No EZ Bake Ovens, No Barbie Dolls, No Sears Toy Catalogs, no late night kick-the-can games. And there was no getting out of there. That was it. Doomed. Which is why my oldest sister used to baptize everybody in the house when she babysat for Protestants. My rebellion came in my 20’s. I married a Protestant and became an Episcopalian. They sang better music, wore nicer clothes and had coffee hours after church.
I left the Episcopalians when I left my marriage. I limped along, flirting with Buddhism, Quakerism, Nihilism, Hedonism, Reincarnation, figuring it didn’t matter, because I was going to end up in Hell anyway. It wasn’t until I went to Greece with my second husband, that things began to perk up. Delphi started it -the soaring cliffs, jagged, majestic, the power of place. It is impossible to resist the call of something larger, deeper. Delphi is located at the foot of Mount Parnassus, a mountain of limestone in central Greece, north of the Gulf of Corinth, where incidentally, St. Paul used to write letters to the locals. Before that, according to Greek mythology, this mountain was sacred to Apollo and the home of the Muses. Ancient Greeks knew this well. They would travel for weeks to come to this magical place, to consult the Oracle at Delphi. Built around a sacred spring, Delphi was considered to be the omphalos - the center - literally, the navel of the world. We sat there, in awe of the majesty of the place, thinking about all the people who had made their way there, looking for the answer not only to specific problems, but to the larger puzzle of the meaning of life. We were just part of a quest that had been going on forever. Why am I here? How long will I be here? What happens when I die?
Age, illness, any deep vulnerability can jolt us towards a consideration of our place in the universe. I recently travelled to the South of France to see the typical sights – the bridge of Avignon, the sun-drenched beauty of the places that dazzled Cézanne and Van Gogh, the lavender, the wild horses and bulls on the vast marsh called the Camargue, a magical threshold of a place. I stayed in a little village surrounded on all sides by the Sorgue River.
I went to a nearby town to walk up the half mile path to see the source of the Sorgue - the Fontaine de Vaucluse, a great opening in the limestone cliffs. The Fontaine de Vaucluse, or ‘Vallis Clausa’, the closed valley as the ancients called it. Seneca and Petrarch both refer to it in their writings. Another omphalos, another fissure, belly button into the magic mysteries of the earth, another Delphi. The story goes that the old fiddler Basil’s fell asleep in the shade, on the road called le Chemin de Vaucluse. He had gone out to dance with the girls of Isle sur-la-Sorgue. A nymph as beautiful as the clear waters appeared, took the sleeping man's hand and led him down into the opening in the earth, to reveal to him some of the secrets that lay under the surface. I walk up the Chemin de Vaucluse, along with many others, the curious, the disabled, the lame, all coming to witness the vast mystery. The spring at Vaucluse has compelled many, including Jacques Cousteau to dive deep into the chasm to solve the riddle of its depths. Jacques never found the bottom. There is no solving a sense of mystery. Why are we moved by the magical? We tell stories, invent myths, ask questions, trying to explain the unexplainable, to make sense of it all: the Delphic Oracle, the Nymph at Vaucluse, Theseus and the Minotaur, Charon with a sop to Cerberus, the loaves and the fishes, seven heavens and seven earths.
Who is God? Why did God make me? It’s all a wonderful mystery.
Just keep pedaling.
In my catechism, I could swear that it said that god made me to show forth his goodness and to share with me his everlasting happiness in heaven. Did I answer the wrong question?
Love this!
J