Learning to Walk in the Dark ~ Book Review

Barbara Brown Taylor is one of my all-time favorite preachers and writers.  "Introduced" to her via mail as a Chautauqua Institution summer preacher by my stepsister, whose church in Clarkesville, Georgia she served as priest, I became a dedicated follower, often scheduling family vacations at Chautauqua for the weeks in which she was preaching, and inhaling her books during the rest of the year.  I had ordered Learning to Walk in the Dark before it came out, and it landed on my porch a day or two before the official sales date.

 

I didn't crack the cover for about six months, not until day before yesterday. Much as I admire BBT, and love to listen to her for the spectacular turn of phrase or for an idea I've never considered, I did not, it turned out, want to hear what she had to say about walking in the dark.  Walking in the dark is my main activity and area of expertise.  What could even BBT have to say to me about an enterprise I know so well?

 

Plenty, as it turns out.  I finally read the book on a day off designed entirely for reading and walking.  It's marvelous.

 

I am particularly taken with her idea of endarkenment  ~ a counter-concept to the familiar idea of enlightenment.  As you might have guessed if you haven't read it already, in Learning to Walk in the Dark BBT seeks to strip from darkness its usual associations with malevolence, sorrow, and bleakness, and to invite us to walk into the dark in anticipation of new possibilities, new wonders, and a sort of healing not available in the bright light toward which we all scurry.

 

The book contains a couple of intriguing chapters on her efforts to become better acquainted with darkness, one of them deep inside a cave, and another, falling asleep in a cabin as the natural light recedes for the night.  She also explores ~ just a bit ~ some of the great Biblical passages having to do with night and with darkness.  If I am at all disappointed with the book, it's due to the brevity of those reflections.  The Bible is, after all and as she notes, a great herald of light, but it is also filled with stories of the night.  I don't think that Nicodemus~ a seeker of endarkenment if ever there was one ~ even rates a mention.

 

Nevertheless, I am much taken with the book.  Last night, the burglar alarm went off at church, and consequently I spent the hour between 12:30 and 1:30 a.m. en route to a rendezvous with the police and then home again.  The moon, just-past-half full, hung low and huge and orange in the sky. As I passed through the empty streets, and the five minutes down a long hill through a metropark into which a parishioner has told me she would never consider driving at night,  I watched for the moon and hoped for an owl.  And I considered endarkenment ~ a benefit of being roused from bed way too early, and perhaps of the opaque places in life as well.

Chautauqua and Chicago

How do you return to sacred places tainted by sadness?

 

I've stood hundreds of times at the spot pictured above ~ but not in the last five years.  I scattered some ashes into the lake a bit to the right (south?) some winters ago, but that was the last time. We've tried to wander through Chautauqua twice since then, and found ourselves making a speedy departure both times.  "I just think of the three of us running all over the place every summer," said my surviving son after our first aborted attempt.  "It's too hard."

 

This year, I find myself re-posting Chautauqua links on FB (where I found this photo), and longing to be there.  I've listened to an entire week's worth of worship tapes from last summer; I wanted to hear Barbara Brown Taylor's sermon series, but that meant listening to the music and readings and prayers and announcements as well.  It was like being there: I could feel the breeze through the Ampitheatre and hear the pileated woodpecker in the trees behind our seats; I could remember the summers I listened to sermons as I pushed a stroller along the back, and the summers we all sang "Holy, Holy, Holy," always the Sunday opening hymn, with our arms around each other; and I could recall myself telling the kids, "Someday you'll be back here with your own children, and you'll be grateful for this Sunday summer tradition."

 

Well, no, not as it turns out.

 

The other place which seems impossible to me is Chicago, where Josh went to college and began what looked to be such a promising grown-up life.  I was headed there last fall, but the plans fell through.  My daughter has promised to accompany me this year.  I had imagined myself visiting grandchildren in Chicago someday, and looked forward to family vacations on Lake Michigan.

 

Well, no, not as it turns out.

 

These are places I have loved so very much.  The spirituality of place is deeply ingrained in me ~ but I cannot figure our how to return to these most beloved of places and survive intact in any kind of way.  On the other hand, I don't want to forgo forever the experience of these streets and paths and plazas and lakes, so haunted by memory and yet still so filled with exuberant joy.

 

It took me four years to return to our family's favorite Italian restaurant, which is only a short walk from our home.  But in doing so I have walled off a portion of my heart. 

 

Is there a way to go back without erecting barriers in a criss-cross pattern throughout my entire interior being?


 

 

How Do You Pray? (Friday Five on Monday)

Jan shared the following Friday Five last week.  I didn't have the time then even to think about it, but the questions address one of my favorite topics, so I thought I'd work through them this morning:

Jan says, "At the beginning of this past week, I attended a conference on contemplative prayer entitled "Turning to the Mystics" at the 2013 Summer Institute at the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, TX. The speakers were James Finley, author and former novice of Thomas Merton; Mirabai Starr, author, translator, and speaker; and Father Ronald Rolheiser, author and president of OST. We were encouraged to regularly sit in quiet to come to realize our union with the Divine, who continually loves us into being."

So for this Friday Five, let us share about our prayer practices, whether silent or not:

 

1. How do you pray?

Most often I use the website Pray As You Go, which provides a daily 12-15 minutes of music, scripture, and questions to ponder.  Some days I sit with a journal and spend an hour on it, some days I listen as I get dressed, some days I listen as I walk. 

 

Other than that I tend to vary what I do.  Some days the Daily Office readings at this site, some days the lectionary or other Scripture passages, some days some sort of devotional book, my favorite being Celtic Benediction.  Some days silence for long periods of time. I tend to use my walks for intercessory prayer. 

 

Sometimes my prayer is all about journaling; sometimes, coloring; sometimes, photography; sometimes, listening to music. 

 

I try to pray the daily examen, which I have been moving to mornings, since I tend to fall asleep in the middle if I leave it till nighttime!

2. How has your idea of prayer changed over time? 

I was introduced to imaginative prayer, to repetitive reflection, to prayer as listening, and to "everything as prayer" when I made the Spiritual Exercises.  I suppose that I had been praying reflectively, mulling things over in the context of scripture, music, and sermons, for a long time before I stumbled upon the Exercises, but without any sort of framework. 

 

The biggest change over the past decade is that prayer is now a constant for me.  Something that at one time I struggled to incorporate into my life in some form or other, even for just a few minutes, now pervades my days. 

3. Do you ever sit in silent prayer? How does it go?

Often, and it varies. I am challenged by distractions the same as everyone else is. 

4. Do you have any difficulties and/or pleasures in prayer?

I have difficulties, but these days most of them have to do with exercising forbearance in the face of the language others often use to pray.  Pleasures these days have mostly to do with listening to others describe their own lives of prayer. So often one would never guess at the profound interior lives of and spirit-led transformations occurring in people who look just like the rest of us, ordinary people going about ordinary lives of family, friends, and work. And so often they exert far more impact on me and my own journey with God than I could ever expect to foster in them.

 

5. What is the best advice that helped you with prayer?

 

I have been graced with extraordinary teachers in the life of prayer; it would be impossible to and ferret out one strand of best advice.   I suppose that there are probably two succinct phrases that I try to remember: "We are all always beginners" and "Listen."

 

Bonus: Share something about prayer or an example of a prayer you like.

 

These days I am listening to two sets of CDs in the car that each, in its own way, is affecting my life of prayer.  One is a new series on the daily examen, the practice reviewing your day in the light of your movements toward and away from God.   I've read lots of material on the examen (reading is always so much easier than practicing!), but this particular series by Howard Gray, S.J., my spiritual director through the Exercises, is filled with riches in insight and eloquence. 

 

The other is Barbara Brown Taylor's sermon series on water, preached at Chautauqua last summer.  Each summer week of the Chautauqua season is devoted to a theme around which morning lectures, daily worship, afternoon speakers, and other special programming spins. BBT did a magnificent job last year of drawing drink from, as she says, "the big book of creation and the little book of scripture."


 

Twenty-Five Years Ago

The Lovely Daughter was en route ~ one month to go.  The boys were approaching their third birthdays, and we headed to Chautauqua for a week.  (You could never guess, could you?)  We rented the second floor of 6 Vincent, played soccer in Miller Park in the evenings, and watched the 4th of July fireworks over the lake from Mayville.  Life was about as close to perfect as it can be.

Summer Fun Friday Five

OK, I redecorated my blog and it looks all summery and nice and . . .  where is everyone????  If I play the Friday Five, will you stop by?  Songbird asks us to list five summer things we love and five we don't, so:

1. Chautauqua Institution.  I have decided I am going to try to go over and hear BBT preach at least one day at the end of July. If any RevGals will be in the vicinity, let me know and we can plan accordingly!

2. The mountains of North Carolina, where I expect to be at the end of next week as I accompany The Lovely Daughter down to her camp counselor job. Like Chautauqua, they are home to wonderful and now heartbreakingly challenging memories, and like Chautauqua, they will soon be home to some precious ashes. 

(That's my girl, lower left in the gray Gwynn Valley t-shirt, in a camp promotional photo.)

3. Lemonade; even the most ordinary glass brings back lovely memories of my grandmother welcoming us home and bringing tall glasses filled with ice and lemonade out to the brick patio under the maple tree.

4.  Very early morning walks; early sunshine and quiet times at the Little Lakes.

5.  Feet: flip-flops and Tevas and sparkles on top of dark red nail polish.

I don't not love anything about summer except the humidity.  We don't have AC and I am already tired of requiring a fan, a glass of ice, and a cold washcloth to achieve even a restless sleep.

So, put on your flip-flops  and stop by for some lemonade in the sweltering shade!

Still a Challenge

I went back to my home church today, for the first time in a very long time.

I realized how much I miss many, many things about it. 

But it's still so hard.

It's Trinity Sunday, and so we sang Holy, Holy, Holy.  

That was the opening hymn for Josh's funeral service, because it is the opening hymn every Sunday at Chautauqua.  When my kids got old enough to complain about accompanying us to the ampitheater service there ever summer, I told them that one day when they were old and still doing the same thing, they would look back with gratitude.

Guess I was wrong about that.

We've only been to Chautauqua once since Josh died, and that was to scatter some of his ashes into the lake on the first Thanksgiving.  I'd like to go back for at least a day of BBT's preaching this summer, but I'm not sure that I'm up to it.

I can't figure out where to sit in church.  No matter where I try, the memories of that service 21 months ago feel like a physical invasion.

When I skipped Pentecost last week, Gabriele wrote that by this time of year she is longing for the green of ordinary time.

Yes.  It seems to me that ordinary time is quite complicated enough.