TO ACCEPT WHAT IS--THE TERRIBLE BEAUTY OF REALITY

  

The IDEA THAT YEATS WROTE ABOUT OF "A TERRIBLE BEAUTY 

Kaira Jewel Lingo, a former Buddhist nun in Thich Nhat Hanh’s Plum Village community in France, reflects on coming to terms with the unpredictable challenges of life:

In the Buddha’s most essential teaching of the Four Noble Truths, he shares his discovery that suffering is a part of life, and there is no escape from it. This is the first Noble Truth and acknowledging it can help us to suffer less. If we can accept where we are, and not judge the disruption in our life as wrong or bad, we can touch great freedom. This is because fighting what is doesn’t actually work. As the saying goes, “whatever we resist persists.”. . .

Thay [Thich Nhath Hanh] often said, “A true practitioner isn’t someone who doesn’t suffer, but someone who knows how to handle their suffering.” We could say that the measure of our accomplishment or success is not that our life has no ups and downs, but that we can surf the waves!

This attitude of acceptance is freeing when we apply it not only to our personal suffering but also to the suffering in the world. Once, as a young nun, when I was practicing a classic Plum Village guided meditation, I came to the final exercise, “Breathing in, I dwell in the present moment; breathing out, I know this is a wonderful moment.” Suddenly I found myself stuck when I did this practice, questioning how we could truly affirm it was “a wonderful moment” with all the violence, hatred, inequality, and preventable tragedies that are happening in the present moment all over the world. . . .

I sat in the question of it and began to see that along with all the suffering and pain, there are also many beings that are supporting others in the present moment. There are many hearts of compassion, opening to relieve suffering, to care for others, to teach, to show a different way. There are people who are courageous and standing up for what they believe is right, protecting our oceans, cleaning rivers and beaches, advocating for those who are oppressed. There are those in every corner of the planet who are quietly doing the things no one else wants to do: caring for the forgotten people, places, species, and doing what needs to be done.

When I focused on that other part of the larger picture, I was able to touch that, yes, this present moment is also a wonderful moment. I saw that suffering doesn’t have to disappear in order for beauty to be there. That life is about all of these things. . . . The reality is that there is great terror and pain, and there is great love and great wisdom. They’re all here, coexisting in this moment.

Here's  how Yeats  applied this idea to the Easter Rising of 1916

I write it out in verse –

MacDonagh and MacBride

And Connolly and Pearse

Now and in time to be,

Wherever green is worn,

Are changed, changed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born

 

Hunger Strike Memorial

 

Here is a picture of the only American  monument to  Hunger Strike Leader Bobby Sands. It is in a traffic circle in Hartford ,

It is a very solemn and dignified monument. It is the only one in this country.

The three words below the name and year of death  can be translated 'Our time will come,"

 Tiocfaidh Ár Lá (our time will come) This is a slogan of the Provisional IRA and it has become a kind of mantra since the Good Friday Agreement.  Over one hundred years have passed since the Partition of Ireland. When will Ireland the entire island be  a Nation Once again?

That is a question I ask myself every day. Why can't we have a monument like  this Hartford  one in Rhode Island?

SLAVEHOLDER CHRISTIANITY IN AMERICA

 WE MUST SPEAK OF SYSTEMIC RACISM

Maybe because I have been working on writing  a series of three short plays about John Brown and his raid on Harper's Ferry and the aftermath of that raid, I have been reading more of the eloquent  speeches of Frederick Douglas. I have come to be amazed at the eloquence of a man who was a slave and never went to school. What a genius he was.  

That fact made me think and wonder  of how many extraordinary minds and souls were enslaved and never could fulfill the promise of the genius that God had placed in them.

What a tremendous loss and what a crime against the progress of the human race.

Recently in my daily readings of  Father Richard Rohr, I was surprised by this analysis of this saintly Franciscan priest,

Slaveholder Christianity

 

 

 

Fr. Richard offers a critique of how Christianity aligned with empire and colonialism manifested specifically in the United States:

The form of Christianity that has grown in the United States and spread throughout much of the world is what we have to fairly call “slaveholder Christianity.” The founders of our nation drew on a Christian tradition that had been aligned with empire for more than a millennium. It must be said that this form of Christianity is far, far removed from the Gospel and the example of Jesus as it has failed to respect the divine image in all beings. [1]

Culture, tradition, and power can keep us from recognizing the true message of the Gospel, which is why listening to other perspectives and voices is so necessary. Historian Jemar Tisby shares the writing of Olaudah Equiano (1745–1797), a formerly enslaved man, who published his autobiography in 1789:

By the time he wrote his autobiography, Equiano had converted to Christianity. As he reflected on his life, he viewed his experiences through the lens of his faith and commented on the hypocrisy of slave traders who claimed to be Christian. . . .

On the kidnapping of unsuspecting Africans and their separation from family, Equiano asked, “O, ye nominal Christians! might not an African ask you, learned you this from your God, who says unto you, Do unto all men as you would men should do unto you?” [2] 

Black people immediately detected the hypocrisy of American-style slavery. They knew the inconsistencies of the faith from the rank odors, the chains, the blood, and the misery that accompanied their life of bondage. Instead of abandoning Christianity, though, black people went directly to teachings of Jesus and challenged white people to demonstrate integrity. [3

ANSWERING THAT CHALLENGE

 SHOULD BE OUR NATIONAL

                     AGENDA.

ALL SAINTS KNOWN AND UNKNOWN - SOME KNOWN ONLY TO GOD

 Looking for women saints to be role models.  Some of us need to look no further than our own mother.

I suppose it is a cliche to say that "My mother was a saint,"  But mine would pass the test.

  On All Saints Day, November 1,  I woke up thinking that there are many Saints that have never been canonized. Saints known only to God and to those of us who were close to them in this life. That HOLY  DAY -- ALL SAINTS-- IS THEIR Day.

My mother was endlessly patient with my two sisters who had Down Syndrome,  She always urged me to see my sisters as a Divine Gift,  She  often said that when we died and stood before God His one question would be--

HOW DID YOU TREAT THE TWO ANGELS I SENT TO YOU?"

I am aware that this is not the way people speak now  of children with Down Syndrome. They  refer to them as Disabled or Intellectually challenged. Styles and terms changed, but the the reality of our life with Janie and Sheila was an unyielding factor in every moment of every day of our lives.

  My mother became aware of the crusade of an Irish Priest, Father Peyton, to encourage the daily rosary in family life.

She adopted his slogan--

THE FAMILY THAT PRAYS TOGETHER, STAYS TOGETHER

She  instigated a habit of daily prayer. She made an altar shelf on my bedroom  wall and tacked a blue skirt with white lace around it. She placed a statue of the Blessed Virgin there, and each night we knelt on the floor before that altar and said the Rosary. 

My  mother urged me to carry the rosary beads in my coat pocket and say the Hail Mary's as I went through the day.  She also encouraged me to visit every Catholic Church that I went past to say  a greeting to Jesus in the Eucharist  on the altar.

Joan Chittiser in a recent posting describes a childhood that echoes with my own.

I spent a lot of my young life making regular visits to church, trying to identify my place in the pantheon of saints. When the light streamed brightest through the colorful church windows and the great nave was empty, I walked up and down the aisles stretching my neck to study the glass figures, trying to discover what the pictures had to say to me about my own journey on earth. I looked always and forever for women saints, of course. They were painfully few. St. Martin, yes. St. George, of course. Sts. Peter and Paul and twelve apostles were everywhere there for the boys. None of them fit the identity I felt growing within me. The few small windows of women saints that were there, though no one talked about them, were important to me. After all, if even only a few women were there, were given places of honor in those windows—well known or not—it had to be possible for me to be there too.

 
The truth is that it’s important to know who our heroes are and what it is that binds us to them if we ourselves are to form a strong sense of self.
 
Social psychologists tell us that the development of distinct identities carries us through life. Without models to steer by, Cote and Levine discovered, we may never become the fullness of ourselves.  Instead, we stand to become unsettled and only partially developed adults. As a result, we may refuse to enter adulthood at all and become dependent on others. We can begin to drift through life, settling down nowhere and doing nothing of lasting value for anyone. As perpetual searchers, we go through life perpetually dissatisfied. Or, on the other hand, we may so internalize the past that we are incapable of change in a continually changing world.
 
The church at one time mandated that the names of saints were to be part of the baptismal rite. Then, forever reminded of the great heroes of the faith who have gone before us, the child had a personal standard to steer by. It would, in other words, become part of their identity.
 
My list of holy heroes at this stage of life is too long to recount. They are everywhere. Nevertheless, Joan of Arc and Teresa of Avila emerged in me somewhere along the way in my early childhood and hold a privileged place in my heart to this day.

I too searched for women saints and I  also found Teresa and Joan and chose Teresa for my confirmation name.
 

I don't want to leave you with the impression that my mother was always praying or urging  me to pray.

Quite the contrary, she had enormous energy. She worked a second shift factory job from 3 to 11 PM.  She got up at 6 Am to get me and my sisters up and dressed and ready for school. She made us breakfast and packed my sister's  lunches.

I walked to school and at noon I walked home for lunch and then back to school by 1pm When I got home at 3:30pm, my mother had already left for her work.   I would often see the evidence of her daytime  efforts. She   painted and papered every room in our tenement and transformed the space.  She taught herself to paper and she  improved our home enormously.  

My mother was very sociable and cheerful.  She had a lovely singing voice and she sang Irish songs often. I learned them all from her. I have already written about the  "SHOWS" she urged me to stage with my sisters.

In 1973 we finally travelled to Ireland and  connected with the  family and friends that my mother's parents had bid adieu in 1904.

I remember coming back home to Pawtucket on the plane;  she took my hand and said --

 "WELL WE HAVE CLOSED THE CIRCLE  THAT FAMINE AND POVERTY BROKE, AND WE ARE A WHOLE FAMILY AGAIN."