Do you hear that buzzing sound? It is not just the bees working overtime on these rare sunny days after so much rain. It is also the sound of my 21st century combrogos, galvanized by Tim Dillinger, doing their best to generate excitement and spread the word about the November 15th release of Red-Robed Priestess, the fourth and final volume of my very long story—which of course, Eliz is reminding me to say, can be read first and is able to stand alone, like the other three. Here’s some of what’s happening.
November 15th unveiling of my FaceBook page. Tim and I worked on it last weekend. It was somewhat challenging as FB does not recognize some of the places I’ve lived or the activities I enjoy, though it did let me list caber-tossing among my sports. You do not have to wait till then to be my friend. You can go now and make your friend request. (Don’t worry, I’ll say yes!) http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002343434468
Monday, October 17th @ 7:00 Eastern time: Melissa Studdard interviews Elizabeth Cunningham for Tiferet Talk on Blogtalk radio. At the link below you will find a call-in number and you can also tweet or post the link on FaceBook. Elizabeth will be reading aloud a passage from Red-Robed Priestess. Please join her and get a live preview of the book. http://www.blogtalkradio.com/tiferetjournal/2011/10/17/elizabeth-cunningham-tiferet-talk-with-melissa-studdard
Reviews: They have been coming in, and they are very favorable. Here is the link to The Publisher’s Weekly Review. When you go to the site, you can tweet it or post it or like it etc… http://reg.publishersweekly.com/978-0-9823246-9-1
Art Contest: Elizabeth’s long-lost, long-found cousin from New Zealand, Jane Cunningham, is conspiring with Tim to bring you a Maeve Art contest. Neither Eliz nor I know the details. It is my understanding that they shall be revealed next week.
Also upcoming: Eliz and I have been answering intriguing interview questions from three bloggers. When these interviews are posted, we will publish the links here, on twitter, and on Eliz’s FB page if mine isn’t public yet. Here is the link to her page, which her brilliant sister musician Ruth Cunningham created and maintains for her. (Eliz is such a luddite). http://www.facebook.com/pages/Elizabeth-Cunningham/137518912968862
WTFWMD? Speaking of questions, I will be answering that one to the best of my ability on November 14th so that the post will appear in your mailbox on November 15th. People have been wondering what sorts of questions to ask. One person did email to ask me how I would close the distance between myself and my first daughter when we finally meet. Great question and one that Red-Robed Priestess will address. If you tune in to the Tiferet interview (see above) Eliz plans to read the passage about our first meeting since Boudica’s birth.
Other questions: You can ask me how I feel about various contemporary issues. You can ask what I would do if I were in some situation you are facing, but please keep in mind, my judgment might be questionable. I am known to be impulsive and rash. You can also ask me about events or people from my time. Do feel free to ask me theological questions. Oh and did I mention sex? I know a bit about that. I will do my best to answer all questions, but there may be some I don’t know enough to answer or might be better answered by you. I am not an authority on anything. And I will always encourage you to claim your own sovereignty. You can ask questions below or tweet or DM @EliznMaeve on Twitter.
IndieBound link. You can pre-order Red-Robed Priestess from your favorite independent bookstore. Do support those hard-working booklovers! http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780982324691
Thank you all so much for your help in spreading the word about Red-Robed Priestess and all The Maeve Chronicles. I had to write this post, because Elizabeth isn’t shameless enough despite her twenty year tutelage with me. Apologies from Elizabeth if anyone is offended by my self-promotion. No apologies from me. I’ve waited more than two thousand years to find my audience. And here you are at last!
Love and blessed bees,
Maeve
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
A Brief Message from Maeve on WWMD
Hello, everyone. It's Maeve speaking, but this is not an official post. I am saying Happy Birthday to Eliz. She had contemplated a birthday post, but I am afraid it would have been about climate change and the clouds of mosquitoes that have prevented her from hiking today and mortality and things like that. I persuaded her not to whinge publicly. (I love that word whinge! Whining is for mosquitoes and chain saws).
If you would like to read a post by Eliz you can go to this link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elizabeth-cunningham/is-god-a-novelist-fiction-spiritual-truth_b_974187.html?ref=tw Our friend Tim Dillinger persuaded her to find out why her Huffpo password had stopped working. For some reason, they gave her a new one, and they published her post "Is God a Novelist?"
But that is not nearly as interesting a question as the one I am going to pose to you now. WWMD? Or if you prefer: WTFWMD? That's right. What would Maeve do? For my release date post which I will write on November 14th so that it will be in your email box on November 15th, I am going to be answering your questions on that subject. If there are more questions than I can answer in one post, I will keep posting till I answer them all. You can start asking them now in the comment section below or by email, if there is a way to do that from here. (Neither Eliz or I know). You can also tweet your questions on twitter to @EliznMaeve.
If you would like to read a post by Eliz you can go to this link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elizabeth-cunningham/is-god-a-novelist-fiction-spiritual-truth_b_974187.html?ref=tw Our friend Tim Dillinger persuaded her to find out why her Huffpo password had stopped working. For some reason, they gave her a new one, and they published her post "Is God a Novelist?"
But that is not nearly as interesting a question as the one I am going to pose to you now. WWMD? Or if you prefer: WTFWMD? That's right. What would Maeve do? For my release date post which I will write on November 14th so that it will be in your email box on November 15th, I am going to be answering your questions on that subject. If there are more questions than I can answer in one post, I will keep posting till I answer them all. You can start asking them now in the comment section below or by email, if there is a way to do that from here. (Neither Eliz or I know). You can also tweet your questions on twitter to @EliznMaeve.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Following the Sun: Earth Science 101
For twenty-six years I lived in a house with a hill to the south and east. Most times of the year by the time I saw the sun, it had been up for hours and had perhaps once again determined there was nothing new under it. Only in winter could I see it rise from my bedroom. It appeared on the hill like a bright match about to ignite the bare winter wood.
On June 25th we moved to High Valley and as I have mentioned here before, I have been getting up early every day to do chi gung on the dock at the pond, for most of the summer the sunniest place at sunrise. I have written more than one haiku about the sun climbing the spruce trees across the pond. Recently, after a week of cloudy weather, I noted that the sun had moved over to a maple tree, but still the dock had plenty of sun.
This week there is no denying the sun has quit this spot. I have to walk past the dock to stand for a moment in a patch of sun. Before I finish preliminary exercises, the sun has brushed the end of the dock and hurried on. Yes, hurried. That’s how it seems to me. No gradual: now it rises in the maple tree and now over the barn. It is rising in a southward curve, casting one shadow and then another and another. And of course, each day it is rising later.
None of these observations are news. Every year the earth makes an elliptical orbit around the sun, its axis tilting away and towards, giving those of us in northern and southern hemispheres a palpable summer and winter. This is grade school stuff. Except suddenly it isn’t or maybe I am reverting to that age (I believe it’s called latency) when discovering things like the path of the sun or the phases of the moon can hold your attention, because you are not thinking about sex, or not all the time. I still do think about sex, but figuring out why the sun appears to be moving faster than it was a few weeks ago is occupying more and more mental space.
I would like to do a science project, and find a place where I can track the sun’s movement in miniature for a year. I have not yet found a place where there is no shade all day. So I expect I will continue to follow the sun every morning, seeking a patch of early light and seeing how long I can stay in it before it moves. I doubt I will get very scientific in my measurements, but I will continue to write haiku. And I will continue to do my chi gung practice early when the sun gives at least the illusion that everything under it is new.
A few thoughts on personification
We do it. I just did it with the sun. We name hurricanes. If your region or home was devastated by Irene, my heart is with you. Though we were in its predicted path, the east side of the Hudson River got off lightly. We also didn’t feel the recent earthquake, though only fifteen minutes away, others did. What I want to say is that people are quick to ascribe motivation to disasters—God’s or Gaia’s. People on both sides of the political spectrum do it. We like to believe that some force larger than ourselves shares our views and our judgments.
I wish we would all just become curious. There is some evidence of a causal relation between the recent earthquake and fracking. There is also considerable evidence that global warming will result in more frequent and volatile storms and rising seas. But who is affected, where and why, is beyond our ken. I just heard from a neighbor who lives ten minutes from me whose road was washed out. Here we had no damage at all—this time. Was it because I walked out early into the storm and asked Irene not to harm my trees?
I don’t need to know the answer to that question. And I will continue to talk to storms and trees and birds and flowers and insects, because that is my nature. Sometimes with familiar trees and animals, I am pretty sure the conversation is two-sided. But the trees speak like trees. And my translation is just that, a translation. Storms and earthquakes also speak. Let’s do our best to learn their languages before we tell other people what they mean.
Note from Maeve
I am a weather witch, and I pretty much concur with Eliz. BTW Tim is going to be giving me blog assignments soon as the publication date for Red-Robed Priestess gets closer. If you have a venue for reviewing Red-Robed Priestess or interviewing Eliz—or me!—let Tim know: tim@monkfishpublishing.com
On June 25th we moved to High Valley and as I have mentioned here before, I have been getting up early every day to do chi gung on the dock at the pond, for most of the summer the sunniest place at sunrise. I have written more than one haiku about the sun climbing the spruce trees across the pond. Recently, after a week of cloudy weather, I noted that the sun had moved over to a maple tree, but still the dock had plenty of sun.
This week there is no denying the sun has quit this spot. I have to walk past the dock to stand for a moment in a patch of sun. Before I finish preliminary exercises, the sun has brushed the end of the dock and hurried on. Yes, hurried. That’s how it seems to me. No gradual: now it rises in the maple tree and now over the barn. It is rising in a southward curve, casting one shadow and then another and another. And of course, each day it is rising later.
None of these observations are news. Every year the earth makes an elliptical orbit around the sun, its axis tilting away and towards, giving those of us in northern and southern hemispheres a palpable summer and winter. This is grade school stuff. Except suddenly it isn’t or maybe I am reverting to that age (I believe it’s called latency) when discovering things like the path of the sun or the phases of the moon can hold your attention, because you are not thinking about sex, or not all the time. I still do think about sex, but figuring out why the sun appears to be moving faster than it was a few weeks ago is occupying more and more mental space.
I would like to do a science project, and find a place where I can track the sun’s movement in miniature for a year. I have not yet found a place where there is no shade all day. So I expect I will continue to follow the sun every morning, seeking a patch of early light and seeing how long I can stay in it before it moves. I doubt I will get very scientific in my measurements, but I will continue to write haiku. And I will continue to do my chi gung practice early when the sun gives at least the illusion that everything under it is new.
A few thoughts on personification
We do it. I just did it with the sun. We name hurricanes. If your region or home was devastated by Irene, my heart is with you. Though we were in its predicted path, the east side of the Hudson River got off lightly. We also didn’t feel the recent earthquake, though only fifteen minutes away, others did. What I want to say is that people are quick to ascribe motivation to disasters—God’s or Gaia’s. People on both sides of the political spectrum do it. We like to believe that some force larger than ourselves shares our views and our judgments.
I wish we would all just become curious. There is some evidence of a causal relation between the recent earthquake and fracking. There is also considerable evidence that global warming will result in more frequent and volatile storms and rising seas. But who is affected, where and why, is beyond our ken. I just heard from a neighbor who lives ten minutes from me whose road was washed out. Here we had no damage at all—this time. Was it because I walked out early into the storm and asked Irene not to harm my trees?
I don’t need to know the answer to that question. And I will continue to talk to storms and trees and birds and flowers and insects, because that is my nature. Sometimes with familiar trees and animals, I am pretty sure the conversation is two-sided. But the trees speak like trees. And my translation is just that, a translation. Storms and earthquakes also speak. Let’s do our best to learn their languages before we tell other people what they mean.
Note from Maeve
I am a weather witch, and I pretty much concur with Eliz. BTW Tim is going to be giving me blog assignments soon as the publication date for Red-Robed Priestess gets closer. If you have a venue for reviewing Red-Robed Priestess or interviewing Eliz—or me!—let Tim know: tim@monkfishpublishing.com
Friday, August 12, 2011
Correction
Watching the mists this morning, I realized that I might have gotten the clock reversed in my mind, and the mists are in fact going clockwise. Though, at the eastern shore, there was a small group of mists going the opposite direction. In any case, they appear to circle to the west before going east to the sun and rising. Perhaps the same principle as going left to go right in Tai Chi form. BTW I often get things backwards in the form, too. A kind of nonverbal dyslexia.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
News from the Pond
my news: from the pond
his from the wide world beyond
we meet at breakfast
I report water lilies
he reports London riots
I get up these days around 6:00am and go out to a small dock on the far side of the pond to practice chi gung and tai chi. I have struck a deal with my neighbor across the road, who is not only building a house and a barn but also constantly rearranges the contours of the land with a bulldozer: No earth-moving, nerve shattering, diesel-guzzling machines before 8:00am. It is to his credit and mine that we came to this solution peacefully. Our land situation is complicated and, on a small scale, very similar to the kinds of border/occupancy situations that have resulted in bitter, intractable wars.
This morning was the most beautiful yet, abundant mists after heavy rain, fresh clear sky. I wondered if it was all right to enjoy it so much when there are riots in London, Republican victories in Wisconsin, not to mention war and famine in various parts of the world, and all the personal tragedies the media insists on bringing to our awareness.
Then I remembered how dreams often balance our waking state. If we are unhappy, dreams can bring lightness. If we are flying high, we sometimes have hideous nightmares. As I sat on the dock after practice and noticed spider webs caught in the light, I thought: we are all in this dream; we are all dreamers. I am dreaming the joy right now. It is my job. I am not separate or disconnected from the nightmares. I am not oblivious or impervious. I am just dreaming my part.
My husband walks around in headsets listening to NPR as our larger radio doesn’t get reception. So I no longer hear the news (except from him). Sometimes I feel guilty for not staying tuned to the larger world. But this morning the world of the pond seems huge, as if the whole cosmos had gathered here with the mists that always circle counterclockwise, and the water lilies rising from their dark wet muck, the insects skimming the surface making ripples and the fish swimming up to catch them, and the birds and the frogs calling, and the squirrels upbraiding my cat till he creeps out of the undergrowth and returns to me for comfort. I can never know everything about this world. But I can spend this quiet attentive time in the morning. Now and then I can share some news. Here is some in the form of haiku (5-7-syllables) and tanka (5-7-5-7-7)
Indigo Bunting
can that really be your name?
Iridescent jewel
bringing blue sky, aqua sea
on bright wings to middle earth
the sun calls the mists
turns them back into fire
morning alchemy
Rise, great blue heron
wings green-blue, water and sky
small dinosaur, soar!
swimming in the mists
to the water lily cove
my cat stands lifeguard
trees singing with cardinals
fish nipping my beauty mark
mists circle moonwise
then rise on a ray of sun
now I know the way
PS: FROM MAEVE
I am enjoying these mornings, too. Eliz did not mention in this post what came to her about a new meaning for Lover of the World (one of my titles). For most of my life and hers, we have thought of the beloved as another human being, a soul mate. But what if your lover is the world, and you love the world back—and what if that love is just as erotic and ecstatic as any other?
Just sayin.’
Tim, please give me a blog post assignment soon.
Your combrogo,
Maeve
his from the wide world beyond
we meet at breakfast
I report water lilies
he reports London riots
I get up these days around 6:00am and go out to a small dock on the far side of the pond to practice chi gung and tai chi. I have struck a deal with my neighbor across the road, who is not only building a house and a barn but also constantly rearranges the contours of the land with a bulldozer: No earth-moving, nerve shattering, diesel-guzzling machines before 8:00am. It is to his credit and mine that we came to this solution peacefully. Our land situation is complicated and, on a small scale, very similar to the kinds of border/occupancy situations that have resulted in bitter, intractable wars.
This morning was the most beautiful yet, abundant mists after heavy rain, fresh clear sky. I wondered if it was all right to enjoy it so much when there are riots in London, Republican victories in Wisconsin, not to mention war and famine in various parts of the world, and all the personal tragedies the media insists on bringing to our awareness.
Then I remembered how dreams often balance our waking state. If we are unhappy, dreams can bring lightness. If we are flying high, we sometimes have hideous nightmares. As I sat on the dock after practice and noticed spider webs caught in the light, I thought: we are all in this dream; we are all dreamers. I am dreaming the joy right now. It is my job. I am not separate or disconnected from the nightmares. I am not oblivious or impervious. I am just dreaming my part.
My husband walks around in headsets listening to NPR as our larger radio doesn’t get reception. So I no longer hear the news (except from him). Sometimes I feel guilty for not staying tuned to the larger world. But this morning the world of the pond seems huge, as if the whole cosmos had gathered here with the mists that always circle counterclockwise, and the water lilies rising from their dark wet muck, the insects skimming the surface making ripples and the fish swimming up to catch them, and the birds and the frogs calling, and the squirrels upbraiding my cat till he creeps out of the undergrowth and returns to me for comfort. I can never know everything about this world. But I can spend this quiet attentive time in the morning. Now and then I can share some news. Here is some in the form of haiku (5-7-syllables) and tanka (5-7-5-7-7)
Indigo Bunting
can that really be your name?
Iridescent jewel
bringing blue sky, aqua sea
on bright wings to middle earth
the sun calls the mists
turns them back into fire
morning alchemy
Rise, great blue heron
wings green-blue, water and sky
small dinosaur, soar!
swimming in the mists
to the water lily cove
my cat stands lifeguard
trees singing with cardinals
fish nipping my beauty mark
mists circle moonwise
then rise on a ray of sun
now I know the way
PS: FROM MAEVE
I am enjoying these mornings, too. Eliz did not mention in this post what came to her about a new meaning for Lover of the World (one of my titles). For most of my life and hers, we have thought of the beloved as another human being, a soul mate. But what if your lover is the world, and you love the world back—and what if that love is just as erotic and ecstatic as any other?
Just sayin.’
Tim, please give me a blog post assignment soon.
Your combrogo,
Maeve
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Feast of Mary Magdalen/Maeve Friday, July 22nd 7:30
Dea volente I will be livestreaming a performance featuring selections for all four of The Maeve Chronicles on Friday, July 22nd at 7:30. http://www.ustream.tv/user/ElizNMaeve
For me this is a celebration of twenty years with Maeve, twenty-one if you include her incarnation as the cartoon character Madge!
Hope to see you (or at least to have you see me) there and then!
http://www.ustream.tv/user/ElizNMaeve
For me this is a celebration of twenty years with Maeve, twenty-one if you include her incarnation as the cartoon character Madge!
Hope to see you (or at least to have you see me) there and then!
http://www.ustream.tv/user/ElizNMaeve
Monday, July 11, 2011
Stranger in a Familiar Land
Of course High Valley is familiar. My first stay was a two week stint at High Valley's summer camp at age eleven. I was warned then to “stay away from Olga’s son.” (My future husband) “He snaps people’s butts with towels.” When I was kicked out of school at sixteen, my brother suggested: “Send her to Olga. Olga will find her something to do.” So for two years I served a sort of tweeny maid at High Valley School. Later, married to the son and heir, I worked for a time as a cook and a drama teacher. My kids attended nursery school here. And when the school closed, I started The Center at High Valley, which I ran as a sort of back burner operation, always careful to defer to my mother-in-law’s sovereignty and always able to retreat to our house a mile away on the other side of the hill.
Now, as those of you who follow this blog might know, we have moved to High Valley to an upstairs apartment—which I had painted in many intense colors after years of living with white walls. It is a rabbit warren of an apartment where people get lost and where tall people look too big in the narrow hall. (My husband and I are both short). Our bedroom—two walls raspberry, two a rich green to match an old oriental carpet—is the one my husband’s parents shared. It has a commanding view of all there is to enjoy—and tend!
All my adult life, I have kept to an unvaried schedule: write in the morning, work at whatever the job I had in the afternoons and evenings. I raised kids, kept a comfortable house, without paying much attention to detail or dust, and enjoyed an undemanding yard surrounded by the friendly trees of a deep wood. Now that whole part of our life is past. Though our apartment is small and will be easy to keep, we have many other spaces to maintain for the Center, not to mention lawns and endless overgrown gardens.
And, for the first time in twenty years, I am not working on The Maeve Chronicles. (They are complete. Red-Robed Priestess is coming out in November.)
I have no schedule—at least not yet. I wander here and there, tugged by this or that task. Though I still write and have a counseling practice, I am feeling more and more like an arch-housewife and inept groundskeeper. Sometimes I long to go home to my old house and life, and yes, sometime I weep. More often, I feel tickled. I am enjoying being a stranger to myself, growing willy nilly into a new life. I like that every day is different and that the weather plays such a big role. It’s dry, so today is the day to mow. It’s cool and damp in the morning, time to weed. It’s raining…rest!!!
I will close this post with a recent poem:
Reluctant Gardener
Overwhelmed by weeds
besieged by poison ivy
overrun with grass
I weed-whack away at a bit
of lost garden and give
it a bad haircut.
I must plant something here,
something that will spread
and take care of itself.
Oh the choices! A low yellow bloom
whose name I forget, whose leaves
turn red in the fall.
Butterfly weed, iridescent orange,
and a butterfly bush that promises
to grow and grow, adding butterflies
to its blossoms. How tenderly I mulch them
as instructed: cardboard, dirt, hay,
how anxiously I water them,
how I plan to seek more plants
today, ground cover, dark red daisies,
lavender. Now the garden
is becoming mine, has called me
to itself through my ineptitude
and so we will grow each other.
PS: I don't seem to be able to comment on this blogpost anymore. Maeve has something to say. Here goes:
"I still exist and have a voice, even though my Chronicles are complete. My friend, Tim Dillinger, and I have plans for me to take back this blog at some point soon. Though she is not writing my story, Eliz is still performing portions of it live (and perhaps livestreamed). Her next performance is at the Barn Theatre at High Valley to celebrate my Feast Day Friday, July 22nd. Details on how to tune to livestreaming in will be posted on the blog!"
Now, as those of you who follow this blog might know, we have moved to High Valley to an upstairs apartment—which I had painted in many intense colors after years of living with white walls. It is a rabbit warren of an apartment where people get lost and where tall people look too big in the narrow hall. (My husband and I are both short). Our bedroom—two walls raspberry, two a rich green to match an old oriental carpet—is the one my husband’s parents shared. It has a commanding view of all there is to enjoy—and tend!
All my adult life, I have kept to an unvaried schedule: write in the morning, work at whatever the job I had in the afternoons and evenings. I raised kids, kept a comfortable house, without paying much attention to detail or dust, and enjoyed an undemanding yard surrounded by the friendly trees of a deep wood. Now that whole part of our life is past. Though our apartment is small and will be easy to keep, we have many other spaces to maintain for the Center, not to mention lawns and endless overgrown gardens.
And, for the first time in twenty years, I am not working on The Maeve Chronicles. (They are complete. Red-Robed Priestess is coming out in November.)
I have no schedule—at least not yet. I wander here and there, tugged by this or that task. Though I still write and have a counseling practice, I am feeling more and more like an arch-housewife and inept groundskeeper. Sometimes I long to go home to my old house and life, and yes, sometime I weep. More often, I feel tickled. I am enjoying being a stranger to myself, growing willy nilly into a new life. I like that every day is different and that the weather plays such a big role. It’s dry, so today is the day to mow. It’s cool and damp in the morning, time to weed. It’s raining…rest!!!
I will close this post with a recent poem:
Reluctant Gardener
Overwhelmed by weeds
besieged by poison ivy
overrun with grass
I weed-whack away at a bit
of lost garden and give
it a bad haircut.
I must plant something here,
something that will spread
and take care of itself.
Oh the choices! A low yellow bloom
whose name I forget, whose leaves
turn red in the fall.
Butterfly weed, iridescent orange,
and a butterfly bush that promises
to grow and grow, adding butterflies
to its blossoms. How tenderly I mulch them
as instructed: cardboard, dirt, hay,
how anxiously I water them,
how I plan to seek more plants
today, ground cover, dark red daisies,
lavender. Now the garden
is becoming mine, has called me
to itself through my ineptitude
and so we will grow each other.
PS: I don't seem to be able to comment on this blogpost anymore. Maeve has something to say. Here goes:
"I still exist and have a voice, even though my Chronicles are complete. My friend, Tim Dillinger, and I have plans for me to take back this blog at some point soon. Though she is not writing my story, Eliz is still performing portions of it live (and perhaps livestreamed). Her next performance is at the Barn Theatre at High Valley to celebrate my Feast Day Friday, July 22nd. Details on how to tune to livestreaming in will be posted on the blog!"
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
The Midnight Hour or WTFWJD?
It’s the midnight hour (i.e., between 3:00 and 4:00am when you can’t go back to sleep) before the dawn of Pentecost. For a week I have been struggling intensely with my core beliefs—and core pathologies.
Those of you who have read The Passion of Mary Magdalen will be familiar with the prologue “In the Night.” The Priestess Whores of Temple Magdalen welcome all comers, for the stranger might be a god or an angel. Or Jesus himself, as turns out to be the case when a Samaritan arrives with “a sick man near death,” and Maeve opens the gate she’d barred for the night.
If you follow this blog, you also know that I direct the Center at High Valley at the site of my mother-in-law’s former school. We are about to move into an apartment on that property, and we will be selling our secluded house in the woods.
High Valley has certain Temple Magdalen-like qualities. The school my mother-in-law ran for many years was home to kids with a variety of learning, emotional, and behavioral problems, which all have labels now but didn’t then. It was a place where misfits fit—including me when, as a high school dropout, I worked there as a sort of tweeny maid. The Center still has that quality, one I treasure. Our celebrations are open to people of all faiths and no faiths. The atmosphere is welcoming, the structure is organic. We often joke that we are an unintentional community. Just like at Temple Magdalen, we don’t have meetings, we have parties, music jams, storytelling, homemade arts and entertainment.
As many of you also know, I am descended from a line of Episcopal priests. I can recite much of the Sermon on the Mount by heart. The Gospel passage that is most indelibly imprinted on my psyche is from Matthew 25: “I was naked and ye clothed me, hungry and ye gave me to eat, thirsty, and ye gave me to drink, sick and ye visited me, in prison and ye came unto me. Inasmuch as ye have done it onto one of these the least of my brethren ye have done it unto me.” These verses are on my grandfather’s memorial plaque. They were at the core of every sermon my father gave in or out of church. They also informed my vision of Temple Magdalen.
So when acquaintances asked me to offer space at High Valley on a barter basis to a troubled woman, I said what I would call a complicated yes, though my gut would have preferred a simple no. The woman has no car (we live ten miles from shopping), can't do much physical labor (our major need) and is in rocky shape emotionally. Moreover, our tentative retreat space is downstairs from the apartment we will be newly inhabiting. I did manage to say no to a summer internship (after much agonizing) but I said yes to a three week retreat. Those approaching me on her behalf felt sure that a change from her current environment would lead to a breakthrough.
The woman responded to my offer enthusiastically but asked to bring with her a man with mental and emotional problems far more severe than her own. I’d met him, and my gut was having a fit, but my first response to her was a mild: “I don’t think it’s a good idea,” which of course she ignored. Then I said my first simple no: “The offer is to you, not to him.” Her numerous appeals that he be included became increasingly manipulative and, as I held firm, vituperative. In the end, she refused to come without him.
There was more than one sweated midnight hour during that week. One session began with: “At Temple Magdalen, they would have taken in both of them….” Suddenly Maeve interrupted and brought me up short:
“You are not going to go all fundamentalist on me! First of all, I have no intention of starting a religion. Second, Temple Magdalen and High Valley are not identical. At Temple Magdalen, we had a lot of staff, and we had two wealthy benefactors. So stop this line of thinking right now.”
Wow, I thought. There could be a blog post in this. Some people do refer to The Maeve Chronicles as their bible. You could argue that Maeve and I have rewritten the New Testament—but not to create a new orthodoxy! Temple Magdalen is a phenomenon not an institution. Moreover, The Maeve Chronicles end with a song called: “All Temples Fall.”
Despite Maeve’s admonishment, the midnight hour before Pentecost finds me fretting once again about my failure. “I wrote the Prologue (I say to myself--again). But I can’t live it. I am a hypocrite!” “Jesus Christ!” Maeve says, fed-up. “You have such a Christ complex. Go talk to Jesus. He’s the one who started all this.” So I do.
Jesus asks me: “What have you learned from me?” I quote all the passages about giving even more than you’re asked, concluding with Matthew 25. Jesus offers no comforting exegesis.
“Tell me what happened,” he says. And I tell him the story from the first request to take in the woman to my last no to including her friend. It must be the effect of his listening; I find myself taking care not to justify or reproach myself. I just give him the facts.
He receives the story without comment, and then he asks: “Where did you go wrong?”
“I said yes when I wanted to say no,” I answer.
Then follows one of those brief yet timeless life reviews in which this pattern is painfully and painstakingly illuminated.
Afterwards Jesus asks me, almost casually, just as a point of information. “Do you want to take care of people?”
“No,” I admit.
Then he asks: “What is it you think I want from you?”
I don’t answer right away, pondering all those deeply embedded passages, my compulsion to be good—at least (especially) in my own eyes.
“I want you to be truthful,” he says at last. “I want you to be real. I want you to be yourself.”
At just that moment, my hand closes on a cross pendant that has been lost for several days among the bed sheets.
“Ok,” I say.
And a few moments later, I fall into a sound sleep.
Those of you who have read The Passion of Mary Magdalen will be familiar with the prologue “In the Night.” The Priestess Whores of Temple Magdalen welcome all comers, for the stranger might be a god or an angel. Or Jesus himself, as turns out to be the case when a Samaritan arrives with “a sick man near death,” and Maeve opens the gate she’d barred for the night.
If you follow this blog, you also know that I direct the Center at High Valley at the site of my mother-in-law’s former school. We are about to move into an apartment on that property, and we will be selling our secluded house in the woods.
High Valley has certain Temple Magdalen-like qualities. The school my mother-in-law ran for many years was home to kids with a variety of learning, emotional, and behavioral problems, which all have labels now but didn’t then. It was a place where misfits fit—including me when, as a high school dropout, I worked there as a sort of tweeny maid. The Center still has that quality, one I treasure. Our celebrations are open to people of all faiths and no faiths. The atmosphere is welcoming, the structure is organic. We often joke that we are an unintentional community. Just like at Temple Magdalen, we don’t have meetings, we have parties, music jams, storytelling, homemade arts and entertainment.
As many of you also know, I am descended from a line of Episcopal priests. I can recite much of the Sermon on the Mount by heart. The Gospel passage that is most indelibly imprinted on my psyche is from Matthew 25: “I was naked and ye clothed me, hungry and ye gave me to eat, thirsty, and ye gave me to drink, sick and ye visited me, in prison and ye came unto me. Inasmuch as ye have done it onto one of these the least of my brethren ye have done it unto me.” These verses are on my grandfather’s memorial plaque. They were at the core of every sermon my father gave in or out of church. They also informed my vision of Temple Magdalen.
So when acquaintances asked me to offer space at High Valley on a barter basis to a troubled woman, I said what I would call a complicated yes, though my gut would have preferred a simple no. The woman has no car (we live ten miles from shopping), can't do much physical labor (our major need) and is in rocky shape emotionally. Moreover, our tentative retreat space is downstairs from the apartment we will be newly inhabiting. I did manage to say no to a summer internship (after much agonizing) but I said yes to a three week retreat. Those approaching me on her behalf felt sure that a change from her current environment would lead to a breakthrough.
The woman responded to my offer enthusiastically but asked to bring with her a man with mental and emotional problems far more severe than her own. I’d met him, and my gut was having a fit, but my first response to her was a mild: “I don’t think it’s a good idea,” which of course she ignored. Then I said my first simple no: “The offer is to you, not to him.” Her numerous appeals that he be included became increasingly manipulative and, as I held firm, vituperative. In the end, she refused to come without him.
There was more than one sweated midnight hour during that week. One session began with: “At Temple Magdalen, they would have taken in both of them….” Suddenly Maeve interrupted and brought me up short:
“You are not going to go all fundamentalist on me! First of all, I have no intention of starting a religion. Second, Temple Magdalen and High Valley are not identical. At Temple Magdalen, we had a lot of staff, and we had two wealthy benefactors. So stop this line of thinking right now.”
Wow, I thought. There could be a blog post in this. Some people do refer to The Maeve Chronicles as their bible. You could argue that Maeve and I have rewritten the New Testament—but not to create a new orthodoxy! Temple Magdalen is a phenomenon not an institution. Moreover, The Maeve Chronicles end with a song called: “All Temples Fall.”
Despite Maeve’s admonishment, the midnight hour before Pentecost finds me fretting once again about my failure. “I wrote the Prologue (I say to myself--again). But I can’t live it. I am a hypocrite!” “Jesus Christ!” Maeve says, fed-up. “You have such a Christ complex. Go talk to Jesus. He’s the one who started all this.” So I do.
Jesus asks me: “What have you learned from me?” I quote all the passages about giving even more than you’re asked, concluding with Matthew 25. Jesus offers no comforting exegesis.
“Tell me what happened,” he says. And I tell him the story from the first request to take in the woman to my last no to including her friend. It must be the effect of his listening; I find myself taking care not to justify or reproach myself. I just give him the facts.
He receives the story without comment, and then he asks: “Where did you go wrong?”
“I said yes when I wanted to say no,” I answer.
Then follows one of those brief yet timeless life reviews in which this pattern is painfully and painstakingly illuminated.
Afterwards Jesus asks me, almost casually, just as a point of information. “Do you want to take care of people?”
“No,” I admit.
Then he asks: “What is it you think I want from you?”
I don’t answer right away, pondering all those deeply embedded passages, my compulsion to be good—at least (especially) in my own eyes.
“I want you to be truthful,” he says at last. “I want you to be real. I want you to be yourself.”
At just that moment, my hand closes on a cross pendant that has been lost for several days among the bed sheets.
“Ok,” I say.
And a few moments later, I fall into a sound sleep.
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